Okay, so this is my first Fanfic in over four years. This is something which i have been plotting for a while so please enjoy and don't forget to share your thoughts :)

EDIT: I have gone though and corrected all the little mistakes that and somehow managed to escape three proofreads. As per some constructive advice, i am have gone ahead and made some other changes. Now with 95% less 'would'.

The NCIS squad room was always quiet in a morning. Surprisingly quiet. Most agents did not arrive until around eight-thirty in the morning. This wasn't the case however for probationary agent Philander Haley. Haley had been in the office since the early hours; struggling to sleep had forced him out of his bed and into work. Haley had made sure that he was diligent in his duties as a supporting probationary agent. His duties mainly include assisting in other squads investigations whenever necessary, commonly being called the 'floater' agent due to him never being assigned to a specific squad to work with. Sometimes the young agent preferred this; you were just given orders and you did exactly what you were told and if something went amiss at the end of the investigation you broke up and moved on. The other side of him really wanted to join a team, a couple of months ago the other 'probie' agents had been dished out and assigned more permanent positions, shuffled into other senior teams or grouped together into a new team led by a senior agent. The Director however, had decided to keep Haley where he was, a decision that even to this day doesn't make sense. The director had arrived early himself. Haley had the pleasure of riding the elevator up with him. They both spoke a polite hello and rode up in silence, just like normal. It seemed to be a NCIS tradition to ride the elevator in silence in the morning. Maybe it would be easier to take the stairs from now on. It was not peculiar to see the director arrive early in the morning. For the past couple of weeks he had even been coming in at three in the morning.

Haley sighed as he looked at the numerous case files he was searching through. He had been given the task of trying to find commonality between some old NIS cases and a new case which was being investigated. It wasn't something interesting like murder, it was a simple scam that was being used to get marines and fellow navy personnel to sign away parts of their veterans benefits to charitable causes. Similar scams had been used in the past and the team investigating it suspected that someone from one of the old cases was responsible for this sudden resurgence. The job wasn't difficult thanks to his working management system; the old case files on the left, the new case files on the right. After spending a few hours scrounging around old case files and badly written paperwork with faded and aged ink, he had found what the team was looking for; a connection. Not a huge one, but one that would give them a lead and hopefully a break in the case. Haley had already compiled his findings into a precise and well written document on his computer, taking care to ensure that he had earmarked all of his references for easy finding with small Post-it notes with notation numbers like: "2.1 and 3.5.4". Haley was always anal about organisation. If everything was laid out correctly, anyone could come along and pick the case up with ease. Haley would get up and start walking towards the printer. The whir of the rollers echoed in the mainly empty squad room. The printer quickly spat out the 6 page document and Haley scooped it up in his hands and scaned it quickly before walking to his desk. He dropped it on his desk as he sat down. Before he could get comfortable however, his desk phone began to ring. Haley would eye it suspiciously. Who would call him at this time? He would look over at the caller ID with the words "DirVan" appearing on screen. With haste Haley would pick up the phone and answer

"Director, to what do I owe this pleasure?" Haley would lean back against his desk chair as he spoke, awaiting the response.

"I need you to come up to my office, I have something for you" The sentence was formal, well spoken and direct. Before Haley could reply the director put the phone down, leaving Haley listening to the phone dial tone. Putting the receiver down Haley took a second to adjust his tie before making the walk to the stairs. Haley briskly climbed the stairs, taking the moment to enjoy the view of the nearly deserted squad room as he turned to go up the second flight of stairs, reaching the top, he would maintain his swift and brisk pace as he advanced towards the directors office. Reaching the silver door Haley took a deep breath. It felt like he was at school and being called up to the principals office. He would knock on the door twice, before Haley could even put his hand back down again he could heard the director call him in. Haley entered quietly closing the door behind him.

He had only ever been in the directors office twice before: once on his appointment and once when he was told he was going to stay as a floating agent. The director sat at his chair, not getting up and was glancing at a file. He lowered the document so that he could see Haley in the corner of his eye before putting it down on the desk. Haley strode over so that he was standing in front of the desk. It most certainly did feel like he was back in school again.

"I have a job for you to do" The director leaned back slightly and observed Haley carefully for a second. Haley was wondering what the job was, he was imaging huge paperwork trail for the director. After all there was a lot of paperwork to do when you are a director, but why do it yourself when you can delegate.

"Yes Sir?" Haley responded, waiting for the words paperwork to come out of the directors mouth.

"I have a case for you" The director smiled lightly as he observed the reaction of Haley. For Haley the news didn't sink in right away. The word paperwork never appeared and for those few brief milliseconds Haley was speechless.

"For me? A case, but I am on my own" Haley inwardly curse himself for that. It was like he was trying to give away this once in a lifetime chance.

