Disclaimer: I do not know Big Hero 6


SFIT – THE NERD LAB

"Alright, we're here, let's get a move on!"

Without a word, Hiro obediently trudged behind Tadashi and entered the university, still not having enough time to recuperate and wash away all his negative thoughts.

Normally, being surrounded by cool tech always made Hiro feel right at home.

However, he currently found himself almost unable to walk. His knees felt as if they were going to buckle under the weight of the biting, clawing, unsettling trepidation that was pumping through his veins. Hiro berated himself for his incapacity to pinpoint the cause of such levels of strenuous sentiments. It wasn't a terror of Callaghan, and it wasn't a fright of being judged (for better or for worse).

So... what could it possibly be?

"Hey, knucklehead!" Tadashi hollered out, holding a door open for his younger brother. "Are ya coming?"

Realizing that he had slowed to a halt, Hiro recovered and nodded rapidly. He inconspicuously scooted past the door, swallowing his fears as if digesting a pill without liquid.

"Heads up!"

Lost in thought, Hiro almost became minced meat as a yellow blur sped by him at speeds which should not be allowed indoors (or even outdoors, for that matter).

Once the blur had come to a stop, Hiro realized that it was but a bike. The biker, a small figure it was, hoisted their invention onto a hanger with ease and proceeded to pluck off a wheel for further examination, only to apathetically swing it back over her shoulder, causing the wheel to magnetically migrate back to its original position.

With intrigue, Hiro drew nearer to the bike while also admiring the many other inventions and scientific creations that decorated the lab in every corner. While mystified by all the wonderful creations strewn about the room, Hiro's heart also grew heavy as he realized that all this time... he was so close. His real home was here this whole time, just a few steps away. All this was just grazing past his fingertips his whole life. Callaghan made him out as a fool, having his son wrapped around his finger at all times so that Hiro was virtually blind to the obvious.

All these years.

"Hiro!" Tadashi called, waving him over to the bike that Hiro had almost been murdered by moments beforehand.

With a shake of his head, Hiro sucked in a wary breath, suspecting that his thoughts weren't actually going to stop tormenting him any time soon; but he refused to show it. Making his way over to the bike, Hiro got a closer look at the sleek model and slowly became more impressed the more he analyzed it. Out of the corner of his eye, he could make out Tadashi's prideful posture as he too inspected the bike.

Testing his hand behind the wheel, Hiro could feel the vibration of the electron-magnetic wavelength that suspended the wheel to the leg of the bike.

"Whoa," Hiro gaped, reeling his hand back. "Electro-mag suspension?" He gasped, pondering about how ingenious the idea was. This was a lot more awesome than Tadashi's pitiful scooter...

"Hey!"

Whirling his head, Hiro stood before the owner of the bike who was clad in a leather crop-jacket, two layers of workout pants, a set of biker gloves, and an intimidating helmet. Up close, Hiro could determine that the figure was a woman.

"GoGo!" Tadashi warmly greets as he cheerily walked over to the small woman, popping the helmet off her head. He bent down and pecked a small kiss on the Korean lady's cheek.

Without any indication or acknowledgment of Tadashi's presence, GoGo indifferently blew a bubble of her gum before popping it between a set of particularly straight teeth with deadly precision. For a moment, her violet-shadowed eyes searched over Hiro, causing the younger boy to back away ever so slightly.

It's then when a small hint of a smile spreads across GoGo's face. "Welcome to the Nerd Lab." She introduces, Hiro finding her voice a little rough around the edges.

Hiro easily recognizes the voice from the call Tadashi had transpired a few days ago. From the conversation and the kiss, Hiro could deduce that this was Tadashi's girlfriend.

"Thanks," Hiro commented, but it appeared that GoGo had already focused her attention back to her bike. "I've never seen electro-mag suspension on a bike before." He further offered.

GoGo smirks to herself as she spun a bike wheel, admiring its smoothness. "Zero resistance, faster bike." She finishes her statement with a tender growl of fascination while cocking a seductive eyebrow, all of which makes Hiro feel a little on edge.

GoGo abruptly clasps the wheel in her hands, effectively stopping its rotation. Hoisting it back off the leg, she adds with slight disappointment, "but not fast enough." She agressively whirls around and chucks the wheel into a bin full of other failures with a force that would effortlessly slice someone in half if the circumference were just a touch sharper.

