"So, what do we have today, Boss?" Tony DiNozzo asked as he walked in.

"Murder," Gibbs replied simply, indicating the body in front of him.

"Ah," Tony said as he looked down, "of course." Surveying the crime scene, his eyes fell upon a strange object: there on the floor, partially hidden from view by a side table, lay a clear plastic drinking glass in the shape of a boot. He bent down to get a closer look. "What do you make of this?"

Timothy McGee turned around after snapping a picture of the shattered glass from the coffee table in the middle of the room. "What do I make of what?"

Reaching out a gloved hand, Tony picked it up. Gibbs glanced over and said curtly, "It's called a cup, DiNozzo. Ever seen one before?"

"Not one shaped like this," Tony replied, turning it over to look at it from all sides.

"It seems to be broken," Ziva David commented, looking over his shoulder and pointing at the vamp of the boot; indeed, only half of the extended lower portion was intact – the rest of it was nowhere to be seen.

"The other piece should be around here somewhere," McGee said, moving to photograph a red splatter next to a shell casing.

Tony stared at McGee in mock-amazement. "Brilliant deduction, McSherlock," he said, "but just one question… Where?" He spread his hands apart as he said this, and it was then that McGee first got a good look at the cup Tony was holding.

"Wait a minute…" McGee muttered, approaching Tony like he was walking in a dream. "That cup… It looks like…"

Gibbs looked up expectantly, but when McGee didn't continue he loudly said, "Looks like what, McGee?"

"You've seen this thing before, Probie?" Tony asked in disbelief.

"W– Yeah… Yeah I have one just like it. Well, not just like it, I mean, mine's not broken, and you can still read the–" McGee stopped talking abruptly when Gibbs whapped him upside the head.

"No rambling, Probie," Tony muttered smugly as Gibbs walked over to him, his expression inscrutable.

"Did this cup get photographed before you picked it up, DiNozzo?" Gibbs said as he held his hand out to take it.

"Uh–" Tony started to respond, but a swift Gibbs-slap told him his boss already knew the answer. "Right. Sorry, Boss."

The cup now in his hand, Gibbs took a few steps away before turning to face his team. Expecting to hear an admonishment about professionalism and protocol, McGee and Tony each did a double-take when the next words Gibbs said were directed at someone else: "How'd you get in here?"

Looking around, they found a young woman in the doorway staring at Gibbs – or, more specifically, at the cup he was holding.

"It's an honor to finally meet you all, Agents Gibbs, DiNozzo, McGee, and David," the stranger said, glancing at each of them in turn as she said their names, "but now isn't the time for pleasantries. There is something going on here that none of you could possibly understand."

Tony and Ziva stood in observation, watching the strange young woman sitting in interrogation looking relatively calm but still rather anxious. Gibbs sat across from her, saying nothing, while she did the same.

"Why is she not talking?" Ziva asked Tony under her breath. "It is obvious she wants to tell us something…"

"Obvious," Tony echoed, though he didn't think so.

Ziva glanced at him, reading his tone correctly. "You did not catch that? When she showed up at the scene, she made it obvious she had something very important to say."

Tony looked over at his teammate, raising an eyebrow. "You got the impression she wanted to tell us something important? I got the impression she knew who had committed the murder and was afraid she would be next…"

Ziva snorted. "Please! If that were the case, the first thing she did would not have been telling us she knew all of our names; that makes her seem like a fangrouping girlie."

Tony appeared flabbergasted for a moment, blinking twice before telling Ziva, "I think you mean 'fangirling groupie'."

"What is the difference?"

"It's 'fangirling groupie'; what you said makes absolutely no sense."

"What you said does not makes sense either," Ziva shot back.

"Yeah, but at least the way I said it, other people would know what I'm talking about!"

"See, this is why I hate the English language; the only people who understand it are the ones who have spoken it all their lives. I mean, seriously, it is almost like you people add new words to the dictionary every year!"

Tony was tempted to tell her they do, but at that moment the silence was broken on the other side of the glass.

Gibbs spoke first. "Alright, what's your story?"

"Of all the agents I could tell, you're the one who would understand the least. If you want to get any of it at all, you should really have Agent McGee in here," the woman replied.

"Let's start with what I would understand: who are you, and how is it you know everyone on my team?"

The woman rolled her eyes as though she had been wondering how long it would take him to ask her that, then took a deep breath and said, "My name is Danielle Seth; aliases Daniela, Gale, Dani Cross, Marie Rivers, Christie Edogawa, Heili O'Trope, and Vendaval de la Luz. And I know your team because, where I come from, your lives are portrayed in one of my favorite TV shows: NCIS."

"There's definitely something hinky about this," Abby muttered, looking over the evidence McGee had brought to her.

"What's hinky?" McGee asked confusedly.

"This doesn't fit," Abby said, picking up the boot cup.

"Doesn't fit… where?"

"Here! Here in this lab, McGee! It has no place among this evidence!"

"It was at the crime scene–" McGee started to say.

"It didn't belong there! I'm telling you, McGee, this cup is nothing more than an innocent bystander! There is absolutely no forensic evidence on it whatsoever; it's almost as though it wasn't even there!"

"But Abby, it was there, I saw it–"

"Saw it where? Next to the murder weapon? Underneath the dead body?"

"Um… no, off to the side… under a table…"

"See, I told you; nothing to do with it!"

A/N: I'm posting this on my sister's birthday since this story is a collaborative effort between us. Seeing as how this is an NCIS fic, I thought I'd try something new (well, new for me; I've seen other writers do this before but I've never done it myself) – get your investigative brains going for a pop quiz! Put your answers in with your review for this chapter and whoever gets the highest score wins a prize! …Dunno exactly what it'll be, but we'll see. Here goes:

Question 1: If this story were to be placed somewhere in the chronology of the show, what is the earliest episode it could be after?

Question 2: Where did the boot cup come from?

Question 3: What can you deduce about Danielle from her aliases alone?