A few hours later, Rena was sat on the kitchen counter. She had a mug of coffee clasped in her hands whilst she was listening to Hiro and Tadashi talk back and forth about what they were going to do with Baymax later that evening. She was listening intently, occasionally butting in with her thoughts on what they should be adding to the chip. Tadashi had notes and hard-drives on Baymax - everything that he needed for the robot was stored in a single laptop. Everything they needed to completely rebuild the robot in a matter of days. The problem was that he'd taken it to the showcase and left it there. So now everything on said laptop was lost and all they had to go on for a completely new robot was in notebooks. Rena used to tease him about it until she realised that he was actually really torn about it and had promptly decided to stop. She still thought it was idiotic that he had never thought to back anything up anywhere else, it was so uncharacteristic of him. But she couldn't really blame him. That laptop was his life, and she was willing to bet money on it being half the reason he ran back into the fire in the first place. Of course he couldn't have predicted that it would melt in a fire - who would have?

'I have a few initial ideas and thoughts in a couple of notebooks on campus.' Tadashi said. He lent back in his chair and swirled his tea in its mug. 'It's all I have though.'

'Well it's a start. I had a few improvements noted down actually, whilst we're completely rebuilding him we might as well incorporate them.' Hiro replied. He'd kicked his shoes off and was sat back with his feet on the table, twirling a pen in his hand as he scrawled down notes.

'Oh yeah?' Tadashi sat forwards and set his mug down on the table. He swung his arm out and swiped Hiro's legs so they fell off the table and landed on the floor with a thud. 'What you got?'

Hiro yelped and then quickly composed himself, scowling at his older brother. 'For starters, laser eyes.'

Rena snorted. 'I can get behind that.'

'Yeah! Like, oh you don't believe in vaccines? ZAP! Suck it up and let me stab you.'

'What do you mean you don't want healthcare from a huge, untrained marshmallow? I will ZAP you for the pure AUDACITY!'

Tadashi frowned as they cackled at the idea of Baymax with lasers. 'How about we don't do that?'

'You're so boring! Fine, what about him looking less like a giant marshmallow?'

'But he's designed that way on purpose! I don't want him to look threatening.'

'Yeah but-'

'Nope. The vinyl is non-negotiable.'

'What about rocket boosters-'

'Hiro you're banned from suggesting anything else.' Tadashi said, rolling his eyes at his brother's immaturity.

Hiro huffed dramatically and slammed his notebook down on the table. 'Well if you won't accept my suggestions then I'm going to someone that will!' He turned and thundered up the stairs to their bedroom.

'WHO?' Rena called to his retreating back.

'FRED!'


'How do you keep your lab so clean?'

'Because I'm not feral like you two.'

'Feral's a bit mean. I'd say... more adventurous.'

'Uh huh.'

Rena rolled her eyes at their bickering. Although, Hiro did have a point. Tadashi's lab was freakishly clean. Like, there wasn't even a speck of dust on the window. Rena had always been jealous of Tadashi's lab. Not because of how weirdly clean it was. No, it was because he had the best lab in the entire school. It may sound like an overreaction but no other lab had the same view as Tadashi did. Also, it was the closest lab to the public lab and therefore the storage cupboards. Where Rena was situated, it was a ten minute walk just to come over and grab a spare battery or two. Tadashi had only been given the lab because he was Callaghan's favourite but Rena couldn't help but feel jealous as she looked out of the window at the city lights twinkling in the early evening darkness. She turned her attention back to the task at hand. She was writing up the ingredients of a number of antibacterial sprays to input in Baymax's database. She squinted at the spray bottle that she was holding and noted down a couple more ingredients before tossing it onto the pile of noted down bottles. Three down, a hell of a lot more to go. She sighed and picked up another bottle, peering at the small text before scribbling it down. It was dull work but it had to be done. Besides, she was only doing it because Hiro had refused to.

Hiro was sat on the floor at her feet, chewing a pencil. He was filling in an order form for materials they would need to make the inner skeleton of the robot. Rena leaned over his shoulder and whistled.

