A/N: Ownership of Chuck. Patience, patience. Keep checking the mail.
A/N2: Welcome to the eighteenth arc of our story. It is non-canon once again. I'm calling it the Chira arc. Any of you readers want to know who or what has been capturing the Fulcrum agents and torturing them to death? I think that might be sort of interesting. I mean, I certainly hope it's interesting. I guess you guys will tell me if it is or isn't. But first some other stuff goes on in our friends' lives in this chapter before they get an important call. They're going to be out of town for a bit, so I thought I'd clean up some stuff before they leave.
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Doctor's office, Ardmore, Pennsylvania
The pretty young nurse picked up Molly O'Donnell and said, "Come here you little squirmy critter you." As she had accurately described, Molly squirmed like crazy as the nurse was putting her on the scale to weigh her. The cold metal under her made her fussy and she was not at all shy about letting them know.
Emma said, "Just be still a second, little one. Let us get your weight."
"Ok," said the nurse. "Got it."
Emma picked the child up off the scale and gave her a hug. The nurse said, "Oh, what a cute birthmark. It's a heart." She pointed to the heart shaped birthmark on the back of the child's right thigh.
"Yes. The doctor said it will probably fade in time," Emma said.
"Yeah, that's likely. But if not, the boys are going to love it."
"Boys? No way. She's never dating. No way."
Both women laughed.
The doctor came in and the nurse left. "Before I look at Molly, I was asked to give you this by a mutual friend." He handed her an 8x10 plain manilla envelope without any markings. "I was told to tell you to open it only when you get inside your home."
Emma tucked the envelope into the diaper bag on the floor by her feet. "Thank you."
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Buy More, Burbank, California
Most of the greenshirts and all of the Nerd Herders were in the break room. There was a cake on one table and soft drinks and cups on a nearby table. Big Mike didn't notice Jeff and Lester adding something to their drinks from a small hip flask.
The cake on the table said, 'GOOD LUCK, JOHN, AMY AND CHUCK.'
"John, Amy, it's been good to have you with us. I know it was only a few months, but you guys did good. John, there's no one can sell a Beastmaster like you."
"Thanks, Big Mike," said Casey, shaking Big Mike's hand. Big Mike reached over to give Amy a quick kiss on the cheek. Lester leaned over to try to give Amy a kiss as well, but was stiff-armed back by the blonde green-shirt.
Lester said, "If you need any assistance in the human resources part of the job, Amy, you be sure to ask me. I'm particularly skilled in that field, if you know what I mean." Lester tried to look charming and sophisticated as he said that, but only succeeded looking goofy.
"You'll be the first call I make, Lester," assured Amy. Behind his back she caught Casey's eye and grinned.
Turning to Chuck, Big Mike said, "Chuck, you've been with us for years and we're gonna miss you. It's a loss to retail, I'm telling you, a real loss, Son. But we're all proud of you. Starting your own business. Good for you. Good for all three of you." Big Mike was getting emotional and pulled Chuck into a long hug.
Chuck said, "Thanks, Big Mike. I do appreciate it. I promise I'll never forget my time here."
"We got you a little something," said Big Mike, handing him a wrapped gift.
Chuck said, "Oh, you didn't have to. Thanks so much." He unwrapped it and found a small plexiglass box containing a Nerd Herd pocket protector.
Chuck started to laugh.
Jeff said, "So you remember the pocket protectors. Unless you'll keep using them in your new job. Then you can just think of this as a spare, I guess." He looked a little confused as to whether that would work.
Big Mike said, "Well don't just stand there, someone give me some cake."
Skip began to cut and distribute the slices of cake.
Anna leaned forward and gave Chuck a kiss on the cheek as he was taking a forkful of his cake. "You know I never wanted to be the Supervisor, right?"
"I know, but I also know that you are going to be really good at herding these cats," he said quietly.
She made a face, but said, "Big Mike told me that it was your recommendation that clinched the deal. Thanks."
"You earned it, Anna. I know you'll do great."
Lester, with Jeff by his side, said, "You know, Charles. I do have a certain expertise in cybersecurity. Should you ever need another partner in the new business."
"Thanks, Lester. I'll keep that in mind."
"Me too," said Jeff, looking like he had forgotten what he had just said and was trying to remember it.
