The virtual nerve center of NCIS was not buzzing with criminal investigative activity. It was a collection of investigators whom were awash in boredom. Of course, that didn't mean that they weren't involved in activities whose intent was to alleviate said boredom.

Anthony "Tony" DiNozzo was basically surfing the internet via his desktop computer, looking for examples of erotic beauties designed to put a lecherous smile on his otherwise bored, albeit handsome, face.

"Oh, yeah," he said just loud enough to be heard by his colleagues: Ziva David, the lovely black-haired beauty who was still attempting to fit into this collection of naval investigators; Timothy McGee, the computer whiz who still struggled to prove himself in the eyes and mind of Tony, who still persisted in calling him "Probie".

"We're not listening to you," McGee said soundly, as he, himself, was using his computer to play violent RPG games easily, for him, located upon the self-same internet being used for lecherous reasons by Tony.

"That's your lose, Probie," replied Tony, even as his screen came alive with beautiful bikini-clad ladies, causing him to virtually drool with delight. "I've never seen such sexy swimwear since the last time my old frat buddies and I went on Spring Break."

"Aren't you worried," sighed Ziva, even as she continued playing Solitare on her computer, lamenting, on the inside, the fact that there simply was not any source of investigative necessity for which she, and the others, could concentrate, "that Gibbs might see what you're using your goverment-issued computer is being used for?"

"I would be, if it weren't for the fact that the Old Man is out chasing down another Starbuck's extra-large black coffee. Ooo, baby, look at your. Mm."

So entranced with what he was seeing on his computer screen, in the way of scantily clad women going from skimpy bikinis to almost see-through nigligees, Tony was completely unaware that Leroy Jethro Gibbs had just entered, walking around the rear of Tony's workspace, large Starbuck's coffee in hand, and spied the sexually explicit sites for which his computer was being used, during this down time, in regards to criminal activities.

Gibbs did what he had done dozens of times before, whenever Tony as behaving inappropriately for such a professional place. He smacked him on the back of the head.

"Ouch," Tony said suddenly, even as he quickly closed all the sexy sites through which he had been surfing. "Sorry, boss. Just trying to keep from falling asleep here. You wouldn't by any chance be coming back with a murder to try and solve would you?"

"Sorry," responded, coolly, Gibbs, even as he walked around his desk to sit and sip his beloved coffee in a modicum of peace and quiet. "The only corpse that Ducky's working on is the one that was involved in an accidental car crash. He's checking it out, just to ascertain whether or not the Marine-in-question had been drinking or doing drugs that led to the car crash."

"Hence the reason," cut in Tony, with more than a little sarcasm to his tone, "for scanning chicks in sexy attire, boss. To keep from dozing off over here. I know how much you hate that."

"Just do something on your computer that doesn't involve slobbering over nearly naked women, DiNozzo," loudly ordered Gibbs in between sips of his large cup of black coffee. Which seemed a trifle wasted, since he wasn't on top of a criminal murder of a sailor or a Marine that would require him being one hundred percent awake and aware.

"Okay, boss," Tony heavily heaved, as boredom threatened to break his will. "Maybe I can stream an old movie. Maybe a classic like Casablanca. 'Here's lookin' at you, kid.' Just as soon as I find my headphones...ah, here they are."

"Just don't fall asleep, DiNozzo," Gibbs said slyly. "You wouldn't like my response to-"

"What's that, boss?"

Gibbs begins sniffing the re-circulated air, his brow knitting in puzzlement, "What's that smell? Plastic burning?"

Suddenly the other three individuals making up NCIS were aware of this unusually pungent sent...

"Yeah, boss," Tony said, as he lay down his headphones upon his desk. "I smell it, too."

"Me, too," said Siva suspiciously, in regards to what could be causing such a slight-but-definitely present stench.

"Where's it coming from?" rhetorically asked McGee, even as he continued loudly, more so than the others, sniffing the air in the climate-controlled offices of NCIS. "Think something's on fire somewhere in the building?"

That last question, not at all rhetorical, garnered a response from Gibbs, as he reached for his phone, intent upon alerting firefighters, before a fire, if that was what it was, could get out of control, "I'll call it in, then we're all out of he-. What's happening now?"

At the self-same moment that the DMT began affecting Gibbs, Tony, Siva, and McGee were all as affected by the hallucinogenic compound as was Gibbs.

Speaking of whom, his psychedelic experience would lull him into a hellish reliving of the point in time when Jenny Shepard, someone to whom he was romantically attached, was killed during an investigation.

"Jenny..."

Someone whom was, in his hallucinating state, suddenly back to life, but in a manner meant to torment rather than fill him with a surge of resurrected affections for the lady with the short-cut reddish hair...

"No, Jenny," murmured Gibbs, even as the woman whom, in his DMT-twisted mind, had become a wraith, rather than a loving ghost, come back from the grave to offer him a chance at affection one last time. "I couldn't help you. I know that. But it wasn't as if I had, somehow, been directly responsible for your death."

"That's where you're wrong, Jethro," the spiteful spirit of Jenny snarled, as she stood close to Gibbs. "You were supposed to keep me safe. As you do for your team, whenever you all are investigating a criminal murder. But you didn't...did you?"

"Jenny," painfully breathed Gibbs, as tears welled up in his eyes. "If I could do it all over again...I would've given my life to save yours. Surely you can see that?"

"I'm unable to 'see' anything anymore, Jethro," Jenny's wraith-like ghost said with more than a little harshly, and accusatory. "I'm in the ground, aren't I, Jethro. In the ground where you put me after my murder. And now, as you continue to live and breath, I shall rip out your own soul and bring it into the ground with me!"

"No, Jenny, nooooo-!"