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The Not-So-Average Girl
"Who are you?" the bearded man yelled at Peter, his focus so completely on Peter that he apparently hadn't registered Kim yet. "How can you see me?"
"I-I-I don't know!" Peter yelled desperately. "I just do what you can do!"
The man stepped back and released his grip on Peter, letting the younger man land on his feet.
"Fantastic," the man said, tone practically heavy with sarcasm. "One of those… and who's this?"
"Kim Pierce," Kim said, still holding on to Peter's arm as she glared at the other man.
"One of those?" Peter repeated, looking at the man with new urgency. "What do you mean? You know someone else like me?"
The bearded man was just turning around when Kim reached out and grabbed him by the arm, gaze fixed coolly on their new acquaintance.
"You are not walking out on us!" she said bluntly. "Peter's been trying to work out how this works for weeks, and you're the first person we've met who might know anything useful-"
"And why should I care?" the man said, looking Kim up and down with a scornful expression she didn't really like. "And who're you to him, anyway? His bit on the side?"
"Ew!" Kim said, before she glanced over at Peter. "Sorry, that came out- it's not that you're not-"
"I get it," Peter smiled briefly at Kim before he looked back at the other man with a firmer glare. "Look, we need help; there's some psycho serial killer hunting people like us who seems to be taking his victims' abilities, and I'm pretty sure something's going to cause an explosion that could destroy most of the city-"
"Then you'd better get out of town, huh?" the shaggy man countered.
"Excuse me?" Kim glared at the man incredulously. "Peter saw you in his dream; who the Hell are you?"
"No one," the man said bitterly. "I'm the Invisible Man; I'm Claude Rains. Now get away from me; forget you ever saw me-"
"When we're the only people who can see you?" Kim countered.
"Only because you're touching him- and what do you even need my help with?" the invisible man said. "You're copying me well enough-"
"Look, I'm still trying to get a proper sense of everything I'm capable of here!" Peter protested. "Copying people when I'm right next to them is one thing, but I'm still not even sure where I got this… making people talk thing I tapped a while back, and then I had some trouble during that first fight with Sylar…"
"Hold on; you had trouble?" the man looked sharply at Peter. "As in you're still learning about this?"
"Which is why I said I need help," Peter insisted, seizing on the opportunity. "We can't just-"
"You're saying that you had trouble fighting some psycho with powers when you should have been able to match the other guy but you're still tapping into abilities you didn't know you'd copied?" the man looked at Peter with a new level of interest before turning to Kim. "Were you there when he had it easy?"
"I…" Kim paused, thinking back for a moment to realise that the man had a point; the way Peter talked about his past efforts to use his powers back in New York, and comparing it to how he'd held his own against Sylar, it seemed as though he'd genuinely had an easier time of it when he was near her. "Yeah, I was… I mean, I was with him when he used that persuasive ability he mentioned… but so what?"
"You find school easy?"
"Uh… Home Ec's tricky, but I'm pretty much straight A.s in my other subjects-"
"You particularly fast?"
"Not… I mean, I do OK in races, but it's nothing that-"
"Just got to test something," the man said, before he stepped back and gave Kim a hard shove, pushing her into the middle of the road just as a large truck came around the corner, simultaneously shoving Peter back against the wall behind him.
"Kim-!" Peter called out as he saw the young teen directly in front of the approaching truck, one hand already reaching out to try and move Kim to safety-
As soon as she saw the truck coming towards her, Kim jumped sharply upwards, literally flying towards the truck, and grabbed its front grill with the tips of her fingers. Peter could only watch in awe as Kim moved with the kind of speed they'd probably have to do in slow-motion in an action movie, vaulting herself off to the side as she scrambled around to the side of the truck and then pushed herself away from it, landing back in front of Peter as though she'd never been away.
"What the…?" Peter looked at Kim in surprise.
"I… I did that?" Kim looked at her hands and back at the still-moving truck that had just kept moving down the street; she wasn't sure if the driver would have even registered their near-miss, considering the size of that thing.
"Yeah…" Peter nodded tentatively before he looked back at Kim. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"That the invisible guy was… testing me?" Kim said, her tone just as tentative as Peter's own. "You think… I have an ability?"
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Ron looked uncertainly at Hiro as the four of them walked through the museum, trying to remain discreet. "I thought you said your powers weren't in good shape right now-"
"With sword, all fine," Hiro said with an enthusiastic smile, glancing over at a display about dinosaurs before he moved on down a corridor.
