Get Well Soon (12 of 14)

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Disclaimers in part 1

Sunday came, and Joe joined the throng crowding the Treasure Island
showroom.  All Blues Week was over, and Tommy had hailed off to Chicago,
where a friend of a friend thought he knew someone who could get him a
great gig.  Tommy wasn't curious about the guy who was planning to come
back from the dead on live TV.  He assumed, as did most people, Joe
gathered, that in the city of Lance Burton and Seigfried and Roy, this
would just be a Las Vegas magician's trick.  The story was still not the
international sensation Joe wanted it to be.

Locally, though, it was a big deal.  Joe was fortunate that, as a Treasure
Island guest, he had been allowed to purchase one of the outrageously
priced tickets to the affair.  Hundreds of people gravitated to the casino
just to be around when it happened.  Treasure Island had hired additional
security, too.  Revenue was probably great, Joe guessed.

In order to maximize the number of people who would fit into the showroom,
the chairs had been removed, so Joe was crowded in, standing between an
overweight woman and a man with opera glasses.  Joe was a little uneasy in
crowds like this.  If anyone shoved him hard, he had no way to get his
"feet" under him and catch himself.

John Kirin took the stage, to thunderous applause.  His followers, dressed
all in white, filed in at the back of the stage, behind a large screen,
filling a three tiered bleacher bench, like a choir.  The screen isolated
the followers from the stage, so even if Joe had known what Maya looked
like, he wouldn't have been able to discern her.  In front of the screen,
but still toward the rear of the stage, were seven chairs.  Six men and a
woman, wearing suits, filed in and took the chairs.  The only other items
on the stage were a microphone and a large wooden post.

Kirin removed the microphone from the stand and held his other hand up.
His craggy face wrinkled in a smile.  The applause began to die down.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for coming.   God will bless you for your
faith."  His voice was graveley like Joe remembered,  and his wispy blond
hair haloed his head.  "God has blessed me for mine.  Dark times await us,
my brothers and sisters, dark times.  The Millennium is here - the time is
now.  Repent before you are all judged."  No mention of love or peace, Joe
noticed.  Kirin had become a different preacher than the one Duncan and
Richie had met.

"Where is the Saviour? I hear you cry.  Who will be our Champion?  I'm here
to tell you, my brothers and sisters, I will be your Champion.  I have died
the death and I have seen the devil who waits to claim all our souls.  Evil
is red - red with the blood of those who have died fighting it.  Red with
the fires of Hell.  But I will conquer death!  I will take away the sins of
the world.  Today, before you, the faithful, I will die for you.  And God
who has chosen me to be His Champion, will raise me from the dead.  Then
you will see the power of faith.  Then you will see the power of God.  Then
you will see my power and follow me."

Kirin gestured to the rear of the stage, at the seven people in the chairs.
"Lest ye doubt, these doctors, men and women of good faith, will witness
the truth of God's acts.  And when I am back among you, then will begin the
true battle against evil.  The battle of the thousand years, and the
Champion will defeat the demon."

Kirin bowed, arms outstretched, and, amidst the crowd's cheers, walked to
stand with his back to the wooden post.  The post was a good three feet
higher than his head, and was notched toward the top, like a Lincoln Log.
Three of the white-clad men entered from stage right, carrying stepstools
and another notched wooden beam.  Like practiced magician's assistants,
they positioned the stepstools on either side of the performer, climbed
them, and lifted the beam to form - the crowd gasped - a cross.

*A cross?*  My God, thought Joe, that man has balls.  Around him the crowd
murmured, tittered, and hissed.  Joe looked around to see the television
cameras in the balconies above, rolling busily.  The last Joe had heard on
the news, they either hadn't decided how Kirin was to die, or they weren't
releasing the information.  But, a cross!?

One man blindfolded Kirin, and then, with his arms stretched out, the
assistants lifted him into place, tying him to the cross by the forearms
and waist.  They then packed up the stepstools and vanished into the wings.
Recorded music started, and, to Joe's amusement, the white-clad followers
did start to sing.  The song was a rousing, rock number with the lyrics,
"warriors of worship, warriors of faith".

A petite woman in a flowing white robe entered the stage, carrying a
crossbow.  She paused at the chairs of the seven seated doctors, and handed
over the crossbow.  The doctors passed it among themselves, looking it and
the quarrel bolt over, then returned it to her.  She moved to center stage,
and raised the crossbow to aim for Kirin, bound to his cross at the side of
the stage.  As the sleeves of her robe fell away from her wrists, Joe
spotted a round tatoo.  He borrowed his neighbor's opera glasses and
confirmed it was a Watcher tatoo.

