Chapter 20

That control Tadashi maintained over his keep, his pride and joy, his one keystone project that he had poured countless hours, days, months, joys and frustrations into, was lost to a wilting defeat. It was a design made especially to ease the burden on frontline medical staff tirelessly caring for infectious patients, without appearing cold and robotic. This technology was intended for good things, not to induce pain and suffering unto mankind. But the resulting darkness settled in and around his awareness, and nulled his senses. Even his ever pressing concern for the safety of his little brother faded away, and the override switches meant nothing. The older Hamada no longer had any reason to resist, or move, or even speak.

The magic seal placed upon Baymax turned the robot into Tadashi's prison. After many hours of trying to resist that dark witch's assault, his battered spirit was snared by her greater power when they managed to break through the firewall.

Baymax was fully disassembled, programming chips removed, and re-engineered to the Fujita's specifications as a formidable machine for fighting instead of saving. The inflatable, balloon exterior was omitted, and they left the skeletal framework exposed. This made the robot appear more gangly and monkey-like, with the arms looking much longer than the legs. But a monkey was not the concept they wanted this time. The Monkey King fatally lost his last battle and the Fujitas wanted to keep it that way.

So instead, their newly acquired robot would take on a supernatural aura, jokingly like the Slenderman, but not quite. Its arsenal and battle tactics would be much different. The frame was more broad than tall, and the legs quite short. This design was kept for stability so that the robot would not lose its balance. To preserve the slim, skeletal appearance, armor was used sparingly as shoulder pads, a chest plate, and a faceless mask. The optics were not visible even though they were hidden behind a screen of the mask.

The Fujita were particularly interested in the strength and durability of the robot's power core. Its ability to go so long in between charge-up's was commendable. This gave them much more confidence in what they planned for the arsenal.

Short tendrils of blue electrical plasma sparked and crackled from what had been the shock panels on Baymax's palms. Kamiko's face lit up menacingly in the glow when this level of potency was reached. Supplying extra power to prevent burn out afterwards was only a small detail for them. Their secret weapon, however, was Baymax's wireless ability to connect to other devices. Their opponents would not guess what had happened until it was too late after she had remotely hacked into their controls. That idea seemed far more clever than using an electro magnetic pulse attack, as they had done before.


Hiro sighed, resigning again to resting his head in his hands as he stared at the two monitors with multiple camera feeds. He rubbed his temples with his fingertips, like GoGo had done for him, in his attempt to alleviate his mounting headache. The persistent throb was from all this stress more than anything this time.

So many uncertain factors still nagged at him, despite the reassurances from the others. Sure, the Fredericksons have their clout with SHIELD, but what they were dealing with wasn't your typical superhero case. It reached beyond the normal expectations of the physical world, of common things like typical crime, terrorism, or biological warfare. In the least, this wasn't even like an extraterrestrial case, despite the possibility of portals being involved. The chilling reality was that this matter was just a small part of a larger operation that involved an unknown realm of spirituality.

That grey area between the living and the dead had many names, such as the 'the boundary' or the ocean between the near and far shores. This is where some of the living have learned to access, and in the process gained additional power from the chi that flowed to them there. It stunned Hiro to realize that his childhood perception of what he thought of as make-believe magical qfantasy was proven to be real. Of course, his comment about 'magic' caused Fred to divulge into a whole other tangent about how vague of a term it was to describe all kinds of science or slick visual trickery. Yes, unfortunately, there was a whole lot more to that than Jedi mind tricks and fire bending.

What it all boiled down to was that the Fujita were in cohorts with a secret Japanese society bent on world domination. Considering the unfavorable WWII history that Japan had tried to keep hidden, it didn't really come as a total surprise. However, the notion that this group, dubbed Hi No Sei, wanted to infiltrate global tech giants, like Krei Tech and other government subsidies, with the tech stolen from these bot fights was unsettling. Again, Fred started to ramble on about how this reminded him of the classic Terminator series, which totally downgraded the severity of this problem.

Clearly, bringing down this nefarious organization in one night was not currently feasible. The authorities have been chasing after their various sects for a year now. Thus tonight, their immediate objective was to stop the Fujita from sabotaging the tech behind Baymax and any other hapless competitor matched against them.

That was the plan, straightforward and simple. Yet, Hiro's feelings were still on edge despite all this backup. How was SHIELD so sure about this?