"But… explosion!" Ando looked urgently at Hiro even as he indicated Claire and Ron. "We all only have month!"
"Wait; explosion?" Claire looked urgently at Hiro. "You mean… that painting on the floor of Isaac's loft? That's actually going to happen?"
"Saw it in future," Hiro nodded. "One month from now, New York go boom unless we stop it."
"…Yeah, I'm definitely not in favour of that," Claire nodded, before opening the map she'd picked up at the entrance and looking over it. "OK, so if we're here, then the Japanese exhibit should be… this way."
It took the small group a few minutes to make their way through the museum properly, each of them pausing at least once to take a brief look at another exhibit, such as the dinosaur room, but eventually Hiro stopped in front of a suit of black Japanese armour, set in one of several glass cases with similar suits, the short man's attention captured by the black-handled sword on the figure's back with a strange gold symbol on the hilt.
"OK," Ron nodded tentatively as he glanced around the room. "Security's a bit tight; I'm not exactly comfortable with the idea of breaking into a glass box in the middle of a public museum…"
"On any level," Claire added. "I didn't exactly leave home to become a criminal."
"If I not have powers… museum explode," Hiro said, keeping his voice low as he looked at the case. "Good deal."
"Stealing?" Ando said.
"I'm really not comfortable with…" Claire began, before she sighed and shook her head. "God, this is such a mess."
"One weapon; save world," Hiro said firmly.
"Eh," Ron shrugged. "Look at it this way; we're getting that sword out there to do what it was meant to do."
Lost for better options, Ron, Claire and Ando moved around to carefully take up position around the room, as Hiro stood in front of the case. Glancing back, Ron saw him close his eyes and concentrate, but he opened his eyes after a few seconds and shook his head apologetically as Ando looked anxiously at him. Hiro squeezed his eyes tightly shut as he pressed a hand against the case, and then…
Ron wasn't sure exactly what happened after that. He was fairly sure it wasn't exactly stopping time, as he could just about see Hiro moving, but the short man was… he didn't know how it worked, but it was like Hiro was moving really fast. Ron just had time to work out that Hiro must have slowed time down for some reason when the case door opened and the blur that seemed to be Hiro had moved away from the case. As the alarms started to blare around them, Ron moved quickly out of the exhibition wing with Claire and Ando, heading down the stairs and out of the museum as quickly as possible. As soon as they were outside the building, Ron and Claire followed Ando as he ran for Hiro, who was standing in a car park off to the side of the museum and panting.
"You got it?" Claire asked Hiro, the Japanese man grinning eagerly as he nodded at the blonde girl before he exchanged hurried words with Ando. Glancing back at the museum, Hiro raised his new sword in a dramatic manner, but his mood faltered when he drew the weapon out of the scabbard and revealed that it was just a short wooden 'stick' with a small metal plate on one side.
"Is that a fake?" Ron looked anxiously between the weapon and their new friend.
"Linderman?" Hiro said, looking uncertainly at the plate on the fake sword before his shoulders slumped in frustration. Shaking his head, he muttered something in Japanese and turned back towards the museum, leaving Claire and Ron to look over at Ando.
"He take it back," Ando explained solemnly.
"Right," Claire nodded thankfully at Ando. "So much for the sword being his… whatever…"
"But… but how can I have any kind of ability?" Kim looked incredulously at Peter as they walked along the street. "I mean, time travel and painting the future and flight and telekinesis all make- I mean, they're dramatic and obvious, but that was… I was just… couldn't it just be adrenaline or something?"
"No," Peter shook his head, keeping his voice low as he looked around to make sure nobody was listening in, his words carefully chosen as though he was still working it all out himself. "I may have studied medicine only up to a point, but I still picked up a bit about how the body copes in dangerous situations. Maybe you could duck out of the way of that truck if you had enough notice, and I'm not going to deny that you're in great shape, but there's no way you could be psychologically capable of avoiding that truck the way you did if you didn't have some kind of ability."
"Psychologically capable?"
"You saw the truck, managed to grab it without getting hurt while it was moving and you were starting from a standing position, and jumped off it before it got too far away from me," Peter explained. "Physically you're obviously capable of it, but from a few of the more advanced books I read… well, I don't think the regular human brain's capable of processing everything you'd need to pull that off in the time you had to actually do it."
