Latter-Day Saints, better known as Mormons, believe in a wondrous afterlife for the faithful, becoming godlike in the Celestial Kingdom. To achieve this, they set very strict rules of behavior for themselves, called “The Plan of Salvation.” Tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, and other drugs are strictly prohibited, as they are seen as pollutants to the mind and body. They follow strict paths of sexual morality, saving themselves for marriage, as they believe that marriage transcends even death. Mormon men, and women who desire to, are strongly encouraged to serve a proselytizing mission. Who we are and the actions we take define who we will be in the future. Will we seek perfection, knowing that life is too precious to waste, or do we accept who we are, avoiding the slippery slope of denying our true natures for some misguided ideal? One day, in this life or the next, we will stand to be judged, asking ourselves, “What have we become? How did we get here?”
: : :
Matt and Mohinder
Mohinder’s Lab
Lower Manhattan, New York
2011
Mohinder peered over a microscope, looking at blood samples, while Matt studied him. Mohinder looked up, asking, “Matt, are you looking around inside my head?”
Matt’s concentration broke. He apologized, “Sorry, man, but I’m getting this weird output. It kind of reminds me of how my turtle sounds.”
“You have a turtle?” Mohinder asked, ignoring the main question.
“Yeah,” Molly replied, “his name is Darwin Kgosi Leonardo Geochelone sulcata James Maurice Rémy Willie Walker-Millbrook-Parkman.”
Matter-of-factly, Matt noted, “I just call him Turtle. He’s my spirit guide. My totem, so to speak.”
Mohinder paused. “Matt, who on Earth let you get your hands on Carl Jung?”
Matt refused to be distracted, “Mohinder, something’s strange about your brain.”
“Maybe you should read some Freud, too. It’s called the id.”
Matt’s brow furrowed. “Like the comic strip?” Seeing Mohinder’s trick, he noted, “I don’t hear the Id in anyone else.”
Mohinder sighed. “It’s the transformation, all right? It’s evolving me. My enhanced senses and strength, they make me more animal. And my brain is compensating with a larger limbic system.”
Peter appeared before the conversation could end. In his hand, he held half the formula.
“Good job, Peter,” Mohinder congratulated, taking it. He noted the torn edge. “This is only half.” He traced where the rest of the chemical formula should be.
“I know. Hiro should be here with the other half soon. Can’t you start?”
“I can do a little. It’s the right side of the protein chain that I got wrong, but I’ll be able to conjecture about nucleotide bonding along this main chain of carbons…”
Matt’s cell phone rang while Mohinder continued to explain the importance of the formula, in increasingly denser biological terms. Matt chose to answer his phone. “Hello? What? No, she should still be there. She’s on the overnight program. What do mean my wife picked her up? My wife is in a coma!” Matt hung up. To Molly’s worried frown, he noted, “It’s Daniella.” He dialed the hospital. He handed the phone to Peter. “They can’t know it’s me. Say what I tell you.”
Peter repeated the words in Matt’s head. “This is Dr. Pickaname.” Matt scowled at him; Peter scowled back. “Yes, there seems to be a problem with a patient’s chart. There’s a… Excuse me.” He held the phone to his shoulder and commented to Matt, “You have no idea how a hospital works, do you? I’ll take it from here.” He got back on the phone, and continued speaking to the person on the other line knowledgeably, “Yes, there’re a few tests missing from a certain Parkman-comma-Daphne in Neurology. D-A-P-H-N-E. Yes, a CAT scan and an MRI. I see.” Peter held the phone to his should again. “They said… that Daphne checked herself out.”
“Dammit!” Matt exclaimed, “I knew I should have gone back sooner. I’m being blackmailed.” Calming down, he stated, “I’ll handle this. I’m the only one who gets to kidnap my own family.” He ran out, rejecting Molly’s cries for attention.
Peter turned to Molly. “Shouldn’t he have asked you to find them first?” He stared at Matt’s phone, still in his hands.
“We’ve been trying for years to get him to not jump into things without thinking them through. Mom says that’s her job.” Molly concentrates. “Uh-oh. He may be right. Something’s blocking my ability. I can find my mom or Daniella.”
They turned to Mohinder, who looked up from his microscope at the formula, still talking. “…a hydroxide on the anterior carbon chain is more common, but it might possibly be some sort of nitrogen-based ion. It all depends whether potassium or sodium is the catalyst for the glutamine codon…”
: : :
Charles and Angela
Manhattan, New York
1987
“You’re too kind, Charles,” Angela told her friend, “to let Peter come over and socialize with your daughter.”
