Contains spoilers for An Evening With Mr. Yang, Mr. Yin Presents, and Yang 3 in 2D.

MR. YANG STRIKES AGAIN: SERIAL KILLER CLAIMS NEW VICTIM

The paper lay innocently in the middle of the table, folded neatly so that the main article was there, in all its glory. The picture accompanying the story was the last of his trademark stickers, a yin-yang with tattered edges. He supposed the pictures of the victim had been too gruesome to put in a public paper. A bit disappointing, but nice to see he wasn't unnoticed all the same.

He had read the article several times and nearly memorized it. He was pleased to see that, from the statements they had given, the police involved in the incident seemed shell-shocked…as they should be.

He drained his coffee mug and looked up to see her coming down the stairs, her curly black hair an untamed mess. She gave him a nod for good morning and walked over to the cabinet.

"My dear, how would you like to become Yang?"

He encouraged her to write the riddles, which she struggled to do, demanding as he was. By the fifth rewrite, he was beginning to have second thoughts, until finally they lived up to his admittedly lofty standards. He typed them out, folded them carefully, placed them in envelopes and sent the first to the police department.

Then it was time to have some fun.

She watched with wide eyes as he knocked the girl out with a swift, vicious blow to the head. She watched as he dragged the corpse to the appointed location, and as they waited a ways away with binoculars to see. He was very precise about that—he loved seeing them find the clues.

None ever got past the third clue. In the summer, he had had two of the challengers solve the second, but both had failed at the third. The looks on their faces were incredible as they found the victims they had failed to save. Once he had put the body back in the detective's home. That had been one of his favorite cases.

These, however, were clearly stumped by the second riddle. They were frustrated, shouting at one another, arguing about the true meaning of his twisted rhymes.

"That's time," she murmured. The stopwatch held by the police began to give off an audible beep, even as his watch marked the time as well.

"Sure enough," he said, straightening and turning to the girl. "Too bad. These weren't the best challengers for your first time."

He injected a colorful mix of deadly chemicals straight into the unconscious girl's heart and settled back to watch her die. His daughter watched, her gaze guarded as though she was watching something indecent.

Once she was dead, he carved the Yin-Yang into her skin and left the final note.

"I hope she didn't mind too much—

This girl you couldn't save.

You followed the futile clues—guess what?

It's you who her death paved.

Maybe we'll see each other again…?

-Mr. Yang"

The phone was ringing, the sound echoing hollowly through the house. She was in the middle of unloading groceries, but she paused to answer all the same.

"Hello?"

"This is the University of Colorado at Boulder. We're calling for Mr. Rotmensen—is he available?"

"No, he's on a business trip and won't be back until next week."

"Please tell him we called."

"I wi—"

Then there was a click and the line went dead.

It was sick, she thought, so sick how many people lusted after his teaching abilities, not knowing what else lay hidden under his perfect façade. Who would hire a serial killer to teach their students? Every major school out there, apparently.

She set the brown paper sack on the kitchen counter and returned to the car for another load. It was overcast and dripping.

The whirring, mechanical sound of a bicycle chain interrupted her. She turned to see a boy cycling along on his bike, no helmet covering his floppy brown hair. He was looking at her, but quickly turned away as she looked back, his cheeks turning pink.

"What's your name?"

He had no choice to stop the bike and turn to look at her, one foot balancing on the ground. "Shawn. Shawn Spencer."

"Shawn Spencer." She couldn't say why, exactly, but the boy intrigued her. Maybe it was the carefree look he had to him while he rode along the side of the street, or maybe it was the confident way he said his name. She wondered whether his parents had ever taught him not to talk to strangers.

"Yeah." He shifted his weight awkwardly, clearly uncomfortable.

"Will you help me get the rest of these bags?" she asked, giving him a slight smile. He glanced around as though looking for a way out, before shrugging.

"Sure. I guess."

There were few enough bags that it only took two trips for the two of them to transport all the groceries inside the house. On the second, a car pulled up beside the driveway. There was a blonde woman at the steering wheel.

"Oh, great," Shawn muttered.

"Shawn! I've been looking for you. You were supposed to be home an hour ago," the woman said, climbing out of the car.

"Sorry, Mom."

"Was he causing you any problems?" his mother continued, turning to her. "I'm so sorry. Come along, Shawn—"

"Wait!" She couldn't help herself. Her smile vanished and she reached with one claw-like hand for Shawn's shoulder. "Please. Can I have a picture with him? Just one picture?"

Shawn's mother blinked. "A photo? I don't see why not."

"Thank you." She ran inside, rummaging furiously within the drawers to find her father's digital camera. He would be furious with her, but she didn't care.

