AN: I'm back again with yet another story, this time I'm revisiting Big Hero 6, only this time in an AU setting starting from the showdown at Akuma Island where the twist commenced. For the record, there will be spoilers in this story in case anyone hadn't seen the movie yet. Don't own Big Hero 6.
"But we don't even know where he is!" Hiro had protested. It was after the scenario at the warehouse and the group was in his garage. He had been working on some kind of handcuffs that can easily stop a person from attacking them and Fred had suggested going after the masked man again. However, Baymax had an answer to the guy's location.
"It's Akuma Island", he said. The group looked at him.
"Where's that?" No response from Baymax. Unbeknowist to them, Hiro was looking up the location, eventually coming to the site for Krei's company, where, among the typical staff, experiments and contact information, he eventually found the section of "Faculties" where, in addition to the main labotory, he found a link to Akuma Island. Needing more answers, he apprensively clicked on it and sure enough, it was the right one.
"Guys! I found it! Akuma Island was a faculty that Krei had bought as a way to expand his operations. It says here that after a notorious accident involving an experiment regarding teleportation, he was forced to shut down the island and stop all activity there", Hiro read.
"You think Krei is the man behind the mask?" Wasabi inquired. Hiro got a dark look in his face.
"No. At the expo, he didn't strike me as a guy who would step over to get what he wanted, much less indirectly murder someone. Besides, he's too high-profile anyway and his nose is too big to fit the mask. When Baymax and I were at the werehouse when he first attacked, I got a good look at the mask. It's one of those masks where the nose has to be just the right size for the face to fit the entire mask", Hiro stated. But he also acknowledged the possibility of it being a double whom Krei hired to take suspicion off of him, a smokescreen of some sorts. But it was getting really late and the group decided to seperate for the night, that is, obviously, except for Baymax and Gogo, who decided to stay with him. To Hiro, the problem was that this whole thing seemed a little bit TOO easy and he began wondering if the masked man seemingly wanted to get caught or he was some average joe looking for his 15 minutes of fame. He also noted the fact the masked man showed up soon after the joint funeral for Tadashi & Callaghan was a little bit too coindental for his taste. As he lay in bed thinking, he wondered if the person behind the mask was a traitor to the team in some way, shape or form. Either way, He'd get his answer tomorrow.
Meeting up at the garage again, the group discussed the fact that it made sense that the masked man would move his base of operations to another spot after Hiro & Baymax "busted" him the first time at the warehouse because they were aware that returning to the warehouse would make them easy targets for both the 6 and the police force. After discussing further plans of action, the group, armed with Hiro's special handcuffs and a flashdrive to download potential evidence to turn over, the group set off for Akuma Island.
When they landed, the fact that Akuma was abandoned and vacated made it easier for the group to navigate around it. Locating the building and a door kick-in by Fred later, they were inside it, snooping around. Eventually, Honey Lemon had found a partially open door, meaning someone was already here. She opened it and the quartet found themselves in a lab. Even though the place had been abandoned and vacated, someone was obviously doing some maintennce work on the place. Hiro found a computer and fired it up, trying to locate evidence. "Guys!" he motioned for the group to join him at the computer and not before long, everyone was huddled over it. Hiro clicked on a video link, showing Krei demostrating his latest experiment, teleportion. The way he had it set up was with two portals on seperate tracks, one for the object to go in, the other for the object to come out. He demostrated this with the general's hat, tossing it into the first portal and sure enough, it came out of the second one. Hiro paused the video so he could transfer the entire file over to the flash drive and resumed the playback of the test, which involved Krei testing it out on a human pilot. "All set, Abigail?" he asked the pilot.
"Yes", she responded before settling into the device that would shoot her through the first portal and back through the second but before they could proceed, one of the techies noticed something wrong with it.
"Sir, there's an irregularity", he said. Krei ran over to check to see if everything was still within the parameters that had been set. However, everything seemed fine.
"We're good", Krei announced after a moment. "Ready, Abigail?" he asked.
"Ready!" Abigail said, flashing a thumbs up signal. Krei pushed the button and the capsule shot down the track so fast that before Krei and his men could open their eyes, it was gone.
"Any second now", Krei muttered. However, something was wrong. The capsule didn't appear out of the second portal, which exploded almost instantly and the first one began to malfuncition, sucking in everything. The finanical backers were NOT impressed with this recent delevopment. "Sir, I can explain!" he said.
"There is NOTHING to explain", the head backer stated. "I want this faculty shut down immediately and quarantined!" Having no choice, Krei, obviously, obeyed. Hiro paused the video which was a good thing because the masked man had appeared so fast that the team didn't even form a battle plan. Baymax, Honey Lemon, Wasabi & Fred were subdued instantly by his weapon, the Microbots that Hiro had used as his submission for the expo. The only ones keeping him busy were Hiro & Gogo.
"We need to break his contact!" he stated.
"How?!"
"Throw your disk at him or something but under any circumstances, don't harm him! Got it?"
