Chapter Forty Two

Baymax

ANNA

Wallowing in self pity had never been her strong suit, though in a time like this it felt so helplessly attractive. A day had passed since they had found Hiro and he had agreed to help them build a device that would allow them to travel back to their world. However, it was going to take time.

Melody had spent most of the day out by herself, and Maui had spent most of his day trying to track her down. That just left Anna, who spent most of her day hiding in the darkness of the basement.

Hiro and his aunt had graciously allowed the three strange visitors a place to stay without asking many questions. The house had no guest rooms though, and so a space in the basement had been cleared out for the three of them. They had managed to find a large mattress on which the trio had shared in the night.

As a child, Anna never had any sleepover parties since Elsa was too busy locking herself away in her own bedroom, so this was pretty much her first experience. Not that she could really enjoy it though. The basement was extremely warm and stuffy, and having to squeeze with a huge demigod wasn't exactly her ideal night. And there was still too much that was pre-occupying her mind anyway.

She appreciated the quiet she had gotten in the following hours of the morning and the afternoon, since she had the basement to herself. In the darkness of the storage space, she laid on the mattress propping her head up with her magenta coat that was doubling as a pillow, and stared up at the ceiling which had cobwebs spun across it with beautiful, tiny patterns.

The same thing had been plaguing her mind ever since they had arrived in San Fransokyo, but it didn't seem to get any less heavy or guilt-inducing. She groaned and rubbed her eyes. Moping about was so unlike her as she always wanted to be the first one on the scene of action, at the forefront of every adventure, and yet there was nothing she could now but wait. And wait with her personal demons dancing about in her mind.

"Good morning."

Anna very nearly jumped out of her skin when a voice called out from the entrance of the basement, and hastily sat up in a more presentable and ladylike way.

"Hi," she attempted to smooth out her hair which was in complete disarray, but to no avail. "Wait, is it still morning? It feels like it's been hours."

Hiro shook his head. "It's been hours. Come on, get up, Your Highness, or whatever you call queens and royalty. Never was really interested in all that royal stuff. Doesn't really apply in our time anyway."

"It's actually 'Your Majesty'." Anna shrugged nonchalantly. "But whatever. You're lucky I'm not one of those picky, egotistical monarchs."

"Come on," Hiro motioned for her to follow him. "There's something you should see. In the garage."

"Alright, give me one second. I need to use the bathroom."

###

After sprucing up a little and emerging from the toilet, she went in search of the garage only to find that it was dark outside. Wait, what? Had she been moping around for literally the entire day? She found that hard to stomach. Sure, she had always had a habit of waking up late in the morning, sometimes oversleeping till the afternoon, but never before had she spent the whole day lying around in bed. This was a first.

She trudged around the house to locate the garage, to find it on the opposite side facing another street. The garage was big, and there was a metal door that looked like it would withstand a siege gun.

Rapping on the door, she then twisted the knob to find it unlocked, and entered the garage. In here, it looked like a whole different place. It was large, no doubt, but on the inside it seemed even bigger. Two walls were lined with various inventions, and in a corner were odds and ends, some tools and some unfinished products. There were even some modern, futuristic looking weapons that looked way beyond its time, even for the time period they were currently in.

"Woah." She whistled, taking her mind off her own troubles for a while to admire the place. "Some workshop you got here."

"Thanks." Hiro said. "I've been working out of this place for years. My aunt let me to use this as my personal factory."

"You said you wanted to show me something?"

"Ah, yeah." Hiro motioned for her to come over to where he was. A large computer - that was what she learnt it was called - with a wide screen sat atop a wooden desk, displaying several things which apparently only Hiro knew how to interpret.

"Wow." she marvelled, venturing to press a button on the keyboard. It had a nice tactile feel to it which was oddly satisfying.

"Don't!" Hiro screeched, immediately taking control of the keyboard and typing away furiously to override what she'd done. "Don't touch anything!"

"Okay, okay!" Anna held up both hands in defeat. "Geez, the way you're acting, it's like I was going to detonate a bomb or something."

"Worse. You don't want to end up in some other world again, do you?" Hiro said. "Then you'll have to go through the entire process of finding that version of me, and there's no guarantee he'll be so willing to help you."

"I'm going to pretend I just understood what you said." Anna shrugged. "Okay, then. So what's all this?"

"This little project took a lot less time than I thought." He said proudly. "Since I had my prior research, it helped to speed things along quite a bit. I've managed to triangulate and isolate the frequencies of the gravitational core of…"

As he babbled on and on eagerly about the process of his discovery, Anna's attention drifted away quickly like that of a young schoolgirl in a physics lesson. From the corner of her eye, she noticed a big red suitcase laid flat beside the desk. Anna inched towards it, though in his ramblings, Hiro didn't even seem to notice as he yammered on, periodically pointing at various parts of the screen.

