"Well, I did detective good enough to see through your horses**t"

-Griffin McElroy

The harsh lights of the underground stadium reflected off the hot pink sequin-bedazzled suit of Ando's opponent. However, he found them not quite as blinding as he would have liked as he sent another burst of lightning her way. He could still make out her face. Guilt wormed in his gut as the other fighter stumbled back off the edge of the ring and plummeted toward the ground below. The crowd yelled out their protests while Ando looked away, bracing himself for the sickening crunch from below that would signal his victory.

He hated fighting in the ring. He positively despised it. It went against everything he and Hiro stood for. Sometimes Ando liked to pretend that all the people he was pitted against were villains, but he knew full well that probably wasn't true. He was just killing random people. But what choice did he have? Takeda warned him that he wasn't quite popular enough yet for Linderman to bother bringing him back if he died, so if Ando lost one of his matches, it would be the end of the line. Even if he hated it, he had to fight, and he had to win.

A few seconds passed, and then a few more. Murmurs of relief broke out in the crowd. Ando looked over the edge of the ring to see his opponent at the base of the platform, hovering about a foot off the ground. So that was why her stage name was the Crystal Kestrel.

Shooting him a devious grin, she rocketed back up to the top of the platform. Ando tried to shoot her down, but she raised her sword, which was fashioned from pink tourmaline, and blocked the blast. The weapon glinted as she thrust it into Ando's side. A wave of pain shot through him as the blade slid into him and then back out. Stars danced across his vision for a moment; his opponent took the opportunity to strike him again. This time, she swung for his throat. How come everyone is always trying to cut my head off? Ando wondered as he jumped back to avoid the attack. The sword just narrowly missed its mark, leaving a thin red line across the front of his neck.

Taking a moment to catch his breath, he grimaced at the throbbing pain in his side. In a mostly futile effort to stop the bleeding, he clamped his hand over the injury. Then, gritting his teeth, he grabbed the Crystal Kestrel by the arm and sent a powerful electric charge into her body. She convulsed, letting out an earpiercing shriek. Then, as the shriek lapsed into silence, Ando dropped her and she fell limply to the floor. The battle was over.

An announcer stepped up and declared him the victor, met with boos from the crowd. Ando didn't care about his less-than-warm reception, but he hated himself for killing yet another opponent. He had kept track-counting Elle, this was the sixth life he had ended in the ring. At first he'd tried to convince himself it didn't matter since it was an alternative universe, but that didn't really make a difference. Hiro was-or rather, had been-right: just because these people were from another reality didn't make them any less human.

If Hiro could see Ando now, what would he think? He'd be ashamed. Ando hated knowing that his friend would have hated him for what he was doing. And Hiro's anger would have justified. Ando wasn't sure which was worse-that Hiro would have been ashamed of him, or that he wasn't around to feel that shame.

Oh, who was Ando kidding? He deserved to be looked down upon. Hiro didn't deserve to be dead.

After the match, Takeda congratulated Ando on, in his words, "another great fight". He then took a look at Ando's injury. "It ain't so bad, kid," he concluded after sticking a bandage over the jagged wound in his side. "Ya coulda gotten off a helluva lot worse."

"That's good to hear," Ando mumbled, but he didn't totally agree with his agent's words. He may have survived the match, but his mental health was still at an all-time low, and it was only deteriorating with every time he was forced into the ring.

"Now, kid, don't be so glum," Takeda urged him. "Yer doing amazing out there! Sure, the crowds haven't warmed up to ya just yet, but just ya wait-soon everybody's gonna be cheering for the Crimson Arc!"

Ando forced himself to smile. The crowd may not have been what was really bothering him, but he still appreciated his agent's attempts to lift his spirits. In this messed-up world, it seemed like Takeda was just about the only person on his side.

"Thanks, Sir," he said. "That means a lot to me."

Takeda clapped him on the back. "See, kid, that's the spirit!" he said. Then, in a more serious voice, "Kid, I'm really so sorry about yer friend. I know yer still real torn up about him."

Ando flinched. Of course I'm still 'torn up' about him, he wanted to shout. He was my best friend since we were in elementary school! However, he knew that taking his feelings out on Takeda wouldn't be fair. Even Elle wasn't truly to blame. Nobody was except for whoever had come up with the idea to pit people with powers against each other in the first place.

"It's really such a shame, too, 'cause Linderman would've brought yer buddy back if he could've," Takeda went on. "But not even Linderman can heal somebody who's had their head cut off."

