Wow. I have never had such a great response to a new fic. Thank you – all of you! I actually wanted to update this earlier to show my sincere gratitude but my laptops fan decided it needed replacing, and then the electricity went out… so instead, I give you a longer chapter :)

And a note: This fic will not be case-centric, that is just a way to get where I want to go.

Anyway, heres a new chapter – this one is more in Kate & Gibbs POV…

--------------1100 hours, the squadroom----------

"Alright, this has to be some sort of prank," Kate said with gritted teeth, glaring at the pile of paperwork that still sat at her desk. She and McGee had been working for over two hours and it seemed like they hadn't even made a dent in the paperwork. "Tony had to have set this up somehow, before he left."

"And got Gibbs to play along?" McGee asked helplessly, adding another form to the 'done' pile, and then grabbing an empty one from the pile with a heavy sigh. "Well, at least now we know why Tony always hands in his report late."

"Except that Tony does muck around," Kate insisted, leaning back in her chair and rotating her wrist around to ease the pain that had started to build up from her constant writing. "I mean, half the time when we're writing our reports he's playing Tetris or something."

It honestly drove her insane. Her and Tony were quite good friends; but his frat boy personality drove her up the wall. On the way home, at the end of a long day, then it was good, but Tony never knew when to stop. She felt like he didn't take the job seriously enough. He acted like he was still in college, constantly cracking jokes, or pushing Gibbs or something.

She knew that after McGee had first joined them permanently, then he had wondered a little about how Tony became an agent. She knew the feeling – she had too. During that first case she had had with NCIS, Tony had seemed far more preoccupied with sitting (and getting a photo) in the Presidents chair then he had finding out who had killed Commander Trapp.

She groaned as she leaned back over her desk, grabbing another piece of paper. "I swear, DiNozzo, if this does turn out to be a prank, I will shoot you," she muttered under her breath.

---------------1110 hours, MTAC-------------

"I noticed that Agents Todd and McGee seem rather frustrated at the moment," NCIS Director Morrow said as he slipped in to sit beside Gibbs in the back row, effectively drawing the former marines attention away from the undercover infiltration op that was taking place on the screen.

Gibbs let out a chuckle and said, "Just learning the wonders of bureaucracy."

"Yes, Agent DiNozzo has left us for the week. A well earned vacation, I don't believe he has taken a real one in all the time he has worked here, except for that compulsory one he took after the Rota mission with Agent Blackadder," Morrow said, shifting slightly so that he was actually facing Gibbs more, rather than just talking to thin air.

"He loved Rota," Gibbs said in response, taking a sip of coffee. In reality it hadn't been much of a holiday. Three days of enforced leave, plus a weekend off duty led to five days 'on vacation'. Gibbs had been planning on working on his boat and wallowing (not that he would ever admit, even to himself, that that was what he did) about what went down in Spain and how stupid it was to let Blackadder on that operation.

However, Abby and Tony had different plans. They had invited themselves over to his house, and had stayed there for the entire five days, taking over his guest bedroom, and somehow managing to connect a TV and a DVD player in his living room so that they could drag him into watching one of their movies that they 'just knew he'd love' (he had to admit, he had enjoyed Air Force One). And then they'd sit on the steps while he worked on the boat, sometimes helping him sand but more often than not just joking around.

He had known what they were doing, but he was surprised to realize that it worked, when, on the fourth day, he realized that he hadn't thought about Blackadder once as he tried to stop Tony and Abby from destroying his house. It was in that moment, as he was cooking dinner for them all, that he realized that it felt like family.

He shook himself back to the present as he realized that Morrow was saying something else.

"When I talked to Agent DiNozzo he said that he thought Agents Todd and McGee were still a little green but should be ready to tackle cases without him there," Morrow continued, looking at Gibbs carefully to gauge his reactions to his words.

Gibbs smirked, answering the Director, "That all he said?"

The Director also chuckled, "Well, he might have also mentioned that he believed the bigger problem would be learning to deal with your temper."

