I'm still rewriting the stories the Chuck Daemon stories came out of, so I'm not ready to progress them yet, but I've had the urge to have another stab at a contemporary Chuck story.

This chapter has references to rather unpleasant topics and same sex relationships, so anyone who has issues with these topics should not read it. It may explain how General Beckman ended up with Roan, too.

Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed and this is neither the real world nor a Disney princess tale.

Chuck's childhood had ended in November Nineteen Eighty Nine, just after his eighth birthday. It hadn't exactly been idyllic before that, with what were to him scary men watching them most of the time, his mother starting their fighting training with their first steps (OK, it had been mostly fun games for the first few years but he could fight well enough to take down multiple bigger opponents by the time he started school), and her and Auntie Em going away all the time... but he had Sammie, and Nora, Mom and Auntie Em, he even had Dad when he wasn't off at work, though he seemed to be there an awful lot of the time. But just after his eight birthday, Uncle Joe took Sammie away on one of his trips, and they never come back.

Life was empty for him without Sammie, and Auntie Em was crying most of the time up until she left on Sammie's birthday to go try and find her, and she didn't come back. Things got even worse after that, because Mr Graham, that big scary black man Mom and Dad worked for, came to the house and he and Mom were shouting at each other, then Mom went away on another trip, and she didn't came back either. Dad spent all of his time working and talking crazy after that, even more so after he'd snuck into his Dad's workroom that time and set off something on that computer with the 'Activate' prompt, until about a year later when they got up one morning and he was gone too. Uncle Bry and Auntie Di came and got them then because Dad had called Auntie Di before he left, but Auntie Di had explained in that no nonsense way of her's that she and Uncle Bry couldn't stay with them or Mr Graham and those other scary men would find them, but she promised to get Auntie Em to come and look after them... they'd pretty much been alone since Auntie Em and Mom left anyway...

Chuck shook his head in an attempt to dispel this trip down memory lane, because it never went well and he knew it... Auntie Di did as she promised, a couple of weeks later she brought Auntie Em back and they all moved from San Francisco down to Arcadia in Los Angeles with their new names (stupid names! Charles Irving Bartowski? What sort of name was that? They only got to keep their first names, and even there they'd had to agree to be called Chuck and Ellie instead of Charlie and Nora to make it harder to find them. Eleanora became Eleanor Faye Bartowski and Auntie Em became their Aunt on their father's side, Emmeline Mary Bartowski, but he still thought that their new names didn't sound as stupid as his did) and ages too, because Ellie had been made just under two years older and he was made a few months over two years older.

Auntie Di had also made them a proposal. She explained that she'd just become a Major in the Air Force, but she was working for the Defence Clandestine Service and National Security Agency and with some friends' help (he smiled at the memory of Auntie Em snorting at that, then hastily explaining that Auntie Di had a lot of friends when they looked at her and getting glared at by Auntie Di), she was creating an intelligence group so that Auntie Em could work for her in secret, but Auntie Em couldn't do enough on her own to make that group work. Auntie Di knew that even then they were both every bit as brilliant as Mom and Dad, so she asked them if they'd work with Auntie Em so that they could make a group that did enough work to stop people asking questions about the money going into it, the money that would be paying all their bills. Chuck agreed after Ellie did, saying that they didn't really have a choice. Auntie Em looked angry at Auntie Di for asking them to do that, but she seemed to be angry at her sister a lot back then, so that wasn't unusual.

When Chuck asked how come Mister Graham and the others didn't just ask Auntie Di where they were Auntie Em laughed, but sat him down and explained that her Mama got pregnant before her Papa went away to war, and he only found out about her and married her Mama after he came home, so Auntie Di actually had a different name to her. She also explained that she wrote down that she came from somewhere else when she left home to go to MIT like his Daddy, because she was angry that they never bothered getting her name changed to match their's, but Auntie Di had gone to Harvard like the rest of the family, so there was actually nothing in their records to show that they were sisters and they never told anyone about it. She'd laughed again when Chuck nodded very seriously, saying that that made sense.

