just a little somethin-somethin :)
Tadashi was bursting with pride at his little brother. He had just presented his microbots at SFIT and Robert Callaghan had granted him acceptance to the campus. Tadashi remembered the feeling of joy that filled his heart when Robert had winked at him, crouched down to Hiro's level, and handed him the envelope. Hiro's eyes widened, he death gripped the envelope, and jumped up and down excitedly, hugging Tadashi around the neck. Tadashi could've melted on the spot. Finally! If he had known it would be this easy to wake Hiro up and show him the brighter things in life, he would've done it ages ago. He had underestimated Hiro; he was more mature than he thought. Nevertheless, he couldn't wait to tell the others. He couldn't wait to celebrate. He couldn't wait for school to start.
He just couldn't wait anymore.
Hiro was one step ahead of him, dragging him along to the front and to the group of friends conversing with the Hamada's aunt. They got the message when they each eyed the paper Hiro was fisting and they all cheered in triumph. He got in!
"Hiro, we're so proud!" Honey Lemon beamed at him. Fred, Wasabi, and Gogo nodded in approval from behind, grins on their faces.
"Congrats, little man."
"Awesome!"
"Way cool, dude."
"HIRO! You did it!" Cass screamed at him, engulfing him in one of her trademark bone-crushing hugs. He accepted it as quickly as it came, hyperventilating in pure excitement.
"Let's go to the cafe to celebrate!" Tadashi suggested. They all agreed, rushing out of the door and toward Cass's car. Halfway down the steps, Robert called Hiro from the showcase doors.
"Hiro?"
Hiro hummed and turned on a dime, tilting his head at the professor.
"You left part of your invention on the stage. It's required that you take our equipment home, you know. After all, you must have worked so hard on it."
"Right! Sorry, sir," Hiro said nervously, skipping back up the steps. Tadashi shrugged but grinned, jogging to catch up with his friends. When he did catch up, he turned back just in time to see Callaghan shutting the door behind Hiro, a strange look on his face. He didn't know what it was about said expression, but it chilled him to his core for an odd reason. Something about it didn't set right with Tadashi. Was something bothering Robert so much that he felt uncomfortable around Tadashi's little brother?
"Hey, guys. Let's wait for Hiro."
The group hadn't heard him, continuing to walk and laugh amid conversation. Tadashi rolled his eyes.
"Guys-"
RING RING
Tadashi jumped at the loud alarm, turning around again and stumbling back at what he saw.
The windows of the showcase glowed orange, and it didn't take a genius to tell that the building was on fire. People rushed down the steps, classmates and teachers of his, screaming in horror and wrenching to get away from the heat. Something clicked inside of Tadashi, and he found himself running as fast as his legs could carry him towards the burning building. His friends screamed after him, but he paid no mind.
An older woman stumbled to her knees, coughing horrendously. Tadashi rushed to her aide, though more to ask a very important question.
"What the hell is going on?"
"I-I don't know!" the woman cried. "It was so sudden. It all just happened so fast!"
"Are the people still in there? A young boy with black hair and a blue jacket?"
"Yes," the woman croaked, and the simple response was enough to send Tadashi flying towards the steps of the building.
"DUDE!"
Tadashi was suddenly being dragged back down the stairs by none other than Wasabi and his strong arms. Tadashi fought back as much as he could, but it was no use. He was on the ground now, Wasabi crouching down in concern and grabbing Tadashi by the shoulders.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"What?! HIRO IS STILL IN THERE, WASABI!" Tadashi roared at the man struggling to rise to his feet.
"Seriously?!" Wasabi choked out. "I-"
"GET AWAY FROM ME!"
Tadashi and Wasabi's heads snapped up at the familiar voice coming from the building. Hiro was fighting to get a man coated in black to get off of him, stuck between the door and its frame. He finally threw the man off, falling to his side and crawling to get to the stone steps leading downstairs.
"Hiro!" Tadashi screamed, jumping to the steps. Hiro's head snapped up and relief crossed his features as he continued struggling down the steps.
Only for the man in black to rise from the ground and grab Hiro by the ankle, dragging him back through the doors of the furnace of a building.
"No, no, no, no, no!" Hiro shouted at the man, kicking at him in vain to get free. "Help me! Please! Oh god, no! HELP ME! SOMEBODY!"
Tadashi was now paralyzed with shock, a horrific thought crossing his mind.
Your teen brother is getting murdered right before your eyes.
"HEY!" Tadashi yelled at the man as he dragged Hiro back into the fire with ease. Hiro noticed Tadashi dashing up the steps and cried for him not to. What good would it do if they were both dead?
