A/N A bit more Chuck this time around, filling in some of the gaps left from me rearranging the plot of the movie. Some classic bits revised just a little.
Thanks to fezzywhigg, who suggested the title for the previous chapter.
Sasha sat outside the sandwich shop, eating her lunch while waiting for her target to reappear. As instructed, she'd ordered the best seller in order to avoid being noticed. The A-plus-plus had to be a better sandwich but the price was off-putting, and she allowed herself to be put off. Instead she selected something called the Harry, not bad, but the tang was a little harsh.
She was wiping her mouth yet again when her subject emerged, and she threw the napkin to join its fellows on the floor as she picked up her phone. "He's finished his lunch."
She watched as he and his blonde strumpet went back to his car, hand in hand. Hmp. She started her car and waited for his to pull out and start moving toward the exit lane. She pulled in a couple of cars back.
Sarah noticed the car, finally. There had to be one somewhere, but she hadn't noticed anything following them in, other than the first two. Chuck had mentioned Poppy's openly, though, so maybe someone from the other team got there ahead of them. It didn't matter much. Not as much as ditching this tail now. "Chuck?"
"Yeah?"
"Isn't your friend Morgan working today?"
"Within a very wide definition of 'working', but yeah, he is. Right over there." He started to point at the store across the lot.
Sarah caught his hand before it could become visible to anyone outside the car. "Why don't we go over there and prove to him that I'm real?"
"But we're already in the exit lane," said Chuck. "We'll have to go all the way around to get back in."
Sarah looked behind them. "I don't see anyone coming. If you go now you can cut across these empty lanes back into the entrance."
"Okay, but if we get arrested and go to Sing-Sing on a moving violation, I'm blaming it on you."
"Go ahead. What did you say in the sandwich place? 'Have I seen me?' Yes, I have. Feminine wiles are a powerful thing. No jury would convict you."
He gave her his trademark grin again. "Y'know, you're right, you evil seductress, you."
Nope, that's three cars back. "Turn. Now."
Chuck took refuge in her confidence. "Okay, I'm turning."
"Where the hell is he going?" said Rye, watching Chuck's car going the other way. "Is he trying to blow our cover?"
"Doubt it," said Anna. "Probably just checking six. With a car. I think it's clever." She swallowed her bite of tuna sandwich. Looking in her mirror she didn't see any other cars making any move to pull out after them. "Get in the next lane, nice and normal. We can cover that lane, and get back in more quickly to boot."
Right before the light turned green his car suddenly pulled out of the exit lane, crossed two other lanes illegally, and headed back into the lot. "Goddammit," Sasha snapped into her phone, as the bodyguards' car pulled over to block the next lanes as well. "He foxed me." Foxed them all, but the other car could get back in much more easily. She had to exit now, anything else would blow her cover all to hell. She tried to keep an eye on his vehicle as she was forced into the traffic stream going in the wrong direction. "Where the hell is he going?"
"Welcome to the Buy More," said Chuck, waving a hand in front of the doors so the sensor would pick it up and open them for her. He made it look like a bow.
She laughed. "I'm honored," she said as she walked into the air conditioning.
"You shouldn't be," said Chuck, following. "They should have a sign, 'abandon all hope, ye who enter here'. I know they have one over the employee entrance."
"Buy More employees are a rare breed," said Sarah.
"Thank God." He gestured expansively. "So, my home away from home. Shoppers, eagerly not buying. Greenshirts, eagerly not helping, and my own little domain, the Nerd Herd desk, also full of helpers-"
"Also eagerly not helping?"
"You've worked here before?"
"There he is, there he is," shouted someone shrilly. "Chuck, the master of the cell phone, here to help us on the day off he had absolutely no business taking." The voice got louder but no less annoyingly shrill as the speaker approached, a tall thin man with dark skin, long black hair and an attempt at a beard. He was dressed in the standard Nerd Herder uniform which Chuck rather conspicuously was not.
Chuck put his arm protectively around Sarah's shoulders. "Actually, Lester..."
"Stop trying to hide behind that poor but deeply attractive young lady. You have a customer who needs you." Lester turned to the person who had followed him from the desk, since her phone was in his hand. "Allow me to apologize for my comrade's current state of deshabille, madame, but rest assured he is one of my best men when it comes to phones."