Wait. What?

"Head cut off?" Ando echoed. "That didn't happen to Hiro!"

Takeda gave him a puzzled look. "Weren't ya at the match, kid?" he asked. "That Kensei fella knocked his head clean off his shoulders, poor guy."

Ando's mind raced. His agent was talking about the alternate version of Hiro-of course! He probably didn't even know about the other Hiro. Why would he? The fight with Elle had happened on the other side of the world.

"I, um," he stammered, scrambling to come up with a reason to not know the outcome of a match he had attended. "Oh, that's right! How did I forget? Heh..."

"Kid, ya don't need to play dumb with old Takeda," his agent said with a shake of his head. "I suspected for a long time now that ya ain't from this world."

"You knew?!" Ando blurted, attempt to keep his cover forgotten. "How?"

"Ya don't act like someone from this world," Takeda said. "I'm pretty attuned to the vibes that folks from certain realities give off, and ya just don't give off vibes like the folks from here."

That raised far more questions than it answered. Takeda looked like he knew this quite well, as he bit his lip and looked away as though to say he had said too much already. But Ando wanted to know more. How had his agent gotten so knowledgeable about parallel universes? Suddenly he got the feeling that there was a lot more to this old Osakan man than he let on.

"Have you ever been to another universe before?" Ando asked.

Takeda chuckled. "Oh, you can bet I have," he said. "Don't tell my superiors, but I've got an ability myself, and it's travelling between different versions of reality."

That was certainly new information. Ando blinked in surprise at the revelation. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone," he promised. Then, eager to learn more, he asked, "How many parallel worlds have you been to?"

"Oh, kid, I lost track a long time ago," Takeda laughed. "But I think the real question is," he added, a hopeful glint in his eyes, "do ya want me to take you home?"

The next time Nathan had to go out of town for business, he left Claire with her grandmother. "Now that Elle's gone, I don't feel comfortable leaving you at home by yourself," he said. Claire was too fed up with her father to even argue with him about her independence. If Nathan thought that an 18-year-old was too tiny and delicate to look after herself, a few harsh words weren't going to change his mind. At this point, she was better off trying not to make her father hate her.

At least Angela was another one of the few family members Claire had left, but that didn't mean Claire wanted to stay at her house. If only she knew where Peter was, she had half a mind to run away and go stay with him. She'd always gotten the feeling that her uncle cared about her more than most other people. But if she really mattered that much to him, wouldn't he have told her before vanishing into the night?

Maybe nobody in her family really loved her at all. Maybe Elle was the only one who had ever truly cared for her. It was probably a dangerous sentiment to hold-that a girlfriend of only a couple years was a more meaningful relationship than people she was related to-but she had only known Elle for one year less than the Petrellis anyway. Blood ties didn't matter if there was no emotional bond.

Angela lived in one of the nicests parts of New York. Her house wasn't quite as luxurious as Nathan's, but she was still extremely well-off. She welcomed Claire inside with open arms, and despite her annoyance at being forced to stay with her, Claire held no contempt for Angela. Her grandmother always struck her as a lonely person, but the kind of lonely person where her isolation was mainly of her own doing.

Old pictures dotted the white and gray walls of the house. Most showed the Petrelli family, but there were a couple of photos of people Claire didn't recognize. However, on Angela's bedside table, there was one particular photo which she was surprised to recognize. Specifically, she recognized it from the conspiracy board Hiro had set up while he and Ando had been staying at her place. It was a photo of Angela and her late husband with a group of people, mostly middle-aged or elderly save for a blond man standing off to the side who looked younger than the rest. While she had never met any of the people in the photo aside from her grandparents, a couple of them looked vaguely familiar, like she had seen them on the news at some point.

"Who are all these people?" she asked of Angela once, motioning to the photo. "Were they your friends?"

Angela sucked in a sharp breath. Something almost like regret flashed in her eyes for a moment. Then she scowled, grabbing the photo off the bedside table. She stuffed the picture into her medicine drawer, which she then locked shut.

"Get out of my bedroom right now," she snapped.

"But-"

"Go on-out with you!"

"Okay, fine," Claire huffed. "I don't care about your dusty old photos anyway."

