because I can't get the idea of Abigail joining the team and having a student-TA friendship with Hiro out of my head

this is Jazz Elective's sequel and connected to Five Alarm Death March, so read those two first please

disclaimer: I don't own the copyrighted material within; the title and opening lyrics is from "NRG" by Duck Sauce and I don't own that either.

NRG, between you and me / it's a body shock, electricity

Abigail looks up at the auditorium, fingers drumming on her new messenger bag and her shoes catching the sunlight and wow, this is harder than she'd thought.

She never really left SFIT in order to pilot for Silent Sparrow, so her graduate student standing is still valid and therefore she can TA in the Aerial Robotics course for Prof. Roe and Calculus for Engineers for Prof. Sullivan. She prefers the first's academic course load but Prof. Sullivan is a half-drunken, half-inspirational riot and really, she can't avoid the auditorium forever.

However, due to her absence caused by being trapped in another dimension, she's late to the game and all of her prospective students are already covered and not jumping to the idea of being TA'd by Robert Callaghan's daughter. In fact, the only student in her two classes that she can TA for is also behind in the term, and Abigail wonders what Hiro will think of her.

Abigail sees a few freshmen whisper behind their hands like stereotypical shoujo and really, does she stink of fire and multidimensional ozone? Is it that obvious that her father killed Tadashi just a few meters away? She takes a drag on her e-cigarette and chokes on the vapor. Oh wow, she really can't do this, it's too soon—

"Abigail?"

She turns to see Honey Lemon adjusting her cute new sailor collar sweater, and Abigail smiles, "Hello, Mariluz."

Honey giggles and hugs her, her headphones blaring metal JPop into Abigail's hair, "Please, Mariluz is what my parents call me; roll call isn't supposed to be a formal affair."

Abigail grins wider, "I dunno, Tadashi did mention last year that Prof. Akiyama insisted on referring to her students by their full names." Abigail bites her lip against the recoil of hot defense at the idea of Prof. Akiyama speaking her full name with derision. At least SFIT's Chancellor had been discreet about his distaste of their fallen idol, he didn't outright blame her for last month's destruction like the tabloids did. Abigail swallows more vapor and teases, "Isn't this class a bit outside of your major requirements, Maria Lucia Camila Victoria Hernandez Fellner-san?"

Honey snorts and tugs on her earphones, "Don't say that around Freddy, he'll get an aneurysm. And no, I'm just leading Hiro here from around the Hub, the path is a bit out of the way due to the new construction."

Hiro, Hiro is here and Abigail finally sees the mop of black hair half hidden by Honey's bubble skirts. In the portal, Abigail was neither here nor there in hypersleep—everything was cold, and comfortable, and technicolor, and invisible, and he was there with tear drops freezing on her pod's windshield and Tadashi's eyes. Abigail puts her e-cig away and holds out her hand, "Hi Hiro, it's nice to meet you."

He takes her hand and it's fragile despite the growing size. Hiro mumbles a shy introduction and Tadashi was never this quiet, Abigail raises her eyes at Honey so Honey can get along in fixing that. Hiro spots her mass of syllabi in her messenger bag and asks, "Wait, are you TA'ing anyone next to me?"

"Nope," Abigail pops the word around her lips like a sonic boom, "But Gigi Nguyen forgot her Aerial Robots syllabi and I promised to bring them to her. Hmm, I think you'll enjoy that class," Abigail remembers Hiro flying her into safety and the footage of him and the red robot flying her father to incarceration, and she hopes he'll make a good pupil. "My major is around pilot-y stuff, like aerodynamics and how to keep people alive in so many Gs, but these past few weeks..." He understands that it's a Thing and Abigail shrugs, "Gotta get back on track. Speaking of which, we need to meet Prof. Sullivan before class so we can get our remedial assignments, so you good?"

He nods, half clinging to Honey and hands doing the fidgeting thing that reporters do when they don't want to bring up the fact that Robert Callaghan might be facing the death penalty for his crimes. Abigail brushes hair out of her face and grins, "Prepare yourself, I saw Prof. Sullivan with a bottle of Everclear this morning; class is going to be fun today."

She gets him to smile, ever so briefly, and they walk into the building together and hey, that wasn't so hard.

"But I just—don't his bosses know that he tried to get everyone to sing this chapter's formulas to 'Mary Had A Little Lamb', and that if you didn't you were dropped from the class?"

"He's been doing that for the last five years, and got the humanities department to agree with him."

"But what about him throwing an empty bottle at that one TA's head because of 'domains'?"

"That was Huang, SFIT's resident ultra teetotaler; I think that was Prof. Sullivan's way of saying that he didn't quite agree with his lifestyle."

"What?!"

"Tenure will do that for ya."

