"My name is Rhoda," the woman said where they sat in the diner Gibbs frequented. Gibbs sat beside her, while Tim and Tony sat across from them. "Gideon got a hold of me in '75," she explained. "Kept me at his house and fed me and these other girls all kinds of drugs. I mean, it was voluntary. It was the 70s. But we had no idea what he was giving us. We just took it and had good times.

"After a while though, he stopped giving it to us. Started shooting us up with something. Next thing I know, I'm waking up in an alley with a couple of the other girls. Only...they weren't waking up. I was so freaked out, I just ran. Ran right into traffic, in fact." Tim and Tony grimaced. "Woke up in a morgue." She started to look extremely uncomfortable then. "Looked at my naked body on this metal table and saw the Y incision all sewn back up, and that's when I knew... I had died and I had come back. I damn sure wasn't gonna stick around to see what they'd do to me if they found me breathing after they'd done the autopsy. So I grabbed some scrubs and got the hell outta there. Ran to my spot and grabbed my bag, and I hopped the next bus outta town and never looked back." She got quiet for a moment.

"You've been running for nearly 45 years?" Tony asked quietly. Rhoda let out a small laugh from her nose as she looked up at him.

"Didn't run that long," she replied. "I made the mistake of thinking I could settle down, get married and have a normal life. Then somewhere down the line my husband started getting wrinkles and gray hair, and I kept staying the same. Thought maybe I just had great genes, but hell I never knew my folks. I grew up on the street. My skin kept me there until I met my husband. He was everything to me," she said as her gaze drifted off somewhere out the window. "And I never could give him any kids. I always blamed whatever Gideon did to me for that.

"When he died, my whole world changed around me. I had everything I would ever need, but when he left, something inside me just..." A tear slipped down her cheek, and Gibbs put a hand over hers. She looked down at their hands for a moment. "I became an angry, bitter woman. Suppose I still am," she said with a small, sad smile as she looked up at Gibbs, then to Tim and Tony. "But back then, my anger had strange things happening around me. I started seeing things. Energies. Like one of them psychic aura readers. But I could see it in things too, not just people. Things that meant something to someone. Took me months to realize it was pointing me to things I needed to see. Like instinct personified.

"Over the years I figured out how to use it for what I wanted to look for..."

"And that's what led you to Camper," Tim surmised.

"Sorry 'bout the door," she told him.

"Already have someone fixing it."

"I made the trip to meet you guys because I felt your aura. I knew that somehow...we're connected. I know that sounds weird as hell, but..."

"Trust me when I say we totally get it," Tony said.

"It's you, isn't it?" Rhoda asked, looking at Tony. "I've never met anyone else like me. Always thought it was just me an that asshole. Pardon my French." She looked around at them all again. "How you have friends, I can't imagine. It's been so long since I could talk to someone without keeping half of what I am a secret from them. When did he get to you?" she asked.

"Few years back," Tony told her, his gaze dropping to the table top. "'s why I've got friends still." Tim could feel the pain the thought caused him.

"We're trying to find a way to get the compound out of anyone who's got it," Tim picked up for him. "We think there's a way to transfer it. Whether it be to another person or to an object. It doesn't stick around once it's released, but if there's a way to transfer it to a capacitor, we might be able to harness it. Like a battery. Thing is, it replicates itself somehow."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"So far we've figured out that a big enough chunk of that energy transfers over, what little is left will go into kind of a hibernation, theoretically. It doesn't show itself at all. The aging process resumes as if it's gone. But under certain life-threatening circumstances it replicates itself, rapidly refueling the host so that it can continue to survive inside of it."

"How do you know this?" she asked. "Is this something that happened to you?" she asked Tony.

"It's a long story, but yeah."

"How long was it dormant?"

"A few years," he told her. "Now it's back stronger than ever."

"How did you transfer the energy?"

"By accident, actually."

"Before we uh...continue any deeper with this conversation," McGee said, "I think we should go someplace a bit more private." Gibbs noticed then that there was a group of people heading inside. He hadn't even noticed the cars when they had pulled up.

"Let's go to my place," Tony suggested. "No one ever comes to Casa DiNozzo, and it's a shame because there's a lot of entertainment there."

