The three guys had just finished the first Wreck-It Ralph and were debating starting on the sequel when their discussion was interrupted by the sound of someone knocking on the door.
"Oh, that must be one of the others!" Tadashi says, standing up.
"R-Really?" Fred, while incredibly excited to meet the rest of the team, was also super nervous about making a good impression.
"Yeah!" Tadashi agrees before noticing the expression on his face. "You okay? You're looking kinda pale."
"I just… I really don't want to mess this up," Fred admits. "What if they hate me?"
"Well, if it makes you feel any better, I think that Hiro is the hardest one of all of the team to convince, and you've already made pretty great progress with him!"
Fred half expected Hiro to be offended by this, but the younger teen just shrugs and says, "Well, he's not wrong."
"C'mon." Tadashi squeezes Fred's hand. "It'll be fine. Trust me."
Fred nods, swallowing thickly as Tadashi leads him towards the door-he was still nervous, but it was almost impossible not to trust Tadashi.
"Honey Lemon, hey!"
Fred feels himself sagging with relief when Tadashi opens the door to reveal Honey Lemon. Of all the team members, she seemed like the friendliest and easiest to get along with.
"Tadashi, hi!" Honey Lemon, who looked like a human ray of sunshine (both because she was dressed completely in yellow today and because of her radiant smile), enthusiastically hugs Tadashi before turning eagerly to Fred. "Oh my gosh, hello! Are you Fred?"
"Yep, this is him!" Tadashi agrees with a rather proud-looking smile.
"It's so nice to get to finally meet you!" Honey Lemon catches Fred completely off guard as she pulls him into a hug and then kisses him on both cheeks. "Tadashi's been talking about you for forever!"
"T-Thanks?" Fred felt himself blushing as she finally lets him go-he hadn't expected this enthusiastic of a welcome-but he was incredibly relieved that things were going so well.
"Oh, Gogo!" Honey Lemon turns and waves to the woman who was coming up the steps behind her. "Come here! This is Fred, you have to meet him!"
"Hey." Gogo, who wasn't quite as welcoming looking as her girlfriend, at least seemed civil as she nods her greeting to Fred.
"H-Hey," Fred answers, waving nervously back.
"So-you're the guy that Stan picked to be the new author, huh?" Gogo says, looking Fred up and down.
"Y-Yeah, I guess so," Fred agrees, trying to keep his legs from shaking too badly-he had no idea how Gogo felt about the whole author thing.
"All right then." Gogo loudly cracks the gum that she was chewing. "Cool. I read the story that you sent in. Not a bad plotline. Could use a bit of work, but overall I was impressed."
"Thank you!" Fred breathes-he couldn't believe that he'd actually done something to impress Gogo, who was easily the hardest person other than Hiro to impress on the team.
"I especially appreciated the fact that you were one of the few writers who didn't spend five paragraphs talking about my ass or tried to 'upgrade' my suit with a chest window," Gogo adds with a wry smile.
"What? People did that?" Fred cries, completely repulsed by the idea. "That's so gross and disrespectful!"
"It is!" Honey Lemon agrees before adding with a playful smile, "No one's allowed to talk about Gogo's butt like that but me!"
"Hey!" Gogo cries out in protest as Honey Lemon not-so-subtly places a hand on her ass.
Fred, in spite of himself, starts laughing as Honey Lemon tries to play innocent. He'd been a hardcore shipper since the early days and it was incredibly adorable to get to see this in person. Still, he has to remind himself that this wasn't just a ship anymore. Honey Lemon and Gogo were real, and they might just possibly end up being his friends. Wow-friends. Was that even possible? Could he actually end up being friends with the members of Big Hero 6?
"Okay, really guys? I just got here and you're already doing this?"
"Wasabi!" Honey Lemon turns and waves at the man who was standing behind them on the steps. "Hey! Have you met Fred yet?"
"I haven't exactly had a chance to with you guys blocking the door," Wasabi points out.
"Right, sorry!" Honey Lemon pulls Gogo inside with her and moves out of the way.
"Wasabi, this is Fred," Tadashi says as Wasabi reaches the top of the stairs, ushering Fred forward.