The singing ended, and the crowd grew excited, crushing forward, the better
to see the gore to come.  Joe leaned heavily on his cane, and tried to
maneuver forward so as not to be tipped over from behind.

What was she waiting for?  Maya, Joe presumed the woman was Maya, held the
crossbow poised, as the tension in the crowd grew.

"Look at him!" the woman beside Joe exclaimed.

Joe looked, and saw Kirin struggling against his bonds.

Another man entered the stage, from behind Maya.  He wore white as well,
but, rather than looking like a monk or an angel, his clothes were in
pirate style.  Over his head he wore an executioner's mask, but his feet,
which should have been in black knee-high boots in order to complete the
costume, instead sported tennis shoes.  He carried a curved sword, and it
didn't look like a prop.

"Who's there?!" yelled Kirin.  "Get me loose!"

Joe searched for the security men, and spotted a few.  They were watching
the crowd, not the stage, and showed no concern.  Onstage the assembled
doctors spoke to each other, but they, too, didn't respond to Kirin's
cries.  The crowd murmured appreciatively.  A sword thrust could be an even
gorier death than the crossbow bolt.

Only Maya looked uncertain.  She lowered the crossbow and called something
to the newcomer, but Joe didn't catch it.  She was away from the
microphone, and the noise of the excited crowd was growing.  If the man
answered her, Joe couldn't hear that, either.

The newcomer's strides across the stage were purposeful.  As he neared the
cross, Kirin's frantic struggles finally freed him, and he ripped the
blindfold from his face and started to slide to the stage.

"You fool!" Kirin called, his voice clear above the noise, "You don't know
what you're doing."

The newcomer drew a second sword from his sash, and tossed it to Kirin, who
caught it.

"Securit - !" Kirin was calling, when he suddenly had to deflect a powerful
swing.

The crowd broke into excited applause as the two men began a tremendously
real looking swordfight.  Joe's heart leaped into his throat as he
anticipated some fatal blow.  People around Joe surged forward, and, as he
had feared, he had to struggle to keep his feet.  Dreading every strike,
every slice, Joe tried not to lose his view of the action.  Onstage, he saw
Maya set down the crossbow and circle the combatants toward the doctors,
some of whom were now on their feet.  Behind the screen, the lights which
had illuminated the choir of Love Now followers were off, so Joe couldn't
see if the followers were calm or not.

The crowd pressed harder as the swordsmen clashed furiously.  Around him,
Joe heard excited voices.

"It's fake!"

"No, it's not!"

"It has to be.  Why would he be so good with a sword?"

"He has to lose, if he's going to die.  Of course it's fake."

"They're bleeding! Look!"

Joe was looking, and, yes, both men were bleeding.  Joe couldn't stand the
terror anymore; he tried to find some emotional distance.  It doesn't
matter, he told himself.  Observe and record, observe and record.

Kirin was on the defensive.  His moves were skillfull, but he acted as if
he was tiring.

"You can't defeat me!" Kirin taunted, his voice rasping above the sounds of
the crowd.  "I'm invincible!"

"Promised you that, did he?" responded the hooded man in a quite passable
Yoda-voice.  With a deft sweeping twist, the hooded man caught Kirin's
blade in the curve of his own, and flicked it out of Kirin's grasp.  The
sword skidded across the stage, disappearing stage left.

The excited crowd finally shoved Joe over.  He was knocked backward, not
forward, and had no way to move his cane to behind him quickly enough to
balance himself..  Fortunately, he was caught and lifted by someone strong
and calm behind him.

A familiar voice spoke in Joe's ear, as he was replaced upright on his
prosthetics.

"That," hissed Connor MacLeod, "is no student."

"Connor!" Joe gasped, forgetting to use the man's modern name.  He whipped
his gaze back to the stage, oblivious to the tight grip the Highlander
still kept on his upper arm.

The hooded man scored a gouging slice on Kirin, to the delight and horror
of the audience.  Kirin staggered to one knee, blood pouring from between
his fingers.  The fighters were near the front of the stage.

"This can't happen!" gasped Kirin.  "I can't be beaten!"

His opponent raised his scimitar for a neck blow, saying, still in
Yoda-voice "Believed him, you did," but a recovering Kirin struck him with
the microphone stand, and the blow never fell.  The sound system woofed
with the hollow sound of the microphone crashing.

Connor shook Joe's arm.  "Who is he?" he demanded.

Joe tore his gaze from the action to look at the angry Highlander.  He
dared not lie, and he dared not tell the truth.  He just looked at the
immortal in panic.