"I know that. However, this is a small case and I think you are ready to do some field work of your own. Metro found two vehicle parts and a base access card for a marine at Quantico. I want you to go over there and see if you can find out why a marines access card was found lodged inside this wreckage. I don't expect this to be anything, but I need someone to go check it out" Leon eyed Haley carefully again, watching to see how relaxed he was and how he was taking the information in.

"If it was found in wreckage doesn't that mean that a marine could be injured, missing or dead? Shouldn't this be a MCRT case?" Yet again, Haley trying to palm the case off on someone else. Haley would once more curse himself.

"Like I said, I am not sure what it is yet. If it does actually turn out that we have a dead marine then yes I will have the MCRT take over, but right now I need someone on the ground collating the facts. Clear?"

"Crystal Sir" It was starting to dawn on Haley what he was being asked to do. He was going to out to collect evidence, trying to work out if there was a case or not. He was doing his own field work. Haley couldn't help but smile to himself.

"Good, I have sent the details to your email. Just remember, take it slow and don't jump to conclusions, let the evidence do the work for you" The Director picked his papers back up and continued reading, signalling to Haley that it was time to go. Haley walked out of the office, closing the door, still smiling to himself. He turned and glanced out of the window behind the Directors sectary desk, noting that the sun was now rising and the city was coming to life. Haley then started making his way towards the garage, back down the flight of stairs and into the elevator. Once he was there he would sign out one of the black agency vehicles and be on his way.

The case location, or the 'scene' was in a nice suburban area of DC. It reminded Haley of where he used to live when he was growing up, pleasant sprawling green space with nice neatly laid out houses and small apartment buildings, along with trees dotted down either side of the road. On first impressions it seemed like a strange place to dump a few vehicle parts. As he was driving down the road, he spotted a police car and pulled over. Looking out of the car window, he observed the wreckage. It had been cut off from the outside world with police tape running around a few nearby trees and a police officer was guarding it, awaiting his arrival. Haley climbed out of the car and started advancing towards the scene. As he got closer he decided the term wreckage was maybe not the best word to describe what he could see. From a distance there only seemed to be two auto parts in the pile and of that neither looked damaged. As he got closer the police officer would start walking towards him.

"You the one from NCIS? Been waiting here for a while. Can you wrap this all up?" Haley pulled out his ID showing it as well as flipping it over to show his badge, just to make sure that all the formalities had been dealt with.

"Yeah, Probationary Agent Haley. I got this, you can go"

"They sent a probie then? Wow, you guys must be short staffed" Haley wanted to make a remark about how he had been chosen by the director personally to investigate this incident but decided to let it slide this time.

"Something like that. I was one of the very few people still up" By the time he had finished his sentence the officer had already gotten halfway to his cruiser, clearly not wasting any time in wanting to leave. Haley would look back at the officer one more time as he climbed into the vehicle, then focused back on what he was here to do. He mentally ran through his head what he needed to do and in what order:

1) Wear Gloves

2) Take photos of the scene and anything of interesting

3) Process evidence

4) Neatly store evidence for transportation back to HQ

Gloves. Part one. Haley searched inside his pockets, looking for the gloves that he had sworn he had packed in his pocket before he left the vehicle. He would mutter a curse to himself when he began to realise that he hadn't packed his gloves. At that moment he also came to the realisation that he hadn't bought the camera out from the vehicle either and warranted himself another mumbled curse. He span around on his heels and began the walk back to the vehicle, taking the time to observe the area around him once more. The area did look like a suburban dream, the houses were immaculate and white, the driveways were crisp and well kept and every garden was well kept and trimmed. As he approached the vehicle he noticed that several people were now leaving the house, the majority of which were wearing suits and were getting ready for their morning commute to the office. No one seemed to notice the police tape, or the vehicle parts that were littering their greenery.

With the camera and gloves in tow now, Haley had gotten back to his crime scene and began the process of searching for evidence. Not that was a lot to search for, so far there were 3 things he had found: The first was the bumper of a vehicle. Back in it's prime it would have been a shiny piece of metal, but now that gleam had gone as grime and rust had taken hold and aged the poor thing. Haley was struggling to make out if it was a front or back bumper The license plate was also missing making identifying the suspect vehicle impossible. The second part was some form of bodywork. It was hard to tell what it was. It was roughly L- shaped and looked like it it bolted to something from the various holes on one of the sides. The red paintwork had also lost its crisp shine like the bumper, and rust was also starting to take hold here. The final thing he found was the marines base access card. The card belonged to Staff Sergeant Keefe Eliott and that was all it really told him. The access cards never listed home addresses so Haley wasn't sure at this point as to where the marine lived. He re-observed the scene once more looking around the ground for hints or clues that could shed some more light on the situation. He couldn't find anything however. Sighing at himself he walked back to the car to get some wrapping plastic to wrap the evidence in. He planned to take the parts to forensics and see if there were any fingerprints on the vehicle parts that would give away whose car it was. After he had finished wrapping the parts and putting the marines access card in an evidence bag he had the fun task of carrying them back to his vehicle. The big problem was that these parts were huge, and trying to get them into a sedan was proving difficult. Eventually after thirty minutes of putting seats down and twisting and pushing, he managed to get the parts secured and safely tucked inside. He then jumped into the drivers seat, looking back to inspect the parts for a few brief seconds, before beginning the drive back to NCIS.