“‘Socialize.’ You’re too much, Angie,” Charles laughed, “Peter’s welcome to play with my daughter anytime he likes. Carlos brings his boy around her all the time. Peter’s not got any playmates at home. It was a little cruel of you to put a twelve years between your boys.”
After a brief pause to let the elephant in the room pass by, Angela countered, “Yes, Nathan was too old to think of Peter as a playmate so much as something to protect. What about you, Charles? You know the cliché about only children.”
“Spoiled? I’m a millionaire, Angela; I already had my work cut out for me.”
“Well, one day, we’ll get together and write a nice parenting book.”
Charles laughed heartily again.
“Well, Charles,” Angela said, “I’ve got to go. I’ll be back soon to pick him up.”
In Charles’s daughter, Simone’s room, Peter stood shyly in the middle of the floor while Simone used a watercolors set to paint a landscape. Playing on a 13-inch TV sitting on top of her Barbie Dream House was The Joy of Painting.
“What’cha paintin’?” Peter finally asked.
“A happy tree,” Simone answered.
“It looks like a nuc’lar explosion.”
“It’s a happy tree,” Simone seethed, scowling at him. “Isaac paints good happy trees.”
Peter’s gut was filled with an unfamiliar discomfort that made him dislike Isaac rather suddenly, which was strange, because until then, he thought Isaac was an okay kid. He didn’t talk much. Peter was quiet, too, but he at least seemed to like people more than colored pencils.
Since Simone was content to paint blue exploding trees like the guy on TV whose hair was curlier than hers, Peter wandered back into living room, where Charles was resting in an easy chair. He looked over to Peter and smiled warmly, “Hey, Peter, what are you doing back in here? Is my Simone not playing nice?” He looked over at the clock. “Oh, it’s Joy of Painting time, isn’t it? She’ll be more social in about ten minutes.” He coughed heavily for almost a minute.
“Are you okay, Mr. Deveaux?”
“Why, yes, Dr. Petrelli, I am. I’m just getting a little old. My sinuses kill me every time the weather turns cold.”
Peter seemed confused by the metaphor and Charles had to laugh at that. “So, tell me, Peter, what kind of movies to do you like?”
“I like the Superman movies.”
“You and every other boy. What do you like about Superman? Is the flying?”
“The flying’s cool,” Peter admitted, looking out the window.
“I like how fast he is. I ‘member in one of the movies where he saved Lex Luthor’s girlfriend because her aunt was about to be hit by a nuc’lar bomb. He saved everybody; not just the good guys.”
“You like people, don’t you, Peter?”
“Well, why not?” Peter asked, a little confused by the question, “I mean, some people aren’t nice, but you can’t not help people because of it.”
“I used to be like that. So did your mom and dad. We thought we were gonna save the world. Protect everybody, even the dangerous people. Turns out we could be dangerous.”
“You’re not dangerous, Mr. Deveaux.”
“Peter, I may be a decent fellow, but for a long time I was pretty naïve and sometimes the most good-doing people make mistakes and it still hurts a lot of people. I can go anywhere I want in my mind and I can see the effects of my action.”
“I can anywhere in my mind, too,” Peter commented.
“Really?” Charles replied, a bit surprised.
“Like my teacher says, you can go anywhere you want if you use your imagination. And reading books does that, too.”
Charles chuckled, “You got yourself some smart teachers. God gave you both a heart and brain for a reason.”
At this point, right as the grandfather clock in the room chimed the half-hour, Simone came wondering into the living room. “Peter! Come play Barbies with me!”
“I wanna play Superman instead.”
Simone rolled her eyes, “Boys. I gotta Superman doll in my toy chest. He can save my Barbies.”
Peter ran in after her, noting that it was Superman action figure, not a doll.
: : :
Ryan, Bess, Elle, and Gabriel
Primatech Research Facility
Barstow, California
2011
“We could have tracked down a bag of Natural blood, you know,” Gabriel commented to his partner as they walked down the halls of Primatech.
Ryan looked on with admiration at the scars on the back of his hand. Grinning, he replied, “Synthetic’s cheaper. Plus, what’s the fun of a good fight if you don’t have the scars to prove it?” Turning to Elle’s tall partner, he added, “And thank you so much for tending to my wounds in the field.”
“You’re welcome,” Bess replied coolly, allowing her Russian accent to come through to emphasize her point. He continued to smile at her with interest, causing her to turn around and confront him. “Let me make one thing clear, Covington. Back there, we did not have a moment. We do not have chemistry. And there are no sparks between us.”
