Soli Deo gloria

DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own Big Hero 6.

"This is getting old and we can't keep doing it this way," Hiro said, panting, as he threw his empty delivery bag onto the counter. The insulated cloth bag read The Lucky Cat Café in pretty font in both English and Japanese. A pretty cat sprawled around the letters, smiling. Its face sat wrinkled in its thrown state.

Honey checked the electronic screen stuck next to the till. "I'm sorry, Hiro, but there's another delivery—one for Forty-second Street and then one on Hill Avenue."

"No way. We have the technology for people to order food on their phones," Hiro pulled up their app and sighed at the name, "but we have to make something to get the food to them besides me. Oh, yeah, how about I use Baymax!"—he waved a dramatic hand to the marshmallow-y robot, who was blowing up balloons to give to the kid patrons (they loved them and they loved him—he was slowly becoming more known than the actual lucky cat)—"and get these orders done in like, a tenth of the time?!"

Wasabi at the coffee machine gently brushing coffee grounds into the trash and Honey finishing the glaze on the white chocolate croissants and Gogo making change with the tips from the tip jar collectively all said, "No," calmly, in unison, just like they'd done a ton of times before. Fred, sitting over in the corner greasing up his skates with a can of oil, said, "Hey, you know I'm all for it, my man Hiro, but in democracy, majority rules."

"Freddy, you know what we mean," Honey said. "He'll be recognized. It's bad enough he's out here in broad daylight as it is." She turned and apologized. "No offense, Baymax."

Baymax took twenty seconds to finish topping off the cat balloon he'd been slowly inflating from a helium can. "No offense taken, Honey," he said.

"We are missing out on a great opportunity if we don't do this," Hiro argued. He glanced at his phone's time and sighed. "All I'm doing is running all over San Fransokyo delivering meals when I could be helping out here! This city is the world's biggest technological hub and this café is still in the last century!"

Now all of his friends stared at him; Hiro quickly looked ashamed and said, "So, um, nobody tell Aunt Cass that. Especially since it came from me."

"He's got a point," Gogo said, leaning against her till.

All heads swiveled to her. She waved a hand lazily. "This place could use an upgrade. Sure, we have a computer, but come on—this place is being run by us. Is this really a café we are running?"

"Hiro," Honey said, even as the wheels began turning in her own brain and Wasabi looked around with new eyes, "would your aunt mind if we made some modifications to the café?"

"I don't see why she should!" Hiro said excitedly.

Wasabi raised a hand, even as he saw transformations pop up in his mind's eye, "Can we just like, confirm it with her, so we don't give her a heart attack besides the broken leg the next time she comes down here?"

"You know what, good precaution, Wasabi," Fred said. "Even if we do conveniently have a private healthcare robot at our disposable every moment of every day. My man Hiro," Fred waved a hand past him to the stairs leading up to the Hamada apartment, "go ask her."

Hiro dashed over, hopping and leaping over bags of flour and around friends at the back of the counter, but stopped when Fred leaned over and said, "Hey. Get her go-ahead about Baymax. Who can override Aunt Cass?"

"Good idea, Fred," Hiro approved, before bounding up the clutter-strewn stairs (he absentmindedly thought he needed to clean the stairs, as future guard against further broken legs).

He found Aunt Cass sprawled across their blanket-strewn couch. It was too early in the day for horror films, so she sat transfixed, hand always in a bag of half-eaten sriracha potato chips, flipping between daytime talk shows and soap operas. "Aunt Cass! How are you feeling today?" Hiro asked, sauntering awkwardly over with his hands dug deep in his hoodie pockets.

"Oh hey honey," Aunt Cass said, breaking her gaze from the TV like she was under some witch's spell, "I was just . . . um . . . waiting for the results of Shelly's lung transplant. Also, they're giving away free computers on Daytime Talk." She made feeble attempts to sit up and just ended up knocking her bag of chips to the floor. "Oh, crap. Hiro, do you mind—?"

Hiro picked it up and handed it back to her; her face showed gratitude as she shifted around to make room for him on the couch. "What's up, sweetie?" she said, her arm around him as she pressed a kiss to his feather-light, floppy hair.

