Warnings: Spoilers for anything up to Season 7

A/N: I know that it has been a long time since an update and I apologize for that. As always, your feedback is appreciated and I do read all your reviews even if I do not get the time to respond to them!

kathy- Thank you, I didn't think I was bashing Ziva either. Certainly there are much worse fics out there that really are bashing. And yes, I agree that I did no worse than what the actual writers of the show did. For someone that claimed to love Tony she sure put him down a lot, which makes it really hard for me to buy into this "tiva" nonsense.

Natalie soon realized that "on the job training" meant just that. No sooner had she been handed her new probationary agent credentials and assigned a weapon, than she was off on a case. It was a simple case, easy open and shut, and she was glad for that, but now the team was languishing around the squad room and she had been shipped back and forth to FLET-C courses when the instructors were available to train her.

But today there were no open slots. Natalie was shoved a stack of paperwork to fill out, all apart of the probie hazing, as Tony put it with his trademark grin. Now, she was struggling to get through it all and pass it on time as to not incur the wrath of Gibbs.

"Time to roll," Tony announced appearing in the bullpen. "Bossman got the signal. He's sending us."

"Just us?" McGee asked, grabbing his gear. "Wow, whatever Vance has him shacked up in MTAC for must be important."

"Don't know, didn't ask," Tony said, grabbing his own gear.

McGee paused midway through packing up and gave his senior partner an incredulous look. "You want me to believe for one second that you didn't ask why Gibbs wasn't joining us?"

Tony didn't answer, not verbally anyways. He just shot the younger man a look while holstering his weapon and that was the end of the conversation. Natalie had learned quickly that the three agents that she was working with had some sort of silent communication thing going on. Gibbs and Tony seemed to have it nailed down, and McGee could read both of them all well and good most times, but she was still struggling to find her footing.

"Hey, Probie," Tony called out to her. "Are you coming?"

"Yes!" Natalie sputtered, sprinting towards the elevator when she realized she had been left behind. "Where are we going?" she asked, slipping into the cab between the two men.

"Norfolk. Dead petty officer was found this morning by his bunkmates," Tony replied, pressing the button for the garage.

McGee was certainly curious now as to why Gibbs was not joining them on this trip. A dead Navy man and the team leader was staying behind working on something in MTAC? It was not very Gibbs like. And it made him a little nervous. "Any idea what happened?"

Tony sighed and clicked his tongue. "Apparently he hung himself."

Natalie chuckled, lowly. "Apparently? Do you think there's some kind of conspiracy going on that ship to make sailors look like they committed suicide?"

"Rule 8, Natalie," Tony reminded her. "Never assume."

"Uh, am I ever going to get a written copy of the rules so I can learn them?" Natalie questioned, slightly annoyed. "Besides having to learn NCIS rules and regulations I have to learn Gibbs' too!"

Tony scratched behind his ear and smiled at her, slyly. "There's no rule book. You either learn them or you don't."

Natalie threw him a not so amused look. "And if I don't?"

"Guess then you go back to Boston."

"Fantastic."

"Don't worry, Natalie, it took me a long time to learn them too."

"There are just so many," she fussed as she climbed into the van on the passenger side and slammed the door shut. "And I think half of them were written when Tony came along."

McGee laughed as he buckled himself in and started the van up, following behind Tony in the Charger. "Doubt anyone, even Tony, would argue with you on that one." He settled in for the long ride a head of him, glad that he had Natalie to keep him company and not Gibbs or Tony. Gibbs hated to talk and Tony liked to talk too much for his liking most of the time. Besides, Natalie had been pretty much off doing her own thing with FLET-C when they were not working a case so there hadn't been a lot of opportunity to get to know her. "So," he finally said, breaking the silence, "You grew up in Boston. I went to MIT."

Natalie smiled at him. "I had a boyfriend from MIT once."

"Oh? Really?"

"Yeah. He did my chemistry homework for me. Lots of guys at MIT willing to go out with me in exchange for homework."

"Probably a dime a dozen."

"Were you one of those guys, McGee?"

McGee shook his head. "No. My dad had me so focused on excelling at my career that I didn't pay too much attention to girls. Dated one from my bio lab, but that was when I went to John Hopkins."

Natalie processed what he had just said, then asked, "Why didn't you go into the Navy? Like your dad?"

"Because that's what he wanted."

"Didn't know you were a rebel, McGee."

McGee laughed. Neither did he, until she had pointed that out to him. Yeah...he liked riding with her a lot better than Tony or Gibbs.

Norfolk was a long, boring drive. Natalie hated every moment of it. Not that McGee wasn't good company, but she found that she related to Tony more and well, Tony was incredibly good at filling up that awkward silence with mindless movie trivia. By the time the team arrived, minus Gibbs of course, Natalie and McGee hadn't said a word for thirty minutes. But that didn't seem to faze the agents, they got right to work. In the quarters of Petty Officer Rod Wilson, McGee met up with Ducky and Palmer and began to process the scene.

