"How are you feeling? Better now that you've got some food in you?"
"Much better, thanks." Hiro offers his brother a grin before going back to eagerly devouring his slice of pizza. He hadn't realized how hungry he was until he'd actually gotten here and his nose had been hit with the delicious smell of Italian food. It had almost been torture having to wait the forty-five minutes for their pizza to be made and cooked, and he'd torn through at least a whole basket of breadsticks in the meantime.
"Someone's hungry," Tadashi lovingly chuckles, reaching over to ruffle his hair.
"What? I'm a teenager, our stomachs supposed to be never ending pits!" Hiro tosses back with a playful glare.
"I know," Tadashi reassures him. "If anything, it's a good thing that you're hungry-maybe it's a sign that you have a growth spurt coming up."
"Yeah?" Hiro perks up at that. "You really think so?"
"I don't see why not!" Tadashi grins at him. "That was usually what happened to me right before growth spurt-I would end up eating everything in sight."
"Good to know!" Hiro laughs, feeling like he was grinning all the way from the top of his head to his toes, and not just because he did like the idea of growing taller. Just sitting in his favorite pizza place with his bro, joking and bantering like in the old days-it was almost possible to imagine that the fire had never even happened. Almost.
"Is there anything else I can get you two?" The waitress who had been taking care of them walked up to their table, oddly enough looking a little bit skittish. She'd been acting that way the entire time they'd been here.
"I don't think so." Tadashi glances over at his little brother. "Hiro, do you need anything?"
"Nah, I think I'm good!" Hiro reassures him.
"Just the check, then, please." Tadashi turns back to the waitress with a smile.
"A-All right, I'll have that right out." The waitress gives him a fleeting smile in return before hurrying off towards the kitchen.
"What was that all about?" Hiro quietly grumbles, although he had some idea and, if he was right, she completely deserved the nasty glare he was sending after her.
"Maybe it's her first day?" Tadashi answers, frowning at his brother's reaction.
"I don't think it's that…" Hiro mumbles-he was pretty sure that he remembered seeing her on previous visits.
"Then what do you think it is?" Tadashi asks. "You obviously have some idea or else you wouldn't be looking at her like she'd kicked Mochi. Unless that's your idea of what flirting looks like, little bro, in which case I think there are a couple things I need to explain to you."
"What? NO! I'm not trying to flirt with her, get that out of your head!" Hiro groans before quietly admitting, "I-I think…. I think it's maybe that she kind of feels nervous around you because of how you look?"
"...Really?" An almost crushed look crosses Tadashi's face. "But I've been nothing but nice to her!"
"I know, but some people decide to judge based on appearances instead of by actions…" Hiro reaches over to gently squeeze his brother's hand before sending another death glare towards the kitchen where he could just make out their waitress whispering to two other servers.
"I… Wow…" Tadashi whispers before finally shaking his head, a determined look in his eyes. "Well, I'm just going to have to try to be extra nice to her! And when we get home, I am definitely at least changing my clothes."
"That's fair," Hiro agrees, almost feeling bad now for refusing to let Tadashi change earlier and putting him through something like this. But, on the other hand, the waitress shouldn't be making snap judgments about his elder sibling so technically this was her fault!
He was about to try to say something more to try to comfort his brother when he feels something moving in his pocket. "What-?" he mutters, reaching in and pulling out the petri dish, only to gasp when he sees the microbot ramming up against the glass again.
"Oh my gosh! Dashi, we have to go!" he gasps, heart hammering in his chest-yes, they had a lead!
"What?" Tadashi frowns in confusion at first and then his eyes go wide as he sees the microbot.
"Come on!" Hiro jumps up out of his seat. "We've got to go before the trail goes cold again!"
"R-Right!" Tadashi stands up too, just as the waitress returns.
"Here." Tadashi doesn't even wait for the check, just sliding a few bills into her hands. "Please, keep the change for your wonderful service." He gives her his best smile and then races out after Hiro.
"Was that sarcasm, bro?" Hiro smirks as he jumps onto the back of Bae.
"More like killing her with kindness," Tadashi laughs as he fumbles in his pocket for his keys. "I actually gave her a pretty good tip."
"You shouldn't have done that, she was being a jerk!" Hiro cries.
"Jerk or no, we both know what it's like working in the restaurant business so I always like to try to show a little extra kindness to people who are in the same position," Tadashi answers with a small shrug.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Hiro sighs. Usually he did the same thing, but he wasn't exactly feeling kindly towards someone who had hurt his beloved older sibling's feelings.
