bonjour, hola, and hi again. this is Tibki here, introducing you to my latest plot bunny that i wrote some time ago but will not stop trying to convince me to post. my reasoning here is this: after Judgement Day 2, McGee got moved down to cybercrimes, buthe didn't know what Vance had planned for him at first. this is what i think happened in the first month and a half or so down there, before he was told about the spy thing.

disclaimer: no ownage on my part... except for Julie, Smithers, Sandra, Jonsie, and Freddie (:P)

"McGee, I'm transferring you to Cyber Crimes unit."

Cyber Crimes.

In the third sub-basement of the main building. The lowest place a field agent could ever go, excepting autopsy. It was almost symbolic. The simple fact that he had been transferred down there simply screamed that Vance didn't find him fit for actually fieldwork anymore.

After all, Tony had been taken to the ships. Ziva was sent back to her assassin's life in Israel. He was tucked in a basement and told to do the one thing he had had above them, which of course, involved nothing except sitting at a desk and staring at a screen in a windowless room with fellow geeks.

So of course, he wasn't feeling like the most charitable person towards Director Vance. Privately, he'd wished that Ziva had just killed him the minute he had said the words 'cyber crimes'. Slowly.

And painfully. Especially painfully.

Soon though, the usually short-lived hatred inside Tim had died out. He simply couldn't bring himself to hate anyone. His parents told him he was too good a person, which could be a very good thing. His sister had said he was a wimp. Tony had, unknowingly, agreed. Ziva didn't seem to be able to understand that aspect of not being able to hold a grudge.

But still, the fact that he had had to be accompanied down by the Director himself was trying.

He sort of wanted to shoot him.

Or at least hit him with one of the throwing knives Ziva had made him promise to carry in case the geeks—or Vance—annoyed him.

He might not work under Gibbs anymore, but rule 9 was still in play. Besides, feeling the metal against his right ankle made him think about the days in the bullpen. The good ole days, as Tony would call them with an accent.

As they reached the 3rd sub-basement, Vance stepped out with him in tow. Lined up in front of him were a group of people win loose t-shirts and pants, obviously used to sitting on their butts from 9-5. Most of them had glasses thick enough to act as the bottom of wine bottles.

Oh God.

He wasn't going to end up like them, would he?

Tony would tease him to no end.

If Tony was on dry land. On the right continent.

"Everyone, this is Special Agent McGee," Vance introduced him. McGee nodded to them. One or two waved back. "Agent McGee is new to cyber crimes, but has 5 years of experience under his belt, so I want you to treat him with the respect he deserves. McGee, meet your new coworkers. Settle down, then start working."

He nodded, putting the box he was carrying on the empty desk in front of him. On top of the junk he'd had in his desk was a single photo, of the team and himself at a bar after a successful arrest. That found its own special place before he realized that Vance was still watching him

McGee turned, not saying a word. "Your badge and gun, Agent McGee," he said, holding out a hand.

This caused an immediate reaction in the room; the computer geeks in line behind them all gasped and started whispering. They'd probably never had to work with an actual field agent before. The prospect of a fellow geek carrying a gun was outside their imagination.

McGee's jaw clenched as he tensed. The hatred sprang back from the dead. The last thing he wanted to do was hand his SIG and badge over to this… man. It was the last thing he had in connection with the team, besides the photo. Vance saw him, but pressed on. A computer geek couldn't have a gun.

Leon Vance had seen many things in his life, but the amount of menace in the green-eyed glare he received as he drew his gun and badge almost staggered him. For the entire time he'd known him, Tim had seemed like the most peaceable of the entire MCRT. He'd heard rumors about what he would do to protect the ones he loved, but he'd always assumed it was just a rumor.

And he'd just scattered his surrogate family across the entire planet.

But he wasn't going to let that show. And there was one more thing before he left.

"All your guns, McGee."

"What makes you think I have more than one?"

"You worked under agent Gibbs and with Officer David. Don't insult my intelligence, Agent McGee."

McGee almost scowled, something he'd never done in his entire life, but he pulled his spare SIG from his box and the back-up revolver he kept on his right ankle. "Anything else, Director Vance?" he asked with the same amount of venom and insult Gibbs used in the word Director.

"Any more firearms?"