Tony took Natalie with him to question the bunkmates that had found the body. They met up with the agent afloat, who had the three other young men that bunked with Wilson waiting in his office. "Agent George Dixon," he introduced shaking both the other agent's hands briefly. "Hopefully you can get these three to talk. I had no luck."

"Rule number one, Dixon," Tony snapped.

"Pardon?"

"Probie."

"Rule number one—never put suspects together in the same room."

Tony smiled at her, however briefly it was. "Ah, nicely done, Probie. You're learning. Might be able to make an NCIS agent out of you yet."

Dixon was still slightly perplexed. "I'm confused, Agent DiNozzo. Petty Officer Wilson killed himself. How are any of these bunkmates a suspect? Unless you think one of them provided the rope for the noose around his neck."

"Well, that's our job to find out. Wait out here," Tony said, harshly before entering the quarters.

Natalie looked at the other agent, apologetically before stepping inside herself. Tony had put his back pack down and was glaring at the three young men standing at attention against the wall. He paced the small space for a moment, stopping at eye level with each sailor before continuing on to the next. She wasn't sure what he was doing. Tim had once mentioned that Tony had his own style and that you got used to it after a while.

Tony paused in his pacing and said, darkly, "Alright, gentleman, who's gonna talk to me first?"

All three sailors glanced at each other, while Tony stood there cracking his knuckles to intimidate them. Finally one of them spoke up and pointed towards Natalie. "I'd rather talk to her. She doesn't look like she's gonna pounce on me."

"Yeah," another one piped up. "Her. We'll talk to her."

"You will, huh?" Tony said with a sly grin. "Okay. I'll let that happen if you can stop undressing her with your eyes."

Chuckles passed between the sailors and Tony's gaze turned deadly. Immediately all three sailors paled. "Something funny, gentlemen?"

All three shook their heads and stammered at the same time, "No sir."

Tony glanced behind him at a bewildered Natalie before turning back towards the sailors. "Good. Now talk."

"Listen, sir," the first sailor stammered, "Rod...he...he hadn't been right since we got into port forty-eight hours ago. Ya know, acting all paranoid that someone was out to get him...hearing voices."

Natalie watched as Tony nodded his head, silently taking note of what was being said to him. The infirmary had not mentioned if Petty Officer Wilson had gone down to report any hallucinations or hearing voices. Of course, she knew that many people that had delusions did not report them. So it was entirely possible that their dead petty officer had slipped into a psychotic episode. She shifted slightly on her feet, noticed that the second sailor eyed her, and asked, "Do you know if Petty Officer Wilson had a history of mental illness?"

Tony glanced at her, his face expressionless, but his eyes were intense. She stepped back slightly and muttered an apology. He rolled his eyes and responded, "Rule 6, Callahan, never say you're sorry." Turning back towards the second sailor he titled his head. "Well, answer the lady's question."

He shook his head. "No ma'am or sir...who...who am I speaking too?"

"Me," Tony said, firmly. "Wilson use drugs?"

"No sir," the second sailor replied. "He was as straight as they come sir. Never even seen him touch alcohol when we were on liberties."

"Huh. Funny because we got the tox screen back from our lab. He had traces of LSD in his blood."

Natalie did her best to hide her shock. They hadn't even removed the body from the ship yet. There was no way Abby Sciuto could have gotten a tox screen done on the petty officer's blood that quickly. Tony was clearly bluffing. She wondered why. Did he see something that she didn't? She did, however, notice the third sailor's fingers twitch. He had been remarkably quiet while his buddies were offering up the information on Wilson. "Do you know something about the LSD?" she directed towards the twitchy sailor.

Tony now watched the third sailor closely, seeing his twitch and not surprised that Natalie had noticed. He was learning that she had the eyes of an eagle, which sometimes was turning out to be a problem for him trying to be sneaky around McGee's desk when he thought no one was looking. "Sailor?" he questioned the third man. "Are you gonna answer her or are we bringing you in?"

He panicked then, shoved Tony so hard that the senior field agent went crashing into the desk behind him, loosing his balance. Tony watched as the sailor tore past his stunned bunkmates and grabbed Natalie by the shoulders, pushing her so hard that she went flying back into the corridor. He heard a loud clang and thud, and Dixon curse. Pushing himself up, Tony took off down the corridor, noticing that his partner was on the ground. Son of bitch, he snarled as he shouted for their suspect to stop. "Hey!"

