Disclaimer: I don't own Psych, nor Maximum Ride. ...I don't know why I'm writing this. Just like the Danny Phantom fanfic that I've been wanting to write for, like, forever! ...heh heh..."Phanfic." If nobody's used that before I claim it! "TM" it and whatnot. If someone's used it before, I still claim it. Unless it's been "TM"d. Then I mentally claim it.

Either way, you guys should/might know the drill. One-shot until I decide otherwise. I PLAN on this becoming a full-length fanfic, but either I'll update it rarely, or I won't until I finish another story. Hell, I may NEVER update this again. Though I probably will.

...I can't believe I'm doing this. XD

BACKGROUND! And yes, this is important: For "Psych," I feel like this would take place sometime around season four or five. Probably five, actually, with a select few episodes ignored. If it's important, I'll say which episodes to ignore later. For Maximum Ride, this takes place AFTER the books. But you know what? Ignore the last four books. Ignore "Max," "Fang," "Angel," and "Evermore," or whatever the last book was called. Why? Because I haven't read "Angel" or "Evermore," so I can't accurately have the details. Plus, it'll probably screw with the plot of this fic.

And no, I don't plan on reading "Angel" or "Evermore," even though I finished reading "Fang," like, three years ago.

P.S. - There may be references to happenings in season six or whatever. Why? Because I like them. *stares at title* ...GRRRRRR.

Avian-American

A Psych/Maximum Ride Five-shot

Part 1

"I'm seeing...green...no, red! No, red and green! And...brown! Red, brown, and green, all cushioned between two pillows of white goodness!" A man of average height with blue-green eyes pulled his right hand away from his temple, flashing the man that was pointedly glaring at him a brilliant smile. "Does this mean anything to you, Lassie?"

The other man just kept glowering, tapping his pen against his desk in a steady rhythm. Tap tap tap tap tap...

"...pain, so much pain, Lassie!" The average-height man wailed suddenly, flinging himself into the pole next to "Lassie's" desk. "Mashing, grinding, darkness! Lassie, the red-brown-green-cushioned thing is gone! DEAD!"

Taptaptaptaptaptaptap...

"Lassie, this must be familiar to you! I sense it!"

"No, Spencer, what you "sense" is my damn sandwich. In your stomach. Remember, the one you ate?"

Shawn Spencer, "official" psychic of the Santa Barbara Police Department, and self-proclaimed "winner of the best hair" award, bounced excitedly on his heels. "And it was delicious! Thank you, Lassie!" The darker-haired man's eye twitched. His grip on the pen tightened.

It snapped in two, spilling ink all over his desk, hand, shirt sleeve, and about fifteen different reports he was working on.

"Spencer!" He snapped.

Shawn yelped, spinning around and darting through the SBPD with a fuming Head Detective hot on his heels, screaming for his girlfriend to come to the rescue.

There, at the coffee maker! His salvation! All five-foot-six, one-hundred-ten pounds of her.

"JULES!" Shawn ducked behind her, the effect of "hiding" ruined by how half of his head was visible above the woman's own. "HIDE ME!"

Juliet O'Hara, Junior Detective of the SBPD, took one look at the charging form of Carlton Lassiter - who looked much akin to a raging bull - and then promptly stepped out of the way.

"Deal with your own problems." She called over her shoulder, strolling leisurely away with her fresh cup of strange-tasting department-coffee, leaving her boyfriend sputtering behind her, frozen in his tracks. "If your fingers aren't too broken, don't forget to TiVo "The Voice.""

Shawn squeaked, diving underneath the table that held the coffee maker and box of donuts. Right before Lassiter could wrap his hands around Shawn's throat and throttle the life out of him, Chief Karen Vick came, miraculously, to Shawn's rescue.

"Detective Lassiter! Detective O'Hara! My office, now!" She shouted into the hustle and bustle of the police department. Shawn rocketed out from his hiding place, latching around her waist.

"CHIEF! You saved my life! I owe you, big time!" He detached himself for a moment. "Marry me?" He returned to hugging her, giving her abdomen a bear-hug.

"Mr. Spencer, if you don't let go of me this instant, then I will let Detective Lassiter do whatever he was about to do. Better yet, I'll shoot you myself." She was joking. Hopefully. But either way, Shawn released her and bounced off, probably to go bother someone else in his quest to relieve his boredom.

Much of the PD dreaded the days that Burton Guster was on a business trip.

Don't take them wrong, they loved the hyperactive psychic. But sometimes - especially in times when it was really busy - his four-year-old mentality got on peoples nerves. Like right now, for example.

