Chapter 32
Rishi yawned as he opened his eyes, stretching in bed as the early morning sun broke in through the blinds in his dorm room. As he woke up, his mind went to the events of the previous day. His mentor and his friends were Big Hero 6, and while he easily made the connections, he still had a bit of a hard time believing it. It hadn't been his intention to break into their secret base and interrupt their meeting, but it had happened anyway. After some tense discussion, Hiro and the others had let him go after he'd promised to keep their secret, but now he was stuck. The whole reason he'd tracked down their hideout in the first place had been because of a stupid argument he'd had online. Now that he'd promised to keep their secret, he couldn't very well win that online fight, could he?
Rishi sighed as he got out of bed and made his way over to his desk where his laptop sat. He put on his fluffy bathrobe and sat down in the desk chair, thankful that he'd been granted a private room due to his age and that he could keep the thermostat on 65 degrees like he preferred. Just cool enough to feel a little chill, but nowhere near cold enough to freeze. He opened up his laptop and scooted his half-constructed robotics project over to the side of the desk, deciding to worry about his homework later. Typing in his password, the computer booted up fully and Rishi was bombarded by notifications.
Scowling, he opened up the fanfic chat app to investigate why he had forty-five mentions and twenty-seven tags from the past seven hours since he went to bed. It was way too early to be dealing with this. As he started scrolling through the mentions, he slowly started to realize that he wasn't the only one being tagged in most of the messages. RobotLover23 was being tagged in most of them too, many of which were even from responses they themselves had sent. As he got to the bottom of his notifications, he finally saw that a new topic had been created. Apparently, the small little argument that he and RobotLover23 had been in the day prior had gone public, and now people were choosing sides. Many of the names posting in the chat he didn't recognize, but one or two of them he did, and they were the other high-standing members of the Big Hero 6 fan community that were more likely to take KHeartsQT's top spot in the fandom.
SuperNerd56, 3:23 AM: Seriously, lying about where you live just to get some bonus points online is really low. KHeartsQT always had proof that showed she was local to BH6. What's this kid got besides his word?
NoodleMuncher01, 3:24 AM: Let's not jump to conclusions that BH6rox11 is lying.
PlasmaGal77, 3:26 AM: Then why haven't they posted proof yet? Even if they can't get a good picture of BH6 in person, how hard is it to take a selfie next to a local landmark?
NoodleMuncher01, 3:27 AM: Um… maybe because they don't want their face on the internet? I say we give them a chance to uphold their end of the deal, there's still like a day and a half left before the timeframe he and RobotLover23 agreed to is up. And besides, why would you act so cocky if you knew you couldn't uphold your end?
SuperNerd56, 3:30 AM: HELLO?! This is the internet! People do dumb stuff like this all the time! I guarantee you that BH6rox11 was lying and is now panicking behind their keyboard, trying to figure out how to worm their way out of this situation.
Truth be told, Rishi was starting to panic a little bit. A small handful of people were coming to his defense, but as he kept scrolling, the thread only got worse and worse. RobotLover23 had gotten everyone stirred up, and Rishi was seriously wondering what he'd done to deserve this. Sure, he and RobotLover23 had argued a time or two over the last month since they'd met, but it had all been in a friendly nerd-competition way that was typical of fan sites. Or at least he had thought that. Now he wasn't so sure, as it seemed his online friend was now coming for blood. This wasn't something that would get cleared up with a few comments online telling his side of the story. He needed to take direct action on this and get it settled today. Thank goodness it was Saturday. Rishi checked the time. He knew that Richardson's Rare Collectables would be opening soon, and that he could corroborate Rishi's story.
Rishi stood up and threw his robe off, moving towards the dresser to grab a change of clothes so he could get going. His online reputation was hanging in the balance, and if he didn't act soon, it'd be going down in flames.
Trina smiled as she scrolled through the fanfiction site. After escaping from prison and being filled in on Obake's contingency plan that he had buried in Noodle Burger Boy's databanks, she had done some spying on Hamada while she worked out the details of the plan. To her surprise, Hamada had taken on a protégé, so she did her research on him. The boy was promising, an eleven-year-old robotics genius that proved to potentially be a greater mind than even Obake had been if he could be cultivated correctly. His weakness she soon discovered was his pride. His activity online in comparison with her observations of him in person (and by in-person she of course meant footage from concealed Buddy Guards still under her control) told her as much. So she'd quickly made an account on the dorky fanfiction site and had befriended him and a few other people just to appear legitimate.
She hadn't been completely certain how to make use of Rishi until recently, instead keeping him as an ace up her sleeve. But with Big Hero 6 growing their numbers and Obake's contingency almost ready to go, she needed a way to take the team of heroes off the board, and a strike on their home base to keep them distracted would be just what she needed. She'd narrowed down where their base was but needed final confirmation of its exactly location before her team could strike. But with Rishi so determined to prove himself online, she knew it would be easy for someone of his intellect to put the final clues together and uncover the base for her.
All she had to do was continually attack his pride, and the army of users and bots she'd raised overnight to attack the young genius was working splendidly. After posting about their private chat on the public forums, most of her work had been done for her when other Big Hero 6 fanatics had jumped to her defense. In a few cases she steered the conversation where she wanted it with a bot or two, but for the most part, the stupid humans were feeding right into her plan. The clueless dorks had argued back and forth all night, and finally she saw the message she'd been anticipating.
BH6rox11, 7:53 AM: You guys that doubted me are going to feel real stupid when I come back with proof in like an hour. See you all then.
Trina laughed as she shook her head. The boy might be a genius in robotics, but he was still so naïve about the world in general. Honestly, Obake was doing the world a favor, as it needed a center for advancement and intellectual achievement if what Trina saw online was the average human experience. So easily worked up, so easily fooled. Noodle Burger Boy skipped over to her.
"What's so funny, sis?"
"Humans. Father was right to have a low opinion of them as a whole. They're playing right into our hand and they're too stupid to see it."
"You sure you want to say that out-loud when the… extra fries are still around?"
"Don't worry, Noodle. They think they're exempt from most of humanity, so they don't pay attention when I talk bad about them. Ego is a wonderful thing to exploit. But why don't you go and tell them to be ready? They're not going to miss out on what we've got planned for today."
"Oohh. What do we have planned?"
"How would you like to raid Big Hero 6's base?"
"Really?! When are we going? Are we going now? ARE WE GOING NOW?!" Noodle jumped up and grabbed onto Trina's jacket, hanging off her in his excitement. Trina brushed him off and sent him falling back to the floor.