"Aunt Cass, I need your permission to transform the café," Hiro said.

Aunt Cass's eyes grew wide and she withdrew her lips abruptly. "So, wasn't expecting that." She thought nervously as she dug out more chips. "How so, exactly?" Her cheeks bulging with chips, her eyes grew still wider. "You didn't change the menu, did you?"

"What? No! I was talking with the everyone and we were thinking about upgrading the café. You know, bringing it into the twenty-first century. Maybe get a computer in the till, update the ordering systems, add some cool modifications, you know—time-savers."

"That sounds like a lot, sweetie," Aunt Cass said, looking blankly past the TV as she dug around for more chips. She drew short on actual chips and finally threw back the bag and took the last crumbs as a shot. She crumbled the bag up, the plastic crinkling loudly, as Hiro said, "It's like a dishwasher—saves you time and money. That's it—only it'll be like, a hundred times cooler."

Aunt Cass gave him a teasing face. "What could possibly be a hundred times cooler than a dishwasher?"

"Thanks, Aunt Cass," Hiro said. He squeezed her but then gave her another long hug. "Extra hug," he said. He flew up, leaving her to nap, before turning around and walking backward, asked, "I'm going to use Baymax for deliveries."

"Oh, cool," Aunt Cass said sleepily, fluffing up her pillow. All this business talk combined with her shows ending made her tired. She closed her eyes and said, "Have fun. Fly safely."

Hiro pumped his fist and bounded back down the stairs to the waiting ears of his innovative friends. He gave them a thumb's up and Wasabi said excitedly, "That's a green light!" He produced his own device quickly and tapped fiercely away, his eyes lit up by the green 3D blueprints opening up before him.

"What are your ideas, Gogo—?" Hiro turned to her to have The Lucky Café's delivery bag slammed into his chest.

"You still have a delivery waiting," she said. "They're expected in ten minutes."

Hiro made an unintelligible squeaking noise as he dashed out the door, calling over his shoulder, "Baymax, hurry! You're my ride!"

Baymax looked first at Wasabi, then Gogo, then Honey, then Fred. Then he started walking out the back door, one carefully set step at a time.

Honey watched him with anxious eyes, wondering how she could somehow urge him to go fast just by staring at him. Gogo snapped a bubble and said, "Well, at least he's fast when he flies."

Hiro stood at the door to Aunt Cass's garage, wrestling on his flying gear. He looked up at Baymax and threw his hands up for a second before running over and pressing the button he'd installed on his robot's right inner wrist. "Hurry, Baymax, t-minus eight minutes!"

"I am not fast. This is a fact I have relayed to you before," Baymax said. "If such an operating issue continues to occur, perhaps it is time to go over ways of fixing it."

"Wait, what? We're not doing this right now! You're fine! You're just slow on the uptake!" Hiro said. Armor and gear assembled in a flash like a perfectly fitting puzzle piece all over Baymax; Hiro retrieved the address from his phone and climbed onto his robot's back, securing his hands and kneecaps. He flashed a smile. "But fast in the air."

They blew off into the San Fransokyo air. It was cleaner air than of yesteryear's smog-riddled air; Hiro whooped as the cold hair whipped what hair his helmet couldn't hold down around; it was great, but would've been more enjoyable if Baymax wasn't still speaking. "Options for troubleshooting are: running a full systems diagnostics test; turning me on and off again by the means of a manual reboot—"

Hiro rolled his eyes to himself, even as he smiled. "Oh, Baymax. . ." Baymax could do plenty of human things, could learn and evolve, but he'd never picked up that subtle human trait that was, at the end of the day, uniquely human: how to use tact.

"I don't see why we can't just use you, buddy," Hiro thought aloud. "Who cares if you're recognizable? You're more popular than the Lucky Cat of the Lucky Cat Café, for Pete's sake! It's not like we have any sworn enemies out to exact revenge or anything. Hey," his thoughts leading astray into a daydream of the future, "do you think someone will raze the café to the ground to get back at us?"

"T-minus four minutes until delivery time deadline," Baymax said. "Do you want to exceed posted legal speed limits to get to destination on time?"