'That's gonna cost us a lot.'

'Won't they cover it if we say it's for a project?'

'Callaghan might have done, but not Granville. The budget is stretched thin already.'

'Okay.' He sucked his teeth, then drew a line across the page. 'I'll ask her to cover this much,' he pointed to just under half of the materials, 'and we can cover this part.'

'Hiro.' Rena said, squinting at the prices. 'That's going to cost us almost a thousand dollars. I hate to break it to you, but we don't have that much money.'

'Don't worry, we'll manage. I'll cover it.'

Rena narrowed her eyes at him. 'How?'

'I've been saving!' She gave him a suspicious look and he quickly added, 'I've been doing jobs around and about.'

She was about to question him further when Tadashi called her over. He was sitting hunched over his computer and was typing codes frantically. he thrust a list into her hand.

'Could you grab these for me? I'd do it myself but..' He gestured to where his prosthetic was leaning against the desk.

'Yeah, course.' She started towards the door and then stopped in the doorway, 'don't run off whilst I'm gone.'

Tadashi shook his head, grinning and she smirked. She glanced at the list clutched in her hand as she made her way down the dark corridor. A few types of batteries, screws, a sheet of iron. The basic stuff she expected when building a robot. She wasn't huge on building robots, that was always more her brother's kind of thing. She preferred chemistry. Setting stuff on fire and combining random chemicals to create something entirely new. Yeah, that was her kinda thing. She smiled as she remembered accidentally flooding the lab with pink foam with Honey Lemon. Technically, they hadn't meant to. Rena wasn't paying any attention and added hydrochloride acid instead of sulphuric. Still, it was funny. The memory of Wasabi running around with pink hair never failed to make her laugh, even almost a year later. You couldn't easily achieve that with robots.

Sure, she still enjoyed constructing robots. She'd grown up with Tadashi and Hiro, after all. For as long as she could remember, she'd been caught in the middle of their inventions. She'd help Hiro construct those rocket boosters for Mochi and helped Tadashi figure out what was wrong with his jet-powered sled when it just exploded instead of sending them whizzing down the hill. However, two robot geniuses in the house was enough, they definitely did not need a third.

She was so busy reminiscing about their past inventions that she didn't notice that someone had turned the hallway lights on. She blinked, her eyes adjusting to the sudden brightness. She'd reached the storeroom, and was just about to slip inside when she heard footsteps. Rena whirled around and saw Caine jogging towards her, grinning.

'Hey, Hamada! How's it going?'

'Oh, hi! Um, yeah, it's going good.'

'Good stuff.' He replied, rubbing his hands together as he approached. 'Going in here?'

She nodded. 'Yeah, just grabbing some stuff for my brother.'

'Brother?' He asked as she held the door open for him.

Rena clicked the light on and grabbed a cardboard box lying discarded to the side. 'Tadashi Hamada, he's in the year above. Oh, and Hiro. He's a freshman.'

'Wow! The brains run in the family, huh?'

'Yeah, you could say that. Hiro's only fourteen and all.'

She jumped at the sound of glass smashing. She dropped the screwdriver she was holding into her box and looked at Caine. He'd been holding a bottle of something that he'd just dropped onto the floor. For a second, he just stared at her. Then he seemed to come to his senses and gave out a nervous laugh.

'Whoops! Stupid butterfingers.' He cursed, bending down to pick up the larger chunks of glass.

'Careful!' Rena exclaimed, 'don't want to cut yourself, it's literally broken glass.'

Caine shrugged. 'It's fine.'

Rena rolled her eyes and grabbed a broom. The janitor had learnt the hard way that it was simply best to leave stuff in there for the students to clean up their own messes. She tossed it to him and he began sweeping up the mess.

'So,' he said, 'fourteen, huh? Kid must be a genius.'

Rena turned back to the shelves and grabbed a box of screws. 'Well, that;s one way to put it. He's smarter than everyone in my classes put together.'

