Hiro in the Future

A day after Noah Bennet´s apartment house met its unfortunate fate in Santa Barbara, on the other side of the world, two men were standing on a roof and looked over the movement area of the Tokyo airport. The sun was shining in a sky that was only partly speckled with small white clouds. The port itself was crowded with people who were on their way to enter the planes. But there was only one person amongst all of them that was of interest for these two guys, currently standing on that roof. A very special person.

"I can see her." Hiro told his friend, while looking through the binoculars. "She´r right there."

"Are you sure it´s her?" Ando asked uncertain.

"Of course I am. She´s right there. She looks exactly like on the picture."

He gave Ando the binoculars so he could see for himself. His friend had to search the woman but then he found her and wagged his head. "All right." he admitted. "She does look like her."

"Prepare yourself." Hiro said and hurried to get the binoculars back. "Our client is on his way."

Ando followed his gaze and spotted the young man, who was now running past the line of passengers to get to his girlfriend, soon to be fiance. He reached the woman Hiro had identified as the woman that had been described to them … and passed her to stop at another woman a few steps further in the line.

Ando threw Hiro a glance, one brow raised. Hiro just smirked and shrugged. "She could have been her twin sister." he said and looked through the binoculars again. A smile appeared on his face. "Seems the plan is in motion." he told Ando. "Get ready."

Ando reached out his hands, as if he was holding an invisible ball and build up the energy until he could feel it tickle in his palms. There were a few tiny red sparks dancing between his hands, but so far he didn´t dare to raise the level. He had to wait for the right moment.

"I believe he is asking her now." Hiro told him, still looking through the binoculars.

"How does she react?" Ando wanted to know, now as excited about the outcome of this admittedly ridiculous (ridiculous but cute) assignment for their dial-a-hero business.

Hiro made an uncertain sound. "She seems to be reluctant." he said.

"Of course. She got a job offer in Osaka. That´s a one in a lifetime job."

"She only took it because they had a fight." Hiro recalled, absolutely certain that the plan would work out. "You should get ready to start. Wait for my signal."

Ando tensed and prepared himself. He looked at his friend. Waiting. Hiro´s hands were clinging around the binoculars. If only Ando knew what he was seeing. But then Hiro cried: "Now! Do it!"

Ando didn´t hold it back any longer and sent the red lightnings into the sky. A big lettering appeared in the sky above them, dancing and itching but still readable. It read: "I love you, Chibiko."

Hiro watched how the people on the airport all turned to the big and unexpected lightshow and especially how the eyes of the woman in question went wide with awe when she saw what her boyfriend had prepared only to keep her from leaving. When he asked her something again, she started to cry and embraced him.

"Yataaa!" Hiro cried, jumping up and down happily.

"She said yes?" Ando asked, a big smile on his face.

"She did." Hiro affirmed still jumping. Ando couldn´t help and got swapped away by his friend´s happiness and joined him in the little victory dance. Hiro looked up at the slowly fading writing in the sky above them and frowned, a little startled. The name Ando had written there, the name of their client´s fiance Chibiko, looked a little as if he´d written Kimiko instead. He tabbed Ando on his shoulder and pointed upwards.

"Was that a typo?" he asked.

Ando just looked at him smiling and shrugged. "Just in case Kimiko should see that." he explained. "She shouldn´t think that I write love notes for other women in the sky." When Hiro gave him a face he asked: "What? It worked just fine, didn´t it?"

Hiro gave his friend a playfully reproving glance. "Aha." he made.

Not that it wasn´t amazing that Ando could do something like that with his power. Hiro never made an issue out of the difference between the two of them. All he could do was stopping time and teleport from one place to the other. If he wanted to impress someone with that, he had to do a lot of sweat producing work to accomplish a face like that of the woman down there, when she´d seen the writing in the sky. He could of course. If he wanted. But of course he would never do that. A hero had to keep his powers secret if he wanted to save the world with it. Moments like this when they could actually use their abilities to save the day for someone, were exceptions. But they were worth it.

So of course Hiro couldn´t keep up that put on mask for very long. They were both too eager to see what was going on with their client and his fiance. The two of them were already on the way back to the terminal, the people in the line applauding them for their decision. Again Hiro and Ando smiled at each other, more than pleased with what they´d accomplished.

"And once again, we made the world a little better, my friend." Hiro commented.

