Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; you know what to expect from this site.
Feedback: Always appreciated.
The Not-So-Average Girl
"We couldn't have found something a bit classier than this?" Ron asked as he followed Peter and the girls onto the plane. "I mean, we want to get out of here fast-"
"And we want to do that without drawing attention to ourselves," Peter cut the teenager off. "I know that you probably want to travel in style, but you need to remember that I'm not James Bond or Bruce Wayne; I can't just throw money at everything and get a fancy flight on short notice."
"He's right, Ron," Kim smiled over at her friend as they headed for their seats. "Peter's already pushing it by convincing the airport staff to put down false names on those records without real passports; he can't just make money out of nothing and expect to avoid awkward questions."
"Man, can you imagine how cool it would be if you could do something like that?" Ron smiled wistfully. "Wonder if there's some guy out there with the Midas Touch or something…?"
"Wasn't that meant to be a bad thing?" Claire smiled over at Ron. "As I recall, Midas couldn't even eat towards the end."
"Sure, but that's only if you can't turn that particular ability off…"
Peter let his mind drift as he watched the three teens talk amongst themselves, smiling thoughtfully as he observed their casual banter. He still had some doubts about the scale of what he was doing, but he had to appreciate how the group were coping with their decision. Claire had refused to leave a note for her parents after what that mind-manipulator had told them about her father, feeling that she couldn't even trust her mother in case she had some knowledge of her husband's agenda, but Kim and Ron had left notes explaining to their parents that they were safe and had just been called away due to some urgent issue relating to the attack at the school. It wasn't a perfect excuse, but it should at least buy them some time to work out what they were going to do about this situation.
The most difficult part of their departure had been when Claire had tried to call another friend of hers from school, going to the trouble of finding a public phone in the airport to make the call, only for the boy to respond in a manner that made it clear he had no idea what she was talking about. Claire had tried to brush the whole topic off once it was clear that the boy genuinely didn't remember anything, and she had assured Peter and the others that she didn't blame them for not getting to him before then, but it still hurt to realise that he'd failed one of his new…
What are they to me?
Looking at the teenage trio sitting alongside him, Peter was suddenly lost for the best way to define what they were to him. Thinking of them as his 'charges' was the most obvious term, but he had to appreciate that Kim in particular had made some valid points when he was infiltrating the police station to steal the FBI files about Sylar that made it clear they weren't just kids who needed his help. They might be young, but Claire and Kim had shown an aptitude for thinking on their feet when Sylar attacked them, and Ron had shown an admirable dedication to his friends despite his fear…
Whatever they were to him, Peter had made up his mind to protect these kids; he just needed to get them to New York, and then they could work out their next move.
He just wished that he knew how he'd been able to convince everyone to go along with his 'requests' since he met that memory-erasing guy. He could guess that it might be some kind of 'evolution' of his abilities that allowed him to tap into the powers he'd copied without the person he was copying in the area, but that didn't explain where he'd acquired the ability to basically compel others to obey his orders.
On top of being unsure where he'd acquired that ability in the first place, Peter was surprised to realise that he had actually felt differently each time he tried to actually use that power. When he'd been confronting that memory-erasing man, it had felt as though he was somehow bypassing a lengthy debate to convince the other man to answer his questions, but when he'd told those two cops to give him what he was looking for in the station, it was more like he'd reached out to plant the command in their heads rather than cutting to the end of an argument. When he'd convinced the airport staff to accept the cover identities and ignore the rat in Ron's pocket, it had felt like a strange combination of the two previous sensations, as though he was persuading them of one thing while encouraging them to ignore something else…
Lost in thought, Peter's eyes drifted shut…
He was in the middle of a New York street, cars all around him but none of them moving and nobody sitting inside. For a moment as he looked around, Peter couldn't see anybody else in the city, before he saw Claire, Kim and Ron running towards him, pausing a couple of feet away. As he continued to search his surroundings, Peter saw to his surprise that the three teens weren't the only people in his dream, which was a strange mix of familiar and not-so-familiar faces…
The man who'd introduced himself as Ando standing beside another Japanese man who looked like a younger version of Hiro (probably the 'present' version, now that Peter thought about it)…
