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The Not-So-Average Girl

"You're going to Vegas?" Kim stared incredulously at Ron.

"Hey, Hiro and Ando are going to need someone to help them talk with people while they're over there," Ron shrugged as he waved his hands around the empty loft, Claire having left to do some quick shopping with Simone while Hiro and Ando prepared for their next trip. "C'mon, KP, you've got to admit that I'm not really helping anyone right now-"

"We all want you here, Ron; do you really think Peter couldn't have made you stay behind if he thought you…" Kim began, before she shook her head and smiled slightly at her friend. "OK, that doesn't really work; we both know Peter's not that big of a jerk, even if his brother's a dick."

"Dick?" Ron looked at her with a teasing smile.

"The man's trying to 'cure' Peter of his ability because he's worried about how that might make him look bad; I think 'dick' is completely appropriate."

Kim knew on some level that this talk was just her and Ron's attempt to avoid facing the reality of the situation, but when they were about to be parted for the first time in as long as Kim could remember- apart from that summer camp Ron had been on a few years back- she felt that they were entitled to avoid thinking about the scale of what they were about to do. She appreciated that Ron wanted to find some way to contribute to the current situation, but that didn't make it easy for her to accept that her friend wanted to leave her in the middle of this crisis. She and Ron had experienced the ups and downs anyone would expect of such an unconventional friendship as they realised how they better fit into certain social circles in school, but they'd always been sure that the other would be there for them.

The idea of facing a difficult situation where Ron wouldn't be there for her…

"Look, KP," Ron smiled at her in understanding, "it's gonna suck being away from you, but I just… I need to prove myself here even if you and Peter don't think I need to. I mean, Ando's stuck with Hiro even though he can't do anything himself; we've still got a couple of weeks before that explosion Hiro told us about, so maybe spending them with them will help me work out what I can do in this."

Kim wished that she could tell Ron that she had faith in him, but she had to appreciate that Ron had a point; he was stuck in the middle of a situation where it seemed as though everyone else around him had some kind of ability even before she learned that she could do something. Considering that he'd already had an interest in the guy who owned the sword Hiro was looking for, at least if Ron went off with Hiro he'd be doing something he enjoyed, and he made a valid point that he might be useful as a more 'local' face than the other two at the very least.

"I… I get it, Ron," she smiled tentatively at him at last, wanting to show her support despite her regret. "It's… I mean, I'll miss you, but… well, Claire and I can probably find something to do…"

"That's the spirit, KP," Ron grinned at her as he gave her a thumbs-up. "You hold down the fort here and we'll be back with a time-travelling ass-kicker in a few days, or maybe even minutes."

"No harm in hoping, right?" Kim grinned back at Ron, once again envious at her friend's ability to focus on the positives regardless of the challenges they had to overcome in the process. "Where are Hiro and Ando anyway?"

"Just waiting outside in their car; Simone's sorting out the travel details, but they thought it'd be best if we stayed low-down until we know more about what we're dealing with here," Ron explained.

"That makes- hold on, they're already ready to leave?"

"Well, they told me they were just going to meet Simone at the shops to pick up the food, but then… I wanted to say 'bye' before I just headed off…" Ron said, shrugging awkwardly before Kim leaned over to give him a reassuring hug.

"It's fine, Ron," she grinned at him; Ron could be impulsive, but she'd never call him insensitive. "You know what you've got to do, so get going and get Hiro that sword."

"Badical, KP!" Ron returned her grin, briefly patting his pocket to confirm that Rufus was in it before he turned and ran out of the loft, heading down the stairs. Walking over to lean against the wall, Kim looked out of the window with a wistful smile as her friend got into the car with the two Japanese men, but her smile faltered as she looked back around the now-empty loft.

It wasn't as though she and Ron hadn't spent time apart before, after all; it was just that this was the first time she'd been so completely cut off from everyone she knew. Claire was a good friend so far, but Kim hadn't exactly spent much time with her before everything happened, and now Peter had gone off to train…

She felt like she was losing basically everyone she had known before this mess started, and on top of all that, Kim couldn't even risk calling her parents to assure them that she was safe. Unlike with Claire's dad, Kim had no reason to believe that either of her parents were involved in that company the mind-erasing guy had told them about, but at the same time she didn't want to put them at risk by getting in touch with them. If this company could somehow track superhumans, she had to assume that they could track regular communications like phones and e-mails, which meant that they could find her and Claire if she got in touch with her parents.

She knew that it was the only way to keep her family safe, but she really hated having to keep them in the dark; the moment she knew it was safe, she was going to tell them everything…

Shaking her head to force the nostalgia aside, Kim sat down to think about her next move; so long as she and Claire were staying discreet, they shouldn't have to worry about that Sylar guy finding them if he showed up again, but that still left the question of that explosion Hiro had told Peter about.

