Author's Note:

This was written and posted exactly three years ago today – and the blame is still laid firmly at the feet of VerityFrancesB. She saw fit to send me an email about an unidentified male taking a leak in a canal at three in the morning, and this is what came of the exchange.

Set in Season Three - when this kind of scenario was still possible.

"And still you insist that this is not the strangest case you've ever had," Ziva said to Tony.

"This is just wrong .." he said with a shudder, as he watched Ducky and Jimmy Palmer inspect the speciman on the table in front of them.

"Something the matter, Di Nozzo?" Gibbs asked as he swept past them.

"Well boss, I mean ..."

"What've we got, Duck?"

"This is very bizarre, Jethro," Ducky said, as he picked up a scalpel. "None of the others have a tattoo."

"How many others are we talking about here, Ducky?" the Director asked as she came to stand next to Gibbs.

"Well, ten were found in a dumpster behind Bethesda. This one was found near a canal not too far away, a few hours after the others. M.O. is the same in all of them. Same cut. And whoever did this was most certainly left-handed. Same preservation technique, too. Strange. Very strange."

"Feeling squeamish?" Jen whispered to Gibbs, as Ducky probed.

"Nope," he replied, not looking at her.

But she did think he had paled somewhat.

"Were they alive when it happened?" came a small voice that turned out to belong to McGee.

"Need to know, probie!" snapped Tony, slapping him upside the head "Lets not go there."

"We're waiting for Abby to bring us DNA results. She's been looking for ma -"

The goth burst into autopsy as he spoke.

"It is a fact that the mass spectrometer ... is king," she said dramatically, as she placed a crate full of jars on an adjacent table. "I have identified each and every one of our eleven men. Ten of them are members of the United States Navy. This one ..." - she indicated the speciman on the table - "is not."

"Who is he, Abs?"

"Able Seaman Paul Jeffrey Isaacs" she said proudly. Waiting for someone to connect the dots.

"Royal Navy."

"The very same, el Gibbso."

"Wasn't there a ..." McGee started.

"We're on it, boss," Tony said, pushing his colleague ahead of him as they headed out of the suite.

"How did you match the Royal ..." Ziva asked Abby as they followed.

"DNA polymerases are, as you know, ubiquitous. So .. there's this mass spectrometry-based approach for identifying novel DNA polymerase substrates from a pool of dNTP analogues. Turns out our Seaman ..."

"Aren't you glad it wasn't one of us that asked that question?" Jen asked Gibbs with a smile as they left autopsy.

He cocked his head slightly, but all he said was, "we're taking the stairs," as he took her by the arm and propelled her in that direction.

A few minutes later Ducky transferred the speciman back to its jar and raised it to the light.

"Well, dear boy, I wonder how much action you've seen. Able Seaman seems to have been a good description. I'd say the girth must have been pretty impressive at full mast. Wouldn't you agree, Mr Palmer?"

"Erm ... yes Doctor," he replied, somewhat perturbed by the one-sided conversation Ducky was having considering who the other party was.

Or did he mean what?

It was hard to tell where to draw the line under the circumstances.

"You had three women looking at you a few moments ago, you know. Three very beautiful women, I might add. A trained assassin, an agency director, and a goth. It does seem rather like a waste. But don't worry," he said reassuringly to the jars, "Jethro will get to the bottom of this. In the meantime, Mr Palmer, let's tag all of these jars now that Abby has identified them."

Jimmy raised his clipboard for a moment.

"I guess I should change the designation for the British speciman?"

Ducky considered for a moment.

"I don't think so," he said.

"I should leave it as TUW 11?"

"It seems the most prudent course of action. Beyond which it seems only right to keep using a British term now that we know what we know. Until Jethro figures out why Seaman Isaacs was in the country at all, I'm afraid this is still very much the unidentified willy."

"Very good doctor."

Ducky raised the jar to the light once more.

"Did you know ..." he began, "that in the late 1960s, the London auction house Christie's included in its catalogue an item enigmatically described as a shrivelled object? They failed to sell it, of course, but the item in question reputedly ended up in the possession of a leading New York Urologist in 1977. For the paltry sum of $3000. Or maybe it was $4000. I forget."

He shook his head as he placed the jar into the same crate as the other ten and headed for the storage room.

Jimmy Palmer observed the medical examiner with interest.

"Was it a-"

"Oh yes."

Jimmy's eyes widened.

"Whose was it?" he asked.

Ducky looked back from the doorway.

"What? Oh ... Napoleon Bonaparte."

Author's note:

Yes .. a story about dismembered penises.

I apologize if it offends anyone's delicate sensibilities.

You may lodge a complaint with Ms. Verity, if you so desire.