In the following morning, Detective Tracy spoke with Officer Gerson about Hiro's report at the Bayview Police Station, simply telling him that he had been curious. Gerson remained on his own counsel that Hiro's story was nothing more than a tall tale, but immediately Tracy grappled his right hand and he was whisked away to Chief Brandon's office to discuss the matter over breakfast. Catchem, Patton and Lizz were already there informing the chief about the speeders and a "black mass" they had spotted and failed to chase last night.

"We also got a call from someone about a van falling into the bay and several gunshots being fired at them," Catchem explained. "Sure enough, we found it in the water near Pier 30 along with some junk that looked like armor pads."

"Did you know who the van belonged to?" the chief asked with locked fingers.

"The caller's name is Damion No-Ginger," said Patton. "He also claims to be the owner of the car."

"Is he?"

"Yes."

"Do we at least know how it got there?" The chief was getting serious.

"According to Mr. No-Ginger," Lizz announced. "They were trying to get away from a man in a Kabuki mask. He also says the man was in league with an army of criminals led by Big Boy Caprice."

"Another tall tale if you ask me," Gerson was slumped in a chair, listening to the conversation with no other concern.

"You don't think Big Boy's trying to revive the Apparatus?" Tracy asked in concern.

"That is something we can look into," the chief replied blandly. "But we can't arrest Big Boy or anyone who works for him just yet, we need more evidence."

"That's what I said to Hiro," Tracy spoke quietly.

"Have you heard anything from him since?"

"No, but God knows what he's up to. For all I care he must have sucked in some of those fumes from the fire last month and it deteriorated his brain."

Before Gerson could answer out of his own curiosity, Tracy turned on his boots and left the office, avoiding a strict reprimand from the chief for a minor discrimination. He went downstairs and found Junior waiting for him by the desk.

"Is it 'Take Your Son to Work Day' already or are you just here to see me work?"

"Tess is still in the car," Junior said suddenly. "She wanted me to tell you if you'll be joining us for lunch at Subways. They've got a three dollar sandwich there."

"Any coupons?"

"Yup."

Tracy pinched his chin with his right thumb and index fingers, wondering for a single minute. As far as he was concerned about these reports, he shook them out of his head for the meantime and smiled at Junior. They walked hand in hand out of the building to Tess's car and looked for the nearest Subway, which was located on 125 Ellis Street. After a hearty BMT sandwich, Tracy confessed that he had to work the late shift, and therefore would not be home for dinner.

"Junior and I will go out then," Tess agreed. "I still have a few bucks saved over from my check last week."

"Will it last you the whole week?" Tracy asked.

"Up until Saturday."

Tracy handed her a $50 dollar bill with his right. His wife's reaction was a mixture of generosity and stupefaction.

"For next Saturday," he told her.

He walked out of the restaurant and he strolled down the street without a squad car, thinking that a good needed exercise was something he needed for his brain and not his physical build. Once the Subways was out of sight, he wondered if the supposed car chase had any connection with Hiro's report about the microbots and the man in the Kabuki mask. He stopped at a streetlight, came to his conclusion and eventually said to himself.

Pure randomness.

The quinjet carrying Peter, Sam, Ava, Danny and Luke crossed the time zone and landed on Baker Beach at 5:15 AM. It was cold and damp with a fog that seemed to dissipate upon sunrise. The teens waited in the jet, falling asleep for the next three hours as they did. When they awoke, it was 8:17; the extra minutes having been spent on dressing into their civilian clothes as they all did it at once.

Peter wore blue, or least the color attributed to his white shirt underneath either a light blue button-down shirt, with blue pants and black sneakers. His brown hair shined in the sun and bleached the pigment by a small amount of the light emitting from it.

Sam wore a light blue sweater with a white long-sleeved shirt and grey trousers to go with his dark hair and blue eyes.

Danny's blond hair contrasted with his tan trousers, a navy blue shirt and a brown jacket tied around his waist, brown sandals and a metal grey necklace with black string.

The bangs of Ava's hair were split on the sides of her outfit, which consisted of a green tunic with a light purple long sleeved shirt underneath, a black- brown sash belt around her waist and strapped black high heels.

Looking as if he was going to the gym, Luke wore a beige hoodie with sleeves curled to his elbows, a black shirt underneath and light blue pants with sensible shoes. His sunglasses used to protect his brown eyes (and his identity) remained hidden in his right pants pocket.

The five teens looked around with awe and Ava was star-struck at the sight of the Golden Gate Bridge standing above the fog from the west direction. Sam sniffed the air, knowing he was close to home (about one state away from Arizona to be exact). Danny scooped a right handful of sand and clutched it tightly, curiously comparing the material with that of the sand from the beach they had gone to almost one day ago. Luke wanted to go for another swim, but Peter, always the headstrong member of the group, was tediously walking towards the stone staircase leading up a sandy path, which led to Presidio and from there they would call Sora and ask him for his whereabouts. Walking the path, in Peter's own mind, would save the group a little bit of time to wait for a taxi, as he always took a few precautions to save his money.

When they got to the road, Peter tried his cell phone and the first response he got was a simple "Yes?" from Sora.

"Where are you?" asked Peter.

"I should be at a mansion on 1000 California Street."

Peter kept the address memorized in his head as he and Sora continued conversing.

"Who will these guys look like?"

"Well, one of them is just like you: smart, inventive and sees himself as an outcast from society."

"Around my age?"

"I'd say about two years younger."

"I'm fine with that."

A minute after the call, a taxi came from up the road and Sam lifted up his right thumb in the most aggressive manner of a hitchhiker, hoping to slow the taxi down. The cabbie was a tough guy who looked like he hadn't slept in a week, but kept a strong posture in the way he carried himself in the most archetypical cab driver outfit you had ever seen. Peter knew that only half of these drivers wore the same type of newsboy cap and brown clothes that looked straight out of the Great Depression: there were traditionalists in New York as well, and even a few of them hailed from San Fransokyo as well.

The driver did see them and he pulled over asking, "You all hitchikin'?"

"I just did it to pull you over," Sam explained, lowering his thumb.

"Next time," the cabbie said thoughtfully. "Just shout 'taxi'. I mean, everybody does it, right?"

"Yes," Peter nodded. "Could you take us to 1000 California Street please?"

The cabbie seemed to know the residents of the neighborhood like the back of his head.

"Any rich friends or relatives?" he asked.

"Friends," Peter stated.

Ava went first in the back seat followed by Danny and Luke, Peter took the passenger seat while Sam, unfortunately with no room available, placed himself in-between Luke and Danny without a word. He made sure that the cabbie wasn't looking, otherwise he'd be walking the whole way to California Street.

As they drove, Sam complained about the cramped space, among other things like Dad, his family, school life, searching for his father and the Chitauri.

"It's like the whole galaxy has gone into an intergalactic hell hole!" he cried to his friends.

"Or a black hole," Luke added in his own knowledge of outer space.

Peter turned right around in his seat and glared at Sam and Luke, reprimanding, "Black holes are more than hell holes, they're 'destruction holes'."

"I know that," said Luke. "I was just trying to mess with him."

Ava sniggered. Nothing seemed to go right with her male peers.

Unknown to the rest of the team, the living pile of sand who had stowed away in the capsule, opened the unlocked lid and crawled out of it like a flexible centipede made out of grain. The steady stream of sand was soon camouflaged against the beach, but only as a mold…and suddenly, it began to form. At first it was rudimentary, then it became an indistinct, generic figure with no features, but if one were to look closely, they would begin to see the feature taking shape into a full, living and breathing human being. The figure had turned into a man with short chocolate brown hair, a green striped t-shirt, pale tan jeans and light brown shoes. His name: Flint Marko.

Marko (known to the authorities by his real name William Baker) was a small-time criminal who loved going to the beach during his childhood years. With an alcoholic mother and a Mr. Baker unwilling to accept the responsibility of being a father, Flint had an impoverished life that led him to steal and commit petty felons just so he could buy a few sticks of bread, candy and vegetables. As a teenager, he became a school bully with a crush for his teacher Miss Flint, who felt that the young William was too young for her and settled down with a man of her own age. Determined to make a living, he became quarterback for the school's football team and violently assaulted his coach after he found out that the games were thrown by the mob.

After a variety of other troubles, including his girlfriend Marcy having an affair with his best friend Vic, William changed his name to Flint Marko, for he was ashamed of his former self and wanted to use this identity to reboot his entire life from the ground up. Breaking out of prison, for which he had gotten into after assaulting Vic, Marko went on the run and found himself trapped in a radiation field that turned every bone, vein and feature in his body into a malleable variation of sand. S.H.I.E.L.D. eventually found out and had Marko captured and taken to a desert island where they hoped he would cause no harm and die of malnutrition, given that water was his weakness and therefore the ocean would prevent him from leaving. But Marko had grown accustomed to the sandy beach for three long years and his chance to escape finally came when the rookies went on their vacation.

