Ring, jump, swish, click, twang. Round and round, swish, catch, yank. Swoooosh. Odd sensations, odd words, odd in general. Twirl, twirl, clang!

"Dammit, Del, I thought I told you to stop that nonsense an' get in this house this instant."

The young man looked up from the twirling metal pipes, spinning much like a mobile over a baby crib, only this child didn't have the fortune to have the crib and those bits and pieces would definitely do damage should they fall. The young man scooped up the small child. There was enough time for a gurgle and a giggle, and then there was only black.

Step, step, stop, pose, turn, step, step, pose, turn, thud.

"Now, Periwinkle," cue the others' giggle fits, "lift her head a little more. Ladies do not slouch, nor do they let their chins dip to their chest."

A prim-proper woman approached the young girl, maybe eight years old, and set the book back in its place on the girl's head. As she set it, she firmly lifted the girl's chin so that she knew exactly the proper way to hold it. The others giggled more as the girl looked very uncomfortable. She didn't squirm, but she'd beg never to go back again.

It wasn't bad enough that she didn't have a father; he'd gone missing after an accident with a car and her mother's current ex-husband-to-be. No, it wasn't bad enough that her grandmother cared about as much for the young girl as she did for the few bits of livestock that were left on the wasting farm; actually her grandmother cared more for the livestock – they could legally bring in money. No, what was bad…the fact that little accidents tended to happen around the girl when she felt any extreme emotion.

One of the girls in the class - Grammy had thought that her granddaughter might bring in some money working in catalog modeling – said something Pottywinkle didn't care for, that her father was a murderer and a crazy one at that. In fact, Pottywinkle would probably go to crazy and straight hell like her dad! Was it Potty..no-Periwinkle's fault that the nasty girl was bitten by a mouse? Or that the nasty girl's foot was hit by a hammer only the nasty girl saw? Okay, Periwinkle might have seen it too.

Ring, jump, swish, click, twang. Round and round, swish, catch, yank. Swoooosh. Familiar sensations, familiar words, still odd in general. Twirl, twirl, clang!

A very few years after a young girl escaped the usual fire or destruction that marked those with abnormal abilities, said young girl was asked to join an undercover operation. Now this was before Alias, before The Recruit, before any show that the girl could legally see or that her Grammy would allow her to watch, before the girl could even realize that there really were bad guys hiding as good guys. Or maybe, the offer to use those special abilities and to possibly be accepted by others was too good, allowing the young girl to overlook a few oddities – namely that the government wanted her to help fight bad guys at the tender age of sixteen. And that the people involved all seemed to be slightly, she'd heard the word before, civilian. They tested her, they put needles in her, they even injected her with something that created two marks on her skin. They told her it was for her own good and it would help her keep the world safe.

It wasn't until she was nearly twenty, after her first few real missions – stealing a file from some big bad guy, protecting a few hostages as they were extracted, draining the shit out of an enemies stronghold's energy supply (she'd actually been able to create a working dune buggy that time) – she started to question her place in the world. She started to actually look at what she was doing. She'd grown up just this side of outside, and now she was beginning to see that maybe the world wasn't as clear cut and that they just might be bad guys. But she needed more proof. She needed something to show her what was really going on. So, she continued doing exactly what she was told, watching, waiting.

Years later, she finally met the man behind it all. Mr. Linderman. What an asshole. The guy was a few bubbles off of being genius and certainly had found his way into crazytown. He explained his vision of the world, and while Periwinkle didn't exactly jump in and sing the man's praises, she understood it. She also understood that he had to be stopped. Linderman trusted her, for whatever reason, maybe because she was such a good little soldier, who would expect her to have a brain of her own. She apparently swallowed the company job hook, line, and sinker. She'd even helped nudge two of his chosen ones to create the child that would help change the world – a short stint as a dancer who'd introduce male chosen to another dancer. She then moved to Dallas to work as a back up for Bennett at his paper company. Her "loyalty" soon had her ready to do what she had to, she let them transfer her from the small life she'd made in Dallas, TX, to the big city to work in Nathan Petrelli's offices.

Funny, they never noticed the Haitian, in New York talk to her at times, and they rarely noticed how Mrs. Petrelli, the candidate's mother, talked to her. She went from working on the campaign to finally working just for Mrs. Petrelli. Who was she working for these days? A Petrelli, Linderman, Bennett? Maybe none of the above. Something was terribly wrong with the world she'd grown up in and become a part of, something that put others in charge of destinies, something that forced destinies upon those yet untested.