A/N: Thank you for your patience! If I ever say I have a system and will be posting routinely again... just laugh.

Response to guests:

panther dragon: The portals on Akuma Island are inactive; the distortions are after-effects.

Random Fan: What? ;) Genuine smile, but also sad. The mystery of Smoke. XD Eh, both with the chapter title.

Once again, the rest of the team camped out in the Hamada's living room. Nobody wanted to leave Hiro, even if they didn't know how to comfort their friend and leader beyond their presence.

Aunt Cass didn't open the cafe the next day, either. She opted to fix up an amazing breakfast for the teens. Fred eagerly offered his help, leaving the rest of the teens to wait anxiously in the living room.

"Do you think he's up yet?" Honey Lemon asked. She had a notebook open in her lap, formulas trailing off into doodles.

"He should be," Go Go said. "And he should know he can't just hide."

Go Go words were harsh, but she kept glancing from the radio with which she was tinkering to Hiro's door. She was better at hiding her worry than the rest of her team, but she had stayed the night.

"Alright, alright," Wasabi said, making a placating motion with his hands. "I'll go check on Hiro."

Wasabi stood and went to Hiro's door, unaware that everyone else had stopped whatever they were doing to watch him. Wasabi tapped on the door.

"Hiro?" Wasabi said. "Hiro, are you up?"

Wasabi heard Hiro's muffled voice, but couldn't make out his words. He frowned and leaned closer, leaping almost a foot in the air when there was a loud thud.

"Hiro!" Wasabi swung the door open.

Hiro was on the floor in a tangle of blankets. Baymax waddled toward him to help, asking if Hiro was hurt, and Wasabi was about to join him when Hiro scrambled to his feet.

Hiro didn't appear to be hurt. Tearstains marked his flushed cheeks and his eyes were red, but he wore a grin. In one hand, he clutched a notebook.

"Wasabi, what-" Hiro started.

Aunt Cass rushed past Wasabi. "Hiro, are you alright?"

"Yeah, I just fell out of bed," Hiro said, unresistant when Aunt Cass knelt in front of him and turned his head back-and-forth. "What time is it?"

"Almost seven," Go Go said as she, Honey Lemon, and Fred joined Wasabi.

Hiro blinked and rubbed his eyes with his free hand. "Seven? Then I… Baymax, why didn't you tell me to go to sleep?"

Baymax's audio receptors whirred. "Your treatment was doing more good then even rest."

"Your what now?" Wasabi asked.

Hiro grinned widened, even while scrubbing away a stray tear. "I've been reading. How did you guys find this?"

Wasabi looked at the notebook Hiro waved. "They're… all over school?"

Hiro finally pulled away from Aunt Cass, frowning slightly. "You didn't put this in my room last night?"

The older teens looked at each other, then shook their heads. Hiro glanced at Aunt Cass and received the same response. Hiro hesitated, then turned to Baymax.

"Baymax, who came into my room last night?"

Baymax whirred, then responded. "Nobody."

Everyone stared at Baymax.

Hiro looked at Microbot. "Microbot didn't wake me up, either…"

"However, there is a gap in my surveillance videos," Baymax added. "My systems appear to have shut down for one minute and fourteen seconds. Immediately after the gap in video, the notebook is in your bed."

Hiro's frown deepened. He went to his desk, scooting the chair closer with his foot as he sat. He woke up his computer, then grabbed Microbot and hooked it up to the computer. He typed away in silence, then sat back with a dumbfounded expression.

"Microbot has the same length of gap in his surveillance, at the exact same time," Hiro said.

The older teens stiffened or gasped. Aunt Cass glanced at them, then to Hiro.

"What does that mean?"

Hiro spun the chair around. "It means somebody hacked into Baymax and Microbot to either turn them off or remove the recording. They had to have turned them off, because Microbot won't let anyone in my room at night besides you or the team. Baymax is… impossible. Only two people-" Hiro growled and turned to his computer, "Only I can get into his systems. Getting even one of them shut down should be impossible, never mind both at once."

"And to do so without waking up Hiro, they must have been outside the room at the time," Go Go said.

"And they couldn't have come up through the apartment, so they had to have gotten in here somewhere else…" Wasabi glanced at the window.

