-Back inside the Lucky Cat Café-

After Gogo disappeared out the door with his brother, Hiro was soon busy again. The couple in the corner had decided they were going to have a late lunch instead of just a snack, and the man wanted the coffee that could only be made by the machine Hiro and Wasabi had just 'fixed'. Not only was it the loudest and most obnoxious machine to work with, but it also had a tendency to go completely haywire at any given moment.

Hiro had taken it apart and reassembled it multiple times, but simply could not figure out what was wrong with it. He would have gotten rid of it, but it was one of Aunt Cass's machines, and he wanted everything to be as similar as possible if—no, when she woke up and got back to work. Also, try as he might, he couldn't recall her ever having problems running it. It was probably an issue with him.

Sending a silent command to the machine- work like you're supposed to, just once, gosh darn it- as if it would do any good, Hiro turned it on and set it for the man's order. The loud grinding noise of it starting up signaled that it was going to behave, for now anyway. While the coffee was being prepared, Hiro had time to let his mind wander. Something Honey Lemon had told him while the other three were upstairs had him wondering and slightly worrying.

Why hadn't he noticed the marks? Sure, there hadn't been a time recently when he had seen Tadashi's back, but he felt like he should have somehow known, through brother instincts, or something. Why hadn't Baymax picked up on them when he had scanned him earlier? Or maybe he had, and hadn't told him. If so, why hadn't he notified him? Something like this had to be important.

Of course, it had taken some prompting to find out about Tadashi's other changes. As if having him back alive wasn't enough, though he was much younger, Tadashi had come back with hollow bones and a higher body temperature. Now these markings were revealed, and Hiro had to wonder what else he didn't know about his returned brother. He'd have to look into it more when he had a spare moment.

The quieting of the coffeemaker and a small ding brought him out of his musings. Hiro took the order to its appropriate table, and returned to the counter. He glanced at the door just in time to see Gogo walk through it with Tadashi trailing behind her, as if trying to hide himself from Hiro's view. That didn't bode well.

Hiro looked up at the clock to be certain, but it only verified what he'd thought. "You guys were gone for like, five minutes."

"Yeah, um, Hiro?" At Gogo's uncertainty, Hiro felt fear tighten his chest. Gogo never looked uncertain... unless there was a very good reason. "I think you might want to see this." She gestured to the back room, intending to lead them there to avoid making a scene. His thought processes stopped when Hiro noticed Gogo's hand.

"I-is that blood?"

Gogo realized her mistake and went into crisis aversion mode before Hiro's worry became fully-fledged panic.

"We're both fine, Hiro." She took a firm grasp of his upper arm with her clean hand and led him to the back room, setting him down on a supplies crate. "Neither of us are hurt, you can even ask Baymax." As she said this, the robot finally caught up to the group. "Or see for yourself."

Gogo reached behind her and used a hand to the back of Tadashi's head to guide him into Hiro's view for inspection. A quick onceover and Hiro reached towards the bloodied hole over Tadashi's knee, thinking to himself that Gogo's definition of fine and his definition of fine must be very different things. However, he couldn't seem to find the injury, or even, apart from the blood itself, any redness to indicate a scrape.

"Baymax, scan him," Hiro ordered.

"He already has." Tadashi had finally spoken up, getting over his own initial shock. He set unlaced skates on the ground next to him and pulled up his pants leg until it was over his knee. "There's no injury. At least, not anymore..."

"Not anymore?" Hiro was desperately trying to process this information, but he felt like he was missing some key piece that would make it understandable. "What happened? I want every last detail."

"Well," Tadashi shifted slightly, reaching for the brim of a hat he no longer wore, trying to think of some way to phrase what happened that wouldn't throw Gogo under the metaphorical bus. "I put on my skates and helmet, and Gogo went to the end of the hill so I wouldn't go flying into the street." He generously left out the instances of his protests.

"I was almost to her, but I lost my balance and my leg came out from underneath me, scraping on the sidewalk. She did catch me, so I wasn't hurt worse. Um… I sat down, and by the time Baymax got to us, he scanned me and I wasn't hurt anymore." Tadashi shrugged. "The end."

