now that the Fujitas arc is over, it's back to slice of life drabbles for the foreseeable future, but here I focus on the fallout
disclaimer: I don't own the copyrighted material within. Song lyrics are from "Welcome to the Black Parade" by "My Nuclear Romance"/My Chemical Romance
Baymax is not programmed to have favorites.
He has favorites anyway, one above the rest.
When Abigail contacts him screaming, he immediately leaves; he judges that leaving his patients Kaori and Ai is not too high risk, as Kaori is much calmer than before and Ai's vitals are stable. When he arrives to see one of the Fujita assailants screaming and Abigail kneeling in blood and Hiro's lips turning purple, Baymax forgets about his previous patients.
All he focuses on is Hiro, Hiro dying with a stab wound slotted between his ribs. While no major blood arteries have been punctured his lung has and is collapsing, blood filling his chest cavity and sending him into shock.
If Baymax were human, he'd be screaming like Abigail and the Fujita Gogo is subduing, but he is not, he is a healthcare companion, and Hiro is his patient. He applies pressure with one hand while his other activates the intubation device stored within his chest. When his body was redesigned into Baymax 2.5, Hiro and Abigail took care in increasing his emergency care equipment, just in case something like this were to occur.
Hiro's throat is constricted by a swelling contusion, and Baymax scans the rest of his patient. Bruises consistent with strikes by the blunt edge of a katana, a cut on his chin, a concussion that without his helmet would have been much worse, and very low blood pressure. Baymax does not panic because he cannot, and he gently but firmly guides the plastic tube down Hiro's throat.
Reassured that his functioning lung will not falter from the strain of his injuries, Baymax then focuses on the stab wound. Air leeches out and bubbles against the blood, and Baymax is hesitant to repurpose a spare tube as a chest drain. But then Hiro spasms, blood flecking at his mouth, and Baymax takes the risk.
Hiro cries out in pain and Baymax regrets causing his patient distress, especially Hiro. It is for the best though, as air steadily leaves the chest cavity through the drain and Baymax's hands apply firm pressure to the wound. Hiro needs to go to the hospital but he is not quite at the brink of death, Baymax will not allow it
he will not fail Hiro, he will not allow another one of his creators to die.
Abigail and Wasabi return with Fred, who is unconscious and suffering from electrical burns. "The patient is stable," Baymax doesn't say Hiro because Hiro is his only patient, "but requires immediate medical attention,"
"Go," and Baymax carefully holds Hiro in his arms. Perhaps it's the loss of body armor, as the Fujita had discarded it before Baymax arrived, but Hiro feels too light. Gogo helps arrange Hiro and Fred in Baymax's arms, and he dampens his thrusters to not jostle his patients. Especially not Hiro; when Baymax returns to collect Kaori and Ai, he notes that Hiro is the youngest by 3 years to Ai.
Hiro is his patient, his favorite patient, and Baymax will not allow a child to die in the streets. He rockets away towards the hospital, and takes no delight in the shrieks he draws from the night nurses. He cannot feel that kind of joy, because he is a robot, and especially because their terror is more time ticking away from Hiro's chances for survival.
His patients are rushed away, and he is joined by Honey and another unconscious Fujita. Honey is wearing the Fujita's rocket skates and twists her ankle when she crashes into Baymax, but she asserts that her pain level is only 2. Baymax concurs, as her adrenaline levels are high enough to counteract the pain, but he makes sure to stabilize and wrap the injury.
The movements are simple, methodic, and he takes his time; by the time she's treated, the others have arrived. Baymax scans the group and while Abigail, Gogo and Wasabi are relatively uninjured aside from bruises and minor whiplash, the others are not as well off. Nene and a Fujita are rushed into surgery because Nene is suffering from a very serious stab wound to the abdomen, and the Fujita has brain bleeding.
Baymax registers that Fujita as being the one to leave her DNA on Big Yama and the one reported to have caused Hiro's injuries, and he finds it in himself to be…not pleased, but certainly not concerned.
She is someone else's patient, someone else's headache—Hiro is his patient, the team and Nene are his patients, and Baymax is allowed to pick favorites.
Hours later when Hiro wakes up, Baymax has already reassured Cass that he was simply caught in a street fight with gang members. Cass was hysterical, ready to put the Fujitas in the ground, but Baymax calmed her down with the helpful lies of the team. She was mollified, Hiro's identity wasn't compromised, and Hiro draws from the sketchpad a nurse left so that he may communicate with a ventilator, "Thanks buddy."
Baymax doesn't feel the need to be thanked, but he hugs Hiro anyway.
