"Rise and shine, Claire-bear."
Those words were the only warning the young blond received before the curtains on the hotel window were quickly drawn open, exposing the room to bright, streaming sunlight. This did not please the cheerleader, who muttered something to her father about it being her vacation and attempted to fall asleep again.
From deep within the sanctuary of her blankets, Claire heard her father say, "Remember, the first Q-and-A is at three o'clock and the signing booth will be open at noon. I want you down there helping Peter set up by eleven."
"If I say okay, will you just let me sleep a little while longer."
"Okay, okay," Her father relented. "But remember, this is your first convention, so eventually you should get out there and have some fun. I know some of things here may not be your cup of tea, but I think with time you'll begin to enjoy yourself." He patted her covers, "I'm going down to the dealer's room. I got a report of some company contraband being sold there. Gadgets of different sorts that shouldn't get out to the public."
When Claire heard her father leave, she looked at the clock. Eight o'clock in the morning! Who gets up that early anyway? Sometimes she questioned who the real mutant of the family was.
DragonCon was a mecca for geeks, Claire thought to herself idly as she sat at the booth, waiting for Peter to come down with the supplies. Not that there was anything wrong with geeks, but it's worth putting it out there in the open. Some of them were even incredibly cute, she smiled as someone dressed up as Han Solo walked by and winked at her.
Han decided to take this as an invite. He saddled up to her and asked, "So, what group are you with?"
"Oh," Claire blushed, being quite new to this whole convention thing. "We're with the S.H.A.A.U. Presentation. The.. er.. Superpowered Humans Are Among Us.. it's an organization devoted to shining light on those of us who have special abilities. We're actually looking for a better name." She really hoped Mohinder would come up with something that didn't sound so ridiculous one of these days.
"And what might your Superpower be?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?"
She was enjoying this conversation quite a bit, despite even being that much of a Star Wars fan, until Han's cellphone went off. After checking the number, he excused himself, saying he needed to get back to his Cosplay panel. "But I will see you again."
It was a promise.
Claire nodded. "We'll be at the booth all day, stop by any time. Oh, and we have a question and answer session at three." He shook her hand, then kissed it and left her just slightly confused and bit more interested in the geeky side of life.
"What's up with the half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf-herder?" Someone asked Claire from behind, as she was watching Han walk away. She jumped, recognizing the voice immediately. Turning around, she gave Peter a huge hug. He dropped the boxes he was carrying on the booth and returned the gesture. "Hey, kid, I haven't seen you in two months. How've you been?"
"Everything's great, Peter."
"Are you just saying that because some Corellian was giving you flirty eyes?" He found enjoyment in teasing his niece sometimes. This was one of those times. While Claire pouted, he began opening boxes filled with photographs, convention schedules, 'I'm On The List' t-shirts and a few copies of Activating Evolution signed by Chandra Suresh. "Mohinder's really got this organized, doesn't he?"
Claire nodded as she looked over all the merch they would be trying to sell today, "My father has been helping him a lot. And you know how things are when my father gets involved.. things get seriously organized." She looked on the convention schedule, "This says Micah is speaking on some Sci-tech panel.. oh, and Mohinder's giving a lecture sometime tomorrow on genetic coding. I didn't know about that."
"They just got added to the schedule." Peter nodded. He pulled one last thing out of the box, showing the costume to Claire. "And look what else just got added. Nathan lost a bet with me."
"Oh my gosh," Claire started giggling, not able to stop for quite sometime. When she finally regained her composure, she shook her head, "Nathan's not gonna go for that, Peter. I don't care how many bets he lost, he won't do it."
"Which is why you have to help me convince him."
At first Claire was a little worried about this whole thing but as she held up the costume in front of her, picturing her biological father wearing it, she couldn't help but burst out into another fit of giggles.
Walking out of the Hentai 101 panel, Ando and Hiro, who came to the con that day dressed as Naruto and Sasuke, were a little dazed. They'd seen cartoons before, but never ones like those. All Ando seemed to be able to say was, "Hiro, I-- uh-- wow!"
"I know." Hiro nodded, taking his new boyfriend's hand in his. Despite the shock that the last panel left him in, Hiro was extremely enjoying his twenty-first convention. He'd been to many of them, but never as a guest before. And yet, through it all he had not once ventured into any of the anime events before today. "That was-- very interesting. That panel was-- very informative." He shot Ando a secret smile, wondering if the other boy had the same thing on his mind. "Especially part about Yaoi."
"Yes," With a feverish nod of his head and a quick tug on Hiro's hand, Ando readily agreed. "The Yaoi taught me many things."
