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The Not-So-Average Girl

"So… you only just found out about all this?"

"Well, there's really a lot of things I only 'just' found out about," Kim replied, smiling at Simone in what she hoped was a reassuring manner; she liked helping people, but there was something unnerving about looking at this well-dressed older woman and feeling that she was the one who had more control of the situation. "I only found out what Claire can do about a month ago, we met Peter barely a week ago, and I literally just learned that I have an ability yesterday-"

"That's what I'm talking about," Simone cut in, looking at Kim with new urgency. "How do you feel knowing that you're… look, don't take this the wrong way, but you're not…"

"Normal?" Kim finished for Simone. "Maybe not, but Ron has a simple philosophy on that front; 'Never be Normal'."

"Really?"

"He has a naked mole rat as a pet; he's always danced to his own beat."

"A… naked mole rat," Simone looked at Kim in a bemused manner. "That's… a real animal?"

"We think the little guy escaped from a lab or something; Ron needed a hairless pet because of his dad's allergies, so it all worked out and we've never really looked into it," Kim shrugged as she indicated the loft. "Besides, considering that your boyfriend can paint the future, my little trick isn't exactly flashy; all I can really do is 'know how not to get killed'."

"And… what else can people do?" Simone looked at Kim with new curiosity. "I mean, I get that Hiro can travel in time… if he wasn't having his problem… and Peter can copy other people… but what else is out there?"

"Aside from me and Isaac?" Kim smiled. "Well, we've already encountered a guy who can negate the powers of others-"

"Excuse me?" Simone looked at her in surprise. "There's a guy out there who can… his only power is to shut down other people's abilities?"

"And apparently erase people's memories," Kim added, nodding in understanding at Simone's uncomfortable grimace. "Yeah, that freaked us out too… still, we also met a guy who can make himself invisible, and Peter seems to have encountered someone who can… make people do what they tell them to do."

"He 'seems' to have met someone?"

"He used the ability to make the power-blocking guy talk but even Peter didn't know where he got it from," Kim explained. "I mean, he maybe only tapped it back then because he was using my ability to help him work out the blanks…"

"Could you… do you think superhuman strength could be a thing?"

"Strength?" Kim looked at Simone curiously. "I mean, probably, but… why that ability in particular?"

"It's just… I was meant to have a meeting with a client in a shopping mall a few days ago, but while I was waiting in the restaurant…" Simone's face twisted for a moment, as though trying to find the best way to voice something she was still struggling to accept was possible. "Some figure in a hoodie broke into a jewellery store opposite the restaurant I was in and lifted a stone bench off the floor as a distraction."

"A stone bench?" Kim repeated.

"OK, maybe not stone, but… whatever they use for those things in malls," Simone said. "It was all just… I mean, I was so busy freaking out about everything else…"

"And now you're worried that there's someone else out there on a crime spree with their ability?" Kim said, looking at Simone with new intensity. "What else can you tell me?"

"Seriously, can't you give us just a little break?" Ron looked urgently at the parking attendant. "We're only a couple of minutes over; how's that fair?"

"Rules are rules," the man said, although Ron had to concede that the man at least looked slightly apologetic. "Do you want the car back or not?"

Sighing in frustration, Ron took out some of the money he'd received from Simone to cover their expenses and exchanged a few points for the car keys. As he walked back to join Hiro and Ando, he tried not to think about the frustration in Hiro's eyes as he looked at a nearby clock; he guessed that the older man was trying to get his powers working again and hadn't had any luck.

"How's it going?" he asked tentatively.

"Power gone; need sword," Hiro observed, his speech tentative as though he wanted to be sure every word was correctly chosen. "It focused Kensei's power; will do same for me."

"And… any idea how we'll get it when we're just three guys?" Ron asked. "I mean, I'm all for sticking it to the man, especially with what we've heard about this Linderman dude, but-"

Hiro and Ando froze and grabbed Ron by his shirt, practically slamming him against a pillar as they looked anxiously at something further along. As soon as the two had released their grip, Ron glanced around the corner to look at whatever had caused their panic, and saw a man standing near his friends' car, the man making a call on his phone with a particularly grim expression on his face.

