Chapter 6: What a Brush With Death Has Shown Me
Aunt Cass hadn't been thrilled to hear that Hiro would be away from home again so soon, but with a careful application of Hiro's best puppy dog eyes, she'd caved eventually. However, she insisted that she drive him and Baymax over herself, so he had to wait until she closed the cafe for the day before they could head over. That meant by the time he arrived, it was far too late to start hunting, and so instead it turned into an impromptu sleepover party.
Heathcliff provided a dazzling array of snacks and drinks, and they sat up half the night just hanging out and tossing theories between themselves about what the creature could possibly be. Over time they got more and more wild as they ran out of reasonable theories and just started guessing at random, until Wasabi was suggesting it was some kind of alien, and Fred kept trying to insist it was some sort of screaming death bird from the ancient past that had come back to the land of the living for revenge against perceived slights. Hiro and Honey Lemon were laughing too hard to respond, but GoGo threw handfuls of popcorn at them both.
They'd all crashed in their sleeping bags sometime around two in the morning, but they were all up bright and early the next day thanks to Fred's alarm clock suddenly blaring the He-Man theme song. With a collection of groans, they'd all stumbled into the manor's massive kitchen for a quick breakfast before throwing on their suits and heading out to search.
They'd decided to have Honey Lemon and Wasabi ride with Hiro on Baymax's shoulders while GoGo and Fred followed below. It was more for the speed and convenience than anything, though Hiro also argued that way they could look high and low at the same time. They started at the edge of town closest to Fred's place, sticking to the edges of San Fransokyo so they could search the city itself and the outskirts at the same time.
They were about thirty minutes into their patrol when Baymax suddenly let out a beep, his head swinging to the side and focusing. Hiro glanced down at the robot in confusion.
"What is it, bud?" Hiro asked, holding a hand up to his helmet to make sure the communication lines were open.
"Hiro, I am detecting signals that match those of the creature coming from that direction," Baymax reported, pointing his finger slightly to the left of their current trajectory.
"What?!" Hiro yelped. He squinted in the direction Baymax was pointing, but he couldn't see anything past the hills ringing the city. "Where? I don't see it!"
"It is approximately one mile from our current position," Baymax explained, already adjusting his flight path to intercept the creature. "We are estimated to reach it at our current speed in, two point one minutes."
Hiro heard Honey Lemon passing on the information to GoGo and Fred below, who moved to follow Baymax's new path, but he was too busy concentrating to pay attention to that, his eyes sliding closed so he could block out everything but his medium senses. He hoped his night away from Aunt Cass would be enough to boost his powers so he could get a better lock on the creature. He couldn't afford to lose it again.
He threw out his senses, focusing them in the direction Baymax had indicated, and sure enough he felt something light up in his mind like a lightbulb. Though he'd been very distracted during their earlier chase, he could still recognize the familiar energy of the creature that had taken his brother. Baymax was right. They'd found it.
Still keeping his senses trained on the creature, Hiro opened his eyes again. They were focused and full of determination.
"Alright guys, this thing is definitely some kind of ghost, so make sure you've got specter-vision on, because it's probably not going to be visible to you otherwise. It's airborne, so we'll come at it from above while GoGo and Fred come at it from below. Last time it managed to outspeed us, so we've got to figure out how to slow it down. Honey Lemon, see if you can throw something sticky at it, something to gum up the works. GoGo, Wasabi, if it's got eyes, aim for those. Fred, you're the only other one who might be able to reach it if it tries to fly off, drive it back down. Baymax and I will stay above it. Everyone ready?"
"Ready!"
"Yes!"
"I'm good!"
"Let's do this thing!"
Hiro grinned to himself, listening to everyone chime in. Finally, they were doing something. "Baymax?"
"I am ready, Hiro."
"Okay. Let's get this thing!" he roared, just as they swung around the closest hillside and into the creature's path.
Just like before, initially it looked like just a bunch of shadows flying in a mass towards them, but when Hiro gave himself a chance to focus on the thing, little details started to become clearer. He got the impression of churning wings, scales sliding over scales, and wide staring eyes looking up at them in surprise from the darkness. But then the creature let out a loud hissing noise and turned, faster than anything that size had any right to, and started diving downwards, trying to gain speed and lose them.
But that wasn't happening. Not on Hiro's watch.
"After it, Baymax!" he shouted.
Baymax was already complying, dropping so fast that Wasabi shrieked and scrambled to stay on. With gravity and rocket boots working together, Baymax managed to follow after the creature quickly, and actually started to gain on it as they dove towards the city streets.
The creature didn't like that though. Hiro thought he saw eyes glancing back to look at them and narrow angrily, but it was only a brief flash. The next second though, the creature shifted, its entire body elongating and becoming long and sinuous, and dispersing the shadows it had collected around itself. For the first time, Hiro finally got an idea of what they were facing.
