Usual disclaimer for the Land of Litigation, no rights to any characters portrayed.
With their post Lester Burton life story re-imaging finished, most of Clan Carmichael had homework to do, committing their new lives to memory. For the most part it was minor details, just the shifting of a few locations or dates here and there. The biggest changes were for Ellie, because as well as her academic and medical careers and where she'd lived being shifted quite a bit, one thing she had actually asked Chuck for was to wipe out any record of her marriage to Devon, to give herself a chance to start over, seeing as she sort of had to do that anyway. They were sitting down with their parents and talking about it when Stefan burst out laughing, he looked at his wife and children looking at him as if he was off his rocker and managed (with some difficulty) to stop laughing long enough to explain himself, the point was that for most of the last nine years he'd been the one who had to learn and embrace his new life story, but now he was the only one in that family who DIDN'T have to work to get the story straight, it was a nice change for him, at least. The others looked at him for a bit and eventually joined him in the laughter, as it was funny when he put it that way.
When they'd settled down Stefan asked Chuck how the new virtual touch screen watches were working out? As he very rarely operated away from home he didn't use the mobile interfaces as much as the others did, he'd made up the prototypes when Chuck had suggested it, but wasn't sure how useful they'd be. Chuck showed him that he was wearing his at the time, and said that they were proving handy, Sarah used the virtual touch screen and a pair of the AR glasses all the time she was away from her desk. He did note that personally he'd like to increase the resolution and sensitivity, because when he was typing in other languages like kanji, the original prototype wasn't enough, if they could resolve that he'd happily use it with the AR glasses anywhere other than at home or in the office, where he could use the primary interfaces for the Castle computer, it had already replaced the phablet, but would be nice if it could provide the full keyboard capabilities that he needed. Stefan made some notes as he asked him for more detail on what he wanted and said he'd have a look into what he could get out of it, which generally meant that Chuck would have the upgraded prototype in a few days, a week at most. Before they finished Chuck asked if he could see about adding a separate virtual track ball and button interface on the other side, so the hand wearing the watch could operate that while the other hand was operating the virtual keyboard, if they got that far. A challenge like that got a big grin out of Stefan, as that would take this interface into a totally different space, now he was really motivated to get into it. Chuck grinned as well, it was handy having a mad genius inventor for a father.
They actually had about six months without any indications that BGRU was getting active again, it almost felt like a holiday for them, but as usual, something always came up, and this time it came in the form of a call from Josie in the office while Chuck and Carina were going through some things, asking if anyone knew where Jeff was? They looked at each other, and Carina asked why? When Josie answered that she had what appeared to be an unattractive Indian lesbian there demanding to see her partner, Jeffrey Barnes, they quickly brought up the office camera feeds and burst out laughing, Chuck told Josie that it wasn't a lesbian, and they had every reason to believe that Jeff's ex "partner" was actually male, while Carina went to find where Jeff was working and give him the news that Lester was back.
When Carina found Jeff, they got changed and hopped in Jeff's Porsche to head into the office. They got there just in time, as Sarah had swung through the office with Molly to pick up something and she was being accosted by Lester in the reception area, and more to the point so was Molly. Lester hadn't gotten any brighter or less disgusting in the years that he'd been away, and Sarah was ready to end him then and there after he made comments about her and Molly (and Josie) obviously being prostitutes and he was sidling closer to Molly, obviously interested in her. Carina quickly grabbed Sarah and Molly and pushed them into the office, spending about ten minutes trying to calm Sarah down enough to stop her from bursting back out through the door to kill Lester. When Chuck saw Sarah walk in with Molly on the monitors he dropped everything and jumped on the Nighthawk (Sarah had reversed her position on the Nighthawk years ago and said he could have it back, and as it had been in storage since it was returned to the NSA due to the fact that no "normal" humans had the reflexes to safely operate it a speed, the General had quietly arranged for it to be released back to them) to try and get into the office before things got dangerous, but he only managed to get there a few minutes after Carina had dragged Sarah and Molly into the inner office.
Once Chuck was there, he and Jeff bodily dragged Lester into the outer conference room and shut the door. Chuck spend a couple of minutes tying to calm down as he looked at the obnoxious creature that had just forced its way back into their lives while it rabbiting on about how they couldn't manhandle him like that, he was an important person and he'd sue them. Once he'd managed to get himself under control he told Jeff to make sure that his "partner" stayed in the room and went to see whether Sarah and Molly were OK, loudly calling to Josie to shoot anyone who tried to leave the room before he closed the door.
