Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; you know what to expect from this site.
Feedback: Always appreciated.
AN: Starting from this chapter, the plot will start to branch out to explore more character arcs than just Peter, Claire, Kim and Ron, as their actions begin to affect the rest of the cast
AN 2: After an observation in a recent review, I felt that I should give you a 'cast list' for these characters; of the Kim Possible characters who have appeared so far, Anne should be represented by Alyson Hannigan, Kim by Christy Carlson Romano (during her younger years when she was voicing Kim in the original series, albeit with red hair), and Ron by Sean Giambrone (who played Ron in the recent film, although maybe with bigger ears). I have a few ideas for other characters, but I'd prefer to save that for when they're actually introduced to limit potential spoilers.
AN 3: On a minor note, the Giraffe Hotel (which I mention later) actually does exist; I stayed there during a recent holiday to New York.
The Not-So-Average Girl
"So," Ron looked around the rest of the group, sitting uncertainly in Peter's apartment the day after their arrival in New York, "where do we go from here?"
"Well," Kim said, sitting forward to look around the table in a thoughtful manner, "right now, our biggest problem is that we've got no idea who 'Sylar' is or any real clue about this superhuman-hunting organisation that Claire's dad's apparently a member of, right?"
"Right…" Claire nodded thoughtfully.
"So," Kim smiled, "with that in mind, we need to find more about those people before we can do anything else."
"Which gives us something to start with, anyway," Peter pointed out, looking sympathetically over at Claire. "Sorry to bring this up, but since we know your dad has something to do with this, maybe that company he officially works for is some kind of… cover company for whatever group he works for?"
"That… makes sense," Claire nodded tentatively.
"OK," Peter continued, still looking at the young blonde with tentative regret at having to bring up such a difficult topic. "If your dad's employed by this conspiracy, maybe we can trace whoever's behind this by working out who actually owns that company?"
"Trace the guy in charge and maybe find out who's pulling the strings?" Kim smiled. "Sounds like a plan."
"And how do we do that?" Claire asked.
"I… might know someone who can help."
"Someone you don't want to talk to?"
"It's… not because she's a bad person or anything like that," Peter said, looking awkwardly at the three teenagers. "It's more that… well, I worked for her dad as he was dying, and then we… OK, 'dated' might be a strong word, but we were… involved… after he died…"
"And it didn't go well?" Claire asked, a curious expression on her face that Peter wasn't sure how to interpret.
"Things with her and her last boyfriend are… complicated," Peter shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable at the idea of talking about how things had turned out with him and Simone. "Actually, Isaac was part of the reason I was able to find you guys."
"He's got an ability too?" Ron asked with a new eager grin.
"He can paint the future."
"Huh," Ron said after a brief pause. "I can't decide if that's cool or lame."
"Painting the future could be lame?" Claire looked at Ron.
"Well, at least Dream Girl could just see the future in her dreams; what kind of power means you need tools to use it properly?" Ron asked. "I get that it's useful to know the future, but if he runs out of paint or anything he's kind of in trouble…"
"The point," Peter cut in firmly, "is that Simone inherited most of her father's business deals after he died, which means she might have the kind of contacts we need to work out who actually owns… Primatech Paper, you said?"
"That's it," Claire nodded.
"OK," Peter said in a resolute manner. "The point is that Simone mentioned she had a few business matters to sort out after her father's death, so I'm not sure exactly where she is right now, but if we go to Isaac's place he might be able to help us find where Simone is."
"Seems workable to me," Ron grinned.
"I second that," Kim affirmed, Claire nodding in agreement.
Doctor Mohinder Suresh had no idea how to react to the discovery that his father's work had something to do with the killing patterns of a serial killer. He had found it difficult enough to consider the idea that his father had been murdered for his work, but the concept that someone could take that work and use it to kill others…
He appreciated that his father couldn't have known the scale of what he was going to unleash when he came to America to conduct his research, or even that it might inspire something like this in the first place, but it was still a harrowing thought.
"I have to admit," he said as he looked between the two agents, "I'm glad the Bureau finally decided to take me seriously."
