Chapter Thirty Six: Photo

Out of habit, Chloe flashed her badge the moment Cass Hamada opened the hotel room door. "Ms. Hamada, I wondered if we could come in. we have a few questions we'd like to ask your nephew."

Lucifer stood a pace or two back, waiting to see what Cass would say about this intrusion. She'd already been quite upset about the earlier ones, and with ample reason. And since he knew a lot more about what was going on than he'd let on, he wondered how this recent development would pan out.

Cass looked from Chloe to Lucifer and back to the detective. She frowned a bit as she purposely made them wait a few extra seconds, then she let out a sigh. "I supposed. But I still stand by my previous words. Hiro is innocent. He wasn't involved in anything illegal and unless you have proof, we really have nothing to say."

Lucifer decided to insert himself at that moment, sliding in front of his partner. "There actually has been a new development that does need some explaining," he admitted, ignoring the glare from the detective.

"Fine," Cass said with resignation in her voice. She moved to one side to let them both in, only giving a hint of a satisfied smile when Chloe paused at the sight of Tony Stark and Bruce Banner. She quickly smoothed it over as she closed the door one more time.

Chloe headed straight towards Hiro, ignoring both Banner and Stark as she resisted the urge to bend slightly to shake his hand. She still held out her hand, but kept the other firmly holding her file to hide the growing stain on her pants. "Hiro Hamada, I'm Detective Chloe Decker. I wondered if I could ask you a few questions."

Hiro glanced over at his aunt, who now stood against the far wall, arms crossed over her chest. "Sure, I guess. So long as you're not still accusing me of killing that one competitor, or setting any bombs at the arena, cuz there's no way that was me." He wasn't sure why he said that last part but it somehow felt like it needed to be said.

"Should I be calling up a lawyer?" Tony asked as he took in the detective. If he recalled correctly, she was the same one who tried to accuse Hiro of murdering his opponent. Last he'd heard, there was doubt shed on that possibility but there was always also the possibility that she'd "found" something else that might disprove that as well.

The detective glanced over at Tony, not sure how he fit into everything, except that he somehow knew Hiro and seemed to be on at least friendly terms with him and his aunt. "I don't think will be necessary. I just have a few questions, nothing formal."

Tony raised his brows. "That's what they usually say before heading into dangerous territory." He pulled out his phone but didn't immediately activate the screen. Instead, he spoke at it, something that confused the detective, since she hadn't seen him do anything besides take it from his pocket. "JARVIS, have my lawyer on standby, would you? I want him ready to come over should the questions go in a direction I don't like."

"Of course, sir."

Cass didn't comment, silently approving Tony's move. It certainly put the detective on her toes, something she could see from the woman's posture. That or she just didn't like Stark, which she could also appreciate. The man was charming, helpful, and just outright infuriating in turns.

Only slightly taken back by this turn of events, Chloe dropped her out held hand and took the photo from the airport from her file instead. "I just wondered if you could explain how your image showed up on a photo taken from the airport surveillance system only minutes before the explosions there."

Hiro almost hesitantly took the photo, wondering the same. He didn't immediately see where they thought he was in the frame but realized where after a moment's study. "Hey, Baymax," he motioned the robot over. "Can you scan and enhance this for me?" Since he didn't have his usual computer, and other tools, Baymax was the best he could do.

Baymax waddled forward, noting Chloe's injury but choosing not to say anything at the moment. Now was not the time to bring it up. Instead, he gingerly took the photo from Hiro and scanned it into his internal memory. From there, he enhanced the photo, showing the enlarged section in question. "It would appear that your image does indeed appear in this photo. However, I cannot explain why as I know you were in a different location at the time suggested."

"Could you let me take a look at that?" Tony asked as he took the photo from Baymax's hand. He used his own phone to scan the image, asking JARVIS to project it into the air so he could get a better idea of what he was looking at. "Doesn't look like a holographic projection," he mused as he used his fingers to make the image larger.

"I tend to agree," JARVIS said. "While holographic projectors have come a long way in the last few years, the quality is not consistent with any known model on the market."

Lucifer put one hand to his chin as he studied the image floating in front of them all. "That expression does look similar to the one h was making while back at Lux, although he did have his eyes closed most of the time."