After cake and soft drinks, handshakes and hugs, it was time to go.
"Thanks, guys. Good luck to all of you," said Chuck.
Big Mike came in for another hug, maybe a little teary. "We're gonna miss you, Chuck."
Anna said, "Remember us for your computer emergencies."
"You bet."
Chuck, Casey and Amy left the Buy More together, still wearing their respective uniforms. Sarah was waiting for them in the parking lot in her Weinerlicious outfit, complete with pig tails. They couldn't help but recognize that it was the last time. That chapter was at an end.
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The Mattock Mansion, Beverly Hills, California
Team B was dressed for a Beverly Hills movie-star cocktail party. Amy and Sarah were beautiful in their short cocktail dresses. Chuck and Casey wore sports jackets and open neck shirts. Given the quite skimpy outfits some of the young women around the pool were wearing, Amy and Sarah were overdressed. They didn't seem to mind at all, though.
Although the other members of the team had been to fancy parties at luxurious homes (Casey usually as a waiter or bartender), Chuck had not. He was amazed by the home that the Mattocks had as part of their cover. Ten bedrooms, 15 bathrooms, a five-car garage, a huge, heated pool with a pool deck leading to a lawn overlooking the city below. Add to that a spectacular sunset and the scene was postcard perfect.
At the moment, the pool deck was crowded with party guests. Some of the women and a few of the men had brought swimsuits and were splashing around in the water. The late March weather was warm enough and they looked like they were having fun.
The party crowd was composed of Hollywood types. They were some truly gorgeous people. Sarah and Amy fit in perfectly. He and Casey, maybe not quite so much. He smiled to himself. He could always claim to be a screenwriter, no doubt the authors were not held to the same standards of beauty as the actors.
Chuck said, "Oh, my God. That's Harrison Ford. It's Han Solo. How cool is that?"
Amy said, "And Brangelina. You're right. So cool." She looked around some more and said, "Hold your horses, that's George Clooney. Phew. Carry on without me, guys." Amy lit out across the deck to the other side of the pool wearing a happy expression.
Grinning a winning smile, Ben Mattock, who they had first met as Craig Turner, made his way over to them. It took him a while, as multiple people stopped him on the way to catch his ear about this or that project. He politely extricated himself each time and continued to head toward Team B.
The plastic smile left his face as he arrived. His back to the dozens of partygoers on his pool deck, he growled. "I am so fed up with these Hollywood people."
"Well," said Chuck, "you run a major Hollywood movie studio. You have to expect the attention."
"I know. I know. It's part of the gig. I shouldn't complain. Graham could have stuck us in Peshawar running a secondhand rug shop. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get decent booze in Peshawar?"
"Actually, I do," said Casey, nodding.
"What's our excuse for the invite, Ben?" asked Sarah. "We're not a part of your usual crowd."
"I don't care what the excuse is. You fixed my computers or something. I don't care. I wanted to see some people here who aren't self-important assholes." He gestured at Casey, "At least he's not self-important."
Casey just grunted good-naturedly at the jibe.
A young man made his way over to Ben, carrying an oversized martini glass on a tray. The dark brown liquor in the glass covered three cherries on a stick. "Here's your Manhattan, Mr. Mattock."
"Thank you, Jake. You got the Marasca cherries, right?"
"Yes, Sir. Had a delivery this morning directly from Croatia."
"Excellent, thank you, Son." Jake took drink orders from Team B and turned to leave. Lisa Mattock arrived at the group just as Jake was leaving.
"Club soda, Ma'am?"
"Yes, thank you, Jake." She turned to Team B and said, "So, what are the real spies up to lately? We hear you caught Ty Bennett."
Casey grunted. Sarah said, "Yeah. Tough one. Bennett and Casey were good friends. Case took his defection to Fulcrum personally."
Ben, for once, didn't ride Casey. Being careful not to spill his drink, he reached out and gave the big man's triceps a squeeze. "You did the right thing, Major. I knew him years ago in the Mid-East. He was a good man. But this Fulcrum thing, it's like a civil war, dividing families, dividing brothers. It was hard...what you did was hard, but it was the right thing. Thank you."
"Thanks, Mattock," said Casey, meaning it.
Lisa said, "Any other gossip for us?"
