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AN - I blame Quistie64 and her version of Sound Of Music for this.
Apparently she is just as warped as I am... Freakishly, she'd watched this film the previous day, and had a rather silly thought...
So, all is normal, I cannot have an original idea. Mel Brooks on the other hand... he stol.. was inspired by James Whale and Mary Shelley (nee Wollstonecraft) to write some of the best stuff in cinema history.
Don't believe me?
One word – Blücher!
As of 06.09.11 I don't own Chuck (or any material referenced from popular culture) et al.
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Chapter One
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It was a dark and stormy night.
The far off, and cinematically creepy, Transburbankylvania was being lashed with driving rain, and theatrically lit by lightning provided by tropical storm Eleanor, as she unleashed her fury on the unfortunate inhabitants of that impoverished and backwards province.
One such barrage of lightning illuminated the "For Lease" sign festooned with cobwebs in the window of a defunct Orange Orange yogurt franchise.
A shadowy figure ignored the two local peasants, one large one small and foreign looking, as they hurried across the depressing deserted parking lot, intent on making it to their local, The Jugular and Vein.
The shadowy figure used a key ring with an impressively large number of keys on it to open the disused fro-yo shop. The bins of sprinkles and gummy bears were covered in a layering of dust, and thanks to the levels of preservatives approved by that poorly informed government for child friendly treats, were as almost good enough to eat as they had been when the shop was open.
The shadowy figure wasn't here to snack on dusty sugary animal shaped goodies. He placed the key ring into his valise, took out a flashlight and placed the case on a small table. A fortuitous flash of lightning illuminated the gold leaf writing on the flap. 'Grunka and Ass. Attorneys at law.'
Max Grunka, for indeed that was the shadowy figure's name, opened the cash draw. He winced at the ominously creaky sound it made, and held his breath at the dust he'd disturbed. Underneath the cash draw he found and removed a large, yellowed envelope. He pulled it out, only to have it snatched out of his hands, back into the draw. More forcefully this time, he recovered it from the spring it had caught on.
The simultaneous lightning flash and thunder clash was purely coincidental as Grunka read the impressive family crest of the paperwork inside the envelope.
Last Will and Testament of the Baron, Stephen Von Bartowski.
The thunder chose that moment to thunder.
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Some time later, in a different, better lit and more enlightened local, the brilliant young neurologist, Dr Charles Bartowski was addressing his medical students in the lecture hall. Chuck still thought of himself as 'Chuck,' despite he and his sisters efforts to cultivate the correct atmosphere for an associate professor. Herr Professor Doctors weren't called Chuck. They were Charles'.
"...where it descends through the foramen magnum... to become... the spinal column. Please read up on chapter forty two of Woodcomb and Woodcomb. Are there any questions?" Chuck turned from the whiteboard and faced his students.
He noticed a man enter the hall, dressed in a somewhat out of style suit, that seemed to have been knitted out of marmalade. The man held a flap-top briefcase on his lap as he sat at the back.
A young student in the forward third of the hall raised his hand.
"Yes?"
"Doctor Bartowski, I'm not sure I fully understand the difference between voluntary and reflexive synaptic responses..."
Chuck rubbed his hands together in anticipation "Excellent! That brings us to our next demonstration" he leant back, and looking off to the side, to what actors on a stage would call 'the wings,' rang a convenient gong.
A patient gurney was wheeled out by two orderlies with a man lying on the gurney, looking around him. The two 'green shirts', who bore name badges proclaiming their names to be 'Skip' and "Fernando,' left without saying a word.
Dr Charles Bartowski held a wireless microphone into the face of the patient. A little too close by the patient's expression, which accompanied the amplified "Fooomp!" as the mike bumped into his top lip.
"Your name is...?" Chuck asked the man.
"Erm.. Shaw. Daniel Shaw"
"Well, mister Shaw. Have you ever met me before?"
"No. I've never..."
"Excellent. Mister Shaw. Would you mind hopping up and standing here beside me?"
Shaw rolled to his side to get up as he normally would in his athletic manner. But the recent abdominal injury he'd sustained caused him to groan in pain and flop back onto his back. He manfully gritted his teeth and tried the other side.
Partway through his dismount, the knife wound let him know it was still there, and not happy about things. With another groan, Shaw was forced to clamber off the gurney eventually in an awkward backwards slide, the hospital gown flapping open to the massed students. Taking a moment to recover from the pain, Shaw eventually stood beside Chuck.
"Nice hopping" muttered Chuck to himself as he placed a friendly hand on Shaw's shoulder. He then addressed his students "Mister Shaw has kindly agreed to assist in the demonstration of the differences in conscious movement and autonomic reflexes. Watch how Mister Shaw will react instinctively in an uncontrollable reflex..." Chuck said almost without any change in his inflection as he moved to violently knee Shaw in the groin.
Shaw's reflexes kicked in, and he automatically tried to move his 'produce department' out of the way. This brought his bare bottom against the surprisingly cold steel of the gurney behind him, and his face into abrupt contact with Chuck's shoulder, bending his nose painfully.