Hiro laughs and it's nice and loud through the throat, a good belly laugh that Abigail hasn't belted out in quite a while. Hiro doesn't laugh too much though, mostly snickers and half shrugs and nervous smiles because he's a fourteen year old boy genius who people expect to be Tadashi 2.0. As such, Abigail figures that he deserves to know about Nene Wakahisa's underground candy bar on the edge of campus. It's a good place for her to hold an impromptu TA appointment, since her office is still filled with boxes and their schedules are tied together.

Abigail likes Nene; the former bot fighter is laid back, she sells candy flavored cartridges, and she doesn't ask questions. And Hiro does too, especially when Nene whips him up a monster of a gummy bear sundae covered in anko sauce, espresso and what Abigail swears is an element in hot wing sauce. The portal messed up her nose though, so she's not the best judge in either smell or taste. Abigail refills her e-cig cartridge with hanami dango flavored menthol and drawls over the EDM thumping in the floor speakers, "You like Nene's?"

"Best sundae ever," Hiro declares between mouthfuls of goop. He a little careless with his spoon, but he doesn't drip on the papers she spreads on the counter, and Abigail knows that obviously he's Tadashi's genius little brother that Tadashi always managed to sneak mentions of into their past study sessions, but wow; she curses Krei for seducing her with cash when she could've been already teaching Hiro.

The hour is pleasant. He's still quiet, not quite a shrinking violet but maybe a sunflower in eclipse, and Abigail can feel her forward personality grate in the fixed air. Definitely not the easy relationship she had with Tadashi, or even the relationship-by-association she has with Honey...but it's something, and she outlines how her own assignments derive from Prof. Sullivan's remedial work, and that spoilers, there's going to be a pop exam next week.

Hiro somehow gets Abigail to go off on a tangent about why her front teeth are so nice compared to her still admittedly nice bottom row, and they share a mutual hatred of Yama. "Trust me, I prolly deserved getting my face knocked in by trying to con him so bad, but I gave as good as I got: there's no way one man can be born so ugly without my foot's divine intervention."

He laughs a belly laugh and she feels one rise from a gut still in hypersleep. He pauses to catch a breath, but then his voice softens so much that it's just a wisp of technicolor smoke blurring past Abigail's ears, "Did Tadashi..." his thought changes directions, "umm, ever come here?"

Abigail draws a portal on a discarded course syllabus, "He preferred savory food I think, he had a thing about chicken udon like I do, but Nene's pizza cupcakes were a favorite of his."

Hiro nods to himself, eyes lost and three universes away. Abigail lets the silence stretch, twirling her e-cig between her fingers and dreading the upcoming term. She startles a bit when he declares, "You shouldn't smoke."

"No worries," she shows him the cartridge, "it's nicotine-free. I even had a chem engineer make sure the only thing I'm breathing in is water vapor." Water vapor yes, smoke no; she can pretend it's smoke, taste fire and ash and ozone ice wearing a hole against her teeth implants. Hiro takes the e-cig and she knows he can appreciate the aesthetics, the year 3000 imprinted against her lips. "But maybe you shouldn't try it," she grins, "don't wanna get you grounded like how Ms. Hamada grounded Tadashi for trying to drink me under the table."

"That was your fault?" Hiro narrows his eyes, before leaning in, "So whatever happened to his pants? He came home in flower print leggings and never said why."

"That, Mr. Hiro, is a question for another appointment," Abigail gets up and pokes his forehead, "You have World History with Prof. Squires soon, and she does not tolerate lateness."

Hiro gasps at the time and runs out of there, promising to read ahead in their Calculus assignments like Abigail suggested. Nene comes to clean the counter and she asks, "Why do you know about his course schedule, Callaghan?"

Abigail sticks out her tongue, "Getting nosy there, Wakahisa." Nene shrugs and continues on her way, and Abigail gathers herself for fellow graduate students that won't be nearly on Hiro's level, not by brain nor by personality nor by a lifestyle that Abigail is bound to by a dead robot and tears frozen on a transportation pod.

Abigail sees Hiro throughout the week, in between her own graduate glasses, convincing the board of trustees that no she had nothing to do with her father's attack two weeks ago because she'd still been in the portal back then, and making cup noodles in her silent apartment. Her jazz elective class helps her get some of that energy out, although she'll never be a musician.

Between low key monitoring Hiro for the best time to remind him that hey, she knows his secret identity and wants to help, she notices who he associates with. He hangs out mostly with Tadashi's old friends; Abigail is friendly with Honey because everyone is, and Tadashi brought her up the most in their old sessions, but she doesn't really know the other beyond their reputations. Yerin Cho once ramped her bike across the Hub's rooftops two years ago, Andre Newman screamed like a tiny schoolgirl when he found his lab partner going at it with his two girlfriends on top of Andre's equipment, and Fred...does Fred even go here?