'Is he the scrawny kid? Huge mop of black hair? Wears a navy hoodie most of the time?'

'That's the one.'

She turned back to Caine and caught a glimpse of his face. He looked... hungry? Angry? Vengeful? She blinked and the expression was gone. She silently told herself off. She was being paranoid. This guy was just a dumb helper trying to make conversation. There was nothing to worry about.

Caine tipped the glass into the bin and put the broom back. 'What are you doing here so late anyway?'

Rena silently willed him to shut up. He was nice enough but she couldn't be bothered for polite small talk. Besides, the conversation felt very one-sided. It was more like an interrogation, she barely managed to get a word in edge-ways, let alone ask him anything about why he was here and why he was so interested in her little brother. 'Oh, you know. Just catching up on stuff. Helping Tadashi with his project.'

'Stealing my job, huh?' He replied.

Rena laughed. 'Well, what are you doing here if you're such a great helper?'

'Okay fair enough. Just grabbing some stuff for a freshman I'm helping.'

Rena nodded. She grabbed the last handful of batteries and edged around him to the door. 'Well, I'd best be going. Nice talking to you.'

'Hang on! I'll walk back with you.'

She fought down the urge to just run off and leave him on his own. If she was any less polite then she would have done. Instead, she stood outside the door and waited for him to click the lights off and follow her out. Seriously, how long did it take to grab one thing?

'So, what are you working on?' He asked, falling into step beside her.

'It's basically a healthcare robot. My older brother made one but then he got... lost. So I'm helping him to remake it. Oh, and so is Hiro.'

'Cool! Would you say that you're close then?'

Who cares? Why are you so intrusive? 'Uhh, yeah. We're real close.'

'That's good. I wish my brothers and I were close but we all hate each other, haha.'

'Oh. Sorry.'

'No, don't be!'

'Okay I take it back then.'

Caine laughed. 'Fine, laugh at my tragic backstory! I see how it is!'

Rena snorted. 'Trust me, no one knows tragic backstories better than me.'

'Ah yeah? Try me.'

'My parents both died in a car crash when I was seven.'

'Oh-'

'And my brother was in that fire back in July and was in a coma for a month.' Shit! Why am I telling him this? I barely know him. Oh God, now he's gonna be all sympathetic and sorry for it. Jesus.

Caine opened his mouth and Rena mentally braced herself for the awkwardness.

'Well. You win.'

'Is it really winning?'

'I guess not. Sorry.'

She laughed. 'No I'm sorry. You've known me for five minutes and you already know my life story.'

'I guess it makes sense that you're all so close then.'

'Yep. We pretty much only have each other, aside from my Aunt Cass.'

They'd arrived at the student lab. Caine rested his hand on the doorhandle and studied her. 'Interesting.'

'What?'

'You. You're interesting.'

'Thanks?'

'See you around Hamada.'

He slipped into the lab before she had the chance to say goodbye. She shook her head and continued her walk to Tadashi's lab. Well, that was weird. Why was he so interested in her? She was just a random student among the sea of hundreds. And that look on his face when she talked about Hiro...

She brushed it off. No, she was definitely just being paranoid. She'd felt more protective of her family than ever since Callaghan, it was probably just that old fear speaking for itself. No one was out to get them. She needed to relax.

'Guess who's back!' She sang as she kicked the door open.

'Finally.' Hiro muttered, not looking up from his notebook. 'You were gone ages!'

'Awww, did you miss me?'

'Loads.' He replied sarcastically.

Rena ignored his sarcasm and placed the box on Tadashi's desk. The stuff inside rolled about and the noise finally tore his eyes away from his computer. Rena glanced at the screen and was met with a hundred different equations and codes that looked foreign to her. She could definitely figure it out if she had time but this stuff didn't come as naturally to her as it did the other two Hamadas. She ignored the coding and went back over to her corner. She picked up another bottle of spray and noted down the ingredients.

