PRIVATE LAND OVERLOOKING THE PACIFIC COAST NEAR BURBANK, CA, May 2020.

Money can buy a great many things. It is certainly true that it can not buy happiness, but it can certainly buy such things as private estates overlooking the Pacific Ocean, nice homes, privacy fences, and extensive human and technological security. It had most certainly purchased all of those things here.

Not from from the bustling hive that was Greater Los Angeles, not far from that subset of said hive known as Burbank, but far enough to have a certain amount of privacy and security, is a an estate. Located on a spit of land reaching out in the Pacific, with steep twenty foot cliffs on the north, west, and south, this peninsula is level-topped and hosts a green expanse of lawns, small woods, and several modestly sized but very nicely appointed homes. A high privacy fence edged the cliff tops and reached across the east side where the peninsula joined the land.

The tiny extension of land was perhaps 1000 feet long and half of that wide, and it was private property belonging to Carmichael Industries Inc. One of the homes belonged to the two co-owners and majority stockholders of CI, Ellie (Bartowski) Woodcomb and Charles Irving Bartowski. The other houses belonged to various senior officers and personnel of that same organization, most of whom were either family or close friends of the owners. Of course there were also a few structures dedicated to various work-related matters as security, intelligence, and laboratory work. CI was a very special corporation, and its interests straddled several areas.

Today, though, was a warm sunny weekend of beautiful weather, mild temperatures, and a refreshing breeze blowing in off the ocean. The owners and senior personnel of Carmichael Industries had taken a day off, and gathered together for a cookout and afternoon of fun. At a cluster of picnic tables near the western end of the peninsula, with a glorious view of the sun dappled blue Pacific, they were currently engaged in the pleasant aftermath of a pleasant meal.

"Dinner was delicious, honey!" Alex Grimes said, from where she sat on top of a picnic table, looking at her husband Morgan. "Where did you learn to cook like that, and how come you can't do it in a kitchen?"

Morgan grinned at his wife, and said, "It's a law of nature, baby. There's a fundamental difference between cooking in a kitchen, and cooking over a charcoal grill out of doors. It may look similar, logic may say it ought to be similar, but it's two different things. Being good at one doesn't have anything to do with whether you're good at the other."

Morgan was currently engaged in cleaning the metal grill, scrubbing off the grease and bits of meat left over from grilling a huge array of hot dogs, hamburgers, and even some grilled chicken and grilled corn on the cob. The corn on the cob had come fresh from a farm somewhere, but Captain Awesome had refused to reveal the source.

"It's an heirloom variety," Devon had said. "The guy who grows it makes a mint selling it to artisanal restaurants and private buyers, if his secret got out he'd be out of business."

It was certainly delicious corn, Morgan mused, and it had grilled up deliciously over a hot mass of charcoal.

"Today was fun," Alex said. "It was so nice to have a day with peace and quiet, everybody together, no arguments, no gunfire."

Morgan shook his head. He still had the occasional moment when his life seemed surreal, even after all the years since that day when he and his best friend had been tied up together, and he heard his life-long best friend admit to being a CIA agent, with a 'level six clearance'. The same guy he had played video games with, worked at the Buy More with, played poker with, the same guy who could not string three sentences together in the presence of a pretty girl without making a fool of himself, and he was CIA.

And now he's co-owner and co-CEO of Carmichael Industries, Morgan mused. Which is kind of like being CIA only with him and Ellie owning the agency.

Of course, Morgan mused, that was nothing compared to the fact that the band Jeffster was now on their fifth consecutive Top 40 hit, the latest of which had peaked at #11. How twisted is that? Anybody who thinks God doesn't have a sense of humor should ponder that fact.

Morgan glanced over to where a net had been struck between two polls, and someone had used red spray paint to draw out an impromptu volley ball court on either side. Ellie Woodcomb and her husband Devon were currently engaged in a ferocious volleyball game against Mary Bartowski and Chuck Bartowski. Sister and husband currently appeared to be up two points against mother and son, but the game was still ongoing. Alex's father was sitting in a chair to one side, sipping a glass of iced tea and acting as referee.

"Ten bucks says Chuck and his mom kick Ellie and Awesome's ass," Alex said.

"I'll take that bet," Morgan laughed. "I ought to bet on Chuck on principle, he's my best bud, and the bro code says I should, but he's up against Awesome."

"Yeah, but Chuck's using the Intersect," Alex pointed out. "What've they got it up to by now, anyway?"

"Version 8.3," Morgan answered. "But it hardly matters, when his sister has it too."

As they watched, Chuck suddenly jumped in the air, turning as he did in a perfect roll that looked like it might have come from a professional volleyball player, caught the ball on his wrist and bounced it on a path across the net, clearing the net by millimeters. The ball was moving extremely quickly, and at an extreme angle, looking nearly certain to bounce just within the boundary line.

