Chuck vs. the Spiked Punch, Chapter 6: "Chuck vs. the LSD"

- and as his eyes slowly cracked open, the overwhelming brightness filled them.

“It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s all right, she moves in mysterious ways!”

Chuck squeezed his eyes back shut, and then, very carefully, with a hand shading them, opened them again.

He was in Sarah’s hotel room. The clock radio was playing U2’s “Mysterious Ways”. Chuck slowly turned his head to look over at the clock.

Two thirty in the afternoon?!

“Fuck,” he breathed.

He pulled off the blanket. Yep, he was naked. Not good. And so was Sarah. Well, maybe it was good.

He slowly moved again, looking for his clothes. Every movement hurt. That’s when he spotted the note on the nightstand.

Bartowski, it said. Take one of these pills when you wake up, and give one to Walker as well. You’ll feel better, trust me. Once you’re back up to speed, come in to the Buy More. There’s some stuff you need to see. – Casey

Chuck swallowed the pill, and staggered to the bathroom. Bracing himself against the wall, he climbed into the shower and turned it on. A moment later, though, there was a banging on the bathroom door.

“What the hell?” he grumbled, stepping out. He wrapped a towel around himself and opened the door –

To admit a buck naked Sarah Walker, who dove for the toilet and started puking her guts out.

Chuck shook his already dizzy head. “That’s so disgusting,” he said.

When she finished, he helped her to her feet. “What the hell happened last night?” she whispered weakly.

“I have no idea,” he replied. “But I’m getting cleaned up, because Casey needs me to come into the Buy More to talk to me about something.”

She closed her eyes for a moment. “Can I shower with you?”

“Sarah, I really don’t have the energy…”

“Neither do I,” she replied. “I’m just afraid I’ll fall over if I shower alone.”

---

Forty minutes later, the Herder pulled into the Buy More parking lot. Sarah was dressed all in black, and Chuck was thanking God that he kept a spare Nerd Herd outfit at her place. They both had on very large, very dark sunglasses.

Chuck walked slowly and purposefully into the Buy More, Sarah holding onto his arm for support. Casey intercepted them almost as soon as they walked in the door.

“Follow me,” he instructed them.

He led them into the home theatre lounge, shut the doors, and drew the curtains. In the dimmed light, both Chuck and Sarah finally felt okay to take off their sunglasses.

“So, here’s the deal,” Casey began. “Turns out that Morgan spiked the punch last night at Sarah’s birthday party.”

“Wait, what?!” Chuck protested. “I was watching him all night!”

Casey shook his head. “When you took Walker back to your bedroom to give her her birthday present…”

Sarah felt for it, and there it was. The small cross around her neck.

“Morgan was unsupervised for about five minutes,” Casey finished. “That’s when he did it.”

“But he’s spiked the punch before, and I’ve NEVER felt like this!” Chuck said. “I mean, for God’s sake, Casey, I was having dreams that I was in a bunch of movies! Serenity, The Matrix, Gone in Sixty Seconds, Back to the Future, Star Wars – I mean, I was IN ALL OF THEM!”

Casey smiled. “That’s because Morgan spiked it with lysergic acid diethylamide.”

Chuck narrowed his eyes, and Sarah’s jaw dropped. “You mean that little bastard gave us all LSD?!” she asked, astonished.

Casey nodded. “I wasn’t affected because I didn’t have any. But when I noticed how the two of you were acting, I figured I better test it.”

“Wait,” Chuck interrupted him. “The ‘way we were acting’?”

Casey smiled. “You don’t remember, do you?”

“Remember WHAT, Casey?”

“Talking Walker into stripping down to her lingerie and then doing a body shot off of her…”

Chuck buried his face in his hands, and Sarah just leaned her head back. “No…”

“Well, fortunately for you, I’m the only person who’ll remember it, and it’s such a disturbing image that I think I’ll be pretty successful in blocking it from my brain,” Casey said with a little shudder. “Morgan, Anna, Ellie, and Devin were all in just as bad shape as you guys this morning.”

“I’m gonna kill him,” Chuck muttered.

“Yeah, well, there’s more,” Casey replied. He handed Chuck a thick envelope. “I don’t know what got into the two of you, but after I pulled the surveillance footage from the Bartowski apartment, then I had to go and pull a bunch of surveillance footage from the Wienerlicious and from here.”

“What?!” Sarah practically shouted.

“I guess you guys thought that just one place wasn’t quite good enough,” Casey said with a lecherous smile. “So, you decided you had to christen the service counter at the Wienerlicious, and Big Mike’s desk…”

Chuck held up a hand. “Enough!”

Then Casey turned serious. “Unfortunately, there was one piece of footage that I was not able to recover,” he stated.

“What exactly are you talking about, Casey?”

Casey reached into the envelope and pulled out a DVD labeled “Buy More 6/15/08 0200-0600”. “Watch this around the 3:30 AM mark,” Casey replied. “I’ll be outside.”

After the door shut, Chuck slipped the disc into the DVD player. He fast forwarded to 3:28 AM, and then hit play.

Chuck and Sarah watched in shock and horror at the scene unfolding before them, but it was like a bad car wreck – neither of them could look away.

“You know what we should do?” Chuck asked onscreen.

“What’s that?” Sarah said, giggling.

“We should video ourselves having sex and then post it on the Internet!”

“Oh, God, no,” Chuck groaned, burying his face in his hands.

Sarah was frozen as she watched herself from eleven hours earlier. “Okay! That sounds like fun!”

And they watched, in horror and dismay, as they did exactly that – set up not one, not two, but three cameras, and proceeded to get frisky all over the Nerd Herd counter. By the time they were done, Chuck was watching from between his fingers, moaning in disgust as his onscreen counterpart sat down at the Nerd Herd desk, edited the video together, and UPLOADED IT TO A PORN SITE.

“I’m done,” Chuck said weakly. “I will never hear the end of this.”

He looked over at Sarah – and saw that she was actually smiling.

“What the hell is so funny about this?!”

She just shook her head. “The thought of us making a home sex video…” Her voice trailed off. “It just seems ludicrous.”

“There’s the proof,” Chuck replied, pointing at the screen. “And knowing my perverted staff, I’m sure they’ve all seen it by now.”

He looked on the verge of breaking down. “So now what do we do?”

Sarah took his hand in hers. “We walk out the door, we ignore the world around us. We go back to my place and get some worthwhile sleep, and then when we’re feeling better…”

Her smile took on a wicked undertone. “We make a sequel.”

That was enough to make Chuck laugh – which he instantly regretted, because his head was still killing him. Nonetheless, he squeezed her hand, and they walked out the door of the home theatre lounge –

To the applause of the Buy More staff. They both turned bright red, and bolted for the door.

“NICE TECHNIQUE!” Chuck heard Jeff yell at him as they ran.

Once they were outside, they slowed to a walk – and then Sarah’s phone rang.

“Walker,” she said. “Yes, sir. Yes, I’m aware, sir. Yes, sir, that is actually me. No, sir. I was drunk, sir. Yes, sir. I apologize, sir.”

Chuck looked at her as she hung up the phone. “Graham’s seen the video, has he?”

Sarah nodded. “Not much I can do about it now.”

Chuck scratched his head as he opened Sarah’s car door for her. “Just imagine if we ever have kids,” he said. “This would make a hell of a story to tell.”

Sarah gave him a look. “Chuck Bartowski,” she said. “If you and I ever have kids, they will NEVER hear about this incident.”

