Chapter 13

Hiro leaned in close to study the situation. He looked up at Karmi as she studied her next move, both of them sitting in his private lab. "Everything rides on this. You sure you can do it?"

"Yes, I can. I'm sure." She said confidently.

"You don't sound sure." Hiro replied.

"I can if you stop blabbering, now shut. Up!" Karmi looked at the colorful playing cards in her hand. She had limited options and had to choose wisely. Finally, she made her choice and made eye contact with Hiro again. "Do you have a Zinc?"

Hiro smiled smugly and leaned back in his seat. "Go fish."

Karmi groaned and picked up a card from the deck in between them. When Hiro said he'd found a deck of custom Periodic Table themed playing cards in a box of Tadashi's stuff recently, she thought it'd be fun to play a few rounds with Genius Boy. She was starting to regret it.

"What about Boron?" Hiro asked. Karmi grumbled and handed Hiro one of her cards as Hiro made a match and laid it down on the table.

"You're a 'Boron'. How about lead?" Hiro shook his head and prepared to cast the winning blow.

"Got any golds?" Karmi shrieked in frustration as she handed Hiro a card, signaling the end of the game. A scoreboard illuminated on Baymax's stomach, giving Hiro another win.

"Hiro has now won five games, while Karmi has only won two. Hiro has won the tournament."

"Fine, Hiro wins. But the deck was literally stacked against me, they're his brother's cards!"

"While Tadashi created the deck to study with, it gives Hiro no actual advantage. The probabilities of winning a game are the same as a classic game of Go Fish."

"Listen to the robot, Karmi. I won fair and square."

"This time, Genius Boy. Next time, I'm taking you down."

"We'll see," Hiro smiled. Hiro gathered up the cards and began to shuffle them as Karmi got up and reached for her backpack. She grabbed her phone and looked at the time, startled to find it nearing five in the evening.

"I'm starting to get hungry. You want to head to the caf and get something to eat?"

"I'd love to, but I'm starting my internship at Krei Tech back up tonight. Gotta be there on time to impress the boss."

"Kinda late to start an internship at five, isn't it?"

"Well, Krei's kind of an eccentric guy. He keeps some odd hours."

"Can't be any crazier than my last boss," Karmi chuckled nervously. Hiro just shuffled the cards, not sure how to respond. The two sat in an awkward silence for a moment before Karmi finally turned to leave. "Well thanks for hanging out, I'll talk to you later."

"Karmi, wait…" Hiro stood up and grabbed her by the hand to stop her from leaving. "We never really talked about what happened with Di, we've just kind of danced around it. You ok?"

"Yeah, no, I'm fine. Just not great at jokes." Hiro nodded and the two stood there again. As Karmi looked at him, she realized that for the first time she was eye-level with Hiro, when previously he'd been a couple inches shorter than her. "You've grown…"

"Yeah, I kinda hit a little growth spurt over the summer. Had to go pants shopping with Aunt Cass, outgrew all of my shorts."

"Hiro grew two point seven inches in three weeks. Aunt Cass was very proud."

"Yep. Puberty, yaaaaay…" Hiro blushed, silently praying that the conversation about his growth spurt would end soon. Karmi smirked and ruffled his hair.

"Aww, is Cass's little Genius Boy growing into a Genius Man?" she giggled as Hiro sputtered, his face somehow growing redder. She finally turned to leave for good. "I'll see you later, Hiro. Have fun with Krei."

"See ya, Karmi." Hiro smiled as she walked out the doors. Baymax scanned the departing Karmi and then scanned Hiro. He turned toward his patient with an inquiry.

"Hiro, according to my database, you and Karmi are showing signs of romantic attraction similar to Aunt Cass and Chief Cruz, and your ages are compatible. Why have you not extended an offer of courtship?"

"Because with everything going on right now, she'd be a distraction, and it might put her in danger."

"Are your feelings for Megan also conflicting with a potential courtship with Karmi?"

"What? No, Megan and I are just friends. We don't like each other that way."

"I scanned you, and both of you were displaying signs of-"

"That was embarrassment, Baymax. We didn't really like that Aunt Cass was trying to force us together and were embarrassed."

