Author's Note: Sorry I haven't updated all week. My life's been a little crazy. Anyway, let's see how the team is going to handle this situation! Thank you to everyone who has followed, favorited, and reviewed! And happy Pi Day!
Honey Lemon raced to Fred's house, phone in hand. Honey had followed a trail only to find a mother unconscious and bleeding from protecting her son who, like the first boy, suffered from extreme hallucinations. They needed to stop this now.
She pounded on the door and waited, taking out her phone and looking at the pictures one more time. The tracks looked like they belonged to an abnormally large dog, but as they approached the victim's house, they abruptly stopped, and a set of small, deep holes replaced them. She could only assume that it was whatever attacked the poor woman.
The door opened, and she grabbed Fred's arm, dragging him to their team's usual spot. "I think I found something you'll wanna see!"
...
The screen in front of her was less than ideal, but Agent Hanson could manage. She told Hiro Hamada that they were watching them, since it seemed only right that people knew when they're privacy was invaded, but she hadn't been completely truthful. From the connection she had to the health care bot's scanner, she could read their blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, and even see the results of repeated brain scans that the bot would do periodically; but she couldn't actually see what was going on. After watching the health bot work for a while, she wanted to shake hands with Tadashi Hamada; that was some serious coding. However, she didn't care about the team's current health at the moment; she was more interested in the audio.
"Are the little rug rats behaving themselves?" Turning around, she saw Agent Oshima leaning against the door frame, silhouetted by the dim light in the room.
"They're actually much smarter than we give them credit for. I think they've already found one."
He swiveled a chair around and sat beside her. "Smart, yes, intelligent, maybe. What have they found?"
"A trail."
"Literal or metaphorical?"
"Both," she explained. "They've been interviewing victims that seem similar to the Utah ones. I think we might be able to finally catch X."
His eyes looked doubtful, but maybe a little hopeful. "Have they figured out where she is? Or how to beat the robot?"
"No, but apparently she hasn't been killing people this time. I definitely think she's been recruited, though."
He raised an eyebrow. "Why would our evil overlord encourage his villains to not kill?"
...
Silence pounded against her ears, amplifying every mangled breath that the occasional patient would take. They were boring. All of them. She would pull them in and out of consciousness for a little while, testing her gadgets on a few of their heads sometimes, but they perished too quickly.
The only exception was on the bed in front of her. His firm face and firm figure lasted through all of her experiments. He was not only cooperative, he was free. With only a word, she could tell him to burn the world down, and he would do it without blinking an eye. He was the only human free from consciousness. And until she was able to replicate her results, he would be her favorite.
Smiling gently down at him, she watched as tawny brown eyes stared curiously at the ceiling. She traced a hand over his hair. Even after triple the normally legal amount of morphine, he was still awake. This man was a scientific wonder, evolution's next perfect human being. Not caring about the emotions of others and powerful enough to survive regardless of temperature, poisons, and electric shock, he was the man of her dreams.
Still, there were imperfections that would need fixing. Fear stimulus was simple, but it had to be carefully and meticulously watched. Not that she minded.
Speaking of fear stimulus, she might as well she what would happen if she added a little something extra to his bloodstream after all of the morphine. Taking out a second syringe, she pushed the drug into his forearm.
His features scrunched together and he let out a low grunt. The air around him felt heated, and soon steam oozed out of his skin, the poison coming out with the moisture. A fire blazed in his eyes, but they were still unfocused. Same result no matter the drug. Seems like she could only directly affect the brain. Interesting.
A door creaked open behind her. "Seems like someone's finally onto me," an amused woman said, watching her phone screen. Three people, one girl and two boys, were searching an office through one camera. Another camera showed a girl and a boy searching a house.
The first woman put down her syringe and picked up the phone. If a group of teens (though some of them looked like they were in their early twenties) were searching the home and work place of the second woman, they were most likely close to one of the victims. Ah, a person's wildest instincts kick in when they want revenge. They become so desperate for a reason. That desperation makes them prepared to do anything. They are highly susceptible to suggestion. She could easily get them here with little to no effort at all.
...
The office of Eva Ruth was eerily normal-looking, at least to Hiro's standards. There was a soft couch with a blanket draped across the back, a small chair, a modern-looking desk with cat pictures on top, a dusty book shelf, a low coloring desk, and a file cabinet. Of course, Hiro knew that sometimes the crazy people were most likely the normal-looking ones.
"Guys," Gogo said after a little while from the direction of the file cabinet. "Check this out."
