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.

13. The Professor and his Daughter

…to reveal the face of Professor Robert Callaghan.

"Professor Callaghan?!" Hiro's eyes went wide with the quiet realization, while his friends looked on with similar looks. Honey's lips were concealed with her left hand, Wasabi and Go Go stared with open mouths and Fred, looking through the top eye of his suit, gritted his teeth in fear. Sora who had also arrived at the scene was just about as flustered as Big Boy, whose own reaction was a simple, "I knew there was something screwy about you. That you had to hide something that was indecent and amoral."

"It wasn't very easy," Callaghan spoke in his normal voice for the first time in a month.

Hiro looked into the mask; sure enough the transmitter was there along with a voice changer that was displaced at a deep pitch.

"The explosion…" Hiro stuttered. "You died."

Callaghan shook his head no three times over.

"Actually, that was my doing," he confessed. "I took a gambit by knowing that one of the inventions presented at the showcase would be valuable to my plan. For the occasion of that event, the interior of the showcase hall was repainted. The paint was flammable, but it dried before I could take action, so I planted seven explosive charges behind the floodlights and disabled one of the pipes to the gas tanks in the ceiling with my pliers when nobody was around. I even spilled small amounts of thermite on the floor and painted the lower halves of the walls with kerosene that same night before the showcase. Once you and your friends left, I went to the back of one of the stages, got out my vial of liquid hydrogen, threw it to the tank and you get a big fire from the heat that spreads to the thermite and kerosene that nobody ever dared to look where it came from. The charges helped to conceal the source. I also planted a bomb under the stage that was powerful enough to produce an explosion that could wipe out any evidence that the fire was set intentionally."

Breathless suddenly remembered. She leaned her mouth closer to Big Boy's right ear and whispered, "Told ya there was a bomb."

"After I set the fire," Callaghan continued. "I used the microbots to dig my way underground where I came the surface just a few yards away, enough for me to escape the premises and leave for home, where I got this outfit and this mask as a souvenir from the theater company. As I predicted during the event, Flattop and his own gang brought the materials they stole from the lab to the warehouse where I had been living for the past month. I also used Breathless to steal the microbot plans during the showcase and it was she who brought them to me at the right place."

Hiro looked at Mahoney's guilty face of a tattered beauty. He did not bother to interrogate her during his search, for she belonged to enemy territory, where Hiro had a small chance of escaping with his life. Turning back to Callaghan, he asked.

"What did you wish to gain from being assumed dead?"

"Faking my death allowed me to manufacture the microbots at a continuous pace without arising suspicion. Had I done this at the college, someone would start to wonder why I was going through so much raw material or why I was producing so many of these bots. This way, I can get to my goal faster and have Big Boy and his 'merry men' steal small supplies of materials from all over the city."

Big Boy fumed.

"So all this time you've been usin' us as pawns?!"

"I had to be inconspicuous. Your army was all I needed. But it was your own methods that brought me and Tadashi into your façade in the first place, and you were the only person I could trust…despite my personal objections."

Hiro's mind was starting to race with a cavalcade of questions.

"You and Tadashi-? You were with Big Boy?"

"Right after he got out of prison three years ago, thanks to an appeal from his lawyer requesting that he'd be released on account of his health. He was so thin that he was begging to use my intelligence for his own purposes. I was doubtful until he claimed that he had been reformed. Tadashi and Krei were also curious to his new outlook on life, so I asked them if they were interested, they said 'yes', and while we were spending a lot of our time at Club Ritz with the guys, it turns out that we were all part of some money-laundering act."

"Actually, I prefer the word 'charity'," Big Boy corrected, making ersatz quotes under his voice of deception.

Sora vocally barged in, curious for a specific cause. "What kind of laundering act?" he asked.

"Big Boy was desperate to reconstruct the Apparatus, so he reconstructed some of his assets to commit robberies," Callaghan continued. "His hired men, at the time including Flattop, Mumbles, B-B Eyes, Shaky, Crewy Lou, Texie, and Ribs, would steal various amounts of cash and give it to us, thinking that the police would have a ton of difficulty tracking it down. But I was the only one who looked through his charade, so I decided it was over and I gave Tadashi my half of the money with some of his own to build Baymax."

Big Boy scowled at this reminder, but Hiro could tell that with every word Callaghan spoke, there was something else that the professor did not dare to mention. Something so furtive, that it was buried deep in the back of his mind.

"And I had you all marked for death for going against me," Caprice's frown turned into a smirk of satisfaction. "But thanks to you, I thought, that the fire last month had given me a risk cure."

Hiro had wondered where Tadashi had gotten the wad of money from that one night, but another question, a more imperative one, was crossing his mind. His voice was starting to break as he asked.

"If you caused the fire…then what about Tadashi? Did you let him die?"

But instead of a solid answer, Callaghan extended his right hand at Hiro with an offering gesture.

"Give me the mask, Hiro-" Callaghan growled like a wild dog, but Hiro held the mask in his own right hand, extending it towards his back and out of Callaghan's grasp as he said through gritted teeth.

"Not until I get answers. Did my brother die trying to save you from your wickedness, or did you kill him?"

Callaghan took three steps in front of Hiro, his eyes fixed on the mask. But his frame of mind went from angry to practical as he confessed in a doctorial voice.

"Actually that was his own mistake. God knows what would have happened if I kidnapped him, and even if I did spare his life, he would have betrayed me the same way he betrayed Big Boy. So I decided to kill him—"

His right hand reached into his left vest pocket.

"—with this."

He presented the murder weapon: a chrome plated Colt 1911 with black rubber grips.

Hiro's mouth went dry. The size of the gun's barrel was all beginning to make sense to him. The big splotch on Tadashi's forehead was a gunshot wound and the bullet was lodged so deep into his frontal lobe that the undertaker couldn't get it out without having to ruin the corpse completely. It was no wonder why Tadashi's cause of death had not been classified as murder instead of a sacrifice that all had been done for nothing…

Nothing…

Nothing…

Nothing…

Nothing…

NOTHING!

The word "nothing" echoed in Hiro's head so many times. Without even asking Callaghan for the core root of his plan, he began to see that Tadashi had no reason to die, Big Boy's mark having been written off in his mental library as an act of pure evil and Callaghan (as he was looking at him right now) was the embodiment of pure evil that needed to be extinguished…rather killed, and be banished to the fires of Hell.

Hiro frowned at Callaghan, which turned into a glare, which turned into anger before it finally collapsed into an irreversible frenzy of rage, revenge, hatred and the sadistic pleasure of seeing other people suffer at his hands. Then like a cheetah, he leaped at Callaghan with open hands and grabbed for his throat, completely choking him and forcing the poor bastard to drop the gun out of his hand that grew weak from the suffering that followed. The professor coughed and wheezed as his windpipe began to close, his breathing grew slower, his tongue slacked, his glands swelled and he was starting to tremble as Hiro screamed in his face.

"You sick bastard, I NEARLY COMMITTED SUICIDE BECAUSE OF YOU! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH TADASHI MEANT TO ME?! DID YOU?!"

Through his gagging, Callaghan found his inner strength and gained the upper hand, distracting Hiro with a taunting, but cold-hearted message that only increased the boy genius' rage.

"Why should I? I never cared for that boy anyway. He never understood me. Neither of you did."

His hands gripped onto Hiro's wrists as he spoke, and like a strongman trying to bend the steel bars of a celled window, Callaghan held Hiro by his hands. The teen struggled to break free, but was losing his métier and his motivation from every single word the mad professor poured into his ears. He felt himself being thrown to the wall like a rag doll and his body collapsed to the floor. When he got up, Hiro's face went redder than the lights illuminating his face, his eyes locked on Callaghan and his expression meant only one thing in his large brain: Time to use the big guns.

Baymax, who had liberated himself from the ceiling by pushing his way out, flew to his master's aid. Hiro greeted the robot with a face of revulsion, pointing his left index finger at the robotics scientist turned criminal mastermind.

"Baymax, kill this sick bastard and when you're finished with him, DUMP HIM IN THE SEA!"

Callaghan was surprised, but Big Boy was looking cheerful. He was looking forward to seeing his ill-received death on the traitor come true.

"Well, it was nice knowing you, Rob."

Hiro turned the finger at him. He did not wish to leave any witnesses, and because of Big Boy's premature release from prison, he too was going to pay the price…with a macabre result.

"You too, Caprice."

He pointed at Breathless, remembering her role in stealing the microbots for Callaghan.

"And you."

He pointed to Flattop.

"And you!"

He waved the finger at the criminals staring at him from behind their leader.

"And all of you will pay for your crimes…in blood!"

Baymax tried to calm the boy.

"My programming prevents me from physically injuring or killing a human being."

Hiro's voice began to show the darkness inside of him growing at an exponential pace.

"Not…any…more!"

He pressed open the badge to Baymax's chip slot, clutching the green chip between his right thumb and index fingers. Despite Sora's protest of "Listen to him, Hiro," the genius himself looked at the chip for fifteen seconds. He wanted to break it half, yet if he did, the last remnants of Tadashi encoded in the chip would be lost forever; so he flung it to the floor, landing eight feet away from Breathless' high-heel boots.

Baymax tried again with his voice of reason.

"Hiro this is not what-"

"Shut the fuck up," Hiro said lowly as he slammed the remaining card of death back into Baymax's internals. The droid straightened himself for two seconds, followed by the grey lids of his eyes closing. Then a split second later, his head was titled downwards by eight to six inches and his eyes turned to blood. His viewpoint was redder then the lights illuminating the area as Callaghan backed away in fear. And then, in the place of his soft squeaky voice, came the polar opposite that was a mixture of a Terminator and a Dalek with only a single word that boomed all across the entire facility.

"KILL."

His master placed the Kabuki mask on his belt for extra measures regarding a personal dramatization.

"Baymax," Hiro said with the voice of an insane dictator. "Kill the sick bastard and his allies, and when you are finished with them-"

A depiction of smoke and flames came into his irises that were marked with a mad smile as he rolled his fingers at the level of his chin.

"Burn them at the stake."

Spots cringed and so did the other criminals. Shaky was trembling more than ever. Lips gasped in horror along with Sketch at the thought of being executed the old fashioned way. In their minds, being burned at the stake was inhuman compared to the electric chair.

"Quelle horreur!" the Frenchman replied.

"Not the stake!" Mole protested.

"Spare us!" Crewy begged.

"Please no!" Oodles cried.

"Nonono," Mumbles, in a rare moment of world class begging, slowed his speech down as he sobbed in gross tears. "Anythingbtdat! Anythingbutthat! Anything but that!"

But Hiro, ignoring their pleas for mercy, reached for a perfume bottle from his right pouch with his left hand. Opening it with his other hand, he splattered the contents all over the criminals. Then, from his left pouch in the same hand, he unleashed a single match that stood on the threshold of fate, in some ways a vomitus deception of the Scales of Justice and Hiro was pressing the guilty scale by releasing a blank matchbook from the same pocket of the match and carefully placing it against the striking surface.

"Burn in hell—fuckers."

And at the very moment the match was lit in his hand, Hiro began to laugh like an evil clown, something that only Fred could identify as "Joker". He threw the match and watched with masochistic giddiness as the match tapped the right vest side of Big Boy's coat and ignited. The heat of the flame attracted the other gangsters, sprouting flowers of fire onto their clothes and three tiny combustions kindled Crewy Lou's hair.

Hiro wasn't afraid of fire anymore—he was using it as a weapon of irony. The liquid in question was actually kerosene, to which Hiro had stored from his garage. The kerosene had been used by him and Tadashi for testing robots that could withstand fire, and if the material was truly fireproof, they would pour a trail of the kerosene into a circle and move the robot into the flame. These tests, were mostly successful, yet in the case of Big Boy Caprice and his grotesque army, this was sure to burn their clothes…and their skin right off. Breathless shrieked in horror like a damsel in distress, for the situation occurring around her was growing fouler by the second.

"Stop him!" screamed Big Boy as he tried to slap out the flames on his lamb overcoat with his right hand.

Spaldoni aimlessly tried to shoot the raging robot's visor with his Webley Mk IV, he fired twice, but Baymax shoved it out of his hands with a right hook that sent the pistol flying out of the crooked lawyer's reach. Then Sandman joined the fight with well-aimed hammer formed from his right hand, but Baymax, his eyes locked on Callaghan, threw a right backhand at his face while his left hand fired the rocket fist. Callaghan cartwheeled to the right as the fist slammed into the wall behind him. He ran to safety and so did the other criminals except for Big Boy and Breathless, who were scrambling up the stairs, towards the exit and back to the ferry as Hiro continued to laugh in a brainwashing process of insanity.

"Yes…kill him! Kill him! KILLLLLLLLLLLL HIMMMMMM! AH, HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!"

The laugh was so loud, so slow and so long that Go Go, Honey, Fred, Wasabi, Donald, Goofy and Sora were all beginning to see that Hiro was losing his mind and so was Baymax, whose' rocket fist was returning to him. Go Go slid down the right hand bannister and when she was about twenty inches away from the edge, she leapt onto Baymax's left arm, shouting "Ani!" as the rocket fist fired again. Sandman's whose face had by now rematerialized, gripped Go Go with both hands and yanked her off the arm. She struck the wall behind the stairs hard and heavy and her body collapsed into a heap.

"This is my fight," he muttered.

But when he saw Big Boy and Breathless standing there in a great deal of distress, Sandman moved his back towards the crime boss and the chanteuse, mentally vowing to protect them with widespread arms.

Hiro stopped laughing then when he saw Fred jump into the action. He was tackling Baymax's neck from behind, dragging him back from having the droid search the pillars for Callaghan. The incensed genius, thinking that there was nothing he could do, removed his helmet and slapped the mask on, bringing the microbots back to life. They slid under Donald's and Goofy's feet, sliding them to the floor and returned to their rightful owner, who was just about as corrupted as they were from a month of serving their captor.

Fine—I'll do it myself.

He found Callaghan behind the pillars, running about as he had reached the left half of the area. Pushing his right index finger forwards, the microbots formed a trip line in front of Callaghan, sweeping him off his feet and crashing his nose to the floor face first. Then Hiro picked up the fallen chrome plated Colt 1911 and advanced to the murderer on stomping feet.

Callaghan felt like he was living a nightmare as he turned his body around to see his own mask turn against him under the guise of a purple clad figure, which smacked his left nostril with his own gun and pushed his face to the floor. Getting up, his right cheek was slapped by the barrel of the gun, followed by a blow to his chin and before he knew it, the barrel was in his mouth. The Kabuki mask lifted his left hand to reveal the laughing figure of Hiro, his mug of insanity filled with the delight of committing genocide.

"And when you see Tadashi, tell him I said…"

Callaghan expected a word of forgiveness, but Hiro's reply was full of blood thirst.

"It was your mistake."

"Please, Hiro, let me explain-"

But Hiro was not in the correct mood for an explanation. He just pushed the gun further into Callaghan's mouth, cutting off his speech, and his voice sounded like he was possessed by Satan himself.

"Go to hell."

The devil child formerly known as Hiro Hamada had his right index finger on the trigger, ready to pull down and bring Callaghan's criminal career to a bloody finish, before Sora, Kingdom Key in left hand, shouted.

"You want justice, not revenge!"