The drive back had been horrid for Haley. He had got caught up in the DC rush hour traffic and his journey back was a full fifty minutes longer than it had been when he left for the scene. Still, the constant time he spent being stuck behind cars and being motionless gave him time to do some case reflection. He spent some time mulling over the facts in his head.

* At some point during the night two pieces of an unknown vehicle were left in the middle of a suburban area with a Staff Sergeants base access card lodged between the two.

* The vehicle was old and had signs of wear and rust on both the bumper and the strange piece of bodywork.

* The whereabouts of marine Keefe Eliott is unknown.

As his mind began to process the information and he slowly was making his way back to NCIS, he began to realise that he had no idea as to what to do next. He was a probationary agent on his first case so of course he wasn't going to have everything come to him naturally. Suddenly though, Haley had a flash of inspiration. His head poured in with ideas and theories as to what to do next and how this case would solve itself. In this moment of disorganised chaos of ideas, the advice the director told him seemed to ring true: take it slow and don't jump to conclusions, let the evidence do the work for you. Haley would calm his mind back down and do exactly what the director told him to do, make the evidence work for him. His evidence so far was two vehicle parts and an access card. Not an awful lot to go on. He was going to take the parts back to forensics to see if fingerprints could be found. The id card didn't give him anything to go, except that the marine was stationed at Quantico. Surely then he had to have a CO? Maybe Staff Sergeant Eliott didn't report for duty this morning? Slowly a plan of action was forming in his head, and not a moment to soon as he was rolling into the NCIS motor pool. And now the fun task of carrying the parts to forensics began.

The ping of the elevator signalled that Haley had reached his destination; the forensics lab. He hadn't been to the lab many times, only a few times to transport evidence and get papers signed. The lab was a small one, but then again it only had to be used for one person and in retrospect you could get at least another three scientists in there easily. The first thing Haley heard was the music, even before he got into the lab. This sort of music didn't bother him but he knew it drove some people around here crazy if they had to go inside. Stepping inside he looked around for a minute before noticing the female huddled over the computer screen. He stood only a few steps away from the doorway and waited there for a few seconds. He knew that forensic specialist Abigail Sciuto knew he was there, she was taking her time. Just under a minute later she would spin around and smile at him.

"Well look at you, mister got my own case now. News around here travels fast. I guess that means you aren't here to get me to sign more evidence forms" Haley did however hold up a clipboard, a mock disappointed look on his face.

"I do have an evidence form, but this time it is my evidence form. I have two pieces of vehicle bodywork downstairs, I was wondering if you could work your magic on them?" Abby walked over and grabbed the clipboard and took a look at it.

"I don't do magic down here, I do science. And sure I can help, I just finished doing some work for Gibbs. I will call you when I know something. Do you know anything about these parts?" Abby placed the clipboard down on her metallic table and placed one of her hands on her hip.

"Nope nothing, they were just left in the middle of a nice grassy area in the middle of a suburban paradise. No sign of a crash and the parts just look old, not damaged. I can't even tell you what one of those body parts even is truth be told"

"Well fear not then, for I am here to use logic and science to save the day. Go and investigate, I will call you when I have gotten something" Haley turned on his heels and left the lab as Abby pretty much shooed him out, waving as he turned around and entered the elevator. He politely raised his hand to signal he was waving back as the elevator doors closed and started to take him back to the squad room.

The squad room was now fully staffed, a hub of crime fighting activity and not the desolate skeleton it was in the early hours of this morning. People were shuffling from desk to desk, finding out and sharing information as they were trying to break cases. The entire MCRT team had arrived. Haley had spotted them as he was walking across to his own desk. His desk was behind the MCRT teams desk, only two away from the legendary Leroy Jethro Gibbs. The quickest route to his desk was to cut between the MCRT desks, however he discovered on his first day it was very awkward when people stare at you as you walk. Instead, Haley would walk around the stairs leading to MTAC and get to his desk that way. Sitting down he smiled gracefully feeling right at home with the comfort of his government issue desk chair. He checked his phone to see if he had any calls off the director, then he checked his email to double check if there was anything else he needed to do.

