A/N: Moving right along.

Chapter 2:

Chuck managed to drag himself out of the hotel bed the next day at something approaching the time he and Walker Marine Salvage agreed upon via email. Just not the agreed upon time for him to wake up. His eyes opened almost to the minute when he was supposed to be showing up at the Marina, but due to his still extreme case of jetlag, Chuck staggered to the bathroom without looking at the alarm clock. After leisurely showering and fixing himself a pot of coffee with bottled water from the little mini refrigerator (His Roark Instruments travel pamphlet suggested against drinking the local water, even though 90-some-odd million filipinos seemed to drink it problem-free everyday.)

Chuck sat down with his laptop and checked his email. He shook his head in consternation. Right at the top of his inbox was a message from Bryce freaking Larkin! The man who had stolen his girlfriend and nearly succeeded at framing him for cheating. He scowled and resolved to delete the damn thing unread, until he spotted the attached file, and more importantly, the file format: .zrk.

It was far enough out of the ordinary that Bryce had sent him a freaking Zork file that he was intrigued in spite of himself.

He opened the attachment and grinned as a text window opened, with a familiar line of Zork narration. He hadn't played the old text-based game since Stanford, and he couldn't remember at first how he was supposed to vanquish the Troll. Chuck frowned and rested his chin on his fist like Rodin's the Thinker.

A banging on his hotel room door took him out of the moment. "Chuck Bartowski? Please don't be dead in there!"

Chuck frowned in confusion, and glanced at the bottom right corner of his laptop screen. "Oh, crap," he muttered, slammed the lid down and shoved his laptop into his messenger bag. "Sorry! Sorry, I overslept!" he said, raising his voice to carry through the heavy door. "I'll be right there."

"No hurry," the voice said. "Your company's paying us by the hour."

"Crap, crap!" Chuck said, stumbling over the desk chair and nearly landing on his laptop-bag. He managed to catch himself with an arm on the bed, bouncing off and forward, staggering to the door. Chuck whipped the door open.

"Hi," he said, and then his brain ground to a halt. A detail had escaped him in his rush to get to the door. The voice he'd heard had been a little muffled by the thickness of the door, but he should have been able to recognize it as a woman's voice. Somehow the possibility had never occurred to him. The possibility that the person pounding on his door demanding entry would be maybe a couple inches shy of six feet, blond, well muscled, tan, and quite possibly the prettiest woman he'd ever laid eyes on, had somehow never entered his brain. "Uh," was all that came out, when Chuck's brain lurched back into gear.

"Hey," she said. "I'm Sarah Walker, Walker Marine Salvage? You, uh... want to put some pants on? Maybe a shirt to go along with? I mean, not that you're not easy on the eyes, but... you go out on the water like that, you'll die of sunstroke."

Chuck scrunched his eyes closed, hoping to open them and realize this whole misadventure had been nothing but a bad dream, well except for the hot girl part. He'd had enough 'realized he was naked at school' dreams, that he couldn't discount the possibility, but then he opened his eyes and he was still standing there in his boxer-briefs, and she was staring at him, one eyebrow arched expectantly. He slammed the door in her face and dove for his pants.

Outside in the hall, Sarah laughed softly. "Well, that could have gone better," she said.

Chuck dressed hurriedly and opened the door again. Sarah was standing impatiently in the doorway, with her arms crossed. "Hi. Didn't mean to slam the door in your face," he said. "I'm Chuck. Sorry, I panicked."

Sarah frowned and furrowed her brow at that one. "You panicked because I saw you without your shirt on? This bodes poorly for you. When was the last time you went to the beach?" She jerked her head in the direction he remembered the elevators being the night before, and started walking. He had to lengthen his stride considerably to catch up, and she was already at the elevator with the call button lit up when he arrived.

"So? Beach?" she reminded him.

"I guess, wow... five or six years? I've been working a lot lately."

Sarah turned to stare incredulously at him while they waited for the elevator. "I thought Roark Industries was in LA?"

"Instruments," Chuck said. "And it is."

"And you haven't been to the beach in five years?"

The elevator dinged, and Chuck shrugged, sliding into the giant metal box. Saved by the bell. But she persisted. "Seriously? Why not?"

"That's a little personal, isn't it?" Chuck said.

Sarah arched an eyebrow. "Not really."

"Okay, let me say this a different way," he said. "That's a little personal."

She winced. "Oh, sorry." They rode down in silence the rest of the way. Sarah leaned her back against the far wall and watched him the whole ride down.