Sarah said, "Chuck and I are engaged." She flashed the ring.
"Oh, how wonderful. Married spies." He gave a sideways grin to his wife. "Good luck, Sarah, and congratulations, Chuck," said Ben. "I hope you'll be as happy as we've been."
With a grimace, Lisa said, "I hope you'll be happier." She oowwed and ahhhed at the ring. "Nice one. Good job, Chuck."
"I'm sure you'll be very happy together," said Ben.
"And we're starting a company together. The four of us. Cybersecurity," said Chuck.
"Changing covers?" asked Ben.
"Nope. Not a cover," said Sarah. "The real deal. A real company. With real clients and contracts and stuff. Beckman and Graham want us to troubleshoot the IC's computers and this way we can be paid for it. We've given up the cover jobs."
"Doesn't the IC have its own cybersecurity guys?" asked Lisa.
"Not nearly as good as what we'll bring to the table," said Sarah proudly.
"That's fantastic," said Ben. "But you'll be busy as hell."
"Yeah. Tell me about it. We were out all day looking at office space around town."
Ben said, "Office space? But you operate out of Castle. Your cute little clubhouse in the basement."
"Right, but we'll have employees that won't know about the spy stuff. Real civilians. So, we need a civilian location. It's also not large enough down there."
"How about Castle? No, no, no. I mean the studios upstairs. We have a whole damn office building upstairs from you. How much space do you need?" asked Lisa.
"About 9,000 square feet," said Sarah.
"Oh, that's easy," said Ben. "That's not even half a floor. We can do that. And you'll be right upstairs from the spy center."
Three of the owners of Carmichael Industries looked at each other for a moment. Upstairs from their spy headquarters? Easy access to both aspects of their lives? Everything in one place and in Burbank no less. That was a home run. Perfect, in fact. Wordlessly, they agreed.
"That sounds great, Ben. Thanks. But we'd want to pay full market rate for the space. We are charging the government full rate for the services, we don't want any discounts," said Sarah.
"Sure. Whatever," said Ben. Turning to Lisa he said, with a gesture across the pool deck, "Honey, what's his name?"
"His name is Jordan. I know you remember that and you only play that game because you think he's a tool," said Lisa, looking and sounding grumpy.
Ben yelled out, "Hey, Jordan, come here a sec please."
A young handsome man came over. "Yes, Mr. Mattock."
"Jordan, I want you to meet my friends, Chuck, Sarah and Casey. There's Amy too, but she's over there hitting on Clooney. They are starting a new business and need office space. Give them half a floor in our building. How about that space on four that the magazine people just moved out of?"
"Certainly, Sir. Business terms?"
"I don't care. Just work it out with them. Just a nice market deal. Nobody screws anybody else. OK?"
"Yes, Sir. I'll get on it in the morning."
"Thanks, Jerry."
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Hotel San Mateo, Santa Monica, California
Sarah, Ellie, Chuck and Devon were looking at the fifth location of the day. All beachside. All very large, to fit hundreds of guests. All with availability on December 28. There were two more places to look at before the day was over.
"I think Honey Woodcomb wants us to get married in a church, but we want to get married by the beach," said Ellie.
"Oh," said Sarah. "Will that be a problem for you?"
Ellie grinned wickedly, and said, "Oh, no. I just blamed you. This was the most brilliant idea I've ever had. Whenever she gets bossy, I just say, 'oh, yeah, love to, but Sarah...' and she backs off. I love it. So many problems solved."
"Is she going to hate me?"
"Naw. She's pushy, but she won't hold a grudge."
They stepped out onto a huge patio overlooking to beach. A light breeze blew the smell of the ocean to them. Ellie said, "It will probably be too cool in December, but this is really beautiful out here."
The deck looked out over a long stretch of sand and beyond it to the endless blue of the Pacific.
Sarah had one hand to her hair to keep it from blowing into her face and she was squinting a little from the bright sunshine. "I know. It's lovely. I mean, I guess they could put out portable heaters or something. The ceremonies themselves aren't going to take too long, right?" asked Sarah.
"Well, if it's too cold we can also do the ceremonies inside. We want a beach wedding, but not enough to have everyone freeze to death in December."
"It is lovely, though. I think I like this place the best of the ones we've seen."
"Me too." Ellie turned around and said, "What do you guys think?"
