Fly Soup, or the Stoutland Chronicles
Chapter Three
"You're really coming along well on your project," Tadashi said. "I think You should really spend some time with Honey Lemon, play a board game or something together, to celebrate. You know, one on one with a future fellow pupil at San Fransokyo University. I think you'd enjoy it."
"Yeah, me spending time with your Hispanic girlfriend would go over quite well."
"She's not my girlfriend."
"She would be if you'd go out with her, I think."
"I'm not ready to ask her anywhere. She's my friend."
"She could ask you," Hiro said, punching in a final formula on his computer keyboard.
"I wish she would, it's be a lot easier for me," Tadashi said.
"I wouldn't have thought you'd be afraid of rejection, bro."
"After Abigail? What can you expect? The worst thing would be if Honey Lemon and I started dating and then began fighting. It would make things tense in the nerd lab if we broke up."
"Which is why you're obsessed with a pair of Norwegian princesses."
"Hey, you know that Anna would take you," Tadashi said, rumpling Hiro's hair. "She'd fall in love with you two seconds flat. And Elsa, well…at least a girl who is long dead can't reject me."
"No, she can't. And neither can Vanellope Von Schweets."
"Oh come on, Hiro. I haven't played Sugar Rush: Teenage Racers since I was your age. And Elsa is a ton more attractive than Vanellope. Especially given that everyone first knew Vanellope as an eight-year-old."
"So you with Elsa, and I with Anna."
"Yes, that's exactly how it would happen, if time-travel was ever invented."
"Yeah, like that would ever happen."
"It could, with that big brain of yours."
"I doubt I would ever need to make time-travel an actuality."
"If your date with Honey Lemon doesn't go well, you might," Tadashi said.
"I don't have a date with her."
"You're playing a board game with her. That's a date."
"I never agreed to—" Hiro began, but his computer beeped to let him know he had an e-mail.
Tadashi read the e-mail over Hiro's shoulder. It was from Honey Lemon, asking if he'd play Fix-It Felix Hammerworks with her.
"I always did love that game," Hiro said. "Never gets old."
"Then play it with her. A girl can make board games ten times more fun. Especially one as breathtaking as Honey Lemon."
"She's not Elsa."
"No, nor Anna for you. But until some genius invents time-travel, you're stuck with girls in the present."
"All right, I'll play that game with Honey Lemon. Though what will you be doing while that is going on, bro? I notice she doesn't say you're going to be there."
"I've got a date with a Norwegian princess," Tadashi said, cryptically. He placed his motorcycle helmet on his head, and was out the door in a flash.
"Must be going to a historical convention to dance with a cosplayer," Hiro said, though Tadashi hadn't taken any costumes with him. He assumed they would be provided by the convention.
He went to Google Plus Max to search for the nerd convention he was sure Tadashi had headed to. Sure enough, there was one in San Fransokyo scheduled for that day. The sponsor's page showed a guy dressed as Napoleon Bonaparte getting ready to lock lips with a rather buxom Pocahontas.
"Weird. Only nerds cosplay as historical figures," Hiro muttered to himself. "And Tadashi is going to go kiss a girl dressed like Elsa, while I'm expected to girlsit Honey Lemon. If he likes her so much, why doesn't he ask her out instead of harping over a long dead queen of Norway?"
He let his thoughts wander for a bit, before deciding to test his microbots more before Honey Lemon came to the café, for that's where Honey wanted to play the game…it would be weird with Aunt Cass hanging around, but it would help Hiro think of it as a friend thing and not a boy-girl thing…