"Romantic feelings or the lack-there-of can lead to embarrassment?"

"Yeah. It can lead to lots of embarrassment."

"Why?"

"Because… human emotions are complicated, Baymax. Sometimes what we want and what people think we want can lead to unwanted attention, which can lead to embarrassment."

"Oh. I concur that human emotions are… complicated. I shall endeavor to understand them better to be a better healthcare companion."

"Good luck with that, buddy, people have spent years trying to understand human emotions and have nothing to show for it. C'mon, we're going to be late to Krei Tech at this rate."

Hiro and Baymax walked into Krei's office as said CEO was looking over a pile of blueprints scattered all over his desk.

"Ah, intern!" Krei said, a smile spreading over his face. "So glad that you agreed to continue on. I really appreciate it."

"It's fine, Mr. Krei. Thanks for being so understanding about having to delay."

"Of course, it'd be selfish of me to keep one of the city's superheroes all to myself. Or at least that's what Judy tells me. Come here, I want you to take a look at these."

Hiro walked up to Krei's desk to observe the blueprints. Each one was for a slight variant on a magnetically charged car, eerily similar to Go Go's mag lev suspension bike. Little scribbles of math equations off in the margins only confirmed as much to Hiro, as they were written in her handwriting.

"These are Go Go's blueprints. How'd you get these?"

"She came by a few weeks ago and presented them. I happily bought them, any one of these designs could revolutionize personal transportation as we know it, and Krei Tech sort of needs a safe bet right now."

"Wait, she sold you her blueprints? She worked on these for like three years on and off."

"I was as surprised as you are, most of the people I do business with are very eager to retain some form of control over their designs, but she seemed very… apathetic. Said she needed the money for school. We even offered her a position here at the company to help develop these, but she declined."

"Huh. She did not tell us about this. So, what do you want me to do with them?"

"I just wanted another set of eyes on them to double check there aren't any ways to turn this into a weapon."

"Well, at this point I think anything could be used as a weapon, but outside of using one of these as a ramming device, I don't think they're overly dangerous."

"Excellent news, because I may have sort of already put them into production."

Hiro rolled his eyes. "Of course you did."

"For testing purposes only, I assure you! Do you want to come take a look?"

"Sure, why not?"

Krei led Hiro and Baymax out of his office and to the elevator. When the doors closed behind them, Krei scanned his security badge on the button panel and the two lowest buttons lit up green, now accessible. Krei hit the one marked "Testing Floor" and the elevator began moving downward. Hiro ignored the Four-Two Sing elevator music as Krei began talking about the lower levels of the building.

"Our most advanced prototypes we test in the basement levels under the building. It allows us to keep a lid on things should they go south."

"And how often does that happen?"

"Well… let's just say there's a reason we started using abandoned warehouses to test some of our more… volatile experiments. We practically had the fire department on speed dial for a while."

The elevator reached its destination and the doors opened with a ding. The testing floor was a long central hallway with doors on each side, allowing for dozens of products to be worked on at once. As they walked down the hall, Hiro looked around. Some of the test rooms were locked down without a way to look inside, while others were brightly lit and what was being worked on was visible for all to see. In one, a scientist in a lab coat took a vial of some type of serum and drippled the tiniest amount on a potted plant. Krei pointed at the experiment.

"We poached some of the former staff from Sycorax when it went under to continue some of their research. Not everything Di Amara was working on was totally evil. This is for a fast plant growing formula."

The plant started to shake, the effects of the serum beginning to become evident. The central vine stood up straight and miraculously grew by three inches, flowers blooming on the stems. The scientist began to take notes, and didn't notice when the flower pedals quickly wilted and spikes grew along the plant. More spiked vines began to grow out of the soil and started attacking things in the room. The scientist with the clipboard slumped in defeat and picked up a cattle prod, shocking the plant into submission. Krei grimaced at the results.

"I think we might have hit a dead end on this one." He said.

"Yeah, I think I have to agree."