"What's taking so long to get your keys?" he asks, bouncing impatiently on his seat.
"I'm sorry, but these skinny jeans make getting things in and out of my pockets almost impossible!" Tadashi gives him a small glare. "And since someone wouldn't let me bring my bag…"
"I love you, bro, but a purse kind of takes away from the whole intimidating thing." Hiro sticks his tongue out at him.
"It is not a purse! It is a satchel! It's very different!" Tadashi protests.
"Whatever! Just get your keys so we can get going!" Hiro complains.
"Fine! I've got them!" Tadashi finally manages to get his keys out of his pocket and climbs onto Bae. "I'll drive, you navigate!"
"Sounds good!" Hiro agrees as his brother turns the keys in the ignition before glancing back down at the microbot. "You need to go left!"
"Right!" Tadashi steps on the gas, and they were off.
"Fred? Fred, focus!"
"What?" Fred looks up from his mug of mint cocoa, blinking a bit owlishly up at his friends.
"We just asked you ten times if there's anything that you wanted to do tonight," GoGo repeats, rolling her eyes in frustration. "It's your Friday to pick what we do."
"Oh… Um… Y'know, I'm really good with anything? You guys go ahead and pick," Fred answers with a weak smile.
He sees the worried glances that his friends were exchanging, and usually he would have tried to make them think that he was okay but right now he was just too emotionally exhausted to try to put up a better front. He'd been trying to do better recently-he really had. And, for the most part, he was back to acting like his old self, even if the smiles and the jokes were just a cover for the fact that he was barely functioning after losing his best friend of five years and lover of six months. He still hadn't opened up to anyone about that-he had no idea how he was even supposed to try to tell the others the truth. He thought that Honey Lemon might have suspected, but he'd always fended off her kindly meant questions with excuses and vague answers. He didn't want any of his friends pitying him for his pain-he'd already had more pity than he could stand and the idea of anyone else telling him that he was "going to be okay" or any of that kind of crap was enough to make him want to throw up.
So he'd started putting up a front-a very convincing front, apparently-to get people to stop trying to make him "talk about his feelings" or to open up to them about the mess that he was inside. For the most part, he felt like he was doing a good job of fooling everyone. But some days were harder than others. Days like today. For one thing, Midnight, who had been making regular visits to his house, hadn't shown up today. He'd waited for the cat all day, but it had never come crawling in through his open window, and finally he'd had to give up and had left the house with only just enough time to not be late for meeting up with his friends.
That had been painful enough. But, to make things worse, tonight was his Friday night on the rotation-to make things fair, the friends had early on made it a rule that they took turns picking what they did on Friday nights. The only problem was, it wasn't really his rotation-or, it shouldn't have been. Tadashi's turn had always fallen been right before his, but since he obviously wasn't available to choose what they wanted to do, silently his spot on the rotation had been removed. Just like everything else about Tadashi. It felt like everyone was just trying to erase any sign that the deceased man had ever existed, and it was enough to make Fred want to scream and rage at the world for the injustice of it all. Tadashi didn't deserve to be forgotten! He was the bravest, purest person who had ever lived, and he deserved to have a statue raised in his honor in the park and have a whole comic book series detailing his incredible accomplishments created so that everyone would know how amazing he had been!
"Fred, it would really be better if you picked something that you want you do," Honey Lemon says gently, laying a hand on his shoulder and bringing him back to the present. "Something that would make you happy."
The fanboy offers her a miserable sort of smile, knowing that she was trying to make him feel better. He really appreciated the sentiment, but going out to see the latest superhero movie or to visit their favorite comic book shop wasn't going to repair his broken heart. Not even close.
He stares out the window, trying to make it at least appear like he was trying to think about what he wanted to do, only to blink in surprise as he sees a familiar figure racing out of the pizza parlor across the street.
"Hiro…?" he whispers, frowning in confusion.
"Oh, you want to go see Hiro? I think that would be a great idea!" Honey Lemon says brightly.
"No, I mean, Hiro's right there!" Fred answers, pointing out the window to where the young boy was climbing onto a red motor scooter that looked suspiciously like Tadashi's.
"He's what?" Honey Lemon turns and lets out a tiny gasp of surprise when she also spots the teen. "Oh my gosh, you're right, that is Hiro!"
"Who's that guy he's with?" GoGo asks, frowning when she spots the rather rough looking man that the the younger boy appeared to be arguing with.