McGee stood for a moment, wondering if he should tell him about the hunting knife on his right ankle. Technically, it wasn't a firearm.

"No."

"Do I have to search you, Agent McGee?"

"Do you trust me, Director Vance?"

He was quiet for a moment, then replied, "You, yes. Gibbs? Less so."

A DiNozzo-worthy smirk played across his lips. "I can honestly tell you, Director, that I don't have any firearms in my possession, excepting the personal one I keep in my house."

"Revolver?"

"No sir, a German Shepherd named Jethro who gets a healthy serving of baked beans every night." He smirked at Vance's face. "And that's firepower."

Someone in the line sniggered. Vance chose to ignore it; he'd get worse from Gibbs later. They were all mad. He understood.

"Paperwork for your transfer will be on your desk soon. A person from Legal will be coming."

"Lee?"

"No. She's been assigned to Gibbs's team." So that's who was in those files. "If its any consolation, she's been put in Ziva's desk, not yours. A fellow MIT graduate is getting yours." Vance nodded to the unit, then backed off into the elevator, leaving McGee to his misery.

Tim glared at the closed doors, then did an about face and started pulling things out of his box. He quickly noticed that the room was silent despite the number of people standing there. What, were they expecting him to say something? He had quite a few things to say, but none of them were meant for their ears. These people had done nothing to deserve his anger.

He turned around once again and met their stares evenly.

McGee swallowed. "Er…" Yeah, real great, Mr. Double-Degree genius. "Er." Seriously. Gibbs would have your head for that.

He covered his throat to cover it, but he was cut off from speaking when a man entered from the other end of the room.

He had tousled black hair and, hidden behind thick glasses, bright green eyes that were very similar to a certain ex-cop's, but with more malice in them than Tony's had had. The others scattered and McGee instantly recognized what happened when a bully entered the realm of geeks.

"Who are you?" he asked in a whiny voice. Suddenly this guy didn't seem like a bully. He looked like the King of Geeks, really.

"Sp…" McGee cleared his throat. "Agent McGee. Just transferred down here."

The man's mouth grew into a smirk like mold grows onto a log. "Ah, so, one more Geek inside my realm! Welcome to cyber crimes, McGeek. You'll know me as Fredrick among your fellow lowly Geeks, but as sir or boss to me. I am the leader of cyber crimes."

McGee's eyebrows had risen when he said "my realm". At the term McGeek, they'd almost hit his hairline. But when he heard the "sir or boss" comment combined with his claim of the entire unit, they threatened to fall off.

"Boss," one of the men behind him hissed, like he couldn't hear him. "He's a field agent!"

"Did I ask your opinion, Smithers?" he barked nasally. "No, I did not! You know what the punishment is for speaking out of turn. Cough it up."

Smithers sulked, but went over to the desk a ways away from McGee's and took a specially cased pen from his drawer. He grudgingly gave it to "Fredrick" and got back in his place in line.

Frederick snorted, looking down at the glass case. "This is your most prized possession at hand? This piece of junk? What is it?"

"A-a pen sir," he replied sheepily. "M-my grandfather gave it to me when I was a kid, before he died. He… said it was my Uncle's, who died in his arms in Vietnam. I… I don't use it, it's just… special to me."

McGee's heart broke for Smithers. Why was he giving the one thing he had left of his uncle and grandfather to this guy?

"Sentimental value?" Fredrick sniveled. "Not much use to me… but it'll do as a good punishment. This is mine for the month."

What?

"Whoa, you can't do that!" McGee protested. "That's his!"

"Not for the next month, it's not, McGeek." Fredrick looked him directly in the eye. "And I plan to use it as much as possible until then. Maybe I'll get lucky and it'll run out of ink before then." He smiled. "You see, that is how it goes down here. You disrespect me, and you lose something you love for a month. You might get it back when it's over, if you're lucky. Now, what sort of underfunded, special-people college did you come from?"

Suddenly, the knife at his ankle really itched. But killing the head of the unit on his first day would be pretty bad on his resume when he got out of jail. McGee crossed his arms and decided that he'd fight back with words.

"I have a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins and a Masters in Computer Forensics from MIT. Had both my degrees by the time I was 24, passed FLETC as valedictorian, joined NCIS afterwards, and the MCRT team a year later, where I've been working under Supervisory Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs and alongside Special Agent Tony DiNozzo for the last 5 years. Compared to him, you're nothing, Freddie. You don't scare me."

