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The Not-So-Average Girl

Studying the video footage she'd acquired from the mall as she sat in the loft, Kim still wasn't sure if it had been worth the effort she'd put into acquiring it. It was useful to confirm that there was another superhuman criminal out here that was doing something dangerous with their powers, but without any more information she didn't exactly have anything useful to be going along with.

And when did my life reach a point where I'm actually thinking about trying to track down the woman who marches into a crowded mall with a gun and can lift up a stone bench with her bare hands?

The only thing Kim felt comfortable deducing about the figure was that it was female, based on what she could see of the chest and the sound of the woman's voice, but that didn't exactly narrow things down that much…

"Here," Simone said, walking up to her and handing her the small bag. "You're sure this is it?"

"We don't want to do anything that will give… whoever's tracking us anything more they can use," Kim explained as she took out the small phone and turned it on. "This isn't meant to do anything more than let me make a quick call to some people."

As Simone nodded in understanding, Kim dialled in the number she'd practically memorised since she was old enough to understand the concept, hoping that she had remembered the schedule correctly.

"Hello?"

"Hi Mom," Kim said.

"Kim?" her mother replied incredulously. "You're-?"

"I'm safe, Mom," Kim smiled warmly as she spoke, fighting back the pain and discomfort in her chest. "I'm with… friends; we're doing something important-"

"You're not even eighteen yet, Kimberly Anne Pierce; you can't-!"

"I'll be home as soon as I can, Mom," Kim cut her mother off before she could hear anything else. "I just wanted to let you know… this is important, and I'm safe."

She terminated the call and quickly turned the phone off. She wasn't sure if the Company could track phones or not, but if that Mission: Impossible film was any example, it would take a certain amount of time to trace a signal, and she had to hope that turning that phone off would make it harder for them to trace it afterwards.

"Your mom?" Simone looked at Kim with what Kim was sure was a copy of her own earlier uncertainty.

"Just had to let her know I'm still alive," Kim replied, hoping that her exaggerated nonchalance would come across as more casual than she felt; she didn't want Simone to start thinking she was out of her depth. "Getting back to the bigger issues, have you managed to find anything more about Primatech?"

"…Not really," the older woman shook her head apologetically, even as her sceptical stare made it clear she didn't buy Kim's attempt to deflect attention. "I'm looking through my father's records, but nothing's really… I mean, you have to keep in mind that this isn't my speciality, but I picked up some things from my dad, and there's nothing in his papers obviously linking him to the company…"

"And there's nobody you can talk to about this?"

"Not without it becoming more… obvious we're doing this," Simone said tentatively. "Do you think I should-?"

"Not yet," Kim shook her head as she indicated the painting on the floor. "The issue right now is Sylar and this explosion; it's… well, we might have to worry about that company, but we're not going to get anywhere obsessing about it when they're not after us yet."

"And you're still worried about this company even though they probably don't even know you're… well that you know about them?"

"Should I just not worry about something just because it hasn't affected me yet?" Kim countered.

Simone was spared answering that question when Claire walked into the loft, a solemn expression on her face.

"Hey," the other girl said dejectedly.

"Everything OK?" Kim looked anxiously at her friend as the blonde cheerleader sat down beside her.

"It was… it's been tricky," Claire shrugged. "I was doing some reading at this Internet café down the road…"

"Anything interesting?" Simone asked.

"I was looking for anything on my parents."

"Your parents?" Simone looked at her in surprise. "I thought that-?"

"I was adopted," Claire clarified. "I was looking for anything on… well, I just suddenly wondered if maybe the reason Dad never brought my real biological parents to meet me was because they were dead and he was trying to spare me or something…"

"Your real biological parents?" Simone looked at Claire uncertainly.

"I met a couple of people who claimed to be my parents a while back, but… well, I'm fairly sure they weren't the real deal," Claire shrugged (Kim thought about mentioning Rufus's support, but decided that a naked mole rat wasn't the kind of source someone like Simone would believe). "Anyway, I started looking for deaths around that time, and I…"

Her voice trailed off as she reached into her jacket and pulled out a piece of paper, evidently a print-out she'd made in the library, which she handed on to Kim. Taking the paper, Kim glanced over it, nodding in solemn understanding as she took in its contents.

