Sora meets Big Hero 6

by Puterboy1

Ten years after Kingdom Hearts II, Sora, Donald and Goofy meet Hiro Hamada, whose life has been catapulted at the mercy of the notorious Big Boy Caprice and the all powerful Sandman. With the help of an inflatable robot named Baymax, his closest friends, Sora, detective Dick Tracy, Ultimate Spider-Man and his team of rookies, they band together as "Big Hero 6" to solve the mystery.

3. Friends and Family

Cass Hamada had led a stressful but outgoing life with her two nephews. She ran a modest teashop called the "Lucky Cat Café" at the bottom of her house on Haight St and had a recipe for almost everything pastry related. Her love of felines since the age of nine had transformed her into the resourceful stylist up to the point where she imagined, sketched and decorated her future dream home as everything cat-themed down to the last piece of furniture.

She had taken the full responsibility as a guardian when Hiro was four and Tadashi was eleven since all of their other relatives were distant and living in Okinawa, Japan, the birthplace of the Hamada and Takachiho families. Swearing an oath of honor to Judge Garrity (as well as her deceased brother and sister-in-law), she tried every trick in the book to know the hardships of raising two boys on her own, or at least her own knowledge of parenting. But it wasn't enough for her sake of parental problems, so it was Tadashi who provided Hiro with every bit of comfort that he needed. Unlike the rest of her family, Cass had little knowledge of the Japanese language, being able to say "Hello" and "Thank you" in her brother's ancestral tongue after flunking three of her language classes in Spanish, French and Latin.

When she received a call from Detective Catchem telling her that Tadashi and Hiro were in a cell after partaking in a bot-fight, she rushed right over without even bothering to close up shop in her bright blue 1950 Ford F-1 tow truck. Her driving skills required both eyes on the road and she nearly ran a stop sign that would have (in an ironic sense) earned her a ticket to where she was going. After picking up Tadashi's Vespa from the impound without lifting a finger from the strong employee who worked as a mechanic, she parked the truck outside the Central Police Station, waiting nervously as she bit her left fingernails into her pearly teeth.

After two minutes and twenty eight seconds, she saw Hiro and Tadashi by the door with Officer Groove.

"Konnichiwa obasan," the two said sheepishly in unison.

Hearing their voices, Cass immediately ran over and wrapped her arms around the brothers into a big hug. Tadashi's neck concealed by her left arm and his chin on her cervical curve while Hiro was brushed against her chestnut brown hair with Cass' right arm wrapped around his left side.

"Are you guys okay?" she pleaded in grief-stricken worriedness. "Please, please tell me you're okay."

"We're fine and okay."

"Thank you, Officer Groove,"

"Anytime, Mrs. Hamada," replied Groove, and he went back inside to attend his wife's troubles with the other occupants.

Cass smiled at her nephews, a long, loving smile of gladness. Just when Tadashi and Hiro could assume that she would take them home without further problems, Cass pulled a 180 and gripped her left hand on Tadashi's right ear while her right hand held a tight firm on Hiro's left ear, so much that he would have suffered an internal hemorrhage.

She tugged them towards the pickup truck by the ears she was holding, and Hiro reluctantly sat in the middle while Tadashi sat next to him on the left hand side. Both Hamadas wished that she didn't have to do that. It became even worse as their aunt shouted pointedly in English.

"What the hell were you two thinking?! Going to a bot-fight like that! You could have been killed by one of those…freaks!"

The ride home was silent, with Tadashi smoothing his right ear and Hiro smoothing his left, Cass was glaring at herself in the rearview mirror as well as her own reflection in the windshield, her lips were scrunched up and her eyes had a steel fixture. Her hands remained on the steering wheel in a death grip and she remained tight-lipped until they were at least a half mile away from home.

"Ever since my brother, your father and his wife died ten years ago, I have done the best I could to raise you! Have I been a perfect mom? NO! Do I know anything about children? Again, NO! Should I have picked up a book on parenting? Probably, YES! Should I have taken Tomeo's advice on parenting?! YES! I CAN NOT TAKE ANOTHER DAMN FLAW!"

She took a deep breath and huffed it out as she saw the cafe up ahead. Continuing to mutter the words playing in her mind.

"…Where was I going with this? As your closest living relative, I had a point."

The lights in the café were turned surprisingly left on despite the average "Sorry, We're Closed" sign that hung from inside behind the glass door. This only proved to be more of a frustration to Cass as she took out her keys to make sure the door was unlocked before Hiro and Tadashi said: "Obasan daisuke."

"English please?"

"We love you, Aunt Cass," the boys murmured.

"Well, I love you too!"

She choked back a sob as she entered the door.

"I swear to Buddha, it's like the blind raising the blind," she muttered to no-one in particular.

Built in 1900, the walls of the Lucky Cat Café were painted in lime green against a wooden floor with a red circular window on the right hand side. Fifteen wooden chairs of different styles from Queen Anne to Old Dutch were placed in crooked positions from careless customers. One square table was placed near the circular window and the remaining five were round, carved from professional and amateur craftsman using oak, maple and mahogany. The foods served at the Lucky Cat were hailed by critics as the best coffee and breakfast spot on the West Coast, complete with strawberry, blueberry, banana and blackberry smoothies, crunchy ouiche, $1.50 for sardines, PLT sandwiches, egg salad, croissants, pies of cranberry, pear and rhubarb flavors and even donuts to make the mouths of men water with saliva.

Whenever Cass was in an upset mood of outrage, she would always overeat on nothing but fats and sweets to calm her nerves (to which she called "stress-eating"). As she walked her way to the wooden shelf of donuts in plastic trays, Hiro and Tadashi looked to see that they were not the only ones in the dining room. Sitting on the bench near the circular window was a red haired woman with a black hat, a green coat with black wool, black high heels and a dyed black rabbit muff. Next to her on the left was a freckled boy who was three years younger than Hiro, and wore short checked pants with argyle knee socks, a blue shirt and black-and-white polka dot necktie, and a little red cap, under which his reddish hair sprouted like weeds. Both persons carried the look and style of the traditionalists who lived not too far from the café: Dick Tracy's wife Tess and his adopted son Junior Tracy.

Tess Tracy (née Trueheart) was a photographer and a grocer's daughter, who had been in love with Tracy ever since he came to work at her parents' delicatessen store on Columbus Avenue for a small fee. When their love for each other had fully blossomed into a strong kinship, she had prepared for a romantic dinner date in a red lace dress and a scrumptious dish of meat and bread with chicken soup as the second course. Once they got home unfortunately, things had taken a turn for the worse. Two mobsters named Crutch and Spike had broken into the store and threatened her parents out of $20,000 dollars' worth of savings. When her father, Emil Trueheart denied access to the upstairs safe, he was shot in the chest by Crutch, and the two thugs broke the safe open with a hammer while Mrs. Trueheart fainted from the shock and Spike, who wanted nothing more than a hostage, gagged Tess and knocked Tracy out with a right hook to the jaw. They carried Tess off to the hideout of Big Boy Caprice, who was aroused by her blond hair and shade of skin that would have been as red as a Mahican princess, but was actually a very light tan. After a hard slap on his left cheek received from the young Ms. Trueheart, Big Boy enlisted her as the chauffeur of the car needed for a payroll robbery, thinking that no one would suspect a pretty girl behind the wheel. But before the plan was complete, Tracy came into Big Boy's confidence under the guise of a gangster and rescued Tess. Following that life changing sequences of events, Dick and Tess continued their relationship, though his new position on the Major Crimes Squad had prevented him from executing a proper engagement, and after three and a half years of interruption, they finally married on Christmas Eve. As a Christmas gift, the new Mrs. Dick Tracy had received a whole new wardrobe of green coats, black hats and cerise dresses from Q&J Boutique. Tess also got a bottle of red hair dye so that she would look stunning in her new clothes. Happy to accept the changes in her life, she was glad to have settled down with a detective and his newly adopted son, Junior.

Dick Tracy Jr. had come into his and Tess' lives about two years ago on the eve of Hiro's twelfth birthday party, to which by then, he was only known simply as "the Kid". His real name was John "Jackie" Steele and the only son of Colorado miners Hank and Mary Steele, who had several falling outs due to financial troubles over trust funds. When Junior was about 2 years old, Mary had fallen for a malformed looking hobo named Steve "the Tramp" Brogan, and they moved to the northwest of Japanifornia in search of a healthier atmosphere. When Mary came down with a mild case of scarlet fever, Steve took Junior away from her and a large sum of $500,00 was demanded for the price of his return. The ransom was not paid, and two weeks passed with no word from Steve, who did not hear about the reward and the two lived in a train yard somewhere outside of San Fransokyo. Seven years later, a nine year old Junior attempted to pick the watch of Pat Patton, and Tracy, at first assuming that it was a petty theft but soon had his doubts, took chase into the train yard just in time to save Junior from being thrown into the railroad tracks by Steve, who was upset over the short amount of items that he had stolen for the day and was beginning to get sick of having a street urchin steal for him. Before he could even abuse Junior further by having him decapitated by the wheels of an oncoming express train, Tracy snapped into action and took him off the street. Tracy had taken a shine to Junior while Steve was hauled into court where he confessed the real name of his step-son and Mary Steele was reunited with her lost Jackie. Now she worked at the chrome trimmed storefront of Mike's Diner across the Buena Vista Park from the Lucky Cat while her son started his own Junior Crimestoppers Club and fell for a girl named Moon Maid, who was believed to be an alien from the moon.

"Of all the nights, why did you two felons have to pick 'Beat-Poetry Night' to go bot-fighting?" Cass fretted as she took a quarter bite of a chocolate covered donut in her left hand.

Before Tadashi could deny his involvement, Tess got up from her chair and spoke defensively to Cass.

"Don't mind them, Cass. Junior wanted to stay for dessert and after you left I took care of the customers."

"I should have closed up early," Cass sighed.

Then Tess turned to the brothers.

"Hello, Hiro. Hello, Tadashi."

"Hello, Mrs. Tracy. Hello, Junior," the brothers greeted in unison.

Junior was the first to ask, "So what's up?"

"You should have seen me, Junior!" exclaimed Hiro. "I just took down a big robot by Mr. Yama and won thirty thousand bucks!"

"And your husband got us locked up in jail for the last hour and a half," Tadashi added to Tess in a sardonic tenor.

"Did he?" Tess asked in an unenthusiastic voice. She looked bored, and when someone like Tess Trueheart would be married to a famous plainclothes dick, action loses its excitement when it is encountered too often in the field.

Then, after blinking her eyes twice at the brothers, she said, "Nice seeing you," and headed straight to the door. But then she stopped and turned her head back, whispering, "Just don't ask me to like it."

As the door opened all the way for the bell to sound, she commanded the younger boy in a louder voice.

"Come on, Junior. We're going home."

Junior scurried after her and was outside by the time he waved goodbye to Hiro just as the door closed on him. He ran after Tess with quick feet, catching up to her in six beats of his racing heart.'

Cass was already walking up the stairs to the living room apartment, which was located on the second floor. Taking another quarter bite of her donut, she saw Mochi curled up on the countertop and shouted, "Come on, Mochi!"

Mochi woke up from his cat nap and climbed slowly down from the countertop on his front paws. Tadashi, hoping to explain what really happened, followed after them, leaving Hiro downstairs with another bot-fight on his mind despite his apprehension forty minutes ago.

Aunt Cass' bedroom had no windows, it was as small as the cabin of a cruise ship with an adjacent bathroom connecting to it. Her bed featured a cotton red blanket, a wooden dresser and a left bedside table where her alarm clock was positioned. She was taking slower bites of the donut when Tadashi came in along with Mochi. Of all the many times obasan had been there for her nephews, she was not the one to show any emotional support and it was because of her inattentiveness that prevented Hiro from aiming at a more meaningful purpose in life.

"You know, Aunt Cass, Hiro is the one who ought to be punished. After all, it was he who participated in the fight, not me. I was just trying to bail him out. You can start by keeping him locked up in his room for a week."

"I don't know, Tadashi, I just don't have the heart for it."

She swallowed the last piece of donut whole and dropped down on the bed, back first with her legs hanging off the side.