"Hey." Wasabi smiles and puts his hand out. "Nice to meet you. I'm David, but as you probably already know everyone around here calls me Wasabi, no matter how many times I tell them that's not my real name."
"Nice to meet you," Fred says, shaking the offered hand and trying not to geek out too much. He knew from reading the comics that Wasabi had his moments when he was a complete dork, but when he wasn't freaking out over something he had an air of innate coolness about him which was even more impressive in person.
"So, you're going to be taking over the writing of the story?"
"Well, that sounds like it's the eventual plan, yeah…"
"Cool. In that case, could I ask you a favor?"
"Um, maybe? What kind of favor?" Fred felt slightly nervous-he was worried enough about doing justice to the story without having someone in the story making special requests. Was he allowed to take requests from the characters? It felt only fair that they should have a say in the story too, but would that be interfering too much with the natural course of events?
"Do you think maybe you could get everyone to start calling me David instead of Wasabi? It's such an embarrassing nickname, and maybe if you did it everyone else would too!"
"Don't even think about it," Tadashi cuts in before Fred could try to think of a good answer. "You know what Mr. Lee said, everyone's used to calling you Wasabi now and it would just confuse everyone if you tried to change it back."
"Shame on you for trying to take advantage of the fact that Fred's new!" Honey Lemon adds.
"Well, it was worth a try," Wasabi answers with a small shrug.
"I think Wasabi's a really cool nickname!" Fred quickly puts in, trying to salvage the situation. "Not that David isn't a cool name! But I think Wasabi's more unique-there's no one else I know with a name like that!"
"Thanks." Wasabi flashed him a quick smile before asking, "So, what are we doing now?"
"I guess since everyone's here and introduced I was thinking we could all hang out and get to know each other a bit since Fred's going to be joining the team," Tadashi answers.
"Hanging out sounds good!" Honey Lemon agrees eagerly before beaming at Fred. "We all want to get to know you better, Freddy!"
"Wow, I… I-I can't believe that you guys actually want to get to know me, but sure!" Fred answers, feeling like someone was reaching inside of his chest and squeezing his heart (but not in a bad way-in fact in a very, very good way.)
"Why wouldn't we want to get to know you?" Wasabi asks, frowning in confusion.
"I guess just no one else has before now?" Fred answers with a small shrug.
"Well that's pretty messed up-you seem like a pretty cool guy to have as a friend," Wasabi tells him.
"How can you say that when you barely know me?" Fred protests.
"Well, for one thing, we read the story that you wrote and we know what Tadashi's told us about you, so that's some pretty good information to go on," Gogo points out.
"And I can definitely say from the time I've spent with you that you're going to fit in great with the team," Hiro adds. "I mean-most of us here are misfits and that's why we get along so great. So if anyone's going to be a good fit for you, it's us."
"I-I don't know what to say," Fred whispers, starting to feel a bit choked up.
"Well, why don't you start by telling us your story?" Honey Lemon answers with a warm smile. "You know so much about us. We want to know all about you too!"
"I-I don't know," Fred mumbles. "I don't know if my life's very interesting…"
"Nope. Turnabout fair play, you've been reading comics about us for years so we get to know all the gritty details about you too," Gogo answers, and Fred might have thought she was sounding harsh if he hadn't seen the slight smile pulling at the edges of her lips as she pushes him down onto a chair. "So sit your butt down and start spilling."
"It's okay," Tadashi says encouragingly, sitting down next to Fred (who was freezing like a deer in the headlights under all this pressure) and squeezing his hand for support. "Just... start from the beginning."
Fred still wasn't sure about this, but everyone was looking at him so expectantly that finally he caved in, hoping that he wasn't making a major mistake. "Okay. So I guess if we're starting at the very beginning I was born in San Francisco-"
It was easily the most talking that Fred had ever done at one time in his life, and he kept waiting for the others to get bored or tell him to stop, but instead they kept pushing him to keep going, asking questions and getting him to share more stories about what it was like growing up in a city both so similar to and so different from this one. Fred was relieved that he wasn't the only one doing the talking-the others would often break in with stories of their own, and he had quite a lot of questions about life in San Fransokyo as well. He felt nervous and stiff all throughout the beginning of the conversation, but eventually he found himself relaxing, and even forgetting that he was talking to the characters from his favorite comic series. They were all so similar to how he'd always imagined them, but they also kept surprising him too, and something about that just made them all feel so much more real, which was even better than if they'd been exactly like he's always pictured them.
