"I'm not giving up on you. You don't understand this yet, but people need you. So let's get back to work." Tadashi said glumly. He held his flashlight high in the pitch-black room so he could reach around his creation and manually pull the plug. Tadashi rubbed the bridge of his nose as his robot in progress he had named Baymax deflated loudly with a noise like air out of a balloon and folded itself into its red charging station.

This was ridiculous. He couldn't deny that after thirty-three disastrous attempts he was beginning to think that maybe this project had been a bit too ambitious. Brandishing his flashlight's beam of light out in front of him Tadashi walked out of the room to find the breaker to get the lights back on in his lab again. Unfortunately over the past few weeks, Tadsahi had gotten quite familiar with the tiny electrical room at the back of the lab. Baymax had sucked the power away from the lab the previous evening too, and nearly caused an electrical fire that morning! Tadashi had been so sure that he had fixed the problem…Nope! It was back to the drawing board… again.

With the lights back on Tadashi turned away from the breaker, returned his flashlight in his back pocket and whipped his phone out as he walked to the break room. A cup of coffee was going to be absolutely necessary to keep him going. It was 2:43 am and he was determined to figure out what was causing the electrical drain before class tomorrow at 8:30 am! It was a good thing that he had told Aunt Cass he'd be home late. He opened up the tracker app that he had invented to keep tabs on his younger brother Hiro; who was a 13-year-old boy prodigy, about to graduated from high school, and was bored out of his mind. Which was the worst possible combination that Tadashi could think of. The trackers that Tadashi had sewn into every one of the hems of Hiro's hoodies had enabled him to keep an eye on his bother and ensure that no matter what hair-brained scheme his short sighted little brother cooked up, that Tadashi could be there to get him out of trouble.

It was the smell of fresh coffee that brought Tadashi's eyes up from his brother's blinking red dot (indicating that Hiro was in the garage at home) to glance around the break room. He hadn't thought that anyone would be here this late on a Sunday night. The room was small but extremely comfortable; there were red and brown squashy couches and arm chairs in the corner with coffee tables, white boards on the walls, and a LEGO set that Fred had constructed a surprisingly accurate replica of the Coliseum in Rome. A tiny kitchenette against the wall closest to Tadashi, equipped with thrifty mix of appliances like a retro blue toaster and plain black coffee maker (the fact that they didn't match drove Wasabi insane), a stove and a fridge. The kitchenette was now occupied, Tadashi's his favourite professor was opening a carton of cream, and he hadn't noticed Tadashi yet.

Professor Callaghan had been something like a father figure to Tadashi ever since he'd first been assigned to him as a supervisor for Tadashi's projects for school. Tadashi had always loved the professor's lectures; Callaghan had a way of making robotics not just exciting, but opened his student's eyes to the incredible and infinite possibilities of what robotics had to offer the world. The seventeen year old had been scared out of his mind when he'd been assigned to Callaghan as his overseeing professor with Gogo and Wasabi in their first year of college. The man was a superstar in the world of robotics. Tadashi and his two friends had idolized him, and were beyond excited to be given the chance to work under his supervision. But for Tadashi, the moment that would define their relationship had come on their very first one on one meeting in Callaghan's office. Each of the three students assigned to Callaghan had been given a private brainstorming session to come up with their project for the year. However the day of Tadashi's meeting had been ill timed.

September 23, 2045. The nine year anniversary of his parent's death…

Tadashi had had a hard time getting out of bed that day, he'd put on a bright face when he'd gone down for breakfast, Aunt Cass had made an enormous pile of pancakes for the pair of them and had doused the whole stack in so much maple syrup that it was dripping onto the tablecloth. Tadashi knew that this was Aunt Cass's way of trying to comfort them as well as herself; stuffing everyone with enough sugar and dough to put them all into a food coma. Aunt Cass set the plate down in front of them with a big "Tadah!" and Hiro's eyes went as big as saucers.