His brother's voice supplemented the usual "reason before killing". But he would not listen to his words.

"Hiro, listen to me. I don't want you to hold this against him."

"Save me the shitty heroics," Hiro said coldly. It reminded Sora of his first journey when Riku was possessed by Ansem, the Seeker of Darkness, an evil Heartless obsessed with opening the door to Kingdom Hearts and plunging the universe into everlasting darkness.

"He killed Tadashi. So I say it's time for poetic justice to see the killer die with the same gun he used to kill his victim."

Hiro's right index finger slowly pulled the trigger down—only to let Sora jump into the act and tackle Hiro's arm, removing the gun from Callaghan's mouth. The barrel flipped his upper lip and Hiro, too late to stop himself, fired the gun just one feet away from the professor's head. Any lower and it would have left a seven-to-three inch scar up Callaghan's right eye.

The bullet ricocheted across the room and struck the titanium steel wall where it bounced off and flew to the roof. It deflected against the steel beam and flew towards the edge, zig-zagged off like a football hitting the back of the rim, then down to the ground where it landed 94 feet away from its intended target. It lay there, untendered and lifeless as the victim that could have ended its life with lead poisoning. But instead, it just simply lay there for the rest of all eternity.

Regaining his strength, Callaghan threw a right haymaker at Hiro's nose, knocking the mask off upon his right temple making direct contact with the steel floor before the mad professor himself re-obtained the gun and his mask. The microbots were back under his control.

Baymax, after throwing Fred off of his back, charged towards Sandman, Big Boy and Breathless. But before he could, Wasabi and Go Go held their hands against the corset piece, allowing Sandman to strike back at the robot with a right farmer's fist. He spotted Lord Deathstrike about fifteen feet away from them, the microbots crawling to their master in a black river of evilness, and Big Boy and Breathless seized the opportunity to escape with Sandman following behind him. Yokai elevated himself back to the upper level, obtaining the intact portal and Sandman did the same, carrying Breathless and Big Boy in his strong hands.

Honey, who had spotted the healthcare chip when Hiro removed it, rushed down to pick it up with her right hand. Throughout the majority of the battle, she hid in the corner where the chip lay next to the bullet intended for Callaghan until Baymax was safely out of the way. Go Go was taking the rear, while Wasabi took the front of the robot, balancing him against a test of strength before she was thrown back by the mechanical right foot and Wasabi with a strong set of arms. Then, Sora aimed his Keyblade at the chip slot door, followed by a beam of light that opened the badge and allowing Honey to insert the chip back into its proper place.

"Por favor," she whispered.

And that was all it took to bring Baymax to his senses.

Hiro opened his eyes just in time to see Yokai exiting through the roof on a wide gondola of microbots. Big Boy and Breathless followed after him on a similar gondola created by Sandman, who used his reshaped body to carefully balance the two crooks out of harm's way. He wanted to follow them, yet he just sat there, regaining his strength while they got away. Steam was blowing from his head and he wanted so much to break Callaghan's neck as he raised his right fist into the sky like an archetypical villain and screamed with all his fury at the man who trusted his brother…and shot him in cold blood.

"YOU'LL BURN IN HELL FOR KILLING MY BROTHER, CALLAGHAN! I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU AND YOUR GODDAMNED FRIENDS, TOO! DO YOU HEAR ME, YOU SON OF A BITCH?! I WILL KILL YOOOOOOOUU!"

At last, Hiro broke down, he tried to stop the tears but they could escape the strength of his waning eyelids. He slammed his fists to the floor like an immature child, forming two small craters into the tiles.

Baymax's readout went back to blue, a clear and purified sort of blue that made him observe Fred, his top eye unconcealed, lying face first on the floor. He offered a helping pair of right hands as he spoke.

"My healthcare protocol has been violated. I regret any distress I might have caused."

Sora, Honey, Goofy, Fred, Donald, Go Go and Wasabi stared a Baymax, shocked by the shadow of his evil counterpart for a second before Hiro came stomping up to his friends, shouting with pure rage and utter dismay.

"HOW COULD LET HIM GET AWAY?!" He was still sobbing from his loss, both Tadashi and his killer. He began to shake Honey furiously. "WE HAD HIM! DO YOU HEAR ME, BITCH?!"

With a glare, Wasabi sidestepped in front of Honey and what he said next were the most powerful tone of words he had ever spoken in his life (as of late).

"Don't you dare talk to her that way! We didn't sign up to become contract killers!"

As Hiro grumbled his way to Baymax, Go Go added her own voice of reason.

"We said we'd catch the guy, not kill him!"

Hiro raised his right hand, violently slapping her left cheek (which was blocked by her visor and didn't seem to crack upon impact).

"SHUT UP, BITCH!" he screamed in her face like a madman (or in this case, madboy). "I NEVER SHOULD HAVE ASKED ANY OF YOU TO HELP ME!"

"Revenge doesn't solve anything," Fred added with his expertise of comic book logic. "That's why most heroes don't kill!"

"WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT WHAT HEROES DO?!" Hiro growled. "ANY CRIMINAL THEY SHOULD FACE DESERVES TO FUCKING DIE!"

Before Sora could join in, Hiro turned to Baymax, lowering the decibels of his voice as he spoke.

"Baymax, find Callaghan and Big Boy!"

Baymax placed his head up by six degrees, his visor turned blue and flickered with the cracks it had suffered from Spaldoni's bullets. The color faded with a foreshadowing of no result as Baymax lowered his head. To Hiro's dismay, the results came true.

"My enhanced scanner has been damaged from two bullets."

"FUCK!" Hiro stomped his right foot. The blow was so hard that it created a mini-earthquake which rattled the entire facility for a split second. He climbed aboard Baymax, left foot first, then his right before he gave the following command.

"Wings!"

The robot complied and the eagle-like wings expanded from his back.

"NOW FLY!"

And they flew towards the hole in the ceiling and into the dark night, away from Callaghan, away from SFIT, away from his new friends, away from a criminal underworld that seemed out to get him. He didn't bother to chase after Big Boy and his cronies now, nor did he care that Sora was following him on his Keyblade Glider…all he wanted was to see Callaghan's immortal soul burn at the mercy of the devil. As they flew, Hiro cursed himself for shooting Callaghan sooner before Sora intercepted his chance. He even wished that Tadashi was still alive, flying with him by his side with an angel's wings.

Nii-san would know what to do. He thought as the Lucky Cat Café came into sight.

Back in the facility, Spider-Man had regained consciousness. He panned his head left and right, noting the amount of damage done from the battle he was unable to witness.

"What did I miss?" he wondered out loud.

While Donald and Goofy went over to resuscitate Nova, White Tiger, Iron Fist and Power Man, Fred released his hands from the mechanics and reached his right hand into his right pants pocket, pulling out his light blue Sony Ericsson and dialing the home phone number. After a three second dial tone, Heathcliff's came on the other line.

"Lee residence."

"Hey, Heathcliff, could you pick me and my friends up from Akuma Island? I'll meet you on the roof."

Back at the Lucky Cat Café, Aunt Cass had a light dinner of two croissants with jelly on the inside and a glass of water to wash the minerals down. With Hiro's amount of newfound absence, her family life was becoming progressively quieter by the month, starting with Tadashi and his premature death, followed by Hiro's depression period and him going back to school at the spur of the moment. It was likely, that given her own experience with her family and such, the phase was all part of growing up. As she pondered the nature of Hiro's decision, she heard the quiet whine of a rocket coming from the garage. Cass looked over at the kitchen clock, which read "6:55" and made her way downstairs to the garage behind her house, certain that it was Hiro, having made it back an extra ten minutes early before his curfew.

Damned nerds! Hiro removed his helmet as he opened the garage door on maddened footsteps. Baymax stood in the middle and Sora landed his glider at the exact time Aunt Cass came in, asking.

"Home already?"

Hiro ignored her entirely as he placed his helmet on the computer desk along with his gloves. Cass's gaze went to Sora, then back to Hiro grabbing a foldable four foot step ladder in front of Baymax. Only when Hiro removed the robot's helmet did she recognize the squidgy head of Baymax more properly. Hiro, marching back to the computer with the helmet, furiously pushed aside a thin oil can, his scanner and a spark plug socket off the table, reaching into the helmet's USB cable with his right hand and in his left, another one for the computer. Seeing Hiro's current mood, Cass' question seemed rather odd, yet factual based on her knowledge of drugs.

"Have you been taking steroids?"

Sadly, his head was turned.

"His blood pressure is elevated," Baymax answered for her. "There are no traces of any steroids in his system."

Sora entered the garage, removing his own helmet and carrying it under his right armpit.

"He's just upset," he did not wish to tell Cass about any particular details until the matter involving Callaghan was solved.

"You appear to be distressed," Baymax said as Hiro typed away on the computer. His view of the monitor was obstructed by the boy genius' head, but it was apparent that Hiro was going into his files and recalculating the super-sensor.

"I'm fine!" Hiro muttered under his breath. "Kuso robotto."

He climbed the step ladder again and placed the helmet back onto Baymax, adjusting it four degrees to the left as the grid came into the visor. Sora and Cass exchanged blank glances from their sides of the garage, both mentally agreeing to Hiro have his moments, but they continued to watch with suspense in the air should Baymax fail to provide reason into Hiro's madness.

"There! Is it working?" Hiro tried to calm down, hiding his lust for killing Callaghan with open hands that seemed normal and content.

Baymax lifted his head, turned left by five degrees, three to the right, then craned his head back down to meet with Hiro's eye contact.

"My sensor is operational," came the reply.

"Good. Now let's get going."

Hiro was relieved; but in the process, he began to show his negative mindset of covetousness. It was starting to reappear when he tapped his right index finger on the badge of the armor, but it did not open.

"What the fuck?"

He tapped four more times; no result. Sora took a step closer, Cass did the same and Baymax asked softly.

"Are you going to remove my healthcare chip?"

"Of course I am, you dumbass," Hiro seethed. He added his middle finger to the strength of his index and pressed them both against the surface of the badge with zero results. Baymax was smart enough to override the lock, a page he had taken out of HAL 9000's book to prevent hackers or thieves from getting into his chip slot.

"Open!" Hiro growled with the darkness of his heart increasing.

"My purpose is to heal, not kill," Baymax's reasoning no longer had any purpose in the twisted mind of an evil genius.

"Baymax, open your access port."

"Do you want me to kill Professor Callaghan and Big Boy Caprice?"

Before Aunt Cass could speak out at the recently undeniable fact that Robert Callaghan was alive and well, Hiro shouted back, "YES, NOW OPEN THE GODDAMNED DOOR!"

"Calm down, Hiro," Sora tried to intervene. "Violence is not the answer."

SHUT YOUR ASS UP! Hiro was assuming that if Baymax could not open his access port from the armor exterior, he would do it from his bare body. And so, with extended arms, he unhitched the chest plate and threw it to the floor near Cass' feet. The purple corset had dropped by twenty inches and when Hiro got the same result after tapping the badge two more times with his right index finger, he decided that the best way was to rip the port off with his own two hands. He screamed bilingually as he slammed his right fist into the badge.

"OPEN, DAMN YOU! DOA O AKETE, ANATA BAKA KUSO ROBOTTO!"

"Language, please!" Cass was on the threshold of upsetting herself.

"Will killing Professor Callaghan and his allies improve your emotional state?"

When the words reached his ears, Hiro flung his arms over his head. He wanted nothing more than to eat Callaghan's liver as a self-reward for ending his life, but his good and bad sides had other ideas.

"Yes! No! I don't—know!" Hiro tried to confess the truth, but his words were too ambivalent. His mind was completely fixed on gory subjects like darkness, death and decay. With his aunt in plain sight, his chances at surprising her with the news of his heroism were spoiled and he did not wish to admit in front of Cass that Tadashi had been purposely murdered. He continued to slide all ten of his fingers behind the access door, wanting to rip it open as he saw it as the heart of Callaghan, trying to pull it right out of his fresh corpse as hard as he could.

"Is this what Tadashi wanted?"

The words of Baymax struck Hiro's mind in the form of a bullet, the same one that took his brother away. He thought about it…for a second. And in the next moment, he was cursing at his own strength; the strength of a weakling that could not even open a simple door…let alone save the lives of his loved ones. It was also because of his weakness that he let Tadashi run off into Callaghan's clutches when he could have held on for just a few more minutes. Now that he was even more miserable at having a close member of his family joining his parents in death, he never wanted to hear the very mention of his brother's name ever again.

"Tadashi! TADASHI! TADASHI! How should I know what Tadashi wanted?! Why do you even keep speaking about him as if he's alive, when he's not?! HE'S DEAD, YOU PIECE OF FUCKING SHIT!"

He punctuated the last word by slamming his hands into Baymax's chubby chest, startling Sora and his aunt as it looked as though they would just break through and deflate the robot's rubber flesh into a pile of ripped linen. Then, realizing what he had called his brother's last work, he sunk his head further into Baymax's torso and his arms fell to the level of his eyes, hating himself, his weakness, his life and his intelligence.

"Tadashi is….dead."

It was then that Hiro realized, that, among the countless billions of carbon based lifeforms in this godforsaken world, his life had been nothing more than a deficiency of perfection. He couldn't understand why his parents, whom he had only known for the first four years of his life, had to be taken away from him in a car accident. He couldn't understand why Tadashi, the older brother who had been with him for the majority of his childhood, had to throw his life away at the hands of a man consumed by the fires of evil. He couldn't understand why Aunt Cass, out of all his other living relatives on opposite sides of the Pacific, had to be his legal guardian. He couldn't understand why his brother had so many connections with crime, when he himself nearly became a part of one. He couldn't understand why his new friends were so geeky and weird and he couldn't understand why Tadashi even built Baymax in the first place. In fact, Hiro couldn't understand anything anymore, about life, about love, about hatred or revenge. He wanted to end it all, yet he could not. His mind was telling him to commit suicide, but his heart was telling him live a long life; a very, very, very long life.

At last, as though he was able to read his thoughts, Baymax spoke.

"Isn't it obvious, Hiro? You have a heart condition."

Hiro kept his eyes closed. The congenital stigma of angina pectoris or some generic kind of heart condition never seemed to bother him, and after yearly visits to the hospital until his twelfth birthday, he assumed that it was gone forever. But no matter how hard the doctors tried, a small portion of the defect still remained—at the very bottom of his organs.

"I know," was all he said.

"Tadashi knew that he wasn't going to be around with you forever," Baymax explained. "So he created me. His idea stemmed from seeing you in the hospital among other patients who needed help, as his father was a doctor who studied in neurosurgery."

Hiro didn't care about his parents any longer. He didn't care about his friends left behind on the island. He didn't care about Sora or Aunt Cass, who were standing close to him with warming hearts. He never wished for anything so hard in his life. What he really wished for, was that when he opened his eyes, Tadashi would be standing there, ready to take him in his arms and give him a great big hug, whispering comforting things into his ears.

A light shone into the dark recesses of his eyelids. His wish came true…but it was only an image of Tadashi in his lab at early daybreak standing high with his head looking down, his eyes obscured by the visor of his cap. He was also wearing a blood red t-shirt, brown trousers and he appeared to be exhausted, but determined, which was hidden by his right hand covering his eyes while his left hand held a clapper board. Written in white chalk on the board read his full name on the bottom, "Robotics Project" on the line above his name, "Test #" on the top right and the numbers 82, 83 and 84 on the top left, the first two numbers crossed off in a single line.

