Starring:
Guest Starring:
Date: March 20th, 2010
Summary:
The Bennets get an unwelcome surprise. Don't they always?
"Broken Promise"
Bennet House
Queens, New York
Nine o'clock on a Saturday night in the city that never sleeps and there's always something to do — and what is Claire doing, with this world city as her oyster just outside her door?
Taking out the trash.
The good news is she's only grounded for a few more days. The bad news is the trash bag is smelly and leaking as she brings it out to the trash cans, and something disgusting leaks on her bare feet. She returns into the house, letting the door shut not too quietly behind her to express her displeasure at the foul task, and heads into the kitchen to find a handiwipe from under the sink to wipe what looks like soda off of her foot. "I'll never complain about emptying the dish washer again," she mutters to herself.
Seconds after the door of the Bennet house shuts after trash duty, a van inches up the street, pulling into sight across from the home in direct line of view from the kitchen window. Black with darkly tinted windows, it doesn't even try to disguise the fact that it's suspicious.
The elder of the Bennet women is sitting at the kitchen table with a pile of books, papers, and a red Jiffy Marker. She's grading a stack of English papers. "It's not that bad, Claire. Really. Why don't you go upstairs and see what Lyle's doing? You two never spend enough time together, he probably feels so left out of everything." With a sigh, the woman gets up from the table and crosses the room to the sink where she starts running the cold water.
The black van is noted and Sandra's face freezes in a little bit of a confused expression. Shrugging her shoulders, she grabs a glass and pours herself a glass of water. "Claire, what do you think about going to a movie tonight?"
"Mom. He's a teenage boy. He wants to be left out of anything his sister is doing, unless I had a bunch of hot friends over and then he would be suddenly interested. Unfortunately for him, I have no friends," the blonde says, not noticing the van as she wipes off her foot and then throws away the handiwipe. "And tell him not to throw away half-full bottles of Mountain Dew. Gross."
The sudden interest in a movie earns Sandra a suspicious look. "A movie? It's already 9… by the time we get there and get out it'll be past your bedtime," Claire says, a small smirk to show she's teasing, though late night showings are certainly not Mrs. Bennet's style. "Why, is there something you're just dying to see?"
Tonight's movie: action.
Or maybe horror.
Out of that van pours an entire squad of figures dressed in dark, decidedly militaristic garb, most certainly armed, and they're headed straight for the Bennet home. Not all of them though. No, some of them take off at a run to encircle the Queens property, boots pounding the pavement. This is no covert operation.
"I want to see…" And then the van explodes like a clown car, spilling men in black all over her sidewalk and lawn. "Claire, go, go now… RUN!" Sandra is already running toward where Noah keeps his secret stash of revolvers that he thinks she doesn't know about. Poor woman, she was wrong about her husband. He wasn't able to keep their daughter safe.
Mr. Muggles is protecting the front entrance as only he can. The vicious pom looks like something out of a Blade movie the way he's snarling and barking at the door. While he creates the diversion, Sandra is running between the back and the front, making sure the two doors are locked.
"What?" Claire says, and finally looks out the window, seeing the van and the men that spill from it. "They're going around back — where do we go?" she hisses, glancing to the counter and grabbing a knife out of the knife block. She chews her lower lip in a moment of frozen indecision — run or hide. Fight or Flight. Her instincts are … broken. Finally she runs, though it is up the stairs and to her room — her goal to simply put distance in between herself and the men coming for her — maybe she can climb out on the roof and jump off a side where no one is watching…
The locked doors slow down the barrage of agents at first, but the scratching and pounding on the front door suggests that such simple things as doors may not be a successful barricade for long. Sandra has time to prepare; Claire has time to reach the top step; Mr. Muggles has time to assert his questionable dominance.
The front door of the Bennet house then bursts open with no regard for propriety. If they have a warrant, it's a hell of a warrant and none of the agents make a move to show it. The group of them numbers four here, three men and a woman, the leader a fresh-faced soldier. They're no one of note. Just agents doing their jobs. Their job is to finally take in Claire Bennet. It seems the rules have changed. "Check every room! Upstairs now! Find her and take her in!" the front man shouts. All agents have rifle-like tasers in hand as they pound into the house, ignoring the Pomeranian.
Mr. Muggles has successfully attached himself to the ankle of one of the agents and is busily defending the women of the household, and Lyle too. Rrrrrrr RRrrrrRRRrrrrr
This gives Sandra a chance to scream and fire the pistol in her hand at the man in front of her. If only her daughter hadn't come back from Haiti, if only Sandra hadn't had so much faith in her husband. If only she wasn't so naive. "Get out of my house!!" She yells, pulling the trigger again, and again.
The noise itself is enough to rouse Lyle from his bedroom and wave Claire toward their parent's bedroom. "The attic, Claire, get out of the house…" He loves his sister, even if she tortures him with her specialness.
Claire nods, wishing she had shoes on. "Thanks, Lyle," she whispers. "I'll call you guys." She already knows she isn't going to return to the house tonight, not if it puts her family in danger. So much for a normal life. So much for not being in hiding.