They worked in almost complete silence. Rena absent-mindlessly began to tap her page with the end of her pen, creating the beat for a song she knew but couldn't quite place the name of. Hiro joined in with his pencil, and then Tadashi with the end of his screwdriver. It was something they'd done for years and had originated when Tadashi would do his homework at the kitchen table and tap out songs whilst he was doing it. Other people found the habit annoying but Rena thought it was comforting.

An hour passed without a word passing anyone's lips. Rena had finished with her bottles of spray and was scrolling through Twitter instead of being useful and working on something else. Her finger was hovering over the retweet button when someone stood in the doorway cleared their throat loudly and her phone slipped out of her fingers and clattered onto the floor.

Rena bent down to pick it up and was about to curse the person who had entered the lab when she realised that it was Professor Granville. She bit back her retort and sat back in her chair. Granville was the replacement dean, having been appointed straight after Callaghan had 'died.' She was harsh and cold, nothing like Callaghan had been when he was dean. Rena swallowed nervously. The foreboding woman had fixed her with a piercing stare so intense that the teen felt as though she could read her inner thoughts.

'Good evening Professor.' Tadashi said politely. 'To what do we owe the pleasure?'

'Evening to you too, Mr Hamada.' The professor replied curtly. 'I am merely here to inquire why you are here at such a late hour.'

Rena stared at her. Why was she asking that? SFIT students had always been allowed back on campus after hours. It had been a rule that had been in place since before she even started. What, did she think they were up to something that they shouldn't be? Until she'd arrived, they'd literally been sat in silence! 'Professor, Hiro and I are just assisting Tadashi on his project. I thought we were allowed to be here at this time. Has there been a rule change that we have not been made aware of?'

'No, not at all.' Granville replied, 'I just like to know what my students are up to is all. May I ask what you're working on?'

'Oh, just recreating Baymax.' Tadashi said. 'The healthcare robot I made.'

'Ah yes, I remember Baymax well. An excellent project, Mr Hamada. You should be proud, I know you worked very hard.'

Tadashi looked surprised. Granville wasn't exactly the one to be giving out compliments like that. 'Thank you Professor.'

Granville smiled at him for a second, but it wasn't as warm as it could have been. She glanced at Hiro for a second. The fourteen-year-old shrank back slightly, quite obviously nervous of the strict dean. Her eyes moved over to Rena who smiled at her warily.

'If you don't mind, I would like a word with you, Miss Hamada. And Tadashi, if it's not too much of a bother. Outside, please.'

She turned on her heel and stood in the corridor waiting for them. Rena rose, sharing an anxious glance with her older brother. She stepped forwards and handed Tadashi his prosthetic. He attached it quickly and Rena grabbed his hand, pulling him to his feet. He smiled at her and exited the room behind Granville. Rena wiped her already sweating palms on her jeans and followed him outside, leaving Hiro alone. Rena shut the door behind her and tried not to look scared when the dean faced the pair of them.

'Do not worry, neither of you are in any trouble.' Granville assured them. Rena exhaled slowly. Clearly the professor was more observant than she thought. 'An issue has arisen concerning your brother, Hiro.'

Tadashi stiffened beside Rena. She knew instantly that his older brother instincts were going to kick in and he would have some kind of internal breakdown. Another reason to get this conversation over with as fast as possible. 'An issue? What kind of issue?'

'Does your brother have any kind of... gambling issues?'

Rena felt like she'd been punched. No.. he wasn't. There was no way he was botfighting already. At least not on campus... surely? Tadashi didn't speak and Rena realised this was all going to be down to her. She cleared her throat nervously, deliberating over her answer. A tiny part of her wanted to tell Granville the truth but she decided against it. Nah, she wasn't in the mood for ratting him out for illegal activity. 'Um, no Professor. Not that we're aware of, why do you ask?'

'I have had a couple of reports from concerned members of the student body illustrating him taking bets on silly little matters such as who was going to get a higher grade on the pop quiz and which team was going to win the football game. I wish to point out that not only is this behaviour dangerous, it will also not be accepted here on campus. Kindly inform your brother that he if he wishes to continue studying here then he must stop this behaviour immediately.'