"Too many people from that list were showing up dead or missing," the woman said. "There are enough people not on the list to deter the casual investigation, but my colleague and I… we've been running a few new avenues for our current case, and we think this one's worth checking out."
"That said," her colleague observed, a wry smile on the larger man's face, "you're confirmed to have been in India or other parts of the country when some of these people died, or we might have been having a very different conversation."
"How fortunate for me, then," Mohinder observed
"Your father put this all together?" the woman asked, glancing around the apartment and indicating the map on one wall.
"Yes, he was a geneticist," Mohinder nodded. "All the people on the list share a unique genetic marker that he was able to map and track using the Human Genome Project."
"And you think… Sylar… got this list from your father before he killed him?" the woman asked, looking at the man in a manner that Mohinder couldn't entirely interpret; on the one hand, she was clearly the senior agent, but she seemed to be looking for the other man to offer her something during this interview…
"Yes," Mohinder nodded, once again wishing he'd taken his father's theories more seriously when he was alive; being able to talk to Doctor Chandra Suresh directly could have given him so much more to work with in terms of providing evidence…
"Name's clearly an alias, and without anything more to work with, we're pretty much stuck for how to find the guy," the woman continued. "We found evidence that he might have been interrupted in an attack in Texas a few days ago, but we've got nothing about where he might have gone since then."
"That said," the fat man said as he reached into his jacket, "we did find something on another name from the list. Sarah Ellis?"
"Yes," Mohinder nodded, even as he wondered why they were bringing up Miss Ellis in particular. "I tried to locate her in Los Angeles, but she wasn't at any of her known addresses, and no, I've never met her before."
"Are you sure?" the man asked, as he took out a photograph and handed it to Mohinder. Looking at the image, Mohinder was shocked to see a mug-shot of the woman he knew as Eden McCain; she had longer hair in the photo, but it was definitely Eden.
"That's Sarah Ellis?" he said. "I know her by a different name; Eden McCain. She, uh, lives across the hall right there. She's been gone for a few weeks. Is there a problem?"
"She turned up yesterday," the woman said, looking apologetically at the Indian doctor. "What was left of her, anyway."
"What?" Mohinder said.
"She was found in Lake Ramsey in Sudbury," the woman explained. "She had a gunshot wound to the head; local law enforcement called it a suicide."
Mohinder could only sit down, stunned at the news.
"The, uh… last I heard from her, she said she had something to confess to me," he said uncertainly.
"She was a friend of yours?" the man asked.
"I… I don't know what she was," Mohinder said.
"Right…" the man shook his head before he looked at the woman. "He didn't know about any of that."
"But she had to have something to do with everything we're tracking," the woman nodded, looking thoughtfully at Mohinder. "I'm not sure how this all fits together… but you're the earliest dated record we've got of Sylar's existence, and this list of your father's is the best sign we've got of what he might be looking for."
"What are you saying?" Mohinder asked.
"Doctor Suresh," the woman looked solemnly at him, "I'm Special Agent Audrey Hanson, and this is my colleague, Officer Matt Parkman; we're officially requesting your assistance on the Sylar task force."
"Really?" Mohinder looked at Agent Hanson in surprise. "There's a task force?"
"Unofficially, anyway," Agent Hanson clarified, as she looked thoughtfully at Parkman (and why was he an officer rather than an agent?) before turning back to Mohinder. "I won't say I'm totally sold on the idea of why Sylar's after these guys, but if this list gave him his targets… we might have something we can work with to track him…"
"What does it say about our lives when the guy who's our best chance of finding who we need isn't even here?" Ron asked, looking around Isaac's apartment. From Peter's tales, he had expected to find a gallery of prophetic paintings, but it was as though someone had completely emptied the place since Peter's last visit, clearing out the room of everything but a large mural on the floor. The painting in question was relatively vague, making it hard to determine the proper scale of the image it was depicting, but considering future Hiro's warning about 'save the cheerleader, save the world', Peter had more than a few worrying ideas about what was being destroyed in that blast.