It looked very superficially like an asian dragon, with the long thin body covered in dark green scales and short arms topped with deadly-looking talons and a wild mane of thick fur the colour of old blood. But that was where the similarities ended. Rather than flying through the manipulation of wind currents like other asian dragons did, this one had a pair of massive bird's wings, the dark feathers flashing in the sunlight with each powerful downbeat. Hiro couldn't make out its face yet, but he also could tell that there was something wrong with it. That was definitely no dragon.
But that was all that Hiro had time to observe, because no sooner had the creature dropped its shadows and revealed itself than it suddenly turned, darting between two buildings far faster and smoothly than Hiro had been expecting. It moved so fast!
"Baymax!" Hiro tried to shout in warning, but Baymax was already responding to the creature's change in course. The space the creature had ducked through was too narrow for him to fly through straight on, but he could make it sideways...barely. Hiro came to the conclusion almost at the same moment as the robot did.
"Hang on guys!" he tried to warn Wasabi and Honey Lemon, and then he was pressing himself as flat against Baymax's back as he could go, hoping it would be enough.
"Oh no!" Honey Lemon squeaked, Wasabi letting out a high-pitched scream on the other side, and then Baymax was flipping onto his side, zooming through the gap between the buildings at full speed. The space was narrow enough that there was barely a foot of clearance on either side of them, and Hiro nearly swore when they passed below a fire escape that came close enough to whistle past Honey Lemon's helmet fins. Then they were out, back onto the street, and Baymax was righting himself.
"Oh god, please don't do that again," Wasabi moaned from Hiro's right, sounding like he was going to be sick.
"Seconded," Honey Lemon added, not sounding much better. "Dios Mio."
"Try to stay above it," Hiro instructed Baymax shakily, not exactly fine himself. "We don't want it getting away from us again like last time."
"Understood," Baymax agreed, still tracking the creature with his scanner. It was slithering along through the air below them, following the path of the residential street, but ducking around as many obstacles as it could to try to throw them off. Rather than follow the creature's convoluted path around cars, telephone poles, and trees, the four of them stayed in the air, following along above but not coming any closer. They needed a clear path if they wanted to catch this thing, and right now it had too many escape routes if they tried to grab it and they missed.
However, the creature seemed to realize what they were waiting for, because it switched up tactics again. When they came upon an intersection, the creature suddenly pulled an impossibly fast u-turn, curling back and flying up over its own spine. Above, Baymax was flying too fast trying to keep up to respond in time, and they overshot the creature by a good twenty feet before Baymax could get his thrusters under them to slow them down for the turn. Hiro cursed and turned to look back, figuring that the creature would take this chance to shoot off into the sky.
To be fair, that's exactly what the creature tried to do. But then a blue-and-orange figure fell out of the sky towards it, spitting fire and laughing, and it was forced to jerk to the side to avoid being hit. Its dodge brought it directly into the path of GoGo's disks, which smacked it straight in the face, stunning it enough that its wings faltered, and it plummeted.
"Yes!" Hiro cheered, throwing his arms into the air in victory. It looked like GoGo and Fred had finally caught up to them.
"What the heck is this thing?" GoGo's voice came over the comms, sounding disgusted.
"Still no idea," Hiro responded, "but that doesn't matter. Just keep it down, we're coming!"
"Can do!" Fred chimed in cheerfully, already using his superjump to leap for the creature and laughing like a kid in a candy store. GoGo was dashing up the street as well, her disk zooming back towards her, the other one ready to be thrown. They converged on the creature just as it hit the ground with a mighty crash, shaking the street and causing several of the nearby parked cars to jump.
A few car alarms went off, much to Hiro's absent annoyance. The last thing they needed was to draw attention at this point. While the normal people of the city were tolerant enough of their superhero antics, if anyone saw them fighting apparently empty air and causing property damage they might not be so accomodating. They needed to take this thing out fast.
"Careful guys!" Hiro called out, just as they reached the crash site, Baymax swinging his rocket boots beneath himself to come in for a graceful landing. Hiro hopped off almost before they landed, rushing towards the downed creature, while Honey Lemon and Wasabi followed after.
Hiro looked the creature over consideringly, noting the way its sides were heaving as if it were breathing heavily from the flight. Now that he was closer, he could see that its face was some sort of distorted fusion of a human face and a bird's beak, though that was only the closest comparison he could think of. It was slightly horrifying to look at, so Hiro quickly looked away to inspect the rest of its body. It didn't look too injured, but he knew how hard GoGo could throw those disks, and they hurt. After taking a hit to the head, this thing would probably be stunned for a while. Now to make sure it didn't go anywhere in the meantime.