Rena blinked. Dangerous? How dangerous could it be? And who'd been ratting out a fourteen-year-old kid when she knew for a fact that betting happened literally all the time. What did Granville expect when she has hundreds of super intelligent, super competitive kids on campus? 'I'm sorry professor, but why can't you tell him this yourself?'

Granville eyed her coldly from over the top of her glasses. 'I suspect that he may only listen if it comes from someone like you two. I could tell him myself, if you would prefer that?'

'Um, no that's okay. Thank you for telling us Professor, we'll let him know.' She elbowed Tadashi who gave a small mumble of agreement.

'Thank you Miss Hamada. Good evening to you both.' The professor replied. She gave them a quick nod and then began walking briskly back to her office. Neither Hamada spoke until the sounds of her clicking heels had disappeared.

'I'm gonna kill him.' Tadashi said angrily.

'Hey, calm down. He's not botfighting, he's just placing a couple of stupid bets! Really, she's overreacting. I've had loads of bets with Gogo on who's essay will get the highest grade.'

'How do you know he's not botfighting? And you heard her, she'll kick him out. He's being so casual about being accepted here! Does he not realise that there's a massive waiting list and they'll kick him out even of he puts a toe out of line?'

'He's a kid Tadashi. He doesn't have a gambling problem, just calm down a bit. We'll just tell him to stop and then he won't listen so we'll tell him again and he'll still do it but he'll be so subtle as to not get caught again. Just... cut him some slack.'

Tadashi sighed. 'Yeah, you're right. I just worry that's gonna fall down that path again.'

'I know you do. Just have a little faith in him, he won't do it again. Besides, he's too distracted with rebuilding Baymax anyway.'

'True.' But he didn't look convinced.

'Just trust me, alright? Hamada rule 23. Come on, knucklehead.'

She opened the door and was immediately bombarded with questions by her younger brother. 'What did she say? Are we breaking the rules? Are you in trouble? Are we still allowed to build Baymax?'

'Slow down! Don't stress about Baymax, of course we're still allowed to build him.'

Hiro breathed a sigh of relief before knitting his eyebrows together in confusion. 'Then... what did she want to talk to you about?'

'Umm-'

'You.' Tadashi interrupted. Rena was shocked at the intense anger displayed on his face. 'You've been betting.'

The colour drained from Hiro's face as he realised what was going on. 'Hang on, I-'

'What the HELL were you thinking?' He was almost yelling, all calmness he had displayed outside had evaporated.

'Jesus Tadashi calm down!' Rena said. She skirted around the box she had grabbed and put a hand on his shoulder. 'Stop.'

He looked at her and shrank back slightly. 'Explain yourself. Now.'

'I- I wasn't betting! Well, not really. I only bet Harvey that I would beat him in our test next week. If i get a higher score than him, then he has to buy me a can of Pepsi. If he wins, I have to buy him a Coke. That's it! I swear it is.'

Rena looked at Tadashi as he processed this information. She didn't like being the calm one, the reasonable want. It felt weird. 'Okay, well that doesn't sound as bad as Granville was saying it was. But if you're gonna do it, at least be subtle about it because Granville says she'll kick you out if you keep doing it.'

Hiro stepped back, shaking his head. 'Really? She'll kick me out for that?'

'Yeah.' Tadashi said, folding his arms across his chest. 'So stop being such a knucklehead and think about things before you do them. Is that really so hard?'

Hiro's cheeks flushed with shame. 'I'm sorry. I didn't realise it was so frowned upon. It was just for a can of drink, I don't know why she's being so strict about it.'

Rena pondered over asking him why Granville mentioned numerous reports of it but decided not to push it. She didn't want to make Tadashi even more annoyed than he already was.

'Let's just forget about this and keep working. It's only 7 and we have a lot more work to do.'

Hiro nodded and sat back down with his notebook. Tadashi ran his hand through his hair and turned back to the computer screen. They continued working, remaining in silence as they had done before.