Chuck and Devon made pleased, but generally non-committal noises, in case the womens' opinions were different than theirs.
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Chuck and Sarah's Apartment, Burbank, California
It had been a busy few days for the team, but especially for Chuck and Sarah. They had all the Carmichael Industries stuff to get through and a lot of the wedding planning stuff to do with Ellie. In addition to all that, they knew they would be going out of town for a couple of weeks and wanted to get what they could done before they left.
They now had three very talented hackers in the employ of Carmichael Industries, Amy having finished up the last of the three employment contracts that morning. After each applicant managed to hack into the spot chosen by Chuck in the CI mainframe and leave a resume, Chuck had changed the way in. Word was spreading among the hacker community. This was a job that let you hack away and paid you serious, serious money to do it. Chuck and Sarah had personally interviewed each applicant and made the decision to hire. Casey was still working on pushing through the security clearances for them. Unfortunately, the company didn't have any place for them to sit yet, though.
They were also close to finishing the contract with the NSA. Sarah and John, the New York lawyer, had spent hours negotiating multiple drafts of the contract with the government lawyers, but now it was almost done. The payments from that contract should fund the operations of CI for at least two years at a full level of staffing. None of the owners intended to take any money out of the company yet.
After finishing the dinner dishes, Sarah sat at the table to read the draft lease that they were negotiating with Castle Studios. It was almost a hundred pages of legal language. John had asked her to work with a very nice woman real estate lawyer from his Los Angeles office. Sarah knew she'd have a ton of questions for the woman about the various provisions.
Casey had advised her, "Don't look at the whole thing. Just look at the important provisions."
Sarah had responded, "Ok. If you tell me that there will never be a fire in the building, I won't read that section."
He didn't have a good response to that.
Chuck was sprawled out on the couch with a tablet computer, reading something.
"What are you doing, Sweetie?" she asked.
"I'm reading the textbook for the class next week," he said. Team B was flying to the east coast in a few days to take a demolitions course at Camp Peary, the CIA training facility known as the Farm. Chuck wanted to learn about bombs in case he ever had to defuse one. The rest of the team had decided to take the course with him to keep him company. Amy and Sarah had taken the course before, but a refresher never hurt. Casey had learned demolitions in the military, and he was actually looking forward to seeing how differently the civilians in the CIA taught the material.
"What textbook? What do you mean?"
"I emailed the instructor and he sent me the textbook for the class. That way I can read it before I get there. It's easier for me to understand the material if I've read the textbook first."
She looked at him like he was nuts. "Is that what you did at Stanford?"
"Sure. If I could. Sometimes I couldn't get the name of the book or get ahold of it if I did. Things were all on paper then and sometimes they were hard to get. Oh, some quarters were tougher than others. Sometimes I couldn't get through all the reading before the next quarter started, so I'd just do the hard classes, as a priority. It really helped me."
"You know you're a freak."
He grinned at her. "Yeah, I know."
"It's a demolitions class. Not organic chemistry."
"Well, the explosives are chemistry. And physics, of course."
"Did you take physics at Stanford?"
"Sure. It was required of all electrical engineers."
Sarah started to laugh. "You know what? The CIA instructors are not going to know what hit them when we four show up."
"They'll be blown away?"
"Ughh, that was awful," she said.
"We'll blow their minds?"
"Stop it," she said, laughing.
"Oh, come on. Don't tell me my jokes bomb," he said.
She laughed harder.
"I'm just lucky you don't get mad at me easily. You know, like you if you had a …"
"Short fuse? You're the worst," she said, laughing so hard she started to snort.
"Love me anyway?" he asked with a grin.
"You know I do," she said, and blew him a kiss with a huge grin.
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A/N3: To the guest reviewer who asked about the fighting scenes, I'm delighted to chat with you about it. If you don't want to sign up to this site to get PM's (it's really pretty painless to sign up), let me know and I'll give you my email address.
A/N4: I know. I promised we'd be chasing down the Fulcrum-hunting person or people, and we will. Just wanted to get some other stuff taken care of before we fly off to the east coast again. The main plot of the arc will start soon enough. In the meantime, let me know what you think of these developments. Carmichael Industries is going to be located right upstairs from Castle. That should make life easier for our friends.