Tadashi could tell that she was exhausted from a long day of operating the café and rushing over to pick them up from the police station. After petting Mochi's soft, hairy head with a stroke of his right hand he went upstairs to the third floor room where he and Hiro had slept for the past ten years of their lives. It was there that Tadashi first notified Aunt Cass of Hiro's intelligence when he created a quadruped robot in one minute and fifteen seconds, leading to the theorem. It was there that the brothers created their own Hamada Brothers Robotics Club and built a "jumpy bed" that tossed them into the air like bacon in a frying pan via hydraulic arms. It was there that Hiro and Tadashi tested their first "lab animal" Mochi on a set of four rocket boots (which Hiro later used to scare a sleeping Tadashi into a real life nightmare) and it was in the garage later on when Tadashi was fourteen and Hiro was seven that they created that makeshift airplane from a laundry dial, a shopping cart and a fan. The 30 minute long flight was thrill-seeking and breathtaking for Hiro as they enjoyed other, more normal things, like empty hand matches in the garage, teaching the safer ways of crossing the street, hyping over the latest movies and video games alike, watching the annual exposition at San Fransokoyo Tech and at the end of the day while working on stuff at night, they would turn on the old boom-box radio and listen to some of their favorite artists, like Owl City, Fall Out Boy, Greek Fire or 30 Seconds to Mars. Among these favorites was San Fransokyo's local starlet Patricia Mahoney, whose classic songs such as "Sooner or Later", "I Want More" and "Back in Business" to covers of Elvis Presley hits ranging from "Heartbreak Hotel", "Stuck on You" and "The Devil in Disguise" dazzled the many patrons of one of the city's most fancy schmancy nightspots: Club Ritz.

Now Patricia (or "Breathless" Mahoney as she tended to be called) was, in reality, a femme fatale who led a double life of crime and entertainment. She frequently wore tight gowns (in plain leather or sequined) along with closed high heels, and would fix her gorgeous blond hair in the styles of Veronica Lake, Lauren Bacall and Marilyn Monroe. Breathless first started out making an honest living as a student of journalism for the Daily San Fransokyo Tribune when she first encountered Dick Tracy at the scene of the Emil Trueheart case and the two had formed a quick relationship. But after the recent discovery that her mother Elia had remarried to a confidence man named Shaky Trembly while she and her younger sister Heartless were away at boarding school on the other side of the state, Breathless soon went down the crooked path herself, and to allude the fact that she had been gifted with a tremendous singing voice, decided to make a much better profit as a vocalist because her paychecks at the Tribune were extremely terrible.

The first place she looked up was the recently opened Club Ritz in the downtown area of San Fransokyo on Broadway Street. The club's owner, Bob Honor was already searching for a songstress to sing at lively dinners and wild parties and Breathless immediately accepted under a contract requesting that her songs be broadcast on radio to make herself famous. Mr. Honor saw this as money-making opportunity and when Big Boy Caprice came along, the first thing he said to her was: "If a girl don't wear mink, she don't wear nothin'."

Breathless was flattered, but at the same time, she couldn't help but feel torn and powerless between her two suitors and under the thumb of the criminal underworld that wanted to the run the city dry. Throughout her life, she had been desperate in finding the right man to marry her in any way she could think of. She hoped to impress Tracy with her newfound fame and fortune, but grew bitter after his marriage to Tess Trueheart, and she knew that some of the people she encountered over the period of her three year career (namely the Hamada brothers) were much too young and much too smart to fall for her hook, line and sinker.

Hiro had never actually met Breathless before (other than in passing or just briefly), but Tadashi did. When he was old enough to visit nightclubs near the age of eighteen, an intrigued Tadashi was given a front row table to hear Breathless make her debut performance with the song "Sooner or Later" that she had specifically written herself. The rest of her test audience (some of them record producers) did not know what to make of her slow and seductive voice full of jazz, since the times had changed with punk rock groups and hip-hop artists, and she retired to her dressing room, thinking that her very first record had been a failure.

As selfless as he was, Tadashi followed Breathless into the dressing room where he articulated a positive outlook on her voice. Having been a fan of Stephen Sondheim for some time while taking music classes at his schools, Breathless and Tadashi were surprised at how much they had in common; although he wanted to keep their relationship as professional as possible since he already had his eyes on another girl named Aiko Miyazaki from SFIT.

In the meantime, Tadashi was pushing it all aside and thinking of other things. As part of their robotics club, they each had their own rules:

451: Hamada brothers never use something as lame as a notebook.
452: Hamada brothers don't judge notebooks by their covers.
453: Incoming trolleys don't scare Hamada brothers!
454: Hamada brothers laugh in the face of trolley danger.
456: Hamada brothers' projects have to be CRAZY AWESOME.
457: Hamada brothers only show their work to the outside world when it's ready.
(Sidenote: And AWESOME!)
1: Hamada brothers don't just reach for the stars. They reach for the flying cats.

The rules were secret, so that only the two of them could know off the top of their heads and it was no wonder why Hiro sometimes thought that Tadashi was the good-looking one, while Tadashi himself thought that Hiro was smarter than him.

Hiro and Tadashi's bedroom was much larger than Aunt Cass' "ship cabin", painted in a very pale turquoise with red laminated beams and a giant Mazinger Z clock on a wall before the stairs. Hiro's half of the room took up most of the entirety with a large bed with a black and white striped blanket, three windows behind it, another on the left with a couch, a desk for his sleek black computer screen, three shelves full of action figures, a drawer for clothes, an oval mirror from the Gilded Age, a small light green shelf of important books, a lamp, a couple of posters, among them an advertisement of the television host Mr. Sparkles, blueprints for his inventions, postcards of their vacation spots, a lamp, a file cabinet shelf for Megabot, a red beanie, a maroon fiberglass dragon hung from the ceiling and a soccer ball on top of the wooden shelf.

Tadashi's half of the room was separated by a plain Shoji screen and took up a third with a bed in size and shape like Hiro's with the black and white striped blanket and a single window behind it. It contained a white surfboard from summer days gone by, black flippers, a wooden bookshelf with five rows of manuals and great works of literature, and extra two shelves packed with school books, a clover green carpet under the bed and a wooden shelf in front of it with binders on the top.

Tadashi was grateful in giving Hiro the larger part of the room, since he was claustrophobic at times and knew that his younger brother deserved better than a small space to let his imagination be cramped up, though it had cooked up his worst nightmare of Hiro using his brains on the illegality of bot-fighting instead of helpful purposes like he was. Tadashi had become something of a righteous Samaritan, as the deeper meaning of his Japanese name allowed him to help others even if they did not deserve it in situations, which started after the car accident that claimed his parents, and further increased by various visits with Hiro and himself to the doctor for a checkup or an operation where he studied from various doctors and nurses of history and local, more contemporary resources to create something revolutionary to the world of robotics in the war against bot-fighting.

As he reached the top of the stairs, placing his helmet and cardigan on the wooden four hook coat rack, he saw Hiro on the computer, hoping that he would not be doing what Tadashi thought he was doing, but he was. Hiro was undaunted by the arrest, and hoping to evade the cops the next time he went out, was already in the process of booking another bot-fight in the Tenderloin neighborhood not too far from Chinatown on the black and red textured website. Tadashi spoke to his brother commendably before he noticed the colors of the website in twenty seconds.

"You had better make this up to Aunt Cass before she eats everything in the café."

Hiro's eyes were glued to the screen. "Sure."

"And I hope you learned your lesson, bonehead. Or should I say, shithead?"

"Either one's fine."

Tadashi could see that Hiro's back was still turned on him.

"Hiro, are you listening to me?!"

Hiro turned his chair around with both eyes focused on Tadashi and admitted in a tone that sounded very responsible. "Absolutely."

But Tadashi's eyes had a better observation of the computer screen. He could tell that Hiro had just told a lie.

"You're going bot-fighting aren't you?"

Hiro motioned his head three times in a nod which meant yes.

But Tadashi's tone went from suspicious to enraged. "AREN'T YOU?!"

This time, Hiro responded vocally.

"There is a fight across town. If I book it, I can still make it."

He got up from his chair and made his way to the stairs. But his destiny had come to a complete stop when he felt Tadashi's right hand place a tight grip on the hood of his sweatshirt. Visibly upset, Hiro did a 180 and found himself face to face with Tadashi and his look of genuine dismay.

"When are you going to start doing something with that big brain of yours?"

And to prove his point, he tapped Hiro's forehead three times with his left index finger. Then with an angry "Huh?!", he greeted all five of his left fingers to his younger brother's right cheek with a slap before Hiro pushed his arms free from Tadashi's hold, unaffected by the harmful move as he replied.

"You didn't have to hit me like that."

Now feeling sympathetic for his youngest sibling, Tadashi used the same hand again to rub the slap. The tone in his voice was a lot calmer than before.

"Are you going to keep hustling these aimless bot-fights, otouto, or are you going to start doing something with your life? You are wasting your time! What about your future? What about my devotions?! Didn't you learn anything from tonight!?"

Hiro had heard this before after the third bot fight he had gone to, and did not appreciate the harsh reprimand. So he came up with the most sensible motive-for the second time he said it.

"Maybe I have, but what else can I do?! I can't even find a well-paying job until I am at least sixteen!"

"Then you should do something other wasting your talent on these amazing bots."

"Like what, go to college like you did?"

"I am a good teacher."

"Who teaches me stuff I already know."

Tadashi's reply was brief and blunt.

"Unbelievable."

Then he placed his right hand over his face, nearly sobbing at the thought.

"Maa nante koto nanda. What would okaasan and otousan say?"

"They'd probably scold me," replied Hiro before turning away. "But that was a long time ago when I was four."

"And I promised them on their deathbed that I would protect you!" Tadashi retorted.

"From what?" Hiro frowned, turning his head back. "The sinners of this city?"

He was about a foot away from his older brother before he turned his head back a second time.

"Oh and by the way, I'll still be leaving so...we'll just think about it in the morning. Sayonara, onii-chan."

Tadashi threw his arms up in agony as Hiro made his way to the stairs.

"So go ahead! But think about this Hiro, who's gonna pay for all the penalty fees from all this bot-fighting? Obasan and I are going to be neck deep in fines! We're not super rich you know!"

"You're the one who came back with a wad full of money one night!" Hiro called back from the banister. "If want to stop me, you're gonna have to catch me first."

And he resumed to walk down the stairs as Tadashi lifted his left arm and pointed at Hiro in an accusing and very threatening manner.

"Hiro, if you walk out that door, Detective Tracy will never forgive you! He'll give you a life sentence! And if you still keep this up, he will give you a death sentence!"

As his left foot was hovering over the sixth step of the staircase, Hiro panicked and ran back up the stairs to defend himself.

"He wouldn't do that! Not to a fourteen year old like me!"

Tadashi's voice was low with a seething tone of seriousness.

"Of course he would. Even in third world countries like South America or India have child criminals, and they have suffered a much harsher treatment than just sitting in the corner, like being executed by a firing squadron. Have you even heard of capital punishment?"

Hiro was startled. "Well I have heard about it, but I don't see that happening to me any time soon, unless if the people who do it are very...demonic."

"Oh yeah?" Tadashi scoffed. "Well its lot more gruesome than you think, because I see three methods; first they put you a room where they give you a lethal injection. It's like getting a shot only to find out that it is your final trip to the doctor. The second method is hanging. Once you are dead, your body falls through a trap door into a room below the execution chamber where your death is confirmed. And as for the third method, well...maybe you would like the electric chair?"

As he spoke, Tadashi walked behind Hiro, who was gazing down the stairs with shell shocked emotions and not wanting to hear what his brother had to say next.

"That's right, the good old electric chair."

As Tadashi leaned his face closer to the back of the younger Hamada brother's head, Hiro was still looking down at the stairs in disbelief. He shuddered and cringed at such morbid things like hanging or electrocution before he stifled a laugh, making him think that nii-san was just trying evoke fear into his heart by any means of abandoning the illegal underworld for good.

"Tadashi, you're just trying scare me, right?"

Tadashi had his arms crossed. "No, I really mean it. Now you can either go to college with me so I can teach you the proper and LEGAL uses of robotics or you can spend the rest of your goddamned life in juvenile hall!"

Frightened, Hiro turned to face his brother's angry eyes. He knew what it was like to live in a youth detention center (or juvenile hall as some people had called it) from videos and pictures that he had seen online. Taking in all of the unspeakable atrocities with a guilty expression, he buried his face into his brother's abdomen and Tadashi rested his chin on Hiro's head, wrapping his arms around him in a comforting hug.

"I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't have yelled at you."

He moved his chin away from Hiro's head and looked at him, smiling.

"Now have you learned your lesson?"

Hiro looked at the older Hamada brother before he slumped the right side of his face back into Tadashi's chest and mumbled the next six words with defeat.

"All right. You win. I'll go."

Successful, Tadashi patted Hiro's head with his right hand.

"That's my bro."

He kissed Hiro's forehead as an act of mutual respect for otouto's obedience and Hiro could see that Onii-chan was right. He looked at Megabot on the shelf and asked Tadashi.

"Is it alright if I took Megabot with me? It is a robotics institute after all."

"More than that," smiled Tadashi. "It's a college for everyone."

