A/N Thanks again to the reviewers. I definitely appreciate all the support, as well as the requests/constructive criticism. We've now gotten to the second half of the Battle for BuyMoria, which means confronting Shaw (guess it's not a spoiler now to point out that he's the bad guy?). I've combined the next two chapters into one, which means that (barring any more major revisions-or inspirations from reviewers) that there will be two lengthy chapters and one lengthier epilogue to go. Enjoy.
I don't own Chuck. Or gummy bears (it'll make sense later).
Ch. 10 Chuck versus the Magnet
Standing on the roofs of Underpants, Etc., Chuck looked down at the Reaper control to his wrist computer. He then fed the main video feed to the heads up display on the SEAL team helmets. As neither he nor Sarah had such a helmet, the two of them monitored the video feed from Chuck's wrist computer. It was readily apparent that the Ring soldiers had not anticipated the loss of communications as they were still in disarray from the EMP pulse.
Just as Sarah said, "There goes our guy" as Shaw jumped through the window into the OO, the Reaper video signal went dark. Chuck started quickly typing away at his computer. "The Reaper has been shut down," he said while frowning at the information on the small screen strapped to his wrist. "I can override it, but it will take me a few minutes."
Sarah simply shook her head. "We move forward with the plan. We zip down to the Orange Orange roof and capture or kill whoever just went into my shop. The Reaper surveillance would be nice, but it is not necessary at this stage of the operation. Trust me, once this is over I'll be finding out who shut down our eyes in the sky and it won't be a pleasant conversation. There aren't many people with the access to remotely shut down that bird. I'll find who did this to us."
Through their ear buds, they heard Mancuso give the heads up and then the attack command. An instant later, they heard the .50 incendiary round from the sniper rifle detonate the Ring recoilless rifle ammunition. After the explosion, they could hear the sounds of the rounds being fired by the SEAL teams striking the vehicles near the remaining Ring troops, but no sound from the silenced weapons or from the highly trained specwar operators.
Unsure of whether the mercenaries were actually dead or were just playing possum, O'Neil rode the zipline down to the roof of the OO. He skirted to the edge of the building until he was in position to provide cover fire once Sarah and Chuck made their entrance into the store. Despite Chuck's enhanced skills with the Intersect 2.0, Sarah was still uncomfortable with the fact that he would be alone during his zipline over the parking lot of the Plaza. He would be by himself as he went through the heart of what was, for all intents and purposes, a combat zone.
Sarah stepped to the side to allow Chuck to get to the edge of the roof and grab the zipline. Just as he looped the handle over the piton rope, Chuck happened to glance down. "Oh crap," he murmured, although it was still loud enough for Sarah to hear him. "So high. This roof has got to be way higher than the BuyMore roof."
"You did the jump from the BuyMore roof for me, Chuck. Now you need to do this for Casey," Sarah told him in a calm, confident voice. For a moment, Sarah was utterly distracted by a wayward mental image of Chuck dressed as an Olympic high diver atop a 10 meter platform. After making a mental note to buy Chuck a speedo when this was all said and done, Sarah refocused on the mission at hand. "Besides, this should be a piece of cake after jumping out of an aircraft from 30,000 feet."
"Right. Casey. We've got to get down there and save Casey," Chuck said with slightly more confidence. Sarah could see Chuck psyching himself up, working to overcome his fear of heights in order to save his friend. Although he was working hard at not spiraling out of control, one of his knees slightly buckled as he stepped to the very edge. That little wobble let Sarah know that, despite the capabilities of the Intersect 2.0, her Chuck was still in there. The Intersect 2.0 was still dependent on Chuck's emotional state to function properly, and Chuck's fear of heights made him plenty emotional. Then again, his fall from the Grand Embassador balcony strapped to a chair with Casey while trying to save Sugar Bear's girlfriend probably didn't help. Nor did his Tarzan impersonation to save her from Sasha Banichek. Or when he tried to use the zipline at the training facility in Prague…hmm, best not to think about Prague.
