hello!
here's part three...i'm really just making this up, so i hope there's not TOO much disaster going on...i promise this will have a plot and not just be a buncha oneshots that don't make any sense...
thanks to everyone for viewing and reviewing!
especially silvie! for clarification, in my story Catastrophe, hiro didn't destroy the energy amplifier a month before cause tbh it fell out of his pocket and they left it at the warehouse...sorry shoulda been more clear! thanks so much for reviewing tho!
happy reading everyone!
When we get back to the hotel, Baymax gives us all blankets and then heats up, trying to warm us all up before we die of hypothermia. I finally stop shivering as Baymax tightens my hip brace. He proclaims that I only have a few bruises and other epidermal abrasions, then places band-aids on the cut on my forehead and the scrapes on my hand. I collapse into my bed as Baymax splints Teddy's broken ankle and wraps gauze around his goose egg. Dashi gets bacitracin and a square of gauze taped over the cut on his cheek, and he rubs more ointment on Trev's face. Megan isn't injured, so Baymax looks at Honey Lemon.
The only thing he says is, "Oh no."
"What? What's wrong?" Dashi exclaims.
"Honey Lemon has entered a comatose state," Baymax declares. "We must take her to the hospital."
Tadashi starts freaking out, and chaos ensues. Two hours later, we're on a life flight helicopter back to San Fransokyo. I decide to get some sleep for the hour-and-a-half ride.
I regret it.
Tadashi picks me up and dashes out of the lab, running as fast as he can. My three-year-old self watches helplessly as Dad runs back in to help Mom. I scream Daddy's name over and over again, but he doesn't come back. And Mommy doesn't answer either. I feel tears start to roll down my cheeks, and I stretch my hand out toward the lab, silently begging my parents to get out of there alive. Tadashi keeps running, and we almost make it to safety.
A massive explosion rips the sky apart, and Dashi and I both go flying. I yelp as we slam into the ground, bouncing twice and then skidding to a stop.
Dazed, I try to get up, but Tadashi's arms are still firmly clasped around my chubby toddler waist. My head hurts—I wonder if I hit it on the pavement. I struggle to breathe, the smoke stinging my eyes and making me cough. I gently slap Dashi's cheeks, trying to get him to wake up. "Wake up, Dashi, pwease wake up…" I beg, more tears streaming down my face. "Pwease, Dashi…"
I stop. I can't fight it anymore.
The smoke seeps into my lungs and everything goes black.
I wake up in a stark-white room, my head throbbing and my throat and chest burning. There are strange tubes in my nose, and I can feel gauze taped over my cheek, as well as bruising on my stomach and back. Where am I? Where's Tadashi? What happened?
I struggle into a sitting position, whimpering as stars explode in my vision. Looking around the room, I can see a bunch of machines, a lot of them hooked up to me. The lights in here are bright and make my head hurt worse. I need to go find Tadashi. He'll know what to do, he always does.
Climbing out of bed, I take a few steps toward the door, but I'm suddenly so dizzy the room is spinning. My hands fly to my temples and I let out a whimper of pain, collapsing to my knees. I decide to just crawl back to my bed and drag myself into it. I try to get into a comfortable position, but I only succeed in getting tangled up in all the wires and tubes, so I just lay there, hurting all over and wondering if Tadashi is anywhere nearby. I want him to come hug me and tell me everything will be alright.
A few minutes later, he does. "Hiro?"
"Dashi!" I exclaim, sitting up and ignoring my headache. I hold out my arms and Tadashi climbs into the bed, gently unwrapping wires from around my waist and legs. "How're you doing?"
"Not good. I can' bweathe wight," I tell him. "An' my head hurts an' my chest an' my thwoat. What happened to you?" Dashi's arm is in a sling and there's gauze wrapped around his head.
Tadashi rubs the back of his neck. "I broke my collarbone. And I have a concussion. But I'll be fine. Hiro, there's something I need to tell you. Come here."
He pulls me into his lap and I press my ear against his chest, listening to his heartbeat.
"Hiro," Dashi begins. "The explosion…our parents…Hiro, they're gone. They died. And…and…I don't know what we're gonna do."
I bury my face in his chest and sob.
I jerk awake as the helicopter starts landing, gasping from the memory and bursting into a coughing fit, having inhaled some sort of dust. The attack subsides after a few moments and I sink back in my seat, breathing hard.
I haven't had a nightmare about that for years. The last one was when I was five. Why did I dream about it tonight?
After that fire, I had asthma. The doctors thought it would go away, but even after my scrapes and bruises had healed, my lungs hadn't. Dr. Armstrong, my pediatrician, examined me and confirmed that I had permanent asthma. I still have it, and I feel it if I move too fast or overexert myself. I felt it tonight after I got out of the flood. It's getting worse, actually—the coughing fits are longer, and every cold turns into an illness that keeps me in bed for at least a day. My hip brace doesn't help—I can't move very much, so I can't clear my chest like I used to.
