A/N Sorry.

"You do know Casey's a Ronald Reagan fan, right?"

"You know how I feel about lethal weaponry."

"Oo, fresh meat."

"Don't freak out."

Hugo Panzer approached the stainless steel coffin, making sure his every step could be heard. He had tranq-head, and he hated tranq-head. Whoever was in that metal box was going to pay for that. What a stupid place to try and hide.

Chuck, hidden in the shadows between the top of the pallet and the roof of the hold, raised his watch. More important, the button on his watch that would make his phone ring. Just as soon as Panzer was in position.

Panzer stopped. It was a stupid place to hide. Whoever managed to take him out couldn't be that stupid. Using the box as a trap would be smarter. He looked up, just as a phone rang from inside the box. He reached down and flipped open the lid.

Chuck wasted aprecious second looking at the button on his phone, still unpressed. By the time he jumped off the top of the pallet onto Panzer's back the box was already open.

Something hit him on the back, driving his forehead into the phone held in the hands of the dead guy in the box. The call picked up, but neither of the men in the room noticed. Chuck rolled off Panzer's broad back, slamming the metal lid down on his head, mainly to provoke the big guy. Angry men make mistakes that non-angry men don't.

Panzer stood, neither angry nor injured. "Okay, first off, said Chuck. "I really hope that isn't a relative of yours. If he was, condolences, but even if not, yeah, dead hands, I know how you feel on that one."

Panzer swung at him, but he was too slow, and Chuck dodged around him. Hugo swung his arm back, catching Chuck off-balance and pushing him down the aisle. This was bad, since it put him between the pallets, a more confined space.

Instead of pressing his advantage, though, Hugo reached into the pallet near him, giving Chuck time to look around for possible weapons. Panzer came out with a sword just as Chuck spotted the Yale Athletics bag. That really was the fencing team, have to give Hannah credit for that one, if he managed to survive this.

"I was just going to come down here and kill you," said Panzer, enjoying the upper hand, as usual. "You got me in trouble with my bosses." He raised his own watch. "My watch revived me, but it also recorded the fact that I had to be revived. Still, you got me with the drink, snookered me with the phone, and you're even holding that sword passably. You're clearly a capable agent, so I'll show you some respect. Come over here and I'll do this quick, and clean. No pain."

Chuck looked from him to the sword. Nothing. He'd done okay in his fencing classes but something told him Panzer did more than just okay.

"Come on," said Panzer, becoming annoyed. "Die like a man."

Chuck flashed, and the fight was on. He was the better swordsman, but Panzer's sword was shorter, something of an advantage in these close quarters. He started out with a more basic set of defensive moves, parries and such, but those morphed into attacks very easily, and soon he was matching Panzer blow for blow. Then he started speeding up, and Hugo couldn't match that. He tried to retreat, to disengage, but the Intersect moved to follow him, and Chuck couldn't make it stop. "Help."

Hugo parried, and punched Chuck as he did. "Help this!" He dropped the sword and fled the field. Chuck shook his head, clearing it of sword-fighting tactics as he forced his hand to open. Something struck him in the back, and he whirled.

Hugo stood behind him with a small piece of someone's luggage in his hand, swinging it like a club. "No more Mr. Nice Spy," he said.

Chuck flashed on hand-to-hand fighting skills and grabbed the small case he'd just been hit with. No good as a weapon, it was still useful as a distraction as he approached Panzer and threw it at him. Panzer chose to deflect it, leaving him open to Chuck's attack This was a mistake on his part, as Chuck fought like he fenced, slowly at first but with increasing aggressiveness over time.

Chuck began to panic, trapped inside his body as the Intersect moved it around, but he hadn't been sparring with Casey all this time for nothing. He fought his own skills, trying to bring them under control, like he'd had to do more than once in training. Panzer, larger than Casey and far more evil than Emmet Milbarge, took a lot of punishment even as Chuck slowed.

"Bartowski!" shouted his phone, and Chuck seized control. And the small case, whacking Panzer with it and knocking him out.

Chuck staggered over to the open casket and pulled his phone from the dead fingers. Ew. He shut the casket and put his phone up to his ear. More Ew. "Casey," he panted. "I did it. I beat Panzer, and I beat the Intersect, thanks to you. Yay us."

Casey was seething. Sarah had nothing to say, apparently Mr. Genius super-spy had put the kibosh on talking to Chuck, but luckily he wasn't down there. He'd called Chuck on his own, and listened in on what sounded like one of those chop-socky movies that the moron liked to watch. He'd heard enough of them while on surveillance to recognize the scenario, but this had been real. Chuck's cry for help had been real, and Casey could only listen.

And yell real loud. He was good at that.

Eventually something got through, but the kid still sounded like crap when he finally picked up. Panzer was down but still alive, go team, and Chuck had the key. He finally gathered the strength to restrain Panzer, and Casey hung up to pass the news to Walker.