Huffing a breath, Lassiter and Juliet followed Vick back into her office, where she quickly took her seat at her desk, her two best Detectives standing in a strange version of "at attention" in front of her.

"As you may know," She began in her usual exasperated-ish tone. "there have been a string of...strange...murders lately. They were mostly confined to the forests near the city, but recently the victims have been found closer and closer to the city. The most recent one..." She paused to reach into her desk, and toss a manilla folder onto its surface. An image was paper-clipped to the front; a picture of a man laying face-down on pavement, his back torn completely open, with bits of the pavement showing through his torso. "...was found inside the city. The murderer is no longer just killing wayward hikers, but random people seen on the street."

Lassiter reached down to pick up the file to flick through, but there was a strange lack of a manilla folder when his searching fingers reached the desk. "What the..." He looked down, shuffling papers out of the way in search of the suddenly-missing folder.

"Ew, that's nasty." Lassiter and Juliet spun around, while Vick just pinched the bridge of her nose in exasperation.

Shawn was sitting in one of the armchairs in the back corner of the room, his face twisted up in a distasteful grimace as he turned the picture of the mauled man every which way, holding it up to the light as if to search for some type of a hidden image. "Yep, it's official." A tense silence filled the room; even if he didn't believe that Shawn was psychic, Lassiter still couldn't deny that Shawn brought results. "...this man has been murdered!"

...then again, he could always still shoot the man.

Shawn threw the picture onto the floor, shooting to his feet. His right hand flew up to its customary position near his left temple, his fingers slightly splayed as he closed his eyes with flourish. He hummer, rocking forward and back slightly.

"I see teeth!" He barked so loudly and suddenly, that the three other occupants in the room jumped, their hearts hammering a bit faster for a moment. "No, not teeth! Fangs! Ripping, tearing fangs! And claws! Wicked, sharp claws!" Shawn's eyes snapped open, his face lightning up. "He was killed by a fluffy!"

"An animal, you mean?" Vick asked slowly. Shawn nodded his head rapidly, a pleased look on his face. Lassiter, however, snorted.

"Keep your wild grabs to yourself, Spencer, we already know it's a man." Retrieving the file from where Shawn had tossed it onto the ground, he flipped through its contents, before pulling out the picture that he himself had added to the ever-growing file. He presented it to Shawn, not even bothering to hide his smug grin. "View it and weep."

It was a very grainy image, one that no computer could probably enhance. Hell, it probably already was enhanced. The image itself was a strange form of sepia, browns and tans blending together to create a mass of nothing. Almost nothing could be defined from the image, except for a few trees, and one other thing; a man.

At least, it looked like a man, though it very well could have been another tree. He - or she? - was tall and thin, and...well, that was pretty much all that could be discerned from the photo.

"Who took this picture? Nessie?" Shawn asked, missing the looks of confusion he got; not that he would care, anyway, considering only he understood half the things he said, anyway. "And this isn't a man! It could just as easily be a tree! Or Slenderman!"

"Hop into the real world for twenty seconds, would you?" Lassiter demanded, swiping the picture back out of Shawn's hands. "It was a human that killed these people, not an animal. Stop trying to finagle your way onto this case!" As the taller detective spun around to return to his spot - and probably ask (more like a poorly-veiled demand) Vick to kick Shawn out of the room - something slipped loose from the file.

It was another picture, this one slightly less blurry, printed on a square of card-stock. Once again the background was trees, but that wasn't what caught Shawn's attention.

With speed and skill that pretty much nobody knew Shawn possessed, he snatched the picture out of the air before it had fallen more than a few inches, flipping it around to stare at the picture he had only glimpsed.

As soon as he saw the focus of the image, he paled. His hands began to shake, and his eyes flew wide as he broke out into a cold sweat. "W-when was this taken?" He asked. His voice was so quiet, so soft, that the three almost didn't hear him, but the quiver in his voice definitely caught his attention. After all, Shawn Spencer rarely ever shut up, let alone speak quietly.

"Wha-" Lassiter began to turn to confiscate the image from Shawn, but the shorter man beat him to it; he was at Lassiter's side in an instant, twisting his fist up in the fabric of the front of Lassiter's shirt. The Irish man gave an indignant shout at the sudden contact, a protest that Juliet and Vick quickly mimicked as Vick rose out of her chair.

"When. Was. This. Taken?" Shawn repeated, his voice deadly low, the stutter no longer present as he glared at Lassiter, actually glared. Shawn never glared.