"Oh, yeah! Those are for ground vehicles, Baymax. We're in the air—no legal speed limit can contain US!" Hiro declared, pressing a couple of buttons and sending Baymax into overdrive.

"Posted speed limits are also safety precautions. Exceeding such limits would bring on greater risks to your health," Baymax pointed out.

"Unless I directly fly you into a billboard blimp, we're not getting into a traffic accident today, Baymax," Hiro pointed out. He did tuck a note into the back of his mind to fly slower on the way back, just to set Baymax's worrying robot mind at ease.

The count down on Baymax's chest blinked in red: less than a minute. A quick nosedive with Hiro pulling his robot up just in time—and they were outside a tall hill of a neighborhood. Hiro descended from Baymax, threw his flying gear into his billowy arms, and shoved him into the nearest alley. "Am I being hidden from the public to keep up our secret identities or not?" Baymax wondered.

"I don't know right now, Baymax. Just let me finish this delivery!" Hiro hefted the insulated delivery bag from Baymax's arm and breathing in deep, marched up to the cute front door.

A young dude with speckled facial hair opened the door in his bathrobe and slippers. "Cash only?" he said, when Hiro told him his total.

"Yeah," Hiro said tightly, with a fake smile.

"You know, most people are on apps or online pay only," the customer said, handing him some crumpled bills he'd dug out deep from some hidden fold of his bathrobe pocket.

"I will keep that in mind," Hiro said, walking backwards and waving awkwardly before disappearing into the alley.

"Baymax," he said determinedly as he mounted the robot's back, "we're gonna go make some deliverers."

"Okay," Baymax said cheerfully, listlessly.


"When I was talking technological advances, this isn't what I had in mind, weirdly enough," Hiro said, walking dazedly through the café, taking in what could happen in being gone thirty minutes.

"Now I know I said I wouldn't update the menu, but I couldn't help myself!" Honey clapped her hands as she bounced back from her latest culinary creation. The baked goods sat on their shelves, all freshly iced, freshly baked, and completely forgotten. Before Honey was a culinary lab of frozen dessert ingredients usually reserved for their smoothies and occasional milkshakes. Besides the recognizable ingredients were clear square containers with black chalkboard labels written in wet white marker. "Agar agar, maltodextrin, and lecithin!" Honey said excitedly, like she was recalling the names of beloved pets instead of obscure scientific names. She pet her container of dry ice and her siphon. "This is the introduction of scientific innovation in modernist cooking!" She grinned as she dropped droplets of a tangerine-colored juice into a bowl containing ingredients of exact specifications; they bobbed down in little spheres. "Spherication," she whispered to herself.

Hiro watched the baby fruit caviar drop to the bottom from the other side of the bowl. Honey stared at him from the other side, her huge eyes made frigging ginormous through the magnifying glass. "Molecular gastronomy!" she squealed. "What do you think?"

"Impractical in this case, but cool," Hiro said.

"It's so pretty. Just watch—I can totally make it everyday practical!" Honey said. She danced away to stick the turkey breast for the lunch sandwiches into her sous vide.

Hiro blinked; Gogo was already knee-deep in building an entire new till system. "How'd you get that so quickly?" Hiro wondered.

Gogo lifted her head, wiped her forehead of sweat, and staring him down, blew a bubble wearing a REALLY? look. "Do you know where we live? Who you're talking to?" she wondered.

"And you're still ringing up customers?" Hiro wondered.

"Duh."

Hiro backed away with his hands up. "As you were," he said casually.

Gogo returned to that which she was.

Hiro almost tripped over the tiny robot vrooming at a legal speed under his feet. "You can make robots too?!" he asked Wasabi.

"He's just a prototype off a popular model. He's cleaning! Look at him go! He's amazing!" Wasabi sighed excitedly. He also walked Hiro through his new fine-tuned automated cleaning assembly line at the sink. "Every dish is scrubbed clean and sanitized 'til it's free of ninety-nine-point-nine percent of germs!" Wasabi said proudly. "Also, between the three of us, we're scheming of a pulley system to deliver the dishes to the correct table as soon as they're done so there's no wait for the dine-in customer!"

