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The Not-So-Average Girl

"You're sure this is gonna work?" Peter looked uncertainly between the police station in front of him and Kim as she stood alongside him. Since they didn't know how much Claire's father knew about the situation with Sylar at the moment, or even what her father knew about Sylar specifically, they were just hoping that he didn't know about Peter's interest in this situation yet. Claire and Ron had agreed to stay near a friend's house- not wanting to get directly in touch with anyone in case it put them in more trouble- while Kim and Peter put Kim's plan into action.

"Trust me, I've gone here with my mom more than once; I know my way around like it was my own place," Kim assured him, reaching over to adjust the suit she'd managed to retrieve from her father's wardrobe. With her parents still occupied keeping an eye on her brothers while waiting at the stadium to be 'released' by the rest of the police investigating the recent attack, it had been easy enough for her to sneak back to her house and 'borrow' a suit to give Peter a more professional look for this part of the plan. "Look, that guy mentioned that there was someone from the FBI here with files on Sylar; visiting agents would stay near the interview room, so all you need to do is get to the main room, find whoever has them, do your little 'command' thing to give yourself time to copy the files, and get out so we can look over them ourselves."

"Without anyone realising I've done it?"

"Hey, you managed to get that guy to tell you what he was doing, and you've no idea where you got that power; if you can pull it off then, you can do it here," Kim smiled encouragingly at him before she grabbed his phone from his pocket and tapped in a number. "Oh, and here's my number; call me if you need any help once you get inside."

"Uh… thanks," Peter said, still lost on if he should be touched or apprehensive at this teenage girl's faith in him. Deciding that his best chance would just be to go along with it and hope for the best, he walked up to the door and headed into the station, nodding politely at the few officers gathered there as he walked further into the building.

A part of Peter still wasn't entirely sure if this was a good idea, but at the same time he had to admit that he couldn't deal with this situation on his own. He might have saved the cheerleader the future Hiro had told him about, but that didn't mean he could just walk off and leave her, particularly not when they had a chance to find out more about whatever they were up against. He somehow doubted that the files would give them anything like a full list on Sylar's powers, but maybe they could find a clue or two about what he might have acquired if they were lucky…

As he walked further into the station, Peter took care to find a balance between nodding politely at the other officers around him, recalling some of the advice their father had tried to give him and Nathan before it became clear that Nathan was the 'ambitious' one of the two. When dealing with a new situation, so long as someone looked like they were belonged somewhere, most of the time people wouldn't question their presence, which made it easier to talk others into giving you what you were after.

Granted, Peter didn't think his father had ever intended him to apply these lessons to what basically amounted to breaking and entering, but the core idea of taking control of a situation by feigning control was still valid. Once he was in the main area, relatively few of the desks were actually manned, and any officers still sitting here were clearly working hard at their paperwork. Scanning the area, Peter's eyes focused on a slightly overweight man talking with a thin blonde woman at the back of the room, both dressed in plain clothes while the woman had a badge on her belt that Peter recognised from TV shows as an FBI badge.

"…what now?" the man asked, looking urgently at the woman. "I mean, why would someone like Sylar even have accomplices? Aren't serial killers usually solitary?"

"It all depends on what they're actually after," the woman replied. "Even if it's all in their own heads, these guys often want something out of their sprees; could be trying to satisfy some warped vendetta, or think they're going to get something if they get enough of a certain type of victim. Add in all this freaky crap that's been happening on this case, and I've got no way to be sure 'bout anything; Sylar couldn't have gotten away on his own if he was leaving that amount of blood, but I'd rather not speculate when we're still working things out…"

"Excuse me?" Peter said, mentally crossing his fingers as he walked up to the duo. "You're working the Sylar case, right?"

"Yeah…" the man looked at him curiously.

"How did you hear that name?" the woman asked, looking at Peter with a new intensity.

"It… came up," Peter said, already regretting that he hadn't been able to do much more background research before doing this; he admitted that he hadn't heard much about Sylar before now, but how well-known was this guy outside of law enforcement?

"Came up where?" the woman said, looking intently at Peter. "And who are you?"

"I just-" Peter began, before he froze as he felt something 'click' in his head.