Except that Ellie Woodcomb moved with equal suddenness in a low, fast dive, twisting as she did to bounce the ball back toward Chuck and Mary, with barely an inch to spare. She ought to have landed flat on her back on the ground moments after so doing, but she righted herself in the same motion and came to rest on one knee, not even winded. Ellie grinned savagely as her mother tried futilely to intercept the ball, which bounced through for another point.

"Damn," Alex said, laughing but sounding admiring. "It's like watching the Bionic Nerds play volleyball."

"You know, that could be a viable concept for a TV show," Morgan said thoughtfully, as he finished cleaning the grill. "If we found the right production company, we could get richer from it. The Bionic Nerds...I think Peter Dinklage could play a character based on me-"

Alex shut him up with a kiss.

Morgan sighed. That was definitely preferable to the ways certain other people had sometimes chosen to quiet him, he had to admit that.

"Anyway," Morgan said, "Chuck and Ellie cancel each other out. Anything one can do, the other can do. So it's really between Mary and Awesome, and they don't call him Awesome for nothing!"

Indeed, as they watched, it was becoming clear that the game really was a contest between Mary Bartowski and Devon Woodcomb. It was not that Chuck and Ellie were not playing, and not playing hard, but it was also true that pretty much everything one sibling did, the other could counter, and did.

Thus it was Mary vs. Devon and it was a real contest. Devon was substantially younger than Mary, larger and stronger, and very fast. Mary was in her sixties but in excellent shape, and she played hard. As they watched, Mary and Chuck closed the gap, pulled a couple of points ahead, and then lost ground again as Devon raised his own game.

Then, as they approached the final point in a tie, just as Devon was about to slam the ball across the net, Mary resorted to an unorthodox tactic. Chuck bounced across the net, Devon caught it and sent it to Ellie who bounced it back at Mary, who managed a fairly nice diving intercept that successfully caught the ball and sent it across the net toward Devon's side of the imaginary court.

Devon immediately moved to intercept, but Mary kept on moving from her own maneuver, landing on the grass and sliding...and somehow half way losing her snug top for a moment in the process as she slid! All this happened just a couple of feet in front of Devon across the net.

Devon gasped and fumbled the ball, and Casey declared, "Winning point!" pointing at Chuck and Mary.

"Pay up!" Alex ordered, holding out a hand.

"That's cheating!" Morgan protested.

"What? She slid on the grass and her shirt started to come off. It's not like she planned it and it's not her fault Devon was distracted! Though I hope I'm that distracting when I'm her age!"

"The Hell it wasn't intentional!" Morgan said. "Don't tell me she didn't do that on purpose!"

From the sounds of the discussion at the volleyball course, there were indications that Ellie Woodcomb was not convinced of the accidental nature of her mother's wardrobe malfunction, either. Chuck was blushing and trying and failing to say something coherent. Mary was apologizing to everyone, but the smirk on her face did not seem apologetic.

Morgan knew it was intentional, and he knew his wife knew, but he also knew that Alex wouldn't care. With a sigh, he pulled out a ten dollar bill and handed it to his wife, and then began to laugh. He had to admit, the look of shock on Devon's face had been funny, even from this far away.

"It's like old times," the sound of a familiar voice said from behind them.

Morgan turned and said, "Hi, Roan."

The elderly retired agent was smiling as he watched the escalating argument at the net. By now it looked rather as if Chuck and Devon were attempting without much success to separate mother and daughter, who were getting louder and louder.

Alex appeared to be becoming concerned, as the sound of Mary and Ellie's voices was steadily rising, and sounding more and more belligerent as they it went on.

"Why isn't Dad stopping this?" Alex asked worriedly. Indeed, Casey remained seating, sipping his tea and to all appearances enjoying the spectacle.

"She'll de-escalate in a moment," Roan said, sipping a martini. "General Casey knows that."

"Who will?" Alex asked.

"Mary," Roan Montgomery said as he sat down on the bench of the picnic table Alex was using as a seat. Morgan looked at Roan on the bench and his wife sitting on the table top, and quietly sat down beside his wife...just on general principles.

"I've known Mary professionally since we were both in our twenties," Roan went on. "This is her idea of fun. She's got her daughter riled up, but it won't turn into a catfight because Mary won't let it. She's only pretending to be angry."

"You're sure about that?" Alex asked as they watched.

"Completely," Roan said, quiet seriously, as he sipped his drink. Roan was so rarely serious that when he was, he seemed like a different person. The drunken, sleazy lecher vanished, leaving a very intelligent and observant agent. "Think about it. Mary loves Ellie. If it turned nasty, though, Mary doesn't stand a chance in a fight with her daughter and she knows it. Mary could almost certainly kill Ellie in a fight...but she couldn't defeat Ellie without killing her, and she knows it. She's seen what Ellie-Intersect can do.