...

"I can´t tell you how thankful I am, for what you did." Mr. Masaki told them, when they were back in their secret stash, which was practically more like an oversized office to welcome clients. "Chibiko can´t wait till our wedding." he said.

"We´re very happy for you too." Ando assured the man. "You may recommend us to your friends and family if you like."

"Oh, I sure will." Mr. Masaki said with a wide smile.

"Then the only thing left to do …" Hiro said and shoved the book over to Mr. Masaki.

"Of course." Masaki said and picked up the pen. He was just about to start writing when a female voice called through the hall.

"So here you are."

The three men turned around surprised. The woman who had spoken stood in the door, her hands in her sides and her dark eyes on the two men who owned this place.

"Kimiko." Ando cried. "Sweetheart. What are you doing here?"

"I was about to ask you the same." she replied serious but her voice was a little softer now. "Weren´t you supposed to meet me in the city?"

Ando squinted as if in pain. "I´m sorry, I forgot." he said and hurried over to her.

"His girlfriend?" Masaki asked in a whisper tone.

"His wife." Hiro replied. "And my big sister."

Masaki threw him a glance that was first surprised and then amused. Hiro pointed at the book where his client was supposed to sign and Masaki went to it. On the other side of the room, Ando and Kimiko were talking quietly with each other. Hiro watched them. It still felt great to see them together. His little family.

After another minute they seemed to have come to an understanding. When they came back to them together, their arms were wrapped around each other´s waists. She had obviously forgiven her husband his forgetfulness.

Still when her eyes met Hiro´s, Kimiko looked strict. But then again, his sister always looked strict, especially when she looked at him. Hiro smiled at her. She didn´t smile back. God, how much she reminded him of their father sometimes.

"So you again held off my husband from his real duties?" she asked.

"Our real duty is to make the world a better place, sister." Hiro replied as dignified as he could.

"I see." was all she would say to that.

Hiro and Ando exchanged a glance of shared carefulness. Kimiko was about to say some more but in this moment there was a sound coming from somewhere in the back of the hall. It sounded as if something had just exploded. The four people swirled around but there was nothing. Everything looked just all right. Everything was quiet.

"What was that?" Kimiko demanded to know.

Ando lay a protective hand on her shoulder, before he walked around a bookshelf, to check this mystery. Hiro followed him. The space behind the shelf looked just fine, except for the fact that a lot of the comic books Hiro had stored there, lay around like a strong wind had blown them down.

"You really should clean up more often." Ando told his friend in a hushed tone so Kimiko wouldn´t hear them.

"But I did." Hiro said. "Just yesterday."

"What? Then how did this chaos happen?"

"I don´t know." Hiro said, honestly worried. He looked around but the nearest window was ten feet away from the book shelf and it was closed. To make sure it wasn´t just shut by a wind, Hiro went over to it and checked it. No, it was closed.

By now, Kimiko had rounded the shelf too, curious to see what was going on.

"Ando?" she asked, a little worried.

Her husband gave her a smile to ease her mind. He opened his mouth to tell her that everything was all right, that it had been just an open window and they had been scared by their own shadow. But he didn´t even get a chance to say the first word. All the sudden there was a deafening noise behind him, like thunder that rumbled, not in the sky but directly in this room. They all covered their ears and then, without any warning or transition, something very big and very dark appeared behind Ando. It looked like a perfect circle, and inside of it there was nothing but pure blackness.

An even stranger sound came up.

Fffffflopppp.

And then everything around them went flying around. Ando´s eyes went wide in surprise and then he was pulled backwards, right into this black thing.

"Ando!" Kimiko screamed.

Hiro, whose hand was still on the handle of the window, felt how this strange force was pulling on him too. He instinctively grabbed the handle tighter, and a moment later he was hanging horizontal in the air as if a hurricane was blowing in their stash. Everything else happened like through a filter. He heard his sister scream and somewhere he made out the voice of their client as well. Between dozens of flying objects he saw the form of his sister´s body, how she got sucked into that infamous thing just like his lifelong friend Ando.

Hiro shouted her name, but she was already gone. Just like Ando. Everything around him seemed to explode. His mind was screaming, in pain and denial over what was happening here. He was sure that he was crying but the wind that sucked on him was too strong to let him feel the tears.