"I don't like the looks of him." Wasabi was also frowning him. "He looks like-"
"He looks like he's either giving Hiro trouble, or like he's helping Hiro get into trouble." GoGo was scowling now. "Just going by how he's dressed, he's probably a bot fighter. I don't like this. This is the first time we've heard of Hiro leaving the house since-" She doesn't finish her sentence, just standing up and roughly shoving her chair back. "Come on. Let's go find out what's going on."
"Right behind you." Honey Lemon also gets up, clutching her purse tightly. "We need to make sure that he's safe."
Wasabi follows them and, not wanting to get left behind, Fred does the same, unable to shake the unsettling feeling in his stomach that he'd seen the stranger before. But no, that wasn't possible-he definitely would have remembered running into a guy like that. Still, he was curious to find out who he was, as well as seriously hoping that Hiro hadn't gotten himself tangled up in some kind of trouble.
Just as they got out of the coffee shop, Hiro and the stranger took off down the street on the moped, leaving the small group of nerds in the dust.
"What do we do now?" Wasabi asks, watching them go with a worried expression on his face.
"What else? We follow them!" GoGo answers, racing towards the older man's van. "C'mon! Let's go before we lose them!"
"Are you sure this is where it's telling us to go?" Tadashi asks, glancing back over his shoulder at Hiro. "We're almost back to the factory!"
"Yeah, that's where he wants to go!" Hiro answers, keeping his eyes glued onto the tiny microbot. He only looks up when he feels the scooter slowing to a stop.
"What are you doing? Why are we stopping here?" Hiro asks, frowning in confusion.
"Because if we drive any farther we're going to end up in the bay, genius," Tadashi answers, gesturing to the dark expanse of water in front of them. "I think your little bot is confused, or else-"
"WHOA!" Hiro feels the microbot give an almighty tug, and he just barely manages to keep it from flying out into the darkness.
"What is it?" Tadashi asks. "What happened?" He squints out into the fog, only to have a sharp intake of breath when he sees a figure taking shape out over the water.
"I think we found our guy!" Hiro tells him with a grin.
"Well we're not waiting for him out here in the open! C'mon!" Tadashi quickly starts the scooter back up and maneuvers it over behind some shipping crates where it would be less visible.
"Whoa…" Hiro gasps again quietly as he gets off of the bike and peeks around the edge of the nearest container, watching the masked man coming onto the dock from the water, supported by an army of microbots that were almost functioning like the legs of a gigantic octopus, before lifting what looked like a piece of a gigantic metal structure out of the water..
"Hiro, I don't like the looks of this," Tadashi whispers fiercely to him as he joins him. "I think we're getting in over our heads, we should probably go before something happens that we can't get ourselves out of!"
"No way!" Hiro hisses back. "That bastard stole my invention! All I need is one good stunning spell and I can take him down!"
Tadashi looks like he's about to argue when suddenly they're both blinded by a pair of headlights shining on them. Hiro puts an arm up to cut out the glare, his heart pounding in his chest-what the hell was going on? And then the lights shut off and he sees-
"Shit." It was Tadashi who actually cursed this time as he sees all of their friends from the university piling out of Wasabi's van. Hiro could perfectly understand his reaction-not only was this definitely not the time for a reunion when they were hot on the tail of a masked criminal, this particular reunion was one that was going to take a lot of explaining that he didn't think either of them were ready for yet. They hadn't even discussed how to explain things to the others, and from the looks of things they had absolutely zero time to try to cobble together a coherent story.
"Guys, you can't be here!" Hiro cries, hurrying forward to try to keep the others from coming any closer. "Get out of here! Go! It isn't sa-"
"Hiro, what are you doing out here?" Wasabi demands. "Don't you know how dangerous it is to be in this part of the city after dark?"
"Yes, I know, but-"
"And who is this guy who apparently brought you here?" GoGo asks, cutting him off and scowling as she looks Tadashi over. "If this is your secret bot fighter boyfriend, he's got a lot of explaining to do if this is his disturbed idea of a date, bringing you to some dimly lit alleyway to do only God knows what to you! You can't be that naive, Hiro! Didn't you have sex ed in high school that warned you about date rape situations? This is a textbook example!"
"B-Bot fighter?" Tadashi sputters, looking completely affronted by the accusations being leveled at him.
"Boyfriend?!" Hiro cries, unable to believe that they actually thought that he and Tadashi- Okay, no, he didn't even want to go there! And besides, now wasn't the time for having this discussion.
