Tutelary

Penny sighed as she looked around the Human Dimension. It was going to be impossible for her to find King Anthony in this mess. She looked at the other tutelary warriors that had come with her and shook her head. They were supposed to have established a light bond with their charge before the King returned to the Human Dimension, but King Anthony had been too impatient to wait for that.

Truthfully, she wasn’t even sure that King Anthony was aware of that custom. They didn’t want the bond for purposes of stalking the King. They needed the bond, so that they could detect when the King was in danger. At least, Sammy had already bonded with a guardian. Still that meant that King Anthony was somewhere in this dimension and they had no clue where.

Given King Anthony’s lack of experience with transferring between dimensions, he’d made it impossible to figure out even where he appeared in the human world let alone where he was now. The energy he’d used had been enormous and had obscured his exact location. Right now, Penny wasn’t even sure they were in the same city despite their best trackers trying to pinpoint exactly where King Anthony had landed.

The ability she’d used to force King Anthony into his kitten form should have allowed her to track him, but so far she had gleaned nothing from it. It probably didn’t help anything that she’d never been to the Human Dimension before. Actually, none of the guards had been to the Human Dimension.

It was unheard of for the royal family to travel to the Human Dimension once they’d been appointed. Staring at a bunch of statues of humans, Penny couldn’t help thinking that the Human Dimension was weird. Who encased their dead in stone? Still this in no way helped them find King Anthony.

She wracked her brain trying to remember what information they had on King Anthony and what he had been doing before being called back to the Cat Dimension. It was pretty obvious that King Anthony would likely attempt to return to his old life at some point in time. She couldn’t remember anything about his background, right now, however.

Penny and the other guards stood out quite a lot it appeared, as their togas which had been what the humans used to wear, did not appear to match what anyone else was wearing. In fact, there was a lot of pointing and whispering about them going on. Gesturing for the others to fall back to a more defensible position, Penny put her head together with her second in command to figure out their best next move.

Meanwhile, Abby had given up on figuring out what the cute black kitten wanted and had decided to just go about her day, which luckily for Tony meant that she was now heading towards NCIS headquarters. He’d settled down once they’d gotten into Abby’s car and were on their way to NCIS headquarters. In fact, Abby had almost completely forgotten about him, so quiet was he underneath the passenger seat.

She remembered quickly when Tony became a blur of black across her feet as she opened the door. She gasped and quickly tried to catch Tony, but he was too fast for her. She gave a valiant chase, but the heels she was wearing were in no way suited towards running. Tony quickly outpaced her and she lost him before she even made it inside NCIS headquarters.

Once Tony was sure that Abby wasn’t following him, he slowly made his way towards the bullpen. He had to be careful now. If security caught him, he’d be thrown out. So he had to avoid being spotted by anyone. As such, he was carefully peeking around corners and checking to make sure the hallways were clear before darting down each one.

He’d gotten lucky that one of the back employee entrances had been just about to close when he darted through it, so that the employee didn’t even realize that he’d come in. The back corridors were not patrolled as often since you had to have an employee badge in order to be able to enter through them. You still had to go through security, but you could at least avoid the long lines of the public entrance.

Tony had used that to his advantage. He’d also used the fact that the motion detectors were expecting someone of human height and not of kitten height to infiltrate NCIS headquarters. He’d managed to sneak past security, but now he was getting to the occupied sectors and he’d have to be even more careful.

People were coming down the corridors at more regular intervals now and he couldn’t just go from one end to the other without someone showing up. With that in mind, he waited for the rush of people to go through and followed the last person quietly. He’d been forced to take the stairs since the elevator was too chancey.

Finally, though, the bullpen was just around the corner. Peeking around the corner, it appeared that everyone was already hard at work. He’d have to time it just right, but if he was quiet he thought that he could make it over to his team’s area without anyone seeing him except the team. He wasn’t sure what to do about the team seeing him, but he hoped by the time he got there that he’d have figured something out.

Sliding under his desk, Tony looked around the MCRT’s area and couldn’t help feeling a little lost. No one was here. Turning around in a circle, Tony looked for the team again hopefully. He settled in to wait when there was still no sign of the team, hoping that they would return soon.