"Take it you don't know that guy?" Ron asked, hoping that his initial apprehension was just him being overly paranoid after the girls' close call with Sylar.

"No," Ando confirmed.

"Not look friendly," Hiro added apprehensively.

"Oh no," Ron whispered, looking back at the man as the unknown figure pulled out a gun and began to walk towards them. "This isn't good…"

"Run!" Hiro yelled, as he turned to run back the way they had come, only for a dark van to come around the corner with a loud screech as its tires came to a halt. Looking anxiously around, Ron tried to work out where they could go next, but he only ended up running into Hiro and Ando as they all tried to move off in a different direction. Ron could only look apologetically at the other two as men from the van practically hauled Hiro and Ando to their feet and dragged them into the van, only pausing for a moment before they grabbed Ron and did the same to him.

With Hiro, Ron and Ando sitting on one side of the van, they could only watch awkwardly as the men climbed into the van and closed the door behind them before driving off, maintaining a prompt but even pace through the city streets. The other men were all wearing a similar outfit of dark jackets and trousers over what looked like wool sweaters, which must have been rather warm in this weather but didn't explain what they were doing or why nobody was talking to them.

"So," Ron looked over at his apparent fellow prisoners with a weak smile, "at least we've gotta be on to something if someone's trying to stop us, right?"

"Good view," Hiro grinned back at Ron. "This how we roll."

"Can we get off it?" Ando asked, looking anxiously over at Ron and Hiro before he turned back to the other men. "Where are they taking us?"

Noticing the bag at the feet of the man who seemed to be the leader of the group, a gun sticking out of it in a manner that seemed almost 'designed' to taunt them with the idea that they wouldn't be able to grab it before this man turned it back on them, Ron was suddenly unsure if this had been a good idea…

The more time Peter spent with Claude, the more he found himself wondering if this had been a good idea. He and Kim had each agreed that relying on her to control his powers wasn't a practical long-term solution, but so far he wasn't sure if Claude actually knew anything useful and was being a bitterly eccentric 'mentor' just because, or if the invisible man was just improvising.

"I don't see how petty theft is a useful part of training," he finally observed after Claude grabbed a scarf from a passing man; he had been prepared to excuse Claude grabbing food from other people, since it seemed unlikely a man who spent his time being invisible had any kind of job, but clothing was at least close to crossing the line.

"There's a lot you don't see," Claude countered nonchalantly. "You've no idea how to use these gifts of yours properly."

"And you do?"

"Right now, your abilities only show up as a reflex; you're basically just defaulting to 'flight or fight' in a tight spot," Claude observed. "Making it a conscious choice, using something beyond just what you can use right that minute, that's what makes you more than poodle."

"And insulting me is going to help?"

"Hey, you're the one who's going to blow up the city unless I can get you housebroken," Claude retorted, pausing to stop a clothes rack being pushed along the street, settling into place as the man pushing the rack realised that it had stopped. "So you've absorbed all these abilities; you're invisible with me, you've flown with your brother, you got telekinesis from this Sylar psycho, and you copied Miss Survivalist, along with that… making people obey you thing you can't explain."

"I just meant that I don't know where I got that from-"

"We'll work that out later," Claude cut Peter off (Peter was starting to wonder if 'invisibility' was the right term for what they were when people were just walking around them like that; shouldn't passers-by still be able to hear them?). "Point is that you have the powers, but right now your body doesn't know what to do with them; your whole system's jumbled around like cards in a shoebox, and far as you're concerned, those cards are dowsed in plutonium and piling up to a critical mass. What we've got to do is teach you how to pull 'em out, one at a time, and actually choose what one you're using, 'stead of just goin' with whatever your body picks."

"That's a bad thing?" Peter asked.

"What if you're facing someone dangerous enough that you'd instinctively want 'em dead but you consciously want to keep 'em alive to interrogate?"