By the end of his speech, half of the mouths in the room were on the floor. This guy wasn't just a field agent; he was a geek-turned-field agent! And he worked under Agent Gibbs!

"What did you do to get sent down here, McGeek?" Frederick asked, unfaltering. "Shoot another cop? Watch as a key witness got strangled again? Get bitten by another dog high on cocaine?"

McGee froze, horror creeping onto his face. Fredrick grinned, seeing the crack in his shield. "Oh yes, ex-Special Agent McGee, I know everything about you. I even know about your little sister. Framed for murder, wasn't she? Honestly. With all the problems you've caused that team upstairs, I'm surprised we haven't met earlier." He went up in his face, smiling evilly like only a geek could. "And thanks to your little backtalk, I'm going to have to give you punishment."

Fredrick turned and looked at his desk, with only one thing on top of it: the photo of his old team. "Ah yes," he said, snatching it and pulling it out of McGee's reach. "Your old team. Ziva David… back in Israel, isn't she? Tony DiNozzo, Agent Afloat. Abby Sciuto… well, we all know Abby. Ducky, Palmer… ah, and Leroy Jethro Gibbs. But who's this way in the corner? Oh, why, it's you! I couldn't tell at first, because, well, you're so well hidden, so… ignored."

Every word hit McGee like a bee sting, sticking inside so deeply he could begin to pull them out. This man knew everything, almost as much as Gibbs had. He knew about Benedict. About Erin, about Jethro, about Sarah.

But worse…

He believed him.

He was right, about everything. He'd caused a load of trouble upstairs. He didn't deserve to be up there. They were better off without him. After all… he was just the probie. Probies got replaced.

Even after 6 years, he was still probie. Maybe that should've been telling him something.

"Agent McGee?" a soft voice asked from his side. He snapped back to the present, looking down at a short girl with huge, sympathetic brown eyes. "I'm Agent Kiddip. You can call me Julie, if you want."

"N-nice to meet you, Julie," he managed to stammer. "Tim."

She nodded. "The trick to living with this guy," she said, her voice hidden from Frederick's ears by the noisy clacking of keyboards, "is to not let anything he says get to you. You have to endure him, though. He says he's one of SecNavs' undersecretary's nephew, and if he gets any word of us treating him badly, we'd be out of the base faster than you can say you're fired."

McGee thought back to his good ole days. "Not the redheaded one," he groaned, falling into his chair and running a hand over his face.

"How did you know?" Julie wondered.

"Because God just seems to hate me that much today," he replied. "First we had to go to Director Shepard's funeral. Then Vance split our team across two continents and a ship. Tony's an agent afloat, with no girls and 5000 men on a rat-infested ship. He had the plague, did you know that? Pneumonic plague. Nearly killed him, and now he's stuck with a bunch of rats. Ziva's in Tel Aviv with her father, doing God only knows what, probably killing more people than she's helped in the last 3 years. And now I've been sent to work in a claustrophobic, dimly lit, sub-basement h#!!hole that makes the Chimera look like a cruise ship, underneath the nephew of the assistant to SecNav I told to 'Stick it' when Tony as chained to a fugitive!"

Julie let him breathe for a minute. "Wow. Pretty bad day. On my hand, I've been working under Freddie for the last 5 years and have had to endure everything from getting my most valuable possession snatched to Freddie's Birthday."

"What do you have to do on his birthday?" He was almost afraid to ask.

"The guys have to bring him presents costing over 50 dollars. Most of the girls do too, except one girl who gets handpicked to entertain him that night." If McGee could look any more horrified or surprised, he would have. "Welcome to #3!!, Tim."

i can't believe Freddie came from my own mind. i used to be so innocent, then i started hanging around with a bunch of people who sit at my lunch table- some of them are so screwed up (and yet so funny and nice) that they've taken my pure and pristine brains and twisted them and written bad words on them in graffiti and black sharpie (before sniffing said sharpies).

sorry if i have a little OCC, this is an early one. there's a good bit more to this, but i promise to update daily.

plz tell me if you liked it, hated it, or just want to rant about your weird times and life in general. thats sort of what i did up there.

PEACE~ Tibki