"Okay," he started, turning to Honey Lemon. "First things first, we've got to trap it. Do you have a chemball potion that can - "
Hiro never got to finish his sentence because at that moment the very not stunned creature burst into motion. Its long tail lashed out like a whip, knocking them all backwards hard enough to knock the air out of their lungs and leave them gasping. Hiro was incredibly glad for his helmet at that moment, because if he hadn't been wearing it, he probably would have cracked his skull open on the sidewalk when he landed. As it was, his vision went black for a moment.
When his eyesight returned, it was just in time to see the creature whirl on Baymax and pounce. Baymax shot off a rocket fist, trying to knock the creature back, but the creature dodged it and then struck, pinning Baymax on his front, helpless. Armour screamed and wrenched as the creature started pecking at Baymax's back with its razor-sharp beak, its talons sinking into his shoulders and arms and leaving gouges in the carbon-fibre. Baymax could only flail helplessly, his arms pinned and his legs too short to kick at the creature above. The beak stabbed again and again, driving down at the armour and trying to break through it, crashing down dangerously close to where Baymax's chip port would be on the other side.
"No!" Hiro screamed, trying to struggle upwards despite his dizziness, but before he could manage to get up any further than on his knees there was a flash of movement and then GoGo's disk impacted the side of the creature's head, knocking it aside. Hiro glanced over to where the disk had come from, spotting a woozy GoGo struggling to stand using a telephone pole for support. Her eyes were narrowed though, and her second disk was ready.
The creature shook its massive head, and glared at her. For one heart-stopping second, Hiro thought it would pin her down next, and tear into her with that deadly beak. She only had armour on her top half, the creature would make short work of her if it managed to grab her. But to his immense relief, the creature seemed to have had enough fighting for one day. Instead of leaping at her, it planted both of its talons flat on the ground, turning to face them all.
It flared its massive wings, opened its massive beak, and screamed. They immediately all slammed their hands over their heads, even though their helmets were in the way, the scream sending spikes of pain through their brains. By the time the echoes of the scream had ended, and they were able to look up again, the creature was gone.
There was a breathless moment as what just happened sank in for each of them.
"Well, damn," Wasabi said from his position sprawled against a bike rack. The others could only nod in agreement.
Heathcliff was called in.
Hiro thanked every god, higher power, and lucky star in the universe that GoGo had managed to knock the creature away before it had managed to get too far through Baymax's armour and damage the structures underneath, but it had been very close, and Baymax's armour was totalled in the process. And Hiro still hadn't repaired the old set after their earlier crash landing, which meant the whole team had to be shuttled off to the cafe so Hiro could build a new set from scratch. Heathcliff, for his part, didn't even blink at the unusual directions, simply waiting until everyone was in the limo and safely buckled in before driving off with impeccable calm.
Even though Hiro was slightly annoyed that they were heading back to the cafe again when he'd only just left the night before, he still wanted to check on Baymax's healthcare chip to make sure it hadn't been damaged, and to do that he needed the files at home, so he couldn't be too upset. He made sure to call ahead first though, so that Aunt Cass wouldn't be too surprised by their sudden appearance. She sounded a bit confused over the phone, but Hiro quickly made up an excuse about picking up some things he'd forgotten, and she'd chuckled in understanding. From the sounds of the background noise, the cafe was pretty busy, which was probably why she didn't ask too many questions.
Hiro kept his goodbyes short so she could get back to work, and then hung up, passing the phone back to Fred and looking towards Baymax with a concerned expression. The robot was lying in the middle of the limo floor, his deflated body full of tears from the creature's sharp beak, the vinyl hanging off of his carbon fibre skeleton and showing every bit of it. But Baymax was still blinking serenely up at everything, and he wasn't showing any other signs of damage, so Hiro told himself not to get too worried...yet.
Heathcliff dropped them off around the back so they could sneak directly into the garage without walking through the cafe in their suits. Hiro went straight to work on setting up the 3D printer to create a new set of armour for Baymax, happy that he'd set up shortcuts on his system after the third time Baymax's armour had been destroyed. Then, with the 3D printers humming to life in the background, Hiro pulled Baymax towards Tadashi's old computer so he could check the healthcare chip for damages.
Meanwhile the others were pulling off their armour and changing into the more comfortable clothes they'd stashed in Hiro's garage for situations just like this. Finally Wasabi threw a blanket over the lot of it in case Aunt Cass arrived unexpectedly, his motions well-practiced. They'd done this many times before, Hiro's garage being like their secondary base after Fred's place, so everyone knew what to do.
