Nell pulled over, the street was empty, it was just a side road for this one building really, so she was pretty sure nobody else had seen the explosion. LAPD had left a while ago, the only people there were Kensi, Deeks, and herself. That is, if they had survived. Getting out of her car and running round to the back Nell pulled her phone out.

"Eric!" She knew she sounded panicked, but she hoped not enough to scare her partner.

"Nell! Nell what is it? Are you alright?" His voice was anxious, obviously she hadn't sounded quite has calm as she had thought. Putting her phone between her ear and her shoulder, Nell searched the back of her car as she responded.

"Yes, I'm fine Eric. It's Kensi and Deeks I'm worried about." She looked over her shoulder at the lot where the warehouse was. It was smoking, but she could not see any fire over the trees. That was a good sign. But if she didn't find what she was looking for it might not matter.

"What happened?" Nell tried not to sound annoyed as she answered her partner, it wasn't him. No, it was that stupid bag...she knew it was there, but of course the one time she needed it would be the time that she couldn't find it. It was getting very frustrating.

"I was driving up the road to the warehouse, and I was maybe half a minute away, and the damn building just went up in flames." Nell could almost picture the look on her partners face. He had been right, the one time he wanted the most to be wrong he had to get it perfect. She knew how much that would upset him.

"You mean it..." He couldn't finish, but he didn't have to. His partner didn't even let him.

"...blew up? Yeah, big time."

"Okay, well..." He continued speaking, giving her instructions, but Nell wasn't listening. She had to find that bag...

"Oh god damn it! Where the hell is that stupid bag!" Nell didn't normally swear at all, the word brought up memories she tried very hard to suppress, but the situation she was in right now had even worse memories associated with it. The people in there were part of the closest thing she had to family, and there was no way she was going to let history repeat itself again, she wasn't sure she could survive it another time.

"Nell? Are you listening?" Over the phone Eric yelled at her, and she was thankful he had. She had promised herself she was going to forget her past. Those parts at least, where to painful to let surface.

"Huh? Sorry..."

"What are you looking for Rockstar?" He said it gently, she was sure she must have sounded more than a little hysterical. Two of her friends where in the wreck of an explosion, she couldn't find that bag and the whole situation was threatening to break down the carefully constructed wall she had build to keep that part of her childhood from ever surfacing.

"My bag, I have to find it! It has my mask..."

"What mask Nell?"

"My mask, my gas masks! I need them Eric, Kensi and Deeks..." She trailed off, tears threatening to spill over onto her cheeks.

"No, no! Nell you are not doing what I think you are doing..." She cut him off with a cry of excitement.

"Got them!" She forced the tears back as she made sure everything was inside the small blue drawstring bag. "Eric, I have to go. I'll call you when I can." As she spoke she began to get ready and tested the inside of the masks.

"No way, no! You can't honestly be thinking of going in there Nell! It's suicide, wait till the rescue team gets there!" She could hear him shouting at someone in the room to make the call.

"How long?"

"Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes at the most..." Nell cut him off.

"They don't have time Eric! The stuff stored in the warehouse can let out fatal toxins when burnt or melted...every breath they take is killing them. They don't have more than five or ten minutes!" She undid the strap of the her mask.

"Nell, Nell, please..." She could hear the desperation in her partner's voice, he was pleading with her now.

"I have to try Eric, I know what I'm doing!"

"Nell...please, just promise me you'll be careful. Promise me rockstar, please"

"Just stop Eric, please just stop." At this Nell ended the call. She didn't have time for a long debate on being careful, it was pointless anyways. Even if she maybe did wish, just a tiny bit, that he would talk her out of it, that she wasn't so stubborn.

Turning her phone off and shoving her phone into her pocket and swinging the bag over her shoulder Nell took off running for the now building, strapping on her gas mask as she went.

Eric sat in his chair, sadness, defeat, and pure horror all mixed into the one expression on his face. He didn't think he had ever been, or ever could be, as terrified as he was now. Nell, his little pixie like partner, with all her 'habits' and quirks, was his best friend. And now she wasn't acting anything like the woman he new. Honestly, if he had to compare her personality shift to someone else, it would be Kensi. And that scared him out of his mind.

His first thought was, why the hell did she have a gas mask in her car? Not that it really mattered at this stage, but if she survived he was going to have a long talk with her about what she wasn't telling him. What was it that was changing her from Nell, his best friend, to someone he couldn't recognize? This person was someone who understood thing and knew things that he had never even thought about.

