-o0o-
As of 10.10.11 I don't own Chuck (or any material referenced from popular culture) et al.
A very scary thought – During the past week, one of my wife's staff said to her 'Surely you can't be serious.'
Naturally, her reply was the obvious one (No woman I marry is going to miss a straight line like that).
Except... No-one had heard that before. Five staff, all in their early thirties, and none of them knew of 'Flying High' (or 'Airplane' to the rest of the world). When she tried to explain, she said they all gave her that look. You know, the one you gave your parents when they talked about some old film (probably black and white) that was obviously of no interest to you at all.
I'm hoping that the same does not apply in our shared pool of specialised insanity. Otherwise, I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.
Chapter Six.
-o0o
Once again, Chuck found consciousness, a little reluctantly since he had a nagging feeling he'd lost it for a rather good reason, with Sarah swimming into view. That sort of made up for the reluctance.
She was managing the somewhat Sarah-esq feat of looking relieved and worried at the same time.
"Chuck!" she cried, seemingly pleased he was OK.
"Hi" he smiled as he sat up. She leant forward a little, as if to hug him, but then sat still. Chuck ran through the events from before his passing out. 'Passing out' sounded far better than 'fainted.'
"Um... was there something about Frau Rau... Frost. You said she was agent Frost. She was my father's ..." it all came back in a flash.
"Married... you said she's my mother...." he said, his eyes bulging as big as hubcaps, which one still saw on cars in Transburbanklyvanina.
Sarah nodded. She took a breath "Agent Frost is a ... well, she's a legend. When I went through The Veld, she was the one I tried to emulate. She was so good, that when she fell in lov... married her asset... it was only because she was Frost that she got away with it."
"What do you mean, 'got away with it?'"
"Spies don't fall in love, Chuck."
After a long hesitation, he mumbled "Apparently their assets can."
"It's... a common spy problem" she told the same patch of quilt he was trying to out stare.
Chuck looked up her. Anything he said now was fraught with danger. "Mmm hmm" seemed the safest option. Time to change the subject.
"So... I have a mother" continued Chuck. "What happens now?"
"Well, at the moment, Major Casey is loose..."
"Major Casey?"
"He was a Major before the accident. And Casey seems to be the best name for him now."
Chuck realised he may have been partly responsible for naming him Casey. "I've created a monster" he muttered.
Sarah sighed, a moment Chuck tried to memorise for later savouring, "Well, that's what the locals think. Two beer breath locals saw him run off into the night."
Chuck flopped back onto the pillow "OK, I've got a mother I need to re-connect with, and a monster to catch. No pressure then."
-o0o-
The daughter of a humble wood cutter played with innocent innocence outside her house. A large shadow fell over her, and she looked up. There was a big man standing there.
"You have a USB cable sticking out of your head, did you know?" she was young, but knew USB cables didn't belong in a people's head.
"Mmm" the big man nodded. Apparently he was aware of the USB cable. Maybe he'd come to terms with it, because it didn't look like he was too upset about it anymore.
Inside the humble wood cutter's cottage, the humble wood cutter finished nailing the last board across the window. He repeated a saying he'd heard from his father, Woody the wood cutter, "When monsters are loose, not awesome." He wiped his brow and impressive, if suspiciously hairless, chest.
His beautiful wife said "It's good you checked Clara was safe inside."
Outside, Clara, for that indeed was the little girl's name, was teaching Casey how to play 'loves me, loves me not' near the well. Casey seemed to like pulling the petals off the flowers, as he did them a fist-full at a time.
"Hmmp" he grunted happily, as he dropped the remaining half of the flower petals down the well. Clara sighed theatrically, as five year olds are wont to do, and copied her mother's hands-on-hips pose.
"Well? Now what are you going to throw down the well?" she wanted to know. Casey looked around, and then back at Clara. He'd had a thought. "Mmm-mmm" he signified.
Back inside, the humble wood cutter had a paroxysm of horror cross his chiselled visage "But I thought you checked on Clara..."
The pair looked at each other in a shared moment of panic, before running up the beautiful and humbly carved wooden stairs.
Meanwhile, outside, in a scene reminiscent of a Mythbuster episode, Clara was sitting on one end of a humble wooden see-saw (as they were known locally) demanding of Casey "Sit down!"
