Wasabi held tightly to GoGo's hand as they stood outside the college campus, behind a tied yellow tape border that isolated the horrific incident. The images were still fresh in GoGo's mind, flashing on the backs of her eyelids as if the bolts of electricity that surged from Honey's thrashing body had burned into GoGo's eyes just as unforgettably as her screams rang in her ears. Her grip tightened on Wasabi's hand, refusing to let him go at the risk of losing her cool in the public.
Hiro stood on GoGo's other side, clutching Baymax underneath his arm. This was all becoming too much. In less than a year, they all had lost so much and, in the back of Hiro's mind, he was certain that there was more to come if they didn't push their emotions aside to address the problem. Looking at GoGo's suppressed anguish and fear, Hiro also knew it would be impossible to do that.
Professor Hikari came out from the front doors of the lab with a briefcase in tow, taking a deep breath at the top of the steps before reporters started asking their questions. He was only just assigned to replaced Callaghan when his heinous act of public treachery thrust the people of San Fransokyo into a fearful state of mind about the experimental technologies that came out of the university. If he went under for this, he'd never come back up.
He took each step slowly and carefully, swallowing down the saddened words he had to try and make as legally acceptable as possible. The podium was already set up for him. Microphones installed and everything. He set the briefcase on the ground as he took the podium in two hands, the rambling reporters finally drowning out the worrisome thoughts in his own mind. He held his hands up as a soundless request for silence. Silence never came.
"At around five in the morning, today, August twentieth, a student, who shall remain nameless to protect the identity of their friends and families, appears to have been raped and fatally electrocuted while in the laboratory." Camera flashes caught his broken face and reporters demanded to know what he meant by 'electrocuted'. In the context of the situation, he wasn't sure, himself. The body showed so many signs that replicated that of people struck with lightning or children who got electrocuted by grounded outlets. But…
"No further comment will be made on the matter," his voice trembled as he spoke, "as the police have requested, due to the nature of the crime." He turned and attempted to plow through the crowd of cameras that swarmed him on the way to the parking lot. He stopped and looked at Wasabi and GoGo with a passing glance before rushing to his car and shutting himself in alone with the luggage.
Wasabi held GoGo's hand tightly in his and Hiro placed a hand at the small of her back in comfort, helping Wasabi lead him to his car to drive her home. It was silent nearly the whole time, aside from GoGo's lonely sniffles. She fought off efforts to help her get out of the car, storming into her apartment complex without a word. Wasabi and Hiro let themselves into her studio apartment after she had plowed through the door as if it was a dumbfound bystander who got in her way. Looking up the stairs to the upper deck, Hiro could see her dresser tipped over and laying on the floor, clothes strewn about.
Wasabi sat on the couch and buried his face in his large hands. Hiro set Baymax down in the corner and activated him, his big inflatable body filling the case and sliding the mechanical armor where it was intended to. He looked down awkwardly and waved his hand in a perfect circle beside himself. "Hello," his voice emitted.
"Deactivate hard hull," Hiro commanded and Baymax's armor separated at the front, down a long line of clasps and latches that came together to form the illusion of a handle and lock on the suitcase when it was closed. Baymax's more familiar bulbous form stepped free from the metal exoskeleton. He was in full nurse mode. "Go upstairs and scan GoGo for chemical or hormonal imbalances. Cheer her up, you know? Like you cheer me up?"
"I can hear you, asshole," GoGo called apathetically from upstairs. Hiro winced and looked at Baymax, nodding to follow through.
Baymax carefully maneuvered the terrain for his body, cautiously sidestepping around the coffee table at the center of the room and ensuring to take each step one at a time with an almost mathematic precision. He got up to the upper level of the studio and a faint sound from within him signified that he was scanning GoGo as she lay on the bed.
"Scan complete," Baymax announced. Hiro watched from below as, suddenly, a large, fast pillow flung towards Baymax's head with expert aim, knocking him off balance and sending him bouncing down the stairway on his inflatable backside. When he came to a squeak of a stop at the bottom of the stairs, he looked to Hiro and held a finger into the air. "Diagnosis: neurotransmitter imbalance. Miss Tomago has a lack of dopamine and serotonin."
"Baymax, we know what's wrong," Wasabi muttered. "She's sad about Honey being gone, man. We were trying to see if you could find a way to fix her."
Baymax looked at him for a long time before looking up at GoGo again. He stood and cornered himself, flickering the screen on his chest and standing still before announcing. "Viary program engaged."
At the sound of the word "Viary", Wasabi stood and his eyes widened. Viary was the name of program installed on all the computers at the nerd lab, specifically used there for recording progress on experiments at the college. Tadashi kept one on Baymax's construction. GoGo kept one for her electromagnetic, zero resistance wheels. Even Fred kept one about his made up nicknames for the new freshmen. Surely, Honey kept one just as well and, since Baymax had the file cloud password from Tadashi, he could access all of the videos they submitted.
Honey's image flickered onto the screen as she backed away from her computer at the lab, grinning and obviously hiding something behind her back. She pulled it out to reveal that it was the chrome polished, bubble spewing gun she used in the footage of the fire on South Minami, only in some prototype stage where there was no glass bulb in the hilt and less chrome plating.