Gibbs nodded, still smirking. Tony had said the exact same thing to him when he had come down to the basement after Abby had finally decided he was ready.

"Do you agree?" Morrow asked, looking more serious.

Gibbs nodded slowly, giving the decision he'd been mulling over for half the night. "It's about time they learn – there are going to be times when Tony or me aren't going to be there."

"Good, I was hoping I wouldn't have to take my top team off the rotation for the week," Morrow said.

------------1500 hours, squadroom----------------

"We are done!" Kate said happily as she dropped her pen on her desk and leaned back, stretching her arms.

"Six hours," McGee groaned, rotating his neck to get rid of the crick that had developed.

Kate glanced at the clock on her computer and asked McGee, "You want to go grab some takeout and bring it back here?"

Before McGee could answer, Gibbs strode in and said, "Grab your gear."

"Now?" Kate said disbelievingly, even as she grabbed her gun and loaded it.

"Problem, Agent Todd?" Gibbs asked, raising his eyebrow, as he walked back towards the elevator, coffee in hand and gun in holster. "Di-McGee, gas the truck."

"Got it, Boss," McGee said, fumbling for the keys.

---------------------

"Flipping Hell," McGee swore, stumbling around to the back of the truck, gripping onto it for support for his shaky legs.

"Gibbs driving the truck out here is one heck of an experience, isn't it," Kate said, breathing slightly heavier then normal.

"No kidding," McGee said, opening one side of the trucks back door as Kate opened the other.

"Come on, let's do this," Gibbs said, finishing the last of his coffee and putting it away to throw out later.

"What do you want us to do?" McGee asked.

"Kate, you shoot, McGee, bag and tag," Gibbs ordered, jumping into the truck to grab the sketchpad and laser.

"What about sketching and measurements?" Kate asked, reaching for the camera.

Gibbs just stared at her and held up the two items, holding her gaze until she muttered 'right' and then left.

----------------

"Found him," McGee said triumphantly, tapping a few keys to put their dead marines service record on the plasma.

"About time," Gibbs said, annoyed. "Well?"

"Uh, Marine Staff Sergeant Jeffrey Arnlow," McGee said, reading from the screen as Kate stood up to stand in front of the plasma.

"Trained at Parris Island, recently finished his second tour in Iraq, currently stationed at the base in Oceania, lives with his wife and they have a seven year old daughter," McGee finished, giving the pertinent details.

"Ugh, that must be horrible for his wife and daughter," Kate said, not noticing Gibbs' shoulders tense slightly at the discovery that the dead marine had a young daughter.

"The laptop?" Gibbs asked shortly, wanting to get out of there and get more coffee. He was going to need it. There was no way he was going to let the bastard that murdered Arnlow to get away.

"The laptop… the one we found at the crime scene," McGee said, cottoning on.

"A laptop isn't exactly something that most people have when they just go out," Kate pointed out. "It's bound to have something important, anything."

"Yeah, got that part," Gibbs snapped at her. He continued to glare at her as he said in a tight voice, "McGee. The laptop."

"Well… uh, it's with Abby at the moment, but…" McGee hesitated, but continued on when Gibbs' glare moved from Kate to him. "Well, she, uh, can't get a whole lot from it, said it keeps shutting down on her and she can't get any of the information from the hard drive. I was thinking that it might be some sort of a sophisticated defense system."

"Well then get down there and find it out," Gibbs snapped, glaring at them both as he swiveled around on his heel and strode away.

"Uh, find out what, Boss," McGee called to him cautiously.

"Anything that will help us find out who murdered that marine!" Gibbs shouted at them, making them both wince.

-------------

"Hey, guys," Abby said, turning around beaming, "You can-"

Before she got the chance to finish her statement, Kate interrupted her, saying, "Sorry, Abby, but Gibbs is really mad and he wants answers, pronto."

"Where's the laptop?" McGee asked her.