"Okay!" Gogo dettached one of the disks and threw it at the masked man, forcing him to break his eye contact with the bots, enabling the rest of the team to recover, albiet briefly. The masked man shook off the hit and again refocused his contact, subduing the remainder of the 6 again with the exception of both Hiro & Gogo. This cycle went on until the masked man gave off a cough, showing that the team was wearing him down. Going after Gogo, Hiro jumped in front of her to take a hit but Honey Lemon had tossed a ball in his direction, which exploded on him. He whirled around to face her while preparing for a strike. Hiro's hand leviated towards the special cuffs he had brought on the excersion.
"What are you waiting for?!" Gogo asked, more like screamed, at him.
"An opening!" Hiro replied. Sure enough, just as the masked man was about to sic more microbots on her, he tossed the cuffs to force the man to break eye contact. He turned his head just in time to see his hands immoblized by the cuffs, which pinned them to his sides so he couldn't move them. Finally subdued, Hiro advanced to him. "Now, let's find out who's behind the mask. Baymax, would you please do the honors?" Baymax lumbered over and plucked the mask off of the masked man's face. To say, the group was shocked was an understatement as the person behind the mask was none other than their teacher, Professor Callaghan. "You!" Hiro stated, feeling hurt and betrayed at this recent delevopment. Everyone else looked shocked and betrayed as well. At that moment, Callaghan was no longer a teacher and friend but a traitor. "But, why?"
"You saw the footage", Callaghan merely stated. It dawned on Hiro that he was talking about the footage from the test that he had saved on the flashdrive and then it hit him. Abigail was his kid.
"She was your kid, wasn't she?"
"Yes." Hiro looked around and noticed that he was in the process of rebuilding the second portal so he could go in and get his daughter back. "Give us the parts, Callaghan", he ordered and knowing he was in no position to disobey, Callaghan conceded the parts over. While the 6 did feel some sympathy for Callaghan after hearing his own testimony, there were still two possibilities to consider: 1. Abigail was legitmately his daughter or 2. he was lying to gain sympathy. Also, the sympathy didn't change the fact that Callaghan betrayed the 6 by stealing Hiro's microbots and indirectly murdering Tadashi. The group left the island with the flashdrive, the parts of the portal and Callaghan in chains.
When they returned to the mainland, Callaghan was turned over to the authorities and was charged for his crimes, being sentenced for 16 years in prison and ordered to undergo consueling while serving his sentence, having been diagnosed as emotionally unstable. Meanwhile, Hiro was studying the parts of the portal, trying to figure out how to rebuild it and get Abigail back. Gogo was watching him. "You know you're adorable when you ponder", she said.
"It just felt a little bit TOO easy, we figured out it wasn't Krei relatively early on. For our first superhero outing, again, it felt too easy in my opinon. But again, this nagging feeling is telling me that Callaghan was lying about Abigail being his kid just to get some sympathy out of me", Hiro admitted, placing the parts down on his desk.
"Hiro, while I applaud you for not letting your own emotions get in the way of bringing down Callaghan, did you not watch the full video?" Gogo asked. Hiro remembered the flashdrive. He dug it out of his pocket and inserted it into his computer hardrive. He found the file and opened it, noticing that there was more footage in the file.
"Project: Silent Sparrow", he muttered and clicked on the first video. It showed the prelude to the experiment test. It turned out that Callaghan had also attended the demostration as well as a guest of honor, due to the fact that Abigail was taking part in it. He fastforwarded through the boring parts before coming to where Callaghan and Abigail were hugging and instantly made the connection. "So, he WAS telling the truth", he realized.
"What? What was it?"
"Abigail is Abigail Callaghan, his daughter", Hiro stated. That file ended on the demostration leading into the original video they watched on the island. Hiro clicked on a third video covering the aftermath of it. After it was announced and demanded that Krei shut down the island, Callaghan came running into the viewing room, inquiring if Abigail was okay. When Krei couldn't provide a definitive answer, Callaghan's anger took hold, accusing Krei of murdering her to the point where he had to be escorted out. The footage ended there. Hiro and Gogo then retired to bed and Hiro blushed when he noticed he was laying next to her in his own bed. He rolled himself onto her suit and gazed at her beauty.
Next morning, the group got together again as Hiro needed to inform them of the recent developments that occurred last night. He explained that Callaghan's betrayal was based more on trying to avenge his daughter, who supposedly perished in one of Krei's experiments. "So, let me get this straight. He betrayed us and he tried to KILL us when we caught him at the warehouse and at the island? All because his kid died in an experiment Krei had preformed? Somebody PLEASE explain to me exactly what is going on here because my head is hurting!" Wasabi said, gripping his head to emphisize that.
"Classic villain motivation: Eliminate any and all witnesses!" Fred stated. Hiro suddenly got a dark expression as he began to consider why Callaghan had double crossed Tadashi the night he died. He suddenly then inferred that Tadashi had seen Callaghan nicking Hiro's microbots so he double crossed him to avoid having Tadashi tattle on him for the microbot thieft, which also gave him an added justification NOT to try and save him in the fire, assuming he started it as a distraction while he stole the microbots. Sure, he had the bots and headset back now as Callaghan was told to return them to him when they took him into custody, but it didn't change the fact they were stolen in the first place and used for personal gains, particularly for purposes like that.