Now, standing on a familiar setting, but in a civilized world, Marko now had his chance to exact revenge on S.H.I.E.L.D. for his imprisonment and he would start with the rookies he had stowed away with. It had been obvious to Marko that they were working for S.H.I.E.L.D. and using them as hostages would convince Fury to allow Marko his freedom-or so he thought.

"Freedom at last…but where to start?" thought Sandman as he panned his eyes at the gleaming ocean. But unlike his prison, which was wide and vast, the San Fransokyo Bay was partially blocked by Point Bonita and the Golden Gate Bridge. This, in a way, somewhat satisfied Marko, taking in his new surroundings as a much needed vacation away from his island prison.

He backed carefully away from the solidified section of the beach that was drenched by water. A true hydrophobic in his prime trying to get a clear distance from the water that would supposedly kill him. Turning his body forwards, he raced up the trail and walked casually down the road. He didn't care for any of the cars that came past him, all he wanted was no attention…at least until the time was right.

The escape from the Apparatus had been a long night for Hiro. By the time he got home, Aunt Cass was already sleeping like a log in her bedroom. The next morning, so as not to give her a heart attack, his account of what happened last night remained silent. He was a having a nice dish of ham and eggs for breakfast when Sora, Donald, Goofy, and the SFIT quartet came to the house and rang the doorbell. Cass went over to answer it.

"And what do I owe this lovely visit?" she asked politely.

"May we take Hiro out for the day?" Honey probed in return. "We'd like to do some new experiments for the school, maybe he'll come up with a new invention for next year's showcase."

Cass turned and bit her lip at the dreaded event that took her oldest nephew away from her, but she kept a face of upmost positivity, chasing away the lugubrious tragedy from her mind as she kindly set herself aside to let the group in.

"Ready, Hiro?" questioned Go Go to the hungry genius.

Hiro swallowed the last piece of ham and made his way to the door. Already dressed in his hoodie, he hugged Aunt Cass from behind and slipped away into the circle of his friends, smiling as he shut the door. Cass felt relieved; she was certain that Hiro was finally getting his mind off of Tadashi after two days in a row.

Inside the garage, Sora, Donald and Goofy watched Hiro retrieve his scanner and stood by his side as he placed Baymax and the nerd quartet against the garage door with stretched arms. As before, the green ray covered them from head to toe and came in form of a grid on Hiro's 3D printing computer. Then, about four minutes later, Hiro ran a 3D model of Yokai's mask and the microbot headband, connecting it with the back of the mask.

"We'll never catch Yokai unless we take out the microbots, so we need to level the playing field." he instructed the group. "The neurotransmitter must be in his mask, if we get the mask and destroy it, he'll lose control of the bots."

Fred raised his left hand like he was in a proper classroom at the Tech.

"What about Big Boy and the other guys?"

Hiro ran through nine pictures of the arsenal used by the Apparatus on the monitor, from the Thompson gun to the CZ 27, identifying as many of the firearms as he had seen during his two encounters.

"Big Boy and his men are likely to be armed, so we're going to need bullet-proof protection, like a super suit or some kind of body armor."

"Like Baymax's?" asked Go Go, remembering the so-called "carbon fiber underpants".

"Exactly like Baymax's," Hiro snapped his right fingers.

"Is there any way we can override the microbots?" asked Sora, displaying his own intelligence for electronics. "Like…build another headset or something?"

"I don't think we have time for that," Hiro said cautiously. "We don't know when Big Boy and Yokai are going to commit the final stage of their plan. So we gotta act fast."

Everyone else agreed, and Sora thought it would be best to discuss the further details of their "project" at the Lee Mansion, where he was expecting Peter and the rookies to be waiting for them.

"A lot of superhero knowledge is in his library," he said patting Fred on the back with his right hand. "And I'll bet he even has an encyclopedia large enough to know the majority of being a hero."

Fred smiled at Sora. His reply was as proud as a lion.

"That I do, Sora-have you been reading my mind?"

"It was just an accurate guess."

So Hiro and his tomodachi took the trolley back to the Lee Mansion where Heathcliff had been standing as before by the door. Once inside, the butler informed the party of nine "We seem to have extra guests," and took them to Fred's small museum of a bedroom. To Sora's surprise, Peter, Ava, Sam, Danny and Luke were all sitting on the white couch, wondering who the new heroes were.

"I'm fifteen years old and I'm already too old for training more rookies," said Peter as the group walked closer to the room.

"I just hope they're not losers," Ava glowered. "I have had enough of those back in Midtown High."

"One's of them has got to be the expert on being a superhero," Sam smiled. "And it's not you, Danny."

Danny remained unperturbed at the off-handed insult.

"For your information, I faced the great Shou Lao and even I had my doubts on taking the role of Iron Fist."

"While we're waiting," Luke said calmly. "I think we should make a good impression with these guys. One of them might even be like me."

"Another Afro with a heavy build?"

Luke turned his head left and right. He was certain that the voice did not come from any of his friends, but from an outside party. Rotating himself, he saw the very person standing by the doorway, Wasabi.

"Did you say that bro?" Luke squinted with absolute certainty.

"Uh…yes?" Wasabi felt like he had made a politically incorrect statement. "I'd thought we'd look similar, 'cept I've got dreadlocks and you don't."

"Well anyway," Luke shook out his right hand. "I'm Luke. Luke Cage."

Wasabi returned the favor with his left hand.

"Damion No-Ginger. My friends call me Wasabi."

"Like the sauce?" Luke was looking puzzled. "Probably explains the green shirt."

Wasabi took a glance at his favorite shirt and blushed.

The others introduced themselves as well and Peter had the pleasure making an acquaintance with Hiro, whom he later learned was also a genius living with his aunt in a large metropolis.

"Well, Hiro," he said after shaking hands. "I'm sure we'll get along just fine won't we?"

"Yes," Hiro replied before his tone went serious. "But now we have to find the guy who stole my microbots. He killed my brother as well."

"Did your brother have something to do with it?" asked Peter, his smile fading.

"He only helped me with the construction."

"Was it a hit job?"

"No. He went to save Professor Callaghan from a fire."

"Well that was unnecessary."

"You bet it was," Hiro was growing sensitive about the subject.

"What difference does it make?" Peter asked, remembering his own experience with his uncle's death. "At least you're trying to find the guy aren't you?"

At last, Hiro couldn't take much more of it. He felt like he was speaking to a teenager subjected to a generic developmental disorder that made him act like a child. Growing frustrated in his plot to avenge Tadashi with murder and bloodshed on his mind, he shouted loudly.

"THAT'S WHAT WE'RE TRYING TO FIND OUT! WE'RE TRYING TO FIGURE OUT IF HE KILLED MY BROTHER AND WHY AND WITH WHAT OTHER THAN THE STINKIN' FLAMES OF HELL!"

Baymax laid a comforting right hand on Hiro's left shoulder and said to him calmly.

"Hiro, there is no need to shout, your vocal cords will strain-"

Hiro turned his head at Baymax and while in his current display of emotions, yelled at him (in an ironic fashion).

"I'M NOT SHOUTING!"

Realizing the irony of his words, he lowered the volume of his voice, pathetically confessing.

"Okay, I was."

The boy took a deep breath and looked at new friends, whose reactions to his outburst were those of dumbstruck gapes. Hiro turned back to face Peter with another idea on his mind.

"Why don't we talk about this somewhere else?"

"And where might that be?" asked Peter.

"In the hall."

Before he knew it, Hiro took Peter's right hand like a young child dragging his father one place to the next and stormed out of the room to hall where they sat down on the green sofa located on the left side of the staircase.

"Did I upset you?" inquired Peter.

Hiro took a slow breath and looked straight into Peter's eyes. They were the same shade of hazel as his own. Even though he had only known Peter for at least five minutes, the color seemed evident enough that Peter could be as trustworthy as all the people he had ever known in his entire life.

"No," Hiro spoke at last. "But if you want to know my life story before asking anymore questions, I'll tell you, but it's gonna be a long one."

"You could always shorten it," Peter quipped a smile and so did Hiro before he resumed.

"Well, it all started on my fourth birthday; Mom and Dad got in a car accident and we had to live with Aunt Cass. So they sold our house and told me and Tadashi that it was for the best of us."

"Kinda like my parents," Peter confessed in a sad voice.

He looked away from Hiro, preventing him from seeing the tears of a grown man.

"They left me with Uncle Ben and Aunt May when I was five, they got into a plane crash while they were in Algeria and the cops left us with all their stuff."

"I live with my aunt, too," said Hiro like it was a coincidence. "All I had for an uncle was my brother, she never married."

"During my school years," Peter resumed. "Some kids started pushing me around just because I was a smartass."