Later, holed up in Angela's guest room, Claire got out her phone and did some online research. Googling her grandmother's name revealed that Angela had been part of a group called the Company which had been disbanded after the government found out what they were doing. Quite a few former members had moved on to working for or at stadiums. However, the strangest case had to be that of Daniel Linderman. Nobody knew exactly what he was up to nowadays, but after doing a little digging around, Claire stumbled across a deep-web conspiracy thread regarding the mobster's current occupation.

"The government doesn't want us to know this!" one user had written. "Last week I saw a person who died in the ring four years ago!"

"TRUE STORY: Kiera Johnson (friend of mine who works at New York stadium) involved in underground conspiracy," someone else claimed. "Saw her with Linderman yesterday and denied it when asked for details."

While Claire was usually hesitant at best to buy into such outlandish ideas, it was tempting to believe that the outlandish stories about a secret operation in which Linderman brought dead fighters back to life. Surely it wasn't true, but if it was… maybe Elle was among those who Linderman had resurrected! It may have been crazy and stupid, but if there was even the most miniscule sliver of a chance that Claire's girlfriend was still out there somewhere, she owed it to Elle to track her down and find her.

After further research, Claire figured out that if-and, she reminded herself, it was a big if-the theories were correct, Linderman was probably holding his operation all across the world, but the man himself most likely still lived in the same New York penthouse as always. She considered just going there, but she figured it would attract too much attention, and there was no way Linderman or the people working for him would let her in. First, she decided to find out a little more about what kind of security Linderman had-ideally from someone who had firsthand experience with the underground ring. Whatever angle of attack she took, it would no doubt still be dangerous-good thing she'd kept that dagger.

The next day, having found a lead, Claire approached Angela. "Hey, so, I'm in the travel club at college," she lied. "We're going to be going on our trip to Rome next week, just so you know."

"How long will you be gone?"

"Eh…" Claire tried to come up with a good estimate for how long her little detective mission might take. "A couple weeks?"

"Thank you for letting me know, dear," Angela said. She said nothing of the photo she had gotten so worked up about the day before. "I hope you have fun."

"I'm sure I will."

Honestly, Claire was shocked at how easily her grandmother had bought her story. She could never get those kinds of lies past Nathan. Maybe the Petrelli family's penchant for deceit was finally rubbing off on her.

Claire knew that her mission was almost certainly a wild goose chase. It would probably be completely pointless in the end, and it was far too great a risk for such a slim chance of success. But she had to try, didn't she? She loved Elle more than anything. And when you loved someone, you didn't just give up on them.

"Can you really get me home?"

"Of course I can, kid," said Takeda. "It takes me a bit of effort to use my power nowadays, with me getting older and all, but I'm sure I could get ya back to yer own dimension no problem."

Ando was incredulous. It seemed too good to be true. After all this time, he could go home just like that? And what's more, Takeda could have taken him home all this time!

If only Ando had told him he was from another universe the first time they met at the Tokyo Stadium, he and Hiro could have gone home together… but this wasn't the time to dwell on what could have been. As much as it hurt to acknowledge, Hiro was gone. Ando wasn't going to get him back. He had to accept that the chance for he and his friend to return to their own dimension together had passed. But now, Ando was being presented with an opportunity to get back to his world-how could he refuse?

"Can you take me home right now?" he asked hopefully.

Takeda pursed his lips and shook his head. "Ya got a big match scheduled for Friday," he said. "The higher-ups won't be happy if ya randomly disappear. But," he went on as Ando groaned in frustration, "After that, I think ya can get away with it."

It was Tuesday, so that was only three days away. It was also the first Ando had heard of this upcoming match. That was a little odd; normally his agent informed him about scheduled fights much farther in advance. Did he really have the time to prepare?

Takeda must have seen the alarm in his face, because he explained that he had only just been informed of the upcoming match himself.

"I wouldn't worry, though, kid," he said. "I don't know who it is you'll be up against, but I'm sure ya can beat them. Yer a talented guy, Masahashi."

Despite his strong distaste for the ring, Ando couldn't help swell but swell with pride at his agent's praise. Even Hiro had rarely ever been so openly appreciative of Ando's abilities. He was always just the sidekick, never quite on the same level as Hiro. But Takeda didn't see him as a sidekick at all-he saw him as a young man with a lot of potential. That was the kind of positive feedback which Ando so rarely got, even from his best friend.

"Thank you, Sir," Ando said. "That-that really means a lot to me."