And he saw understanding hit him.

Connor whirled back to look at the stage.  "Push!" he spat, to Joe's
confusion.  Then Joe recognized the Gaelic sound to the pronunciation,
although he didn't know the word.  Connor began fighting through the crowd,
toward the stage.

Joe made a grab for the Highlander calling "Connor, wait!  I don't know
what he's doing, but ..." Then he shouted over the heads of the crowd "He's
not hunting Duncan!"

John Kirin, his white robe stained crimson, took his opportunity to turn
and lope painfully off the stage, vanishing into the curtains.  Methos, for
it had to be Methos, recovered his footing, but, rather than following the
other immortal, he turned to the audience, spread his own arms wide and
proclaimed, still faking a Yoda accent, "Escape me, you will not!  Death
will overtake you!"

The audience tittered and some members applauded.  A shaft of desert
daylight beamed through the room and was gone, as a side door was opened
and closed.  Methos turned and ran into the wings, emerging beside the
stage.  The door opened and closed again.

For a moment the room was frozen, then Maya raced across the stage, through
the wings and out the door.  Joe thought again of Amy, his daughter, and
the dangers of Watching.  Maya wasn't cleared for this kind of thing.

Pandemonium erupted.  The camera operators in the balconies were gesturing
madly, and the crowd surged toward the small side exit.  Joe found himself
pressed up to the Highlander, who had nearly reached the stage.

"Connor," he cried, "go after her!  She'll get hurt."

The crush of humanity was log-jammed by the stage, since few people could
fit through the side door at a time.  Joe groped for a grip on some solid
part of the stage.  As soon as the press was loosened, he would likely
fall, without something to hold on to.

A crash above him caused Joe to look up and see that the light screen
separating the Love Now followers from the stage had fallen, and the the
white-robed followers were flooding onto the stage, and into the wing.

Connor, also momentarily immobilized by the crowd, answered.

"She should stay out of the way!" he called through the noise.

"It's her job to observe!" Joe yelled.  He saw Connor mouth some epithet,
his light eyes flashing.  Then the immortal vaulted, one-handed, the six
feet up to the stage, landing on his side, rolling.

"Out of the way!" Joe heard someone call.  "Let us through!" cried someone
else.  The daylight shut off, causing Joe to blink his vision back to
focus.  Through the bobbing heads ahead of him, Joe saw that security men
had reached and blocked the door.

"Everyone exit out the main doors!" one of them called in a booming voice.
"This is only a fire exit!"  There was a scuffle, and a voice in an accent
Joe was sure he recognized, yelled "Fire!"  The daylight flashed again, and
the crowd laughed, but the defensive security men recovered and pulled the
door shut, although not before one trenchcoat-wearing figure slipped
outside.

At the back of the crowd, Joe saw that people were peeling off to dash out
the main doors, into the casino.  Joe was determined to get out the side
door.  He couldn't move through the casino fast enough to catch up with the
evaporating crowd, and besides, the immortals had gone out *this* door.  He
had no guarantee that he could find them from another exit.  He consulted
his internal sense of direction, and determined that this door should open
to the Strip side of the resort.

It took only a minute for most of the crowd to thunder into the main
casino, leaving Joe by the side door with most of the Love Now followers
and, to Joe's surprise, the seven doctors.  The followers babbled
incoherently, but one doctor pulled himself up to the security men.  "Let
us through," he ordered, in doctor-voice.  "We are the witnesses.  We have
to see the death."

"That's not what was supposed to happen!" cried the followers.  "We don't
know who that guy was!"

The security men ignored the Love Now followers, but seemed discomfited by
the doctor's argument.  The remaining people in the showroom numbered no
more than fifty, and, after exchanging uncomfortable glances, the security
men opened the door.  Joe joined the group and exited into painfully bright
daylight.

Joe, like the others, had to pause just beyond the threshold for his eyes
to adjust, and to get his bearings.  He was facing the Strip, on a
guard-railed walkway which hugged the building.  Directly before him,
almost within touching range, was the back side of the pirate ship.  The
back of the ship had no paint, and Joe could see the rails beneath the
water which conveyed the ship into its battle with the British.  The mast
loomed above them, casting one dark shadow in their direction.

Beyond the ship, across the water, was the collection of bridges from which
people watched the Pirate Show.  Excited people were filling the bridges
from Joe's far left, which would be where a main casino entrance was.
Behind him white-garbed Love Now cult members flowed onto the walkway, and
scurried in both directions along the path, looking for access across the
water.  Joe didn't see the immortals anywhere in the growing crowd.

