regenerated | how to stop an exploding man.

The papers read November 7th, 2006. The much anticipated New York congressional elections were underway as people all around the city were filing in lines, some staring with a bit of curiosity or trepidation at the new booths provided by one Daniel Linderman, a big name throughout the whole of New York, but one who came with his share of shadiness as well. Not every household trusted him, the most wary sticking in their apartments, offices, and classrooms, absentee ballots clutched in their hands, but the turnout was decent on the whole, the only event which seemed to set that day apart from most others in that gray city, skyscrapers stretching all the way up into the clouds above.

But, unknown to the general populace, there were a group of individuals scattered around the whole of the city, some whose faces were plastered on posters at every turn, others making it onto national television, and still more trying their best to avoid any detection altogether. And those individuals were special, the pinnacle of human evolution, some believed. Destined to do something great.

A hospice nurse.

A taxi driver.

A watchmaker.

A girl next door.

An office worker.

A policeman.

A socialite.

A soon-to-be Congressman for the 14th District.

A manager at a paper factory.

A cheerleader.

Heroes and villains.

This was their story.

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"The tick tock man?" Coraline asked because when she thought about Claire's nightmare and the long stretching corridors it was the tick-tock man that truly scared her. The terrible anticipation, the dread and the fear and that ticking. The constant ticking. "He's- he's here?"

Coraline bit her lip before stamping her closed fist into her hand. Coraline was brave and Claire was a superhero, they could take on one little tick-tock man. One terribly scary tick tock man. "We'll be okay Claire. I'll make sure we're safe even if it means we have to run away. I'll protect you."

"Yeah, him," she confirmed, turning away and looking down, because it was the easier way to avoid Coraline's gaze and the fear that she so clearly heard in the other girl's voice, sharp, but not debilitating. It wasn't one that Claire wanted to face before she was ready, because she knew that fear had a tendency to multiply, to increase whenever people gathered around each other with that looming enemy drawing near. "He's here, and he might be listening, so we need to be careful what we say and..."

She drifted off, eyes looking around before she snapped back to attention and shook her head, quickly, her curls bouncing around her shoulders. "No, Coraline, you're not going to protect me. You need to get away, okay? Leave this to me, he won't come after you if you're not... if you can't do things like I can, okay? There's no need for all of us to be in danger here."

Coraline looked around. She wondered if the type of magic from her world worked here. She didn't know much about Claire's world except she was a superhero and had really cool powers. Apart from that she wasn't sure what anyone else could do or what the tick tock man would do if he found them. Probably not anything good.

"I don't know what I can do but what I know I won't do is leave you here. I've defeated a scarier villain than a tick-tock man." Coraline said. She didn't say that she was scared to be alone in a place that wasn't her home. She had no money, no passport, no friends here except Claire. And even if she had those things, Coraline wasn't the type of girl to leave her friends behind. "I'll be okay Claire, we'll be okay but I don't think we should stay here if you say it's not safe. We should go somewhere safe."

A scarier villain than a tick-tock man, Claire thought wryly, certainly with her doubts. It wasn't that she wanted to discount Coraline's experiences, precisely, but from what Claire knew of Sylar, there was very little that could top what he was capable of doing. A man capable of absorbing every power in the world, who had no remorse about killing others just to expand his skill set. Claire knew that if there was ever a man capable of tearing her whole world asunder, well.

He was it.

"It's not about whether or not you've defeated other people, though, Coraline, it's... what he's after, what he can do, I'm the only person who can get by that right now. Or, well, my uncle too but that's beside the point," Claire stressed anxiously. "You need to hide, you and all the others who might be here, you need to hide and I need to find my dad and figure out what's going on."

"What's he after? What if we get to it first? And we hide it or destroy it or make it so he can't use it," Coraline said. Coraline wasn't the type of girl to run and hide. She would do it if it meant keeping Claire or her friends safe or if it gave them an advantage but Coraline usually tackled problems head on. It didn't matter if she had super powers or not, she wasn't leaving her friends alone to face monsters whilst she hid.

Coraline looked at Claire and folded her arms across her chest. Coraline wasn't going anywhere and Claire had to get used to that.

"We'll find your dad together, with everyone and then he can tell us what to do. And then if we need to hide, we'll hide together." Coraline said before taking Claire's hand and squeezing it.

Even though she knew that it was too harsh, knew that it wasn't right to treat Coraline in the same way that she'd been treated, there was a part of Claire that just wanted to tell Coraline to be quiet, that wanted to pull away from that hand holding her own. Were it Noah speaking in such a way to her, or even anything close to it, she would have balked. Had, actually, on multiple occasions in the past. It all came down to the fact that Claire knew she was the pinch hitter. The only one who could stand up to Sylar, for all he could do. She had been burned away by nuclear radiation before, only to be fine and healthy again in a matter of seconds. She was pretty sure Coraline couldn't do that.

Otherwise, she would have mentioned it in the nightmare.

"He's after what I can do. He wants to kill everyone in the world who's special, but he knows that it's not going to be easy to kill me, because I keep on coming back," Claire explained, trying to keep the deepest details private still, before shaking her head, almost vigorously. "You can't follow me everywhere, Coraline. It doesn't... it makes more sense for the rest of you to run. You could be a hero by leading people away from here, because this is one area where larger numbers aren't going to help. He'll just find us more easily this way."

Coraline stared at Claire this was worse than the fog, this was worse than everything in that nightmare and the thought that the Other Mother could use her and would use her. The tick-tock man wanted Claire and everyone like her.

"I don't want to leave you," Coraline said. She wouldn't admit to being scared, she was brave but she didn't want to be alone. She was somewhere new and that was exciting but terrifying too. She wanted her dad, she wanted Adam. "And I'm not a hero, heroes save people Claire. All I've ever done is take people to the next place after they're dead and I don't want to do that again. And I don't want to be alone."

She tried to think of how to word it in a way that would get through to Coraline. Because no matter what, she knew that she would have to abandon Coraline at some point in the next twenty-four hours, because this wasn't something that a kid (which Coraline definitely was, the gap between the two of them even greater than the sheer difference in their ages, Claire thought) should have been exposed to. The only thing that held Claire back at all was the fact that she didn't want to disappear without an explanation. If at all possible, she wanted Coraline to know, to hide somewhere safe, rather than try to do anything stupid. Not everyone had the luxury Claire did, of being invincible and healing from every scar.

"Coraline, you have to listen to me," Claire said firmly. "I can't... I can't do this if I think that I need to be watching out for someone else the entire time. I'm only brave when I know that I have nothing to lose, so you can't just follow me the whole time, okay? Because I've watched... I've seen so many people die because of this, I'm not even sure if my biological father and uncle are going to survive this. I'm not brave, but when it's just me out there, I've got nothing to lose. And I need that, to try and keep my family out of trouble. You, too."

how to stop an exploding man.

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