"Like me?" Hiro was beginning to see a mutual connection.

Peter tried to find the rest of his story, but almost immediately, he confessed in a rather nervous tone.

"Well, nobody really likes a nerd who's smarter than everyone else. I did make a few friends, though, Harry Osborn, Liz Allen, Seymour O'Reilly, Sally Anvil-"

"I got beaten up once," Hiro halted the older teen's list. "And Tadashi stayed right by me at every class until he went to the tech."

"Then I got bitten by this spider who fell into the radioactive beam," Peter resumed after a minute had gone by. "Gave me powers, thought I could use them for a TV show, wresting, I let some guy get away…"

He stopped to draw his breath. It seemed he had been wanting to tell his glossy autobiography for some time after Sora's visit to New York.

"Then he killed Uncle Ben, and after finding out that the guy I had been chasing was the crook from the arena that I should have stopped-I had learned a damn good lesion that night-with great power comes with great responsibility."

Hiro didn't know what to make of it. His face was looking pale as he tried to mentally obtain every single word of Peter's mythos.

"Well, this all new to me," he said at last. "But what's really weird about it is all the commodity that we have."

"I would say we we're like twin brothers," Peter quipped. "But not in a Lottie and Lisa sort of way."

Hiro understood the reference.

"Now that," he said, directing his left fingers at Peter's chin. "Would be absolutely the deepest amount of weirdness I would ever see in my life."

And thus, the two homo sapiens sharing a familiar background walked back into Fred's room to discuss the current matters at hand.

Later that evening, after walking his way around the new city without stopping for even so much as a bathroom break, Flint Marko finally came to a public house on 770 Stanyan St called the Dripping Dagger, formally known as the Kezar Pub. The proprietor of the establishment, known to her friends as "Filthy Flora", personally suggested a more violent name to reflect her short-lived criminal background of petty offences, like fencing jewelry and exporting alcohol. The entrance to the tavern was dynamite red with twenty seven six inch windows and a similar looking pair of doors. A steel bench painted in navy blue sat blew the window, contrasting with the paint work of the entrance. The interior was dimly lit, but Flint could see through the window that there were about eight tables, with one table all the way in the back he considered to be a nice shady area where he could have peace from the common crowd, avoiding the chances of being recognized.

Upon realizing that no one in the city appeared to know him, or least compare him with somebody else, Marko opened the right side door with his left and was immersed by the atmosphere, taking in a whiff of the air conditioned room. He found the table that drew his attention, only to find a man already, sitting alone with a craned head. He wore a pitch black trench coat with matching gloves and boots, a dark fedora with a light green band sitting on the floor by his left shoe and a bright purple cravat hidden under the collar. Physically he had black hair and black eyes…but his nose seemed to have disintegrated and the rest of his face was like a corpse, an almost exact replica of Lon Chaney Sr. as Erik Destler from the classic silent film version of Phantom of the Opera from 1925.

Ignoring his appearance, Marko thought that this classic Universal monster wannabe needed some company, since most of the other seats were preoccupied by less unscrupulous characters who appeared to be of a mixed race. His boots took careful steps, leaving behind a few inaudible beats as he approached the man and asked politely.

"Mind if I sit with you?"

The man looked up and eyed Marko with a sharp sense of trustworthiness.

"Sure," he said after finding his voice.

Marko took the seat opposite from the man and sat down with his hands locked on the table. A waitress with blonde hair and a grey apron came by with a pencil in her right hand and a notebook in the other. She did not seem to be frightened at all by the strange man, who kept his face looking straight down at the table. Had he moved his head all the way up, she most likely would have screamed.

"What can I get you too?" she asked in a friendly way.

"Just a glass of wine," muttered the strange man keeping his face out of sight.

"Nothing for me thanks," Marko gestured his right hand to the waitress in a defensive way.

"One glass of wine coming right up," the waitress said and she left to find a wine bottle, leaving the two men alone.

The strange man moved his face back up.

"It's not every day I get to sit with a stranger," he tried to smile but it looked eerie with a sort of look that told Marko he was going to kill him for sport. Marko, however, kept his cool with the man.

"I'm more than just your average stranger, I'm a foreigner."

"From where?"

"The Caribbean."

The strange man let out a chuckle that faded into a dulcet tone.

"Must be nice there."

"No, and I don't think we've been introduced," Marko said out of the blue.

Both men shook hands.

"Flint Marko."

"Frank Redrum. Before you ask about my face, let's just say a bullet from a shootout got stuck up my nose and they had to cut off."

"Was it painful?"

"They gave me a sleeping pill so that I wouldn't feel a thing and it work. So most of my nose is gone, but it still works."

"How unfortunate."

"But that was after I escaped," Redrum stated with ferocity in his voice. "The doctor seemed very trustworthy."

"If you think breaking out of a real prison was bad," Marko replied. "I had to be dumped on a deserted island for three years until some 'kids' came along and I hopped onboard their ship."

Looking over Marko's right shoulder, Redrum could see the waitress returning with the bottle and lowered his face back so that she could only see his hair. After she poured the wine from the bottle to the glass in a dainty manner, the waitress left without another word to find another patron asking for his service. Once she left after a second, Redrum raised his head back to Marko with something else in mind.

"You know Big Boy Caprice?"

"Of course I don't," Marko really did feel like a stranger in this city.

"Well he's one of the big honchos around this part of town," Redrum spoke like an expert. "Got his own crime gang called the Apparatus. Last I heard from him, he was asking for new members."

Marko felt that this Big Boy character wanted something big if he was willing bring in as many criminals as he could find.

"If they decide to hire me," Redrum went on. "They'll either see me as the guy killed off all of his cronies two years ago or another curiosity in need of being accepted into a normal society."

"The feeling is mutual," Marko confessed. "Because I can do this."

He held up his right hand and in the blink of an eye, the textures went immediately from flesh to sand. Redrum was fascinated, but that did not stop him from asking Marko.

"How the hell did you do that?"

"Practice. Got this stuff from a chemical compound and believe me, it's strong enough to break this table in half."

"No wonder you didn't get yourself a drink," Redrum said taking a sip of the glass.

Marko lowered his hand and the sand reshaped it back to its normal size and texture.

"So where can we find this Big Boy?" Marko asked.

"Club Ritz, apparently. I think it's about a mile from here."

"You think he might still be there at this hour?"

Redrum looked out the window from afar. He could tell the sun had gone down when the streetlights were turned on.

"Yeah," he said after three seconds. "It's still early."

Big Boy, dressed in a black and red dinner jacket, was having a warm dish of lobster in the conference room of Club Ritz. Flattop, 88, Laffy and Lord Deathstrike were in the room as well along with Breathless, who had been staring into the fireplace, hypnotized by the very same flames that took Tadashi away from her and his family, to whom she was starting to care about as well. It seemed that a spiritual embodiment of Tadashi's selfless personality was starting to take hold of her and she was doing her best to resist in what she later described as a metaphysical battle that would change her personality forever.

But on the other hand, Breathless had been feeling bored after so many songs. Dressed in a low cut black gown with gold straps, she was still in mourning and was not planning to stop until after Lord Deathstrike's master plan would succeed. Even if they lost, Breathless would have also ended her mourning at that point and finally, she would be wearing nothing but a whole new season of dresses that matched all the colors of the rainbow.

The calm silence was interrupted by a knock on the door, Big Boy went to answer it.

"Friend or foe?" he asked instead of the usual password.

"Friends," came the reply from the other side.

Trusting his instincts, due to the lack of a peephole on every door in the club, Big Boy stood aside in case they were armed; but it seemed apparent to him that Frank Redrum was very recognizable.

"Oh, it's you. Who's your friend, Frank?"

"This is Flint Marko, from New York."

"How do you do?" Marko shook his right hand with Big Boy's left.

"Oh, fine, just absolutely fine," Big Boy said in his most sassiest tone. His current thoughts were on Hiro, still under the belief that he and those other kids had survived the sinking car.

"I know had that feels," Marko could see right through him. "Mr. Redrum and I are here on business…your business."

Big Boy gestured the two to sit down at his hand of the table.

"This may sound plain and simple," said Marko with an understandable tone. "But with you talking about every criminal wanting to join your league of rogues and turning this city into a city for freaks-"

At the very mention of the offensive name, Big Boy held up the palm of his left hand and Marko stopped.

"Don't use the f-word," he interrupted. "We never use it on ourselves, especially our enemies."

"Sorry," Marko apologized. "But just to be frank…we would like to join your organization."

Big Boy studied him. The other criminals watched with interest while Breathless, not showing any concern, sniffed the butt of a long cigarette under her left nostril and placed it back into the box on the table.

"I'm close to about having enough men and women to suit my needs, but if you can show me what you're good at, I'll consider it."

Redrum leaned closer into Big Boy's right ear.

