Fifty Two - Fulmination, Files, and Flight
"Are you sure we should leave Colonel Mann by herself?" Abby asked as she and her colleagues walked down to the Great Hall.
"Colonel Mann can handle herself," Gibbs said.
"He got past her once already!" Abby objected.
"And he won't now that she's keeping an eye out for him."
"Who's 'he'?" Emily asked. She tried to jump up next to Gibbs, but her father kept a firm grip on her hand, refusing to let her any further than three feet away from himself.
Seeing Gibbs look ahead with burning anger, Tony quickly tried to strike up a different conversation. "Today is Monday! That means they all have class!" he said joyously.
Ducky chuckled. "One's opinion on school change drastically as they grow older."
McGee opened the Great Hall doors and the group walked in, taking their usual seats at the staff table.
Gibbs looked out at the sea of students. He noticed the Weasley children plus Harry Potter and Hermione Granger all leaned in toward each other, their heads almost touching over the table. Ron looked up at the lead agent, anger evident in his face. Hermione snapped her fingers in front of Ron's face, bringing his attention back to the conversation.
"Are Mr. and Mrs. Weasley still here, Jethro?" Ducky asked.
"As far as I know," Gibbs answered.
"You need to find them, Jethro!" Ducky said desperately. "Tonight they will have been missing for two full days! We all know Ziva is competent in the wilderness, but she's injured! Miss Weasley is, as well. Considering how efficiently Ziva is hiding her tracks, she must be keeping Ginny off of the ground. Her strength will only keep up for so long!"
"I know, Ducky!" Gibbs said harshly. He put his fork down on his plate with force.
"What are your plans?"
"I don't know," Gibbs admitted.
"If you give up now, Jethro," Ducky began, anger beginning to sneak into his voice.
"I am not giving up, Dr. Mallard," Gibbs argued.
"Then don't act like you are! Find Ziva. Find your killer," Ducky coached. "Get us all home."
Something caught Gibbs' eye. He looked down at a flashing red light on Ducky's pant leg. "Duck," he said slowly, pointing.
"Well that's certainly abnormal," Ducky commented, scooting his chair back. The light went past him and began hitting Gibbs' leg instead.
Gibbs suddenly fell out of his chair to the ground and squirmed under the chair emitting the light.
Emily giggled and looked at Gibbs below her seat. "You're funny, Jethro! What are you doing?"
"DiNozzo!" Gibbs urgently called.
Hearing the tone in his boss' voice, Tony responded immediately. "Here, Boss!"
"Evacuate the Great Hall. And give me a blade," Gibbs ordered.
Tony grabbed his pocket knife and handed it to his boss. Drawing several odd and concerned looks, he stood up on the staff table. "Attention!" he yelled as loud as he could. The chatter in the hall was too loud. "Hey!"
A loud whistle sounded behind Tony. He looked back to see McGee lowering his hand from his mouth and turned back to the front. Enough students had quieted for him to begin shouting once more and be heard. "SHUT UP!" he bellowed. Suddenly, the attention of the entire Great Hall was upon him. "They always say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. You're going without it today. Get to class!"
Muttering broke out as friends turned to each other to discuss what they had just been told.
"Maybe you didn't hear me!" Tony shouted. His eyes widened and his face began to turn red with the effort of speaking so loudly. "Get out of this hall!"
Some students began moving, but not enough. Tired of his efforts going no where, Tony leapt off the table and hurried over to Dumbledore. "I think we need a bit of your help, Professor. Do you know what a bomb is? If not, I can show you because there's one that could explode at any moment right over there."
Dumbledore stood up quickly. "Classes will be delayed," he told his students who had hushed as soon as he had stood up. "Return to your dormitories immediately!" The sound of hundreds of feet hitting the ground and moving toward the exit filled the hall.
"Thanks, Professor!" Tony said over his should as he ran back to his colleagues. "What's going on, Boss?"
"No pressure pad, Tobias. Get her out of here!" Gibbs said.
Fornell picked up his daughter without hesitation and ran out of the hall with her.
"It's timed, Tony," Gibbs finally answered. "We've got five minutes."
"Five minutes... breakfast is supposed to be over in fifteen," McGee said, looking at his watch.
"Set so that everyone will see a big boom, McGee," said Tony.
"You'll all be the 'big boom' if you don't get out of here now," Gibbs said with a grunt as he pushed himself a bit further under the chair.
"I know last time you said you'd fire me, Boss," Tony said, kneeling down, "but I'm staying."
Gibbs suddenly let out a plethora of swears.
"Boss?" McGee asked hesitantly.
"Get back!" Gibbs shouted. There was no room in his voice for disobeying. "Tony, McGee, make a hole!"
