Danny felt all of two feet tall sitting across from Gibbs at the kitchen table and pushing some stray peas around on his plate. As bad as he felt for blowing up at Gibbs—and after he helped take out Spectra none the less—he was just so sick of constantly apologizing. It seemed like every other word out of his mouth nowadays was sorry. And to make matters worse, on top of his guilty conscience he also had Vlad's threat hanging over his head.

I will graciously allow you one day to make your final decision. After that, well, I will lose my current restraint.

Time was up tomorrow and he still didn't know what to do. Danny hadn't told Gibbs, knowing that he'd want to help resolve the situation, probably in a way that involved helping Danny fight Vlad off or even leaving Danny on the sidelines altogether. Gibbs might think he could handle Vlad, but Danny was familiar enough with Vlad's tricks to know otherwise. Gibbs might not want to face reality, but no way in hell was Danny going to pit him up against Vlad, not when he was so clearly outclassed. But then what the hell was he gonna do?

Seemingly able to read minds, Gibbs broke the silence, "You never did tell me what Vlad wanted when he overshadowed me."

Danny gave his best teenage eyeroll, "Was that a question?"

"Might as well be," Gibbs quipped off, seemingly un-phased by the small act of teenage rebellion.

Danny finally gave up all pretense of eating, plopping his fork down, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms, scowl firmly in place. "Just the usual crap: join me or suffer the consequences bullshit. I told him to go to hell and then he left. Happy?"

Gibbs sighed, "Danny—"

"I don't want to hear it," Danny interrupted, shoving away from the table and stalking off.

Gibbs sighed and rubbed his temples—teenagers.

"Status update on mission preparation, Agent K," Agent S's smug voice rang clearly throughout the GIW mission control room.

"Everything seems to be in order for our strike tomorrow night at 0200 hours," Agent K barely glanced up from his computer screen to answer the question, but then paused. "Permission to speak, sir?"

"Permission granted."
"What's our contingency plan for the NCIS agents? They might prove troublesome."

Agent S remained un-phased, "Additional planning is unnecessary; they will simply be treated as any other civilian that gets in our way."

"But, sir… couldn't that potentially back-fire? I know at least Agent Gibbs has some friends in high places."

"Why don't you do your job and leave the planning to your superiors, Agent K," Agent S's voice was steely, the threat clear.

"Yes, sir."

"Uh, are you sure you should have another cup of coffee?" McGee asked tentatively.

The glare he received in response wasn't entirely unexpected.

McGee awkwardly cleared his throat, "Well, anyway, as I was saying, clearly the Fentons were using an electrical framework to control and focus the ectoplasm in their weaponry, but we don't have the necessary circuitry or materials to build off of that. I'm thinking we can instead contain the power source in a way similar to the thermos, and then use lenses to control and amplify the blast."

"Are you sure about that, McGee? How would we condense it into a reasonable size?"

"Well, it's either this or a scattershot type blast with none of the power behind it."

"I just don't think we should hop on to the first half-baked idea we come across."

"Half-baked?!"

"What else would you call it?"

"Mostly-baked!"

Danny quickly tuned them out, too irritated to pay close attention. He knew the rest of the team was upstairs, figuring out how best to counter Vlad. Without him. He had fought the decision, of course, but Gibbs was beyond stubborn. He could always invisibly eavesdrop, but McGee and Abby would notice if he just disappeared.

As it was, he was left to his own devices, his leg bouncing a hundred miles an hour with pent up energy and frustration. He really needed something to do; anything other than sitting there waiting with nothing but his thoughts to occupy his time. Especially since his thoughts kept returning to last night, and how much of a dick he'd been to Gibbs. He was strangely disappointed that Gibbs hadn't fought back.

Deciding he needed a distraction—any distraction—Danny began to fiddle with the computer, opening and closing tabs mindlessly. He knew that the team had made a point of keeping him away from any news, much the same way they're trying to keep him away from the main conflict. Of course, they didn't exactly have parental controls on the computer. Finally settling on a tab, Danny conducted a quick google search, and was less than thrilled with what he found.

NCIS KEEPS BROKEN FAMILY APART

NCIS HOLDS GODSON IN CUSTODY, LEAVING MAYOR MASTERS HEARTBROKEN

Danny couldn't help but wince at the deluge of bad press. To make matters worse, the newspapers hadn't bothered to hide his name, disclosing his family's deaths along with it. Spectra had even provided an interview where she lamented over Danny's "fragile mental state", claiming that he should be with his loving Godfather for his own mental health. Gag.

It was no longer a question of if the GIW will make the connection between Danny Fenton and the ghostly activity in DC, but how they would act on it. Between the public and the GIW, it was really only a matter of time before NCIS would be forced to give up custody. He couldn't quite decide which would be worse: living with Vlad, or the "lots and lots of painful experiments" from the GIW.

He needed to do something; clearly whatever Gibbs was planning wasn't working. He was done running.

Before he could lose his nerve, Danny quickly and quietly made an anonymous email account before typing out a message. His cursor hovered over the send button, doubt coiling in his gut.