"No, not now. But give it a couple hours, and we will be. All we have to do is wait." Trina turned back to her computer and read the incoming messages following Rishi's post. If she wasn't careful, her plan would work too well and the Moderators would disable the topic for violating community guidelines at the rate people were arguing. Rishi hadn't posted again since a few minutes ago, and he wasn't responding to the heated replies to his post. That probably meant he was on the move. Or he was formulating a scathing response. But it was fine. Trina had nothing but time, and a project to complete anyway.
She reached for one of the recently stolen Krei Tech super batteries and a wrench, moving for the duplicate High Voltage orbs, ready to finish what her father had started.
Rishi was officially panicking. He'd arrived at Richardson's Rare Comics long after it was supposed to open to get the owner to corroborate his story online. He might not be able to get images of Big Hero 6, but he could at least prove he lived in the city. That had been his plan anyway. When he arrived, the shop was closed still, and the lights were off. A note taped to the inside of the door stated that the owner Richardson Mole and his assistant Nega Globby had taken the weekend off to visit a comic convention in another city to acquire some new collectables for the shop.
Rishi started to sweat as he read the note a second time. This had been his one lifeline, and it had slipped through his fingers. Calling Hiro and asking for a favor wasn't an option. He and the team were real-life superheroes, they wouldn't just drop everything to do a photo op with him. Even if he were on friendlier terms with them than he had any right to be, asking wasn't an option. They'd think the whole thing was stupid and refuse, especially after he'd broken into their base the day prior.
Waiting for Mole to return wasn't an option either. He couldn't just ask for an extension on the deadline like this was a school project he'd forgotten about. He'd lose any and all credibility he had, and that had been the whole point behind this. For the first time in years, Rishi felt like he wanted to just sit down and cry as if he were a little boy. But, he supposed, he was a little boy. His intellect was impressive, but he'd allowed his hubris to get himself into this situation.
Rishi sniffed and rubbed his nose, forcing the tears to stay in. He wasn't going to cry; he didn't have time for that. If his hubris and immaturity had gotten him into this mess, then he'd use his intellect to get himself out of it. He'd treat this as one of his projects in school. Identify the problem, brainstorm a solution, and execute it in the most efficient manner possible. He pulled up the GPS on his phone again and checked his surroundings. He wasn't that far off from some of the well-known downtown landmarks, and if he wanted to, he could take a trolley down to Tori Gate Park and take pictures of Tori Gate Bridge.
Rishi started walking, a new resolve in his determination. He might not get anyone to corroborate that he lived in San Fransokyo, but he could use the city itself to prove he was telling the truth. For some it might be a tough sell based on their comments, but it was the only option he had left.
Hiro drummed his fingers on his desk as he stared at the newsfeed on the News 7 site. There wasn't much new that was being reported on that Hiro didn't already know about, having been at Krei Tech the previous day. All the updates he saw were essentially secondhand information to him. But something was bothering him. After Rishi had left and the team had disbanded after dinner, something had crawled back up from the back of Hiro's mind. Steamer couldn't help but gloat about his plans, he was too old fashioned a villain in that way even if he'd finally been doing some upgrading.
He'd started to say something at first, but Cobra had stopped him, and then he'd been surprisingly coy when Hiro had confronted him one-on-one (plus Baymax). What was it he had said? Something about quaking in their boots? It seemed like an ordinary supervillain threat, but combined with his earlier mention of Shimamoto, it struck Hiro as odd. Obake had been the Shimamoto expert, not Steamer, and he wasn't that old as to have known her personally. Something about the two things together got Hiro's mind turning, but he couldn't quite put it together on what the correlation was yet. Hiro was finally broken out of his thoughts when he heard footsteps on the stairs and Karmi appeared, knocking on the wall as she entered the loft.
"Knock, knock."
"Hey." Hiro smiled and swiveled around in his seat as Karmi walked over and wrapped his head in a hug, the only thing she could reach from Hiro's slouched position in the chair. "You're here early."
"Not really, I was supposed to be here like five minutes ago, but I got caught up talking to Aunt Cass."
"What?" Hiro turned back to his computer and looked at the time. It was 11:55, past the time when he and Karmi had agree to meet up. Hiro grimaced at how caught up he'd been thinking about supervillains and sheepishly turned to his girlfriend. "Oops. I didn't even realize what time it was, I guess I zoned out for a little while."
"You only do that when you think really hard," Karmi chuckled. "So, what's up?"
"I don't know, something about what Steamer said yesterday. I can't get it out of my head, it has something to do with what Trina is up to but I can't quite figure it out."
"Hmm. Maybe thinking about something else for a little while will help, you can take your mind off it during lunch."
"Yeah, you're right." Hiro stood up and grabbed his wallet and phone, stuffing them into his pants pocket and moving for the stairs. After a step or two down he froze and turned to Karmi. "Wait, you talked to Aunt Cass?"
"I did." Karmi smirked, nudging Hiro on down the stairs.
"What did you talk about?"
"Oh, you know, girl stuff. Makeup and junk like that."
"I really doubt that. Did you tell her about… us?" he whispered as he reached for the door handle that lead outside to the street. Karmi just laughed as she followed him outside.
"Maybeee." Hiro groaned as she took his hand and they started walking down the street. "No, Hiro, I didn't tell her, but I think she already knows anyway. Why did you want to wait? It's been a week already."
"What? I can't want to keep what we've got just between you and me for a little while?"
"We told the team like… immediately."
"Ok, fair, but it was more than a little obvious what had happened when they finally got there to check on us."
"You still didn't have an issue telling them. Why wait with your aunt?"
"I just… don't want to have that awkward conversation with her about how her 'little man is growing up' or whatever. You saw what she was like right before the dance. I tell her and it'll be like a hundred times worse."
"Sounds like you just need to rip the band-aid off. She's going to be happy for us, Hiro."
"I know that; I just don't like being… fussed over."
"Baymax fusses over you all the time." Karmi laughed.
"Totally different! He's a healthcare robot, it's his job."
"And Cass is your aunt. It's her job to fuss over you too."
Hiro sighed, knowing she had a point. "Touché."
"But hey, no rush. Tell her when you feel ready, I'm just letting you know that I think she's at the very least got her suspicions."