Casey was unsure. He wasn't one hundred percent certain, but he was pretty sure the see-saw might not work as advertised with himself on the other side. Mathematical tables of parabolas, and ICBMs flashed fleetingly through his brain. He tried to operate the garden toy by pushing it down. Clara wasn't satisfied with this half-handed approach. She wanted the full monty.
"Sit Down!" she demanded again.
Casey wasn't certain how to deal with women in general, and miniature ones seemed to be just more concentrated. He sat down. The boys (and girl) from Mythbusters would have been pleased with the result.
It all worked just the way the myth said it would. Casey hit the ground with a thud. Clara's face showed exhilaration on her way up. All the way up. She achieved free fall without the use of a staging rocket. The other end of the see-saw was still going 'bwa-dwoing-a-dwoing-a-dwong-ong-ong' as she sailed serenely overhead towards the upper window of the nearby humble wooden cottage.
In a scene that would have been difficult to film in an era before CGI animation, Clara flew neatly through the open window to bounce onto her own bed. Just in time for her parents to burst in, and see her resting comfortably.
"Awesome" said the humble wood cutter, as his wife held his smooth chest close.
-o0o-
Casey roamed the rest of the day. He wasn't comfortable around people, and from what he'd seen so far, people weren't comfortable around him. There'd been some pointing and screaming. More that average pointing-and-screaming he felt anyways.
It was dark as he ghosted through the forbidding forest. For a large man with a USB dongle dangling from his dome, he moved quietly. The cottage ahead had no lights. He thought he might be able to rest in there.
The cottage was dark because the occupant inside was blind. It's a funny thing, but blind people seem to forget about turning on the lights after dark. A bit of an inconvenience for unannounced guests.
And yet, in this case a popular one. As the local resident tragic 'blind man,' the blind man had perpetuated this by opening the door to his semi frequent evening visits by the young ladies of the nearby village of Echoparkberg by asking confidently if they were his missing true love.
"Hello Diane."
Normally, this would be responded to by the stream of healthy young ladies enquiring after the welfare of this tragic and lonely man. Most of them seemed to be compelled to stay, sometimes for up to eight hours at a time, to make sure he was safe for the night. Their unspoken agreement was, if the light was on he 'had company.'
On this night however, his "Hello Diane" had a very different reply to the somewhat slightly frequent "Oh, you poor man."
*Grunt*
He put his hand out, expecting a feminine shoulder to caress and guide inside, instead he hit a solid chest. "My, but you're a tall one. Come in, my dear, I didn't catch your name."
"Mmmm."
"I'm sorry, what was that again?"
"Mmmm."
The blind man realised three things. One, the large chest was distinctly masculine, and two, so was the voice. Unless one of the Transburbankylvanian women's Olympic swim (or less likely, weight lifting) team had popped by for coffee, his visitor was a 'he.'
Third, he seemed to be slightly inarticulate.
His visitor must be a mute. "You must have been the biggest one in your class."
As he said the word 'class,' he wondered briefly if he was in the presence of one of his former students, possibly the least garrulous man he'd ever met, and a large man too. The rest of the class had nicknamed him 'agent Frankenstein.' The one he had had to fail. Twice. In the end, this agent's best method of seduction involved pharmaceutical grade tranquilizers and C4.
Best see if he could salvage something of the evening by getting rid of his visitor as soon as possible. There was still a possibility of one of the local 'Diane's' checking on him later...
Fortunately, he happened to have some soup on the stove. Bravo.
"What an irony this is, me a poor blind man, starved of company. And you a mute... An incredibly big mute..." he double checked by thumping where he thought the shoulder should be. Nope, it was higher still. "Share some of my simple soup with me, and I'll teach you the proper way to drink a martini."
The soup was a disaster.
Casey was starving. He quite literally couldn't recall his last meal – it had been rehydrated rations, not sure what, eaten hurriedly while in the field somewhere in Butphuqistan before he'd been wounded.
Casey found a crude bowl, and held it out. What soup that did land in the bowl, not a lot for some reason, smelled wonderful. Sadly, most of the very hot soup landed in Casey's lap. Painfully. The soup he did have was painfully hot in another way. Perhaps being blind, the blind man had mistaken Paprika for a different spice. Or else had mistaken the 'half-teaspoon' measure for 'cup.'
The martini didn't go well either. When the glasses were 'tinged' together, instead of a musical 'ting,' Casey's glass reduced itself to just the stem. Even the olives were gone.