"They were on the roof?" Aunt Cass guessed.

"If I might add my theory," Fred offered, then went right on. "It was Smoke."

"If the notebook had been hidden in the lab, Smoke would have known where it was," Honey Lemon agreed.

"And since I'm pretty sure he's a spirit." Fred nodded to himself, ignoring Go Go's groan. "Spirits can't be detected. He ghosted in here, left the notebook, then did something unearthly to mess with the robots-"

"This is how they got Baymax," Hiro interrupted. He waved Tadashi's notebook. "There's a page where Tadashi was working through ways to keep Baymax's systems secure. If Smoke -if it even was him who left this- read this notebook, they'd be able to find a way to bypass Baymax's security."

"Even if they could bypass Tadashi's efforts and the protections I know you've put into place, how did they figure out Microbot?" Go Go asked.

Hiro dropped Tadashi's notebook onto the desk with a sigh. "I don't know."

The team spent the weekend searching for clues as to how the notebook had been left, but could find nothing. As much as Hiro tried, he couldn't retrieve the missing memories in Baymax or Microbot, either.

Never one to give up, Hiro's efforts went throughout classes on Monday. Hiro kept busy on his school laptop, which he had hooked up to Microbot, leaving the others to get him to his classes on time. The teachers, used to students occasionally diving into projects, left the boy alone for the day.

Hiro still hadn't gotten any results by the time they headed for open lab. He glared at the empty screen, then blinked when the laptop was whipped away.

"Eat," Wasabi said, setting Hiro's lunch bag where the laptop had previously sat.

Hiro made a face, then his stomach growled. Smiling sheepishly, Hiro pulled out his forgotten lunch and ate while the others went to work on various projects.

Half an hour later, a yelp made all the students look up. Ziggy was dancing in place at her station, sucking on her finger.

Honey Lemon darted over to the girl. Curious, the others followed. When they arrived, Honey Lemon was doing her best to examine a cut on the tip of Ziggy's shaking finger.

Abigail arrived a second later. "What happened?"

"Knife slipped," Ziggy said, frowning at her station. "Don't tell Monitor."

"It's not serious," Honey Lemon determined. "Wasabi, do you have our first-aid kit?"

"Always," Wasabi said, whipping a pale yellow box from under his table.

"That's not the first-aid kit," Abigail said, raising an eyebrow.

"Watch," Fred said, pointing.

Honey Lemon opened the box and pulled out a kazoo. It was a cheerful yellow in color, and there was a small yellow duck with a nurse cap on the end. When Honey Lemon blew into the kazoo, a bubble appeared on the end instead of a noise. The bubble floated to Ziggy's finger, where it stuck, then shrunk down to just cover the top half of the finger.

"There we go!" Honey Lemon said.

Ziggy poked the bubble with her other hand. "What is it?"

"Anti-bacterial bubble," Honey Lemon said.

"Can I see that?" Abigail asked.

Honey Lemon handed the kazoo over, explaining, "It won't pop for twenty-four hours, unless you hit or poke it too hard. It will keep the cut clean so it can heal best by tomorrow!"

"Amazing," Abigail turned the kazoo over, where there was a word carved into the plastic. "'Boomerang'? Is that what this is called?"

Wasabi's eyes suddenly widened. "Er, no, it never got a name."

"He just put his name on the bottom until he could trademark it," Go Go said, taking the kazoo and walking away.

Abigail turned. "So, who's Boomerang?"

Nobody answered her. Abigail looked around. Whoever wasn't avoiding her gaze appeared to be as confused as Abigail.

"That was Tadashi's nickname."

Half the students literally jumped when Hiro answered. Abigail raised an eyebrow at the reactions, then looked at Hiro.

Hiro, eyes on the floor, shook his head, "Tadashi never could leave a project, no matter how disastrously it went. He didn't believe in giving up. Everyone started calling him Boomerang, because he always came back."

"I've heard a lot about Tadashi," Abigail murmured to herself. "I wish I could have met him."

"Me, too." Hiro lifted his head and gave a weak smile. "I think he'd have loved to meet you."

A/N: Hiro did a lot of thinking that night.

The next chapter is tricky because I realized I don't know what's supposed to happen between this point and the next big event, so... filler chapter, anyone?