"How's Baymax?" Wasabi asked after his task was complete, walking over and leaning over Hiro's shoulder to look at his progress. Of the four of them Wasabi was the most familiar with Baymax's coding, as Tadashi had often come to him to ask for help spotting errors, and so it was only natural for him to act as Hiro's double-check, looking over the lines of code for any issues or mistakes.
"I think we're okay, although I'll want to go over this line by line to be sure," Hiro said with a relieved sigh, though he wouldn't fully relax until Wasabi gave him the okay as well. "Looks like that thing didn't manage to hit his chip, though he did a number on his body."
"Tell me about it," GoGo snarked, lifting a piece of Baymax's ripped vinyl skin. The tear revealed was large enough to stick her arm through. "Forget fixing his armour, look at him."
"Oh, it's not that bad!" Honey Lemon chirped, dancing around Baymax's body to inspect the damage. "I'm sure we can fix it! Just need to throw on a few patches here and there, that's all."
Privately Hiro thought Baymax was going to need a bit more than a few patches, but as a temporary stop-gap, it might work. After they rescued Tadashi, though, Hiro was going to have to re-fabricate an entirely new skin for Baymax. He sighed, already dreading it. He hated sewing.
"There should be some vinyl scraps in that bin over there, and I'm pretty sure Tadashi kept the sewing supplies on the shelf above" Hiro gestured towards the indicated area. Honey Lemon immediately darted over, humming under her breath, eager to get to work. "GoGo, if there's not enough vinyl to patch everything, can you get the smaller holes with the duct tape?"
GoGo just raised her eyebrow and popped her gum at him, as if offended that he'd even needed to ask, before heading towards the stack of duct tape in the corner of the garage.
"Anything you want me to do, little man?" Fred asked from his position sitting on the smoking remains of their old couch. They still hadn't bothered to replace it since Tadashi had accidentally set it on fire, too busy with other things.
"Yeah, here," Hiro pulled a file out of the data on Baymax's chip and with a flick of the mouse moved it to a second computer screen. "Here's a picture Baymax managed to get of the creature. Now that we have a better idea of what it looks like, maybe we'll have more luck with the research. You know all kinds of crazy trivia, does it look like anything you recognize?"
Fred frowned at the image on the screen, taking in all of the details with the concentration of a scientist trying to solve the mysteries of the universe. After a moment of making increasingly loud thinking noises, he finally shrugged and threw his hands up in the air.
"No idea," he confessed. "But maybe I can find something."
"Use my computer," Hiro pointed at the computer in question, turning back to Wasabi and waiting for the physicist to finish looking the code over. Fred himself waited until the computer booted, and then with a crack of his knuckles he put his English Major research skills to work and started looking for answers about the mystery of the creature's identity.
The five worked in silence for hours, each deeply absorbed in their respective tasks. It could have been any other day in the nerd lab, each of them doing their own thing, but still enjoying the company of others. It wasn't until nearly dinnertime that they were finally jolted out of their work by a knocking sound on the door.
They each looked up, startled, to see Aunt Cass standing tentatively in the doorway, her hand still raised from knocking on the garage doorway. In her other hand was a stack of pizza boxes, visibly steaming. Her expression was hesitant, as if she wasn't certain she was welcome.
"Hey, guys!" she greeted them, giving them all a weak smile. "Sorry to burst in like this, I'm sure you're busy, it's just you've been down here all day, and I'm pretty sure you skipped lunch. So I brought you all some pizza. It's extra pepperoni and sauce, your favourite."
Hiro felt his heart stutter a little in his chest.
"Aunt Cass…" he trailed off, not sure what to say. It was just too confusing to be around her right now! He knew, he knew it wasn't really her fault that she messed with his powers, that she'd blocked him from seeing Tadashi, but he couldn't change the fact that she had. Even now, he could feel his medium senses dulling in her presence, like she was a black hole coming too close to a sun and sucking away all of its light. But then she just kept looking at him with that sad, hopeful expression, the one she'd worn almost daily in the days and weeks after Tadashi died when he'd holed himself up in his bedroom away from the world, the one he'd hoped to never see again.
She'd stolen Tadashi from him, though, and she had no idea what she'd done.
But then Hiro realized what he was thinking, and he wanted to slap himself. This was his Aunt Cass. He loved her, he couldn't keep resenting her for something she couldn't control. Not after everything she'd done for him. Swallowing thickly, Hiro pushed down all of those thoughts as deep as he could, and forced a smile onto his face.
"Hey Aunt Cass, your timing is perfect, I'm starving," he told her with the widest grin he could manage. And for once he was happy to find it didn't actually feel that fake.
Aunt Cass seemed to sense his good mood, because her own expression brightened as well, and she stepped into the garage confidently, dropping the two pizzas on one of the workbenches that was relatively clear.