---

The San Fransokyo Institute of Technology (commonly abbreviated as SFIT, or San Fransokyo Tech) was a college campus that lengthened to about a mile long and almost a hundred years old. It was built in 1932 and was located in the far south of Presidio, which also featured a park and a military base for graduating rookies with a college degree. It was home to many of San Fransokyo's scientists and engineers, and was the very center of all science and technology in the city. It attracted various students who studied in the fields of computer science, robotics degrees and technological advancements from all over the globe and with these rising amounts, the campus had quickly expanded to five buildings with three of its older buildings still in use. A total of 1,289 students currently occupied the school by seven hours of the day and worked on their achievements at night until 9:30 p.m. for extra classes, which was what Tadashi was going to take Hiro to see.

Tadashi drove the Vespa past the front gate toward the Ito Ishioka Robotics Lab on the eastern side of the campus with Hiro riding on the back. The tower gates were in Renaissance-style and on each side of the gates were ground offices in the traditional Japanese design of tatami and shoji from the Heian period. The words "San Fransokyo Institute of Technology" on the entrance sign along with the school's logo were lit in a neon turquoise. The logo was a round shape with a gear design, containing "San Fransokyo" on the top and "Institute of Technology" in a shaded layer. The dark letters "SF" were found in the very center of the circle, almost blackening the rest of the turquoise.

As they approached the lab on a cul-de-sac, passing a traditional style dorm room with a gothic Notre Dame-like tower in the center of it, Hiro had completely forgotten as to why Tadashi would bring him here, thinking they had made up their quarrel and he agreed to visit the institute. Sometimes, recent memories can be can be quite of a blur, especially if it has been a minute after the occurrence.

"So…what are we doing here again?"

"You agreed," Tadashi told him.

"About the school?"

"Yes."

"Are you signing me up or do you just want to show me the place?"

"A little bit of both, actually if I have the time. It'll be an hour before 9:00."

Tadashi parked the Vespa at the front steps of the super modern Ito Ishioka Robotics Lab. It was named after the founder of the school and was a recent edition in 2012 with heavy modifications. The exterior of the building itself was futuristic in every way, entirely made of cutting edge steel and international styled reflective glass embedded with transparent solar panels to conserve energy when not being used at night or closed for certain occasions and at the same time, exposing most of the building's interior. The shape of the building was almost like a domed mushroom with a roof of nine LED lights towering above the entrance. There were four doors against a circle leading to the inside, with a streamline moderne designed office to accommodate the local purists and architectural enthusiasts with a secondary passion for technology in lantern fixtures and decorative miscellanea.

As Tadashi got off the back, removing his helmet as he did, he turned around to hear the voice of a young man who been standing there before they arrived.

"Excuse me, do you know if there are any job openings around here?"

Hiro turned to hear the source of the voice as well. The young man was a thin 24 year old, with brown spiky hair and blue eyes. His shoes were yellow and crown symbols adorned the end of his pant legs of his red jumpsuit that featured a long zipper running through the middle. He also wore a white and black overjacket with an indigo interior and black on the exterior with white sleeves ending in grey edging, white gloves on his hands with blue, black and yellow straps, a crown pendant around his neck and a loosely worn blue belt. This was Sora.

"Are you here to apply for the school?" Tadashi asked without noticing his age.

"We're just visitors from Destiny Islands and Disney Castle," said Sora. "And to share the history of the Keyblade with the student body."

Tadashi's eyes narrowed. "How much do you know about it?"

"I am one of them."

Proving this, he opened his right hand and a magic substance of white and star-yellow formed the shape of a skeleton key before it solidified into a blade with teeth forming the outline of a crown. The rain-guard was midnight blue, the guard was bright gold, the handle was of black rubber and a keychain bearing the head of King Mickey Mouse himself was attached to the rear of the guard. It was called the "Kingdom Key", the very weapon used by Sora in his many adventures and escapades.

Tadashi and Hiro were in disbelief before a second had passed and the reality of the Keyblade had been taken in before their eyes.

The older Hamada cleared his throat. "Well, nice to meet you. Tadashi Hamada, I'm a robotics engineer for the school."

"I'm Sora," the young man said dipping his head down by a creek.

He gestured to the sailor suit clad duck on his right and the five foot anthropomorphic dog on his left wearing a green marrowbone-like fedora with a black band, blue pants, long brown shoes, white gloves, an orange shirt and a black vest.

"This is Donald and he's Goofy."

Donald waved his right hand slightly while Goofy just raised his left hand with no vibration. Hiro removed his helmet, giving the three newcomers a full look of his black hair.

"I'm his brother, Hiro."

While he was often shy amongst strangers, especially foreigners, Hiro stepped off the bike, placing his helmet down on the seat and walked slowly towards Sora to gain his trust. Unable to stop himself at the mere excitement of seeing a stranger to his shore, he jerked himself in front of Sora and shook the ten-years-older-than-him-stranger's left hand with his right.

"Kinda jumpy, aren't you?" Sora nearly chuckled at Hiro's impulsiveness.

"Swell," said Donald, arms crossed and tapping his right foot as if it were the most aggravating thing in the world. "Now may we have the tour?"

Tadashi nodded. "Yes, follow me."

And up the steps they went into the building with Tadashi taking the lead.

As a former student and an avid fan of sports, Tadashi always kept a black baseball cap in the rear right pocket of his trousers. It bore the logo of the city's home team, the San Fransokyo Ninjas, the "SF" in gold yellow and the signature "N" in a fiery shade of red. A special 18th birthday present from the school to show their gratitude towards the hard work of a generous young man. Tadashi accepted the job, not wanting to be anywhere else but home, as his deep-knit relationship with Hiro kept him bound to the city limits. He enjoyed wearing the cap from the moment he first laid eyes upon it, almost never wanting to take it off. Sports like baseball, basketball, volleyball, bicycle racing, surfing and snowboarding helped provide Tadashi with the motivation of watching his weight, something that female subjects like beauty models were more obsessed in doing.

In the streamline moderne styled office, the entourage of five was approached by Vitamin Flintheart, the big-hearted actor and drama class teacher known for his hammy performances in soap operas and westerns on many soundstages and backlots in all of Japanifornia's major and minor film studios as well as Shakespearian plays in local theaters of any quality. He was tall, dignified, and elderly with a distinctive moustache and was a friend of Dick Tracy, addressing him as "Richard" due to the offensive usage of the name "Dick". He often wore black berets, fedoras, tan colored trench coats, with scarfs of a different color, smooth trousers and sensible shoes. Vitamin had earned his nickname from a propensity toward chugging health tonics like Bromo-Seltzer and popping vitamin pills down his throat in pursuit of a youth long since fled. He was also married to the talented young dance and skating instructor, Snowflake Falls, whose black hair, light blue eyes and slender hourglass figure made her the queen of ice skating in the city.

He greeted Tadashi with a dip of his head.

"Hello, Mr. Hamada. Have you some newcomers in your company?"

"Yes, Vitamin, this my brother Hiro and these are some visitors to tell us about the legendary Keyblade."

The three newcomers spoke each of their names.

"Donald Duck, sir."

"Name's Goofy Goof."

"I'm Sora."

"Vitamin Flintheart at your service."

"I was just about to give Hiro and these newcomers a tour of the lab upstairs. Care to share your history of the place with my bro, Vitamin?"

Vitamin checked his bronze pocket watch, which read 8:28.

"Love to," he apologized. "But my shift is over and I need to get some rest. I have a long class tomorrow and I must show the new applicants how superior my way of acting works if they want to embody the true emotions of drama."

And he was out the door after throwing a small pill into his mouth.

Taking the stainless steel elevator to the second floor, Tadashi, Hiro, Sora, Donald and Goofy came to a silver-grey corridor with a wall of white and blue doors on the left and translucent walls encased in smart glass that, if made contact from the inside will deactivate the "frosted" mode, exposing a crystal clear view of the interior on the right.

"How long will this tour be?" Goofy asked for no particular reason.

Tadashi smiled as entered the door. "Enough to show all four of you the basic ideas. Hiro has only been to the campus twice before and after I graduated. He hasn't even seen my lab."

Hiro's reply was full of pure sarcasm, uninterested over his forced decision. "Great! I get to see your nerd lab!"

But the very moment he stepped out from the shadows of bot-fighting, Hiro had entered the door to a brand new world of robotics. Before he could take it all in however, a woman's voice shouted:

"Heads up!"

Hiro jumped back at the 5'4 tall figure that passed him like lightning: a motorist wearing a dark gray leather jacket, fashionably ripped dark gray leggings with violet patches, underneath a pair of black shorts with red highlights, a white shirt, black trainers with blue on them, and bare-knuckle gloves. The motorist approached a rack of tools and turned the rear of the makeshift bicycle that was as yellow as Dick Tracy's trench coat in a clockwise direction and hitched it to a black harness suspended by titanium cables. He observed the motorist taking a close inspection of the rear wheel and threw it behind her back, instantly attaching to its former position on the drive chain instead of falling to the floor like it should have been logically. It was magnetic.

When he took three steps closer to the bicycle, Hiro was called to the attention of Sora's "Wow!" at all of the many sights of technological projects. Two hydraulic arms, one lime yellow and the other one a rusty orange were playing an artificial intelligence table tennis match with an actual table, ball and ping pong paddles as a young man and a girl in her early twenties watched with amazement. A bearded boy in his late teens was working the controls of his four rocket boots attached to a mask-and-mantle cat, something that reminded Hiro of his younger days when he worked a similar invention on Mochi, dubbing him "Rocket Cat". There were also 3D printers, the turbine of a Cessna jet, a dark skinned male riding a Mars rover on a simulated platform, a rolling bot that looked like a CD player from a distance and an inflatable great white shark used for underwater sessions.

While he stood looking eagerly at the makeshift bicycle with a small fourth of the wheels streaked in light purple and a spot of gray in the middle, Hiro felt a hum as he moved his right hand over the wheel that he had seen being thrown back in place.

"Whoa. Electromagnetic suspension?" he was amazed at the sight of it, as opposed to how much work had been brought into the wheel.

"Hey! Who are you?"

Hiro turned to face the source of the muffled voice. It was the motorist, her helmet's jet black visor portentously reflecting the boy's worried face.

Tadashi appeared behind him. "Go Go, this my brother Hiro."

The motorist removed her helmet to reveal a head of fair skin, pink lips, short, somewhat scruffy black hair with violet streaks, brown eyes, and lavender eye shadow. She blew a pink piece of gum into a bubble twice the size of her lips, opened her mouth, pulled the gum in-between her teeth and shut it into the back of her throat with a small pop. Her name was Leiko Tanaka.

Leiko Tanaka was a sixteen year old messenger girl with the spirit of an adrenaline junkie and a punk female member of a motorcycle gang associated in short terms with the criminal Floyd Jones. She was aptly called "Go Go Tomago" for her speed and sheer sarcasm. Her highly aggressive personality was attributed towards her ignorant parents, allowing Go Go to live her life to the extreme with the criminal underworld in gang races almost one year ago, that earned her a four-pack of squiggly designed tattoos near her shoulders and by her knees along with a criminal record that turned her parents into the overprotective type. It was also around that time that Tadashi had caught her eye, successfully persuading her to a better life in SFIT rather than facing jail time, though she wasn't able to accept any limits towards the leisurely pacing of the school.

When she looked at Hiro, comparing his looks with Tadashi's, all she could say was.

"Welcome to the nerd lab, so-nyeon."

"You speak Japanese?" Hiro asked her.

"I'm Korean, and my name is Leiko Tanaka."

Hiro giggled at the remark. Sora, Donald and Goofy approached her with courtesy.

"Ma'am," they all waved.

"A talking duck in a sailor suit and a human dog in a green hat? Now I've seen everything."

Her comment did not show any sign of offense on Donald and Goofy's faces, but Sora was curious at seeing the magnetic functions of the bicycle.

"I've never seen this type of magnetism on a bike before."

"You mean electromagnetic suspension?" said Go Go while adjusting the rear wheel. "It's got zero resistance, making it a faster bike. But, sadly, it's not fast enough."

And with her reflexive right hand, she threw the wheel as if it were the vibranium shield of Captain America (whom she had been a fan of through her traditionalist neighbors) towards a blue recycling bin of seven other wheels bearing the same size, shape, and color, three of them not being contained and laying outside the bin.

"Well, not yet anyways," finished Go Go, and she went over to the 3D printer on the other side of the lab to start work on another wheel for the eleventh time in the last seven days of gathering the right essentials.

