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As of 15.11.11, I don't own Chuck (or any material referenced from popular culture) et al.
Chapter Eleven.
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The dust on the gummy bears left the tired and emotional mob cotton mouthed and desperately seeking refreshments. The sugar rush rushed past them and emphasised to tired part of tired and emotional. Actually, the 'emotional' bit received more than a bit of a boost too.
All in all, the aftermath of any feeding frenzy is never a pretty sight. The bodies lay scattered everywhere, some barely breathing, along with some half masticated but never domesticated gummy bears. It had been short, messy and violent.
To give some indication of the great gummy carnage that had occurred, imagine that at the height of the Roman Empire, the Roman proletariat might have sat down at the end of a hard days slog at empire building, just to catch up on the evenings news and sports, the sports segment of the days information as reported live from children's matinee at the Circus Maximus might have been relayed with the results: 'Lions fifteen, Christians nil.'
That would be assuming that the Romans had enough town heralds to make 'villa calls.' The (accurate) full time score reported above should also reflect the point that, on the whole, Christians are generally larger than gummy bears, and as such are far more filling.
The first of the bodies on the floor stirred, and somewhat like the coming zombie apocalypse, their utterances were a unified, hair raising call.
"..beeer..."
"..Beeeer..."
"..a white wine spritzer..."
"...beer..."
Fortunately, the larger part of the posse not involved in, what would be recorded in the annals as, The Great Gummy Bear Frenzy of 2011 found the survivors of the massacre and were able to restore some level of vitality with that life giving nectar.
The one idiot of Sub Continent-Transburbankylvanian extraction, who bleeted piteously for a wine cooler was wisely ignored.
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Sarah hovered over Chuck. Carina hovered over Casey. Morgan, observing the general consensus, found the only thing he could hover over was the computer, so he hovered over that.
The two men on the operating tables seemed to be doing a very good interpretation of a 'Corsican twins' twitching, eye rolling and muttering.
Twice each woman looked over at Morgan with unasked questions. At the fourth time Morgan shrugged, spread his hands and replied honestly "Unninno."
Beep
Option one "I am unsure at this time"
Option two "Perhaps you can check back with me later about this"
Option three "Why is it that you meander to the sound of a different bag pipe player"
"We can probably turn that off, if this goes well, we won't need it anymore" said Morgan, as he checked which phone had beeped.
Copied source file: 78% read the main computer screen.
"This is worse than waiting for the last episode of Downton Abbey to down-loa... not that I would download pirated material off the net..." Morgan filled in the easy companionable silence. The two women's hot glares filled the easy companionable silence even more, so much more, that Morgan felt comfortable not speaking any more.
Copied source file: 79%
Sarah wanted to run her fingers through Chuck's hair, but the cables plugged into his cap prevented that. She took on of his hands in hers.
As she lifted Chuck's right hand, Casey's right hand mirrored Chucks. Carina took the lone hand.
When the hand squeezed, both women smiled.
Copied source file: 80%
It was somewhere in the low nineties when the torch brandishing mob burst into the lab.
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By this stage and after a long, both time and distance wise, chase across Lower Transburbankylvania (a successful estate agent ploy implying that the prices and taxes charged in Upper Transburbankylvania and Encinograd Heights are wholly justified), even the police portion of the mob were tired and emotional as well.
Considering the lateness of the hour and the general condition of the posse, the mob found their way inside Castle with alarming ease. Again, for a former government Cold-War bunker, access was disturbingly easy for a large and angry hostile force. This time, the fine construction work of H. Tang Constructions was not to blame. Morgan really should have checked things properly after putting the cat out, but he was distracted by Carina turning up and all.
So, all in all, the group of spies and their assets (We will include Morgan in this but there is still some debate), the collective noun for which is a 'redaction,' were slightly surprised when the door burst open and roughly one hundred and fifty people tried to head down the stairs all at once. Not all of them made it uninjured by the stairs, or at least by the sudden stop ten feet below the top of the stairs. This gave time for Sarah and Carina to correctly surmise that the unannounced arrival of one hundred and fifty guests who had 'seen their lights were on and decided to pop by' was somehow Morgan's responsibility, and frankly added fuel to the debate regarding the including Morgan in on the redaction.
The famed and well respected Prussian Field Marshal, Helmuth von Moltke (the Elder) once recorded in his memoirs that 'No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.' Although, he probably wrote it in German. Sadly, the mob facing down Sarah and Carina had not studied their Moltke (the Elder) with more detail while in school. Or at least should have had a battle plan of some sort in mind before storming Castle.
Sarah and Carina on the other hand had studied their Moltke (the Elder), E.E. Milne and even some von Clausewitz.