Gogo rolled her eyes at the barebones explanation. "That wasn't everything that happened, and you know it."

Tadashi was confused for a moment. Did she want him to tell Hiro that he hadn't wanted to go down the hill? Then he realized what she was referring to.

"Oh, uh, I cried. Just a bit." Tadashi chewed on his lower lip. Hiro wanted details, so he supposed he would give him details. "I mean, it was enough that I got tears on my knee, so maybe it was more than just a bit... Then Baymax scanned me, said I wasn't hurt, and Gogo wiped at the blood to check, so that's why it's on her hand."

He paused for a moment, trying to think of anything else. "I think that's everything." He looked to Gogo, who nodded, satisfied with the story, though she had something to add.

"Also, though I doubt he could see it himself, Tadashi's eyes were bright orange right before he started crying. I'm not talking about a trick of the light or glare from the sun orange either. This was some colored contacts unnatural orange."

Hiro looked like he was considering something, fiddling with the edge of his sleeve like he did when he was lost in thought. He knew exactly what she was talking about, and he could picture it clearly. He'd seen it before, back in the hospital room. Right when Tadashi had been close to tears.

"Baymax, scan him again, specifically the skin of the previously injured knee. Bring up everything you find on the screen, whether you deem it 'important' or not." He'd really need to work on the issue of Baymax withholding information.

"Scan complete. Displaying results now." A list of components appeared on Baymax's stomach. The alphabetically organized compounds were grouped and named for better understanding. Hiro skimmed through the list, past asphalt, blood, foreign skin cells attributed to Gogo, and normal components of skin, to a listed compound with no name. Hiro pointed to it.

"So, what about this one?"

"This substance is not in my database. However, it contains cell information similar in many aspects to that found in a non-specific embryotic stem cell, indicating regenerative properties."

Bingo. Hiro had one more thing he wanted to check before he could be absolutely sure.

"Baymax, scan the substance on Gogo's hand and check for a matching compound to the unidentified one."

There was a beat of silence, before: "Scan complete. There is a match." Baymax pulled up a similar list next to the previous one, highlighting the compound in both. Hiro was certain now.

"Okay. So whatever it was wiped off easily and was introduced after the injury, but before Gogo made contact. Also, looking at what was found on Tadashi and Gogo's skin, there is a distinct lack of lacritin, a main component of tears –and saliva, but that's not important. So this mystery regenerative substance must have been what he cried, and what healed him." Hiro sat back, looking very pleased with himself.

Gogo didn't look impressed. "So his tears healed his wound. I could have guessed that."

"But could you have proved it?" Hiro snarked back.

Tadashi tuned them out, retreating into his own thoughts. So... his tears, except they weren't even really tears, at least not normal tears, had healed him.

Could he do it again? Except, he didn't feel like crying. In fact, he was surprised he had cried earlier. He didn't recall being particularly prone to do so, unless there was a very good reason, but maybe being five made it easier.

Did the healing work on just him? Could he use it on other people? Could he even control it? He hadn't really been aiming for his knee, it just sort of happened. Could he extract it? Or would the effects wear off?

"Earth to Tadashi, come in Tadashi." Hiro waved a hand in front of Tadashi's face, startling him and effectively derailing his train of thought.

"Hm? What were you saying?"

Hiro chuckled; when Tadashi was preoccupied, he was completely oblivious to his surroundings, which had made for some interesting pranks in the past. He wouldn't notice what was going on until it was far too late.

"Gogo and I were wondering what you wanted to do about this. I mean, it's your tears or whatever." Hiro shrugged.

"Oh." Tadashi blinked, sorting his thoughts into something semi-coherent. "I was wondering if I could do it again, or force it to happen, somehow… and if it might work on other people." He'd first need to find out what exactly was necessary to activate the ability.

"I figured you would say something like that. Hey, Gogo. Do you think-" Hiro was cut off when Gogo's phone went off. Her messaging alert was something of a mix between an air raid siren and dubstep, and could not be missed or ignored.

