No Longer Superman Chapter 2: Awake But Still In The Nightmare, a big hero 6 fanfic

Chapter 2

Awake But Still In The Nightmare

You took for granted all the times I never let you down.

You stumbled in and bumped your head, if not for me then you'd be dead.

I picked you up and put you back on solid ground.

If I go crazy then will you still call me, Superman?

– Kryptonite by 3 Doors Down

No! No! No! No! No! It couldn't be! It can't be! Not this place! Not again! Anything but this place! Why was he here? Back to this nightmare?! He can't... He can't... He just can't!

Hiro ducks down and tugs at his hair with his fists, tugging madly at them, hoping to the gods that everything wasn't real. He closes his eyes tightly and chews on his lower lip. No. He knew it wasn't real. It was never real. It was just a broken memory–but it felt real! It felt like he was actually there! The pain he felt in his chest was real! And everything else was real!

The smell of burning soot filled his nostrils and he felt himself suffocate, he couldn't even hear himself choke from under the cackling of the flames. His body felt like it was on fire!

"No! Tadashi, don't!" he cried. "Please! Get out!"

Hiro felt a gentle warmth wrap around his shoulders, protecting him from the flames. He looked up to see the shadow of someone he once knew. The shape so familiar, yet so unrecognizable.

"Don't worry, I'm not giving up on you." The words left the black figure's hollow mouth. It smiled widely, a white crescent moon forming over its blank empty black face where the mouth should've been but the image still somehow calmed him down. "I'll never give up on you." The figure continued before enveloping him in a deeper hug.

Then, the cap wearing shadow exploded into flames.

Gone.

All that remained were the ash-like shadows that flew away in the wind.

Hiro tried to look away, none of this was real. It was just an endless nightmare. Nightmares weren't real...

It's all your fault that he's gone.

"No!"

It's all your fault...

"It's not, it's not my fault!"

He's gone because of your weakness!

"No! No! No! Stop!"

TADASHI DIED BECAUSE OF YOU!

"Why? Why, do you say that?! I didn't... I didn't..."

It's all your fault... It's all your fault... It's all your fault... It's all your fault... It's all your fault... It's all your fault... It's all your fault... It's all your fault... It's all your fault... It's all your fault... It's all your fault... It's all your fault... It's all your fault... It's all your fault... It's all your fault... It's all your fault... It's all your fault... It's all your fault... It's all your fault... It's all your fault... It's all your fault...

"Please...just stop!" Hiro fell to his knees, no longer being able to stand. This is just a nightmare, this is just a nightmare! Just wake up! He screamed in his head. He knew deep down it wasn't real but that didn't stop him from hurting. The hurt was real.

Hiro slammed his face into the floor and wrapped his arms tightly around his head, hoping to muffle out the noises but the more he closed the more louder they became.

More shadows appeared. Dozens of them surrounded him, repeating those dreaded words over and over. At first they were formless blobs but they gradually shifted and took on another familiar form: Hiro's.

"Stop!" but the words didn't come from Hiro's mouth as he looked up with quivering lips to find their owner.

The Hiros to his left parted and let the newcomer approach him. With every step the newcomer took, each Shadow Hiro blew away in smoke.

When he was standing right in front of Hiro, all of them had finally vanished. Hiro ducked his head back down, hoping that the nightmares would just end. What more did these nightmares want from him?!

"Hiro, look at me." The man ordered but Hiro refused to look. That voice... Hearing it made Hiro hurt in so many ways. He couldn't look. Not now, not ever again! "Look at me, Hiro. I'm here for you...like always." The man knelt at Hiro's eye level and grabbed him gently by both cheeks, guiding his face upward.

"...Tadashi?" Hiro finally relented, having no choice but to look at the man. His jaw dropped. Tadashi wasn't a shadow. Tadashi wasn't a shadow! It was Tadashi! Not some disfigured remnant or ghost from the past! It really was his brother!

Hiro felt tears well up in his eyes, clouding their vision before he lunged forward at Tadashi and wrapped his arms around the elder Hamada's waist.

Tadashi chuckled and petted Hiro at the top of his messy thick hair. "I love you, Hiro." He said with a gentle warmth that Hiro had forgotten.

"I love you... too, Tadashi..." Hiro smiled and said with a choked sob.

Tadashi's hands went to wipe away Hiro's tears, but when his vision became clearer, fire swallowed his brother and Tadashi's skin turned charcoal black. There were cracks and veins of fiery lava flowing down his skin and deep into his flesh.

"But you left me to die, Hiro!" Tadashi's voice became hoarse and dusty. He tossed Hiro to the ground and stood up. Two objects appeared near him: a black jacket and a white mask, and he donned them one by one. "You let me suffer when I did everything for you, Hiro!" When he put on the mask, his body began to distort like a computer glitch. Now adding to his voice was a deep broken resonance of a machine. "I'm/I'm ti-t-ired of/be1ng_th3re–for you/YoU!" A black scythe appeared in his hand, set alight by blue flames. "Now, I'll let you feel what I've felt all that time... Hiro!"