Casey decided it was time to go. When the blind man produced two cigars, Casey eyed him with suspicion. With the way things had gone so far this evening, he'd end up with something on fire.
A little while after Casey fled into the night, there was a shy knock at the door to the blind man's door.
"Hello Diane" came his reply as he opened the door with a smile.
"Oh, you poor man, is there some way..." came the much more pleasant feminine voice. And it smelled as if she'd brought food. Something more substantial than soup, at least.
'I've still got it' thought the blind man. "Espresso?"
-o0o-
Meanwhile, back in town, Chuck and Sarah were on a stake-out. Much to Chuck's disappointment, his 'stake-out' mix was reduced to Orinoco Flow over and over. And over.
Morgan at least saved the day with some Chinese take-out. Sui Mai and Char Siew Bao. It was like he had a black belt in meal recommendations for less than one hundred and thirty seven wepdiggies, forty six aypees, the current exchange rate to ten dollars in a currency Chuck was more familiar with.
Sarah was once again revealing what Morgan had referred to as her 'aversion to clothing,' by wearing a short skirted outfit with a low neckline. Red, or salmon. It rather reminded Chuck of a Bavarian themed restaurant that was popular with some of the male students when he went to university. All she needed was the ridiculous little hot dog necklace. Chuck had enjoyed it, but his roommate had dated one of the girls, said she complained that the uniform smelled of sausage.
But with Sarah wearing the simulacra, the nostalgia returned. They'd been a little awkward with each other since the kiss. And things had conspired to occupy their time in such a way that they'd had to be professional, work together and not talk about it.
While she waited in the laneway with him, smelling of a light and nice perfume / shampoo mixture. And dressed ... well, the way she always seemed to always dress.
She was driving him nuts.
"I've got movement" she whispered. Adding goose bumps to his current list of troubles.
There, a monstrous shadow lurched, showing a figure coming up the cobbled street, seeming to follow the music of Enya. Chuck nodded to Morgan across the street, who checked that the line running up to the net overhead was ready to be released.
A simple plan, that couldn't possibly go wrong.
Naturally, it went wrong shortly after Chuck yelled "Now!" when Morgan yanked on the quick release knot, and turned it into something resembling a knot favoured by Gordias of legend, and butter fingered failed boy scouts everywhere.
When Chuck, not at that time realising that the net was still safely overhead and well out danger of entangling anyone, rushed at Casey, the cable from his iPhone was yanked out of the speakers playing that same damned song over and over. Casey realised it was a trap when the music stopped, and brought him to awareness of the situation. That, and Chuck bouncing off him and falling down onto the cobble stones.
"Mmmm!" wasn't a yummy sound this time. It was a little menacing.
Chuck in particular thought so, since those huge paws were reaching out for the familiar territory of his neck. Again. Annnd here we go with the bouncing. Again. Chuck felt that they should have been past this by now.
Sarah saved the day. With a growl that put the fear of Sarah into both Chuck and Morgan, and frankly gave Casey pause, she reached into somewhere intimate in her clothes and flung a knife at the knot Morgan still had his fingers worrying at.
With a metallic wiffling sound the knife flew straight at the knot in a manner that should have been filmed lovingly in slow motion and severed the knot, millimetres from Morgan's fingers.
Morgan looked at the severed knot, his fingers and the knife.
"Uh..."
All his fingers still seemed to be there. The cargo net fell as advertised, if a trifle late, down over Casey. And Chuck.
In the ensuing scuffle, Casey ended up on the bottom of the pile, along with Chuck under the net. In some ways, this made a pleasant change for Chuck, as back in high school, he'd usually been the one at the bottom of the pile. Although cargo nets were rarely an option in the school yard. At least the schools Chuck had attended.
As he was trussed and twisted up in the net, he was unable to reach the syringe in his pocket to sedate Casey. Casey was having his own troubles with the net. Its tangling properties were preventing him from strangling the nearest moron, and he was feeling rather vexed about that.
"Gnaaarrrh!"
That was when Sarah added her body to the mix. Chuck found himself with his face between Casey's and Sarah's. While he wanted to look at Sarah's, after all hers was prettier than Casey's, Casey had a certain je ne sais quoi that made Chuck look at him rather than her.
Even when he felt her hand inside his pocket, reaching for the syringe.
After she got the syringe out, it was fairly straight forward. Chuck was finally able to look at Sarah, rather than Casey. They shared a smile.
Just in time for Morgan to jump onto the pile.
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