time to get the first major arc of this drabble series off the ground!
disclaimer: I don't own the copyrighted material within
The day after the disaster of a study date, Hiro makes up with Marys. He even gets her flowers—more specifically, he makes the flowers himself, with delicate colored glass slowly spinning in their iridescent stalks. Marys blushes and shoves his shoulder for being an idiot, then weaves the flowers into her pigtails.
Hiro decides that the only thing that can match the sweetness of her smile is a gummy bear sundae, and Nene is more than happy to set the two up. She watches them giggle in the quietest corner, pinkies brushing together and a soda with two straws, and it's adorable. They take their sweet time and she throws in a plate of strawberry mocha ice cream for free, because Hiro saved Nene's neighbor from a mugger last night and Marys held the door open for Nene in their shared biomechanics class and
they're just cute, ok? Nene might be aromantic but she appreciates the rosy Coke bottle life.
Nene's best friend Kanon Akiyama titters from her place by the register, "They're giving me cavities, please tell me they've been this way for a year."
"Newlyweds," Nene shakes her head, "Let's hope the honeymoon bubble lasts past midterms."
It does, and for every moment Hiro and Marys (and Abigail, Wasabi, Honey, Fred and Gogo for that matter) laugh in her dessert bar, Nene bites down on her tongue. She wants to ask questions, like how was their day, how is Cass Hamada holding up, where did Abigail get those cute flats, do they need a place to hide their super suits when they get stuck transitioning between classes?
But Nene keeps her silence; these people, no matter how friendly and bright and so happy next to her bubble of quiet, they are too high up to be brought down by Nene Wakahisa's drama. And it's the Golden Rule to never ask questions, only Kanon is the exception and she's special.
So she serves them, gives them free stuff, and works on her kinesiology work in the backroom. She pokes at Abigail, indulges in Fred's wild requests, lets Wasabi see how she prepares his frozen yogurt, fixes Gogo up with the good imported bubblegum brands, discusses Dizzy Kei fashion with Honey, and gives Hiro the space he needs to be just another teenager with Marys.
Kanon is there for Nene to share secrets with, and life goes on just as it always does around her dessert bar. Ask no questions, give no answers, and just live.
Marys blows powdered sugar onto Hiro's nose and Nene laughs
and it's the last time she laughs for a while.
"We've got another report of a murder," Wasabi's voice is solemn in the tense silence, "and it's the same MO, the police are directly asking for our help now."
Hiro glances at the file given to them by a shaken officer, and he recoils. Eun-seo Kjellberg is twenty years old, an aspiring ultrasound technician with white blonde hair and thick radish calves and a history of volunteering at her elementary school and three younger siblings, and she is dead. "Kaki" is carved into her chest in katakana and garish white makeup smears on her face, and the murderer left her in a gutter. "Ms. Kjellberg was alive for approximately an hour after the attack," he reads, "but her larynx was crushed in the initial ambush and prevented her for calling for help."
And that's enough reading for a lifetime, Hiro slumps in a chair and it's only Abigail's cool fingertips on the back of his neck that keeps him from hurling. It took him a while to process the deaths of his parents, and Eun-seo's youngest brother is only 5, too young to understand how much blood the human body can contain.
"I know this family," Gogo's voice is dark in its softness, "My family and I are attending the funeral. I…let's get this sicko in jail so I have some good news to give them."
Hiro chokes around a swallow and Honey asks, "Are you alright? Do you need to step out?"
Hiro needs Eun-seo Kjellberg to not be dead and go home to her family and tell her siblings that she loves them, because no one should ever be murdered like this. He shakes his head, "I'm fine. How many other murders have there been?"
"Two," and it's the same. Mari Nasagawa was twenty three years old, in the National Guard and newly engaged to her grieving fiancé; the "Kiichigo" carved in her chest was too long and reached to her navel which caused her to bleed to death rather quickly. Sachika Miyazaki was a twenty eight year old mother of year old twins, who are now orphaned from a car accident taking their father and a "Banana" tearing apart their mother's lungs.