Haley knew however he had to get back on the case, he sat at his computer and opened up the NCIS database program, staring back at him was a black screen with plenty of green text and boxes, giving him varying options. He had spent most of his time dealing with paper evidence and old case files, so he was still rusty at using the system. He would 'umm' and 'ahh' for a few minutes, pressing several buttons as he tried to work out what he was doing. Eventually he managed to bring up Staff Sergeant Keefe Eliott's details up and work out who is commanding officer was; a one Master Sergeant Bristol Clifton. He got up from his seat, ready to make his way to the motor pool once more. As he got up he saw Director Vance exit the elevator and start walking towards his office. However, instead of going ahead and going upto his office and he turned and walked into the MCRT area, stopping halfway through and hailing Haley.

"Agent Haley..." Haley stood up straight, moving around his desk To stand in front of the Director properly, as a sign of respect. Before Haley had a chance to speak he noticed that a woman was approaching behind director. The woman had brown hair and was wearing light grey female business attire. At first Haley struggled to think of who it was, however that question was quickly answered when she passed Gibbs desk. Gibbs would nod to the woman

"Madame Secretary" Upon hearing this Vance turned around to make room for her to stand next to him.

"Madame Secretary..." Vance gestured his hand out towards Haley "This is Probationary Agent Philander Haley. Haley this is the Secretary of the Navy Miss Sarah Porter" The Secretary held her hand out and Haley gladly accepted it, giving it a gentle but respectful shake.

"I haven't miss behaved already have I?" Haley asked, somewhat concerned. He was fairly confident that he hadn't done anything wrong. He was already going through his head and trying to see if there was any event he could recall, right before Director Vance interrupted his train of thought.

"No, no, you are doing fine. I am just interested in your progress from this morning. What did you find?" It was at this point Haley noticed that Miss Porter was looking concerned, She looked deeply concerned, in fact she looked more worried than concerned, almost as if Haley was about to reveal some long awaited information.

"Well, there wasn't much really. Two vehicle parts, both old but neither were badly damaged, just rusty. No signs of a crash at all and no evidence at the scene which seems to suggest why those parts were placed in the middle of a suburban area or why a marines access card belonging to a Staff Sergeant Keefe Eliott was left their either" Haley was observing both the Director and the Secretary. Vance did not reveal anything through his body language, years of experience was clearly showing. The Secretary on the other hand looked the same as she did a few seconds ago, it was almost like she couldn't decide if the information she had heard was making things better or worse. Before Vance had a chance to speak however the Secretary did.

"I am going to come out and say in bluntly, Keefe is my nephew. He joined the marines as soon as he was able and every time he is here in DC I promised my sister to look out for him in case of emergencies" The Secretary looked really concerned now. And why wouldn't she? Something could of happened. Haley wanted inwardly to say something that would console her, however that could just be giving her false hope.

"Have you heard form your nephew since last night?" Vance questioned , beating Haley to the punch with a vital question.

"I tried calling him when I found out this morning and got no answer from his cell" Vance was yet again quick to snipe in.

"So what's your next move Haley?" Haley didn't even think. He knew exactly what his response was.

"Get over to Quantico and speak to his CO and see if he reported today for duty" Vance nodded, showing approval at his answer. Seemed like Haley was picking things up rather well.

"However, Probationary agents are not allowed inside Quantico on their own..." Vance turned around to look at Gibbs "... Gibbs, I need to borrow one of your agents to accompany Agent Haley" Gibbs nodded, not even looking up from the papers he was reading.

"DiNozzo" He called out, and the brown haired suave agent looked over at Gibbs, although it had been apparent that he had been listening in on the conversation at the side.

"Yes boss?" He replied, knowing exactly what Gibbs was going to say.

"Grab your gear, accompany Agent Haley to Quantico" DiNozzo got up to grab his rucksack and threw over his one shoulder and walked around his desk.

"Got it boss, escort Agent Haley around Quantico" Haley grabbed his coat from his chair and walked past the Director and the Secretary, for once taking the short cut through the MCRT office and past DiNozzo. As the duo began walking to the elevator Director Vance would have one more thing to say.

"Agent Haley. Keep doing what you are doing now and you will do fine. And also listen to DiNozzo, he might be a pain in the ass but he is damn good at his job" DiNozzo faked shock as he heard what the director said as they waited for the elevator doors to open.

"Director Vance, since when have I ever been a pain in the ass?" He quipped and walked into the elevator when the doors opened, not giving the Director or anyone on his team time to say anything. Haley walked inside himself and turned around, hitting the button for the lower levels. "This is going to be fun" DiNozzo smiled "I am driving however" At that point the elevator doors closed and they started to make their way down to the motor pool.

Enjoyed it? Let me know what you think.