Tadashi sits on one side of me, Megan on the other, both asleep. They don't seem bothered by the turbulence. We're descending pretty fast.
Too fast…
I get up and walk over to the pilot, deciding to ask if everything is all right with the helicopter.
At that moment, the helicopter plummets—and that's when I notice.
The pilot is asleep.
I scream and rush back over to the other end of the helicopter as we fall, not quite nosediving but instead coasting at an alarming speed.
"Wake up!" I yell, desperately shaking Meg and Dashi at the same time. "Wake up, you guys—"
They don't wake up in time. The helicopter misses the landing pad entirely and skids into the side of the hospital with a tremendous crash. The windshield shatters and the impact throws me to the ground. I land on my chest and all the wind is knocked out of me.
As soon as the glass and dust has settled, I tentatively raise my head, a little dazed but remarkably awake. There are a couple scratches on my cheek and my nose is bleeding, but I'm okay. Surprisingly.
I'm still gasping for air, trying to get my breath back, when I hear a weak voice. "Hiro?"
I roll over onto my back and sit up, pinching my nose so as to stop the blood flow. "Hey, Dashi," I groan. "You okay?"
"I'm okay, but what on earth happened? I fell asleep and then suddenly the helicopter's like this—are you hurt?"
"Just a bloody nose," I say. "Do you have a tissue?"
Tadashi rummages in his pocket and pulls out a package of tissues, then tosses them to me. I give him a nod of thanks and hold one to my nose. The bleeding stops after a few minutes and I get to my feet. I'm amazed I'm not dead, with the helicopter crashing like that.
Dashi and I hurriedly check on everyone else—most of them actually slept right through the whole thing. Honey's stretcher has tipped over, so Tadashi pulls it back upright, brushing his wife's hair off her face. Megan and all the kids seem okay—no worse than before. All of us have little cuts and scratches from the glass flying through the air, but nothing is bleeding excessively, so Dashi and I determine that we don't need to visit the hospital for any reason other than the fact that Honey is in a coma—which really isn't good.
We've crashed into the San Fransokyo General Hospital, so we can least take Honey in. Tadashi rushes her stretcher into the emergency room, and he goes in with her while the rest of us wait—I woke everyone else up.
Dashi texts and tells us to just head home for the night, and he'll stay with Honey while the doctors figure everything out.
Megan and I bring the kids back to the café and we all crash, Aunt Cass pulling out the old baby bassinet for Trev. I try to sleep, but my eyes keep popping open at every little sound.
Pilots don't just fall asleep on the job. They're trained not to. So what happened to that pilot? He can't have just fallen asleep. Did he hit his head somehow? Does he have narcolepsy? Was he even a pilot?
Or did someone make him fall asleep?
I have no idea, but I know I have to go see Tadashi. Something's really wrong and I don't know what it is.
I walk out of the café and down the street to the hospital, not wanting to wake anyone up with the truck. I stop under a streetlamp, looking around. Something isn't right. I hear heavy breathing and whirl around, my eyes scanning the shadows.
Then something sharp stabs into the side of my neck and everything goes black.
I open my eyes in a dark room, sprawled facedown on concrete. My whole head hurts and so does my neck where I got stabbed. I don't know what that was, even—some kind of syringe or dart. Whatever it was, it contained a tranquilizer for sure.
I push myself into a sitting position, rubbing my neck. I can't see a thing, and I wonder if the tranquilizer blinded me or if it's just dark. My eyes start to adjust after a few moments, though, and I can make out bars covering a door.
Slowly standing up, I limp over to the bars and poke my head through them. They're really far apart—I bet I could fit through them, since I'm a pretty skinny guy. I don't know where I am or who's kidnapped me, but I'm pretty sure I should try to escape. I pull my shoulders and chest through the bars—and then stop.
I twist around, looking accusatorily at my hip brace. It can't fit between the bars, stupid thing. I squirm furiously, trying to squeeze through, but my brace won't move. I sigh and retreat back into the cell, taking off my hip brace and shoving it through the bars, then sliding out and buckling it back around my waist.
Limping through the halls, searching for an exit, I eventually come to a door. A locked one.
Suddenly, the door flies open and I'm knocked backwards by the man who walks through it. I land painfully on my tailbone but scramble to my feet, facing the man who I assume is my captor.
My jaw drops when I see who it is.
Professor Robert Callaghan.
But he can't be here. He's in prison. And I was the one who saved his daughter, not almost killed her. Well, I guess Baymax was really the one who saved her, but I helped. So why is he kidnapping me?
"Hiro," Callaghan sighs. "I should have equipped your cell with tighter bars. But no matter. Come with me."