"NO, Tadashi, stop it!" Hiro shouted, regretting crying so desperately for help. Hiro kicked harder and harder, but it was no use. They were back inside of the building. Dead in the center of it. The man in the coat tackled Hiro and began punching him harder and harder. Hiro coughed and choked through each punch, eyeing what was left of the front entrance and sighing in relief seeing that Tadashi was no longer there. He was probably safe on the ground.
Hiro looked around desperately as he was suddenly hauled over the man's shoulders. The man wore Hiro's neurotransmitter, and thousands of microbots were crawling up the man's leg, lifting him higher and higher. Hiro gasped when he realized how high they were. His vision became foggier and foggier through the smoke and the blazing heat. His heart thumped louder and louder as he noticed two or three dead corpses on the ground below.
Think, he thought, before you end up just like them.
Hiro's head darted to the nearing ceiling, eyes widening and a smile crossing his face as he noticed a chandelier hanging and swinging just above his head. The man began to command the microbots to sink lower and lower and toward the back entrance. Hiro panicked, jumping from the man's shoulders to the large chandelier and swinging from it. The man cursed at him, too taken aback to act right away. Hiro cheered in a victory when he also noticed an escape door right next to the ceiling.
Why it was so high, he would never know, but he chose not to question it; it was there and it was perfect.
Hiro lifted his legs and kicked the emergency door wide open, crawling through it and collapsing on the roof of the building. The roof was extremely warm from the fire below, but he didn't care. He needed to breathe.
"PLEASE!" he heard voices from below. Likely Tadashi's. "Please let go! Hiro is in there! I have to save my brother!"
"Sir, the building is unstable!" another voice boomed. "It could collapse at any second!"
"More reason to HELP HIM!" Tadashi roared, and Hiro didn't think he had ever heard him get so angry. With that thought in mind, he knew he had to get down somehow and reassure Tadashi that he was alright despite the smoke in his lungs and his punch wounds.
Who the hell was that guy, anyway?
Hiro groaned, walking toward the fire escape stairs conveniently attached to the side of the building. He jogged down as fast as his exhausted legs could carry him, running past the side of the building and sighing in relief at the sight before him near the front, but it broke his heart all the same.
Tadashi was screaming at the firemen and police officers holding him back from the stairs. Cass was sitting in an ambulance with red, puffy eyes. Tadashi's friends were comforting her. Tadashi's eyes were glossy and his voice was beginning to crack.
He needed to get out there.
So, without a thought, Hiro rounded the corner, stumbling all the way.
"Tadashi!"
Tadashi jumped at the call of his name, wide eyes landing on Hiro and gasping in pure relief.
"Hiro!"
Before they could run to each other, however, the building was exploding, sending both brothers flying different directions.
White.
White, fuzzy, hot.
Pain.
Heat.
Ringing.
Hazed.
Sting.
Hiro.
Tadashi slowly came to, squinting his eyes. The sound was excruciatingly loud, and the light was so, so hot. Too hot for his body to handle.
Where was he?
He sat up slowly, taking everything in. He was lying on the concrete facing the Exhibit Hall, only there was a hardly an Exhibit Hall to face anymore. It was near completely burnt to ashes, flames roaring and dancing in the night breeze. Tadashi gaped in terror, memories flooding back and suddenly there was only one thing he cared about finding. One person, rather.
Hiro.
"HIRO!" Tadashi screamed, coughing viciously and rising to his feet. "Hiro! Where are you?!"
Tadashi scanned the entire scene frantically until his eyes rested on a small figure lying several feet away from the building. Off to the side was his little brother, right underneath a large oak tree, completely deflated. Tadashi raced to his side, trying to fight tears away. He skidded to a stop, kneeling beside Hiro and taking him in his lap. He cradled his head and pulled his legs over his arm.
"Hiro?"
Hiro didn't even flinch.
"Hiro."
Tadashi shook him this time. Still, nothing.
Tadashi was officially panicking.
He took in his brother's state. Both of his eyes were black, and his cheeks were littered with gashes. He grimaced as anger flooded through his veins and he vowed that the day he met the mysterious man in black, he would ruin him like he ruined Hiro. After this, he knew things would never be the same.
Hiro coughed violently, wrenching himself up. His eyes flew wide open and he rolled out of Tadashi's lap. Tadashi stiffened, watching Hiro closely as he struggled to regain himself. His cough sounded horrible, and he was clearly clutching at his chest in pain with each choke. Tadashi's eyes stung again, and he patted Hiro's back soothingly.