The same style of katakana, the same white makeup, the same dead women and Fred leaves to destroy a bunch of trash cans outside. They're alone on Fred's estate, no one will hear him or Honey's hitching breaths or the absolute horror in all of their eyes. "Why would someone do this?" Honey asks, trailing her finger along Eun-seo's graduation picture, "why would someone be so cruel?"
"I haven't seen violence like this for a long time," Abigail narrows her eyes, "the underground of this city is a travesty but this…this died out years ago."
"How so?"
"Back when I was a bot fighter," Abigail ran a tongue over her shiny white front teeth, "every now and then you'd see someone in the gutter. No katakana, mind you, but it was bad. When I stopped at sixteen there was still murders in the warehouses and by Yama's dungeons, but it declined and by three years ago it was much, much better. This…"
"Guys," Fred comes in, "I had a thought."
"Shoot."
"Ok, so it's kinda like this comic book—" and Fred leads them down a rabbit hole. Normally Hiro would be annoyed but this time his face is as serious as it ever gets and his voice doesn't have his neon rush. This time Hiro's on Abigail's lap, looking at the Adventures of Mimi Ranger: Maiko's Revenge, and Fred finishes, "—and it all leads to one conclusion, with Hatsuka's bloodline curse being an outlier."
Gogo raises an eyebrow, "Which is?"
"An organization, previously active in the danger days of Abigail's bot fighting, is rising from obscurity with a message: fear us, and fear ever leaving us." Fred points at Sachika's file, "Sachika Sato was arrested twice, six and five years ago, before she suddenly moved to Los Angosaka, married her husband, and returned with a clean slate and a new last name. She was part of this organization, but wanted out and ran out, and now that they're rising up, they had to cut off an old traitor."
Honey gasps, but Wasabi leans forward, "You're on to something. It says here that Mari Nasagawa had a stint in juvie before she joined the National Guard; her records were sealed and purged when she turned twenty, but she is a far cry from Sachika, except for the arrests."
Hiro thumbs through Eun-seo's file, and Abigail hisses when he catches, "Eun-seo was arrested every year from age eleven to fourteen. Then she started volunteering and got her life on track, and now…"
"All three women were arrested, went good, and were murdered," Gogo sums up, "Whatever this organization is, they wanted them dead." She crosses her arms, "They must've had secrets or something, if Eun-seo started off young back then, then who knows how much they could've known."
Honey stands up, "We should search for all women—women, yes? This seems very gendered—who have been arrested in this time period, especially those of Asian descent." Honey notices Abigail staring at Eun-seo's thirteen year old mugshot, a coy little smile taunting her demise, and asks, "What's wrong?"
"…I saw her," Abigail hugs Hiro, "at a bot fight, she has distinctive green eyes, right Gogo?"
"The prettiest girl in our neighborhood," Gogo nods, "you sure it's her? Why was she there?"
"The context is lost, but she was there, and it was a bad time."
Wasabi speaks up, "Then we start looking for records of people arrested in association with these bad times. And let's do a patrol tonight," their eyes are drawn to the bloody katakana spelling danger for an unknown pool of San Fransokyo women, "and stop this before anyone else gets hurt."
They don't stop the next attack in time, but Baymax is there to save twenty one year old Rohini Wallis's life. She deviates the most from the victims—she's black and Indian, skin like Wasabi's and hair even longer than Honey's—and she chokes out a thank you from her strangled throat. Gogo runs off in search of the attacker but when they regroup at the hospital, she spits, "They know the streets even better than I do, which is damn near impossible!"
Hiro flinches at the idea of bloodthirsty murderers memorizing all the nooks and crannies he can't fly into, and leans against Fred for support. Honey tries to perk up the mood by pointing out Rohini's survival; no katakana carved onto her chest, only vocal cords in need of serious off-time and a broken wrist.
Rohini is awake when they pile into her room, but when Abigail gently asks for knowledge of the organization, she pressed her lips tight enough for her lipstick to go white. I'm not saying anything, she writes, or they might kill my girlfriends.
"We can protect you," Fred argues and the filet in his suit makes him sound all the more desperate.
You can't protect all of us, her eyes fill with tears. They killed Eun-seo and Mari, they even killed Sachi and she had kids. They're killing everyone off who left before the age out, her writing grows unsteady, and there's so many of us who did.