"Point…" Kim said, nodding thoughtfully for a moment. "Actually, if we're thinking of that… when Sylar tossed me and Claire away while he was killing Jackie, I managed to stop myself actually hitting the wall…"
"You stopped yourself hitting the wall?"
"I did this whole… I spun around mid-air and basically kicked myself away before I hit it and broke my neck…" Kim said, shaking her head as she realised how implausible it was when she actually stopped to think about it. "But… why would Mr Raines be asking about me because-?"
"No, that part… makes sense," Peter cut her off. "Think about it; he was asking about what I could do and then he started asking you questions, right?"
"Right… so?"
"Well, I'm not sure how that stuff about your school performance ties into anything, but we've seen enough to be sure that, whatever your ability actually is, you seem to just… know how to survive threatening situations… which means that when I'm near you…"
"You're copying my ability," Kim finished for Peter, smiling at her friend in new understanding. "And when you're copying me, my whole… how to stay alive thing is helping you basically 'fill in the blanks' for your own ability?"
"Makes sense, right?" Peter smiled at her. "That's why I'm doing so much better when I'm near you then when I'm alone; when I'm copying your ability, it basically makes it easier for me to tap my own… well, it's like my body knows what I can do better than when it's just me."
"Whoa…" Kim said, looking at Peter with a new warm smile. "So… as long as we're together…"
Her smile faltered. "That's… not really practical, is it?"
"No," Peter shook his head. "Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the help, but this way… you're basically my training wheels, Kim; I can't expect to rely on you to be there for me all the time."
"Yeah, I get that," Kim nodded in grim understanding. She might like to think of herself as being capable, but in practical terms, there was no way she and Peter could stay together for the rest of their lives just so that he could always be at his best.
It wasn't that Peter was a bad guy or anything, but she just… well, she was going to want her own life away from him at some point, right?
"OK, so what do we do now?"
"What we did last time," Peter smiled, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the sketchbook he'd used earlier. "See if we can find him."
"Now?"
"Well, we're pretty sure I'm in trouble if I can't work out what to do next, and we both agree you can't spend your life being my training wheels; we already know this way worked once, so there's no harm trying it again, right?"
"Worth a shot, anyway," Kim nodded as Peter pulled a pencil out of the same pocket, walked up to a nearby wall, closed his eyes, and began to sketch. For a moment Kim was startled when he seemed to vanish, but only needed a moment to think on it before she walked up to where he'd been and held out a hand to grab Peter's jacket, smiling as he came back into view, still sketching away in the book. A few moments later, Peter's eyes lost their blank state and he glanced at his latest work.
"You know where we're going?" Kim looked curiously at her friend.
"I've got an idea," Peter said, as he turned the book around to show the pictures to Kim, one of them showing Claude on a rooftop with various buildings in the background. "It's this other picture that's worrying me."
Taking in the other half of the sketch, which showed a glowing humanoid figure, Kim had to admit that it didn't inspire a great deal of confidence.
Sheila Gogh had no idea how she let herself get dragged into these things.
She appreciated that she and her siblings had a standing arrangement with this company to explore what their abilities were capable of, and she certainly wasn't complaining about how they'd taught her to channel her powers to enhance her strength rather than just shooting fireballs, but she still resented being sent out like this. Her brothers might enjoy getting the chance to go out and take down a few 'criminals', but she'd prefer it if she felt like she had some kind of control, rather than just dealing with whatever the people at Primatech told her to do.
Still, at least the current task was a bit more interesting than being treated like a blunt instrument who could only hit things. Tracking a missing teenage girl was fairly low-key, but Bennett had suggested that he was keeping a few things about the girl quiet even from his own superiors, which had given Sheila more reason to be interested in what she was digging up. They'd already managed to track down school records that reported a couple of other students had 'gone missing', and while a check revealed that the kids' parents had apparently reported their absence, the fact that these two were in Claire Bennet's year at school raised a few possibilities for Sheila…
Seriously, why am I letting myself get caught up in this? I break bones, I don't crack cases; this isn't really my area!
The problem was that she knew her brothers would take this kind of assignment more seriously and end up making some kind of mess in the process; at least if she was able to keep an eye on everything, she could keep them on the right track. The 'Wegos' (as Henry in particular liked to call the twins) had managed to make a few quick rounds to question the people at the big game to confirm that nobody had seen the Bennett girl since she went into the changing rooms, at about the time when Sylar (whoever he was) had gone after that Wilcox girl, but there was no clear reason to believe that she'd been another of the psycho's victims. Michael had run a few online searches and managed to find some last-minute flights purchased on that night that might include groups matching Bennett's description. There were apparently a couple of other students missing, but even Henry had to concede that they couldn't be certain if three students going missing on the same evening was just a freaky coincidence, as much as he wanted things to tie together that easily.