"I'll keep that in mind." Hiro answered, grabbing the door handle to Joe's Diner. He opened it wide for Karmi who smiled sweetly and entered, Hiro trailing in after her. Joe waved to Hiro from behind the counter, always happy to see one of Globby's friends. Hiro and Karmi found a booth and a waitress came by with menus. The two ordered and made small talk as they waited for their food, such as going over Karmi's thoughts about her grade in robotics. Most people would easily be satisfied with a B+, but to an SFIT student, anything lower than an A was a black mark.
They continued to talk as their food arrived and they began eating. As they did though, Hiro couldn't quit thinking about the potential connections between what Steamer had said the day before and Trina's plan. The android was obsessed with upholding her father's dark legacy, Hiro knew that much. But why the reference to Shimamoto? It wasn't Trina or Noodle's MO to reference Shimamoto, that had exclusively been Obake's thing. Karmi snapped her fingers at Hiro, getting him to focus back in on reality.
"Hey, you ok?"
"Yeah, sorry." Hiro mumbled sheepishly, taking another bite of his burger. Karmi smiled kindly and nodded.
"I get it. When I'm confronted with a problem, I can get caught up on it too. So out with it, maybe talking it out can help."
"Well…" Hiro looked around, making sure no one in the vicinity could overhear them. "Obviously Trina has been working on something, she's stolen enough stuff over the last month that makes it pretty obvious that's what she's up to. But Steamer mentioned something about Shimamoto that doesn't add up."
"Shimamoto? Like Lenore Shimamoto the scientist slash artist that Honey Lemon was obsessed with?"
"Exactly. Obake was obsessed with her too, and he replicated her work to try and wipe out the city last year."
"Right, the tidal wave incident that you guys stopped. The news was kinda vague on the details except that Obake was the mastermind."
"Well, he got her journal and used her notes to… influence me into helping him create an unstable energy amplifier. Shimamoto had tried to make a similar device back in the day and that's what led to the Great Catastrophe. Obake thought that San Fransokyo needed to be destroyed so it could be rebuilt by people who properly understood science and could experiment without limits, and he programmed Trina with that same goal. But she's different. She's adapted or her programming became corrupted or something, because if she had her way, no humans would be left in the city, or the world for that matter."
"Is it possible that Trina's using something from Shimamoto's journal like Obake did?"
"Honey Lemon went over it a thousand times after we stopped Obake before she gave it back to the Shimamoto museum at SFAI. The stuff in it was related to the energy amplification project and that's it. But… it wouldn't hurt for her to go through it again, it has been a while."
Hiro pulled out his phone and hit the video call button next to Honey Lemon's name and waited for the girl to answer. Karmi got up from the opposite side of the booth and slid in next to Hiro as the phone rang. Finally, the girl picked up, Honey's face appearing on screen.
"Hi, guys!" Honey said cheerfully, but out of breath. Behind her, several cardboard moving boxes were piled up in Go Go's apartment and things were thrown around all over the place as Go Go wrote Sticker Box 2 on the side of a box.
"Uh oh, we're not interrupting, are we?" Hiro asked. Honey waved at him dismissively.
"No, no. Just getting some of my stuff ready for the moving truck next week, and we probably needed the break. Right Go Go?" Honey Lemon turned the phone more towards Go Go, and the shorter woman leaned on the stack of boxes.
"I still can't believe how much stuff you've managed to cram in here. What's up, Hiro?"
"Karmi and I were discussing the… incident yesterday. There was a mention of Shimamoto along with a warning, and I know you've gone through the thing before, but it couldn't hurt to take another look at her journal and see if there's anything we might have missed."
"Ok, we'll give it a try, Hiro. But no promises." Honey assured him.
"Anything to give me a break from sticker cataloguing, ugh." Go Go complained. "I guess we'll need to suit up and run to SFAI then."
"Good thing we didn't pack that stuff yet. We'll call back later when we have an update for you."
"Thanks, guys."
"Bye, Karmi!" Honey Lemon waved quickly before she ended the call. Hiro sighed and put his phone away.
"Hopefully that'll give us some answers."
"And if not, I'm sure you'll figure it out anyway. You haven't been a successful superhero this long by being dumb." Karmi said as she rubbed his arm supportably.
"It's not really always about being smart or dumb, it's about staying on step ahead of the bad guys. And right now, I feel like we're still one step behind…"
Rishi sat down in his chair back in his dorm room and plugged his phone into his laptop to download the pictures he'd taken. He'd spent all afternoon running around San Fransokyo and taking pictures at some of the most notable landmarks, and even a couple more obscure places just to be a little more authentic. When the twelve images were transferred, Rishi logged into his fanfiction forum account and went back to the topic he'd inadvertently become the focus of.
In the hours since he'd last logged on, there were a couple dozen new messages, but at this point people weren't bothering to tag him and the conversations and arguments had spiraled off into areas that were a little off topic. Seems all some people needed was an excuse and they'd argue about anything. Rishi hit the reply button to the topic and loaded in his pictures, a selection of selfies (his face was already on the internet thanks to news articles boasting about how smart he was) and a few landscape shots to add variety. Rishi hit post and leaned back, breathing a sigh of relief.
Now there could be no doubt that he lived in the city. He might not have been able to get pictures of Big Hero 6, but the storm had passed, and he could worry about reaching the top of the fandom food chain another day. For now, he was just happy that his reputation had been salvaged. Checking the time, Rishi found it was a little past five and he'd skipped lunch in his travels across town. Feeling satisfied in his day's work, Rishi unplugged his phone from his laptop and traveled to the cafeteria on campus. The food on the weekends typically wasn't great, but he wasn't that picky.
After a couple slices of obviously day-old pizza that had been re-warmed under a heat lamp, Rishi made his way back to his room and laid back on his bed, exhausted. He hated to admit it, but maybe his mom had a point about keeping a consistent bedtime. He yawned and spared a look at his laptop, considering whether he should work on his robotics project or stream a movie, when he noticed the mountain of fresh replies. Rishi begrudgingly got up from his comfy position in bed and went back over to his desk, sat down and started to scroll.
At first the replies were encouraging, with a few of the more vocal doubters apologizing. But then things turned into an utter disaster. About fifteen minutes earlier RobotLover23 had reposted Rishi's images he'd taken in town just that afternoon and began pointing to where they had 'originated' from. Rishi couldn't believe it. Somehow RobotLover23 had managed to convince the entire message board that the picture of the Tori Gate Bridge that he'd taken just hours earlier had actually been stolen from the San Fransokyo Board of Tourism website. And his selfies? Apparently, Rishi was a model that had been photoshopped in.