She gazed at the red suitcase, with her head cocked. It had a big button which protruded from the suitcase, almost as if to scream "press me". Why not then?

"What's this do?" she pressed the button.

"No, wait!" By this time, Hiro had take notice, but it was too late.

The flap of the red suitcase popped open abruptly, and there was something white and rubbery inside. Then, without warning, the thing began to inflate and expand at an exponential rate, and grew in size and height.

Anna squealed in surprise and back-pedalled as the thing grew to twice her size, it's body structure similar to a human, but rounder and larger in every way.

"I told you not to touch anything!" Hiro fussed.

"I'm sorry, it just peaked my curiosity." Anna apologised, and pointed a finger at the gigantic white figure. It had a face and it blinked its eyes. "What's this thing?"

"Ah," Hiro grinned, every trace of vexation seeming to have disappeared. "Well since you discovered him, I guess I should introduce him."

"Him?"

"This," Hiro put his hand lovingly against the thing's side. "Is Baymax."

"What's a baymax?"

"It's his name." Hiro explained. "He's a robot."

"What's a robot?"

"Oh. I keep forgetting you're from a time without technology." Hiro shook his head and laughed. "He's basically a friend that's…not exactly alive in the normal sense of the word. But he has a mind of his own, right Baymax?"

"Indeed," Baymax blinked again, and stared at Anna before raising a chubby hand. "Hello, I am Baymax, your personal healthcare companion."

"Ummnn, hi?" Anna gawked at the robot, her eyes wide in amazement. How was it even alive? "My name's Anna. Wait, what? Personal healthcare companion?"

"That's right." Baymax said, his voice impassive and his face more or less featureless apart from two black dots as eyes and a line that was supposed to be his mouth.

"So he's like, a nurse?" Anna blinked. "Where did he even come from?"

"The red suitcase." Hiro laughed. "Remember?"

"No, I mean, how did he even fit in there?"

"Futuristic stuff. I won't bore you with the details since you don't seem to be interested." Hiro chortled. "But yes, he's something like a nurse. Only better."

"And you built him?"

"No, not me." Hiro said. "My brother."

"Your brother? He must be a genius like you then, if he can build a living thing."

"Well, he was a genius. Sadly he's gone." Hiro shook his head. "He passed two years back."

"Oh." Anna suddenly found the topic rather awkward and inappropriate. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Hiro grinned. "He left me Baymax, who's as good a companion as one can get."

"I'm sensing some sadness and anger." Baymax looked at Anna, and a screen with a range of sad and angry faces appeared on his belly. "On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain?"

"What?!" Anna gawked. "No, I'm not angry. Wait, how did he do that?"

"Futuristic stuff." Hiro raised an eyebrow. "Angry, huh."

"No, no, you got it wrong." Anna turned back to Baymax. "Maybe he's not working properly."

"On the contrary, Miss Anna. I'm working in top condition." Baymax said politely. "I will scan you now."

"No, no, no." Anna waved her hand frantically. "Shut him down or something."

Hiro laughed. "I can't shut him down. He's not a computer. He's got a life of his own."

Baymax glanced at her from head to toe, and within two seconds, he spoke again. "Scan complete." Another visual display of a human body appeared on his belly, replacing the previous display. "You have an unhealthy amount of anger bottled up inside you. Shall I prescribe you some suggestions for better emotional health?"

"I don't know what he's talking about." Anna waved at him desperately. "Turn him off."

"Like I said, can't." Hiro was laughing uncontrollably at her helpless expression.

"It's not true, I'm not angry or anything." She argued.

"You can fool me, but you can't fool him." Hiro finally stopped laughing, to her slight relief. "He's a healthcare companion. It's his job to detect stuff like that. Don't worry, I was rather shook too when I first met him."

The term "rather shook" was foreign to Anna, but she guessed that it meant something along the lines of being confused and thrown off. She shrugged and turned back to Baymax. "I suppose you caught me."

"I'm here to help," Baymax said. "Would you like the prescription now?"

Before she could say anything, he launched into his prescription.

"After encountering distressful situations, it is always good to address them with someone who cares about you." He began. "The anger I sensed had a eighty nine percent possibility of being triggered by self-guilt. Is the assessment accurate?"

"Surprisingly yes." Anna mumbled.

"You should seek help in dealing with your guilt, Miss Anna. It is unhealthy to keep it bottled up as it could result in physical symptoms."