Somewhere in the middle of all of their conversation, Aunt Cass came upstairs to check on all of them (Fred greatly appreciated that she went out of her way to privately ask him if he was adjusting okay and make sure that he wasn't feeling overwhelmed) and she ended up providing them with snacks from down in the cafe, as well as a platter of her famous hot wings (which were just as mouth scorching but delicious as they looked.)
Sometime much later into the afternoon, Hiro proposed that they all go down to the garage for Fred to give his suit it's first try-on to make sure that it was fitting properly, and before Fred knew what was happening he was being escorted by the rest of his team (it was insane to think that he was really a part of the team, but everyone was being so nice and accepting that it actually was starting to feel real.) He was incredibly nervous about trying on the suit-there was something about trying it on that he felt would make or break all of this being true. Everything so far was so incredibly unbelievable, it didn't seem like it could be really happening. And his brain had randomly decided that the reality of this situation cruxed on the suit. Everything else had been leading up to this moment, but actually having his own super suit was the very height of his fantasy. He was half convinced that the moment he put on the suit he would wake up and find that all of this had just been a crazy, incredibly realistic dream and that he was back to his miserable, incredibly ordinary life. That's why it was with slightly shaking limbs that, with Tadashi's help, he climbed into the suit, prepared for all of this to disappear right before his eyes.
But it didn't. Everything stayed exactly the way that it was. He was still here, in the Hamada's garage, surrounded by his team. Tadashi was standing next to him, grinning at him with pure adoration shining in his eyes. And he was wearing his very own super suit. Nothing had ever felt so right.
"Whoa, hey, if you don't like it you don't have to wear it!" Hiro cries when Fred breaks down and starts crying in spite of himself.
"I-It's not that! I just… This all so, so amazing… I can't believe that it's actually happening to me," Fred manages to get out.
"Awww, Freddy!" Fred unexpectedly found himself being pulled into a hug by Honey Lemon, and then Tadashi joined in, and suddenly he found himself in the middle of a giant group hug as the rest of the team joins in.
"Just go with it, group hugs are kinda a thing with us," Tadashi whispers into his ear.
"Okay," Fred agrees, allowing himself to just melt into the embrace. He'd never felt so loved and accepted in his life, and he'd finally decided to stop second guessing this and just accept it.
"Well, it looks like things are going well here!"
The group hug almost instantly breaks apart, and Fred could see everyone going on the defensive until they spotted Mr. Lee standing in the door.
"Sorry to startle you, your aunt let me in," Mr. Lee says with a smile as he walks into the garage. "But I'm very glad to see that everyone's settling in nicely. And Hiro, very well done on the suit, it's looking absolutely superb."
"Thanks!" Hiro grins at him. "It's not done yet but it looks like it at least fits so far!"
"Wonderful!" Mr. Lee beams at him before turning to Fred. "And how are you doing? Still holding up alright?"
"Yeah, I am!" Fred reassures him, realizing that it was probably still evident that he'd been crying and quickly pulling one of his arms out of the suit arm to wipe away any tears left on his face. "I really, really am. This is probably the best night of my life. Well, y'know, after last night!"
"I'm glad to hear that." Mr. Lee smiles warmly at him. "You look like a real hero in that suit."
"Really?" Fred asks hopefully.
"Really. I know you're going to be a great superhero-and a great author too," Mr. Lee answers with a warm smile.
"Thanks Dad..." The words come out before Fred even has time to think them through, and as soon as he's said them he realizes his mistake. Shit, shit, shit, how had he made this perfect moment so awkward?
But then Mr. Lee just chuckles and pulls him into a hug, saying, "You're welcome… son."
And Fred finally knew that he was home. Surrounded by people that he cared about and who somehow inexplicably cared about him too, he was home.
"Guys, it's getting pretty crazy in here! I think we're outnumbered!" Hiro calls to the rest of the team as Yama's robot guards surround them.
"No way! We're not going down to a guy like Yama!" Gogo answers, looking for an opening.
"There are hundreds of them! How the fuck are we supposed to get out of here?" Wasabi cries, desperately searching for an opening.