It hadn't been easy, going to school and working like grown ups for Auntie Di, but Auntie Di was right, they were all brilliant so Major Beckman's new Special Projects Group quickly came to be well regarded and much in demand. Then he got what he regarded as the best present ever for his tenth birthday in October Ninety One, because Mom came back, as Mary Elizabeth Bartowski! There was already enough demand for their work to justify an expansion of the group, so on paper it more than doubled in size, going from eleven people (Army and Navy identities for Chuck and Air Force, Army and Navy identities for Ellie, Auntie Em and Uncle Bry) to twenty four (Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force identities for all five of them and someone else on Auntie Di's team, John Casey).

They knew that they weren't getting the whole story of what happened when she was away, but from Mom's expression, and Auntie Em's too after they'd talked in private, Ellie wasn't sure that she wanted to know the whole story. All they were told at the time was that Uncle Hartley had a different version of what Daddy did loaded into him to make him turn into someone else, Alexei Volkoff, and he was sent to Russia. Mom was sent after him to bring him home when he turned back into himself, but he didn't. Someone had also told him that she was a CIA spy sent to kill him, and who and where they and their father were, so she couldn't get away and come home for fear of someone coming to hurt them, not until Auntie Di and Uncle Bry got word to her that Daddy had disappeared and they were safe.

What she swore Emma, Di and Bry to secrecy about was the fact that Eleanor and Charles most probably had a half sister out there somewhere now. Volkoff had had his fun torturing and raping her when he heard that she was a CIA assassin, and she'd only managed to avoid being killed by getting him to confirm that she was in fact a KGB sleeper, Marjan Zaleska, who'd been sent to America when she was sixteen to get herself recruited into the intelligence community from university, and convince him that she'd changed sides because of the CIA's betrayal so she was loyal to him. She of course didn't tell him that she'd stopped being an active sleeper after she met Stefan Jaworski and they fell in love, but even though she managed to play him well enough to avoid having to have any more sex with him after that, she was already pregnant. They took the baby away at birth and she never saw it again, but she was in no state to face what had been forced into her by that animal like that anyway, Volkoff wasn't Hartley, he was a monster. Once the baby was born though, she'd had to keep convincing Volkoff that she was his loyal aide in order to stay alive and keep Stefan, Eleanor and Charles safe, but as soon as Di got word to her that they were all out of harm's way, she started making plans to get out of there as soon as she could. It was actually men from the Spetsnaz groups who made up the core of Volkoff's security forces who had helped her get away, because they respected her as a warrior and did not approve of what had been done to one who had proved themselves as she had.

As well as all the work they were doing (for both Auntie Di and school, because their cover story was that their parents were away working on the pipeline up in Alaska, but that hardly paid enough for them to live in Arcadia where the best schools were, so Ellie and Chuck would need to earn scholarships if they wanted to go to university, and Ellie only had three years to make a name for herself against stiff competition), they were using the resources of the intelligence group to search for Sammie and Dad, and Mom and Auntie Em were teaching them all the things they were best at, which meant a lot of training. Chuck had heard Auntie Em crying to Mom sometimes about it not being right to take their childhoods away from them like this, but Mom always reminded her that it wasn't them who had taken Eleanor and Charles' childhoods away, nor Di either, it was Graham and those other bastards!

Over the next ten years until Ellie and Chuck finished university, they'd worked their arses off. Major Beckman's secretive Special Projects Group remained the hot property of the intelligence community, so much so that they more than doubled in size again (on paper anyway) and branched out from military intelligence because the FBI, ATF, DEA, US Marshals (for the witness protection program), and even the CIA had to avail themselves of the group's services to get the results they were after. Auntie Di, Uncle Bry and Uncle Roan also extended the training that Mom and Auntie Em gave Ellie and Chuck (and Anna, after she worked out the family secret), either by training them themselves, or getting them into training that shouldn't have been possible, like special operations training (even the SEALs' for Ellie and Chuck) and aviator training (up to supersonic jets), and they started going on special operations and intelligence missions with Mom, Uncle Bry, John and Uncle Roan, because part of their training had been how to make themselves look older, and convince everyone else that they actually looked younger than they were, their abilities helped with that as they were better than most of the others.

