Welcome to the start of a new and improved fanfic! Third person, based around Chuck vs. The Beard, and much more Chuck :D Sam will also have some significant changes to her character and the plot revamped.

EDIT 11/10/2013: So, this is a re-edit of a re-edit, I've changed the time stamp to Chuck vs. the Fake Name to give myself a week's more of narrative time to flesh out the story. I would also like to mention that there are some story elements that I've pushed forward so they haven't happened yet. There is more character and background development for those of you who haven't seen Chuck, so some things will be more explained in-depth. And an added note, in case I forgot to mention, this is after Scorpia Rising.

Chapter One

Chuck Vs. The Newcomer

Chuck Bartowski was just an average guy with an average life. He got paid $12.50 an hour at the Burbank Buy More, and had a pretty girlfriend named Hannah, who was sweet with brown hair and green eyes. He had a loving sister and a brother-in-law who was the epitome of awesome. He worked at the Buy More with his best friend since Elementary school, a fact that made the boring life of a computer repair expert a little bit more interesting.

To mundane eyes, Chuck had it pretty good.

But Chuck Bartowski was also a spy for the CIA. He had a computer inside his brain that would activate with a Flash if he saw or heard anything related to government, spies, and terrorists. He had lived with this secret for three years now, and it wasn't getting any easier.

Chuck Bartowski also wasn't a big fan of airports.

There were a number of reasons for this, in no particular order: the traffic, Big Mike chewing him out for missing another shift of work, having to pull out the tooth of his NSA coworker Casey to cover his alias of Rafe, a professional and cold-blooded killer (which Chuck was not)...Chuck was not in a good mood that day, and expecting company was not making it any better.

The call had been abrupt to say the least, but Chuck shouldn't have been surprised. It seemed as though he lived in a family of spies, and that proved no different with Clarice Bartowski, or Aunt Clary as Chuck knew her. He had his suspicions after learning his father hid under the alias of Orion – was his mother a spy? His aunt and uncle? Surely not the Awesome family as well...

Well, okay, not the Awesome family. Devon couldn't lie his way out of a paper bag. Chuck sighed to himself and readjusted the sign he was carrying, with his cousin's name on it. He had no idea what she would look like, so he hoped she could read her own name when boarding off the plane.

Aunt Clary, an agent for the CIA, had remained dormant for the past ten years, until last week when General Beckman called for a mission in Budapest. Clary couldn't very well leave her daughter to stay alone in Montana in a tiny cabin in the Rockies, so she of course sent her to California to live with her next of kin. As far as he knew, said kid had no idea her mom was a spy. That seemed to be common in this family.

He waited patiently for the passengers to unload. Chuck doubted the Intersect would pick up on a teenage girl, so he took some pointers on profiling from Casey. If she's wearing a thick coat or sweater with a bulge around the waist or under the arm, she probably has a gun. If she walks as though there is a rock in her shoe, she probably has a knife strapped to her ankle. If she's carrying a briefcase or backpack, there's probably a bomb or disassembled sniper inside.

Chuck frowned to himself. Okay, maybe taking pointers from Casey was a bad idea.

He was less concerned about his cousin being a spy so much as what he was going to say to Hannah when he got back. Life as a spy wasn't one of convenience – he was lucky that the Buy More did home installations, because otherwise he'd be scrambling all the time for an excuse as to why he was never at work all the damn time. Each week there seemed to be a new problem he had to deal with. A problem that usually involved having a gun pointed at him.

But Chuck realized he didn't have to worry about having a family member mistakenly trying to kill him because they work for a different country – because he was pretty sure the girl he was looking at never left this one. She was easy to pick out amongst the men in tuxedos and families carting toddlers, a lone teenager amongst groups.

He saw her hair first, then her shoes.

Thick, curly bird's nest that hadn't seen a hairdresser in a couple years (maybe they were lacking such in the Rockies. Who knows?), looking unkempt as though she had spent most of the four hour flight sleeping. Then there were her lime green All Stars oxfords, an odd color for a shoe, and probably not very easy to find in Montana. The bright dye clashed with the rest of her clothing, relatively modest and worn, like jeans with ragged ends and a robust sweater that was a bit too small; stuff you'd expect a Montanan to own. Chuck tried to smile and not judge her taste in fashion at the same time.

She spotted him instantly after emerging from the crowd of disembarking passengers. Her face lit up with a big, toothy grin across her freckled cheeks and Chuck saw the family resemblance, like a smaller version of her mother. A smaller, much less refined version, to be exact. She wasn't carrying much, just a ratty carry-on that looked as though she used it to distract an angry bear while she ran the other way.

She waved and said as she got closer, "You're Chuck, right? I'm Samantha."

"Yeah, I know," He said, finally allowing himself to drop the sign. "I've been carrying it for the past half hour."

Samantha blinked at him, her smile faltering, eyebrows quirking up. She seemed bewildered by what he said, apparently trying to decide what he meant through both his choice of words as well as tone. It was a look Chuck knew well, particularly amongst bad guys with a bad sense of humor. She didn't have a good handle on sarcasm.

Huh. A teenager who didn't understand sarcasm. That had to be a first. Chuck had to assume it was a side effect of too much fresh mountain air and not enough cable TV. Morgan was going to love this! Well, after he explained his extended family – a highly confidential part of his life for reasons unknown until now.

Chuck was going to offer to carry Samantha's bag before she spotted something over his shoulder and gasped, "They have Cinnabons here!" and burst past Chuck while his hand was still out. The pastry stand had her completely enraptured, the cashier looking as bewildered as Chuck felt. Samantha had completely forgotten Chuck was even there.

Chuck made a face and sighed to himself. "Nice to meet you, too."

This was going to be a long day.