Chapter Five: The Sun Room

Elizabeth did something she hated to do, but did often. She stomped on the floor and acted very childish.

"Colonel, you need to listen to me! Please!"

The colonel, who had been walking away, put on a professional scowl and turned on his heel. "You have twenty seconds to explain, and believe that I will find every way to try and understand you, Miss..." He found he forgot her name, but his status and disposition led such things to be ignored.

"I do believe, Colonel," she started, breathing deeply and sincerely as the selection and nature of her words could very well break her career. "That tracking this target-- the target with the ten thousand euro price tag-- is completely useless."

The colonel did not look pleased. "And you suggest we give up?"

Elizabeth breathed deeply again. "The facts are that this man has slipped from a total of twelve missions from a variety of agents, all of which barely had a glimpse of him. He has alluded us, and in the process, we ourselves have slipped, making far too much trouble in the past. I'm thinking... Colonel... that the target is more trouble than he's worth."

Staring with a confused expression, the colonel seemed to scowl even more deeply, even more than what Elizabeth thought possible. He leaned in, seeming to inspect her eyebrows, but Elizabeth sort of leaned back in a way to let the colonel know that he was being creepy.

In a sudden, frightening sort of way, he grabbed her hand. They were, instead, in a fashionable sort of sitting room with cubic sofas and a ominously glassy marble floor.

"I see the Corps has enough to courtesy to at least knock."

This came from a man with wide frame glasses and thick wiry hair. He was wearing a deep blue sweater and had a book open in his hands. Immediately, by his home full of books and early century feng shui, it seemed to Elizabeth that this man was some kind of... classic, stuck-up, cappuccino-drinking geek.

The colonel responded with, "Mr. Johnson, you owe me a favour," and guided Elizabeth toward him.

The man seemed to understand, so he put on a grimace, took off his glasses and stepped in front of the young woman. He looked into her eyes, and although Elizabeth always thought this was creepy, looked into his just to show she could. They were either gray or green, but hard to tell in the dramatically artsy lighting.

"She's a employee of mine, and went to track down someone a few hours ago. She hasn't been the same since, a complete change of personality over the whole case. You only need to find out why," said the colonel.

Mr. Johnson did something even creepier, alarming Elizabeth. He placed his left hand on her head, with his thumb at the top of her forehead and fingers through her hair. She raised an eyebrow at him, breaking the gaze she had. He, instead, gazed at her forehead, and seemed to be in a different place completely.

It suddenly occurred to Elizabeth that the man might be tapping into her memory, although she had told Colonel that she only remembered seeing a glance of the target before having to leave Mrs. Luther and the carrot cake. No? Then perhaps... she really didn't know, although she was freaked out that this guy placed a thumb on her forehead. It would have to be something of knowing everything she had done in her past, hadn't it?

The man started to smirk, almost laugh as if watching a sitcom, but he didn't speak.

Elizabeth's eyes widened. Well, of course, he'd be able to see everything she's ever done, including her aiding Mr. Allen, being good friends with Kate and Clarisse and the twins while still pretending to be an Individualist to her mother and father, vowing to go against Joseph Allen and all of his surviving ideals. Her heart started to pump through her ears and panic spread through every inch of her body.

"She's had her memory erased," Mr. Johnson said suddenly, dropping his hand to his side and looking behind her, to the colonel, "and mind reconfigured. It seems the man they were tracking isn't just a time traveler at all. Rather, the legend Peter Petrelli himself. She's right too. Not doing anything with time, merely observing. More trouble than he's worth."

The colonel looked like he's just been insulted. "'More trouble than he's worth?' Listen here, is a robber let go after he robs a bank twelve times without being caught? Perhaps a murderer commits such perfect crimes that the police never catches him, no matter how hard they try? Are they, the criminals, just waived of their crimes just because they're 'more trouble than they're worth?' It doesn't matter how many abilities this Petrelli has, nor how well he can clean up after himself. He has time traveled, and that is a crime punishable by death."

Elizabeth tried to look with a blank face, although her new opinions screamed that everything the colonel was saying was wrong.

Mr. Johnson, however, licked his lips and responded with, "Colonel, you eat your heart out trying to find Peter Petrelli. Like I said, he's a legend, in the traditional sense. Almost a myth. Just don't come crying back to me when you need a favour. Mine's been done."

He craned his head to face Elizabeth, looking into her eyes again. His eyes weren't full of contempt or amusement however, but full of gratitude. He smiled at her, sincerely.

The colonel, with a unpleased grunt, grabbed her hand, and they left.

"So you're back to clarinets again?"

"It's an oboe. Look, does this even look like a clarinet?"

Jeremy judged if Clarisse was asking a serious question. What she held in her hands was this long black tube with lots of keys, which was a clarinet for as far as he knew.