Simone and Isaac were glaring at him from an alley…
The cops he'd 'compelled' to get the files on Sylar were standing to the side of the street…
Nathan and Mohinder were looking at him from another part of the street in a probing manner that he didn't like…
A dark-skinned man trying to protect a young boy while a blonde woman stood between them and Peter, one arm raised as though ready to fight while the other was held out as though trying to protect them…
A man with a scraggy beard and shabby clothes was laughing as he looked at Peter; for a moment Peter could swear he was looking up at the man, but then it was clear the bearded man was just on the street…
A young woman in a hoodie with a gun in one hand and her free fist raised to fight…
A figure whose appearance was a strange blur…
A dark-haired man whose face put Peter in mind of something he'd seen in an old Dr Who episode, particularly with the man's hairy hands…
A dark-clad man with a narrow face and piercing gaze that Peter wasn't sure he'd ever forget…
A man with fair hair and a round face who somehow gave an impression of great age…
Feeling a sudden heat, Peter looked down to see that his hands were glowing a brilliant gold colour, the glow spreading across the rest of his body… Kim and Claire were running towards him… Hiro, Ron and the fat cop were moving forward more cautiously… Isaac was dragging Simone away… Mohinder, Ando and the female cop didn't seem to know what to do… Nathan and that family seemed to be torn between moving towards him and getting away…
Sitting sharply up, Peter glanced anxiously around himself, only relaxing when he realised that he was still in the plane as the three teens looked at him anxiously.
"Are you… OK?" Claire looked tentatively at him.
"Just… dozed off, I guess," Peter shrugged, looking anxiously at the three teens. "Was I… is everything OK?"
"We… had a quiet flight, but you were really shaking it up there; you must've been having a serious nightmare," Kim looked anxiously at him. "Like Claire said, is everything OK?"
"It was… weird, anyway," Peter said uncertainly. "You let me fall asleep?"
"We were up in the air and you've been through a lot; KP thought you needed the break," Ron shrugged.
"That said," Kim pointed out, looking at Peter with a surprising air of authority for a teenager, "now that you've had that rest, I was thinking that we need to work out our next move pretty fast; we can't just hide away and hope this Sylar guy doesn't find us when we don't even know where he is right now…"
"I actually had an idea about that," Peter said, glancing around the plane for a moment before he looked back at the kids. "Let's just… wait until we're home, OK?"
Peter tried to ignore the way he felt so reassured when all three of the teenagers showed no objection to the way he was basically inviting them to consider his home theirs for the immediate future.
He might still not know for sure what he was going to do about the Sylar situation, but the easy faith these three had in him…
It might come across as playing to his ego, but it was inspiring in a way that Nathan had probably always tried to be but never managed to pull off properly.
It was the one loophole Noah Bennett had always hoped he'd never have to use.
Everyone in the Company was aware of the existence of the self-styled 'Team Go', of course; the concept of siblings developing abilities was obviously a popular belief, but it was surprising how diverse families could be when manifesting abilities. For all the research the Company had done into superhuman genetics, nobody could explain how Bob Bishop's ability to create gold led to his daughter being able to generate electricity. Noah himself had witnessed Nathan Petrelli flying away with no sign that he'd acquired that ability through some variation of his father's power, and it definitely had nothing to do with his mother's ability.
With all those questions to consider, the Company kept the Gough siblings on a tentative 'retainer', primarily asking the siblings to keep themselves available for tests and demonstrations of their abilities, even as it was basically an open secret that they were used for other purposes. Noah was aware of the rumours that came up whenever the Haitian was called away from him to deal with business in other parts of the Company, but he had always told himself that his partner's skills just made him uniquely suited to deal with particularly powerful or dangerous superhumans.
Now here he was, prepared to resort to those same tactics in the name of working out what had happened to his daughter. It wasn't as though he hadn't bent the rules before, but there was still a considerable difference between erasing a few memories and dispatching five people for a mission that he knew would end with him wiping their memories.
Still, if the Gough siblings could find Claire and get her home safely (and maybe work out how Kim Pierce and Ron Sinclair fit into this mess), it would hardly be the worst thing he'd had the Haitian do for him outside of their usual Company business…
AN: May I assume that the Kim Possible fans will be able to work out who the 'Gough siblings' are? It'll take a while before they show up, but be assured that more characters from the other side of this crossover will be appearing soon…