Note: Written for special challenge #1 (cross-over) at the LiveJournal community heroes_contest.
Spoilers: End of Heroes, plot-point of S5 for Lost.
Disclaimer: Heroes and Lost are copyright their respective creators and license-holders. No infringement is intended. This is a royalty-free fan-work that the author has created to express a love of the mentioned franchises.
...
Stop the Cheerleader, Save the World
by Jack Velvet
...
The doctor didn't believe his wild tale of time-travel. He swore that it happened, though, and now that they'd just blinked into 1977, he was sure of it.
And for as screwed up as his current timeline was, he was happy that maybe his imagined heroics weren't so imaginary.
...
Hiro's power matured over the years. It took a lot of practice—much like his first manifestation did—but months ago he'd stumbled upon a new facet of his ability: jumping timelines.
His brain perceived them as threads, some intersecting with themselves, some intersecting with each other, and some barely touching, but each was as long as infinity. Neither beginning nor end could be seen, no matter how hard he looked in the space between time. He couldn't harm the threads in that tangible reality he dubbed the Void, but he could enter them. That's when he learned that the threads looping upon themselves were the ones that were interfered with: they were the crushed butterflies.
He wasn't sure why his visit didn't overlap more threads, and decided that his brain presented it this way as a means of coping with this aspect of his ability. Maybe, the fact that he stood among those threads meant that he was already connected to all of them.
Either way, an adventure was to be had. He'd seen many worlds in that Void. Countless. He spent a few weeks in one, squatting in an apartment as he dealt with the scope of what he'd discovered, not only about time, but about the timelines he thought he eliminated, which were represented by those intersecting loops.
His own timeline had several loops, and he visited all of them just to be sure of their origin. Some were created by him, some by Peter Petrelli, and some by others he never met. He took to carrying a sketch pad and pencil around with him, just so he could doodle out the timelines when he couldn't see them. This was important, because all he wanted to do was what his future self had tried to do many times in those many other loops: observe the Prime Directive, and not introduce the masses of the world to abilities before it was ready.
But no matter how often he flickered on top of the dangerous ferris wheel to show Claire his drawings, she still jumped. Upset by her father's demise at the hands of Sylar, and her adopted father's constant need to shield her, she recklessly plummeted to the earth each and every time. Short of killing her, Hiro was running out of options.
Until he visited that other world.
...
Charlie wasn't real, but this guy?
"Dude, if you like, don't leave, I'm gonna scream for the nurse."
"The nurse won't hear you, because time is stopped."
The large, curly-haired man fiddled with his robe. "Then how can like, my voice reach your ears if all those molecules and stuff can't move?"
"Because my ability allows it to."
"Dude, my science teacher would totally disagree with you. She was always like, 'Physics are laws of nature, they can't be changed!' and stuff." The man, Hugo Reyes, sat down on his bed. "Maybe if Doctor Arzt showed up instead of Charlie, I could explain it a lot better."
"You need to come with me," Hiro said, ignoring Hugo's distraction. "We need to stop the cheerleader."
"Dude? Do you expect me to believe that a cheerleader is on the rampage somewhere?" Hugo leaned forward, noticing something unusual strapped to the man's back. "Holy crap, is that a sword?" He stood, distancing himself as far as he could from the stranger, and shouted, "Help! Help!"
By the time someone arrived, Hiro was gone.
...
Hiro returned to the Void and inspected the place he came from. For some reason, this timeline didn't just have loops, it had knots. Some were tighter than others. They were also restricted; he didn't have enough skill to penetrate them. He barely had enough to figure out how he sometimes transported to just the right place in time; the best he came up with was emotion, which wasn't exactly the most scientific of answers.
Either way, he felt there was a purpose to him landing in that hospital room with that man, so he decided to travel a few days ahead in the man's time.
...
Okay, so they definitely see him, Hugo thought.
The staff lead Hiro—more appropriately dressed—into the recreation room, where many patients were allowed to see visitors. As the long-haired samurai sat down at the table, Hugo resisted the urge to claim that he didn't know him. Anything he had to say about it would just make him seem crazier.
"Hello again," said Hiro. "My name is Hiro Nakamura. You are Hugo Reyes?"
Hugo's brow creased, eyes shifting left and right. "Yeah. You know me?"
"I do not," admitted Hiro. "But you are supposed to help me stop a very bad thing from happening."
"Yeah?" Disbelief. "What's that?"
"Stop the world from finding out about—" Hiro spoke quieter. "About people like us."
"What? Crazy people?"
"No," Hiro corrected. "People with abilities. You must have an ability; that's why I was brought here."
Hugo leaned into the table. "An ability to do what?"
"I do not know. For me, I can manipulate time and space!" Triumphant, Hiro sat back, arms folded, smile across his aged face.
"Prove it," dared Hugo.
A nurse stopped mid-stride. A carrot, dropped by a patient, levitated in the air. People turned into mannequins.
"So, Dude Man. What's your ability?"