"Here you go, guys! Freshly delivered!" she announced, resting her hands proudly on her hips. The rest of the group perked up at the smell, each abandoning their tasks to come closer.
"Oooh, green peppers!" Honey Lemon cheered as she opened up the second box and grabbed a slice. GoGo and Fred were right behind her, while Wasabi took a slice of the pepperoni instead. "Thank you!"
"Yeah, thanks Ms. Cass!"
"Thanks."
"Thanks, Aunt Cass," Hiro said quietly as he grabbed a slice of pizza, "for everything."
Aunt Cass' breath hitched, and she stared at him with wide eyes. Then, before he had a chance to say anything else, she suddenly pulled him into a tight hug, squeezing him to her chest so hard he couldn't breathe. But when she pulled back, he was the one to grab her and hug her again.
"Last hug," they whispered together. Hiro grinned into her shirt, ignoring the sounds of Honey Lemon and Wasabi cooing behind him. Jerks.
Then he let go, grabbed his pizza and shoved half of it in his mouth in one bite. Wasabi gave him a disgusted look, but Fred gave him a thumbs up. He couldn't help it, that was just how he and Tadashi ate pizza, by opening wide and eating as much as possible without choking. He didn't remember which of them had started it, it was just their 'thing'. Well, his 'thing', now. Tadashi didn't exactly eat anymore.
But to his alarm, Aunt Cass didn't immediately leave now that she'd delivered their dinner. Instead she moved deeper into the garage, looking at their various projects with a curious expression.
"What happened to Baymax?" she asked as she looked the robot over. Thankfully Baymax was powered down while they were repairing him, because otherwise he might have told her exactly what had happened to him. As it was, Honey Lemon and GoGo were stuck answering her instead.
"Uuuuh," they both glanced at each other, looking for a good excuse.
"Freak accident at Fred's house!" Hiro squeaked, jumping out of his chair so fast he nearly knocked the pizza out of Wasabi's hands, and rushing over. When Aunt Cass looked over to him, startled by the sudden outburst, he laughed and tugged at his hair, going for contrite. "Whoops. You know how it is, we get a little crazy and then all of the sudden Baymax ends up, uh, fighting a lawnmower. Yeah."
"O...kay," Aunt Cass drawled out, giving her nephew a weird look. But thankfully she seemed to buy the story, or at least be reluctant to ask more questions, because she just shook her head. "Well, I'm just glad to see that old tablecloth is finally being put to use. The floral print looks very cute on him."
Honey Lemon giggled weakly. "Heh heh, yeah, we...thought so...too." She gave Aunt Cass a wide smile, patting the patches she and GoGo had made from a set of floral-print vinyl tablecloths they'd found in Hiro's stash when the leftover vinyl from Baymax's construction proved to be insufficient. The result was a mish-mash of patterns and colours patching all over Baymax's body like some kind of abstract art piece, mixed in with the occasional spot of duct-tape, courtesy of GoGo.
"And what about you, Wasabi?" Aunt Cass asked, moving on to the next student. "What are you working on?"
Hiro bit his lip fitfully as he followed in Aunt Cass' wake. He knew she would have no idea what she was looking at on the computer screen, so there wasn't any risk of her recognizing the fighting data in Baymax's code, but Wasabi was a very bad liar. She might ask the wrong questions and he would just spit everything out. Even now Hiro could see the sweat beading on Wasabi's forehead under his usual headband.
"Uh, just...doin some...computer stuff," Wasabi told her cautiously, his eyes darting from side to side, trying very hard not to look back over his shoulder where Aunt Cass was standing. So long as he didn't make eye contact, maybe she would lose interest and go away.
Sure enough, she just reached out and patted him on the shoulder. "You keep on with that...stuff, then," she told him encouragingly. "But make sure you take a break at some point. Staring at all those numbers and symbols all day can't be good for your eyes."
"Can do, Ms. Cass," Wasabi promised with a shaky thumbs up. Hiro let out a silent sigh of relief as she once again moved on.
"And Fred!" Aunt Cass greeted cheerfully, "What about you? I know you're not working on anything science-related, right?"
"Nope! Just doin my own thing!" Fred agreed brightly, casually leaning forward and contorting his body to block the computer's screen with his body. It left him in an awkward position that did not look comfortable at all, but it got the job done. The screen, and the image of the creature splashed across it, was pretty much hidden from view.
But not enough, apparently. Hiro's heart nearly stopped when Aunt Cass let out a small gasp and darted over, pushing Fred out of the way to reveal the picture of the creature. The image had been taken by Baymax when they had been flying overhead, and it was actually a very good shot considering they had all been flying at high speeds at the time. The creature was fully extended, green scales flashing in the sunlight, with its wings flared out mid-downstroke. It was looking back up at them in the picture as well, revealing the hooked beak and one glowing eye.