Getting the hint, Hiro teleported them to their hotel room where their Naruto and Sasuke costumes were quickly tossed aside in a heap besides the bed. Grabbing his partner, Hiro tried out some of the new moves they had just seen on the anime cartoons. This was turning out to be one of the best cons he had ever attended.
By the time Sylar peaked his head into the ballroom to see what was going on in there, it was packed with at least a hundred convention guests, most of them wearing black. They were all singing along to the songs emitting from the goth guitarist on-stage. He had a good stage presence, whoever this freak in the skull sweatshirt was, an ease about himself that a tiny part of Gabriel envied.
Sylar grinned to himself from the shadows as he listened to more of the lyrics. Now this was some music he could get interested in! All the songs seemed to be about dismembering people, being evil, destroying those who had hurt you and of course, brains!
He couldn't help walking out of the ballroom at the end of the concert, singing to himself, "Brains, brains, I won't lie, I'll eat their brains 'til they're zombified. Sure, they might think it's deranged, but they won't give it a thought after I've eaten their brains."
At the end of the show, Sylar silently watched the man in black as he walked off stage. A bouncy, young thing who didn't look over the age of fifteen was following closely behind him. "Voltaire, wait for me. These CDs are heavy."
"You're the one who signed up to be my roadie, Vixen." The guitarist answered her. Then, patting her on the butt he playfully added, "Now if you want to be my merch-bitch, you'll carry those CDs and like it. And eventually, there may be foot sex involved in your duties."
Sylar made a mental note of the name Voltaire, so that he would remember to let this man with the awesome music skills live when he ruled the world. But for now, he would just get a CD when the large gathering of groupies following the man after the concert had died down.
Matt was usually able to control his mind-reading ability. The thoughts he didn't need to be listening to seemed to filter out with ease. However, this weekend, with the crowds being so huge and him being a little under the weather, it all left him with one big migraine and very little protection from random thoughts of random passerbys.
'I really hope I get laid by the end of con' he heard one Trekkie say. 'At least I got to play with that girl's boobs last night'
Another, dressed in a suit of fur that resembled a dog mascot, looked angry as he mentally muttered, 'I don't know why she doesn't want to wear the fursuit.. she said if I bought it for her, she would wear it and we could have sex with it on. I've always wanted to have sex in my fursuit, damn it!'
Yet another, wearing a tightly laced corset and renaissance faire styled dress, grinned from ear to ear and exclaimed, 'I finally got to see what was under his kilt! Too bad his girlfriend walked in on us.. though, the threesome was nice'.
Matt bumped into a tall man who was dressed as Neo from the Matrix. Excusing himself, Matt took a deep steadying breath. Still the thoughts came at him in a breakneck speed. Sex, sex, SEX! It was all these people thought about. He backed away from the rest of them, making for the exit and then took a long walk around the city of Atlanta.
He needed to regain his composure before heading back into the den of debauchery that was DragonCon. At least Molly had been too busy on her school trip this weekend to attend the con. There were just some places kids shouldn't be. Even if she was older now.. actually, i especially /i since she was older now.
"I'm not coming out there," Nathan shouted from where he had changed in the bathroom. He had been in there for fifteen minutes now, continuing to tell Peter that no matter how much he may have lost the bet, he was not going to be wearing that outfit to the question and answer portion of the day. "I look ridiculous."
"Come on, Dad," Claire stiffled a laugh, from where she and her uncle were sitting on the hotel bed. Trying to be serious, she attempted to coax him out into the room. Beside her, Peter was wearing a shit-eating grin and covering his mouth with one hand to keep from laughing. Elbowing him, Claire continued, "How bad can it be?"
"Oh, Claire, it's bad." Nathan answered her from behind the door. "And if you had anything to do with this, I am going to be talking with Noah about grounding you for a year."
At that, Peter's face turned red from trying to contain his amusement. When, at last, he couldn't keep it up any longer, he removed his hand and nearly fell off the bed laughing. Claire watched and shook her head. The two brothers never ceased to find new ways to torment each other.
"Is that Peter laughing?" Nathan asked, finally coming out to join them. With his arms crossed in front of him, the conservative congressman stood in the middle of the room, wearing the Superman costume Peter had bought for him. The tights were definitely.. tight. All matter of bulge and muscle were clearly outlined by the red and blue stretchy material.
There were few things that could break Claire, but seeing her father in extremely tight tights was one of them. She was at a loss for words. "I-- um.. wow, Dad."
Nathan, seeing how shocked they were, turned around and shouted, "That's it. I'm taking it off."