"Hiro..."

"HIRO...!"

–

"HIRO!" A familiar (but not Tadashi) voice shouted. He blinked several times. He looked around to see himself in the garage filled with blaring lights, reminiscent of a hospital room, surrounded by multiple figures of his friends.

"Oh, thank goodness you're awake!" Hiro blinked again and focused his vision to see Honey Lemon's worried face over him with Fred trying to push past her to do the same as she held his cheeks.

"Like, Little Man, what was up with that?" The beanie capped teen said loudly. "You were like..." He looked over in the corner of his eyes to see Honey give him a stern shake of her head. GoGo was rolling her eyes, crossing her arms and Wasabi just slapped himself in the forehead in the background. "Crying...?" Fred finished.

"I-I was?" Hiro asked in shock. He brings a hand stiffly to his own face, Honey's own hands moving away to let him touch it. He felt hot dried tears soak his palms.

"Way to go doofus," GoGo walked past Fred and elbowed him in the chest as she did.

"Hiro was having a nightmare." Baymax said informatively. "It seemed to be involving my creator, Tadashi Hamada, as Hiro kept calling out his name."

"What did you dream about, Hiro?" Honey Lemon asked somewhat sweetly, she looked scared. She seemed to be afraid that Hiro was going to lash out at her like a rabid animal or something.

It's all your fault... It's all your fault... It's all your fault...

Hiro winced and groaned out loud. He squeezed his hands over his temples.

"I... I can't remember."

"It is something that Hiro must not wish to discuss. It seems to be traumatic in nature. His brain activities are being erratic." The white robot held a fist under his chin then thought out loud, "My database also states that it is better to let the patient handle it on their own. If you force it, it will only cause the patient further distress."

"Tadashi!" Hiro yelled out suddenly, jumping out of Honey Lemon's arms. "Please, tell me we really did see him!" He looked from Honey Lemon to Fred to everyone else and they all tore their gazes away from him and he felt his heart drop. "H-He's not dead...right? Was everything just a dream, then?" His eyes began to swell and heat up. Hot liquid bubbled near the surface of the lids of his skin, threatening to fall. It couldn't be that he dreamt up everything up to this point...right?

"Hiro, Tadashi's not dead." GoGo was the first one to speak and Hiro immediately felt the weight leave his shoulders.

"He's not?!" Hiro smiled widely but then the next words leaving her mouth filled him with great unease.

"Baymax can't find him." She finished and crossed one arm around her chest, leaving the other limp at her side.

"What do you mean Baymax can't find him?" He started to hyperventilate a bit. Honey Lemon went up to him and wrapped one arm around his waist and patted his head softly. The others slowly joined in, hugging Hiro in a big mess of a sandwich. "Why?" Hiro groaned darkly. He closed his eyes and tried to block out the teenagers' friendship. "After all this time, he shows up and now we can't find him?"

"The augments I mentioned earlier seemed to have reformed Tadashi's vitals up to the point that I can no longer locate him." Baymax replied with a shake of his head. "In order to be able to locate him once again, I will need to rescan him with his new vitals."

"Baymax..." Hiro swallowed, "What are these 'augments' that you keep talking about?" Nothing about what Baymax had said sounded good.

The round robot paused for a long while that Hiro feared that he had broken and was in need of some repair.

"I do not know." Baymax said finally. "While I insisted that Tadashi was to be hospitalized and remove the foreign objects; nothing in my database can tell me whether they were malignant or beneficial to his well-being. I will need to run a deeper scan whenever possible to discern what they are." He later added, "All I can discern is that he placed the augments within his own body."

"...They were mechanical in nature..." Hiro looked deep in thought. He shot up and looked wildly at his friends. "What if the augments were what gave Tadashi his control over my microbots?!" He pushed past the group and starting pacing back and forth, biting at his thumb while mumbling his thoughts out loud. "No way... It can't be... Is it pos–That's it! That's the only explanation!"

"Hiro, not to be rude or anything but how do we beat him, then?" GoGo asked, gesturing with crossed arms, waving her hand a bit.

"Yeah, if he's mentally controlling them with a device that we can't remove, nothing short of destroying ALL the microbots will stop him." Wasabi added.

"That's it!" Hiro jumped and shouted, scaring the large bulky teen when he lunged at him with a big hug. "That's it!" Hiro repeated. "I–No, we need to come up with an electromagnetic pulse device to short-circuit all of the microbots! And then we can bring Tadashi down and get him to explain everything!" A shit eating grin stretched across his lips. "Then, I can have my brother back and you guys can have him back in your nerd squad!"

When Hiro finally let go of Wasabi, he raced over to his desk and immediately scribbled down notes.

In the background, all of the teens looked nervously at Hiro who was smiling manically. He went from sobbing mad to depressed to joyful in an almost unhealthy manner. They all gave each other a gesture with their eyes, relaying their worry for the boy. This was just all too much for him to take and they couldn't let it go on. Hiro's fragile heart could only take on so much stress.