Now here he was, staring out at a sea of hostile Buymorian faces, his glare more pronounced than usual. Morgan made his announcement, and the new lieutenant assistant manager made his acceptance speech. "I hate insurgents."

Chuck sat at the bar, celebrating his victory. Unfortunately he was celebrating it with the wrong person, but she was the only one around. Sarah still wasn't picking up. Hannah was too perceptive by half, as well. Chuck began to wonder if maybe he'd been dealing with another agent all this time and hadn't been aware of it. So he hit her with the truth, let her try to penetrate that instead. "I work at a Buy More in Burbank. I'm just riding someone else's ticket."

Okay, mostly the truth. This ticket was his own, freely chosen.

So she tried to match him with a truth of her own, or what she claimed was the truth. That was a side of agentry he didn't like so much, that he had to clamp down on his empathy before it could get him into trouble. If true, he felt bad for her, that she had to pack up like that, but he doubted she'd be unemployed for very long.

Eventually they wandered back to their seats, where Chuck regaled her with Tales from the Buy More ™. She toasted his inventiveness, because obviously a place like that couldn't really exist, and he grabbed the drink at his seat to toast with her. He automatically took a sip of that drink, noticing the bitter almond aftertaste only on the way down.

Crap. And there's Hugo. Double crap.

"Chuck, are you okay?" asked Hannah. "You look…poisoned."

He felt poisoned. His stomach burned and he had to get away from Hugo, and maybe Hannah as well. Could they be working together? He was with her all evening, how would Panzer have gotten loose on his own? He pressed the emergency stud on his watch. They might be deep-ending him, but they wouldn't ignore that. "I'm gonna go throw up."

On his way to the bathroom he was intercepted by one of the flight attendants. "May I help you sir?"

"No," he said. "Just going to–" He stopped when she shoved a pistol practically up his nose "–write a letter of complaint to the airline." Small caliber, not enough to pierce the skin of the plane but more than enough to do him some serious damage at close range, especially with him already weakened by the poison.

"I have the antidote for the poison," she said. "I want the key."

"I have the key," said Chuck. "It's hidden in the hold."

She smirked. "Lucky for you that's where I have the antidote hidden as well. Let's go."

"There have to be two operatives on that plane," said Sarah. And her guy was alone between them.

"Yes, that was my conclusion as well," said Shaw. "I'm running identity checks on everyone in that cabin, starting with the passengers sitting next to him, and the cabin attendants."

"I'm calling him," said Sarah.

Down in the hold, Chuck welcomed the distraction when his phone finally went off. "I work for the CIA," he admitted to the woman. He figured Panzer, standing behind him, already knew. "That's my boss. I'm going to need authorization before I can hand the key over."

"On speaker," said the woman. He held out the phone, pressing the contact.

A female voice came out of the speaker. "Chuck?"

"Hey boss," said Chuck. "Ran into a bit of a snag on the operation."

"How so?"

"I poisoned him," said the woman with the gun. "Tell him to give me the key."

"Who are you?"

"I work for a third party," she said, "And my employer doesn't tolerate failure."

"Then you're a dead woman."

"How so?"

"They'll kill you if you fail, I'll kill you if you succeed."

The woman looked at the phone, expecting a layer of ice but not seeing one. "You have no idea–"

"I know exactly who you are, Serena," said Sarah, reading off the screen. "You used the same poison in Berlin, to kill the Syrian ambassador, and your 'third party employer' is the Ring."

"How do you know this?"

"Give my agent the antidote, I'll let you slide."

"I can't. They may not be a third party but they still don't tolerate failure. Your man is going to die here, alone."

"My man is never alone," said Sarah. "Isn't that right, Chuck?" She pointed at Shaw, and he pressed a button. The special subnetwork on Chuck's phone broadcast a special pulse, not enough to do any damage but enough to make local electronics…unhappy.

The plane fell out of the sky, a moment of distraction that a prepared agent could take full advantage of, and Chuck was prepared. The first thing to go was the antidote, and he chased after it, letting the jury-rigged netting on the luggage pallets fail on top of the two Ring agents.

He grabbed the bottle, as Serena lined up a shot, and he dove into a safe cross-aisle as she took it. "You're a terrible shot, Serena," he said. "You couldn't shoot a plane if you were standing in one." He drank the antidote.

Serena wisely dropped her gun. It shouldn't be powerful enough to damage a 747, but why take chances, and she had a better alternative. "Panzer will enjoy killing you," she said, as the plane leveled off.

Chuck stepped into view, nunchuks in hand. "Bring it."

A/N2 Yeah, I know it's the same gimmick I used before, but it still makes more sense than what they did. I hope you'll drop me a line and tell me what you think of this rewrite so far.