Tony's First Department Move

The apartment looked like crap.

The brown second-hand couch was spilling stuffing, tipped over in a precarious arch. Huddled under it were two white husks of pillows, laying like shriveled balloons. Stuffing from both the couch and pillows littered the ground like clumps of dandelion fluff. The flat screen HD TV that I had saved up for months to get was ruined, the screen punched in. Spider-silk thin cracks trailed around a gap large enough for a fist, and glass shards were littered underneath it. The oak shelves I kept my classics in had its shelves ripped out, and the main body laid on the ground looking like some one smashed it with a battering ram. My videos lay scattered around the splintered shelf, all but one ignored. The video I showed at the departmental Christmas party, It's a Wonderful Life, was shattered. Its serrated edges were strewn across the room, purposely in places that a person would normally step. If I had bothered to shrug my shoes off at the door my feet would be bloody pincushions by now.

When I saw the mess I was gob smacked at first, but as my fish face expression receded I realized I wasn't extremely surprised. I knew there were plenty of people at work who were glad to goad me, send thinly veiled threats at me, and use me as their personal punching bag, but I didn't expect it to affect me outside of work. And yes, even if work sucked to a degree, I'd still go back every day. Because really, isn't a power hungry director, backstabbing partner, and anti-DiNozzo squad men a small price to pay for justice for the heartbroken families I come across each day? I'm perfectly fine with putting up with heavy hazing at the workplace... plus, I have the lab techies on my side, so it's not like everyone hates me.

With a heavy heart I slowly gathered up the shattered chunks of my favorite movie, using tissues to preserve any DNA or fingerprints before sliding them into a plastic bag. Hopefully Alice, the most sexy lab techie I've ever laid eyes on, will be willing to trace the culprit down. The rest of my movies were collected and stacked in the same way, films of tissues separating them.

The sad part, I thought as I systematically tided the living room, tipping the couch upright and sweeping up glass shards, discarding ruined cloth and catching floating cotton, is that I pretty much know who did it already. Nicky and Carlson defiantly; wherever Nicky goes Melone follows, so her too; and ... possibly Derrick, but I think he likes ragging on me to much to risk getting caught vandalizing my humble abode.

I wrapped up my clean up, glancing at the decimated state the room was still in and steeling myself for what was to come before heading to the kitchen. I peered through the doorway, cautiously hoping the intruders hadn't entered, but the sight that met me dashed my hopes. The mini-kitchen was in shambles, large slivers broken out of my few glass plates, dented and bent silver wear lying with them on the tiles. One fork's sporks were bent sideways and propped into a sitting position, reminiscent of a fork back the undead. The kitchenette devices had been executed, stabbed with steak knives I didn't know I had and left to bleed to death. The empty shell of the oven was cracked open, showing streaks of blood red paint saying 'Leave Now Or Else', and I winced, knowing how costly it would be for the landowner to replace the paint stained oven with the broken council.

I sighed and started tidying up again, using self-righteous anger at my partner and his crew to cover up the deep-seeded futility of it all. How am I supposed to fight for justice next to officers who're ready to stoop as low as the scumbags we lock up to make my life miserable? That was the real question. It doesn't really matter how pissed people get just from seeing me, or how many threats and punches I can collect in a day, heck, it doesn't even matter if I have to carry this home with me every night, but the victims and their families - they matter. And ever since this hazing-on-steroids started the victims and their cases have been put on the back burner in order to 'put me in my place'.

My train of thought derailed as I picked up and smoothed out the wrinkles from my various take-out menus, found crumbled into basketballs and tossed into my wastepaper basket, a mannerism I used often at work to dispose of unwanted documents as I kept up a running commentary on every shot. It got annoying to most after the fifteenth paper, and I hardly ever make it through a fifty paper document without getting at least fifteen death threats by the other officers filling out paperwork. My death threat record was actually an astounding seventy-five, made when recycling a one hundred page document. I smirked a little, storing the menus in my pocket, as happy paperwork-filled days flashed into my mind. I frowned again as my original train of thought re-railed.

Why did the hazing start in the first place? Sure there was the friendly hazing from the first six months, but I was a Rookie then, and it wasn't nearly as sadistic as it is now. So why...?

That's when the truth hit me, a sledgehammer in the face, the weight of it cracking my skull in two. I slowly walked back into the living room and collapsed on the mauled brown couch, my fingers absent-mindedly trailing into the slashed cushion and rubbing the scratchy cotton. It's me. It was the only logical explanation, the only linchpin the their operating style. Me.

Me, flirting with Melone as she twisted her wedding ring, desperately blocking my advances; me, flinging Mickey Mouse comments at my new partner Nicky at every turn; me, making scaring off Carlson's dates a professional sport; me, taunting and teasing Derrick as he frantically tried to get in a hit as we sparred; me, me, me, me, me. My happy-go-lucky attitude, my frat boy persona pushing decent officers off the deep end, eventually making them vandalize my apartment just to make me notice how much they want me gone after every other attempt failed.

Me. Gone.

A light bulb flickered on above my head.

Me and gone have meshed together many times before, and really, why not? It's not like there's anything here for me, and there are 49 other state police departments that haven't yet been graced with Anthony DiNozzo's presence. Surely the lab techies could live without me. Alice certainly toughened up enough to drag the rest of them out of any mess they could create, and Steve is a close second.

Two days later a red Mustang with a golden-yellow sheen was gliding down the passage out of Peoria, not heading for the Golden Gate, but for the silver moonshine found in Philly-delphia, Penny-sylvania.

A/N: Thank you for all the favorites and follows! I'm so glad that everyone likes it, and that so many of you have sent reviews! Two in particular have caused me to re-think things, so explanations are below.

camcampgirl - I have personally got the impression through Ducky's stories that he has moved around a lot, visited different areas and, inevitably, must have had several different supervisors. I did not know that the show provided a predecessor for Ducky, nor that that predecessor had Alzheimer's. Also, the actor Bob Newhart means nothing to me, so half of your review just flew over my head. The only thing that paragraph did for me was show me how much you love the show and give me some great tidbits of information.

Also, I don't hate Doctor Reed. At first I had created him just to be a jerk, but writing has taught me that well rounded characters aren't 'just' anything and that all humans have reasons for how they act, so by the end I warmed up to him and, instead of having him fire Ducky like I planned, I had him be revealed to be a little like Gibbs and Fornell respectively, just a little more manipulating. I also thought that Ducky would have learned how to treat Gibbs from somewhere, and I thought Dr. Reed would be a great test subject. Thank you for your review, camcampgirl, please keep giving me input!

And to the Guest NCIS fan - Dr. Reed coming upon the body of our fake Mr. Lance was just pure coincidence. The body was just one for a mandatory autopsy, like to check if someone really died of a heart attack, and Dr. Reed decided that it would be more productive to test his new assistant with the body than to just do it like normal. Ducky would be the only person this test was used on.

Ok, I'm working on Gibbs and Fornell's meeting, but Fornell isn't really written in depth well on fanfiction and wiki wasn't much help, so that part may take a while. Do you want the meeting to be case related or not, because I can swing both ways. Keep reviewing!

Now, for this chapter. Tony's thought process may seem a little jumbled, but I thought that would be how Tony goes about thinking things, so I didn't try to polish it too much like I did last chapter. Please tell me if you think I got his character right, if he bashed himself to much, whatever you think.

Thank you for reading this super long A/N,

fanficfantasies

(PS. Thank you PACTNMMT for the flattering review! Sorry I forgot yours; you didn't have any questions.)