"Umm, Hiro," Honey Lemon was the first to voice her thoughts. "I know that you're happy that Tadashi is alive–We all are! But I think maybe we should slow down a bit."

"Yeah, like Little Dude, we can't even find him yet. And I dunno about you science pros, but I can't imagine an EMP being that easy to make in less than a day." Fred said.

"Come on," GoGo stalked over beside the younger teen and elbowed him in the head. She held him by his head and made him look at her as she bent lower to meet him eye to eye. What she saw only made her more firm in her conviction alongside her friends. "Look, Hiro, your eyes are bloodshot. You haven't slept a wink as far as I can remember. We can hold off on finding Tadashi for a few measly days. He's not dead and that's all that matters. Right?"

"No!" Hiro roared and shook his head away from her grasp. "I–I–I–I gotta find him!"

"Hiro, please, your vitals are going out of control. You must get some rest immediately." Baymax rushed over to him and pulled him into the air.

"H–Hey! Leggo of me!" Hiro screamed, kicking his feet into the air while Baymax moved him back onto the couch to rest.

"Please, we all just need a little rest." GoGo said wearily. She wanted to tell him to 'woman-up' but knew that it just wasn't the right time. She wasn't as crass as Fred.

"NO! Y–You guys don't really care about Tadashi at all, do you?! T–That's how it was from the start, huh? You bastards!" Hiro continued struggling under Baymax's surprisingly powerful grip. He kept kicking around and clawing at the robot but his soft "huggable and non-threatening" body was able to absorb all of his blows, to his displeasure. "Baymax! Lemme go!"

Hiro's cries and accusations hurt everyone. They all understood the pain that Hiro was going through and felt the same way he felt but they were older and more mature about it. Tadashi was alive but that only added a new problem. It was just supposed to be catching some punk criminal who was possibly the cause of their grief and getting some justice.

But this?

This was something just too complicated that a room full of nerds, plus one science enthusiast, just couldn't comprehend.

All of them looked from the corner of their visions to see Baymax petting Hiro lightly on the head, the other seeming to calm down a little as exhaustion overtook his body.

"There, there. Everything will be alright once you get some rest, Hiro." Baymax said, not at all affected by the glaring look he was receiving from the young boy. He pulled out a blanket and wrapped Hiro tightly until he looked like an angry caterpillar with fuzzy black unkempt hair.

"I can't go to sleep with you staring at me...!" Hiro mumbled and despite being wrapped tightly under the blankets, it was no doubt that he was crossing his arms over his chest. "Don't you ever get tired of babying me?" He mumbled and rolled over his side so that his face was against the backrest of the couch. Just looking at that sweet marshmallow face was getting on his nerves. Nice job making a loveable bot, aniki!

"As a robot I cannot get tired, though I can become low on energy." Baymax replied, adding, "And as my primary patient, I must take care to watch your continued well-being."

"Amen to that brother," Wasabi said softly before taking a huge yawn. He looked around for a second before pulling at one of the fold out chairs, turning it around and straddling it. Wasabi was already out like a light as he snored with his head resting sideways at the top of the chair's spine.

"That's the best idea I heard all day–Hawauuh!" Fred walked over to Wasabi and plopped his butt on the floor and sat back against his friend's knee and followed suit.

The two girls looked at the way the two men sloppily slept; finding a bit of humor at how Sleepy-Wasabi didn't care about how unclean the chair he slept in might've been.

GoGo went over to the couch that Hiro slept and took up the spot that he didn't take and just sat there with closed eyes and arms crossed. She looked awake still but Honey Lemon knew her friend enough to think otherwise.

"Honey Lemon," Baymax spoke up, slightly waking her. His optic eyes stared a hole into her before he took a long slow blink. "You should also get some rest."

"No–No. That's fine, Baymax. I...I just want to wait up on Aunt Cass. We can't just crash in in her garage so rudely. I'll...get sleep...af–" the blonde drawled until she tipped over and fell back but Baymax was surprisingly quick on his clumsy feet and caught her before she hurt herself.

He looked around slowly, trying to find a place to put her down.

His eyes fell on a few chairs that he could lay her on like a bed but he had trouble moving them into the right position while holding her, at first kicking his wobbly leg in the air trying to move them, squeaking all the way. Eventually he gave up, knowing that it was better to drop her before moving them but finding that in bad manners so he just laid against the bottom of the couch and wrapped his arms around Honey Lemon, making himself into a makeshift bed of white marshmallows.

A few moments later, the door to the garage from inside opened and a red-haired woman peeked her head in. She took a quick look around and gasped, quickly leaving, to gather some blankets. She took great care to tiptoe around as quietly as possible.

"I'm so glad that Hiro and Tadashi's friends are getting along so well!" Aunt Cass squealed like a giddy teenager. She made a mental note to make them a cake later.

A/N: Sorry for the long update! Had trouble coming up with why Tadashi was evil lol (but that reason isn't in this chapter btw) I also wanted to upload ch3 along with this one but decided that it was better to spread it apart so the next one will come out tomorrow. Also changed ch1 slightly but nothing major, just added a little fight scene.