Sarah watched as Chuck's attention shifted to the zipline. She saw the momentary shift in Chuck's posture as the flash showed Chuck exactly what he needed to do. While Casey was an excellent partner, Sarah doubted that he would be able to pick up that slight tell from Chuck. Sarah was becoming an expert on all things Chuck, although there were so many more details to learn. Hopefully she would one day learn them all- maybe after fifty years or so of close study. Focus on the mission, Walker.
Sarah shifted her attention from Chuck to the parking lot below. She brought the MP5 submachine gun up to her shoulder as Chuck launched himself down the line. She let out a relieved sigh when Chuck landed on the OO roof with no sign of movement from the Ring mercenaries. She swung the sling for the MP5 over her head and shifted the gun to her back as she threw her own zipline handle over the cord and quickly followed after Chuck. The thought that he was down near the enemy while she was beyond arm's reach turned out to be more unnerving than watching him zipline down in the first place.
After landing on the roof, she reached into the backpack she was carrying to withdraw two coils of rope, which she secured to different points on the air handler housing. Playing out the rope, she made her way over to the edge where Chuck and O'Neil were peeking out from over top of the mangled front door. She dropped one coil at Chuck's feet, while dropping the second a couple feet to his left.
While the zip lining had been nerve-wracking for her (at least when Chuck had been apart from her), the next stage in their assault was downright terrifying. Again, it was not fear for her own safety, but the degree to which Chuck would be exposed to danger. The plan called for the two of them to repel into the store through the opening in the front picture window. With the Reaper offline, they were going in blind with a known hostile somewhere on the inside.
Sarah and Chuck lined up shoulder to shoulder on the lip of the roof, facing back over the shop's roof. On her three count, they pushed off and swung their bodies through the open window and into the yogurt shop. The good news was that they hadn't been shot at by the Ring mercenaries while repelling. The bad news was that Murphy's Law decided to make its presence known.
As Sarah swung through the window, she came face to face with the electrical wire that had been swaying back and forth since before Casey retreated down into Castle. Letting go of the rope and twisting her body to avoid being electrocuted, Sarah was off balance as she landed on the floor. The spot she landed on was covered in melted yogurt, which made a difficult, unbalanced landing impossible. The sound of her crashing to the ground and getting the wind knocked out of her was enough to draw Chuck's attention to her, and away from the threat inside the shop.
Chuck had landed smoothly, and quickly drawn his tranq gun, but just as quickly was distracted by his concern that Sarah had been hurt. He had started to see some movement from behind the counter, but couldn't tear his eyes away from Sarah as he had to be sure that she was ok.
"Still not willing to use a real gun, huh Chuck?"
"Shaw," Chuck exclaims, stunned at the identity of the leader of the Ring attack. "Daniel, it doesn't have to be like this."
"Take a look around Chuck. This is real life. Not everybody gets the fairytale ending-in fact most people don't. After what they did to my Eve, no one in the CIA deserves a happy ending. Especially not Sarah Walker, not after she killed my wife. You get to watch her die Chuck. Maybe you will be like me and every time you go to sleep you will see the image of her dying over and over again."
"Now, drop the toy gun and hands out at your side. With the retinal scanner out of commission, I'm going to need you to override the system so that I can get into Castle. Shame you boasted to me about having read the manual from cover to cover, isn't it."
Even with his enhanced skills from the Intersect, Chuck had been so concerned when he heard Sarah slam into the floor during their breach into the Orange Orange that Shaw had been able to get close enough to Chuck that Shaw was able to use his left hand to knock the tranquilizer gun out of Chuck's hand. Shaw quickly followed that blow with a punch to Chuck's stomach that left him winded and doubled over. Through his pain, Chuck was able to pivot on his left foot and swing backwards with his right arm, driving his elbow into Shaw's nose.
Despite his nonviolent nature, Chuck was secretly thrilled to hear the crack that signaled Shaw's nose shattering. Shaw's face being a bloody mess didn't stop him from swiping the back of Chuck's knees sending him to the floor. Shaw followed the kick with a right cross to the back of Chuck's head, causing Chuck to flop to the ground with his hands splayed out to the sides. Chuck then quickly snatched up the object that had been on the floor next to where his right hand landed. From his prone position on the floor, he threw it at Shaw, striking him in the forehead.
"I've been trained in fifteen different martial arts styles, and none of them recommended using a gummy bear as a weapon," Shaw said derisively.