"…Bleak, but good point," Peter nodded.

"Glad you approve," Claude responded, as he stepped away from the rack and they began walking again. "You've been lucky so far, but packing that much power in one body could get ugly if you lose control of it…"

"Like what?"

"Could be the bomb you're worried about is a bit closer than you think."

Peter almost asked what Claude meant by that, but shoved it down as soon as an explanation came to his mind; if he could tap multiple abilities at once, he didn't want to risk his body thinking he wanted it to do something like that…

"OK," he said anxiously, focusing his mind back on track. "What's today's lesson?"

"Seeing if you can hold onto an ability without Miss Training Wheels or any of your other benefactors hanging around," Claude said, grabbing a handbag from a passing woman and shoving it into Peter's chest. "Remember to breath."

As the invisible man walked away, Peter fought to hold on to the sensation of what it had felt like when he started compelling that man to talk when he had been explaining everything to Kim, Claire and Ron; the way everything had just fallen into place, the way he'd just felt that he could make the other man do what he wanted… the way he'd felt like he was moving past some kind of barrier to grab a shield and a tool, and now he was reaching out for a different kind of shield…

The sound of the woman screaming prompted Peter to turn his focus away from his own internal search to realise that the woman was looking at him in outrage. Lost for better options, he handed the bag back to her and ran down the street, cursing himself for not setting some kind of ground rules for these lessons. It didn't take long for him to find his way back to his current 'mentor', who was waiting nonchalantly against a wall with a cool smirk.

"Thanks for that," Peter glared at the other man, as he felt a tentative 'tingle' that at least suggested to him that he was invisible again. "I could have been arrested, you know."

"A little more focus, you'd have had some cash and fresh lipstick," Claude countered. "I never said it'd be easy; in fact, I think I repeatedly said it'd be crap-"

"Hey, I'm here to learn how to control what I can do, but I didn't ask to start a career as a purse-snatcher," Peter protested. "Besides, you've been doing this for fifteen years; cut me some slack trying to get a handle on this in five minutes."

"You'll learn," Claude shrugged. "We just gotta figure out what's holding you back… maybe it's just you worrying too much."

"Worrying too much?" Peter repeated. "If this is about Kim, she's just a friend-"

"And you've got her friends, your mother, your brother… seriously, it's a wonder you haven't sunk under-"

"What; you think I'm too attached to people?" Peter cut Claude off.

"You spent your life being the little brother who got pats on the head and told that you're not fit for the outdoors, and now you've got a bunch of kids looking to you to be the hero; you need to get the picture that it's easier bein' on your own."

"What?" Peter glared at Claude, suddenly unable to believe he was even hearing this. "You're talking about… those people are important to me-!"

"When you need someone holdin' your hand every step o' the way?" Claude retorted, pausing in front of one of Nathan's campaign posters. "How can you not want to punch that face every time you see it?"

"Nathan… look, I'll admit that I'm never sure if he cares because he cares or because it'd screw up his campaign if I had a meltdown or something like that, but at least he always tries to help!" Peter retorted, suddenly scrambling to find a way to articulate something he'd never really thought about himself. "I'm not saying he gets it right, but when he could just try to cut me out completely, at least he's putting in some kind of effort to be there-"

"Because it suits the damn campaign," Claude shook his head.

"He's not like that, and you don't know him-!"

"Don't need to," Claude said dismissively. "I spend a lot of time moving around peoples' homes, and believe me, you get to know people if you see them when they think they're alone. You see them for what they truly are; selfish, deceitful, and gassy."

"And that's your big truth about the world?"

"Sooner you learn it, sooner we get that collar off your neck," Claude responded with a firm glare as he pointed at Peter. "People suck, friend; every last one of them. Never forget that."

"Not all of them."

"Oh, right; there's a girl."

"That's not what I meant," Peter said, suddenly determined to keep Simone away from this man. "Maybe you've met a few crap people and let them define your experience, but I've met people who are a lot better than that! Hiro's come back from the future to save the world, Kim put her life on the line to save someone she only just got to know, Ron's going all over the country to help strangers-!"