Hiro shook his head at the whole situation. "This is impossible. The last time anything like this happened was back when that meteor broke up over San Fransokyo." He purposely didn't reference the Makt, not wanting to explain that to either Lucifer or Chloe. "You remember, right, Aunt Cass? That one jogger who disappeared in front of the café? The only difference is that guy wasn't transparent."

Cass pushed away from the wall to take a closer look. "I think you're right," she agreed, not entirely sure she knew if she was on the same page as her nephew or not. But it was close enough to count. She noticed Kally looking over from her perch on the bed. "What do you think?" she asked the other teen genius.

Kally took that as invitation enough and moved closer, standing to do so. "May I?" she asked Tony before moving the image around. She made it rotate from one side to the other, wishing it were a 3D image, but it wasn't. "I got nothing," she admitted after a moment. "What about the rest of the security footage?"

Chloe looked a bit resigned. "I wasn't given access to the whole feed," she admitted. "But what I did see only showed him for a few seconds."

Hiro shook his head again. "How is that even possible? There's no projection equipment visible. I know I wasn't there. There's no way it was a photo or an image ghosted over the frame." He sat down on the bed again.

Baymax decided it was time to change their focus as he turned to look at Chloe Decker. "Perhaps you should sit down," he advised the detective. "I am detecting that you have pulled your stitches and should therefore not be standing."

Lucifer immediately looked at his partner. "I know Jack hinted at something, by why didn't you tell me?" he asked as he pulled out the desk chair for her. "You should have said something!"

"It's nothing," Chloe protested, even though she did take the offered chair.

The devil let out an impatient huff of breath. "Detective, I can see the blood on your pants. You can't tell me that's nothing. Why don't you have your crutch? You know you should be using that!"

Chloe resisted the urge to grind her teeth. She'd hoped to avoid any attention on that matter but supposed it was inevitable. "I was going to stop by the hospital when we were finished here."

Lucifer raised one eyebrow at that. "Were you really? Or are you just saying that to try and placate me? Either way, it is now my duty to make sure you are properly taken care of. Heaven knows you need it." He seemed to mentally cross himself at his last comment.

Tony frowned at the detective. "You might want to listen to your partner," he admonished, still mulling over the photo and what it might mean. Hiro had somehow been there, and part of him wondered if it had anything to do with the whole Hydra incident, as Bruce had suggested, or something much bigger.

"Can't this wait?" Chloe protested, sounding more than a little impatient. "We still don't know why Hiro showed up in that photo."

But Lucifer clucked his tongue at her. "Detective, your health is more important than some mystery that may never be solved. We both know he was not there in person. The only explanation that fits is that either someone is messing with us, or Hiro somehow managed to slip his soul from his body and went gallivanting halfway across the city, appearing only briefly in that form to torment us over the details." Admittedly, part of him wondered if it weren't really that simple.

The detective let out her held breath. "Fine. Since we do have proof he wasn't there, I can't charge him with anything, though I'm not sure I agree with your theory. I'll have Ella give it a look over back at the precinct" She reached out a hand to take the photo back.

Realizing what she was doing, Tony handed the photo over. "I can personally assure you that Hiro and his aunt won't be going anywhere until we all get down to the bottom of this." He ignored a look from Cass, who wasn't pleased he was taking charge of the situation. It wasn't his call to make but he was making it anyway. "But if you have any further questions, you will need to talk to my lawyer. "He slipped a card into her hand with the photo. "His number is on that card. And since we have nothing else to say to you, and you have a pressing matter to take care of, I suggest you leave."

Chloe abruptly stood, wishing a second later that she hadn't, and made her limping way to the door in a bit of anger. "Let's go, Lucifer," she ordered, her fingers bending the file in her hand as her partner followed.

Cass gave Tony a disapproving look. "You didn't need to be quite so rude," she admonished the man. Even though he was older, and taller, and a lot more famous than she'd ever be, there was no way she could allow him to use that tone. "Aside from which, you're not in charge here."

Tony towered over her, though she didn't look all that impressed as she glared up at him. "I took charge because no one else seemed inclined," he retorted.

""We shouldn't argue," Bruce spoke up in a hesitant voice. "The important thing is they're gone now so we can talk about what we came for."