The handle of the window started to give in and a few seconds later it just broke off, sending Hiro flying ahead at this murderous thing that had already killed his best friend and his sister. But even with the pain this knowledge brought along, even with the shock over this event that had happened so unexpectedly, Hiro somehow managed it to remember the only way he had to escape his own certain death. He squeezed his eyes shut as fast as he could and prayed intensely that he would be fast enough.

His back collided with something, painfully, and then he fell down, to the ground. The noise that had been screaming in his ears was gone, replaced by an eerie quietness. Hiro opened his eyes and looked around. He wasn´t in the hall any longer. He was outside, in a street. But the street barely looked any better than the hall after that thing had raged in it. There were cars standing around that were burned or half destroyed. Shop windows along the street were smashed and there was litter and garbage everywhere.

It wasn´t Tokyo, that much Hiro knew. This wasn´t even a street anywhere in Japan. The cars were American and so were the signs in the windows. Where was he? And what had happened here?

With shaking legs he stood up and started to walk almost on autopilot. The shock about Ando´s and Kimiko´s death was still shaking him – had this really happened? – but this new shock was almost worse. He´d thought – if one could even think in a situation that happened so fast – that this destruction would have been limited to their stash. But now it seemed as if it had happened everywhere. Since he hadn´t teleported to a certain point in the world intentionally, he had landed on a totally random place, just like always when he had to teleport quickly without time to think about his target. And the chance that he had hit the only place that was destroyed like that by pure coincidence, was rather thin. Not none existing but thin.

Had this black eye done that? What was it? It had looked like a hole in the air. Hiro halted. A black hole. Great Scott. Was that possible? Of course it was. He had seen it. And he had read at least a dozen stories in which black holes had appeared. Some of them comics, some of them science fiction novels or short stories. Of course that thing in his stash had been a black hole. But why? How?

Someone shouted behind him and he turned around, still too shocked to even be startled. He heard the sound of shattering glass. There were some guys in thick bomber jackets walking in and out of a shop, each of them carrying another electronic device. DVD-players, TVs, a computer … One of them spotted Hiro and shouted something at him that the young Japanese didn´t understand. When Hiro didn´t react at once, the guy put the monitor he´d been carrying down and headed for him in a threatening way. Hiro started to back up in fear but the shock that was still fresh in his bones, made his legs feel like led. The guy was at him in a heartbeat. Now Hiro understood what he shouted.

"What are you looking at, asshole?" he asked. "You want trouble? Huh? YOU WANT TROUBLE?"

Hiro didn´t even get a chance to say something, when the guy had already grabbed his collar and started to punch him. Fists were raining down on him, while the other culprits just went on with their loading business as if nothing happened. Whining and begging for the man to stop, Hiro tried to back up, but the hand that held his collar wouldn´t let go. Neither would the fist stop pummeling down on him. The rage this man felt for him, stood in no relation to what Hiro had done or not done. Not even teleporting away was an option for him now. He didn´t even find the time to close his eyes and concentrate. And then all the sudden the hits stopped and the man swirled around to look at something.

Hiro was still too shaken to realize what was going on until he heard the sound of a voice that shouted: "FREEZE, YOU DOUSHBAGS!"

Other voices shouted something in response and then there were shots. The hand let go of Hiro´s collar and he dropped to the ground. Somehow he managed it not to lose consciousness. Resting on his hands he watched the fight between the culprits and a group of men and women who seemed to be police. Everything seemed muffled and the whole scene appeared like a far away dream. A few of the culprits fled when they realized that they would lose. Three of them got arrested and two seemed to have died from bullets.

Someone was by Hiro´s side all the sudden and lifted him up. When he looked up, he faced a woman with brushy blond and purple hair.

"Are you all right?" she asked him, her voice as muffled as the rest of the sounds around him. Still it somehow helped him to get back to his senses.

Hiro took a breath and then asked with a voice as thin as Chinese porcelain: "What happened?"

"You were attacked." the woman told him. "But don´t worry, we arrested most of them. Are you living nearby?"

"No." Hiro cried. "I mean the city. What happened here?"

The woman frowned at him in confusion. She opened her mouth to say something but the voice of a man stopped her before she could even start.

"Detective Lassiter!" this voice called and the man in question, turned around to him. "If we hurry we can still get these bastards." the younger man told him.

The man named Lassiter nodded and turned back to the woman. "Let´s go, Karen!" he said, suspiciously eying Hiro.