When he saw Sarah and talked to her, he was relieved at first that they were OK, until she told him what Lester had said and was doing. At that point he gently kissed her and told her with a tightly controlled voice that he'd be back soon, turning to go out the door. Carina frantically called out to Josie to stop him, tranq him or something, but when Josie jumped up with the pistol to tranq him he closed the distance and snatched it off her faster than she could react, tossing the pistol into the corner as he headed back into the conference room. When he entered the room Lester immediately jumped up and frantically tried to get away from him, because the man in front of him wasn't the Chuck who used to be at the Buy More, it was a primal force out to kill. When Chuck reached him his hand darted out like a striking snake and Lester found himself snatched up into the air and smashed back against the wall effortlessly, but with enough force to drive the air from his lungs and knock him half unconscious.
To Jeff's credit, even through he knew quite well what Chuck was capable of and could see how enraged he was at this point, he was brave enough to grab Chuck's arm and try to pull it down as he said that Lester wasn't worth the trouble that would come of killing him, even if he deserved it. Lester was coming to as Jeff was talking to Chuck and he heard this last, and he squeaked, terrified, only now realising that this visit could go very, very badly for him. The squeak drew Chuck's attention back to him, and the baleful gaze pinned him to the wall as surely as the arm that ended in the fist with a handful of his shirt against his chest. Chuck's voice was deceptively calm as he asked what right Lester thought he had to come into their offices and call his wife and his teenaged sister-in-law prostitutes and then try to lay his hands on his sister-in-law?
Alex was now standing at the doorway with the pistol that Chuck had taken off Josie, trying to think of a way to diffuse the situation, and Chuck's voice chilled her, because it was exactly the same as Sarah's had been the night that she had Morgan dangling against the wall (because she'd just found out about the way he'd been trying to sabotage her relationship with Chuck). One thing was clear, unless someone found a way to back the situation away from Defcon 1, there would be blood here, and in his state, trying to tranq him would probably just piss him off unless she used enough to harm him. She quickly made her way across the room and joined Jeff in trying to talk Chuck down, grabbing his other arm to get his attention. The only thing that gave them hope was the fact that Chuck hadn't attacked either of them when they grabbed him, his arms didn't budge a centimetre while they were hanging off them, but he didn't do anything directly against them, he just looked at them. Eventually they managed to get through to him enough to get him to let Lester down, and they sat him in a chair.
Chuck pointed to Jeff to talk without his eyes ever leaving Lester. Jeff started by asking Lester what he was here for? Lester couldn't look away from Chuck for more than a few seconds at a time, his gaze held him like a snake's, but he started talking when Jeff kept working to draw him out, saying that Jeff needed to come back to Jeffster, the act needed him again. At Carina's snort of derision and and flat statement that that wasn't happening he gave her a brief look of disdain (Chuck still held his attention most of the time), saying that ho's weren't there for conversation, and they should just stick to their purpose in life. That actually made Chuck smile thinly, as he could feel the figurative heat coming off Carina as she was ready to blow now, too, but his amusement was short lived as he clicked his fingers for Jeff to continue. Jeff re-iterated what Carina had said, that that wasn't happening, as he had a life here and he wasn't going anywhere. Lester actually turned to look at him then, saying that it was time for him to come back, the changes made after he left weren't working, so he had to come back to fix it. At that Jeff got rather pissed as well, pointing out that he didn't leave, he was thrown out quite publicly (by you) with considerable fanfare and playing to the media with reports that he was dragging the act down with his lack of ability, so there was no way that he was going anywhere. When Carina added that they had three kids to look after now, too, Lester looked at her in shock for a second before he looked back at Chuck.