"They call me the Blank," he whispered. "I've killed several of my own men out of revenge cutting me out of their scheme of rigging slot machines."

"Oh," Big Boy blew smoke through his nostrils. He wasn't impressed by this bland display of a criminal, so he turned to Marko and asked. "So what's your specialty?"

"Watch this."

As before, Marko lifted his right hand at the level of his neck and it transformed into the uncanny shape of a mallet, but it wasn't brown like any other real mallet and just as Big Boy could question the exact nature of Marko's ability, the Sandman swung the mallet right down to the floor, leaving behind a small crack and a quick shudder that shook the room like a weak earthquake passing by on its way to the San Fernando Valley.

Laffy watched his glass of wine vibrating in the aftershock, Flattop and 88 suffered a slight headache from the loud impact of the blow and Breathless' heartrate started to pump faster, fearing the roof would fall on her. Lord Deathstrike could feel the shock through his boots and his fingertips, but his view on Sandman's mallet was questionable.

"Will that be enough to take down any intruders?" he asked Marko.

"Most definitely, I can even fill this whole room with sand if you'd like a demonstration."

"I think we have all we need," Lord Deathstrike said slowly. "You can savior your true powers for the battlefield."

Marko smiled and nodded.

Big Boy unwrapped a Havana from its cellophane and immediately took a puff out of it with his lighter. A mutant was all he needed for a large conquest to overthrow the city council and replace them with his own gang once Krei Tech was out of the picture. Then he would use Sandman again to bury every last member of the police department, including Detective Tracy, alive in a land fill where they would breathe their last breaths until the sand took over their lungs and drown them with no chance of escaping.

"You're hired."

With those two words, he now had a set of thirty criminals. Almost an entire army of rogues to take on a small town, but with proper tactics and concentration, they would take on the entire city with the prowess of Sandman.

Tadashi's one fatal mistake, as Hiro had pointed out the next morning in his garage, was the lack of fireproof protection. As he had promised yesterday, he decided to give each and every one of the team (including Baymax, Sora and himself, but excluding Donald, Goofy and the S.H.I.E.L.D. rookies) a special two-toned armor and body suit that was flameproof, bulletproof and above all, fit for a true soldier. The bright colors of the suits also served as a tribute to the traditionalists of San Fransokyo, who liked to wear bright comic book-esque colors, even on sad and inky clouded days. For this, the 3D printer had to work overtime, starting from the boots to the helmets, piece by piece. Hiro designed these suits separately on seven windows, using forty seasons of Super Sentai and its spin-offs for reference material on the shape, fundamentals and weaponry of the armor. But first, he had to find the best of their skills, including himself.

Dressed a light blue t-shirt, he watched Honey Lemon test her skills with chemicals. A dropper filled with green in her left hand, while in the other, it was blue. She pinched it ever so carefully above the petri dish and when the liquid made contact with the concoction of tungsten carbide, it sizzled into smoke. Then, using the green liquid, a single drop created a quick source of light, followed by an uproar of gooey squiggles that covered the entire table in three seconds flat. Honey and Hiro smiled at the successful attempt.

A while later, Go Go had rode her bike into the garage and placed it on a harness. Hiro studied it with awe, hoping to use the electromagnetic suspenders for a special feature made for Go Go's suit as she removed the front wheel and tossed it to Hiro. Taking in the details, he now knew what he wanted for the suit: disks.

After consulting his teachers about a special science project, Wasabi took a small version of his laser from the robotics lab and rode the trolley back to Hiro's garage, where he placed it on a workbench as Hiro looked on, his right thumb pressing his chin like a truly patient executive watching a demonstration. Wasabi held a juicy red apple in his left hand and dropped it right into the middle of the green beam. Just as the apple made contact with the beam, it split from the bottom and landed on the table into two perfect halves of what had once been an entire piece of fruit. Wasabi held an open smile while Hiro shared his mutual feelings with a small one. They even got to share the two apple pieces as a reward.

Closer to the end of the day, Fred came in with his Hulk comic. Hiro felt that this was impossible as he studied the cover, but Fred wanted to be something else, a fire-breathing Kaiju. Even though he was still arsonphobic, Hiro agreed on the condition that Fred would not dare to try and burn any buildings. A repeat of Tadashi's death would only break his spirit again and he would have no other reason to live.

After that, Baymax, Sora and the rest of the team gathered around the 3D computer to watch Hiro design what looked like four rings attached to a conveyor belt, followed by a piece of machinery in the shape of a heart. The heart was surrounded by the designs, conductive tracks, electronic components and pads of a circuit board, with the intention of a computer screen filling in the heart.

Honey had gotten the chance to try on her new outfit the next morning on the back porch of Lee Mansion, which consisted of a light purple mini dress with two white linings down the middle and forming a half-circle above her right knee. Dark magenta sleeves and leggings made of latex and wicking fabric with tiny red spots to provide skin protection from a chemical spillage. Purple platform heels with three light pink wedges to strengthen the grip of her boots and rosy red armor with a belt to match. She was no longer wearing glasses, due to the prescriptive visor on her purple helmet with two orange stripes over her head in an equal downslide. The helmet also had horns, which were streaked with orange on the top and purple on the bottom with orange joints, as well as two orange buttons by the base of her helmet to contact the other members of the team via radio.

"I love it!" Honey cried the very moment she observed her body like a model. Her long hair was left untied, but it didn't matter to Honey, who with Hiro by her side in a neon green t-shirt, was ready to begin a six hour training procedure.

Hiro made 3D prints of Yokai's Kabuki mask and the heads of Big Boy, Flattop, Pruneface, Mumbles, Lips, Oodles, B-B Eyes and Coffyhead for target practice, carefully modelling the faces from their own mugshots on a level of "uncanny valley".

Since Honey's old purse was apparently lost with Wasabi's van, Hiro made a new one matching the beige color of her old one from the printer. It had a strap of twenty two empty chem-capsules of purple, red and yellow and Honey would press the right buttons on the heart shaped screen of her bag, which displayed the first thirty six elements of the periodic table. The hydrogen, sodium and iodine elements were displayed in a bright lime green, the transition metals were in pale pink, the metalloids were turquoise and the alkali metals were printed in a sunny shade of yellow that Honey liked. She pressed "Y" (yttrium), "Po" (polonium), "Zr" (zirconium), "Zr" again, "Se" (selenium) and "Ca" (calcium) and the colored balls snapped into action through a hatch that came out of the other side.

One ball passed into the micro chemical factory built inside the bag, where twelve boxy shaped injectors of red, yellow and purple sprouted the chemical cocktails into the ball. Coming out from the other side, Honey's right hand caught the ball and she brought it up to her nose with a silent display of awe. Hiro exchanged her reaction with his own smile of presentation and he gestured his left hand to Heathcliff. The butler had been standing there, watching them as he drank a strong cup of herbal tea. He did show any sign of fear as he placed the faux Kabuki mask over his prudish face of posterity. Only his mustache, mouth and chin were exposed and his eyes looked solemn under the red eye shadow. Standing in front of Honey, he lifted his right hand and gestured his fingers as a form of asking her to come over. Ava Ayla dressed in her White Tiger costume, also participated as a coach and an observer to review the training course.

Honey lifted the ball with excitement, but it quickly faded when she had seen the harmless nature of Healthcliff. So she catapulted the ball and when it struck the slick black shoes of the emotionless butler, it turned into a gelatinous mass of peach orange that turned blue within seconds, and by that time, Heathcliff was waist deep in a sticky, gooey, mass of liquescent.

Quivering slightly, Honey walked tediously over Heathcliff, and removed the mask with her left hand. The butler exchanged a quick smile before Honey threw her arms around his neck and hugged him like he was her favorite teddy bear. White Tiger gave the performance a three out of six for the use of "sticky gelatin", proving it to be comical, but useful for capturing enemies.

While Hiro had been working on maglev disks for Go Go's suit, the after-hours of the San Fransokyo Natural History Museum told a different story…

Through a glass skylight, Crewy Lou, her waist wrapped in a green bungee cord and a black strap carrying her Winchester, was slowly lowering herself to the ground floor, humming Lalo Schifrin's theme from Mission Impossible as she skid past the display of a Brachiosaurus skeleton. Her tips with the Fujitas had earned her the experience of learning a quiet figure eight, used to move quietly past unsuspecting guards. Taking a can of black spray paint from her dark colored handbag, she found a security camera and sprayed the lens with an indecent manner of trying to exterminate an insect.

The guard who had been reading the evening edition of the Chronicle, only noticed this about a short five seconds after the paint had been applied. He was quick enough to see Crewy taunting him on the screen closest to him, "Chub down, you fat bastard," before coating two other screens on the top left and right bottom screen in a black, inky paint.

"No one calls me a fat bastard," the guard muttered, searching for his Sauer.