Chuck nodded. “Fair enough,” he said.

“And, we should probably tell them to stay far, far away from Uncle Morgan’s Kool-Aid.”

---

Author's note: this is what happens when I get really bored on Friday and then get really silly on allergy medicine. And to think that it all started with me thinking that Casey should say, "Shiny. Let's be bad guys!" in a fanfic.

I hope you all enjoyed this. It greatly entertained me to write it.

And just in case you're curious, I threw in the brief little reference to Sarah's birthday party in Chapter 7 of "Chuck vs. the Bright Side of Life" to indicate that, as bizarre as this story is, it takes place in the same AU as "Seduction of Sarah Walker", "Star Spangled Intersect", and "Bright Side of Life."

Chuck vs. the Spiked Punch, Chapter 5: "Chuck vs. Darth Walker"

- and with a glare of white light, the Millennium Falcon’s hyperdrive engines cut out, dropping the freighter into the Alderaan approach path.

But rather than seeing Alderaan, they were headed straight into an asteroid field.

“Crap!” uttered Captain Awesome. “We came out of hyperspace right into a meteor shower! Morgan, is this on any of the charts?”

“No way, Captain,” Morgan replied. “We’ve got nothing.”

“Look at that!” Chuck shouted, as a TIE Fighter flashed overhead.

“Where in the hell did that come from?” Awesome asked.

“Did it follow us?”

“No,” Casey-Wan Kenobi said. “That’s a short range fighter. They’re not equipped with hyperdrive.”

Chuck pointed. “Maybe it came from that small moon.”

And sure enough, the TIE Fighter seemed to be headed that direction. But Casey-Wan sensed that something was wrong.

“That’s no moon,” he whispered. “That’s a space station!”

Captain Awesome whirled around to look at him. “That’s impossible. The construction required would be on an absolutely awesome scale.”

“And yet,” Casey-Wan said, “I believe, there it is. I have a very bad feeling about this.”

“Yeah, me too,” Morgan said. “CA, I think we need to get out of here.”

“Yeah,” Captain Awesome concurred. “Morgan, lock in the auxiliary and put us in full reverse.”

A moment passed, and nothing happened. “Morgan, lock in the auxiliary and put us in full reverse!”

“I did!” shouted Morgan. “It’s not having any effect!”

“Crap!” Captain Awesome said. “They’ve got us in a tractor beam. This is decidedly NOT AWESOME!”

“What do we do?” Chuck asked in consternation. “If the Empire finds me…”

“We hide,” Awesome said. “Round up those two droids of yours –“

“What, Jeff-3P0 and R2-Lester?”

“Yeah, whatever. Get them down here. Do whatever you need to to get them to shut up – turn them off, whatever. They’ll have to be completely quiet.”

---

Grand Moff Larkin stood on the bridge overlooking the shuttle bay as the Falcon was dragged in by the tractor beams. Then he noticed that his second in command seemed ill at ease.

“Is there a problem?” he inquired.

Darth Walker looked back at him. “I feel… I feel a presence I have not felt in a very long time,” she replied. “The presence of… my former master.”

Larkin snorted. “Casey-Wan Kenobi? He’s long since dead.”

Darth Walker shook her head, her blonde hair swishing slightly. “Never underestimate the power of the Force.”

Grand Moff Larkin rolled his eyes. “Fine. Take care of whatever you need to do, Walker.”

And with that, Darth Walker strode off the bridge, cape flowing behind her as she went.

---

When the Imperial Stormtroopers boarded the Millennium Falcon, they initially found nobody. But as they were exiting – well, there was a barrier between them and the exit.

A moment later, two stormtroopers, two men, and two droids came sneaking out of the freighter. “I’ll go find the power source for the tractor beam and disable it,” Casey-Wan said. “Meanwhile, the rest of you find Princess Eleanor and break her out.”

“Hey, old man, all good and well,” Captain Awesome shot back, “but when am I getting paid?”

“All in due time,” Casey-Wan replied. “All in due time.”

And he swept out of the room quickly, leaving the other five standing there.

“Hey, Chuck!” R2-Lester called from the side of the shuttle bay. “I think I found your princess, man!”

Jeff-3P0 laughed. “You wouldn’t know a princess from a crescent wrench,” the droid burbled drunkenly.

“Hey, Jeff, I don’t know any crescent wrenches named Eleanor,” Lester shot back, “and besides which, I’m not the one who drank a whole case of 10W-30 on the trip here.”

Jeff-3P0 tried to formulate a comeback, but failed utterly.

“Where is she?” Chuck asked.

“Cell block 4A72,” R2-Lester replied. “I don’t know how you guys are gonna get in there, though. You’re pretty much hosed on that one.”

“No, I’ve got an idea,” Chuck said. Reaching behind him, he detached a pair of cuffs that were attached to the stormtrooper uniform belt. “We put these on Morgan…”

“Hey, hey, hey, why me?!” Morgan asked.

“Never mess with a Wookie,” Captain Awesome advised.

“Okay, dude,” Morgan said, a note of aggravation in his voice. “Just because I am covered in hair does not make me a Wookie.”

“Seriously, could the two of you just shut up and let me put these cuffs on Morgan?” Chuck asked impatiently.

Morgan rolled his eyes and held out his hands. Chuck snapped the cuffs on.

Then he turned to the droids. “Jeff, Lester, I want you two to find a closet somewhere and lock yourselves in it.”

“Oh, the hell,” R2-Lester replied. “I’m not locking myself in a closet with this drunken bastard.”

“Hey, then we can come out of the closet together,” Jeff-3P0 laughed.

Lester did not look amused.

“Guys, I don’t care,” Chuck said in exasperation. “If you get found, we’re all screwed.”

“Fine,” Lester grumbled. He rolled off, tossing a few choice beeps and whistles over his shoulder at Chuck.

Chuck and Captain Awesome guided Morgan to an elevator. They got on board, and were in the elevator for what seemed like forever. Finally, it opened to the cell block they were supposed to be at.

A short Asian man with a bitter look on his face stood in their paths. “What the hell is this?!” he snapped as soon as the door opened. “Where are you taking this… thing?”

“Dude!” Morgan complained. “I’m not a THING!”

Chuck looked at the Asian man. He had on a bright yellow polo shirt that was embroidered “Imperial Death Star” over one breast and “Commander Harry Tang” over the other.

“Commander Tang,” he said. “My apologies, this is a prisoner transfer from cell block 1138.”

Tang narrowed his eyes. “I wasn’t advised of this. I’ll have to check in on it.”

“Oh, screw this,” Captain Awesome grumbled. He raised his blaster and shot Harry Tang in the back.

“Anybody else want a piece of me?” he asked. The rest of the jail block staff, all dressed in green polos with the “Imperial Death Star” logo on them, shook their heads.

As Chuck was herding them all into a cell, a radio console started speaking. “What’s going on down there?” somebody demanded. “We heard weapons fire!”

“Uh, accidental weapons discharge,” CA said into the microphone. “But… everything’s good now… uh, how are you?”

“Who is this?! What’s your authorization code?”

“Not awesome!” he shot back, and then blasted the radio.

“CHUCK!” he called down the hallway, as Chuck looked for Princess Eleanor’s room. “HURRY UP! We’re gonna have company!”

Finally, Chuck found it. He opened the door. A brunette woman lay on the bunk, sleeping, but the sound of the door woke her.