Those three are with Hiro when Abigail comes and tapes a paper to his hair, "Congrats, somehow you got a 98% on your pop exam. Prof. Sullivan is already planning to use you to shame the other students, since we're remedial and they should've wiped the floor with you."

Hiro blushes and one of his friends, a smoking hot Korean girl with perfect radish calves that makes Abigail wish she were still an undergrad, smirks, "Seems like you're doing just fine in nerd school."

Hiro laughs that embarrassed inside joke laugh that feels as good as it burns your cheeks, and his other friends rib him for a while. Hot Korean Girl—that must be Yerin Cho—nods at Abigail, "I'm Gogo; please make sure Hiro doesn't get depressed from never getting to sleep from Prof. Roe's course load."

That name strikes an odd chord in Abigail's stomach, and she imagines Gogo in hot rod yellow. Oh, oh, how very nice. Hiro introduces Wasabi/Andre and Fred and ah, Fred's the school mascot. Abigail smiles at them all, "I assure you that the floggings will continue until morale improves."

Gogo laughs and Hiro is flustered and Abigail wishes that she were their age and their school year so that she didn't have to be alone with a bad legacy hanging over her resume and the board of regents watching her steps. She taps her foot staccato against the sidewalk until that sad longing goes away and rummages in her bag, "Oh, I have that paper you were looking for, Hiro. Prof. Roe did some thesis work for it, so she let me print it out for free."

She hands him a paper that to the untrained eye is just for the physics of moving very heavy robots very quickly, and to them they know it means that robot that saved Hiro and Abigail from the portal. It was round and white and wasn't Tadashi working on something like that last year? Hiro takes the paper and his smile is shy but sunny, "Thank you, Abigail."

Abigail wonders if she should let him call her Abby, but decides against it; that's her father's name for her, and it's too raw. "No problem," she pokes his forehead as she heads out to tackle the mountain of boxes in her office, "just be sure to put it to good use. And swing by my office sometime so we can work on getting a 100% next time."

In her office she finds the notebooks she scribbled on with Tadashi. She opens a random page and clasps a hand over her eyes to stop sudden tears because it's too raw, Tadashi is dead and he was her student and her friend and it's only been two weeks since she's lost so many more in the portal, what madness her life is now. Before she puts it away though, she catches the design of the dead robot, and Tadashi's neat katakana spells Baymax.

Baymax, that's a good name as any for the savior of her life, shame she never got to speak it to him (him, right? Or is it just it? They? Tadashi would've known) personally. She vapes on the balcony and doesn't think about her father's pending court sentencing.

Hiro is brilliant. Abigail already knows this, since without him her father would've continued on to destroy half of San Fransokyo in revenge for her not-death. And Tadashi knew this, he would rave to her about his genius little brother who graduated high school at 13 and want about how Hiro was getting into bot fighting because that's very illegal don'cha know, like Abigail didn't already get that lesson sucker punched into her incisors. Hiro's work is always turned in first and it was always the most correct, Abigail lords Hiro over her fellow TAs like nya nya nya I have the kiddie genius and you have Adderal-addicted burn outs.

But then she catches him working in Tadashi's old lab, and she feels her breath being sucked away by her pod's windshield failing to the brief vacuum within the portal. He's rebuilding Baymax, the endoskeleton crafted by a child's hands to shame adult masterpieces, and she watches bold determination swaying new dimensions bleeds in with fragile hope less substantial than technicolor plumes on his face.

He's fourteen and he's going to save the world and break his heart trying; Abigail understands why Tadashi loves his brother more than life itself. She makes her move, "Do your friends know that you're rebuilding Baymax?"

Hiro shrieks and Abigail's steps were still staccato jazz against the hard flooring, he must've been enraptured to his project. She giggles and he stutters, "H-Hi Abigail! Oh, yes, umm, well Tadashi wouldn't have wanted Baymax to go to waste, a-and I have the chip—"

The chip is tiny and green in the computer port, and Abigail's breath hitches when she sees Tadashi's handwriting and smiley face. Damn it all, if she still hurts then how must Hiro feel? She comes closer and appraises the endoskeleton, before grinning at Hiro, "Tell me, was he originally designed to fly through multidimensional portals to save poor pilots in distress?"

Hiro doesn't try to lie, only half-smiling, "We couldn't just leave you in there."

Abigail reaches out to touch what will become Baymax and it's cold. "When I went through the portal," she shivers, "the shock messed up my pod, and then the portal destabilized and made it worse. The windshield was compromised—just a crack, but that was all it needed for my life support to declare an emergency and send me into hypersleep. I caught some of the outside air though; it was so...cold."

Hiro rubs his arms, "I barely noticed, I was distracted by all the colors and the pieces of buildings and trying to find you."

Abigail turns towards the red metal fist on a counter top, "I remember you and Baymax. You peered through the windshield, and then you were crying." She blinks, "Can I ask why?"