Crewy slipped her way past an 18th century vase and came to an exact replica of an Easter Island statue, painting a handlebar moustache above the mouth with a sinister chuckle. Passing the closed ticket booths, she came to the door to find Flattop, Itchy, B-B Eyes – and Lord Deathstrike in the middle of the group. Crewy opened the right side door with her hairpin and stepped aside like a true hostess.

"Nice work, Crewy," Flattop congratulated. "Now, what would be a suitable trade for a portal device?"

Crewy chuckled under her teeth and walked quietly after her male companions.

Under a banner displaying "Hall of Gems & Minerals", the guard with a flashlight in his right hand heard the sound of footsteps and shined his light on Lord Deathstrike and Flattop's gang approaching him ominously. Acting fast, he found the security door and pressed the red button with his left hand. As the button was pushed completely down, the bells rung and grey screens covered the doors and windows, preventing an escape that no match for likes of the criminals he was about to face.

Lord Deathstrike reached his hands for the door as he walked slowly, summoning a thousand of his microbots to create a large blocky glove. The fingers sunk under the gate just as the bottom reached the floor and lifted upwards in a quick squeal of metal, allowing Crewy Lou to enter the exhibit. She pushed her nose against the guard flirtatiously, hiding the Winchester behind her back before the guard had time to notice the barrel aimed directly at where his appendix was supposed to be.

"Don't know whether to hurt you or kiss you, lady," the guard tried to reason with her.

"Do I look harmless to you?" Crewy smiled devilishly.

Just as the guard looked down to see the gun aimed at his stomach, Crewy fired an ear-splitting shot that drowned out the sound of the alarm for at least two seconds before it continued to ring. Blood spewed from his throat and leaked over his bottom lip, then clutching his stomach in extreme pain that shot through his intestines, fell face first in a sea of crimson blood. His cap fell next to him in strange way…something that reminded Lord Deathstrike of another person he used to know, but was not wearing a hat when he died. It was only a lifetime ago and he had to move on from such tragic affairs (not that he had any emotions to deal with).

Careful from setting either one of his boots onto the puddle of blood, Lord Deathstrike's right hand obtained the guard's identification card, sliding it through the security access control and turning off the alarm. The gates were opened as well, returning the lights of the city and the moon to the dark museum.

Flattop was looking at a large ruby in the shape of a diamond. It was said to have been found in Southern Asia about twenty seven years ago and had been carved at a Swarovski facility in Absam.

"For some reason, this just speaks to me," he smiled with intense glee. "What do you think, Crewy? Should we lift it?"

"I think Big Boy would like it," Crewy giggled with poison in her voice. "It would look good in his conference room."

The two crooks stood on opposite ends of the glass case displaying the ruby, staring at its infinite reflections that symbolized their love for blood. As the two lifted the glass, Flattop on the right, Crewy on the left, Lord Deathstrike passed them.

"Leave it," he said gesturing his left hand negatively.

Flattop and Crewy followed his gaze, unwilling leave such a precious beauty.

Itchy came over and looked as though he had to punish his own children (if he had any).

"We can take it later," he snarled to the duo.

Defeated, Flattop and Crewy Lou lowered the display case and followed B-B Eyes to a door which had a sign reading "Authorized Personal Only". He slid the card down and the door opened with ease.

The room was narrow with only a few shelves and file cabinets. Lord Deathstrike peered his eyes over the shelf on his left, filled with separate boxes, then on his left, found a drawer with the name "Mongolian Ruby" written on it in black cursive letters. The jewel was hidden by a white layer of cloth, so he carefully hovered his right hand above it, removing the top layer with his left through tedious fingertips. The magnificent light of the ruby shone through the darkness, revealing a small scent of red as he spoke quietly.

"This ruby has enough light to produce the power needed for the portal."

Flattop, Itchy, Crewy Lou and B-B Eyes peered from behind, comparing the small scale of the gem with the diamond.

"You mean this portal runs on solar power?" B-B asked him.

"Defiantly," Lord Deathstrike said. "It may also provide energy in the place of a beacon."

And he tucked the ruby deep inside his right vest coat pocket, leaving through the front door to start back to Club Ritz.

Because the Toyota was being repaired of the dents and scrapes from the earlier car chase with the intruders, Measles and Mumbles were sitting in a fish taco van they had "rented" from Tako Taco. Measles had been blasting "Orange Crush" by R.E.M. over the CD player, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel while Mumbles covered his ears from the loud disturbance. He never said a word, thinking that Measles would not understand his speech impediment, and kept exchanging angry glances to the young hoodlum, thinking that the music would give them away…and it did.

"Fish tacos? All right!"

A duo of shaggy looking teenage boys named Ryker and Ray knocked on the window, attracting Measles' attention.

"You still open?" asked Ryker.

Measles gave the two a look that meant "go away please or you can say hello to my little friend".

"Sweet!" exclaimed Ray, thinking he said "yes". "I love fish tacos!"

Mumbles looked over to see the obnoxious, hungry males by the door. There had to be something done if they were not intending to go away. He opened the passenger seat door, and walked around the front of the van, carrying his Smith & Wesson. Before the two slackers had time to run, Mumbles fired two warning shots – one into Ray's mouth, the other into Ryker's upper left knee, leaving him crippled, but only for a short time before he succumbed to the shot and died with his best friend as Ray's own life was hanging by a thread.

Just then, Lord Deathstrike and the others came from the left side of the street. He surveyed the scene of the crime with an unhealthy obsession of macabre humor.

"No problems, were there?" he asked the two.

"None," Mumbles said quickly.

"Not until these fucking slobs showed up," Measles gestured his right hand at the bodies. "We have got to get another getaway car."

"Hey, at least I'm not the one who's gonna be riding in the trunk," Crewy argued.

"Just get in the van," Lord Deathstrike ordered.

They dumped the corpses into a nearby trash bin, the others got into the van, Measles turned on the headlights and the vehicle screeched away into the night.

The next morning, Go Go's suit was ready. It was a black-and-yellow suit of armor with yellow maglev discs on her wrists and boots, gloves to prevent friction, a matching helmet with what looked like a aerodynamic fin on the back to control the airflow, red buttoned joints for crash protection, and black underclothing made of skintight rubber with a hint of red linings and a patch of square textures.

She was sitting down on the bottom step of the back porch at Lee Mansion. Hiro, in his orange t-shirt, used his right hand to pull her up. At the precise minute she let go and was fully standing up, Go Go felt like she was a newcomer at roller skating; as a matter of fact she was. With flailing arms, she lowered her upper body down as her feet stood sideways in an easel position. She stood back up, flung her left leg, then her right and fell to the stone ground on her behind. Hiro tried to help, but she thrusted her left arm at his direction and opened the palm of her hand in a blocking gesture, silently refusing to be helped by some preteen trying to make a living out of her.

Healthcliff had been standing in the middle of the columned porch leading to the garden. He was still wearing the mask and he had been trying to apply a slice of butter to his croissant with a knife in his left hand and a dish carrying it in his right. He didn't mind Go Go spinning around him at seventy miles an hour and tying his legs and waist with a green hosepipe, he just stood there, undaunted as before and letting the croissant standing on its edge. Danny, who had been wearing his Iron Fist suit for the occasion of reviewing, gave Go Go a five out of six for the use of dizziness to weaken the senses of the enemy; if not annoy him.

Go Go, meanwhile, removed the mask and slid her way back to Hiro, tossing it to him as she blew a new piece of pink bubble gum. Pressing the light orange button on the left side of her helmet, she said to Hiro,

"I just went faster than I have ever been in my whole, and I don't feel sick at all."

"When it is your body going fast, you feel fine," Hiro guaranteed her assurance. "When it comes to stuff like roller coasters, that's a different story."

Go Go smiled and Hiro went home, telling his aunt that he and Go Go had been out on a date and Sora played along with the deception. A truncated explanation of the events followed suit.

"We had some Korean food for dinner, watched Sly Cooper and had ourselves a couple of sakés."

Hiro's lie seemed to have a perfect outcome on his aunt. He didn't wish to reveal the truth just yet, as before, he was intending to surprise her, hoping to receive what might have been a mixture of a shock and an enormous hug.

Back in his garage, as he listened to Breathless Mahoney's cover of "You Can't Hurry Love" and her newest single, "Immortals" on the boom box radio, Hiro extracted the model skeleton of his Baymax model on the 3D computer while the real Baymax watched him with care and curiosity. Hiro knew that now was the time for Baymax to receive his own armor.

After a quarter of an hour, Baymax's left gauntlet was ready. Hiro held his most prized creation with both hands very carefully and tightly as he brought it over to Baymax. Baymax held out his left hand, ready to have the gauntlet plugged in – and it did, but did go all the way through and the forearm was compressed from the helium. Instead of asking Baymax to deflate his immense body by a couple of meters, Hiro pushed the gauntlet two more times like a plunger with no success. Plumbing it again, he pushed Baymax to the garage door and with a grunt, successfully squeezed the glove into the hand of rubber.