Krei quickly turned and walked away from the potential lawsuit waiting to happen and marched to the end of the hall where a pair of double doors waited. Krei pulled them open and walked in. The room on the other side was massive, being an indoor test track for vehicles. A type of car was zooming around the room. It sported a sleek silver carbon fiber chassis, with only a simple "Test Model #03" written on it for decoration. Four other similar but altered designs sat parked nearby, some having only two wheels meant for only one or two riders, wile others had four wheels like a traditional car. Each one was being held up by mag lev suspension, Go Go's design work being evident in all of them. The one on the track zoomed past, ruffling Hiro's jacket in the breeze it left behind.

"That vehicle is going twenty-seven point three miles over the speed limit for this area of town," Baymax said.

"Is it? Good, she's managed to improve the speed, then," Krei said with a smile.

"I thought you said Go Go declined the job offer?" Hiro asked.

"She did. That driver isn't Go Go." Krei waved the vehicle down as it was about to make another pass. The sleek four-wheeler slowed and came to a stop in front of the trio. A side panel opened, acting as a door for the driver to step out. The driver was decked out in a Krei Tech issued crash suit and a crash helmet, but a brown ponytail was evident underneath the helmet. Abigail Callaghan removed the helmet and shook her head, freeing her hair a bit and rolling her shoulders.

"Figured out the propulsion issue, Mr. Krei. She's sailing along now."

"Excellent work, Abigail. I brought along Hiro to inspect the vehicles. He knows the inventor."

"Wow, intern to the big boss and knows the inventor? Kid's connected." Abigail smiled at Hiro. The kid genius in question rubbed his hand on the back of his neck and looked towards the parked vehicles.

"May I?" he asked.

"Help yourself," Abigail answered. Hiro walked over and began to inspect Go Go's blueprints come to life. He'd seen her doodling them on occasion, but it was impressive to see them actually built. He ducked down to peer underneath one, hearing the faint hum of the mag lev suspension working perfectly. Behind him, he heard Abigail inspecting Baymax.

"Hello. I am Baymax."

"Well, you look like a big ol' softie, don't ya? What do you do?"

"I am a personal healthcare companion. I am programmed to help people."

"Hiro build you all by himself?"

"Yes. He built this body based on his brother Tadashi's designs." Hiro sucked in a breath of surprise and hit his head on the vehicle as he surged to stand up.

"Ow!"

Baymax turned and began to waddle over to Hiro. "I was alerted to your need for medical attention when you said 'Ow'. On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain?"

"Just a two, pal. I'm fine, I just hit my head."

"Tadashi…" Abigail was chewing on the word, her mind at work. Finally, it came to her, and her face fell in shock as she looked at Hiro. "Tadashi Hamada."

Hiro sighed, bracing himself for the conversation to follow. "Yeah, he was my brother."

"And you… know who I am?"

"I do. It's not your fault, Abigail."

"Hiro, I'm… it's probably not worth much, but I'm sorry for what my father did to your family."

"Thanks, Abigail." Hiro sighed and finally looked her in the eyes. "Have you… been to see him?"

"No." It was Abigail's turn to look away. "When I came to in the hospital and was told what he had done, I… I couldn't even look at him on the news. I'm just… I'm glad Big Hero 6 was there to stop him."

"Yeah… me too." The two stood there as Krei and Baymax looked between one another, unsure of what to do. Finally, Abigail peeled back her sleeve to check her watch.

"It's getting late, I think I'm going to head home, Mr. Krei."

"Of course. I'll see you tomorrow, Abigail." Krei offered her a sympathetic smile as she turned to leave, glancing back at Hiro briefly before walking through the doors. When she was well out of earshot, Krei turned to Hiro, who had gone back to focusing on the prototypes. "Hiro, I apologize. I wasn't trying to engineer an awkward situation."

"It's ok, Mr. Krei. If we were going to work together on occasion, that was probably going to happen sooner or later."

"Hiro, I regret if I gave you or Abigail unneeded stress or unwanted emotions. This goes against my caregiving protocols."

"It's ok, Baymax. It wasn't your fault."

Krei fidgeted, feeling uncomfortable. "So, do the prototypes get your superhero seal of approval?"

"Yeah…" Hiro finally said. "I think they'll be fine."

"Good to hear. That's all I really needed for you today, so you can head on home if you'd like."