She looked at Chuck curiously. “Aren’t you a little short for a Stormtrooper?”

“The hell?” Chuck shot back. He pulled off the helmet. “I’m six-foot-three, for God’s sake!”

“Sorry…” Princess Eleanor said. “My bad.”

“Anyway, I’m Chuck Bartowski. I’m here to rescue you.”

“All by yourself?”

Suddenly, there was an exchange of weapons fire outside. Captain Awesome and Morgan both dove into the cell with them.

“Captain Awesome,” CA breathlessly introduced himself.

“Seriously?” Princess Eleanor asked. “Captain Awesome is your name?”

“Is that a problem?” he asked, giving her a look.

Morgan stepped between them. “Morgan Grimes,” he introduced himself. “And may I just say, you’re absolutely beautiful.”

“And you look like a Wookie,” she replied. “How are we getting out of here?”

“No idea whatsoever!” CA said.

Princess Eleanor looked stunned, and then just shook her head. “Mr. Bartowski,” she said, “may I borrow your blaster?”

“Uh, sure,” he replied.

She lifted the blaster and shot out a grate across the way. “In,” she said, pointing.

“What?!” all three men replied at once.

“You first,” she snapped, pointing at Captain Awesome.

“I have no idea what’s down there!”

“Tough. Go NOW!”

She shoved him out into the hallway, and he had no choice but to dive down the shaft to avoid the blaster fire coming his way. Morgan ran screaming after him. Chuck took a headlong dive into the shaft, and Princess Eleanor brought up the rear, firing Chuck’s blaster down the hall as she went.

---

Casey-Wan had found the tractor beam power source and disabled it easily – mostly because whoever had designed the station had decided it would be a good idea to label it the “Tractor Beam Power Source.”

He shook his head at the lunacy, though he did have to give them credit for making the only access to it a foot-wide ledge over a drop thousands of feet deep. Pretty slick method of keeping saboteurs out – unless the saboteur was a Jedi Master.

Master Casey-Wan Kenobi was quietly making his way back to the docking bay where the Millennium Falcon was when he felt her. He felt her presence before he ever saw her.

He turned to see her. “Grand Moff Larkin didn’t believe me when I said you were here,” she said.

Casey-Wan studied her. She didn’t look a day older. Still had the flawless alabaster skin, the golden tresses, the ice-blue eyes, and if her black body armor was any indicator, she still had the smokin’ body, too.

“Darth Walker,” he said. “So, Larkin’s still alive. And here I thought I killed him.”

“He was… revived,” she replied. “And here I thought you too had been killed… Casey-Wan Kenobi.”

---

“HOW COULD YOU LEAD US DOWN A TRASH CHUTE?!”

“You would maybe prefer to go back and take your chances with the Imperial Stormtroopers?” Princess Eleanor asked angrily.

Captain Awesome had no answer. He just crossed his arms and looked grumpy.

“Hey, it could be worse,” Chuck said, trying to keep the mood light.

That was when the walls of the trash compactor started moving.

“It’s worse,” Captain Awesome said in dread.

Chuck’s eyes widened. Pulling out his commlink, he started yelling for Jeff. “Jeff-3P0!” he shouted. “Jeff-3P0! Come in!”

“Yo,” came the slurred voice of the oiloholic robot over the commlink. “WASSSSSSSUP!!”

“Not now, Jeff!” Chuck shouted. “Tell Lester to shut down all the trash compactors on Level 37!”

He could hear Lester in the background. “Which ones? Which level?”

“JUST SHUT THEM ALL DOWN!”

---

“You’re too old, Casey-Wan,” Darth Walker said scornfully. “You’re past your prime, a burnout.”

“And what exactly are you?” Casey-Wan asked. “You’re a Sith bitch in body armor. I hear that the only reason you got as high as you did is because you’re boning Grand Moff Larkin.”

Her eyes lit up with fury. “HOW DARE YOU!”

And without warning, her lightsaber flew into her hands and ignited. She struck a downward stroke toward Casey-Wan –

But his lightsaber was waiting for the stroke. The two clashed together, throwing off sparks.

“I am the master now, Casey-Wan! You are no match for me!”

Casey-Wan looked back at Darth Walker. “Walker, if you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you could ever imagine.”

---

Chuck dragged himself out of the trash compactor, smelly and filthy. Behind him, Awesome and Eleanor were arguing about what had just happened, blaming each other for the mess. Morgan walked up to him. “Dude, I think I need a new best friend,” he complained. “You want to fill in?”

Chuck shrugged. “Sure, why not. All my friends are probably going to end up dead while flying X-Wings anyway.”

They made their way back to the shuttle bay with no interference – because, they found, there was an epic duel going on between Casey-Wan Kenobi and Darth Walker just outside the shuttle bay, and they’d attracted a huge audience.

“Casey-Wan!” Chuck shouted when he saw what was going on. Casey-Wan looked up.

“Good job, kid!” he shouted, and then shut off his lightsaber. As Chuck watched in horror, Darth Walker struck Casey-Wan’s torso with her lightsaber – and he disappeared.

“NOOOO!” Chuck screamed. He began firing his blaster indiscriminately, not caring who he hit. He ended up taking out a few stormtroopers in the process.

“Come on, kid, let’s go!” Captain Awesome shouted.

Morgan and Princess Eleanor dragged Chuck onboard the ship. Behind him, R2-Lester rolled in as fast as his wheels would carry him, while Jeff-3P0 staggered in and drunkenly fell down on the ramp. It closed, locking him safely inside.

As the ship moved into hyperspace, Chuck sat glumly in the galley. “I can’t believe Casey-Wan’s dead,” he muttered.

“It’s okay,” Princess Eleanor said to him. “Really. It’s alright.”

“I wish I could believe that,” he replied.

She nodded. “It’s alright. It’s alright.”

Chuck narrowed his eyes, looking at her. “Are you okay?”

“She moves in mysterious ways,” Eleanor said.

Chuck closed his eyes, rubbing them. “What are you talking about?”

He opened his eyes –

To be continued…

Chuck vs. the Spiked Punch, Chapter 4: "Chuck vs. 88 Miles Per Hour"

- and Chuck snapped back to wakefulness

Huey Lewis’ “The Power of Love” was playing on his clock radio. He looked at the time – just after 8:00 AM.

Chuck stumbled out of his bedroom, down the hallway toward the kitchen. He crossed into the dining room – and stopped dead.

He looked incredulously at the sight before him. His sister and brother-in-law, both dressed professionally, eating breakfast.

“What the hell is this?” he asked.

Devin looked up at him. “This… would be breakfast.”

“Since when does breakfast get eaten in this house?”

Ellie stood up and put a hand on Chuck’s forehead. “Chuck, are you feeling alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” he said. “I just had some weird dream… that I was on a spaceship… and then, I was in some computer simulation, and then I was stealing a classic Mustang…”

Devin snorted. “’Classic’ and ‘Mustang’ in the same sentence?”

“Yeah,” Chuck said. “And, it all seemed to take place in the future.”

Ellie looked at him with a tolerant smile. “Chuck, it’s 1985, Ronald Reagan is the President, and you’re in Hill Valley, California.”

“I know, I know,” he grumbled. “It just all seemed so real.”

That was when the screen door opened, and two people walked in. Chuck turned to his right – to see his parents.

He practically fell over. “Holy crap!”

