A Note From Lara: I haven't much to say by way of an author's note, but I will say this: LAST WEEK'S EPISODE WAS AMAZING! Definitely one of the biggest Petrellicest episodes in a long time, as my friend Aly pointed out. I'm hoping for some big-time Paire in this Monday's episode.

Okay, so I might want to point out that the events with Hiro and Ando in this chapter take place slightly ahead in time of the others. Just by ten hours or so, but enough that it would be confusing if you weren't really clear on the timeline and I didn't mention this....

--

Hiro shook his head. This was the worst day of his life, and it was almost certainly Ando's fault.

They were outside Las Vegas. It had taken a great deal of time upon his return to the present to convince Ando of his powers. But once his best friend had understood that Hiro was not drunk or crazy, he had agreed to take some "vacation" time off of work to come with him to the United States to stop the bomb Hiro had seen. Guided by the 9th Wonders comic book Hiro still kept clenched in his hand, they rented a blue Nissan Versa and drove to Las Vegas.

Then Ando had managed to gamble away all their money, and Hiro had been forced to use his powers to get it back. It saddened him- here he finally had something that made him less of a failure, and he was using it to cheat.

But Ando was always so convincing when it came to things like this. And eventually, it came back to haunt them, when they were thrown out of the casino by a group of thugs. But it hadn't stopped there. One of the men Hiro had cheated came and knocked the two of them out last night. They had awakened this morning to being rudely tossed out of a van in the desert.

And now Hiro was sitting alone in a diner in practically the middle of nowhere. Ando had ditched him to go see his stripper friend in Vegas. LasVegasNiki, as she was known on her website. Hiro shrugged to himself, fiddling with the salt shaker. "I'll probably save the world faster without you!" he called as Ando walked away past the window of the diner. The taller man ignored him. Hiro sighed sadly. Despite his bold words, he knew he would miss his friend. Oh well, at least he was going to get waffles!

A few minutes later, Hiro was gazing out the window when he saw... a flying man! The man touched down outside, skidding on the hot gravel and swearing under his breath. Hiro's eyes opened wide in amazement and a small smile crossed his lips.

The man was wearing nothing but sweatpants, and a look of self-effacing irony crossed his face. He held up his hands. "All right, I get it. A guy in his pajamas. Ha ha, very funny. Now, we could all have a good laugh, or one of you could lend me your cell phone."

He crossed to the counter, sat down, and ordered a cup of coffee and a T-shirt. When the waitress walked away, trying not to laugh, Hiro hurried over to the man. " Hiro Nakamura," he introduced herself.

The man shook his hand. "Oh. Nathan Petrelli."

"Petrelli. Nathan. Very nice to meet you," Hiro said. "Flying man. I see you fly. Whoosh!" He made a swooping gesture.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Nathan said.

"No, I saw you," Hiro insisted. "You fly. I bend time and space. Teleport into the future! We are both special. But don't worry, I keep secret. I go to New York, in future. There big bom there. Very bad for many people. Boom!"

Nathan shushed him. "Yeah, I can see how that might be a problem," he said in a hushed voice.

Hiro smiled. "Don't worry. I stop it. Am hero."

"Lucky us." A long black car pulled up outside, honking its horn. "Oh, I better go," Nathan said. Then he paused. "Hey, in this future you see, you don't happen to know if I win the election, do you?"

Hiro paused, thinking. "Um... Petrelli... Nathan... Oh, yah yah yah! Nathan Petrelli! Now I remember! You win big. Very big! Landslide!" As Nathan turned to go, Hiro called to him, "Give me ride-o?" The other man looked confused. "Ride-o?" He motioned as if driving.

"Ah, sure, what the hell. Come on."

--

"Why can't you work at home like usual?" Micah asked his mother.

Niki smiled sadly at her son. "Well, this job... it's-- it's a little different." Damn right it was different. Linderman's men had caught up with them on the way back from Micah's grandmother's house. They had drug them down to downtown Vegas, to one of Linderman's casinos. Ms. Sakamoto, one of Linderman's associates, had explained just how Niki was going to pay off her debts.

