"This isn't a good idea, GoGo," Hiro assured as he stood outside the alleyway. The sidewalk was sticky with residue that glinted in the moonlight when he lifted his feet. The only noise aside from their hushed arguing on the long abandoned street was GoGo's bubble gum popping. Wasabi did everything within his power to avoid making contact with the parts of the ground that GoGo explained what happened. Call it paranoia. He called it safety.

"Would you rather go look yourself?" GoGo asked, staring straight ahead and into the pitch black void of light that swallowed the gap between the buildings.

Hiro clenched his fingers into his palms, digging nails into skin as he contemplated the idea. If something were to happen in there, Baymax might not be as efficient without him commanding him directly. Protocol could only work so well with fighting. Based on what GoGo described, Baymax had never encountered something quite like it. His computing might haywire with the combined programming for attack as well as the programming for nursing the deathless creature to health.

But he certainly didn't want to go in there and see what GoGo claimed to be true.

He took a deep breath and turned to her. "Slap me in the face."

GoGo's brow furrowed and she looked down at the fourteen year old. She couldn't hit Tadashi's brother. That would be like hitting Tadashi. Or like hitting his brother. Or like hitting Hiro. She couldn't do any of those things, not even now. To maintain her cool and bitchy front, GoGo turned immediately to Wasabi and slapped him across the nose, evoking a squealed 'ow' from the man.

The lights on Hiro's suitcase glowed to life and the box unfolded and expanded at certain points to reveal Baymax in his armored status. Hiro had been working on the portable armor get-up for a long time. Lots of configuring the charging station to house metal sheets thin enough to be concealed in a large suitcase but thick enough to protect the artificially soft skin underneath.

Baymax stood tall and awkwardly, raising a hand and rotating it in a single circle before stating aloud, "Hello! I am Baymax. I was alerted to your distress when you said-," it was here that GoGo and Hiro had to muffle their laughter as Wasabi's girlish screech replayed from Baymax's speakers. "How may I be of service?"

"Baymax," Hiro coughed into seriousness at the situation's depth, commanding, "there might be a sick patient in that alleyway. I want you to scan him and come back with whatever information you acquire."

Baymax's emotionless face looked to the alleyway and his body rotated underneath it, marching forward with wide, loud strides. Hiro bit his lip as he heard the all too familiar sound of scanning being done in the dark. Wasabi started shaking, attempting to remember what his last words to Fred were. If Fred was dead, he'd feel guilty for everything he'd ever said or done to him. GoGo was pinching her elbows with her hands, arms crossed over her chest to keep tight to her what she felt about losing a longtime friend like Fred.

Baymax slowly returned, long strides punctuated by equally long pauses as he calculated each movement to avoid scraping his body or his armor on the walls of the buildings beside him. The wait increased the anticipation. Baymax stood at the threshold of the alleyway and looked down at Hiro.

"The patient in the alleyway was unresponsive. Scans indicated a zero beats per minute heart rate and a brainwave scan displays unrecognized neural activity," Baymax concluded.

Hiro looked up to GoGo. She wasn't even trying to appear cool and aloof anymore. She was simply devastated. Her head hung low and her eyes were shut tight as her face bared a grimace of remorse. Hiro gulped and looked at Baymax.

"Baymax…" He inhaled sharply. "…display scan photo documents."

Baymax's screen revealed itself from within his chest, bright in contrast with the night and certainly visible from the windows across the street. Night vision enhanced images showed Wasabi and Hiro something of what GoGo had seen earlier, a mangled monster suit with no head on it, the seams where the head had to have been attached completely melted together. The sticky residue from the floor coated the clean cut in the suit's design, reflecting some of the light off of the street. It mixed with the darker fluid inside the suit, keeping it moist enough to identify even through the monochromic photo.

"There's just…" GoGo shuddered, "…no fucking head…"

Wasabi wretched, leaned over and began to vomit onto the street, bent nearly clear in half and holding his stomach. Hiro's heart pounded in his chest. Even when his brother died, he'd never seen anything like this. Nothing so…disturbing.

"I'm satisfied with my care," Hiro muttered and Baymax started to deflate, his metal sheet plates sliding against one another and locking into place where they belonged within the confines of Tadashi's former suitcase. There was a still and stagnant silence among them, broken only by littered paper dragged against the concrete sidewalk by the wind. Finally, Hiro turned away from the alley.

"I don't care what caused that fire," Hiro looked down the road. The city went on forever it seemed, lined with buildings full of people with cars and jobs and families. And lives. Lives that Hiro had, though unspoken, promised to himself he would protect. Fred was a person. With a car. With a family. With a life. "I want to know what all this is about and stop it before it becomes something too big to handle. One life is too many and god knows what else its done out there."

Wasabi spat the last of the nasty taste from his mouth. "Whatever it is."

"Wasabi," Hiro pointed at him, "I want you to find Honey. If she can stop a raging fire, she might be able to stop this thing. We can use her chemical knowledge to fight it."

"I'll check around the campus first," Wasabi nodded. "Last I saw her, she was trying to utilize electromagnetized electrons to create a special kind of covalent molecular bond. Or something like that. It's hard to tell what she's talking about sometimes. I'll find her."

GoGo stepped forward and jabbed a thumb into her chest. "I'm going after that thing."

"Absolutely not," Hiro crossed his arms.

She narrowed her eyes at him but his stare was unwavering.

"You narrowly escaped that thing last time, you said so yourself," he annotated. "You research any scientific reports that mention anything about worms or mutilated subjects. The more we know going into battle with this, the better. I'll go after it and supply myself the aerial advantage."

"I tried that," GoGo shook her head, "it nearly gobbled me up. Cutting through its collective body was the best way to stun it, even if only temporarily and the sharpest thing on Baymax is his wings. There goes the aerial advantage all together."

Wasabi leered at the slime trails leading into the alleyway and gulped.

"In that case, I'll go after it," he announced. "My plasma blades are attached to me so they're not getting stolen and I can set up some traps using the string plasma slicers back at the Geek Lab."

Hiro and GoGo glanced at Wasabi and nodded to each other.

"I'll find Honey, then," GoGo confirmed.

Hiro patted Baymax's casing. "I'll do some homework."

Wasabi clapped his hands and rubbed his palms together.

"Now we're acting like a hero squad."