"You guys need to go-now!" he tells the others, starting to seriously fear for their safety. He didn't want them all getting mixed up in their dealings with the masked man-he could defend himself and Tadashi, but even he didn't have enough magic to protect all six of them!
"Don't push us away, Hiro," Honey Lemon says, reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder. "We're here for you. You don't have to go back to bot fighting just to try to bury your feelings-it isn't what Tadashi would have wanted. Please, come back with us and we can talk about this somewhere safe!"
"But we're leaving this deadbeat," GoGo adds, scowling at Tadashi. "I don't trust him farther than I can throw him."
"Guys, please, you've got to listen to me!" Hiro groans. "You really need to-"
"HOLY MOTHER OF MEGAZON!" Before he can finish his sentence, Fred, who had been oddly silent in the back, cries out, having seen something that none of the others had noticed going on behind them-namely a gigantic shipping crate being lifted by two towers of megabots.
"A-Am I the only one seeing this?" Fred asks as they all stare up it in various stages of horror.
Honey Lemon, for reasons beyond Hiro's understanding, actually chooses to pull out her phone and take a picture, which unfortunately seems to alert the masked man to their presence. Before any of them can react, the crate being lifted by the microbots was thrust right towards them. It looked very well like they were done for-Wasabi started screaming in terror, probably thinking that he was about to be squashed to death on the pavement. But before the crate can make contact, Hiro manages to shout out a barrier spell that keeps it from being able to come any further.
"The hell?!" GoGo cries, mouth falling open in complete and utter shock as she sees the crate floating in mid air.
"No time to explain! Just run!" Tadashi cries.
The others don't even question it-as a group they race back towards Wasabi's waiting van, Tadashi dragging a protesting Hiro along with him by the arm.
"What are you doing?!" the teen cries.
"Saving your life!" Tadashi answers as he pulls Hiro into the middle seat, slamming the car door behind them as the last of the group piles in.
"But I can handle that guy!" Hiro protests.
"I am not letting you take that chance!" Tadashi tells him before shouting, "Wasabi, get us out of here!"
"H-How did you know-?!" Wasabi sputters, looking back at him in shock.
But before he can get his answer, Honey Lemon cries out, "Wasabi!" as they masked man on his tower of microbots towers over them, and Wasabi snaps into action, backing the car quickly back down the road and away from the imminent danger.
"Hiro, explanation, now," GoGo demands.
"That guy stole my microbots-he started the fire, and I don't know who he is!" Hiro answers in a panicked voice-this was not how he'd planned things to go!
"Hiro, there's more coming!" Tadashi shouts, seeing a gigantic tower of microbots heading right for them.
Hiro reacts on instinct, casting a shielding spell around the van which, when the bots came into contact with it, causes the vehicle to spin around wildly to face forward but otherwise remain unharmed.
"How do you keep doing that?!" GoGo cries, but before Hiro can even try to answer, she turns back around and shouts to Wasabi, "Hard left!"
Wasabi follows her instructions, sharply turning at the corner and causing everyone who wasn't belted in (which was most of them) to be thrown against the side of the van.
As the vehicle continued careening down the road, the cloaked man continued to give chase on his wave of microbots. Fred, who was keeping watch out the back window, mutters, "That mask… The black suit. We're under attack from a supervillain, people!" For the first time in longer than Tadashi could remember, there was a genuine smile on his face as he continues eagerly, "How cool is that? I mean, it's scary, obviously, but how cool?!
"Oh Fred…" Tadashi whispers, unable to keep a fond smile from slipping onto his face at his boyfriend's reaction. It was just so… Well, Fred.
Everyone is jerked forward as the van slams to a stop at the next intersection.
"Why are we stopped?!" GoGo demands.
"The light is red!" Wasabi answers in a panicked voice.
"There are no red lights IN A CAR CHASE!" GoGo shouts at him as, mercifully, the light changes to green and Wasabi starts the car again.
"Why is he trying to kill us?" Wasabi whines, looking like he was having the worst possible day of his life, before leaning out the window and, to Hiro's disbelief, actually shouting back at the masked man, "Why are you trying to kill us?"
"It's classic villain! We've seen too much!" Fred cries.
"Let's not jump to conclusions!" Honey Lemon protests. "We don't know he's trying to kill us!"
"CAR!" Fred shouts as another vehicle comes flying through the air towards them.
"He's trying to kill us!" Honey Lemon shrieks as Wasabi turns the car just in time to avoid the projectile, which smashed to the street just where they'd been only seconds earlier.