Tony and McGee ran toward the doors, screaming at the kids to move faster. Their desperate calls worked and the doors were soon cleared.
Gibbs turned his head sideways and saw his clear path. He took a deep breath and put his hands on the bomb. With a mighty tug, he pulled it off the bottom of the chair. In a swift move, Gibbs kicked the chair off of him and popped up off the ground. He sprinted out of the room, through the Entrance Hall, and out the main doors.
Tony and McGee followed Gibbs to the doors and watched as he ran half way across the lawn, threw the bomb with all his might, and began running back inside. "Come on, Boss!" McGee said quietly and with much tension.
Gibbs was halfway back to the school when a brilliant orange came from behind him with a loud sound and knocked him off his feet.
"Well stop squirming, Jethro and we can both be done!" snapped Colonel Mann. "You're a damn fool! Where the hell do you get off thinking you can go running with bombs?" she asked, trying to clear blood off Gibbs' face.
"Professors," Gibbs greeted, looking past the ranting Colonel at the headmaster and his deputy..
"Agent Gibbs," Dumbledore answered. "Is everyone here alright?"
"Just dandy," Gibbs said dryly. He moved his hand from his nose. In his hand was what must have once been a white bandage. It had turned red and more of the color was falling onto it from Gibbs' nose. "Holly," he said, holding it out.
Colonel Mann scoffed, threw the soaked bandage to the side, and offered Gibbs a new one. "Keep the pressure on!" She returned her attention to Gibbs' forehead.
"What happened?" McGonagall asked.
"Jethro thought running with scissors was a bit too boring!" Colonel Mann said with sarcasm. "He decided bombs might be a bit more exciting."
Gibbs looked at Colonel Mann unamusedly. "Someone rigged a bomb under Emily's chair. I couldn't disarm it in time, so I got rid of it."
"And you just had to fall on a rock, didn't you?" Colonel Mann snapped.
"Next time I'll aim for the pillows laying around on the grounds," Gibbs said irritably.
"Thank you very much, Agent Gibbs," Dumbledore said with honesty. "Is there anything we can do to help?"
"DiNozzo and McGee are collecting fragments. Ducky and Jimmy are checking Emily." Gibbs stood up, despite Colonel Mann's protests. For a moment, it seemed as if he might fall over. He regained his balance and shook his head slightly as if to clear it. "Actually, there is something you can do," he said.
"Jethro, sit down! I'm not finished with you yet!" Colonel Mann fretted.
Gibbs plucked the wet cloth out of the Colonel's hand, put it to his bleeding forehead, and began heading to the doors. "Professor Dumbledore, if you don't mind."
Dumbledore followed Gibbs out of the morgue.
Colonel Mann looked at the doors with a furious expression for a moment before beginning to clean up. "What are those, Professor?" she asked absentmindedly, shoving several used bandages into the trash can.
"Files," McGonagall answered, holding up the manilla envelopes in her hand. "I believe they come from NCIS archives," she said coldly.
Colonel Mann was distracted by the words. She peeled off the gloves on her hands and snatched the files from the professor. She opened the first one, looked at the two faces smiling up at her, and set the files on a clean slab. "Where did you get these?" she asked, placing the top file to the side and opening the next.
"They were on my desk last night," McGonagall said.
Colonel Mann quickly flipped through all the files. The file of the murder of a Mexican drug dealer, La Grenouille, Jeanne Beniot, all cases that were considered questionable and possibly damaging to the NCIS team. "You read these already?"
"I did," McGonagall answered.
"It's best you forget them," Colonel Mann said. She strode over to Ducky's desk, took a key out of her pocket, opened a drawer, shoved the files in, and shut and locked the drawer.
"I believe I can't," McGonagall said. "Wouldn't you agree that it's a bit disconcerting that the whole of the NCIS team have been suspects in murder or thought to be accessories to murder? One of which was technically never cleared, and another one barely? Officer David was an assassin before she came to America!"
Colonel Mann bit her tongue briefly. "Those files, Professor, were put on your desk by Trent Kort with the intent of getting you to distrust us."
"It's working!"
Colonel Mann looked McGonagall in the eye with a fury the professor had not seen the colonel demonstrate before.
"How dare you!" Colonel Mann spat. "After you've seen what Ziva must be doing, after the Director being sent away by one of your illnesses, after what Jethro has just done, you dare insult us? We are giving this all we've got and it's costing us! There is a whole other side to every one of those files that you don't know!"
"I believe those files to be very thorough, Colonel," McGonagall said icily.
Colonel Mann gave a single acidic chuckle. "Are they really? In the drug dealer's file was anything said of a woman named Shannon Gibbs and her eight year old daughter, Kelly? Was anything said about their murder?"
