The car pulled up to the crime scene tape, coming to a sudden stop. The team got out of the car and walked under the tape, working their hands into rubber gloves.
"What've we got, Duck?" Ducky and Palmer had already arrived, a surprising feat, considering that Gibbs was driving this time.
"This is utterly bizarre, Jethro." They were kneeling next to a Navy uniform, laid out on the ground, covered in black dust. "There's a hole in this uniform, and it looks like it was being worn. But how come there is no body? Quite strange."
Ziva turned around, hearing something in the bushes. She walked in the direction of the sound.
"I'll have to look closer at the lab, but I have no idea what could cause this, Gibbs." Ducky stood up.
"Maybe these two can help!" Everyone turned around at Ziva's words, annoyance evident in her voice.
None of them knew what to think of these teens. The first thing everyone noticed was how one of the boys had a black arm with . . . were those claws? Their hands were in the air, anyhow, so Gibbs moved his hand away from his gun resting in its holster on his belt. Ziva, however, had her weapon drawn.
The kid with the strange hand was only one of the curious things about the kids. The one with the claw-hand had white hair and a scar over his left eye, and the other had red hair, a green headband, and an eye patch. They were wearing black jackets with red pinstripes and silver cross crests. The red-head had a scarf and a strange holster on his right leg, where a small hammer was resting.
Despite their dark dress, the teens looked to be scared out of their wits. They looked around at the NCIS crew.
The white-haired boy tensed. "Not again . . ."
"What are you doing here?" Ziva's strict tone startled the boys, as if they weren't already scared enough.
The red-head put on a fake smile. "Well, see, we didn't actually mean to come here . . . wherever here is . . ."
It was evident to the team that these kids wouldn't be telling them anything yet.
Gibbs looked to Tony. "DiNozzo."
Tony looked back at his boss, startled. "Boss?"
Gibbs gave him a "what do you think you're supposed to do" look. "Put them in the car."
Tony didn't move, but rather looked back and forth between the two mysterious teenagers and the boss. They knew nothing about the kids; for all DiNozzo knew, they would hack him to pieces with that weird claw-hand-thing the one kid had going on. He didn't want to get near them.
"DiNozzo. Today."
Tony cleared his throat. "Yes, Boss." He could hear McGee snickering behind him as Tony walked toward the teens. Remember, they can sense fear. He tried to hide his nervous energy, but to no avail. He made slow, cautious steps forward.
The white-haired kid moved his left foot back ever-so slightly, to barely be noticed.
"Don't move!" Ziva yelled, making the kids and Tony jump, and earning a barely audible whimper from the kid who moved.
The kid turned his head a few degrees to partially face Ziva. "Can I just—"
"No!"
When DiNozzo got within an arm's length of the suspects, the kids looked to each other before lowering their arms to where Tony could handcuff them. Their hands were even shakier than Tony's.
Once he got the cuffs on, he stepped back, glad to have his hands intact. Being that close to claws that looked really sharp was nerve-racking.
"You're halfway done, DiNozzo," Gibbs said as though he were encouraging a toddler to finish a meal. "Now get them in the car."
The redhead closed his visible aye and slightly smiled. "We don't bite."
Tony was still cautious. He was taking small steps forward when Ziva rolled her eyes.
"Oh, for screaming out loud," Ziva said. She nudged the teens forward, in the general direction of the car. "Go."
"Yes, ma'am," the kids said in unison, and started obediently marching forward. Ziva glared at Tony as she and the teens walked in front of him.
"The phrase is 'crying out loud'," he shouted after her.
When Tony turned towards the others, he saw McGee smiling.
"Finding something funny there, McGiggle?"
"No, just the fact that you're scared of a couple of kids half your age and shorter than you."
Even Gibbs smiled at that one.
"Let's get to work, people." Gibbs looked at the clothes on the ground. "This murder won't solve itself."
"I told you we shouldn't try it! But no! You were bored and convinced me to do something that I knew we shouldn't do!"
As soon as Gibbs had put the teens they found at the crime scene in the interrogation room, they started yelling. Didn't they know Ducky, Ziva, McGee, and Tony could see and hear their conversation? Gibbs walked in and joined the crowd watching the kids.
"Well I just wanted to take some time off! I got tired of doing nothing but reading or watching you eat! I wanted to go somewhere for fun!"
"I get that, Lavi! Believe me, I would love nothing more than to be sitting on a beach right now! But the point is I told you we shouldn't push it!"
"Well at least now we know that you can't make an entrance to the Ark without having been to that place before."
"Yeah, but that does us no good if we can't get back home!"
The two paused to get their breath and calm down, taking seats in the chairs inside the room.
"Where do you think we are, Allen?"
"I don't know. This place is nothing like I'd pictured."
"Any guesses?"
"Well . . . I've been all across Europe, and have never seen a place as advanced as this. And it doesn't really have an Asian feel. Maybe . . . America?"
"Nowhere I've been in America . . . Allen, do you think it's possible we're in . . . the future?"
"What? If we are . . . you know what that means, right?"
"Disaster . . . And if we do eventually get back . . . Lenalee will kill us, Yu will kill us, Cross will kill you, the panda will kill me . . ."
The white-haired teen put his head on the table. "And even worse . . . I won't ever have Jerry's amazing cooking again."
"Um, Allen, why is Crown Clown still activated? Isn't it tiring having it activated for so long?"
"The exhaustion offsets the hunger."
"Well, I'm sorry I interrupted your meal! But you had like, five plates left and I was bored!"
"Yeah, only five. Tim and I could've—Tim! Where's Timcanpy?"
A golden sphere with wings and a tail flew out of the kid's white collar.
The kid sighed, holding his hand palm up. The sphere landed in it. "Don't do that to me, Tim. I thought I'd lost you again."
Everyone in the observation booth had gotten so into the conversation that they didn't even notice Gibbs had walked out. When he walked into the interrogation room, everyone was shocked. He tossed a package of powdered doughnuts in front of each of the teens before sitting down.
They looked surprised, but after exchanging glances with each other took the packages. The kid with the white hair's clawed hand transformed into a regular shaped hand. It was black with long black nails and a gray cross on the back. The white coat around his shoulders disappeared.
They opened the packages and the white-haired teen started eating right away while the other was more cautious, turning one of the doughnuts. What, hadn't they seen doughnuts before?
Gibbs leaned back in his chair. Where did he start?
"So what were you boys doing out there?"
They looked at each other again, each looking worried.
The redhead looked at Gibbs. "You haven't heard of the Black Order?"
Gibbs shook his head.
"Akuma, the Millennium Earl, Exorcists, Black Clergymen, Finders, Innocence? None of it?"
Again, Gibbs shook his head. Were they making this up, or did they actually believe it?
"Tell me about it," Gibbs said in his "I'll listen" voice. "First, though, names."
"Oh, right. I'm Allen Walker."
"And I'm Lavi. I came along to keep Allen here out of trouble."
"Well that worked. You're the one causing the trouble!"
"Well, excuse me, Bean Sprout."
"My name's ALLEN! I'm getting tired of you and Bakanda calling me that! It's not MY fault I'm not a giant like you!"
Gibbs put his hand up, making Allen and Lavi stop their argument. "Tell me about how you got to the crime scene."
I had some spare time, and I'm really getting into writing this, so I made a new chapter.
Uploads from this point on will be like watching grass grow, since I'm going to have so much crap going on! But I will try to fit in a new chapter or two next month. Thanks for reading to this point! It's much appreciated ^_^