She nodded and turned back to Hiro, only for a last checking glance, before she joined her partner. Hiro attempted to follow them, crying desperately that he needed to know what happened. That this was not right. That they had saved the world and this was just impossible. But these strange police men were already on their way, not paying any attention to him.

Hiro could see the man, that had been addressed as Lassiter, talk to the younger man for a moment, both of them looking back at Hiro, making him hope that they´d decide to stay and help him after all. But then they just got into their cars and drove off, none of them even looking back at him.

Barely a minute after everything had started, Hiro found himself alone on the deserted street again, the sound of the engines slowly vanishing in the distance. The electronic devises the bad guys had tried to steal, lay on the street, shattered and useless and forgotten.

Far away Hiro could hear gunshots. Where by everything that was good in the world, was he?

Slowly he started to walk again. What a strange world he had landed in? Was that even his world? Maybe this black hole hadn´t been a black hole after all but a bridge of some sort. A wormhole maybe? Had he slided into another dimension? A darker version of his own world?

But no. He had teleported himself away before he´d even entered the black hole. And if he would be in another world, then Ando and Kimiko would be here as well. But they weren´t. They were nowhere. Because they were dead. Hiro was sure about that. He could feel it deep inside. His best friend since childhood and his sister, the only relative he´d left, were dead. Taken away from him in only a few seconds.

In this moment, when he finally had the time to realize the gravity of that loss, Hiro felt sadder than sad and weaker than just weak. His legs, which had shaken before, gave in for good and he dropped down to his knees and just cried. He´d lost them. The two people in the world who were the most important to him. Now he was alone. He´d always wanted to be a hero. He could teleport through space, travel through time, and still he hadn´t been able to save them. What kind of a hero was he? What was a hero any good for anyway, if he couldn´t even save the people closest to him?

A wind came up and blew coldly around him. Hiro was freezing. A newspaper rushed by and got stuck at his knee. Hiro looked down on it, through a mist of tears, but he could see clear enough to read the date that was printed there. October 21st 2015. When he saw that his heart skipped a beat. 2015? How? But then he knew how. Of course, he had had one of his accidents again. He´d jumped too quickly and too far once again and had somehow landed in the future.

The relief about that didn´t last very long though. Even if this was the future, this was still not right the way it was. Why was everything destroyed? Maybe if he could find out, he could go back in time and stop it from happening. From one moment to the other, hope was back with him. If that was the future maybe he could even save Ando and Kimiko. Maybe he could stop all this before it even started. Yes, maybe he could. He just had to.

He jumped up and started to run. At the next corner he stopped and looked around though. Where was he running to? But then he spotted something on the other side of the street in front of a closed drugstore and he knew what he had to do. He needed information about this strange and dark future in order to go back and stop it from happening. If he wanted to save the world, he needed someone to tell him what had destroyed it. So he ran over the street to the phone booth that was nothing more than a skeleton of steel with no glass left in it, and prayed that it still worked. When he heard the signal, he exhaled in relief.

The book that was attached to the booth read Santa Barbara. California? Why had he landed here from all the places in the world? But that was a question he couldn´t answer right now. He needed other answers that were more important. And the first one was the one that threatened to devastate him right from the start. Who should he call to ask him for help?

At last he dialed the first number he could think of. The number of his home office. He got no connection.

He hung up again and tried to think. He knew so many people here in America. Who should he call? Would he even be able to remember their numbers? He closed his eyes and tried his best to get the numbers out of his memory. The first one he could remember was one that seemed hopeless on its own but he dialed it anyway. It was the number of Isaac Mendez, the painter in New York that had died from Sylar´s hand somewhat around five years ago. No, now it was even eight years ago. He was in 2015.

He got a signal but no one answered. Hiro tried another number. Peter Petrelli this time. Again there was no answer. The lines were working but no one answered the call. The next number he dialed, was the one from Noah Bennet. But the result was the same. No answer. Then he tried Matt Parkman. No answer. Only this unnerving repeating of the signal that told him that the phone on the other end was ringing.

No answer.

No answer.

No answer.

He tried all the numbers of people he could remember. When he had only one number left, his hope to reach anyone, was almost gone completely. Especially since this last number was only a cell phone number that had been current five, no eight years ago. Surely he would have gotten another one over the years or the phone that number belonged to had been destroyed and never replaced. Anyway, the chance that he would reach him after he hadn´t reached anyone else, were thinner than thin. Still he had to try. He mustn´t give up. A hero never gave up.