When they were starting Ellie and Chuck's weapons training, Auntie Di got the secret government contractors to come in and dig a basement and bunker under the house, then Mom contacted her friends in Russia, and about a month later she went out one night and came back with a truck that was packed with high end special operations weapons, ammunition and explosives. The majority of it was from Russia, but the best gear from the rest of the world was there too. John and Uncle Bry drooled when they saw what was there.

Ellie and Chuck had no trouble earning the scholarships they needed to get into university, as they were both the valedictorians for their years. Ellie went into medicine at UCLA in Ninety Four and got herself locked into the trauma and neurology tracks (because Chuck, Mom, Uncle Bry and John came back from the missions they went on with bullet wounds and other injuries all too often so she needed to look after them, and they'd found Dad after a few years but his brain was half fried by that thing he'd tried on himself after Chuck did without harming himself, so he was over in Washington as Stephen Jay Bartowski with a therapist who was one of Auntie Di's 'friends', but it would take more than therapy to fix him, so Ellie was studying to become a neurologist), and Chuck went into Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford in Ninety Seven. They were worried about Chuck going to Stanford, because there was always a chance that CIA might still be keeping an eye on San Francisco in hope that his father may go back, but Stanford was the best university which had offered him a scholarship and he took his looks mainly from his mother, so they were hoping to get away with it.

Of course, using the 'poor scholarship kid' cover meant that he had to take the allocated housing as well, and with Skip going to UCLA instead of Stanford, he didn't have a ready made room mate like Anna and Jill did, so he ended up sharing with a trust fund jock from Connecticut by the name of Bryce Larkin (though they found that this wasn't as random as it appeared when they looked into it after everything fell apart, because his family had used its influence to get him placed with the brightest of the scholarship kids in an attempt to get him the help he'd need to get decent grades).

Anna had been Chuck's best friend ever since they moved to Arcadia, because the little pocket rocket was every bit as brilliant as she was feisty, and she was into martial arts too, but while everyone thought that they'd been boyfriend and girlfriend since their early teens, this was just an act to cover up the fact that Anna had a girlfriend, Jill. They had experimented with sex when Anna's hormones were kicking in as she was moving into her teens (she didn't know that Chuck was over a year and a half younger than her), but she'd found that while she loved Chuck and he certainly had talents, she wasn't into him that way at all, as she found that it was girls that she was attracted to. When she tentatively broached the matter with their new friend Jill (because she was worried that she might disappear like Lou had), she was delighted to find that Jill felt the same way, but therein lay a different problem, because Anna was from a traditional Chinese family, while Jill was from a strict Christian family, so neither would ever accept their daughters being homosexuals! The faith issue would just add to the problem.

The solution to that problem actually presented itself when the girls were crying on his and Skip's shoulders about it in Chuck's room…. Skip was commiserating with the girls, because he was in much the same position, being gay himself, and that made Anna suddenly sit up and look at Jill in Skip's arms, then turn to look up at Chuck with a hopeful expression. "Chuckles, you're the only one here who isn't gay, but we both know that there's only one girl for you. You know that I'll keep helping you look for her for as long as it takes, but until you do find your Sammie, do you think…. is there any chance that you could pretend to be my boyfriend? I'm sure that we won't have any problem convincing my family and everyone else that I'm your girlfriend because they think that already, so if Jill and Skippy could do the same, no-one should ever find out that we aren't straight."

Chuck smiled, kissing her on the head and giving her a squeeze, then looked at the others. "What do you guys think? Can you pull off being boyfriend, girlfriend?"

Jill and Skip looked at each other and nodded eagerly before turning back to him and Skip answered. "Sure we can, but what about you Chuck? You're the only one who isn't getting anything out of this!"

Chuck shook his head with a smile. "Sure I am! Like Anna said, there's only one girl for me, so this way I get a pint sized pit bull to scare off any other girls who might decide that they want something from me. And besides, this one and you guys are my best friends, what kind of friend would I be if I didn't help you?"

Anna elbowed him for the 'pint sized pit bull' crack, but kissed him for doing this for them, and that was how it was up until they got to Stanford. There was a slight change when they got there though, because they were met by religious head cases up on their soap boxes, ranting about homosexuality being a sin and all the jocks leering at Jill. This frightened the girls, Jill especially, so Anna asked Chuck if Jill could be his pretend girlfriend instead of her while they were there. He agreed because they wouldn't be doing anything more than kissing and cuddling to keep up the act in public anyway and he would still be protecting both of them, so he had himself a new 'girlfriend' at Stanford.