"What age out?"
Rohini scribbles away her notes and writes in all caps, DON'T ASK ME. She then pauses, looks at Hiro, then adds beneath the harsh lines, ask anzu, she'll talk, but only if you ask first.
Then the nurse throws them out and Abigail exhales harshly, "Who the hell is Anzu?"
No one knows, and they try to encourage themselves with Rohini's survival but her silence punches through the glamour like katakana to the chest. "I am detecting increased blood pressure in all of you," Baymax says, "My diagnosis: frustration. I recommend another group activity to "blow off some steam", before you make mistakes in your investigation."
"You're right," Honey suddenly smiles, "and I know where to go."
As they leave, Gogo mutters that she's the only one who has any idea where to go from here; Hiro sticks close to Abigail against the sudden inertia.
During one of their various adventures to Nene's, Honey scored some tickets from Nene to a roller rink at the edge of the warehouse district. They were still valid for all of them, and after storing all their gear at Hiro's garage, they made their way downtown.
Nene's in line, a bright blonde streak in her mousy brown hair, and she's with Kanon who Hiro remembers for holding the door open for Marys once. They wave towards the group—it's odd seeing Nene so animated, the girl's usually…drab is a mean word, she's usually blasé—and pull them ahead of the crowd, and Kanon asks, "Ever been to a roller rink before?"
"Once," Hiro gripes, "and my older brother pushed me into a wall."
"They smell like feet," Wasabi grumbles, "with sticky benches and dirty shoes and ugh."
"Maybe," Nene concedes, but when they are pulled into a glittering dark cavern with shattered disco lights and a glowing skate rink and music that makes Hiro's feet move on their own, she smiles like Eun-seo's mugshot, "but that's half the fun."
They get their shoes, making sure to wipe down Wasabi's four times, and they spill onto the rink and woah, Hiro's head spins as people spiral to pleasantly sinister beats. Nene and Kanon are experts, they pull Gogo and Abigail into a vicious battle of inlines vs quads, and Hiro is left finding his skating legs. Baymax watches from the corner, covered in oohing grunge sweethearts, and recommends, "Find your center of balance, before carefully moving forward with your feet moving out towards the sides."
"Yeah, no kidding!" Hiro face plants when some jerk in a tie-dye onesie bowls him over, but Fred and Wasabi pull him up and get their revenge. Honey laughs and makes vines of the three boys hip checking the jerk into next week, of Gogo skating with Abigail on her shoulders, of herself making figure eights with Nene, and it's loud in here, Hiro can hardly breathe.
It feels good, to have the air catch sweat and perfume before it's sucked down his lungs, to have his arms burn from running into the wall and being swung ahead of his cackling friends, to fly at the speed of shrieking wheels and be alive. He can't tell what time it is, only that his heart's skipping beats and his eyes are seeing galaxies in the shattered disco lights and blacklight crystals. The music grinds guitars and furious vocals against his ears and Hiro likes it, Marys said she's past her emo punk phase but he never started
did Eun-seo start, when she went to jail? Did Mari? Sachika? Blood stains like running mascara and Hiro never wants to forget the difference, he barrels into Abigail and inhales the scent of her shirt.
She skates him away back to Baymax, and she asks into his hair as he catches cooler air, "Having too much fun?"
"Maybe," he wipes his eyes, "or I'm just out of shape."
After a moment with Baymax who gives Hiro a lollipop to play with, Abigail grins, "Only one way to fix that."
The grunge kids laugh when Abigail and Nene pull Hiro back into the rink, and he's the one on Gogo's shoulders, the one propelling Fred into the sound barrier, the one laughing and the one alive. Tadashi isn't, the women in the gutters aren't, and that makes him want to cry but the tears are lost to the music and for once he just enjoys himself.
When he collapses on his bed, up way past his bedtime and absolutely filthy and covered in smooch marks from Honey and Kanon, he decides to ask Nene where she found that place.
He doesn't get his chance; Kanon is attacked at Nene's bar when Hiro and Marys are studying at her house, and Abigail says over the phone that both of them might not make it.
"It was at the freaking campus," she forces out, "the attackers came for Kanon and she tried to stop them but they…they were too much."