"This is Tadashi Hamada," he announced in a soft, breathy voice. "And this is the 84th…"

He looked at his clapper board with an unrelenting sigh of discomfort.

"…test."

Tadashi smoothed the back of his neck with his right fingers, sighed and looked at the camera, revealing his eyes as he fixed his lips into a smile of sanguinity.

"What do you say, big guy?"

He placed his right hand at the chip slot, followed by the sound of the access port closing. Tadashi lowered his arms and took a solid breath, sucking the oxygen through his nose and directly out from his throat, ready for the final result that stood on the boundary lines of failure and success.

"Hello! I am Baymax. Your personal healthcare companion."

Tadashi flubbed his lips slightly, then his jaw started to drop with an expression that plainly read "awe". Without warning, every ounce of his enthusiastic childishness, long nursed since his tenth birthday, was unleashed into what became the happiest moment of his life.

"MAA NANTE KOTO NANDA! IT WORKS!"

He held his arms outs, shouting "THIS IS AMAZING!" as he spun to the left came back to Baymax and give his magnum opus a romantic face that urged his lips to kiss the artificial life out of the robot. And so he did, and it only took him a split-second to fog the polished hyperspectral cameras.

"Hai! I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!" He danced to the taciturn beat, using his legs for drums of excitement, until at last he resumed all matter of being content and limped his arms.

"Okay, big moment here…scan me."

At his master's command, the voice of the other Baymax responded after a three second whir.

"Your neurotransmitter levels are elevated. This indicates that you are happy."

"I am! I am! I really am!" Tadashi cried with all the love found in his heart. "How do you feel, Baymax?"

"Battery power at 98%. My systems are running perfectly."

"I see. Well, as you probably know, my name is Tadashi…and it's nice to meet you."

Hiro watched as he started to beam with not a single tooth shown, trying to contain his own enthusiasm from watching his older brother during a time when life was simple, before an ex-member of the Apparatus took his life. Sora and Aunt Cass walked quietly behind Hiro, placing opposite hands on his shoulders. All three members of Baymax's audience peered into the screen, the orange shade of the early morning painting their faces in a similar glow of light that symbolized the light of Hiro's heart finding its way back to the surface. In the video Tadashi pulled up his swivel chair and sat down on it, looking prim and proper as though, in an ironic sense, his last testimony. The testimony of an advocate whose words saw the best in all living beings, even if they did not deserve it the most.

"Wait until my brother sees you! His name is Hiro. He's a little offbeat, but he's really smart, and he loves inventing things. Sometimes he goes over-board and gets himself in trouble. But he's my only brother…and I love him. To be honest, when I was making you, I wasn't sure this was going to work. But now, I have lot of high hopes for the both of you. You didn't know this yet, but you are going to help a lot of people, and one day…I hope…you will be Hiro's friend."

Tadashi extended his right hand to Baymax, and unknowingly, to Hiro himself.

"Let's watch over Hiro together and see what kind of a world he creates. I'll bet that everyone is going to love him."

The screen froze at that moment. It was a frame that had perfectly captured all of Tadashi's happiness into a big smile. Hiro, imbued by the epiphany of his words, edged his right fingers on the screen where Tadashi's left cheek was and stared at the image hungrily. A small tear came out of his left eye, hoping that he would fall right through the screen and reach this alternate dimension where his brother was alive and well, but he could not. The screen was a barrier that could never be reached by any means, filling his heart with half joy and half terrible sadness. Cass held her arms around her nephew with similar emotions. Sora remained silent, respectfully towards the living Hamadas. It felt as though Tadashi had been speaking to him as well, somehow knowing about all the countless times he had saved the lives of others, even going as far as letting them reside within his very own heart.

I don't think Tadashi would have wanted revenge.

Hiro's tears blurred his vision, fabricating a dream that would never come true. In it, he saw himself in the Buena Vista Park on top of Baymax, who was offering a dodgeball to a blond haired boy of ten, while he himself drew a simple cloud from his smoke pen. Tadashi stood by his left, blowing his disinfectant bubbles. Aunt Cass and Mochi stood nearby with the other adults, watching their children play with the inventions of her nephews. Fred was there as well, being a showoff in his mascot lizard suit as he rode a rocket powered hoverboard. Go Go smiled at the cloud cat perched on top of her head, clinging to her purple locks. And Wasabi and Honey laughed and cheered as they played with the children and the bubbles that completed the atmosphere. Detective Tracy, Tess and Junior were there as well, having a picnic with Sora and the S.H.I.E.L.D. rookies displaying a wonderful show of Keyblade tricks, web-slinging and the magic of Donald's mage turning Goofy's shield into a Frisbee. As his dream (and Tadashi's image) faded into memory, Hiro saw how much Tadashi wanted to help others, a trait taken from his own father, who wanted to find a cure for cancer. But underneath his enthusiasm and utmost happiness, he was still wishing that his brother hadn't been so stupid. He looked up and addressed Baymax with a short, yet heartwarming speech of forgiveness.

"Baymax, you were trying to protect the world my brother was trying to create."

"He was," Sora added with kindness.

"Thank you," the young genius confessed in a quiet voice. Then he looked down, reflecting his size, his IQ level and his actions.

"I guess I'm not like my brother after all."

"You're wrong."

Hiro turned around. The voice belonged to Go Go, who stood there with her helmet off, flanked by Honey, Fred, Wasabi, Donald, Goofy and the rookies. Aunt Cass was flustered and mystified with this revelation.

"What is all this?" she asked, rising her voice with hidden fear and anger. "Is this what you have been doing this whole week?"

"It's a long story," Hiro replied.

Aunt Cass was overcome with so many questions, that she didn't notice Hiro being pulled into Go Go's arms. She closed her eyes as she did. Her teammates Honey, Wasabi and Fred looked on with sympathy and Sora patted Hiro's ratty hair with his right hand. Goofy and Donald were on the verge of tears and Spider-Man was trying vainly to hold them back. Nova looked as though he wanted to hug someone else as well, but White Tiger, Iron Fist and Power Man were in no mood for further sadness. In this moment that only lasted four seconds of her life, Leiko Tanaka felt she was at peace with Hiro's emotions and her ancestral country Korea's tense relationship with the Japanese.

"We'll catch Callaghan and Big Boy," she cooed, stroking Hiro's hair. "And this time, we'll do it right."

Hiro smiled, but it quickly turned into sadness, for he was still brooding over the nature of his actions.

"I want to kill him, but now I don't want to."

"I'm sure you don't mean that," Go Go assured him.

"Leiko, Callaghan killed my brother. Tadashi deserved justice."

Go Go looked at him, appalled with his words.

"That isn't justice you're talking about, Hiro, that's revenge. Justice is about harmony... revenge is about you making yourself feel better. That is why we have an impartial system."

Hiro understood her words. As a genius, he seemed to know every last bit of the criminal justice system.

"I know, but sometimes I just wish I could have a perfect world."

"It doesn't have to be a perfect world," said Peter from under his Spider-Man mask. "When my uncle was alive, everything was perfect and it would have been if I had stopped the thug at the studio. But what's done is done. Time to look forward."

The boy genius looked back at Spidey. Even though his eyes were covered by the plastic chrome covered lenses of his mask, there was serendipity in his heart, serendipity that would finally lay all of his troubles to rest. Finally, he gazed at Fred, wondering how the hell they had gotten here so fast.

"Oh, before you ask," Fred jumped in. "I called Heathcliff to have us picked up in the family chopper."

"And next time," Wasabi reprimanded in a stern, but caring smile. "Don't leave your teammates stranded on a deserted island."

Hiro covered his eyes in shame with his left palm. His doubts were increased by the fact that Tadashi would never desert his own friends by any deliberate means.

"Also," added Honey, holding the red junk drive in her right hand. "After the video was over, I thought we could take the video back as evidence."

"Just what we need for Detective Tracy," Hiro let out of small laugh of disbelief. "The fact that Alistair Krei created a portal that nearly destroyed the whole city. I'm not so sure how it will connect us to Big Boy and Callaghan."

"Well," Sora suggested, crossing his arms. "Why don't we watch the video again and see for ourselves."

Honey inserted the drive into the USB port of the computer, everyone (including Aunt Cass) watched Hiro focus the screen entirely on the control room footage, picking up exactly where they left off with General Hammond shouting, "You nearly got us all killed!"

A figure in a grey shirt, black tie and black trousers with matching shoes could been rushing down the stairs from behind them. Looking carefully into the video, Hiro could see that it was Callaghan, looking as angry as a raging bull.

"KREI, YOU SON OF A BITCH! YOU KNEW IT WASN'T SAFE! YOU KNEW IT WAS NOT READY!"

Hiro paused at the right moment, which saw Callaghan being detained by two short haired men in dark indigo suits, his left hand reaching out as though it were hell-bent on choking Krei to death.

"He was there," Hiro whispered in denial.

His ex-students could not believe their eyes.

"He was such a good man," Honey's voice was full of woe. "What happened to him?"

Hiro rubbed his chin.

"The answer must be in here."

He reminded all nine of the screen, going back to the start of the test. On the left side of the screen labelled "Pod Camera 01", Honey's sharp eyesight found Callaghan's his hands clenching Abigail's and she pointed her left index finger at the said screen shouting "There!" and Hiro held down the right mouse button, creating a select feature surrounded by a light blue barrier, which gave the team a closer look the video. It began to play, showing Callaghan and Abigail embracing.

"With the pilot."

The name "Abigail" sounded very familiar to Hiro.

"Hold on"

He zoomed in on the exact scene where Abigail was getting into the pod, her left profile to the camera. On the same side her helmet was the name "Callaghan", printed in all caps.

"Callaghan did say he had a daughter by the name of Abigail when you first met him," Sora pointed out and Hiro put two and two together when he came to an unanticipated conclusion.

"The pilot was Callaghan's daughter?!"

Playing the footage again for any other sign of Tadashi and the crashed pod, all Hiro could hear was his brother's voice shouting "She's dead! Her forehead's bleeding and her neck is broken," and that was when Callaghan came in, throwing his fit with last three sentences that ended the video.

"SHE WAS THE ONLY FAMILY I HAD LEFT! AND YOU KILLED HER! I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU AND YOUR GODDAMNED FRIENDS, TOO! DO YOU HEAR ME, YOU SON OF A BITCH?! I WILL KILL YOOOOOOOUU!"

Hiro moved his upper back all the way in his chair, remembering the same exact words he had sworn on Callaghan almost an hour ago.

"Guys…?" Fred said slowly and dramatically. "This…is a revenge story."

Now, Hiro was no longer interested in getting revenge on Callaghan, when the mad professor himself was going down the same path he almost took to get his black hands of death on Alistair Krei. Taking in every moment of what could have been, a spillage of blood on his friends and the entire populace of San Fransokyo in an endless cycle that would led him straight back to prison, he knew that with previous charges of bot-fighting and other petty offenses, he would have lost any chances of the future Tadashi wanted for him: to use his intelligence to create a better tomorrow.

"We'll get them in the morning," Hiro announced. "Right now, it's time for bed."

Aunt Cass walked quietly back to her bedroom, while Sora, Spider-Man, Donald, the rookies, Goofy and the entirety of Big Hero 6 all slept on the floor. Hiro would have preferred his bedroom, but being in his garage where he could be surrounded by the memories of Tadashi was perfectly fine. He even used Baymax's chubby stomach as a pillow while the robot was being charged in his station for tomorrow's battle with the Apparatus. Soothing himself to sleep with a CD of Breathless Mahoney's soft and gentle tune of "Something to Remember" playing from his boom box, Hiro heard every meaning behind the lyrics. If there was something Tadashi wanted his brother to remember him by, it was his baseball cap, his possessions, his inventions, but most of all; his magnum opus, Baymax himself.

Callaghan could remember back to the time after he left the disaster on Akuma Island, when he was sitting in his office three months ago with Tadashi. The men sat face to face, the elder expressing his remorse, while the younger tried aimlessly to console him. His desk served as a barrier, preventing Tadashi from taking a step closer to tranquilize his increasing mountain of ire that seemed to transform into an erupting volcano.

"I was thinking we could dedicate a building in her honor," Tadashi suggested to the ruminating professor.

But he looked Tadashi straight in the eye and itemized an unsatisfactual expression.

"The situation's changed, Tadashi. We have to decide whose side we are really on, and I found that working a man like Alistair Krei would be suicidal. I can live with that mistake, but I can't live without my Abigail."

Tadashi tried to press the words into his father-figure.

"You didn't know this was going to happen. You can't just blame Krei for some malfunction, it's very common in computers. Even Baymax is malfunctioning because first moments have rocky beginnings."

"Well Krei was more the means to that 'rocky beginning'. The same thing you will be if you wish to get out of Big Boy's league."

The words hit Tadashi like a heavy sack of mail.

"You don't mean to say that every wad of money's he's been giving us was counterfeit?"

"It's legal tender," Callaghan deadpanned. "I was in a good mood to use the money to support the project…but I could have used it for something greater. We have all been part of a laundering scheme."

"Big Boy hasn't completely reformed—" Tadashi could not believe his ears. "At all?"

"He's still bad. But he probably has a better moral than Krei ever has."

"It's never too late for Krei to make up for his mistakes. As for Big Boy, he probably doesn't know what honor really is."

"Krei's the one who is meaningless!" the robotics teacher fumed. "Big Boy and his cronies may have broken the rules too many times, but the loss of my daughter is unacceptable."

Tadashi leaned closer by seven inches.

"All you need is to give him another chance."

Callaghan scowled with daggers in his eyes. He could see his daughter's blood on Tadashi's hands, to which only a fading trail could be seen going up his left pinky.

"He had his chance, Tadashi! First he decides to collaborate with Big Boy over more money, uses it for bad science, and now my daughter?! He can't do what he knows is right because he is a sadistic prick who knows about the flaws without realizing the consequences. He probably doesn't even know the true meaning of 'reaping the benefits' and instead of grasping the effects of his actions, he just laughs it off in his head. For a man like Alphonse Caprice, he has a better mind; simple but wise."

Callaghan stood up from his chair facing the window on his right hand side, looking out at the campus grounds and buildings obstructing his view of Akuma Island beyond the sight of memory. Tadashi came to his left hand, trying to summarize the fact that the "father" he had known for three years was becoming an entirely different person with a twisted sense of morality. Optimistic to the fact that he would get over it in time, Tadashi spoke softly.

"You're talking nonsense, Robert. Big Boy and Krei are the other way around, so you don't need him. Now you've mentioned his true purpose, I'll see to it that I'll be financing the remainder of Baymax all on my own."

And in a second, Callaghan darted his left index finger at his so called "son", turning his body by 120 degrees as he did.

"The opinion of Don Caprice is that he is a thinker, and Krei…Krei is just somebody who should be appointed with hemispherectomy. I agree with his system completely, anyone who defies the law, major or minor, is as dead as good. There are no second chances…only death. Maybe you can write that on her headstone"

The situation was getting so ugly, that Callaghan imagined for a split-second that Tadashi was Krei, planning on giving him a humiliating speech and a skewed poem that went along the lines of "Roses are red. Violets are blue. Your daughter is dead and so is your wife. Oh, yes it's true."