Ever since the Fujita raided his place, Hiro realized he couldn't sense his brother anymore. That just added to his anxiety and queasy demeanor, because it meant one thing…..

They finally got to him. They must have reformatted Baymax. All it took was to destroy Tadashi's programming chip, Baymax's very soul. Hiro subconsciously drooped, jaw clenched, growing numb to the unimportant radio chatter. His stomach felt more queasy, not liking what he tried to eat earlier. Because he didn't know the answer on how he himself could reach that ethereal place where his brother was so he could save him. This was all his fault-

A hand gently rubbing his back, between his shoulders, finally pulled at Hiro's attention.

"Are you holding up okay, Hiro?" Honey Lemon softly asked him. She had moved in closer on her rolling desk chair to touch him. She looked concerned, and as much apologetic for putting him up to this.

But it wasn't her fault. He wanted to do this. Hiro just couldn't sit idle and be removed from the action. It was his fault for losing Baymax!

"Just... worried," Hiro finally breathed. After further consideration about how Honey had a background of the afterlife and spirits, he felt she would have a better chance at understanding his plight. "Even if they say he's in some spiritual plane… something doesn't feel right. Tadashi's in trouble."

Honey Lemon just nodded, somehow not at all looking concerned by that fact. So he continued to explain what he meant by that.

"Since Baymax was stolen, and that I realized that he was bound to Baymax, somehow…" Hiro glanced back to her, pausing for a moment. He still felt like a nutcase for what he was about to say next, but he didn't know how else to describe this empty, anxious feeling. "I think something really bad has happened to Tadashi now. I… can't feel him, like before."

"That's plausible, from what the SHIELD told us," Honey sounded more sincere.

"But I hate it! I hate just sitting here, feeling helpless against.. them!" Hiro sat up to complain more vocally about how much he felt like a fish out of water on this. "I hate not knowing how to help him out of wherever he is! I got him into that mess, and I- how can I just sit here while they do everything?"

Honey's expression became even more graven and placed her hand on his shoulder to show more compassion. "I know what you mean, Hiro. It's a lot to process-"

"But what can we do?" his interruption was softer again, but still strained. God, these goons looking over at them didn't help his mood either. Sure, all this was his fault, but he's not going to pull a slick one on them. Yet.

"Well," the blonde took a moment to think. "You told us before that the programming chip Tadashi created was what made Baymax who he was… even if you had rebuilt the second one."

Hiro nodded, even though he wasn't sure why she was reiterating that fact.

"That makes me think of the time when I went to a seance with my aunt - her sister wanted to try it for some crazy reason. My aunt told her to also bring some items that her belated sister's husband cherished so they could have a stronger connection."

"So… you're suggesting we pull out a ouija board?" he didn't mean to be sarcastic, but he was. Hiro did respect her beliefs, but having to rely on something as sketchy as a seance struck him as weird.

"No, I was thinking that if you had something else that meant a lot to Tadashi, maybe you could reach him that way?" She was serious.

Hiro bit his lip, then sighed. "Like... his ball cap? Or-" he stopped abruptly when somehow, that crazy idea of pursuing the original Baymax crossed his mind again. The younger Hamada shook his head and decided now that this wasn't going to work. "How is this supposed to help though? Do I even have time to get this stuff?"

"You could ask them to get it?" she nodded at the SHIELD agents.

Like hell he was.

"I'm serious, Honey!" Hiro gritted his teeth and raised his hands with that intent to rub his face, or grip his hair, but had to stop himself so he didn't smear the make up. " ..oh shit- no, wait, wait!"

Maybe she had a point… maybe this might work, realistically. He swung around in his chair to get to his new backpack, and dug through it quickly. "This!"

Honey tilted her head, then smiled when she recognized Tadashi's old tablet.

"This could work, right?" Hiro opened the cover and turned it on. This suddenly gave him a lot more hope again, and he felt glad for having the intuition to bring it. His brother had used the tablet a lot for homework and stuff. "There were a couple apps that Tada-nii had connected to Baymax too… maybe- I dunno- maybe something still connects?"

"That it could," she agreed, leaning in to watch Hiro's fingertips tap and move over the screen.

"And then what?" He prodded. His thoughts were not going to be stopped by his next confirmation that the apps were not working, because yeah… it had been over a year now without anyone maintaining them.

"Well," Honey's expression fell more solemn, as she appeared to pull together the importance in her words. "You feel for your brother, use your connection to reach out to his essence, his soul… and just.. talk to him, you know."