Marys's father Dr. Kenichi is a world renowned rocket scientist, only eclipsed by his daughter's rising star, but he helps process Hiro through his panic attack. Nene might not be his best friend and he hardly knows Kanon but they're nice to him, they're people he cares about, and they don't deserve to die strangled and bleeding in a gutter while the world turns a blind eye, while their Big Heroes fail yet again.
Kenichi drives Hiro and Marys, Marys refusing to let Hiro go alone because he's her boyfriend and she knows how much this will hurt. Dozens of people are there; unlike Rohini whose support base is across the bay, Nene's dessert bar attracts many loyal customers, Hiro's friends at the center. Abigail hugs Hiro and Baymax is brought in by Honey, and they wait
and wait
and wait
and are allowed to see Nene. She's still in the bed, yellow still clinging to her hair, and the nurses say that she's on her way to recovery. When Wasabi asks about Kanon, the nurses go silent, and the group is left to watch Nene breathe in privacy. Hiro comforts himself that there's no katakana carved onto her chest, only cuts from glass and bruises from brass knuckles blooming like last year's dead flowers all over her flesh.
Marys kisses Hiro's pale cheek and goes to get coffee for everyone. When the door shuts Abigail hisses, "Nene is self-supported through her bar, she can't afford these bills. And I don't know about Kanon, I don't—" she flinches away from Nene's heart monitor.
"We'll have Krei cover it," Hiro's voice is low because someone broke into Nene's home, strangled her and Kanon, and carved into their chests before dragging them across town and dumping them in the gutter. No one saw this happen, did anyone notice the blood stains through the broken windows? Do people just not care about girls with a bad past? He wonders if Kanon has a little brother or sister waiting for news and wishes he was suffocating back at the roller rink.
"Wasn't Nene a bot fighter?" Honey fusses over Nene's covers, "Some of her acquaintances are, at least that I know of. Would this explain her connection to Kanon, who might be associated with the attackers?"
"She said she was," Abigail rubs her temples, "she said she was active in the scene from age ten to age fifteen before something happened and she stopped." Abigail sees Hiro jolt and snorts, "They made them young back then, eh? But she said she wasn't as good as you, and never got Yama mad enough to smash her face in like me." She blinks and mutters, "I wonder why she's a kinesiology major then, if she likes robots enough to risk jail time for it."
"The organization must be connected to bot fights," Fred speaks up, "it explains the young age of the women when they were arrested…" He goes off to look at Nene's file and leaves everyone in silence until he gasps, "Plot twist!"
He opens the file on Nene's chest, and when Hiro sees the "Anzu" carved black and white on the picture, he bowls over Marys on his way to puke in the hall.
Kanon is in a coma. Nene stares at the ceiling, feeling the people around her breathe, and bites her bottom lip against all the screams. Kanon might wake up, Nene's best friend and closest thing to a partner she'll ever get might not wake up, and considering past concussions and the blood loss, Nene doesn't want to hope.
She sees Hiro with a paper covered in Rohini's scrawl, and wants to ask where he got that, but the Golden Rule chokes off her tongue like a fist around Eun-seo's throat, around Mari's and Sachika's and
and like around Kanon's
like around Nana's she took forever to die Nene was there Nene could only watch and swallow her screams and not beg for help because asking the police would only kill everyone and Nana no please no not Nana not Kanon not three more dead friends in the gutter like fifth hand kimono clogging the sewage drains around Nana's last breaths
Hiro asks, "Will you please tell us what you know?"
Nene bites hard enough to bleed, half sobs, and finally breaks the rule. "I know that you're Hiro Hamada," they jolt behind their visors and Nene doesn't laugh, "so if I told you that I was a Fujita, could you please help me?"
*throws confetti* THE FUJITAS HAVE ARRIVED
And boy oh boy, did they come with a bang. I hope you all were pleasantly surprised by Nene; if you knew she was an ex-Fujita from the get-go, I admire your ability to see through my crappy foreshadowing, and if you're upset by my bad OC building…I'm sorry, I'm too busy celebrating the beginning of the FUJITA ARC!
Tell me what you think, if I should kill poor Kanon off, if Hiro would make an adorable emo punk science son, etc.