'Uncle' Jeff took their things up to Palo Alto for them in his 'work' van, because Chuck drove the girls up in 'Anna's Lancer (even Jill didn't know that this was more Chuck's car than Anna's, because Anna was a part of their group before she met Jill, and she kept the secrets that were entrusted with her, even from her girlfriend. Anna's parents had agreed to buy her a car for when she went to university, but didn't argue when she took her American boyfriend and his Uncle John instead of her father to find the car she wanted, as they accepted that the two of them knew more about cars than he did. They had had a few words to say when she came back with the Lancer instead of the little hatchback that she was supposed to buy, but it didn't cost them any more than the hatchback would have and they just put it down to her being influenced by her boyfriend. What they didn't realise was that the Lancer actually had a full works spec Evo IV drivetrain, brakes and suspension underneath it that cost many times what they paid. The Lancer looked tame enough on the outside to be believable as a university student's car, but had enough performance to give them an effective getaway car for missions, because Chuck and Anna would still be working for Auntie Di while they were up at Stanford.)

Of course, Anna took advantage of the fact that Chuck couldn't say anything in front of Jill and was pointing to the massive airship hangars and asking what they were, and what this place was as they were passing Moffett Field. She did feel a little guilty about that, because she knew that Chuck was pissed off that they'd had to spend over six hours driving up when they'd bought one of the hangers there, cleaned it up and set it up so that they had facilities there, as well as having room for half of their planes in the hangar... Most notably their Cessna CitationJet, which could have cut the trip down to about an hour door to door... And after all, it was her girlfriend who made the ruse necessary, but it was just too much fun to wind him up and they'd been doing this since they were twelve.

As well as taking their things up, Jeff was supposedly there to look for a place to set himself up in Palo Alto, somewhere he, Chuck and Anna could do their work, because he'd be staying up there to support Chuck, using a tech services business (Charlemagne Computers Etc) to explain what he was doing there. 'Uncle' Jeff was actually Jefferson Barnes, better known as the hacker Rosco. Given the fact that he was only offered two alternatives after Chuck uncovered his activities on government computer systems and tracked him down so that John could capture him, work with Chuck, Anna and Skip on the cyber side of the group, or disappear into a black site somewhere, never to be seen again... it hadn't been a hard choice for him to make. Having the chance to work with the Piranha and the Lotus (and to a lesser degree Skippy) was something Jeff wasn't likely to pass up anyway, because they were up there with the best in the game, which Chuck had proven by how easily he'd caught him because Rosco was one of the hacker elite too. Jeff had been part of their group for over two years now, and he still regarded being caught by Chuck as the best mistake he'd ever made.

The girls had fun winding up Chuck about the fact that even without Skip coming to Stanford, he still had a gay room mate, after they met Bryce when they were helping him move into his room. That was aggravating, because he didn't need any complications and he was trying to concentrate on how they were going to get Jeff set up quick enough to prevent a work backlog, but he wasn't too worried about Bryce because he knew that he'd be able to handle anything the guy may try, if he did. They had a bigger worry anyway, and that was probably why the girls were trying to wind him up, to get their minds off that.

While they were moving the girls' things into their dorm, they had heard lots of talk about girls getting raped in their rooms, especially girls who were thought to be lesbians. There were already girls packing up and going home because of those attacks, before classes had even started, and when Anna asked some of the girls what the campus police were doing about it, she was told "Nothing!".

This obviously frightened Anna and Jill so Chuck tried to calm them while they were helping him move into his room by pointing out that Uncle Jeff was already looking for a place to live as he was thinking of moving up here for the work opportunities, so they'd just get him to look for a bigger place and think up something to tell their parents. That did lower their panic levels, but they begged him to stay with them that night so they'd feel safer. Anna smirked at him, with a subtle nod in his room mate's direction as she whispered. "Maybe you'll feel safer that way too Chuckles."