She lead the way to a beat up Jeep Wrangler, which seemed to be missing some important equipment, like both doors. There was a mess of netting, the purpose of which Chuck couldn't guess, some kind of fishing equipment (not fishing poles, but with enough fishhooks that he figured it out from context clues), an oxygen tank and some flippers, along with a heavy duty toolbox built-in back behind the seats. At second glance, he noticed that there was no back seat; it must have been removed at some point to make more room for whatever all that was for in the back. The only things that seemed like they were actually secured were the oxygen tank and the toolbox.

Sarah cocked her head, catching his eye through the passenger seat. "You getting in or what?"

Chuck nodded slowly, and slipped in beside her, hoping she wouldn't detect his sudden reluctance, but she spoke up almost as soon as she had shifted into reverse.

"May not look like much but she's got it where it counts, kid. I've made a lot of special modifications myself," Sarah said, head craned around as she drove backwards out of the hotel's parking garage and onto the street. The heat was somewhat oppressive, and he probably should have been taking in the sights of the city, but he was too busy staring at the woman sitting next to him.

"What? Do I have something in my teeth?" she said, while they waited for the light to change.

"That... what you just said. That's from Star Wars."

Sarah turned and looked at him, eyebrow quirked. "Yeah..." she said. "So?"

"Okay," he said. "Don't take this the wrong way, but will you marry me?"

She didn't miss a beat. "Nope," Sarah said with a grin, and hit the gas, plastering Chuck to the seat from the acceleration.

"I apologize!" he said fervently.

Sarah glanced at him quizzically, taking her eyes from the road, which didn't do anything nice for Chuck's blood pressure. "What're you sorry for?" she said with a frown, slamming on the brakes at a second stop light. "Wait, you weren't serious about the marriage proposal, were you? That happens all the time."

"No," Chuck said. "Of course not. What really?"

Sarah somehow managed to roll her eyes and not plow them into the back of an eighteen wheeler when she was distracted. The jeep accelerated around another slow moving vehicle, going briefly into the oncoming lane to do it. "No, not really," she said as she flicked the wheel back and swerved into the correct lane once more.

"Okay, then I'm sorry for whatever you want me to be sorry for?"

"Why do you keep apologizing? I'm not mad at- oh, do you think I'm mad about you answering the door in your boxers?"

Chuck tried not to choke on his tongue. "I thought we were just awkwardly going to avoid talking about it all week."

"Wow. I guess that must have been pretty embarrassing for you. Hey, look on the bright side. It could have been worse."

"Yeah," Chuck agreed, then blinked. "How exactly?"

"Well from my point of view," she explained, "I mean, I don't know you from Adam, you could have opened the door and been horribly obese, wearing an adult diaper and demanding that I change you, for all I knew." She sent the Jeep rocketing forward into traffic again.

"Ah..." Chuck said, checking to make sure his seatbelt was securely fastened. "Yes, I guess... that would have been worse. Hang on, that's alarmingly specific. I hope that hasn't happened to you."

"No, no, nothing like that," she laughed, "thankfully. I just have a very active imagination. It's a gift... and a curse."

"I can see that," Chuck said and then seized hold of the roll-bar which served as the Jeeps 'roof,' "Hatchamama!"

She laughed at his reaction to her death-turn, squealing around a corner and nearly going up on two wheels. "Anybody ever tell you you're cute when you're in fear for your life?"

"No!" he said, once the Jeep was 'safely' back on two wheels. They were still going far too fast and Sarah was zipping around traffic, laying on the horn when necessary, but never slowing down. "Absolutely not. Until today, I've never actually been in fear for my life, so it hasn't come up." He winced as they swerved around a slow moving truck holding what looked like a large number of chickens. He couldn't quite tell, it could have been feather pillows for all he knew, they moved by so quickly he had no time to focus on the vehicles they were passing. "Oh, god! Who taught you to drive?"

She shrugged. "My dad, who taught you to drive?"

"And you actually have a driver's license?"

"License? We don't need no stinkin' license," Sarah said, teeth gleaming in a crooked grin. "And relax, we're almost there."

She took a hand off the wheel to point out the marina from which Walker Marine Salvage was based, and Chuck cringed. "Hands at ten and two, please?" he said.

Sarah laughed again. He realized that she had a very nice laugh, but wasn't too thrilled with it being directed at him so much of the time.

The tires squealed slightly as they pulled into a parking spot. "See?" she said, "Safe and sound."

"I hope you don't drive the boat like that," Chuck said.

"Nah," Sarah said, "Dad's more of an old woman about that kind of thing than you are."