“Chuck?” his mother asked. “Are you feeling alright?”

“I already asked him,” Ellie said. “He was apparently having weird dreams about the future.”

“Dreams about the future?” his mother asked worriedly.

“Don’t worry, Mom,” he said. “I’m fine.”

“So, Chuck, tonight’s the night, right?” his father asked.

“Yeah, Chuckster!” Devin interjected. “The night of awesomeness?”

Chuck looked at them both. “What are you talking about?”

His mother looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “You and Sarah… going up to Big Bear Lake tonight…”

How did they find out about it?! he raged inwardly. “Yeah, um, it’s no big deal… and besides, the car’s wrecked, isn’t it?”

“WHAT?!” his father interjected.

“Not awesome!” Devin said, jumping up from the table. The two men ran outside –

“Car’s fine, Chuck,” his father said.

Chuck went to the front door – and sure enough, there was a gleaming black BMW 5 series in the driveway, being washed and waxed.

“Now, don’t forget, Jeff,” Chuck’s father called. “TWO coats of wax.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Bartowski, sir!”

Chuck thought his head was going to explode. Something seemed distinctly not right here. At first, he thought it was the fact that his father was driving a BMW.

But on second thought, he thought that something far bigger than that was wrong. Like, for some reason he was having these thoughts that he was four years old in 1985.

He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs. It had to be an after effect from traveling back from 1955 the night before. That had to be it.

Chuck was sitting at the breakfast table, still incredulous that there was breakfast to be had, when Jeff came running inside with a FedEx box. “It’s your book, Mr. Bartowski!” he said excitedly, handing the box to Chuck’s dad.

The older Bartowski opened the box, and pulled out the book. He looked at it, and proudly held it up for all to see.

Chuck vs. the Computer, the title read. Mr. Bartowski had made it very clear that he wanted to name the main character after his own son. “It’ll be a book about a guy who accidentally gets a computer stuck in his head!”

So far, bookstores were grabbing as many advance copies as they could get their hands on. But Chuck had an actual published copy of the book thrust into his hands by his own father.

He opened the cover. What happens to man when he becomes a computer? the dust jacket asked. When Charles Carmichael gets millions of government secrets embedded in his head, he becomes the government’s number one intelligence asset.

Chuck looked at the title page. Fulcrum Publishing House, it said.

And there it was again, those thoughts that something was wrong. He shook his head, trying to banish the thoughts. Nothing was wrong, and if Doc Casey was here, he’d tell him he was just suffering the after-effects of temporal displacement.

He needed some fresh air. While he knew that that was pretty much a lost cause anywhere in metropolitan Los Angeles, he figured it couldn’t hurt to go outside.

And so outside he went – and Jeff walked up to him. “Here are your keys, Chuck.”

Chuck took the keys, looking at Jeff strangely. “To what?”

Jeff looked back at him, even more strangely. “To that…”

Chuck followed where Jeff’s finger was pointing… to the four-by-four Toyota pickup parked in the garage.

“Holy crap,” he uttered.

“It’s all waxed up and ready to go!” Jeff said enthusiastically.

Chuck ignored him. He actually had the truck!

He walked into the garage, almost reverently looking at it. He ran his fingers over the truck –

And an image briefly flashed before his eyes, of doing the same thing over the flank of a Mustang –

But he banished the image quickly, instead focusing on the truck in front of him.

“Hey, mister, can a girl get a ride? Or would the two of you like some time alone?”

He turned, and there she was. An angelic vision in blonde, her golden tresses falling on her shoulders, her blue eyes piercing into him.

“Sarah,” he whispered. He rapidly closed the distance between them, embraced her, and then kissed her passionately.

“Wow,” she said softly when they broke. “Chuck, you’re acting like you haven’t seen me in a week!”

“I haven’t,” he replied quietly.

He was just about to kiss her again when a sonic boom rolled through the neighborhood. Out of nowhere, a DeLorean DMC-12 appeared on the street, skidding to a stop in Chuck’s driveway, and knocking over a garbage can.

The gullwing door swung upward, and out popped resident mad scientist Doctor John Casey. Casey had, at one time, worked for the National Security Agency, but they had decided that he was a looney-tune and banished him.

So he built a time machine. Chuck knew that it worked – he’d been back to 1955 in it, and just returned the night before. And now, here it was, having just reappeared from God-knew-where.

Casey ran to the garbage can he had just knocked over, and started collecting various detritus. “Casey, what the hell are you doing?” Chuck asked.

“I need fuel!” Casey replied, knocking open something on the back of the DeLorean that looked for all the world like a coffee maker. Mr. Fusion, the label on the side said.

Casey dumped in a carton of bad eggs, a banana peel, and emptied a beer can into it, before throwing the beer can itself in. Then, he turned to Chuck and said, “Chuck, you’ve gotta come back to the future with me.”

“Wait, no,” Chuck protested. “Come on, Doc, I just got back! I was looking forward to spending some time with Sarah!”

“Bring her too!” Casey yelled. “It involves both of you!”

“What are you talking about?” Chuck asked. “Do we turn into a couple of assholes or something?”

Casey shook his head. “No, no, no. It’s your kids! Something’s gotta be done about your kids!”

Chuck and Sarah looked at each other wide-eyed. Our kids?! she mouthed.

Throwing his hands up in defeat, Chuck said, “Fine, we’re coming,” and climbed into the passenger seat of the DeLorean.

Sarah climbed in too, but there wasn’t a middle seat, so she and Chuck had to kind of share the shotgun seat. “Hmmm, cozy quarters here,” she said playfully, stroking Chuck’s ear.

“Careful there, Agent Walker,” he said unconsciously.

“What?”

He looked up at her. “What?”

“Why did you just call me Agent Walker?”

He had no idea what she was talking about. “I really have no idea,” he breathed.

Chuck was trying to figure out what was going on, when Casey climbed back into the DeLorean. “Alright!” Casey said. “To the year 2015!”

He backed the DeLorean out of the driveway, and began rolling down the street.

“Casey,” Chuck said concernedly, “I don’t think you’ve got enough road to get up to eighty-eight miles per hour.”

Casey looked over at him, grinned, and flipped down his sunglasses. “Roads, Chuck?” he said. “Where we’re going… we don’t need roads.”

And with that, the DeLorean lifted off from the street, turned around in mid-air, and rocketed forward.

In a heartbeat, they had reached eighty-eight miles per hour. The time circuits activated, and everything disappeared into a glare of bright white light –

To be continued…

Chuck vs. the Spiked Punch, Chapter 3: "Chuck vs. Eleanor"

“We’re here, Chuck.”

- and his eyes came back open.

He was sitting in the shotgun seat of a Ford Windstar, on a street that passed beneath a large skyscraper.

“Are you ready?” Sarah asked, looking at him with concern.

He nodded. “It’s go time.”

She leaned across the center console and kissed him. “Be careful, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, and opened the door of the van.

Chuck quickly jogged off the street into the parking garage – and there she was.

Eleanor. The 1967 Shelby Mustang GT 500. She had eluded him so many times, but not this time.

“We’re gonna have a nice, smooth ride, right girl?” he asked as she approached.

He could swear she was looking back at him, the elongated brake lights like narrowed eyes. He lovingly ran a hand along the Mustang’s side as he approached the driver’s door. Reaching into his leather jacket, Chuck pulled a door jimmy out of his pocket.