"Five days ago, Spencer. What's your glitch?" The older man demanded.

"Where?" Shawn asked, his voice equally as stern, completely ignoring Lassiter's question, and the reattempts by Juliet and Vick.

"In the forest, near where Becky Tangent's body was found."

Shawn was suddenly sweeping out of the room, swiftly making his way out of the office, down the hall, and then out of the police department. Not a few seconds later, the sound of his motorcycle revving to life and peeling out of the parking lot reached the office.

The image that had caused the drastic change in Shawn's behavior rested on the floor where it had fallen as he had left, laying face-down. Juliet, being the first to notice it, picked it up and flipped it over.

Standing in front of the trees was a blurry figure. A blurry figure that looked like a wolfish creature that stood on hind legs, with glowing eyes and wickedly-long claws.

The picture was a mystery to the department. Nobody could make heads nor tails of it; it had just been an photo that a hiker had taken nearly a week ago in the forest. The hiker hadn't even noticed that there was something odd in the photo until he had been searching through them later. The department had given up on identifying it, and had just settled for calling it either a man dressed up, or just a collection of very convenient trees.

So what had set Shawn off so drastically?

:::With Shawn:::

His dad hated it when he used his cell phone while on his motorcycle, for a number of reasons. For one thing, he'd only be using one hand to drive the vehicle down the road. Another thing was that he wouldn't be wearing his helmet. But while Shawn acted like a buffoon, he wasn't an idiot. He knew when something was an emergency enough to do something stupid.

He waited as the other line rang. Once. Twice. Thrice.

Whining to himself, he hung up and redialed. He waited.

Brrrr...Brrrr...Brrr-

"What do you want, Shawn?" An annoyed voice asked tiredly on the other line.

"Code: Pink Pearl!" Shawn blurted into the phone as a response. The other line went silent.

"...what?"

"Pink Pearl, man, Pink Pearl! Pink. Pearl." He stressed the words repeatedly. Again, the other line went silent. Then:

"Oh." A pause. "Oh."Another pause. "Oh shit."

"Yeah." Shawn agreed, his voice taking on a rarely-used, solemn tone. He readjusted his grip on his iPhone. His dad would never let him hear the end of it if he dropped it on the highway.

Again.

"Are you positive?" The voice on the other line - Burton Guster, Pharmaceutical Representative and "Psych" private investigator - asked, sounding urgent. "Are you absolutely positive? Like, 100% positive?"

"Dude, I know what I saw. Or, sorta saw. Well, it was a blurry photograph, but the point still stands! I know what I saw. A Pink Pearl."

"Well...what do we do?" Gus asked after a moment of silence between the two.

"We find a buncha number two pencils and stab the crap out of them!" Shawn replied forcefully.

"Shawn..."

"I'm kidding Gus. We've had a plan for years." He sighed.

"Yeah, when the only ties you had to Santa Barbara were an estranged father and your friend." Gust replied. "Nobody would have really missed you; your father wouldn't notice, and I'd be with you. But now people wouldnotice, people that we don't need on our tails; the police."

"Okay, then what do you suggest, Señor Plan-Ruiner?"

"...get a bunch of number two pencils, and-"

"I said I was kidding." Shawn said, stressing the sentence. Even so, a small smile was curling at his lips. He paused briefly to swerve around a few cars that were going way too slow; in other words, they were going the speed limit. "We could try to bomb them..."

"Shawn..." Gus sighed heavily on the other line. "I thought you said you'd stop making bombs."

"Well, my friend taught me for a reason," Shawn responded. "and I think is a good enough reason as any."

"And if a store reports that you're buying all the necessities for a bomb?"

"Gus, don't be a crazy hooligan. We both know I can make a functioning bomb out of duct tape, a water bottle, some string, and a stick of bubble gum." All of which he had at his house. It wouldn't make a strongbomb, but hopefully it would work well enough. Now, if he wanted to make a good bomb, he'd need all of the previously mentioned ingredients, an onion, one of his socks, and a stopwatch.

"I don't know, Shawn..." Gus said, sounding uncertain.

"Fine. Then how about I make a few bombs, just in case we get into a tight situation?" Shawn said, pulling into the parking lot of his converted-laundromat home. He parked the motorcycle around back, both to make it look like an abandoned laundromat, or if people already knew it was a house, that nobody was home.

"If you get caught by the cops, I'm not bailing you out."

"Duly noted." Shawn replied, quickly hanging up and slipping his phone back into his jeans' pocket. He slipped in through the heavy back door, locking it securely - though, really, it would do no good - and quickly closed all the blinds. He kept all the lights off, except for one; a light right over a door to an old, small closet.