As his brother headed for the bathroom to remove the costume, Peter jumped off the bed and said, "Come on, Nathan. Our fans would love it. The Superman fans would love it. And you've gotta see the irony in it. You can fly.. he can fly.. you're both heroes." Then, after a pause, he added, "And you did lose that bet. I could think of other ways for you to repay it but trust me, they wouldn't be worse."
"Fine," Nathan sighed. It seemed they had him. He turned around and the cape seemed to follow him like it was already his second skin. "But the next time you lose a bet, you're dressing up as Rogue."
Peter blinked, surprised at Nathan's deftly applied X-men reference. He then clapped a hand on his shoulder, as he and Nathan posed for Claire's camera. This was definitely one for the Petrelli family photo album. The scowl fixed across Nathan's face in the photo only made it that much better.
The auditorium was filled when Mohinder gave his speech before the Q&A. If only his father could have seen the turn out but at least his son was there to carry on his work. People had been coming up to him all day, comparing him to some Professor X.. a man Mohinder couldn't recall ever hearing about before today, but who seemed to know quite a lot about evolved human and ordinary human relations. He would have to read up on him when he got back home.
"We've come together here today, to show you what will be the future of humanity. These few people who stand before you today represent many hundreds, possibly thousands, out there who are unseen and unheard of, those who have powers but are still afraid to take that first step out into the open and reveal themselves as they are, as an evolved form of human. These few have chosen to stand up and demand to be recognized for what they are, hoping that others may follow in their wake if we accept them first. Let's give them a round of applause and welcome them out here."
Mohinder joined the clapping, as Peter, Claire, Matt, Niki, Hiro, Nathan (in a Superman costume which caused even more applause) and Sylar stepped out, waved and took their seats. Then it was time to take questions from the audience of hundreds, each one more curious and usually a little odder than the last.
"Claire," One audience member asked, "I've been hearing rumors of a possible relationship going on between you and Peter. Can you elaborate on that at all?"
The girl raised her eyebrows, a little worried over the mental health of that particular fan. "Um.. me and Peter are family. We're related. He's my.. uncle." She shook her head and tried to explain that as smoothly as possible, but it all seemed a little awkward to her. "Um.. can I have the next question please?"
A little while later, someone asked. "So, Sylar, you've been cleared of all charges regarding the murders of these individuals, based on the loophole that your DNA has been altered so much that you lack a basic human structure and police agencies can not yet charge a non-human for a crime.." The fanboy seemed intent on babbling on before getting to his question, "But, what I really want to know is-- what do you do with the brains?"
"I eat their brains with some fava beans and a nice chianti." Sylar smiled, deliciously. "I have a good recipe back in my hotel room, if you'd like to try it out."
The questions continued until their hour was up. The last girl who spoke, asked them, "I heard writer-producer Tim Kring was interested in working on a fictional project that would be based off of your extraordinary lives. What is your view on that? Which actor or actress would you like to play you if that happened?"
Matt was the first to speak on that topic. "I would be rather impressed. I've seen his work on Crossing Jordon and Providence. It's good stuff." He paused, "As for actors, I've been told I look a lot like Greg Grunberg from Alias. He's a good actor, but I don't see the resemblance."
Claire looked over at him, speaking into her table-top microphone."No, really, there is something there. You've got an Alias thing happening, Matt."
"Oh, like with the multicolored wigs?" Peter chimed in, interjecting with a little humor.
"Hey," Matt joked back. "I was only doing that for undercover work. And possibly also because I was searching for and rescuing the artifacts of Milo Rambaldi, but that's all hush-hush. I think I may have already said too much. Besides, I think our time is up." To this, the audience erupted into cheers and laughter, standing up to give them a standing ovation.
Mohinder moved up to the podium to say a few words and then dismissed the group and finally left himself. They'd done good today. They'd met a bunch of new people, gathered new fans for their cause and he had even gotten a hold of a few contact numbers with people who swore they had interesting abilities themselves. His father would be proud, though maybe a bit perturbed by the chosen venue.
Science fictions fans, however, seemed to be, after researching this topic, the most accepting and open minded of people. They came from all walks of life, though they had a love of knowledge and adventure in common. If Mohinder was going to reach the rest of humanity, it was here that he would begin to build that bridge.
Claire wandered around the lobby of the hotel, walking between the people taking pictures of Wookies and the Kill Bill brides battling for the right to kill Bill. She had never been so woozy before. Niki had dragged her off to a party, but when Jessica came out ditched her without helping the younger kid get back to her hotel room.