Suddenly, there were sparks between them. Literally, as Elle stuck her hand between them and activated her power.
In one efficient motion, Bess pulled a latex glove from her pocket and used it to twist Elle’s wrist and shove it away. “I’ve doused you for less,” Bess pointed out.
Yanking her arm away, Elle pouted. “Ow. Excuse me for thinking you two are cute.”
“You’re delusional,” Bess commented. “Clinically,” she added.
Elle made contact with her husband, shrugging with agreement. He mirrored her gesture and they grinned like lunatics at each other.
As they made their way to Angela’s office, a new face appeared from around the corner. Audrey Hanson made eye contact with the group and immediately drew a pistol and fired twice. Both shots hit Gabriel square on the shoulder.
Bess and Ryan drew their guns. Elle wasn’t so restrained; she fired a stream of electricity down the hall, throwing Audrey into the wall. Bess and Ryan ran down the hall, guns raised, toward her. Elle knelt by her husband. “Baby…”
“I’ll be fine,” he groaned. “Roll me over.”
Elle struggled with the task, but rolled Gabriel on his side, allowing the bullets to fall out of his shoulder.
“I’m gonna need you to pop my shoulder,” Gabriel commented, his voice still pained.
Frowning, Elle whined, “I hate doing that.” All the same, she grabbed his arm and shoved it back into joint.
“Twist! Twist!” Gabriel screamed, in more agony that before.
Elle twisted and Gabriel sighed with relief. “Barf,” she noted.
“I thought you liked pain.”
“Electricity’s a clean hurt. All this shoving around bones and blood is all… ick.”
Audrey woke up to two pistols in her face. She saw Sylar with a blonde-haired woman approaching. To the agents with guns, she explained, “That man is a serial killer named Sylar. I was just trying to…”
“Lady,” Bess interrupted, “we know who he is. I’d gladly give you my gun to shoot him a few more times, but I’m actually protecting you from Blondie McBugzapper and Johnny Boy Scout.”
“Hey,” Ryan proclaimed, “I… haven’t been a Boy Scout in over ten years. I stopped at First Class.”
Audrey, her head pounded, noted absurdly, “Should’ve held out till Eagle. It puts you on the fast track in the FBI. Armed services and NASA, too.” Seeing Sylar in perfect health, she asked, “How’s your shoulder okay? I saw those bullets hit you.”
“Little trick I picked up from that cheerleader in Odessa.”
“The one who’s brains you spattered across the locker room walls?”
“No, the other one, I caught up with my real target a few months later. She survived.”
Elle annoyed, brought up, “And, moral of the story, is he stopped killing people. For brains, at least. Now’s he a loyal agent of the Company.”
“Forgive me for not trusting the woman who electrocuted me into a wall.” To Bess, the apparently sane one, she asked, “Who Psychobitch? His girlfriend?”
“Wife.”
“Lovely couple. Sorry I missed the wedding. Did you serve hor d’brains?”
“That’s a terrible pun,” Elle noted to Gabriel.
Gabriel replied lightly, “I wish people would stop assuming I snacked on them. They probably taste like calamari and cabbage.”
“He hates calamari and cabbage,” Elle felt the need to explain.
“I’ll tell the BAU to add that to his profile,” Audrey commented sarcastically.
“So, what are you doing here?” Ryan asked, with obvious intent to change the subject.
Angela, coming around the cornered, answered, “Miss Hanson is our newest recruit. I see you’ve all met.”
“She shot Gabriel,” Elle tattled.
“She hasn’t been through orientation yet, Dear,” Angela replied, “Miss Hanson, first rule is, we don’t shoot my son.”
“Son?! What the hell?”
“Oh, yes, I guess his childhood adoption record would have been sealed. Now that all these silly misunderstandings have been resolved, I’ll excuse you for the day, Miss Hanson. See you bright and early tomorrow morning.” At that, Angela promptly left.
Bess and Ryan finally pulled their guns away, and Audrey got up with the help of Bess. She approached Gabriel and pressed her finger into his chest. Elle created a ball of lightning and held it up threateningly.
“Sylar, or Gabriel, or whatever you’re calling yourself, I want you to know that you’re still a killer and no amount of ‘redemption’ will ever absolve you of your sins.”
“I agree,” Gabriel replied seriously, “there’s more blood on my hands than I will ever be able to wash off. But, you’re going to have to learn very quickly, that the world needs my help right now a lot more than it needs for me to be punished for my crimes.” With this he walked away, Elle on his arm. Audrey curtly nodded and walked the other direction.
Bess, seeing Ryan preparing her ask her a question she didn’t want him to ask, walked away, too.