The closet's door was locked securely, different chains, bolts, and padlocks hanging from the door. Two planks of wood, old and dusty, were nailed across the door, firmly holding it in place. Showing a feat of strength that pretty much nobody knew Shawn possessed, the pseudo psychic ripped the planks right off the door, heavy-duty construction nails and all. He forced the door open, the heavy slab of wood scraping loudly against the floor and providing much more resistance than it had when he first nailed the closet shut.

Inside the small closet was an even smaller workbench, cluttered with a plethora of objects that were only related to each other through the fact that they were there. Wires and cables were in twisting piles that spilled over onto the floor, and there was a mountain of duct tape rolls in the far corner.

Everything was smothered in a thick layering of dust, right down to the last wire. Some things weren't even recognizable with the layer of dust that covered them. Shawn allowed himself a massive grin. It had been well over a decade since he had last made one of his favorite objects in the world.

Time to make a Big-Bang-Two.

:::Santa Barbara Police Department:::

"Why'd he run out of here like that?" Juliet asked, not for the first time in the twenty minutes that her boyfriend had been missing from his usual spot in...well...the entire police department. She hadn't stopped asking since he had left, and Lassiter was quickly beginning to wonder which was more annoying; Spencer with his phony predictions, or Juliet and her incessant rambling.

Sure, his running out of the police department without any type of explanation was odd, but what did Spencer ever do that wasn't odd?

Lassiter lifted the grainy image of the wolfish thing off his desk, staring at it with a frown. It was just a grainy image of some idiot dressed up in a wolfman costume. Nothing that should set anybody off. So why had-

No. Lassiter slammed a lid down on the thought immediately. There was nothing wrong with Spencer, nor how he was acting. There was no reason to believe anything that would make Lassiter need to spend any more time with the younger Spencer.

Fifteen minutes later found him pacing back and forth in the men's room, grumbling under his breath. The case file was open on one of the sink counters, its contents spread across the cold surface, carefully arranged so that none of the resting water on the counter would bleed onto the papers.

Something wasn't making sense, and no matter how much he tried to ignore it, he couldn't ignore Shawn's odd behavior.

'It was this picture.' Lassiter thought, once again looking at the photograph that had started it all. 'Not the information given on the case, but this one picture. Is Spencer afraid of wolves or something?' Lassiter snorted at the thought; while Spencer seemed to be afraid of - or at least freak out about - a lot of things, he had acted okay around wolves. The case when a man thought he was a werewolf was proof enough of that.

'Okay, look at this like a case.' Which, technically, it was. 'Look at the facts...'

One: The image.

An image that looked like a man wearing a wolf pelt or something similar to look like a wolfman. Not too hard to understand.

Two: Spencer had seemed frightened by the image.

Not just frightened in the usual, "I'm going to scream and run away and let the people with the guns deal with this" frightened, but the "I'm going to find my own gun to shoot the thing before it gets me" frightened. And there was a difference. If you need to find your own gun, it means the threat is something that shouldn't wait to be dealt with until professional help could arrive.

Three: Spencer had quickly gone from fright to anger.

Lassiter had rarely seen Spencer angry. There were only a few times that he had; usually when a friend or family member was threatened, especially in the incidences with Yin and Yang. And, while Lassiter wouldnever admit it, when Spencer was angry - truly, righteously angry - and there was no stopping the younger man, Lassiter was a little afraid of him. Again, not that he would ever admit it.

And then something caught Lassiter's eye.

A small rectangle of green on the faded-colored image.

Small, and in the hand of the figure.

And then everything made sense.

Kind of.

But not really.

:::Psych Office:::

"And then you connect the wire there...and tweak it little bit here, and then...viola!" Shawn looked around the room, waiting for the inevitable correction from Gus. He could just hear him now...

"It's not "viola," Shawn, it's "voilà."

To which he would respond with his usual: "I've heard it both ways."

But no, Gus was still on his business trip, but knowing him, he was probably already on his way home from Phoenix, Arizona now that they were on Pink Alert, also known as Code: Pink Pearl.

God, he liked making up nicknames...

His current focus on the moment, however, was a mini-bomb he had constructed in just a few minutes out of random objects he had found in the Psych office. He would worked at home, but he had gotten jumpy in a place that was usually empty. Of course, the office was no better, but at least it still had the lingering smell of Gus, his dad (strangely enough), the last few clients, and the two stray cats he had taken in and then forced to get rid of by Gus. At least his placed smelled lived in, unlike his own home.