"Really?" Chuck said. "I'm an old woman because I think driving under a hundred miles an hour is maybe prudent?"

Sarah rolled her eyes, leading the way down the dock. "Please," she scoffed. "We barely got up to sixty-five. And Manila is like Miami, if you don't drive like a maniac you'll get flattened by somebody who is driving like a maniac."

"Oh so you admit you were driving like a maniac," Chuck shot back.

Sarah glared at him out the corner of her eye. "I can see talking to you is going to be some kind of pedantic argument all the time, isn't it."

"Semantic," Chuck corrected. "Pedantic is when you do it just to tick somebody off."

Sarah smirked. "I rest my case, Counselor. Here we are," she said, waving expansively. "Lisa's Revenge."

He resisted the urge to quote Star Wars back at her 'What a piece of junk,' while potentially a fitting description of the Lisa's Revenge, was not likely to help him win any friends, and though it might influence people, it probably wouldn't be in a direction he enjoyed. "It's certainly..." Chuck faltered trying to come up with a word that wasn't too insulting.

Sarah laughed instead of taking offense. "It's a piece of junk, you should have said," she grinned. "If you were going to try and base a relationship off Star Wars quotes, you should have quoted back at me. And it is a piece of junk. We named it after my mom, kind of a wistful type deal, you know, when the was what we thought was new? But then everything started breaking left and right, and we realized she was a temperamental bitch just like mom."

Chuck winced a little to hear Sarah talking about her mother like that. He wasn't exactly close to his own mother, but that didn't mean he wanted other people to be estranged from their parents. "So, you're not close, you and your mother," he finally said.

Sarah shrugged. "That's a little personal isn't it?"

Chuck winced to have his own words thrown back in his face. "Sorry. I know how that goes," he said, without thinking. "My mom ran out on us when I was nine."

Sarah blinked, and her expression shifted. She shrugged a second time. "Don't worry about it. And yeah, I guess you could say my relationships with my mom is... a little complicated."

"Should we... ask permission to come aboard first or?"

Sarah shook her head in hopefully feigned exasperation, grabbed him by the sleeve and dragged him up a boarding ramp made out of a thin sheet of plywood.

The Lisa's Revenge was about forty-five or fifty feet long, with a raised housey-looking bit toward the front. There was what looked like a crane toward the back. Aft, wasn't that the aft of the boat? Chuck didn't know much about boats other than that there usually was a wheel that steered them, somewhere.

Sarah went right back past him back onto the dock, and Chuck turned to follow. She put a hand up to stop him. "No, stay on the ship, dummy. I'm just untying the mooring lines."

She ran up to the front of the boat. He didn't know what they called the front of the boat, if there was a phrase like aft, for fronts of boats.

He dug out his phone and hit up google while Sarah undid the mooring lines. Chuck was reading away when she returned. "Huh," she said. "You have a satellite phone or something? I get lousy reception out here at the marina."

"Huh?" Chuck said, looking up in time to see Sarah's eyes roll, and then narrow.

"What kind of phone is that?"

"Oh, I made it myself," Chuck explained on for a while, with Sarah's eyes glazing over a little more with every passing second. "I got tired of my friends spilling grape soda on my phones and ruining them, so I made one that's water-proof. Shock-proof, dust-proof, bulletproof—had a lot of fun testing that part out—"

Sarah blinked and looked at the phone more intently. "Bulletproof?"

"Well, not completely, but it'll stop most pistol rounds and keep on ticking," he said with a fair amount of pride.

"Oh, I guess that explains why it's so bulky," she said.

"Bulky?" Chuck said, mildly affronted. "I basically built my own iPhone, and you call it bulky?"

"Yes," she said. "It's like twice as big as my cell phone, and mine was like forty bucks. How much did your's cost?"

Chuck mumbled something indistinct, and Sarah grinned, pressing him on it. "Hmm?"

"Nine hundred seventy five dollars..." Chuck said a little more clearly.

Sarah's eyebrows went up, and she walked over to the wheelhouse (what would he do without google?), and banged on the aluminum siding with her fist. "Get a move on dad," she shouted. "We're burning this poor guy's money, and he already spent a thousand bucks on a phone."

Chuck crossed his arms and glared half-heartedly, "It's the company's money," he started to protest, but she just grinned disarmingly and went aft to check something by the stern. He checked his phone again for his list of nautical terms and yes, stern was the right name.

The boat lurched out of its spot by the deck... pier? Chuck checked his phone, but that wasn't on his current list. He'd have to do another search to— "Hey!" he said in outrage. "Give me back my phone!"