He swatted her on the behind with a smile and said that of course he'd stay with them, getting a kiss from Jill when she remembered that she was supposed to be his girlfriend. They had discussed the fact that him being as affectionate with Anna as he was with his 'girlfriend' much of the time would probably have many people thinking that it was actually a three way relationship, but agreed that that would serve their purposes better anyway, so they weren't worried.

With Chuck's skills, it wasn't difficult for him to slip into the girls' dorm and hence Anna and Jill's room without being noticed later that night. The three of them had had so many sleepovers over the years that the girls had no compunctions about getting undressed and changed in front of Chuck, sure they knew he was straight, but they also knew that he was a perfect gentleman and that he'd spend the rest of his life if need be looking for the one who'd been taken out of his life when he was eight, they'd heard that story from the whole family and Anna had seen his anguish when he couldn't find any sign of Sammie. To Anna and Jill, Chuck and Skip were as good as one of the girls, so they just got ready for bed and settled down for the night after a round of good night hugs and kisses.

Chuck was woken in the early hours of the morning by sounds out in the hall, so he leapt out of bed and woke the girls. Jill was terrified, because she couldn't see how they could fight off the groups of men she'd been told would be coming for them, but Chuck quickly swapped places with Anna when she spat out "Chuck, the girls were saying that they're targeting lesbians, get in here with Jill and make it look like you're making out! Maybe they'll leave us alone!" as she clambered out of bed. He was surprised when Jill ripped her top off and threw on the floor then fell on him in a heated make out session while Anna hopped into the other bed, but before he could say anything the door of their room burst open and at least half a dozen big, burly figures in ski masks rushed in.

As distracting as Jill was being, Chuck didn't miss a word of what was said as they entered. From what they said, the first ones in were obviously the ones in charge.

"Shit, I thought she said that they were dykes?"

"Who cares? Looks like the beanpole's warmed that one up for us, which one do you wanna do first?"

"This one looks ready, I'll take her and you can start with the Chink…."

At that point the clock radio that Chuck had grabbed from the bedside table cut off his words as it smashed into his face, the heavy base of the lamp took out the next guy and the vase the one after him. Then Chuck swept Jill off him and rolled out of bed, snatching up the solid wood chair that was sitting against the wall and using it on the others. They were all down in under thirty seconds, and the ones he took out with the chair were in by far the worst shape because they all had shattered arms, legs and ribs.

Chuck went to the nearest conscious one, yanking off his ski mask and grabbing him by the hair.

"Who's 'she'?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Your buddy said 'she' told you that the girls were dykes, who's 'she'?"

"Fuck you! I'm not telling you any….."

His words were lost in a scream as Chuck grabbed the spot where he'd shattered the guy's leg with the chair and squeezed.

When he stopped screaming, Chuck repeated the question. "Who. Is. She?"

The guy wasn't about to take any more of that, so he frantically pointed out the door. "HER! HER!"

Chuck turned to see a severe looking young woman with a worried expression (because this obviously hadn't gone the way it was supposed to) standing there, fully dressed at two in the morning when everyone else was in their sleepwear. When she saw him turn to look at her she tried to run but the other girls crowding around the door had heard what the would-be rapist said too and grabbed her. They'd heard quite enough for there to be no doubt in their minds that this bitch had been setting girls up to be raped just because she didn't approve of what she thought their life choices were. They didn't see that girl being a lesbian, not with the way she and her boyfriend were almost naked and had obviously been going at, and they knew for a fact that some of the other girls who'd been raped weren't either, but whether they were or not was immaterial, that bitch had been setting other girls up to be gang raped, and some of those girls had been their friends, so there was no way that they were letting her get away!

He knew that someone would have called the campus police by now, but Chuck didn't trust them at all, so he called Auntie Di, telling her what happened and she told him to try and stall until she could get an FBI team there.

With that, Chuck went back to the girls, Jill had her top back on and Anna was comforting her. As he walked up, Jill stepped forward to embrace him and he kissed her, whispering in her ear "Remember, I'm your boyfriend." She nodded and kissed him, and then he reached out to pull Anna into the embrace, kissing her on the forehead, whispering "And you were in your own bed if anyone asks." Anna nodded too, hugging him.