"Oh my gosh, where did you get this picture?" Aunt Cass asked Fred desperately. "It looks so real."
Fred spluttered, trying to recover the situation. "Well, I - "
"Did they make a movie recently? Oh man, where was this twenty years ago? This would have been perfect for my report."
"Wait, what?" Hiro jolted, looking at his aunt in confusion. He suddenly had no idea what was going on, but it almost seemed like Aunt Cass recognized the creature. "What report?"
To his further surprise, Aunt Cass ducked her head and blushed, playing with the ends of her hair a bit. "Well, it seems a bit silly now," she chuckled, embarrassed.
"Aunt Cass?" Hiro asked again, completely confused. Aunt Cass looked over at him, and her expression softened a bit. With a sigh, she pulled over one of the spare stools and took a seat, shifting to get comfortable. The team all unconsciously leaned closer, recognizing a long story when they saw one.
"Well, like I said, it was over twenty years ago now - god I'm getting old. Shortly after...shortly after Tadashi was born, your parents decided to move to San Fransokyo to be closer to their work, and to be closer to me so I could babysit."
Hiro sat himself heavily down on the ground in front of his Aunt, staring transfixed at her face. He'd never heard this story before. Most of what he knew about his parents had come from Tadashi, but he couldn't have remembered these earlier stories, and so Hiro had never known them. And Aunt Cass so rarely talked about them. When she did, she always got a very sad and melancholy look on her face, so he and Tadashi had learned not to ask. She was already always so stressed, they didn't want to add to it. But now here she was, telling him about them. That melancholy expression was coming back, but at the same time Aunt Cass looked fond rather than sad. Her eyes glazed and her hand came up to play with the pendant around her neck as she lost herself in the memory.
"I remember your dad calling me, telling me the news. I was so excited, the moment I hung up I danced around the kitchen like an idiot, scaring poor Dango," she laughed softly at the memory of her old cat, the one who had lived with her before Mochi. "I hadn't really had a chance to see my brother in years, other than a brief visit when Tadashi was born. So I was very happy to have him home again."
"But your mother, well, she'd never been to San Fransokyo before. I didn't know her very well yet, but I remember your dad telling me that she'd grown up in the quiet countryside, in a very traditional home, and that she was a bit intimidated by big cities." Here Aunt Cass smiled secretly to herself, as if remembering a private joke. "Well, she ended up taking to San Fransokyo like a fish to water, but that was after they arrived."
"I wanted to do something nice for my sister-in-law, and I knew from talking to your dad that she was very interested in traditions and mythology, so I thought I'd put together a little something, to welcome her and to kind of introduce her to the area. I figured I'd make her a book of all of the mythology and urban legends of San Fransokyo, so maybe it would feel more familiar to her. Well," Aunt Cass chuckled to herself, "I might have gone a little overboard with my idea. I spent the month before they moved here researching all of the local legends I could find, going from the library to the university, even to the temples! I scoured the city trying to find every single thing I could. And then when I had everything, I put it together in a scrapbook."
"I stayed up until four in the morning putting that thing together so it would be ready in time for when they arrived, and I probably looked like death warmed over when the showed up on my doorstep the next day, but I finished it," Aunt Cass told them proudly. "And the look on your mother's face made it all worth it. She loved it."
Then Aunt Cass' face furrowed into a frown. "The one problem I had, though, was finding pictures of everything. I had all of these notes, but it made the book really boring, so I tried to put in as many drawings or paintings as I could find, not that there were a lot. But if I'd had that picture," Aunt Cass pointed to the screen, and the image of the creature, "it would have definitely gone into the scrapbook."
"Aunt Cass," Hiro spoke up, licking his lips. His throat was suddenly very dry. "Do you know what that thing is?"
"Hmm? Oh, of course! It was one of my favourite stories, full of tragedy and ghostly revenge. That's an Itsumade."
Hiro went very still. Here it was, here was the answer he'd been searching for all week and it had been right under his nose. He felt like a fool, but how was he supposed to know that Aunt Cass had somehow known all of this stuff about the supernatural!
But then he shook his head. He needed to stay focused, this was an answer, not the answer. And he knew just where to find the rest of it.
"Aunt Cass, do you still have that scrapbook?" Hiro asked her desperately, coming up on his knees and resting his hand on her leg. When she looked a bit startled by the intensity of his question, he backed off a bit, rubbing at his nose and laughing to try to ease the tension. "Sorry. It's just, uh, Fred has been trying to do a...report on this...Itsumade, and he's having a bit of trouble finding anything. Maybe your notes might help him?" Hiro finished weakly, shrugging a bit and hoping he wasn't coming across as completely crazy.
