A/N So Chuck is on Amazon Prime now. Hello, all you Chuck-discovering people out there!

"Let's do this."

"That could have gone better."

"The story of my life."

"About time."

"Morgan, you have that key?"

"Yes, sir, Agent Carmichael, sir." Morgan pulled the handcuff key from his pocket and handed it over.

"You can stop saying that any time now." Chuck released the leader's foot from the display case, so they could cart him and his cronies off to the holding cells. Casey and Sarah had broken out the gas masks and headed up to the Buy More, to get the two goons up there before they were discovered. The Buymorians could deal with the spilled anesthetic on their own.

"I know, I just like to," said Morgan. A spy! His best bud was a spy, not a space alien, or a ghost. e started moving around, slashing the air like he remembered Sarah doing. Sort of.

"Well, if you're not careful, Agent Shaw over there will try to make some moves to put you into Witness Protection."

Morgan stopped. "I don't want to go into Witness Protection."

"I know that and you know that, but something tells me Shaw wouldn't let a little thing like your civil rights stop him." He'd found the bug. "Not to mention that I wouldn't let him. We've been best friends for 22 years. You know a lot more embarrassing stuff about me than this, and none of that ever got out."

"Of course not," said Morgan, grabbing leader's feet after Chuck had zip-tied them. Together they shifted the villain onto a cart. "That's the whole point of being a best friend." He patted the bad guy's shoe. "To make sure the bodies stay buried."

Upstairs, behind the break room lockers…

Both bad guys had survived, so Casey and Sarah had divested them of their weapons and other tools, and zip-tied their hands and feet. They hoisted them up, to carry them down a flight of steps to the cart.

"So how much did you tell him?" asked Casey, dropping his load down ungently, or maybe he just slipped. Either way Casey wasn't motivated to do much about it. These guys were in for a bad wake-up anyway.

Sarah was politer about it, or maybe her guy was lighter. "As much as Chuck knows."

Casey grabbed the box of gear and put it on top of the two unconscious goons. "You sure that was a good idea?" he said, pushing the cart down the hall. "Awesome doesn't even know that much, and Awesome is awesome. Grimes is a moron."

"I'm something of an expert on bad ideas, Casey," she said. "This one doesn't have that feel."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Chuck once told me a story, from one of those books of his," said Sarah. "A man built a high wall to protect himself, with no door to let things in."

"So how did he get out?" asked Casey.

"He didn't," said Sarah, with a sigh. "I could wish that nine-year-old me had been a bit more of a nerd."

"It was a rookie mistake," said Casey.

"I know."

Heh. "Except you were nine, not even a rookie, so I think you did the best you could. Whatever trouble you're in, it looks like you've got two saps to get you out of it now. Feel free to not keep me in the loop, I don't need to hear about every little lady-feeling." Casey's lip curled in disgust. "You may be happy to be feeling again, but I'm losing my best partner."

"Chuck needs me," said Sarah, not specifying how. "So I'm staying right where I am."

Casey looked up, or rolled his eyes. "Under the Burbank Buy More, God help us."

They met at the holding cells. "Morgan."

"Sarah."

"Ugh." Casey dragged his guy off the cart and left him lying on the floor. The box of gear went into a container and he was gone.

"How did I never guess that he was a Marine colonel?" said Morgan to no one. "I mean, there aren't that many possibilities." He turned back to the cells, where Chuck and Sarah had put all the rest of the bad guys. "So am I on the team now, or what?"

Chuck knew that was coming. Morgan never minded being picked last, but he hated never being picked at all. "Walk before you run, buddy, and I mean walk back upstairs before that 'revolution' gets more out of hand than it probably already has. We'll have to talk to our boss and see if 22 years of video gaming is an acceptable substitute for the usual training course."

"And put all that stuff back on the shelves," said Sarah, pointing to all his quote-mission gear-unquote. "Think of it as post-mission clean-up." Even Shaw was doing some, or would soon. He and Jones were working on his script. If they were working on anything else together she didn't want to know about it.

"Try not to make it look too neat, though," said Chuck. "That always looks suspicious."

"Right," said Morgan, taking his pile of junk. "Not too neat." He walked into the hall and turned left. Five seconds later they saw him walking the other way.

"On the team?" asked Sarah.

"He can be useful," said Chuck. He remembered Morgan's battle plan against the Large Mart team the previous year. "A little overboard on the mission prep sometimes…"

"That's my guy," said Sarah. Always looking for their strengths…

"Your guy, huh?"

"Yes, and I definitely mean that in a possessive way," said Sarah, looking him over, "As opposed to the walking computer box everyone else is worried about."

"Hey," said Casey, in a low voice, sticking his head around the corner. "Is it safe?"

"See? That's all they worry about, your safety." She turned and said, "Yes, it's safe, Morgan's gone back to work."

"I'm not worried about him," said Casey, "I'm trying to avoid stepping in any of your lady-feelings. Worse than mud in my combat boots." He waved them over. "Come here, I have something to show you before Shaw and Jones miss us."