He is silent. Abigail wants to cut out her inconsiderate tongue, and almost falters in her mission purpose to bail out of there until she hears him whisper, "I lost Tadashi. I didn't want to lose him too."

Abigail turns to him and sees the tears building up on his lashes; Tadashi did say that he was a sensitive boy, and it both breaks and mends her heart. "Well, you didn't," she motions towards the endoskeleton, "You're incredible Hiro," she doesn't miss how he wipes his eyes at that, "and you're going to bring him back. And if you want," she tilts her head as she serves him papers to a possible future, "I can help. It's the least I can do, for the man who saved my life and San Fransokyo."

Hiro smiles, fragility hardening back into determination. "Are you busy this weekend?"

Abigail half shrugs, "I'm a grad student and a TA and the tabloid's darling, I'm always busy." Then she grins, "We'll just have to meet up at my jazz class Saturday morning; you're a nerdy science superhero, it'll give you nice background music to save the world with."

The jazz elective class is designed for stressed out science majors who need some color back in their schedules before they lose it and start setting buildings on fire. SF State and SFIT partnered with SFST's music program to host Saturday morning jazz rehearsals in the auditorium, and auditing students get to write pretend science about music correlating with their majors for an easy A.

Hiro tags along with her and brings his notebooks, and Abigail sits next to him while they listen and plan Baymax 2.5. She watches his bunched up shoulders gradually relax over the course of the hour, caffeine stimulated handwriting flowing smoother on the pages. Abigail tilts her head back and lets a chorus of saxophones wash over her head like ozone, and her mother used to listen to electroswing back when she still cared enough to make their visitations.

She wonders if her mother is listening to the news and seeing her old family fall into so much shame, then decides that Hiro's designs need some guidance and this is the only way Abigail can apply herself in a new world order.

The hour ends and they're both relaxed and covered in ink. Abigail giggles, licks her thumb and tries to wipe a smudge from Hiro's cheek, but just makes it worse and his laughter is strained with a memory she has no part in. But the awkwardness passes and they head to Hiro's house, Cass Hamada greeting Abigail like a friendly third cousin."Do you two need any study snacks, coffee for you Abigail?"

"Taiyaki!" Cass doesn't want to load up her nephew with so much sugar and he begs with the tiny voice of a kawaiiko, "Onegaaaaiiiii?"

Cass laughs because Hiro can be adorable when he tries, and the two head into Hiro's room with enough cakes and soda to fuel SFIT's robotics department. Abigail lingers by Tadashi's closed off half, remembering how she helped drag his giggling drunken butt up the stairs and throw him onto the bed while Hiro recorded the whole thing. It's not as dusty as she'd imagined, and Abigail wonders where she can buy some incense for the little shrine setup on Tadashi's drawer.

"Abigail?" Hiro pulls her away from not so sparkly thoughts and redirects her to his messy computer desk. "So, I was thinking that Baymax would be too heavy for the actual engines to be in his legs and it would burn his vinyl skin—"

"We can still prep his skeleton for the forces that his leg boosters create, and if we make a sympathetic relationship between the two for a better failsafe—"

Hiro plays his iPod and Abigail teases him for having Sugar Rush's VGM in there, and they plan a proper arcade showdown once they finish their current leg of the project and Sullivan's remaining remedial work. The cakes are eaten and Cass is complimented and Abigail only smokes once.

Abigail is glad that the rest of the grad students avoid her after class hours, because this way her empty hours are spent with Hiro. He uses her as a sounding board to bounce ideas for Baymax 2.5 off of, a guide for how to survive college in general when his friends' advice doesn't quite cut it, and one of the remaining links to his older brother. After a hard night where Hiro tears his hair out trying to figure out the elegance of Tadashi's work, Abigail gives him the notebook and they flip through the brittle pages.

She has a lot of tissues stocked up because her father haunts her dreams, and they need a box or two. There's a strange floatiness in Abigail's hands as she explains the context of off-the-wall scribbles and doodles to Hiro, a strange thickness to her voice as he looks at the coffee stained pages as if they were the world's greatest pearl. Hiro knows his niisan but doesn't know these, and the gratitude in his voice makes Abigail faint because her father did this, Tadashi should be here working with them together and why couldn't her mother have been Cass?

But between sniffles and Hiro apologizing over and over for being a crybaby Abigail helps Hiro find what he needs to take Tadashi's magnum opus and make it twenty times better, and she watches industry blossom under his fingertips and on his eyelashes. It's beautiful, and Abigail shows him exactly where to taper the endoskeleton and where to reinforce, how to shape Baymax into being the ultimate airborne healthcare companion. Abigail watches the machine grow over the weeks and the bags under Hiro's eyes grow darker, and she stops him one night with, "Are you hungry?"

"Huh?"

"When was the last time you ate?"