Funeral rites vary between different cultures and economic classes, and the funeral of Eun-seo Kjellberg is a mix of Korean and Swedish, tempered by the Kjellberg's relatively small budget.
Gogo thinks it's beautiful anyway, with the wild blooms of flowers on Eun-seo's casket and the delicate pots of incense placed at every table. She's in her black hanbok as most are the women here, if they aren't in severe Lutheran dress, and while she dislikes the billowing skirts they match the unhappy beauty.
People say their condolences and gloss over the fact that Eun-seo was a former delinquent, that she died with "Kaki" in her chest and geisha smears on her face. Gogo thinks that it's a dishonor to who Eun-seo was, better or worse, and when she sees a framed picture of her on the casket, recognizes the coyness from a bloodstained mugshot.
Her parents and siblings are holding up ok, having gotten the chance to wail a week ago. But Gogo sees how teenage Min-joon is hiding his agony into his suit jacket, how pre-teen Chae-won keeps going to the bathroom, how little Hyun-woo is still laughing and going under people's tables
Gogo's heart breaks because he doesn't know, not quite yet, but one day he will and it's going to destroy him.
It's the Cho family's turn to approach the casket, put a flower down on the glossy wood (many people are putting white lillies but Gogo remembers how Eun-seo used to wear thistles in her hair and enlisted Baymax in finding the prettiest thistles in all of the bay area), bow three times old fashion style and approach the Kjellbergs. Gogo's mother is sturdy, eyes clear and chin raised, and this comforts Mrs. Kjellberg, who needs better help in hiding her grief. Tiger mothers must stick together, Gogo backs away so her parents can support each other.
She bumps into Hyun-woo, who giggles, "Your skirt is fat, Yerin!"
Gogo grins, "And your monkey suit makes you look like an old man."
"Does not!" Hyun-woo pouts and Gogo shields him from his elders' disapproval, because how dare a five year old not carry the right kind of brevity for a funeral. He will soon enough, once he realizes that his nuna isn't coming home, Gogo doesn't see why he can't be allowed to smile until then.
Especially since the one person who could have saved Eun-seo is encouraging to run out into the back lot of the funeral building and catch the dying sunlight. They are alone out here, save Chae-won who comes out two times to sneak them pieces of the reception smorgasbord, and Gogo clenches her fists in the billows of her chima. Did Hiro cry at his parents' funeral? He didn't at Tadashi's even though everyone else did
even Gogo, hiding her tears in her suit jacket
but this is a little different, despite both of the deceased being murdered before the Big Heroes could stop it. The scattered funerals of her borderline-poor Korean neighborhood come to mind and it was always the little children with bright faces, only crying when their parents did. She looks down at Hyun-woo fussing with his little tie, and finally decides to say, "I have a special message for you?"
"From who?"
Gogo looks around like she's sharing a world-shattering secret, making Hyun-woo lean in with gigantic excited eyes, and she stage whispers, "From the Big Heroes of San Fransokyo!"
He gasps, "No way!" and crawls onto her lap, begging to hear the message.
Gogo laughs, and tells him, "They say that they found the person who hurt Eun-seo and a few other ladies, and that they put her in jail forever and ever. Yup," she nods at his babbling, "they told me this directly, no one will ever hurt your family ever again."
"Really?" He tilts his head, "How do you know?"
Because Gogo will decapitate the next person who makes her fail her duties as a Big Hero. Eun-seo deserved better, Mari and Sachika and Elisa and even Chiyo, Yue and Ai deserved better. Nene and Nana deserved better that what the Fujitas were, than the criminals of San Fransokyo are, and Gogo will never let someone touch a white blond hair on this little boy's head. "I know because they promised me," she boops his nose just to make him smile, "and they never break a promise."
Gogo doesn't see Chae-won listening to them, or her getting Min-joon and their parents so they could all listen; she doesn't see their tears, only the cheer on Hyun-woo's face. Eventually the two return to the funeral thinking they've had their private moment, and when it's over and Gogo's checking over her homework in the family room, her mother comments, "I'm proud of you, Ethel."
Gogo tilts her head, "I didn't do anything."
"Perhaps," Her mother goes to bustle about in the kitchen, "but the Kjellbergs will never forget today, mark my words."
Honey clacks away at her laptop, sipping her Monster frappuchino and making sure not to nudge her drying toenails against her desk. She, Carol Nguyen and Bethrani Alatas are having a study session/Dizzy Kei meet up, and so far Bethrani's enthusiasm for pastels and thigh high socks is filling in Carol's unusually large silences.