Rishi's despair quickly turned to anger. RobotLover23 had somehow messed with the metadata and or hacked into some websites to further their lies. Well two could play at that game. Rishi found the SFBT website and clicked on the employee portal, easily bypassing the login and going straight for the base code of the site. Sure enough, the last edit to the site had been made less than twenty minutes earlier from an unknown location, and Rishi's picture had been put in place of the original JPEG that had been uploaded years prior. Part of Rishi wanted to just change the site back to what it had been originally and post it, but if RobotLover23 had hacked in once, there wasn't anything to stop them from doing so again.
Rishi clicked out of the site and went back to the tab with the fanfiction forums, heading straight for his PM chat with RobotLover. He took a few minutes to compose his message and hit send. The response was almost immediate.
RobotLover23, 5:45 PM: You did this to yourself by acting the way you have online this entire time. Consider it a lesson. Either admit to lying or get me pictures of Big Hero 6, and this all goes away.
Rishi was fuming now. He wasn't lying, he never had. Ok, he could maybe admit that he could be a little obnoxious sometimes, but he never lied about anything. Who did this RobotLover23 think they were? What had Rishi done to deserve this? Well, if they wanted pictures of Big Hero 6, they'd get pictures of Big Hero 6. And more than that, they'd get one better: exclusive images inside their hideout. Rishi slammed his laptop closed and grabbed his phone, setting off for his destination.
Hiro laughed as he held the door open for Karmi, both of them entering the Lucky Cat. After lunch at Joe's, they'd taken a calm stroll through the park and had eventually found their way back to the café, where both had decided it was probably time to eat something again. After worrying about Trina all morning and throughout lunch, just blowing off some steam with Karmi had helped Hiro calm down some and put him in a better mood. Aunt Cass noticed as much when they entered, and she smiled from behind the counter.
"Heya, kids! It's almost six, have you eaten?"
"Not since lunch." Hiro told her.
"Have a seat and I'll whip up something for you two."
"That's nice, but I shouldn't impose…" Karmi started.
"Oh, nonsense." Cass interrupted her. "Anything for one of Hiro's 'friends'."
Cass disappeared into the kitchen before Hiro could tell her off, instead just turning red in the face as Karmi giggled. She grabbed his hand and pulled him to a booth as he grumbled about his embarrassing aunt. Mochi emerged from wherever he'd been hiding, seeking attention, and Karmi picked up the cat and placed him in Hiro's lap.
"Here, maybe the orange on the cat will disguise the red on your face." Karmi joked. Hiro tried to glare at Karmi but couldn't find it in him to really be mad when her smile was that large. If there was one thing Hiro enjoyed more than anything about their newfound relationship, it was Karmi's smile. He'd seen very little of it when they'd been rivals, and when he did see it, it was usually because she was laughing at him. Now that she was smiling because she just simply liked being around him… well, it caused his stomach to do little flipflops. Hiro finally gave in and smiled back as he stroked the cat on his lap.
"You know I'm going to find a way to pay you back, right?" he asked her. She gave him a sly smile in response as she leaned forward onto the table between them.
"Oh, I'm counting on it."
They both laughed in response.
Rishi easily hacked through Basemax's defenses for the second time in as many days and walked into the conference room. This time, it was empty, and Rishi had the whole place to himself. He took a moment to just look around, something he hadn't really had time for the previous day. The place was spotless and very futuristic looking, even by SFIT standards. Hexagonal patterns were everywhere, from the floors to the giant screen(s) that made up the AI interface. Those screens were currently blank, as Rishi had temporarily disabled the AI before he came in to avoid tripping any extra security measures.
The nine chairs surrounding the conference table hovered on repulsorlifts, advanced ones that Rishi had only seen theorized about. He bent down to look at one on the bottom of a chair and wondered if they could be utilized for something bigger, but he was getting distracted from his main goal. He turned around, and there in their glass containers were the suits that the original six members of Big Hero 6 used on most of their missions. At least one set anyway, Rishi assumed they probably had multiple pairs. He pulled out his phone and swiped to the camera setting, lining the camera up for a good shot and clicked the button.
He'd managed to get a shot of all six costumes in the frame and nodded. He'd take more, but first he needed to rub it in RobotLover's stupid virtual face. He opened up the forum app on his phone (not his favorite, as it crashed on occasion, but handy in a pinch such as this) and went straight for his PM with RobotLover. He sent the image along with a message and then went back to taking more pictures for the rest of the forum to see. Now this whole ordeal would be over with, and he'd have the love and adoration of the entire fandom behind him.
Trina stopped her modifications to the duplicate High Voltage orb she had been working on when she heard the ping of a new message on her computer. She put down the wrench and walked over to her computer, pulling up her PM with "BH6rox11". He'd sent her a message with an attached image.
BH6rox11, 6:17 PM: More to come.
Trina looked at the attached image and smiled. It was clearly where Big Hero 6 kept their suits at their secret base, and Trina didn't have any reason to doubt Rishi. She never did. But she had to admit, she didn't think it'd be as fun as it had been to manipulate him. She clicked on the message that he'd sent her and used her special software (her certainly not legal software) to track where the message had been sent from. As she'd hoped, the human brat hadn't waited to return to SFIT before sending it, giving her an exact fix on Big Hero 6's base.
She smiled as her head was disconnected from her body, her other one transferring her to her larger self. With a click she had installed herself on her bulkier form, and her more humanoid self took a seat to wait until they returned. Trina stomped out of her makeshift lab and into the tunnel just adjacent to it. Hardlight and Cobra were playing holographic checkers as Steamer napped against the wall and Noodle kept himself busy by drawing something on the walls with ketchup. The clunking of her large mechanical feet drew everyone's attention, even rousing Steamer out of his slumber.
"Steamer, get your drill ready." She told the Baron.
"Do we finally have it?" Hardlight asked.
"The location of Big Hero 6's base…" Trina tapped her forehead. "All up here."
Noodle Burger Boy clapped and began skipping off to follow Steamer. "It's time to cook the noodles!"
Honey Lemom continued to thumb through Shimamoto's journal as she and Go Go walked up the steps to Basemax's entrance. She finally sighed. "There isn't anything useful in the regular ink. We need that blacklight."