Hiro, who had been fretting in surprise by her athletic skills, heard the high-pitched whirs of some type of machinery behind his back. Tadashi, watching him with his hands placed on the blue workbench, followed his eyes in synchronization of Hiro's direction toward a burly African-American with smooth dreadlocks, brown eyes and a stubble of beard. He wore white sterile gloves, yellow protective goggles, a light green sweater embroidered with a mustard yellow stripe across the middle with lime green squares, black jeans and all black jikatabi shoes. He was known as Wasabi No-Ginger.

Wasabi No-Ginger (whose real name was Damion), was a top-ranking sushi chief with a razor sharp talent who worked at Tako Taco, a Mexican-Japanese hybrid of a restaurant, where the main course was an octopus taco. He was patient, mysophobic, disciplined, quiet and very strict by the book, who had a mild obsessive compulsive disorder and loved nothing more than to talk about important matters (despite a few exceptions). At twenty years of age, he signed on to SFIT with the idea of creating a plasma blade that could cut through anything but humans to save time on washing utensils. So far, he was in the process of creating a laser screen with a little magnetic confinement for ultra-precision. His work space was immaculately organized with two computer screens, one subwoofer, three danger signs regarding the reader not to slip or fall on spilled liquid and a dark grey generator to power the machine.

When Hiro approached Wasabi with curious eyes, the Afro who had been adjusting a key on the top of the left laser pole saw the young man within the vicinity of a danger zone and held out his gloved right hand defensively at Hiro, pushing him back by four steps.

"Woah, woah, woah, woah! Do not move!"

He pointed his right index finger down at the black and yellow striped hazard line that was taped vertically to the floor.

"Behind the line, please!"

Hiro quickly removed his right foot from the line that it had been standing on. He wondered what could have made the guy so jumpy, the hazard line had to be there for a reason.

Just then, Tadashi, Goofy, Donald and Sora came up to him from behind.

"Hey, Wasabi!" greeted Tadashi. "This my brother, Hiro."

Sora lifted his left hand upwards to gain Wasabi's attention. "And I'm Sora. How do you do?"

Wasabi lifted the yellow goggles with his right hand, greeting the newcomers with a cool expression as if he were a rap singer.

"Jambo, Hiro and Sora, prepare to be amazed by the great Damion."

He grabbed a juicy red apple sitting on top of the generator with his right hand, tossed it behind his back and caught it in-between his left thumb and index finger.

"Catch."

A split second after he threw the apple past the poles, the shiny red exterior had transformed into twenty two wafer-thin layers of white. Hiro caught the last one with his right thumb and index fingers, observing it with wonder. Sora caught another, Goofy hid his layer that originally belonged to the stem in his right pants pocket for safe-keeping and another layer that belonged to the core landed in Donald's beak. The duck swallowed it whole, not feeling anything by the small amount of juice and a thin seed that instigated from the layer.

"Wow. How'd you do that?"

"Lasers."

And to prove this, Wasabi flipped on the generator and a screen of green and blue lasers filled in-between the two poles.

"Laser induced?" Hiro asked him.

"Yep," replied Wasabi as he removed the key from the left laser pole onto a burgundy colored workbench with four wheels. On the table was what Wasabi called his "system", providing him with organized tools under a matching white outline to designate which tool matched the outline from the smallest to the largest, including five other keys, six wrenches, a black plug, twelve sockets, a ratchet, a triangular ruler, nine screwdrivers, a remote, three black curettes, a blue case of four small screws, two black squared magnifying glasses, a small scope, a drill, two oil cans, three keys in bronze silver and gold and a mug labeling "Sugar", "Milk" and "Coffee" in red lines.

"There has never been a system so precise like a little magnetic confinement for ultra-precision," Wasabi went on. "I have also specialized in teaching Swahili, Spanish, French and Klingon."

"You're a Trekkie?" asked Hiro as he observed the black magnifying glass.

"Yes, indeed. So was my pop."

"How do you find anything in this mess?"

Wasabi grabbed back the magnifying glass and put it back in place.

"As I said before: I have a system."

He extended his hands back with the finishing quote. "There's a place for everything and everything is in its place."

As his hands motioned to a complete stop, Go Go appeared as if out of nowhere and grabbed a ¾ wrench from the worktable, pushing it over with her thigh and nearly messing up the contents out of place.

"Need this!" she shouted as the wrench was swiped into her left hand.

Wasabi lost his temper at this display of rude behavior, shouting pungently in Swahili. "You can't do this! This is anarchy! Society has rules!"

He chased after her continuing to shout in English. Sora, his friends and the Hamada brothers watched him leave. Just then, a girl of seventeen shouted, "¡Discúlpeme!" as she rolled with a black rubber ball that looked as big as an average beach ball.

The girl had lightly tanned skin, bright green eyes and long, honey-blonde hair that reached halfway down her back. She was thin and distinctly tall, appearing to be so even without the yellow platform heels. She wore pink lipstick and large, magenta rimmed glasses that also functioned as impromptu safety goggles. Her clothing consisted of a late sixties short yellow dress with a beige headband, a lab coat, white pants and dark orange socks to go with her platform heels.

The girl, Aiko Miyazaki, was a talented chemist with a burning passion for blowing things up and the type of girl with fire in her stomach. Though tired of the embarrassment brought up by the mispronunciation of her real name, she had her name legally changed to "Honey Lemon" after her favorite television program. Bright and cheerful at her best, she had previously worked as a barista at the Sweet Bean Coffee shop downtown with her Hispanic parents, who often socialized with the traditionalists and were fluent in English and Japanese. In making herself more well-known in the food business, she performed some volunteer work in other restaurants, including the Lucky Cat Café where she met Tadashi on his first day at the Tech and the two had fallen in love on a platonic level (considering themselves as just friends). During her more recent time as a student, the other females looked at Honey Lemon as an outcast, as she stood out from the rest, thanks to her fashion sense as a traditionalist herself and she was very concerned about the clothes she wore, especially her more suitable outfits for balls, proms and parties of upper and lower classes. She also ran an online boutique store and was a photoholic with her iPhone, taking selfies and pictures of many things she saw to count as memories enough to drive the phone's memory up the wazoo.

She rolled the ball onto a four armed platform, placing her legs against the pale blue cabinet drawers, with her upper body and head observing Tadashi from upside down. She was excited to the young boy standing by him.

"¡Dios mío! You must be Hiro! Mi nombre es Aiko Miyazaki, pero me puedes llamar 'Honey Lemon'."

"You speak Spanish?" asked Hiro in utter confusion.

"WHAT?!" Honey screamed. It did not take a second for her to realize that she had been listening to José Luis Rodríguez's Boca, Dulce Boca on her iPhone through white earbuds. She removed them and French-kissed Hiro's cheeks. Tadashi blushed in front of Sora who just smirked in stupidity while Donald and Goofy giggled.

"Tadashi has told me sooooooooo much about you! Perfect timing!"

Hiro took in a great breath when he saw the rubber ball rising up to his eye level on a lift.

"That's a whole lot of tungsten carbide," he muttered rapidly.

Honey gripped Hiro's right lower arm with excitement.

"Four hundred pounds of it!" she squealed into his right ear. "C'mon! C'mon! C'mon! You're gonna love this!"

Honey pulled Hiro over to her chemistry set, a table long series of laboratory equipment.

"A dash of perchloric acid…"

She twisted a knob and a yellow green liquid swirled down and up a thin pipeline into a larger tube of ocean-blue liquid.

"A smidge of cobalt…"

She twisted the knob on a cone shaped container and a drop of indigo colored liquid landed on a smaller version at the bottom, striking the dish with a miniature mushroom cloud that was indigo at first then faded into a dark shade of iris.

"A hint of hydrogen peroxide…"

She whipped out a flamethrower with a sapphire can featuring a dark blue dragon looking panicked and aimed it at a vial of yellow liquid, engulfing it.

"SUPERHEAT IT TO 500 KELVIN, and…"

The yellow liquid had changed to pink and she removed the vial from its place. Honey danced as she sprayed the rosy substance all around the black ball as Hiro and Sora watched and the crazed girl flipped a switch. Electricity swirled around the ball while the pink matter was still in the air, in just a split second, the electricity had absorbed the substance onto the ball with not a speck of dust around it.

"Ta-dah! It's great isn't it?"

Although it was a safety precaution to have one's hair pulled up in a science lab, Honey Lemon didn't mind as she had her hair constantly styled all the time in 60s and 70s to match her dresses. Hiro, however, did not know what to say as he never been introduced to a new type of chemical, but Sora did.

"It's very…pinky."

"Pinky's for little girls," Honey said with distaste. Her voice suddenly changed to sing-song. "Here's the best part!"

Grinning madly, she tipped her way to the ball and lowered her left index finger towards the surface. Just as the finger made contact with the ball, a strong wind blew a shockwave through their hair and Honey was lost from head to toe in a pink cloud of chemical combustion.

"Woah…."

Sora and Hiro were left in a daze, a happy, silly daze. The specs of Honey's glasses were covered in pink dust, completely obscuring her eyes until she removed them.

"I know right?! Chemical metal embrittlement. I believe the world can be made into a happier, and much brighter place, through the thorough application of nature's toolbox-CHEMISTRY!"

Tadashi walked up, sporting a romantic look in his eyes. "Not bad, Honey Lemon."

"What's with all the weird names?" Hiro asked in confusion. "'Go Go'? 'Wasabi'? 'Honey Lemon'? Why not just call them by their real names?"

"I really don't like my real name," Honey said sourly. "Aiko Miyazaki is so Japanese, Honey is more…Spanish, like my mother's Hispanic background. You see, my dad's Japanese, and my mother is, as I've already told you, Hispanic."

Wasabi was nearby, having overheard their conversation as he paced around the room in a hysteria from Go Go's theft of the wrench.

"I spilled wasabi on my shirt one time, people! ONE TIME!"

Sora walked over, curious to hear the origin of his pet name.

"How exactly did you spill wasabi? I thought it was just a mushy substance."

"That is the most peculiar thing, Sora, because I distinctly remember it like it was yesterday. I was at my restaurant with my friends over there, I dipped my nacho chip into the wasabi bowl and was just about to eat it when Fred Lee comes up shouting about a new comic book and he makes me drop it, RIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE OF MY SHIRT!"

Sora flinched at Wasabi's outburst before he asked. "Who's Fred Lee?"

"This guy, right here!" said a voice.

Turning his head counter-clockwise, Sora was soon face to face with what looked like a green lizard with orange eyes and black scales, a costume of some sort carrying a red board with the insignia of the school on one side under his right arm.

"Don't be alarmed, it's just a suit, not my real face and body" the voice of the dragon spoke before revealing himself to be a tall, shaggy, and scrawny young man with brown hair and blue eyes. His traditional outfit consisted of a brink pink T-shirt with a Japanese Kaiju monster imprint and white, long-sleeved undershirt, dark green, OD cargo shorts, and white sneakers with emerald laces. He was Fred Lee.

Fred Lee was a fan of DC Comics and tokusatsu monster movies, featuring classic characters like Godzilla and Anguirus. He was also an English major and had been involved in many not-for-profit volunteer organizations supported by the recommendation of scientist Reed Richards and soldier Timothy Dugan in his letter to SFIT. Born an Ainu in origin and raised in a secret S.H.I.E.L.D. base in Japan with his parents Stanley and Joan, Fred had been fascinated in science after having been around experimentations all his childhood. Now eighteen years old and experienced in the reflexes to twirl a sign, he moved to San Fransokyo for a normal life, a life of fiction becoming a reality. He was immersed with such ideas that could be considered ridiculous in some circles. In fact, out of mutual respect for Tadashi as long as he participated in his duties commendably, Fred did not give his "boss" a nickname for himself.

He pulled out his right hand from the costume and used it to shake Hiro's left hand wildly, but the younger boy did not show any sign of lightheadedness.

"Name's Fred Lee. I'm a school mascot for the Green Lizards by day. But, by night…"

He twirled the red sign behind his back, flipped it over his head, bounced it with his feet, spun it around in his left hand and snaked it behind his back again before he exposed the front, bearing the logo against an artwork of flames.

"I'm also a school mascot."

"Actually," Tadashi interfered. "He's my lab rat by night."

Fred cringed at the very word. Tadashi was so nice, yet he had to suffer at the hands of a Samaritan for more important occasions. "Please, don't say that, it makes me feel uncomfortable."

Hiro, having suffered at Tadashi's wrath a lot worse than Fred, just rolled his eyes and smirked for being so lucky.

"And what's your major?" asked Sora.

"I'm not really a student, but I am a major science enthusiast."