Next, Hiro placed Baymax on his back as he pushed the right footplate into the marshmallow-like foot with the robot's head against the 3D printer for support. As he placed the foot on, the plate struck Hiro's chest and his eyes went wide with a short pain to his heart. He didn't have much trouble with the arms, chest and shoulder pads, thanks to Goofy and Donald, but Hiro was sensitive towards the "buttpiece". Baymax felt a great shove of insecurity as Hiro placed the piece into his rubbery rear end and blinked once, looking traumatized.

Once that had been settled, Hiro, with the help of Sora, set Baymax down, grabbed the left footplate and charged at it with great speed. The moment he shoved the footplate in, the force of the impulsion made contact with his chest and pushed him back a few three inches from the robot. Thankfully, although Hiro had fortunately landed on his behind, he was exhausted by the time the helmet was to be placed onto Baymax's head.

The helmet had less difficulty, but it was nothing compared to the "corset piece", which was purple with three lines that went down, three meters straight in the middle and back up in the same extent of the downward line. Hiro took a deep breath and proceeded to attach the corset to Baymax's nearly completed armor. With every ounce of sweat and toil, he struggled to push the corset against the vinyl, compressed surface of Baymax's chubby stomach using all the strength he had. Effectively pushing the top part of the corset under the chest plate, Hiro placed the left side of his face against the corset for support, clenching his teeth and straining his lungs as the helium was starting to gain the upper hand. But Hiro's own hand, his right one, pushed against the potbelly and with a slow comeuppance, slotted the bottom of the corset right above Baymax's "codpiece". He fell face first, thankful that he did not severe his hand for performing such a task.

Hiro stood up, beaming with a chuckle as he backed away to view the combined magnum opus of his brother and himself. Sora, Donald and Goofy stood seven feet behind him with astonishment in their eyes. Baymax was kneeling on his right knee and carried himself up, lifting his right foot by twelve inches as he suspended the foot for three seconds and lowered it back onto the ground. The majority of the armor matched the orange-reddish color of his luggage with purple spots on his shoulder pads and the backs of his gloves. He stood proud, tall and serious with fisted hands and his helmet, which had two horns with purple joints, covered the top halves of his eyes, giving the appearance of a glare.

"You look awesome, Baymax!" Hiro chuckled and he flexed his muscles to emphasize the reinforced durability and flexibility armor.

Baymax lifted his arms, directly copied Hiro's position, sunk his head further—and his helmet shot in the air like a rocket, setting off a chain reaction to the shoulder pads to which the left one had struck Donald in the face. Then the gauntlets, the chest plate and the bottom half which suspended Baymax in the air by six feet before gravity kicked in and sent his feet back to the floor. Hiro dodged and looked away, not wishing in any way to see his creation falling to pieces. All that was left of Baymax once he was on the ground was the purple corset, which looked out of place in giving his exposed body the appearance of a ballerina.

"Oh no."

Just the words escaped from his voice box, the corset could not hold any longer and catapulted right off the vinyl body as quick as a flash. Hiro looked away again before turning back to Baymax and covered his face with his left hand, opening his left eye through his index and middle fingers out of annoyance.

As Sora and Goofy helped Donald to his feet, Hiro's cheeks went as pink as Breathless Mahoney's sleek boattail speedster, looking at all the hard work that had gone to waste. The gauntlets lay on their sides like the discarded gloves of a careless giant, three of the rear pieces lay stacked in a corner, the helmet fell behind a trash can, the corset lay on its end and the rest of the armor was scattered all beside the four corners of the room, knocking over a screwdriver, three boxes and a skateboard.

"Next time," Sora advised. "Ask Baymax to deflate himself by just a little," and he placed his left thumb and index fingers within an inch from each other as a way of accentuating the problem.

Hiro facepalmed again. He felt like his brain was down to an iota.

That same night, a conference was held at Club Ritz. A tintinnabulation of cars and trollies were the only sounds that filled the night along with footsteps, the honking of horns and a small drizzle that passed over the city and moved onwards to Arizona and Utah. The flames of the fireplace in the conference room were now brighter than ever as Big Boy introduced his newest member to the rest of his peers, who as usual, were sitting with him at the fiberglass table. Lord Deathsrike stood by his left hand side while Frank Redrum and Marko stood opposite to Deathstrike on the right.

"May I present Frank Redrum," he said at last.

The criminals made a short applause, for he was likely to be another ordinary hit man.

"Now what is your profession, Frank?"

Frank had his back to Big Boy, his hands moved from his right vest pocket, holding a piece of rubber that only Breathless and 88 Keys could make out as a mask of sort. Placing it over his face, Frank turned slowly back and when his head was completely facing the table, it also met a reaction of wide-eyed criminals. Pear-Shape and Laffy even thought twice before touching another drop of brandy to make sure they weren't fantasizing while under the influence.

"They call me the Blank," a creepy voice spoke from the mask.

"And now for another member of our party, Mr. Flint Marko."

Before the criminals had a chance to applaud, Marko raised his right hand, molding it slowly into a heavy, hard, malleable sand…in the shape of a mallet. The crooks were impressed, until Flattop spoke up.

"How's sand gonna help us? A dust storm."

Marko fixated his eyes on Flattop.

"More than that," he spoke lowly.

He pushed his right hand forwards, changing it into a fist. Flattop had little time to realize his mistake and before he could dodge his head out of the fist's way, his nose suffered a hard blow from the sandy knuckles, the chair tipped backwards and he fell on his spine with a small shock of pain surging through his back. Flattop, after ten seconds of short breaths, helped himself and the chair back to an upright position just as Big Boy began his briefing.

"I strongly believe there's a thirty to three chance that those kids, or at least one of them, survived that fall into the bay. And to make sure of it, we're gonna have to comb the city from top to bottom and finish 'em off while we search for more pieces for the portal."

"What portal?" Marko asked.

"It's a long story, Mr. Marko," explained Lips Manlis. "Lord Deathstrike, our benefactor, promises to use it for own advantage off ridding San Fransokyo of its normality's and the police department."

"Speaking of the men in blue," Crewy Lou spoke up. "Did they find out about the guy I killed?"

"Unfortunately," Itchy said solemnly. "B-B and I read it all online."

"But the good news is that thanks to your spray paint," B-B Eyes added after him. "They weren't able to figure out it was you."

"Looks like I'm too fast for Tracy to catch me," she smiled devilishly.

"And 'we'," Flattop added. "Have to get on a move on before gets a step ahead of us."

"Well said, Flattop," Big Boy addressed his fellow Solomons. "Now all in favor of finding the kids, stand now or forever hold your peace."

The criminals remained seated, and it seemed, in Big Boy's own opinion, that they were much too lazy and much too focused on Lord Deathstrike's construction of the portal for a secondary objective.

"I'll look for 'em," said Spaldoni, rising from his seat.

"It'll be much faster if we work together," Big Boy said gravelly. "Before Joe Q. Public gets wind of our motives."

"Finding a bunch of kids in this city is like finding a needle in haystack, which makes me the needle," Spaldoni said. "I know what the kid with the dark hair looks like. Got his balloon friend too, along with the duck, dog and that other guy with the spiky hair."

"Good luck, then," Big Boy said magnanimously.

After Spaldoni left quickly out of the room, Caprice turned back to his colleagues.

"The least I can hope for my lawyer is that he reports their location first."

While Spaldoni searched the city, unarmed so as not to increase the danger zone of criminals, Hiro was working on the pogo-hydraulics of Fred's suit. Unlike the others, it was a fully covered costume resembling his own idea of a Kaiju monster named Krogar: mostly consisting of the colors blue, orange and turquoise, with three black, spiky, claw-like nails, a tail with similar features, and three eyes (with the top lens notably acting as Fred's access to night vision). Its four-fanged "mouth" was the only opening the suit had and the soles on the suit's feet enabled Fred to perform high jumps.

That morning at his manor, Fred was jumping like a child on Christmas morning when he saw his new costume all laid out for him. Setting it down, he thrusted his legs into the body and Hiro helped himself up. Then Hiro held the top eye and headdress for the costume and Fred jumped into it, sticking the head on. A sophisticated flamethrower inside the suit was mounted to his abdomen, and Velcro was attached to the pogo hydraulics around his ankles.

Once the top was on, Fred shouted "Super jump!" as he leapt his way about nine feet into the air. He fell back to earth, and the impact with the ground launched him even higher, about fifty feet at least. At the precise altitude of forty nine feet, he curled his limbs and unleashed the flamethrower into a perfect three hundred and sixty degree angle, which created a ring of fire around an undaunted Heathcliff, who was reading The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side by Agatha Christie in his right hand.