"Pretty sure I know where Wasabi keeps it, he's always checking to make sure Fred doesn't get nacho sauce or whatever on the floor." Go Go replied, placing her hand on the hand scanner to enter the base. Nothing happened, so Go Go removed her hand and put it back on. Again, nothing. "Something isn't right here…"
"The door is ajar…" Honey Lemon whispered, pointing. Sure enough, there was a crack in the double automatics, allowing the two to slightly see inside. Go Go grabbed one of her disks and used her free hand to grab and push the doors apart. Honey Lemon loaded an icy chem ball into her hand, ready to throw it at a moment's notice. The two girls crept into the conference room, not seeing anything at first, but then a chair moved, and they clearly saw Rishi with his phone in his hands, spinning in circles and taking pictures.
"Rishi!" Go Go yelled angrily. The kid looked up, surprised, and dropped his phone. He stuck a leg out to stop his chair from spinning and gulped, knowing he couldn't talk his way out of this one.
"I… uh… I can explain." He said meekly. Go Go crossed her arms as Honey Lemon pulled out her phone.
"I'm going to call Hiro." Honey Lemon said, shoving Shimamoto's journal under her arm as she pulled up Hiro's contact info.
Hiro walked Karmi to the door, their evening over now that dinner was finished, and both had homework that probably needed doing. They lingered just for a moment, not really wanting to say goodnight.
"I had fun today." Karmi said, making sure Cass was out of earshot for Hiro's sake.
"Me too. If you need help with your robotics, feel free to give me a-" Hiro's phone in his pocket buzzed, getting both teens to laugh at the timing. "Call."
Hiro grabbed his phone and answered, not really getting a chance to answer before Honey Lemon started speaking on the other end. Hiro's face fell and grew darker as he listened, and he finally sighed. "On our way."
He hung up and Karmi raised an eyebrow. "What's wrong?"
"Rishi broke into the base and Go Go and Honey Lemon caught him in the act."
Karmi groaned. "Really? After everything we talked about yesterday?"
"I know… you can head on back to SFIT if you want, but I'm going to go talk to him."
"No way, I'm going too. We both stuck up for him yesterday, and he doesn't get to just turn around and do this to us."
"Alright. I'll get suited up and we can take Baymax, it'll be quicker. Give me a minute to grab him and meet me in the garage."
The cockpit was cramped with Trina's larger body taking up a lot of space, but no one complained. Steamer threw a few more switches and the drill machine began heading upward. After a few minutes, the machine broke ground and they had reached the surface. The drill leveled out and settled in a patch of green grass as the doors opened, allowing the villains to step out. Everyone took a good look at where they were, and Steamer spat on the ground in front of them.
"Bah! Should have known they'd be hiding inside a Frederickson building this entire time." He growled.
"I had my suspicions but needed to wait for confirmation." Trina told him. She turned to Hardlight. "Mind getting the door for us?"
"Knock knock, big heroes! Time to come out and play!" Hardlight conjured up a giant mallet and began spinning around in circles before he stopped and let go, sending the mallet crashing into the doors of the building and knocking them off their hinges. The villains rushed in through the dust, ready to take on the heroes, but inside there was nothing but a bunch of rusting assembly line parts. Noodle looked around.
"Wow, this place is more of a dump than ours."
"We sure this is the right place?" Cobra asked. Trina activated her scanners and looked around the room, spotting a set of slightly open secret doors next to an obviously high-tech palm scanner. She smiled and pointed, with all the villains following her line of sight.
"And there's the real entrance." Trina said, warming up her cannons. She fired, blowing the doors away and creating a hole large enough for the villains to saunter through. On the other side of the secret entrance was a sort of conference room, and Trina recognized it from the image that Rishi had sent her. Coughing drew her attention to the overturned conference table, where she spotted Rishi crawling out from underneath it. He fanned the dust away from his face and he looked up, his eyes catching sight of the team of supervillains.
"Uh…" he stammered. Hardlight laughed.
"And who are you? Big Hero 6's little squire, or something?" Hardlight made a move to grab him, but Go Go's disk caught him in the face, causing him to stumble backwards. Go Go and Honey Lemon leapt over the trashed conference table and readied themselves.
"Back off, creeps! Your fight is with us." Go Go said sternly.
"Yeah, let him go. He's got nothing to do with this!" Honey Lemon added. Trina just laughed and stepped forward.
"Nothing to do with this? Oh, he's got everything to do with this. Isn't that right BH6rox11?" Trina looked down at the cowering Rishi as he gasped. He was still in shock from the explosion, but she could see the gears turning in his head.
"RobotLover23?" he asked tentatively.
"The one and only. I considered 'HumanHater' for my username but felt that was a little too obvious. Thanks for showing us the way in, kid." Trina just laughed as Rishi's backed up slightly from his position on the floor, pure terror in his eyes.
"Congrats, you fooled an eleven-year-old kid." Go Go growled. "You're a real evil mastermind. Now are we going to continue with the useless talk or just jump straight to the fighting?"
"I like her spirit." Cobra said as she stepped forward, activating the holographic projection unit on her belt buckle. "I might even miss it when the heroes are gone."
Holographic cobras appeared on the floor, beginning to slither around the room and towards Honey Lemon and Go Go. The taller woman adjusted her grip on the ice chem ball that she still had and whispered quietly to Go Go. "When I give the signal, get Rishi out of here. I'll hold them off."
Go Go wanted to argue with her friend, but it was neither the time nor the place. So instead, she simply nodded once. The plan silently set between them, Honey Lemon hurled her chem ball, managing to freeze Trina's left arm, and drawing the attention away from Go Go so she could zip over and grab Rishi. Holographic cobras went flying as Go Go skated the few feet over and grabbed the kid, throwing him on her back and making for the entrance as more chem balls began flying through the air.
Go Go managed to make it outside and skated to the end of the block, plopping Rishi down on the sidewalk as she activated her commlink.
Baymax was airborne with Hiro and Karmi on his back. If they weren't so upset at Rishi at the moment, it might have been considered romantic considering the setting sun in the distance. Hiro's commlink clicked open and Go Go's voice filled his helmet.
"Hiro! We need you here NOW!"
"Go Go, we're just as upset as you are, but-"
"Shut up and listen, idiot! Trina and the other villains found our hideout, they're attacking it right now!"
Hiro's blood ran cold as the words sank in. "We're in the air now, I'll assemble the rest of the team. Where's Rishi?"
"I got him out and left him like a block away. We might get Abigail to keep and eye on him or get him back to SFIT. I'm going back for Honey Lemon, she's all alone."
"Roger, we'll be there as soon as possible."
Go Go didn't bother saying goodbye as the commlink clicked off. Hiro opened the group chat in his HUD and sent an emergency message that everyone knew meant it was urgent and then smacked Baymax on the back. "Go as fast as you can, buddy, Basemax is under attack."