Gently sliding it into the door, he popped the lock up, and opened the door. Settling into the driver’s seat, he reached under the steering column. He carefully popped out the ignition lock, and inserting a narrow flathead screwdriver, turned the ignition cylinder.

The Mustang’s 289 cubic inches of V-8 engine roared to life, echoing off the walls of the parking garage – quieter than usual at 6:55 on a Friday morning.

Chuck carefully backed the Mustang out of its parking spot, and then shifted her into first, squealing the tires a little bit as he pulled forward. He turned right out of the driveway onto the street –

Just as a black BMW M3 turned left toward him a block away, Detective Casey driving and Detective Awesome riding shotgun.

“Shit,” Chuck breathed as the police lights on the M3 went on. He cranked the wheel over hard to the left and floored it.

In the M3, Casey was yelling at Chuck. “Easy way or the hard way, Chuck! Easy way or the hard way!”

He pressed the M3’s accelerator to the floor to pursue the Mustang – but had to stand on his brakes just as fast, as Sarah Walker pulled out in front of him in her Windstar. The M3 came to a stop just inches from its side.

“I think he’s going with the hard way,” Awesome intoned.

Casey backed the M3 up just far enough, and then put it back into drive, whipping around the end of the Windstar. “Stupid bitch,” he growled as he sped past Sarah.

Chuck flew out onto Ocean Boulevard, cranking his wheel hard right. The Mustang fishtailed as he shifted gears, the raw torque producing a little more power than the car could handle. He took another hard right onto Atlantic, Casey and Awesome hard on his tail in the M3.

When they got a little too close behind him, Chuck said, “Yeah, let’s see what you think of this,” and took another hard right onto Alta Way – blowing right through a “Do Not Enter” sign.

Casey followed him. “That sign said ‘Do not enter,” Awesome pointed out anxiously.

“Keep your shorts on,” Casey grumbled.

“This is not awesome,” Awesome muttered. Picking up the radio, he said, “All units, this is One-Baker-Eleven… we are in pursuit of a 1967 Ford Mustang, grey, eastbound on Alta Way… correction, we are now northbound on Lime.”

The Mustang pulled around into northbound traffic. Chuck was looking for a way to escape the M3 on his tail, and so he took a hard right down an alley. He was probably going fifty-five when the garbage truck pulled out in front of him.

Chuck stood on the Mustang’s brake and clutch simultaneously, sliding to a stop bare inches from the big Peterbilt front-loader. Dropping the Mustang into reverse, he backed up. Behind him, he could see the M3 whip around into the alley.

“Oh, you do NOT want to play with me, Chuck!” Casey shouted as the Mustang grew larger and larger in his windshield. When the Mustang was maybe two seconds from impacting the M3’s front end, Chuck whipped the wheel to the left, causing the rear end of the Mustang to drift around to the left, entering an underground parking area.

Chuck was staring anxiously out the back window as he approached Alamitos Avenue. He saw a brief break in traffic, and gunned the engine. The Mustang flew out into southbound traffic, nose to nose with a cement truck.

“Whoa!” Awesome shouted as Casey stomped on the M3’s brakes. That gave the Mustang a brief time advantage. Chuck accelerated away from the truck, and then stood on the brakes. The driver of the cement truck did the same, and as it slid to a stop, Chuck put the Mustang back in first and pulled away.

Driving northbound on Alamitos Avenue, Chuck closed his eyes briefly. Come on, Intersect, he thought. Tell me where to go.

And there it was. He just had to get there first.

That wasn’t going to be easy, he discovered as a Long Beach police officer pulled up next to him and forced him to take a hard left onto Fifth Street. Chuck flew down the back street, the police officer behind him, and watched anxiously as he approached Atlantic Avenue.

There it was – another break in traffic. He gunned the Mustang’s engine, and shot between a Suburban and a Mercedes going opposite directions on Atlantic, flying to the other side of the street.

The police officer wasn’t so lucky. As his cruiser pulled out onto Atlantic, an LA County Metro bus t-boned him, pushing his car fifty feet down the road.

Casey pulled out into Atlantic Avenue in the M3, sighed, and came to a stop. Opening the door and getting out, he heard Awesome pick up the radio and say, “Unit 22 has been in a T/A at Atlantic and Fifth.”

---

Ten minutes later, Chuck was on De Forest Avenue, heading north, when he heard the sirens. Somehow they’d found him again.

But too late. He cackled in glee as he turned left into the flood control drive, barreling down the gravel path toward the mostly-dry concrete bed of the Los Angeles River.

Of course, he hadn’t been counting on the helicopter. Looking up, he saw a McDonnell Douglas H-Star helicopter coming up on his rear end – quickly.

Casey had just pulled on to the 710 freeway, headed north, when the call came in. “One-Baker-Eleven, this is air unit… we have the Mustang in the Los Angeles River, adjacent to the 710 freeway.”

“HAH!” Casey shouted. “I got you now, Bartowski! I GOT your ass!”

And Chuck was starting to feel like that might be the case. He had a helicopter above him, a dozen LAPD and LBPD units on his tail, and the Mustang could only go so fast.

Desperately, he started looking around for something – anything! – to help him escape… and there it was.

A red switch, next to a red button that said, “Go Baby Go!”

Chuck pumped a fist in victory, and then hit the switch. Giving the nitrous a second to cycle in, he pushed the button – and his body hit the seat as the Mustang violently accelerated.

“Speed’s up to 100!” the helicopter reported. “110!”

“Don’t lose him!” Casey screamed into the radio.

“This is an H-Star, sir, not an Apache… 120, 130, 140… he’s gone.”

“God dammit!” Casey shouted, throwing the radio handset down.

“Man, this guy is awesome!” Detective Awesome breathed.

“What? WHAT?!”

“It’s probably mostly the car.”

---

Chuck had lost the police, but the nitrous had made Eleanor’s engine come dangerously close to overheating, so he pulled into a residential neighborhood just south of Willow St. to let her rest for a moment.

As he parallel parked the Mustang, he came a little too close to a truck and knocked her passenger side mirror off. “Aw, crap,” he muttered, reaching out the window. The mirror was dangling by its control cables.

That’s when the engine started stuttering. “No, no, no,” he said. “Come on, not now!”

And the 289 died. Just then, Chuck saw a Los Angeles police cruiser pull into the field of vision in his rear-view mirror. “Come on, baby,” he whispered, cranking the engine. No such luck.

The police cruiser began to turn. “I’m freakin’ out, Eleanor!” he said, pumping the gas and cranking the engine again. The big Ford V-8 roared to life, and he squealed out onto the street.

The LAPD officer immediately took notice and followed. “One-Baker-Eleven, I have the Mustang at Caspian and Burnett!” he shouted.

Casey and Awesome locked eyes. They were less than two blocks away.

A moment later, the Mustang blew past them, going the other direction, onto the 710 freeway. Casey flipped the M3 around to follow.

Chuck wove Eleanor in and out of traffic on the 710, creating havoc. He was making it very difficult for the officers driving Crown Vics to follow, and Casey had to grudgingly admit that this guy was a pretty good driver.

But not too good to lose a BMW M3. Casey stayed right on Chuck’s tail as he came flying off the 710 onto Pico Avenue. “Ain’t nothin’ at the end of this street but the ocean, Chuck!” Casey exclaimed as Pico turned into Pier G Avenue.

And Chuck seemed to realize that. He began to feel trapped. Keeping the accelerator to the floor, he reached the end of the pier. “Shit,” he breathed. “SHIT!”