"Oh, hello, Peter," Claire slurred her words as she fell into her uncle. "Have you come to play on the tilt-a-whirl too? It's fun. The room goes this way," She swayed away from him and then swayed back, falling into his arms, "and then it goes that."
"I saw you from the top of the atrium." Peter told her, "What did you have to drink?"
"Jessica took me to a party. There were these bikers with funny wrinkly heads and bad makeup there.." She looked like she was about to puke. "They gave me some Klingon blood wine and now I know why people tell you never to drink the bloodwine. It's tasty.. but geez, one sip and hello dizziness!"
"Claire, you need--" Peter was trying to be the responsible one, but she seemed about ready to go stumbling around to go find another party. "Claire, are you listening to me? We need to get you back to your hotel room.. no, better yet, mine. If your father sees you like this-- if either of your fathers sees you like this.. it won't be pretty."
"I love Dragon'Con," Claire made with the merriment, shouting it to the top of the lobby's atrium. "It's like spring break, for geeks! Don't make me go to bed yet, Peter. I wanna stay up and hang out with the cast of Firefly!"
"Okay," Peter scooped her up and lifted her over his shoulder in a fireman's hold, "That's it. The party's over. I'm taking you back now."
She watched at the guests in crazy costumes got father and father away, as they headed up the stairs since the elevator was once again clogged with people traveling between floors. He carried her all the way back to his room, keeping watch over her through the night. There was a moment when Claire thought she heard Peter tell Noah that she had fallen asleep in his hotel room and he didn't want to wake her up to move her, but she was too busy throwing up to hear all the details of that conversation.
In the morning, she woke up to see Peter, wrapped in a blanket and asleep in the arm chair of his hotel room. The sound of her stirring, caused him to open his eyes, yawning and watching her for any signs of a hangover. Despite being the easy-going member of their fucked up little family, there were times when Peter could come down on her just as hard as the rest. "So, Claire, is there anything you would like to say?"
"Never drink the Klingon bloodwine?"
"Anything else?"
"Voltaire is a pretty damn good musician."
He cocked an eyebrow, expecting more.
"And.. um.. never go to a party with Niki. And I shouldn't drink until I'm 21." She gave him the best puppy-dog look ever. "And my uncle is the best person in the whole wide world for taking such good care of me and because even though I screwed up horribly, he won't tell anyone because he loves me and doesn't want to get me into trouble?"
He thought on this a moment. "Agreed." After a pause, he added, "But if you ever do anything like that again--"
"Oh," She jumped up and gave him the biggest, tightest hug ever. "I won't ever. I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die and all that good stuff." She breathed in a sigh of relief and thanked him a multitude of times. Then the hangover hit and she needed to lay back down again.
Upon leaving the convention, Sylar was bombarded by half a dozen female fans. All wanting an autograph or a photo opportunity. For once, he got to play the star, with all the attention focused on him. This was what he had dreamt of his whole life; the moment where people would put him on a pedestal and think he was something special, someone that deserved love and attention.
He loved the audience. And the audience loved him. And he loved them for loving him. And they just loved each other. That's because none of them ever got enough love in their childhood.
And that's show biz, Kid.
NOTES:
1. This was written in homage to the fucked up convention that is DragonCon and to all con geeks everywhere, who will tell you that it really is ALL that fucked up. And also because I was watching the ComicCon panel on YouTube while on vacation this weekend.
2. Hentai - "Hentai means "pervert" or "perversion" in Japanese. It is usually associated with erotic or sexually-explicit anime."
3. Naruto and Sasuke – Two characters from Naruto. I told my friend to pick two anime character for Hiro and Ando to cosplay as, she picked these two.
4. Cosplay - "A very popular activity during anime conventions, also referred to as masquerading. It consists of dressing up as an anime or video game character to participate in contests or simply for fun"
5. Yaoi - "Stories in anime or manga which focus on male homosexuality."
6. Voltaire is a musician that can be heard at many different conventions throughout the year. He does Dragon'Con each year. And yes, I have been his 'roadie' on occasion and I couldn't help passing up a small cameo. And yes, he does have a song entitled "Brains!" which I think Sylar would enjoy, as it is pretty much his theme song.
7. Fursuit – Er.. I'm not going to explain this one. It's a Furry thing, if you really want to know.
8. Professor X and Rogue are characters from X-men. Go watch the movie or read the comic if you have been living under a rock these past few years.
9. The last two paragraphs come from the Roxie song from Chicago soundtrack. It actually works pretty well as a Sylar quote, heh.
10. NEVER DRINK THE KLINGON BLOODWINE!!