"That's because its a condiment, not a weapon," Chuck responded with a shrug. "You could even call it a magnet."
Shaw's eyes went wide as he started to turn to look at the floor behind him where Sarah had lain immobile since swinging through the window. Only she wasn't lying on the floor unconscious from electrocution as he had thought.
"Looks like you don't get your happy ending either Shaw," Sarah said as she fired twice into Shaw's back, her Smith & Wesson shining in the strobe lighting within the shop. As Shaw lay motionless face down on the floor, Sarah looked at Chuck to make sure that he wasn't hurt. She saw Chuck with a stunned expression, his eyes tracking back and forth between Shaw and the gun in her hand still pointed at the body lying on the floor.
At first, Sarah was confused over the shock and fear in Chuck's expression. Her eyes then narrowed and the blue color became like ice as she realized that Chuck was thinking back to her shooting Lt. Mauser in the Christmas tree lot not far from where they were currently standing. Back then Sarah had willingly committed murder to protect Chuck, only learning later that he had seen the whole thing-seen, but had not heard the threats that Mauser had made towards Chuck and his family. She had known without a doubt that killing the surrendering Mauser was the only way to keep Chuck, Ellie and Devon safe.
Sarah had willingly sacrificed a piece of her soul when she had pulled the trigger on Mauser. She had sacrificed other pieces of her soul in earlier, similar although less worthy, justifications during her career with the CIA and even during her cons with her father Jack. Despite believing that she was not an inherently good enough person to be worthy of a man such as Chuck, she had, without hesitation, embraced evil in order to protect Chuck, Ellie and Awesome.
Before the shooting of Mauser Sarah had told Chuck that she would do whatever it took to make sure that he was protected. Yet when he saw her doing what had to be done to keep him and his loved ones safe, he had freaked out and pushed her away. It had hurt her then, and still rankled her. She had acknowledged to herself that it would have been better for her to have told him the truth straight out, instead of the white lie that she had thought would protect Chuck's naivete, and try to keep Chuck from realizing that he was falling for the CIA's most effective assassin.
Even now she feared, in that dark corner of her mind, that one day the inherent goodness in Chuck-the trait that had convinced Bryce that Chuck was the only person who was both capable of handling the Intersect and decent enough not to be corrupted by access to such power-would make him realize that her sins from her childhood magnified by the horrors she had perpetrated as a CIA operative made her unworthy of the love of such a man.
For the moment, however, her frustration with Chuck overwhelmed her self-doubt, "He's not dead! He was wearing a vest. Even without the Intersect you should have been able to spot that."
"A…a vest?" Chuck questioned in a quavering voice as he stared at the inert body lying at his feet.
"Yes, a vest," Sarah ground out between clenched teeth. For a scary smart guy, Chuck can certainly be a complete idiot at times. She holstered her trusty Smith & Wesson while simultaneously pulling out her tranq gun. She proceeded to shoot Shaw in the ass so that he would stay unconscious for the next fifteen to twenty minutes. She tilted her head to the side as she contemplated the gun in her hand. Before working with Chuck, she had rarely used tranquilizers, except for those times when she would slip a little something into the drink of a mark. Back then, whenever she drew a gun the person on the other end wound up dead. Now she never headed out on a mission without carrying a tranq gun.
Straightening up, she looked down at Shaw and shot him twice more in his butt for good measure. She then secured his hands and feet with zip ties, while putting his boots, belt, watch and all items from his pockets into a bag to be thoroughly examined by an NSA tech. She wanted to be sure that he didn't have any knives or toys that could help him try to escape.
"Three darts, Agent Walker," Chuck questioned with a glimmer in his eye.
"He used to smirk- a lot," Sarah replied with a one armed shrug. "And I hate smirkers."
Struggling to keep a straight face (honestly, was there anyone who had liked Shaw-besides Shaw himself?), Chuck nodded, "Duly noted."
As Sarah and Chuck walked back to the freezers and door to Castle, Sarah reached behind her back, snapping out her tranq gun and shot again without looking back, the dart striking Shaw right between the eyes.
"How do you do that?" Chuck asked with a lot of respect, and not a little bit of fear. Note to self: never get on Sarah's bad side.