Baymax didn't respond and simply turned up his boosters. Hiro reached back and grabbed the hand that Karmi didn't have magnetized to the robot, so she was leaning against him and not flapping in the breeze like a flag. They'd been close already, thankfully, and Hiro soon saw the Frederickson signage. Things didn't look too bad, until a pair of lasers flew through the roof and cut what was left of the sign in half, sending several letters falling down to the ground. Baymax landed in the courtyard, allowing Hiro and Karmi to jump off. Karmi quickly conjured up a set of holographic assault gear for herself as the trio ran inside.
It wasn't a pretty sight. Honey Lemon was pinned down behind a rapidly crumbling gummy barrier as she fended off attacks from Trina, Noodle Burger Boy, and Baron Von Steamer. Go Go meanwhile was skating around attacks from Hardlight and Cobra, who were doing their best to trip the speedster up. Hiro launched a magnetic disk at Hardlight and got it stuck to his chest, sending him flying up into the rafters when the second disk connected to the first. He then pointed at Trina.
"Baymax, distract Trina!"
"I am on it!" Baymax charged over to Trina and grabbed her by the shoulders, throwing her backwards and away from Honey's crumbling cover. Trina skidded to a stop and smiled, readying her knife-like fingers.
"Hiya, Hugs. Was wondering when you'd show up." Trina charged, and the two automatons began a boxing match. Karmi meanwhile took the fight straight to Baron Von Steamer, grabbing his stun rifle away from him and throwing it across the room with a giant blue hand. It clattered to the ground as the Baron turned to face her.
"You shall pay for that trespass, girl!" Steamer grabbed his steam cannon and fired, but Karmi leapt over the incoming steam cloud with her holographic jetpack and raised a bludgeon to strike with. Steamer blocked the strike with his bionic arm and shoved Karmi aside, causing her to tumble to the ground.
As Hardlight fought to get himself free from his magnetic trap and Go Go dealt with Cobra, Hiro was face to face with Noodle Burger Boy. "Sooooo, how's my other sisses?"
"Deactivated." Hiro simply said as he launched a disk at Noodle. The bot simply blasted the thing out of the air with his laser eyes, undeterred.
"Well maybe you should wake them back up. Father would like to see the whole family together when the city is done crumbling into pieces."
Hiro paused right when he was going to attack. He had an opportunity here he couldn't pass up. "What do you mean the city will crumble to pieces?"
"Hehe, we're going to shake it to is very core! Did you know that every Noodle Burger location on the western seaboard has quake insurance? Well, it won't help them with the next one!"
Hiro fought to decipher Noodle's food jargon, but that on top of what Steamer had said the day prior finally made things click into place. "You're going to cause an earthquake big enough to shake San Fransokyo to pieces…"
"Right-eo! Who do you think caused the laaaast one? Hehe. Hehe." As Noodle kept laughing, all Hiro could see was that stupid purple eye, and Obake's smug face burned into his brain. He was responsible for all of this, Hiro knew it. He didn't know how exactly, but even from the grave, Obake was trying his hardest to ruin Hiro's life. Hiro charged the burger-bot, ready to do whatever it took to finally take him out for good, but Hardlight intercepted him and knocked him away, having managed to get free from Hiro's trap. Hiro rolled to a stop right when Noodle began firing laser blasts at him. Hiro scrambled and managed to make it behind Honey Lemon's cover.
"Why isn't Basemax deploying the training bots as backup?"
Honey Lemon was messing with her purse, goop dripping from the barrel and out the sides thanks to an accidental misclick and subsequent bad chemical reaction. She finally tossed the purse aside, the thing probably beyond repair, before answering. "Rishi disabled Basemax when he entered. Go Go couldn't get the scanner to work and we had to force the doors open."
"If I can get outside to the control room, I can get Basemax reactivated, and we can end this here and now. Can you cover me?"
"With what?" Honey asked, motioning to the wrecked purse. Thankfully right at that moment, Globby oozed in through the barricade and joined them.
"How about me?"
"We can do it." Honey nodded.
"Ok, on the count of three…" Hiro said, turning to watch the ongoing melee. Globby created icy chem balls for Honey to throw and raised his arm, ready to launch bits of himself into the fray as well. "One… two… three!"
Hiro took off out of cover as Honey Lemon and Globby let loose. Hardlight dodged out of the way of Globby's attacks, but Noodle was caught in the face by a flying icicle, freezing his entire head. He stumbled around awkwardly, trying to free his frozen head with his tiny arms. Hiro slid towards the open doorway as Trina went flying over him. She landed in a heap and looked up just in time to see Hiro escape.
"Where you running to, Hamada?" she got up to follow, but Baymax pushed her back, putting himself between her and the entrance.
"You will not harm Hiro. Robots should be programmed to help people."
"You've got outdated parameters, Hugs. You won't be able to stop me for long without help."
"Who says he doesn't have help?" Wasabi asked as he and Fred arrived. Wasabi activated his plasma blades, ready to strike, but Fred didn't wait and charged directly at Trina, fire leaping from the mouth of Fredzilla. Trina caught Fred in the air and hurled him across the room, taking out Go Go in the process, freeing up Cobra.
"Deal with the kid!" Trina commanded. Cobra ran after Hiro, having seen him exit the building. She managed to catch sight of his left boot disappearing into an air duct when she got outside and created a giant holographic cobra to raise her up to the entrance of the old vent system. When she got there, she realized that the opening was too small for her to squeeze through, so she sent in her holographic minions to do the job for her.
Hiro finally made it into Basemax's control center and brushed himself off, glad to be out of the vents. He looked at the powered down control box and moved to reactivate it. Maybe the Spammibia Incident had been a decent training exercise in retrospect, despite how annoying it had been at the time. Thankfully, the reboot sequence for Basemax wasn't going to be near as complicated as it had been last time, as the AI just needed a simple jumpstart from her deactivated state she was currently in. Hiro toggled the power switch and the screen lit up, showing the reboot progress bar.
Hiro breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that in moments Basemax would be back up and running and they'd have the forces necessary to put a stop to the villains for good. However, that sigh of relief came too soon, as digital hissing from the vents caught Hiro's attention. Green transparent cobras slithered out of the vents and attacked Hiro, latching onto his armor. Hiro staggered around in the confined space and tried to dislodge them as the holographic entities started chewing through his armor.