McGonagall suddenly looked as though she had been slapped.
Colonel Mann continued, "In Grenouille's file, was anything mentioned about Jasper Sheppard and the suspicions surrounding his so-called 'suicide'? In Jeanne Benoit's file, was it mentioned that she was at risk not because of the fact that she was dating Tony, but rather the fact that her father had made quite a few enemies in his line of work? And do you know anything about Officer David's upbringing? I assume you don't, in which case I'll inform you that in her world violence is unavoidable, and ever since she could walk she's been right in the middle of it.
"If you judge these agents based on what you read in those files, then I could judge Potter, Weasley, and Granger on their past years from Snape's point of view alone. Does that seem fair?
"If you can't trust these people, you can't trust anyone. And if you start spreading rumors about them, I'll put you in so much pain you'll wish you were never born." Colonel Mann pointed at Ducky's desk. "And you never read those files. Are we clear?"
The Colonel stormed out of the room.
Not even five seconds later, Colonel Mann walked back into the room. She grabbed a black bag off the table and was almost to the door once more when she turned and asked, "Didn't you have a conversation similar to this with Gibbs recently? The nerve some people have! We have one of the most thankless jobs one could possibly - " the colonel cut short, took several deep breaths, and left without wrapping up her thought.
"What else do you need, Tobias?" Gibbs asked, shoving a teddy bear into a suitcase.
Fornell threw his cell phone into his pocket. "Diane's still not answering." He peered into the open suitcase. "That looks like everything."
"Do you have your stuff?" Gibbs asked.
"Packed while I was waiting for Diane to answer her phone," Fornell said. "Where's Emily?"
"Down in the bull pen with Ducky. I'll bring her bag down," Gibbs offered.
Fornell left the room and headed down to the bull pen, Gibbs not far behind.
"Come on, Em!" Fornell called.
"We're leaving?" Emily asked.
"Yes! Now!" Fornell said fiercely.
"Can I say - "
"Emily, let's go!" Fornell said impatiently, handing his bag to Gibbs and grabbing Emily's hand.
"DiNozzo, accompany!" Gibbs ordered.
"You're not going anywhere, Jethro! Put those down!" Ducky commanded. "McGee, take the bags."
McGee grabbed the Fornells' luggage, Tony grabbed his gun. The two NCIS agents, the FBI agent, and his daughter left the Room of Requirement.
"They'll be met in Hogsmeade?" Gibbs asked Dumbledore.
"Kingsley Shacklebolt is already waiting," Dumbledore said with a nod.
"Good," Gibbs said. He wiped his bloody right hand off on his trousers and held it out to Dumbledore. After shaking hands and seeing Dumbledore leave, Gibbs went over to his desk, but was stopped by Ducky.
"No you don't, Jethro."
"I need to work, Duck," Gibbs argued.
"You are not any good to anyone bleeding all over everything! Look at your shirt! Look at your hands! Do not punish yourself! You haven't done anything!" Ducky's voice began to rise as he spoke.
"Go help Abby," Gibbs suggested as he walked around the ME.
"No," Ducky said shortly. "Sit down." He pushed down on Gibbs' shoulder. Remarkably, it worked. Gibbs fell into his chair and suddenly looked much, much older.
"Coming here was a mistake," Gibbs said quietly.
"Here is where we leave you, stranger," Magorian the centaur said to the woman.
"Thank you very much for your hospitality," the woman said with truth.
"Before we leave, human, tell us," said Firenze, "What are your names?"
The woman opened her mouth and shut it almost immediately. Her head began to pound as she searched. How could she not remember her own name? "I - I cannot remember," she finally admitted.
"You can't remember?" Bane asked disbelievingly.
The woman began to panic. She could not think of her own name.
Magorian looked at the woman, his eyebrows raised. "Be well, stranger," he said and lead his fellows away.
The woman gently set the girl sleeping on her back onto the ground. She put a hand to the back of her head and walked several circles. Finally, she threw her mind from it and pushed a branch away, revealing a small mound of dirt. She quickly dug into the dirt with her bare hands. She put her knives, flashlight, phone, lighter, batteries and spare change back in their assigned places before reaching back into the hole and pulling out a scrap of paper. She eagerly opened and read.
Keep moving. We'll find you. -Gibbs.
The woman's sense of panic returned full force. She could not put a face with the name 'Gibbs'. Was this note a threat or was it endearment?
Her mind thrown into overdrive, the woman shoved the earth she had moved back into its correct place, quickly picked up the girl, and moved as fast as she could away from where she had been.
Author's Note
I haven't named the next chapter. To make up for having not done so, I will give you a hint: what happens when Gibbs meets the centaurs?
Be nice! Tell me what you thought of the chapter! Click review!