She handed the camera to Shawn's mother and stood back, one arm around the boy, smiling broadly with all of her teeth. The camera beeped once, an orange light flashed, and then it was back in her hands, and Shawn was in the car, and Shawn was driving away…She waved from the driveway, her smile still in place, long after the car had disappeared.

She unpacked the bags and stared at the picture. She wanted a print.

He was in a rage when he returned. "The level of ignorance in this world is appalling, simply appalling. Cutting corners, never doing anything all the way…they all deserve to die, don't they!"

He turned to her, his bright eyes flashing. "Your time has come, darling girl. Prove to me that you are indeed ready to become Yang."

"I don't—"

"Do it!" he roared, before catching sight of the photograph lying on the tabletop. He snatched it up before she could stop him and investigated it thoroughly, his eyes taking in every detail. "What is this? Who is this boy?"

"Shawn Spencer," she said dreamily.

"Shawn Spencer," he repeated, mocking. "Who is Shawn Spencer? No matter. You are to play the game, do you understand me? I will give you very minimal assistance this time. You've watched me enough that you should have observed how a professional operates."

"It's Mr. Yang again! We're going to play a game. Can you guess the corpse and win? Or will I get to kill again? This is going to be so much fun!"

Watching the police's movements was the easiest thing in the world. The inspector in question was so gullible, so easy to trick, that it almost made her want to laugh. She had taken his childhood sweetheart, and here the detective was, acting like he still loved the girl.

"Aww, isn't that sweet?" she cooed to the terrified girl, who watched her movements with wide, frightened eyes. "He still cares about you, even though it's been so long. I'm such a romantic at heart. Maybe Shawn thinks about me every day…"

The inspector threw down his hands and yelled, so loudly that even from the distance she was watching him from, his voice was clearly audible. "I can't do it. I can't fucking do it! God, please, God, don't let Yang kill her!"

The girl's breath stopped in her throat, an audible gasp as her eyes widened impossibly. Yang turned to her and shrugged, her broad, toothy smile still firmly in place. "You heard 'im. What shall we do? I want to make Daddy proud of me…"

The girl was hyperventilating, her chest rising and falling so rapidly that she seemed imminently in danger of passing out. Yang tossed and caught her knife idly by the handle, before aiming it for the girl's jugular. "Kind of messy, isn't it?"

The seconds ticked by, the clock hands on the wall moving jerkily along as Yang stood, holding the knife, staring into her victim's eyes.

"I don't…"

"Yang, Yang, Yang," the all-too familiar voice chastised her, as her father emerged from the doorway, his bright gaze piercing her. "You disappoint me! You were incapable last time, and now you can't even kill a girl? Come now!"

He crossed the room in swift strides, pulled the knife from her limp grasp, and with a stab the game was over.

"You disappoint me," he said again, coldly. "At least finish the game yourself."

Yang cowered silently, a single thought running through her mind. The man got his wish—Yang didn't kill the girl, Yin did.

It was several years later when he came home on an especially late, dripping night, and slammed a newspaper down in front of her.

"Well, my dear, it appears that your little obsession has risen through the ranks of life."

She unfolded it, and as she looked at the cover her eyes slowly widened until she began beaming, showing all her teeth. "Shawn…"

"You have one more chance," her father said, imperiously, looming over her. "Can you be Yang, or shall I be forced to deal with you? I trust that you won't betray me."

"I-I can," she said, her voice breaking.

"Perfect," he breathed, a smile crossing his own face. "And I have the perfect test of your ability to play the game."

He slammed one hand down onto the picture of Shawn Spencer, the psychic detective whose picture dominated the front page.

The newspaper covered enough of her face that it was difficult for her to see Shawn over it. He was being blocked by his partner—Guster. Yang shifted her chair and wrinkled the paper down, watching as a waitress with long brown hair and a pink shirt came to take Shawn's order.

She returned her gaze to the newspaper. She hadn't yet decided on a victim, though she had been actively stalking Shawn for the past week. Today, however, she was determined to put her plan into action.

Guster pushed his chair back and stormed off, presumably to find a restroom. Yang looked up at Shawn once more.

…Was he flirting with that waitress? She watched him shake his head, waggle his finger, give a half-smirk.

And Yang knew who her first victim would be.

"So this is where the infamous duo of Psych works," Yang murmured, dragging the tied-up girl behind her. "Ooh, look, pictures." She eyed the row of framed images of Gus and Shawn as kids. "Wow, he's really young here. I love that innocent look on his face," she cooed, before turning away. She had a bit of time before Shawn would solve the train clues, and then she would be ready for him.

She forced the girl into one of the chairs unceremoniously, before digging through her bag for her camera. It was her father's, an old-fashioned one that printed the picture then and there.

"Say cheese!" she said, holding the camera up to her eye and smiling. "Oh, wait, you can't, can you…?"

