Disclaimer: I don't own Psych.
A/N: Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed, favorited, followed, or just read! Well, this is a much longer chapter than I was going for - I wanted to be under 1K words - but it also ended up being more fluff and banter than actual plot. Don't blame me, though: Blame Shawn. Every time I'd try to advance the plot, he'd open his big mouth and make an inappropriate joke. Seriously, every time Chief Vick tells him off in this chapter, it's really just me trying to get him to behave. What was I thinking? He barely listens to Vick; why'd I think he'd listen to me of all people? But I finally got around to a little backstory and plot. And more will be coming soon.
The full reason for the investigation and why Lassie's working with them on this one will be hashed out in the next chapter, and the investigations will begin!
As usual, I don't own Psych. I also don't own Shadow of Mordor or Skyrim (well, I have a copy of the games, but not the rights) or Lord of the Rings in general. There's also another Harry Potter reference in this one (a bit more obvious this time, but at least two people got the last one) and a quote stolen from Moana. See if you can catch it. :)
Enjoy this continuation of the setup. I promise, more mystery and actual investigation will be coming soon! Please let me know what you think. For more info on the games mentioned in this chapter, see the end notes.
Five Nights at Spencer's
Chapter Two: Shawn Gets His Head in the Game
"Lassie, what are you doing in San Fran, man? It's like halfway across the world!"
Lassiter shot Shawn a withering glare. Chief Vick, leaning against the edge of her desk, her arms crossed, followed suit. Gus jammed an elbow into his best friend's ribs.
"You know, Spencer," Lassiter said tritely, "I can almost understand why you had to act like an idiotic ass back at the SBPD. But here, you actually have a chance to make something out of your pathetic charade."
There was an almost tense beat; at this point, it was unsaid, common knowledge that Shawn wasn't actually psychic, but the subject was hardly ever broached, because if it were said aloud, action might have to be taken. Then, Shawn beamed. "Lassie, that is literally the nicest thing you've ever said to me!"
Gus snorted. "That's sad."
"It's a process," Shawn informed Gus sagely. "He's learning to use his words to heal, not hurt."
"Karen, do we have to include them in this?" To Shawn and Gus's amusement, the SBPD chief was almost whining.
"Carlton." Even though he was on the same level as Vick now, all it took was one stern recitation of his name to quell Lassiter's ire to a more respectable level. He slumped a little, then sighed, resigned to his fate, and straightened back up, the brave look of a self-effacing martyr on his face. "Right," he sighed. "All hands on deck."
Shawn briefly considered making a joke about whether they were going to be going out to sea on a ship – some inane comment about a poop deck – but the grim expressions on the two chiefs' faces were enough to keep him on track. "Something big's going down, huh? What is it? Diamond smugglers? Serial killers? Diamond killers? Cereal smugglers? Are they packing Rice Crispies into hokey Bing Dynasty" ("Ming Dynasty!" corrected Gus crossly.) "vases and shipping it overseas?" Well, somewhat on track, at least.
Holding up a hand, Chief Vick admonished in a voice indicating her nearly bottomless patience was running low, "Mr. Spencer. Something big has indeed 'gone down,' but I want to wait until my head detective is here to go over the situation."
Shawn instantly brightened. "Jules is coming? Sweet!"
Lassiter scoffed. "Don't you live with O'Hara, Spencer? It's not like you haven't seen her today."
Gus muttered something under his breath that sounded astonishingly like an accusation of living in sin – Lord knew he was still a naïve little stickler about "shacking up." Shawn opened his mouth to retort indignantly – whether to Lassiter or Gus, the small gathering of detectives would never know, because Juliet O'Hara chose that moment to walk through the door.
"Jules!" With a wicked grin at the other two men in the office, Shawn swept Juliet into his arms and planted a big, sloppy, wet one on her cheek.
"Shawn!" Juliet protested, face bright red.
"Mr. Spencer," Chief Vick warned, though a muscle in her cheek twitched. "What have we said about public displays of affection in the workplace?"
Shawn accepted the reprimand with grace, because Lassiter looked like he was about to blow a gasket, and his job as an antagonist was done. He felt slightly guilty about using Jules to bait Lassie, but he'd make it up to her later. It had just been an opportunity he couldn't pass up.
Sighing, the chief switched gears, turning the small assembly's attention to the laptop set up at the edge of her desk. "Okay, people, it's time to get serious."
Shawn couldn't help it. "I'm Sirius," he assured her. Thumbing at Gus, he added, "He's Black."
Gus flicked his nose. "You know that's right."
"Will you two idiots shut up?" Lassiter growled.
Raising her voice to be heard over the bickering, and trading an exasperated parade of looks with her fellow female, Vick plowed on with the briefing: "This is a case that has to be handled swiftly and delicately, as it is in the public eye and involves some victims that are of considerable repute in not only our area, but also across the country."
She briefly met the eyes of each person in the room, and the no-nonsense fire burning in them was enough to put a stop to any more acting out from the resident "psychic" and his wingman before it could begin again. Hitting a key on the laptop to start the slideshow, she continued, "This—" she pointed to the picture on the screen, a young guy in his late teens or early twenties, "—is Carter Isaacs, known affectionately by his fans as 'Magmacarter.' He is an up and coming star on YouTube."