The next three days couldn't have gone by fast enough. While Ando was nervous about his upcoming match, his anxiety was outmatched by his excitement at the prospect of finally getting to go back to his own reality. He vowed that, as soon as he got home, he would march right up to Kimiko and promise her to never try to break things off between them again. Now more than ever, he wanted to marry her. He even looked forward to going back to working at Yamagato. The sheer normalcy of a simple domestic life and an office job appealed to him so much after going through the hell that was this universe. Of course it would never be the same without Hiro. How could it have been? He would always miss his friend, no matter how much time passed. But Ando didn't need Hiro in order to have a good life. He could manage that much on his own, sidekick or not.

I'm sorry you won't be with me, my friend, he thought, casting his gaze to the dark gray ceiling of the compound. You were everything to me.

But perhaps being everything was too much. Ando had to believe he would be able to find happiness even without his friend. Hiro was-had been-a good man, but he wasn't everything. Nobody was everything to anyone, or at least they shouldn't have been. Did that even make sense? Ando had no idea. He'd never really been the philosophical type.

The first time Hiro saw Ando on the TV set in the compound, he was extremely alarmed. What was his friend doing back in the ring? And arguably more worrisome, why was he actually killing his opponents? Even though Hiro knew the rules of the matches-the term "death battle" generally wasn't taken lightly-taking innocent lives went against everything Hiro stood for. He had always known that Ando wasn't quite at the same level of heroism as him, but… killing was wrong! That was just such a basic ethical fact, and yet in the grainy black-and-white footage of the TV, Hiro saw his best friend break this ethical code seemingly without remorse. What had this world turned Ando into?

But wait, he realized with a surge of relief, this must be the alternate version of Ando! Hiro had been worried that his friend's alternate counterpart had died, but apparently that hadn't been the case after all. He and Ando were both no strangers to the ring in this universe, and although from what Hiro understood his own alternate self had retained a no-killing policy, it wasn't too much of a shock to learn that the same was not true for Ando. It still stung to know that any version of his friend had it in him to be so ruthless, but seeing as Hiro had once caught a glimpse of a future where Ando killed him, it wasn't the worst thing he'd seen a version of his friend be capable of. Just like the bad futures Hiro had seen, this universe did bad things to people. It twisted them around to the point where even someone like Claire was capable of awful things. In a world where you didn't have the people you cared about, it was easy to turn into a twisted perversion of your regular self.

That was another reason why Hiro had to get out of the compound and hopefully out of this universe as soon as possible. While he still stood firmly by the belief that the people in this world weren't inherently worse than the ones in his world, he definitely still preferred his reality to this one. Any world where people with powers were forced to battle to the death for entertainment wasn't a world Hiro wanted to be trapped in forever.

The day before his next match was set to occur, Hiro had a talk with Daphne. She approached him while he was in the training room trying to get a feel for his sword. His swings were hit-or-miss, and he knew he'd have to improve if he was expected to survive his match. He didn't notice Daphne come in at first; she drew his attention only when she charged at the training dummy he was practicing on and buried her knife in its head. The momentum knocked the dummy's head clean off its shoulders, and it fell to the floor with a thump as Hiro jumped back, startled.

"Hey, so, I thought about what you said," Daphne began. "About getting a happy ending. Pikachu, there's something I want you to tell me."

"Yes?"

She stared at him in such a way that made it feel like she was staring directly into his soul. "How did I die?"

Hiro wasn't sure how to respond. He knew how she had died in his world, but in this world, it may not have panned out the same way. Was that why she was asking him-was she testing him? Hiro gulped. The last thing he wanted was another person knowing he was from a parallel universe.

"You… were shot," he said, hoping that was still the correct answer for this world's version of Daphne. "Matt tried to save you, but he was too late."

"Ding-dong, you are wrong," Daphne singsonged. "Matt did save me after I was shot. We got engaged after that. The day before our wedding, I had a match scheduled. It was against some newbie, so I was sure I'd win. I lost. Question is," she went on, her eyes narrowing into slits, "What world are you from where things didn't turn out that way?"

Hiro's throat tightened. He had no idea whether Daphne could be trusted to keep his being from another world a secret. If she told the wrong person, it could be disastrous. What could he possibly tell her that would convince her otherwise? He got the feeling that no matter what he said, it wouldn't be enough to dissuade her.

Luckily, before Hiro was forced to explain the whole situation, his agent came into the room to tell him it was time to train for his fight. Daphne's eyes bored into Hiro as he walked away, seeming to say, you have a lot of explaining to do once you get back.