Heroes: Hero Fight

Happy Halloween! Before we start, a note on nicknames. We now know that Possible D.L. and Actual D.L. are not the same (thanks, sagejenn!), which means that the erstwhile Possible D.L. needs a new nickname. If you're a TWoP reader, you know that they call him Deep Cleaner over there, but I think I'll go with Blank Slate, because a) if he's not D.L., then we know nothing about him, and b) it's what he does. But he doesn't show up this week, so it's a cow's opinion anyway.

On to the heroics!

Hiro/Ando: They hear the message from the future, but the only bit that really makes an impression on Hiro is the sword. He's way into the katana, so I guess we know where that will come from. Anyway, the Rich Texan they cheated shows up again and forces them into a game to pay back what they owe. When Ando catches sight of a gun aimed at him, he flees with Hiro to the bathroom, and there the guys listen as Niki brutally murders the Rich Texan and his pals. Hiro's upset that he couldn't save them, but Ando bucks up the little camper by telling him he can come back and do a do-over when his powers get stronger. Yeah, but if Hiro starts bouncing all around the timeline, he's going to seriously mess up the mythology. Which may be what the writers want; if the fans really hate some plot point, the writers can have Hiro go back and make sure it never happened. Can they start with last week's Matt story?

Claire: Glasses Man wangles a meeting with her bio-rents, and Claire is disappointed to discover that they're not super. But they're also not her bio-rents, because Glasses Man hired them to get her to shut up about her real bio-rents! Mama Claire lets it slip that they tried looking for the bio-rents before, with no success, when Claire was a baby and they thought she had some chromosomal disease. The seeds of distrust have been sown. Also the seeds of love, because Claire and Zach flirt cutely. I do like Claire; I think she has the best balance between normal life and abnormal superhero life, so I always enjoy her scenes. Good thing they're going to save her, because if it was Peter, I really wouldn't care.

Niki/D.L.: D.L. tells us a story about how he was set up and sent off to prison by some mysterious woman (Niki), and that he's going to get the name (Niki) from some friends of his (the poker guys) and clear his name (except that Niki brutally kills them). Niki's mirror pal comes out of the mirror, admits to everything we already knew she did, and tells Niki proper to take the money she stole and run with Micah before D.L. finds out what she did. But Micah tells her secret, and so it's a full-on hero fight between D.L. and Evil Niki, ended only when D.L., with his Shadowcat powers, reaches up through her torso and chokes her. You'll notice that Micah is Niki's trigger – whenever anyone threatens to harm him or take him away, that's when Evil Niki takes over. And while I do find that a realistic (ahem) idea for a single mother, I wonder how long they can keep doing that sort of thing.

The Baddies: Props to all of you who figured that Mohinder's pixie-cut neighbor, "Eden," was in the League of Evil, because she totally is. After sending Mohinder off to India with quite a bit of her saliva, she gives Glasses Man a status report, including the whole "save the cheerleader" message. Glasses Man is thrown by this, but recovers enough to tell her to take Isaac out. I still can't figure out what his endgame is, and whether or not Claire has anything to do with it. Is he trying to keep her out of everything or is she just another experiment? Oh, Glasses Man, you are so bad. But you need a better lieutenant than "Eden." She's the Diet Coke of evil.