The girl's eyes were wide, her face taut and bloodless, an expression of the utmost terror on her face. It reminded Yang pleasantly of her last victim.

She had framed the picture and was spying on the pier for Shawn, binoculars to her eyes, when she saw him. He ran to the pier, his cronies from the police flanking him, desperately looking around. She took her cell phone from a pocket and dialed the number of the planted phone.

Shawn looked around desperately before diving for the park bench. He picked it up. Yang counted the rings in her head.

But Shawn wasn't answering.

"Come on…"

His friends were yelling something at him, but as the eighth rang came, Shawn simply held the phone up in one hand, before throwing it into the murky waters of the ocean.

"Oh, Shawn, you bad, bad boy," Yang said with a sharp intake of breath. "Naughty, naughty boy."

She wrote the note on the back of the photo, hung it on the wall, and dragged her prisoner out of the Psych office, purposefully leaving the binoculars behind. When she was safely in the girl's Jeep, she watched through the windows. After a few minutes passed, the team went in. There was a pause before all but Shawn and Gus came out again. The police team looked especially grim.

"Shawn…doesn't want to play anymore," Yang sighed, turning back to her victim. "Well, that's good news for you…"

As if on cue, her cell phone began to ring. She pulled it out once more and checked the number on the screen.

"Daddy?"

"How is it going?"

"Shawn's given up," Yang whined. "He doesn't want to solve the next riddle. And I know it's 'doesn't want to.'"

Her father sighed with exaggerated patience. "My dear, what makes you think that any part of this game is about what Shawn wants? If he has no desire to play along, then leave him no other choice."

Yang smiled. "I hear his mother's in town…"

"I just can't believe this! It's such a coincidence! I swear, you haven't aged a day," Yang said, looking away from the driving wheel at the blonde woman sitting in the passenger seat. Shawn's mother was trussed up, firmly, a piece of duct tape covering her mouth. Her eyes were narrowed in hate at Yang, and no spark of recognition flashed within them.

"You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?" Yang said. "Oh, well."

Night had fallen as the blue Sedan rolled into the parking lot of the outdoor movie showing. Yang parked, thought for a moment, and bit her lip. She was behind schedule, a schedule that was key if her plan was to succeed.

She hesitated before dialing the number. "Daddy, can I ask a small favor?"

She just wanted to talk to him, and that was all. See him face to face, now that he was all grown up, and hold a real conversation.

Yang had placed the bomb on Shawn's mother and retreated to a different car, where she sat, watching the movie, eating her own popcorn piece by piece.

The cop cars pulled up in a whirl of flashing lights and loud sirens, and as she saw Shawn get out of the car she felt her heart jump a bit. This was it. This was her finale, either way, and she had no problems with that.

Shouts disrupted the night air as Shawn jumped onto the roof of one of the cars, frantically looking for his mother. The people watching the movie yelled, wanting him to get down. How naïve they were, only concerned about seeing the fiction unfolding in front of them, while a true story was happening under their noses.

He had seen the car. He jumped down and ran toward it. Yang watched his face, and then watched the police officers creeping closer and closer. Would they fall for the trap her father had set?

A group of policemen ran back toward the projection room, but Yang noticed that Shawn was not among them. Of course, he was too smart, too intuitive to fall for that trick. Yang leaned forward in her seat. She wanted to see the look on his face when he saw his mother, wanted to see his reaction to realizing that he couldn't save her. She imagined the pain his face would show and shivered from the thought. It took all her self-control not to break into laughter.

She turned back to the movie, and minutes passed slowly, before she glanced back over at the blue car. Surprise, surprise—Shawn was staring over the top of the car, a mix of fear and shock in his face. She smiled and beckoned him with her head.

"Admit it…I'm prettier than you thought I'd be."

White was so…boring. It covered the walls and her clothes and everything in the institution. Her food was the only escape she had back into the world of color. Everything else was totally monochromatic.

It gave her rather a lot of time to think.

The days passed methodically, slowly. There was nothing to expect, nothing to look forward to. As far as rehabilitation went, Yang suspected that the institution was doing very little to make her saner.

Her book was the only thing that even kept her occupied, and when it was completed she had absolutely nothing to do.

Of course, soon enough afterwards, the monotony broke again.

Shawn or Daddy? Shawn or Daddy? Shawn or…

But she had chosen Shawn, hadn't she? She had given him the clue he needed to rescue his sweet little girlfriend. She had told him that there was, indeed, a Yin.

She had laughed when she heard that Mary was dead. She had hated the way he looked at her, like she was some sort of animal he was strangely fascinated by. She had planted the false trail, convinced Shawn that Mary was Yin…

And now he was dead. She wondered if that counted as murder, and decided that she could hardly be blamed.