He flipped the Mustang around, passing the cop cars going the other direction yet again. He flew through a gate and knocked over a stand, causing a group of pier workers to almost lose their grip on a huge compression tank.

When the police reached the gate, they found themselves blocked off by the workers desperately keeping a grip on the ropes holding up the tank. “MOVE!” Casey yelled. “MOVE!”

They didn’t. “Screw this,” he said, swinging the M3 around and going through a section of fence. The falling fence brushed a dock worker, causing him to let go of his rope. The tank came crashing to the ground, and punctured. It shot upward, through the cab of a truck, and flew down Pier G Avenue.

Chuck saw this all transpire in his rear view mirror, watching with some satisfaction as the tank disabled three, then four, then five police cars. Then he looked ahead.

A wrecking ball was swinging toward the wall ahead of him, and a San Pedro Police Jeep had just pulled in behind him. Nowhere to go. So he hit the gas.

The Mustang shot forward again, going past the wrecking ball just in time to miss it. The ball instead hit the Jeep, pushing it directly through the wall – and slamming it into the side of Casey’s M3.

Casey brought the M3 to a quick stop and Awesome jumped out. “Are you okay?” he asked the San Pedro police officer.

“Yeah, I think so,” the officer said.

“Are you sure?” Awesome asked, concerned. “’Cause, you just went through a wall.”

---

Chuck turned left out of the yard onto Ocean Boulevard, the police struggling to catch up. He had twelve minutes to get the car to the dock, or he was dead.

As he flew down Ocean, though, a little black dot in his rear view mirror got larger and larger – Casey’s BMW. The front end was mangled, but the car was practically unstoppable.

When he reached the toll booths onto the Vincent Thomas Bridge, Chuck blew right past them, practically causing a CalTrans truck to roll. The police followed, hot on his tail.

Chuck was about a quarter mile onto the bridge when the left lane suddenly closed off. Ignoring the cones, he blasted past – and then saw the cause.

A multiple vehicle traffic accident, right in the center of the bridge. Ambulances, fire units, and a tow-truck with its ramp down, ready to receive a car.

“Crap,” Chuck muttered, putting Eleanor into reverse. He began to back up – and came to a stop, as the police pulled up right behind him.

He slammed on the brakes. Behind Eleanor, Casey jumped out of his M3, gun up. “Chuck, get out of the car!” he yelled.

“That’s a change from the usual,” Chuck thought wryly.

He looked back up the road – and then his eyes rolled back in his head. Images appeared before him – a government car, speeding down the road, tests using a similar tow truck as the one before him, and the test results. “Forty percent chance of fatal injury,” the report said.

Chuck’s eyes snapped back open. “I’ll take those odds,” he muttered.

He shifted the Mustang’s transmission back into first, and hit the gas. “CHUCK!” Casey yelled behind him.

But Chuck was gone. Fifty, sixty, seventy… he hit the ramp of the tow truck at eighty-two miles per hour and blasted off into the air.

“Holy shit!” he breathed as the Mustang flew over the wreck, starting to angle nose down as it came toward clear freeway.

He felt the rear bumper clip the edge of an ambulance parked under him, and then the front end impacted the surface of the road. The hood crumpled a little, and he could hear the car howling in distress. He swerved left, then right, and then, miraculously, brought the steering wheel back to center.

The car under control, he accelerated off down the road.

At 8:07, he pulled into the dock at the end of Signal Street. Lester came jogging up to the driver’s window.

“Sorry, Chuck, we’re done here,” he informed him.

“Wait, what?!” Chuck said, incredulously.

“Deadline was eight o’clock,” Lester replied. “It’s 8:07.”

“You’re gonna argue with me over seven minutes?” Chuck exclaimed.

“Take it up with the boss,” Lester said.

Chuck growled as he drove the Mustang, now ejecting steam, out of the dockyard. Five minutes later, he pulled into Fulcrum Salvage and Steel, rolling to a stop in front of the office.

Opening the driver’s door, he stepped out of the car. Bryce Larkin came strolling out of the office.

He looked at the Mustang with disbelief on his face. “I said fifty cars, Chuck, not forty nine and a half!”

“Forty-nine – come on, Bryce! I’ve been up ALL night stealing cars! I’m exhausted, and I think the least you could do is show me a little appreciation!”

Bryce just stared at him, inscrutable. “Look,” Chuck said. “The damage isn’t that bad. A little fiberglass, some body work, she’ll be good as new. You figure a ’67 Shelby’s worth, what, sixty, seventy, maybe eighty grand? So, we take eighty grand from the two hundred I’m supposed to get, you give me one twenty, and we’re done.”

Bryce stared back at him, then nodded almost imperceptibly. “Alright,” he said.

Chuck couldn’t believe his ears. “Alright, then,” he said, almost smiling. “And this thing with Morgan, it’s done?”

“Done,” Bryce replied. And that was when his fist flashed out from behind his back.

As Chuck collapsed to the ground, he saw Bryce slip off a pair of brass knuckles. And then everything went black –

To be continued…

Chuck vs. the Spiked Punch, Chapter 2: "Chuck vs. the Matrix"

- and then his eyes flew back open.

Chuck was standing in a completely white room. He looked down at himself. Dressed all in black, with a long black trenchcoat. Black sunglasses completed the image.

He looked at Sarah. Also all in black, except her outfit was leather, and very, very tight.

“So,” Morgan’s voice floated out of mid-air. “What do you need?”

He paused, and then muttered. “Besides a miracle…”

“Guns,” Chuck replied. “Lots of guns.”

He heard a rushing noise, and then saw shelves flying toward them from out of nowhere. Sarah stepped forward, getting very close to Chuck as the shelves blasted past them, causing Chuck’s trenchcoat to whip around in the wind.

Finally the shelves stopped. “This’ll do,” Sarah said, stepping past Chuck. Reaching up to the shelf, she selected her usual handgun duo of a Colt 1911A1 and a Desert Eagle .50 caliber. She tucked those into her waistband before grabbing four Uzis to attach to various points on her body.

Chuck, meanwhile, had grabbed several H&K MP-5 submachine pistols. Loading those on various points of his outfit, he also slid about twenty-five clips of ammunition onto his belt.

Finally, he reached down, and pulled a duffel bag from a bottom shelf. “Explosives,” he said, and the shelves started moving again, stopping when the C4 explosives showed up.

Chuck packed the bag with several large bricks of C4, along with fuses and timers. When they were finally ready, Sarah said, “Okay, Morgan, jack us in.”

In the blink of an eye, the room disappeared, and they found themselves standing before what Chuck had always THOUGHT was the Gas Company building in downtown Los Angeles. Striding forward, he stepped through the automatic doors. There before him was a security checkpoint, with an X-Ray scanner and a metal detector.

Chuck placed the duffel bag on the scanner belt, and stepped through the detector. Needless to say, it went off.

A security guard with a wand approached him. “Sir, please remove your coat and place any metallic items on th-“

Chuck opened his coat, and the guard’s jaw dropped. “Holy shit…”

Chuck reached into the trenchcoat, removing two of the MP5s. He brought them up to face opposite directions and fired off quick bursts, taking out four security guards.

As he began to move across the lobby, another security guard raised his radio to his lips, saying, “Backup! We need backup!”

Unfortunately for the guard, Sarah chose that moment to walk in. She raised her 1911 and put a bullet in his forehead.