He couldn't explain what it was, but suddenly, as he looked at the man and woman before him, he could suddenly understand the deeper context of what they'd been talking about. They'd found the trail of blood that Sylar- Peter noted that the woman in particular referred to him as 'Sylar' while the man still seemed to be more tentative about that name- had left after he'd walked away from Peter's fallen body, but then two other sets of footprints had appeared on the scene and apparently taken Sylar away. While Peter guessed that Sylar had used him to cushion the fall, and maybe his telekinesis had helped protect the other man somehow, he briefly wondered if those other footsteps could have anything to do with the company that other man had mentioned, but swiftly decided it wasn't worth thinking about too closely; after what he'd seen the killer do, he wouldn't believe that Sylar was dead or out of the picture until he'd explicitly seen the man's body.

Peter couldn't explain even to himself where this sudden sense of insight had come from, but when the overweight man turned to look at him with a particularly intense stare, Peter's focus shifted back to the reason he'd come here.

"I need to see all the files you have on Sylar."

"H… here," the woman said, reaching over to the nearest desk and picking up a set of files that she passed to Peter, her body twitching slightly as though she was trying to resist his command.

"Uh… thanks," Peter said, looking awkwardly at the files for a moment before he glanced around the nearly-empty room and came to a decision. "Both of you; go to the interview room, and sleep."

It was a bit of a strain to issue that command, but Peter was relieved when the man and the woman nodded jerkily and obeyed his orders, each of them heading for the small room off to the side of the station. Peter followed them just closely enough to hear the 'click' as the lock slid into place before he headed for the nearest photocopier, pulling out papers from the files to look over them as quickly as possible; it wasn't likely that anyone would use the interview room this late at night if 'Sylar' was the priority investigation for this department, but he couldn't afford to wait too long. Looking at the contents of the files, he soon decided not to worry about the photographs in favour of copying some of the files on the crimes themselves; he could read over the papers in more detail and just glance over the photos right now.

From what he could tell as he skimmed over the files, there was some doubt about the identity of Sylar's first victim; the earliest one on record was someone named Trevor Zaltan, but apparently the cranial damage had been so precise there was some speculation that Sylar must have killed at least one other person before that. Before he came to Odessa, the latest victim report was on the Walker family; apparently Sylar had just walked into the Walker family home and killed the father and mother, while the young daughter had escaped him by hiding in a closet. On top of the Walkers, the files listed over a dozen other victims between New York and California before he circled around to Odessa, but while only a few victims had their brains removed in the manner that had apparently become Sylar's trademark, there were other cases where the victims had been impaled with household objects and their bones broken without any actual trace of physical contact.

The guy's telekinesis probably explains that at least, even if it doesn't explain why he's doing this…

When he noted the case report on the Walker family stated that Sylar had only killed one of the Walkers with his traditional M.O., Peter took a closer read. According to this file, Sylar had taken the top off James Walker's head and then frozen his body, but he'd just impaled Walker's wife with cutlery, and he'd apparently completely missed the Walker's young daughter Molly.

And Kim and Claire told me he was trying to take off the head of that other girl because he thought she was the one who'd saved that guy in the fire…

There were still a few gaps in his knowledge of the situation, but Peter thought he had an idea what was going on here. He wasn't exactly an expert, and he was still working his way through the book Mohinder's father had written, but he guessed that there was something in the brain that was in some way different depending on if a person had powers or not, or even what powers they had, and Sylar had worked out some way to copy other abilities if he could get access to the brain.

It wasn't a perfect theory, and Peter had no idea what Sylar could get out of a brain that would let him copy other abilities- the files didn't even seem to indicate whether he actually took anything from the brains or not- but it fit the basic facts. From what he remembered of Doctor Suresh's book, people couldn't 'naturally' have more than one ability, and if Sylar could just copy abilities like Peter did, he wouldn't have been trying to chase the girls down to try and kill Claire, and he definitely wouldn't need to attack people like this.

With his new idea in mind, Peter took another look over the list of Sylar's past crimes. It didn't specify where the killer's name had come from, but assuming Peter was right about the brain thing being key to Sylar taking other peoples' abilities, Sylar had at least tried to copy the abilities of half a dozen people or so by this point, and there might be more depending on how long it had taken anyone to identify his 'trademark' or refine his method. Based on what he and Peter had used against each other in their fight, Sylar definitely had at least three powers- telekinesis, freezing, and whatever the man used to blow up the ice Peter had thrown at him- but it was possible that he could have others that just weren't of obvious use in a fight.