The silence stretched on and on. The weeks drew out into months, and no one had come to visit her. She doubted whether they had caught Yin. He wasn't that stupid, was he?

She wanted to see Shawn again, an obsession that crept into everything she did. She thought and planned and thought and planned, until she thought of a way out.

Yang began behaving, putting effort into acting at least decently normal. Her efforts were rewarded, and she was let out of her cell more and more often, until the day when Shawn finally returned, for business, of course. Yang doubted whether he would ever really visit her just because he could.

So Shawn had a girlfriend. She processed the information for a while that day, and wasn't sure what to make of it. She giggled to herself, and waited until they returned the next morning.

Yin was dead.

No, she had killed Yin. But Yang didn't really feel much regret. The obsession was taking over again, because now Yang had no idea when she would next see Shawn again. There was nothing to occupy her time but to think, and so think she did.

It was a surprise, then, when he showed up on Wednesday to play badminton with her, looking much the same as he always did. She wondered whether he would be kinder to her now that he had discovered that she wasn't, at least not in actuality, a killer.

They talked, and talked, and just talking with him made her feel better. Then the planning stopped, and she really did begin to feel more normal. He returned the next week, and the week after…

"Shawn, you aren't dressed properly to exercise," she admonished him, after meeting him in the waiting room.

He folded his hands together awkwardly, avoiding her eyes, and appeared to choose his words carefully before speaking. "Yang, I'm sorry, but I can't visit you anymore."

"What? Why?" For once she wasn't smiling.

"My, uh, friends found out, and they weren't exactly thrilled that I was visiting you," he said, meeting her eyes for the first time.

"Oh, but Shawn, opposition only makes our love burn all the brighter," she said, still unsmiling.

"Look, Yang, I had fun," he said finally. "I liked talking to you, and I liked playing badminton…but we both need to move on. I don't need this, and you can't keep living in the past. It's over."

She watched him leave with her mouth slightly open.

That night, in the dark, with no one to hear her, she laughed. It was a dark, deranged sound, full of intentions and broken promises.

And then she started to plan once more.

"So. Jules. What's up?" Shawn leaned comfortably against the wooden desk, Gus by his side as they both faced the blonde policewoman.

"I don't…I, well, I think this may come as a shock to both of you," Jules said, her face serious as she faced both of them. "But I received a call this morning with a rather unwelcome piece of news."

"Come on, just tell us," Shawn said.

"Shawn, Yang escaped," Jules said in a rush, watching Shawn to gauge his reaction.

"What? What? No," Shawn said, a smile still in place as he slowly shook his head back and forth, his hands raised as if to protect himself.

"I know it's hard to believe, but it's tr—"

"No!" Shawn yelled, throwing his fists down on the desk. "We are not playing this game again!"

"Shawn, we don't even know if she'll start killing people," Gus said, trying to grab Shawn's shoulder.

"It's my fault. It's all my fault! She's going to come after me again!" Shawn said, throwing his head down. "I can't do this, Gus! I can't!"

As if on cue, Carlton Lassiter walked purposefully over to the others, his face grim as he surveyed them. He held a large yellow envelope in one hand. "We received this just a few minutes ago," he said stiffly, turning it over to reveal the yin-yang sticker on the seal. "I didn't bother with verification, as it's obviously a prank."

"Oh my God," Gus said, staring at the envelope. Jules looked up at Lassiter, horror on her face.

"Carlton, this isn't a prank. Didn't you hear? The news came in just a few minutes ago. Yang escaped."

"What? No," Lassiter said incredulously, his mouth open in a quasi-smile. "That's…"

"How the hell did she get out, that's what I want to know," Jules said, shaking her head.

"Open the envelope," Gus urged, looking around at each of them in turn. Shawn slowly reached for it, but before he could even begin to peel off the sticker McNab looked around the corner.

"Where's the chief? She's not in her office."

Lassiter and Jules exchanged looks, both shaking their heads.

"She didn't call in sick, and now that I think of it, I haven't seen her all morning," Jules said. "Wait. Oh, God."

They looked back at each other slowly, horror dawning on both of their faces. "Yang couldn't have…"

Shawn, meanwhile, had pulled the clue out of the envelope.

"I haven't seen you since our fight.

So let's see each other again tonight—

Your notice is my only aim.

Come along! And we'll play our game.

P.S. Have you missed her yet?"

"Emotions are the enemy of efficiency."

Yang smiled. "No, Daddy. Emotions are inspiration, and with inspiration, anything can happen."

"You're going to rot in a cell with four padded walls. The end."

"No, Shawn, the beginning…"

A/N: Please tell me what you thought! I worked rather hard on it. Reviews are always appreciated!