"Wait a second," Gus said, his eyes lighting up. "I recognize him! He was one of the first Let's Players to play Shadow of Mordor last year." He scowled. "He's a moron. Can you believe that he claims to be a LotR fan and doesn't even know who Tom Bombadil is?"
"I think you are the only person in this whole room who knows who this Tom Bombardment is," Shawn commented.
Gus stared at Shawn, horrified. "You're dead to me. All of you."
"Anyway," Vick interrupted, "Mr. Isaacs is currently in critical condition at San Francisco General."
"He was a good man," Gus immediately changed tunes at word of the man's fate.
"You just said he was a moron," Shawn pointed out.
"A person can be a moron and a good man, Shawn," Gus pointed out. "I mean, look at you!"
Shawn's mouth flew open, but Chief Vick beat him to the punch. "That's it," she declared. "Mr. Spencer. Mr. Guster. I understand that humor is your 'coping mechanism' and your way to 'distance yourself and cope with the darkness in the world,' but so help me, if you do not shut your mouths and let me continue this briefing, I will kick you out of this office, and off this case. Which I really do not want to do, because I need every person I can get on this, but I will if I'm going to have consultants who are going to refuse to take this matter sensitively. Am I clear?"
"'Coping mechanism?'" Shawn parroted. "Where did you get that idea?"
"It was from the official profile conducted by your mother after the last Yin/Yang incident," Vick answered, eliciting a small groan from Shawn. "Now, are you going to let me finish, or am I going to have to reduce my workforce on this and make this whole ordeal harder on everyone involved?"
Effectively put into place, Shawn and Gus quieted down while the chief finally – blessedly – continued the briefing into a silence void of obscure references, bickering, and name-calling. According to the chief, Carter Isaacs had been recording a "Let's Play" episode of Bethesda Game's hit title Skyrim when a fire started somewhere in the house. It spread like a starving virus, eating everything in its path, and within ten minutes, the whole house, from the attic to the basement Isaacs used as a recording studio, was engulfed.
Isaacs had abandoned his station at his computer and must have wrapped himself in a blanket to better shield himself from the raging fire as he made his escape up the crumbling basement stairs and out the kitchen door. When firefighters arrived on the scene, they found the young man unconscious in the front yard, wrapped in a flaming blanket. They'd managed to douse the flames and get some oxygen into him before rushing him to the hospital, but he'd been in a coma for over a week now with no signs of waking, and they were unsure if he ever would.
"But if it was just a fire, why does the police station need to investigate?" Gus asked, brow wrinkled. "Do they suspect arson?"
"That's just it," Lassiter spoke up. "They didn't. At least until this video was uploaded onto Magmacarter's YouTube page three days later." He waited as his fellow chief changed the slide once more, revealing an embedded YouTube video entitled 'ALDUIN ATTACKS: FIRE IN THE HOLE|Skyrim #54.' The uploader name was 'Magmacarter.'"
Juliet stepped forward. "When we had our techs trace the IP address used to access the YouTube account, it led us nowhere but straight back to Mr. Isaacs's."
"But it couldn't have been uploaded by him. He was in a coma," Gus puzzled.
"Could he have somehow put the video on a timer so that it would upload on its own days later?" Shawn wondered. Everyone stared at him. "What? I had a YouTube channel a few years ago. I was 'PineapplePsychicGuy98.' I had fifteen whole followers."
"There were 97 other PineapplePsychicGuys before you?" Juliet asked, delicate eyebrow raised.
Shawn shrugged. "They were all fakes, though, unlike me."
An awkward silence. Then – "Actually, Spencer, we did look into it," Lassiter admitted. "It's a good thought, but apparently the video was just in the recording stages."
"It still had to be spliced and edited in post," Juliet added. "It wasn't anywhere ready to be uploaded, and it hadn't been linked in any way to YouTube at the time of the fire. It couldn't have been Mr. Isaacs."
"So we think that someone had it out for the guy and what? Set his house on fire, and then uploaded the video he'd been making before the fire for the world to see? How does that make sense?" Shawn asked.
"I think it will help if you actually watch the video," Chief Vick said. "I warn you… it's odd."
She pressed play.
A/N: *Shadow of Mordor is a video game released for the XBox 360 and Playstation 3 in 2014. It's based off of Lord of the Rings, and it's an epic, largely free-world game in which you play as a man who has been killed and is trying to regain his soul and take down the armies of Sauron from the inside after his family is killed in front of him. It's intense, and gory, much like the LotR movies, but it's a beautiful game that has so much lore from Tolkien's world that it's considered canon itself in many circles.
*Skyrim is my favorite game ever, released by Bethesda Games in 2011, the fifth game in the Elder Scrolls series. It's a free-world fantasy game where you make your own character and go on endless quests throughout the map, with the main questline being that you're the Dragonborn, a person who can absorb the souls of dragons to become infinitely powerful, and who is meant to stop Alduin, the big bad of the dragons who has returned to destroy Skyrim. It's epic.
Also, I made up the usernames in this chapter. If there is actually someone out there on YouTube by the name "Magmacarter" or "PineapplePsychicGuy98," this is not referring to them and is no way associated with them. Just a little disclaimer. :)
~Emachinescat ^. .^