He had no idea why Sylar would want to gather more abilities, but looking at the scale of the man's past crimes, Peter was certain of one thing; he was not going to let the three teenagers he'd just met become Sylar's next victims.

As soon as the printer had made its last copy, Peter folder the copies and put them in his inside jacket pocket. Walking back to the interview room door, Peter opened it and looked in to see the man and woman sleeping on either side of the main table, just as he had instructed.

"Wake up and forget that I was ever here," he said, giving the command a suitable mental push. He waited in the door just long enough to see the two respond to his commands and start to stir back to consciousness before he stepped back out of the room. Making sure he had all the papers in his pockets, Peter walked briskly out of the station, fingers crossed that his last little gambit had paid off.

He'd managed to command that other man with relative ease- at least, he could be fairly sure that he'd been getting honest answers to his questions- but this had felt different for several reasons beyond the fact that he seemed to be tapping a different power. When he'd been conducting that interrogation, he'd been able to ask questions and get answers, but this time around, he felt as though he was making a conscious effort to force the two to do what he wanted them to do…

The moment when he'd read the agents' minds at least reinforced his theory that he'd just tapped into some new ability, but he couldn't be sure if that had anything to do with the way his 'persuasion' had felt so different this time around…

"Well?"

"Well?" Peter looked at Kim, who had walked up to join him as he left the station.

"Did you get the files?"

"Got the files, made copies, and I think I convinced the investigating agents not to remember that I'd been there," Peter said, shaking his head slightly as they walked along the street, before he looked curiously at Kim. "Did you just…?"

"Did I what?" Kim asked.

"Nothing," Peter shook his head; he could clearly see that Kim wasn't cheering at the success of their latest plan, so asking if she was wouldn't help her opinion of him.

"OK…" Kim looked thoughtfully at him for a moment before she shrugged. "So let's get back to Ron and Claire before we start talking about this."

"Good call," Peter nodded, even as he began turning over the implications of everything he'd read so far.

He didn't know why these ideas were coming to him so much more easily all of a sudden- he didn't think of himself as stupid, but he'd never been a very tactical guy- but based on everything he'd read about Sylar, he could be fairly sure that the man was going to go after Claire again. Considering that this guy had killed quite a few people in a manner that made it clear he hadn't even tried to copy their powers, Sylar had no problem with causing collateral damage, which meant that he would probably go after Kim to get rid of any other witnesses, and from what he'd seen of the guy so far, Peter had a feeling that getting Ron to leave the girls alone after all this would be an exercise in futility at best.

Just because I don't know where Sylar is now doesn't mean he's going to stay gone for long, which means getting the girls and Ron somewhere safe before that guy comes after them.

Whoever Sylar really was, Peter's first priority had just become keeping those three kids safe, which would mean getting them all out of Odessa and away from the last place Sylar had encountered the girls…

In other words, he reflected grimly as he looked at Kim walking alongside him, I just took responsibility for three teenagers.

This was far from what he'd been expecting to deal with when he came to Odessa, but if he couldn't let Claire get killed when he thought he was going to die saving her, he definitely couldn't leave her in danger if there was anything he could do to stop it.

AN: To cut off any questions that may arise, Peter is only able to give Matt and Audrey orders because he's tapping into Matt's telepathy rather than Eden's persuasion (or whatever you want to call it), but he's using Matt's ability based on his experience of using Eden's in the confrontation with the Haitian; think of it like Vixen of DC Comics using Superman's super-speed but basing her use of it on her experience tapping into the Flash's abilities (during the time she was able to copy other superhumans rather than other animals). Matt hasn't tapped his abilities that way himself yet because he doesn't know he can use it to control others, but the potential is still there, and Peter's using his experience of Eden's ability to use the telepathy in that manner.

As for why Peter was able to access Eden's powers when confronting the Haitian but couldn't do it this time… well, you'll find that out later in the story; as with Peter's superior combat ability during the fight with Sylar, be assured that there's a reason for it beyond 'I wanted to do that', and you'll find a few clues if you look back.