At this point Lester made the first of his big mistakes, saying that he wouldn't need that now, anyway, they were obviously doing very well with their little "business" here, so he'd just sue them all for his treatment here. Carina asked what he meant by their little "business" (using the same inflections that Lester had)? Chuck leaned back without his eyes leaving Lester to say that Lester had decided that all the girls here, including her and Molly, were prostitutes, smiling thinly again as Carina's pressure valve went off again. Carina and Jeff jumped on that to say that he was an idiot, they were a tech company, and that he wouldn't get a cent out of them after what he'd said to Sarah and Molly. Lester waved their argument off dismissively, saying that if he couldn't get what he needed by suing them he'd go to that expose show which had posted the clip about them where he'd seen Jeffrey, they had been talking about stories of some bizarre spy background for the company, but that they'd had to drop the story because they couldn't find any solid evidence. Obviously he could make plenty of money off them by giving them the stories he knew about the spies working out of the Buy More, the secret base under the Buy More and everything else he knew about (listing several of the things that Jeff had uncovered while they worked at the Buy More). If he hadn't been smugly congratulating himself that he had it all planned out and dreaming that he would be on easy street very soon, he would have noticed that everyone in the room had narrowed their eyes at that last statement, and that Sarah was now standing just inside the door. At that moment a brass figurine flashed past Carina's and Chuck's heads (just missing them), and pulped Lester's head. They all turned to look at Sarah, and she shrugged, pointing out that he had just told them enough detail to confirm that he could expose them, and that he fully intended to do so to get money, so they didn't really have any other choice, did they?
Casey arrived just as Sarah threw the figurine and swore, but it was to late to stop anything. He had no problem with her actions, just the fact that she'd done it in their conference room and that they needed to clean it up PDQ before the bloodstains got into the carpets and everything else. He also didn't have an issue with the fact that Chuck pulled Sarah into his arms and just held her while he and Carina handled the body and did the clean-up around them, or that the others were too shocked to help either. Except for Sarah, he and Carina were by far the most experienced in this sort of thing, and Jeff had been a close friend and partner of the unlamented deceased, so it was to be expected that most of them would have issues with what happened. He was aggravated by the fact that it had come down to this, but given that he'd heard enough over the monitors to make him drop everything and rush in, he had no doubt that it would prove justified when the full story came out. They took the figurine and carefully cleaned it to remove any signs of fingerprints or DNA other than Lester's, and later used it to stage the body as a gay hate crime in a part of town where that would be quite believable.
When Casey and Carina got back to the office they all relocated to one of the internal conference rooms and everyone, except Molly, who Alex had taken home (as Josie was getting her fingers taped up after Chuck almost broke them when he wrenched the pistol off her, something he couldn't stop apologising for when he came down and realised what he'd done to her) sat down to talk it out. Basically, no-one thought it could have gone any other way once Lester started threatening to sue and then sell everything he knew about them, they couldn't afford for that happen, especially after everything they'd done to cover their trails with the recent Morgan incident. Those without an operational background were a little shaken by the way it happened, but they could see that it was inevitable, including the fact that Sarah had obviously decided to do it before Chuck made himself do it, to save him that on his conscience. The fact was that the world would be a better place without a pervert of Lester's calibre in it, and that was obvious to everyone. The fact that he decided that all the girls were hookers (the only conclusion for something of his mindset for all the beautiful women in there, and the fact that they were with Chuck and Jeff), actually said that to Sarah's face and obviously wanted to have time with Molly just proved what a sick, delusional little animal he was, and there was no way to talk him into keeping quiet as soon as he'd started seeing dollar signs. No, it was the right thing to do, even if it was a bit of a shock at the time.
A/N: OK, never thought that this would be a necessary clarification in the space that the show was set, but the spy world where Chuck is situated is a nasty place with nasty to evil people making up most of its inhabitants. Therefore IMHO it's absolutely ridiculous to expect things to play out in this world the same they would in a Disney Princess cartoon, but it seems that many people read stories that say up front that they're dark (it's been in the description since nearly the beginning), and still get upset because they are? Really?
If anyone else can't work out why it was necessary, the actions Lester was threatening (and would have done) would expose them to all the organisations who were looking for them, but they didn't have any grounds to get him locked away in a government supermax (or even ordinary) prison before he had a chance to do that, so if he'd walked out of there the evil little pervert would have put them in the sights of all the "bad" organisations that they'd been putting away and possibly signed their death warrants, much like Morgan was trying to do, but Morgan had government secrets in his head, so the government would have stepped in with him.
BTW: Lester wasn't an idiot in the show, he and Jeff were the only ones other than Chuck who actually showed any intelligence in the Buy More, and in fact, the show portrayed him as the brighter, leader of the pair throughout. As I hated the character's sleaziness I chose to show that this only happened because Jeff was continuously impaired due to drugs, alcohol or carbon monoxide poisoning, but that wasn't the way the show had it.