"I'm your boss," said Chuck.
"You're out of uniform," said Lester. He held out the phone. "Just save the day, with your usual aplomb, and I might be minded to forgive you."
Chuck noticed the make and model of the phone and already knew what the problem was likely to be. "The Intellicell, huh? Battery pops out all the time?" When the customer nodded, he reached out and plucked the tiny screwdriver from Lester's pocket protector.
"That's rude," shouted the thin man.
"Let me just do this, and this, and tighten this, and then this, and you're done." Chuck handed the phone back to its panicking owner. "Thank you for your patronage."
"Give me that," said Lester, grabbing his screwdriver out of Chuck's hand as the customer took her phone and fled. "How dare you touch another man's tool." He stalked away, the image of outrage.
"It's like a circus in here," said Sarah.
"Circus, yeah, that's another word for it," said Chuck with a nod. "I would have gone for Hell, myself." He reached out and caught a greenshirt in mid-flight. "Have you seen Morgan, Fernando?"
"Try the Cage."
"He hates the Cage," said Chuck, and he explained to Sarah, "Computers give him a rash."
Fernando shrugged. "Yeah, but he also thinks no one would look for him there." He pulled free and resumed his escape from anything resembling work.
"You know, that actually makes sense." He guided Sarah towards the back of the store.
"More sense than working in an electronics store when computers give you a rash," said Sarah.
"He also thinks he has to root for the plane otherwise it'll fall out of the sky." Which was neither fair nor sensible but at least it was consistent.
"So he's like a crazy person?"
"Like," said Chuck. "It's good to have goals."
Washington DC...
Daniel Shaw was just lifting his fresh cup of hot coffee to his lips when a loud voice behind him said, "Good afternoon, Daniel."
Shaw was of course too well-trained and simply too stiff to show any overt sign of surprise when his hated boss suddenly spoke practically in his ear. The coffee barely sloshed at all in the cup, but it was quite near to his lip and very hot. "Ah," he said, spilling his coffee on the table in spite of himself.
"That looked painful," observed Graham calmly. "My apologies."
Shaw wiped his sore lip and fingers with a napkin. "Nothing you did, sir. Just an accident of timing. I didn't know you were behind me."
"Don't be so sure about that," said Graham, with a slight smile. "Perhaps I'm well in front of you and you're simply facing the wrong way."
Shaw blinked once. "Yes, sir."
Graham started to step away, and stopped. "Oh, by the way." He reached into his pocket. "I got this in the mail, a coupon at the Buy More with any cell phone repair. I don't shop there, but I know you do." He handed it over, and walked away. "Hopefully it will be of use to you."
"Morgan?" called Chuck as he led his guest into the back room. Technically she wasn't supposed to be there, but really neither should half of the employees. In spite of the questioning tone of his voice, he went straight to the Cage, as Fernando had suggested.
Morgan's voice floated to them from that direction. "Chuck?"
When they reached the Cage, they saw Morgan inside, crawling awkwardly out from under a workbench, phone clutched in one hand. "What are you doing under there?"
"Angry Birds, what else? What did you think I was gonna play, Blitz?"
"Actually, Morgan, I was hoping you might try working for a change."
"Oh, come on, Chuck, nobody works at the Buy More."
The door to the back room slammed open. "GRIMES!"
Morgan winced. "Except him."
A short-well, shorter than Chuck, but who wasn't?-bald man with Asian features and a ferocious scowl marched up to the Cage. "I knew if I followed Chuck I'd find you, slacker."
"Hey, he's no slacker, Harry," said Chuck. "He's been trapped in the cage. He had to call me on my day off to get him out."
"Yeah, sorry about that, Chuck," said Morgan, playing along.
Harry looked suspicious, which wasn't at all different from how he looked the rest of the time. "Why not call the Nerd Herd desk? It's your cage."
"You know as well as I do that Jeff and Lester would just stand here and throw things."
Nope, Harry could not argue that point. He turned to his subordinate. "You could have called the store."