By the time the campus police arrived, Chuck had pulled a T shirt on and some of the girls who'd been raped had come in and said that they were sure that these were the bastards who'd raped them, while others identified the would-be rapists as all being on the university's football team after their ski masks were pulled off.

Things went pretty much as Chuck expected with the campus police, as they said that these boys had just been playing around doing a harmless panty raid and tried to drag Chuck out of there in his underwear, telling him that he was facing multiple counts of grievous bodily harm, attempted murder, unprovoked assault and anything else they could think of. At that the other girls pushed their way into the room and started shouting at them about all the rapes that had been occurring but the campus cops just said that there was no evidence that any of these boys had had anything to do with that and threatened them to try and get them out of the way.

This bickering was enough to keep the campus cops tied up until the FBI arrived though, and Chuck smiled in relief to see John and Uncle Bry walk in. Auntie Di must have had them waiting at Moffett Field in case of trouble, but whatever the reason he was just glad to see them. Chuck wasn't sure why John was putting on a southern accent, but it was hard not to laugh as he drawled "You better check yourself there boy! Did your Mama hit you with the stupid stick or somethin'? Trying to tell the FBI that we don't have any authority here?" when that jumped up security guard tried to tell them to get out because the campus police had this under control.

With the proper authorities there, the other girls started shouting about the rapes that had been going on and how this bitch had been setting girls up to be raped and the campus cops had been sweeping it all under the carpet. Casey's expression turned very grim at that and he brusquely told the campus cops to get out, but wait outside the building, because he'd be angry if they made him track them down, that was all it took to make them scamper out of there.

The would-be rapists were taken to hospital to be treated and were kept there under guard, being questioned and having samples being taken from them for DNA tests, and the woman who'd sent them to Anna and Jill's room was taken into custody and questioned too. The next day samples were taken from the rest of their team and they were questioned as well, along with the other university teams. Some of the players tried to argue, but they buckled very quickly when faced with a very angry John Casey and Bryan Mills (both of whom had daughters who would themselves be going to university inside ten years).

It took a couple of months for the real police (with the FBI and Colonel Beckman's Special Projects Group's help) to root out everyone who'd been involved in the rapes themselves and setting girls up to be raped, and more than a few people around the university were complaining and threatening retribution because a number of the university's first string players ended up in jail as a result of the investigation (how dare those bitches destroy their football team with their lies because the boys wanted to have a bit of fun?), along with a number of the religious fanatics who'd been targeting girls to be raped. A number of others (including many of the campus police and the ones making threats) who they didn't have enough evidence on to make criminal charges stick but were obviously guilty as sin were permanently banished from the university. The women of the university felt a little safer after that, but those bastards hadn't been the only predators on the campus so they still had to be careful, and for that matter the anti-homo crowd were still there too.

It hadn't taken long for them to get the purchase of a house through (seeing as it had been done before they got there), and get a $2.4 Million settlement out of the university for fostering an culture of rapes, hate crimes and attempted intimidation by the campus police to cover them up, and to have very public charges of false arrest against the Chancellor dropped to officially pay for it. They had only asked for half that at first, but Roan (as their family lawyer Herman Goldstein, and himself actually, as that was who and what he he'd been before he joined the CIA) gleefully doubled it as planned because of the threats and abuse being hurled at them, and thanked them for upping his fee for him. When they threatened to cancel Chuck's scholarship, Roan's smile lit up the room as he said. "Oh please do! That will give us ample grounds to double the settlement, and therefore my fee, again!" Needless to say, the Chancellor shut up the idiot who'd threatened that quick smart and got him out of there before he could cost the university any more money. While they had them on the ropes, they got the Chancellor to officially waive the pre-requisites and have both Chuck and Anna accepted into Stanford's MBA program, seeing as he 'now' had the money to pay for it.

The house they'd bought just off campus had four bedrooms and a study, and a good sized garage too. Anna and Jill shared one room of course, but Anna kept most of her things in the 'spare' bedroom that was kept for John or Uncle Bry's use when they were in town on a mission, so that if her or Jill's parents came to see them, she could quickly move in there. Them staying in a house off campus had easily been explained away by their being attacked in their dorm room, and they told their parents that they'd asked Chuck to stay with them that night because they were frightened, with good reason obviously, after hearing all those stories about rapes, and Chuck had gotten a false arrest settlement that was enough to pay for the house. His uncle being there was explained as him having seen that there weren't many tech services companies in Palo Alto when he helped them move up there, so he'd moved up there to try and get a slab of the services market while it was wide open, and that having another man in the house made the girls feel safer after being attacked like that.

