Apparently I've been incorrectly presuming that people have been following my story and understood what the world "my" characters are living in is like, recent comments have shown that I was obviously incorrect in that presumption. Sorry about that, I'll try to make it clearer from now on what the scenario is and how things fit together and work in "my" world.
I guess I get frustrated when people write reviews or messages on my stories to tell me that the events that I write about are unrealistic or wrong for my story, when they haven't bothered paying attention to what the world of my stories actually is, and are in fact writing about how they don't fit into the world of their own stories. I don't write reviews to tell them that I find their stories unrealistic or silly just because they don't match my view of how things were or would have gone, I stop reading them, it'd be nice if they'd reciprocate with the same consideration.
For clarification, my stories are about my perception of how things were portrayed in the actual series (for the most part exactly as they were shown there), and how the story would have played out down the track after the finale in "my" world. So yes, characters that I disliked on the basis of what I saw in the series get treated accordingly, and others who showed obvious qualities that weren't allowed to come out within the time constraints of the series have been given their chance to show who they actually are.
Usual disclaimer, no rights to any characters portrayed here.
In the weeks following Lester's forced entry into (and abrupt exit from) their lives, there was a degree of disquiet within the family. None of them questioned that what had been done was correct, or that the world was better off without the foul little pervert, but it dredged up a lot for those who had been around in that world where Lester had had a part, none more so than Jeff. In a way, Lester had been a close "friend" and yes, partner to Jeff for a long time. He was disgusting, self serving and dismissive of any needs or desires other than his own, but he was a large part of Jeff's life for a long time, and now Jeff was spending a lot of time thinking about "What if?"s, even though he knew quite well that the biggest "What if?" was "What if Lester had been a decent person and not what he was?". Carina tried to give him space while being there when he needed her (she was trying to grow as a partner, and tried to give him what she thought he needed from her at that point), but the kids couldn't see things that way, so Charlie and the girls kept hugging him and asking what was wrong, as they could see that something obviously was.
While the kids didn't give him time to go through things the way he wanted to, in a way that was a good thing, as it prevented him from dropping into the old Jeff, and kept the best parts of his new life in his face, he had a family, a partner and kids who loved and needed him and cared enough about him to show him that, as well as the love of the rest of the extended family of Clan Carmichael and a fulfilling and exciting life through Carmichael Industries that was more than he'd ever dreamed of. That put his thoughts about Lester into perspective better than they would have been if he was just wondering about what Lester could have been, and against his current life, Lester was shown to be what he was, a self centred, conniving manipulator who had always taken everything for himself and forced Jeff, in particular, to give up everything he wanted to support Lester's plans for himself.
The very fact that he came back as soon as he found a way to locate Jeff with the intention of dragging him back into restarting Jeffster (purely to restart his own career that he had ruined when he decided that he didn't need Jeff any more and therefore tossed him aside and ridiculed him so publicly) showed that he hadn't changed at all. This was emphasised even more by the fact that he immediately jumped onto the ideas of trying to sue them when he saw that they obviously had money, and then selling them out to the expose channel the second that it looked like suing them may not work out, with absolutely no consideration of the issues that that may cause Clan Carmichael (or Jeff himself). His only thought was how to get onto the quickest path to easy street for himself, to hell with what that did to anyone else. That was, and always had been, Lester's only consideration, what was best for Lester. Jeff settled down a little when he finally came to that understanding, and hugged "his" kids, they didn't know how much a part of the solution they were, but they could see that he was better and were happy because of that.
Of course, in Clan Carmichael's world, self serving sleazebags were far from the biggest danger that they had to face, and soon enough they had a much bigger threat on the radar, when they started getting hits on Nicholas Quinn. This appeared to confirm that he had, in fact, been revived, and the patterns that were showing up appeared to indicate that he was trying to do what Riley and co had been trying, to unite the remnants of BGRU under his control. In a way this was a bigger threat than Riley and co had been, as Quinn was a bigger independent player in the intelligence community and general bad guyery, and there was also the fact that he was by himself, so there would be no infighting over control to dilute his effectiveness For that matter that could make him a better figurehead to the BGRU mindset, especially as he was even more morally challenged than most of them (with Graham that seemed to be something they looked up to). Of course, the revival process may have taken a lot from him depending on how long it took for them to get to him, but Bryce had been mostly unchanged the first time around, it was mainly personality elements that he'd lost, so if the effect on Quinn was similar to that, it may not make him less effective in the role, it may only make him that much more dangerous.
