…yikes, i have no excuse for not updating beyond my lack of interest, cycling depression, and continuous battle with anorexia (so far i'm winning, but for a long time i wasn't). lemme try and bridge the gap between the end of spring quarter and current winter break to try and bring this story back to current time
disclaimer: i don't own the copyrighted material within
Hiro looks around the gathered crowd, playing with the zipper of his hoodie, and marvels at the joys of being in the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology.
It's the end of finals week, officially time for summer vacation in just two mornings, and he's showing off the fruits of his yearlong independent study endeavor. Sure, it's 10 at night and everyone from the assembled professors and curious students to his support team and random bystanders are all in pajamas and sweat pants, but that was the fun of it. No auditorium, no stuffy business cards, just everyone in the HUB ready for Hiro Hamada to mark his genius once again.
"Ok," Hiro tests the mic, "is this working? Yes, kombanwa everyone?" He checks behind him to see Abigail, Wasabi, Fred and volunteer Keisha Kowalski standing at attention, giving him a thumbs up. He checks in front of him to see Marys leaning against Priscilla's shoulder but still smiling at him, and all of the faces of those he's gonna impress and thank for their hard work. "Alright, let's get this started…
"I'm Hiro, first year-ish student in the robotics department, blah blah blah, no one cares about that. We're here for the bots!" The crowd laughs and Hiro points at the three recycle bins staged in front of his podium. "Before we begin, I'd like to thank Abigail Callaghan for her fantastic mentoring, since she's the one who bribed me with gummy bears and beat me with textbooks when I wouldn't get out of bed. I'd also like to thank SFIT's wonderful medical track who helped me on this project even though you guys had better things to do."
And isn't that the truth? If it wasn't for Nene and her surprising amount of friends and friendly associates in the medical sector, Hiro's project would've stalled after takeoff. He still wonders if her assertion that she's a lonely blob of boring with about 3 friends outside the Big Heroes is true or not, as half of the people in the crowd are from her side: 5 from the kinesiology department; 4 from the medical biofeedback labs; 3 each from biometrics, biomechanics and neurosurgery departments; and 2 from the athletics department which doubles as a highly intensive experimentation lab with human volunteers.
Every single one of them helped during the past year as a favor to Nene; when he wasn't working on robots or physics projects, he was sitting on a bean bag chair in the general medical department hub watching Nene referee screaming medical students over how to optimize Hiro's nanobots. Absolutely terrifying, all of them, some even got into fistfights over how to make the nanobots work like Hiro wanted, and Hiro once asked robotics-biofeedback double major Elio if this was a usual thing just in this track of study or if everyone at SFIT was so pushy. They dodged a chair being thrown and Nene breaking out the airhorn, and Elio just sorta shrugged that at least they weren't setting each other on fire like the great Honey vs Marisol Morales chemistry smackdown. At least five people ended up in the ER over that mess, they don't talk about it much.
Nene's in the middle of the crowd tonight, slouching next to a yawning Elio and a perpetually chipper traditional Chinese medicine-biometrics double major Rebecca Chang, and the bags under her eyes are just as heavy as everyone else's. But she nods at Hiro shouting them out, and he puts on a show with what she helped create.
He holds up a tiny skin-toned square, "This is a smart skin application. They've always been around since the early 2000s, but tonight we're going to see a direction that I took them in." Hiro plasters them on his four subjects, noting as he covers the stump of Keisha's amputated arm, "They function as the neurotransmitter points for the nanobots, and we fixed the issue where they carry currents as nasty shocks. Thank you for your service Fred, your singed hair will not be in vain.
"Now that the applications are online," Hiro covers himself as well, then raises his arms, "let's see what we can do!"