She blinked and stared at the robot, waiting for him to continue, but he just stood there in silence, watching her with his friendly eyes.

"He's right, you know." Hiro broke the silence.

"Huh?"

"The guilt you're harbouring isn't exactly healthy." Hiro said. "And even without Baymax's diagnosis, it's pretty obvious you're going through something."

"Is it that obvious?" she asked in disbelief.

"Usually people don't lie around in bed all day unless something's wrong." Hiro shrugged. "It doesn't take a genius to figure that out."

Anna rolled her eyes and sighed in defeat. "Okay, fine. So remember the story I told you about how we got sent to this world by this evil tyrant called the Empress?"

Hiro nodded seriously, and so did Baymax, which she found mildly amusing in spite of the serious tone of the moment.

"Yeah, so this Empress had actually been planning the whole thing all along. She sent an advanced platoon of soldiers to ruffle our feathers, so that we would panic. And because I was the queen, I made the decision to split up our team and take the fight to the Empress in her headquarters." Anna explained. "Only thing is, that's exactly what she was counting on. Luring us in and dividing us during the infiltration process, so that she could take us down."

She took a moment to breathe, and continued. "And I fell for it like a world-class sucker. So now, because of my lack of foresight, my friends and sister are scattered and defeated…or worse….and to top it off, now I'm helpless to stop an invasion that's coming to my own kingdom in a matter of days." Anna felt her cheeks flushing red. "My mistake is going to cause millions of innocent lives if I don't do something about it, and I'll be remembered as the queen who caused the destruction and decimation of her own people." She shuddered at that last bit.

"Sounds to me like you've got a pretty low opinion of yourself." Hiro said after a moment of silence.

"Excuse me?"

"And that's coming from someone who used to think pretty highly of himself." He went on. "But trust me, I've been through something similar, believe it or not."

"Have you had an evil despot threaten to destroy your entire city?" She said half sarcastically.

"A couple of times, yeah." Hiro said mildly. "Baymax and I are actually members of a team of superheroes called Big Hero Six, but that's a story for another time." He added the last part quickly when he saw Anna's eyes widen. "The point is, I know what you're feeling."

"You think you're not good enough. That you've messed up and it's cost your loved ones dearly, and they have to pay the price for it."

"Accurate, more or less."

Hiro nodded. "I know. I felt the same way when my brother died."

"Oh." She said quietly.

"Yeah. Tadashi died trying to save someone, and although I knew for a fact there was nothing I could do, there was still a large part of me that blamed myself for not being able to save him, or to even tell him how much I loved him. I beat myself up quite a lot during that period."

"I remember." Baymax added.

"But then I learnt that there's nothing you can do to change your past. Mistakes or even things that were out of your control." He paused. "And I suspect that the whole thing with the tyrant is out of your control. How many queens in history have had to charge directly into the frontlines to defend their own kingdom?"

"Probably not very many."

"Exactly. You gotta cut yourself some slack and move on."

"You know, for a kid, you're pretty wise."

"I'm sixteen."

"Still a kid." Anna managed a grin.

"I can offer you a hug, if you'd like." Baymax spread his chubby round arms wide open.

"I'll take it." Anna accepted it wholeheartedly.

"And in that vein," Hiro said, beckoning her over to the computer screen. "There's something I wanted to show you. To help you see that you're not as bad a person as you think you are. Here." He held out a strange looking device for her.

Anna took it uncertainly. "What's this?"

"Reality simulation goggles." Hiro said. "I built it a while back, but I modified it so that the wearer can perceive other worlds as reality. Put it on."

"Okay…" Anna put on the googles, and it fit snugly over her eyes. Immediately she was plunged into darkness, and a very familiar feeling of falling through a blackhole caused her heart to beat at double speed.

"While working on this little multiverse project and waiting for processes to run automatically, I had quite a bit of free time on my hands, so I went and did a little research." He stopped. "Let's just say that out of the thousand different Annas I found, I was able to find several worlds in which you existed where you were…" Hiro clicked his tongue as if not very sure how to put it. "…not a very nice person."

"What?"

Before she could get another word in, she found herself gazing into an explosion of colours, swirling around and spewing vomits of chewed up rainbows all over her vision. When she blinked and opened her eyes next, she found herself staring at an all too familiar scene.

"Elsa!" A young pre-teen Anna rapped on her sister's door. "Do you wanna build a snowman?"

Author's Commentary:

This chapter probably feels the most different from the rest of the story. But it's a fun change, even if its only for a while. Who knows, we might see Baymax and friends crossover with Anna's team in future stories? I don't know.