More People Out There Chapter Four

II. More People Out There
Part III

I.
Mark walked with Pauley back down to her sanctum, leaving McGee, Ziva and Tony exchanging glances. Mark took special care to pick up the water-filled coffee cup and tilt it in Tony's direction as they passed by his desk, and Tony quirked his eyebrows as if appreciating the joke that was apparently in store for Abby.

Ziva was thinking that that embrace between Abby and Gibbs had been a little bit too...too something. They hadn't lip-locked or anything (she had learned that expression from Tony, of course), and she knew that Gibbs and Abby had always enjoyed a special relationship, but there had been something about that embrace...Gibbs had held her so desperately.

There was a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach... jealousy?, Ziva wondered. She had always found Gibbs attractive...that silvery hair and those blue eyes, not to mention his skills with rifle and the martial arts...but he'd always seemed so dead set against co-workers dating...and now...was his and Abby's relationship progressing to a different level?...and if so, why Abby and not her?! Although Abby's eccentricities were charming in a certain way, surely a gung-ho ex-marine - at least not one of Gibbs generation, would find Abby attractive in a sexual sense? Especially since none of her tattoos were of ships or aquatic mammals or anything of that nature?

Men, thought Ziva. So confusing.

McGee was thinking that Abby had gazed deeply into the eyes of Tony, Ziva and Gibbs, and hadn't given him so much as a look or a wave! He felt a little hurt by that. Her character's death in his next book was going to be particularly gruesome, he decided petulantly. Then he grinned. She'd like that. He'd get a kiss out of that, he was sure!

As far as Tony was concerned, Mark's stratagem at his exit, with the coffee cup, hadn't worked .
He couldn't forget that reaction of Mark's when he'd said, "Who are you and what have you done with the real Gibbs?" Tony was good at reading people's reactions and that had been a guilty reaction.

But how could that man in Gibbs' shoes be an impostor? He looked exactly like Gibbs, he sounded exactly like Gibbs...but he sure didn't drink like Gibbs...

Tony rubbed his face with his hands. He'd have to find out. The question was...how to do it?

II.

Pauley and Mark waited until they'd gotten into the innermost part of her sanctum, with the glass door closed, before they spoke.

Then Pauley said irrespressibly, "Oh, God, Mark, isn't this so cool! I can't believe it! We're actually in NCIS-land!"

"How long have you been...uh...?"

"Just about half-an-hour or so. I was in my house, reading a book. I got up to get some lunch, there was this tremendous pain in my head, and next thing I knew I was here, in the lab! I could not believe my eyes."

"And you're happy about this, are you?"

"Well, du-uh! Of course! Oh! Mark...oh... how long have you been...?"

"Two days, Pauley. More than two days. And I can't...there's no reasonable explanation for this...I thought I'd gone insane."

"Don't think of it that way at all," said Pauley in typical Abbs fashion, bringing up both hands and shaking him by the shoulders. "We've been transferred into a parallel universe, where the NCIS universe really exists. Easy."

Mark grinned despite himself. "Okay, Pauley. I'll grant you the fact that we're not insane, we've just been transferred into a parallel universe. But here's two important questions. How did it happen, and more importantly, how do we get back?"

Pauley paced up and down a couple of times, beating her fists together gently under her chin. Then she snapped her fingers.

"Obvious, Mark. Quantum Leap."

"The TV show?"

"Exactly. We've been brought here by some mystical force to do something. Save somebody, or something. And as soon as we do that, wham bam thank you ma'am, we'll pop back into our real universe!"

Mark laughed, a little weakly. "That sounds good, Pauley, but come on. What could I do here, that the real Gibbs couldn't do ten times better? And even though you've got a degree in forensics yourself, are you really better than Abbs would be at solving something?"

Pauley shrugged. "Well, it must not be our investigative skills that are needed here, but our interpersonal skills. Now me, I'm the same everywhere," she grinned, "but you...you get along with everybody about a hundred times better than Gibbs would. Maybe you have to be nice to somebody that Gibbs wouldn't be nice to."

Mark did indeed, to put it in Pauley's parlance, feel a hundred times better than he had just thirty minutes ago. Pauley's matter-of-fact acceptance of their predicament was refreshing and reassuring.

But to be transported into this alternative universe, if such it was, just to be nice to someone? That couldn't be it. It had to be something more serious than that...

III.

Tony DiNozzo rested his face in his hands. He'd just completed a search of UCLA's football database. No one named Jethro Leroy Gibbs had ever played football for UCLA, let alone quarterback.

Come to that, no one named Jethro Leroy Gibbs had ever played football for any college. Gibbs had gone into the marines right after high school.

"Maybe Gibbs was just yanking that guy's chain," he thought, hopefully, but hope was snuffed out as Tony continued to think.

That man wasn't Gibbs, that was all there was to it.

So who was he, and where the hell was Gibbs, and what was he going to do now?