Unlike before, with the microbots a steely gray commanding space, the nanobots are a translucent silver and flow onto their bodies like the world's thinnest layer of sugar glass. "And like glass," Hiro smiles as he shows off his encased hand and makes a fist, "they form structures according to the user's body. Like a fist," and the crowd takes notes on their smartphones as the fist changes color to green, then grows into a mighty Hulk fist. Wasabi throws an apple at Hiro and Hiro crushes it to paste with his Hulk fist, the nanobots reducing back onto his body.
"Or a pair of legs ," Abigail walks around at seven feet tall with elongated nano-legs, even doing an impromptu tap dance for the crowd.
"Or an exoskeleton," Fred becomes a spider monster straight out of comic book fever dreams, skittering around the professors with way too much enjoyment. Wasabi jumps up in the air and is caught in a sphere of nanobots, which transform into a bed for him to recline on, and then a wheel around the bed for him to chase Fred with. Abigail takes chase, and Hiro giggles into his palm because his latest and greatest creation is ridiculous after weeks of minimal sleep. At least the professors and other students were having fun too, Nene and Marys being good sports when Fred kidnaps them and Gogo seating herself on Abigail's shoulders.
"Or whatever else you want them to be." And this is the kicker, because as much fun as the other nanobot uses are, they aren't the main purpose. Keisha raises her arm stump, and everyone turns back to the stage as a nanobot prosthesis forms. The nanobots change color to match Keisha's ebony skin, and even up close Hiro can see little difference between flesh and manipulated carbon. "Everyone's video ready?" Hiro picks up a glass of ice water, waits for everyone to get silent, then dumps the water on Keisha's prosthetic arm.
Her reaction validates all of the suffering that this project has caused Hiro's feeble teenage body: she shrieks, recoiling as goosebumps raise on her flesh arm and her nanobot arm curls up with natural reflex. Keisha freezes as the crowd gasps, then grins megawatt, "I couldn't tell you the difference between this arm and my real one. That's freaking cold!"
From the surge of students crowding around the nanobots, brainstorming their own ideas for the next phases that Hiro will focus on in the upcoming year, Hiro makes eye contact with Honey. Honey gives him a double thumbs up, suppressing her squeal because she stands right next to Prof. Ishioka, who gives out the final grades for independent study. Honey mouths, "She's giving you an A!" and Hiro wants to faint with relief.
That's it then, Hiro's free to celebrate the summer with a clear conscience before summer quarter starts up. His birthday is soon, along with all of his friends', and he can relax before Baymax finally snaps and locks Hiro in a lockdown suite demanding 12 hours of sleep from his tiny human. Aunt Cass can make mega hot wings, the whole crew can go out for rollerskating and boba tea, and Hiro can finally, finally, enjoy the summer.
As the crowd dissipates from the HUB, and Baymax helps Hiro make sure that not a single nanobot is stolen from the premises, a calling card ends up in Hiro's hoodie. He doesn't notice until he's at home, cuddling with Mochi and blushing under Aunt Cass's enthusiasm for her sonephew. He sticks his hands in his pockets and finds the card; it's mostly blank, with only "I look forward to working with you! :)" from someone named "n0h".
"Hmm, have you got a secret science admirer?" Cass doesn't seem to be worried much, and Hiro's too tired to figure out who is n0h and whether or not this will upset Marys. All he can think of is sleep, and going to the arcade later this week with Junichi, Sonu and Claudio, and how soft Mochi is, and whether or not Tadashi would be proud of him.
Had he known what was coming, Hiro would've gone to the police.
But Hiro doesn't know what is coming, and in his defense he isn't given a reason to worry until the weather's freezing cold again.
The summer is the kind of summer that good memories are made from. Abigail flies them all down to the coast again, this time to Big Sur where they all get injured rock climbing and body surfing and, in Fred's case, terribly sunburned. It's beautiful there, where they celebrate two birthdays (Gogo and Sana) a weekend early so that the group can have first dibs on birthday beatings. Hiro even gets the idea of a mermaid-based battle bot, after watching Marys swim in the aqua surf and falling in love all over again.
