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Tony picked up tickets for Fornell to the Science Center, it would be a good place for him to take Emily. He'd been invited to a fancy party, the kind you needed a seamstress/tailor for your clothes in order to attend. He'd been planning to go, but one thing after another happened. He was preparing a pasta salad and dumped it all over the black clothes he'd planned to wear to the gala. Before he could get them into the dry cleaners, they were called in for a case. Then he'd somehow ended up hit by a truckload of books and broken his leg. As if that wasn't bad enough he found out that his blood appealed to a magical creature and really he just wanted to paint the town red by that point in time. How was he going to find time to wrap gifts the way this year was going? This really was turning out to be a crappy Christmas.
Kort stared at the number of gifts he needed to wrap and wondered if he'd lost his mind this year. He wasn't exactly one for giving presents to begin with. He certainly couldn't be bothered to spend his time and effort in finding the perfect souvenir for a simple colleague, after all. No, he only ever bothered with gifts if the person mattered.
Oh, he'd occasionally pitch in and participate in a gift exchange, but that was more out of selfishness than any true desire to find the perfect tribute for someone. Personally, he preferred the gift exchanges where he could get away with giving prank presents. Watching people's faces on the receiving end tended to be very hilarious. However, his reputation for giving people the perfect reward in the other kinds of exchanges tended to mean they tried harder to get him something he'd actually like, hence selfish motivation.
So how he'd ended up with over twelve gifts to wrap when he wasn't participating in any exchanges this year and could count the number of people he considered worthy on one hand, one finger even was a mystery even to himself. He was pretty sure the person didn't even know that Kort considered them one of his. In fact, they might well be horrified if they found out. It was definitely not a mutual relationship or anything close.
Who were these gifts for you, you ask? One, Tony DiNozzo, Very Special NCIS Agent. They somehow kept ending up on opposite sides, so Trent knew there was no way that he'd endeared himself to the other. After all, the job came first for both of them though DiNozzo might not see it the same way.
If he was lucky, he could wrap these presents and include a note and start wooing DiNozzo, but given the guy was constantly surrounded by Gibbs and the rest of the MCRT who were decidedly prejudiced against Kort, he doubted that anyone would be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, least of all Tony.
He hadn't even purposefully started picking up gifts for the other man, it had just happened. He'd been minding his own business on one of his CIA missions when he'd caught sight of the knife with a very sharp blade. He hadn't been able to avoid admiring how cleanly it cut through flesh and bone and pretty much everything he tried it on. At first, he'd thought to keep it for himself, but then he'd remembered Gibbs' rule #9 and realized this would be a perfect way to appeal to the SFA he wanted. He still couldn't believe the man followed or pretended to follow Gibbs' rules. Kort had learned all of them, not to impress DiNozzo or Gibbs, but in an attempt to prepare himself for what he might be getting into.
Anyway, one gift would have been fine. He could have passed that off as normal relatively easily. When he'd found himself palming a couple of hand grenades left over from an operation with a vague idea to provide them as protection, Kort knew he was in trouble. It only got worse from there.
He didn't even know why he'd picked up three M-16s. Gibbs was the sniper, not DiNozzo. Still Tony was bound to have learned something about sniping from his leader wasn't he?
The four Tommy guns made even less sense. Was he trying to arm the entire MCRT now? He'd confiscated them from a few idiots that believed themselves to be revolutionists and just hadn't bothered to turn them into the CIA.
Then there was the time he'd taken a wrong turn in an old mine shaft and found himself in possession of five sticks of dynamite. He hadn't needed them and no one knew he had them, so he'd simply added it to his growing collection of gifts. He hadn't realized quite how big it was growing until he consolidated it from the various safe houses he'd stored each item in, to one singular collection as he added six Molotov cocktails to the pile of gifts, some already wrapped, some not.
They would have quite nicely blown up his entire set of gifts by themselves, if he hadn't defused them first. They would need to be ignited again to be useful as an incendiary device. Apparently, his odd collection of weapons was making the rounds of the CIA gossip channels as someone looking to get into his good graces had handed him seven electric cattle prods. Needless to say, the guy had not succeeded in winning Trent's praise or admiration, but Kort had still pocketed the cattle prods to use later.
Trent had smiled as he heard the rumors that had spread after that. Apparently, recruits were now being warned off of giving him anything, but especially not weapons. He didn't really mind. He was sure Tony would appreciate weapons that he'd retrieved himself more than ones that someone else had given Kort.
He went out of his way to find eight bayonets, next. He'd pretty much consigned himself to this insanity at this point in time and just hoped he would find an end to it soon. Once again, the bayonets reminded him more of Gibbs than DiNozzo, but hopefully Tony would see these as offers of protection rather than threats because of that. At least, that's what Kort hoped.
He was beginning to think he should include the stories of how he came to own these particular weapons when he sent them to Tony. He suspected that DiNozzo would be amused by the story of Kort being sprayed with mace courtesy of nine women before he confiscated all of their containers of mace and stored them somewhere safe until they could be added to the pile.
The next one was a bit crazy even for him. Who would trust him with ten nuclear submarines? Even the CIA knew better, or at least Trent thought they did. And yet somehow he now had command of ten nuclear submarines. He ordered them to surround the safe house containing the other gifts for DiNozzo and hoped he could figure out what to do with them before Christmas came around.
The never gas was easy to explain compared to the submarines. They frequently had to use it when dealing with insurgents, after all. Though 11 containers was definitely more than he thought he'd ever need of the stuff, preferring more subtle methods himself.
The final straw, though, came when he heard what Ziva had done to Tony, not just once but multiple times. How dare she pick anyone over DiNozzo? Did she not see the guy's worth?
He badly wanted to offer Tony twelve nuclear holocausts as recompense for Ziva's treatment of him, but he felt that might be going a bit far for someone on the right side of the law. That didn't stop him from blowing her up a little, though. Now, if he could only figure out how to wrap her up.