[Chapter 2]

Startled, Hiro woke up with a slight jolt. His muscles felt stiff, as though he'd been clenching them in distress. He gasped for breath, but he couldn't seem to calm down.

I have weird dreams when I'm oxygen-deprived...

The thirteen year old forced himself to slow his breathing. Then, he slowly tilted his head to catch the still-dropping water. Once he didn't feel so parched, Hiro settled against the cold concrete beneath him.

It was just a dream...

Tadashi didn't really go in the building without me. I have proof. I'm the one trapped under a mountain of rubble. So he's okay. Everyone's fine...

My brain must just be trying to cope... It's taking things I know and have seen, and it's trying to make an alternate reality so I can cope with being trapped down here.

Hiro sighed. He was cold, which meant that he was either under quite a bit of rubble, or it was nighttime. Both possibilities sucked. He shuffled his head against the ground, trying to get comfortable. He had to get back to sleep...

-{[(•)]}-

Hiro sat sadly in his room. It had been almost a month since Tadashi's funeral... He had yet to eat more than a few bites of food or invent a single thing. He hadn't gone to college yet, either.

[No... No, it can't have been a month already...]

They'd found one of his microbots in the remains of the building. All he had done since then was stare into nothing and wonder how the fire happened. Was it his microbots? Had they overheated from rubbing together? Had they been the cause of the fire that killed the professor and Tadashi?

[The professor?!]

Aunt Cass brought him some more food, but he still didn't feel like eating. What was the point? Everyone died eventually anyway, right? He'd just get to go back to Tadashi sooner is all...

He'd stood and tried to do something, but somehow he hurt his foot.

[Not just my foot... Didn't I also hurt my leg?]

He'd forgotten that Tadashi's friends had brought Baymax over. The plushy marshmallow-like robot had activated when he'd shouted. The robot carefully assessed him, even as he was slowly pummeled by the rest of his action figures. Then the robot told him he was going through... puberty...

[Well... I think my body's trying to tell me something...]

Trying to make the stupid thing go away, Hiro jokingly told it to figure out where the microbot was trying to go. Honestly, he just wanted to get both of them out of his sight; they reminded him too much of how he failed Tadashi.

He didn't actually expect the overgrown balloon to do it!

Hiro wildly chased after Baymax, running through streets and back alleys and jumping over trash cans along the way. Eventually, he caught up with the robot at an abandoned warehouse. True to the fluffy robot's word, the microbot seemed to want to go in!

[That can't be right... It would only do that as a reaction to the neural transmitter, and that was destroyed in the fire!]

[No, no. Not the fire... It got crushed when the building collapsed, right?]

Hiro quickly found a way in through the window, and he stared awkwardly as Baymax tried to get in, got stuck, and was forced to deflate. The teen quickly pulled the robot in and let him inflate as he went to investigate the warehouse. After a few moments of wandering, he came upon a tented machine producing his microbots!

[What? No way...]

The brown eyed boy was shocked to find barrels upon barrels of his microbots. And nearby, a wall was covered with maps, plans, articles, pictures...

[That bird... I've seen it before, I'm sure... But where?]

Hiro jumped when Baymax startled him, and not a moment later, the two were fleeing from an army of microbots. They scrambled through the warehouse, sometimes pushing, sometimes pulling Baymax along. Unable to get out through the door, the boy quickly raced up the stairs.

A man in a masked greeted them.

[He's controlling the microbots?! He has to have a neural transmitter! But either way, it's gone! How..?]

Terrified, Hiro hurriedly pushed him and Baymax through the window, forgetting that it was an almost two story drop. Heart racing, breath quickening, the boy tried to reach back for the edge. Suddenly, soft, warm arms wrapped around him, offering comfort and protection.

[I want those arms with me now...]

Baymax cushioned the fall for Hiro, even if he was still kind of sore. Ignoring the holes in Baymax's vinyl, the black haired teen rushed towards the nearest police station. Unfortunately, the police officer was having none of any of it...

[I know him! Didn't he come to Aunt Cass's bakery once?]

Hiro and Baymax wearily (and a bit drunkenly) returned home and snuck upstairs to get the robot to his changing station. The giant marshmallow downloaded information on mental health and decided his first mission would be to help Hiro.

[But I don't need help...]

A/N: Hiro's fine line between the dreams and reality is starting to blur just a bit. Chapter 3 should be up soon!