"Abs and Bishop are still at mine though," Gibbs told him. "Plus you know I've got the most room to crash."

"Speaking of," Tony said as he looked at Rhoda. "Do you have a place in town?" She raised a brow at him. "I mean somewhere to sleep for the night."

"I don't sleep," she told him. "I mean I don't need to. My body will heal without it. Unless I use my power a whole lot. But it's more like I pass out than sleeping. Got a place in Montana, and I know a bunch of places to crash if I need to."

"Guess what I was trying to say is that I could get you a room. Or...you could stay at my place. I'll crash at Gibbs' house if that makes you more comfortable."

"You're not afraid I'll take your stuff?" she said with a slight grin.

"Not unless you've got an overwhelming desire for DVDs," McGee said with a laugh.

"You a movie buff too?" she asked Tony.

Tony's face went slack. "You like movies?"

"I've been collecting for 40 years. Super 8, VHS, hell I've got HD DVDs. Remember that 14 days in history?"

"This is all at your place in Montana?"

"Nah. I've got a cabin in Virginia. Off the beaten path. About a quarter of them are there. The rest are in storage. You don't even wanna know how many there are."

"I kinda do," he replied, fascinated.

"Can we continue this on the road?" Gibbs asked as he slipped out of the booth.

"Sure thing, boss," Tony replied as they all filed out after him. The men headed for Gibbs' car as Rhoda mounted her motorbike, some kinda Kawasaki that looked about 20 years old.

"Hey Tony," she called before he could get into the car. "16,702." She smiled at the look on his face before putting her helmet on.

"Just follow us," Gibbs told her with a smirk. "Tony, get in the car." Tony obeyed, closing the door once he was inside, and Gibbs began to pull out onto the road.

"There's no way," Tony said to no one in particular.

"No way what?" Tim asked.

"That she has almost 17 thousand movies in her collection. That's just...not possible!"

"Been collecting for 40 years, she said," Gibbs reminded him.

*~.~*

"Okay so, I'm guessing there's a bunch of duplicates," Tony said when they were all inside Gibbs' house. "Like you got DVDs that you had VHS movies for already."

"Nope," she replied. "No duplicates. I've got most of the VHSs and Super 8s in storage, but there's no two the same, I don't think."

"But it's a possibility!"

"Tony, if half of her movies were duplicates, it'd still be way bigger of a collection than you have," Tim said as they all walked into the dining room where Abby and Ellie were still apparently discussing the supplement plan.

"Rhoda," Gibbs said as the others looked up. "This is Abby and Ellie. They work with us, and they know everything we do."

"Nice to meet you," Ellie was the first to stand and shake her hand.

"You think maybe tomorrow we could ask you some questions?" Abby asked as she took her turn shaking hands. "Like...stuff about what abilities you have and if you've learned anything specific over the years?"

"I uh...guess I don't have anything better to do," she replied. "Can I ask why?"

"Sure!" Abby replied as they all sat back down. "A few of us are working on a supplement for Tony. You know, for when you use you abilities more than usual."

"I'm not sure I understand."

"In the beginning, when you first started using you abilities, did you get sick afterward? Nose bleeds? Anything?" Tim asked.

Rhoda seemed to ponder the question, but eventually shook her head. "I remember getting headaches at first. Not too bad, but they'd go away in an hour or so." She glanced around the table. "Why? Does that happen to you?" she asked Tony.

"If I'm going full force for too long, yeah," he replied. "Or if something new starts happening. Takes a bit of practice before there's not so much of an after effect."

"Wait...something new? Are you telling me you've got more than one ability?" she asked, curious as she cocked her head to one side.

"Does that mean other than healing and not being able to kick the bucket, your ability is limited to this aura thing?" Ellie asked.

"Well there's a lot of layers to the aura thing," Rhoda defended. "I can track from thousands of miles away. I can tell if someone's lying to me. Stuff like that. What is it you can do exactly, Tony?"

"Heh..." he felt as though he'd be bragging at this point. "At first," he told her, "I would get visions of things that were going to happen to my team. Or to me. Like I was getting a heads up so I could save them."

"That sounds...awesome and probably awful as well," she said.