He grabs my arm and yanks me toward him, ignoring my protests and yelp of pain. Callaghan drags me down the hall and shoves me back into my cell, then steps inside and locks the door behind him.
"Do you know why you're here?" Callaghan asks, his voice trembling with anger.
"No!" I explode, furious. "We saved your daughter! She's not dead because we were there! What on earth would you kidnap me for?"
"She's gone, Hiro! She was murdered two weeks ago! And you weren't there! Big Hero 6 wasn't there when they should have been, and Abigail is dead because of you!"
I stare at him. "Murdered by who?"
He tears a hand through his graying hair. "Obake, you idiot! He killed my daughter, and you weren't there to stop him! Where were you? What were you thinking, leaving like that?"
I'm confused for a moment, and then I remember where we were two weeks ago. We'd just left for Arches, so we weren't in San Fransokyo. But he's kidnapped me because I went on vacation?
I try to reason with Callaghan. "We were on vacation! Isn't everyone entitled to have a vacation every once in a while? We just wanted to take our families and be together on fall break, wouldn't you?"
"Superheroes can't take vacations, Hiro!" Callaghan roars. "They can't leave the people they've sworn to protect, not even for a little bit! What protection does San Fransokyo have if their heroes aren't there to save them?"
"Well, the police—"
" %#$ the police! They're incompetent!"
That's true. They don't do anything. Nevertheless, I collect my thoughts and try to make a good argument. "Well, maybe we could teach them something, help them do better—"
"Or you could not just leave!"
I open my mouth to protest, and Callaghan punches me hard in the jaw. I fall over and land on my hip, a jolt of pain shooting through the injured joint.
Scrambling up, I try to throw a punch back at him, but I'm not as agile as I used to be with my brace. I stumble, and Callaghan punches me again, this time in the gut. I double over, all the breath knocked out of me. While I'm down, he gets me in the eye, but then thankfully stops, watching me try to recover my breath.
"What…was that…for?" I manage to gasp, still bent over with my hands on my knees. "Seriously? That really hurt!"
"You needed discipline," Callaghan says, as if that should be obvious.
"I didn't even—"
He slaps me across the face. "You #$&%* child! You don't understand, you don't even care—"
"Of course I care!" I shout, my voice shaking with fury. "I'm sorry your daughter was murdered, but it wasn't my fault."
Callaghan is screaming obscenities at me, and I'm screaming right back at him. Though I'm using much cleaner language—I don't swear. Finally, he stops and glares at me.
"Where is the rest of your team?" he hisses. "Tell me, and we'll bring them here. Tell me, or I'll make you wish you'd never been born."
I roll my eyes. "And I would tell you that because?"
"Because you don't want me to hurt you?" Callaghan says, sounding bewildered.
"Yes, but well, no," I decide. "I can't. I'd never give them up to you."
Professor Callaghan's eyes narrow. "Tell me. Now. Then you can go free. I've already punished you a little. I will not hesitate to go farther. But I will let you, and only you, go if you tell me where the rest of Big Hero 6 can be found."
"No," I say firmly.
"Then I suppose you leave me no choice."
Quick as lightning, Callaghan sweeps my legs out from underneath me and I land hard on the concrete. I yelp as Callaghan unbuckles my hip brace and rips it off my waist, then throws it into the corner.
Callaghan plants his foot on my hip and presses down. "Now will you tell me?"
"No way," I hiss, trying to keep back a whimper of pain. It doesn't hurt that much yet, but it will soon.
Callaghan lifts his foot and kicks me, obviously as hard as he can, in the hip. I scream as I feel the bone break. I've felt this several times before, but I've never been prepared for it.
Callaghan is still screaming the questioning, and I'm still determined to never give up my friends, no matter how much he hurts me. He keeps kicking at my side, and I'm still screaming, tears streaming down my face. But I will not give up.
Finally, everything stops.
Callaghan stops kicking me and turns around, sweeping out the door. "We'll try again tomorrow," he hisses, and locks the door.
I drag myself painfully over to my brace and buckle it back on, strapping it tightly around my waist and thigh, wiping the tears from my eyes. My hip is broken, my stomach, ribs, and upper leg badly bruised. Everything hurts, and I just want to lay down and never get up again. But no. I can't. I have to get out of here and warn the others. Honey can't protect herself—she's in a coma! And her kids—they're so small, and I'm afraid Callaghan will go after them if he can't have their mom. And Tadashi—I would never let that man near my brother.
And does Callaghan even know that GoGo, Wasabi, and Fred are all gone? I'm not sure.
I pull out my phone and try to get a signal. There's not one, but I'm pretty sure I can get it with enough time.
After several minutes of limping around my cell, thrusting my phone into the air, I sink back into my corner. Leaning back against the wall, I massage my hip until the pain is soothed somewhat, trying to think of a way to get out of here.
I wonder when Callaghan goes to sleep…