He dialed the number and was positively surprised that the connection was working. But when he didn´t get any answer here either, his last hope seemed destroyed too. After the fifth ring his heart was broken with hopelessness. Just as he attempted to hang up, a clicking sound was in his ear.

"Who´s this?" an accented voice asked warily.

"Dr. Suresh?" Hiro cried, almost unable to believe that he finally had someone on the phone. "It´s me. Hiro Nakamura."

The line was quiet for a moment. "Hiro?" Suresh sounded almost shocked. "Where are you?"

"I´m so glad I reached you." Hiro cried, holding the handset with both hands. "Everything is wrong. No one answers the phone. I traveled to the future by accident. I´m in America. Ehm … in California. Santa Barbara. Please, you must help me."

There was another brief pause. "I´m in Santa Barbara too." Suresh then told him.

Hiro halted. "You are?" but then he decided that he couldn´t afford to question this lucky coincidence. "Please, can you tell me what happened?" he begged. "I don´t understand."

"We should meet." Suresh said. "Is this line secure?"

Hiro blinked. "I think so." he said, even though he had no idea if the line was secure or why this was important to the doctor. Suresh seemed to believe him though and named an address for him. His voice had changed since the beginning of their talk. When he´d answered the call he´d sounded careful and almost paranoid. Now he was excited and hopeful, Hiro could tell from the way he talked. He promised the geneticist to come to him right away and hung up.

It wasn´t easy to find the way. He was in a city he didn´t know after all and asking someone for the way was impossible, since people didn´t stay to talk to him. They either walked faster when he approached them or they ran away at once. The ones that didn´t run, didn´t look trustworthy enough to ask in the first place. So he had to find his way all on his own. But thanks god he had a good orienting sense and an hour or so later, he´d found the right street. Only that it didn´t look very friendly there. And the sounds he heard weren´t inspiring confidence either.

There were crashing sounds and then he heard shots again. People were shouting and since he remembered his first encounter with people that shouted like that very well, Hiro hid behind a garbage can. He saw three guys leaving a house and got into a car. Each of them was carrying a gun.

After they were gone, Hiro got out of his hiding place and went on. He looked around to find the right place Dr. Suresh had named him. When he was certain that he´d found it, he was up for the next shock. That was the door the bad guys had just come out of.

"Oh, no." he breathed and hurried in.

It was a hall he found himself in. Like a small storehouse. There were tables and shelves everywhere. Hiro saw a computer and a lot of instruments he didn´t know. There were also a few boards with pictures and newspaper articles and other stuff pinned to them. But all this became minor when Hiro heard a groaning sound, from behind one of the shelves. He immediately hurried around it and when he saw who lay there on the ground, bleeding from at least six gunshot wounds, his heart almost stopped in fear and shock.

"Dr. Suresh." he cried and went down to his knees next to the wounded man. "No. Dr. Suresh! Dr. Suresh!"

"Hiro." the scientist´s eyes fluttered open. "You must take it back." he slurred, half unconscious already. There was blood trickling out of his mouth. He coughed. "We all … made a terrible mistake …" he breathed in heavily. "Creating that formular … To inject him … He would´ve understood it. Could´ve stopped …" He started to cough again.

"I bring you to a hospital." Hiro told Suresh, his voice shivering.

"No time." was all the response he got. "I´m dying. Go … find Shawn Spencer. He can tell you. He knows what happened."

"Shawn Spencer." Hiro repeated, still too frightened to really compute what was happening. This just couldn´t be real. It mustn´t.

"Go back." Suresh said again, his voice getting thin now. "Save … our fut..." His head fell back and then he was dead. From one moment to the other he was just dead. Hiro sat there and couldn´t believe it.

His head was spinning and his heart racing. Dr. Suresh had been his last hope to get the answers that he needed. What should he do now? How could he save the world if the last person he´d hoped for was dead? He hadn´t even had the time to ask him anything.

But then Hiro´s head gave him the answer. Of course, Dr. Suresh had told him what to do. He´d only forgotten it, because of the shock. He´d had to suffer a lot of shocks today. But now he knew what to do next. He had to find Shawn Spencer.