Title: 50 Reasons (The Q-Branch Edition)
Disclaimer: I don't own or claim any rights. I don't get paid. I'm just playing around with the characters.
Reason 10 - Curiosity
Q was intrigued. The explanation provided by ElfLord for the recent debacle in the MMORPG was just a bit too polished. Q wasn't quite sure why but the story had the flavor a professionally created fiction. It sounded like a legend and he'd created enough of those to know one when he saw one. That made him curious.
First thing to do was to pin down ElfLord's physical location. It took a bit to track him through several proxy servers to a flat in Washington DC rented by one Timothy McGee.
Nice hardware. Professional firewalls. Custom, self programed additional protections. The contents were just as interesting. Organized research files on a variety of subjects. So ElfLord was a writer on the side. E-mails from his agent and publisher. Used an anagram for his pseudonym. Cute, Q thought.
Armed with a name and a location a little more digging gave Q the police report. Even with the security redactions it was clear that the burglary was actually an assassination attempt. Now why would a biomedical engineer with an MS in computer forensics from MIT and working for the U.S. Navy be a target? That required a detour to look at McGee's employer's files. Well, well, what have we here. These servers were better secured than the CIA's. Q happily set to hacking and discovered some of the same protections he had encountered earlier were included in the NCIS systems. Mr. McGee had been busy.
Ah. McGee was part of a team led by an ex-marine gunnery Sargent and special forces sniper. Other team members were interesting. Anthony DeNozzo Jr. formerly of the Baltimore PD. That was a name Q easily found in the MI6 files. Apparently Sr. was a hanger on to the rich and famous. A con-man operating not quite in the grey zone. Next was a familiar name Q knew without running a search, Ziva David. One of the offspring of the spider at the head of Mossad. She seems to have escaped her father's web. The supporting personnel were just as interesting. A medical examiner named Mallard. Scottish with intelligence community connections. The old M's generation. Jumped the pond some 20 years ago. Hmmm, he'd need to look into him later. Also there was a forensics specialist, Ms Sciuto, the author of that blood spatter study last month that Sherlock had been so taken with.
Perusal of the case files told Q that this team was good, very good. Good enough to make enemies. There was also enough of a collective past to have enemies come out of the woodwork. Satisfied for the moment Q backed out of the servers. With that caliber of personnel this NCIS was clearly an agency to keep an eye on.
Author's Note: This was what Q did to satisfy his curiosity in Reason 5.
Thanks to hajimebassaidai over on AO3 for catching some typos in this one.