"So, Danny, what do you think?"

"Huh?" Danny blinked up at Abby and McGee having completely forgotten about their discussion, "That uh, that sounds great."

Abby raised an eyebrow at his response but didn't call him out on it. Turning back to the data on her screens, she and McGee began planning schematics, trying to sift through the information.

He stared at the email for another minute before hitting send and closing the browser. Rubbing his face, he sighed. It was going to be a long night.

"What have you got McGee?" Gibbs asked without further preamble, striding into the bullpen with coffee cup in hand. McGee jumped up from his seat, scrambling for the clicker to pull his report up onto the screen.

"Well you see, boss," McGee began, slowly gaining confidence, "it really wasn't too hard to dig up dirt on the GIW. They might obsess over having spotless uniforms, but their record is far from it."

Pulling up a few different videos on the screen, McGee continued, "There are plenty of incidents where they have endangered civilians to fight or capture ghosts. They've fired into crowds, used people as bait, caused thousands in property damage… I'm honestly amazed they're still operating. And that's not even mentioning the experiments."

"Experiments?" Ziva asked, dread coiling in her gut.

McGee's face was uncharacteristically grim as he continued, "I managed to hack into their systems and download some footage of their… experiments. Most of them seemed more focused on causing as much pain as possible than they were on collecting data. Ghosts might not be legally considered humans, but there's enough humanity in them that if this were to ever go public there would be significant backlash.

"To put it bluntly, it won't take much to shut them down, it's just a matter of dropping this in the hands of the right people."

"Good work, McGee," Gibbs gave his approval, although it was a hollow victory. The fact that the GIW had operated for as long as they had and conducted themselves in this way… it was dishonorable, to say the least.

"Ziva," Gibbs called her up. Ziva fluidly rose from her desk, collecting the clicker and pulling up pictures and articles on the screen as she began her report.

"Vladimir Masters, born 1966, attended the University of Wisconsin in '84, but was forced to drop out due to health problems. He originally studied astrophysics and conducted research. His declining health was actually due to a lab accident, but the details weren't made public. After spending the next three years in the hospital, Masters was finally released and soon began a career in business, apparently completely abandoning his previous field of study.

"He managed to convince a start-up to make him CEO, despite having no experience, contacts, or money to contribute. It didn't take long for him to scale the company up, and he quickly bought out the competition at remarkably low prices. He has a history of stalemate negotiations that suddenly end in his favor after just a couple of meetings. It didn't take long for him to amass a fortune and a reputation. As of 2 years ago, Masters has also been mayor of Amity Park.

"While there have been suspicions of Masters in the past of foul play or fraud, there is no evidence of any illegal dealings. Those who have spoken out against him in the past have all either changed their minds and began singing his praises or have had big enough public scandals of their own to be discredited. Occasionally, especially early on in his career, he has had a business adversary die suddenly and… conveniently, but the deaths are all of natural causes and there is no link between the death and Masters specifically."

"So what you're saying is, we've got nothing," Tony intervened.

"We have Danny's testimony."

They all looked at each other before Ziva pursed her lips.

"We have nothing."

Danny really needed to stop picking at his food. Between being stuck in the lab all day and his anxiety about his latest plan, Danny was past antsy. After pacing around the living room for hours, Gibbs had finally wrangled him into sitting at the kitchen table to eat. In silence. Because they were still fighting apparently. Leg bouncing like a jackhammer and glare fixed on his plate, Danny looked every bit the angsty teenager.

Gibbs cleared his throat, "I know this isn't how you normally deal with problems, but I appreciate your patience."

Danny just scowled, guilt stoking his irritation, "Yeah sure, whatever."

"I'm serious," Gibbs frowned, deathly serious, "I know it doesn't seem like anything's happening, but we're working hard to fix this."

"Fix this?" Danny finally snapped back, "This isn't something that can be fixed! Even if all of my current problems just went away, it wouldn't change anything. I'd still be a freak. Everyone would still be dead. Nothing you can do will change any of that, so just butt out!"

Not even waiting for a response, Danny shoved up from the table and stalked out of the room. A door slammed soon after as Gibbs rubbed his eyes in frustration. Danny was, rightfully, frustrated; it was just unfortunate that he ended up taking that anger out on Gibbs. Gibbs could understand, and, while he didn't hold it against the teen, he hardly enjoyed it. Maybe he should just give the kid some space—he had been cooped up in the lab all day. He'd already tried running once; surely, he'd learned his lesson.

Then again, it couldn't hurt to just make sure he was still in the house.

"Mother fucker."

So it's maybe been a while.
And by a while I mean a long ass time, so sorry for that. I've had half of this chapter collecting dust on my computer, so I'm glad I finally finished it. I promise I do have the rest of this planned out, I just have to write it in paragraph form and all that.

I'm never writing such a long fic again-idk how y'all stay so invested in your ideas for so long.

Regardless, I will eventually finish this-hopefully before the end of the year! Beyond that, I'm not gonna make any promises I can't keep lmao.

Thanks to everyone who's still following this story-y'all have been super supportive and I really do appreciate it.