I do not, nor will I, ever own the rights to any characters owned by Davis/Panzer. I'm borrowing Methos for a short bit and promise to return him unharmed.

Canon Note: After "Through A Glass Darkly" and before "Judgement Day."


Out of the Frying Pan…


"I just need a ride to the shop so I can pick up my car, it's not like it's going to be a big deal. Just picking up a car!"

"Right. And since when is anything "just" with you?"

"I'm sorry, Mac had an appointment and nobody in my building owns their own car. Adam, please - "

"I'll be there in two hours."

"Thank y -" Amy stared at the handset, surprised by the abrupt hang up. Perhaps she had made a mistake calling Adam, but the shop wasn't exactly convenient to the Metro, and getting a cab to take her into the neighborhood would have involved more persuading and paying than she was interested in dealing with at the moment.

But now, standing on the sidewalk, waiting for Adam to show, Amy felt her stomach clench and wondered if she shouldn't have just taken the Metro. They weren't yelling at each other, they were able to be around each other if and when they both happened to be around Mac, but to Amy it felt like walking on eggshells, afraid she'd say the wrong thing at any given time and she really didn't know what to do to make that feeling go away.

Methos' Volvo pulled over to the curb and stopped with a jerk. Amy's stomach clenched again and she swallowed past her suddenly dry mouth. She kept her eyes on the ground while climbing in and pulled out a piece of paper. "The address. It's not the best area…"

"I figured."

Amy risked a glance sideways and saw the corner of his mouth twitch. She felt some of the tension across her shoulders ease.

"Little late for most repair shops isn't it?" He pulled away from the curb and paused at the corner.

"This one's special. They cater to a crowd that prefers odd hours."

"Why am I not surprised?" Methos muttered and turned out onto the main road.

"It's just about being discreet," Amy smiled.

"What did you have added to the little junker?"

"Actually it just broke. Clutch went out and these guys do great work."

When they reached the correct street Methos parked where Amy pointed. The setting sun threw a few orange and red rays down the street, leaving deep shadows between the buildings. Random bits of debris skittered along, pushed by the breeze. The old industrial area suited a barely-legal business, being warehouses and small factories abandoned years ago.

"Are you sure they knew you were coming? Everything is closed up."

"Yeah, I made arrangements. Promised I'd lock everything back up." Amy hopped out and started across the street, angling to go a distance further down the block than where she had told him to pull over.

"Why didn't you have me park down there? I could have dropped you at -" Methos stopped mid sentence. Amy had disappeared from his side and now stood in the narrow gap between two buildings, staring into the gloom, fists clenched, eyes narrowed. "Amy?"

"Huh? Oh, sorry, thought I heard something." She hurried to catch up to Methos, her eyes scanning the roofs down the row of warehouses.

"I'm not the one that knows where we're going, you know."

"Sorry, it's the blue doors. Two more buildings down." She glanced back over her shoulder.

"What is wrong with you?"

"It's not right." She paused again and turned a circle, carefully scanning each rooftop before turning the other direction and peering into the spaces close by.

"What?"

"Something's not quite right." She stepped through the broken overhead doorway of the next building. A faded sign across the top declared it to have been a foundry at one point in time, but now only the remains of equipment littered the space, industrial ghosts rusting in the elements. The ceiling lay half open to the elements; pieces of it fallen to the floor in pieces and piles. Massive support pillars marched in order from front to back, refusing to admit most of the load they bore had vanished. Down the center of the room, a hole surrounded by rusted railing opened onto a lower level, where the casting molds would have stood as molten steel poured down from above. "I'm getting a - There they are."

"I knew it!"

Four shapes appeared at the other end of the building, stepping through another broken door which mirrored the front. Behind them, abandoned train cars rusted on the long-disused track. Three males, one female, each stood an arm's span apart, waiting. She didn't have to enter, but to turn and run was not an option. Not for Amy. She strode in until she stood halfway between the doors and the pit, assuming Methos had followed. "What do you figure the structural integrity of this place is?

"What?"

"Do you think it could survive a small earthquake?"

"Amy, what are you -"

She slipped out of her shoes and pushed her sleeves above her elbows. "You'd better get out of here."

"They're not Immortal. Why should I?"

"They're telepaths with no idea and no care who or what you are. Get out of here."

"How do you even know what -"

"Call it bad vibes, okay? I don't have time for this!"

"It's four on one!"

"Feel sorry for them, not me." She bent her knees, flexed her fingers, and Methos felt a tingling in the air. "Look, it's about to get like a tornado in here and I don't know that I can fight four of them and shield both of us at the same time. Get."

"What does that have -"

She heaved a sigh and spared a quick glare at Methos. "Are you willing to take the chance of regenerating in front of telepaths that do not have our best interests in mind?" Amy used her toes to push aside crumbled concrete until she had flat floor, not debris, beneath her feet.

"Good point." Methos began to back away carefully, his eyes never leaving the group waiting at the other end.

"I know." Amy planted her feet in the dirt and shifted into a ready stance. No chance to surprise the others now, but they had also lost their ability to catch her unprepared. It would all balance out.

Methos walked backwards until he reached the front doors. He then slid sideways along the wall until a sizable piece of equipment covered in ceiling debris and paper trash gave him cover.

Amy twisted the balls of her feet in the dirt again, drawing energy into herself, preparing for whatever would be thrown at her. The first wave came as a psychic assault from the woman, a wave of noise and voices that began as a low murmur in the back of her mind and probably would have built to a maddening cacophony of noise, but she had expected the opening to salvo and brushed it aside with less effort than squashing an obnoxious bug. The shortest man, standing about five and a half feet tall, took a step forward to throw the second punch, such as it was. To Amy's eyes the attack looked like a cone of colored light coming at her, a vortex centered at his chest. She threw up a physical shield as a precaution and made her mental shields a wall, not the usual river. With an effort she turned the attack aside and drew more power in, preparing for the next assault.

The four weren't entirely stupid, Amy decided. Two failed attacks and they quickly changed from the light, probing attacks and went for full-on assault. As one, they sent a powerful wave of a four-pronged mental assault and began firing the semi-automatic pistols they pulled from holsters under their jackets. With a flick of her physical shield, the bullets fell to the floor and she tried to quickly switch focus back to the psychic attack buzzing through her skull like a swarm of mosquitos, searching for any weakness in her mental shields. Amy flinched as the buzz grew to a near deafening level. Four different wavelengths of attack and four guns were apparently her limit. She gritted her teeth, flexed her arms, and pushed back with physical and mental shields at the same time, trying to at least drop the buzzing to a background hum while she sent bullets flying wildly back at her attackers.

The telepaths doubled down. With their clips empty, they dropped their guns and poured all their focus into breaking through her shields. They split up so they no longer stood four abreast, stepping around in a wide arc, trying to pull her focus too far apart to mount an effective defense. To Amy, defending against a mental assault was preferable to maintaining shields against flying bullets and she thanked heaven they hadn't thought to attempt the flanking move until their clips had emptied, but being on the defensive at all was unacceptable.

And then the pieces of concrete, trash, bits of metal and even pieces of broken machinery began to fly. A cloud of dust and dross writhed in front of her, small pieces managed to occasionally pepper her scalp and back, making it around the shields as Amy warded off the larger, dangerous rubble. A chance piece of concrete and iron made it past the shields and slammed into her shoulder, numbing her arm down to the fingers. If it came to hand-to-hand combat, she would have a decided disadvantage immediately.

One of her attackers had the gift of telekinesis and Amy wanted to curse, but couldn't waste the time or breath. She tried to redirect the flying waste back to her attackers, but couldn't split her energy in three directions. Protecting herself from the mental barrage and creating a shield didn't leave her enough power to rip debris from someone else's control, let alone send it flying back at them. She managed a few weak pushes, shoving the smaller things away, but it wasn't enough. As she prepared to release the physical shields and channel that energy into an attack, a piece of railing came flying from behind, hitting her across the shoulders and forcing Amy to stagger a few steps before catching herself.

With a primal yell, she pulled in a surge of energy and pushed her physical shields out in an arc, a battering ram of willpower and a hope to knock her nameless foes down. With a moment to breathe, she checked to make sure her arm hadn't been broken and made a decision. She would put a dome of shield around herself, stop focusing on mental shields, and attack like a berserker. If she were fast enough, she could take the four down before their telepathic attacks overpowered her.

Except for the pulley flying at her head - a massive piece from the overhead crane - which she avoided only by diving to the floor.

"That's it! I'm done playing your game!" Amy screamed and her voice rattled what little glass remained in the windows. She stood again and ground her feet against the floor, reaching through the concrete for the energy flowing through the earth beneath her. Amy pulled in so much, she glowed blue from her toes to her head and her hair flared out like a halo. The team of four had already regained their feet and prepared themselves. The woman pulled another pistol out and started firing. Amy raised a shield and the bullets ricocheted away once more. The tallest of the four - taller than any of her brothers - let loose with a yell that echoed through the warehouse and battered her mental shields like a pile driver. The walls groaned, old fixtures swayed, and crushing pressure built behind her eyes.

Amy sacrificed her physical shield to add another layer of psychic shields around her innermost core and got hit by several rusty bolts swirling around, courtesy of the telekinetic. With another scream, she used raw force to push the vortex of detritus across the warehouse, letting the giant's attack batter her mind in exchange for being able to usurp control of the materials.

She braced her legs, clenched her fists, and focused every bit of energy and will she had on the floor and ceiling. Slower than she wished, she could feel the concrete surrounding her move. Too slowly. Darkness gathered at the edges of her vision while pinpoints of light popped behind her eyes. A concentrated wave of pain slammed against her, the four in a simultaneous mental attack with all their abilities. Amy switched her focus to the four and a wind tore through the warehouse, picking them up and throwing them back to the far side from where they had appeared. Sound, light, and pain exploded through her mind, her shields wavered but she couldn't let go just yet. She focused on the building again.

Massive support beams creaked, cracks running across their surfaces. They swayed and collapsed. Too much had been asked of them in the last ten minutes. They could no longer carry the load of the building after the battering they had taken and Amy only had to nudge them and suggest they give out. The back half of the foundry collapsed in a cloud of metal, glass, and dirt exploding in all directions.

And Amy heard nothing but the sudden quiet in her head.

She collapsed to the floor.


In the shadow of the faded yellow machine, Methos hoped "out of sight, out of mind" applied to the four Amy faced across the expanse of the old foundry. He allowed a small smile as he noticed a pale glow at her feet, so pale as to be invisible except in the shadow Amy cast. What ever was to come, he found it amusing to think those Amy faced had no idea what was about to happen to them.

He watched her crouch, muscles tense, and stare across the building. It seemed like everyone stood still for minutes - an eternity when fighting. Amy's fingers twitched, she flinched sideways, one hand flicked, but no other action betrayed the ensuing conflict.

And then the guns came out.

He bent down and pushed himself forward at the same time the four began firing, heading for Amy, intending to force her out of the way, since she was too stupid to move on her own. He stopped himself by dropping to the floor, flat on his face, when the realization hit that his assumption was stupid. Against the shadows of the building beyond, he could see pale flashes of light as bullets became trapped in an invisible shield and then bounced away in random directions as Amy's hands snapped in small motions. Methos scrambled back feeling like a fool.

The firing stopped short and Methos shifted so he could peek out. A movement caught his eye. Across the building, deep in the shadows under a catwalk, Methos spied another person slipping around piles of refuse and broken tools, clearly angling for a line of sight at Amy's back. He inched around the machine for more concealment, watching to make sure he wasn't noticed and froze when a surprised grunt and muttered curse reached his ears.

Another. Of course there would be a sixth coming from the other side. And by the sound of it, they were only inches away, their view of him blocked by the slimmest chance. Methos held his breath, waited for the shuffling to move a little further away, and prayed the sixth's attention would be too focused on Amy to notice him. He reached into his trench coat and pulled out his gun before poking his head up, feeling too much like a scared rabbit for his liking. He spotted number six's back, and aimed.

Amy screamed something unintelligible, Methos fired, and the sixth attacker dropped like a felled tree, a neat entry wound in the back of her head. Methos ducked back behind his cover, jumped back to his original position, and desperately searched for the fifth, last seen all the way across the building.