"This is the test model of the Bubble Wand!" She leaned in and wagged a finger at the camera with a grin. "Patent pending."
Hiro and Wasabi stood on the stairs, leaning against the rails as they watched Honey bounce back to her original spot to talk about the features of the device.
"The Bubble Wand is supposed to be utilized for the rapid distribution of safety balls." She revealed in her purse a big pile of orbs of pale colors. "The balls can be used around the house to stop fires, block out floods, and so much more if you put your mind to use!"
Fred stepped into the shot behind her and remarked coolly, "You can do anything if you put your mind to use."
"Exactly, Freddie!" Honey beamed.
"Like buy a fire extinguisher," he deadpanned.
She plugged the bag into the gun and aimed at Fred who put his hands up in mock shock. When Honey pulled the trigger, the gun made a terrible grinding noise. Immediately, Fred took the gun from Honey's hands and pushed her away, crouching with the gun and covering it with his whole body before, suddenly, the gun burst into a ball of yellow foam that nearly encompassed his body.
"Freddie!" Honey exclaimed in worry, immediately digging at the foam and pulling it away from him in scoops. It appeared to have the same consistency as sand with the solidity of concrete. Fred looked up and glanced about at the parts of his body that weren't visible behind the sand concoction. "Fred, are you okay? Are you hurt?"
"Nah," Fred laughed, "Just covered in sand, man!"
Wasabi and Hiro chuckled lightly to themselves as they watched the video, Honey frantically scraping layer upon layer of frozen sand from Fred's body until he was able to move again. He sprung upwards and revealed that the gun's butt had burst open like a rifle barrel in old cartoons. He handed it back to Honey and shrugged.
"Maybe you should put some, like, pressure equalizing dome under there?" He suggested. Wasabi was taken aback. It was the most intelligent sounding thing that Fred had said out loud. He was friends with the science geeks but, certainly, he didn't have much intellect to him to speak of. He walked out of the frame, sand still falling where it clumped together on his clothes. "I'm gonna have sand to pick out of my ass for days!"
Wasabi and Hiro laughed again, this time hearing a third laugh from behind them. Hiro looked over his shoulder to see GoGo standing at the top of the steps, holding loosely onto the handrail and watching the videos as tears ran down her softly smiling face. Honey reached towards the camera and turned it off, the shot flickering to a new diary entry, presumably later as Honey had the very pressure equalizing bulb that GoGo saw in the news report and the very same one that Fred talked to her about.
"Fred is making a lot of progress," she whispered into the camera, looking over her shoulder as Fred worked on the pole that GoGo recalled seeing in the lab moments before Honey's event. Naturally. He would make a pole as a science project. "Ever since we all broke up, he's been working really hard to keep up with me in terms of advancing what we have for ourselves. He's working on… Fred?" She turned and called to him, "What are you working on?"
"Now?" Fred asked, flicking the protective facemask he wore over his eyes and pointing at the pole with finger-guns. "I'm making a stick! Check it out!"
Honey shook her head with a chuckle and returned to the camera. "Kidding as ever, but he really is doing something. He's been taking a lot of the science fiction movie stuff he watches so much and applying it to the real world. He's mastering his own suit and making it fun and safe for others."
She looked directly at the camera and the three viewers became silent.
"Wasabi," she whispered, "I think your words got through to him. I think he didn't want to be the bad Godzilla that destroyed San Fransokyo. I think he wanted to be the good Godzilla that fought the monsters that tried to destroy San Fransokyo."
Wasabi blinked for a moment. He almost forgot that anyone could look at anybody's Viaries. It was meant to be able to exchange ideas with classmates who had home projects or who weren't present at the lab at the time. Kind of like a video forum of educational science-y nerdiness. Wasabi looked up to GoGo who looked back at him. How long had it been since they were in the lab? Since they even glanced at their Viary homepage? Where he had given up on his friends, his friends never gave up on their friendship. Fred even appeared to be working towards repairing it for the greater good.
The video clipped again and GoGo recognized the frames immediately. "Baymax, stop."
Baymax took the order and paused the video, shutting the program and looking straight ahead at her. Hiro and Wasabi followed his robotic stare up the stairs to her. She looked at the floor and gulped.
"Sorry," she breathed, "that's just… that's the last video. I've seen it and…"
Wasabi nodded.
She knew how it ended.
Hiro looked to Wasabi. "Why was Honey talking to you through her video diary? Isn't that supposed to be private stuff?"
"Viary was installed because it was the only program that let several people have one video diary to share," Wasabi explained, cupping a hand around his chin. "It let us communicate about projects we were working on to students who didn't have the same class as us or who were working on stuff on their own, outside of school, you know?"
"Any one of us could access it," GoGo continued, "and watch the vlogs anyone in the class did. For a while, it was like our message system. Lord knows I watched a mushy video meant for someone who I'm pretty sure wasn't me."
Hiro looked back at Baymax and touched the silicone casing of his chest. Baymax looked down and automatically registered his heartbeat through the capillaries in his fingertips. It was increasing.
"If we can access Honey's Viary," he looked up to Wasabi and GoGo.
Together, their eyes widened and they looked to each other.
"Then we can access Fred's!"
