plot-bunny: NCIS/Highlander

[marbleglove]

I have recently become absolutely enthralled with the TV show NCIS. It's Naval Criminal Investigatory Service, so military police drama, and all the characters in it are real characters.

I have this image of Amanda, the immortal thief, somehow getting involved with them, sometime when Kate is working for NCIS. Kate would be all sympathetic with whatever story Amanda was telling and would warn Tony off from skirt-chasing the poor innocent Amanda. Tony would tease Kate about Amanda being just his type (lovely, long-legged, buxom, female...) until he got a good look at her face at which point he'd say, "never mind. I'm not going near her without a marine guard. And probably not then."

This is far enough out of character that everyone looks at him. "What? I spent two weeks under review in Philadelphia after an undercover op  completely failed to catch her in the act. Don't you guys recognize her? That's Amanda. The Amanda. The current Amanda of the line of Amanda's that Interpol has been tracking since before they were Interpol."

Kate would be all, "but... she's all... innocent..."

Tony, "not in this universe."

And Gibbs would give that smile that he sometimes does and start walking off towards wherever Amanda is, "this I have to see."



At this point, I'm not sure if Ducky is an immortal himself or if he happens to know about immortals or if he's completely unaware of them, but I think he and Amanda get along beautifully together and trade stories and actually listen to each other's stories.



The more I think of the cross-over, though, the more complex the plot gets.

Becuase it could be an issue that simply has Amanda as a witness or bystander and that's that. But I am more inclined to the idea that Methos is trying to do something big (Possibly steal a nuclear submarine, he's not evil, he just likes to be prepared for all eventualities, and you never know when you might need a nuclear submarine or some other esoteric Navy item. Possibly infiltrate the military dna database so that immortals are harder to track down. Possibly some nameless task that is just really, really important and difficult.) Normally, he would do whatever it is that he needs to do and leave very little evidence behind, and that would be that. However, NCIS and Gibbs' team in particular has become very good at figuring things out on very little evidence.

So, rather than merely leave very little evidence, he decides that the best way to remain hidden is to bury what evidence is inevitable in a massive amount of other evidence. So he calls in some favors and grants some other favors and suddenly Ducky is distracted by the fact that his morgue has lost a body ("Bodies don't just walk out of my morgue, Jethro!"), there's a terrorist cell that makes an attack ("This doesn't make sense, Director. I would swear that I broke them in interogation, but the intel they had... it looks like they were set up, not us."), and evidence of a sailor was left behind at a major diamond heist ("the theif got in, without setting off any alarms, successfully avoids giving the camera any glimpse of her face, and yet wears a naval uniform? That's just weird.")

It would be an absolute mess, with everyone in NCIS working their tails off trying to figure out how and why all of these cases are hitting them at once and how and why they all seem to be interconnected.

Amanda has red hair at this point and gets away with lots of flirting with everyone and a fair number of diamonds into the bargain, Methos who never actually appears in person in the story gets whatever it was that he was actually trying to do, and the NCIS guys deal with various terrorists and bad guys. And are possibly mailed a diamond or two later letting them know that Amanda didn't die in her escape.

Comments

[fractured-sun.livejournal.com]

Ooo this sounds like so much fun. I love the idea of a sneaky behind the scenes Methos, because it is all the sort of thing he would do. You could make Ducky a watcher or former watcher, I could see him hanging around the history buffs quite happily though I don't think he'd like some of the recent political messes.

[marbleglove.livejournal.com]

I can see Ducky knowing about Immortals, and I can certainly see him being acquainted with any number of them whether or not he knows that they're immortals, but I can't see him being part of a secret society that tracks them and/or helps hide their existence from forensic studies. He's too quirky to fit into that kind of society and he's too good at what he does for them to have let him go rather than study the bodies they retrieve.

Although I suppose if he were following someone around or just being sent to where he was needed for "special" autopsies that could explain some of his travels.

[lita-of-jupiter.livejournal.com]

I would love to see that... Methos and Amanda work together beautifully and she would have just so much fun!!

and when the diamonds get mailed to NCIS the assistant to the phone operator who has a rather large nose knows that he got what he needed

[marbleglove.livejournal.com]

I do love me a well-done Amanda-Methos conspiracy. They both do trickery so well in different ways that together it's a super conspiracy. Unfortunately, there just aren't that many such stories.

Anyway, "the assistance to the phone operator who has a rather large nose"? Who's that?

[lita-of-jupiter.livejournal.com]

just some white guy who is helping install the new security precautions to make lines secure at ncis, early 20s nobody especial... likes beer.


you are right Amanda + Methos = conspiracy and not a regular job

[marbleglove.livejournal.com]

Whoops! I've been so caught up in canon that I wasn't thinking. Yup, he and McGee seemed to have a flirt going on which Tony teased about but only half-heartedly, distracted as he was by Amanda. Abby might have been jealous but then the guy chatted with her a bit about exactly what kind of evidence can and can't be picked up by current technology and what she thinks will change in the future.

[lita-of-jupiter.livejournal.com]

hahahah
exactly the new guy? what new guy? You mean Joe from comunications? he has been here six months!

what already?

yes... he came when Sam was having a baby....

how do you know that?

Ducky told me, seems he knew the guy's grandfather in his youth and they got into some scrapes together...