"Whoa! Pancakes? You never make pancakes except on special occasions." Hiro had said looking up at their Aunt with surprise. Then suddenly he whipped around to look at his older brother in horror "Oh no! Is it your birthday? I thought it was next week?" Tadashi felt his stomach clenched and he stared at his brother in disbelief.

Hiro hadn't remembered what day it was.

Tadashi felt an incredible wave of grief wash over him at that moment. It wasn't Hiro's fault, and Tadashi knew that he couldn't really blame the kid for forgetting this particular star on the calendar. Hiro had been a toddler when their parents had died, he'd had never really gotten a chance to know them, let alone really feel the gaping hole that they had left.

But Tadashi still remembered. To Tadashi, this day would forever mar him with a jagged knife. The one person in the world that could possibly share in Tadashi's pain of lost parents, couldn't even remember the anniversary of their death. The fact that Hiro couldn't even remember what the significance of the day was meant that Tadashi could not share his incredible grief with anyone. Aunt Cass was helpful, Tadashi couldn't even begin to imagine what a horrible thing it was to lose an older sibling. But it wasn't the same as being left orphaned; it was just different.

So Tadashi had gone to school that day feeling more alone in the world than ever. He'd gone to his two classes surrounded by fellow students, and not heard a word of what either teacher had said. It was only when Wasabi had pointed out that he was going to be late for his meeting with Callaghan that Tadashi had skidded around the corner and down the stairs in a kind of fog to reach his mentor's door.

"Sorry I'm late professor." Tadashi had said breathlessly as he slid to a halt in his professor's doorway.

"No worries Tadashi, no rush at all." The professor had been sitting at his desk with his glasses on, the grey flecks of his hair illuminated by the open window outside. He was tinkering with a few black pieces of metal and wiring that Tadashi vaguely recognized from their class the previous day. Callaghan raised his square jawed face up to look at Tadashi from over his glasses and smiled, gesturing to the chair in front of his metal desk. "Come, take a seat. Would you like a peppermint?" Tadashi glanced at the bowl of individually wrapped white and green peppermints at the end of the desk.

"No, I'm fine thanks." Tadashi said, thinking that if he tried to eat anything he'd throw up, which would be all kinds of awkward.

"Alright then, excuse me while I set these away. While I'm doing that, why don't you tell me what you are thinking about for your project? Do you have any ideas?" It sounded like the professor was speaking from far, far away. Tadashi rubbed the back of his head, trying to think past the fog that was blocking his thinking process. Callaghan was collecting his things all over the desk and placing them into a small grey box.

"Uhh, to be honest I have nothing that I really want to pursue as my final project." Tadashi said, though it felt like someone else was speaking. Callaghan made a indistinct noise and nodded. Tadashi's eyes travelled around the older man's desk, searching for something to anchor him. His eyes rested on a picture of three people; Callaghan laughing hugely with a little girl with brown hair sitting on his shoulders, and a woman about Callaghan's age looking up at the little girl, holding Callaghan's arm and smiling a big toothy smile. It must Callaghan's wife and daughter. Tadashi mused.

For some reason this upset Tadashi, it made him think of the only picture that he had of his own family together… It made Tadashi lose track of everything that he had been planning on talking about with Callaghan. His throat tightened, and his eyes blurred completely clouding his vision.

"If I remember correctly," Callaghan's voice sounded like it was coming from inside a tin can. The man had ducked down to set the box into a drawer beneath his desk. "Your last project was a set of quite clever rocket boots to be worn by cats. Quite ingenious, I got quite a good laugh out of watching your poor Aunt's cat whiz around the lab! Perhaps something like that for humans… some sort of alternative mode of transportation? Rocket boots? Or perhaps a portable jet pack?"

Tadashi couldn't speak so he nodded. Though he wasn't entirely sure what he was nodding too. He kept losing track of the conversation.

"Tadashi? Are you alright?" Callaghan said, had looked up from beneath his desk and was sitting up now, his entire attention on Tadashi now. "You don't look so well."