The stand-off stood tense for ages. Both Sarah and Carina were eyeballing the armed mob to a stand still. The progress bar read 99% It was almost done. That, sadly, was when Morgan made his move.
He grabbed a stapler off the desk, flipped it open and held it to Chuck's neck. He totally knew how to use this...
"Next man moves, the nerd gets it!" he threatened threateningly.
Lesterovitch squealed "Eeeeee! Oh lordy, I think he serious!"
All eyes in the mob turned as one to Lesterovitch. He thought about life, the universe and everything for a moment...
"...Oh...right... sorry..." after what he felt was a long enough pause (it wasn't), he turned to Jefferski and asked "I thought you said these Bartowski's got all the hot women?"
"Yeah?..." said a distracted Jefferski.
"Well, these two look pretty angry. I mean really angry. Which is a kind of hot, I guess..."
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Lesterovitch tried to correct the women: "Isn't that supposed to be 'over my dead body?'"
There were two growled "No"s.
"Oh, I thought... well, things have sure changed... Is it just me or did someone turn up the air conditioning in here?"
"Copying process complete. Please wait..."
"Not the spinny wheely thing... not that now" Morgan showed he was still able to focus.
While Sarah and Carina were able to decimate large numbers on a manner that frankly should have been filmed in slow motion, soft focus and possibly involving a wind machine as well, two super agents could not stop all of the crowd from reaching the man on the operating table.
Rough hands yanked the cap off Chuck's noggin. It took two goes, but was successful after one of them undid the chin strap. Unseen or hear by the crowd, the spinny circle thing stopped spinning, and the computer said "Ta-da!"
Morgan and Chuck would under other circumstances have been very proud of that 'Ta-da!' as it had taken a combined effort of the pair of them to set that up. Using Morgan's Darth Vader (limited – even if Sarah pointed out that the edition number was a suspicious sixteen digits long, collectors edition) Voice Changer helmet, they had recorded Chuck saying the requisite line, and then filtered the result through another computer, tweaking the properties just a smidge. Imagine, if you will, the dark lord of the Sith, but voiced by either Chip, or Dale. Morgan really wanted to, at some later stage, re-record the whole of Lord Vader's lines from Empire Strikes Back using the same technology.
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"Put that moron down!" bellowed an unfamiliar voice. Morgan looked around, since he was the one most used to being called 'moron.'
It was Casey! Casey was sitting up.
The background noise in the lab dwindled to a dull roar. There were murmurings of:
"Who's that?"
"The monstrous one awakes"
"See? Told you he was the front man from Europe!"
"The six million wepdiggy man" (which grossly underestimated both Casey's value and the cost of the entire project for that matter).
"Just why should we put him down? You're next"
"Because I will rip each one of your heads off, and shit down your necks" roared Casey in a parade ground voice.
That put a damper on the festivities for a moment. Some of the braver ones (at the back) did some rough maths regarding that, but they felt he might be prepared to hold the ones with intact necks until it was time, so to speak.
Inspector Colt became aware that things might have gotten out of hand, just a little, and if they continued the way the looked like they wanted to continue, well, there would be a lot of paperwork. He hated paperwork, it gave him the heebie-jeebies.
"Well, that is an entirely different matter..." muttered Colt, overcoming his heebie-jeebies. And then said to Sarah "Your monster, he's good."
Morgan muttered "I thought using Chuck's overlay, that would give him a more eloquent mode of speech..."
"Yeah, well if I wanted to make them feel special and get in touch with my girly side and crap like that, I'll call you" growled Casey.
"Ok, actually about that I've got some self help booksss... shutting up now."
"Ladies and gentlemen..." actually Colt was pretty sure the crowd was all male, but like Lesterovitch, there were one or two he wasn't a hundred percent about so he allowed a fudge factor "Perhaps we should all adjourn to the Lumber Yard" he said naming the nearby gentleman's establishment that featured a nightly demonstration of the Polish national dance as well as a surprising number of non-structural and yet load bearing floor to ceiling poles for some reason, "For a little Chunky Monkey and some schnapps!" He felt that some demonstration of Poland's national dace by the all female review in what he was assured was national costume might ease the tension he and some of his men were feeling right now.
Once the mob had left the party to adjourn to the Dancing Pole club, Carina plastered herself against Casey. Sarah made sure Chuck was alright. When he opened his eyes, he found himself immersed in a desperate Sarah hug.
That was also when she proposed to him. Only it was more of an order, or demand, than the traditional on-bended-knee request for a hand (as well as the rest of the body) in marriage.
She took his slightly addled "...Um...?" as a yes.
Just as well too.
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