"Yet..."

GoGo then storms off, leaving the boys to their own devices.

Hiro gulps, recovering from the Korean woman's intensity. "She's... lovely."

"She is." Tadashi responds, rather oblivious to Hiro's hesitant sarcasm.

"You love her, don't you?" Hiro drawls, dramatically changing to tone in his voice.

Tadashi sputters dramatically, "you accuse me of being with a temperamental speed-junkie?" Tadashi clutches his chest in exaggeration as he begins to talk in a loud, derisive voice, "My little brother, believing that I, Tadashi Hamada, would give my mind, body, soul to–"

A bolt meets with Tadashi's temple, causing the older Hamada to shut his trap.

"Gotta admire her hearing and aiming skills too, am I right?" Hiro snickers, twisting his shirt in an effort to stifle his laughs.

"Shut up." Tadashi groans, but also finding himself affectionately charmed by his girlfriend's sense of dark humor.

Wandering off, Hiro only made it a few steps before he, once again, almost found himself sliced and fried.

"Whoa, whoa! Behind the line please!"

Hiro flinched backwards where his toes were just kissing the rim of the black and yellow tape that bordered that section of the lab.

"Hey, Wasabi." Tadashi says, still rubbing his temple. "This is Hiro."

Raising his safety goggles up to his forehead, the large African American man stretched his lips into a kindhearted smile. He swiped off his gloves and extended a hand towards Hiro.

"Nice to meet you, Hiro," says Wasabi.

Hiro shook Wasabi's hand which was more than twice the mass of his own but was surprisingly soft.

Slipping his gloves back on, Wasabi inserted his goggles back onto the bridge of his nose and grabbed an apple. "Prepare to be amazed." He declared, and without further notice, tossed the apple towards Hiro.

"Catch!"

In a beautiful moment, the apple had become sliced paper-thin in the blink of an eye.

"Wow..." Hiro marveled. The apple slice was more brittle than paper and he could see right through the flesh of the fruit as if it were a filter or tissue paper.

Revealing his secret, Wasabi flips a switch on a mechanism and mint green lasers now flicker into reality, positioned like a gate that the apple had just trespassed.

"Laser induced plasma?" Hiro fancied as he slid around the invention.

"Oh yeah," Wasabi proudly commented as he walked over to his tool set, "with a little magnetic confinement for ultra precision."

Hiro walked over to Wasabi and stared down at the tool set with disbelief. "Wow," he scoffed, peering into a miniature magnifying glass, "how do you find anything in this mess?"

"I have a system," Wasabi states, taking the magnifying glass from Hiro and placing it back into its designated spot, "there's a place for everything, and everything in its place..."

"Need this!"

Hiro breaks a grin as GoGo suddenly comes into view and snatches a wrench from Wasabi's obnoxiously organized tool set, immediately shaking all the supplies into a disheveled disaster (much to Hiro's preferred liking, however).

"You can't do that!" Wasabi screeched, trampling after the younger woman. "This is anarchy! Society has rules!"

"Excuse me! Coming through!"

Hiro jumps out of the way just in time from becoming squashed by some sort of human-sized wrecking ball. (What next? Was he to be sliced into bits by a series of spinning razors made for cooking efficiently or something?)

Scrambling to get the large sphere onto a fixated pedestal, the tall woman in possession of the object caught a glimpse of Tadashi and a huge smile flashed across her rosy face.

"Tadashi!" She cheers brightly, splaying herself onto the ball with grace, somehow balancing herself with her incredulously tall stilettos (she didn't even need them).

"Oh my gosh, you must be Hiro!" The woman further yells as she lithely flips over and confronts Hiro, making the teenager pry a smile as big as hers.

Hiro winced away from the lady's loud, energetic voice, which was undoubtedly caused by the ear-buds; Hiro could hear her music blasting from where he was standing. That was surely going to cause deafness in her later years. Besides that, by the lilt in her voice, Hiro could tell that she too had a different ethnicity like Wasabi. It sounded Latina?

"It's so good to see you!" She yells, but with every genuinely nice intent. She (finally) rips out her ear-buds and gives Hiro two french kisses before grasping his hand and leading him closer to her experiment.

