When McGee stopped talking there was a short silence. Which was, eventually, broken by Tony. Which wasn't much of a surprise to McGee.

"Wow," the older agent said in a voice that sounded as if he was still concussed. "You'd think that things couldn't get any weirder. But then it takes a 90 degree turn and whacks you on the back of the head like… like…"

There was a thwacking noise as Gibbs slapped the back of his senior field agent's head.

"…like that. Thanks boss."

"Any time DiNozzo. Any time." He looked back at McGee, who was standing there quietly. "So, you're a Jedi."

"Jedi Knight boss. So, yes."

Gibbs stared at him and McGee could see a multitude of questions rattling through his brain. Finally he seemed to settle on just one. "So what now?"

McGee raised his eyebrows for a moment. "Boss, I can be an NCIS agent and a Jedi Knight. I have been since I came back from Sunnydale. Just because you now know about it shouldn't change a thing."

Gibbs was still staring at him levelly and McGee stared back.

"What if these Jedi call upon you in the middle of a case?" Gibbs asked eventually.

"They probably won't – I'm the only Jedi on the East Coast so far. And they do, then you can bet that it'll be important – about as important as it gets."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. "How important?"

"Oh, I suspect that it wouldn't be a case of keeping the USA safe – more like keeping the planet intact. Keeping humanity safe."

"Wow." Tony sounded… well as if he was experiencing five different emotions at once, none of which were making him in any way coherent. There was awe in there, incredularity, a dash of envy, some annoyance and finally whistfullness. Then he seemed to almost shake everything off and looked at McGee with a slightly manic gleam in his eyes. "Can… anyone… become a Jedi? I mean, I know that I'm a spiritual man, kind of, and I'm a Jedi Master of investigations so…"

Oh dear. McGee sighed slightly. "Sorry, Tony. I haven't sensed anything about you that hinted that you can use the Force."

Tony deflated visibly and then rallied slightly. "Oh. Ah well. The robes would probably chafe anyway."

There was the sound of someone taking a deep breath of air into their lungs and then Gibbs looked at him again. "My gut. Well?"

Ah. This was straying into dangerous territory. "Well Boss, I have kind of good news and I have… odd news. The kind of good news is that you're not a Jedi. The odd news is that you need to have a word with your dad about any… odd ancestors of yours. Because at least one of them was a magic user."

He could almost hear the hairs standing up on the back of Gibbs' neck. Then he waited for the explosion.

"What?"

"You heard me right Boss."

Gibbs rocked back on his heels as if he'd been tapped on the chin by a punch. Ok, a punch from a pensioner. "Oh," he said eventually. "Well, I wasn't expecting that."

It seemed that no-one else was either, judging by the stunned expressions on the faces around them both. Ducky was the first to recover, judging from the sudden grin and the way that he was suddenly rubbing his hands together. "Aha," he grinned, "It's been a while since I last had to teach magic to a, well, no offence Jethro, to a novice. It'll be quite the challenge."

Gibbs eyed the older man dubiously for a moment and then sighed heavily. "Ok, well, we'll work out a way to make this thing work. I hope." He turned back to McGee. "So, can you use this Jedi stuff on day-to-day cases?"

"Carefully boss, carefully. I wouldn't want to explain to a judge how we'd captured someone using the Force. Or got someone to confess using the Jedi Mind Trick. Besides, abuse of the Force, even with the best of intentions, can lead to-"

"The Dark Side," muttered DiNozzo with a knowing look on his face. "The road that leads to Vader. To Palpatine. To black robes and that breathing problem." He started to make Vader-like breathing noises, only to be stopped by a Gibbs-slap to the back of the head. "Shutting up again boss."

"Good," said Gibbs with a glare. Then, as he walked to the doors, he stopped. "Does Abby know any of this yet?"

McGee sighed. "Not yet boss. I will though, especially that you all know. Besides, she left a message that she needs to see me about some research she's been doing."

"See that you do, McGee, see that you do. Now, let's get back to work." And with that he swept out of the room.
Tony, Ziva and Ducky all exchanged glances before looking back at Jedi. "Good luck," they chorused.

When McGee entered Abby's lab he was surprised by the lack of music. Then he saw that the black-haired Goth was asleep on an inflatable mattress on the floor, with a blanket over her and her stuffed Hippo, Bert, tucked in next to her.

McGee sighed. She'd obviously pulled another all-nighter, which was a bad thing. He looked around at the screens on the various desks and then frowned slightly. She'd been running some kind of statistical search on California. Ah. A specific place in California. Sunnydale. He looked wryly down at Abby. Ok, why had she been checking on the place after he'd returned from it?

He leant over quietly and stared at the screen. Oh, he could tell that she'd have some questions about the place. The death stats for Sunnydale were horrific. Not so much in the past few years though, thanks to the combined efforts of Slayers and Jedi.

One of the machines behind him beeped slightly, possibly because it was running a diagnostic and then suddenly Abby was awake. She sat up, blinking wildly and clutching Bert against her chest, making the stuffed toy fart feebly.

"Oh! McGee! When did you come in?"

"Just now, Abs. I didn't want to wake you. I think that Major Mass Spec just finished a diagnostic."

"Yeah," she mumbled as she put Bert down and then got up and stretched. "Need to make sure that he's working properly."