Hiro knew that wasn't true, there was a myriad of different tasks and things Krei usually had him do during his work hours, but the man had been improving lately when it came to showing kindness. Hiro wasn't about to decline his offer. "Thanks, Mr. Krei. I'll see you Wednesday, same time?"

"Looking forward to it," Krei opened the door for Hiro and Baymax and the three left the test room.

Night fell over San Fransokyo. Citizens found their way home and ate dinner, watched the evening news, maybe had some family game nights, and then went to bed. The streets became largely deserted as police began their night patrols. Big Hero 6 turned in as well, keeping their phones nearby so they could be roused at a moments notice, but Chief Cruz insisted that they should all take a night to rest up after the last few weeks. Whether or not they had been taking a night off probably wouldn't have stopped what happened.

A security guard walked through an outdoor shopping center located near Night Market Square. As opposed to its name, the markets dried up at night as everyone went home. The man shined his flashlight though the closed storefronts as he made his nightly rounds. A popular chain jewelry store caught his attention and his shined his light inside. Nothing going on, the store barricade was down, and the lights were off. So, he turned around, this section of the market clear.

As he left, he missed the disturbance that had he been there for three seconds more he would have caught. The room began to shake, diamonds and fancy watches rattling around in their glass cases. Finally, a rip in space/time opened up. At first a crack, this rip slowly grew larger until a portal opened up in the shop. A figure burst out of the portal, landing on the ground in a graceful move. The portal shut itself as the intruder raised up and looked around, activating her night vision goggles. Spotting her targets, she readied her burlap sack and her infiltration tool of choice: a large crowbar. Setting a timer on her watch, the seconds began to count down as she got to work.

The glass cases shattered under the attacks of the heavy crowbar. A brutish tactic, but effective. The alarms in the shop sounded, alerting the police and bringing the security guard running from his position a courtyard or two away. Rings, gems, diamonds, basically anything that glittered was shoved into the burlap sack as the thief made short work of the small store. Her watched beeped, signaling time was up. With a tightening of the rope around the sack to keep her bounty from flying away as she moved, the thief jumped up on a chair and pointed an armored gauntlet at the wall. A dozen small metal beads shot out of it, hovering in a circle around the room and activating the return portal home. Just as the security guard ran around the corner, the thief leapt into the portal, disappearing from sight before the guard could ever lay eyes on. The portal closed, the beads being sucked into the portal to be reused later, leaving no evidence behind. All he saw was the flashing alarm light and busted glass cases. Empty busted glass cases.

The next morning, Big Hero 6 was sitting around the conference table at BaseMax bright and early before school and work. Chief Cruz hadn't alerted them to the jewelry store break-in at first, assuming it was common thieves. But then he took a look at the security footage and sent it their way. Hiro signaled for the surveillance footage to play on the large monitor. Cruz had taken the liberty of cutting straight to the point, and only after a few seconds the main event started. They watched as the thief appeared out of thin air thanks to their portal and wrecked the place. From infil to exfil the thief was there less than 40 seconds in total, but they left behind plenty to identify them with. As the thief jumped back through the portal, Hiro ran the footage back, stopping it right as the thief smirked at the camera.

She wore a white leotard with red and black markings, decorative face paint covering her features to match. Her white hair completed the look, but the arrogant smirk was the real icing on the cake. The heroes looked at the footage and then at Hiro as BaseMax scanned the thief's features and confirmed what they already knew, her identity popping up on screen. Hiro sighed.

"Sirque is back in town."

Abigail woke up to the sun shining in her face, which was weird because she always kept the blinds in her bedroom closed. She sat up and looked around, finding herself in her apartment's living room rather than her bedroom. Abigail groaned. This was the third time in two weeks she'd sleepwalked elsewhere in the apartment. The first time she'd done it had been to her office and the big comfy chair in there, so not a huge deal. The second was more annoying as she'd found herself passed out on the kitchen floor, freezing on the tile. It was probably time to make a doctor's appointment, she'd never sleepwalked once in her life prior to two weeks ago.

