hey! so here's the second chapter of this heh. maybe i'll develop it further - thank you so much to everyone who reviewed. really.
okay, i personally don't think this chapter's as good, but i did want stuff to really start happening here. maybe i'll get more fluff down in the next chapter. heh.
hope you enjoy!
The next morning, Hiro wakes to find sunlight streaming in through the window, the door to Tadashi's room open and the clothes he's lent Dani for the night neatly folded on the bed, and Dani nowhere in sight.
All at once he's scrambling up in a panic, because where the hell has she gone did she leave what is he going to do she can't leave him not like that –
"Aunt Cass!" he finds himself saying, frantically, and he hurls himself down the stairs in his pajamas, "Aunt Cass, have you seen – "
And then he sees Aunt Cass look up from where she's serving coffee, and Dani glance up from behind the counter, and the people in the café looking at him oddly. There's an odd sense of relief washing over him as he sees her there, standing there, smiling, as she always is, even with the Styrofoam cup of coffee on the counter, just like nothing's changed.
And then he realises he's still in his pajamas.
He flushes red, deep, dark, red, and he doesn't miss the small smile on Dani's face as she tries to hold back her laughter.
"I'm gonna go now," he mutters, and he slopes back up the stairs hurriedly, quickly.
(He's totally embarrassed – but damn she's cute when she's trying to hold back a laugh. Not that he'll run down in his pajamas again and embarrass himself like that. Not even for her to smile like that again. Nope. No way.
Probably.)
He finds that she's chosen not to tell Aunt Cass why she's stayed over, or why she's continuing to stay over. So he tells her instead, that night, as they eat dinner together.
Aunt Cass' chopsticks clatter to the table – "You don't have a home?"
Dani looks embarrassed; why she looks embarrassed, Hiro will never understand. He expects sad, or upset, but not embarrassed, of all things. "No. No, I don't." She swallows another forkful of noodles (she's hopeless at eating with chopsticks – Hiro tried to teach her, once, and it's absolutely no use) and she says, "I wasn't going to – I can't live with my dad. And I don't have a mum."
"What about other relatives?" Aunt Cass wants to know. Hiro feels a pang of pain as he thinks of the possible reasons why she can't live with her dad, why she doesn't have a mum.
Dani just shakes her head; and then Hiro frowns suddenly.
"Wait," he says, slowly; "didn't you say you have a cousin?"
She ducks her head, and she stares at her noodles, like it's the most fascinating thing in the world.
"Dani?" Aunt Cass asks.
"His family doesn't know about me," Dani mutters, as she finally raises her head. "I was kind of – an accident. And we only found each other by accident. And his parents can't know about me."
Aunt Cass' hands fly up to her mouth, and she's horrified, aghast. This poor girl, this poor girl not a day older than Hiro – living on the streets because her family can't accept her? She doesn't know whether to be furious or upset.
"But it's not so bad," Dani says, hastily, hurriedly, taking in Cass' expression, catching the look in Hiro's eyes. "I know how to take care of myself. And I travel a lot. It's not so bad."
"You're staying here," Cass says firmly, without a moment's hesitation. "With us."
Hiro sees Dani open her mouth, as if to protest; but instead she fills it up with noodles, and she doesn't say a word.
When they go up later, to the bedroom, he finds that she's already been to the building she used to stay at and she's brought her stuff over. She's got a couple of spare shirts and jeans and an extra pair of shoes, and another red hat, and a couple of toilet stuff and a battered-looking phone and earpieces. But strangest of all, she's got a thermos with her, mostly white but with glowing green lines and buttons on it.
"What's this?" Hiro asks, his fingers already itching to open it, to take it apart, to find out how it works. It's no normal thermos, he can tell, and he wonders why it's with her. It looks almost pristine, like she's made sure to take good care of it.
"A thermos my cousin gave me," Dani says, and she doesn't offer anything more as she stows her things in Tadashi's room, carefully keeping the thermos. He doesn't ask.
Hiro flops onto his seat, watches her as she combs out her hair, and he blurts out, suddenly: "Why don't you want to stay with us?"
She turns to him, in shock. "What?"
"Why don't you?" he wants to know, and he thinks of her reaction to Aunt Cass' statement just now. "I mean, we've got the room. And you help out at the café. And we like having you around. We really do."