He nodded and then inclined his head at the screen. "So Abby. Sunnydale?"

She froze slightly. "Oh. Ah. I need to talk to you about that place. You must never, ever go there again."

"Why not?"

"Are you insane McGee? Have you seen the stats for accidental deaths at that place? For people who were attacked by wild animals, or who stabbed themselves in the neck with BBQ forks, or who just vanished? True, the stats have gone down quite a bit in recent years, but that might just be a statistical anomaly." From the way that she waved her hands he could tell that she thought that the recent drop was down to said statistical anomaly.

"Abby…"

"So it's a dangerous place and I should have checked out the long-term stats before you went there so I could have warned you against going there. So you can't go back there. Just because you weren't hurt in some freak accident the blast time you went there, that doesn't mean that you won't he hurt or even killed in some freakish, freakish accident the second time – oh and you need to warn your cousin about the place! I mean he lives there and the chances of something happening to him are so horribly short that you might as well send flowers now and-"

"Abby!"

She paused and blinked at him. "What?"

"I know all about Sunnydale and the risks of the place. So does Graham. He works with a group that's making the place safer. And there are other friends we have there.

Abby frowned slightly. "You know?" Then a look of abstracted calculation crossed her face. "And you have friends there?"

McGee tilted his head slightly and then looked at her. She had some… interesting friends. Perhaps a hint? "Abby, Sunnydale had another name once. Boca del Inferno."

The reaction from Abby was immediate. She froze in place. "Sunnydale is Boca del Inferno?" The question was asked in a small voice that was one long wince.

"Yes."

There was a slight pause as Abby walked in a small circle, her brain almost audibly whirring. Then she seemed to come to a decision as she turned to face him. "McGee, I need to tell you something. It'll sound completely insane and you'll think that I've gone crazy, but it's all true and it's for your own good. McGee… um… you see…"

"Abby are you about to tell me about vampires? Because I already know. Demons too. And I know that Sunnydale is a hellmouth."

He'd never seen a completely deflated and taken aback Abby before and the sight was interesting. "You… you know about hellmouths? And vampires?"

"Yes Abby."

She opened her mouth for a moment and then closed it again. "Oh," she said. "Ah." Then she rallied. "So you know why you can't go back there? Because of how dangerous it is!"

"It's less dangerous than it used to be, Abs."

Abby wrung her hands together. "But Tim…"

"Abby, have you ever heard of the Slayer?"

She looked at him as if he was raving mad. "Maybe. It's a hinky legend."

"No she's not. And she lives in Sunnydale. With friends."

Abby visibly processed this. "What kind of friends are we talking about here? Magic-using friends?"

"Some of them use magic, yes. Others… use something else."

"What kind of something else?"

"Well… they're a great bunch of people. And they can use the Force. Because they're Jedi."

She just looked at him for a very, very, long moment. Then she looked at the phone. "Ok. Right. So we need to call up Ducky and then tell him that you have concussion. Or something. Cool as it would be for real live actual Jedi to exist, they're still fictional."

"Abby I've met them. They exist."

She laughed caustically. "Yeah, right. Did they tell you that they were working on their lightsabres? Because you know that they're impossible with current technology, right? And the idea of the Force is just-"

He interrupted her by pulling out his own lightsabre and placing it quietly on the desk next to him. She looked at him exasperatedly. "Oh, very nice prop there, McGee! Is your real one in the mail? Is that what they told you?"

He picked it up again, grabbed a pen from a pot to one side and then looked at her. "How many pieces do you want me to chop this into?"

Abby stared at him. "You're serious."

"Yes."

"Ok – five."

He thumbed the activation switch, threw the pen in the air and then sliced at it in the grip of the Force. A millisecond later he deactivated the lightsabre and looked at Abby as five shards of pen clattered onto the floor.

If the previous silence had been long, then the present one drabbed out for an eternity. Finally Abby pulled herself together enough to point a shaking finger at the weapon in his hand.

"That…. That's… a lightsabre. A real, working, lightsabre."

"Yes it is."

"That's… not… possible… But you have a lightsabre. That works. Does not compute!"

"As I said, they're a great bunch of people. And they have access to some very interesting equipment. Which is how I was able to build it."

Abby looked at the lightsabre and then back at McGee and then back and forth several times, before finally refocusing on McGee. "Why didn't you tell me when you came back?" she asked in a very small voice.

"I was trying to break it to you gently," he said ruefully. "I wanted to tell you, but it was hard finding an easy way to do it. Problem was, the right time never seemed to turn up."

"But you're telling me now. Why now?"

"Because last night I saved two kidnapped female petty officers from a warehouse full of vampires led by an lunatic master vampire who wanted to use their blood to summon demons. And guess whose team investigated the kidnapping?"

"Gibbs?" Abby squeaked. "He knows then?"

"Well, Tony cut his finger on some barbed wire near the warehouse and he accidentally got some in the summoning circle. So I had to intervene with my lightsabre to save Gibbs and Tony from a large and rather unpleasant demon. Ziva was just outside. So they all know now. As does Ducky, because he had to check out Tony's head after he got knocked out by the demon. And by the way, Tony's just fine, I healed him myself."

"Right," said Abby as she pushed him back onto the chair. "Tell me everything."