"So what do you think is going to happen? Mary could kill Ellie but would get her ass kicked in a fight short of that. She loves her children. Mary's having her fun and in a minute she'll apologize to Ellie and they'll both be laughing about this in half an hour."

Indeed, as they watched, Mary suddenly seemed to calm down, and said something too low to hear to Ellie, Chuck, and Devon, and the volume of the discussion decreased noticeably. Chuck and Devon appeared relieved, and Morgan grinned.

Admit it, Grimes, he said to himself, though it was a thought he would never admit it to Alex or Chuck in ten billion years, there's a part of you that was thinking Ellie and Mary in a catfight would be...interesting.

"There you are, Roan," General Diane Beckman (ret.) said, joining the group around the cooling charcoal grill.

Roan looked at his...what were they, exactly? Morgan wondered. He was not quite sure what to call the relationship between Beckman and Montgomery, and he was not sure they were either.

"Here I am," Roan acknowledged, sipping his martini.

"I thought Bartowski said this was a 'dry' party," Beckman said, observing the drink in his hand.

"He did," Roan nodded. "Kids around and all."

"So where did you find that?"

"I'm Roan Montgomery," he replied with a smile, as if that explained it. "I have my ways."

The group at the volleyball court had broken up. Ellie and Devon were heading for the desert table, and Ellie appeared to be somewhat put out with her husband. Casey, Chuck and Mary were heading for the grill area, and Chuck appeared slightly put out with his mother, too.

"Mom, that was embarrassing!" they heard Chuck saying, as they approached. "I mean my mother just flashing my brother-in-law to win a volley ball game, I think that's kind of illegal, isn't it? Or well it's not like you flashed him flashed him, but that bra you had on covers nothing-not that I looked at my mother's-I mean-"

"Shut up, Bartowski, you're embarrassing your gender," Casey growled.

"We won, didn't we?" Mary said equably, clearly enjoying her son's discomfiture. "It was just an accident, but it was a lucky one!"

"I'd expect that from Carina," Chuck was saying. "That's exactly a Carina move. But you're my mother!"

"Carina wouldn't have stopped at a free show," Casey observed, as they arrived at the tables with Roan, Diane, Morgan, and Alex. Chuck took a seat at the table opposite Morgan's, Mary sitting beside him. Casey looked at Roan sitting at the same table with his daughter and frowned, and Roan made a show of both his hands being well away from the woman sitting atop the table. Casey also looked at Morgan sitting between Roan and Alex and nodded approvingly.

Sometimes a nod and a look from General Casey could speak volumes.

A more or less pleasant conversation ensued, though Casey's contribution to it was mostly monosyllabic. He took a seat at the same table with Alex, Morgan and Roan, sitting on the opposite side. Mary eventually tired of teasing her son and let the subject change, and by the time Ellie and Devon joined them, the sun was dropping well into the western half of the sky.

"So apparently when the CATs made their surprise entrance to the generalisimo's base," Chuck was saying, "it turned out that the whole place was abandoned. Not for very long, though, if the intel I've seen is accurate. Maybe no more than a day or two."

Though it was supposed to be a day off, and everyone was relaxing, it was more or less inevitable that with a gathering of people all more or less in the same line of work, the conversation would end up including shop talk. The more so because shop talk included catching up on who was doing what to who and why.

"Again?" Beckman said thoughtfully. "That's what? The third time this year that the CATs missed their target because they had bugged out already?"

"Fourth, if what I'm told is true," Chuck said. "It looks like there's a leak."

"It's happened before," Casey said. "Is Amy still in prison?"

"Yes," Morgan said. "But she'd hardly be in a position to leak anything current even if she wasn't."\

"They were working with MI6 on two of those incidents," Chuck said. "So the leak might be on the British side. But-"

"Hey, Chuck!" a familiar voice called.

They turned to see Ellie walking toward them. Ellie had left the conversation about an hour before to go check on her daughter, and now she was returning, with a look on her face that seemed to be compounded of amusement and concern. Clara Woodcomb walked beside her, grinning.

As she reached the table, she said, "Chuck, I think I need to talk to your for a moment. I think you have a little...problem."

"Me in particular?" Chuck asked.

"Yes, you in particular, little brother," Ellie replied.

"You are in big trouble, Uncle Chuck!" Clara announced. "They're ready to rumble!"

"Who are?" Chuck asked, suddenly getting worried as he ran down a mental list of people in the world who might want to 'rumble' with the Bartowski's and their loved ones. It was a long list, and a list that held some very dangerous people.

"Who else?" Ellie said with a sigh. "The blonde and the brunette want to talk to you. I think they've got a question for you, and I don't think it has a right answer."

Ellie told Chuck what was going on, and he groaned.

"I knew it was too good to last," he said.