Thankfully Aunt Cass was well used to his weirdness by now, because she simply started scrunching up her face in thought. "Actually...yes, I definitely saved it, after all of the work I put into it. I think I have it on a shelf in my room. Or maybe the closet. Hang on, I'll go get it."
She hopped off of the stool, heading out to do just that. The team waited in silence, not daring to even breathe until they heard the sounds of her heading back up the stairs into the cafe. Only when they heard the jingle of the bell above the door indicating she was gone did they dare to move. The garage became a flurry of motion as everyone dropped what they were doing and instantly rushed over to Fred and the computer.
"Quick! Quick! Search for it!" GoGo ordered, nearly slapping Fred's hands out of the way when his typing was too slow for her.
"How do you even spell that?" Fred asked frantically, even as he pulled up the search engine in a new tab.
"It-su-ma-de," Hiro rolled the syllables in his mouth, trying to figure out the spelling based on the sounds. "Try I-T-S-U-M-A-D-E," he instructed.
Fred's fingers were trembling so badly that it took him a couple of attempts to get the spelling right, but he hit enter with force. Everyone's hearts were beating strongly in their chests, hoping that they'd soon know exactly what they needed. The page loaded...and their faces fell.
"Well that's not it," GoGo groaned. The first page of results was nothing but links to Japanese-English dictionaries, and a couple of song lyrics. "Try adding 'myth' after it."
Fred complied, but the next page of results was similarly sparse. There was a single link to a blog that looked promising, but when they clicked on it, all it could tell them was an Itsumade was some sort of ghostly creature associated with death. Nothing that they didn't already know.
By the time Aunt Cass had returned with her scrapbook, they'd tried all of the combinations of 'Itsumade', 'myth', 'legend', and 'story' that they could think of, but they kept getting the same results over and over. So when Aunt Cass plopped the old scrapbook down on top of the empty pizza boxes, they were desperate.
"Here you guys go, try not to damage it," Aunt Cass told them with a pained smile. "I put a lot of work into that thing, and it was one of your mother's prized possessions. If you need me, I'll just be up in the cafe, the evening rush has started and I left poor Marco running the cash all by himself."
She left just as quickly as she arrived, waving at them over her shoulder. The team immediately rushed over to the scrapbook the second she was gone, staring at it like a starving man looks at a banquet.
The scrapbook was old, looking like it had definitely come from 20 years ago based on the pattern and colours on the cover. When they carefully peeled back the cover, the pages inside were stained and faded with age, the careful penstrokes in Aunt Cass' messy writing running in some places where the paper must have gotten wet. There was a little note in the beginning, addressed to Hiro's mother, with a few sentences written out in shaky kanji. Aunt Cass must have looked it up just for this, because as far as Hiro knew she'd never actually learned to speak Japanese beyond a few basic phrases. At the bottom of the letter there was an old picture of Aunt Cass and a man who must have been Hiro's father, looking much younger and posing in front of the San Fransokyo Bay. Hiro so desperately wanted to take a moment to read over the letter, to go back in time and bond a little with his history, but he didn't have time for it. Tadashi was still waiting for them, and he'd been waiting far too long already. Besides, he could always ask Aunt Cass to borrow the scrapbook again later.
So with careful fingers, he started flipping through the old pages one by one, eyes darting over each heading, searching the images for the Itsumade's form. As they flipped through, he spotted several creatures and myths that he was familiar with, who he'd come to know since becoming a medium, but there were also several he didn't recognize. He made a mental note to look through the scrapbook again at a later date, in case these myths and legends did pop up like the Itsumade had, and started causing trouble.
"Wait!" Honey Lemon suddenly shrieked, her finger slamming down on one of the pictures. Sure enough it was an old blurry ink drawing of a snake-like creature with a beak and bird's wings. The drawing was crude and smudged, and very hard to make out, but when Hiro looked at the title at the top of the page, there it was in Aunt Cass' careful handwriting.
Rather than try to have everyone read it all at once, Hiro started reading the passage aloud, his eyes darting over the page as if he could somehow absorb it all faster.
"The Itsumade is believed to be a type of Onryo formed from the spirits of the lost people of the village of Ocaido. In the late 1700s, there was a shortage of food in the area due to the settlers being unfamiliar with agriculture and the growing conditions of the land. This increased distrust between villages and towns, and cause a lot of friction between different districts. Then, some time within the 1770s, there was an earthquake that struck much of the Giso River territories. While many of the towns and villages were affected, it is believed that a fissure opened up directly underneath Ocaido, burying the town alive. Because of the hostilities at the time, none of the nearby townships went to investigate, and so the disappearance went unnoticed for quite some time. There are scant records of the event itself, only that when a trading caravan went through where Ocaido was supposed to be weeks later, they could find no sign of it, only a massive fissure in the ground where it had once stood.
