There was utter silence on the south-side docks of San Fransokyo, where three friends intent on stopping a bioelectric weapon with a dolly full of electromagnetic discs tucked away in a boat. The plan was to draw the worms into the lower deck and, once it was in there, cut holes in the hull and sink the boat with it inside. Hiro kept Baymax floating in the water on one side of the boat while Wasabi hid near a storage crate on the dock, waiting to sweep in once the worms took the bait. GoGo.
Wasabi peeked around the corner and tapped on the metal for Hiro to hear. GoGo was coming down the street, fast, a blurry grey blob following behind her and short circuiting the streetlights as it passed. Just as Wasabi feared from Fred's videos, Tess was getting stronger. But GoGo was still faster than it and that's all that they needed to get ahead of it. Wasabi watched GoGo speed towards the dock on her discs as he hammered the metal container he hid behind.
GoGo leaped and curled her legs underneath her, throwing her weight into a front flip over the edge of the dock. She nearly completely finished her flip when she passed over the boat and Baymax's soft body caught her. She looked up to Hiro and he smiled at the success of the first phase of the plan. He grabbed Tomago's hand and pulled her onto Baymax's back with him.
Wasabi watched as the grey blob pounded against the side of the boat, a gentle rock slowing its momentum as it scurried inside with a noise like metal raking against metal. It made his skin cringe. He waited a minute, giving the creature time to explore the boat and discover the bait naturally enough that it couldn't escape once it was sinking.
"Go," Wasabi nodded and Hiro locked his hands into Baymax's back, pushing forward his armor covered arms and holding the boat steady as Wasabi turned on his plasma blades and punctured the steel exterior. A shrill noise as metal rapidly melted and steam arose from the boat. The boat started to wobble and, as Baymax let go of the side, started to sink all on its own. Hiro's breath caught. Christ. It was going to work.
"Fuck!" Wasabi shouted and Hiro's smile dropped dead. Immediately, he brought Baymax around the boat, using the wings as paddles at his sides. Before Baymax even made it to the edge of the dock, Hiro and GoGo jumped off of his back to get to Wasabi as fast as they could.
As fast as they could wasn't fast enough.
A fluid rod of the worms shot outward from the hole in the side of the boat, impaling Wasabi's shoulder and wrapping around his body wildly. GoGo gripped a disc on her forearm and threw it at the worms, slicing through it and dropping Wasabi from the edge of the dock and into the water. He started screaming in agony and GoGo sprung towards him, reaching a hand out to pull him out of the water but Hiro grabbed her and yanked her away from the edge.
"What the fuck is wrong with you!?" GoGo barked, slapping Hiro with the back of her hand to force him to let go.
Hiro recoiled and grabbed at GoGo's waist to stop her from going any further. "The worms' made their connection! The water is conducting the electricity! You can't touch him!"
GoGo breathed heavily, a panic overwhelming her and forcing her to dart to the boat. She grabbed ropes and threw them into the water for Wasabi to grab onto.
"Wasabi!" She cried. "Grab onto the rope! Please! We can pull you out of there!"
Wasabi stared straight at her with wide eyes. His whole body was tensed, even his jaw was clamped tight, baring his teeth, bloody from biting through his tongue. He slowly started sinking, bubbles popping as the air in his lungs left between the gaps in his teeth, slowly being replaced by water. Fish started to float upwards from the water and rest on the surface. GoGo's eyes pleaded with what she saw but nothing could change what had happened.
Wasabi was dead.
The rest of the worms lunged from within the boat, pouring onto the dock and rearing for Baymax as he awkwardly climbed out of the water. Hiro rolled out of the way as another lengthy extension of the creature spiraled out and punctured through Baymax's exposed torso. Of all the days to remove any part of his armor. Quickly, he started deflating. Hiro ran to his protector and slid to the microchip ports on his chest. He tapped the ring and the port opened. Two chips were in Baymax at the time: the combat chip that Hiro had made to turn Baymax into a fighting machine and the chip simply labeled Tadashi Hamada.
"I'm satisfied with my care!" Hiro shouted as he plucked the green Tadashi chip and held it tightly in his hand. Looking up to the worm's lance, he flinched to the sight of GoGo's disc slicing through it again. She caught the disc as it bounced back to her and leaped at the worm, roaring in a fury Hiro had never seen from her before. Another disc cut Baymax's deactivated body from the worms. GoGo jumped gymnastically onto the dock, catching the disc in her other hand and preparing to throw her weapons yet again.
"I hate you!" She barked at Tess and the creature averted its attention to her and her discs. She spun out of the way of a thin strike and rolled forward to avoid a second before flinging the disc again and bouncing it off of the stack of storage units, slicing into the beast on the way back to her hand. Her eyes widened at the units and she looked to Hiro. "The crates! Trap it in the crates!"
Hiro's eyes left hers and moved frantically to find an opportunity begging to be taken. Adrenaline pumping in his veins started the sprint towards the crate that he had told Wasabi to hide behind when the plan was to lie in waiting. The new plan was to stop this monstrosity from killing any more of his friends. It had taken three people from him. One was too many.