"I'm trying to burn a path out but there's too many of them!" Sunfire shouts. "If there was someone on the other side helping me I might be able to make a good opening, but as soon as I start clearing one more move in to take their place!"
As if reading his thoughts, suddenly the door to the underground lair opens and a huge burst of fire blazes through the robotic guards, disabling a large swath of them. Sunfire, taking advantage of the guards' momentary confusion, sends another blaze through the robots directly in front of him, completing the path to the door.
"Guys, c'mon, let's go!" He waves to the others to follow him, and they race towards the door, hoping that whoever (or whatever) was outside was a friend rather than a foe.
"Follow me, I found a way out of here!" a man in a blue and red kaiju suit (or was he a real kaiju?) calls to them as they race out into the hallway.
The team exchanges glances, not sure if they should trust this stranger. But the robot guards were starting to recover and head towards the door to follow them so it didn't seem that they had many better options.
"Who are you?" Sunfire calls after the mysterious stranger as they follow him through the hallways.
"Me?" the kaiju answers. "You can call me Fredzilla!"
"Babe, c'mon, you're going to be late for your first day of classes!"
"Sorry, hold on, I'm just trying to jot down a few more plot points from our first mission together!"
"Fred, we need to go!"
"Hey!" Fred protests when his notebook is suddenly pulled out of his hands, playfully glaring when he sees Tadashi taking it and putting it inside his own backpack.
"You can have this back after you finish classes for the day-I don't want you getting distracted on your first day at SF State," Tadashi answers firmly before leaning down to press a kiss to his forehead. "Now let's go, everyone's waiting."
"You know that you don't all have to walk me to my first class of the day, right?" Fred says, fighting back a grin-it was impossible not to smile when Tadashi was being so cute. "I'm going to stick out like a sore thumb!"
"Well good, because even though you're attending SF State we want everyone to know that in our hearts you belong at SFIT," Tadashi laughs, taking Fred's hand in his own as they join the others at the door to the cafe. "Especially since you won at mascot tryouts and you're going to be SFIT's new mascot! Besides, I need to make sure that everyone there knows that my gorgeous boyfriends is already very much taken."
"You know that I'll never have eyes for anyone else, right?" Fred says, pecking Tadashi on the cheek.
"I know that-but I'd rather make sure that everyone else on your campus knows that if they ever try to pull anything that they're going to have all of us to answer to," Tadashi answers, pecking him back.
"Guys, we get it, you're ridiculously in love, now let's move it before we're all late!" Hiro groans loudly.
"All right, all right, we're coming!" Tadashi laughs as he and Fred follow the others outside.
"Have a great day! I'll see all of you back here tonight for your first-day-of-the-school-year celebration dinner!" Aunt Cass calls from the counter.
"See you tonight!" Tadashi and the rest of the team wave back to her.
"Your dad's coming, right?" Tadashi asks Fred, causing him to grin as he holds door open for him and then captures his hand in his own as they walk down the street together.
"Yeah, he triple checked to make sure that his schedule is completely clear so he can make it tonight," Fred agrees.
He could still hardly believe that so much had happened over the rest of the summer. He'd officially moved in with Mr. Lee (who at this point he was completely comfortable with calling Dad after Mr. Lee had told him he'd be more than happy to step in as an adopted father if that's what he wanted) and transferred school to SF State. Hiro had finished his suit, and he'd already been on his first mission with the team, which had been both one of the most terrifying and thrilling events of his life, and Mr. Lee was letting him help with making the comic that would introduce Fredzilla as a regular member of the Big Hero 6 (soon to be 7) team. And at the very end of summer, Tadashi had officially asked him to be his boyfriend over a ridiculously romantic dinner and of course Fred had said yes.
Life here in San Fransokyo wasn't perfect. He had good days and bad days, just like in San Francisco. And being a superhero wasn't perfect either-going up against real bad guys was a lot scarier than it looked in the comics. But Fred was glad that things weren't perfect. Because being imperfect meant that they were real. They were real, and this life was real, and Tadashi and his new family and friends were all amazingly, wonderfully real. Fred wasn't alone anymore, and he had all the love that he needed. And that was better than any story he could have ever written for himself.