"Either way, I was trying to figure out a way where we could reassemble the portal and get Abigail back", he stated.
"What good would that do?" Honey Lemon inquired.
"I know that while we can't bring Tadashi back, maybe we can get the thing that he wants back", Hiro stated. The rest of the team concurred and by next morning, the portal was completed. "Scan it, Baymax", he stated. Baymax did so and sure enough, he detected a sign of human life in the portal, a female to be exact.
"Let's get her, buddy", Hiro stated, climbing on top of Baymax and the two zoomed into the portal. Fortunately, it was a clear shot all the way through and the two kept going until they discovered the capsule. "That's gotta be it", he said.
"Are you positive, Hiro, that is the right capsule?"
"It's the same capsule in the video, Baymax, that's gotta be her", Hiro somewhat argued. Baymax circled to the backside of the portal and began to push the capsule forward and the anti-gravity of the world made it a LOT easier to navigate. It took a few hours but eventually, they got the capsule out of the portal, which made itself known with a clank and a scid. The resulting re-entry jettisoned the hypersleep the pilot had entered and she began to rouse from it.
"Where am I?" she inquired as she looked around the surroundings.
"You've landed in my labrotory", Hiro stated, using airquotes at the landing part. He than proceeded to open the capsule and help out the pilot. "What's your name?"
"Abigail Callaghan."
"Date Of Birth?"
"October 10, 2010"
"School?"
"San Franskoyo Institute Of Technology." Hiro then let Baymax take over her care for a while and when he was finished, he asked her if she knew Robert Callaghan, which of course, was a dumb question but he wanted to verify whether or not he got the right girl. "Why, yes. He's my father", she responded. Hiro turned to Baymax.
"Jackpot", he stated.
"Speaking of which, where is my father?"
"Behind bars", Hiro had stated, being brutally honest as possible.
"Why?"
"Well, he alledgely burned down part of the school, stole my microbots, betrayed and indirectly murdered my brother and tried to harm a minor, me, twice", he stated.
"That doesn't sound like him at all!" she said, shocked at what she was hearing.
"Well, your disappearence made him snap completely, believe me, he DID NOT look right in the head when we got him", Hiro stated.
"Can I see him?"
"No, you need to get properly healed up first", Hiro stated. As such, Abigail spent a couple months at the general hospital, recouping from the accident. Eventually, she recovered enough that she could be released from the hospital. When that happened, the 6 asked her if she wanted to see her father. At that, she tensed up, knowing of his actions but knowing seeing her would give him some form of closure, she gave in.
Eventually, the 6 and Abigail found themselves at the San Franskoyo Police Department at the desk of the officer. "Abigail Callaghan to see Robert Callaghan", Hiro told the officer.
"You coming with her?" the officer asked. Hiro and the 6 looked at each other before turning back to the officer.
"I'll go with her. Baymax, keep them company", Hiro stated. The officer nodded.
"Then follow me", the officer said before turning on his heel. Hiro and Abigail followed them and the reason why Hiro volunteered to accompany Abigail was because he himself needed some closure in all this. They followed the officer into the visiting area of the prison. "You have 20 minutes", he said and left the room.
Hiro and Abigail waited in antipication of Callaghan's appearance and after a couple minutes, a guard came in with Callaghan at his heels. As he sat down, the two got a very good look at him. He looked older, unkempt and very disheveled, no doubt the effects of prison have taken its' toll on him. According to the guard, they were his second visitors, the first one being Krei, in one final attempt to make amends, which Callaghan took, although it was clear they were nowhere close to becoming best buds. Noticing Hiro's presence, he hung his head in guilt and Abigail just sat there. No one seemed willing to make the first move, Callaghan out of remorse for his actions and Abigail out of shock at seeing her father in this state. Eventually, Abigial placed her hand on the glass seperating the two from him. Callaghan looked up and saw his daughter standing there. "Daddy", she said.
"Abby? But how?" The answer was standing next to her.
"Thank you, Hiro. I'm forever in your debt", he said gratefully. Hiro took the prison phone from Abigail on the visitor side.
"This doesn't change our current standing, Callaghan. Last time we trusted you, Tadashi died and my microbots got stolen. However, we might consider this an attempt at a reconcilation but consider us more acquaintences from now on", he said and the tone in his voice told Callaghan that he was going to have to work really hard before his former students could find it in themselves to forgive him for his prior actions. As the 20 minutes were up, Callaghan was escorted back to his cell but not before he gave Hiro an ambigious nod. To Hiro, it didn't matter what the nod meant, what mattered was both him and Callaghan received closure on their personal demons.
AN: That's it! That's it! I gotta say is that this was the trickest story I had to write due to the amount of broad stroking I had to do to make it work. I'm aware in the movie, there WAS debris in the portal when Hiro and Baymax went in which hampered Baymax on the return journey but here, there was no final battle because I merged the final battle with the battle at Akuma so Baymax would not be hampered. I also skipped over the expo, Tadashi's death and the warehouse attack but I still acknowledged them and because I wanted to focus on the later stuff because that's where the story could have converged if Hiro had kept himself in check doing that moment. R&R!