: : :
Arthur and Ando
Pinehearst Company
Fort Lee, New Jersey
2011
Ando Masahashi unceremoniously burst into Arthur’s office. He laid a piece of paper on his boss’s desk. Arthur, who was staring out the window, turned and looked at the paper. “This is very good, Mr. Masahashi, but it’s only half. Where’s the other part?”
“I don’t know. Hiro must have hidden it. He died when I took this from him. I killed him. I didn’t sign up for that. Consider this my resignation.”
Arthur, with an ominous tone of disappointment, replied, “Now, Mr. Masahashi, I think we both know that this is not an employment-at-will kind of position.”
Ando lit up his hands. “That’s too bad.”
“It is,” Arthur replied, walking around his desk and briskly taking a hold of Ando’s wrist. His hand burned, but began to heal instantly. Ando suddenly felt weak and began kneeling. Slowly, his hands began to dim and Arthur hands began to glow.
Ando screamed and lurched away, his right hand now a cauterized stump which he held to his chest and he writhed on the ground.
“Actually, Ando, I think I’ll be granting your retirement.” A quick flick of his wrist and Ando’s head was jerked abruptly to the side. He stopped writhing.
Flint, who was sitting on a comfortable chair across the room, walked forward. “Dude,” he commented, mildly impressed.
“Mr. Gordon, I have a task for you.”
“You wan’ me to track down the other half of this formula thingie you’re lookin’ for?”
“No, that’s much too delicate of a task for you. But I do need you to get rid off our recent retiree here.” He gestured toward Ando’s body.
Without another word, Flint created a massive flame and scorched Ando’s body until there was nothing left of him besides a large black circle. He looked up to Arthur for approval.
“I was hoping you would take him outside first so I wouldn’t need new carpet.” Flint looked downtrodden. Arthur added unaffectedly, “But I should have known to be more explicit with you.” Flint’s mind strained to figure out if he’d been insulted, but Arthur began talking before he could come to a conclusion. “I need you to welcome a guest I’m expecting.”
Flint grinned. “Just checkin’, do you mean my kinda welcome?”
“Yes, Mr. Gordon, your kind of welcome. He was recently fired.”
“And you want me to refire him?” Flint asked, grinning. Arthur did not. “Sorry ‘bout the joke.”
“No, it’s quite fine. Coming from you, it was quite clever.”
This put Flint back into good spirits and with a nod, he exited the office.
Arthur picked up the phone and dialed. “Miss Zimmerman, would you come in for a moment?”
A few moments later, Barbara sauntered in wearing a smoldering grin. “Mr. Petrelli, how might I be of service?” She added a suggestive raise of her eyebrows.
Arthur remained disaffected. “Hiro Nakamura would trust only one other person with the other half of the formula. I need you to track down Peter.”
“He doesn’t trust me,” she pointed out, not rejecting the offer.
“Luckily, you look like someone he trusts a little bit.”
Barbara removed her Pinehearst pin. “I’ll go put on my pearls. I never got a chance to thank you for them.”
Bordering on annoyed, Arthur replied, “They weren’t a gift. They were a business expense. You’ll need to purchase a pair of those gaudy sunglasses your sister seems to like, of course.”
“Got’cha, Tiger,” she answered, winking, before exiting the room.
: : :
Chapter 13 coming soon...
Director's Commentary: First of all, it was so tragic having to kill off Ando after just killing off Hiro (and possibly Kimiko). But I think it was a good send-off for the character. If Masi has some more free time, I may do a Hiro/Ando flashback to bring them together again.
I was quite honored to work with Richard Roundtree. He's such a talented actor; he does so much with so little.
It was fun starting of Clea's part with a bang. I hope she can stick around.
Written and Directed by Christopher VanDrey
Christine Rose … Angela Petrelli
Greg Grunberg … Matt Parkman
Sendhil Ramamurthy … Mohinder Suresh
Milo Ventimiglia … Peter Petrelli
Kristen Bell … Elle Gray
Zachary Quinto … Gabriel Gray
Ali Larter … Barbara Zimmerman
Robert Forster … Arthur Petrelli
Adiar Tishler … Molly Walker
James Kyson Lee … Ando Masahashi
Clea DuVall … Audrey Hanson
Olga Sosnovska … Bess Detskij
Chris Carmack … Ryan Covington
Blake Shields … Flint Gordon
Richard Roundtree … Charles Deveaux
Trenton Rogers … 7-Year-Old Peter Petrelli
Na’Kia Bell Smith … 8-Year-Old Simone Deveaux
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