He walked over to his "workspace", a dark maroon recliner made of leather with a pink table and a pile of 59 comic books underneath the shelf. He pulled out an issue from the bottom, gazing at it in his right hand with epic proportions. On the cover was a bespectacled dark haired man in a blue shirt, going through four stages of an illustrated transformation: the first was his normal self, the second grew scaly and the shoulders of his shirt were torn, the third showed only a only layer of the shirt with the glasses falling off, with the man turned into a lizard like creature and the fourth and final stage showed the complete transformation of the man turned into a fire breathing lizard with a rhinoceros' horn and was as large as the Incredible Hulk.

"I have been trying to get Honey over here to create a formula that can turn me into a fire-breathing lizard at will. But she says it's not science."

To prove his point, Fred made quotation fingers at the words "not science". Honey, Donald, Goofy, Go Go and Wasabi were already by the recliner and heard everything.

"It's really not possible," Honey tried to explain, her tone sounding sweet in direct contrast to the negative nature of the comment.

Fred turned to Wasabi. "And I suppose the shrink ray I asked for is not science either?"

"No," Wasabi admitted sadly in Swahili.

Then Fred had an idea.

"How about an invisible sandwich?"

Go Go concealed her face with her left hand.

"You are such a retard," she muttered.

Honey elbowed the hand.

"I heard that!" she spoke in defense of the mascot.

"Tough luck, loser," Go Go glared.

"Oh c'mon, Leiko, do we always have to suffer over men?"

"Not at all, Aiko."

Go Go turned to Wasabi, Fred, Donald and Goofy. "Could you excuse us?"

"No," Wasabi told them without a care. "Go and do whatever you want."

They moved over to Go Go's side of the lab where the bike remained suspended without a front wheel. It was the farthest from Fred's workplace and it was in spot where Go Go and Honey liked to share their thoughts, even though as girls they had a shallow rivalry over boys.

"Go Go, can you blame me for trying to maintain a perfect image for a boy like Hiro?"

"What about him?"

"At least, we are not as far gone as some of the others. You saw what happened to your first boyfriend John Yamada."

"He was too vain for me anyway. Besides, he was Japanese, not Korean like me. No accent, no features, all completely American."

"And Johnny Mintworth."

"Who?"

"The visiting millionaire playboy. You remember him, don't you?"

"The one who was too old for me?"

"Exactly."

Go Go placed her hands on her hips, not wanting to remember the time Johnny Mintworth threw a big party last year after a breakthrough in his account.

"How old is he?" she asked Honey.

"31."

"Way too old."

"And you know Peanut Butter, the young genius?"

"That smart aleck?" Go Go groaned in disgust. "I never liked him. He was always so boastful even after he went on to become a member of the police force uptown."

"He's a junior detective near Union Square," Honey corrected.

Go Go shrugged. "Perfect. At least he won't be bothering me anymore."

"But Hiro is not like any of those three. Slowly but surely, he'll warm up to you…and maybe you'll find that he's the right guy."

Go Go was unmoved by Honey's comment, she was focusing her mind on something else.

"Why did I have to get dragged into this nerd school? It's not like the both of us got in trouble for anything."

"No, but don't you remember that it was because of Tadashi that got you out from a life of juvy hall?"

This caused Go Go's eyebrows to rise.

"I suppose so," she muttered.

Honey tried to get into her head.

"All I know is, maybe Hiro will be a good match for you. After all, the both of you are like two years apart."

In a brief moment of friendship, Go Go fixed Honey with a small smile. This was definitely against her Clint Eastwood-like persona of tough grits.

Nobody had noticed that Hiro and Sora were missing.

---

"In case you have already realized," Tadashi said to Hiro as they entered his laboratory across the hall. "Those four are all part of my research team. They have been here since my third year."

"And I'm just a one man band," Hiro muttered, realizing to himself that he had no friends to share his creations with other than Tadashi.

"What about all those times together? Like building stuff and coming up with original ideas?" Tadashi asked.

"Okay, that was a two-man band," Hiro admitted.

Swinging through the doors, Hiro took his first ever glimpse of Tadashi's laboratory. It had a 20 foot circular window with a plasma computer screen on the right, and stocks of a light blue desk, a dark brown drawer and a yellow file cabinet. A white mechanical arm was placed on a turquoise colored trashcan. Six posters of heart beats and retina patterns filled the wall above another computer that had three monitors and a table lamp for extra lighting.

As Hiro fiddled with the white mechanical arm, Sora asked him. "What have you been working on?"

Tadashi got out a roll of grey duct tape from a red tool box and pulled out a four inch piece that left his brother completely dissatisfied.

"Duct tape? I hate to brake it to you, onii-chan, but it's already been invented."

"Actually, this is part of an experiment," Tadashi corrected him.

He pushed up the jacket sleeve of Hiro's right forearm and stamped the tape in place.

"Now don't scream."

After he said this, his left hand held a firm grip on the tape and he jerked it right off, pulling out six follicles of arm hair and leaving a light red burn that caused Hiro to overreact.

"AH! NANDE KUSO! What was that for?!"

"This."

Tadashi gestured his left hand toward a red baggage like device. Out from the hold, an inflating sound was heard and with it came a very different and a very unusual sort of robot that Hiro had not seen before.

It was a squishy white plush-like figure that appeared to be over 75 inches high and 37 inches wide, with stout limbs, long arms with four fingers on each hand, black dot eyes connected by a line (supposedly the mouthpiece) and a small badge on the left side of its chest.

"I've been working on him for three months and two weeks straight," Tadashi told his guest and younger brother.

"How cute," Sora peeped.

The robot looked down and placed his right foot out from the container followed by his left. He looked up and waddled six steps towards Hiro like a penguin before bumping into a yellow stool. Even though it looked like the stool was out of his way, the robot grabbed it by the seat with both hands and rotated himself 90 degrees to the left. He put the stool down and continued to walk towards Hiro. Hiro was discomforted by this unusual creation, but behind him, Sora just wanted to squeeze the thing so tight that its head would come flying off.

Continuing to approach Hiro, the robot stopped and greeted the boy with a wave of his right hand.

"Hello, I am Baymax. Your personal healthcare companion. I was alerted to the need of medical attention when you said 'ow'."

Tadashi stood behind the robot, proud and strong-hearted with his work, almost making hand gestures with the greeting as he mouthed the final word. Hiro was stunned.

"A robotic nurse?" he asked deniably.

A twelve inch screen appeared on Baymax's chest, displaying two rows of five different faces with a number underneath each one. The first five faces were a plain yellow, the number one displaying a grin, the second face a big smile, the third face a small smile, the fourth face was a wince and the fifth face was just a content facade. The three faces on the bottom row were orange, the last two being red, The sixth face was on the border of sad and happy, the seventh face was a frown, the eighth face was the same as number seven but with closed eyes, the ninth face was red with a tear going down the left eye and the tenth face's eyes were shut tight with grimacing teeth.

"On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain?"

Hiro's eyes were at half-mast, looking emotionless as he said, "Physical or emotional?"

Rather than just saying the word, Tadashi pouted in his own way of saying "emotion". Baymax interrupted his puppy dog eyes.

"I will scan you now."

He gave Hiro's forearm a onceover. Through his scanning system (colored a light blue from his viewpoint), which displayed the figure's outline and bone structure and the symptoms displayed in numbers. Hiro's blood pressure was at 113/90, his respiratory rate at 21, a blood oxygen level at 97 and a temperature rate of 98.

"Scan complete," the squishy fellow stated. The outline of the figure appeared on his chest, with the right forearm covered in blood red.

"You have a slight epidermal abrasion on your right forearm."

He lifted his right index finger upwards to reveal the nozzle of a mist sprayer.

"I suggest an anti-bacterial spray."

I don't really think a spray is necessary. Hiro thought. Out loud he asked out of curiosity as he tried to keep a smug face.

"Woah, woah, woah. What's in the spray specifically?"

A chemical structure with the word "Bacitracin" in a bold blue at the bottom appeared on Baymax's twelve inch screen.

"The primary ingredient is bacitracin," the plushy figure explained.

Hiro snapped his right fingers, still refusing to be treated like he was seriously wounded, when in fact he was not.

"It's a bummer. I'm actually allergic to that."

But with his scanning system at a universal potential, Baymax could see into the dark caverns of Hiro's mind, knowing that he lied.

"You are not allergic to bacitracin," the snowman robot went on. "However, you do have a mild allergy to…"

He paused, and Baymax held up his right index finger for the second time, before he uttered the word "peanuts".

The illusion broken, Hiro reluctantly exposed his forearm and Baymax pointed his index finger downwards as the spray of bacitracin dampened his arm for two seconds.

"Not bad," he said quietly. He turned to Tadashi, wanting to know more about Baymax's functions. "You have done some serious coding on this thing, haven't you?"

"Un-huh," Tadashi piqued. "In the three years that I have been here as a student and a robotics engineer, Baymax is my greatest creation."

He pressed his left index finger against Baymax's chest, the door sunk in, opened up and reveal four slots of a circular design. The only chip that could be seen was in the third slot and was office green with Tadashi's full name written in his own handwriting on top and in the center was a white smiley face wearing a pair of black stethoscopes in his ears and a head mirror to represent the archetypical image of a doctor.

"He is programed with almost 10,000 medical procedures, although I might add some more just for further accuracy," Tadashi observed the chip with proud eyes, his pupils fixed on his handwriting at this moment of the creator and the creation.

"This chip is the most important component that makes Baymax what he is. It's highly processed to act like a neurone synapse amplifier that can match this chip to an almost exact replica of the human brain wave, in layman's terms, it will make Baymax as humanly as possible to his patients. Without this chip, he won't be able to function."

Sora tried to take all of this in, trying not to let his earlier experiences with knowledge work against him.

"Anything more valuable about this chip?" he asked.

"Since Hiro has been spending more time alone, I thought that Baymax would make a perfect surrogate brother. Using ex-HYDRA technology and some notes of Dr. Arnim Zola's algorithm that he used to create an artificially intelligent user interface, I encoded my DNA and my mind in this chip, so that if anything were to happen to me, Hiro and I will always be together, even in death. To make a long story short, everything that is me, my intentions, my responsibilities, my memories and my intelligence are all safe and snug inside this chip as long as it doesn't break. He even speaks Japanese."

Hearing the name, Baymax repeated his greeting gesture in said language.

"Konnichiwa, watashi wa Baymax."

"If you need only one chip," Hiro said as he pushed in the chip back in. "Why do you have four slots?"

"I figured that after the annual showcase in a couple of weeks, I'll bring him home with me and I can work on three more chips for more-helpful things-like cooking and cleaning."

"And bot-fighting," murmured Hiro.

Tadashi was cross at the very mention. "Hiro, wareware wa kono ni watatte ikimashita," he reprimanded his brother.

Hiro turned his head to Sora. "He says we went over this."

Sora, being a Japanese person himself, understood the context of Tadashi's words. "I understood that."

Curious than before, Hiro walked behind Baymax and tapped the rubbery location of his left shoulder blade two times.

"Vinyl?" he asked Tadashi.

"Yes, I'm going for a non-threatening, huggable design."

"I think he looks like a walking marshmallow," added Sora. It was then that he realized that his former childishness got the best of him. "No offense."

Baymax motioned his back by an inch.

"I cannot be offended."

By now, Hiro was looking to the black beady eyes of Baymax, who seemed to be unbothered by Hiro tapping his left eye twice.

"Hyperspectral cameras?" Hiro asked Tadashi as he grabbed Baymax's head with both hands.

"Yep," his brother said.

Hiro's eyes were at half-mast, trying to find a more closer observation, but all he could see was the night-black color of Baymax's innocent eyes. Letting go of the robot's head, he buried his face into Baymax's abdomen, his nose resembling a pig's nostrils from the pressure of the vinyl. He saw the mid-section of Baymax's skeleton, admiring it lovingly by the second. Four grey hydraulics made up the ribcage with red, yellow white and blue wires. Guides allowed the cables in his arms to move freely. Under the clavicle was a projector lens, the scapula in the back had no connection to the ribcage, his legs were connected by Lucite pelvic cover attaches and the pelvic wings at the rear of the pelvis were only attached to the rear and did not touch the joint in any way.

"Titanium skeleton," Hiro identified while Tadashi added, "Carbon fiber."

Hiro pressed his face further against Baymax's rubbery surface, realizing, "Right, even lighter than my other robots."

Hiro's face was even more compressed. "Where did you get these killer actuators?"

Tadashi hesitated in bringing up the resources for his magnum opus but he couldn't keep a secret from Hiro, so he said the truth.

"I have uh….connections. For the money I mean. As for most of Baymax's parts, I built them all right here. He can also lift a thousand pounds."

Hiro's expression was completely deadpan, but serious. "Well, I'll be god-dammed."

By now, Hiro's abrasion had faded away and Baymax leaned his upper body closer to thank the boy.