Up the stairs to the attic she goes, butcher knife clenched in one hand in case anyone manages to get close enough to her to use it. Once in the attic she pushes open the window to the roof, crawling out, then closes the window behind her. She crouches on the roof, narrowed and angry green eyes scanning the area for the best place to jump — a spot out of the sights of anyone still in the van or any agents on the ground.
The agents are all fitted with bullet-proof vests, but the first bullet of the protective mom hits the team leader's arm, sending him whirling as the other knocks into his chest, sending him down. To the floor. With Mr. Muggles at the ankle of the last agent in. Even a Pomeranian is terrifying that up close!
"I don't wanna use this on you Ma'am!" the female agent shouts at Sandra, pointing the taser at the woman. Their weapons are for targets, not the people who get in the way of captures, but they'll detain Sandra if they have to. "Lower your weapon!"
The remaining male agent, after a few muffled curses, shakes free of Mr. Muggles and races up the stairs two at a time, hot on… the cold trail of Claire. He shoves her door open, then Lyle's, then the master bedroom.
Outside, a pair of agents lurk around the back of the building near the back door. Out front, it's next to impossible to tell how many more are in the van, if any — but the engine is still running.
Oh but Mr. Muggles isn't quite finished. When the agent shakes the pom free to race up the stairs, the little apricot king is right at his heels. Barking and growling until the man stops long enough for the teeth to tear at the stranger's ankle again. There's yelling from upstairs as Lyle channels Noah and takes on the man that dared enter his private sanctuary. Crashes and the distinct sound of a heavy thud follow, then from upstairs there's nothing but the sound of a champion toy barking.
"Get out of my house," Sandra growls at the woman who addressed her. The order of the day is buying enough time for Claire to get out and safely away. She doesn't even flinch as the taser is leveled at her, responding with pointing the gun directly at the agent. It's an impasse, if the taser is fired, the gun surely will be too.
On the roof, Claire notes the van in front and the two agents toward the back. The side is an option but she'll still have to get past them on the street. She backs up to one side of the roof, takes a deep breath, and runs, as hard as she can, across the roof to fling herself to the neighbor's roof — she's no expert in parkour, but hopefully the momentum of her tiny athletic body will be enough to carry her across the space. Landing won't hurt even if it injures her, and the injury will be fleeting.
The agent at an impasse with Sandra probably can't believe her luck. She's in a showdown… with a soccer mom? She keeps her taser trained but doesn't fire. However, the man who Mrs. Bennet shot starts to push himself up off the floor and, quickly assessing the situation, fires his own taser at Sandra's legs.
Meanwhile, Claire's daring escape attempt goes unseen by the agents below, but the resulting thud garners their attention. The noise, paired with a scrabble of radio communications that confirm the Bennet girl is not inside the house, have them on alert. They split up and check the side of the house and the neighbour's.
The first pain of the prongs hitting her leg has Sandra accidentally pulling the trigger of the gun. It's a good thing that she'd jerked in surprise when she was hit because the bullet whistles a little too close to the agent woman's ear. Whether she hit or not… Well Sandra will likely never know because in a second she's down on the floor, twitching as the jolts of electricity scramble every one of her senses.
"MOM!!" Lyle shouts as she takes the stairs three at a time, attempting to protect the older woman from the assault of agents. The agent from upstairs is hot at his heels, with Mr. Muggles in tow. The three of them form some sort of crazy chase train as Lyle struggles to reach the seizing Sandra.
Blissfully unaware of her mother's fate at the hands of the agents in her own house, Claire lands, knee buckling and leg snapping at an awkward angle before hands and then face hit the rough fake-shake ceramic tiles of the roof. Pressure but no pain — perhaps for once Claire is actually thankful to Sylar, since pain slows things down, even for a mere moment. She reaches down to reset her leg, waiting the few seconds for flesh to knit together before she is back on her feet, and sprinting for the other side of the roof again. This time, after the moment to recover from the damage her body takes, she heads to the back end of the roof — and what to her wondering eyes should appear but a trampoline.
Score.
It's not like landing on concrete or grass would have given her too much of a problem, but it's nice not to hear one's body's bones snap and pop like cereal. She jumps away from the roof and onto the trampoline, bouncing elegantly into the air once, a surreal sight if her neighbors happen to look out of their window, the blonde teenager in bare feet and Spongebob pajamas! Then she jumps onto the grass where she rolls relatively unhurt. Claire glances around, then scales the wall to the yard behind, her goal eventually to make it to the street behind hers, where she can run to her grandmother's hiding place.
Surrounded by a flurry of the dog's yapping, the agent giving chase wraps a strong arm around thee teenage boy's chest from behind and puts a sudden halt on Lyle's attempts to reach his mom.
The van outside takes off down the street as the agents sight their target skimming rooftops.
Back in the Bennet house, a few moments later, the agent does let go of Lyle and the squad vacates the premises, leaving Lyle, Sandra and Mr. Muggles alone minus one important member of the household.
Claire's bone-crunching path is too fast and clever. Try as they might by running through the neighbourhood, they can't seem to win at the game of Follow the Bouncing Girl. "Damnit!" the team leader, out of breath and holding his bleeding arm, says as he looks up at a neighbour's roof. He radios to his comrades. "We lost her. Keep surveillance on the house in case she comes back. Keep scouring the area. I'll let Danko know the first attempt was a failure."