"Yeah," he said with a small laugh. "Well it's selective," he continued. "Doesn't always tell me everything that's gonna happen. I'm not too sure how it works, to be honest. Then there's the telekinesis. I can move things sometimes. I'm better at it now, but it makes me sick when I try to do it too much. Oh and then there's the psychic thing with McGee."

"Wait, I thought it was just you?" Rhoda questioned.

"That brings us back to that discussion we left off on at the diner." Tony seemed to stop then, oddly feeling like he didn't want to talk about that incident. Tim had to have felt it, because he immediately picked it back up.

"I got shot," Tim told her. "I bled out, and Tony brought me back somehow. He didn't realize what he was doing and he still doesn't know for sure, but somehow he transferred the energy into me."

"It didn't stay for any longer than it took to heal him," Gibbs added. "Somethin' about how it enters your system."

"We figured that since my exposure was through Tony, and not the serum itself like he'd been exposed to, that it had nothing to...hold onto," Tim said. "What happened after that, though, is that somehow Tony and I are linked. At first we could talk to each other, like, in our heads. It didn't last long though. It was gone for years. It just started coming back a few weeks ago, but I wasn't hearing him talk. I was feeling what he was feeling, and sometimes getting images."

"I..." Rhoda started, then looked as though she was trying to decide whether or not to tell them. "I could hear Gideon," she said. "Didn't start till a few weeks ago, but I could hear his voice in my head. He wasn't talking to me, but I heard him. Thought I was crazy and finally lost my mind."

"What do you mean he wasn't talking to you?" Gibbs asked.

"I mean I don't think he knew I was listening in," she replied. "He doesn't talk that often, and sometimes his words are muffled. Like earlier tonight, I could hear that he was talking, but it sounded like he was in another room. I couldn't make out what he was saying, but it lit up his aura enough for me to find him."

"He was talking to me earlier tonight," Tony told her. "So you've got a tap on the old man, and this is new?"

"Yeah, like I said, it just started a few weeks ago. He didn't seem so much like he was talking to someone as much as to himself. He'd say things like he couldn't hear someone anymore. I dunno who..."

"He was likely talking about Tony," Abby said. "Before they imprisoned Gideon, Tony did something to cut him out."

"Hurt like a sonofabitch," Tony said with a half grin. "Not sure I'd know how to do it again, but it was like snapping metal. One minute he was in my head and wouldn't leave, and the next my head felt like it was on fire."

"He had a seizure," Gibbs recalled. "Tim had to shoot Gideon in the head to stop him screamin'. Then everything seemed to stop. But however he did it, it wasn't easy and it probably wasn't safe either."

"But he was outta my head, and that's what mattered," Tony said. "Gideon is kinda...borderline personality disorder, manic, if you can even diagnose him with something in particular. When he's in a manic state of paranoia or anger, it's the hardest to deal with when he's jamming my head full of it.

"Right now he seems to be calm. Dare I say collected. I think he might even be...respecting my privacy at the moment, so that's unexpected, but nice. I really don't think he's a bad guy. He's just...gone mad."

"That doesn't mean he should be let out," Rhoda said. "He's dangerous. And like you said, if he goes manic, who knows what he'll do?"

"The only way we could give him what he wants," Tim said, "Would be to create a reinforced environment that he's incapable of getting out of. If we could figure out how to...suppress..." Tim's eyes wandered off into the air in front of him in thought.

"That's it, Tim!" Ellie exclaimed. "Instead of focusing all our efforts on this capacitor idea just yet, we should figure out if there's a way to suppress the abilities."

"Keeping him in that tank would take considerably longer to research," Abby agreed. "But if we could let him out and maintain everyone's safety by giving him something that keeps him harmless, it might actually be in our best interest."

"You wanna let him out?" Rhoda asked incredulously. "You don't even know if this stuff would work on him! Who are you gonna test it on? My days of being a guinea pig are over!"

"We don't have to test it on anyone," Abby replied. "All we'd need are blood samples. I can expose the samples to it to see if it has any effect. Gideon would be the guinea pig."

"And I'm sure he won't even fight it," Tony said.

"How would you even know it was working on him?"

"I think I have a way to test that," Tony said...

*~.~*

tbc