How did she know how long they had? And what did she mean she knew hat she was doing? Over the phone she had sounded panicked and haunted

"Eric!" A hand was waved in front of his face, yanking him out of his thoughts.

"Oh thank you god..." Standing in front of him were G and Sam, apparently back from the deceased and missing's houses.

"What is it Eric? What happened?" They had obviously been standing there long enough to hear part of his conversation with Nell.

"A bomb just went off inside the warehouse Kensi and Deeks were searching." He tried to sound calm, he knew that Kensi was their little sister and he didn't want them to worry to much.

"What? Are they hurt? What happened?" Callen couldn't believe it, and even though he was trained to hide his feelings he knew that his panic and outrage were clear on his face. Glancing to his right he knew that his partner was thinking the same, this wasn't good.

"I don't know anything really..." Eric began, but was cut off by a frustrated Sam Hanna.

"What do you mean you don't know anything? How do you not know anything?" He felt a little bad, as it wasn't the young tech's fault. But he couldn't stand the thought of something happening to Kensi, who was basically his little sister. He was even worried about Deeks, because even though he was a pain in the ass he was still part of their team. And in this profession, your team was your family.

"I've only spoken with Nell. She was less than a minute away when it happened."

"Is she alright?" They had all grown fond of their new intelligence analyst, she was part of their family to now.

"She is for now, but she isn't herself." The confused looks the agents gave him forced him to elaborate. "She decided to go and look for them. It's not like Nell at all..."

"You let her go? Eric! What the hell were you thinking, she isn't trained to do anything like that...she's gonna get herself killed!" Nell reminded Sam of his youngest sister, all the way down to the way she did her hair, and the thought of her doing something that dangerous was terrible. Blaming it on Eric was not right, he knew that, but the man had let the girl would resembled his sister go on a suicide mission. He felt even worse when he actually looked the tech, he was a mess. When Sam thought about it, he realized that it was probably the hardest on Eric right now. His partner was going on a suicide mission and there was nothing he could do to stop her. The ex-SEAL knew all to well what that felt like, as his current partner seemed to have quite a taste for lone-wolf suicide ops. But Callen was trained, Nell was not.

"I know, I know! But what the hell was I meant to do? Contrary to what you might think I am not a miracle worker." He thought for a second about what he had said, then quickly added on the to his statement. "And do not say 'We know, if you were you wouldn't dress like that'. I'm not in the mood." Eric knew very well he sounded like an ass, but he couldn't have cared less at the moment. Thankfully the two senior agents seemed to understand, and ignored his tone.

"I wasn't going to say that, but that doesn't matter at the moment...right now we need to concentrate on finding Kensi, Nell and Deeks." Callen sounded calm, but inside he was a wreck. They had no clue what was happening and half their team was currently in an exploding minefield. "Have you thought about the fact that if they knock against, or step on, anything they could set off another explosion? Because they are in a building that is used as a holding tank for all kinds of weapons systems." When he thought about it, it didn't really make sense. Because if anything were even to spark in that warehouse, if it was close enough to something, everything would go up in flames. One by one, explosion after explosion, until everything was burnt to the ground and anyone within a 300 m radius was killed with no visible evidence. All three men seemed to realize this fact together, and the look that went around was one of complete and absolute horror.

"They're dead." Eric stated, his voice was barley above a whisper but that seemed to be all he could muster at the moment. All three hung their heads, they knew it was a ninety-nine percent chance that they were dead. And that their bodies would never be found. Eric was not sure which was going to harder to accept, but he knew one thing for sure, if Nell was killed, he would not...

"It could very well be so Mr. Beale." Hetty jolted him out of his thoughts at her sudden appearance in the dark, solum room. But her voice was optimistic as she continued, attempting to convince her team of a hopeful fact. "But we all must try to be optimistic...we must not give up hope of finding our team, as all might not be lost. Now I can assume..." They were soon distracted by rescue plans and thoughts of getting their team out alive. There was no more time to think about what he would do if they died, as Eric was busy getting heat signatures and satellite images up on the screen. They held onto the fact that, as Hetty had reminded them, Kensi and Deeks were two very capable people and Nell was smart enough to know the risks of what she was doing and how to avoid getting killed. Now all they could do was try and not think about what would happen if the fair, or even the heat, reached some of those boxes in the warehouse's main storage bay.

