A/N I had the idea for this silly story a year ago, and this is all I've gotten done on it since then.

The only problem with Casey owning a bonsai tree, thought Chuck to himself, is that it gave Morgan ideas. If only the little man spent even half the time on the gun range as he did grooming himself. If only Casey spent half the time on the gun range as he did on the gun range. He blew through their monthly allotment for training ammo in a week.

Chuck used to spend most of his time hacking other teams' expense accounts to cover it all. They used to spend a lot of their training time sneaking the casings into the other teams' spent-brass bins. They'd gotten pretty good at the surveillance and infiltration, not so much on the other stuff.

Maybe this explained why they were now stationed in Wisconsin. It wasn't so bad. Chuck sent Ellie a selection of local cheeses every month. (She gave most of them away. There was a better variety at the World Market on the corner, and wine to go with. She kept the wine.)

One day in the middle of goat-cheese season, they heard a noise coming from behind the mounds of Casey's favorite used targets. Chuck suggested Morgan stay away, knowing what would-thud!-happen. It was the fastest way to uncover the main monitor that he knew.

He pressed the button, and Director Graham scowled down at them. "Drop everything, Agent Carmichael. I need you and your team."

Chuck clicked his heels together, came to attention, and saluted. "We're dropping it all for you, sir." He winced. "That didn't come out right..."

"I don't care," said Graham. "We have an emergency and you guys are the only guys within spitting distance, so I'm forced...I mean, I've decided to give you your shot. Some cabal of nefarious evildoers stole a priority component from a secret lab, called the Cypher..."

Morgan was so surprised he stopped combing his mustache. "Why would you call the lab The Cypher?"

Graham didn't know Morgan that well, and it was too late for Chuck to warn him. "We didn't, Agent Grimes, the component was called the Cypher. The lab is nameless."

Morgan combed his face as he pondered. "You don't even call it 'the lab'?"

Casey slapped the back of his head, completely undoing the efforts of the last several hours. "Shut up, Grimes, the adults are talking." Then he saw what was on his hand and started wiping it on Morgan's shoulder.

Morgan turned, looking panic-stricken. "What, my mom's here?" He began combing frantically, flipping bits of product everywhere.

Casey leaned in close. "Shut. Up."

Chuck ignored them both. "What does this component do, sir?"

Graham looked harassed, harried, and overworked. "I don't know, Carmichael, I've got more secret projects than I can shake a stick at, and they all use the same goddamn code names. I've got seven Cyphers, four Ghosts, and a Delores, which is the only one I can remember."

"Ghosts, sir?"

Graham shook his head in disgust. "Some kind of new tech called ghostware. I wouldn't have thought anyone would be stupid enough to call a ghostware project Ghost, but they all did, and these are supposed to be some smart guys."

"Well, you'll never have to worry about that sort of thing from us, sir," said Chuck firmly. "That didn't come out right..."

"I'm pretty sure it did," said Graham. "Good luck, team, and try not to let me down too badly."

"No screw-ups, yes, sir," said Chuck snapping off the monitor before Graham could do so himself. "Crap."

Sarah Walker walked into the bar in full Ice Queen mode, dressed to kill. With one glance around the place she knew all she needed to know, threats, exits, the works. It was second nature to her by now, and she didn't even try to turn it off.

She took a seat at the bar and told the bartender she wanted something red. She heard the door open behind her, but given the speed and the heavy breathing, dismissed the new arrival as some kind of loser.
Before the bartender had gotten two feet away from her, the loser put his hand on the seat next to her. "Do you mind if I sit?"

"Absolutely I mind."

Loser-boy sat. "Great, thanks." He looked up as the bartender put down a glass of something red. "Stoli on the rocks, please." When the bartender walked away again, the loser said, "So how does this-"

She held up a hand. "Stop. Stop now." She looked around the room, at the three women she'd spotted coming in. "Which one of you is Stoli-on-the-rocks?"

One of the ladies, in a glittery silver number that totally defeated the purpose of sitting in a shadowy corner, raised her hand.

"I've got your pigeon." She looked back at Loser-boy. "You, go. Fly away." She flapped her hand in dismissal. "Fly away, little bird."

He left, huffing and puffing, for his date with destiny, while Sarah tried to keep her date with something red.

Before she'd even lifted the glass to her lips, a hand fell on the seat next to her. "Do you mind if I sit?"

"Do I look like I want you here?" She glared at him.

He ignored it. "Great, thanks."

Sarah looked over at the remaining agents. "Can we switch? He's holding a copy of Newsweek."

One of the ladies got up, and Sarah matched her move for move as they exchanged places. She sat back in her darkened corner, and took a sip of her wine. As she did, the door opened a third time, and another nervous man entered. He looked around and made a beeline for her table. "Do you mind if I sit?"

Sarah looked at the remaining agent. "Am I wearing a sign, or something?"

Morgan came back to the main room, scissors in one hand and a towel over his shoulder. "What's the big emergency, Chuck?" he asked peevishly. "I was just about to clip a hair." He pawed at his chin. "Now I'll have to find it all over again."