His stomach decides to growl and Abigail checks the window. It's still rather light outside, the clouds and fog doing things to the sunset that makes Abigail itch for her flight suit. Maybe when she helps Hiro fly again, she will too; but for now, dinner. "Tadashi had a thing for chicken udon, but something tells me you appreciate things a bit more spicy."

He perks up, and Abigail walks him downtown. It's nice, having him bob by her shoulder as they point out all the bot fighting alleyways and where Honey part times as a barista and where Aunt Cass adopted Mochi. Sure, it attracts some jerks with cameras because oh kamisama, the poor brother of Tadashi Hamada associating with Tadashi's murderer's daughter, how ironic!

But screw that line of thinking, and Abigail is surprised when a cloud of real cigarette smoke hits her and makes her cough. It's been a while since she's had her e-cig, hanging out with Hiro cuts down on the portal nightmares and her craving to transmute water in her lungs. Hiro waves away the smoke and complains about his innocent lungs and Abigail snorts before pushing him inside; incredible, Hiro is just incredible.

Tommy Kazan's is a small shack in comparison to Shizu's or the Lucky Cat Cafe, and it's not the cleanest either. But Abigail has Tommy set up Hiro with a full course of chicken wings and enoki maki that could melt the heat shields from Abigail's first launch pod. Everyone cheers him on and his face his bright red and Abigail laughs harder than she should when he refuses to acknowledge the steam rising from his ears and

and it's a good belly laugh. Hiro takes some leftovers and the notebook home and Abigail sleeps a bit easier, curled up fetal position in her comforters as waves of color steal the bad feelings away and warm hands pull her from her cold.

Abigail is officially entered into the group after Hiro crushes his second midterms and she goes to tease him about ruining the class average for Aerial Robotics and Calculus for Engineers. Hiro's decided to show his project to his friends—and really, Abigail prides herself on not spilling the beans since her mouth filter isn't nearly as polished as her e-cig—and Abigail's staccato heels meld into the general excitement.

"This is just too perfect!" Fred is enthusiastic and spreads his arms wide, "Reborn from the ashes of his sacrifice, Baymax 2.5 will rise better than ever!"

Ashes is a touchy word but Fred makes it work. Honey flutters around, seeing the schematics and adding her input in regards to solvents and sanitizers for Baymax's medical equipment, and Gogo asks Abigail, "You knew about this?"

"She got this off the ground," Hiro picks up a controller, "literally!" And he makes Baymax's assorted armor pieces fly around above their heads, Abigail is happy that Sullivan was too hungover last week to hold lecture so that she and Hiro could perfect the propulsion system's synchronicity in peace.

Gogo whistles and damn, maybe in another life where that won't get Abigail's TA status revoked. "What else have you two been up to?"

Hiro makes Abigail sound super competent and amazing in front of his friends, even though half of their time together involved Abigail messing up Hiro's hair and complaining about work loads and being depressed over her father. She blushes a bit when Hiro mumbles, "Really, she's helped out a lot, aaaand she already figured out our secret identities, so don't be too mean."

Wasabi pats Abigail's shoulder, "Show us some other of your work, Abigail?" and just like that she's in, she's rebuilding Baymax and adjusting Gogo's speed suit and encouraging the others and oh, how her father would just hate to see Abigail helping Big Hero 6.

It makes her heart clench with bloody defiance, and she hovers over Hiro's shoulder, watching him build a future that Tadashi would've been so proud of.

The group puts their tech to use the next day when a bank is being robbed (wow, how original, and how stupid, don't people know that video cameras can connect to the Internet and things in there last forever? That Abigail can't hope to erase the smoke slicks and blood from her family name when it can be recalled with a simple search?) and Abigail watches from her lonely apartment. She feels claustrophobic because she needs to be out there with them and she smokes away an entire cartridge and this is no good, she's a pilot and she was made to fly.

When they return battered but victorious, she helps repair their gear and flirts a bit with Gogo over her increased performance; when the others filter back to their nighttime interests, she tells Hiro, "I want in."

He sizes her up, "How so?"

"Give me something to pilot," Abigail takes a small sip of ice cold menthol and exhales, "And I'll show you why Krei hired me in the first place.

Abigail is a licensed pilot for private aircraft, public aircraft, seaplanes, experimental aircraft and multidimensional pods. Impressive for a 24 year old former bot fighting queen, despite her not being able to handle freeway traffic in any way productive for modern society. Hiro goes "woah" at her horde of papers and Abigail goes "yep", and they get to work.

When Baymax is finished, he and Hiro will fly together, so Abigail gets her own mini-pod. They plow through fifteen trash can's worth of failed designs up until finals, and then they have to stop because it's finals week and Abigail is stressing over her jazz ensemble final and World History was never a strong point for Hiro. The entire group ends up sleeping over in the Lucky Cat Cafe at one point, Abigail ending up with Mochi purring a storm in her lap while she tries to figure out how Hiro managed to be so comfortable sleeping upside down.