She had just crossed the lobby to join Chuck when they heard the sound of pounding footsteps. As they watched, thirty men in camouflage uniforms and helmets spread themselves across the lobby into tactical shooting positions. When they were all set, one of them took aim and yelled, “FREEZE!”

Chuck and Sarah did NOT freeze. In fact, quite the opposite. The two black-clad rebels dove in opposite directions, opening fire as they went – Chuck in bursts of automatic fire, Sarah one shot at a time from each of her handguns.

Thirty against two is normally very good odds. However, the military troops weren’t expecting these two. With the grace of ballerinas and the ruthlessness of Mob enforcers, they danced around the room, jumping off of walls, maiming troops, killing them with their own guns. A pillar behind Chuck began to disintegrate as he hid behind it, but he remained safe, finally popping out to dispatch his tormentor.

Finally, all thirty troops were dead or almost there. Dropping their empty clips to the ground, Sarah and Chuck headed for the elevator.

---

Agent Casey put his hand against his earpiece. He looked at Big Mike, and then at Agent Larkin and Agent Longshore.

“They’re coming for him,” was all he said.

---

When the elevator reached the 22nd floor, Sarah pressed the stop button. As she opened the emergency hatch in the roof, Chuck boosted her up. Then he handed the duffel bag up to her, and pulled himself up.

Sarah was already shaping the bomb. It was going to be a doozy. Setting it on top of the elevator, she set it to a contact fuse – the moment the elevator hit the ground, the bomb would blow.

Chuck grabbed on to the elevator cable with a carabineer, and Sarah held on to him. Pointing the Desert Eagle downward, she fired one, then two shots, and the elevator cable disconnected from the car. They went shooting upwards, and the elevator went plummeting downwards.

As they reached the rooftop access, Chuck looked down. More than five hundred feet below, he watched as the elevator crashed to the bottom of the shaft, the bomb on top exploding. The fireball grew, grew, reaching for Chuck, and then retreating.

---

Agent Casey looked up in disgust as the building shook and the sprinklers came on.

He whirled to Agent Larkin and Agent Longshore. “Find them,” he growled. “NOW!”

---

The pilot of the Huey on the rooftop was radioing for help. “We are under attack!” he screamed. “We are un-“

His head jerked to the left, and then his face stretched, and shifted, and suddenly, Agent Larkin appeared in his place.

Agent Larkin opened the door of the helicopter and stepped out. There was the annoyance, Sarah, beating up several troops, but the real threat, Chuck, stood at the other end of the roof.

Seeing Larkin, Chuck pulled out his two handguns – both Browning Hi-Powers. He began firing at Larkin, emptying the clips in both guns.

Larkin watched the bullets approach him, and then, with impossible speed, simply moved to dodge the bullets. His gun came up, and he began to fire.

Chuck’s eyes went wide as Agent Larkin’s bullets flew toward him, but then time seemed to slow down. Chuck bent over backward to an impossible angle, twisting his body to make the bullets miss him, but one still caught him. It grazed his right shoulder, enough to knock him over.

As he lay on his back, the wind knocked out of him, he watched Agent Larkin approach, gun aimed.

When Larkin reached Chuck, his face took on an almost pitying expression. He shook his head. “Only human.”

“Dodge this.”

Larkin whirled, and for a brief second, saw Sarah, just before her gun discharged directly in his face. His body flew backward, but just as it hit the rooftop, it morphed back into the body of the pilot.

Sarah pulled out her cell phone. “Morgan,” she said. “I need to know how to fly a Bell 212 Huey helicopter.”

“You got it,” she heard.

A moment later, she could feel the information entering her brain as it was implanted into her via the Intersect. Opening her eyes, she said to Chuck, “Let’s go.”

---

Agent Casey looked up with disgust as Agent Larkin re-entered the room. “They escaped,” Larkin reported.

Casey shook his head and rolled his eyes – and then his eyes widened, as a Huey slowly dropped to hover directly outside of the room he was in.

He looked out in disgust and despair at Mr. Carmichael, sitting behind the minigun in the Huey’s doorway. “NO!” he shouted, drawing his gun, as the minigun opened fire.

The stream of bullets flying out of the gun made its way across the room. Down went Longshore. Down went Larkin. As the bullets gradually came toward him, Casey scowled and gritted his teeth.

Down went Casey. Chuck stopped firing. He looked across the room – there was Big Mike, tied to a chair, and clearly straining against his bonds.

“Come on, big guy,” Chuck whispered as a vein began to stand out on Big Mike’s forehead. With one gigantic yell, Big Mike stretched the bonds to their limits – and they popped. He stood up, and began running across the room toward the open window.

That’s when the door opened – and Agent Casey stepped into the room. He raised his gun and fired, hitting Big Mike in the back of the leg. Big Mike stumbled and nearly fell, his momentum carrying him out the window.

Chuck saw this, and making a split second decision, jumped out of the helicopter – attached to it by the rope around his waist that was tied to a cabin anchor. He grabbed Big Mike in midair.

His muscles strained against the weight of the much larger man, and the helicopter dipped noticeably to that side, but Sarah was still able to pull to the left and fly away. As she did so, thought, Agent Casey fired off two more shots, putting them right through the hydraulic line for the tail rotor.

“Shit,” she whispered. Using brute force to muscle the collective upwards, she rose to the level of the top of the building. Chuck let go of Big Mike’s hand, and Big Mike dropped the ten feet to the rooftop. Then Chuck rappelled down to the roof of the building – and the Huey’s tail rotor failed.

As the helicopter fell, Chuck could see Sarah desperately unhooking his rope and tying it around her waist. Just before the helicopter impacted the building across the street, she dove out, headed for the side of the building Chuck stood on.

The helicopter struck the building with a vicious explosion of fuel and glass, sending a cloud of debris behind Sarah. She did her best to shield herself as she impacted the building Chuck was on top of.

Chuck almost went over the roof’s edge because of Sarah’s momentum, but he was able to hang on just long enough. He closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief –

To be continued…

Chuck vs. the Spiked Punch, Chapter 1: "Chuck vs. Serenity"

“You want to explain to me again why she’s going, Chuck?” Devin demanded angrily.

Chuck turned around with a sigh of exasperation. “Because it’s about time she started earning her keep, Devin. Now let me remind you one more time – you may CALL yourself ‘Captain’, but I really AM Captain.”

And so it appeared. Chuck Bartowski, captain of the Firefly-class transport Serenity. He had insisted that it was time that his sister, Ellie, accompany the crew on a mission. Devin, being her husband, hadn’t much liked that idea – after all, he’d gone to the bother of breaking her out of the Academy, and now Chuck was just going to plop her back into the hands of the Alliance!

As if Chuck was reading his mind, he turned to Devin. “Look. There’s no Alliance presence on the planet, okay?”

“How can you be sure, Chuck?!”

Chuck was uneasy. He couldn’t very well tell Devin about the Intersect, now could he?

“Just trust me. Okay?”

“Not awesome,” Devin grumbled as Chuck stalked off.

When Chuck reached the cargo bay, he found the mule warmed up and ready to go, Sarah standing at the pilot’s station. Casey was by the back of the mule, loading weapons.

Chuck looked at the NSA agent in disbelief. “I said no grenades, Casey!” he shouted.

Casey looked back at him. “Whaddya mean, ‘no grenades’? What if we run into trouble?”