When they sat down to discuss the ramifications of Quinn's possible return and the fact that he'd almost certainly come after them, most of the family were totally confused when Sarah turned to Chuck and said that if Bo Derek came back with Quinn this time, she was going to kick her corn fed ass back to Kansas and Chuck tried to correct her, pointing out that Bo was actually a California girl, but Sarah just fixed him her icy glare on him and said "Don't care!". Casey and Alex burst out laughing, and then they had to explain that Bo Derek had worked for Quinn against them before and there had been words when Chuck asked Sarah not to damage the face that he'd had his childhood fantasies about, which set most of the others off too.
With the fun out of the way, they discussed what Quinn may be like now, and what he may be after in regard to them. Without any way of really knowing how this would go down, they automatically ramped up their security procedures to several times what they were, as Quinn almost destroyed them last time, and there was a good chance that he was more dangerous now.
With that in mind, Sarah talked to Emma about taking over Molly's driving lessons and giving her and Kathleen "special" driving lessons and training as well, because if they were going ANYWHERE without guards for the foreseeable future, she wanted to ensure that they were in the best position to look after themselves. The Clan's "civilians", Kathleen, Emma, Molly and the kids, were their weak spot, and it was something that Quinn had already exploited, using Alex to get to Casey when she was a "civilian". Therefore Sarah was drumming everything she could into their current civilians to try and keep them as safe as possible, which included taking over most of Molly's driver's ed to teach her how to effectively handle the special Odyssey's they had, and also bringing the other women up to speed on their special capabilities (not the weapons, if they needed to be deployed that would happen remotely from home, but evasive driving techniques and how to effectively handle the performance of the machines to get away from pursuit, give them an idea of what sort of fire they could take and keep going, that was all within the scope of what they needed to know if they were driving alone, because the performance capabilities of those machines meant that they could safely get away from most other vehicles on the road, especially of the ones coming after them were in SUVs or vans). Clara and Charlie also got more basic lessons on how to handle the Odysseys, in case their driver was incapacitated or prevented from getting them away, just as a last ditch option to get them and the other kids away, because the safest place for them to be when they were away from home or inside the CI offices was locked into one of the armoured vehicles. All the family's civilians also got extensive lessons on how to behave at all times away from home, such as NEVER getting into anyone other than the family's cars, how to distract or disengage from an attacker and the best places to hide to avoid detection. These were all things that they never wanted the kids to know about, but the family's threat profile just went up the moment that they knew that Quinn was possibly on the scene again, so they had to.
Quinn wasn't as easy to track down as Graham and the others had been, he was quite elusive the first time around, and he was far more so now. He spent his time bouncing around the world popping up here or there for a day or so at a time, one of the few benefits from his behaviour was that they were accumulating a map of probably BGRU remnant locations, as they could think of little reason other than chasing the remaining BGRU groups for support for him to visit most of those locations, so on every point where Quinn popped up they intensified their searches for BGRU presence. They were getting hits on all the locations with the intensified searches (which appeared to confirm that there were BGRU bases in those locations), and after 3-4 months they started getting repeats for Quinn, himself, as he was going back to see/meet with people again in his on-going campaign. It was much harder to get results than it was the first time that they tracked BGRU down, as they were all in hiding now, if they thought they were being careful under Graham, that was nothing compared to the way they were now. The BGRU guys HAD to be going crazy, hiding as deep as they were, as there had to be thousands of them out there, but in general they weren't getting more than half a dozen hits a week world wide in all their searches.
So they were ever so slowly building a map of probable current BGRU locations, they had 20-30 individuals who were obviously rebelling against the rules to stay inside, as they accounted for about a quarter of the BGRU hits that they were getting. That was a slight win, anyway, as it was making it easier to close in on the BGRU site at their locations. Another minor win was that after about seven months of this they were starting to see a pattern for Quinn's movements, the locations he was more likely to go to.