"They could have told us they were doing this," groused the woman doctor at
the rail next to Joe.  Joe followed her gaze and gasped when he saw what
she was watching.

Kirin and Methos, Methos still wearing an executioner's hood, fought their
death duel aboard the pirate ship.  Kirin, retreating, kept looking for
escape, but Joe's ledge or the water below were his only options.  And
Methos circled and maneuvered in order to stay between Kirin and the side
of the ship.

"I don't understand how he's still on his feet," mused the man on the other
side of Joe.  "I'm sure that sword perforated his abdomen."

As he spoke, the crowd "ooh'd" and Joe searched to see what their viewing
angle allowed which his didn't. The combat had paused, he could tell, for
he could see Methos, chest heaving, in a deceptively relaxed ready stance,
blood staining his clothes in a half dozen places.  Methos backed up a step
as Kirin moved into Joe's view, holding his sword to Maya's throat!

Kirin held his slight Watcher in an armlock, with one hand.  Joe had a
clear view of Maya's pale face.  She didn't struggle.

Joe gripped the rail and swore.

"This is quite a show," commented one of the doctors.

"But isn't he supposed to be the hero?" puzzled another.  "That's one of
his own people."

"Look!" cried the woman, pointing.

Connor MacLeod hung from the side of the ship, holding onto the metal
scaffolding which framed the side of the ship which the audience couldn't
see.

"Who's there?" called Kirin, looking around.  Finding only himself and his
opponent, he went on.  "Now, you're letting me leave here with her, or
she's shish kebob."

Methos gave ground slowly, letting Kirin move closer to the end of the ship
within reach of Joe's walkway.  He also moved closer to Connor's position.
Joe and the doctors with him had a clear view as Connor inched into
readiness, but the main audience, on the far side of the ship had no view
of Connor.  Unfortunately, some of the Love Now members had found the lower
maintenance accessways, and could also see Connor.

"John!" someone called.  "Look out below you!"

Alerted, Kirin moved away from the side of the ship, still looking around.
Connor tensed, but held.  Kirin's concentration may have slipped, for Maya
chose that moment to stomp on his instep and struggle.  Blood flowed from
her throat as Kirin's blade sliced her skin.

"Now!" yelled Methos.  He leaped to Kirin's right side, telegraphing a wide
swing for the head, the sword in his left hand.  Kirin blocked
instinctively, and, since he held the sword right-handed, that brought the
blade away from Maya's bleeding throat.  Connor flowed over the edge of the
ship, delivered a vicious arm blow to Kirin's grip on Maya, and wrenched
her from his grasp.

Kirin tucked and rolled, and tried to trip Methos as he tumbled by him to
relative safety.  Nimble-footed, Methos avoided him and swept his blade
around into that relaxed ready stance Joe had seen before.  Kirin returned
to his feet and the two immortals engaged again. The crowd cheered.

Connor held a dazed Maya tight against his side, as he backed away from the
combatants.  He was on the far side of the ship from  the safety of Joe's
walkway.  Joe saw him glance over the side of the ship.  Surely he wouldn't
leap into the water with an injured woman!  Then he looked up, saw
something, and hauled Maya up to stand on the yardarm.  He reached up and
unfurled a thick rope from the rigging.  Hoisting the slight woman onto one
shoulder, he wrapped the rope around his other arm, and swung, Luke
Skywalker style, over the heads of the other two immortals to land
gracefully on Joe's end of the ship, not ten feet from Joe and the doctors.
Again the crowd cheered.  Joe cheered with them.

Connor brought Maya to the edge, and leaped over the rail of the walkway
with her.  Blood covered the front of her white robe, and her face was the
chalky color of the rest of the robe. Her eyes were wide and frightened.
"Ah.  Ah," she said.

Two of the doctors took her from Connor and sat her down.  Joe was torn
between wanting to see how badly she was injured, and wanting to see the
outcome of the fight.  Looking from one to the other, his gaze passed over
the scowling Connor.

"Aren't you going back?!" Joe demanded.

"It's not my fight," replied Connor with a shrug, his gaze on the duel.

A glance told Joe that the concentrated medical expertise on the walkway
made anything he could contribute trivial, so he turned back to the ship,
too.

He saw Methos give Kirin an opening which the other immortal went for,
scoring a huge gash on Methos's torso as the eldest immortal spun aside at
the last possible moment, putting Kirin past him, hurtling toward the back
side of the ship, the side which the audience couldn't see.  Off balance,
Kirin stumbled against the low wall, and Methos, still spinning, brought
his curved sword around in a sweeping arc, and severed Kirin's head at the
neck.