Digging it out of her pocket and checking the incoming message, she let out a string of curses through clenched teeth that had no place around a five year old. Of course, Tadashi had already heard them all before, and was amused at the creativity of their arrangement.

"Of course, they can't handle a single thing going wrong." Shoving her phone back into her pocket, Gogo headed for the door. "Their timing, I swear. You two better tell me anything you find out, I gotta go."

"Wait, don't you want your—" But she was already gone. "Helmet?" Tadashi lowered the arm he had raised to gather up the helmet that had been set next to his skates.

"She'll be fine." Hiro didn't seem concerned enough to Tadashi, but he supposed there wasn't really anything he could do now. There was no way he could catch up to her, especially since he didn't know where she was going.

Baymax and Tadashi headed upstairs while Hiro went back into the café and collected the bills from the indecisive, but clearly happy, couple and the bored looking red headed guy sitting near the window. Once they had all filed out, Hiro changed the sign on the door to 'Closed' and locked up. There were only a few small 'closing time' tasks that he could do in his sleep to finish before he joined Tadashi upstairs.

"I guess it's a good thing you went shopping today." Hiro gestured at Tadashi's torn jeans, before starting his computer and pulling up a search engine.

"If I hadn't been shopping, I wouldn't have the roller skates in the first place." Tadashi was sitting on his own bed, with his shoes off and a large white teddy bear clutched in his arms. Hiro remembered Honey Lemon having mentioned getting it for him, but he had forgotten until just then. It was cute, and suitable for the whole five year old image that Tadashi probably needed to keep up to avoid too much suspicion.

"Don't get blood on the sheets," Hiro cautioned as he turned back to the screen, wondering what he would even need to type to find what he was looking for. There was plenty to describe, but search engines were notorious for giving you exactly what you didn't need.

"It comes out with dish soap," Tadashi pointed out, feeling reluctant to do much of anything after the adrenalin crash.

Hiro didn't even spare a glance backwards, and found himself very nearly quoting his own brother from 'before.' "Only if you want to scrub it. Just change into some new jeans."

Hearing movement and guessing that Tadashi was taking his suggestion, Hiro just decided to type in what he knew and see what came up. How bad could it really be?

The words 'hollow bones high temperature healing tears' resulted in a whole bunch of medical articles, but none of them applied to Tadashi's state. There weren't any results when he paired the words like they were supposed to be, but he wasn't really surprised. Trying something else, he added 'fire' to his search query, leaving out 'high temperature', since that only seemed to draw up medical pages on fevers.

The results were varied, but a single word caught his eye, reminding him of the long string of theories Fred had rambled off on the first night he had reintroduced Tadashi to the group. He had been particularly adamant about this one, so maybe...

Hiro figured it couldn't hurt to know a bit of lore on it, and cleared his search bar, typing in the word 'Phoenix'. On the results page, he scrolled past the mentions of the state capital and followed the link for Phoenix (Mythology). Reading the first line, and then rereading it just to be sure, Hiro couldn't help but laugh a bit in disbelief.

No. Freaking. Way.

Tadashi had finished dressing and looked over when he heard slightly hysterical laughter build up from Hiro's side of the room. Mildly concerned, he padded over to where Hiro was seated.

"Hiro? What's so funny?" Tadashi looked up at the screen, trying to determine what could have made Hiro- "Oh." Oh.

Hiro began to recite: "'Obtaining new life by rising from the ashes of its former self, the phoenix is typically depicted as a fiery bird. A remarkable aspect, apart from its natural ability to control its own fire, is the regenerative property of its tears, which can heal wounds and combat the deadliest of venoms.' Holy freaking— Fred's gonna have a field day with this." Hiro reached for his phone, unlocked the screen and began typing away.

Tadashi couldn't help but wonder what he'd just been dragged into.

**A.N.: Thanks to all who have reviewed and continued thanks to my friends and beta editor for enabling me to continue this. :)