He was never one for staying in one place for too long, anyway. ADHD, maybe.

Gus had told him to lie low until he returned from his cut-short business trip, which would take about a day since he would have to stop somewhere for sleep to gas up the Blueberry. He had wanted to drive straight through the night, but Shawn had told him - repeatedly - that Gus's "malt-ball-head of ideas" would be no use with him tired. Besides, Shawn said he would have to sleep, too, so Gus getting back in at three in the morning wouldn't do much good.

Besides, Shawn could handle himself for a while.

And that was exactly when his front door nearly flew off its hinges.

Shawn leapt up from where he had been sitting at Gus's desk - getting his friend's desk sticky with pineapple juice, of course - while sweeping the bomb under his jacket and shirt.

He stared at the door leading from the front room to the offices, just waiting for the source of his current urgency to break in a rip his throat out. But the throat-ripping never came. And instead of a seven-foot mountain of muscle and fur, came a shorter, normal man. Except, of course, he was scowling, but that was a normal thing.

"Lassie!" Shawn cried, hiding his relief and stress behind a large grin. "And Jules! Not that I'm not happy for the visitors, but, uh, what are you two doing here? Don't you have that one case to work on, with the animal murders."

"It was a man." Lassiter said, apparently before he could think through his response for he shook his head to get back on track. "Spencer, let me see your phone." Shawn frowned slightly, but pulled the green rectangle from his pocket. He tossed it to Lassiter.

"Well, okay, but if you wrack up the phone bill, you're the one who'll have to explain to me dad, and pay for it." He paused. "And get me a month worth of pineapple smoothies, free." He tacked on the end.

Lassiter wasn't listening, however, and Juliet was inspecting the wires strewn across the floor in confusion. Lassiter was busy looking back and forth between Shawn's phone and something in his hand.

"Seriously, Lassie. What's going on?" Shawn asked, shoving his hands in his pockets and leaning against the wall. As he did so, he shifted slightly, allowing the bomb he had recently created to fall behind the fish tank and entertainment center that held it instead of a TV. Probably not a good idea to drop a bomb three feet to the floor, but Shawn knew what he was doing. Mostly. Homemade bombs weren't an exact science, after all.

"Spencer, do you still have that wolf pelt from the case concerning the man that thought he was a werewolf?" Lassiter asked, once again ignoring Shawn's question. Shawn blinked, scratching at his cheek.

"I...don't know what you're talking about!" He said, over-annunciating.

"I know you stole it from evidence, Spencer."

"How'd you know?" Shawn asked, before slapping his hands over his mouth.

"We have security cameras, idiot. Do you still have it?" Shawn sighed.

"Yeah. Gus wanted me to get rid of it weeks ago, but I like it!" He mimed stroking a dog in mid air. "He is my Fluffy and I named him Fluffy and he shall be my Fluffy, for ever and ever."

"Uh huh. And where were you two nights ago, ten o' clock in the evening?"

'Well, I'd tell you, Señor Scowl-y, but you wouldn't believe me, so...' "Uh...at home?"

"Are you asking me, or are you telling me?" Shawn stared to laugh.

"What is this, Lassifrass?" He asked. "An interrogation? I supposed I'm one of the murder suspects, now." Lassiter raised an eyebrow and just stared at him, offering up no comment. Shawn's smile vanished. "Oh, come on, Lassie."

"You have nobody to place you on the night of at least one of the murders-"

"Yeah, one! I bet a lot of people don't have alibis for at least one of the murders!"

"-you have a green cell phone, as seen in the picture here-"

"A lot of people have a green cell phone."

"-and you have a wolf pelt that is similar if not identical to the one in this photograph." He flashed the image with the wolfish figure, and Shawn flinched. He averted his eyes, staring directly at Lassiter, who returned the look in kind. Silence reigned.

"I didn't do it."

"Can you prove it?"

"Come on!" Shawn whined, flailing his arms briefly. "You're always trying to get me in trouble, Lassiter!"

"Well, if you didn't do it, you at least know something, don't you?" Lassiter demanded. Shawn's arms dropped to his sides. "Your reaction to the picture is proof enough. What do you know, Spencer?"

Shawn remained silent.

Author's Note:

...as it turns out, this one-shot became much longer than I originally thought. I already typed it all, and it's 46 pages long. ...whoops. XD Either way, I'm splitting it up into a few parts, and I'll put up each part every hour or so. Hopefully nobody's annoyed with my writing style or plot yet. XD If people are reading this, I mean. ...meh.