"You have been a good boy, have a lollipop."

In a lightning-fast move, he pulled out a cherry flavored lollipop from the palm of his right hand, the same flavor Tadashi had given Hiro all those years ago.

"Nice."

Taking in the memory, Hiro grabbed the lollipop in his right hand, removed the foil wrap and took a lick from the bottom.

"I cannot deactivate until you say you are satisfied with your care," said the marshmallow.

"Well then," said Hiro after pulling the lollipop from his mouth. "I am satisfied with my care."

Baymax turned around and walked back to his luggage. As he did, Tadashi walked next to Hiro, who was holding the sugar-free lollipop in his mouth as if it were a cigarette.

"Baymax is going to change the world by helping a lot of people."

Tadashi's powerful words struck Sora's mind and heart with a kindred spirit. In a way, Sora felt that Baymax was just like him: selfless, caring and devoted.

Hiro changed the subject, "What kind of battery does he run on?"

"Lithium ion," Tadashi added.

"Super capacitors can charge more faster, you know."

Tadashi was inspired. "I think I'll just about do that."

But before the three males could start work, the door opened from behind and in the doorway were two of SFIT's greatest scientists.

"Burning the midnight oil, Mr. Hamada?"

The reply belonged to Dr. Robert Callaghan. He was a tall, somewhat elderly man with a generally warm appearance. With gray hair, wrinkles, blue eyes, an olive green sweatervest, a baby blue shirt with the sleeves pulled up, black trousers, brown shoes, a watch on his left wrist and slacks, he donned the appearance of a kindly grandfather. In fact, he felt like one to all of his current and former students, but Tadashi was the only one he could deeply sympathize with, given the young man's fatherless background. As the surrogate father Tadashi lost, they did more than just act as teacher and mentor during Hamada's student years: Shows at Club Ritz, movies about robotics and scientific discussions, experimenting with food at restaurants and reading the latest in Discovery Channel Magazine for research. Like Tadashi, Robert's family was small though not as small as his other relatives, his wife had died of cancer six years ago and his daughter, a girl of 5'5 long black hair named Abigail, had long since disappeared three months prior. Robert left the details in the dark, calling his daughter's disappearance the most reckless thing she had ever done in her life. He also paid a visit to Culver University to introduce his revised laws of robotics to the entire student faculty when Jane Foster, Erik Selvig and Darcy Lewis, former nurse turned astrophysicist, scientist and intern student, decided to pay him a small fortune to create an advanced piece of equipment for Foster's research on the event of an Einstein-Rosen Bridge. This "bridge" was infused with the Bifrost Bridge of Asgard, where they met the thunder god Thor Odinson in Puente Antiguo, New Mexico. All three had warmed up to the thunder god during his short lived banishment, and even Jane had to admit that she had romantic feelings for him, even if he was a god who came from another dimension.

The man on Callaghan's right was Diet Smith, the inventor of the two-way wrist radio and the two-way wrist TV. He had wild hair, a small chevron moustache, a brown suit with cream lapels and was a very health conscious millionaire. Diet's wife Irma was at first a disgruntled worker had had taken a liking to her employer when her plans to steal a shipment of lithium needed for a thousand more wrist radios went straight down the tubes. They had son named Brilliant, who was also a graduate of the Tech but never worked there unlike Tadashi, he had moved on to head his father's business at Diet Smith Industries in Emeryville. But it seemed to Brilliant that his father's biggest fault wasn't doing too little for his support of the San Fransokyo Police Department, but trying to do too much for his friendship with Dick Tracy.

A minute earlier, Callaghan and Smith had been discussing plans for a renovation on some of the older buildings, and the next minute they were overhearing Hiro and Tadashi's voices from outside the hall.

"Hello, professors," Tadashi greeted. "This is my younger brother Hiro and this our guest Sora."

Sora waved his right hand and greeted in a sweet "Hi!"

Callaghan extended his left index finger at Hiro. "I think I've heard about you, Hiro. You were at a bot fight last month near Broadway street in the property of old Bob Honor, am I right?"

"You mean Lips Manlis?" Hiro corrected. "He wasn't much of a prize, and what does a guy like you be hanging around bot fights for?"

"When my daughter Abigail was twelve, bot-fighting was all she wanted to do. But then I stepped in and said 'nope, not gonna do it anymore. It's illegal.' So she came here and I taught her everything that there is to know about robotics…before she disappeared."

"Disappeared?" Sora had overheard and was curious to know the juicy details.

"It's confidential," said Callaghan.

Diet Smith butted in for a slightly more detailed explanation.

"A simple event that has been only known to the public as a laboratory accident."

Callaghan noticed Megabot lying Hiro's left hand.

"May I hold it?" he asked while offering his right hand out to him.

"Sure."

Hiro surrendered Megabot over to Callaghan, and he studied the robot with great detail in all five of the magnetic joints.

"Magnetic-bearing servos."

Sora stepped outside.

"Cool isn't it?"

Hiro followed him.

"Want to see how I put them together?"

Before he could, Tadashi, who was still inside the office tapped the smart glass window adjacent to the left side of the door three times with his right hand and deactivated the frost mode, speaking to Hiro and Sora from outside as his voice resonated from the open door.

"Hey, genius. He invented them."

Carrying his ever so innocent look, he pointed his index finger in the direction of Callaghan just before the window went back to "frosted" mode. Hiro faced Callaghan and Smith with his lips on the verge of screaming to the world.

"You're Robert Callaghan…like the Callaghan-Catmull Spline and your revision of Isaac Asimov's Laws of Robotics?"

"Yes," the older man replied.

"And my name is Diet Smith of Diet Smith Industries," the other man said as he extended his right hand to shake Hiro's. "How do you do?"

"Have you ever thought of applying here?" Callaghan asked Hiro.

Sora, unsure if he was referring to the both of them, was the first to reply. "Well, I'm just a visitor, but if you-"

"I mean Hiro," Callaghan interrupted. "His age wouldn't be an issue."

"Of course," Diet suggested. "My son Brilliant was sixteen when he came here and now he's running the family business across the bay."

By this minute, Tadashi had shut off the electricity in his office.

"I don't know," he said in worried tone. "With all that seriousness in bot fighting, I'm afraid he's bound for the electric chair."

Hiro did not want to make Smith and Callaghan think that he was a full time criminal, so he followed after them while Sora went to retrieve Donald and Goofy in the laboratory.

Donald was close to Honey Lemon, who was working on another chemistry ball. This time it was painted purple and Donald was trying to make a move on the young woman.

"Care if I try tootsie?"

Goofy had been near Fred's workspace, curious at the silver boom box radio near his pile of comics. Switching on the play button with his right index finger, his ear drums were nearly popping out to the loud blares of The Summer Set's "Chelsea", which nearly sent Donald into Honey's arms and her back fell on the unelectrified rubber ball of purple spray glitter.

At that moment, Go Go came out from the restroom door, looking irritated as Wasabi and Fred followed her in different discussions.

"But, Leiko, I told you five times before going to the bathroom that soap is-"

Before Wasabi could mention any inappropriate uses of soap, like consuming it, Go Go stopped to see Honey's legs sticking out from the wall of her workspace with Donald's tail and webbed feet exposed as well. She scrunched up her face and glared, assuming that the two were having an affair. Fred rushed over to turn off his boom box while Go Go stomped her way to Honey's workspace and grabbed the duck by the back of his sailor suit.

"That's it! Party's over!"

And she performed a knife chop on Donald's bill, causing it to reverberate up and down.

"So! Dare to speak to me like that, you little wench!"

"Your goose is cooked, duck," Go Go cracked and held out a five-eighth wrench, swinging left and right five times at the hapless duck as Donald dodged her attacks. Sora rushed in and broke up the fight by holding Go Go back by her shoulders.

"Hey, hey, hey! Don't hurt my friend!"

Go Go just bopped his forehead with the wrench.

"Shove it, spiky," she hissed. "You're nothing but a big cunt."

Honey heard this, and Fred was next to her, smoothing Goofy's ear from the loud blasting of his boom box.

"She'd better not speak to that boy like that again," she muttered offensively in her Spanish.

"So what have you been doing in here?" Sora asked Donald.

"Nothing," the duck peeped.

"Other than making eyes at Honey, I hope not," Go Go was still glaring and she helped Sora to his feet in a simple act of charity with a sick tone in her voice. "Now take your pets and get out."

"Okay."

Sora cowered at Go Go's aggressiveness and as he left for the door, Wasabi and Fred waved goodbye while Honey just tilted her head by three degrees, smiling innocently at the duck who tried to make eyes with her.

Outside, they met Tadashi and Hiro by the Vespa. The older Hamada was already on the bike, while the younger was just pacing back and forth or just staring directly at the lab from the eighth step of the main staircase, absorbing every last detail and consequence of this marvelous and creative sort of school.

"Come on, genius, you wanna go home, or are you still wanting to go that bot-fight you were talking about earlier?"

Hiro flipped himself around, placing his left hand against his forehead in distress. "No, Tadashi, you were right. Bot-fighting is bad and after everything I've seen just now, I have to go here. If I don't go to this nerd school, I will go completely insane! But how do I get in? Work my way up with tuition money?"

"There is a faster way," Tadashi smiled in a successful, heroic pose. He knew that Hiro would fall head over heels with the Tech and everything else that it had to offer. After Hiro hopped onto the Vespa and drove for home with Tadashi leading the way, Sora, Donald and Goofy arrived just in time to see the Hamada brothers leaving through the gate.

"I'll call a taxi," Donald suggested.

And they did, though it was Goofy who had been sticking his right thumb out like a hitchhiker as he was close to Sora as being the tallest member of the trio.

---

At 3:00 PM the very next day, Tadashi found the wide poster he was looking for from the school news bulletin and planned on showing it to Hiro as soon as he got home. All the fourteen year old could think about was that "nerd school", so much that he lacked sleep until one in the morning. The trip had accelerated the wheels of his mind to a deficiency in caffeine, and the voices in his head were chanting "Go to nerd school, go to that beautiful institute of science".

He couldn't even bother to tell Aunt Cass about his visit, since she was already fast asleep by the time they got back. Tadashi couldn't bother with her either, since he preferred to have her work for money over socialism, something he thought as a waste of time for the hard working citizens of San Fransokyo like himself (despite a few occasions where he would just stop to smell the roses).

"So what have you got?" Hiro asked his older brother when he came in with the poster in his right hand.

"The key to getting in," Tadashi explained, and he went to get a black stapler from his bedside table. With no other room to place it along the walls, he was determined to get bot-fighting out of Hiro's blood system by stapling it over bot-fighting poster directly above Hiro's head: a grey manga piece of artwork with violent red lettering and displaying a taller robot impaling a much smaller bot with its right arm. Within four seconds, the majority of the poster was obscured by the advertisement Tadashi had obtained: "San Fransokyo Institute of Technology" written in white against a green stripe, "SFIT Showcase" against a dark blue background featuring a nebula and a gear. The left area was all white, with the logo on the top, "Call for entries" and "For more information please visit .edu" typed in a bold cerulean on the bottom. Hiro was sitting in his black swivel chair, posed like the thinker he was with his right hand placed on his chin.

"Every July 10th, the school hosts a student showcase," Tadashi explained. "If you come up with something that blows Callaghan away, you're in."

"I know," said Hiro, remembering his previous visits to the showcase hall. "You took me there for every six years before we decided to grow up and act mature."

"I was just reminding you," Tadashi continued. "But your invention has to be as great as Baymax."

Hiro looked at the poster of his dreams, and checked the date from the calendar on his computer. The showcase was only fourteen days away, and with his amount of IQ and confidence to define against the odds, all he had to do was to believe in himself.

"Trust me," Hiro moved the chair closer to the computer monitor. "It will be."

"If you want I can help you," Tadashi called from his side of the room.

"I'll be fine," Hiro assured him.

Switching on the boom box radio to Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" at a volume of 20 decibels, he locked his fingers together and cracked the joints. He quickly got out his indigo covered notebook from the top drawer on the right hand side of the computer and a yellow pencil from an ultisol colored cup. He sharpened the pencil for five seconds and observed it in between his eyes as if it were a mighty sword, worthy and honorable of serving the Bushido. He opened up to the first page of his so-far unused notebook and started to draw a remote controlled kaiju robot that reminded him of Fred. The result was blocky with teeth in the torso and big anime eyes for the head.

Tadashi on the other hand, was thinking of his own idea for Hiro to create: a cleaning robot with eyes that resembled Baymax's down to the line that connected them in-between to represent the mouthpiece as he listened to the less wild sound of Breathless Mahoney's cover of "Stuck on You" from the earplugs of his Walkman. It would have two stout arms and a container for storing garbage, which could be dumped out from behind into the waste bin. When he showed the design to Hiro, all he could say was, "Boooorrrrinnnnnning."

