GoGo watched the video closely. Flames shot out the windows of the building for a while before Honey came in, metal heels screeching against the pavement to stop her sprint. The camera got shake-y for a bit before refocusing on Honey's latest invention, a chrome plated rifle of some sort with a bulb of what appeared to be plexiglass as the stock. Inside the bulb, GoGo could see a hose stretching between the gun and her bubble producing bag. Pale blue bubbles popped out of the bag and filled the bulb and awaited to be fired from the rifle in Honey's hands. The bubbles fired with the pull of a handle and replaced the flames in each window with white foam that poured onto the streets.
The clip flicked to a reporter sitting at a desk and staring intently into the camera, furrowing her brow and reading her cue cards in total seriousness.
"San Fransokyo has been saved several times by the members of the team that referred to themselves after the Kreitech University incident as 'Big Hero Six'. They come from nowhere spouting technology we can only imagine and rescue citizens in danger. But their recent successes call into question the reality that poses a threat to you and your family." A new image replaced Honey's beside the anchorwoman's head. It was a still from a reporter's camera that captured their spectacle at Kreitech three months ago. "Tonight, channel seventeen will discuss the mysteries behind the vigilantes that fight against technological terrorism using technologies of their own in Eleven/Eleven's 'With Fire', at eleven. The time is nine fifteen and today, a new shipment of…"
The reporter babbled on about some other subject, obviously less stern than the previous topic based on her dramatic and quick vocal transgression. Surely, something Fred did was the cause of the fire and, just as surely, Honey's success didn't make up for it. The public didn't like what they were seeing. They were scaring more people than they were saving and it needed to change. Fast. If Fred started that fire and Honey put it out, it'll look suspicious and god knew what was being talked about tonight at eleven on Eleven/Eleven.
"Shit," GoGo cursed under her breath as she closed the video app on her phone and opened an empty text and addressed it to Wasabi. Her fingers started into their motions but hovered over the keys for a moment as she hesitated. A moment passed and she looked up from her screen. She was certain something had happened just then. Something in the corner of her eye.
She hated that her attentiveness wasn't good enough to pick up on things like that. Sometimes, Hiro and Baymax would fly over the city and she wouldn't notice until he was further ahead on the horizon. How she didn't see their shadows on the city floor was unthinkable but it needed to be improved upon. Of course, now, she was starting to overcompensate and think something was there when, in reality, it was nothing at all. She returned her stare to her phone and started to blow a bubble from her gum. She pinched the gum and brought the bubble past her lips and cradled it in her teeth.
Pop.
Then she saw it.
Out of the corner of her eye, GoGo saw a flash of soft grey, springing from the alleyway she stood across the street from. Instinctively, she flinched in reaction, jerking her whole body away from the road where slippery tendrils swiped widely at the electromagnet blades on her feet. The people on the sidewalk in the street panicked in different ways, some screaming at the sudden fright, others simply darting away from the strange and unidentifiable thing. The tendrils started retreating to the darkness of the alleyway again and GoGo swore at herself for doubting her senses.
She bent at her knees and pressed her wrists against the insides of her golden yellow boots, the magnetic wristbands she wore pulled off the detachable metal cuffs. A flick of her wrists and the cuffs locked onto her forearms. She threw her arms over her shoulders and into her backpack, feeling the magnetic catch of her discs click onto her gauntlets and pulled herself to a fighting stance mere moments before the tendrils launched out of the alleyway again, striking higher this time.
GoGo leaped forward, curling her body under the tendrils and springing up on the other side of the street with a spin. She used her momentum to toss a discus at the form and watched it plow through the flesh with ease. Scratching to a halt on the sidewalk, GoGo took a longer look at the peculiar creature. It oozed a translucent fluid that encased its entire grey body, consisting of what had to be a million individual wormlike organisms woven together and moving as one. The end of the worm sack that struck before had been hit by the disc, severing the tendrils there. GoGo's eyes widened as the cut parts of the creature didn't die but, rather, wriggled on the ground on their own.
The fleshy cords sprung for GoGo's legs and she bounded up to the building beside her, digging one foot's disc blade into the brick and stepping up with the other until her altitude was acceptable. She pushed away from the wall and took her second disc from her arm, throwing it expertly through the creature's stretched length. The tendrils tore again, like a plasma knife through butter. But the sliced worms redirected upwards and straight for GoGo's boot. She coiled and retreated her limbs away from her enemy, rolling in time to land on her feet back on the other side of the street.
She gripped the first disc she threw, lodged in the concrete of an apartment building, and yanked it free. The creature reared and morphed itself with the second, severed half that wriggled chaotically, forming a much shorter but much thicker weave of worms. GoGo pressed the disc blade against the wall and spun herself where she stood, forcing the disc on her arm to spin as well and become a toothless saw of her golden fury. With one swift motion, she raised a leg and thrust away from the wall, spinning like a low torpedo through the air towards the worms, spinning blade extended to slice yet again.
The worm caught and encompassed the blade, smaller worms flying out of the clear slime bag that contained them until the blade stopped rotating and GoGo's attack was rendered futile. She tugged her arm out of the gauntlet and fell back onto the curb. The creature quickly gathered itself and slithered into the alleyway from whence it came. GoGo snarled and ran forward, grabbing the disc it left on the floor, covered in mucus, and threw it into the alley.
A direct hit sent the worms into a writhing panic, dropping the disc inside it and cowering up the walls away from her and out of the alley. She spat her gum at one of the worms that attempted to escape past her as she stepped into the alleyway to get her weapons back. She narrowed her eyes in suspicion as she picked up the first blade.
This wasn't a dangerous alleyway. She and Fred always came down around this place to meet their weed dealer. GoGo knew the alley like the back of her hand and, yet, now she was anything but easy about it. Some strange alien thing had crawled out of it to attack her without explanation and, just as suddenly as it appeared, it briskly made its way out of the scene. She chewed her cheek with her molars as she reached down for the second disc blade and looked up to an ungodly sight.
Fred's suit laid in a pile of trash, like the guy was just relaxing on a beanbag chair at his massive estate. Except, GoGo knew that wasn't the case. The suit was damaged. A lot. Scorch marks covered its hands and melted the plastic brim where the monster's head met the chest. The head, however, was gone. It appeared to be cut off from the rest of the body, in a near perfect and clean cut, save for the gallon or two of mucus that covered it. The suit's stench was putrid.
GoGo gulped and peered into the suit only to immediately regret even thinking about it. She pressed a hand against the wall of the alley and held herself up for a moment before letting her disc blades roll from under her weight and put her on her knees across from the trashed suit. She could feel vomit boil up into her throat, threatening to pour over if she dared look again. Her breaths were raspy, taken from her by the sight she unmistakably saw.
The suit wasn't empty.
She bowed her chin to her neck and shut her eyes for a long time before fleeing the alleyway on her blades, texting as she skated.
To: WASABI
Subject: The Fire
IT WASN'T FRED