Still…
She still felt out of her depth, but the more she dug into this mess, the more she had to wonder what she'd actually find when Claire Bennett turned up again. The man might say that he was just looking for his daughter, but he'd already missed an assignment to meet up with a 'Doctor Suresh' who'd apparently been doing some digging into people with abilities.
This particular 'case' might not be something Sheila liked doing normally, but there was still something about this situation that kept on inspiring her interest. Why would Claire Bennett have run away from her family so suddenly… and if Michael and Henry were right, why would Bennett have run off with two other students that Bennett couldn't remember even visiting her house before Homecoming?
Walking onto the roof of a building, Kim chose not to question how Peter had been able to get inside something this big that easily, particularly not when he placed a hand on her shoulder and she could suddenly see Claude standing by a battered pigeon-coop in the middle of a seemingly abandoned balcony level (Kim chose to assume nobody rich enough to own a place like this would leave it in that kind of state).
"I told you not to follow me," Claude said even as he kept his head in the coop.
"Look," Peter looked indignantly at Claude, "right now, the entire city is in danger from some kind of explosion in the future, we have a super-powered serial killer after people like us-"
"Then you'd better leave town," Claude cut him off.
"No," Kim said firmly, even as she took care not to lose contact with Peter; she didn't want to embarrass herself and start talking to thin air. "We're not just going to leave the whole city of New York to get blown up because you say we shouldn't be bothered!"
"Look, I know this building," Peter said. "I took care of the man who owned it before his death-"
"Should that matter to me?" Claude countered.
"You don't think that's a bit strange?" Kim protested. "Peter works right next door to the place where you keep your birds?"
"I don't keep anything," Claude corrected eve as he opened one of the doors on the other side. "I let 'em out once a day, they come back. Sounds like free will to me."
"We're not here for a philosophical debate," Kim said firmly. "Look, what I can do… I'm basically a survivor, right? I'm helping Peter use his abilities because when he copies my ability it helps his 'fill in the blanks'?"
"Seems like you're doing pretty well without me-"
"But it's not practical," Peter said. "Kim can't just be my training wheels for the rest of her life; I need to learn how to control this."
"What are you talking about?" the invisible man said as he crouched down to open another door. "It can't be controlled."
"There has to be some way," Peter said. "If we don't, New York explodes, OK? I explode."
"An exploding man?" Claude looked sceptically at him. "Where'd you get that idea?"
"Things coming together," Kim waved a dismissive hand. "The point is we think Peter's been focusing on you for a reason; maybe you're the one who has to teach him how to stop this?"
"There's no such thing," Claude said as he closed the coop door and looked up at Peter. "No teaching; no Sunday school for the special. What I can do, you can't learn. You wake up in the morning, it's there. If you've got thin soup, then that's your supper. Sorry, mate; that's the way it is."
"We're trying not to die," Peter said, grabbing Claude by the arm as the other man moved to walk away. "There has to be something you can do-"
Claude cut Peter off by turning to grab him by the shirt, glaring warningly between Peter and Kim.
"I could just kill you both myself and solve that problem right now," the invisible man said bitterly. "Maybe that's why you dreamt me."
With those words, the man shoved Peter away from him and turned around. "Don't bother looking for me. However you did it this time, I'm not going to stick around here much longer."
As the invisible man vanished from view again even before he reached the door, Peter and Kim could only exchange grim glances.
No matter what they wanted to believe about Claude's role in their lives, they couldn't ignore the fact that he clearly didn't want to help them, which meant that even if they managed to find him again they probably wouldn't have any more luck getting him to help…
AN: And yes, Sheila Gogh is my interpretation of Shego, along with her brothers Henry (Hego), Michael (Mego) and the 'Wego' twins (open to options for their real names, so long as they both begin with 'W'). In keeping with my recent fancasting choices, Sheila can be envisioned as Summer Glau (River from Firefly or Isabel Rochev in Arrow), Henry/Hego as Seamus Dever (Kevin Ryan in Castle), Mego as Sean Maher (Simon from Firefly), and the Wegos as Shawn and Aaron Ashmore (Iceman from X-Men and Jimmy Olsen from Smallville).