The younger man tried to get himself together, "Snap out of it!" He ordered himself silently, tried to think of anything but the twisted metal, the flames and the sound of his mother's head had made when it hit the side window… All he could see was his father's blood hit the windshield… Tried to think of anything but of the toddler's tiny screams of terror beside him. He needed to get himself and his baby brother out of the flaming twisted wreck, out of the twisted wreck that Hiro could no longer remember.

Suddenly Tadashi could feel himself moving and realized that Callaghan had his hand on Tadashi's shoulder and was gently shaking him and calling his name. Tadashi started and came back to himself with a jolt that sounded like crunch of glass and the squeal of bending metal.

"—Son, stay with me. Tadashi, you're ok, don't worry there's nothing hurting you now." Callaghan was saying very gently firmly. He was crouched in front of the student and looking at him right in the eye. Tadashi blinked and felt his sweaty shaky hands unclench from the arm of his chair. He felt incredibly cold and sick.

"Wha—What? Where… Professor I am… S—Sorry. I umm…" Tadashi rambled, incredibly embarrassed and not sure what had just happened. He put his hand through his hair and accidentally knocked off his hat with his trembling movement.

Callaghan picked up the fallen hat as Tadashi put his trembling hands against his face. Callaghan was holding the hat by the brim, his eyes extremely concerned as Tadashi tried and failed to hide the fact that he had just lost the war he'd started with the syrupy pancakes and started to cry. The professor put a hand on Tadashi's shoulder while the young man wiped his beige sweater sleeve across eyes and took few sniffs as subtly as he could. Callaghan stared at Tadashi for a long moment, a calculating concern in his stormy blue eyes before standing up and walking out of the room, his brown dress shoes clunked against the linoleum floor.

Tadashi stayed where he was trying to get a grip on himself. This was ridiculous! It was neither the time nor place for him to have this kind of a melt down. Tadashi's eyes caught the picture of the professor's family again and he felt a wave of longing sweep over him, a grief that his little brother would never remember his father's bear hugs, or his mothers tickle fights. Hiro would never feel texture of his father's favourite fuzzy green sweater, or the smell of his mother's favourite perfume. Never have popcorn fights, or eat too much ice cream when mom wasn't looking… Never sing along to dorky old songs, or colour with washable crayons on the wall when dad was at work.

"Enough!" Tadashi exclaimed to himself, and with a great effort and practiced effort along with a huge sniff, Tadashi managed to shove the whole thing under the carpet of his mind, wipe his eyes and get himself presentable again. He had just started to wonder how he could repair the mess he'd just made with his professor when the sound of professor Callaghan's boots on the floor heralded his reappearance. Tadashi looked around determined not to look too embarrassed, intending to apologize and get the conversation back on track when he noticed what the professor was holding. Tadashi blinked. Callaghan clutched in his big hands two mugs of something that steamed, and smelled delicious.

"Coffee Mr. Hamada?" Callaghan held it out the steaming mug in his left hand to Tadashi who took it deftly, suddenly realizing as he did so how tired he was. Callaghan sat heavily across from Tadashi at his desk and took a long sip from his own mug. Tadashi held his cup, but didn't drink it.

"I apologize professor, it's an anniversary of a rather bad day for me. I'm ready to get back on track now." Tadashi said eager to make up for his breach in professionalism. "The rocket boots would be—"

The professor held up his hand and pointed

to Tadashi's mug. "Have a few sips first, then we can talk." Tadashi blinked again, then looked at the coffee that had been doused in cream and what smelled like some sort of flavoured syrup.

"When my daughter as a bad day my wife always makes her a cup of hot chocolate with this peppermint syrupy stuff she got for Christmas." Callaghan explains. "Considering however that this is a university and I'm guessing that you, being a student, are under caffeinated after a long two weeks of first term. The flavour in it is hazelnut, the only one we have here. I hope that it is to your liking." Tadashi looked down at his mug and felt a flush creep across his face.