Even though he thought that onii-chan's inventions were always exciting, Hiro had to agree (in his own opinion) that some of Tadashi's ideas were not that great. He just crumpled the sketch onto the table along with the kaiju robot, thinking that the blocky nature was too "archetypical" (and it was).

An hour later, Hiro sketched his next idea to Tadashi: a fire breathing dragon robot with a can of N2O for non-flammable purposes. It would have to be made from fireproof steel to keep the robot itself from catching fire.

"It could light up fireplaces and candles and just be supercool!" Hiro exclaimed, but Tadashi wasn't into it.

"It could also cause a disaster," he enunciated. "That thing it just too dangerous for the sake of the community."

Hiro had already crumpled up the design when Tadashi came up with the sketch for another robot that could save on energy. As if it were a trademark, the head featured Baymax's nondescript face and looked like a child's interpretation of an alien, with antennas on the head and an almost skeletal body.

"This one could turn off all of the electrical equipment that isn't being used."

But for the second time, Hiro was unamused.

"Do we live in a world where light switches were never invented?"

"Of course we do, just not all the time."

Hiro just swiped the sketch from Tadashi's hands, folded it and threw it in the waste bin. He was thinking of scoring ten points ahead of his brother's leaden ideas with a super-sushi chef robot for special nights at the Lucky Cat downstairs, each one with a kitchen knife for a hand. The robot chef would also have purple armor of ancient times, yellow eyes and a red bandana to emulate the common headwear of human sushi chefs.

"This one could feed us and put on a show at the same time," Hiro countered.

Unlike his previous counter-comments, Tadashi's answer was serious-and cold.

"That thing is a killing machine. Someone could die from those knife throws if they aren't handled professionally."

Hiro sensed that he was, for once in his recent years, fighting a losing battle with his brother and after three hours of brainstorming, was faced with almost fifty ideas, scrapped, discarded and crumpled into origami shapes, three of them lying on the floor. He was pounding his forehead on the front of the desk at each word with punctuation of defeat.

"Nothing! Useless! EMPTY! BAKA! CHI KI SHO! BRAIN!"

Tadashi, who had left all the brainstorming to Hiro's devices, was sitting in his bed, right leg extended and left knee in a squat position, reading the eighty third page of Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, in the scene where Rhett Butler met Scarlett O'Hara for the very first time, albeit in passing. He had already changed into a white shirt and green plaid trousers (it was already 7:30 in the evening) and was glad to see Hiro finally putting some effort into his mind for the purpose of good, but not so much with his tirade of headdesking his prefrontal cortex to the deficiency of a cerebral damage.

"Wow, washed up at fourteen. So sad."

Hiro jerked his head upwards, almost insulted by the comment.

"Less sarcasm, more helping!" he shouted.

"Why should I care?" Tadashi spoke, his voice still in a smug, sadistic tone of sarcasm. "It's your invention, not mine. All those other ideas I gave you were simply brain teasers. You'll never reach your potential if you keep tagging along behind me."

You are such a bastard. Hiro slumped backwards in his chair.

"I have already lost my potential! I'm never, repeat, NEVER getting into that school."

He concealed his face in the palm of his left hand with ignominy.

"What's the use? I'm at a dead end."

Just as he was ready to give up his dreams of putting his brilliant mind to the test (as well as his own life, if not just going to back to hustling bot-fights), Tadashi made his presence known. He jerked Hiro's chair from behind with his own right hand and turned it around to face Hiro eye-to-eye with a staid expression that matched his reply.

"Don't be stupid, Hiro. There are no dead ends…because I am not going to give up on you."

Tadashi knew that one essence of Hiro not coming up with an idea from scratch was due to his ability of miniaturizing and building off of others' inventions and capabilities, so without warning, he grabbed Hiro's legs, pulled him off the chair and hung him from behind with Hiro's popliteal fossa on his shoulders like a backpack in a reverse frankensteiner. He often used this whenever Hiro was at an existential crisis, while Hiro himself just hated the treatment of an inversion therapy, especially since he had to be hanging from his brother's shoulders.

Tadashi danced around in 360 degree turn and shook Hiro left and right seven times over before slightly rattling him like a car riding on an incomplete road of asphalt.

"What do you think you are doing?!" Hiro shrieked as if he had not done this before. He felt like he was going to upchuck at any moment or perhaps suffer a headache with a tumor on his forehead the size of a goose egg, should Tadashi drop him with a hard blow to his intelligence.

"Shake things up!" Tadashi encouraged. "Use that big brain of yours to think your way out of that dead end!"

Oh my God, not this again, Hiro suddenly remembered, and as Tadashi added his own catchphrase "Look for a new angle," his eyes were on Megabot, lying on its end as it was on the last bot-fight he had gone to. Taking in Tadashi's slogan, Hiro tilted his head forty degrees to the right and it was the shape, size and ability of Megabot that inspired the one thing that would appease Tadashi with the sole purpose of preventing disasters and saving the lives of innocents like the superhero he saw his nii-chan as. The name popped into his head immediately as his brain cells flowed with wanton velocity: microbot.

---

With only thirteen days left to spare, Hiro opened up the door to Aunt Cass' garage, which she helped to set up so that the brothers could work there without any noise from construction causing any problems for her. It was actually made to serve as Tadashi's secondary laboratory where he could do homework and extra time from SFIT. After Tadashi was given the position of an official robotics engineer at the school, Hiro got to use the garage as well, which was equipped with a widescreen computer, a 3D printer, a television set, a radio, three workbenches, boxes, hydraulics, wheels, drills, placards of bot-fights, toolsets, wires and plugs for multitasking. He set Megabot on the work bench in the far end of the room and set to work.

As of then, on that very first day, he re-studied the workings of Megabot and his magnetic joints on his computer and designed a headband to function his new microbots in a fully operational matter through pre-existing neural interface technology. By themselves, these microbots would be futile to operate, but when held together, they would create a swarm and acquire the ability to transform into any image directly crafted from the wearer's mind, including a mallet, a robotic excavator, a skateboard, a boxing glove, an infinite ladder, walking legs, an army glove, a motorcycle helmet, a motor fan and a limitless set of stairs. Hiro hoped that his new creations would not only help people, but also would make their jobs a lot easier than ever. Such opportunities would include building bridges, taking less time in the construction of buildings through assembling the right pieces as well as forming prosthetic legs for the disabled. He would have loved to form giant fighting bots out of them to take down the other bot-fighting champions in seconds, but Tadashi's threat of sending him to juvenile hall made him think otherwise. As a result, Hiro knew that the microbots would have their limits, they would never be used for brushing Mochi, cleaning his laundry or even doing his homework.

By sunset, he decided to begin work on the headband first and the microbots later. Aunt Cass had given him a warm meal of steak and potatoes to keep his strength up through the night until midnight had arrived. On the second day, after a break of playing with a red light to entertain Mochi, Hiro worked on his desk to start the basis of the headband all through the morning and Cass had served him a hamburger and mashed potatoes for lunch, announcing it in sing-song. Cass had been looking forward to seeing Hiro attend the institute in Tadashi's footsteps and broke no sweat in doing the pre-occupied Hiro's chores of keeping his room in a neat and tidy status.

"You must be obsessed in wanting to go there," Cass said to her nephew.

"I'd prefer the term 'devoted'," Hiro replied without a direct eye-contact.

"I see," Cass observed carefully. "You are starting to become more and more like your brother every day since that night."

"You mean from the bot-fight?" Hiro directly asked her. "I've learned my lesson. Tadashi actually opened my eyes to a world beyond all of that."

"You mean like a good one?"

"Yes….something like 'using your head for the good of others'."

Cass smiled and she left Hiro to resume his work. He had taken a small ring of stainless steel cables from the six rolls that hung from a black metal rack on the left side of the garage. He continued to use them all throughout the night for his headband and Tadashi was pleased with his progress so much that he ordered a box of six pepperoni slices from Haight Pizza and gobbled it all down as Hiro continued to work on the computer without stopping. Then, an hour later, Tadashi had already gone to sleep and Hiro followed him shortly after.

By morning on the third day, Hiro started actual work on the microbots, which were no more than the size of Thumbelina (about four inches tall to be precise). Clad in his pajamas of a white shirt and blue plaid shorts from working all through the night, he searched his tool box for a means to multiply the microbots from the core master copy and had a can of Red-Bull to accelerate his working strengths instead of coffee, which he knew had the right amount of caffeine that he needed to hasten the project, but anathematized the taste. Knowing that he would need a total of two million nanobots, he borrowed a blue recycle bin from across the street and went on to build 100 more microbots from the 3D printer. He proceeded to work through the night, wielding the magnetic joints of the microbots together in order for them to function as a tight-knit group as he recalculated Megabot's limbs and borrowed two more recycle bins from the corner of the café.

Sparing no expense with his earnings from the bot-fights he won (along with half of the money going to the Lucky Cat), Hiro, exhausted from the work that had forced him to stay up all night, slept through the entirety of the fourth day, still clad in pajamas and he was still in a coma by the morning of the fifth day. Tadashi didn't bother to wake him up, and during his own spare time, he decided to take Hiro's advice by replacing Baymax's lithium ion battery with super capacitors and updating Baymax's databanks with three more health procedures, like anti-smoking campaigns, proper itinerary of a blood vessel and being cautious with sharp objects such as scissors or glass fragments. At nightfall, Hiro had been sleeping on the swivel chair to his computer in a crooked position and the weight of the right side of his body hanging from the chair pulled him down and the impact of the rear of his head striking the floor set him back to work by 8:41 PM. He designed the microbots to work into a square shape that was the size of a Nintendo DS before turning it into a box.

On the morning of the sixth day, Mochi wanted to play ball with Hiro, but had decided to a cat-nap on the third recycle bin, not bothering Hiro at all as the genius switched to his normal outfit and bought a fourth bin for the extra amount of microbots. At 5:00 PM, he decided to entertain Mochi with a game of cops and robbers using a remote control SWAT van to depict the getaway vehicle, but the bobtail would not leave the bin until Tadashi came home with Sora, Donald, Goofy, his team from the lab and threw a pizza party to celebrate Hiro's progress. Sora, who had booked room 201 at the Hyatt Regency in Embarcadero, kept in touch with Tadashi while visiting the institute and the elder Hamada was kind enough to give Sora his address and by the time he arrived at the garage with Donald and Goofy, Wasabi was nitpicking at his slice of pepperoni while Fred was covering his face within in his own slice. Honey was socializing with the brothers and Go Go looked disgusted to see Fred lying lifeless in a sea of cheese and crust. They told jokes and riddles about their nicknames, Tadashi and Hiro fought over the last slice of pizza, Sora and the girls watched Legally Blonde on DVD, Donald and Goofy played hangman and Fred had been choking on a large piece of anchovy while Wasabi pulled a Heimlich maneuver on him. The piece of anchovy came shooting right out of his mouth and landed in the middle of Haight Street's jet black pavement and was run over by a moving van. Tadashi decided to increase Hiro's research and energy with additional materials and possible inspiration for microbot forms.

"All the same, we could use some spare parts to help speed things along the way," were the words he said.

On the seventh day, they went to a junkyard in Bernal Heights and they found all sorts of pieces that could be made useful again. The junkyard was owned and run by Bob Oscar Plenty, his silver haired wife and ex-convict Gravel Gertie and their three year old daughter Sparkle. B.O. was a hillbilly from a close-knit Ohio family who was thin with wary black hair and an unkempt beard. Habitually, he wore a red pit helmet, a black vest, and white sleeve garters. Until he was twenty four, B.O. and his twin brother Goodin ran a gas station further west of Ohio in a Podunk town and had saved up enough money to own a vegetable farm in the more rural areas outside of San Fransokyo for thirty years. With his savings, B.O. came to work for Diet Smith as a groundskeeper and he even helped Dick Tracy when a partner of Smith had been electrocuted by a crazed Irma over the top secret creation of the two-way wrist radio. After the case had been solved, B.O. moved back to his farm and caught the eye of Gravel Gertie, a small time convict known for playing the mandolin and a loud singing voice that critics just simply called "not music to my ears." As she moved into a cottage across the road from B.O.'s farm, he and Gertie were at odds, calling each other the most ugliest human beings that ever walked the earth and after taking in the cruel remark, B.O. had seen what a kind woman she was and Gertie returned the favor. A month later, they were married in the vegetable field with over one hundred and fifty people attending, including the Hamadas. Disk jockey Ted Tellum broadcasted the scene nationwide on television, radio and online networks like it was the biggest wedding of the century since Prince William and Catherine Middleton tied the knot in Westminster Abbey. Nine months later, Sparkle was born and to their surprise, the girl was so beautiful that they spoiled her with enough money to satisfy their needs, which led B.O. to purchase the junkyard for extra money. He had been hoping to modernize it with robots to replace the outdated crusher.