In a panic, Hiro activated his magnetic pulse, which managed to get the holograms to dissipate. With the threat gone, Hiro slumped down against the wall as he watched the progress bar on Basemax's reboot reach 95%. Then disaster struck. Twin laser beams sprang through the floor and began flying around the room, clipping off parts of the ceiling and eating into Basemax's systems. Hiro sprang forward and ripped out the hard drive just as it was about to be cut in two, and lost half of his left shoulder pad for his troubles. The computer sparked and died out completely, blasted into Swiss cheese and unable to operate any further as Hiro clutched the hard drive to his chest. The twin lasers cut out and Hiro took a moment to gather his breath before he started to make the climb back outside.
When he climbed down from the vent and made his way back inside, the conference room was an even bigger mess than when he'd left it. There was now a gaping hole in the roof, and Hardlight and Trina were making their escape through it. Hiro was about to fire a magnetic disk at them to keep them tethered to the ground, but Karmi came out of nowhere and tackled Hiro to the ground just as a final laser blast from Noodle Burger Boy went sailing over their heads and blasted apart a section of wall. Noodle, Steamer, and Cobra ran back out through the ruined entrance to escape, with Globby, Wasabi, and Fred hot on their heels.
"Are you ok?" Karmi asked as she sat up from her tackle.
"Physically? Fine." Hiro groaned. Karmi sat up and offered him a hand and the two got to their feet. Hiro looked around the room as Go Go fell to the floor, not caring where she landed because of how exhausted she was. Honey Lemon limped out from behind the overturned conference table, clutching her right arm. Baymax walked over to her, some serious scratches and blast points evident on his armor, but otherwise undamaged. As Hiro got his breath back, Wasabi, Fred, and Globby walked back in.
"They got away." Wasabi confirmed. Fred grabbed one of the remarkably still floating chairs and sat down in it, lifting up the hood of his costume.
"How'd they find us?" he asked, the energy clearly gone from his voice. Go Go sat up and pointed.
"Why don't you ask him." Everyone turned to where Go Go was pointing. Abigail walked into the room in her plain clothes, clutching Rishi by the arm, not even being afforded the time to suit up when the call came in. Rishi gulped as he looked around the room of hard stares.
"What happened, Rishi?" Hiro asked. The kid to his credit was clearly distraught by the role he played in things, avoiding eye contact and looking down at his feet.
"I thought the robot girl was my friend, we met online. Yesterday when Karmi posted that she was quitting fanfiction, I said that since I lived in San Fransokyo, I could get pictures of Big Hero 6, but no one believed me. That's why I came here yesterday, but then I found you guys. I wasn't planning on coming back, but my reputation was on the line, and she turned everyone on the forum against me, so I had to do something and… I didn't think."
"You can say that again." Go Go growled. "So what, you snuck in, took a picture of the base, and posted it on a forum?!"
"Pretty much…"
"That is so many levels of wrong." Wasabi interjected before Go Go could say something decidedly less child friendly. "You didn't think that someone online wouldn't track your data back to here?"
"My phone is like super-encrypted; you'd have to be a top-notch hacker to get any information from it!" Rishi tried to defend himself.
"Well, Trina is." Hiro sighed. He couldn't find it in him to be furious with Rishi, he was too worn out at this point. Go Go on the other hand was ready to lay into him.
"Regardless, that was one of the stupidest things you could have done. Even if it hadn't been Trina trying to trick you, breaking in like that was a serious violation of the trust most of us gave you just yesterday. That's got to be a world record for quickest backstab or something."
"I'm sorry, I just didn't know what else to do." Rishi was almost crying at this point. Fred removed his beanie and scratched at his scalp, looking at the kid.
"We would've helped if you'd asked. I take pictures with people on the street all the time."
"I figured you'd think I was asking for stupid reasons." He muttered.
"Well, it seems pretty stupid from where I'm standing." Go Go said, not letting up. "Honey Lemon got hurt because of you."
"I'm fine," Honey said, nursing the fresh bandage on her arm. "Noodle just grazed me with a laser."
"Baymax, medical assessment." Hiro commanded.
"Honey Lemon has suffered first degree burns to her right forearm. They will take time to heal but are not serious."
"She got lucky." Go Go deadpanned. "If things had been any worse-"
"That's enough, Go Go." Hiro said sharply. Go Go crossed her arms in anger but went quiet anyway as Hiro sighed. "We got hit hard, and we may have lost Basemax. I managed to pull her hard drive, but Noodle's lasers did a number on her base computer unit, and it's probably beyond repair. I need to run home and see what condition she's in. Hopefully the data didn't get corrupted when I pulled the hard drive out, but with how things have gone so far tonight, I don't have tons of hope."
"What do you need from the rest of us, Hiro?" Honey Lemon asked quietly.
"Take a look around and do a damage assessment. We need to know where we stand and if we can salvage anything. Wasabi, can you take Karmi and Rishi back to SFIT?"
Wasabi nodded. "Yeah, let me get changed."
"Alright then. I'm going to run home and see about Basemax. I'll be back later." Hiro turned to Karmi before he left, her mood just about as good as everyone else's. "You uh… might want to confiscate Rishi's laptop and phone for the time being as well. Just in case."
"Yeah." She agreed. "Talk to you soon."
"We'll talk about this later, Rishi. Come on, Baymax."
Hiro walked out of the crumbling entry way as the robot followed him. The courtyard was just as big a mess as the inside, with two giant holes in the ground from where Steamer's drill had entered and exited. The main building, which had already been falling to pieces before Big Hero 6 had moved in, was in even worse shape now. The exterior shell had basically collapsed around the reinforced parts of the building that Roddy Blair had built to make their main headquarters. Most of the building had essentially been a shell to hide what was really going on inside, and now that shell had cracked and fallen away.
Hiro jumped on Baymax, and the pair flew off. The ride went quick to Hiro, who was again lost in thought. When they landed in the alley behind the Lucky Cat, Hiro simply lifted up the garage door and walked in, immediately powering on the computer and placing his helmet on the counter. Baymax waddled in after him and closed the door again to give them a little bit more privacy as Hiro logged into his profile and plugged Basemax's hard drive in. At first things seemed promising, but as he dove through Basemax's files and subroutines, he realized that his fears were correct. In his desperate move to save the hard drive from complete annihilation, lots of the important data that helped Basemax function had been corrupted. In anger, Hiro picked up his helmet and chucked it across the garage, where it bounced off the wall and hit the hanging tools over the workbench, knocking several of them onto the floor with a series of clangs.
