who| Arthur Petrelli and Patricia McFangirl[NPC] what| Arthur's laborious arrival set-up How the Petrelli patriarch gets from one place to the other. where| From Obscuristan to New York. when| Afternoon rating| PG-13 status| Narrative; Complete.
He folded the pages of his newspaper together, then down, and eyed the artcile one last time before setting it on the desk infront of him. It was a day behind the current printing, as you could only have things delivered to [OBSCURISTAN] so quickly without raising suspicion, but he doubted the next would bring anything useful.
...Petrelli Family Still Missing--Police puzzled by dissapearences, without leads...
The authorities weren't the only ones who had been visiting dead-ends. Arthur sat back in his seat and propped an elbow on one of the chair's arm, resting his chin against a fist as he thought. The Company didn't have them, he was certain of that. There were two moles left in the ranks, and both had confirmed seperately the Petrellis were not amoungst those tagged, captured, or killed. Trusting might have been an issue, but as neither of them knew who their reports eventually reached, or of the other's existance(Nothing ruined a subterfuge like two undercovers glancing meaningfully at eachother or whispering at a watercooler.), he did so with appropriate skepticism. He'd put a freelance tracker on their trails, had several New York police associates paid to search the houses.
He had even sent someone far removed from the small staff he kept to see Molly Walker. When the clairvoyant had failed to find them, Arthur decided that there was only one explination; They were somewhere, and sometime, else. 'Dead' was not an option, because Arthur knew Peter was next to impossible to kill, Nathan had a daughter who's blood healed--Presumably Peter's might now, as well, and he had been with his brother at the time of his shooting and dissapearance--so that would have been sorted quickly; and Angela? Angela would be complaining about all the roaches and dust at the ground zero of a nuclear explosion.
"Patricia!" Arthur called, pushing his chair back and getting to his feet. There was the sound of heels on the uncarpeted stairs--she'd been halfway up them already, and his voice had prompted her to pick up the pace--and along the hall to the office. He accepted the cup of steaming coffee from her hands without any acknowledgement towards her effort. Patricia was young, and more importantly, wholly dedicated. Arthur had pulled her out of the basement of a radical Russian church when she was six, and loyalty had popped from every pore of her pretty face since.
"Ti sevodnay shto dalish?" The top of her red-haired head was level with his chin, her neatly ovalled face harboring a strong, straight nose that her voice sometimes came through when she used her motherland-tongue, full enough lips, and a pair of china-blue eyes he'd made certain turned out to be intelligent.
"English," He said, without needing elaboration, and continued on without giving it, "You're to leave for Siberia for the next flight. There will be a list of things for you to purchase downstairs when you've finished packing. When you're finished there, additional trips to Hong Kong, Athens, and the Chota Nagpur Plateau. You'll need to know what they look like; I already do. Three days in each, a fourth in Athens if you want to be thorough. I'll need a passport, travel documentation--All real, and as close to legal as possible--under the name David Darrel Carver." He stopped to take a gulp of coffee.
Patricia nodded at the appropriate intervals, never taking a note down. She didn't need to; another trait Arthur had seen to. "Is this a plan?"
"It sure as hell isn't a picnic." He replied without reproach, or any other real indication of mood, draining the remaining contents of the cup and handing it back to her. "That is all until you return. I expect you to do your job without unnecessarily lingering or distraction."
She nodded again, and left the room.
Two weeks later, Arthur was standing over Patricia at the dining table, alternating between dictating and watching her work. Every item, down to the rubber keychain of the Parthenon, was spread out before the redhead. She was going through them one by one, placing her hand down atop them, pausing, waiting for Arthur's instructions before moving onto the next. Imprinting false memories wasn't as flashy as something along the lines of Pyrokinesis, but it was subtle, and Arthur appreciated subtlety.
"All done," He was draining the last of the scotch from his glass when she finished, and turned to look at him. "Except for the noggin." He italicized the word in his mind because her accent had mangled it beyond upright speech. "You have an asprin?"
Arthur refilled his glass at the sidetable, straight scotch this time; no ice, and shook the asprin bottle. Ten, maybe twelve left.
"I will pick up more when I go to town." She said, and held his scotch in one hand, while the other pressed over his eyes.
They left [OBSCURISTAN] on a late flight, Arthur toting Patricia's cary-on while she fussed predicably with her hair. Whatever little tricks and ticks she had employed has surved her well, as all strands were orderly when the plane passed over Manhattan. They slid through security and retrieved their baggage, Patricia handling her own luggage while Arthur hefted the well-worn hiking backpack onto his shoulder. He'd only laid hands on it breifly before at the house and during the drive to the airport, though his memory told him of the many merry travels he'd had with it by his spine.
That was the thing about false memories. You had to keep reminding yourself they weren't real until you needed someone else to believe they were.
He headed for the line of cabs outside the airport, the fake familiarity of the kit on his back providing no comfort.
"So, we sit." Patricia asked, pushing her sunglasses up into her hair, watching the sculpture in Kirby Plaza glint in the light through the tinted windows of the stalled cab. The cabbie cursed crabbily from behind the hood. Arthur sitting next to her, reading a newspaper, gave an affirmative grunt.
Arthur couldn't fly. He couldn't mimic, he couldn't heal, and he couldn't bend steel--let alone space or time. It didn't bother him. Lacking those abilities wasn't a hindrance; it only meant he had to be more creative with the resources he had. So many people only thought to do with their powers what was listed on the tin, limiting their abilities to the obvious applications; never holding still long enough to speculate the broader, fauceted picture. Scoping out a point where probability was at it's most volatile required patience, and concentration, which was why he had been sitting in a broken-down cab for half an hour running up a tab he wouldn't have paid the fare for even if he would still have been there to do so. Kirby Plaza was his first, and best bet, considering the amount of mucking about with time and space had been done in the general vicinity by Kaito's butterball spawn and his own set of offspring.
Ten minutes later, he had it. He folded the Newspaper, and tossed it into Patricia's lap while he opened the door. A few horns blared as he turned to pull the bag out and onto his shoulder in one quick, deliberate movement. He faced the plaza again, and kicked the door shut on Patricia's questions behind him. He could almost hear all sorts of alarms and alerts going off inside the building as he crossed the street, and maybe he had, because the first bullet hit the pavement in synch with his shoe. Bullets were easy. A gun jammed here, a misfire there, and lots and lots of lucky misses. Bullets helped; The more he had to work with, the better.
Crowds scattered, tires screeched. Heels broke, 991 calls misdialed to grandmothers, engines stalled, ATM machines miscounted, two people in Long Island spontaneously combusted, the DOW rose four points, several birds began flying backwards, and the Yankees hit nothing but home runs for three days.
Patricia made it across the Plaza just in time to catch the bullet occupying the space where Arthur had been standing.