Suddenly, about fourteen months after they first started getting hits on Quinn, it looked like they were starting to make a move on Carmichael Industries, as there was a ramp up of BGRU hits around LA, including a couple of hits for Quinn himself. In a way it was a relief, they were obviously far more at risk now that BGRU was moving, but the fourteen months of always being on the defensive and looking over their shoulders had been just as bad for them as it was for BGRU, and it was wearing them thin. The only benefit was that their readiness was so much better than it had been fourteen months ago, they'd reluctantly agreed that the kids needed to be able to protect themselves as well as they could, so everyone had been training in all forms of self defence and the necessary processes constantly. All the kids would handle the Odysseys to some degree now (Jaqui and Piotr were the smallest, of course, but not that much smaller than Susie and Wendy and they were more competent than Carina's girls were), there were two more Odysseys now (Casey finally gave up the Crown Vic and Josie replaced the SUV she used with an Odyssey) and the Odysseys had all now been retrofitted with remote/autonomous driver packages, so if necessary they just needed to get them going, and then as soon as possible they could be taken over from home. Everyone knew all the protocols and processes and how to react when anything happened, it took a bit to get it through to everyone that the time had finally come that they had been preparing for (especially the kids), but they got everyone together in the bunker and brought up the images of all the BGRU people who'd been flagged around LA, to get them to memorise the faces in hope that they could recognise them if they turned up, they put special focus on Quinn as he was the biggest threat, and eventually they all got the point about how serious the situation was now.
Other key points that improved their readiness were the fact that Stefan and Ellie had managed to complete the optimised Intersect versions that allowed Chuck, Sarah and Ellie to get the maximum performance and benefit out of the Intersect. Once everything was optimised for Chuck and working well consistently, they backed it off a little and Ellie loaded it, they then optimised her version for her brain, too, before repeating the process for Sarah. This meant that they were all far and away ahead of any previous Intersect hosts, including Chuck himself with the CIA/NSA version 2.0 or 3.0 Intersects. This version pushed them a fair way beyond ordinary human capabilities in every area, so that they were the ultimate soldiers. If the test results from Graham's program were accurate, Chuck and Sarah's kids were going to be able to exceed them when they were ready, but even if Ellie had been prepared to contemplate loading the Intersect into their kids (she wasn't), Chuck and Sarah weren't prepared to consider it until after they were teenagers, to give them and their brains a chance to develop properly before they tried anything like that.
While Chuck, Sarah and Ellie were the only Bartowski Intersect hosts for at least the next decade, the kids and everyone else were trained on and were using the new generation of the mobile nodes for the targeting systems etc (as well as the pseudo intersect data capabilities and communications). Stefan had enhanced the virtual touch screen/track ball interface watches to bring them up to the level that Chuck had been after, and had also enhanced the Augmented Reality glasses to that they could support independent 1K video displays and audio. The brain makeup of about half of the family couldn't support proper simultaneous usage of the independent displays, that appeared to be only a Bartowski trait (which included Sarah and Mary actually), but Chuck and their kids could quite easily separate the vision and motor control to use the camera feeds for two pistols/weapons simultaneously, as could Sarah and Ellie, and Charlie, Stefan, Mary, and Clara could do it to a degree. Ellie obviously didn't like using the weapons or using the other fighting skills, but she had accepted the need to step up when she had the discussion with Carina about what she had to do to protect her daughter after she was told Graham's plans for Clara, and had applied herself to learning and mastering anything and everything that came under those requirements. Given that she had the same latent capabilities as Chuck (as the result of the same breeding experiment), she mastered all aspects easily, especially with the Intersect boost.
So the fact that they had BGRU coming after them yet again, probably being led by someone who may have been worse than Graham as far as his practices went was bad, but the family was prepared to take on a force at least several times their size, and the Intersect hosts could feasibly take on fifty to one odds without too much trouble, so they were as ready as they could be.
They didn't want to go to war, but if it came to them they'd deal with it.