He mapped out the whole thing in his head. He'd open the double doors on both sides so that half of it was open and the rest was shut. Once GoGo had gone through it, he would shut his side on Tess. GoGo would shut the door behind her to make sure it didn't get out. It would work. It had to. It was all they had, now.
GoGo performed a backflip off of the management building façade, forcing the sack of worms to crash into the structure before turning around and continuing its heated chase with her. She saw Hiro doing his work on the cargo crate and immediately started to line herself up to loop around and into it. She would be the bait this time, since the damn thing seemed to enjoy fucking up her life so much. It would be hell before she dare let anything happen to Tadashi's little brother. She was going to make up for the deaths of her closest friends by saving his life along with all the people of San Fransokyo who had no idea what Tess even existed.
She slipped on the wet concrete and reacted as rapidly as she could, placing one of her forearm discs on the ground to slide along her calf and cut a wide arch with her speed to thread herself through the figurative needle's eye of the storage unit's door. She rocked herself back onto the blades of her roller discs and charged for the target, watching Hiro on the door.
In a blink, she zipped through the door and, in the next instance, the creature followed hotly behind. She scraped to a stop and slammed the door shut on her end, hearing a subsequent slam as the momentum of the magnetic monster mashed against the inside of the door, fighting to get through it. Hiro locked his side and quickly rounded the container to check up on his friend.
GoGo held her head low as she panted, holding the door with her whole weight. She looked up at him with a soft smile. He sighed and sat down, tears already flowing from his face. Finally, they could report the damn thing or just toss it. The latter really tempted him. Just fucking throw it into the ocean and never, ever, have to worry about it again. Mourn their friends. Stay together. Understand each other better. Be finished with the responsibility of being a hero or, if they chose to do so, keep up this hectic, dangerous life. For the first time in what felt like a long time, despite being two days, Hiro felt like they were back in control of their lives.
GoGo's eyes widened and she fell to the ground, gripping her leg. Hiro jumped back. The worms had made it part-way through the door just as GoGo was closing it and had a hard hold of the discus there. She looked up to Hiro in utter fright and Hiro's heart rate peaked again. He grabbed at GoGo's hands and pulled her as hard as he could, finding little grip under his boots and heavy resistance to her freedom. GoGo started grunting as the worms couldn't extend outward from the doors, nor drag her through the pinched sliver of a gap between them. It was going to compromise and break her whole body to get her in there, starting with her leg. And Tess wasn't going to stop there, apparent from the worms that started to crawl up her arms.
Hiro looked at the Tadashi chip in his hand and kneeled to GoGo, pulling at the flexible fabric between the metal plated armor she wore and using the sharper corner of the chip to puncture the weave. He cut along her neck line, the largest opening in the armor between her shoulders. She wriggled under the worms' grapple on her and looked up to Hiro in fearful confusion. Hiro wormed his fingers under her suit, the leather tipped fingers of his gloves on her sweating skin.
"Remember what Fred said at Kreitech?" Hiro heaved. "It's a suit."
GoGo's eyes widened and she grinned, biting her lip and writhing her fingers free from the metal plated gloves' internal grip. First out was her left arm and she used it to pull her right arm free from the suit. She wrestled her torso out of the suit and slipped out of the electromagnetic disc skates like they were loose shoes. Her hips and ass took some work to get out of the hole intended for her neck's mobility but, once they were free, Hiro was able to pull GoGo out of her power suit.
Sweating, she adjusted her bra strap to keep what little clothes she wore underneath the suit on her body in the vaguely chilly night air. The two of them breathed heavily and stared at Tess as it struggled to bring the electromagnetic discs on GoGo's suit into the crate with it. Clangs of metal on metal echoed off the water with each attempt to pull the suit past the doors and, soon, a sad sounding screech whimpered from within.
Hiro blinked for a minute. He understood what it was, now. Why the worms didn't take the bait in the boat once Wasabi punctured it. Why Honey was attacked in the lab. Why Fred couldn't keep it contained in the beginning of everything.
Tess was a glutton.
A glutton who got used to the electric energy that Fred fed it and went out in search for more. It killed Fred for the electromagnetic current he held just from his overexposure to the magnetic pole he had created to contain it. It killed Honey because of the electron absorbing foam that stuck onto her. Then, when it had a bowl of electromagnetic discs to itself and Wasabi interrupted, it was certain it could attain even more.
And now, it was trapped in the dark, food in its grasp, and completely incapable of absorbing it - of becoming one with its electromagnetic energy.
Hiro took GoGo's hand and lead her away from the scene, keeping in the shadows to make sure she didn't feel too exposed in this public situation. Based on GoGo's exhaustion, Hiro could tell she didn't seem to care who saw her, so long as she got far away from the docks to finally have her moment about Wasabi just as she had about Honey and Fred. Hiro supported her with his shoulder and, for the first time, they felt like a single entity, alone in the dark. Not Big Hero 6 but, rather, something completely different, more functional and healthy, tried and true.
Alone.
But whole.
As one.