If the explosion is what we're focusing on right now, the main question is if we're dealing with a bomb someone planted as part of some bigger agenda, some superhuman with uncontrollable abilities who just went off in the wrong place at the wrong time, or something in between…?

Looking at the new material she had been provided for her case, Audrey didn't know if she should consider this an orgy of evidence or just appreciate the obvious good luck. The part of her that had been in law enforcement for a good few years by now wanted to be suspicious of the fact that the doctor she'd just brought in as a consultant had this much information on the killer she'd been tracking for months, but the rest of her had to appreciate that the current situation meant that she was dealing with a very specialised field.

"So," she looked at Mohinder with a thoughtful stare, "your father came all the way to America to study people with abilities? If I'm missing something here, I apologise, but why wouldn't he just study them back in India?"

"To be blunt, it was easier for him to find people with abilities over here because America has better facilities for that kind of large-scale research, and he'd already burned most of his personal bridges with the academic community back in India," Mohinder explained. "My mother told me that he also had some experience with America from past research projects over here, but I can't find any records of that visit, so I wouldn't like to swear to anything."

"What made your father choose this as his research focus?" Matt asked. "I mean, it's a fascinating idea, but what made him study it?"

"I…" Mohinder began, pausing in awkward thought for a few moments before he spoke again. "I had a sister."

"Had?" Audrey repeated, the expression on his face making her feel guilty about bringing up the topic.

"She died when she was… I was barely two years old," Mohinder explained. "I never even knew about her until I returned my father's ashes to my mother; from what my mother told me, my sister had some kind of ability herself, but she… died when I was young."

"How young?" Matt asked.

"She was five… or so I'm told; like I said, I don't fully remember it," Mohinder explained, his expression sorrowful for a moment before he continued. "In any case, my father apparently believed that her death was a consequence of her having an ability of some kind herself."

"People get sick because they have an ability?" Matt asked.

"I don't know more than that about her at this point, but my father… well, just because I don't have all the facts that led him to that conclusion yet doesn't mean that I doubt him."

"Let's just focus on Sylar for now and we'll work that out later," Aubrey said. "From these tapes, you think Sylar was your dad's first test subject? Which means he'll have access to this list?"

"He'll have access to it up to a point, anyway," Mohinder said. "From what I've been able to determine from my father's notes about Sylar in the last few days before his death, I'm assuming that Sylar managed to acquire a copy of at least some of the list without my father knowing, but it would appear that my father at least suspected what had happened at some point and tried to deal with the situation on his own."

"Quite," Audrey nodded. "I'd say your dad should have tried to call us, but to be blunt, I'm not sure anyone would have believed this crap if he tried to get us in early enough."

"Hey, you believe him now-"

"Because I've seen enough to realise there's more freaky crap going on than anyone else is ready to face, but it took meeting the mind-reader and the man with the radioactive hands, and maybe seeing evidence of a guy throwing ice around for me to get this far," Audrey pointed out before she looked back at Mohinder. "No offence, but from what we've seen, your dad wouldn't have had anything to show us if he'd come here when this all started; at best we'd have gotten good agents killed while trying to get ahead of this guy because we didn't know what he could do, but now we might be able to work together and come up with some kind of plan before Sylar can get too far."

"Which starts with working out why this guy is going after other people with abilities in the first place," Matt said. "Any ideas on that front?"

"A couple," Mohinder nodded. "From what my father has written, he speculated that Sylar's true original ability was… relatively simple; something that people can't do normally, but not something to inspire a great deal of interest."

"Like what?"

"He didn't say, but based on the potential powers my father identified in his book, he speculated that there may be people out there whose ability is nothing more than the ability to always know where north is, or being able to breath underwater."

"Interesting, but not exactly reading minds or blowing stuff up, huh?" Audrey nodded (she couldn't believe she was taking this kind of talk seriously).

"Precisely," Mohinder nodded. "In any case, my father speculated that Sylar was able to work out a means of taking, or possibly just copying, the powers from others, which involved somehow analysing something in their brains to determine how his victims' abilities worked."

"I… see," Audrey nodded thoughtfully. "Well, guess that explains why all these corpses are missing the tops of their heads…"

"So what do we do now?" Matt asked. "Try and catch Sylar out?"

"Probably our best bet right now," Audrey nodded before she turned back to Mohinder. "If he's tracking his victims based on this list he got from your father, is there any way we can work out who might be the next target?"

"More importantly," Matt pointed out, "if this guy has all these abilities, is there any way we can actually stop him?"

The silence that filled the room after that comment said more than Audrey was comfortable with. She was used to cases where the only option was to kill the murderer because they wouldn't surrender, but what would she do if she was dealing with a man who had this much personal power? Parkman was good, but there was only so much they could do with a guy who could read minds against a man who could freeze people solid and cut off the tops of their heads…