"Morning, youngin's," B.O. greeted the brothers as they entered the gate. "What can I do for you today?"

"We're just here for some parts for the showcase," Tadashi explained.

"The one at the institute?" B.O. chuckled. "I'm not sure about any parts specifically, but you can take a gander at we've got in stock."

He gestured his left hand towards the pile of salvage parts, from the corner of his right eye he could see Gertie trying to adjust Sparkle's feet with the new Mary Jane shoes she bought for $7.33.

"Gertie!" B.O. called to his wife. "We have guests! Hurry up!"

After Sparkle's new shoes had proven to be comfortable for her tiny feet, Gertie and the toddler came over to the teenagers, hand in hand with a warm greeting.

"Hello, Tadashi, hello, Hiro. Who're the new fellers?"

"These are my classmates," Tadashi gestured back to them.

"I'm Sora. He's Donald and that's Goofy."

The spiky haired man felt odd at seeing such people, among his other visits. But he could not judge anyone by appearance, so he continued to remain silent.

"They've come for some parts for that showcase at the school or somethin'," said B.O.

Sparkle, having learned how to speak since she was two and already improving on her vocabulary, cautioned the party of nine with a simple instruction.

"Well, you can have whatever you like and don't try to get my new shoes dirty, okay?"

The friends agreed and they set to work while the Plentys went out to lunch at Izzy's Steaks & Chops on Steiner Street to keep Sparkle's new shoes in pristine condition. The whole yard was enough to salvage for $250,000.

Tadashi found what could have belonged to the turbine of a jet plane, but Hiro didn't think it would make a useful shape for the microbots. Fred, as lazy as he was, didn't participate at all; he just sat there in a shopping cart reading Captain America and eating a blue bag of Doritos, not showing any sign of interest into the parts and was more interested in socializing with his pals. Honey Lemon took a selfie in front of two oil cans filled with purple and green colored liquids of carbon dioxide, her obsession with explosives and chemistry had completely distracted her in the form of "art". With only her wielding mask to protect her eyes from dust particles, Go Go spent much of her time looking through parts, most of them belonging to cars and motorcycles, when she came upon a yellow moped with a dual tone of orange, thinking that a motorbike made from microbots would suit her needs. Wasabi, his mouth covered with a procedure mask and hands equipped with his rubber gloves, was in the process of drenching an electronic memory board with a can of Lysol disinfectant spray and he continued to do this on practically any piece of scrap that his rubber coated fingers had made contact with. Hiro found the best piece of all: an armed claw that could only have originated from the assembly line of a modernized factory. Donald and Goofy played Marco Polo under the trash cans and Sora could not find anything that he thought Hiro would like given his lack of knowledge in electronics. (He did enter an arcade game called Space Paranoids several times in the past, but robotics was only a similar topic relating to computers). However, before it was time to leave, Sora did find a button cell battery near the gate, which he later told Hiro that it would make a great power source for the microbots.

"The headband is all I need. Unlike most robots, these microbots have unlimited power," were his words.

Sora decided to give Hiro the battery anyway as an additional resource for future usage.

It was sundown when Tadashi's friends dropped him and Hiro back at the Lucky Cat. They also took Sora, Donald and Goofy back to the hotel in Wasabi's 1998 Mitsubishi Minica Toppo without running into heavy traffic. In no time at all, Hiro had enough materials hasten his work on the microbots, but he was too overheated and entirely exhausted from a day of outside exposure to lift a finger, so he sat on the couch (upside down to emulate Tadashi's frankenstiener) and went to sleep with only the glowing essence of the computer monitor, a lamp and a lightbulb above him. Bringing a soft light to his surroundings as the night went by in a flash, when in reality, it was only nine hours before he woke up to see that the eight day had passed him by.

The morning of the ninth day had come, and Hiro was still sleeping from a period of thirty four hours. Aunt Cass and Tadashi thought it wise to let Hiro get his rest, and before they knew it, Hiro was already up and about by 4:00 PM. He had already bought another recycle bin and he was wielding another 600 microbots together with his new tools and objects of inspiration from the junkyard. When the tenth day arrived, Tadashi's research team and Sora came over to see Hiro working on the last batch of microbots on his computer. Fred, wearing a sapphire colored version of his shirt, sat on the seventh bin reading about the memoirs of Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow and Flashpoint, a major storyline in the history of the DC Universe and it was so sacred to Fred that he wanted to capture every detail of the New 52's origins for three hours and thirty three minutes. Later on, Fred decided to play hide and seek in the bins with Donald and Goofy before they were occupied by a third half of the new microbots. They stayed until 7:25, by which Hiro had been sleeping on the couch. The movie he had been playing on his television set, The Iron Giant, was already finished.

"He's so cute the way he sleeps," Honey giggled.

She tried not to laugh out loud, covering her mouth with her left hand as the others minded their own business. Tadashi went to get the core microbot from the workbench, allowing his friends a chance to see the finished product.

"Don't tell him I've shown you, but this is what he has been working on."

In his left hand was the core microbot, it was black with two hexagonal shaped thimbles held together by a round joint. Wasabi and Go Go were unimpressed by the inferior size and look of the object, but Fred, Goofy, Donald and Sora were impressed by the detail.

"Really?" Go Go fumed with a hint of disappointment in her voice. "Did he work on that little thing for ten days straight?"

"Exactly," Tadashi replied kindly.

"So what exactly is it?" asked Wasabi, squinting his eyes at the miniscule bot.

Tadashi pointed to the filled amount of microbots in the first bin.

"These are microbots. They are held together by a neurotransmitter and whoever wears the headband can command the Microbots to respond by a thought or a mental image. They are designed to work at a high efficiency even if they are not commanded by the controller."

Sora was interested in such things that seemed revolutionary, especially if it was a vintage model of technology. So he asked Tadashi, "Can I try it?"

Fred stepped in front of him.

"Actually, I'm more of an expert on these braincontrol things. So I should be the first to try."

"Each of you will have a turn," Tadashi told them, and he looked over from behind to see if the headband was on the workbench or in one of the drawers, when in fact it was neither in any of those locations.

Where did Hiro put that headband? As if he did not realize it, Tadashi felt his left hand vibrating in a lenient buzzing sound, but he was not doing it on his own free will. Opening up the palm of his hand, he saw the core microbot zipping about like a fire ant and Tadashi had come to realize that Hiro had left the headband on while he was wearing it.

"Oh shit," he whispered to himself, then he turned back and saw that rest of the microbots from the already filled six bins were forming the shape of a six-fingered hand rising upwards to reach the ceiling.

"Is that normal?" Wasabi panicked once he saw the hand.

"Doesn't look normal to me," Goofy was the second to notice.

"My brother is doing that," Tadashi explained. "He's still wearing the transmitter. Which means that the microbots are reacting to his subconscious thoughts while he is asleep. And he's probably dreaming about a fight."

The microbots by now had reached the ceiling, forming an arm with clenched fist that was threatening to crush the victims to death. To Tadashi's friends, they were in a real life supernatural horror film, to Sora it was like a Heartless, which had become an endangered species following the defeat of Xehanort, while Tadashi was convinced that Hiro had still not gotten over his obsession with bot-fighting and all he could do was scream.

"RUN!"

The teens ran outside while Sora summoned his Keyblade and tried to tame Hiro's boisterous mind, while Donald whipped his mage's staff in front of the fist and Goofy tried to deflect the oncoming blow with his shield.

"Why are they attacking us?" Wasabi whimpered as they viewed the battle from the left side of the garage door.

"Cause they think we're the enemies!" Fred hushed him in an excited tone.

"Remind you of anything?" Honey asked Go Go.

Go Go could see that the solid nature of the microbots reminded her of her bellicose attitude, and she enjoyed it as much she liked to see someone like Sora putting up a good fight as he plunged the Keyblade into the middle fingers of the fist.

Then she suggested something else.

"HIRO!" she called within hearing range.

"It's no use, Go Go," Tadashi disappointed her. "He's a heavy sleeper."

Honey looked at the hand, it was closing in on them and Sora was losing the battle as the hand was pushing him down. Any further and he would fall to the floor, broken with defeat.

"Dead in the prime of my life!" Fred whimpered quietly to himself. "At least I want to die in my Megazon shirt."

The very thing that Honey knew how to use as a weapon of self-defense was her yellow colored handbag, which was embroidered with a zigzagged design of dark red lining in the bag area at the bottom to the fold over closure. She swung the bag at Hiro's head, knowing that she had one chance to succeed, and with enough pendulum to correct the balance of the swing, smacked his crown.

The lids of Hiro's eyes opened halfway through the process of gaining his consciousness and the arm was instantly dematerializing as Sora held the Keyblade behind his back and collided the teeth with the shrinking fist all the way down to the floor.

"Wow, I must have fallen asleep," Hiro yawned.

He saw the fallen microbots scattered across the floor and wondered if an earthquake had knocked the bins open. But after his left hand was feeling his forehead for any signs of dizziness, Hiro realized that he was wearing the headband. He had been planning to experiment it on the current microbots by creating a perfect swarm maneuver to qualify the standards of the showcase. Unfortunately, his fatigue and lack of strength from the day's hardships had caused him to doze off before he could test them and the witnesses were glancing at him with awkward expressions.

Wasabi was the first to give a sigh of relief. "Glad that's over."

Go Go felt his left arm using her body for support. "Tell me about it."

Sora, Donald and Goofy dismissed their weapons as Hiro removed the headband, trying to reason with his new friends and completely oblivious as to what happened over the last thirty seven seconds.

"I was just wanting to test them out and I-guess I forgot. You want to see it?"

Go Go, Wasabi, Honey and Fred looked at each other, quickly coming to the conclusion that once was enough. So they left for Wasabi's van with Sora and his animal pals behind them.

"Sorry, bro. But I think I left the microwave on," Wasabi fibbed. "Unless if my parents have already done it, but that's my responsibility."

"I'm out!" Go Go informed the brothers.

Honey turned back and apologized to Hiro with a comforting sweetness.

"Maybe you should save it for the showcase, Hiro. But it was good to see you!"

Fred said nothing, he walked after Honey and let her take the backseat like a true gentleman. Sora, on the other hand, thought that a good night's worth of exercise by walking back to the Hyatt would be refreshing after a short fight with an arm made of microbots. He told Wasabi that they would find their way back and they headed down to walk for a 2.8 mile length of Market Street. Donald complained all the way after his feet were growing tried and Goofy was the one to suggest a trolley, but Sora was not the one to give up. When they reached the lobby, the three amigos collapsed on a bench and a bellboy whisked them off to their rooms on a cart.

Back at the garage, Tadashi told Hiro about the microbots and had advised him to use the headband more wisely in the future. Hiro was glad that his presentation wasn't spoiled (as only eight people excluding himself were present), but he felt disappointed, confessing to Tadashi that he had tried so hard to get his formative days of bot-fighting out of his bloodstream.

"All I just wanted to do was to show them my invention."

Tadashi ruffled his brother's hair.

"Believe me, otouto…you did and it was a great success!"

Motivated by his brother's words, Hiro continued to finish the last batch of microbots. He searched through more of his tools all through the eleventh day and bought himself another bin for a third of the final lot. Then he bought another by the morning of the twelfth day after an arm wrestling match with a robotic arm while finishing up on the two millionth and final microbot. He programmed the bots to create a hand shape on the computer, this one being more solid than the wavy shape he had conjured up two nights ago. At nightfall, he checked the computer to see that the showcase was tomorrow night and was ready to fill the last set of microbots into another bin that he had been saving for later.

Altogether, he had twelve recycle bins containing over ten thousand of the two million microbots. Tadashi came over, and Hiro had pleased his brother by showing him the amount of microbots in the bin placed in the center of the front row. Satisfied, he lifted his right hand into a fist and Hiro did the same with his left. The two brothers clashed their fists together and imitated a sound effect that might have been an exploding whistle. This fist bump was their own way of articulating excitement over a great achievement that they had just completed after a certain time of labor that was no longer than a whole week. Despite his lack of rest, Hiro wasn't just ready to go to bed yet, he was too excited for the showcase and Tadashi remained calm as a means of giving his brother a good impression of how polite he was underneath his brash exterior. So after three hours, the lights in the Lucky Cat Café were turned off and diminished in the darkness, with no sound other than the snoring trio of a very proud family of geniuses.

Hiro slept soundly that night and looked forward to a new life with his brother Tadashi at the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology.