A/N: If you're wondering, I'm placing this story timeline wise after the summer finale of Season three of Psych, that way I can have the "adrenaline monkeys" from the SWAT team show up at some point. And if someone knows Luntz's full name, I would be eternally grateful is you could tell me.
Chapter 5 – The Passengers From Hell, Part 2
SBPD Headquarters, Chief Vick's Office
Karen Vick walked into the police station that morning to a beautiful sound.
Absolute silence.
She chuckled to herself at her own brilliance. She had gotten rid of the irritable Shawn Spencer and his partner, the trigger happy Carlton Lassiter, the overtly emotional Juliet O'Hara, and the former partner / pain in the ass from hell, Henry Spencer. All with one, brilliant stroke of genius.
Ship them all away. It had been exactly that easy. Okay, so she couldn't take any credit for the vanishing of Henry, but the other four were all her. She just thought about it for a moment, she'd probably actually be able to get things done.'
There'd be no psychic visions. No vaunts of well meant emotional blundering. No legal cases involving complaints against her lead detective. And, no psychics shamelessly flirting with her head detective's partner.
But there was something wrong about it all, something she was sure she'd forgotten.
It only took one glance at her calendar to figure it out.
"Dammit!" She said out loud. "How could I have forgotten?" Karen got up and started pacing.
"Crap!" Vick muttered, still pacing. "She's in her hometown, a point of emotional vulnerability for her, and if Spencer is going to take his shot, it will be the perfect time."
Well, it would be the perfect time for only Shawn, Juliet, and Lassiter. After all, it was still in Lassiter's bracket, and depending on how long Spencer took, Lassiter could end up with all of the 50,000 from the pool. And Vick was unsure if Lassiter even knew he'd placed a bet. He'd been pretty drunk.
She couldn't let that happen. No, her bracket was later, but how much later? Vick glanced at her calendar to check.
"Dammit!" Vick repeated, seeing the name 'Henry Spencer' emblazoned along the two weeks after Lassiter's space ended. After that, almost a full month from now, sat her own name.
Vick cursed herself for getting overconfident. She had let her control on the situation slip after she had recruited the oblivious services of the SWAT team commander, Luntz, as soon as she had seen them so eager to work together on the roller derby case. She had figured Luntz would last a week or two more, and then Spencer would have Juliet in endgame, just in time for Vick's time slot to roll around. But, if they were all in Miami, Spencer would probably be able to work a lot faster, and the 50,000 would go to Lassiter, or, she shuddered, Henry. Vick had no doubt that Henry would use his powers for evil, conspiring to win the 50 grand for himself, proving to everyone that he was still the master of everything. And Vick was sure that the prospect of grandchildren was a pretty good motivator for him too.
No, Vick couldn't allow herself to lose. Not at the pool she had cleverly started so people could bet on when Shawn and Juliet would finally stop dancing around each other.
She had to delay Spencer somehow. But in a way that Henry wouldn't catch on to, or he'd crank up his abilities to full blast. So, she couldn't go herself. But, as Vick smiled, she did know someone who was just dumb and bull-headed enough to cause a problem.
She poked her head out of her office. "McNabb, I need you to fetch me SWAT Team Leader Luntz."
Back in Lassiter's strange dream world
"Nooooooooo!" Commissioner Lassiter screamed as the pineapple bomb exploded in front of him. And he watched in horror as Officer Lassiter ran in front of the Commissioner to take the brunt of the blast. Pineapple juices and bits flew everywhere as the pineapple exploded, and wherever Officer Lassiter had been hit by the fruity shrapnel, bits of him melted, like the pineapple was acidic to the Lassiters.
"Lassiters, stop Spencer!"
The Lassiters all drew their firearms and fired at Spencer. Spencer began laughing, and stuck out his hand, like Neo from the Matrix, and stopped all of the bullets in place.
"Come on, Pineapple Express! Let's fly!" Shawn yelled, and the Pegasus flew into the air, after which Shawn began tossing more pineapple bombs at the collected Lassiters. He eventually destroyed all of them, save for Commissioner Lassiter, who was left to stand in the middle of the carnage.
His police station was on fire somehow, encircling him with the pineapple fueled blaze. Lassiter looked around at the remnants of his army of Lassiters, all melted somewhere around the police station. Then, he faced front again, and Spencer stood in front of him, still grinning like an idiot.
Spencer walked calmly up to Commissioner Lassiter, who quickly found that he could not move, because pineapple juice has solidified into a glue-like substance around his shoes.
Spencer stopped right in front of him, so close, that Lassiter could smell the pineapple on his breath, not that he would tell anyone that. Spencer drew back his hand, and then poked him in the head with two of his fingers. Lassiter fell backwards towards the floor, and when he hit it, he was yanked back into reality…
Where Spencer stood, several inched from his face, having poked him in the head with two of his fingers. As Lassiter's eyes and face snapped out of dream mode, Spencer backed away from Lassiter, yelling out grandiosely, "There! I have healed him! The spirits no longer assault his dreams!" Then Spencer fell backwards, imitating exhaustion after his spiritual episode.
Lassiter said nothing. He knew that anything he could say would only add fuel to Spencer's fire.
But before long, one of the people gathered around Shawn, who was still 'recovering,' said "Well, aren't you going to thank him? He just saved your life!"
Lassiter's left eye twitched rapidly.
"Yes, he just saved you from the rampaging spirits, and you didn't even thank him!" Another onlooker said.
For the umpteenth time that day, Lassiter had to force his face into that twisted abomination that resembled a smile. Lassiter could smile genuinely, but he would never do that unless he was happy. And nothing related to either Spencer made him happy, except the idea of neither of them being within ten miles of him.
"Thank you, Mr. Psychic." Lassiter spat out, as quickly as he could. It seemed good enough for the passengers of the plane, but Shawn just stared at him, wide eyed.
"Lassie!" he said excitedly. "You admitted it; you really think I'm a psychic! Gus, Jules, this is a momentous occasion! We should have a party…" Shawn trailed off as he realized that Juliet was still sleeping and Gus probably wanted to kill him.
Speaking of Gus, his first angered cry of "Shawn!" would have been accompanied by Gus charging down the length of the plane and demanding an explanation out of his best friend. But in his haste, Gus had forgotten to unbuckle his seat belt, so all Gus only got a bad seatbelt rash across his waist.
However, Gus had quickly removed the safety device / obstruction blocking his way to vengeance, and had proceeded to run down the plane, looking for Shawn, yelling out his best friend's name in anger again.
However, what Gus didn't see was Lassiter shoving Shawn away from him as soon as he was able to regain his senses. And so Gus ran straight into his friend, which sent them both careening towards the row of seats nearest to them.
Right at the seat that still contained the sleeping Juliet.
Inside Juliet's Dream Land
I don't think I really need to say this, but Juliet's dream land was absolutely nothing like Lassiter's. It consisted of just one Juliet, clad in a flowing flower printed dress, happily skipping through a tree-laden grassland, with a basket of apples in her hands.
Juliet suddenly came to a crossroads in the woods, with several paths to take. Different forest creatures gathered around her loosely, apparently startled by her abrupt stop.
"I wonder which path I should choose?" Juliet asked the creatures. They just looked at her strangely, before pointing to the signs around the paths.
"Hey, they're all labeled!" Juliet exclaimed, jumping up and down happily. Then, she went to go inspect the signs before choosing a path.
"Hmm, this one's labeled 'Shawn,' this one's labeled 'Denial,' another one over here is called 'Richard,' the one behind me is 'Fear of Heartbreak,' this one by the cliff is 'Lock Yourself In A Room And Cry,' wow." Juliet said, suddenly losing her happy composition. "Most of these choices suck." She scratched her head in confusion, as more paths appeared before her, with more signposts to read.
"I know!" Juliet exclaimed. "I'll just stay here and keep all of my friends guessing while I wait for the perfect path to come up!"
But before the perfect path could come up, Juliet noticed several figures walking out of some of the paths towards her. First to arrive was a dark figure, shrouded in a black cloak, who walked out of a path appropriately called 'Bad Memories and Emotional Trauma.' He was speaking in whispers, which Juliet could not hear, but he advanced on her, making threatening gestures with what appeared to be a knife.
Juliet reached down for her sidearm, but realized that she didn't have it, only a basket of apples. But she was no longer clad in the dress; instead it was her high school cheerleading uniform. Juliet threw some of the apples at the evil looking man, but she missed him.
Just as the man was about to get to her, there was a flash of white in front of her as something flew by. Juliet looked for the white thing, frantically calling out to it for help. She got a fix on the flying object and realized that it was a giant flying horse, or a Pegasus, with someone riding on top of it. At her call, the large horse swooped down and the rider drew a sword, slicing the dark cloaked man in half. But before Juliet could thank the Pegasus or the mysterious rider, they flew away.
Next, riding a magnificent, regular white horse with a golden mane, a man rode out of the path marked 'Richard.' Like her, he had blonde hair and blue eyes, and was wearing bright silver armor and a regal red cape. He rode up to her and produced a red rose from somewhere.
"A rose for you, my fair lady Juliet." He said. Juliet eagerly accepted the rose from Richard, blushing madly.
"Not so fast, Dick!" shouted a voice from another path, labeled 'Shawn.' Out of that path ran out Shawn Spencer, dressed in a perfect Robin Hood outfit, complete with a bow and arrows. Shawn fired one of those arrows at Richard, who dodged it with his horse.
"My dear Juliet, who is this person?" Richard asked. "And why is he so… odd?"
Before Juliet could answer, a third person marched out of the path labeled 'Luntz.' This was a man dressed in dazzling finery, with proud, bright colors. His attire was otherwise indescribable because no one could look at him for too long without injuring their eyes.
"Juliet, who is that person?" Richard asked.
"Yeah Jules, what's the deal with him?" Shawn asked, both trying to look at Luntz without looking at him.
"He's uhh… my bo… we're dating." Juliet stammered, trying to find the correct words to describe her relationship with Luntz.
Richard was the first to respond. "Why?" he asked, drawing the word out. "Isn't he a bit of an… older gentleman?"
"Yeah, I bet he has saggy man-boobs." Shawn commented.
"Quite." Richard agreed.
Before Juliet could respond, Richard charged forward at Luntz, yelling oaths about how he would "save his Juliet" from that "hideous monster."
Shawn just looked at Juliet with a sad look before she heard a noise from the 'Shawn' path. It was Shawn's name, yelled at several hundred decibels from a good distance away. Shortly thereafter, a second person ran out of the 'Shawn' path, a figure clad from head to toe in jet black armor, Burton Guster. The Black Knight himself.
"Shawn, you lied to me!" Gus yelled. Juliet wasn't sure what was going on anymore, right now Richard and Luntz were dueling each other, Richard wielding a gilded silver longsword and Luntz wielding a giant flyswatter. Meanwhile, Gus was chasing after Shawn, trying to hit him with his own sword. Then, Juliet looked upwards to see that the sky was apparently falling towards her. Before she was yanked out of the dream world, she looked down a path marked 'Perfection,' to see a mysterious man riding atop a huge Pegasus.
-End-
A/N: you are eventually going to see everyone's dream land, and I'll probably make the dream land sequences a quasi-regular thing, instead of having characters talk to themselves in the middle of a dark room, I can have them talk to themselves inside their heads. It should be fun, because everyone will look different in their own dream land, and the other characters will be perceived differently by the dream land that they're in. For example, in Lassiter's dream land, Shawn is a pineapple tossing terrorist, but he won't be that in every dream land.
Yeah, and I know everyone got the Pineapple Express reference, which was just too good to miss, but still no one has gotten the secret from chapter 4, so the 'prize' is still out there! Go and get it fellas!
So, only one more airplane chapter left to go, and then we finally get to Miami. I'm sorry this is taking so long, but this is fan fiction, so I have to actually write out the exposition instead of steam-rolling over it like George Lucas does with his horrendous title crawls.
So please review! And you'll get another chapter soon! No, that didn't rhyme as well as it did last time.