Disclaimer: I don't own any of the wonderful characters in this story. :(
All was quiet in the garage of the team who called themselves Scorpion. They were all out saving the world again, but, this time, they'd called in the help of some of their friends. Namely, Callen's team from NCIS and this fellow who named Sherlock and his, oh, what was she? Associate?
No, wait. Didn't he say something about bodyguard? Housekeep? He mentioned the word valet in there somewhere? Oh, well. It didn't matter what she was. Her name was Joan and she was here with Sherlock for whatever reason.
So, it was all quiet in the garage. It was almost silent, but, if you had been sitting there in silence on that day, you would have heard some noises, that could only be described as peculiar, coming from upstairs. If you were to strain your ears and listen carefully, you would have been able to hear small, soft barks and whines.
If you had listened really carefully, you also would have been able to hear a noise that could best be described as low-pitched dolphin. You would have heard low-pitched squeaks coming at a rapid succession.
Now, if you were to have gone upstairs (which I would not recommend if you heard the above noises coming from upstairs), you would have found three animals all happily stretched out on the upstairs bed. There was a dog, a ferret and a turtle (or was that a tortoise?).
These three animals had been brought together by their owners, and left by themselves while their owners went out to save the world.
The dog had been named Monty by his master. He was told quite a lot that he looked like his master. He loved his master very much.
The ferret had been named Ferret Bueller by his master. It baffled Bueller why his owner had given him a very German sounding name. After all, he thought they were American!
The tortoise's name was Clyde. He'd been given that name by his new owner on one of his lazy days. He'd just been sitting happily in his tank, when all of a sudden, he was lifted out and taken to a new place. Not that he was complaining. He quite liked his new owner. As well as his girl. She was pretty.
Now, the funny thing about animals is that they can understand both humans and animals, while is humans can only understand other humans. That puts humans at a slight disadvantage to animals, which they make up for in the fact that they're stronger that quite a few animals.
So, to a human, animals talking would sound like barks, squeaks, meows, roars and so forth. That's why, if you were there that day, listening to these animal noises, you would not have known that these three were talking to each other, unless I had explained all this to you.
"This is absolute bull!" Ferret Bueller exclaimed to his friends, which, to a human, would sound like low-pitched clicking noise at a rapid speed. "Our people leaving us behind to go save the world on their own!"
"Right!" Monty agreed. To people like you and me, you would think he's just barking. "We can save the world just as well as they can!"
"Stupid humans!" Clyde nodded beside Monty. To us, that would sound like…well, you get the drill. "They think just because they can do cool things we can't that they're somehow superior!"
"I know!" Monty jumped in. "I mean, we can do cool stuff they can't! That should count for something!"
His friends nodded in agreement and they sat in silence for a while.
"Hey," Bueller spoke up. "Perhaps if we proved ourselves to the humans, they'd consider us higher."
"Hey, good idea!" Monty eagerly agreed. "But how should we do this? The humans are so picky about what is okay to do and what's not okay to do!"
All three friends fell back into silence, racking their small yet intelligent brains to come up with a suitable idea to prove themselves.
"Hey, what about going out to find them?" Monty suggested. "And then we save the world with them?"
"Idiot!" Clyde muttered. "Don't you know that the humans would blow a hissy fit? They don't like animals saving the world alongside them!"
"Hey! No need to be rude!" Bueller cut in. "Monty was just trying to help!"
"And he was doing a ruddy awful job of it!" Clyde grumbled, using one of the words he had heard Sherlock use sometimes. He didn't know exactly what it meant, but the context sounded right, so, he used it. Monty growled lowly – a sign that he was angry. Clyde let it slide, but toned it down a bit.
"Any other ideas?" Clyde asked, changing the subject.
"What about setting up a little party?" Bueller suggested. "You know, as a sort of 'Well Done' for the humans for saving the world?"
"Yeah!" Monty bounced up and down eagerly. Clyde contemplated this for a minute before nodding slowly.
"That does sound like a good idea," he agreed. "We can easily achieve that, and it's perfectly acceptable, according to the humans!"
"Let's do it, then!" Monty declared, already at the top of the stairs. His friends called him back, as it would take forever for Clyde to get to the bottom of the stairs if he were to do it himself.
Reluctantly, Monty trailed back and scooped Clyde up in his mouth gently, as a mother would her cub. He padded back over to the stairs and, stretching up on his hind legs, Monty precariously placed Clyde on the banister before releasing him. Clyde slid down, flailing his stubby legs around to keep from falling off the edge.
He eventually reached the end, but didn't stop because the journey wasn't over. He fell off the end of the banister and began to fell. Fortunately for him, Monty was there to catch him in his mouth, so Clyde never touched the ground. Monty placed Clyde on Happy's working table, and Clyde waddled over to where there was a mini metal mountain. Although, to a tortoise, it looked huge.
Once Clyde had struggled to the top of the mountain, he took charge of the situation.
"Monty!" he barked. "There are some ribbons in that box over by Mr O'Brien's desk. You get started on that!"
Monty nodded and happily trotted over to the ribbon. He quickly found it and began stringing it up everywhere. Humans loved ribbons, right? Well, Monty shouldn't question it; Clyde appeared to know what he was doing and Monty trusted him.
"Bueller!" Clyde spoke to the ferret who had helped himself down the banister and had a rather rough landing. "Toby is hiding some balloons in his desk. For Happy I think. Bring them over here."
Bueller was very quick to obey and, soon, Clyde had ten black balloons in front of him.
"Bueller. Your job is the food. Find some food and set it up for the humans."
The little ferret scurried off to gather up some snacks for their people. Clyde climbed down from his mountain and got to work on the balloons. Blowing them up was harder than he thought. He tried so many different ways to blow it up, but nothing worked.
Bueller had since gotten into the food and was snacking and hefting them up onto the table for the humans. Monty, meanwhile, thought he was doing a pretty good job at stringing up the ribbons. The three animals worked busily for hours, trying to make it nice for the humans.
But, as does happen, the hardworking bunch became bored. Clyde gave up working on the balloons, as it was near impossible to blow up with his tiny mouth. Bueller thought the food looked far too good and tempting, and thus started snacking on it. Monty became bored at stringing up ribbons and turned it into a game of 'how tangled up can I get and still get out of the ribbons?'
Pretty soon, Buller was stuffing his face with food and throwing some at Monty, thinking it was the funniest thing in the world. Clyde agreed that it was hilarious, and he thought it'd be even funnier if he could stuff himself into the balloon, and both other parties present thought it'd make a good laugh. Monty kept playing his game while doing his best to dodge the projectiles fired at him by his furry friend.
All three were having so much fun, that they didn't even notice when the humans walked in. All twelve people were not expecting to see what they were seeing. They saw a dog, tangled up in ribbons, being pelted with food hurtled at him by a ferret with crumbs on his furry little chin and a tortoise half-stuffed backwards into a black balloon.
"What the hell?" Deeks wondered, observing the mess. All three creatures heard this. They stopped and looked and saw all twelve humans standing there. Clyde, being the wisest and most intelligent of the bunch, let out a thoughtful sigh.
"Perhaps this is why they don't take us with them to save the world."