A few weeks in San Fransokyo proper, with huge Korean neighborhood birthday feasts that leave Hiro feeling full for once and ease the ache in his growing bones. Honey's birthday is next, the same again with a huge Mexican family that all try to teach Hiro Spanish and fail miserably
Honey just laughs, since Tadashi was much of the same way
and Hiro hasn't enjoyed a 5-round piñata battle in years, it's loud and wonderful. Days blaze by in the arcade, since the boys love the Sugar Rush racing game and the girls are worthy opponents, and Nene even helps host a huge charity game tournament. What's a proper sugar rush without her crazy awesome cupcakes and cream puffs and milkshakes anyway, and with Hiro egging on the crowd they raise $5000 for the youth detention center. Chiyo, Ai and Yue all thank him privately, since that money is sorely needed from their first-person prospective, and Hiro loves that having fun can equal giving back.
They head down further south back to Los Angosaka for Abigail's birthday, since her family consists of everyone that she can squeeze into an airplane. They convince Wasabi's datemate Alex to tag along, since any heart squeeze of Wasabi's is a friend of the nerd herd, and Alex proves invaluable when an EMP strikes and no one's phones work for three days. Alex and Claudio are LA kids, so they claim, and even when Hiro leads a no-photos-allowed, super-secret Big Hero mission to take down the villain wannabe who knocked out the power, they find all the best food trucks.
Back to San Fransokyo, and for Wasabi's own birthday along with Sonu's and Xiaolan's, and Hiro gains weight. He's a bit defensive of it, since it all seems to be going to his cheeks instead of his pitiful chicken legs, but Marys is…convincing, when she asserts that he's still the hottest fourteen-going-on-fifteen year old roboticist in the city. Wasabi's mama is determined to help Hiro with his body image, along with all of the fussy relatives of Nene's brat horde, and Hiro can't say no to free food.
Most of all, Aunt Cass won't stop smiling, which makes Hiro smile, and that's exercise enough for his face.
Summer bleeds into summer quarter, which is more of the same plus more school. There are Big Hero missions and there are shenanigans and Hiro can't remember the last time he was this happy. Genuine happiness, so sorely missed when he entered high school and lost his shiny view of the world, which seems almost out of place with how easy it is.
But it's here and it's real and Hiro talks to Tadashi's shrine every day about this happiness. He misses Tadashi still, he always will, but it's hurting less every time he and the gang go to Tommy Kazan's and Shizu's and Nene's and whatever Taiwanese hole-in-the-wall that Xiaolan drags them to. Fred's own birthday is a huge sleepover event with everyone at his house for a weekend, binging on bad movies and comic discussions and more junk food than even Hiro is aware of. He lies sprawled on the ground, watching the tallest half of the group battle the shortest half in a vicious pillow fighting war, and wishes every day is like this.
When summer quarter ends
with all As, Hiro is vain and proud of himself for having a better cumulative GPA than Tadashi; now it's time to overtake Wasabi's
and the second summer vacation before fall quarter starts, Hiro's dream comes true. Chiyo, Ai and Yue's birthdays are clustered together and take place at the roller rink, where for the best present ever the Big Heroes negotiate their early release from juvie. Chiyo cries, she's so happy, which makes Hiro cry and before the entire group dissolves into a mushy feels pile Nene kicks them all onto the rink. More bruised knees for Baymax to fuss over, especially when Kaori and other surviving Fujitas show up to kick the party into full throttle, and Hiro goes through with getting semi-permanent red streaks in his hair.
Hiro's own birthday, at the edge of the summer season proper, has Aunt Cass in full form. Birthday streamers, party games (even the fun ones, like Cards Against Morality), cake for days and hot sauce for weeks. His presents are either very useful, like Wasabi's gift of a 100 piece wrench set, or very fun, like Gogo's gift of an electromagnetic suspension bike, or very embarrassing, like Sonu's gift of assorted hair clips and sticky glitter lip gloss.