"Aaaaaaaaargh!" he said, succinctly as he collapsed to the floor in pain, the knife wound still reminding Shaw not to annoy certain government agents. Ever again.
Chuck ignored for the moment, the display of Shaw writhing on the floor, his hospital gown now riding above his midriff as he lay half curled up, feet first toward the students. "That is the classic autonomic, or reflex action learned in childhood. The pathways form due to repeated actions, and it becomes an instinctive reflex. In this case to protect himself from perceived pain... here we go" Chuck said as he assisted a grey and clammy Shaw back onto his feet.
"But..." Chuck continued to his audience "...if we block the nerve impulses with a simple clamp..." Chuck showed the slightly medieval looking shiny implement to the students, who recognised it as a Brooks number five clamp "...here, between C three and C four..." Shaw hissed as the stainless steel teeth bit deep into his flesh, and then stood straighter "... we have blocked the path way from the brain, and so... You girlfriend grabbing, backstabbing traitorous son of a bi..."
This time, Chuck's knee made full contact into Shaw's lower abdomen, about as low on the abdomen as it is possible to go before you only find fresh air. There was a solid 'thudding' sound. It was like hitting a lump of wood. Shaw made no movement, despite his eyes following Chuck's knee trajectory in a kind of horrified fascination. It was as if he was a cardboard cut-out. Afterwards, his right eye twitched slightly as a single tear escaped, down his now distinctly greenish face.
Chuck moved his hand back to the clamp in the back of Shaw's neck, but did not remove it. Yet. "You will recall from your notes that the Brooks clamp only blocks impulses from the brain, blocking the reflex. Pathways to the brain are still functional. If we remove the clamp, the overload will cause a momentary loss of conscious control..." Chuck removed the clamp with a flourish, as Shaw moaned on his way back down to the floor again.
Chuck signalled for Skip and Fernando to remove the slowly rocking and moaning Shaw clutching his privates from the presentation stage. They would need to return after the lecture with a mop. Apparently he'd managed to dislodge a kidney stone.
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As the last students were leaving, the man with the valise approached Chuck.
"Herr Von Bartowski. My name is Max Grunka..."
Chuck interrupted him "Its just Bartowski. We stopped using the Von after my..." Chuck didn't want to remember his father.
"Werry vell, Doctor Bartowski..." he managed, somehow, to emphasis the missing Von. "...My name is Max Grunka. I represent your late father's estate" Grunka said as he handed over the will of the late Baron Stephen Von Bartowski.
Chuck glanced at it in mild disinterest, before re-reading it with raised eyebrows...
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Chuck and his sister had grown up frugal. Both of them doctors now, Chuck had put himself through med school by working at a Buy More, of all places, just to survive. Ellie had even worked in a hospital flower shop at one stage, just to pay the bills when she went through.
Suddenly, he was now rich. A title and lands in someplace that sounded like it belonged in a vampire movie. One of the good, gruesome ones, not some glittering teeny-bop one.
Eight hundred and seventy seven million... even in today's depressed and pressured market economy, that was nothing to sneeze at.
As Chuck sat, alone in his apartment that night, he manfully resisted for ten minutes the urge for paraphrase Austin Powers...
"Eight hundred and seventy seven meeelion dollars... Mwaaahahaha!"
Except, for inheritance purposes, he would have to take possession of his fathers lands in far off Transburbankylvania.
Oh, alright. One more impersonation couldn't hurt...
"Yonder lies the kassle of my fadda"
Chuck wondered if there was a castle... how cool would that be? Sitting in his own castle, overlooking his palatial grounds, skeet shooting his peasants, having smoked kippers for breakfast... what are kippers, and how does one smoke them?
In some ways, Chuck was glad his fiancée was out at a charity event. The Larkin foundation or something. She came from money. That wasn't why he was going to marry her, but she had a different outlook on life. Chuck was rather enjoying the discovery he was rich, by himself.
Chuck's fiancée was rather a 'take charge' woman. He loved her enough to love her little quirks. The 'chastity before marriage' was one of the bigger ones. She was determined to make Chuck a better man. Her current plan involved more Descartes and Spinoza, and less Star Wars and Star Trek.
Chuck wasn't all that certain how he'd gotten engaged to her. It just sort of happened... she was certainly a 'mover and shaker.' She didn't fall into what Chuck thought of as his type, when he had a 'type.' Frankly women of Carina's calibre gave him the hee-bee-gee-bees. One day all was normal, and then she fell into his life. Somehow they'd gotten engaged...
Chuck's sister and brother-in-law were famously in Africa somewhere, incommunicado. Saving lives without borders. The few times she'd contacted him on satellite phones, that frankly should work better considering this was the twenty first century, the conditions sounded brutal. But she loved Devon, and this was what her husband wanted to do.
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AN2 – If you enjoyed this chapter, may I modestly suggest another story of mine, Chuck vs The Gruesome Death Of Shaw? You may see some similarities.