"I feel sorry for you, Robert," Tadashi reasoned.

"Well, Krei is not going to be sorry for my daughter or any other life he takes," Callaghan seethed. "It's a pity I can't use his money to bring her back. As for your brother, you should give him a little something in the criminal world—word on the street is…he's a bot fighter."

Tadashi turned his head away to the right with a slightly open mouth. Callaghan was indefinitely losing his inner psyche to a world of sin, vice and corruption. But still, he needed solid evidence to prove the professor's words.

"I will see for myself," he said at last.

"You better hope so," Callaghan was still facing the window. "Because if you move fast, Big Boy will take care of him. He isn't as much of monster as he was back in the day. Good day, Mr. Hamada. Have a safe life."

Tadashi slowly turned on his feet walked straight to the door.

Then, Callaghan concluded the reflection of his words. Hiro was right about his brother going in to save him. Even though it seemed too late to rectify his mistakes, he knew that not only Tadashi tried to save him from the fire, but also from the wickedness created by the return of Krei at the showcase. He decided to pray for Tadashi again after the first week of his scheme to rebuild the portal. But it didn't help him now that he was strapped to a chair in the empty chrome-and-glass showroom of Club Ritz, with a strong cord of rope tied around his torso.

Big Boy was furious when he found out about the full explicit details of Callaghan's revenge plot. He paced back and forth, unwittingly demeaning the poor professor of his military background in Iraq as Sandman, his henchmen (and henchwomen) followed their eyes at his every move like empty headed drones. Breathless shot fire in her eyes and blew a placating sigh that flapped her lips in frustration as her arms remained crossed over her breasts. She looked like Marilyn Munster in Morticia Addams' clothing. The gangster's skinny moustache sneered at the unmasked Lord Deathstrike, who looked back at him with a guilty face that only a mother could love.

"So…you decide to join me, a seat on top of the world and you chose the gutter after your little girl died. Then, after sending me several messages, you fake your own death, kill one of my backstabbers without my authority, impersonate a Kabuki character, send out more messages, my boys follow your demands… and yet, you used me as a pawn in this harebrained scheme, all because you want Alastair Krei dead as much as I do!"

"I was going to tell you after we pulled the job off," Callaghan said calmly. "I knew what would happen if I turned against you, but I was willing to take that risk…and as I said before, you were the only one I could trust."

"Trust?! After going AWOL and sending me up the wall?! You have no idea who you are dealing with!" the crime lord's temper began to rise. "I AM ALPHONSE 'BIG BOY' CAPRICE! ONE OF THE GREATEST CRIMINAL MASTERS OF ALL TIME!"

"And one of the loudest criminal masters of all time," Callaghan muttered in the direct opposite of Big Boy's volume.

Itchy gulped with a nasty sound coming from the beating of his heart, his lungs and his nose before he spoke.

"I hate to break to break up the argument," he said at last. "But I think it's amazing how you built this portal to ship Krei out into outer space rather than just ripping his limbs off with those tiny bots of yours."

"I can't stand the sight of blood," Callaghan shook his head forlornly. "Besides, his death should be justified…in terms of poetic justice."

"Poetic justice?" Oodles, being the most dim-witted member of the Apparatus, asked with a curious tone, for he did not grasp the true understanding of irony.

"Krei's defective portal destroyed everything I valued," Callaghan explained. "So it will be the same portal that destroys everything he values."

"That's what it is?" Oodles asked again.

"Of course it is," Laffy chuckled. The meaning of poetic justice was alien to him as well, so he played with his own charade of high intelligence as well.

"Or," Breathless said snootily. "Maybe it was your fault that Abigail is dead. If you knew that the portal test was unsafe, why didn't you try telling her to back out of the project?"

Callaghan smiled sadly to himself, wishing he could turn back time to prevent the disaster. To Breathless, he said.

"I didn't know what was going to happen until it was too late. I thought that Krei knew every detail about the pros and cons of the portal, especially since him, me and Tadashi were working on it together along with the science division at Krei Tech."

"You could have sued him," Crewy Lou flipped her hair back in the drawling voice of a slut as if she were incredibly stoned. A few flecks of her ponytail were singed with dark spots exposing the amount of kerosene spilled from Hiro's bottle. Luckily, she was able to put the flames out before they could consume her hair entirely.

"Well I tried," Callaghan confessed mournfully. "But I realized shortly afterwards that Krei is a mega-corporal businessman with an army of lawyers and even if there was something he did underhanded, he would never be able to prove it. Also, it was irrational — I also realized on some level that Krei didn't do anything actionable. But I still held the man directly responsible for killing my beloved daughter."

"Spoken like a true criminal on our side of the 'law'," Spots exclaimed.

"And then I realized that if could not destroy Krei through legal matters, given the secrecy of Project Silent Sparrow, I decided to matters into my own hands by enacting the most elaborate revenge scheme in history. I didn't leave you for good, Big Boy, I just needed to be closer to my job."

Big Boy rolled his eyes, accepting the fact. He believed that his mind was being too harsh on the professor, so he took a knife from the table closest to him, severed the ropes and offered his right hand to the liberated Kabuki man.

"Well, sucker, you have made a wise decision."

The two criminals shook hands, rekindling their relationship.

"I just can't believe that he is dead," sighed Mrs. Trueheart to Tess early the following morning. The older woman was removing a tin of muffins from the oven for breakfast while the younger sat at the kitchen table, stirring cream into her coffee.

"Based on my experience with losing your father, I moved on a lot quicker. But in the case of a pre-teen like Hiro Hamada, I think he needs a little more time to let go. Sorta like you and Dick, torn between love and duty."

"What do you mean, Mama?" Tess asked stiffly. Even though she apologized to her mother for not inviting her to the funeral and explained some vague details of Tadashi's final moments from her knowledge of the disaster, the jumbling nature of confusion was an anchor on her mind.

"I said it takes time for him to let go."

"It figures. When we were at the wake, Tracy and I got into a bit of an argument. He wanted me to show support for Hiro and Cass, but I told him about how you had to mortgage the deli, how I was seen by the PD as nothing more than a housewife—I didn't know what I was really saying."

"I think I know why. You were just like Hiro, afraid to lose the one you love. To lose his brother to...violence. Like I did." Mrs. Trueheart swallowed; behind her wire rimmed glasses her eyes were moist. "Tadashi Hamada was a hero, dear. A real hero."

"I know he was."

"Everybody loves a hero, Tess, it helps us to set an example of things. I don't know where I've heard this before, but…I believe there's a hero in all of us, that keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble, and finally allows us to die with pride, even though sometimes we have to be steady, and give up the thing we want the most. Even our dreams."

The older woman sighed with contemplation. She knew a real hero whenever she saw one, rather than the seemingly corrupted Department of Justice, who gave criminals a few short term sentences instead of longer ones like those out-of-state. Mrs. Trueheart took a bite out of one of the muffins, placing a fresh one on Tess' plate, but the young lady didn't look too hungry. She picked it up in her right hand and studied the confection. In one perfect moment, it seemed to have resolved all her problems.

"You know what? I think I'm gonna give this to Dick. He always liked your cooking."

Mrs. Trueheart's face registered a knowing smile and it was glued that way as her daughter got out a brown paper bag, placed the muffin inside, and headed for the door. Little did she know that in six hours' time, the context of her soliloquy, about heroes, strength, nobility and sacrifice, would come true.

---

At 7:00 AM, Hiro sat down to a warm breakfast of ham and eggs, courtesy of Aunt Cass. As with the showcase, he was about to embark on another life-changing chapter; specifically the grand showdown of bringing Callaghan, Sandman, Big Boy and his Apparatus into the arms of justice. He woofed the food down his throat as quick as he could, unsure of the exact time Big Boy would strike. He did know, via the morning newspaper, that Krei was to open his new Krei Tech headquarters in the financial district at noon the very same day. Finished, he passed the plate to Aunt Cass, who placed it in the dishwasher as he went to his room, changed into his suit and rushed to the garage where his already-suited team of fourteen (fifteen including himself) stood in profound silence as he made an honorable speech of impartiality.

"We can't let Tadashi's death be in vain. He wanted to help others, and that is what we plan to do; starting with Alistair Krei. I know my nii-san only intended to help people through medical means, but his attempt to save Callaghan from his sins is living proof that he wanted to be a redeemer, a champion, a real hero who saves people from danger, in both accounts of perilous disasters and surgical operations. So after we stop Callaghan, Big Boy, the sand guy and those other criminals, we'll continue to be heroes to the very end…and when the time is right, we will show the world who we really are. I mean, not every superhero identity has to be kept secret, right?"

"In some ways, yes," Iron Fist said.

Hiro drew a sharp, serious frown of his eyebrows. After holding his helmet under his right arm for the last three minutes, he held it above his head and with a great drop, he slid the helmet into his head.

"Then what are we waiting for? Let's bring these criminals to justice."

And so they flew onboard Baymax and the Gummi Ship to the headquarters, where they would wait for Callaghan to strike back at Krei with an onyx fist.

As before with the previous night, Big Boy sat at a table in the showroom of the club with a full meal of ribs, cilantro, coffee, blueberries, butterscotch buns and French toast laid out in front of him, a feast fit for a king—only the king was fit to be tied. He looked like a million bucks wearing a black tuxedo, with a boutonnière in the left lapel, and when he was finished, he stood up from the chair, walked around the long table and addressed his fellow "soldiers" pacing back and forth, military style. Lord Deathstrike stood on the left side of the room, flanked by Sandman on the opposite right and the gangsters, wearing similar attire, stood like true soldiers during a briefing.

"Ok, here's the dealio: We have had enough of this city pushing us aside because we're different, retarded, ugly, hideous, misshaped and a bunch a' weirdos who ain't from this planet! In order to gain control of this city and run it to the ground we enact a hostile takeover of Krei Tech and I want their leader, Alistair Krei, deader than the ribs I just ate!"

He stuck his fork in the bones of his ribs and it quivered there. Itchy and Measles exchanged nervous glances; Flattop remained impervious. Laffy was trying his best not to break out of character with his chuckles. Ribs Mocco was not bothered at all by his namesake and Shaky, now armed with a jet black Mossberg 500, was also doing his best military stance, trying not to shake at all for the first time in his life. 88 Keys looked very dapper in his best suit with his hair combed all the way back. Breathless, Texie and Crewy, the sole females of the motley army, stood with their hands on their backs.

"We will show San Fransokyo the side of humanity that deserves to shine," Big Boy continued. "We will show them our own sense of duty! We will show them our own sense of destiny! We will show them a new era where only the imperfect humans are equal! An era, where people with disabilities are treated like kings, and those 'oh-so perfect' ones are liquidated for their inhumane acts! We will show them, as generals; not foot soldiers, that we will NOT tolerate any form of rebellion or cruelty against our fabulous outcast society! What are we?"

"Generals!" the gangsters shouted back.

"What are we not?"

"Foot soldiers!"

"And furthermore," Big Boy's speech was turning into a rant. "If any of those 'heroes' show up, I WANT THEM ALL DEAD!"

Taking heavy breaths, Big Boy was mollified with the answers of his posse. He studied the faces of his army, ready for action against a high-profile corporation company.

"Good. Now let's go get that son of a bitch."

The criminals cheered and whooped as they headed to their cars, while Lord Deathstrike went to the roof. One by one, he used the microbots to pick up the four portal pieces from the attic and headed towards the financial district, not caring at all about the pedestrians who ran out of his way or just stared at him from a distance, taking pictures of him with their phones and sending them to Instagram and Flickr.

The new Krei Tech headquarters was a two story crescent shaped building with an eight story dorsal fin in the 90 degree portion of the circle. Adjacent to the fin was another circular building that was four stories shorter than the former with some green shrubs around the fin and small sections of grass and wooden flooring at the bottom. It's white color and pristine glass windows offered a futuristic look that was way ahead of the city's time. Amongst a crowd of seventy people, three reporters from the San Fransokyo Tribune and CNN stood in the front line of the audience recording Alistair Krei, live on camera, standing in the middle of a dark grey stage and holding a thin glass of Perrier-Jouet in his right hand. On the front of the stage were the words "Krei Tech" written in a blue-gray art deco font, while behind him on the wall of the building was a blue poster with grid designs and the company name in white letters. The rest of the audience, watched him carefully and listened with sharp ears. As president of the company, Krei was known for giving long-winded speeches.

"This beautiful new campus is the culmination of a lifelong dream, but none of this could have been possible without a few bumps and grinds. Although a few setbacks and mishaps have made us stronger—and wiser from learning from our mistakes, they set us on the path…"

He lifted his champagne glass for emphasis.

"To a bright future that shines on the end of every day!"

The crowd cheered and clapped their hands with a praise of his strong words. The cameraman for CNN even had to slide his right hand through the strap in order to clap for himself out of force of habit. Had it been aimed higher, it would have caught something else.

So this is how successful a second string is, he thought with passion on his mind. An ironic outcome.

Suddenly, there was a distorted voice that was so loud, the whole Financial District could have heard it through their headphones.

"SETBACKS?!"

Krei turned around. A cloud of sand, hundreds of feet high, came barreling toward the crowd, blotting out the sun and hurtling at high speed down to the ground. To make matters worse, a spidery substance of darkness was coming down the roof of the main office and took the form of a black river, followed by a man in a Kabuki mask and a motley army of grotesque criminals. The audience screamed with fright, they backed out, slowly at first, then ran for the nearest entrance as the man lunged for Krei, who just stood there, frozen with fear over the unpleasant sight of this theatrical incarnation of the Grim Reaper. Krei ran and leapt off the stage, but no sooner did his feet leave the stage when the microbots swarmed up to his waist and covered the lower half of his body. They pinned him to the floor where he met the calamitous face of Big Boy Caprice, the hunched gangster in his black tux with white carnation looked like the headwaiter in Hades.

Then came Breathless in her black sequined gown, holding a pump-pink Thompson 1928. She aimed the barrel at Krei's pointed nose, snarling, "As they in the movies, stick up your mitts!"

The crowd, unaware of the potential threat aimed directly at Krei, ran to the street and away from the building, followed a squad of eight guards. The other criminals appeared from behind the west wing of the exterior, weapons ready and fired twenty eight bullets on the crowd, gunning down a woman in mute blue and a man in an indigo cardigan. The guards held their Berettas at the ready, aiming on the intruders, shouting "Drop your weapons! Drop the guns now!" when Flattop fired a bullet into his right cheek, forcing him to the floor as the surviving members of the audience screamed loudly. Sandman joined them at normal size, using his arms as a more lengthier barrier.

Crewy Lou, wearing a sleeveless gamboge colored lace dress with a miniskirt, was the first to stop the crowd with her Winchester. Texie was wearing a tight red dress and a matching red pillbox hat with a veil that announced her as a literal scarlet woman and the male criminals, minus Sandman, were wearing their finest tuxedos of black coats, white shirts and red corsages. These garments, representing the colors making up Yokai's costume and his Kabuki mask, reshaped the Apparatus into a formal group, rechristened "The Kabuki Squad".