He uses them all, letting Honey and Nene apply the makeup so they can figure out which smol Japanese boy is the cutest in guyliner: Hiro, Junichi or Claudio. Claudio wins by the smallest of margins, since he has the poutiest lips and is the most confident in glitter eyeshadow. Xiaolan points out that only Junichi is full-blooded Japanese so he should win by default, but Fred argues that since they all have Japanese surnames it counts. It doesn't matter anyway, Marys whispers once she gets Hiro alone, since Hiro definitely won and his prize/present from her is much more fun than getting a pie in the face anyway.
It's appropriate to know how to wear eyeliner anyway, after all, since once September rolls around with Nene's own birthday, they go see My Nuclear Romance in the flesh. It's the biggest group yet, since Nene knows people and gives out tickets to sold-out events like they're secondhand candy, so Hiro ends up squished next to Chae-won Kjellberg and Gigi Nguyen in the van ride over. The girls all dress up in wild shades of scene, Gogo and Abigail and Honey all in fishnets because they're adults and can do as they please, and the brat horde in matching miniskirts because they're not adults but can still do as they please.
Marys has four pigtails dipped in red and rainbow converse, and Baymax asks if Hiro needs a defibrillator for his faltering heartbeat. But Hiro's fine, Hiro's more than fine as he screams along with the others pressed against the security railings, and soon it'll be her sweet sixteenth, how fun will that be?
As much fun as Gogo unceremoniously shoving newly thirteen Chae-won at Junichi, because Gogo apparently wants to make up for being slow in her own love life; Hiro approves, since Chae-won is stunningly pretty like her older sister was, and Junichi looks good with a Crayola red blush. Hiro with Marys, Gogo with Abigail, Wasabi with Alex, Chae-won with Junichi, Sonu and Xiaolan both with a heartbreaker Swedish tourist—it's worse than Valentine's Day, and even Nene is pressed rather close to her friend Elio by the end.
Hiro's ears ring now and then for the rest of that vacation, where everything is loud and fast and burns away the lingering hurts in his stomach. Before the year ends they still have Marys, Priscilla, Junichi and Claudio's birthdays to attend to, along with Thanksgiving, Christmas, general holiday cheer…summer ends but Hiro is still riding high.
When fall quarter comes with its own stress, Hiro is well prepared. He even checks his spam mailbox in his SFIT email, and
n0h's been messaging him since the end of spring quarter, always with the same message.
Hiro ignores it, up until the day that Abigail pulls him out of an acoustics elective class with a face too pale and says with a voice too tight, "Claudio and Sana are in the hospital."
Sana never heard it coming. She's deaf, and the car sped behind her too quickly for her to feel or see; Claudio saw it happen too late, and when he caught her body when it fell from the car's hood, it just so happened that the car's best friend ran into him too.
The police blame the drag racers that terrorize the streets around San Fransoyko State, Fred agrees that there's a serious problem with terrible drivers with worse morals, and the doctors say that there's a chance that neither of them will wake up again.
Hiro sits in the waiting room, paralyzed with hurt because this can't be happening, he can't lose anyone else, not when he just made these friends and they still had a birthday to celebrate, he just can't do it—
he offers his nanobots to the doctors, hoping that they can help in any way, and the head surgeon wonders if they can use the nanobots to construct Claudio's missing arm, Sana's crushed skull. Hiro breathes a small sigh of hope, because maybe no one has to die this time.
When he goes home that night and checks his emails, there's a new message: "I look forward to working with you! Your work will take us to many exciting places! :) :D :D"
Hiro feels a chill roll down his back, like Tadashi's hands on his shoulders, and decides to talk to Abigail about this in the morning.
had he known what was coming, he would've tracked n0h down that second
he would've, he should've, he could've, all unactions that will haunt him in the years to come
lol that is the worst chapter i've ever written
if you're lost on who is in this chapter, go touch up on the last series of drabbles; it's been a while, i don't blame you