Abigail dreads the end of finals because then she won't be Hiro's TA anymore, and she doesn't want to lose him to the rush of SFIT. She's going to TA for real in a few other classes, since no one's found a reason to expel her yet, and that means more students, more time devoted to them, less time with the boy who's going to change the world as he's saved hers—

Hiro shows her his schedule and she's TA'ing in another one of his classes, and he needs a mentor for independent study. He blushes and fidgets and looks so young when his voice spins circles around magnet fields, "I dunno, you've helped me so much and I think we just kinda click and I know you're gonna be busy and stuff but I just..."

His eyes are wide open and Abigail can see a new dimension in them. He squeezes his hands together, "Please?"

Abigail lets him see her brush away wetness from her eyes and she nods, "I'd be honored."

She's honored to be his mentor, his friend, and she hopes that Tadashi approves of her. The courts call her in to testify, they even called in Krei to testify so she's definitely a star witness, and she declines because she's elected to take the Aerial Robotics kids flying around SFIT and really, don't the records from Silent Sparrow and the weeks she'd spent trapped in technicolor hell speak for themselves?

The lawyers drop it and she goes shopping with Honey and Gogo to blow off finals hysteria and her dreams get darker, hypersleep staining her subconscious thought as she gets sucked into colors and watches Hiro cry for help alone in subzero flames.

Finals is hard in every college, and SFIT makes the pain an art. Fred is gone to take his own classes at SFST, and Hiro and Wasabi drink gallons of coffee together in a strange friendship ritual. Abigail loses track of her staccato steps and nearly falls down the 5 stories of stairs at the Hub, and Honey has a meltdown in Argentine Gerspanish over her missing headphones that may or may not be X-rated, if her study partner Marisol's laughter is to be believed.

They survive to the two week break though, and Honey decides that this is the perfect time to go to Los Angosaka for a real life beach trip. Cass gives permission as long as Hiro promises to relax for once and try to erase some of the bags under his eyes; when she points out that caffeine will stunt his growth, Hiro promises to quit for the greater good.

Abigail flies them in one of her professor's private planes; Prof. Yoshida is an easy going man who doesn't look at Abigail as anything but who she really is, and she wishes that she were his daughter, Cass's daughter, anyone else's daughter. Wasabi is super nervous and Fred and Gogo egg him on as they fly up and up into the sky; Honey takes selfies and Hiro stares out the window. Abigail asks him, "Do you miss it?"

He leans against the wall, "Soon I won't have to anymore."

Los Angosaka is a sprawling city as opposed to compact San Fransokyo, and they run around making staccato symphonies with the rest of the tourists. Hundreds of food trucks, street vendors, hole in the wall goth-loli shops next to department stores, more bot fighting tournaments than even Abigail can rationalize, everything back home is forgotten for the day and the group simply is.

It turns out that the beaches here aren't optimal but Santa Moniko's are, and the water is warm around Abigail's ankles. She raises her arms to catch the sea winds in her light shawl, and closes her eyes against the cool rush; it tastes like salt but feels like home, and Robert Callaghan is sentenced to the death penalty for his acts of terrorism and murder.

They drown each other in the waves and really, he could live for years in prison. They build sand castles to be destroyed by kaiju-Fred and a bleeding heart lawyer could advocate for a life sentence. They build a bonfire when the sun dips to kiss the horizon and Abigail Callaghan is so very alone.

Except that Hiro is listing against her side, tuckered out and drawing abstract pod designs in the sand. Honey is to her left, giggling with Gogo whose teasing Wasabi about sand in his shorts and Fred telling cheesy horror stories that no one can dream of being scared by. Hiro falls asleep and his hair is still damp when she runs her fingers through it, and she hates herself for making her father kill Tadashi.

She carries him back to the hotel and he should eat more, he's too delicate, another explosion could tear him away from this earth. With Hiro in bed the adults drink and Abigail makes sure to temper her sake with vape, blowing smoke rings for Gogo's amusement and Abigail is proud of herself for keeping herself under control and neither initiating the sexiest superhero sex orgy in the world nor breaking down in tears because her father is going to die.

"That's it for me guys," Abigail bows out and giggles when she stumbles into a wall, "If we're going to Tomorrowland tomorrow then at least one of us needs to sober up quickly."

"Ani," Gogo balances Korean in her mouth and demands that Abigail tell them why Tadashi showed up drunk at his house in flower print leggings.

Abigail laughs and blows Gogo a kiss and heads back to her room. She kicks off her sandals and spends an hour singing really bad sad songs in the shower, and comes back out ready to sleep for a decade. She falls into bed, curls up in the comforters, and falls asleep to Hiro's snoring and the waves crashing outside, over and over until her pod explodes through the aether and Abigail drowns in forzen smoke.