Peter suddenly grabbed Claude's arm and found himself standing in the middle of a darkened locker room, watching as Kim and Claire flew towards the wall while the dark-clad figure of Sylar held another unfamiliar girl in front of him. With Claude standing beside him, it was easy for Peter to confirm that he was still invisible, but looking at Sylar as he cut open that girl's head as she screamed…

For a moment Peter was tempted to try and save her, but forced himself to hold back. He didn't know much about time travel, but he'd given himself a basic crash course after being visited by the future Hiro by reading a few online plot summaries, and one thing most stories agreed on was that it was a bad idea to change anything when you knew how things had gone originally. The future Hiro may have had more experience to work out how to change the past without making things worse, but Peter couldn't be sure how he'd change things if he saved Jackie Wilcox. At the very least what he'd heard about her suggested he'd find her harder to get along with than Kim, Claire and Ron, even if he'd probably have to keep her safe just because she'd probably want to come along to stay away from Sylar, and that was before he tried to think about how stopping Sylar's kill would affect how this psycho would react to anyone else.

I barely stopped the guy when he had the satisfaction of a kill and couldn't be sure what I was doing; if I stop him now, maybe he'll be so angry that he tries that bit harder and kills me in the past…

Peter hated doing something this selfish, but this was so complicated that he couldn't afford to try anything else. Keeping a careful hand on Claude's arm to make sure that the other man didn't do anything, they watched as Kim vaulted off the wall and back onto her feet while Claire healed her broken neck, followed by Jackie making a desperate plea for the other two girls to run…

As Jackie's body fell to the ground, the killer turned to look more directly at Kim and Claire before the two girls ran for the locker room door. When Sylar turned away from Jackie's body, the moment he faced their position, Peter tightened his grip on Claude's arm and the two of them returned to the New York street they'd been standing on moments ago.

"What… was… that?" Claude looked at him in shock.

"I… that was Hiro's power…" Peter said, looking at his hands with a thoughtful smile. "I was trying to make a point… I was remembering Hiro… and suddenly… that was Kim and Claire…"

His thoughtful smile shifted to a firmer grin as he looked over at Claude. "And if you think humanity's just selfish at its core, how do you explain that? Jackie Wilcox was just a self-centred girl who tried to pretend to be a hero, but the last thing she did was try to warn other people to get away from a psychopath-!"

Claude jumped to the side in shock when Peter thrust out a hand and sent a sign displaying the menu for a nearby takeaway place flying through the air with a telekinetic burst.

"Huh," Claude observed, looking tentatively at the nurse. "That's interesting…"

"It's… I was thinking about that killer… the way he just…" Peter began, before he looked up at Claude with wide-eyed inspiration. "You were wrong… I don't have to forget the people I'm close to; I have to remember how they made me feel!"

Looking down at his hands, Peter flexed his fingers, smiling as ice formed over their tips; it took a bit of focus, but if he thought of the chill he felt when facing that killer, he could tap the ice instead of the telekinesis…

He needed to keep his mind focused, but even if he didn't want to rely on Kim's presence, he could still remember how it felt to tap Sylar's different abilities when he was with her; he just needed to get back into that state of mind and focus.

"I… I think I can do this," he said, grinning in contemplation as he flexed his fingers and cracked the fragile ice that had formed around them. "We just need to work on keeping my focus…"

"That's… something to be going with, anyway," Claude nodded, looking at Peter with a thoughtful expression as though he wasn't sure how to feel about this development.

It might not have been in the same manner as he'd initially expected, but the invisible man had given him some interesting ideas about how to make this work; all he had to do was keep up his focus and get a sense for each ability…

Ron had never had a head for languages, but he'd never regretted that more than in the current situation. Ando had been decent enough to clarify that the man who'd 'abducted' them was Hiro's father, who seemed to want Hiro to come back to Japan, but after that Ron was reduced to just watching them talk to each other in Japanese and wonder what they were going to do about all this. Hiro had already turned down the offer of two first-class tickets back to Tokyo in favour of focusing on their mission, but after his father had ripped up the painting and gone on some big speech about what Ron assumed were his plans for his son, Ron wasn't sure what he should expect next from this guy.