"Perfect timing, perfect timing!" She says giddily to herself as she pumps a lever implanted into the ground, which causes her black sphere to be raised higher into the air.

"That's a lot of tungsten carbon." Hiro remarked, able to determine what the 'wrecking ball' actually consisted of up close.

"Four hundred pounds of it!" The woman squealed, slightly shaking Hiro, her glasses teetering down her nose. She then whisked Hiro off of his feet once more, promptly dragging him over to a chemistry table.

"You're gonna love this!" She proclaims with a wicked smile.

Hiro watches with admiration as the woman proceeds to explain the chemical process of her invention with animated movements and a kick of charisma, "a dash of perchloric acid, a smidge of cobalt, a hint of hydrogen peroxide–" suddenly, she whips out a hand-shift flamethrower, "–super-heated to five-hundred kelvin and–" taking her chemical potion, she merrily skips back over to the sphere of cobalt and dances around it, spraying it with the formula. This forms a thick mist around the invention in a matter of moments. The woman then leans over to a lever and flips it, causing the mist to be magnetized to the ball, "–tada!"

"So... pink." Hiro shrugs, amused.

"Here's the best part!" The woman sings, laying a ginger hand on Hiro before tip-toeing over to her invention, biting her bottom lip with eager anticipation.

She then taps the pink ball ever so slightly–

Kaboom!

"Wow..." Hiro melts.

"I know, right?" The lady jovially exclaims, turning around, revealing a fine coating of pink residue covering her lab coat. "Chemical metal embrittlement!"

"Not bad, Honey Lemon." Tadashi salutes, making his presence known once more.

"Honey Lemon? GoGo? Wasabi?" Hiro inquires, dumbfounded by the nicknames.

"I spilled wasabi on my shirt one time, people," Hiro hears Wasabi holler from another section of the lab, "one time!"

So, these were the guys that banded together to form a bloody superhero team in order to find me?

To say the least, Hiro was flattered and relieved. So far, none of Tadashi's friends had even given Hiro a second glance or held any sort of body language that represented any form of ridicule or resentment. He was being treated fairly, as if he were part of the family all along. They didn't ostracize him at all, it was all so normal, and Hiro respected that more than anything.

Returning back to the conversation, Hiro catches a few of Tadashi's words, "... Fred is the one who comes up with all the nicknames."

"Fred?" Last but not least, eh?

"This guy, right here!"

Hiro let out a startled yelp as he came face to face with a gigantic head of a sentient lizard.

"Don't be alarmed," The man inside the suit blatantly advised as he squirmed out of the suit and came into view through the costume's mouth, "it's just a suit, not my real face and body."

Hiro also recognized the voice from the call and distinctly labeled him as a classic "hippie."

"The name's Fred." The man in the mascot informed, wrangling Hiro's hand in a flimsy shake.

"School mascot by day, but by night–"

Hiro couldn't hold his tongue, "You're Fredzilla of the Big Hero 6."

The air seemed to freeze.

Fred let out a forced cough as he shriveled back into his suit. "Sorry, what was that, little man?" He wheezed, Wasabi and GoGo rejoining the group after Wasabi's wrench debacle.

Hiro didn't mean to say that so loudly. He peered at his brother from the corner of his eye and could just strain enough to see that he was holding his breath. Well, Hiro figured that there wasn't much of a point of covering it up.

"All of you... you're the Big Hero 6."

This seemed to grab the rest of the group's attention.

By the determination and certainty in Hiro's voice, it was unambiguously obvious that this was no fluke, joke, or humorous guess. Hiro knew exactly what he said was true. There was no denying their way out of this.

Tadashi knew best that there was no point in trying to salvage their secret identities. "Hiro, how do you know that?"

Hiro shuffled back as he realized Tadashi towering over him. Not in anger, but Hiro couldn't fight off the sense that he had done something terribly wrong. "I heard you talking with everyone else on the night I came back."

Tadashi pinched the bridge of his nose as the rest of the team slightly cringed, not knowing what to do.

"I wanna help you guys take down Callaghan!" Hiro boldly announced.

"What?" Tadashi retaliated, "No... no way. Absolutely not!"

"Tadashi's right, Hiro," GoGo agreed, but her voice was uncharacteristically empathetic, "it's far too dangerous for you."