Watching from the pagoda tower nearby, Vitamin Flintheart and Diet Smith were the first to notify the police about the incident, but unfortunately on their part, the live broadcast had found its way on the television set owned by Officer Daniel Gerson. He along with the Crimestoppers at the Bayview Police Station were watching the ceremony in the community room. As Tess had not returned home that previous night, Junior went to the station and spent the night there with Tracy's permission. Of Krei's motivating, yet verbose speech, he commented, "Well, that's putting it mildly. All we hope for is a bright future, while other people in places like the Middle East are living the low-life."

On the screen came a shout of "SETBACKS?!" and the camera darted up to see a quick sandstorm and a figure in a dark suit riding down a black river toward the screen. Lizz, Catchem and Patton leaned in their chairs for a closer inspection of the black mass heading to the screen without standing up. It seemed to be ringing some distant bells into their memories.

"The black river!" Patton shouted.

Tracy grabbed for the remote, hit pause and squinted at the figure's head, it seemed to be wearing a white mask with red accents and gold eyes.

"So there was a man in a mask," he muttered, remembering Hiro's words.

"Looks like a Hollywood special effect to me," Gerson had seen the figure for himself, but he did not wish to believe anything so threatening could be a reality.

"Live cameras don't lie," Junior added and Lizz nodded her head in agreement.

Carefully remembering the exact location of the headquarters, Tracy addressed his peers as he headed to the door.

"The Financial District shouldn't be too far from here. Come on, guys, we've got an army of criminals to stop."

Junior followed Tracy into the backseat of the unmarked Crown Victoria, which was parked at the rear entrance of the building, Gerson joining him in the front passenger seat. Patton, Catchem and Lizz raced to their patrol car followed by Chief Brandon and a squad of men in blue. Tracy leaned his head to the left, he didn't bother to warn Junior of the impeding threat. Should the Kabuki man be allied as Hiro foretold, they would have a building full of hostages to shield themselves with. Hardening his eyes, Tracy gripped the steering wheel, rocked his feet twice and the car roared into the city.

"Let's go, boys," Tracy said on the police radio, and the remaining cars dashed into the street, taking several corners and trying desperately to avoid all traffic.

The light wind was blowing through the sandy colored hair of Alistair Krei, but it was no hindrance to his captor, who used an internal device to lift the mask to his head like a sun visor. Shell-shocked and disconcerted, it came to his surprise when saw the hidden face revealed to be Professor Robert Callaghan. His eyes registered anger with the frown of his mouth and his eyebrows were so low, they could only define hatred and revenge into a single most uglified expression of evil.

"Was my daughter a setback, you bastard?" he seethed with his right fingers gripping the Colt 1911. "Huh?!"

He smacked the barrel against the right nostril of Krei's prominent nose, which would have made it more difficult had it been him under the mask. Big Boy and Breathless, harnessed from the waist down in their own microbot pillars, aimed their firearms carefully at Krei's cheeks; Big Boy on the left, Breathless on the right.

"Callaghan—! I…"

Krei was at a loss for words as Callaghan circled ominously around him, motioning Breathless and Big Boy aside by thirteen inches. At last, he found his voice.

"Your daughter, Abigail was an accident. You can't just b—"

Before he could even say the word "blame", Callaghan mentally tightened his grip. The microbots were now crawling up to his breastbone by the second, until it would stop at the shoulder blades. As a bonus for his pathetic excuse for an apology, Callaghan wacked Krei's right nostril with the gun barrel, again with a more brutal force of habit.

"NO!" he screamed into his face before calming down by a notch. "You knew it was not safe! You dated her for a year and you decide to abuse her with harsh criticism and force, then kill her as if she were a piece of TRASH!"

"Anyone can make mistakes," Krei felt defenseless and weak. "We just got into a rough crowd. I never laid a hand on her."

"So she told me," Callaghan replied gruffly. "But I know I liar when I see one."

"The same way I see a back-biting bastard," Big Boy was moving his own Colt closer to Krei's head.

"Big Boy, all I wanted to say was that I had enough money to support my needs for the company. If the press didn't know a thing about—"

Big Boy had already understood Krei's motivations for leaving him. But for the third time, the executive's long nose was wacked by the gun of his former confidante.

"My daughter is dead because of your arrogance…and in return…"

All four looked up. From the right side of the building, a million microbots had taken the piece of portal that had been hiding in plain sight behind the walls. Krei observed the pieces, almost noticing the sparrow symbol on the piece.

Oh God, this can't be happening.

But it was. Breathing heavily, he saw another piece from the left side of the building being carried by another million of the microbots. From his field of vision, cars stopped in the street below, fender-bending other cars that came their way. People on the street stared in surprise and horror, viewing the pieces, the nanobots and the criminals holding the audience hostage.

The microbots formed into the pillars and leggings of a structural framework, the same type used for bridges and large zeppelins that carried hundreds of people into the air as a precursor to airplanes. They were joined by a third million of the microbots, holding a much larger piece, which spawned from behind the fin. The tripod of bots, each carrying a trio of sections rose to an altitude of twenty feet, almost fifteen feet higher than the building itself. As the hunchbacked racketeer and his faithful courtesan watched with wicked smiles, the poor defenseless CEO wildly asked the nutty, if not deranged, professor in a loud remark.

"What is all this?!"

Even though the symbol looked familiar, he did not want to believe it. Callaghan, however, had no remorse in heart. Not a single drop of sympathy for this bastard could be seen in his eyes.

"You took everything away from me when you sent Abigail into that machine…and came out crashing with a battered head and a broken neck. As much as I would love to kill you with this—"

He gestured the gun.

"—I will show you how it feels to lose a loved one by destroying everything you love…with your own invention."

They looked back up. The sectors were ten inches apart from each other now and in two seconds, they were locked together in a perfectly neat position held by strong latches and glowed a blue aura inside the ring. Krei, upon further sight of this, shouted in denial.

"No! NO! NO! YOU CAN"T!"

"Of course we can," Breathless respired. "And with you dead, the next billionaires of San Fransokyo will be us. And then, we will show no mercy…to any of your partners-in-business."

This gave Big Boy a moment to perform what he had been waiting for such a long time. He turned his body clockwise to the crowd, raising his voice to maximum volume.

"And now, citizens of San Fransokyo. We have all come to the part…where I punish you for causing so much pain and inhumanity to the lives of the deformed, the disabled, the ugly and all around perfectly abnormal people. But, as Mike Norton once said, '"It is not what you can do for your country, but what you can do for all of mankind.'"

He turned, looking for Sandman somewhere below. Hoping to draw him out, he shouted.

"Sandy, NOW!"

Sandman compiled. He spun himself around, turning into a dust devil, which soon grew into a dusty wind spout that reached all the way up to the portal. The magnetism, coupled by the strength of the sand-made tornado, stripped the fin of its coverings, which came as tiny fragments and were the first to leave the earth into who knows where. A wi-fi antenna was picked up by the funnel and sent swirling into the blue door to an extra-terrestrial world.

On the ground was a different story. The Apparatus, fueled by Big Boy's words, began firing on the innocent crowds into a small mess of genocide and an applause of raging rapid machine gun shots fired by Flattop, Itchy, Measles, Pear-Shape, Johnny Ramm and Influence. Crewy Lou, Shaky and Pruneface fired slow-by-the-second rounds with their shotguns. Little Face, Spots, Brow, B-B Eyes, Mumbles, Coffyhead, Laffy, Mole, Rhodent, Ribs, Spaldoni, Shoulders, Stooge, Texie, did better work with their pistols and revolvers. Lips, who was unarmed, hid behind the crowd in hopes of a surprise attack of strangulating a member of the crowd and 88 Keys fought through with switchblade. The Blank, who was also armed with a stiletto, was no face to real face with Alice, whose scream had been cut off when he struck the blade into her throat.

Hiro, Sora and their army watched from behind the left wing, thirty feet away from the microbot structure on that side. Big Boy's plan of genocide and Callaghan's weapon of mass destruction unfolded with the similar reactions of the witnesses across the street and afar.

"We should act now!" Sora whispered, and they climbed their way to the roof of the wing.

From above, the top of the fin was pulled free from the glass windows that exploded into specs of glitter. Krei looked on, watching his worst nightmare come true with the roof of his latest creation being ripped from the reinforcing steel that held the walls together. Callaghan leaned his body closer to his and when he was an inch away from his personal boundary, he said with a growing poison in his tone.

"You will suffer as you watch everything you built, disappear and be destroyed for eternity…then it will be your turn…"

He pushed the barrel of his gun into Krei's mouth, wondering as to whether or not he should kill Krei more quickly and just get it over with.

"And when you see Abigail, tell her I said…"

Remembering Hiro's words, he spoke darkly.

"Go to Hell…"

"PROFESSOR CALLAGHAN!"

The said man turned his head right and so did Big Boy, Breathless and Krei. Hiro, Sora, Baymax, Donald Honey, Goofy, Wasabi, Go Go, Spider-Man, Fred, White Tiger, Iron Fist, Nova and Power Man were already standing on the roof of the left wing. His helmet carried in his hands, Hiro shouted out, "Let him go!" while the others looked up, ready to face the villains with courage. The criminals below heard the shout as well and ceased fire on the silencing gesture of Flattop's left hand, allowing the surviving hostages to escape. Sandman looked down at them from his tornado, he felt like a god compared to the pint sized heroes. He slowed the wind speed down for a better focus on Hiro's command.

"Not until I send this bastard straight to Hell where he belongs!" Callaghan shouted back.

Hiro looked over his left shoulder at Baymax, in need of the right words that balanced his light and darkness.

"Is this what Abigail would have wanted?"

"ABIGAIL IS DEAD, YOU RETARDED CHILD!"

Hiro drew back by two steps at Callaghan's tone of voice. Had their physical appearances not been a direct contrast, Hiro would have been looking into a mirror and his reflection would be himself…except for the fact that this reflection entirely captured the personality and caricature of the very person he was fighting to defeat (and almost killed): a man with a twisted mind of anger, vengeance, bloodthirst and negativity.

"This won't change anything. You and I both know how it feels to lose a loved one."

Callaghan relaxed his facial muscles. Big Boy looking for a way to lecture, if not reprimand, his enemies into a negotiable term of reasoning, glanced at Callaghan to use the microbots to move him closer to Hiro. Callaghan obliged and Big Boy's platform of microbots was getting closer to Hiro as he spoke and stopped.

"You know, Hiro. The way I see it—and Plato agrees with me—is that there is what is, and then there is what we would like it to be. But that's not important. What's important is that we take this man here—"

He pointed his right index finger back at Krei before directing it up to the portal ring.

"—and punish him for his crimes, by throwing him into that portal over THERE!"

Krei heard him from afar, but he tried to be brave as he pleaded.

"Listen to the kid, Callaghan. I'll give you anything I want."

Callaghan thought, almost questioning the nature of his actions. But his thoughts turned into a violent decision as he screamed at the top of his lungs, "I WANT MY DAUGHTER BACK!"

"And I want my brother back!" Hiro shouted in return. His tone of voice went from desperate to cocky. "But face it, Callaghan, life's a drag and so are you."

The man's face went red.

NOBODY CALLS ME THAT! He wanted to scream, but he had to deal it with the microbots under his command. The mask automatically lowered back to its previous position (face-on) and Callaghan's voice resumed its distorted tone of "ATTACK!" and so did the bots.

Big Boy shouted to his peers down below.

"OPEN FIRE!"

The criminals quickly reloaded the firearms. Ribs with his Colt Single Action Army fired two shots at Hiro as he avoided the thirty foot blade of microbots with a deft somersault, placing his helmet on before he jumped onto Baymax's back. His friends, having ran to safety on the other side, stopped to hear Hiro shout "Go for the mask!" before he took off on Baymax. Sora leapt off the building with the Kingdom Key raised as high as his arms could go, conveniently finding himself directly above Itchy, who barely had time to look up when Sora thrusted the key down on his glasses. Because they were so thick, the specs did not shatter, they just fell to the ground with a small greasy smudge that could even be bothered to be cleaned right away.

As Sora charged at the other criminals with Spider-Man, Goofy and Donald in tow, dodging in between the bullets as he did, Callaghan saw Hiro and Baymax speeding right towards him. Hiro extended his right hand for the mask, but Callaghan split himself, Krei, Big Boy and Breathless away from him by six feet. Before they could make a U-turn, Callaghan gestured a scorpion's tail of microbots at Baymax's right foot engine and gripped it like a fly caught in a spider web. With Baymax jerked to a stop, Callaghan gained the power to thrust the robot in a 360 degree turn, slamming him into the edge of the circular middle building and catapulting Hiro into the third floor of the fin.

Hiro broke through the glass, landing on his behind, but the velocity of the throw kept him rolling past five chairs made of maroon leather towards an empty office with no personal effects (it was a new building after all). The impact with the metal floor was so hard that the electromagnetic pad on the front of his left shoulder came off into a shatter of rubies. Lying face down, Hiro tried to think of another way at getting the mask off. But no sooner had he used his hands to lift his upper body back up, did he notice a strong force pulling him to the roof. Hiro knew that this wasn't a giant magnet out of a comic book; it was the portal, creating a strong level of magnetism that brought a nearby white desk and a black swivel chair to the ceiling as well with a Styrofoam cup, a mouse, a keyboard and other prepared objects. Hiro felt like he was caught in a roach motel and to make matters worse, the ceiling started to rumble.

Outside, Baymax was starting to lift himself up, but an arm of microbots gripped his behind, lifted him into the air and back down the ground, crashing the stage and the "Krei Tech" letters into splinters. He sat in it like a reclining chair, yet he felt weak for a robot that wasn't meant for combat.

"BAYMAX!" The others cried.

All the others had done was watch their leader plummet into the fin with the implication of mortal injuries, fueled by the additional morbid thoughts that his robot was destroyed for good. With fierce strength, they along with the rest of Spider-Man's pals, charged to the edge of the building. Fred leaped into action with his fire breath, but as the flame reached about a foot before contact with Callaghan, the villain lifted his right hand, obstructing the flames with a wall of fireproof microbots.

Back inside the fin, Hiro grew uneasy with the tension. Out of nowhere, the ceiling began to crack, behind the swivel chair…and then himself, flying up by three stories. He didn't have to be a science major to intuit that the moment he hit the portal, he would probably be trapped on the other side and killed from the effects of a foreign atmosphere. He let out what he was certain to be his final yell, when his right hand gripped a titanium cable that was strong enough to carry a ten foot crate and he jerked to a stop just before the portal.

Go Go raced to the bottom of the building, rolling over Oodles and Mole as she did, joining Sora and Spider-Man deflecting the bullets of enemy artillery. By now, the fin of the building was in a crippled state. She rushed right over to Baymax, but a busybody Callaghan gave his right hand a full thrust with an open palm. It sent a sharp spike of microbots charging at her at the near-speed of lightning but missed her. He missed again, but quickly sent the microbots under her feet, weaving into an orb that sent Go Go onto her behind, her right disk falling out of her hand. She looked up, immobilized to see that she was trapped.