(I really do, he wants to say. I don't want you to go. But he doesn't say it.)
Dani smiles, and Hiro can't help but think that her smile's just a bit sad. (And he thinks that her smile is beautiful; it's sad, but it's beautiful, and he thinks again that he's never met anyone quite like her before.) "I don't like to stay in one place for too long," she tells him. "It's why I keep going from city to city. It's not a bad way to live."
"But don't you ever want a home?" Hiro persists.
"Home's not a place, it's people," she tells him, and she smiles again; but this time it's a happier smile, and she's got a faraway look on her face, and Hiro wonders if he could ever be one of those people. "And I've got the people who care for me."
"You've got a home here," Hiro says, stubbornly. "With us. Always."
Dani doesn't say anything, just smile and steps forward and squeezes his hand, lightly.
(Nope. It's not like his heart rate just increased rapidly, dramatically. Not at all. And it's not like Dani's hand feels so cooling and soft and small, or that it feels so right and real in his. Not at all.)
"Thanks," she says, softly, and then she turns around and pads her way into Tadashi's room.
Things don't change, not really, even though she's now staying with them. She still makes coffee for Hiro every morning, and she still smiles at him, and he still staggers home late at night every once in a while.
But nowadays - nowadays he spends three or four nights each week playing video games with her, while Aunt Cass complains in the background. Nowadays he stays up late into the night, talking to her, and he sees her eyes shine and she makes him laugh and often they collapse into hysterical giggles.
It doesn't hurt so much, anymore. It doesn't hurt so much to see Tadashi's smile staring at him out of photos, or to think of him.
(He thinks it may be because of Dani. But that would be ridiculous. But he can't help but feel better every time he makes her smile, or laugh, or punch him in the shoulder. And he can't help but smile every time she starts talking, or asks him a million and one questions, or beats him at video games, or just listens to him while he talks.)
It's a few weeks later when Hiro finally completes Baymax.
He thinks, though he'll never admit it, that he may have finished it earlier than he expected because of Dani.
Aunt Cass lets her have a day off every week, and on her free day she always follows Hiro to the university and hangs around in his workroom talking to him, or with Honey Lemon or Wasabi or GoGo or Fred. Hiro can't really understand why, but he works a lot better when she's around; his brain seems to get clearer, and his thoughts aren't so foggy, and it doesn't hurt as much when he thinks of Tadashi anymore.
(It still hurts, of course. Hiro doesn't think the pain will ever go away. But it doesn't hurt as much when there's a black-haired, blue-eyed girl sitting across him, talking non-stop enthusiastically about just everything.)
When Baymax is finally okay again, he lets out a triumphant yell and Dani skids in from where she's been talking to Wasabi outside, and her eyes widen in disbelief.
"You did it!" she says, excitedly, to Hiro: "Oh my god, Hiro, you did it!"
And then Hiro finds himself nearly falling over as she tackles him, flinging her arms around his neck with a surprising amount of strength for a small, petite girl, and he can't help but laugh as he hugs her back, because he is so damn happy right now.
He doesn't even care that the rest of his friends are in the doorway, nudging each other as they see Dani cling to him tightly, happily, and as Hiro hugs her back. He doesn't care because he is hugging Dani and he's fixed Baymax and the world feels like it might just be getting itself together again.
And then suddenly –
"Scan complete," a voice says, and then Dani is stepping back, her eyes now on Baymax, growing wide with an emotion Hiro can't quite comprehend.
"Scan?" she questions.
"Oh, he scans everyone," Hiro tells her. "It's part of his personal healthcare companion thing."
He sees her eyes grow wide, very, very wide, and her face grow slightly pale, and he frowns. Why does she look so scared? She can't – she can't have some sort of fatal disease that she's chosen not to tell him about, can she?
(It might explain, though, her love for travelling, for moving from city to city as a homeless kid to see the world – but no! He can't jump to conclusions. No way. There's probably a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. There's no way that Dani is dying. She's too alive, and she's too real.)
"Your heart rate is abnormally slow," Baymax says, facing Dani, and suddenly Hiro's heart is pounding furiously, "and your temperature is unusually cold. There is a substance fused into your DNA known as – "
"Okay, enough!"
Hiro's not sure how she does it, but somehow Dani leaps onto Baymax and shoves her hands over the speakers where Baymax emits sound. Her face is flushed, her eyes are bright, and there's something in her face that Hiro can't quite grasp.