"I'M BREATHING FIRE!" Fred shouted. His voice was muffled behind his costume as he jumped around the center. He twiddled his fingers behind his butler and grabbed the mask, pulling it off before the Englishman had time to react. In his Black Nova outfit, Sam made a cocky six out of six in his review, mentioning the similarity of his own powers and thought it would be cool to combine plasma and fire in the event of a large battle.

Earlier that same morning, Hiro worked on Wasabi's gloves and it was lunchtime by the very hour Wasabi himself got to wear it. It was an ice green armor chest plate and arm pads on the top of his body, with a flowing, shimmering trench coat made of lamé and colored in sapphire blue, indigo cropped pants with patterns of three lines written all over it, jikatabi boots with red linings on the bottom and sides in an "M" shape over the ankle, a pink-red bandana and a smart visor to filter out laser glare.

At the mansion, he turned the gloves on, producing a cerulean flame of super-hot plasma that came in ten different blades based on movement and selection by button under the glove where the fingers should be. They could slice through any know material with ease and had 98% chance of not being able to cut through human flesh, as most superheroes had a "no-killing" rule in order to respect the things in life, even if they didn't deserve it.

Surprised at first to see his invention brought to a different form, Wasabi watched Heathcliff sidestep once to the left to reveal a Lobster tennis ball launcher. He pressed the top green button with his right index finger and a light green tennis ball came shooting out. With shut eyes, Wasabi ducked like he was in a game of dodgeball and shielded his forehead with the blades, creating an "X" as the ball soared through… and was split in half. Wasabi looked behind the see the results. Heathcliff pressed the top button again six more times and Wasabi raised his left glove at the oncoming ball, then his right, left, two more balls on the right, one more on the right, two on the left, right, left, right, a knife chop on the left, a stab on the right and he charged to the machine with each slice strengthening his energy and motive to fight.

As he came to the machine Wasabi jumped, and lifted his right hand at the basket of the machine. Then, in a flash of light, the machine itself was split in half, and Wasabi concluded his training course by flicking the Kabuki mask off of Heathcliff with his left index and middle fingers and caught it in the palm with a cocky smile. He was about to high-five Hiro with his right hand before realizing that the laser in his same hand was still on and quickly turned it off with a fast curl of his fingers. Luke Cage, who had been reviewing in his Power Man suit and sunglasses, made a four out of six in his review for apparent rage and boldness that proved to be sacrificial in the future.

"Cool work Hiro," Wasabi congratulated.

The two proceeded to high five and Hiro rushed back to the garage to get his own armor. Should Aunt Cass catch him in the act, he would fib that he and the gang were going to a costume party. Sora was waiting there with his own armor, dark indigo chest pad, bodysuit and gloves with citrine straps around his upper legs and crimson shoulder pads, armor legs and tight-fighting shoes with a dark plate of armor on the toes.

As Sora had retired his Keyblade Armor after the defeat of Xehanort, thinking that he didn't need it anymore, his personal suggestion to become a member of Hiro's superhero team under the consent of Hiro's acquiescence found Sora taking Tadashi's honorary position in the "nerd group". While he was starting to gain some of his brother's traits, Hiro found Sora and Peter Parker to be kindred spirits regarding their own lives and similarities between himself and Tadashi. But while Peter had an uncle, it was the closest thing he had to a brother or a father-figure compared to Sora, not knowing his brother Ventus whose heart had been rehabilitating in his own since he was four years old. All three males had that certain feeling of connections that were established by the separate worlds.

Hiro got his own armor ready, a royal indigo helmet and armor with dynamite red accents and black-grey pouches for tools, with black latex clothing underneath that covered most of his body up to his knees, along with steel-toe black sneakers fitted with grey laces. On his suit are red magnetic pads, used to carry onto Baymax's yet-to-be fixed armor for transportation and battle purposes. The wrists of his Kevlar gloves had portable computers that flipped open for statistics, data information and attacks. Hiro hoped that once he got his microbots back (if he did), he would put the suit to a better purpose.

After seven hours of a long drive (and a walk for exercising), Spaldoni returned empty handed to Big Boy. He confessed that the kids themselves were the needles in the hay-field and after a calm rant that spared Spaldoni at the mercy of his employer, Big Boy sat alone in the conference with 88 Keys as his only company over an early dinner of steak and potatoes.

"What can you lose, Big Boy? What can you lose?"

88's words struck the criminal as he puffed on his Havana like a train engine burning coal uphill.

"I don't know. The final part of the heist is coming up in a few hours and after tomorrow it'll be smooth sailin' from here on in."

"Jesus H. Christ, Victory Day's getting closer and closer by the minute."

"And then what?" Big Boy asked impulsively. "Most leaders should be satisfied when ruling an entire city."

"I've seen it all the time in fiction like Star Wars or 1984," Keys said austerely. "No matter how many times a person tries to rule a city, a country or even the entire world, there will always be a rebellion."

Big Boy's eyes rolled with sarcasm.

"Well that's exciting."

"It's like finesse with a touch of The Monkey's Paw. Case in point being Alistair Krei, the robotics professor and the Hamada kid. They saw right through your façade, so they turned their backs on you and got themselves killed."

"I know that, but since the last two are out of the way, all that's left is Krei. If I took his company, I could own half the world."

Caprice's hands were coupled in a tight grip, smoothing the palms slightly with a greedy sent of worldwide capitalism. A tan finger of destruction bent on opposing the thumbs of his enemies.

"But let's talk about our reward," 88 resumed. "If this goes well, can I get a ten percent of the city?"

Big Boy presented a $3,000 bundle from his right coat pocket.

"Okay, piano playa. You've got a deal."

It was 5:55 PM when Hiro, now clad in his purple armor, found his friends and the rookies on the back porch of Lee Mansion, sitting on the light mauve colored benches. Wasabi was scratching his bum with his left hand.

"Anyone else's suit riding up on them?"

But nobody listened, Honey was flirtatiously giggling herself over her new purse, Go Go was throwing her right disk around like a Frisbee and Fred was flexing his muscles in his new body suit. The Kabuki mask lay on a Breuhaus styled table, standing on the bottom piece and the rookies stood by, Nova the Human Rocket leaning against the doorway. Goofy and Donald sat on the floor, waiting for Sora, Hiro and Baymax as they played Crazy Eights. Before either one of them could win, Sora came along, surprising Donald and Goofy so much that the muscles in their hands weakened and they dropped the cards into a random pile.

"That's some smart armor!" commented Power Man before anyone could reply.

Sora beamed.

"Hey guys!" shouted Hiro, coming from the west in his indigo armor. "Check this out!"

As Hiro led the group onto the grass, hopping excitedly with crazed child-like discovery, Spider-Man came into view with Baymax by his left hand side.

"I like to introduce…Baymax – 2.0."

With gripped fists, Baymax stood and proud and tall like a true soldier, like a regular robot made of metal instead of rubber, and a heavy reminisce of Tadashi's strong minded nature and selfless courage against all odds.

While the others stared with open mouths, Fred covered the mouth of his suit with his claws in a state of fanaticism.

"Oh!" he cried from beneath the costume. "He's glorious!"

Spider-Man took his place alongside the group, leaving Baymax to himself. The ex-healthcare robot waved a friendly "hello" with his right hand before he found himself in the company of a Habrodais grunus, also known as a Golden Hairstreak butterfly. The butterfly landed on Baymax's index finger, and his head jerked in the direction of the beautiful insect, studying it with his hyperspectral eyes. As part of Tadashi's DNA within the healthcare, Baymax had been programmed to respect even the most grotesque things in life, yet the butterfly was so beautiful, he felt a deep portion of love and curiosity within his circuits.

A second later, the Golden Hairstreak flew off the finger and Baymax's head followed its direction. He wanted to follow it so much, yet Hiro ran up and placed his hands on his corset, stopping abruptly. All Baymax could do was watch the butterfly flutter it's wings, growing smaller and smaller from his view until it was nothing but a speck of dust that disappeared completely out of existence.

"Fōkasu!" the boy shouted. "Show them what you've got!"

Baymax pushed his head by an inch, confused.

"The fist!" Hiro seethed, clenching his left hand and curling it into a fist. "Show them the fist!"

Repeating Hiro's gesture, Baymax positioned himself with his legs apart and his right arm acting as a guard for balance. Four mini rockets came from under his top, bottom, left and right sides of the gauntlet, releasing a blue-purple flame of heat. The decibels of a jet engine came within the group's hearing range which irritated their ears a little. Spider-Man even held his ears when a blast of energy sent the fisted gauntlet off of Baymax's left wrist, heading straight towards a statue of Prince Hans of the Southern Isles, a randomly picked decoration by Fred for his eleventh birthday.

The fist shattered the statue into fifty pieces and broke through the wall behind the prince that crumbled with the rustling of the trees and bushes. The others were amazed, but Go Go could only express her appreciation with crossed arms and a deadbeat set of lips.