"Did you just put your blinker on?!" GoGo spits at Wasabi, looking down at the dashboard in disgust..
"You have to indicate your turns! It's the law!" Wasabi argues back.
"That's. It." GoGo pulls the gum out of her mouth and sticks it to the dash and then, a determined look on her face, pulls the lever to push Wasabi's seat back before jumping into the driver's seat and taking control of the van. Hiro would have been impressed if he wasn't so terrified for his life. He could only hope that his protection spell was as strong as he thought it was.
Everything sort of happened in a blur after that, with GoGo doing what was probably some incredibly illegal and dangerous driving but somehow managing to keep them just ahead of the masked man. Hiro, feeling his frustration at the criminal for constantly trying to kill them with an invention that rightfully belonged to him rising, starts to climb into the front seat, telling GoGo, "Stop the car! I can take this gu-AAAHHHH!"
He lets out a cry of terror as the passenger side door is ripped off and he finds himself falling out and almost becoming roadkill. The only thing that saved him was Tadashi lunging forward just in time and grabbing his arm, yanking him back into the vehicle before desperately strapping him in with the seat belt.
"Put your belt on, you knucklehead!" Tadashi shouts at him, looking equal parts panicked and angry. Hiro just mutely nods in response, his brush with death making him too terrified to be able to form a coherent answer.
The car chase continues, with the car almost flying over the road as GoGo clears a hill and then smashes back down.
"What are you doing, what are you doing, whatareyoudoing?!" Wasabi shrieks in terror as they approach a train crossing which had its gates closing, the train already close enough that they could hear its whistle on the track. But GoGo showed no sign of slowing down. By some miracle, she manages to shift gears in such a way that the car goes flying sideways across the track, just barely avoiding being smashed into by the engine car, before continuing off down the road on the other side of the tracks. Hiro could see the masked man following along on the other side of the train, but he was unable to cross the tracks, and as soon as she can GoGo takes another sharp turn off onto a side road.
"Did we lose him?" Honey Lemon asks hopefully. But she had hoped to soon.
"Watch out!" Wasabi cries as they're blindsided by a thick wall of the microbots, which quickly turns into a tunnel of darkness around them.
"Hold on!" Tadashi shouts to everyone, clinging in terror to his seat.
"We're not gonna make it!" Wasabi shrieks as GoGo races towards the opening at the end of the tunnel.
"We're gonna make it!" Honey Lemon answers as GoGo presses down on the gas.
"We're not gonna make it!"
"We're gonna make it!"
Just then, they burst out of the tunnel onto solid road.
"We made it!" Wasabi cries in relief, and everyone momentarily relaxes. But they shouldn't have let their guard down yet.
The road that they were on abruptly ends, and they found themselves heading right off the edge of it and into the bay. Impact with the water causes the windshield to shatter, and they all scream in horror just before they go under.
The van sinks like a rock towards the murky depths, and everyone has just enough time to take a breath before water fills the car completely. They finally settle with a harsh "thump" to the bottom, and they all try without success to get their seat belts to release. Hiro starts panicking, convinced that they were all going to die down here at the bottom of the bay and that it was going to be all his fault. But then he sees bubbles rising towards the surface outside the car and he has a desperate plan form in his mind that just might actually work. If it didn't work, he was a goner, but he was a goner if he didn't try it anyways and so, using the tiny bit of air that he has left in his lungs, he casts a levitation charm.
At first he thought that it hadn't worked-that his words, garbled by the water, hadn't landed. But then slowly, slowly, the van starts to rise in the water, back towards the surface. He wasn't sure that it was going fast enough, but he didn't have the breath to cast another charm to speed the process. Dark spots were starting to dance in his vision and he was pretty sure he was about to pass out when the van bursts out onto the surface.
All around him, the others were gasping and choking, but as the teen looks around as the van bobs at the surface of the water, he sees with great relief that everyone was still conscious and breathing.
"I told you we'd make it!" Honey Lemon, ever the optimist, declares with a sunny smile.
"Yeah, we made it," GoGo agrees before turning to look at Hiro with a look of disbelief that borderlined on mistrust on her face. "I just don't know how we made it. Care to explain, Hiro?"
"Now isn't the time for that," Tadashi quickly steps in for his younger sibling. "We need to get out of this water and go dry off somewhere warm before we all catch pneumonia."
Everyone still seemed in too much shock to really be able to come up with a solution. But then Fred, a determined look on his face, speaks up. "I know a place."