[marbleglove.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. Gibbs is still suspicious and takes Joe into interrogation.

"You broke him, boss. He's in there stuttering and shaking and telling you about the time he stole a candybar when he was twelve. He just doesn't know anything about this."

"It just doesn't feel right. He knows something."

"Well, right or not, he handed in his resignation. You scared him off."

"Maybe that's what he wanted. A reason to leave suddenly."

"Jethro! Unless you can tie him to this right now, you have to stop harassing him."

[lita-of-jupiter.livejournal.com]

"well, what do you have on him?"

"two parking tickets, one unreturned porn movie, six fines for returning books late at the library, one indecent exposure during greek week in his freshman year at college, and oh yes... the candybar when he was twelve"

"Only that"

"Gibbs, the guy might not be a saint, but he is just a guy"

"I have a feeling, that is exactly what he wants us to think!"

"then why not a cleaner cover?"

"because that would be too clean!!"

[marbleglove.livejournal.com]

"Just a guy"! Awesome.


"Okay, I trust your gut, but Amanda referred to the mysterious manipulator as the R.O.G. The Really Old Guy. What really old guys have we seen recently?"

"Code names aren't descriptive. I was once code name Buttercup."

"Wow. That's really..." Tony trailed off in the face of his boss' glare.

"Mind on the job, DiNozzo."

A cheeky grin. "As you wish, Boss."

[lita-of-jupiter.livejournal.com]

"Besides DiNozzo, how sure are you that the Mater Thief who played us gave us the right codename? Let alone the actual translation?"

"R.O.G, can be Ravishing Odd Girl, Regressive Obsessive Guest, Republic of Gamers, Recreational Olympic God, Rest On Gettisburg"

"Rouge... in everquest"
"Or, you know...Royal Observatory Greenwich, Receipt Of Goods, Reactive Organic Gas , Rise Off Ground, Regional Operations Group, Reviews of Geophysics,
Rely on God, and quite a few other combinations"

"...or just a short for Roger"

"Not helping Abby, Mcgee"

"The two of you, get me every possible meaning for ROG that might be relevant, connected to the investigations we do here, and with security in general"

"You know Jethro in my youth, when I was in india I learned a bit of Hindu, and Rog (Hindi: रोग, Urdu: روگ), means 'malady'... I was also once in a small village in Poland which was named Róg"

[marbleglove.livejournal.com]

Oh that is so very wonderful. And they would go off on this random tangent and it would probably have to be Tony who would give them all a reality check of: wait, this isn't actually getting us anyway. Let's not become obsessive.

[lita-of-jupiter.livejournal.com]

he would... but then either Mcgee or Abby would bet that they could find more meanings than the other for the acronym and start it all over again until Gibbs put a stop to it

[marbleglove.livejournal.com]

But it would probably take on a life of it's own for weeks or years to come as they build up larger and larger databases of things with the acronym R.O.G.

And then on some other case entirely, long after this one had become just an old bone to gnaw on every so often, they would wind up dealing with a Watcher who would casually glance at the list and say something like "did you include the Really Old Guy in that?" And he wouldn't know what hit him, Gibbs would have him in interrogation so fast.

[lita-of-jupiter.livejournal.com]

Oh yes... and then he would be like...
what is the really old guy? who is it? how do you know it?

and the poor watcher with his oath would say its the story of the oldest man alive... some say he is over 5,000 years old


and gibbs would keep haranguing the guy, but he would have no answers except they were played by a master thief using an old legend like herself.
While the watchers had confirmation that Amanda knew Methos.

and the tech guy would contribute to the list every time he swung by with obscure facts

[marbleglove.livejournal.com]

Although I think Gibbs would probably figure it out eventually and then get really pissy about cover-ups and potential terrorist uses.

[lita-of-jupiter.livejournal.com]

absolutely....

but he would only do that once he contacted his old friend Joe and hear him talking on the phone to the ROG and then ask ... only to see the phone guy from years ago to walk in and ask Joe for a beer

[marbleglove.livejournal.com]

Or possibly he sneaks up on Ducky while Ducky is on the phone with his good friend Whoever, the medical examiner for the Watchers and hears a bit too much of their conversation.

"Really Jethro, that should teach you to listen to my stories. There generally is a point to them eventually."

[lita-of-jupiter.livejournal.com]

true... and he had said he knew quite a few meaning for ROG and was good friends with Joe the comm guy

[marbleglove.livejournal.com]

Yup. There's more than one way to keep a secret, and with information technology the way it is today, the information black-out method is going out of style. Instead, you have the bury with excess information method, which Ducky can do beautifully.

[lita-of-jupiter.livejournal.com]

Ducky is a master of that... and none picks up on it... he must crack up when he goes home

[marbleglove.livejournal.com]

Either crack up or just go silent, finally able to rest his voice.

[lita-of-jupiter.livejournal.com]

If he goes silent you know he has a blog somewhere where he says "another day at the office, confused Mcgee again, exaspered Tony and had a delightful time telling Jethro about the time I spent in Marroco, did not however manage to get to the part about the friend in Saudi intelligence I made while there... shame could have put the two of them in touch"

"In other news, I tried a little of the famed caff pow, will never do so again and shall remain faithful to tea"