- Chapter 10: in which the heroes fight each other

The Pie Maker wished that finding Emerson Cod's office was the difficult part of the drive; sadly, it was not. The problem was the awkward tension caused by suspicion with which the empath was regarding the geneticist. Peter held his tongue, more or less, while Ned was on the phone, but once he hung up, the empath turned to face Mohinder and demanded in his recently cultivated intimidating manner, "What's going on here, Mohinder?"

Knowing he couldn't avoid answering forever, the geneticist thought to make it sound as simple as possible. "I wanted to capture Sylar, once and for all. I knew I couldn't do it by myself, so I asked for some help."

"And you asked Elle?" Peter asked in disgust. "Why the hell would you do that?"

"Because she can get the job done."

"You can't be serious. Do you know her?"

"Yes."

The empath's glare could have burned holes through the geneticist. "Mohinder, she's dangerous. You can't honestly tell me you trust her!"

"She saved my life," Mohinder countered simply.

"She works for the Company," Peter said; the worse accusation he could think of.

"So do I."

Peter gaped at him in reply, and an uneasy silence prevailed as he tried to assemble something coherent to say. Finally he gasped, "What do you mean, you work for the Company?"

Mohinder tried his best to calm Peter down. "Look, I know that the Company has done a lot of bad things before. But that was in the past. Things are different now, the Company is trying to help people – "

"Funny you should say that, Mohinder," Peter snarled. "Because that's the same thing they told me before they imprisoned me for four months."

"I'm sure it was just a misunderstanding." The scientist knew it was a pretty weak argument, but it was the best he could do to defend his new allies.

"They murdered people to get me back – your cute little friend, Elle? She torched a guy trying to find me."

"Elle has problems, Peter, no one's denying that. But at the Company, people can keep an eye on her. If she were set loose in the world, on her own? There's no telling what kind of damage she would do."

"The Company has no interest in stopping damage from being inflicted on the world. They just care about where and when that damage is happening. If the Company really has no interest in killing people, why didn't they destroy the Shanti virus?"

"Don't you dare lecture me about the Shanti virus."

The anger in Mohinder's voice was so intense that Peter blinked and leaned back. It wasn't enough to cool his own anger, but it did snap him out of his state of blind rage and allow someone else to get a word in.

"Obviously, you guys have some issues," Ned spoke up, startling the women who knew him well enough to know how little he liked drawing attention to himself. It was simply that, while he was less eager than ever to be in Elle's presence, he had decided that there was no way of avoiding jeopardy completely on this case, so the best possible thing to do would be to solve it and get all these dangerous weirdoes out of his life. It seemed, more or less, that this task would be completed more easily with Elle's help than without it. "I don't really know what you're talking about," he continued, "and I don't care. Right now, there is a psycho with – magic, or something – who wants to kill me. And my friend. You guys still want to catch him, right?"

Peter and Mohinder nodded immediately.

"And you hate him more than you hate each other right now?"

This time, the response took a moment; the two men eyed each other suspiciously, but nodded all the same.

"Then can we catch him now, and afterwards you guys can go back where you came from and – yell at each other, or whatever you want?" Ned gave each of them what he thought was an authoritative look. "Doesn't that sound like a better idea than getting mad at each other and dying?"

Mohinder looked at Peter again, somewhat sheepishly but still defensive. "I suppose he's right."

"Yeah," the empath answered, sounding distracted. "Truce – for now."

"Isn't there something else you two need to say to each other?" Chuck prompted, and when she got blank stares in return, she raised and eyebrow and admonished them, "What, your parents never taught you to apologize?"

Peter was startled enough that he nearly laughed, but one glance at Mohinder strangled any urge toward undue mirth – he still felt betrayed. "Sorry," he muttered, his insincerity matched only by the resentment in Mohinder's own apology.

"That's better," Chuck smiled.

Peace reigned in the car for perhaps 30 seconds, before Olive Snook gave in to her perfectly natural curiosity. "So what's the deal with this Company?"

Mohinder sighed and buried his face in his hands; Peter simply shook his head. "Let's…not get into this right now."

"Okay," the waitress answered glumly, and waited another ten seconds before asking, "So, they're evil, right?"

"Yes," Peter answered, less through conscious thought than by a knee-jerk reaction. Mohinder replied "Not necessarily" at the same time; however, since he didn't raise his head, his voice was muffled.

Olive had already decided to back her personal hero Peter in any and all disputes, especially ones that arose against the man who had pointed a gun in her direction. "How evil? I mean, are we talking a man who steals a loaf of bread to feed his starving family evil, or millionaire CEO exploiting workers for personal profit evil, or terrorist evil?"

"You can't say that a man who steals to save the lives of his family is evil," Chuck protested.

"Well, it's morally gray at the very least," Olive amended.

Chuck was still mildly offended by the notion. "Morally gray? That's like – killing someone to save a life. Stealing something with very little value to save a life isn't a crime, it's a heroic act."

"Actually, stealing is a crime," Ned corrected her.

Chuck glared at the driver, but her tone was teasing as she replied, "So is grave-robbing."

Ned coughed and shifted awkwardly in his seat. "Laws exist for a reason, Chuck. This isn't revolutionary France. If the man's family really is starving to death, there are ways of getting help that don't involve breaking any laws."

"The whole thing is sort of pointless," Peter commented. "Really, one loaf isn't going to make much of a difference if the situation is that dire. It's more senseless than it is immoral."

"I don't believe it," Olive shook her head. "You all want to condemn this poor man as being a criminal and stupid, just because he's trying to do something to help his family. You're just a bunch of insensitive men."

"You all realize that this man is fictional. There isn't really a starving family," Mohinder pointed out, raising an eyebrow.

Chuck didn't seem to hear this. "They're insensitive? You're the one who was in such a hurry to label him as evil."

"I was just trying to make a point, and that man seems to be pretty low on the scale of evil acts."

"He doesn't even make the scale," Chuck huffed.

"I think the man he stole the loaf from would argue otherwise," Ned reminded her.

She threw her hands in the air. "I don't think anyone would even notice if a loaf went missing."

"Well, I know that if a pie went missing from the Pie Hole, I would notice it," Olive cut in.

"And I know that if I were going to steal food, it would be one of Ned's pies, not just some loaf of bread," Chuck laughed.

Olive nodded, "I'm with you on that one."

Ned looked hurt. "You guys would steal from me?"

"Oh, relax Ned," Olive rolled her eyes. "It's a compliment."

"We wouldn't really steal from you," his girlfriend reassured him.

"Speak for yourself, Chuck. I'd steal one of those pies if it was the only way I could get one. They're good."

"Doesn't that put you further up the scale of evil than the guy who steals the bread?" Chuck mused.

"But mine's just a hypothetical," Olive protested.

"So is the guy stealing the loaf of bread," Peter reminded them, feeling his head twisted around more and more the longer they talked.

"I don't think this is the sort of discussion Victor Hugo expected to provoke," Mohinder muttered, too glad they were no longer talking about the Company to be anything more than slightly annoyed by the conversation.

"And look, here we are," Ned said cheerfully, pulling the car into a parking space. "Time to get back to hunting down a psychopathic serial killer." He paused, then glanced at Chuck through the plastic divider. "Remind me again why I'm glad about that?"