"I don't have the number," said Morgan. "What? I work here, I don't call here."
Harry turned away, snarling, coming face to face with Sarah. "What's this civilian doing back here?"
"She's a friend of mine, Harry," said Chuck, hovering protectively. "I was showing her some of the sights of LA when Morgan called."
Harry got all up in his face. As 'up' as he could, anyway, given the height difference. "This isn't LA, Chuck. This is the Buy More!"
"I...wasn't aware we had our own zip code."
"It's not a place, it's a state of mind." He pointed back at Sarah. "Get her out of my mind, Chuck!"
Behind him, Sarah smothered a laugh. Chuck took it as a gift. "Sure thing, Harry. Come on, you guys."
Morgan stopped when Harry put a hand on his chest. "Get back to work, Grimes."
Morgan shrugged. "Sure, my shift's up in like, five minutes, anyway."
Harry glared at him. "I can arrange to make them a very busy five minutes."
Morgan glared back. "They like me better than you, Harry."
Harry stomped away, and Morgan grinned. "Not for much longer," Chuck said. "He's gonna take it out on everyone else, you know that.."
Morgan stopped grinning. "So, uh, rematch?" He looked at Sarah. "Hello, lady."
"Her name is Sarah, Morgan," said Chuck. "Sarah Walker. And between the three of us I'm sure you've figured out that his name is Morgan Grimes."
"She's real," said Morgan, too amazed to offer his hand for Sarah to shake. He looked at Chuck. "She's really real."
"I'm thinking one of us ought to be insulted," said Sarah. She looked at Chuck and pointed to the door.
Chuck pointed to the rear exit, and they all followed his lead.
"Please, please, no insult meant," said Morgan, bringing up the rear. "It's just that after what that bitch harpy from Hell did to him, I knew it would take an angel to get my guy here back in the game. If there were any of those around here I figured they'd be in the city of angels, not one of the suburbs thereof."
"Ellie had me at the airport to hook me up with one of her friends," said Chuck. "She didn't show."
"I didn't know angels needed runways, but what do I know?" said Morgan. "Her loss, our gain."
Chuck took Sarah's hand as they went down the steps and around to the front of the building. "I'm not sharing."
"Yours," said Morgan. "I meant your gain."
"I'm sure you did." Chuck clicked the button that unlocked the doors to his sister's car.
Morgan sped up. "I call-"
"Back seat," said Chuck.
"That's right," said Morgan, changing his path. "I call back seat."
"I've got them," said Sasha into her phone. "I had to go the long way around, but I got back in, and spotted their watchers. He was in the Buy More."
"I just lost a nickel, Banachek," said Decker. "I'm not happy."
"I have a tracker on their car."
"I'm a little bit happier."
"You'll have to pick me up, I'm sure this car is burned by now. I'm in the back, behind the Large Mart."
Harry Tang was having a bad day, and it was all Morgan Grimes' fault. He was sure of it. And Chuck's fault too, for shielding him, but Harry had no authority over the Herd. Wait until he was the assistant manager, though. There would be some changes made then!
He mounted a ladder to scan the store, his domain. He didn't see Bartowski or that blonde. Maybe they went out the back. That was a restricted area.
He came down off the ladder and went back into the back room. No one there, as expected. Typical of those losers to threaten the Buy More's insurance premiums like that.
He spotted Morgan's bicycle. And smiled.
Gruber left the van as Sasha got in, to recycle the car. "Give me what you got," said Decker. "I want to hear these codes."
Sasha handed him her phone, so he could copy her recordings into the computer. Once he was done he tossed the phone back to her as he called up the first file. "You'll have to make it loud at the beginning, if you want to hear him," she said.
Decker increased the volume, and clicked play.
Harry Tang wrestled Morgan Grimes' bicycle out the back door and down the stairs, heading for the dumpster. A van came out from behind the Large Mart into the alley between the two stores. As it passed a loud voice rang out from inside. "There's my lover boy!"
Harry Tang turned to look at the van. "Poppy?"
A/N2 I don't mind the classic Chuck bits but I get tired of the same old lines over and over. I have to think about what to do with the 'flossing' line.
Suggestions are welcome. All comments welcome.