However, years later, legends began to crop up in the nearby towns. People claimed that if you went near the site, and leaned down over the fissure, you could hear the screams of the people below, begging for food, for help. Over time the nature of these claims changed, taking on several variations, but by the time of the early Japanese settlers, it had settled into the legend of the Itsumade.
Early Japanese settlers claimed that those foolish or unlucky enough to visit the fissure where the town vanished would sometimes hear a single voice crying out "Until when?", or "Itsumademo?" from deep within the fissure. They believed this was the cry of the fallen, wondering how long it will take until help came for them. But they would also claim that if anyone was foolish enough to look directly down into the fissure, close enough that the monster could reach them from it's prison in the earth, all they would see is glowing eyes in the darkness, and then the Itsumade would release its horrible scream, killing the person instantly. The Itsumade would then devour its victim whole, trying to slake its unstoppable hunger, the hunger of those who died of starvation, trapped in the fissure when no one would come to save them.
Eyewitness accounts of the Itsumade's appearance vary, depending on who you're speaking to, but it's generally agreed that the Itsumade looks like a giant winged snake with a sharp hooked beak. This was the best image I could find."
The last note included an arrow pointing to the smudged drawing, but Hiro was more concerned with the words on the page. It was a lot to take in.
"An Onryo," Wasabi finally broke the silence. "Another one?"
"Onryo is a word for any kind of ghost or spirit that tries to take revenge on the living," Honey Lemon tried to point out. "It's a pretty general term."
"I still don't like it. I'm still having nightmares about the last Onryo."
"Oh, Woman up," GoGo snapped, rolling her eyes. "We've improved a lot since then, we can handle this."
"Besides, Tadashi needs us," Honey Lemon added.
Wasabi sighed. "I know, I know. But, just...why now?" he asked fretfully. "From the sounds of that story, the Itsumade's been trapped in its fissure for centuries. What's it doing in San Fransokyo now?"
It took a moment, but then the answer hit Hiro all at once.
"The earthquake that hit Bodegawa!" he gasped, his eyes widening in realization. "If the earthquake was running along the same fault line as the one that destroyed Ocaido, it might have widened the fissure enough for the Itsumade to break free."
"And now it wants revenge on the living," Fred added darkly in his over-dramatic plotting voice. "Believing itself to be abandoned by humanity, it now seeks to destroy those that left it to die."
"...actually, you're probably right," Hiro was forced to admit, glancing at the scrapbook again. "That sounds just about right, based on what we know."
Fred immediately brightened, dropping the super serious expression. "I know, right? It's like something straight out of the Evil Perished series!"
"Does it say anything about how to stop it?" GoGo asked, checking the next page to see if there was any more information.
"There's a note here about one man managing to escape alive, but Aunt Cass wasn't sure how valid the story is, because it might have been referring to a different creature," Hiro read the little footnote near the bottom of the page. His brow furrowed deeply in thought. "But maybe, just maybe…guys? I think I have a plan."
"Awesome!" Fred cheered, throwing his arms over Hiro and GoGo's shoulders. Hiro smiled at his exuberant friend, while GoGo just gave him a flat look and blew a bubble. "Are you ready for this? It's time to be superheroes again, takin' on the bad guys!" GoGo rolled her eyes, but Hiro nodded, staring determinedly at the sketchy image of the Itsumade in the scrapbook.
"You're right Fred, we have an Itsumade to hunt," he told them firmly. With that, he pulled himself away from Fred, walking back towards the computer and Baymax's waiting chip. Once it was back in Baymax's chest, the robot's eyes blinked open, and there was a comforting whirring sound from his chest as he started to reinflate. Hiro watched his friend slowly reactivate with a grim expression, his mind already turning towards their next steps.
They had work to do.
AN: I MESSED UP AND POSTED THE WRONG CHAPTER BEFORE. JUST IGNORE THAT. ENJOY THIS CHAPTER!
Quoting Cake once again for this author's note,
"Hey look! MORE answers to mysteries! Looks like we've finally got a name for the nasty creature that's been causing so much trouble. But there's still more trouble to come :D
PS for those who would like to avoid spoilers for this fic, we recommend you do not look up anything about the Itsumade. It won't spoil any major plot points, but it might ruin one of the scenes coming up if you look up the original legend. If you don't care about spoilers though, google away! :)"
Art for this chapter can be found at machina-rex on tumblr /post/126304745942/who-the-hell-is-this-ugly-monstrosity-find-out-by
Don't forget to drop us a review and let us know how you're liking this story!