"Urgh..." Kensi groaned as she opened her eyes, her vision was blurry, from the blood that had crusted over her eyes or from the headache she had she wasn't sure. She tried opening her mouth to take a deeper breath, but instead all she got was a mouthful of grimy hair. Unable to move her arm enough to push it away she again tried to take a breath, but was met with smokey air that choked her until she began to cough violently. It lasted only seconds, but her whole body ached much more in the minutes after. It was then that she realized she couldn't move, the most she could do was wiggle her fingers.

Trying to remember what had happened, Kensi suddenly was hit with an image of her partner flying though the air, and unwillingly following him moments afterwords. The hot rush of air had blown her off her place at the entryway to the secret room, and from what she could see, she was on the first floor again. Kensi could remember falling, and then hitting something soft...Deeks! She had landed on him, but where was he now?

"Kensi...Kensi!" Deeks attempted to call out to his partner, but all that came out was hoarse whisper laced with pain. He had been sitting right next to the computer when it had blown and from where he was now he was pretty sure he was now back on the first floor. Not that he could remember much...pretty much as soon as it blew he had been knocked out, only regaining consciousness momentarily when he hit the ground and then something had hit him. He was hoping that it had been Kensi, mostly because that would mean he would have had less of a chance of it injuring him, and his partner had then had a softer place to land...if she had fallen at all. Actually, he almost hoped it hadn't been her, because then maybe she had not fallen, or maybe had gotten out of the building entirely before it had gone up. But he was probably being to hopeful...

"Deeks..." From somewhere to his left he was almost certain he had heard her voice. It was painfully low and dry. But sounded close, so she couldn't be far away...Deeks attempted to lift his head, not to much, but enough to look around. But it seemed that he was pinned down, under what he was not sure, all he knew was that he had to get out.

"Kensi! Deeks!" Nell called through her mask to the NCIS operatives from her current place at the edge of the destruction. She was nervous about actually searching the ruble for them, for if she was to accidentally knock against something stored there she might set off a round of explosions. She could see that whoever had set the computer to explode had meant for it not to reach the main storage facility. They hadn't wanted the whole building to catch fire, only to permanently destroy whatever was on that computer...and maybe kill the people attempting to access it.

For this reason she was standing towards the back of the building, closest to the destruction, but farthest from the explosives that had been stored there. This section had been almost completely flattened, all that was left was two partial walls and the bottom half of a set of metal stairs. The fire was almost completely burnt out, not that that meant much. There was still a thick covering of smoke, it wasn't bothering her through her mask, but it would be choking Kensi and Deeks, and a spark could send the still scorching debris up in flames again...Which also meant to would be dangerous and painful to walk across in her thin-soled running shoes. But she was going to try no matter what anyways...So she steeled herself for what she might find and began the slow process of walking through and looking for anything that moved or looked slightly human, calling out as she went.

"Ah-urgh..." The sound had come from somewhere to her left, it was a pain-filled groan but it was something non the less.

"Kensi? Deeks? Is that you?" Nell called out to whoever it was as she picked her way through, searching through the concrete for anything she could find. She would have sounded muffled, maybe not completely coherent, but whoever it was would at least have audio conformation that someone was there. When she heard a noise in response she jumped, as it didn't sound completely human, but at the same time as scarring her, it gave her hope. At least one of them was alive, that means there was a better chance of finding them both.

As she made her way over to the body she caught sight of a heeled boot.

Kensi! Good...maybe she knew where Deeks had been when the bomb had gone off. But first she had to concentrate on getting her fully-conscious and safe.

"Deeks?" Nell knelt down beside the body and lifted her mask off her face. Her lungs were instantly assaulted with smoke, but she did her best to ignore it. Using her now gloved hands she pushed a good amount of debris away, trying to find Kensi's head. But when she did she was defiantly not prepared for what she was to find.

"Oh my goodness..."

Hi again everyone! Welcome back to the world of Nell Jones!. This is a super long chapter cause I thought I should give you something good, because school starts on Tuesday and I probably will not have as many updates after that, so please don't give up on me if it comes slowly!

So, getting rid of some business that need to be dealt with.

1. HIT THE BLUE BUTTON OR I WILL SET HETTY ON YOU WITH A LETTER OPENER...just kidding, but please to review! I'll love you forever for it :)

2. Just letting everyone know that I hit my record for most words in a chapter...this one had over 3 thousand!

3. Also, thanks to Nadya again... (that mean any mistakes can be blamed on her proof-reading...just kidding, I luv my straight A+ grades little sister)

4. Oh and...DISCLAIMER = I OWN NOTHING

5. Like my little cliffhanger there? Put it there just for you :)