"Well, what did you expect?" Morgan said sympathetically. "I mean, remember who we're talking about. They really have been on their best behavior all day, you know. Not a single blowup, not a single incident. They both even were polite during dinner. You knew that couldn't last."

"Sis, do you think you could help me out here-"

"Nope, sorry, little brother. This one you got yourself into a long time ago, and you know how. So now you're gonna have to step up and deal with the consequences! You're going to have to face those hellions alone, I'm afraid."

Chuck looked around at the faces of his family and friends. Casey looked more amused than anything else, but the others seemed to have looks on their faces of mixed amusement and sympathy. Oddly enough, there seemed to be more sympathy and less amusement on Beckman's face than the others.

"Man up, Bartowski! It's not like you're dealing with FULCRUM or the SVR."

Chuck reluctantly rose to his feet, stomach churning a little.

"Casey, you'd better not smirk too much," Chuck warned him very softly as he passed the former NSA man. "Our...ah...situations are not entirely dissimilar, you know. Remember when Kathleen and Gertrude both showed up at that restaurant you were having dinner in, at the same time?"

Only Chuck was close enough to see it, but General John Casey, former NSA, current 'private contractor', actually paled slightly.

"Bartowski, if I ever find out you had anything to do with that-!"

"Nope, nothing to do with me," Chuck said softly. "Just coincidence. Weird, twisted coincidence. Happens to me a lot, glad I'm not the only one. But...I could arrange it to happen again, you know. Word to the wise."

As Chuck headed for his confrontation, his eleven year old niece Molly said, "Don't worry, Uncle Chuck, I'll still love you no matter what happens!"

"Thanks, baby," he said to his niece as he left. "Good to know!"

Chuck walked slowly across the green lawns, toward another picnic table where two female human beings were waiting for him. He saw them clearly as he approached, sitting opposite each other...and glaring across the table. Empty bowls were sitting to one side, apparently they had both been gorging on ice cream.

Wonderful, Chuck thought. A sugar rush on top of everything. They'll both be kind of hyper.

In spite of what was shaping up to be a difficult discussion, part of him felt his heart warming and a smile playing at his lips at the sight of the ladies. If there were two people on the planet who he loved above all others, they were both sitting at that green picnic table, icily staring at each other.

Almost like mirror images, he thought, not for the first time. One of the ladies had hair that looked as if someone had captured rays of noon sunlight, woven them into strands of spun gold, and bound it up in a practical pony tail hanging down her back. Staring at her across the table was a girl with hair that looked as if someone had taken the midnight sky on a moonless night, made it material, and wove a waterfall of it to cascade down the back of the second girl. The brunette wore glasses, which somehow made her look even cuter than she already was.

Brown eyes stare with undisguised hostility into brown eyes, as they faced off. The blonde and the brunette, Chuck mused. It was no wonder the whole family referred to them that way.

"All right, girls," Chuck said, trying to sound stern. "I thought you both promised me no fighting today!"

"But Daddy!" Charlotte Mary Bartowski of the golden tresses protested, "it's her fault!"

"It is not, she's lying, Daddy!" Stephanie Bartowski of the midnight-dark mane protested! "She started it!"

"Did not, you stupid-!"

"Did too!"

"Quiet!" Chuck commanded, in a tone he had never used before fatherhood. Now it came automatically, and the girls instantly quieted, sitting up straighter.

"We do not talk to each other that way," Chuck said, more quietly but in the same non-debatable tone. Part of him wondered where he had heard the tone before he discovered it in himself, then he recalled that his parents had used it, long and long before, and then Ellie had discovered it when their parents had vanished from their lives. Even now, he thought with amusement, Ellie could use that tone to catch his attention instantly.

"Now, I want an apology from both of you, right now!"

"I'm sorry, Dad!"

"Me too! Really."

"To each other, girls."

Charlotte gulped, and somewhat reluctantly faced her half-sister and said, "I'm really sorry, Stephie."

"I'm sorry I called you a liar, Char."

Well, they don't sound entirely sincere, but it'll do for now, Chuck thought.

"OK, now what is this big question Ellie said you wanted to ask me?" Chuck said as he sat down beside Charlotte, sitting so that he could face them both.

"Well..Daddy...we were wondering?"

"We just kinda wanted...well, we were talking and we...well..." Stephanie said.

"We wanna know which one of us is your favorite!" Charlotte managed to get out defiantly.

Chuck looked at the two six year olds, and sighed. Well, OK, it's not like it was in any doubt but if there was that would settle it. You two are definitely your mothers' daughters.

Chuck looked back and forth at them as his mind raced for a way to defuse an unexploded bomb that was ready to go off at a touch. As he did, he remembered thinking about how overwhelming being an asset and then a spy had been, back in 2007, and considered that being a single father made being a CIA asset seem like a breeze.

To Be Continued...