"Wait, doesn't that just get rid of Fred's job?" Hiro wondered.

"Yeah, that's the whole point," Wasabi said, like DUH. "His big technological advance is rocket-powered roller skates!"

"Hey, you said they were a great idea!" Fred overhead, rolling up to the counter and hitting it, doubling over the counter.

"Yeah, I was being sarcastic," Wasabi said, shrugging a shoulder.

"Well, I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to go create something to do my job," Hiro said, grabbing a milk tea macaron.

"Hiro, don't spoil your dinner," Honey chastised him lightly, even as her full attention was summoned by her experimentations.

"An orange or a boiled egg would be more nutrient packed snack choices for a growing boy such as yourself," Baymax pointed out.

"Duly noted, Baymax," Hiro said. His robot behind him, he didn't notice Baymax literally adding this notation to the Hiro Hamada file he kept up-to-date.

It took over twelve long hours, a couple of ordered-in pizzas, several visits with his friends, and a lot of back-and-forth traveling in his swivel chair, but by sunrise, Hiro emerged from his garage-turned-lab with a tiny fleet of homemade drones. "Welcome to the world, C.A.T.S."

In introduction to the yawning employees of The Lucky Cat Café, "Meet the Containers for Aerial Traveling Systems. Or the C.A.T.S."

"That is totally awesome!" Fred said, leaping up with pumping fists.

Gogo eyed the little drones flying around the café. "Not remote-controlled though, right?" she wondered.

"Remotely-controlled," Hiro said. He wore the telekinetic crown from his microbots. "I adapted the technology from my microbots to my drones. They're built of the same materials, though now we know to keep them locked up from criminals' hands. I have this controlling crown synched to the retina scans and fingerprints of only six people, which would be us and Aunt Cass. All you have to do is put the order inside the interior of the drone and then just think the address. The drones, equipped with GPS technology, travel to that address."

"Nice," Wasabi said, impressed.

"Here, watch this." Hiro donned the telekinetic crown and just thought C.A.T.S. number one. The drone with a metallic 1 painted on its side flew to him and hovered in front of him. "Put a bubble tea in its interior, Gogo," Hiro instructed.

Gogo, having made bubble tea en masse for the crew, stuck one in the inside, all lidded up with a biodegradable straw next to it. She put the door down and let Hiro take it from there. Go to Aunt Cass's bedroom door. He'd also tricked them out with blueprints of the entire building. C.A.T.S. number one silently flew away up the stairs. Hiro almost cheered with victory when he heard Aunt Cass scream. "Whoops," Hiro said sheepishly. "I may have forgotten to warn Aunt Cass about my latest experiment. Be right back," and the kid skedaddled back up into the apartment to calm his screaming invalid of an aunt.

Despite its rocky start, the C.A.T.S fleet soon became a mainstay part of The Lucky Cat Café. What with Wasabi and his cleaning robots, Honey with her new responsibility of molecular gastronomy meets neighborhood café, and Gogo always finding a way to trick out the new tender system, the responsibility for deliveries shifted onto Fred's shoulders. "Are you sure he can handle it?" Wasabi wondered anxiously.

"Please. I am the puppet master, the drones' leader. I will lead them to victory!" And despite tripping over his own feet and running into tables, Fred never once crashed a single C.A.T.S.

"I hope I can recognize my own café when I come back to work," Aunt Cass said. Her foot put up, she half watched her daytime talk show as she chatted with Hiro, who was cleaning up the apartment for his aunt. He had a lot more downtime now that he and Baymax were relieved from their deliveries and daily alter ego near-revelations. He took this time to help out his aunt.

"Don't worry; I'll show you how to control the drones. Before you know it, you won't know what you'd do without them," Hiro yelled above the noise of vacuuming the rug. Baymax ignored the conversation as he meticulously dusted around Aunt Cass's cat knickknacks.

"I don't know about those drones, but I don't know what I'd do without you," Aunt Cass said over the top of the sofa, softness in her eyes.

Hiro turned off the vacuum and smiled. "Love you too, Aunt Cass."

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