Add in what he remembered about one painting showing an apparent exploding man, coupled with his recent dream about his skin burning with power, and Peter had even more worrying ideas about what was actually going to cause that explosion in the first place…
"I think…" Peter began, looking tentatively around the room for a moment before he grabbed a pad of paper that must have been left behind by whoever took Isaac's paintings, although a quick flick through the pad was enough to confirm that it was empty. Grabbing a couple of pencils from the table, Peter closed his eyes for a few moments, and then began to sketch with both hands, his eyes disturbingly blank as the others watched him work.
"That's… really creepy, right?" Ron asked, looking over at Kim and Claire as they took in Peter's suddenly blank eyes.
"Yeah…" Claire nodded, looking uncertainly at Peter as he worked, sketching two different images on the two pages in front of him, before she glanced over at Kim. "Do you think… I mean, can he see us like this?"
"I'm not sure," Kim shook her head, waving her hand in front of Peter's eyes even as he worked away at the two pictures, gaze shifting between them as he worked. "More to the point, how can he do this, anyway? I thought he said he needed to be near someone else to copy their ability?"
"Maybe being in Isaac's studio makes up for the fact that this Isaac guy isn't here himself?" Ron shrugged. "Besides, he already did that whole thing where he got that memory-erasing guy to talk to us, when I know none of us can do that… make people talk thing he was doing then…"
"So… he can do more than he thinks?" Claire looked thoughtfully at Peter. "Well… that's good, right?"
"If he can use it properly…" Kim observed.
Lost for anything better to say, the three teens just stared at Peter in silence before he took his hands away from the sketchbook, his eyes returning to normal as he displayed the images to the other three. The picture on the left-hand-side of the book showed two Japanese men- one tall and the other shorter and somewhat chubby- standing in what looked like a museum, and the right-hand one showed a bearded man standing on a street corner, wearing a dark hooded jacket with long brown hair that looked like he hadn't had a haircut for a while, a sign saying 'Giraffe' just visible on the wall behind him.
"Huh," Peter said, looking at the two drawings with raised eyebrows before he looked up at the other three. "I did these?"
"Yeah," Ron nodded. "Any ideas?"
"Well…" Peter squinted at the sketches for a moment before he nodded, holding up the two men at the museum. "The drawing style makes it hard to be sure, but I think this is Hiro and Ando."
"Hiro?" Kim asked. "As in the time-travelling guy you told us about?"
"The guy whose future self told you to save me?" Claire added.
"Yeah…" Peter nodded to the two girls before he turned to the other picture. "And this one… I don't know what it's about, but I know the location… and I think I've been dreaming about this guy…"
"Dreaming about him?"
"It's… I'm not sure if it's just something I haven't clearly tapped, but I've had a couple of dreams since this started that gave me the idea that I could fly before Nathan revealed where I got it from… and I was definitely dreaming about this guy before we got here."
"OK, so shall we check these out?" Ron grinned. "I mean, you must have done these sketches for a reason, and if you're dreaming about this guy on top of that he's got to be important to something, right?"
"…Well, I already went all the way to Texas because of a picture and a message from a time-traveller; at least now I can just walk it," Peter said, looking between the group. "OK, Claire, you and Ron get to the museum and see if you can find Ando and Hiro; it might do him some good to know that we managed to save you. Kim, you're with me; we'll look for the other guy."
"You know where he is?" Kim asked even as she and the others got to their feet.
"I recognise the street, anyway…"
The only downside about being in New York right now as far as Claire was concerned was that she was here under circumstances that didn't let her indulge her desire to be a tourist. She agreed with Peter that everything he'd done had been to keep her safe, but it was still hard to be in New York and not have time to go anywhere…
Still, even if she couldn't go into it, she was at least able to see the Empire State building from the outside, and now she had a chance to check out the Museum of Natural History; she didn't have to be an academic to appreciate the scope of what this place contained. Walking along the street, she noticed Ron sharing her enjoyment of the view around them, the two teenagers looking upwards to take in the high buildings all around them that they had each seen in such a variety of films and TV shows over the years…
The sound of two people talking in rapidly in a language that Claire vaguely recognised prompted her to turn around and look in the direction of the voices, just in time to see two men walking down a side-street, the contrasting physical states of both men making a clear impression even after Claire's brief glimpse. Grabbing Ron's arm, she ran down the street towards the two men, until she was close enough to confirm that the two men were Japanese dressed in casual clothes, the shorter man even wearing glasses.