"Betty," Honey calls over her shoulder, "can you review the new shipments for the Daisy Dell jewelry? We got a lot of orders for this upcoming spring and I don't want a shortage December's Holly Kei disaster."
"Got it," Bethrani then looks at Carol and says, "We need more coffee, get ready to recite all the applications of metal chemical embrittlement when I get back."
Honey laughs, and she and Carol sit in silence for a while. Honey wants to speak up, ask Carol how her job applications to NASA and Krei Tech are going, but Carol's silence is as loud as Hiro gasping for air with bloody blue lips, as deep as the katakana in Nene's chest. Then Carol sits up from her slump, decidedly closes her laptop, and says, "Did you hear the news recently?"
"Umm, on current Asian trends or on that one plane over the Middle East that survived a lightning strike or—"
"Or my sister getting charged for being a serial killer, pending her release from the ICU?" Carol meets Honey's gaze evenly and Honey can't help but see the similarities to Beatrice. Honey has a second cousin in jail, perhaps his ex-drug dealer buddies sees Marco in Honey, but Marco never killed anyone. Carol smiles, "Gigi said that Abigail and a few of your friends are treating her rather delicately, as if she's mad that Bea got brained by the Big Heroes."
"Carol," Honey doesn't know what to say because she was there when Beatrice got her head cracked open by Nene. Granted, she was busy with little Yue, but she'd been there for Hiro, Fred and Nene's recovery, been there to see Beatrice lying comatose next to Kanon. Poor Kanon, her family pulled her life support yesterday and for the first time since opening, Nene closed her bar.
Honey was there to see all of this madness, and now she's here to see her friend despair, and she chokes out, "I'm so sorry." And she means it, she grabs Carol's hand and bites her lip when Carol turns away.
"We hadn't seen her for three years," Carol shudders, then bites on her first, "My little sister, a murderer. Did you see what she'd done to those women? She…we knew that she was a Fujita, we didn't know what to do and then she was gone and we'd thought she'd gone clean or died, we d-didn't know that she would turn into this!"
And Carol's close to tears, one more person grieving due to a woman's depravity, and Honey doesn't care that her toenails smudge when she pulls Carol into a hug. "It's not your fault," she combs Carol's hair back and imagines it done up like a geisha, then banishes the thought because Carol is a queen of ao dai and sweet-loli pigtails.
Carol is a friend, and Bethrani returns to find Gogo braiding ribbons and bows into Carol's hair. Bethrani knows and she doesn't care either, Honey reassures Carol of this in between taking expresso shots Vegas-style and singing loudly to the reggaeton popping up on her internet radio. Honey gets the idea to braid all of them together and giggles at their Rapunzel knots; Bethrani laughs and Carol sits up straighter in her chair and Honey redoes her toes.
It's not the most effective thing, to have to sit exactly right so that their three-source braid doesn't tug, but Honey likes it. Synergy, and good vibes, all the things that Dizzy Kei promotes for 20% off and the quiet understanding between women who have seen too much.
Hiro slurps at his peanut butter-sriracha milkshake as Nene restocks the front bar, and relishes in the quiet. The whole team is coming over at 2 to eat chocolate covered pretzels and whine over evil second midterms, but Hiro's noon lecture got canceled when Prof. Mirza eloped with a flight attendant last second. That's fine though, now Baymax can charge in the backroom and Hiro can have Nene's wicked dessert skills all to himself.
Nene doesn't talk much, even after she joined the team, and eventually Hiro asks, "So do all of the people at your rollerskate place like this kind of music, or is it a Fujita thing?"
She looks up at him, then they both listen to the dark bass thrumming beneath their feet, and Nene shrugs, "I am a woman of many tastes; if I can skate to it, then it's good enough to play here."
"Oh really?" Hiro grins, "Lemme see what you got."
Half an hour and two more milkshakes later, Hiro is astounded by the mega-library packed into Nene's tiny little teal music player. The handful of customers that came in got to listen to music ranging from AKB98 to Daft Funk to Fall Out Child, and Hiro's impressed. After a Xellirks song finishes and Hiro stops head-banging from his stool, Nene grins behind her hand, "You don't seem like the type to go stomping around in combat boots and eyeliner."
"Yeah, I never had an emo phase," Hiro stuck out his tongue, "Too busy conning bot fighters with an innocent image."
"That is unacceptable," Nene laughs for real, and she scrolls through her mp3 player, "But you're fourteen, I think now is as good a time as any to start." She pauses, "Do you want eyeliner and studs? I have the magnetic kind, since you don't have piercings."