They were in the sun room, a cute little quarter of the house lined completely with windows so that even in the late autumn, as it was now, the room would warm up through the day and provide a lovely natural view of the sun sinking down the horizon.

After a few moments, Clarisse responded with, "I haven't even touched a clarinet since I was seven. Thought I'd expand my horizons to double-reeded instruments. Listen, I learned the scale today."

She put the oboe to her lips, starting with a chromatic scale, then playing the classical piece on her music stand. It started out slow and sweet, but the rhythms became more complex with a faster, more intricate style.

Once she finished, Jeremy screwed his face over and responded with a, "it sounds... different?"

"Yes..."

"... Different than a clarinet?"

Clarisse gave up, sighing. How sad it was to be the only musician in a family. That is, her mother sang to the radio, and her father knew something of the guitar and violin, but could only remember and play a few songs of his time.

"Hey," said Jeremy, already changing the subject by adjusting his tie in a nearby mirror, "mind not to tell Dad that I'm borrowing his suit if he mentions it? I know he shouldn't, since it's from the back of his closet, but still..."

His sister titled her head, squinting a bit while she questioned herself. Jeremy was looking sharp, his blonde hair wet and combed back, his face free from razor burn, and a blue shirt under an tan blazer with trousers to match.

"You're looking smart," Clarisse said, dropping her hostility for once. It excited her to see her brother in such a state. She smiled and asked him, "Going anywhere special with anyone special? Anyone that I would know?"

Jeremy turned from the mirror, not noticing his sister's smile fade, as he responded with, "Yeah, you know Kassy Madden? It's nearly our two week anniversary.

"But the dressing up is for Hector's party. He's doing a century theme, and I know what you're thinking. I know you're thinking that this isn't 1990s, but you're wrong. Some people from the 1990s dressed like this, but were only about ten years ahead of their time. Plus, don't I look authentic?"

He did look authentic. He looked like the suit was made for him, fitted by a professional tailor. His hair made him look more mature and his shoes gave him an extra half inch of height that made him look undeniably like a man, not a young man, nor a boy. In fact, he didn't really look like himself. He looked much older than himself.

Clarisse only grimaced at him, thinking it would be a great moment to say how great he looked and get all touchy-feely, but she wasn't that kind of sister and Jeremy knew that, being that kind of brother. She simply said, "Yeah, you look um... ace..."

"Yeah, I know, it's pretty lame." He pulled back his sleeve, reading his watch. "Anyway, I should be heading out. Kassy'll take forever to leave her place. And um. Right."

Jeremy took a moment to collect himself, taking a deep breath and a close of the eyes. He seemed tired. Once he opened them, it happened.

Clarisse noticed, too. She had been looking through one of the windows that the sun room held, right at the horizon of warm oranges that the sun was giving off, at the figures of black shadows squatted amongst the bushes. She thought it was odd, and had no time to think of anything else.

The first thing she noticed was that the window shattered, and made that alarming sound of a breaking window to do with it. She jumped, eyes still on the two figures that were now running out of the bushes and toward the horizon. She saw the long gun in the one's hands, and she knew they had broken the window. She thought and knew she could hit one of them if she had a gun of her own, and there was a gun just in the other room, if she'd run now, she'd-- During all of these thoughts which seemed to come in a rush, she happened to look at the room, and see the drops of blood upon the far wall.

Her brother was still standing however. His eyes were still open, a little wide and surprised, and mouth slightly open, but he was completely still, as if frozen by the sound of the shattered window. Slowly, though in a moment, he seemed to stare toward the wall so much that he leaned forward, and gradually, fell.

Clarisse couldn't scream... it couldn't happen, even if she tried. She placed her hands over her mouth and stared at her brother's body with terrified eyes. She was petrified stiff.

Her brother sprawled was on the floor now, faced towards the ground. At the nape of his neck, there was a hole, from the hole, a mass of deep red, which seeped down into the carpet.

"Hey, what's going on? I heard--" Luke rubbed his eyes, yawning as he entered the sun room. He stopped though, frozen, and stared.

Clarisse grabbed for a phone. She shook, trembled as she dialed for an ambulance, and found herself blubbering into the phone. The receptionist couldn't understand her however, until she was screaming into it, weeping in such a way that she couldn't control herself. She couldn't help thinking what she was thinking, mostly because what she was thinking was absolutely true.

A/N: So Clarisse's ability is Accuracy, or Marksmanship, and I always try to find a use for that rather than being a sniper. So I thought a bit, and I suppose playing music requires the same sort of accuracy, counting and predicting, and hitting the right notes at the right time. Um, right?

Also, last night's episode? Abosolute WIN. No doubt about it, the best of the season. Wow. Just. Wow. Everything was just perfect. Epic. Amazing. And they took a hell of their time to get there, but. Well, good.

Who wrote/directed this one? I need to kiss them.

And also, I realized that Arthur is a lot like Adam from my Part Two. Just a bazillion times less sexy and awesome.