Hugo rose from his seat, wanting to look at Hiro's handiwork without disturbing anything. He snatched the carrot from the air; to his surprise, it wasn't stuck. Popping the food into his mouth, he turned back to Hiro, and said, "So, like...maybe I do have one of these things, or whatever." He waved a hand in front of a woman's face. "I think I can talk to dead people."
Excited, Hiro burst from his seat, and ran to him. "Hugo—"
"Hurley."
"—Hurley. Please, come with me. I can bring you back here. Please!" Hiro bowed.
"What happened to your sword?"
Hiro's index finger rose in the air. "Hidden!" Climbing up on the table, he lifted a ceiling tile, and pulled the sword out. "See?"
"Dude, a patient coulda found that and sliced a hand off."
"Nope!" He jumped down. "Are you ready?"
"Can I like, wear something else?" Self-conscious, he looked down at his slippers. "These aren't exactly cheerleader-stopping clothes."
Hiro placed a hand on his arm. "First stop, your house!"
...
Hurley wasn't used to going from day to night so quickly without jet lag.
Better dressed, the duo landed in the midst of a carnival, at the very time and place that Hiro wanted to be in. By now, he'd gotten used to Samuel's routine, so it was easy to walk around without being spotted.
"So you want me to find a dead guy?"
"Yes."
Hurley found it difficult to see in the sea of people. "Well, what's he look like?"
"Like a..." Hiro searched his brain for the right words. A man with dark hair and the ability to fly wasn't as easy to spot as he wanted to believe it was. "Like a senator."
"Gotcha." He turned his head from side to side. "Should I be seeing other yous here right now?"
"That used to happen, before the threads, but," Hiro stopped for apparently no reason, "now, I only see the versions of me before the threads."
Hurley kept walking. "So those other yours just kinda vanished into nothing?"
Hiro shrugged. "Maybe."
Hurley didn't get it, and as he attempted to wrap his mind around it, he failed to notice the running girl that Hiro stopped for. Her prize, a stuffed rabbit, toppled to the ground when they collided. "Are you okay?" he asked.
The girl picked up her rabbit. "Mmm hmm!" she responded. "I'm Ally, wanna be friends?"
Hurley looked about for her parents. "Uh, no. Sorry dude, kinda on a mission. You should go back to your mom, or whatever."
"Okay!" She darted off.
"Sorry, I didn't get a chance to warn you," Hiro said. "Do you see Flying Man yet?"
"I see a fire-breathing man."
Hiro's face scrunched. "Flying Man! Flying Man!" he yelled. "Flying Man!"
Hurley grabbed his shoulder. "What are you, crazy?"
"He's not crazy," said a disembodied voice.
Hurley looked behind Hiro to see a professionally dressed man, with a perfect haircut and a politician's smile.
"Okay," the man laughed. "Maybe a little crazy, but his heart's in the right place." The spirit held out a hand. "Nathan Petrelli."
...
It was a familiar sight: the media, the NYPD, Claire's interaction with her father.
"It's time," Hiro said. Unsure if he was able to allow Nathan's spirit to interact in the stasis of stopped-time, he approached the Bennets, Hurley and Nathan following. Bowing, he greeted them.
Noah adjusted his glasses. "Hiro?" He grew suspicious; he knew what the presence of an aged time-traveler meant. "Claire?" Noah began. "Claire, what are you about to do?"
Claire glared at the man from the future. "Something I should have done a long time ago," she stated. The young woman turned away from the interloper, but was blocked by Hurley.
"Hey, I wouldn't do that. Your dad isn't gonna like it."
"I'm done having him protect me," she said, assuming this man already knew what she was. "No more secrets." She marched around him.
"Dude, hang on. Talking about the one who gave you that necklace?"
That stopped her—momentarily. "Nathan?"
"Yeah. He's telling me that he knows first-hand what it's like. You gotta learn from his mistakes and realize that the world isn't ready yet."
"I don't even know who you are! I'm ready for this. It's going to take forever to get the world where it needs to be, and in the meantime, people like Samuel are going to keep popping up!"
"Claire, I'm telling you. Hiro saw the future, and Nathan says this is a really bad idea."
"How can he even tell you anything!" Her resolve was bending, but not broken. She didn't want to think about Nathan communicating from the beyond. Lies, lies, lies, and heartbreak. "No," she muttered, trudging to the reporters again.
Noah and Hiro approached. "Claire-bear?" Noah asked. "Claire-bear, please. Don't do this to get back at me."
Nathan shook his head. "Either deal with the future, or Hiro's going to have to do the unthinkable."
Sickened, Hugo asked, "Dude, how can you even say that?"
"Because I'm a Petrelli." Nathan watched her get closer, waving to get the media's attention. A camera man turned. "Catch her. Tell her that I'm sorry. I know what Sylar said to her before I died. Tell her I'm so sorry for not having stopped him."
He nodded and took a deep breath. "Hey Claire?" Hurley shouted. "He says he's sorry."
Reluctant, she wiped her tears and listened to what Hurley—no, her father—had to say.
...
Hugo smiled, accepting Sawyer's invitation to join the Dharma Initiative.
Yes. It wasn't imaginary. Somewhere, somewhen, people like him had a future free of turmoil. Now it was time to figure how to do the same for his world.
End