A wave of relief flooded through Joe, so powerful that he sagged against
the rail.  But what was an ordinary, or at least, expected sight to him and
to Connor was horrific to those people watching with them.

"Oh my God!" cried the woman doctor.

"Jesus!" exclaimed another.

"I don't believe he did that!"

Cries of excitement came from the audience, who saw that the fight was
over, but were spared the gruesome sight of a man's head dropping into the
man-made moat around Treasure Island, or the headless, spurting torso which
lopped to the deck, bouncing slightly.

"We're supposed to be there," said the woman.  She pulled up a hanging
connector to the walkway, a ramp like a gangplank which extended to the end
of the ship.  Even the guard-rail proved to have a gate for passage at that
point.  Someone else helped her pull the ramp in place.

Joe put his hand to the gate, preventing them from opening it.  "I would
really wait a minute, if I were you," he advised.  A blueish vapor was
rising from Kirin's torso, enveloping the panting Methos.

"We're supposed to certify his death," the woman reminded Joe sternly.

"Well," observed the one doctor who remained with Maya, "I can call this
one from here."

Relief had made Joe giddy.  He chuckled.  "You should wait a minute," he
repeated.  Beyond the woman, he saw Connor smirk.

"What happened?" demanded Maya, who must have gathered her scattered wits.
Her voice sounded all right, to Joe.

"Kirin lost his head," Joe supplied.  He hoped she wasn't too fond of her
assignment.  She was a member of a personality cult, after all.

"Let me see!" she ordered, struggling against the man who tried to keep her
down.  He spoke firmly to her of shock and blood loss, but she shrugged him
off and got to her feet.  Of course, Joe thought, Maya knows there's still
something to see.

Holding her robe as a bandage to her throat, she joined those at the rail,
and then the final doctor stood to look, too.  Joe decided  the doctor
didn't look too concerned about her.

Connor leaned on the gate, as if he were leaning over a fence to talk to
his neighbor, blocking the doctors from passing through it to the ship.
The woman gave him an affronted look, but no one in the group chose to
challenge him.

"They're right, you know," Connor commented to Maya.  "You're likely in
shock.  If not now, soon."

"Shut up," she said, and Connor smiled, gazing back at the luminous cloud
as it began lancing Methos with blue lightning.

Kirin's quickening shook Methos like a rag doll.  His arms jerked into an
outstretched crucifixion stance, and his head was flung back.  The hood
slipped free, confirming to Joe that it was, indeed, Methos.  Very few of
the crowd out front would have been able to see him, since he was
positioned behind an area of raised deck, but the observers on the walkway
had a curiously intimate view of the passing of immortal energy to a
victor.

The power of the quickening increased.  The metal scaffolding along the
back side of the ship became a flashing blue grid, reminding Joe of the
neon signs of Vegas.  Tongues of power licked into the ship's riggings,
snapping ropes and setting fires in the sails.  A crow's nest lost its
supports and tumbled down to crash against the deck wall and splinter into
the water.  The crowd "aaah'd".

The doctors watched, dumbstruck.  Perhaps, Joe considered, they thought
they were seeing a man electrocuted.  Connor, too, watched in silence, no
longer leaning against the railing gate.  He stood at an easy attention,
almost respectful.  It was a funeral, of sorts, Joe realized.   The blue
flashes were reflected in Connor's eyes.

Maya was mesmerized.  This might be the first quickening she'd seen, Joe
thought.

A cry of agony brought Joe's attention back to the immortal at the center
of the maelstrom.  Joe had to squint to see him in the brightness.
Methos's long arms stretched out so far, Joe wondered if his shoulders were
dislocated.

The power of the storm, to Joe's horror, still grew.  How could Methos
stand it?  He'd wondered the same thing for Duncan MacLeod countless times,
and despite evidence in the Chronicles that receiving a quickening had an
element of pleasure to it, the physical torture of what he saw still
horrified him.

Powerful electrical bolts caused explosions in the wood and plexiglass
materials of the ship.  Pieces came flying loose, narrowly missing Joe's
group.  The doctors ducked and moved down the walkway.  Soon the only
people left were the two Watchers and Connor MacLeod.  Connor stood tall,
one hand shielding his eyes.  Joe made his way past the immortal, through
the flying debris, and put his arm around Maya's shoulders.

Lightning bolts reached the outside of the building, tearing and shredding
the facade.  With all the ship's riggings, and even the main mast, in
flames, Joe heard a new sound.

>From inside the resort came the ringing and clanging of hundreds of slot
machines paying off.

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