Fred was down for the count as well, for he and Iron Fist were pushed by a haymaker punch of microbots molded after Callaghan's right fist (no pun intended). Fred, however, lifted his legs using his hands and regained his balance. He jumped up, aided by a quickly revived Iron Fist as spitted fire from the suit, falling to the ground and vainly burning a pillar while Iron Fist struck another on his side with a rare moment of his negative chi energy. Although he was able to balance it with his positive energy, it did have its consequences and one of the consequences was being weakened as a punishment for so much negativity in his chi. At one time, his chi energy created a false pregnancy on an associate and girlfriend, Misty Knight, which placed a strain on their relationship. Fred, meanwhile, felt a puddle of microbots pouring into his mouth, which slammed his back against the glass windows. His flailed right hand grabbed a steel texture plate, which was already bent by his tail. It fell from his grip as he and Iron Fist were locked in a crucified position with the microbots intending to pull all four of their limbs off. Measles and Crewy Lou, watching with glee, prepared to fire their guns.

Back on top of the building, Wasabi and Power Man were using their strengths and plasma lasers to chop up the microbots as Wasabi had done before on Akuma Island. Wasabi took left, right and all around, leaving Power Man to take his previous positions with the power of his immaculate strength. However, two rivers of microbots came charging toward them in opposite directions. The stream on the right crawled under a tile, lifting it against Wasabi, who reacted just as the left stream came to Power Man. Callaghan was using his hands to turn the two Negros into what he called "a kaffir sandwich".

"Squish the bastards!" Big Boy rooted for the microbots.

Just as he fired off his gun, Nova charged at Callaghan, but the masked man lowered himself by twenty feet. Blowing him off course, Nova looked back at Sandman, as both the Kabuki man, the Sandman and the portal were unstoppable and he wasn't about to take another dangerous risk. He flew back to Spider-Man, who had been dodging the deadly rain of lead from Flattop and B-B Eyes.

"Dance, motherfucker, dance!" Flattop screamed in fury.

Nova swooped in just as the nozzle of Flattop's Thompson gun was deadlocked on Spidey's nose. With open hands, he scooped up the wallcrawler and carried him bridal style behind the left wing of the building.

"Any bright ideas?" he asked.

All Spidey could say was, "I'm thinking about it…if he's made of sand, he would be weak to water. There are other alternatives though."

By now, Sora felt exhausted and he wanted to rest his progressively waning body, but the incoming pellets of lead only kept him in battle mode. Although the armor was just about as bulletproof as the others, he feared that breaking his continuous spinning and deflecting of his Keyblade would only put him in jeopardy of being shot dead. Donald and Goofy, having similar ideas, ran for cover behind a pillar that would not have made a very good trench. To their surprise, a cowering Lips Manlis was sharing a similar, yet fearful reaction to the knowledge of Donald being a mage.

"I don't think you're so tough," Donald quacked and he cast "Sleepel" on the pusillanimous mob boss who immediately limped his upper body upon contact with a silver wave of energy.

Using a turquoise mass of gelatin to break her fall, Honey Lemon jumped into the warzone with White Tiger following behind. She was close to the spherical prison holding Go Go inside like a gerbil and found herself face to face with Measles. Before he could fire a bullet into her mouth, Honey loaded her right hand with a red colored chemball and forced it onto his nose. The liquid spread to his mouth and eyes in a split second, so he couldn't even scream in pain from he assumed was acid burning his face away. When Callaghan had seen this, he gestured a spike of microbots at her, but she was quick enough to trap the blade in an orange goo that she threw the ground with the exact timing. White Tiger found her way to Crewy Lou, her right claw scuffing the mobstress' left leg, enough to weaken her as Tiger's left claw nicked a few strands of her crew-cut hairstyle and suffered a hard blow to her crown from both the Tiger's fists. Crewy fell to the floor hard, her right index finger still holding the trigger of the Winchester and when her body collapsed, the finger went through a spontaneous reflex, firing off a 12 gauge bullet between White Tiger's feet and towards Honey, who avoided the slug by charging at another microbot spike with a purple liquid that froze the spike in it's place…but not so much for the other one that broke through.

Seeing this, Honey had to hide. White Tiger joined her, sensing the approach of doom. In both hands, Honey held two cherry colored balls and threw them to the ground with her head hanging low and arms crossed over her breasts. The resulting effect produced smoke, covering the two women from head to toe in a makeshift fuchsia dome. The dome, made of rubber, was vulnerable and fragile for a microbot spike to poke the surface three times, and it was the fourth that gained the spike to break through in a sparkle of glass. Honey and Tiger ducked and dodged in fear, but they could not escape. At any moment now (as Hiro Hamada had been witnessing from above), the girls would have their guts skewered by the sharp force of a scientist filled with malice in the deepest, darkest area of his heart.

Why didn't I think of building a jammer?! Hiro felt so much inferiority stemming from his pathetic IQ, that he wanted to smack his forehead repeatedly as he had done before when trying to enter the showcase. But with his right hand clinging to the cable and his left being forcefully pulled into the great magnetism of the portal, all he could do was remember how the showcase had gotten him into the plot of a criminal instigator which took approximately four months in the making. The voices of his friends through his built-in microphone started to echo in his head.

"He's too strong!"

"There's no way out!"

"HIRO!"

"Help! HELP!"

Then came another voice…his brother.

There are no dead ends. Look for another angle.

A very brief cogitating followed, and Hiro completely understood that his brother's wisdom was finding its way into his own brain, increasing his IQ level at an accelerating rate. His eyes followed the direction of seven microbots (which Wasabi had already disabled) being sucked into the portal and it was that lucky number that gave Hiro an epiphany.

"That's it! I know how to beat him!"

He looked down, yelling as loud as he could.

"Listen up! Use those big brains of yours to find a way out! There are no dead ends! Look for a new angle!"

Everyone listened. Sora, now motivated and full of energy, transformed his Keyblade into dual guns. He spun clockwise, firing off rays of white light at the criminals that came his way. First Flattop, then B-B, Mumbles, Influence and Rhodent. The other hoods took off behind another pillar, with only Ribs, Texie, Johnny Ramm and Spaldoni, now equipped with a Webley Mk VI.

Wasabi and Power Man, who were the second and third members to respond, found enough energy to drive the microbot controlled tiles back into their proper places, if not find another way out in the words of his best friend and club leader. Using his right laser blade, Wasabi struck a hole in the roof, heading down head first with Power Man falling after him. Just as his head went into the building, the tiles closed on each other, creating nothing than two flat slices of bread. Wasabi laughed for joy once he landed inside, he even turned his lasers off when he gave Power Man a high five.

Honey Lemon and White Tiger, the fourth and fifth members to respond, each holding two orange colored chemballs with a smirk of courage on their lips. When a spike drove through her already cracked and prodded dome of plastic, she clapped her hands on the tip into a fruity flavored gelatin. White Tiger did the same and both girls were dragged free of the dome and back into the open daylight. Texie, Johnny and Ribs fired at them with every bullet available.

Fred and Iron Fist, the sixth and seventh persons to respond, were a mixed situation. Iron Fist tried to recover from his negative energy and Fred kept his eyes closed, not wanting in any way to see his own death by dismemberment.

"Oh God, my arms!" he yelled in serious pain. "I can't go any further!"

Then, realizing he had become the punchline of his own joke, he stopped and released his hands from the bars that operated the arms. He looked at his palms, smiling with satisfaction and relief.

"Wait a second, it's just a suit."

Through the mouthpiece of the suit above the flame thrower, he saw the two bent bars of the fallen texture plate. Iron Fist was just getting to his feet when Fred plastered his lips into a crazy smile.

"Hello, sign! Care to go for a little spin?"

And that was all he said. His left hand obtained the so-called "sign" and decapitated the top left microbot arm while spinning it and weakening the bottom half. He cried "Double spin!" as the hand, now back under the control of the suit's left arm. Iron Fist, fully re-energized, watched Fred truncating the right microbot limbs, then to the piles on the left and right, spinning the plate wildly. Spots, Pear-Shape, Coffyhead and Little Face sprung from the pillar and charged at the two with blasting bullets, but it was Fred's tornado like-"sign" that threw their guns out of circulation, nearly cutting off their hands as the guns fell and Iron Fist rammed his right knuckles at their chins like a torpedo, sending them to the floor.

Go Go, the eighth to respond, popped her bubble gum with a sense of contemplation, sticking on to the right side of her helmet and lowering the visor.

If I'm going to be trapped like a gerbil, I might as well act like one.

And so she did, yet with her wheels instead of her hands and feet and her running wheel was made entirely of blocky microbots taking on a spherical formation. The faster she went, the more sparks were produced by the friction of the wheels that weakened a thin line of microbots until the prison was split in two when she reached about seventy miles per hour. Go Go jumped out of the bottom half while the top remained intact and fell lifelessly on the river of microbots that formed the prison in the first place. Landing on her left hand, she sensed danger in the form of Pruneface, Brow, Shoulders and Stooge, aiming their guns at her rear end. Go Go turned around, flinging both disks at Pruneface's forehead and the other three, failing to catch his fall, fell down like bowling pins.

"Nice work, Go Go," Sora thanked her from nearby.

"Don't mention it!" she replied.

He heard a shout from afar.

"BAYMAX!"

It was Hiro, still clinging to the titanium cable. He felt like his right hand was losing its muscle, and he watched helplessly as his and his brother's precious robot was being drowned by the "microbot river of death". More debris threatened to clip the rest of his armor off, scraping the purple paintwork and internal structure with a small collision that force Hiro's left shoulder upwards with a grunt.

Through his readout, Baymax found his struggling owner, but he was neck-deep in microbots that were just about as evil as his red chip. Salvation came in the form of Sora, who lifted his Keyblade to the sky.

"Thundaga!"

Twenty one bolts of strong lightning engulfed the bots, shorting out the circuits and liberating Baymax from his ensnared state of a final doom. Using his boosters to blow the microbots away into oblivion, Sora hopped onto Baymax's back and the robot took off to a high altitude. Hiro smiled, but all he saw was Tadashi in Baymax's armor, modified to fit his body, coming to his rescue like any older brother should in his younger sibling's time of need. Baymax and Sora flew past Hiro, soaring above him, and the boy genius released his grip, certain that the robot would catch him in the magnetic field. He curled himself into a ball, ready to accept his ultimate fate if Baymax did not catch him…yet out of nowhere, he did. He was holding on to the robot's chest, and Sora pulled his right hand up to Baymax's back.

Callaghan, spotting them his perch, was amazed yet angered at the same time.

"Ha! I LOVE that robot!" Krei shouted with zeal. But, sadly, that crack would be his last.

"Shut the fuck up."

Without even making eye contact with the man that made his life a living hell, Callaghan aimed his Colt 1911 at Krei's forehead…and fired. The force of the blow caused Krei to suffer a whiplash, breaking his neck by four inches before rigor mortis took over his body. Then, with his revenge seemingly complete, Callaghan pushed the fresh corpse into the circular building under the fin, which by now the first three stories had been completely desecrated. The arm of microbots held Krei's body against the "K" logo of his own company and a branch on the left side flipped the "K" section over, holding the corpse from his chest to his upper legs.

"It was a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Krei," Big Boy delivered his lowest bow.

Spider-Man and Nova, who were still behind the left wing of the campus, had come up with the solution to defeat Sandman…besides water, that is.

"He's made of sand," the superhero formerly known as "the nerdy Peter Parker" simply said. "So he's made of silica. Nova, can you light him up to 2,000 degrees? All heat and no force?"

Nova felt himself glow, literally.

"It will be my pleasure."

He flew off, preparing to heat himself at the specific temperature as he did.

The others spotted Hiro, Sora and Baymax and followed them to the front of the campus. Baymax struck his right fist into the concrete, shattering it into five pieces.

"New plan!" Hiro announced as they ran to the recovered criminals. "Forget the mask! Take out the bots and they'll get sucked into the portal."

Wasabi gleamed with pride, activating his lasers as he shouted in Swahili. "Now THAT is a plan!"

"Honey, Fred, can you give us some cover?" Sora asked to the two members of the hero team on Baymax's left.

"Like you have to ask," Fred shrugged, bouncing along the way.

Honey whipped out a quartet of blueberry colored chemballs from her purse, clutching them to her neck.

"LETS DO THIS, AMIGOS!"

Honey threw the balls from both hands and Fred jumped after them. At an altitude of ten feet, Fred shouted "Snow freeze!" and his suit's flamethrower melted the balls into a dense fog that was picked up by the wind. The hoods, artillery at the ready, fired at them before the fog seemed to have clouded their minds into stupefaction (no pun intended). Callaghan, Big Boy and Breathless edged vainly away from the fog that rose to their altitude and covered them entirely.

In the attempt of gaining of better, Callaghan lifted his head up, gesturing Big Boy and Breathless above the clouds. Looking behind, Callaghan could see Sandman sucking up the fog, but it did not last for very long as Nova the Human Rocket was circling around him, concentrating the power of the Nova Force onto the tornado form. Specks turned into crystals, and before he could shout the ever used word of denial, Flint Marko had been crystalized into a silvery cylinder structure that might have been carved by a hundred craftsmen.

"That should do it."

He saw Hiro, Sora and Baymax just a few feet below him and rushed back to his fellow rookies. Breathless fired her pink Tommy gun madly at Hiro, understanding that if she could not have Tadashi, she could not have his brother as well (Hiro was currently too young for her as well). In addition, Big Boy fired off his own Colt 1911 and Callaghan raised his right hand, sending the microbots he had left directly at the trio. Five long spikes threatened to clip Baymax's wings, but the robot dodged them at the left, flying upwards as more spikes came. Hiro and Sora saw that they were heading directly at the portal, hoping to the suck up the arms into the ring.

"Ready?!" Hiro shouted as Baymax spun around the incoming arms.

"And…"

Baymax made a 120 degree turn upside down. His thrusters were nine feet away from the portal entrance.

"DIVE!"

With every thrust, boot and velocity of his rocket-powered feet, Baymax threw his right arm forwards into a fist and escaped all chances of having himself, his master and his friend from being sucked into a another dimension. The microbot arms were now forming into a tall spike, and it was perfectly crafted spike which was immediately decimated by Baymax's right fist and the microbots that held the spike together, ended up on the other side.

On the ground, facing Sketch, Laffy, 88, Shaky, the Blank and a hive of microbots, Wasabi and Power Man leaped over a fallen slab of concrete. Instead of landing on the ground like they supposed to, Newton's law of gravity had been broken and the two Afros were flying at an altitude of six feet. This lasted for three second before gravity kicked and the two were back on their legs.

"Gravity's getting a little weird here, guys," Wasabi announced to his teammates.

Spider-Man, having crawled his way down on the windows, fired a web line from his left web-shooter and struggled to break the bots off. Yet he was saved the trouble of exhausting his strength when Wasabi kicked his right foot against the window and used his lasers to slice the arm up. ON the ground, Power Man and Iron Fist punched both of their own fists into the hoards surrounding them as the criminals fired off their guns until they were completely out of bullets.

Go Go jumped into the fray from the unstable gravity. She plunged her disks into the arm closest to her and White Tiger flung her claws at the bottom of the arm in a very feral manner. The rims of Go Go's disks lit up a bright orange through the dark cloudy atmosphere as she drove them into another beam and sending the sliced bots into the air.

Unbeknownst to his trouble down below, Callaghan kept aiming longer arms of microbots towards Hiro and Baymax, who rammed his right fist through the second arm he had dodged and flung his way over Breathless and Big Boy.

Now carrying two plates of metal in both, Fred activated his flamethrower on the edges of each "sign" and they were now acting as torches with dual ends.

"Double sign spin! Now my signs are ON FIRE!"