“We’re not going down there to reenact the Battle of Serenity Valley, Casey,” Chuck said sternly.

Casey narrowed his eyes, but Chuck matched him glare for glare. “Fine,” Casey finally grumbled, removing the belt of grenades he had strapped around his waist.

Chuck approached his sister. “You ready for this mission, Ellie?”

She nodded, then spoke matter-of-factly. “Somebody’s going to die.”

Chuck nodded, his eyebrows raising. “Well, thank you for that cheery thought, my dear sister. On that note, shall we go take care of what we came here for?”

Ellie nodded and clambered on to the mule. Chuck grabbed the intercom box, pushed the button, and said, “How much longer, Morgan?”

“Two minutes, Chuck!”

“That two minutes till we crash, or two minutes till we’re safely on the ground?”

There was silence for a moment. “Morgan?”

“Uh, I’d say your odds are 50-50 and pick ‘em.”

Chuck sighed. “Please don’t crash my ship, Morgan.”

A moment later, Morgan didn’t crash the ship. Not quite. But it was certainly a very hard landing.

“Gorram it, Morgan,” Chuck grumbled under his breath, but avoided the intercom.

With two quick strides, he leapt up on the mule. “We ready?”

“Ready as we’re ever gonna be, Captain,” Sarah replied, getting the same mischievous twinkle in her eyes that she always got when she called Chuck “Captain.” It was something she generally only called him in the privacy of their quarters.

“Anna, open her up!” Chuck called.

Anna pressed a couple of buttons, and Serenity’s cargo bay doors slid open. As soon as she had the clearance, Sarah throttled up, and the mule rocketed out of the cargo bay.

As they flew across the desert headed toward their target, Casey said, “So explain again to me what we’re doing and why I couldn’t bring grenades?”

“Robbing the security company,” Chuck replied. “According to the Intersect, the primary security company in town has about fifty grand in their vault, and we’re going to waltz in and take it.”

“Exactly why would a private security company have that much money?”

“The Alliance doesn’t want to have much to do with the Outer Rim worlds,” Sarah interjected. “So, they pay private security companies to do their policing. Today just happens to be payday, so there’s a big pile of cash from the Alliance in the security company’s vault.”

Casey still looked confused. “Well, what’s to keep them from reporting us? I mean, if you’d let me bring some grenades, I could keep them from reporting us…”

“Reputation,” Chuck replied. “They report back to the Alliance that they were robbed by a bunch of yokels, and the Alliance drops them like a hot potato.”

Casey finally seemed to understand the whole picture. He picked up his shotgun. “Shiny,” he said, ratcheting the pump. “Let’s be bad guys.”

Sarah brought the mule screaming into the town at a high speed. She brought it to a quick stop outside of a non-descript building. Chuck, Sarah, and Casey all scrambled down from the mule, weapons at the ready. Ellie followed tentatively, barefoot.

They marched into the building. Chuck aimed his gun at the ceiling and fired off a round. “LISTEN UP!” he shouted. “Don’t do anything stupid, you won’t get hurt! We’re here for the company’s money, not yours!”

Sarah and Casey moved out among the people now cowering on the floor, relieving them of weapons, but leaving their wallets. Meanwhile, Ellie had moved into the crowd, doing some sort of eerie dance-like walk, looking at the people she passed.

Finally, she stopped in front of a large black man. “Him,” she said, pointing downward.

Sarah and Casey both crossed to the man rapidly. Casey lifted him up by his collar, Sarah sticking her gun in his face. “The key,” she hissed.

“Okay!” he squeaked, complying readily. He reached under his shirt and pulled out a lanyard. It held his ID and the vault key.

Chuck strode forward and grabbed them both from him. “Big Mike?” he asked, looking at the man. “Your name is Big Mike?”

Big Mike shrugged. “What can I say, it fits.”

Chuck pulled the key off the lanyard, then threw Big Mike’s ID back to him. He stepped across the room to where the vault was.

Inserting the key, he opened the door. Throwing it opened, he revealed –

A one foot by one foot by one foot cube containing maybe two hundred bucks in bills and a few loose gem stones.

Sarah looked inside. “Wow,” she said drily. “Finally, we can retire from this life of crime.”

Chuck didn’t respond. His eyes were rolled back in his head, and it was pretty clear that he was having a flash. Finally, he snapped out of it. Reaching inside the vault, he pressed a button that was hidden above the door –

And the wall slid back, the floor opening to reveal a stairway down. “Okay,” Sarah allowed. “That’s pretty good.”

“Listen up!” Chuck shouted. “We’re coming down there to clean you out!”

“I need the password!” he heard back.

Chuck made a face, and looked over at Casey. Casey nodded, aimed his machine gun into the vault, and fired off a short burst.

“Okay!”

The three quickly descended. Sarah and Casey immediately started filling their duffel bags with the stacks of cash against the wall, while Chuck started talking to the security guard.

“What’s your name?” Chuck asked.

“I’m Lester,” the guard replied. “You’re not going to kill me, are you?”

“No,” Chuck answered, “but I do have to shoot you somewhere so that it looks like you put up a fight. I wouldn’t want to have an innocent man’s death on my conscience.”

Sarah and Casey looked at each other and both rolled their eyes.

“Really?” Lester said worriedly. “Do you actually have to shoot me? Couldn’t you just like, graze me?”

“It’s gotta look convincing,” Chuck replied insistently. “How about the leg? The leg’s not too-“

He was interrupted by a scream coming from Ellie upstairs. Running up, he found her crouched on the floor, a look of agony on her face. “Ellie?” he asked, alarmed. “What is it?”

She turned and stared him in the face. “Fulcrum,” she whispered.

Chuck’s face drained of color. “Wuh de ma,” he whispered. “SARAH! CASEY! GET YOUR ASSES UP HERE!”

The two intelligence agents came running up the stairs. “What?” Casey demanded.

“Get Ellie and get on the mule!” Chuck commanded. “We’ve got Fulcrum comin’ our way!”

The word “Fulcrum” brought a collective gasp from the people in the security office. The only thing anybody knew about Fulcrum was that they were a bunch of men who had gone crazy and now ravaged the Outer Rim Worlds with almost wanton abandon.

Chuck sought out Big Mike. “Get everybody inside that vault and lock it,” he ordered him. “Stay inside as long as you’ve got air to breathe. Don’t open it until you have no other choice.”

Big Mike didn’t argue, just nodded. “Everybody in the vault!” he shouted as Chuck ran out the door.

Everybody went – except one. “Jeff, where the hell are you goin’?!” Big Mike yelled.

“I can’t go down there,” Jeff whimpered. “I have to go with them!”

And he ran out the door. He grabbed onto the back of the mule as it was pulling away, trying to pull himself up.

“GET BACK INSIDE!” Chuck roared as Jeff hung on to the back.

“We weigh too much, Chuck!” Sarah warned, as the mule’s acceleration slowed.

“Go back inside and get in that vault!” Chuck yelled.

“NO!” Jeff screamed, shaking his head.

Chuck looked grimly at Casey. Casey nodded, then stepped forward, and punched Jeff in the face. Jeff fell to the ground. Almost immediately, a group of Fulcrum agents who had been running down the street stopped and surrounded him.

Chuck could hear them as they flew away. “Where is the Intersect?!” they all screamed in unison, as the pulled torture devices from under their black jackets.

He shuddered and turned away. He closed his eyes for a moment –

To be continued…