"Why's that?" Hiro sneered, stepping further away from the group.

"Please don't be angry with us, Hiro," Honey cooed desperately, "you don't need to go after him."

"Yeah," Wasabi followed, "leave that to us. Don't hold a grudge against Callaghan, let us do the slicing and dicing for you..."

"Besides," Fred cut in, "we've been training for this sort of thing... we can't let you get hurt, dude!"

"Don't give me that crap!"

A few subtle stares and whispers passed around the lab.

"Hiro–" Tadashi hissed in a condescending, warning tone, reaching out for his brother who flinched away from his touch.

"You all cannot be serious," Hiro growled, "don't you dare treat me like some kid–"

"You are a kid–"

"Yeah, I was Callaghan's kid for eleven years! He acted like he was my father. I want to put a stop to him, same as you do. Don't I deserve that much? I don't care what I have to do, I'm not afraid of him! Is that so hard for you to understand? Please, let me help you!"

With a blank face, Tadashi glared at Hiro straight in the eyes and spoke, "No."

"Why?"

"I don't want you to get hurt."

"I won't!"

"You might."

"I can take that responsibility."

"I already lost you once, I can't loose you again."

Hiro's brows furrowed in betrayal as he scoffed in disbelief. "Is that what this is about?" He harshly spat, glowering at everyone. "It's not your decision to make!"

At this point, fortunately enough, everyone else in the lab had averted their attention elsewhere, not keen in listening in on the argument. Hiro was gnashing his teeth that his hot breathe seethed through, his body tense with rage. His gaze flickered towards the rest of the group who had fallen silent. Hiro could practically see the steam of the gears turning in their heads, serves them right.

"Actually, Hiro," Tadashi spoke flatly, "it is my decision. You're my little brother and it's my job to protect you. I'm not going to let Callaghan lay his eyes on you ever again."

"I'm no coward, Tadashi."

"I didn't say you were."

"You can't just go off and deal with Callaghan without letting me in on this... it's unfair!" Tears began to prickle the corners of Hiro's eyes and his voice cracked, much to his humiliation.

"I know, Hiro, but I can't let you do this."

Hiro wanted to punch his brother (is that normal?) "I have to see him! I have to... I can't let this go and neither can you, don't be stupid!"

"Hiro, there's no need for this. I'm your brother, it's my job to protect you. I've already failed you once and it won't happen again. Who knows what will happen when Callaghan sees you?"

"I can't accept that answer, Tadashi. Please... just let me help, I'll do anything!"

Tadashi says nothing.

Hiro despises how calm his brother is through all of it. It's as if he doesn't care to understand. It's as if he's already made Hiro's place in all of this without even the slightest bit of consent.

Hiro's trembling, unable to contain the raw energy that was threatening to burst forth. Tears are scarily close to falling and his breaths are coming in shallow puffs. The ground seemed to disappear from underneath his feet and his head is buzzing as if he had taken three shots of vodka. His blood is boiling and his mind is starting to ache with confusion. Never had he felt so angry before. Callaghan would get unreasonably furious with him from time to time, and Hiro would sulk and pout, but never has Hiro felt the urge to bite back.

Did Tadashi and his gang seriously believe that they could leave him out of this? Just because he was little and mentally sensitive to the psychological aspect of seeing Callaghan again? They might be right, but Hiro couldn't be convinced. He refused to be. He would force himself to be strong if he had to. If Tadashi couldn't let this go, neither could he. Hiro needed to see for himself the look in Callaghan's eyes when that man finally realized how he had lost and that Hiro was moving on, a different person than the one he had raised. How come his brother couldn't see that?

This energy was new and different. It was maddening, powerful, and it was starting to scare him.

It was too much.

"I... I need some air."

With that, Hiro bolted out of the lab

"Hiro!"


Hey Guys...I am so sorry that this is coming Saturday, I usually upload Friday evening but I ended having to do some serious cleaning of my apartment. (I didn't know there was so much space on my side of the bedroom O.o) Then I had to pick up my fiance from work when we got home we had dinner. It wasn't until my fiance mention bed just a few minutes ago that I realized today was Friday or...I guess its Saturday now. Again my apologize.

Hope you all enjoyed this chapter remember reviews motivate!

Duskmuse, Fading with the rising sun Out!