He jumped, charging at four beams and splitting them with combined forces of the metal and the flames that chopped the weakened microbots into two pieces. Perhaps they weren't as fireproof as Hiro had built them.

Donald also shot fire, as well as ice and lightning from his mage's staff while Goofy carried Honey by he feet and pushed her to the closet beam of microbots she could find. She placed her purse under the top of the beam, ejecting a pink chemball from the miniature factory, and when gravity started to take its toll, she threw it from her right hand as far as she could. As much as she hated to destroy the very weapon and prized possession that gave her a valuable position on the team, she hate to make a sacrifice or two in the dire need of a situation. The moment it struck, the purse exploded into a fluorescent rainbow of brown, green, blue, orange, magenta and vermillion.

"Now that is a chemical reaction!" she smiled.

High above them, Callaghan and Big Boy threw more bullets and microbots at Hiro and Baymax, with Sora deflecting the attacks with his Keyblade. By now Breathless was out of ammo and so was Big Boy after firing his last bullet at Baymax's helmet when Callaghan thrusted his arms up to the three. Remembering his training from a week ago, Baymax executed the following moves as he spoke them (albeit non-literally).

"Back kick!"

His left foot struck a beam.

"Knife hand."

His right fist plunged into the left side of another beam.

"Roundhouse."

His right foot kicked off another beam.

"Hammerfist!"

His fist drove from the top of another beam all the way down to Callaghan. Unfortunately, even after so many sections of bots had found their way into the portal ring, Baymax's waist was wrapped in a strong section of microbots and to make matters worse, Callaghan was aiming his chrome plated Colt 1911 directly at Hiro's visor. The barrel was perfectly lined up to his forehead…just like Tadashi.

"Looks like it's poetic justice. Two Hamadas with the same gun."

Callaghan pulled the trigger down, but no shot was heard. He pulled the trigger two more times and again, there were no ear-splitting sounds of his gun going off. Hiro drooped his eyes at half-mast, resuming his cocky persona with the hidden sense of victory in his smile.

"Looks like you're out of bullets…and microbots."

The three villains looked down, they were standing precariously on six stilts of microbots with no swarm below other than the beams that wrapped around Baymax's waist. Speaking of which, Baymax burst his arms open and the bots shattered into a thousand pieces. They zoomed down to Callaghan's level, forcing Breathless and Big Boy to duck when the robot jerked to a halt, his right fist and the Kabuki mask were five inches apart from each other.

"Are you going to kill me the way I killed your brother?" Callaghan asked as if he were writing an invitation for somebody to kill him.

"Baymax's programming prevents him from injuring, maiming or killing a human being…" Hiro explained, not wiping off his face of victory. "But, we'll take…that."

Baymax opened his fisted hand, and the index and thumb fingers daintily lifted the mask off of Callaghan's face. With a crunch it broke into thirty pieces, and Callaghan felt weak. Big Boy and Breathless stared at each other before the latter spoke out in a meek voice.

"You don't happen to know what becomes of the microbots when the mask is…destroyed?"

"Not really," Big Boy replied.

Suddenly he felt his stilts lose its balance and Breathless felt her own stilts crumble down by an inch, breaking the fall with a dislocated joint at the bottom of the right stilt.

"Then why did I ask?"

Breathless shifted the tone of her voice to acerbity. Her hands fisted her hips and before she knew it, all three were caught into the gravitational pull of the portal, screaming all the way.

At last from the street down below, Detective Tracy and his cordon of squad cars came to the rescue. Big Boy's Caddy, whom Tracy immediately recognized, had its rear right tire fitted with a wheel clamp along with the other cars within the vicinity. Tracy then looked up and saw the microbot structure holding up the portal ring collapsing before the eyes of his fellow men and himself.

"Well, I'll be goddamned," he whispered.

Baymax swooped around in a sharp U-turn and caught the crooked trio in his arms. Callaghan felt relived, but the eyes of his two comrades remained shut. He watched his microbots fall in the form of raindrops, but it was the portal that struck the hardest to the ground. It created a shockwave of light and dark grey clouds that seasoned the remains of the new campus with dust, decay and debris. Baymax dropped Callaghan down to the floor on his face while Breathless and Big Boy rolled over, finding themselves in an odd position in each other's arms.

"You saved me!" Breathless embraced her boss in a rare opportunity of happiness and relief, and before Big Boy could react, he felt his mouth being smooched by Breathless' silky lips. It was a hard, air-sucking kiss that seemed to release ever last bit of their breaths into the atmosphere at the very moment the two looked at each other with odd expressions.

"Your mouth tastes like tobacco."

"And your mouth smells like perfume," Big Boy smiled with no hint of a sudden change of mood. "What do you wear?"

"Truth or Dare."

"I say it's a dare."

When Hiro landed, the dark cloud behind him revealed the gleaming white light of the portal, which seemed to be acting as a gateway to Heaven…a physical Heaven to which no one had seen before.

"Why is it still working?!" Hiro cried out in apprehension. He turned to Callaghan. "Is there any way to shut it down?!"

"It can't be stopped, it's portable. The containment field is failing…and in a few moments, it will tear itself apart."

Hiro looked out at Sora and his friends who were standing fourteen feet away from him. Then his eyes focused to the other criminals, until in the background he could make out a familiar flash of yellow. Hiro at first assumed that it was Go Go, but realizing the correct distance, the figure soon revealed to be Detective Tracy trying to find his way into the containment field.

"We need to get out of here now!"

Hiro's shout was loud enough to reach the ears of his teammates, and they, along with the criminals, Donald, Goofy and the rookies rushed over into the unsuspecting reach of the Crimestoppers. Catchem, Patton, Lizz and Brandon followed Tracy, spotting the colorful characters from their own distance. For his own safety, Junior stayed in the car and watched the climax from the left rear window. Once they were past Tracy, none of the criminals looked angry to see him, but in an odd sense of danger regarding the collapsing portal, they were relieved with great relish on their smiles.

"This has gone way too out of hand for my taste," said Flattop, stopping at a safe distance from the ring.

The others halted behind a fallen piece of structure that had become a trench wall and they watched the portal shake, rattle and groan. The structure grew volatile and exploded in less than a second. Hiro turned his robot and said.

"Glad we weren't in it."

Sora threw his Keyblade into the air, catching it with a stylized mimic of his ability to open gateways and locking the keyholes to other worlds. Honey, Go Go, Wasabi and Fred whooped and the girls held each other while the boys performed six variations of a high five. Donald and Goofy jumped for joy. Big Boy considered this moment to have been a perfect ending to the crime of the century, despite their initial loss and altercation of morale regarding Callaghan's actions.

"How did you know that Sand-boy here would become a glass figure?" Power Man asked Spider-Man, pointing his left thumb to the crystalized Flint Marko.

"When silica is super-heated, it makes glass. Sometimes it pays to be a science geek."

Underneath the left eye of his mask, Spider-Man winked and mentally congratulated his intelligence.

As the dust settled, Tracy surveyed the destruction. All that was left of the new headquarters was the first floor and glass, concrete, metal, infrastructure, microbots, and bullet shells had decorated the area. Out from the corner of his left eye, he could see the corpse of Alistair Krei, still hanging from the "K" logo. He looked over at the crew of criminals and found the perfect scapegoat in Big Boy Caprice, yet like any good detective the true culprit is mostly someone who you least suspect. His head shifted to Callaghan, and almost immediately, the former Lord Deathstrike broke down the damaging details of the fire, the microbots and most of all, his revenge against Krei. Now at last, after a month of declaring the investigation as a cold case, Detective Tracy finally had someone who could take the full blame for Tadashi Hamada's needless death in the SFIT showcase disaster.

"So…you decided to take the law into your own hands by murdering this poor man, is that right?"

"Yes," Callaghan lowered his head in shame. "But Mr. Tracy, she was twenty one years old! She was the only family I had left! I tried to look for justice, but the law, your law, let me down with nothing in return."

"Nothing in return from me is tantamount to not getting anything from a lawsuit for the loss of a loved one," Tracy said in a slightly furious tone. "You had no right to take the law into your own hands. You behaved like a savage anarchist, acting in league with a band of degenerates and some, supernatural force or other, I don't even know what that thing is."

He looked up at the glass statue of Sandman before returning his eyes, nose and mouth to Callaghan.

"Anyway, the courts, juries and executioners elect themselves for the role of justice. The rule of law is that if it falls, you pick it up and hold it even higher. After the deaths of so many innocents, including Tadashi Hamada, Alistair Krei and others, you have no sense to society at all and civilized people like myself will have nothing to shelter itself from if the law is to be destroyed."

"But it was the Bible that said let those without sin throw the first stone," Callaghan tried to score a point in his own defense.

"When you've been denied justice... you are incomplete. That you have been abandoned in a hell on Earth where you are the sole survivor of your own family. I thought that if I could make other people feel how I felt… they would understand me."

His voice was growing weak as Tracy furrowed his eyebrows to the breaking point.

"And were you successful despite your actions?"

"Yes," Callaghan muttered pathetically.

"You can tell the world that what Krei did was a travesty, but won't help you to testify in the courthouse because I'm locking you up. You're under arrest."

And he removed a pair of handcuffs from the right vest pocket of his lemon trench coat, dangling them with dead seriousness. Callaghan allowed Tracy to cuff his hands to his back, reminding Hiro of his own arrest in that same position. The scientist turned to Hiro, speaking wistfully in despair.

"Hiro…will you forgive me?"

The boy studied Callaghan's face. The emotions were genuine and his reply was a simple...

"Yes."

Two hours later, a team of paddy wagons, an ambulance, news vans and a few more police cars crowded the ruins of the Krei Tech campus and rescue teams scoured through the wreckage in search of the victims and other valuables worth salvaging. Those who were injured by the bullets or the debris could not move without assistance from the paramedics. As they did, a crowd of twenty five policemen jostled the nauseated Flattop and the rest of his companions into four separate vans for each gang, consisting of himself, Pruneface, Lips and Big Boy's original team flanked by Coffyhead, Laffy, Oodles and Pear-Shape. Trying to resist the irony of Big Boy's climaxing quote to the crime of the century, every member knew that had it not been for a plushy robot and some "meddling kids", they would have most likely succeeded.

One man to greet the newcomers was S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nicholas Fury Jr. and his second in command Agent Phil Coulson, who had tracked the rookies to San Fransokyo when they did not show up for winter training. He came down from the platform of his quinjet with a troupe of S.H.I.E.L.D. marshals and a handful of subpoenas for every member of the Apparatus. Everyone that is, except for Sandman, whose crystalized form was being broken down into smaller chunks that would be brought back to the Helicarrier for reconstruction as well as the future rehabilitation of Flint Marko himself.

"I am pleased with your efforts," Fury said to the rookies. "But not with your intentions of going AWOL."

"Sorry, Nick," Spidey apologized. "But we got spring fever. We had no idea about that island."

"Yeah," added Power Man. "That Sandman dude was messed up."

"Of course he was," Agent Coulson pulled up a file on Sandman from his tablet. He turned it over and presented a picture of the said criminal wearing an icy scowl. "Flint Marko was too dangerous to be kept in a normal prison, so parking him alone in the middle of a huge body of water, was our only option. He draws his power from contact with the ground and if he ever set foot on the mainland, it'd be catastrophic."

"Thank God we solved that problem," Nova finished.

"Yes, but I expect to see you in the Helicarrier for a full scrub down," said Fury. Then he turned to Hiro.

"Have you heard of the Avengers?"

"Yes…?"

"You and your teammates have been pretty handy especially with that robot of yours."

If he were a mere human, Baymax would have blushed.

"So, after saving your city, putting an army of criminals in the pokey and helping my rooks, what do you say?"

Hiro was unsure, his mind was back in the showcase hall, yet everything looked different from a certain point of view.

As before with the late Alistair Krei, Hiro knew what to say next. But this time, it was a rather genuine response, considering that the planet Earth already had a large number of superheroes and supervillains at the hand of fate.

"I appreciate the offer, Mr. Fury, but my place is here in San Fransokyo. However, if you still need us, you'll know where to find us."

Fury smiled, mentally frowning at his disobedient rookies. As they boarded, White Tiger going first followed by Power Man, Iron Fist and Nova. Spider-Man, the last to board before Fury and Coulson, turned back to Sora.

"If you know where to find me, I'll either be in Queens or some far-off world helping the Guardians of the Galaxy."

"I'll be the first to know," Sora responded.

Chief Brandon later announced that the investigations behind the actions of the Apparatus would begin the very next day at noon, and he wanted Big Boy, Breathless and Callaghan to be present in the courtroom. All three were handcuffed behind their backs and were currently being escorted by Tracy and Gerson to a nearby Toyota.

"As a consequence of your actions, Callaghan," Tracy said to him. "You might as well be getting death row in Alcatraz."

Big Boy sniggered quietly and hoped for a lighter sentence.

"And as for you, Big Boy, you'll get twenty years for this escapade. No appeals this time."

Big Boy's heart sank, but on the other hand, he felt like he was pissed at everything happening around him.

"20 years?! So what's the big deal? I can live twenty years, while you get your perfect wife, your perfect kid, your perfect job and you're probably gonna get more and more famous by the year when everyone finds out who those heroes are!"

By the time he was finished with his diatribe, Big Boy was sitting in the middle seat with Breathless on his right and Callaghan on his left. The blonde harlot faced her employer with a volatile expression and her voice dripped with an upset amount of satisfaction as she said.

"Well look on the bright side, Big Boy. At least I'll finally have something that you never dreamed of having."

"What's that?"

"A hen-pecked husband."

She craned her neck as far as she could go and with the smoldering smooch of a loving wife, she left a red hickey of lipstick on his right cheek. Big Boy placed his right index and middle fingers on the mark, removed them and studied them with astonished emotions. His fingertips were drenched in Revlon red, looking as though he had pricked them with the spindle of a spinning wheel. His head returned to Breathless and his eyes flashed with the reactions of a man having spent his entire life through lifelong celibacy.

"Now wait just a minute! Don't you think of marrying me yet, Mahoney! I AIN'T THE MARRYING TYPE OF GUY!"

The door closed as he shouted the last word into her left ear. As Big Boy and Breathless proceeded to squabble and bicker over the outcome of their future lives, Callaghan looked out the window at the purple-pink sky. Dusk had fallen not only upon the city of San Fransokyo, but also on his life as a supervillain. Off they drove to the station, never to be seen in public again.

Of all the cars clustered around him, Tracy noticed a figure emerging from a red Plymouth. A woman to be exact. She was backlit by the red lights of the cars and sprinting towards him. It was Tess with her emerald green coat flapping at the level above her knees. He took a step towards her, then staggered as everything that transpired in the past few hours began to catch up with him. She caught him before he fell to his legs.

"What are you doing here, Tess?"

"I thought we could make up with this."

And she presented the muffin from the bag in her left hand. Tracy, tempted by this seemingly Faustian offer, took a quarter inch bite of the confection in his right hand. It seemed like his problems were solved the moment it had completely gone down his throat, feeling as if he had earned it after a month of investigations.

"Well, the new campus has been shot to hell," he said cheerfully. "But other than that, I'm perfectly fine."