"Well?" Simone asked.

"There was a fire in an apartment house around fourteen years ago in Kermit, Texas," Kim explained. "According to this article, a woman named Meredith Gordon was killed in the explosion, along with her eighteen-month-old daughter, Claire."

"And you think that's you?" Simone looked at Claire.

"Well… it makes sense, doesn't it?" Claire observed, a slight tremor in her voice. "The name matches, I'd have been that old when the fire happened, and if there was a fire, I could have recovered from any damage if my ability kicked in…"

"You could survive something like this?" Simone looked at the photo of the destroyed apartment in surprise.

"I've seen Claire break her neck and she was standing up again in a few seconds; the only thing she can't heal from is if something stays stuck in her brain," Kim explained, before she looked back at Claire. Lost for anything better to say for the moment, Kim held out her arms and let Claire fall into her embrace, holding the other girl close for a moment as Claire's body shook, as though still trying to decide if she should start crying or not. After a few moments, Claire sat back and looked awkwardly at the other two women, a shameful expression on her face.

"Sorry…" she began tentatively.

"Don't," Simone looked at the young blonde with sympathy. "If you can't feel sad when you learn that your mother's dead, when can you?"

"And… well, look at it this way," Kim smiled encouragingly. "If Meredith Gordon was your mother, maybe we could… find some of her relatives?"

"When they didn't want me after the fire?"

"Right…" Kim trailed off, looking uncertainly at the other girl for a moment as she tried to think of a better response, before she smiled tentatively. "Actually, you know what? If Simone's willing to help us out, I think I have something that might take your mind off that."

"What?" Claire looked at her.

"Up for a small concert in New York by Kelly Clarkson?"

"Kelly Clarkson?" Claire repeated incredulously.

"I was looking through a few New-York-based online forums, and found this reference to some club where she's apparently putting on a show for the next few nights," Kim explained as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a note where she'd scrawled the address of the club in question. "I'm not saying we can get legitimate tickets easily at this kind of short notice, but if we pool our resources… well, you can't get hurt and I always just know how to do something I really need to do; maybe something will occur when we get there?"

As she sat in her apartment later that afternoon, Simone wished that she could talk to someone about how completely lost she felt in the current situation. On the one hand, she felt that she was on one level 'obligated' to object to the idea of Claire Bennett and Kim Pierce trying to sneak into a concert at a local club, considering that she was the closest thing they had to a legal guardian while Peter was away doing whatever he was doing right now, but on the other hand, she didn't exactly feel comfortable trying to make either of those girls do anything they wouldn't want to do.

After all, it wasn't like sneaking into a concert was going to hurt anybody, and considering what else they could have done with their abilities, that was actually fairly tame. She didn't actually think either of the girls were lying to her about the potential threat they were facing from this 'Sylar' person they'd mentioned, but it was still hard to accept that they were dealing with something this warped…

A knock on her door provided a welcome break from her thoughts, but she found herself with something she genuinely hadn't been expecting when she opened the door.

"Isaac?" she stared at her former lover in surprise.

"Hey," Isaac said, the drug-using painter looking surprisingly put together as he stood outside her apartment. "Can I assume you're glad to see me?"

"You look… you look healthy," Simone said, looking him over in surprise.

"I just got back, and thought I should check in with you," Isaac explained. "I was in a clinic sponsored by… well, they helped me deal with my drug use."

"They did?" Simone looked at him in surprise.

"Yeah," Isaac smiled. "I don't need the heroin any more; I can paint without it."

"Well… I'm glad for you," Simone said, before she swallowed anxiously and decided to try and tackle the question that had been bothering her since she accepted Peter's story. "So… what do you know about that exploding man picture?"

"You mean Peter."

"Peter?" Simone repeated in shock. "What makes you-?"