"T-thank you professor. That's really kind of you." Tadashi said and took a sip, instantly burning his tongue but swallowing anyways. The hot drink felt good, despite his seared mouth, and the taste managed to bring him back to his senses. He had drunk half of his mug before Callaghan set his own ceramic mug down and looked at Tadashi more fatherly than anyone had looked at him since his own father's passing.

"Mr. Hamada, from what I have observed in classes and group projects this month, I would say you are an outstanding student, a fine person and a loyal friend. I have not known you for long, but I suspect that we will see incredible things from you and your incredibly creative mind." The professor said.

"Thank you sir," Tadashi was not sure how to respond to such high praise from a teacher that he admired so much. "It's such an honour to—"

Callaghan put up his hand to stop Tadashi's attempt at returning the compliment. "However, I am also very much aware, that the kind of compassion and insight that you generally show to your classmates comes from learned and lived experience. I am not sure what has happened in your life Mr. Hamada, I am always here if you need to talk about anything, but I once heard a wise man say that it is our greatest miseries that become our greatest ministries. What has caused us our deepest pain can direct and shape how we contribute to society and help the people around us."

Tadashi stared at his professor, mind totally blown out of the water by what he was hearing. Callaghan smiled at his student and leaned forwards in his seat to place Tadashi's hat onto the desk in between the pair of them.

"I suspect what is ailing you now can be the inspiration for the project that you are having a rare creativity block for." Callaghan said and leaned back in his chair again, giving Tadashi the time and space to stare at his hat still on the desk between them and think. All of those emotions that the student had just crammed under the metaphorical carpet, crawled out.

The fire and twisted metal of the car crash, the paramedics that didn't get there in time. His father had died at the scene. Then there was the ambulance ride that had not been supplied well enough to save his mother's from the massive internal bleeding. Of sitting in the emergency room holding his little brother still while the sterile doctors inspected him for injury while he screamed and cried for his mother… Now Hiro could not remember his parent's faces or voices…

He thought about Hiro coming home from his first day of high school with a black eye, and a ripped backpack. Whenever Tadashi saw Hiro at school, he was always alone with his hoodie up in some secluded corner of the school or library. The teachers were no help either, Tadashi had seen them bully Hiro in front of the class, and turn a blind eye when the other students were cruel to his brother.

Ever since their parent's death, Tadashi had played over and over in his mind how it could have ended differently. How he could have saved his parents, something that could have given the paramedics just a little bit more time to get to the hospital… how he could somehow, now that he was Hiro's only defender, always keep Hiro safe, even when he wasn't around to protect him or keep him out of trouble, like at school or on the bus. The anger, the grief and the pain that had before caused Tadashi to go into a kind of haze, now fueled his creativity, the energy that had been devoted to unhelpfully raging emotions, Tadashi now directed into trying to discover how turn the most painful experiences in his life into something good.

Aunt Cass had always said that Tadashi would have made an amazing doctor, but Tadashi had a limited memory for medical terms and no interest in going to school for that long! But maybe… Maybe he could still somehow put all those things together.

"I want to do something that will help a lot of people. I love making things that are fun and cool, but I think… I think that I want to do something that will change things…" Tadashi said looking down at his remaining coffee. "I want to make a difference, to make my time here count for something."

"So what does that look like Mr. Hamada?" Callaghan prompted, looking at Tadashi with the perfect mixture of a proud father and encouraging professional supervisor.

"Health care sir, I want to do something that can prevent disasters and provide healing to hurting people…" Tadashi looked up at Callaghan, ideas of what that could look like bursting out of the creativity block he had been hammering at for the past few days.

"Hmm… Like some sort of device?" The professor prompted.

Tadashi mused for a moment, thinking about how it would look like to get Hiro to wear anything that could suddenly help with health care procedures from anywhere… a backpack? No, that would get in the way…. Some sort of wearable accessory? But how would it deploy? Tadashi took a gulp of coffee, thinking.

"… Maybe some sort of robot that can perform medical procedures…?" Tadashi muttered.

"So more like a health care robot. Perhaps emergency response robots stationed around the city?"

