InsaneJournal

WHO: Arthur Petrelli and Claire Bennet
WHAT: A near-encounter between grandfather and granddaughter.
WHEN: Early evening
WHERE: Colligo Video Store
RATING: PG (if that)
STATUS: Complete; narrative

Although it wasn't always easy to tell from his past infractions, Arthur Petrelli was capable of being quite a patient man. Yes, there would those who might call that a lie, but when the time came to err on the side of caution - particularly when finding yourself at the mercy of those around you - Arthur was one of the best. To him, it was little more than yet another mask to wear. A mask of patience that, while capable of becoming quite thin at times, often remained firmly in place until he knew the best possible way to proceed with any given situation.

This, being trapped in a foreign city with those who would like to see him permanently dead, was just one of those times too.

So he'd started out small. A simple post to the network. A way to determine just who was, and wasn't, around. Then he'd gone looking through past network posts for anyone who might not feel quite so compelled to speak directly to him. And, after that, he'd taken to talking to some of the locals.

Not just any man or woman off the streets, of course. No, he spoke to vendors. Bankers. Law enforcement. Anyone who might have had an encounter with those from 'his world'. Personally, he thought the concept of being on another planet to be a rather ridiculous one, but he found that arguing the point with others was a fruitless endeavor. So he stuck to obvious questions and, years as an attorney, had certainly given him a plethora of those in his arsenal.

It was amazing just how many things he had discovered, too. For instance, there was an as of yet unknown teenage boy that seemed to be rather close to Angela. One of the vendors across from the building where they stayed had kindly informed him of as much. Then there was the fact that, according to some local medical records, Peter had spent some time in a coma a few months earlier.

And then there was Claire.

His granddaughter had been, in the past, both a crux of his plans and a thorn in his side. She clearly sided with Angela in most everything - was far more like his wife than the girl probably realized - and was far too Bennet to ever understand what it truly meant to be a Petrelli. Yet she was family and, perhaps better than that, was the fact that she had made quite a few connections while living in Colligo. It seemed that most vendors knew who she was, as did quite a few of the 'off-worlders', if the networks were any indication.

Normally, such things wouldn't matter to him in the slightest. However, Arthur knew if he could get close to Claire, he stood a chance of gaining both leverage and information. Both were in short supply, currently, and so he set out to do just that. Starting out by contacting her at the video store where she worked.

Unfortunately, things don't always go quite according to plan, especially where headstrong teenagers are concerned. For no sooner had he reached the front door of the shop did he notice a flash of blond moving toward the back of the building. By the time he'd gotten to the alley - admittedly without use of any of his abilities so as to keep focus off of him - Claire was nowhere to be found. A quick trip into the video store confirmed that she'd 'just left'. Apparently, she'd cited a family emergency of some sort.

Arthur supposed, as he left the video store to do a bit more investigating on some of his other, wayward family members, that she had been telling the truth. The moment he did manage to get ahold of Claire - and, more importantly, the information about others present in Colligo that she had in her pretty little head - it was going to be quite an emergency indeed. For everyone else, at least.