Hiro jumped at the motion, looking at Tadashi with wide, bruised eyes.
"Tadashi," Hiro mumbled hoarsely.
"Are you okay?" Tadashi asked immediately.
"I-that man," Hiro said quietly. "He wouldn't stop. And then I was on the roof. And..."
"What? The roof? What the hell happened in there?"
"Don't make me say," Hiro begged. "He wouldn't stop hitting and hitting. Over and over..."
Tadashi felt his heart completely shatter at how broken he sounded. He had been right; things would never be the same for Hiro after this. But Tadashi would do anything in his power to return him to that state of normal.
"Hiro, you're very injured," Tadashi said. "We need to get you some medical attention, okay?"
Hiro nodded slowly, standing up with the help of the tree support. He stumbled immediately and tripped on his bruised ankle, and before Tadashi could rush to catch him, an EMT was scooping him up and running off with him toward the nearest ambulance. Tadashi jumped up, running off after the man to meet a teary-eyed Cass.
They need you now, he thought.
The man slammed his fist on the table in rage, kicking at nearby equipment and punching the windows. He couldn't do this without the boy, and his boss would never forgive him for not getting the boy to him. All that really mattered to the man was getting the bots, but the main point of the mission itself was to take the boy. To rip him from his family and help with the mission. To be manipulated into working at the risk of his family, even though they would end up killing him when they were finished with him anyways.
The man groaned, going to the phone and dialing a number. This was not going to be a fun phone call, but he had to make it.
"What do you want?" the receiving voice growled.
"I couldn't get him," the man said flatly. "Hiro, he got away. Jumped on the roof, no doubt didn't survive the explosion. He's dead, sir."
"But that's just the thing, Robert. It's all over the news. You are. Not only did you recklessly destroy a building on a college campus, but you let the kid get away ALIVE and now we'll never get him because he'll be under close watch by his family! We can't exactly just crash into their house too, you idiot!"
The phone call ended as quickly as it began, and Robert threw it on the wall, watching plainly as it shattered to the ground.
Watch me, he thought. Watch me take him away.
One year later
Hiro was running down the school hallway, a grin on his face. The fifteen-year-old was about to return to Tadashi a missing piece to his invention that he had been looking for forever, and he, Hiro, had found it under Tadashi's bed!
Hiro turned the corner into Tadashi's lab, holding the piece high in the air and bowing with a smirk. Tadashi gaped at him, a large grin plastering his face.
"You found it!" Tadashi cheered, snatching it out of Hiro's hands and wrapping Hiro into a warm hug. Hiro melted into it, fisting Tadashi's sweater in his bony hands. Tadashi suddenly yanked out of the hug and his eyes widened in horror.
"Wait a minute. Did you come here all alone?"
Hiro shrank into his shoulders, shuffling his feet.
"Maybe," he mumbled.
"Hiro! You know you're not allowed to walk around alone, you idiot!"
"I wish you weren't so paranoid," Hiro groaned. "What happened was a long time, can we maybe all just forget about it?"
"I don't know, Hiro, because you still won't even tell us what happened to you," Tadashi said with a sigh. "It was terrifying for all of us, and the fact that we still don't know why you were so hurt is even scarier. So no. We can't let it go. Not until that main is caught and we know for sure that you're safe."
"But that was a year ago!" Hiro argued. "That guy probably forgot about me already."
"Oh yeah, that man that started a fire, killed Professor Callaghan, and dragged you into a fiery abyss just because he needed you for something has definitely forgotten about you already, after all this time. That's it."
Hiro rolled his eyes. Ever since the horror with the fire, Hiro had needed a lot of medical help, and Tadashi was always glued to his side, if not him one of his friends. He was never forgotten about or left behind these days. Someone was always worrying about him, and he was grateful but frustrated.
Still, though, he was never going to tell them about how terrifying that had been for him. He hated appearing weak, and he knew that if Tadashi found out just how hard and brutal the masked man had been with him, he would be heartbroken and even out for blood.
"Anyway, I have to get to class," Hiro said, adjusting the strap of his purple backpack. He was currently wearing a baggy red t-shirt. He also wore black jeans and blue converse. He even wore Tadashi's hat. Tadashi chuckled, patting Hiro's head.
"And it's right down the hall, right?" he asked suspiciously.
"Y-yep," Hiro gulped. "Right down the hall."
"Okay. Be safe, knucklehead."
Hiro let out a breath he wasn't aware he had been holding the minute he left his brother's office. His class wasn't right around the hall, but he could do without the prying from Tadashi the entire walk to class. So, he walked through the three halls to his class with a smile on his face, enjoying the freedom.