"My aunt would kill me!" And then My Nuclear Romance plays, at first with a heart monitor and a man's clear singing and then guitars, drums, noise that makes Hiro doubletake. Nene knows all the words, helping Hiro through the theatric whiplash, and Hiro likes this album, gets a download link written on his wrist in purple Sharpie.
But then he sees Nene freeze up, and he wants to ask why before piano fills in the last song's silence. He turns to Nene and—is she tearing up?
"When I was a young boy," Hiro listens, "my father took me into the city/To see a marching band."
"Nene," Hiro reaches out to a sniffling Nene, "are you—"
She hushes him, and in the empty spaces of her deserted bar, the song fills the air.
And oh god, but Hiro's breath is hitching one two three times in his lung's scar tissue and all he can smell is smoke. He's been making good on his pledge to talk to Tadashi's drawer shrine, venting his issues before they become issues and keeping Tadashi up to date on his friends' antics, and he's so much better than before
But it's hurting now, he misses Tadashi so much and he bites down on his milkshake straw to ride out the urge to cry.
And ok, the second rendition of the lyrics are so loud and scream-y that he can't help but laugh, Hiro even gets Nene to stop wiping at her eyes and try to sing along. But then the song picks up again with lyrics more pointed than a katana to the ribs and oh, that hurts, but Nene suddenly pulls him off his stool onto the bar with her and she leads him along to sing.
Hiro's crying now, his voice cracks and catches against Nene's quiet half-tone and the singer's clarity. Oh god, thank god no one's around to see this, but he can't stop crying and singing and this is a mess, screw this song, he hates it
He hates that it still hurts and soon he's going to be fifteen without his brother and that this darn anthem won't explain how four women died despite him being a Big Hero, Tadashi would've stopped Beatrice before people had to die and he had to get stabbed, bodies in the streets indeed.
The singer shouts about misery and death, and didn't Hiro want to kill Callaghan back on Akuma Island, cross the barrier into the black rage where murderous Fujitas skate and microbots allow people to burn to death?
Didn't Nene do bad things, for that matter? And her best friend Kanon died at the beginning of this week, she never got to wake up and see Nene become a hero and neither did Nene's neesan—
but she's here singing with him, her eyes are watery and her cheeks are flushed but she's singing loud and against the devil winds that keep blowing smoke and blood into their faces. And Hiro knows that Abigail would do the same, she and the rest of the team, maybe even Tadashi in a world where Hiro died and Tadashi was left to pick up the pieces
Hiro feels something click and he listens to the song and "Defiant to the end we hear the call/To carry on!" and oh
Hiro gets it, and when he looks at Nene he knows that she knows this pain flaming in Hiro's gut and they sing together, because they both get it.
He gets all of it.
He tugs at his shirt to catch a deeper breath and who cares if he had to half-lie to explain his stab wound, if Abigail's making people flinch when she wears a sports bra and low rise shorts when she works out, if Nene's branded as "Anzu" for all the world to see? He's still got glass scars in his arms from the explosion and Tadashi wouldn't care, and he's not going to either because he alive and he's not finished yet.
He's not a man, barely even a hero, he's just a kid who knows too much about bot fighting and funerals and different dimensions, and he doesn't care. His high school peers hated his guts, too many gangbangers know his acting on sight, and whatever—he'll paint more of his super suit black and take the streets back and carry Tadashi's memory on.
Hiro sings as loud as he dares, one arm slung around Nene and the other clutching onto his hair. It's not quite matching the singer's key and his throat still chokes around microscopic sobs, but that's ok and Hiro knows that it's ok.
It's ok because they're Big Heroes and their loved ones are dead but they're going to keep going on and make San Fransokyo a place that Tadashi and Nana and Kanon would be proud to live, be proud of them as Hiro and Nene and everyone else carries on their memories
and so the song goes.
When the team shows up later, they find Nene showing Hiro all of her old CDs, real life CDs with signatures from the artists themselves, and maybe their eyes are red and their voices are scratchy, but they look happier than this morning. Hiro even pulls Marys onto his lap and smooches her cheek, making her giggle and the adults grin at each other.
If Hiro goes home and blasts MNR to Tadashi's shrine because "I'd seriously injure someone for a picture of you looking like these guys", not even Aunt Cass gives him trouble because it's all going to be ok; even though Tadashi's dead and gone, Hiro's not going to stop marching any time soon.
Holy songfic, Batman! But seriously, that song fits Hiro and Nene so well it's not even funny; originally there were HUGE chunks of lyrics but oh yeah, we can't post songfics of copyrighted lyrics. But it's heavily implied and if you know the song you know exactly what Hiro's talking about; if you don't go listen to it and relish in my teenage angst lol