She watches her father put on the neurotransmitter in the old auditorium and this is a dream, she can't stop him from ruining their lives. But Hiro is there, Hiro is yelling at him and trying to take back the transmitter in the flow of microbots and this isn't what happened what is

Her father crashes the microbots against Hiro's chest the same chest that barely contains Hiro's excitement and Hiro slams into a concrete pillar, his flesh making a sonic boom and Abigail watches blood trickle from under his hair.

She screams but she has no body in this dimension and Hiro's eyes are so wide and filled with pain and fear, a new universe of torment rips open in Abigail's throat as she watches Hiro slide down the pillar and be licked by the flames her father starts. She screams at him to run but he can only crawl, crawl and drag and gash his delicate arms and knees against burning glass and twisted metal. His jaw moves too slowly for his desperate cry of "Niisan! Niisan!" and it distorts through the acrid smoke like failing alarm bells.

Abigail surges through the portal and tries to bring Hiro with her so the cold can seal off his dripping burns but this is a dream and her father surrounds himself only himself with microbots. The building explodes in slow motion and Abigail watches Hiro die cell by cell, nerve by nerve, skin transmuting to charcoal and brown Hamada eyes boiling to dust and his bones are so tiny.

She screams against the rush of ozone in her leaking suit because Hiro died only ten feet away from the doors, had her father not bashed his head in Hiro could've reached Tadashi's arms. Tadashi smells his brother's burning flesh and screams until all is lost and Abigail tries to beg for his forgiveness but her life support activates and hyperlseep drags her down down down

into Tadashi in a samurai super suit hacking her father to bits, his voice unholy and raw with so much anger and grief that Abigail's windshield is compromised. No more, no more, Abigail is stabbed through the spine when Tadashi tears her father into a not-body and she gasps for air but there's only e-cig vapor and multidimensional smoke filling her lungs and she can taste Hiro's ashes under her fingernails.

They don't reopen the portal and Abigail is left alone to drift for days, weeks, months, years, the hypersleep keeps her alive and the hypothermia longer still and Abigail wants to scream but her tongue has frozen to the roof of her mouth and Hiro is crying outside her windshield, tears turns to snowflakes against Baymax's torn vinyl.

Mother is there and she serves Abigail termination of parental right's papers through her pod's compromised doors and Abigail watches her father hold her hand when her new teeth are implanted into her skull. Hiro is there, a toddler giggling on Tadashi's back as they rocket through the smoke after Baymax in a rocket powered shopping cart, and before Abigail can stop them they both catch on fire, screaming until they turn into Honey and Gogo and Wasabi and Fred being beaten to death by Baymax as Hiro screams for Tadashi screams for Hiro.

The pod is thrown farther into the vortex and Baymax's thrusters are broken and Abigail watches Hiro cry and hug his best friend goodbye. But she pushes herself out of the windshield and pushes Baymax and Tadashi in so that they may slide back into home, and Abigail floats alone in the plumes of smoke. Hiro's tears crystallize on her broken visor, and she sees constellations of the future for the next five thousand years.

it's cold it hurts i want out i deserve to die my father did this tadashi i'm so sorry hiro please don't cry it's cold so cold don't leave me here alone i love you daddy i'll never forgive you it's cold i can't breathe—

Abigail stifles her scream into unconsciousness into her pillow, and small hands rub her back until she gets her sobs under control. She wipes her eyes into her hair and it's 5:49 am and Hiro is awake with her, still rubbing warmth back into her body. "Hiro?"

"It's ok," his voice is quiet in the still air, hovering above everyone else's steady breathing, "sometimes I get nightmares too."

They go get breakfast once Abigail has swallowed enough pills to soothe her headache, and the dawn air cements Abigail back into this world. She holds Hiro's hand as a lifeline just in case though, and he doesn't say anything about it; they are both silent, save for Abigail walking jazz on the boardwalk, and it's nice. The pastry shop is rather cheap and Abigail splurges on hakuto jelly filled donuts.

The news is playing and oh yeah her father is still a hot topic, the first person to be sentenced to death row in fifty five years. Hiro's eyes widen and Abigail ushers him into the quiet outside, and he whispers, "I'm so sorry."

"It's his fault," Abigail shrugs but her voice breaks anyway, "What did he expect after terrorizing San Fransokyo and killing your brother?"

Her chest hitches once, then twice, and she asks, "Do you hate me? He killed Tadashi because he thought I was dead, and you rescued me when you could've left me to die and even the score—"

Hiro grabs her shoulders and hisses, "I could never hate you for what he did. You had nothing to do with it," he screws up his face, "Maybe before I got to know you, I thought it wasn't fair that you lived and Tadashi didn't. But how is it fair for b-both of you to be dead, not when I..."