"I don't always understand what I'm painting after the fact, but repeated paintings make it easier for me to interpret the image," Isaac explained. "Since I started to get a clearer picture of what I'm doing… well, Peter's definitely got a part to play in that explosion."

"…And you think he's going to cause it?" Simone said incredulously.

"It fits," Isaac said. "They told me about-"

"They?"

"The… clinic that helped me," Isaac continued, and Simone decided to appreciate that he at least looked slightly ashamed at what he was saying now. "They have… experience at dealing with people with abilities, and they're worried that Peter… well, that he'll lose control-"

"Which is why he's working on how not to do that," Simone interjected, fighting down her instinctive fear at that particular idea. Peter's powers were terrifying in principle, but after hearing how determined he'd been to protect Kim and Claire from their attacker she felt an immediate need to protect him from Isaac's accusations. "You've met Peter, Isaac; do you honestly believe he wants to do something like… well, like that?"

"I painted it-"

"And maybe you're wrong, have you thought about that?" Simone retorted. "I thought I knew what was going on in the world before… well, all this, but I'm trying to accept that there are things I don't understand; maybe you should do the same thing?"

"Peter is dangerous," Isaac said.

"Give me better proof than a few paintings," Simone said, closing the door between her and the painter before he could see her nagging doubt.

She didn't believe that Peter was actually going to destroy New York on purpose, but if Isaac had been getting some help to control his painting so that he could do it without the drugs…

Could he have been working with that company Peter and the others were worrying about?

And if they had helped him get over his addiction… even if she didn't agree with what Isaac's paintings were apparently telling him… maybe the Company itself wasn't as bad as Peter and the girls thought it was?

Peter still wasn't sure if he was actually getting anything out of Claude's training he couldn't have reached on his own, but he had to appreciate that it was probably easier to get the right 'kick' to deal with these abilities if he had someone else pushing him on rather than trying to do it all himself. He at least felt like he was making progress in getting a clearer understanding of what he was capable of when he was caught up in the heat of the moment, as opposed to needing a moment to focus when he was on his own, even if it was still a challenge to choose the right power.

It was slightly uncomfortable to realise that most of his offensive abilities at the moment all came from Sylar, but it wasn't like it was his fault that the killer was the only person with those kind of powers he'd met so far. It was tricky to actually 'cycle' between the three abilities he'd seen Sylar use so far, but telekinesis seemed to be the easiest one to tap and had the greatest potential. When he tried to blow things up, it seemed like there was a limit to the size of things he could destroy (which probably explained why Sylar hadn't just tried to blow him up with it), and it seemed like the freezing power just generated a burst of extremely cold air rather than outright creating ice.

As for the rest of his abilities, Claude had explicitly asked him not to test that power-negation ability on him as he apparently preferred his invisibility for some unexplained reason, and Peter didn't want to risk tapping into Hiro's time-travel power in case he got himself stuck somewhere like Hiro apparently had. Flight was proving surprisingly difficult to get his head around, and the 'compulsion' ability was harder to tap when he didn't know who he'd actually acquired it from, but Kim and Claire's abilities were relatively easy to maintain now that he knew the trick. On a suggestion from Claude, he'd ever found that he could use his own ability to 'track' Claude without actually looking at him, focusing on sensing where Claude was in relation to him based on his sense of Claude's ability.

Might be tricky to do that in a crowd, but at least there's a chance I'll be able to find out where I got a new talent from if I start doing anything strange…

His mind drifting, Peter found himself making a few idle sketches, only realising that he had tapped into Isaac's power when he actually looked at the papers in his hands. He smiled slightly when he found himself looking at Kim and Claire in what looked like a nightclub, pleased to see the girls having fun, but that smile faltered when he saw a group of five people paying particular attention to the girls.

He appreciated that he wasn't a comic book aficionado, and he definitely wasn't sure how much of Isaac's style came from his training or his ability, but based on the way Peter had drawn those five watchers, he was suddenly concerned for the girls' safety…