NCIS Rewrite: Canteen Catastrophe

Tom was a grown man in a child’s body, literally. Due to his semi-unique ability to change his age and appearance on a whim, NCIS had tasked him with going undercover as a student in Coombeshead Academy. He’d joined the school in the lowest year, and had worked his way up for five years until the final year of the main school.

His current identity kept his name, albeit his last name was Cane instead of Gerald. Tom was extremely thorough with the identities that he created, ensuring that there was absolutely nothing that could possibly link them together as a single person. Because of this, his current persona wore glasses, had a slight lisp, and was nowhere near as smart as any other identity that he was actively using.

While lunch dragged on, Tom was sat in the Canteen with his three friends, two of whom were also Protectors like Tom, only one of the two knew it, and neither of them knew Tom’s true identity. Which was an interesting choice on Tom’s part that none of the undercover agents fully understood.

Tom’s daughter, Emma, was one of said undercover agents and was under the alias of Alison Cane, as Tom’s cover identity’s sister. Unlike Tom, who could control when his hair changed colour, Emma was permanently stuck with her white hair, which caused her to have to wear a brown-haired wig.

                “Hey, Tom,” she stated as she walked up to his table. “Have you got any money, I forgot to grab some before I left.”

                “Yeah sure,” Tom decided and pulled a couple of pounds out of his pocket, he froze before releasing the coins into her hand.

                “Today,” she moaned. “I’m hungry.”

Using his free hand, Tom reached into his bag and grabbed a pen. Emma suddenly realised why he was being so hesitant and formed a small knife of temporal energy in her left hand.

                “What’s going on?” Flavio questioned as a year 8 student behind him turned and slit Ralph’s throat. Tom reacted at unhuman speeds and pined the assailant’s hand to the table before stabbing the pen through it while Emma spun only to have a student’s dead body hurled into her with such a force that it knocked her backwards, across the table and out the wooden doors which shattered as she collided with them.

As everyone else scattered, using the windows and doors alike to escape the chaos, Tom turned and slammed Ralph’s murderer’s head into the table multiple times before he slumped down to the ground. “Huh, I though you abandoned your family,” he stated simply, turning to face Penny, whose arms were both behind her back, while Flavio lay dead in front of her.

                “He found me,” Penny explained. “So I taught him what I did for a living.”

                “You’re not doing that right now,” Tom noted.

                “Someone is paying us far more than you ever did,” Penny smiled before bringing the object she was holding out from behind her back. “Our current employer asked us to give you this. Said you would know what to do with it,” she explained, throwing it to him.

                “Why?” Tom asked, gesturing to the dead bodies of Ralph, Flavio and two other students as well as her brother, Jerome. “You were good once. What happened?”

                “You happened when you decided to use us instead of help us,” she screamed. “We were broken. You could’ve helped us. These deaths are on you.”

                “I used you yes,” Tom admitted. “But I would never have if I’d known you would have jumped off the deep end with the devil.”

                “Are you sure that I’m the one who jumped?” Penny asked as a gust of wind suddenly blew in through the broken door and blew her straight into the fridge. Another gust rushed in the open window in the kitchen and slammed the door shut on her.

                “What’s that?” Emma asked as she climbed over the table.

                “No idea,” Tom responded simply as he turned the right-side of the object in the opposite direction to the left side, causing Tom’s head to suddenly fill with images of humanoid birds and a massive slipspace portal above the ruins of Coombeshead.

When he finally came back to reality, he found himself pinned up against the wall, with the orb in front of him, acting like an anti-gravity module. Looking around the room he saw Penny picking up her brother and flinging him over her shoulder while Felix stood with a knife to Emma’s throat.

                “Sorry Tom,” he stated simply. “Our employer wants to see how far we can push you before you snap.”

                “Felix,” Tom moaned. “Please don’t. Don’t do this.”

                “I have to,” Felix sighed as he moved the knife quickly and effortlessly across Emma’s throat, causing her to slump to the ground with her neck spewing out blood like a broken hose.

                “No!” Tom screamed as his eyes and hair suddenly turned a deep dark red. Without much thought, Tom managed to vaporise the device and send Felix and Penny flying backwards into a pillar of red smoke. On the floor along their path, Jerome lay, stirring slightly.

“Emma, Emma,” Tom repeated as he slid up next to her. “No, no, no. He wants to watch me snap. Fine, I’ll let him see me snap…” he stated to himself angrily.