Pushing that thought aside for later, Abigail stood up and made her way into the kitchen, pouring herself some cereal and switching on the TV. The local news anchor was saying something about a robbery the night before, but Abigail was too focused on her milk to cereal ratio to notice. As she got just the perfect amount of milk in (so the cereal wouldn't be too soggy or too dry), she grabbed a spoon from the utensil drawer and finally tuned into the news when the reporter mentioned that a supervillain was suspected of the robbery.

"This robbery easily bypassed the security systems in place with the use of suspected portal technology. The police say that Big Hero 6 is looking into it, and vow to stop this thief before they can strike again… gee, I wonder how many times we've heard that before?"

Portal technology. Abigail didn't like the sound of that. She didn't remember being trapped in the void between dimensions, but it was jarring to come to and have lost months of her life. Her one worry when joining Krei Tech was that they'd still be pursuing that field, but the CEO had reassured her that it was a thing of the past with the company. They had no desire to pick back up after what happened. Not able to stomach anymore of the news, Abigail shut off the TV and walked into her office, setting down her bowl of cereal and powering on her computer. As she waited for it to boot up, she turned her eyes to the picture frame she'd so angrily slammed down the night before. After properly meeting Hiro Hamada, Abigail hadn't been able to even think about her father, let alone look at him. She gingerly raised the frame up and set it back upright, taking a look at the photo. She'd been about six when it had been taken. A trip to the park. A young Abigail sat atop her father's shoulders with a blue sky and warm sunshine beaming down on them. Her mother had taken the picture, they'd all been so happy back then. Now…

Abigail sighed and logged into her email account as she took another bite of cereal. The engineers had taken a look at her modifications she'd made to the mag-lev cars and had sent her their notes. One of them, Jeff, was a very cautious man. Abigail knew he'd been hired as part of Krei's new "no more supervillains stealing our stuff" initiative, but he drove her up the wall with how cautious he was. Sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, or in this case, potentially crash a prototype or two. Her bowl of cereal finished, Abigail stood up and walked back towards the kitchen. She couldn't wait to get to work now. It was time that she finally gave Jeff a piece of her mind. First thing she'd do was march into his office…

His office? Abigail looked around. She was in JEFF'S OFFICE. The lights were off and nobody was there, thankfully. The clock read 6:27 AM, much too early for most of the employees to be at the office. So how was she at Krei Tech? How was she at Krei Tech in her pajamas and an empty bowl of cereal in her hand?

"This is a bad dream… this has to be a bad dream." Abigail pinched herself. Ouch. No, awake. Not dreaming. This didn't make sense. One second she's in her apartment trying to put her bowl in the sink, and-

Her bowl clattered into the sink in her kitchen as she dropped it. She took two steps back in surprise and looked around. She was in her kitchen, like she should have been. Now the thought of that doctor's visit was becoming a little more urgent. She'd just hallucinated that she had been in a co-worker's office. That's not good. Now she was probably going to need to go in for CT scans and-

The world changed again, and now she was standing in a CT scan room in a hospital. No, not any hospital. THE hospital. The one where her mom had…

Abigail began to freak out. She wasn't even in San Fransokyo anymore. Now she was on the East Coast of the country. This wasn't happening. This was a hallucination, it had to be. She spotted a cabinet and ran over to it, grabbing a pencil and looking for paper. If she could manage to write a note, then whoever found her catatonic on the floor of her apartment might be able to tell what delusions she was going through.

Oh, but what if the pencil isn't real? What if the notepad with the hospital's address on it isn't real? Abigail wasn't sure what was going on, but she knew she wanted to be home.

And… she was. Standing in her living room, the remote right where she'd left it not ten minutes ago. Abigail rubbed her forehead and sat down. This was NOT happening. She was loosing it, she was going crazy and hallucinating objects and places, and… but the notepad from the hospital. She still had it and the pencil in her hand. And they felt so real. What if… what if she wasn't going crazy? What if…

Deep breath. Think hard. Abigail stood up, closed her eyes, and waited. She thought of where she wanted to go and waited. Then she felt the wind on her face. She opened her eyes and the entire city of San Fransokyo laid out in front of her. She looked around. She had done it. She was on top of Krei Tech's building. Standing there in her pajamas. She wasn't going crazy, she wasn't hallucinating. This was real. This was happening.

Abagail Callaghan had powers.