Apparently, some wannabe Senator from New York was coming in to ask Linderman for a campaign "contribution," and the mobster wanted a little "insurance" on his investment. "I'm not a whore," Niki had exclaimed loudly. But Sakamoto had only smiled.

"You've been different," Micah insisted. Niki nodded sadly. "I know, and you have been a trooper. I'm just gonna do this one little job, and things are gonna get back to normal."

The young boy nodded his dark head. "Alright. But it's safer over the internet. I mean... what you do in the garage? It's just acting. None of that's for real." He ran out of the room and answered the doorbell. "They sent a limo!" he yelled.

--

She bumped into her intended target, one Nathan Petrelli. "Oh, I'm sorry!" she exclaimed through carefully applied lip gloss. Then, feigning disappointment, she pulled a ticket out of her glass of champaigne. "Oh. So much for Celine Dion."

"Just the one ticket?" the handsome politician asked her, smiling.

"Yeah. I'm on a business trip... and I don't really like the people I work with, so..."

"So you're traveling alone." Nathan grinned at her, and she couldn't help but smile back. She couldn't help but think 'if only.' If only this wasn't just a con job. If only she could have met Nathan Petrelli purely by accident as it appeared. She almost felt safe with him, for the first time since DL left...

--

Hours later, they were in Nathan's hotel room. "Oh my god, look at this view," she sighed. "Everything looks so much prettier when you're high up."

"Yes it does," Nathan said, looking at her rather than the window. "Do you ever wonder what it would be like to just... soar over that desert?"

Niki smiled. "I took a helicopter ride over Red Rocks once."

Nathan shook his head. "No, I'm not talking about in a helicopter. I was thinking more like... flying." There was a brief and slightly awkward silence, after which Nathan said, "You know, if I were your husband, I don't think I'd let you travel alone."

"I don't have a husband. He left."

"For another woman?" Niki shook her head, half-smiling. "Man?" Niki laughed out loud, saying, "No, I'd take that one too. He's kind of a criminal. And by kind of, I mean he is."

"Any kids?" Nathan asked.

Niki smiled. "One. A boy genius." "Boy. I've got two boys. Not geniuses, just boys. It's weird having children. It's like you've gotta be two people."

"Exactly. There's the person they see, and the one you really are." Nathan smiled at her.

--

She left. She couldn't go through with it, couldn't manipulate Nathan like that, couldn't let him get sucked into Linderman's death trap like that. But as she waited for the elevator in the hallway, something happened as she watched the reflective doors. There were two of her in the mirror... and one of the reflections wasn't moving with her.

The doors slid open to reveal one of Linderman's thugs. He grabbed her, threatened her, her son, and told her to go back and fulfill her promise to Linderman. "Sorry," the blonde said. "Niki's not here right now."

The man flew across the hallway, and the blonde stepped out into the hallway again. A tattoo of a strange twisting symbol was on her shoulder that hadn't been there before. She strode back to the politician's room, threw open the door, and pulled him into a passionate kiss.

--

Early morning sunlight streamed through the windows of the hotel room as two people slipped inside. "Just take the one," said a man with horn-rimmed glasses. "We leave the blonde for now." His partner, a Haitian man, stretched toward the pair entwined on the bed.

--

Nathan Petrelli had only just barely escaped his captors by launching himself into the air. And he wouldn't even have had the opportunity to do that if the Horn-Rimmed Glasses Man's phone hadn't rung at an opportune moment, distracting him.

--

I emerged onto the roof of the building. "What is it Peter? What was so urgent that it couldn't wait ten minutes for me to make that call about trying to find a new job when your brother fires me?"

Peter was sitting on the retaining wall, looking out across the city. I was beginning to sense a pattern here. It was like Clark's loft in Smallville. This was where stuff happened; if it was important or intense, it was going to go down up here.

"I met a man from the future today," Peter said bluntly, turning to face me. "He told me "save the cheerleader, save the world"."