The fact that they'd gotten twice as much as they'd supposedly planned from the university, gave Chuck an excuse to buy something fun, a bike, or rather four bikes. The four Harleys in the garage all had the same core setup, big bore RB Racing ORCA TC126 mills with their fuel injection, engine management and 2 into 1 exhaust setups, RBR's chain drive conversion swingarms, and uprated brakes and suspension. While the core setup was the same though, Chuck's bike had extras like nitrous oxide and such that pushed it further than the ones that John, Jeff and Bry normally used. They all looked like the sort of thing that guys put together in their garage (as even up there they had to pay lip service to their cover life), and in truth Chuck had done a fair bit of the work himself (with John Casey's help, strangely enough, wrenching on the bikes in the garage together was probably the closest they'd ever come to bonding off mission), but he'd also spent over eighty thousand with RBR getting them to the point where they could have some serious fun with them.

Unfortunately, the terms of that settlement dictated strict secrecy, which meant that to keep up appearances Chuck had to officially stay with the allocated housing, so he tried to get Bryce to cover for him, using the argument that Jill's family were strict Christians so they'd go ballistic if they knew that she was sleeping with him. For all his other shortcomings though, Bryce was right up there when it came to manipulation and blackmail, so the deal Chuck had to agree to to get him to cover up the fact that he was staying with his good Christian girlfriend most nights was spending at least one night a week and coming around at least two other nights to help him get through, or at least four or five visits of an hour or more a week to help him. While he didn't bother telling the blackmailing douche, Chuck decided then and there that it would be four visits of no more than one hour each week, at times that suited him, and he'd be staying at the house unless he absolutely had to make an appearance in the dorms, he wasn't going to spend a minute more than he had to with that slug!

Having John and Bry turn up as FBI Agents in the middle of the night like that was something they had to explain to Jill though, to stop her talking about it and prompting more questions. They showed her enough proof for her to accept that they were real FBI agents but luckily, unlike Anna, Jill knew nothing about all their other law enforcement, intelligence and military qualifications and identities. She had no trouble accepting that Bry at least was a close friend of the family who was trying to look out for Chuck, because she'd seen him and Emma together in unguarded moments at the house. She also accepted that their being there wasn't really authorised, strictly speaking, so talking about it would get them into trouble, and she was grateful enough to keep quiet about it so they got out of a potentially sticky situation without too much drama.

Meanwhile, down in San Diego, the person who Chuck, Emma and the rest of the family had been searching for for nearly eight years had put her foot down. Sammie (or rather Jenny Burton as she was currently) was fifteen, but all of her records said that she was seventeen and she had no trouble convincing anyone of that. After nearly eight years of being dragged through nearly every sleazy hole in the country, and more than a few over the border…. being chased, propositioned, fondled, felt up and nearly raped more times than she wanted to remember by dirty old and not so old men, she'd given her father an ultimatum….. Either give up the con game, stay in one place and go straight for a year so that she could complete her final year of school to get the education credits she needed to go to university, or they'd be going their separate ways here and now!

Uncle Joe (or Jack Burton as he now was) had no doubt that his daughter could convince some nice people to take her in for a year to do as she wished, because even though he'd never admit it out loud, she was far better than he ever was, she could make people do just about anything she wanted. That was why he couldn't afford to let her go, he'd never make a fraction of what they did without her planning the gigs and handing the marks the way she did, and he'd most probably be in the pen within a few months as well, so he swore blind that he'd do as she asked without blinking an eye.

Of course, Jack had no intention of honouring that promise, he just said that to stall for time and stop her leaving. Jenny knew that, but even if she was one of the few women on the planet who was totally immune to her father's charms, she couldn't help hoping that just this once, he'd do as he promised.

A/N: The actresses who played General Beckman and Sarah's mother in the series are both about the same height and have similar features, so disbelief shouldn't need to be suspended too much to believe that they could be sisters. ;^)