"It's right here, but like I was telling-"

"Yeah, there's some sort of defense mechanism that causes it to keep shutting down. Can we connect the hard drive in some other way?" Kate asked, interrupting again. She wanted to hurry this up so they could give Gibbs some good news. Gibbs was well known for being a 'bastard', but he really wasn't that bad, at least not to his agents. Seeing him so mad at them was kind of unsettling.

"Actually-"

"If we do that, it may not do anything to the defense mechanism and it's possible that we'll lost some part of the information," McGee explained to Kate.

Abby stared at them, hands on her hips as the two field agents deliberated over what to do.

"Stop interrupting Abby," Gibbs said as he strode in, coffee in one hand, Caf-Pow in the other.

"Thank you Gibbs," Abby said. "Now as Tony and I were just discussing-"

"DiNozzo?" Gibbs asked.

"I thought you said you weren't going to interrupt me," Abby complained.

"How were you talking to Tony?" Kate asked, looking confused.

"It's this little invention called a phone," Abby answered sarcastically, rolling her eyes.

"Hey, guys," Tony's voice came from the speakerphone next to Abby's lab.

"Hey," Kate and McGee said.

"Anyway, if I may actually finish a sentence," Abby said, glaring at them all. Gibbs offered her the Caf-Pow as an apology, getting a smile back. "Okay, so Tony called me while I was examining it and I told him what my problem is and he remembered something."

"A previous case?" Gibbs asked, directing his question to the phone.

"Which case, because-" Kate started saying, already taking out her PDA to record it. She stopped in the middle of her sentence when she looked up and saw Gibbs glaring at her.

"DiNozzo," the former marine barked, not softening his glare in the least.

"It's not a case. Abby and I just did some good, old fashioned police work – logic leaping. Do you remember when Viv kept on having problems with her laptop?"

"Kept on saying that it had never happened at the FBI," Gibbs answered in the affirmative.

Kate and McGee glanced at each other, wondering where the heck Tony was going with this. He couldn't exactly do much police work over the phone on a state of the art laptop.

"Right, well, I went down to the basement with her and they told us what had been wrong with it and all that crap," Tony continued, his voice sounding a little crackly over the phone. "Her fan had overheated or something, and it was doing the exact same thing as what Abby said this one was doing. It's not a defense mechanism. It's just broken."

"Our marine was probably going to get it fixed," Abby told them, shrugging.

"Sophisticated defense mechanism," Gibbs said incredulously, turning to McGee and pinning him with a death glare, making the younger agent gulp visibly.

He opened his mouth to yell some more, but before he could get the words out, Tony said, "Hey, I gotta run. Gibbs, don't be too mean to Katie and the Probie… imagine the paperwork."

Gibbs hid his amusement as Abby started her goodbyes, telling him to be careful, tell his friends 'hi' from her, and to make sure he bought her something cool.

"Alright, Abs, I promise," Tony said, laughter in his voice. Gibbs could feel his temper slightly soften, it had been a long time since he had heard Tony that happy. "Bye, guys."

"Be careful, DiNozzo," Gibbs said, gruffly, just before Tony hung up.

"You two, fix the damn thing and take a decent look at the evidence before you start coming up with excuses," Gibbs snapped at them. "I'm going to take to Arnlow's CO, and I want that done by the time I get back."

They weren't given the chance to answer before Gibbs strode out.

"He can't expect us to fix it in such a short amount of time," McGee said weakly.

"It's seriously the fan?" Kate asked. She had no idea that Tony knew anything about computers, and she couldn't believe that he had fixed the problem over the phone like that. A part of the conversation just struck her, she turned to ask Abby, "Hey, Abby, who's Viv?"

"Viv? She was one of the previous agents," Abby said distractedly, typing a few keys as one of her machines beeped.

-----------------------

Well, there you have chapter two. I'm not sure if I like it, but I go where the muse takes me. Next chapter will see them get to the personnel file.

Again, thank you for all the wonderful reviews! I really appreciate them… please let me know what you thought of this one, the alluring green button is right there…