It didn't take Tony long to catch up with him. He had spent four months on an aircraft carrier, he knew how to chase someone. Tackling the younger man to the ground, he pinned the sailor's arms behind his back, and cuffed him. "Assaulting two federal agents, that might get you some time. But I have a feeling that we're gonna find out a whole slew of more interesting facts about you."

Tony handed the flustered sailor off to Dixon. He made his way back towards Natalie, who was still on the ground, rubbing her head. "Damn," he muttered. "Gibbs is gonna kill me."

Natalie looked up at him, puzzled, when he squatted down in front of her and lifted one eye lid open with his finger. "W-what happened?"

"You might have just experienced your first concussion on the job," Tony stated, drily.

"I feel like someone is playing the drums in my head," Natalie replied.

Tony smiled, sadly, and then helped her to her feet. He managed to grab both their back packs and made his way back to the top deck. Ducky and McGee were standing there, waiting for them. "Hey, Dixon bring our perp up?"

McGee nodded. "Yeah, he's putting him in the car now. What the hell happened? Dixon said the guy took off like a bat out of hell."

"Guess he didn't like our line of questioning," Tony mused handing Natalie's backpack off to McGee. "Take this back to the car. I'm gonna have Ducky check Natalie out while I call the boss and update him."

"He's not gonna be happy about that, you know," McGee said, gesturing towards Ducky leading Natalie to a place to sit so he could examine her. "She's only been on the job three weeks."

Tony clenched his fists. "Yeah. I know. I, however, was not expecting the guy to go into full flight mood." He pulled his cell phone out and dismissed the younger agent, calling up Gibbs' number and dialing. It didn't take the boss long to pick up. "Hey, boss. Thought you'd like an update."

Gibbs didn't sound pleased. Perhaps he would just leave the part out about Natalie getting hurt until he knew the extent of her injuries. "DiNozzo, I'm in the middle of something with the Director. Make it brief."

"Petty Officer Wilson might have hung himself because of drug induced paranoia. Not one hundred percent sure but two of his bunkmates are cooperating with the us, the third we're brining in for my questioning," Tony replied.

"Very well. I trust you to handle it, DiNozzo," Gibbs snapped.

Tony felt his gut tingling. "Boss...there something going on that I need to know about?" There was silence on the other end and Tony chuckled, lightly. "Right...need to know...and I don't need to know. I'll check in later." He hung the phone up and put it back into his pocket, striding over towards Ducky and Natalie. "So?" he asked the medical examiner.

Ducky looked up into the sunlight at the SFA. "Doesn't appear to be a concussion. She will just have a nasty headache for the next several hours. I can give her some painkillers when we get back to NCIS but I suggest that she is taken off of field duty for a few days."

Natalie groaned. "And I was just starting to get on Gibbs' good side."

"I'm not sure Gibbs has a good side, Callahan," Tony said. "So I wouldn't worry about it too much." What I would worry about though is how secretive he's being, because that never ends well for any of us.

"Hate lying to him, Leon," Gibbs said when he hung up with Tony. "He's the best agent I've ever worked with. He's gonna know."

"You didn't exactly lie to him," Vance pointed out. "You didn't say anything."

Gibbs sighed and rubbed his temple for a moment. "Petty Officer Wilson's case is only going to preoccupy them a bit longer, Leon, and then what? Do we tell them we've been tracking Ziva and Mossad because we're worried?"

Vance set his jaw. "This agency has had the wool pulled over our eyes by Mossad before. I want to stay a head of the game. Eli might be a friend but I have always been of the belief that he is never completely honest with me. So, I'm not taking it at face value that Ziva is back in Israel like Eli says she is."

"Rivkin was here taking care of sleeper cell that worked for a terrorist based in Africa," Gibbs recited. "Do you think he ordered her to take the rest of that mission?"

"Possible. Dunham found out that a freighter carrying four Israelis left Jordan in May. He's trying to track down the ship and its crew as we speak," Vance informed him.

Gibbs sighed and got up, reaching for his coffee. "Tell him it's a futile effort. Knowing Mossad that entire crew is dead."

Vance wasn't going to argue with that. "I'm surprised your team isn't already looking for her."

"Ms. David almost destroyed my team back in May...I let personal feelings get in the way of seeing that," Gibbs said, harshly. "That chapter of our lives has closed. And I think I'd like it to stay closed."

"So, speaking of new chapters, how is Ms. Callahan working out for you?"

Gibbs smiled, slightly and titled his head. "Keeps DiNozzo on his toes, knows how to work a crime scene and I heard she makes killer chocolate chip cookies."

Vance chuckled. "So, well then?"

"So far so good."

"That's good to hear because Boston wasn't happy we took her away from them."

Gibbs scoffed before leaving. "They'll get over it." They were going to have too, anyhow, because Natalie was apart of the team now and filling that missing piece nicely. He'd be damned if he let that hole open up again.