"Hiro Nakamura?" Claire called out, looking curiously at the shorter man as he turned around to look at her.
"What?" the man asked, as he and his friend looked anxiously between Claire and Ron. "Who are-?"
"I'm Claire Bennett," Claire smiled reassuringly at him. "I… think Peter told you about me?"
"Peter Petrelli?" Hiro asked tentatively, before he smiled more encouragingly at her. "You the cheerleader?"
"That's me," Claire nodded. "And this is Ron Sinclair; he's a friend."
"Friend?" the other man looked curiously at Ron.
"Just a friend; I'm not… Claire and I… we're not like that," Ron shook his head, momentarily awkward before he looked curiously at the two Japanese men. "What are you doing here?"
"We are…" Ando began, before waving his hands uncertainly.
"We seek this!" Hiro said, pulling a rolled-up piece of paper out and unrolling it to display the image of a short figure that seemed to be Hiro, holding a sword in his hands and facing what looked like a tyrannosaurus rex.
"You're… going to fight a dinosaur… with a sword?" Claire asked. "I mean, Peter told us you could travel in time, but-"
"Sword key!" Hiro grinned, indicating the weapon in his hands in the picture. "It sword of Tazeko Kensei."
"Who?" Claire asked.
"He was a… isn't there some legend about him back in Japan?" Ron asked.
"You know?" Hiro asked, looking at Ron with a new grin.
"I had a bit of a thing about ninjas and that when I was a kid and heard a few stories about their history," Ron shrugged. "Kensei wasn't a major favourite of mine, but he came up in a few tales; he had some kind of… sacred sword that let him control his focus or something like that, right?"
"Yes!" Hiro nodded enthusiastically. "He great leader with sword!"
"And is there a reason this sword should be his?" Claire asked uncertainly as she indicated the painting.
"Legend inspire me; sword help me," Hiro explained. "Sword my sacred object; help me focus power."
"Huh." Claire exchanged a tentative glance with Ron, before they each shrugged. Neither of them had any better ideas about how to deal with the continued threat posed by Sylar, and if Hiro thought that the sword could help him use his powers…
"Have you thought about checking the museum?"
"Museum?" the two Japanese men repeated.
"Maybe it's a long shot, but Peter did a sketch of you two in the museum earlier; it's how I recognised you," Claire explained. "If… well, I don't know how Peter can paint the future in the first place, but maybe whatever gives him that kind of insight thought it was important for us to see that you'd go to the museum, so mabye there's something there that can help you?"
"Peter did sketch?" Hiro looked at her eagerly. "Like Mister Isaac?"
"Yeah," Ron nodded.
"But… Isaac gone," Ando put in. "Peter tell me… he only copy when near…"
"He seems to be getting a bit beyond that," Ron shrugged uncertainly. "We're still working out how that part of his ability actually works…"
"Who cares how he's doing it?" Claire pointed out. "The point is, if he sketched you all at the museum, maybe there's something there we should check out?"
As Peter led Kim along 26th street, he wasn't even entirely sure what they should be looking for at this point. The bearded man had been distinctive enough in the dream, but it was a different matter to look for someone in a crowded street when all they knew was that he was likely going to be in this area at some point…
"Giraffe Hotel?" Kim said, looking at the sign on the wall. "You think this is it?"
"I haven't stayed here myself, but my family have put up a few visitors here when they've been organising events and we needed more rooms," Peter explained. "It's fancy without being too expensive- Hey!"
Kim turned to look in the direction that Peter was staring, but all she could see was a group of people walking along the street, before Peter suddenly charged into the group and seemed to grab something-
"Peter!" Kim yelled, as she ran into the group, looking urgently for her suddenly-vanished friend. She heard a voice yelling about something, but when Peter's voice suddenly called out "You-!" before a loud thud, she reached out and grabbed something she couldn't seen, only to find herself looking between Peter and what appeared to be the bearded man he'd sketched earlier, the bearded man holding Peter against the wall as Kim held Peter's jacket.
"Nobody sees me!" the bearded man yelled. "Do ya hear me? Nobody sees me! I'm invisible!"