"Dani?" he asks, cautiously. "What are you – "
"Nothing!" she says, quickly. "Just – nothing. I'm gonna – I'm gonna go."
"But it's not even lunchtime yet – "
"And I have to go," she says. "I'll be – I'll be back at the café later."
Baymax blinks at her as she slides down the robot, and before Hiro knows it she's racing out of the room, out of the lab, and he's only staring after her in shock.
"What's with her?" Fred asks, and Hiro doesn't have an answer.
"Baymax," Hiro says, and he turns to the robot, "what's wrong with Dani? What's infused in her DNA?"
Baymax blinks at him. "Judging by her reaction, I assume that she does not want this revealed," the robot tells him. "I cannot betray confidentiality as a personal healthcare companion."
"Baymax!" Hiro says. "She's not – she's not going to die, is she?"
Baymax blinks again, slowly, and Hiro can't help the nagging feeling that Baymax is laughing at him, like he knows something Hiro doesn't.
"No," Baymax assures him. "No, she is not."
Dani doesn't bring up the incident in Hiro's workroom again, and she avoids Baymax like the plague – which isn't very easy, considering how the big white robot stays in Hiro's room with him, but she manages it somehow.
Every few nights, Hiro tries to get her to talk to him about it. And every single time, Dani doesn't give him a straight answer.
"I can't," she says, shortly. "Look, I can't tell you, okay?"
"Dani, if there's something going on, I can help!"
"There's nothing wrong with me, Hiro!" she tells him, and she smiles at him, that smile that makes him get so weak in the knees and makes him unsure just why he thinks that she's the reason he could build Baymax so quickly because right now his brain is going foggy just from her smile. "Really. I'm fine."
She smiles again, and Hiro thinks his head is whirling.
"Now, c'mon!" she says, and she drags him down the stairs: "It's time for me to kick your butt at video games!"
He doesn't protest. He'll find out the truth, sooner or later. He will. But right now he lets himself get dragged along because this is Dani and he doesn't think his brain really knows how to say no to her.
(She smiles and she laughs, and he thinks that it's the most amazing thing he's seen and the most wonderful sound he's heard, and he prides himself on being fourteen and in college and a child prodigy but somehow his brain seems to turn to mush around her sometimes and he doesn't even know why.)
He's out on patrol one night when the glowing green mechanical thing flies past him.
"Guys!" Hiro says into his earpiece, as he gets Baymax flying behind the glowing green figure – "There's some glowing green thing flying out here! And he doesn't look like he's here for something good!"
"On it," he hears GoGo say, and he can hear her snap her gum. "I see him."
"This is so cool!" Fred's voice crackles over the earpiece; "why d'you think he's glowing green?"
"Guess we'll find out," says Wasabi.
And so they chase him. Hiro doesn't know if the glowing green guy even knows that he's being pursued, but he flies off at lightning speed anyway, zipping through buildings and old abandoned blocks and twisting around every once in a while like he's looking for something.
And then he sees the glowing green guy, strapped with weapons all over him, let out a grin and a hoarse laugh and dive into an alleyway, in front of the back door to an old building that's falling apart.
It's not even five seconds later that Hiro lands in the alleyway with the rest of his team around him – and then he catches his breath when he sees exactly why this glowing green figure's landed here.
"Dani?"
It's her. She's standing there, in a blue sweatshirt and jeans, her hands in her pockets, looking up at the glowing green guy with a smile – and then her eyes fly to Hiro, and Baymax, and the rest of Big Hero 6, and her blue eyes grow wide and the smile slips. "Hiro?"
The glowing green figure turns around, and oh wow is that his hair on fire?
"So, it looks like you've made some friends, punk," the figure says.
"Oh, yeah," Dani says, "and you know, Skulker, I think they're all smarter than you. You know they all built their suits themselves? And it hasn't failed them yet. Unlike yours. How many times have you tried to catch us in that suit again, and failed?"
"You're as impertinent as the ghost boy," the glowing green thing that is Skulker growls, and Hiro feels himself panicking because he should be doing something and there is Dani cornered in the alleyway and why is he standing here doing nothing when she is in danger –
"Hiro," Honey Lemon hisses, "what is going on?"