Casey came back in from the range, wiping his hands on a chamois. It didn't get them clean, but left them smelling faintly of gun oil. All day. He'd turned a bunch of targets into confetti to calm himself down after Chuck accidentally hung up on the director. "You found the lab already? I thought Graham said it was secret."

"He said it didn't have a name," said Morgan.

"Actually he said both," said Chuck. "That it was secret, and that it was nameless, which is how I found it."

Morgan raised his hand. "You checked the directory of secret nameless labs?"

"No, they keep that hidden," said Chuck. "Riddle me this..."

"You and your DC fixation," muttered Morgan.

"How can something that's nameless have a name?" asked Chuck, "And be secret in plain sight?"

Casey cracked his knuckles loudly. "I'm sure you're about to tell us."

"Uh, yeah." Chuck turned back to his desk and pulled up a map of the United States. "You know how labs tend to get named for the nearest supporting community, like Buena Vista, and Palo Alto?"

"That information is only classified Secret, so everyone knows it, numb-nuts."

"Okay, well, what do you think a lab located near a town called Nameless would be called?"

"They named a town Nameless?" asked Morgan, coming closer to look at the screen. "Who does that?"

"Possibly some mapmaker marked down the town on a map but didn't know the name, so he wrote 'nameless' next to it, and the name stuck? Just a guess."

"You know, that's so stupid it's probably right," said Casey.

"Oh, yeah, like the island in Gilligan's Island, they knew about it but for some reason never bothered to put it on any charts," said Morgan excitedly. "Before they crashed there, I heard it was called No-Name Atoll." The beard parted to reveal his grin. "Get it?"

Casey looked at Chuck. "Can I kill him now?"

Chuck shook his head. "You blew through the monthly allotment two days ago."

"Damn," said Casey, "He's not worth the bullet if I have to pay for it myself."

"The citizens and especially the wildlife of Wisconsin thank you for your financial prudence."

Morgan realized they were talking about him. "Oh, but Uncle Sam's bullets are okay, right Casey? Thanks a lot."

Casey shrugged. "With those bullets I can claim that it's a service to my country, and I'd even be right."

"Speaking of the national interest, how about we do our jobs?" said Chuck.

"You mean, drive to this secret, nameless lab in this guy's car, investigate the theft, find the cabal, and...and fight, and stuff?"

"What's the matter, Grimes, no stomach for the smell of napalm in the morning?"

"It just looks so much easier in Call of Duty, you know?"

"Glorious death in battle doesn't come with a reset," sneered Casey. "Kind'a spoils it."

"Don't worry, Case," said Morgan, slapping Casey as high on the back as he could reach, "You can have mine."

Casey glared at him, and growled, "Touch me again..."

Morgan stepped back. "Hey, Chuck, what's up with the mission, huh? Those hails of bullets don't find themselves, you know?"

Chuck checked all his lists. As the team's planner he took his responsibilities seriously. Some might say obsessively so. Shopping day was always a treat. "Well, if we load up Casey's battle-wagon-"

Grunt. "Don't call Gertrude a battle-wagon, it hurts her feelings."

"Load up Gertrude with all our gear, take turns behind the wheel, and drive all night, we should get there in about an hour. Graham wasn't kidding when he said spitting distance."

Casey actually smiled, with not a bad guy in sight. What a waste. "Well, then, what are we waiting for? Let's go get ourselves killed."

"That's what we love about you, Casey," said Morgan, "Your relentless optimism."

They found her in the third bar they tried. It saved time that they didn't actually try the first two. "You know, if the US Marshal service had any brains, they'd simply have an agent following you at all times," said Carina with a smirk.

"It's like I'm a goddamned black hole," snapped Sarah. She waved at the seats around her table, all of them disarranged to some degree. "Please, sit, maybe if all the chairs are full these idiots will stop trying."

Everyone did, except Zondra. Just as she grabbed her chair, someone else did too. She snarled at the hapless loser with a plaid handkerchief in his left breast pocket, and he pulled his hand back to safety. She scanned the room, and pointed. "There. Go there, now."

"Wow," said Amy, a relative newcomer to the team, watching as the man joined his target, offering her the offensively-colored piece of cloth. "How did you know?"

"She was the only one who needed a handkerchief," said Sarah.

"Maybe she'd just had a bad break-up."

"Nah," said Carina. "Whatever she was using to make herself cry, you could smell it all the way over here."

"Amateur," sneered Zondra, before snagging Sarah's glass and drinking half of whatever was in it in one gulp.

"Hey," yelled Sarah, "After the night I've had I need that!"

"You're gonna need more than that soon," said Carina quietly, getting straight to the plot. "You remember that Cypher job we were offered a little while ago?"

Sarah ran her hands through her hair, trying to remember all the deals they'd been offered through the haze of un-drunk alcohol. "Which one, the St. Louis Cypher or the Atlanta Cypher?"

"The one they wouldn't give us a name for."

"Oh, yeah, the secret Cypher." Sarah sat up straight. "What about it?"

Zondra leaned in and lowered her voice. "The CAT Squad stole it after we turned down the job."

"We're the CAT Squad."

"I know."

A/N2 I find purely AU stories to be very difficult to write, so I hope you'll drop me a line and talk this one over with me.