Ando seemed to be shooting appreciative looks at a young woman that Ron assumed was Hiro's sister, and so far the father just seemed to be basically treating Ron as nothing more than the guy who was there rather than any real part of the current situation, but that didn't make him feel particularly comfortable. Ron could easily imagine that many of the school bullies had gone after him just because he was there; he wasn't sure how to deal with the guy who had already treated his son so harshly just because Hiro wasn't doing what the guy wanted.

"So… what's going on here?" he asked, looking uncertainly at Hiro as his sister walked off after a brief conversation.

"My father want me home," Hiro said. "Offers promotion; wants me there to help company."

"Uh… no offence, but weren't you just working in a cubicle?"

"Symbolic; shareholders doubt control of company when no control of me," Hiro clarified, before looking thoughtfully after his sister. "But I have other idea."

"What?"

"Just wait," Hiro said, saying something to Ando before he walked back over to his father and sister. The young woman's initial small faltered as Hiro continued talking, looking authoritatively at his father before Kimiko countered with her own observations, her voice rising as she glared at her brother, before Hiro looked at his father with an encouraging smile.

"So… what just happened?" Ron asked.

"Hiro list bad ideas for company future," Ando grinned. "Sell Kimiko as replacement by making her share own ideas."

"Ah," Ron nodded in understanding. "Nice job."

It didn't solve the problem of the damaged painting, but at least they were still on course to find Linderman and get that sword Hiro was looking for…

Standing cautiously outside the door leading to the mall security room, Kim wondered if this was actually a valid plan. She had taken precautions to confirm that she wouldn't be recognized if anyone caught her doing this, and she was ready to run if anything went wrong, but so far her theory seemed to be paying off; so long as she timed everything just right, she just seemed to know where to go and when to move to stay out of sight.

Guess this survival instinct thing is really working for me; I can't even be caught if I'm being careful…

As the door opened, Kim waited for the man to walk out before she slipped past him, relieved to find nobody in the corridor on the other side. Moving briskly down the corridor, she turned into the door at the other end, relieved when she only found one security guard sitting there as he studied the monitor screens. Before the other guard could properly take her in, Kim grabbed him by the neck and lightly squeezed his carotid arteries on either side of his neck, waiting until he slumped in the chair to release her grip.

Perfect, Kim thought as she checked his pulse and felt it still beating steadily; she had read that it was possible to do that from her mother's books, but she'd still been a bit anxious about putting it into practise. Checking over the cameras and the attached computers, it didn't take Kim too long to identify the camera that must have been recorded the event that Simone was talking about; there was still a bit of repair work taking place around the bench in question on the camera. Bringing up the camera files on the computer, Kim tracked down the recording for the date in question and copied the file onto a memory stick she'd picked up for the purpose, relieved that the man had left his computer on when she'd knocked him out.

It wasn't a perfect plan, but if there was someone else with abilities out there in New York at the moment, Kim felt a certain tentative 'obligation' to find that person and either warn them about Sylar or stop them doing anything too stupid. The whole 'trying to rob a jewellery store' thing was worrying, but it wasn't like Claire and Peter hadn't done stupid things while getting a handle on their powers, so it was still possible that the girl had just decided to react badly to the whole thing…

With the download complete, Kim checked over the system to make sure there were no cameras for the corridor just outside- they probably assumed that this area was safe enough since it was always occupied- and ran back out in the main mall, timing her exit so that she joined a small group walking through the mall in a manner that would hopefully stop the camera picking out her in particular.

No obvious answers, but I've got something more to work with; I'll check over it when I get back to the loft…

She didn't know what her next move would be, but at least she felt like she was doing something practical here while her friends were tackling the bigger picture.