"I don't – I don't know," Hiro says, and dammit his brain cannot turn to mush right now when Dani's in danger –
"How is he, anyway?" Dani asks, as if she's having a perfectly normal conversation. "I haven't seen him in ages. And what are you doing so far from home?"
"Oh, he's fine," says Skulker. "But he won't be for very long. You see, he'll soon be another one of my trophies. And you're the bait."
He raises an arm, a metallic arm that suddenly has a glowing cannon-gun thing on top of it and shit Hiro what are you doing standing there doing nothing –
Dani just sighs. "It wouldn't be the first time," she says, just as Hiro suddenly says, "Get him!"
Dani's eyes fly to him again and somehow Hiro thinks that she's been talking so casually because she wants him and the others to get out and away but that'd be completely impossible because she'd be suicidal to want to face this glowing green thing on her own. It doesn't make sense, he tells himself, and he launches Baymax right towards the glowing green thing, because if there's one thing he's sure of it's that he is not going to let Dani get hurt.
He's not sure how it happens. One moment they're all heading towards him, all six of them, fully prepared with their weapons – and then suddenly they seem to go right through him and they all collapse onto the ground, crashing hard into the wall where Dani's at, tumbling over with the amount of force they've used, and Hiro is flung off Baymax and onto the ground near the entrance of the abandoned, rundown building.
It's like none of them affected him. And they're all immediately pelted with a blast of green that sends them spinning even more, that knocks them into the walls, onto the ground, even more, and Hiro's eyes grow wide.
"Very determined friends, I see," Skulker says, as Dani stands, frozen, GoGo and Honey Lemon and Wasabi and Fred and Baymax on the ground next to her, and Hiro on the other side of Skulker. Skulker moves forward slightly, turns a smirk onto the boy and then to Dani: "And this must be Hiro Hamada! The famous boy genius who risked his life for the daughter of a man who killed his brother and tried to kill him."
Dani stares at him in shock, and Skulker laughs. "We do keep ourselves updated on what happens in the human world, you know," he says. "Contrary to what you and the ghost whelp thinks. I do think, however, that this boy would make a wonderful addition to my prizes."
Skulker turns back to Hiro, who is now staring up at him blankly, and his brain seems to be shutting down because what the hell was this guy talking about and what was he supposed to do and how the hell had they all passed through him as if he weren't even there?
Baymax is far, far away from him, winded by the crash into the wall and Skulker's green blasts. Fred's trapped in his suit, trapped under Wasabi who's trapped under a large stone that's crashed from the building, Honey Lemon look like she's in a daze and her bag's knocked out of her reach and GoGo is trapped in Honey Lemon's chemistry goo and looking completely wiped out.
How the hell did that happen?
Hiro's alone. He is alone, and he thinks this glowing green thing is going to kill him, and Dani is still there.
And in front of him, the glowing green thing looks at him and a smirk grows over his face and he raises his arm, the one with the gun.
"Your fight's with me!" Dani's voice rings out, suddenly, clear and loud. "Leave him alone!"
There's a blast of silvery white light, and Hiro thinks he must be dreaming.
Two rings of silvery white appear around Dani's waist, going up, travelling up her body, down her arms and her legs – and as they move, her clothes seem to change; she seems to glow, and she's not wearing her jeans and sweatshirt and sneakers, she's in some sort of black-and-white outfit with gloves –
And then the ring travels up over her face, and her hair glows a ghostly, brilliant white; and when she snaps open her eyes, they're not blue, they're green, a glowing, bright green.
"What the – "
Hiro's vaguely aware of Fred's voice, of Wasabi looking up, of GoGo's eyes opening in disbelief and Honey Lemon's jaw dropping.
Dani's there. Standing there. But she's not Dani either.
Her feet lifts up off the ground, and she's floating, she's floating, and her hands glow a bright, eerie green.
"Dani?" Hiro finds himself whispering, blinking, because what the hell is going on?
Her eyes flicker to him, just for a moment, and then back to Skulker, who has turned away from Hiro, and is now grinning.
"Now, ghost girl," Skulker says, "you'll see exactly why I'm the greatest hunter in the Ghost Zone!"
All Hiro can do is stare at Dani.
(In his daze, he thinks that she looks furious and amazing but he thinks he never wants to get her angry.
What the hell is going on?)
any comments? haha
