because i say "what if" too many times
disclaimer: i don't own the copyrighted material within
When the car plunges into the bay, Yokai decides to make sure that they don't resurface, and crushes them deeper into the seabed.
It's only by Hiro's small stature and proximity to an opening that he survives, his arm mangled to mulch by the surge of crunching metal. And Baymax's frame withstands the attack; while his vinyl is shredded beyond repair, he manages to raise Hiro to the freezing surface.
And that's as far as the survivor list goes.
Baymax pushes Hiro to shore and pulls himself onto the docks so that he may self-circuit in peace. Hiro screams in absolute pain and terror and alerts a bystander, which becomes 3, then 5, then police and an ambulance and news reports and Aunt Cass speeding to the hospital begging oh god no please no you can't take all of them.
Hiro is despondent, because it's his fault that they're dead, if he'd just stayed home and been a good boy they would still be alive, first Tadashi now Honey Wasdabi Gogo Fred and why can't he stop hurting the ones around him
what is wrong with him?
The police interrogates him, and Hiro can only give the truth: the man in the mask started the fire and crushed innocent college students into the bay. Baymax has a scan of the "patient" but little else to prove Hiro right, and Cass asks once the police leave, "Is this really true?"
"I would never make this up," Hiro chokes on his voice, smelling smoke and seaweed at once and wanting to throw up his lungs and die. He could never fake this, never be this cruel, and buries his shame into Cass's shoulder. His own shoulder aches and his arm is agony, which doesn't make sense because the doctors amputated it, and Hiro burns and drowns in cycles of madness.
He kneels at the shoreline of depression, and when sobbing parents congregate at the hospital and beg for someone to unearth their children, Hiro considers drowning himself so deeply that his body will be lost among the islets in the bay
maybe he should die so no one else has to
but Baymax pulls him back. He cannot allow Hiro to harm himself, no matter if it will improve his mental health, and Hiro turns towards a possible solution: same mission as before, but four more times the gravity. Yokai is a serial killer and Hiro can't lose anyone else, if Cass or Baymax or Mochi dies then Hiro will surely lose the rest of himself.
So he builds. He builds himself a super arm prosthesis and Baymax a suit for flying, for shooting missiles of of the one true acid that may corrode the microbots, for being the perfect match to Yokai. Hiro imagines Tadashi pushing him, "use that big brain of yours", and Yokai must be wearing the neurotransmitter in his mask
what if Hiro takes it for himself?
A sick sort of glee fills Hiro, elevating his mood enough for Baymax to recommend they continue in this tangent. So Hiro builds, and takes Baymax flying and knows true joy in the clouds. Flying is so much better than swimming anyway, this is true weightlessness, no crunching metal ripping away limbs
Hiro cries in a mix of pain and happiness, clutching onto his arm prosthesis and wishing for a real one to hug himself with. But Baymax's hugs aren't terrible, and Hiro swears to kill Yokai for this, end the torment before any more parents have to bury coffins filled with galaxies of unrealized potential.
Baymax tracks Yokai back to SFIT, where Honey and Wasabi and Gogo and Fred ought to be, and he's going to kill Alistair Krei, how many people have to die before he's satisfied? Yokai assembles a portal shimmering with ozone and terror above their heads, readying himself to throw Krei in.
But Hiro equips his arm with an acid missile, and fires away at Yokai's base as Baymax fires flares and smoke. Yokai goes on the offensive and fights brutal and nasty, trying to mulch Hiro's legs and crunch Hiro's head and Hiro doesn't remember if Tadashi's friends screamed as they died, was it too quick for them?
It will not be quick for Yokai.
Tadashi's memory encourages Hiro on despite his growing damage, and forget trying to take the transmitter, just take away all of Yokai's stolen toys. Hiro melts his microbots because they are his to destroy if he so pleases, and that which isn't melted is blasted to be sucked into the portal. Hiro frees Krei and yells at him to run before he gets killed like all the rest, and Krei whispers "Hamada?" before getting the memo and bailing.
Hiro corners Yokai by knocking over his portal, which lands with a brutal smash and threatens to suck them all in. Baymax scans the portal and someone's alive in there, a young woman, did Yokai throw her in too? Unacceptable; Hiro reaches out to grab Yokai's arm with his metal fist, and shattered Yokai's humerus in his grip as Hiro hisses, "No one else dies today."
Yokai screams as Hiro and Baymax blast into the portal, seeking out the woman inside. It's beautiful here, burning and drowning and deadly here, and Hiro will not let Baymax die here, not by fire or by sea or by multidimensions.
Hiro finds the woman in a pod, and Yokai whimpers, "Abigail," and Abigail?
Tadashi once spoke of an Abigail, his freshman year TA; Abigail Callaghan, daughter of poor Professor Callaghan, who went on a "trip" a few months ago and never came back.
Is Yokai simply determined to kill everyone connected to the Callaghans? Hiro doesn't have time to find out, as Baymax says that the portal is destabilizing. Hiro almost wants to leave Yokai in the portal but decides to hold on just for a little while longer, so that Hiro can take off his mask and face the man who killed so many people.
They blast back out of the portal, the ozone screen swirling and distorting rapidly behind them. Yokai falls to his knees and begs, "Please, just leave us alone, this doesn't have to go any further!"
Hiro reaches out to take Yokai's mask and
Professor Callaghan?
Callaghan is babbling about the chain of events leading up to this moment, but Hiro doesn't hear it. No, he hears the excuses of a man who killed five innocent college students, students who looked up to him believe in him
Tadashi trusted him as a mentor as a father
all for the sake of a woman who didn't even die. Hiro tells Baymax to carry Abigail to safety, and when Baymax protests that Hiro is still in danger, Hiro says that he is satisfied with Baymax's care.
Baymax focuses all his attention on his unsatisfied patient, and flies away.
Just as the portal melts down completely, Hiro takes off his helmet for Callaghan's terrified eyes to see, puts on the mask, and asks to himself, "Is it considered dying when it's on a new dimensional plane?"
before surging every functional microbot forward to crush Callaghan's screams into his chest and through the portal. The portal explodes and Hiro loses his leg in the process, screaming for Tadashi and all the others in the body count.
Hiro recovers, as he cannot help but do, and tells Abigail almost everything. He keeps the exact gory details of Tadashi Honey Wasabi Gogo Fred's deaths to himself, keeps Callaghan's terror as he was sucked into the portal to himself, keeps his ambivalence towards her to himself.
Only Baymax knows everything, and Hiro wonders if he keeps his own disappointment to himself.
What's done is done: Hiro is the Big Hero of San Fransokyo, Hiro is opting to go directly into Krei Tech as Krei's little prodigy guilt project, Hiro plans to revolutionize limb prosthesis before he reaches his twenties, and Hiro may or may not be a murderer.
The truths of the matter are a burning drowning mess that can only be explained in dimensions closed to the public, and that's just fine with him. Cass and Mochi are alive and well and happy, Baymax is Hiro's personal companion for better or worse, Abigail becomes her own ambivalent presence in his life, and Hiro can work his way around phantom agonies as long as someone's around to hug.
It's not what should have been, not but Hiro wants, but it's what he has, and Tadashi would want him to keep moving, keep using that big brain of his.
morally ambiguous hiro kinda gives me strength when my mood suits him