#0.08 : The Mimic //COMPLETE//

0.5 - The Attack

The house was silent when Klaus and Claudia returned. When they turned into the living room, the rest of the family was sitting around. She could feel the tension in the air.

"What's going on?" Claudia asked, setting her small suitcase down next to the couch. She had packed things for the next few days, knowing that the whole ordeal wouldn't be done any time soon.

"We need to have a family meeting," Luther explained. "About mom."

"Okay, I know she's been off the last couple of days, but is that really necessary?" She asked. "Maybe she just needs her programming tweaked."

"She was with Dad when he died," Allison spoke up. "I found the tapes in Dad's office. She gave him tea, and then didn't perform first aid when he was dying."

Claudia observed the room. Allison was closer to Luther now than she had been before. When she had first arrived, the two of them maintained a healthy distance, but now they were sitting closer. Claudia couldn't quite put her finger on the emotion coming off of either of them. Regret, maybe. But there's something else too.

"Do we shut her down or not?" Luther asked, "if she was responsible for dad's death we might all be at risk."

Claudia shook her head. "No. There has to be another way to help her."

Diego agreed. "She raised all of us. We can't just shut her down and throw her out like an old computer."

The family split ways before coming to a decision. Claudia caught up to Vanya on the stairs and touched her shoulder to get her attention.

"Hey, did you want to get some coffee and catch up?" She asked her sister. "I feel like I barely know you compared to everyone else."

Vanya nodded, and they made their way down to the kitchen. Claudia had at least thought to grab a bag of coffee grounds and her French press from her apartment when she packed the night before. She put a kettle of water on the stove and sat down across from the girl she had barely spoken to before the funeral.

"I totally regret not having a better relationship with you when we were younger," she started, "Dad was just so hell bent on me getting to know everyone else."

"No, I understand," Vanya answered, nervously playing with her hands on the table. "I'm not like you or the others. There wasn't anything for you to gain from being close to me."

"Hey! Not true," Claudia responded. "We could be total best friends and just not know it yet."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," she answered. "What have you been up to since you left? I feel like everyone else knows my business, but I never heard anything about you."

Claudia laughed at that. It was true that she had dropped off the radar since she left. Klaus was really the only one she had had contact with at all.

"I own a medical dispensary in town," she smiled. "I've got some really cool patients, actually. I've been running it for five years now."

Claudia went on to gush about how much her medical card had helped her with her own anxiety and all the amazing people she had met on her journey. "You should stop by sometime," she offered. "I'm sure it'll help with your anxiety if you wanted to get a card."

"I'll think about it," Vanya smiled. She went on to tell her sister all about Leonard and her violin lessons with students.

In the silence between the two of them, Claudia turned her head toward the door. Clear footsteps echoed on the floor above them. Her heart skipped a beat.

Two sets of emotions she was unfamiliar with resonated in her mind. Curiosity, duty, tension... There was something else she couldn't quite place.

"What's wrong?" Vanya asked, looking worried at Claudia.

She shook her head. "There are people I don't know in the house. Stay here and be quiet," she said. She felt Vanya's mood drop, knowing her feelings about not being special had returned. "I'll come back when it's safe."

Claudia thought about the confidence Five normally radiated, using the energy of the feeling to call on his power. She warped herself up to her bedroom, cautiously peeking out of the doorway.

Two people in animal masks were coming down the hallway. The one with the rabbit mask spied her first, and opened fire on the wall next to her doorway.

"Shit," she swore, ducking back to the safety of her room. She hurriedly opened the top drawer of her desk and found the custom blades that Diego had given her. It was a set of twenty in a slim, black box with the academy symbol on the top. She grabbed one between each of the fingers on her right hand.

The gunshots rang out through the house as Claudia poked her head out again. The two figures had advanced down the hall, where their focus was on Diego.

"Man, what losers," Claudia taunted them, teleporting again to the opposite end of the hallway from Diego. The heavier figure turned toward her and opened fire. She moved through space again, and appeared behind him, giving him a nice splash across the back with her blades.

When he turned around, she had disappeared again. Blue light shining through the doorway of the staircase had caught his attention. The two intruders bolted their way after her. Diego took the opportunity to land a knife in the slimmer intruder.

When Claudia had finally led them all the way to the entryway, she ran into Allison and Luther. "What's going on?" She asked, "we heard gunshots coming from the bedrooms."

"Intruders, and they have guns," Claudia said, just as the pair had appeared from the bottom of the stairs. "And they just cannot seem to leave me the fuck alone." She threw one of her knives in warning toward the heavier set man. It grazed his cheek and stuck in the wall behind him.

"Son of a bitch," the intruder mumbled, taking shelter behind the couch. Diego and Allison led the female intruder downstairs. Klaus was nowhere to be seen. That left Claudia and Luther to deal with the male one. He was built similarly to Luther, when Luther was younger. 

The intruder smashed the glass display case behind him and snagged a mace from one of the shelves. Claudia teleported into the entryway to take his attention away from Luther. "Over here, you prick," she hissed. Out of the corner of her eye, she realized Vanya was rounding the corner toward the man with the mace.

He wasted no time trying to smack her in the face with it. Claudia hurriedly warped and knocked her out of the way. The spiked ball had grazed Vanya's forehead, but on the downswing it knocked straight into the top of Claudia's head.

She felt blood start to pool and roll down her scalp. Luther grabbed the man from behind and pulled him back toward the center of the entryway. They were engaged in a first fight, throwing each other in all directions of the room.

Claudia was conscious long enough to see the female intruder reappear and shoot down the chandelier on top of Luther before her vision faded to black.