Hiro and Wasabi came over and saw what Gogo was holding. It was a manila folder with 'Fear File' labeled on the tab. Inside, there were crayon drawings. Placing the folder on the ground, Gogo spread out the pictures. There were drawings of spiders, a cat with glowing red eyes, a dark horse with a smokey mane, a ghost, a burning house, and some smiling broccoli. Each paper had the initials of the artist on the top right corner. Hiro picked up the one that looked like a demon cat and flipped it over. 'Fear Optimized' was written beside the previous Saturday's date. "Gottcha."
"What?" Wasabi and Gogo asked in unison.
"These drawings aren't just inspiration," maybe 'inspiration' was the wrong word, "this is a hit list!" He held up the paper to show them.
"So let me get this straight," Wasabi began. "Doctor Eva Ruthless gets kids to draw their fears, just so she can scare them again with some kind of omnipotent robot?"
"Since when do you expect super villains to have reasonable morals?" Gogo asked with her seriously face.
"I don't know, I just kinda hoped that maybe all people had some sort of humanity."
Hiro rolled his eyes. These two sometimes liked to do their best impressions of an old married couple.
"Well, I think we should call Honey and Fred and let them know," Gogo said, pulling out her phone.
Wasabi picked up the rest of the pictures, and he and Hiro flipped each of them over and checked the back. Most of them had dates on them, but some were blank. Spying one that said 'Fear Optimized' with a blank line, Hiro grabbed it. "Tell them that we also have a plan."
"Come again?" Gogo asked.
"There's a line here for a date, but I don't think she's attacked this person yet." He held it up to show them. Once the back of the sheet was facing the others, Hiro got a look at the front of the paper, which had a crayon drawing of a fire-breathing dragon.
...
Hiro and his friends walked back to the garage, carrying some food with them for dinner, as well as plenty of caffeine. Most of them had gone to at least some of their classes, and had gotten some sleep, but none of them were nearly awake enough to battle properly.
Lifting up the door, the group filed in and sat in the back corner of the room, Honey, Wasabi, and Fred sitting on the couch, and Hiro and Gogo bringing over chairs. "Ow!" Hiro called.
He heard the telltale whoosh of air. He and the team all mouthed along with the robot's introduction of 'Hello, I am Baymax, your personal health-care companion. I was alerted for the need of medical attention when I heard you exclaim 'Ow.' I will scan you now." A beat. "Scan complete. You have sustained no injuries." This was as far as he and his friends had memorized, the rest usually varied from suggesting a healthier diet and diagnosing bodily changes (there are some things about your friends that you don't want to know and that Baymax had no verbal filter for). "However, your brain activity indicates that all of you are lacking sleep. You should rest, and – "
"Baymax," Hiro interrupted him, not wanting to hear yet another lecture on the subject. "You know how we talked about the shape-shifting robot today?"
"That is correct."
"Yeah, well, we found the next victim. Do you think you can scan the city for children, ages five to," Hiro looked down at the paper, analyzing the drawing skill, "maybe ten, who might suffer from hallucinations?"
Baymax tilted his head. "It is doubtful that I could narrow down a group of people based on such general terms. However, I will try."
"Sweet," Hiro said, shoving Baymax's helmet on the robot's head.
Flashing of blue light shot across the tinted visor. "There are over three-hundred possible matches."
"Over three hundred?!" Fred exclaimed.
"It is nearly impossible to come up with a match without a proper brain scan of the patients. I cannot do a proper scan from this distance."
"Alright, how about this, if I give you a list of names, could you figure out where the patients on the list might be? Or which of the three hundred kids are patients on this list?" Gogo suggested. She had found a list of names in the file cabinet, complete with notes on each of their sessions. But any information other than the first and last name was kept somewhere other than the psychiatrist's room.
Baymax turned towards her and replied. "I cannot scan people and figure out their names. Nor can I access a database that contains the location of – "
Suddenly, as Baymax was still giving an explanation, the blue lights on the visor twinkled into the shape of a woman with a high forehead and piercing, amused eyes. Agent Hanson. She started to move her mouth, but no noise came out. Aside from that being a relief, Hiro still didn't understand what was going on.
"Um, is an alien that looks like a creepy agent trying to contact us?" Wasabi asked with resounding sarcasm.
Seeming to realize that they hadn't heard anything, Agent Hanson wrinkled her eyebrows and and began pressing buttons that the group couldn't see. After an awkward moment, she disappeared.