Over Tess' left shoulder, Tracy could feel the propellers of the quinjet lifting off into the air. Even from where he was, he could see Hiro climbing on Baymax's back along with his friends. Sora threw the Kingdom Key into the air, activating the glider. Then with a whine of the engine, both parties took off into the sky before any members of the news crew could get a chance for an interview.

"Case closed," he whispered.

And he tilted his head back and let Tess kiss him fervently.

---

The visceral details of the Apparatus' goal became more accurate following the investigations. At his trial, Big Boy's answers were short, vague, evasive and lacked substance. He claimed that the entire concept belonged to Callaghan, that he was eating in the club at the time of the fire and that he was only second-in-command behind the operation. The jury held him responsible for being the direct cause of the crisis, and as a result, Big Boy was to be detained for further questioning ten days later before the decision to place him in Alcatraz would be submitted. His last words before leaving the courtroom were "All I wanted was a world without normalcy".

Breathless, while not as unhappy as Judge Garrity with her boss' performance, simply confessed in her testimony that she stole the microbot plans while nobody was looking before being corrected by Callaghan. She spoke of the location of the warehouse, how many items were stolen as well as the names of the victims and addresses of the attacks shared with her through word of mouth mentioning from the other criminals. While lacking the exact knowledge of the said names and addresses, she had proven her worth as an honorable participant of the crimes. With that, she was to have a comfortable cell in Alcatraz while performing songs for other prisoners in the noon and again at night before the lights were out.

Flattop admitted that he and his gang stole several plans from Callaghan and Tadashi's labs on the night of the showcase and that Breathless obtained the microbot plans from the professor in privacy. He knew all along that Callaghan would ask them to steal whatever parts he needed based on the said blueprints. Needless to say that, although the plans for the microbots were recovered from the Club Ritz's safe, the machines used to build them from the warehouse were dumped into the bay following Hiro's discovery.

Officer Gerson, on the other hand, apologized to Hiro for not believing him in the first place. Not only did he and Tracy share the credit for putting Callaghan and Big Boy behind bars, but their sudden increase of fame had offered Tracy to fill Brandon's position as chief of police. But Tracy, seeing it as nothing more than a desk job, did not want another issue with his family for being a workaholic. To mend his previous ties with the law, Hiro donated a new tape roller on Gerson's desk, using some of his previous winnings from the bot fights that were left over from his construction with the microbots.

On Labor Day, September 1st; San Fransokyo declared a day of mourning for the victims of the Apparatus, including Tadashi Hamada and Alistair Krei. Roughly five hundred people attended a memorial service at Grace Cathedral. As with some previous cases, those who could not find room inside, paid their respects outside. Prayers and thanks were offered to the mysterious heroes, who were hanging out by the park under their true identities. Other places were crowded with friends and relatives who had gathered to remember the callous actions of the criminals. At other Krei Tech establishments across the country, the company flag flew at half-staff for its fallen leader in the largest scale of mourning towards a true technological wizard since Steve Jobs.

Reporters and journalists flooded the newspaper offices with theories regarding the identities of the mysterious saviors. Wendy Wichell attributed her comparisons of the heroes with Dick Tracy to a deficiency in public appearances, while Christmas Early gave a lighter note, stating the heroes were none other than the Avengers, but she was met with denial when it was confirmed by Steve Rogers himself that he wasn't in San Fransokyo when the incident occurred. Author Jean Penfield thought of writing an article or even a book about the mysterious saviors once more information had been revealed. On the day after the portal incident, Ted Tellum sat in front of the camera in the Tribune building and announced the following words.

"A massive cleanup continues today at the headquarters of Krei Tech Industries. Reports are still flooding in about a group of unidentified individuals, who prevented what could have been a major catastrophe. Now, the whole city of San Fransokyo is asking: who are these heroes and where are they now?"

Shots from the air and ground cameras of the cleanup process were viewed on the wide television monitors of the Lucky Cat Café by several people, including Honey, Go Go, Sora, Wasabi, Goofy, Fred and Donald, who were waiting for Hiro. Hiro had been rewarded with a light blue hoodie, which had the SFIT logo stamped on its back. It had been given to him by Aunt Cass when she found out about the news and even though she was upset about Hiro lying to her about college, she had to confess that Hiro needed some time to be other people, even if they were a few years older than him like Tadashi's group. As they came to the table where the others waited, Hiro picked up his lunch, a casserole and a cherry flavored fruit juice with a rainbow sprinkled chocolate donut, he turned back and whispered "One last hug" to his doting aunt as he did just that.

Cass returned the hug, and before she knew it, her left hand was waving good bye to the nephew she had treated like the son she never really had. She smiled with complacency turned to Dick Tracy who had been sitting with Tess and Junior at the second table by the window, eating scrambled eggs and rice with milk.

"My boy's growing up," was all she said to the family of three.

Then when her face made eye contact with Junior, she suddenly remembered.

"Oh, that reminds me," her voice went back to its state of inanity. "I just talked with Hiro and he said that he and his friends would love to sleep over with you tonight?"

Junior beamed in the occasional manner of the energetic child that he was.

"Best day of my life," he muttered before gobbling down the last of his eggs.

His adoptive parents could not agree more than a simple kiss between the average normalcy of a loving husband and wife.

Professor Roloc Bard, the new head of the robotics division following Callaghan's arrest, was the first person to welcome Hiro outside the robotics lab. He was on his way with his friends, talking about the events of last week and the latest news from the school newspaper, laughing, reminiscing and even just plainly discussing it with a dull tone. Hiro looked sharp and professional while wearing his brother's cap and he was the spitting image of his dad (and his brother) even as some of the students commented on him as a "mini-Tadashi".

---

Inside Tadashi's (now his) laboratory, Hiro placed the hat down on a grey desk lamp. At its base was the latest edition of the Mcmaster-Carr yellow pages, which was 4,000 pages long. Also on the desk were the recovered microbot plans and the other files stolen by Flattop's gang, but it did not matter to him anymore. Never again would he exploit them for evil, but was still going to rebuild a thousand of them for his future missions as a superhero. Hiro proceeded to observe and sort the files back into their proper places as shower of memories with him and Tadashi building inventions and robots together. One of them even resembled Mochi's rocket boots, which caused Hiro to nearly shed a tear of remorse that was interrupted by the sound of a knock on the office window. The door came open and it was Sora, craning his head in from behind who asked.

"Hiro? You…want me to help you find something?"

Hiro looked down, recognizing Sora as he continued sorting out the recovered files.

"Oh, I was just looking at this stuff Tadashi left. Nii-san always was a rather conservative type."

He held out the blueprints of what looked like a prototype for Baymax.

"Here's one that had both of our names all over it. A cleaning robot for poor people."

Sora looked at the prints, he could see that the reason behind its failure was pure fantasy.

"Looks nice. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for all the help we've done…me, Donald and Goofy that is."

"Actually," Hiro said, putting the prints down. "I should be the one thanking you. You did me a big favor by helping me with the mission. If Tadashi wanted to help people in trouble, like being captured by a villain, on the threshold of drowning or even people with terminal illnesses, I would do it with assistance…and you helped me solve the mystery of his death."

Sora smiled with pride. He almost wanted to cry, but he had to be content with this information.

"You're welcome, Hiro. Helping people in need, is also my specialty."

Hiro looked over Sora's left shoulder at the unfrosted windows of the lab. Honey, Go Go, Wasabi, Fred and Baymax were waiting for him. Sora looked back as well out of confusion, then finally understood.

"Well, a new day awaits for you. Go have some fun, Hiro."

Hiro shook Sora's left hand with his right.

"Thanks Sora. I guess it's been nice knowing you. Goodbye."

He walked past Sora and left for the door. The Keyblader watched his new friend disappear out of sight and looked out the round window, gazing his eyes into the brightest speck of sunlight the campus of SFIT had ever seen. In all of the city's history, it was the dawn of a new era for superheroes, criminals and outsiders alike.

---

In his mansion, Fred Lee had his eyes completely glazed at the portrait of his parents and his ten year old for thirty minutes. He felt a commoner greeting a king, for his face bore anxiety and Heathcliff did not bother him all (he was too busy dusting the walls and mantle pieces for anything). Now it was 8:30 PM, he was taking in his parents' absence in the same manner as Tadashi's. After a total sixteen outings as a superhero in a Kaiju suit (most of them being petty crimes), he had the composition of the football/basketball he dreamed of being before ending as a mascot…and his "workaholic" parents were hardly present in his lonely mansion where they could praise him, argue with him and even discuss plans for his future.

"Dad," he began after another thirteen seconds passed. "I just wish I could share my accomplishments with you. You mean so much to me and honestly…I think we know that. I have always felt a distance with you and Mom being on the family island and all that-"

He hovered his right hand on the plaque at the bottom of the frame, and something extraordinary began to unfold in front of his eyes. The wall had become a door that opened without a single creak, giving birth to a crack large enough for Fred to peak into. What he saw, made the bottom half of his face drop by three inches.

There was an oval shaped computer mounted inside the grey wall at the very end of the room, complete with a colorful looking console of buttons, switches and five smaller monitors. There was even a thin black swivel chair sitting in the middle of the console. It was a room such as he thought had not existed for seventy years; a room that belonged in a world of Apollo rocket ships, go-go bars, British rock groups, plastic furniture, hippies, Googie architecture, bell-bottom jeans, tie-dye, and batik fabrics of women's fashion by Paco Rabanne and the Watergate Scandal. Like something out of the last century. Every object in the room was colored in red, blue, yellow and silver. On the right side of the room was a jetpack, eight capsules of fuel cells, a sonar gun under a case of three metallic plungers, three harpoons under the gun, a shield and two red topped harpoons below it. On the left side were two suits, with grey, yellow eyed helmets with horns similar to the ones worn by Ant Man. Four pairs of red boots lay underneath an odd assortment of underwear, a total of eleven to precise. They had yellow waistbands with a red oval button, a blue body of superfine fabric that was plain on one side, and with two red circles on the other. Fred assumed that the side with the red spots were the side for the rear end of the human body and took this as a sexual innuendo.

He walked carefully, hands clasped and feet teetering as came into this inner sanctum of secrets. He stopped at the desk, finding a piece of double mercerized cotton, a pair lying on the table. Fred studied the underwear, holding them with both hands on the edges of his thumb and index fingers, when out of the blue came a deep reply.

"Fred," said the low voice. And then there was the hand coming out, the hand that held the briefcase, and the feet were walking down the small hall and Fred gasped again as the figure stepped out of the shadows—exposing an elderly man with ice tea colored sunglasses, black hair on the top, and white on the sides and his pencil moustache. He wore a royal blue jacket with matching trousers, a pink shirt and a ruby ascot. At last, Fred know who he was after mentioning the very word of "son".

"Dad…?"

Mr. Lee held the pair between his fingertips and gestured the following words with zeal and a wild smile.

"I wear them front, I wear them back…"

Fred followed along to the very end of the poem.

"I go inside out, then I go front and back."

Finally, after taking in the details of what seemed like an odd moment of disbelief, Fred cried out a splash of happiness.

"Dad!"

He wrapped his arms around his loving father. It was a warm, soothing hug that was even more comforting when Mr. Lee added:

"We have a lot to talk about."

But whatever they had to talk about, was kept secret…even to the public.

---

On the first day of November, reconstruction on the showcase hall, which began immediately after the investigation, was completed. The new building was pretty much the same with a few additional safety and security features such as an advanced sprinkler system for large fires and security cameras for almost every wall from top to bottom. A crowd of two hundred and fifty people came to attend, including Chief Brandon on what would his penultimate appearance in public before his retirement speech.

"As a long-awaited bonus, we have rounded up all of Big Boy's connections and associates. The Apparatus' rein of crime is over once again. Public safety in San Fransokyo is no longer a laughing matter with the help of our mysterious saviors."

Sora watched from afar next to a tree, he was close to overhearing Tess and Dick in a soft conversation.

"So, did Junior enjoy his sleepover last month?" Tracy asked.

"Yes," said Tess turning her head softly. Her mood suddenly changed, but it was positive one. "I think you're on."

She gave her husband a kiss, and Sora, reminded of his own parents and satisfied with his own concerns, left into the night. Tracy went up to the stage, stopping in between Brandon and Patton. His right hand pulled out a clean white note from his right vest pocket and his mouth had been lowered down to the microphone as he announced.

"We received a letter from the leader of the mysterious heroes this morning and this is what he wrote."

He unfolded the paper and read the text with the strong voice of a true American patriot.

"We did not set out to become superheroes in the first place, but sometimes life does not go the way you planned. The most positive outcome is that my brother Tadashi wanted to help people, whether it be a cat from a tree or the victim of a terminal illness…and that is we plan to do. If the forces of evil should rise again to strike the heart of humanity in this very city, be sure to call us if you get the chance. Who are we? We are…Big Hero 6."

"One question," asked Catchem. "How do we call them?"

"I suggest a hotline," added Patton.

From behind the buildings of the campus grounds, the shrill whines of a jet engine peeled through the trees and bushes with the blowing of the wind. The wind began to increase and it grew louder until it seemed a heat seeking missile from a terrorist organization would destroy all the hard work that had gone to waste. The object in question came closer, and when Lizz heard it, she followed the source and pointed her right index finger at the sky.

"Look!"

Everyone else turned, and sure enough, a streaking aircraft passed overhead. It was Baymax in his armor, carrying the members of Big Hero 6 on his back (at least Hiro, Honey and Go Go with Fred and Wasabi hanging from the arms like before). The crowd watched with wonder and clapped for their newfound heroes in this grand entrance of an air show. Several of them parted through different directions, fearing they would be run over by the robot flying at a low altitude of ten feet. Tracy could make out Hiro saluting his left hand to him and he returned the favor. Tess smiled at the precise time of her husband, Junior's flying robot was indeed real after all.

Sora walked through the lonely street on the other side, waiting for Donald and Goofy to return with the Gummi Ship. He looked up, spotting Baymax and his teammates flying high above them, followed by the Gummi Ship a minute later. The distant sounds of the crowd applauding were drowned out by the sounds of both engines, which overlapped with one another after the other left. When the starboard side of the Gummi Ship landed close to him, with only two inches above the ground, Sora squatted as far as his body could go and jumped right in the back seat.

"Hiro says his goodbyes," was all he heard from Goofy, but Sora felt comfortable. Not only would he be going home after three months in a city, but he was happy to know that he had helped another "random" person in his or her hour of need.

"I can only hope we'll see him and his friends again someday," Sora replied.

Before he knew it, Sora looked out of the window and saw the city buildings shrinking away. The ship was hovering up to a hundred feet, it stopped and flew onwards to the sky as the speed of the rocket accelerated up to five hundred miles per hour. High above the city they went, Sora looked back to take one final look and there from the corner of his eyes were Hiro, Baymax, Honey Lemon, Go Go Tomago, Wasabi No-Ginger and Fred Lee standing on a blimp that was as dark as the night sky with shades of midnight blue around the tail. Sora waved back, hoping that Hiro would see him. But it was he along with the other members of Big Hero 6 who raised their right arms into the air as far as they could reach and they did not stop to rest until they were out of each other's sights.

As the Gummi Ship faded into a distant star, Hiro felt a soft and gentle surge of emotion coursing through his body then quickly disappearing into thin air. His friends assumed that it was just the wind, but Hiro was pretty certain that it was the spirit of his brother Tadashi saying goodbye.