He grabs fistfuls of her shirt and shakes his head, "I need you, ok? You're my friend, I can't lose anyone else."

Abigail bends around him, hugging him as close as she dared and cupping the back of his head to make sure that everything was as it should be, no blood or ash or terror or cold eternities spent alone. She supposes that she's violating the sacred distance of the student-TA relationship like this, but there are other words for what she could be to him: senpai, adviser, another one that's too familial and will most likely make her cry again if he says it out loud.

For now, she's Hiro's friend and it's more than enough.

They return to the motel and delight in Honey's whining, Gogo's murderous morning rituals, Wasabi's overly complicated hangover cure and Fred having a foodgasm over the hakuto jelly donuts. They wash up and go to Tomorrowland and act like complete children all day, eating too much junk food and taking enough selfies to fill up Honey's phone data. Abigail's father is on death row and it doesn't matter when Honey tugs them into group hugs and Wasabi puts Abigail on his shoulders so she catch Fred's runaway balloon and Fred buys them all matching mouse ears and Gogo sit nexts to her on every ride.

It doesn't matter when Hiro acts like the child he is and lights up the entire park, and Abigail gets why Tadashi says that Hiro should've been named Hikari; Hiro whines about not getting to fly through the fireworks, and Abigail promises a next time.

San Fransokyo is covered in snow when they return and Abigail picks snowball fights with her friends, her neighbors, the cats in the alley where she locks her bike. The Lucky Cat Cafe is home base when the group tires themselves out from running around like idiots, and Abigail talks about food and drinks with Cass for a good two hours while she helps pick up around the place. They get their grades back when the snow melts and celebrate exceptional GPAs at Nene's; they sleep over at Fred's for a superhero movie marathon; Abigail finally caves and explains exactly why Tadashi came home drunk with floral print leggings, and they make themselves sick with laughter.

Hiro gets the vinyl needed for Baymax, and at the start of a warm winter quarter, he assembles the last pieces and says "Ow?" Abigail isn't there for that big reveal, but she and the rest of her friends are swallowed up in a giant Baymax hug right after. They take him for a test flight and Abigail's help makes Baymax fly so sweetly through the air, his metal polished better than even her shoes and catching flight like a pilot's dream.

"You did it," she pokes Hiro's forehead and makes him blush, "you're incredible."

Abigail tends to her own studies and mentoring Hiro's independent studies, and she's present for another big reveal. Hiro brings out an elongated oval, bright white with orange lines, and when Abigail lifts the feather light machine, it transforms into a hoverboard shaped like the curve of a wave, swelling into a battering ram/main engine in the front and elongating into a support base and additional thrusters. Hiro digs his toe into the ground and grins, "You said you were good enough of a pilot to get hired for Silent Sparrow, so I wanted to make sure you had enough flexibility with your tech to push your limits."

Abigail squeals and crushes him in a hug. Her super suit is a dusky white, more orange, red and pink coloring in the blanks, and when she touches her hoverboard again she's connected like magnetism, but not quite. "Electromagnetic attraction?"

"It's a bit more flexible than straight magnetism like with my suit." Hiro looks out the window and the sun is setting, "You said there would be a next time?" His voice is so hopeful and excited that Abigail couldn't say no even if she wanted to.

And they fly, Hiro on Baymax as he should be and Abigail piloting towards a future filled with villain battles and endless lights. The battering ram extends an instant shield when plowing through solid steel that both protects Abigail and keeps her from flying off from the shock, and a 270 degree flare gun can fire beneath her. She feels powerful and can fly better than even in her pod, and whoops into the darkening night sky, barrel rolling around Hiro and Baymax.

Sure, she's practically an old lady when compared to Hiro, but this way she and her friends can protect him and Baymax with all the powers they can build, and Hiro's right—she barely notices the chill of technicolor clouds when her heart is racing so fast.

Abigail is Robert Callaghan's daughter who probably will never visit him while he languishes in death row; she's a graduate student at SFIT considering her post-graduate career within San Fransokyo; she's a former bot fighting queen with shiny white teeth implants and a craving for chicken udon and an apartment and office filled with cluttered notebooks and shared blueprints and Big Hero 7 mission objectives and Fred's mascot heads.

Abigail is Hiro's companion, Hiro's mentor, Hiro's maybe someday spoken out loud neesan, and most of all Hiro's friend; technicolor smoke still swirls at her ankles and her lungs sometimes freeze over with ozone, but she's a part of a friendship that surpasses dimensions, and it's a pleasant body shock.

And there's the longest fanfic I've written for BH6 so far! I am super attached to my interpretation of Abigail and how I think she'd become part of Big Hero 6 and Hiro's friend/mentor/big sister figure, so we might see more from this AU in the future.

Anyway, I hope you liked this fanfic!