"Rocket fist!" shouted Fred going into a childlike behavior of clapping his hands. "Make Freddy so happy!"

Oh, grow up. Go Go fixed her eyes on Fred's immaturity, but Danny Rand had his own punchline to crack.

"And they call me 'Iron Fist'," he said, making his left hand glow in damp yellow energy with a tiny smile.

Then, like a large magnet (to which it was), Baymax's fist flew back to the forearm the same way it came, only reversed, and the mini rockets folded back into the armor.

"That's just one of his new upgrades," Hiro said, trying to contain his enthusiasm. "Baymax, wings open!"

Baymax complied, and out of his back were two streamlined, eagle-designed wings with sections of metal feathers.

"No way!" Fred cried again.

"Damn right, no way," Go Go added.

"Can he really fly with those aerodynamics?" Wasabi asked.

"Maybe he should test them first?" White Tiger said as if it were the most obvious thing in the universe.

"I want a ride!" Sora shouted, running up to the robot.

Hiro, however, beat him to the first, he placed his left foot on the back of Baymax's own left foot, then his right and flung his arms onto the spine. His gloves, boot soles and knee-pads, which were electromagnetic, clung to the four purple rimmed platforms of Baymax's back. Once his hands were close to the robot's collar, Hiro shouted, "Thrusters!"

Baymax hovered above the air by four inches, floating like a ballerina on tip-toe with his hands teetering over his hips. The heat of the rockets (which were located in his legs), did not seem to burn the grass as Baymax floated back to the ground. Sora, who was clinging to the left wing, tried hard not to succumb himself to motion sickness.

"I fail to see how flying makes me a better healthcare companion," he turned to Hiro, who was smiling madly.

"Oh, who cares!" he shouted, slacking his tongue between his teeth. "It's awesome!"

He aimed his left hand toward the sky. "Full thrust!"

Faster before he could say, "We have cleared the tower," Baymax shot in the air as fast as lightning and quickly made a 180 degree turn to the south. Sora and Hiro yelled all the way as they took off to the Ashbury district, where an eight year old boy in a cerulean samurai hoodie watched them fly by on Waller Street.

"I think I can see my house from here!" Hiro shouted to Sora.

They cruised past Mike's Diner, where Tess and Junior were having a nice hot dinner of chili and the Blue Plate Special. Tess looked out the window with a small "Hmm?" as the sound of Baymax's thrusters died away. She did not see the flying robot, but Junior who had been sitting opposite to Tess, watched Baymax soaring down the street—but only for a quick glimpse that lasted three seconds.

"We should take this a little bit more slowly," said Sora as they flew up Oak Street.

Hiro, now taking full control of Baymax with his magnets, directed the robot straight up into the sky, ordering Baymax to put his engines on full thrusters. So he did. For Sora, it was exciting, but Hiro was so frightened by the sudden speed of the rockets, he was cringing in his helmet.

"Too much thrust! TOO! MUCH! THRUST!"

As if on cue, Baymax turned the rockets off, sorting them back into his feet.

They came across the Golden Gate Bridge with its pagoda-like towers dominating the sky. Hiro hoped that they were close enough to land on the south tower, but Baymax had been going so fast that they were falling right over it and heading straight to the road, where all three would meet an unfortunate death on the pavement.

"Back on! BACK ON! BACK ON!" Hiro screamed and Sora clung for dear life on the wing as Baymax pummeled to the street in an upright position.

Just as they were about five feet from striking the pavement, Baymax's engines kicked in and the trio soared over the traffic jam of cars and buses carrying approximately fifty people coming to and leaving the city for a variety of reasons. One boy with black hair and a sour green sweatshirt, sitting in the back of his mother's Chrysler 300, was making rocket noises with his Optimus Prime action figure when Hiro, Baymax and Sora rocketed past the car, surprising the boy and a few drivers as they went by. A Chevrolet Camaro even suffered a fender bender with an old Ford Pinto just so that driver of the Camaro could get a better view of the flying robot before it was too late.

Baymax zoomed over the trailer of a moving van and elevated his wings up to the north tower, nearly colliding the pagoda edge as he turned off the engines and landed smack dab on the roof.

Sora fell onto the edge about a second before Baymax placed his wings back into his body.

"I could have used my Keyblade Glider for this."

"I think that's enough flying for one day," Hiro sighed in relief. "What do you say?"

But Baymax only turned his head at Hiro and scanned quietly for his current state of health, which had changed almost drastically since his last scan. Hiro's blood pressure was at 143/90, his respiratory rate at 47, his blood oxygen level at 100 and his temperature rate was at 99.

"Your neurotransmitter levels are rising steadily," he said to the smiling kid.

It dropped, however, when Hiro, his brain muddled from the flight, asked slowly. "Which means…what?"

Baymax moved his head away from Hiro, facing the sunset. "The treatment is working."

"What treatment?" asked Sora, trying to recover from the wild ride.

The robot stood still for a second or two…then he pushed all his weight onto his right side and tipped slowly as Hiro and Sora shouted, "No! NO! NO! NO! NO! BAYMAAAAAAAAAAAAXX!"

When Baymax's right foot completely left the tower, his body took a nosedive, heading straight into the bay… But then, when they reached the bottom of the arch, there was a sudden flash of purple light and Baymax's wings expanded, flying right over the bay at a speed of one hundred miles per hour and leaving a foam of water in the wake of the rockets.

Hiro had his eyes close, waiting to be reunited with Tadashi in the hereafter (as he had expected two times earlier), but the wind seemed to carry his brother's voice, whispering:

"Open your eyes…"

Hiro obeyed and he found himself smiling at the sight of Sora, Baymax and himself soaring across the bay, whooping and yelling "YES!" in English and in Japanese as they headed over Fisherman's Wharf and headed up the Union Square financial district. In a mix of light and darkness that shone over the buildings was a hazy tint from the fading sun that encircled the trio as they flew down Market Street to the taller buildings, soaring left and right amongst the Millennium Tower and shot towards Mission Street at lightning fast speed.

Passing the ElectriTech building, leaving behind a dual river of white clouds from the wake of the rockets, B.O. Plenty and Gravel Gertie who were out shopping with Sparkle for birthday decorations, saw Baymax, Hiro and Sora performing a loop over a bridge where eleven lanterns of red and decorated with a Japanese letter hung under the archway. It was followed by a loop-de-loop around a giant butcher's knife, flooded with Hiro's whoops and Sora's shouts of "Oh yeah!" as they flew upwards.

"Looks like we're in for an airshow," B.O. said to his wife. Gravel smiled as they watched the rocket disappear.

In the Tenderloin, Officers Gerson and Groovy Groove were about to grab an early dinner of hot dogs and French fries from a food stand on Jones Street, when out of the blue, a strong gale blew their caps right off their heads and pushed the red lanterns of the stand from the shockwave of the wake. They looked and they saw a red rocket flying close to the Sailor Moon billboard from the Renoir Hotel, and towards the elevated railway.

"What the hell was that?" Groovy muttered to his partner. But Gerson paid no mind to this little disturbance and proceeded to eat his hot dog.

The driver of the el train, a veteran named Jim, saw Hiro and Sora waving back at him as they entered the tunnel before Baymax's thrusters shot the trio down the track. Unsure how to respond, Jim just sat there in cab, wracked and confused. It was apparent that he had never seen this sort of robot before.

They flew around One Rincon Hill, where Hiro saw his reflection in the glass office windows, staring back at him in a lovely reminder of his escape from Yama on Tadashi's motorcycle about a month and three weeks ago. But it seemed like ten years to Hiro, whose eyes were locked onto his reflection as it smiled with the same tooth gap that his counterpart had between the two front teeth.

I look good. Hiro chuckled at himself.

Once they reached the top, Baymax slid his left hand at the 1,990 foot cable like a surfer gliding the tail of his or her board against a rising wave without causing a metal friction. The cable led them up to a white colored wind turbine with the markings of blue and black waves that looked more like owl feathers. Baymax placed his altitude at 2,001 feet, he looked at Hiro and Sora could tell they were going to have some fun with turbines, starting with the one that was painted in a gothic shade of purple with tiny fins on the sides like a shark or a dolphin. Then Hiro took Baymax to the starboard while passing another one in a royal red color that was decorated to look like a clownfish. It was followed by a regal tang design on the left and a blue and white on the right. Hiro ducked his head as they passed the left side of a killer whale colored turbine and Sora kept holding on to the wing as they spun to the port side of a blue bird shaded turbine.

At last, Baymax rotated himself in a loop-de-loop and Sora smiled to watch Hiro fling his arms up as high as he could go with a loud whoop that echoed all across the city of San Fransokyo on a clear yellow sunset. For the first time in his life since Tadashi's death, this was the happiest moment of them all.