"Hang on, I want to see if it's really water-proof!" Sarah said, tossing it overboard.

"Great," Chuck said. "Do you have a net or something so we can fish it out, or...?"

Sarah arched and eyebrow and handed him her phone before leaning back on the rail and kicking her feet over, disappearing with a splash.

"Oh my god!" Chuck said. "Man- I mean woman overboard!" he shouted.

"What are you yammering about?" someone shouted from the wheelhouse, and Chuck saw a middle aged man sticking his head out an open window. That must be Sarah's father, Chuck mused.

"Your daughter just jumped overboard," Chuck explained.

Sarah's dad merely shrugged. "You should choose a better deodorant, then, ya schnook, and she'd have stayed on deck."

Chuck gaped at the man. Wasn't he worried? Chuck could have sworn it was super dangerous to jump off a boat when still in the harbor; the person running the boat wouldn't be able to see, and you could get crushed against the dock or something. "Oh leave him be, dad," Sarah's voice came from behind him, and Chuck jumped, startled, spinning around to face her. He blinked once and then averted his eyes entirely. She was wearing the same white t-shirt and khaki shorts, she'd been wearing a few moments ago and now, quite obviously due to her dunking, wasn't wearing a bra. "So apparently, you weren't kidding about this thing being water-proof. What would it cost to rig mine to be water-proof? Chuck? Why are you looking at the sky?"

"You're wearing a white t-shirt and no bra, Darlin," her father bellowed from the wheelhouse, "The schnook who paid a grand for a phone is trying to be a gentleman."

Sarah mad a small noise of embarrassment, and Chuck heard the wet slap of her feet retreating, hopefully for a change of clothes."I am not a schnook!" Chuck protested.

"That's what Nixon said," Sarah's father said.

Chuck turned, thankful for the distraction and walked over. "I don't think that's right," Chuck said, extending his hand. "Chuck Bartowski. And it's 'crook', not schnook."

He shook Chuck's hand absently, doing something with the boat controls as they got out into deeper water. "Jack Walker," he said. "And I've heard it both ways. Welcome to Walker Marine Salvage's flagship, Lisa's Revenge."

"C'mon dad," Sarah said, raising her voice from aft of them both. "Flagship? We've only got the one boat!"

"The Zodiac counts as a boat too, darlin," Jack shouted over the rumble of the boat's deisel engines. "And eyes front until she changes into something not sopping wet, Bartowski. You're paying us to recover something off the ocean floor, not to ogle my daughter."

"I wasn't... ogling," Chuck protested.

Jack grinned. "I've heard that before," he said, and shook his head ruefully, before waving Chuck into the wheelhouse. It was really just a single bow-facing box with windows on all sides, with a kind of counter holding a bunch of dials and readouts and an honest to god spoked captain's wheel, two feet wide or more, and obviously not original to the Lisa's Revenge, as there was a shiny strip of metal siding to the port side, where the wheel had rubbed the aluminum smooth, removing the white paint, which wouldn't have happened if the wheel had proper clearance.

Behind where Jack stood to steer the boat, was a table built into the aft wall of windows covered in charts and nautical books that— "Eyes front, schnook," Jack said without taking his eyes off where he was steering, and Chuck dutifully turned back forward.

"I wasn't looking at her," Chuck said. "I was just looking at the charts."
"I've heard that before, too," Jack said.

"She was already downstairs anyway," Chuck said.

"Ha!" Jack said, and shrugged. "You're probably telling the truth, but charts can wait. We've got some safety stuff to go over." He kicked out backwards, hitting a box under the built-in chart-table. Life jackets in there; if we start to sink, grab one of those before you ditch. Assuming you can swim? Don't answer that, you'll just depress me if you can't. Other than that, try not to fall off in the middle of a monsoon."

"Do you expect any monsoons while we're out today?" Chuck said, digging his phone back out to check the weather reports.

"No, this is just, sort of a general thing," Jack said. "You know, it's probably a good idea. Like, don't let pirates shoot you and take over the boat, don't go swimming with open sores in shark-infested water. Don't go trifling with my little girl. Follow these simple guidelines, and I can all but guarantee you get back to port safe and sound. Doing any of those things would be equally detrimental to your health. We understand each other?"

"I believe so," Chuck said.

"Good. Now let's go find this downed plane of yours."

TO BE CONTINUED...

A/N: So, next chapter, you can expect the plot to thicken. Also, i follow through on the bikinis and scuba diving promise from the story summary. Still not going to venture a guess as to when that next chapter will be up. This story has been almost writing itself in a lot of ways.