For a moment, I thought he was joking. Then I realized that there was no way he was going to joke about something like that. "Save the cheerleader, save the world?" I asked. "What the hell does that mean?"

He shrugged. "He also told me to go see Isaac. Said he'd know what was going on."

Biting my lip, I took a moment to reply. "Well, that's one trip you're going to have to make on your own. Me and Isaac in the same room together is like matches and gasoline. I was lucky to avoid slashing his throat open the last time I talked to him, and that was only for about two minutes."

Peter blinked at me in surprise, but I spoke over his confusion. "So what-- what happened?"

So he told me. The story unfolded smoothly. I had to give it to Peter, he was an excellent story teller. I was good at awkward explanations, but narratives... not so much.

I cocked my head, looking at him when he finished. "So what do you think it means?" he said, as I sat down beside him.

"I don't know. I honestly don't know. But he was trying to warn us about something bad," I said. "Maybe that's what Isaac can help us with."

Peter paused. "Hang on. Just a couple of days ago, Isaac painted a nuclear explosion destroying New York City. Could that have anything to do with it?"

"You tell me. I don't know many disasters worse than a nuclear bomb. Althought," I mused, "I always considered it to be one of the coolest ways to die. Literally dying of the light, starshot. It wouldn't really hurt, it'd be too fast for you to feel it. But it would be the power of the sun that killed you. Going out in a blaze of glory in the biggest way possible..." I broke off my morbid train of thought. "Sorry. Sometimes my mouth and my subconscious are rerouted together away from my brain."

He laughed. "Yeah, I had noticed."

There was silence for several moments, and then Peter said, "It looks like we might have to save the world."

"Yeah."

"What's it like?" he asked. "Being... being a hero? Actually being there when the world gets saved, having a part in it?"

I shrugged. "I was never the hero type. I'm a sidekick, and a vigilante. Sometimes I'd work with the JLA, but I was mostly the backup girl. A couple of times I was on the front lines, but when it came time to do the really big things, the things that mattered, they didn't want me, I wasn't strong enough. They'd call out Kara, or Diana, or one of the others." The words sounded bitter to me; I didn't like that they'd come from my mouth, so I continued, to try and repair the damage. "I didn't actually mind that much. Without powers, the people leading the charge tended to die. But... that wasn't really what you asked. Saving the world is... confusing. There's a huge rush when it's happening. Adrenaline, and heat, and you feel like nothing can hurt you until something does. But once it's over, everybody's just kind of standing there in the wreckage, staring at each other awkwardly."

"All the glory's in the action, not the afterwards, huh?" Peter surmised, smiling.

I laughed. "Yeah, something like that."

A glint of light off the windshield of a car momentarily blinded me. "So then, the geneticist wouldn't give you the time of day?" He nodded. "What a jerk. I guess we'll have to figure out what the hell this is without his stupid DNA tests and whatever else."

Peter nodded, and I asked, "So are you going to go see Isaac?"

He shrugged. "I guess I'll have to. It would be pretty stupid of me to ignore Hiro's warning." I chuckled to myself. "What?" he demanded.

"Nothing. Just an ironic name."

"Yeah. Okay." He left the roof, the intensity I had seen in him earlier lifting. I shook my head. Peter was so strange sometimes. He alternately bottled everything up and vented insanely. I couldn't really make any sense of it; it was like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, and then he would have a conversation with me or Nathan or whoever and suddenly he was just plain old Peter Petrelli again. Of course, from the looks of things, ordinary wasn't going to be the adjective of choice for him ever again.

I shrugged to myself and went back downstairs to try and find a job.

--

Another Note From Lara: We're closing on Homecoming! Just a few more episodes to cover and then we get to some of the more AU stuff. So please review? Pretty please? I get inspired when I get reviews. Even just really short ones.

Next time:

Peter and Isaac paint the future

Dianne tries to find a job

Matt meets a new hero (who happens to be one of my favorites!) with an -*ahem*- explosive personality. -*hint hint hint you all know who I mean!!!!!!!!*-