Hiro took a breath and sat back down, turning his attention back to the computer. Thankfully, he realized that while the data was corrupted, it wasn't completely gone. He had a program that could recover everything, it would just take a while. Hiro didn't give himself the luxury of a sigh of relief, but clicked the start sequence all the same to let Basemax get to work piecing herself back together again. Hiro leaned back in the chair as the progress bar appeared on screen, calculating the time until the hard drive would be repaired. Thank goodness for small miracles, he supposed. With the way things had gone already that evening, he didn't know how they could get any worse.
But then the door opened.
"Hiro, honey, I heard something loud in here, is everything alright?" Aunt Cass asked, looking worried as she scanned the room. Then her eyes fell on Hiro, sitting in his chair in his superhero gear, with a fully armored Baymax standing directly behind him. Hiro's eyes almost bulged out of his head as panic flooded his system.
"Aunt Cass…" he croaked, quickly standing from his chair. "I uh… I can explain. You see this is… cosplay! Fred thought that it would be cool if we cosplayed as Big Hero 6, so he had me design us replica suits, and uh…"
Hiro's voice slowly died as his poor attempt of an explanation got worse and Cass just looked at him with a sad smile. Hiro slowly sank into his chair and waited for Cass to say something. Finally, she spoke. "Sweetie, I know."
"You… you know? But… for how long?"
"Since this spring, when all the monsters were running around."
"That long?" Hiro's voice was almost a whisper. He swallowed hard and looked up at his aunt. "How'd you figure it out?"
"Baymax told me." She said simply. Hiro whirled around in his seat and stared dumbfounded at the robot.
"Baymax!"
"Aunt Cass asked why we returned home late one evening, so I informed her that we helped defeat Mr. Sparkles and his Mayoi with the help of Karmi and Liv Amara. You had not yet taught me that it could sometimes be beneficial to lie to protect those that you care about."
"Don't blame him, Hiro. He just did what I asked." Cass said as she put an arm on Hiro's shoulder. Hiro turned back to his aunt and looked up at her from his chair.
"Aunt Cass… I'm sorry I didn't tell you, I… I thought you'd freak out and like, ground me forever and lock me in the house, and after Tadashi, I…"
"Oh no, no, no, no." Cass quickly knelt down and wrapped Hiro in a hug. "Baymax played that video you recorded when you were rebuilding him. I know why you hid it from me, and I am so proud of you. Everything you and the others have done and are doing to help this city is tremendous, and I won't lie, I'm worried sick every time I see you on the news. But its worth it because I know that without you, there's be a million other families out there in this city with their own Tadashis who never got to come home. Heck, we would've been blown up or flooded or whatever a long time ago without you six to stand up for us. And the other day when I said that Tadashi would be proud of how you turned out?"
Hiro could only nod, his eyes on the verge of tears just as much as Cass's were. Cass leaned back and cleared her throat, trying to make sure it didn't break when she continued, but failed miserably as a tear rolled down her cheek anyway.
"This is what I meant. If he could see you and Baymax on the news saving people… he'd be so happy that you're using that big brain of yours for something worthwhile."
That was the straw that broke the camel's back. Hiro surged forward and wrapped Cass in another hug, a huge weight off his shoulders that he didn't know he'd been carrying since that first night on Akuma Island. He cried into her shoulder like he was five years old again. She simply held onto him as they both sat there, finally able to completely clear the air between one another after so long. After a few minutes together Hiro finally leaned back and sat on the floor, wiping his nose with a gauntlet. Cass put her hand on his other arm as he dried his tears.
"Hiro, I'm really proud of you as I said, but no more secrets. Ok?" Hiro laughed and nodded.
"Ok, Aunt Cass, no more secrets. Promise." As Hiro said this, he looked startled for a second and then turned to Cass with a sheepish look on his face. The next thing he was going to say didn't seem as big a deal anymore compared to what they'd just talked about. "Um… one last one. Karmi and I are kinda dating now. It started last week after the dance."
"I knew that too. You guys were pretty obvious about it." Cass chuckled as Hiro shook his head, not surprised. It's then that Cass really got a good look at both her nephew and his robot. "Hiro, what happened?"
She grabbed at Hiro's sheared shoulder pad, and Hiro now realized how bad a shape he and Baymax were in.
"Trina, the robot girl that tried to melt the city back in May, she and a bunch of other villains found our base and attacked it. She's planning something, Cass. Or at least she's using one of her father's plans. And they're going to do whatever they're going to do soon. I just… can't figure out what exactly it is they're up to. And if I could, I could stop it, but this time I'm afraid I won't be able to."
"Well, what do you know?"
"I know that it has something to do with Shimamoto. And something about an earthquake. Noodle Burger Boy claims that he was behind the earthquake last month, but he's nowhere near powerful enough to do something like that… unless…"
"Unless what?" Cass asked as Hiro went quiet. Suddenly he stood up and pulled at his hair.
"Unless Shimamoto left something behind that Noodle found, and that's what they're using to cause an earthquake. But how did Noodle find it? If Shimamoto left something behind and no one discovered it until now, then they had to have help, probably from Shimamoto's journal, which Obake had access to. That's what Noodle was rambling about that night he woke back up suddenly and turned! Obake left instructions buried in Noodle's programming in case we stopped him the first time."
"Well it sounds like you need that journal."
"WE DO HAVE IT, I FORGOT!" Hiro ran forward and wrapped Cass in a quick hug, then jumped away and grabbed his helmet off the floor. "Come on, Baymax, we need to get back to the hideout and dig through that journal. There has to be something in there."
Baymax moved for the garage door again and opened it as Hiro slapped his helmet back on, briefly checking the progress bar on Basemax's recovery. Noticing that it had several hours left to run, Hiro turned and moved for the robot as he extended his wings. He stopped right before he jumped on and turned back to Aunt Cass.
"I uh… might not be back for a while."
"Ok. Just… be careful, Hiro." Cass said, waving slightly. Hiro couldn't contain himself again and ran back up to Cass, wrapping her in a final hug.
"Last hug!" he cried, his voice cracking with emotion. Cass squeezed him tight and the two broke away after a moment. Cass cleared her throat and motioned for Hiro to leave.
"Go on. Go be a hero."
Hiro smiled behind his helmet and turned, running and jumping onto Baymax's back. Baymax activated his rockets and the duo soared into the air, disappearing from sight behind the buildings into the night sky as Cass watched them go, her clothes ruffling in the breeze created by their departure.