Not willing to beat around the bush anymore, Hiro cleared his throat. "Let me guess. You want more information on how I somehow knew there was a bomb, outside of possibly being there moments before one went off at the airport, something I didn't even know happened until just a few minutes ago. The photo bit, I mean, not the bomb. And, to be perfectly honest, I have no idea how I knew. I just knew."

Lips curved down, Tony gave Hiro the once over. "I hope you don't mind when I call bull on that. According to Dr. Banner here, you potentially "dreamed" the event before it happened in some kind of Post Traumatic fit, potentially made possible due to your time at the Hydra base."

"Is that what they think?" Hiro asked, not at all looking certain as he glanced from his aunt to Baymax, who had both been there, to his knowledge, when Dr. Banner had come visiting at Lux. In a way, he supposed it could be construed as true because it had felt like a dream, a really horrible dream.

Baymax tilted his head to one side. "It was merely a speculation," he answered. "There is no definitive way to prove or disprove this theory."

The teen scratched at the back of his neck, just behind his ear, catching sight of Kally out of the corner of his eye. She was being uncharacteristically quiet, all things considered. Wouldn't she normally be loading him up on various questions, just like Tony and Bruce, essentially, were? Or maybe she'd chosen to let her inner scientist sit back and observe, which would be the more prudent action, he supposed. It's what he'd do if the roles were reversed.

"I guess it's possible," he admitted, still glancing at Kally out of the corner of his eye. "I mean it did feel pretty dreamlike when I saw everything unfolding. Well, except for the burning part. That wasn't fun."

Tony couldn't help but look confused. "Burning? You want to explain what you meant by that?"

It took Hiro only a moment to realize he may have given out a bit more information than was wise at the moment. "Oh, um… well, I guess I was so caught up in the moment that I imagined what it would be like if I'd been trapped on the plane, burning up in the explosion." He gave a noncommittal shrug. "Sometimes my imagination gets carried away because it felt a lot more real than I cared for."

"Uh huh." Tony looked thoughtful as he contemplated the youth. Chances were good there really was no way to describe what had happened, but it was still interesting. He'd heard enough about events at the tournament to suspect that something similar had happened there, though he had nothing to prove it. And maybe it was something that happened in the Hydra based that triggered a somewhat unreliable ability to see into the future. He'd heard of crazier things happening to trauma victims, and Hiro's crises could put most of those people's experiences to shame. Not that he was comparing them, or trying to at any rate.

Cass moved between the two males, clasping her hands together. "Now that we've got that all settled, shouldn't you be somewhere else? Last we heard, you were in the hospital."

Looking more than a little absent-minded, Tony looked up into Cass's face at her comment. "I was. I checked myself out."

"A must unwise decisions if you ask me," JARVIS spoke up.

Tony rolled his eyes as he took his phone in hand once more. "No one asked for your opinion."

Bruce cleared his throat. "Technically speaking, we should probably go check in with the other students. I gave them permission to use the pool and other recreational facilities in the hotel but you never know if any of them decided to try and sneak out while I was gone."

That caught Tony's attention better than Cass's comments had and he made to head to the door. "You're probably right." He paused to look back at Hiro and his aunt, still contemplating recent events. "I'd be really interesting in any other information you can give me on today's incidents," he added as he fixated on Hiro for a brief moment. "Any at all."

Hiro gave a nervous kind of laugh. "I'll keep that in mind. But at the moment, that's all I can think of. But I'll let you know if that changes." He mentally crossed his fingers behind his back.

"You do that," Tony responded before nodding at Bruce. "Come on. Let's go. Like you said, we should check in on the others." He opened the door, ushering his colleague out before following suit. The door closed behind them, leaving the original four in the room.

Hiro's shoulders sagged in relief as he let out a sigh. "That was close. I'd really hate to have to hash through all that again. Once was enough." He glanced up at his aunt, who looked thoughtful.

"Hmm?" Cass started at the intensity behind his gaze. "Oh. Right. You two stay here with Baymax," she suddenly decided. "I'm going out."

Kally looked at Hiro as his aunt gathered up her key card and headed out the door. "What was that all about?"

Hiro shook his head. "No clue." Though he did have a pretty good idea. He'd noticed her grabbing both her room key and Loki's. Chances were good she was going up to check on him. And since there was nothing he could do about, Hiro grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. "So, want to watch anything in particular while we wait for her to come back?" He gave Kally a grin.