"Like a prayer...?" Hiro leveled his eyes with her. It occurred to him he had done that before, when things got really nerve-wracking. Scary. When the shaking of the ground got to be too much.

She just nodded, confirming that.

Hiro sighed, feeling even more on the spot now for some reason. Probably because she was watching him, expecting for some great revelation to strike like lightning as soon as he did. But what if he couldn't? He wasn't really feeling that desperate urgency to 'reach out' for Tadashi right now. Ugh.

After a pregnant pause, the younger Hamada set the tablet down with a feigned smile. Despite his earlier wish to help his brother, he decided to wait a little bit more. "Got it. I'll remeber that... when the time is right."

Like when she wasn't watching him so intently.

And like that, Hiro redirected his attention back to the 'surveillance team'. The video coming in on Honey's feed wasn't showing much, just crowd's of people. "Any new updates?" he asked over the comm-link shared with Fred and Wasabi.

A couple long seconds passed until he heard back. "A yep," Fred finally responded. "They are setting the competitions by division ranks. So right now, just the entry level bots are listed on the brackets."

"Great, yeah… I guess that makes sense," Hiro sighed. "When does Ronin go up.. do you know?"

"He's in the next division, so that the winners from the entry rounds go up against the intermediate levels," Wasabi answered. "We have no choice but to compete to find Baymax."

"Right.. because then the winners from the intermediate rounds go up against the advanced bots. We decided that's why they are hiding Baymax - even thought that doesn't make sense since he's new," Fred jumped back in.

Hiro already had an answer to that. "Well, it's probably based more on the operator's experience in that case. But with those Fujita, I wouldn't be surprised they used some sort of bribery for the officials to turn a blind eye to bringing in a new robot, and keeping him under tight security from the public's eye."

"Is that also why they placed Ronin in the intermediate division instead of the entry level?"

"Most likely. They probably used the excuse that even though the operator was new, Ronin is an upgrade of Mega Z," Hiro snorted. He still had faith in GoGo, however, that she had the tenacity to pull through. The woman was just so talented and driven to win.


This was indeed a whole new world, per say, for Fred to witness. His closest experiences that he could relate to were his comic books, Ala early Spiderman when he attempted a cage fight or three to test his abilities. Wasabi, on the other hand, did at least have his maiden voyage when he attended an underground bot fight with their gang before Thanksgiving. His comrades' reminders and tugs to stay focused, however, wasn't doing much to actually keep him in line. Fred may have well been a toddler that his two 'parents' had wanted to put on a leash to keep in their line of sight.

But anyways… there was a robot to be found, and the motley trio (the Fredmeister, Wasabi Man, and their Super SHIELD Chaperone) wasn't fairing well in finding him. Of course, they didn't look for the refurbished robot by appearance or name, but by the signature reading of its core components. Not everyone used titanium and a lithium battery made with nickel instead of cobalt for better stability.

Unfortunately, said robot was not too be found in the competitor's stalls. That would be too easy, of course. It was through some more well scripted conversations that they learned about how the matches were going to be settled.

Thus, their Most Likely to Happen Plan of competing in the Big Battle Bot smackdown was now a go. Hiro seemed to be okay with that, and GoGo was more than ready and growing ever more impatient by the minute.

Fortunately, the wait for their turn wasn't as long as they had expected. The manner in which the first preliminary matches were held was in a tag team fashion so that no time was lost in between sets. This was a speed match, were true skill was tested. If the losers couldn't manage the fast pace, then how could they go up against more seasoned bots?

Basically, as soon as the winner was determined, the next set took over. However, if any competitor stepped in to intervene the current match in anticipation before it concludes, they would be disqualified. The referees were not to be trifled with either when it came to maintaining the rules set forth. That didn't reassure Hiro however. He still told them to be wary of any Fujita Foolery.

At the least, their role now was to blend in with the other spectators in the arean to see how the first round unfolded. Then once they concluded, the results would be quickly analyzed for their benefit.


AN: Oh my goodness, so much time has passed since my last update! I will admit, the pandemic has not helped because my job became short on staff which in turn meant many more hours at work.

But I was touched by people's favs and comments, that even though the times are tough, I'll keep it up. And as I was writing this, I have developed an even greater appreciation for our health care professionals. More power to them!

Again, it's short... but hopefully this will mean quicker updates then? I certainly can hope! Take care of yourselves everyone!