Tadashi thought about how that would work taking into consideration that where his boneheaded brother usually got in trouble was off the beaten track.

"More like… a personal health care companion... Something that follows a person around and keeps them safe." Tadashi said finally. And he knew at the moment that the moment that he spoke those words out loud, that he'd hit gold. This was what he was going to do. It was the answer to all of those things that had happened.

If there had been a robot in the car that could have slowed his parents deterioration before the paramedics got there, something that could have relayed important information that could have saved the paramedics precious time… and something that could follow Hiro around, protect him and help him feel like he wasn't so alone…. Tadashi knew that this was what he wanted to build.

"That's a highly ambitious looking twinkle in your eye there Hamada." Callaghan chuckled. "It sounds like the kind of project that may cost you many sleepless nights, and potentially more than just your second year of college. This sounds like a cumulative project for your entire college experience. Are you sure you want to commit to something that large?"

"Well, I don't have any real solid ideas yet professor, just one really big one that seems to be inflating at the moment. I'll see whether or not I can come up with anything that is practical and then decide from there. Thank you so much for everything sir, for the idea, the advice, and the coffee sir." Tadashi said getting to his feet and leaning over to shake the professor's hand.

"Anytime Mr. Hamada, you let me know if I can help you with the design of your robot. Or if you just need a cup of coffee and a listening ear, I can do that too." Professor Callaghan said smiling and stood as well. Tadashi nodded, put his mug down on the professor's desk and picked up his baseball cap again.

Tadashi set his phone back into his jacket just as professor Callaghan noticed him, still holding the cream in his left hand. "Was that you that made me wait for my coffee?" Callaghan said jokingly, Tadashi noticed that the numbers on the coffee maker were blinking sets of double zeros. Apparently it hadn't just been his lab that had suffered the power outage.

"Umm haha yeah…." Tadashi said rubbing the back of his neck. "Baymax is still having trouble holding his charge. It keeps overloading… I thought I fixed it but clearly I've got to do some more work on it. Still, not that bad, I got his scanner to work properly now… that is if it didn't just fry." He ran a hand through his hair and replaced his hat with a shrug while Callaghan placed the cream on the counter and moved out of the way for Tadashi to grab his own cup. "What are you doing here this late on the weekend professor?" Tadashi stirred in the cream and sugar into the coffee. Wasabi had been on his and Gogo's cases about the amount of sugar they drank. Seeing as his friend wasn't here, and it was 2:57 am, Tadashi ignored Wasabi's nagging voice in the back of his head that he was going to get diabetes and dumped the sugar in. By the time he was done stirring in the sugar, Callaghan still hadn't answered him. Tadashi changed the subject, it had been a stupid question; of course the professor was working on a project.

"By the way, I heard that you've finished that transportation project with Krei Industries. Shouldn't you be celebrating by sleeping for a week?" Tadashi laughed and set the carafe back on the burner. He turned to replace the cream into the fridge, glancing up at his silent teacher, and froze.

Professor Callaghan was standing halfway out of the door to the break room, the dim lights of the half-lit lab casting him into a kind of silhouette. He had his back to Tadashi, his shoulders were slumped against the door holding open, his knuckles white on the handle of his mug. His whole body was tensed, and he seemed to be radiating heat and an emotion that Tadashi couldn't quite put his finger on. Whatever it was, it made the hairs on the back of the student's neck stand on end.

"Professor?" Tadashi asked quietly. "Are… are you ok?"

Callaghan once again did not answer, he stayed silently in the doorway unmoving and unspeaking.

"Hey, professor…" Tadashi walked around to try and stand beside his teacher, wanting to understand what was going on. The second that Tadashi attempted to become level with the older man was the moment when the professor took a long and deep shuddering breath making his whole being shudder.

"The project… Went badly." Callaghan said in a voice that was entirely different than his usual calming tone. Tadashi stared, not sure what to do. Before he could decide on a course of action however, Callaghan seemed to shake himself out of the stillness that had seized him and had disappeared through the metal door with an abrupt and cacophonous clatter.