"You have something you don't want Shaw to see?" asked Chuck as he walked around the corner.

"Not Shaw, Jones, but he's always around her, these days," said Casey. He held up a box, the one that had fallen out of his locker during the fight. "She gave me this while you were on your way back from that Paris mission. I was supposed to give it to you for her."

Chuck grinned, sensing some minor blackmail possibilities. "And you forgot."

Casey bristled, seeming to get larger. "And if you know what's good for you, you'll keep that body buried, Bartowski."

Blackmail thoughts completely gone. "That's what friends are for." Chuck took the box from Casey's hand and unsealed it, popping open a signal-blocker to reveal…"A phone? I don't get it."

"I do," said Sarah. "It's what they were looking for, down here. Sydney Prince's phone. He said it had all of her intel."

"But…we had Prince's phone…?" He'd held it in his hand, after Shaw handed it over.

"Not according to him." And why would he lie? He had the upper hand, but time was running out, so he offered them a truth in exchange for a quicker death.

"So I'm supposed to believe that Shaw gave me a fake phone on purpose?"

"I would," said Casey. "The General sent that back herself, and you know how she's had to tiptoe around Shaw." Then again, maybe they didn't, but if they didn't know it before, they knew it now. "Must have seen it on a manifest in DC when all our reports said it was here."

"Why would he do that?" asked Sarah.

"He shot her, didn't he? Why did he do that?" replied Casey. "Something not right about him."

"Well, it's our problem now," said Sarah. "Chuck, you have to decrypt that phone. Casey and I will have to work on our reports to the General. Carefully."

Later that night, approaching the Casa de Bartowski y Grimes…

"You should have seen it," said Morgan, Subway bag swinging wildly as he tried to demonstrate the magnitude of 'it'. "It was like they'd won a war or something."

Chuck shook his head. "Only in a Buy More...Hey, Devon. Morgan, why don't you go on ahead, it looks like Devon needs something."

Devon waved as Morgan left without a word. "So how'd it go?"

Chuck gestured for them to move closer to the fountain. "Not as well as I would have liked," he said. "It seems their target was Sydney Prince's phone."

"You said that was destroyed."

"We thought it was too, but now it seems a ringer was substituted," said Chuck. "We have the original, and your role in this still current incursion still seems to have been accidental. It might be a good idea for a number of reasons if you guys were to leave town for a while, though."

"Leave town?" said Devon. "We just got back."

"You're right," said Chuck, his ready acceptance doing wonders to convince Devon that there really was nothing to worry about. "And we don't want her going off on another men-in-black tangent again."

"No we don't," said Devon firmly. "You'll keep me in the loop?"

Chuck shrugged. "If there's anything to keep you in the loop about, sure. I better get going before Morgan eats my Meatball Marinara sandwich, Italian-style meatballs drenched in irresistible marinara sauce, served on freshly baked bread, limited time only."

Devon looked at him funny. "Yeah, Chuck, you do that."

Minutes later, in the Casa de Woodcombe...

"Hey babe," said Devon as he came in. "Still reading that airline magazine? You know they just want to put travel ideas into your head."

Ellie put the magazine on the table. "Oh, I know. But they had this really interesting article on Africa, and the work Doctors Without Borders is doing there, and it got me to thinking…"

Far away, in Daniel Shaw's much nicer hotel room…

"Daniel," said Agent Jones, "What's the matter?" Something must have been, it was hard enough getting a rise out of him at the best of times.

Daniel Shaw barely glanced at her naked form. "The Ring knows about Castle."

"Do we have to shut it down?" No more disgusting yogurt, or even-more-disgusting yogurt eaters?

"No, and that's what worries me," said Shaw. "They had me dead to rights, and didn't kill me. They had my intel in their hands, but sent no transmissions."

This was getting boring. She lay back down, pulling up the sheet. "Those both sound like good things. Are you sure they weren't after something else?"

"Not according to Agent Walker."

Sam didn't want to hear about Goddamn Agent Goddamn Walker. She wasn't even on the mission, and she had a better mission than theirs. "Maybe she missed something."

"Or lied."

Jones yawned, rolling over. "Why would she lie?"

Down in Castle…

Casey attached all the necessary leads to the captured Ring phone and put it in a block box. All incoming signals would be recorded and all outgoing signals would be shielded. He was about to get on with his day when the attached devices beeped.

That was fast.

He sat at the desk and pressed the button. "Who activated this channel?" According to Chuck, Price said the same thing when he called her on her own phone. The best way he knew to sound like a Ring agent was to say what Ring agents said.

No dice. "Colonel Casey," said a smarmy, smarmy, oily, overly-confident voice in tone of great self-congratulation. "We thought we'd find you here…"

A/N2 Sorry about the puns. The ending took me a bit to come up with, between the blatant plug for Subway, Shaw's self-absorption, and how the hell did they know Casey was there with the phone? I hope you'll drop me a line and tell me what you think of this rewrite so far.