One walk to class alone was no harm, right?
Wrong.
The sound of clanking metal filled the empty hallway Hiro was standing in, shaking the yellow lockers up and down the never-ending hallway. Hiro shivered in fear at the all-too-familiar sound, turning on a dime toward it.
His heart stopped beating.
The masked man was standing on the other end of the hallway, slithering toward him viciously. Hiro yelped, abandoning his bag and sprinting the remaining mile down the hallway. He had nothing on the masked man, however, and the found his waist behind swallowed by microbots before being hoisted into the air and then thrown to the ground again. He choked and cried out in agony, gasping when he heard the man chuckle.
"You belong to me now, Hiro."
"NO!" Hiro cried, prying the microbots off and running for Tadashi's office. "Tada-!"
The man wrapped a snake of microbots around Hiro's ankle, yanking him to the ground and dragging him. The power was suddenly out, leaving nothing but the light of the windows from four hallways down.
It was hardly a light at all.
Hiro tried screaming, but he couldn't. tried fighting back, but failed. Tried many things, but found himself useless. The lights above began flickering slightly, and when they did, Hiro realized that the man was lifting him off the ground to be thrown into the lockers. Something that he knew would be even more painful than anything the man had done to him thus far.
No, no, no, no, no! Please don't do this! Oh, god! Somebody help me! Help! ANYBODY!"
BANG
Once into the locker, and Hiro felt something inside of him crack.
BANG
Twice into the locker, and Hiro felt his spine do something unnatural.
BANG
Three times into the locker and Hiro's head made hard contact this time. Hiro toppled to the ground, looking up at the large dent now in the lockers smeared with blood.
"Tadashi," he said sadly, slowly crawling with what the had left.
"Tadashi."
Clank, went the metal of the microbots, wrapping around Hiro.
"TADASHI!"
Tadashi had taken a break from his invention, smiling at it pridefully and taking a large swig of iced coffee. He had been so concentrated that he hadn't even noticed his friends had all arrived in their own labs. He smiled at them, earning excited waves back.
Today was going to be a good day, for some reason, and he just couldn't fight the feeling.
A sudden loud bang from far away caught his attention, along with his friends'. He turned to the door in confusion, cracking it open. He looked across the hallway to where Hiro's class was.
Empty.
Tadashi now officially felt uncomfortable, but maybe Hiro's class had gone to the library today and that sound was no doubt just another failed experiment.
Before he could shut the door, however, he heard shouts. Muffled and far away, but shouts nonetheless.
"No! -O, stop! -God, some- help! -help me!"
Even Tadashi's friends had faces laced with concern. Other classmates and one of the professors also crowded by the door, listening to the conflict from far away.
"There's someone out there in trouble," Tadashi muttered in shock.
"-shi! Ta-!"
Tadashi hardly heard that shout, but he decided that there was probably already somebody helping the poor kid down there. So, he turned along with everyone else and back to his lab.
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
"What was that?!" Honey Lemon cried. Tadashi jogged back to the door and listened closer.
"Ta-! -shi!"
Wait a minute...
"TADASHI!"
Tadashi was suddenly wrenching the door open and sprinting with all his might toward the sound. He turned a corner of never ending darkness and yellow lockers to see the masked man surrounded by microbots and staring at a crumple on the floor.
"HEY!" Tadashi roared. He still didn't see Hiro, but he recognized this man anywhere.
The masked man, completely shocked, grabbed the heap and slammed it into the locker, slithering away from the heap on the ground and out of the school. Tadashi sprinted toward the mysterious object.
When he reached it, he was terrified to find that it hadn't been a thing. It had been a person.
His baby brother.
"HIRO!"
Tadashi reached over and cradled Hiro in his arms. His whole body was broken, and he had tear stains running down his face. He was covered in blood. As were the lockers, Tadashi realized, and Tadashi found himself rushing to his feet, his brother still in his arms as he rushed out of the hallways and toward an adult.
"PLEASE HELP!" Tadashi cried. "Help my brother! PLEASE!"
People were immediately all over him, calling 911 and Hiro was rushed to a hospital no less than ten minutes later.
Tadashi had gone with him, blood staining his clothes but desperate for answers and comfort from Hiro.
One thing the man knew for sure; he would never forgive himself for hearing the bangs and the cries from the other side of the door that day...
...and simply walking away.
I know this is simple and crappy but i'm bored and I don't wanna study for finals so it's a THING NOW DAMMIT