Slowly turning to face each other, they waited in confused silence for something else to happen. "My scanner seems to be malfunctioning." Baymax declared helpfully.
"So," Honey began, dragging out the 'o.' "You guys wanna meet somewhere a little more private?"
"I'm going to power down the scanner." Hiro said, feeling both uncomfortable and impressed. He liked having a sense of privacy and hated being spied on (a trait that Tadashi used to his advantage during prank wars), but he couldn't help but admire the brilliance of it. They probably hacked into both Baymax and the scanner, but deleted the alterations when they grabbed the team. It was a safe bet that most people wouldn't check the helmet's advanced scanner, since most people would assume that it was only the robot that had been hacked. It would also look better legally (if they really cared about that) if they used a scanner instead of a camera. The scanner could only enhance audio and pick up health characteristics, allowing them to only hear and (somewhat) see. However impressed Hiro was, he was happy that Agent Hanson had given the secret away, only to find out that she could no longer hack into Baymax. Hiro guessed that they had used the wifi, and had run into some of Baymax's new anti-hacking blocks. Two could play in the brilliance game.
"Wait, do you think that maybe they could help?" Fred asked.
"What?" Hiro replied. Though they agreed in front of GIRI to work for them, they had yet to discuss in private how much of that agreement they were going to keep. As of now, he was willing to maybe fake it enough to get more information about the crime lord and about GIRI themselves. But he was definitely not willing to ask them for help.
"I mean," Fred looked a little unsure continued anyway. "They're a governmental agency that would probably have the resources to give the superheroes the information that they need. We could at least ask them."
Hiro opened his mouth to protest, but Honey spoke first. "He's right, Hiro, and Dr. Ruth might be going after this poor kid tonight."
Seeing that Hiro still looked unsure, she continued. "You didn't see the woman this morning. She got hurt trying to protect her kid from the robot. What if someone gets clawed or even burnt by a robotic dragon?"
Hiro briefly remembered Tadashi running into the burning building, hat flying off behind him. Hiro clenched his fists, trying to get himself to stay focused. Honey was right, and Hiro was mad. He couldn't let someone else get hurt, especially by fire.
Suddenly, Hiro felt a vibration from his pocket. Hiro pulled out his phone and accepted the call, feeling a little nervous since the caller id said 'Blocked Number.' "Hello?"
"She's right you know."
"Agent?"
"Correct on first guess, good job."
"Uh, thanks," Hiro replied. How am I supposed to reply to that?
"All of our resources and databases that we are willing to let you have access to are yours. Just give us the word."
This was so weird. "Shouldn't the information that we're looking for be private? As in, you shouldn't be giving us confidential information?"
"In the name of safety, there are a lot of things you can get away with."
"Like hacking a scanner?"
"Exactly, but now you know! I figured that now that we're partners, I shouldn't have to go out of my way to get information from you. I figured that maybe we could work together from now on."
Unlikely. "We'll think about it." There we go, nice, political answer.
"You'll see. Oh, and your welcome for cleaning up your fingerprints after your little break in today. If you want my help, I'm exactly one block away from your house with a list of the patients, their addresses, and their session times."
She hung up. Hiro turned to the team, who was staring at him with apprehension.
Hiro walked over to Baymax, removed the helmet and plugged it into the computer, and began to delete the advanced scanner.
"So," Honey began. "What did 'Agent' say?"
Hiro didn't say anything for a moment, focusing on deleting the scanner and trying to process what had just happened. "She has the patient's addresses. We need to visit the ones that have that have the initials," Hiro checked his phone, zooming in on the picture of the drawing of the dragon and finding the initials in the top right corner, "P.S." Despite the situation, Hiro had to pause to internally laugh that the kid had the initials 'P.S.'
"Okay," Gogo said. "That means suit up everybody!"
Once the scanner was deleted, Hiro put the helmet back on Baymax and put his own helmet on. Battle time.
Author's Note: Hope you enjoyed! Please don't be shy to tell me what you think!
Eva Ruth is a play on the villain Everwraith from the Big Hero 6 comics. He was a non-corporal being that was born from the souls of the WWII bombing. Although he will not be in this story, I decided to allude to him anyway.
Eva Ruth (aka X), the crazy crime boss, and the strange scientific wonder are based off of actual characters from the comics. More about them will be revealed later. Though I will say that a villain in the comics was born of a description of a monster. That creature was then able to change into any shape at will. I figured that in this universe, that would translate into a robot having the ability to change shape.