Chapter 17, everybody! We're back to the meta commentary….

This was one of the chapters that was written before…I'm going to say about ninety percent of the rest of the fic—had a pretty clear idea of it so I wrote it down to give me a target to aim for. Also yes online learning/homeschooling is WAY flexible and great and really the only issue with it is that it requires the student to be self-disciplined but from experience you can get a day done from 8-12 and have the rest of the day to yourself the whole "zoom call from 8-5 no you can't go to the bathroom and no we don't want your parents listening in" is BS and really did more to show the issues with public schooling.

Anywho—discussions of timey-wimey tropes featuring Back to the Future, Portal 2, Doctor Who, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Déjà Vu. Also it's pretty impressive how much of what happens in Season One is a direct result of 1) Big Hero Six's actions and 2) Obake directly responding to their existence. Love how well the show was written before executive meddling kicked in….

In other news, dipping the fries into the shake references this one episode of Kim Possible where Kim finally dates Josh Mankey and he recommends that. I've said it before and I'll say it again, learning that the guys who did Kim Possible also did Big Hero 6: the Series is what prompted me to give the latter a fair shake because honestly before learning that my thoughts were oh no what has Disney done NOW.

James the apple, thanks for the review! 1) oi, yes, and dropping a controversial take there aren't you?, 2) Obake is the king of pettiness and does an excellent job of defending his crown XD, 3) YES, 4) oh my goodness yes.

Big Hero 6 © 2014 Disney

Obake wasn't too sold on the text he got from Fred telling him to bring his story notes (and probably a laptop should start writing drabbles on this—whatever those were). Less sold when he realized he was meeting the boy at a Noodle Burger. The Noodle Burger, if memory served.

"So," Fred said, gesturing a little at a stack of notes and such he had next to him. "I've been doing some research, and I think before we go too far on this we've got to address some of the big issues with time-travel fics."

"I had other things to do, Fred," Obake said flatly, hands lightly gripping the edge of the table.

"Like?"

Like getting things straightened out and still working on coming to grips with this whole thing. "School?"

"Pff, please," Fred said, waving him off. "If you have school it's online—otherwise why did you spend a whole weekday at my place?"

Dangit he wasn't expecting Fred to pick up on that. "The point, Fred—get to the point of why you called me here."

"Right," Fred said, tapping his fingers on the pile next to him. "So. Big things about time-travel stories. Number one: paradoxes. Mostly you want to avoid past-villain and currently-being-redeemed-villain from meeting."

"I'm guessing there's reasons."

"Yes. There's a chance it could wipe out time, backwards and forwards. At least, this is usually the reason used to keep them from meeting—chances are nothing happens, but then you run into a different thing about time-travel stories where going back in time and changing the past also changes how you know about the things that ended up being changed."

Obake had to take a moment and think about that, mentally review everything. "I'm guessing there's a workaround for this?"

"Yeah, usually the dude doing the time travel has like this, timey-wimey effect where it doesn't directly affect him and he has memories from both timelines. Like on Back to the Future—which also has a different thing, where sometimes actions are predetermined no matter what you do. Kinda like in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, where when the characters go back in time the stuff that happens still happens and Harry could cast a Patronus because he had already done it—"

By this time Fred had totally lost him and he almost appreciated the sound of that irritating song cutting through everything. "Ah," he groaned.

"Yeah, isn't this dude cool?" Fred asked, bopping along to the song. "It's like he can read my mind, man."

That was because of the predictive programming that had been squandered on a fast-food mascot, Obake mused, watching as the Noodle Burger Boy robot filled out Fred's order. Could probably scratch this robot being stolen off the list of likely events, that had been done in response to Big Hero Six, and said superhero team didn't exist anymore.

"Well howdy and hello, mister!" Noodle Burger Boy said, turning his attention to Obake. "I've never seen you before, but I hope we can be swell friends!"

"No, you don't," he said drily.

"Can I help you with anything, new bestie?"

"Find out where my life went oh, so wrong."

"Noodle Burger promotes happiness and therefore has nearby therapists to recommend to you."

"Oh just go get me a coffee," he groaned, rubbing his face.

"I'm on it, mister!" Noodle Burger Boy said, bouncing off.

Fred was eyeing him with something resembling concern. "You sure you're alright?"

"I'm sitting in a fast-food restaurant with a singing and dancing robot mascot at a booth with your face on it," Obake spat. "What do you think?"

"Well I think this is living the dream but you seem stressed. Ooh, you could try jumping in the ball pit! I have a reserved space."

Oh good night save him. "Let's just…get back to the reason we're here to begin with."

"Right. So, time-travel dude running into himself, actions affecting recollection, actions being preordained…and then of course we've got the ripple effect, where any changes no matter how small affect the future. Which means the further you go in the fic, the more you're gonna diverge from your established canon."

"My what?"

"Established canon—what happened in the original timeline. It's a whole thing."

"Right. Sure," he sighed, as Noodle Burger Boy served them. Eyed the robot as it walked off. "So I'm thinking in the original version there's a robot that uses the same predictive technologies that that one has."

"All right, writing life experiences into the fic!" Fred said, pumping a fist and narrowly missing knocking over the tower of pickles on his burger. "Good robot?"

"Originally, but the villain turns it to figure out the superhero team's secret identities."

"OH—oh this is good," Fred said, dipping some fries into his shake and eating them. "So this means the villain knows who the good guys are."

"He does, it's how he stops their forming the second time around."

"And since the team doesn't exist, then there's no reason to steal the robot, and then he doesn't find out…." Point at him. "See, see, this is what I'm talking about on the whole timey-wimey affected-timelines thing—so if the villain knows all this stuff when he goes back in time, and then he prevents the thing from happening, then unless he has that timey-wimey buffer he forgets why this thing needs to be changed, so he can't prevent it when the stable time loop happens and he goes back—"

"I think you might be overthinking this."

"Well stable time loops are also a big thing in these sorts of stories—of course they can be like, deadly. Like Déjà Vu, in order to avoid having two Denzels running around the one kinda had to die—"

Painful thud in his chest at that. He'd really rather avoid that—

His lair crashing down on his head—

"Dude, are you okay? You went really pale."

Shake his head, sip his coffee, go back to the topic at hand. "Say we avoided that. Then what?"

"Well there's also the whole alternate timeline bits—where from the moment something in the past is changed a new timeline is created and diverges from the first. So the original timeline goes on as it does, but now there's this secondary timeline going on all hunky-dory next to it. You get it?"

Kind of—which meant that he was still dead in the original timeline, but still.

What would happen if he as he was survived past the blast?

This was…probably not a good outcome. He'd still be of a mindset to pursue his goals, would, after the depression at having been bested, go back at them with a fervor—he had no limits, nothing to hold him back and point out that what he was after was good or not. Excepting a blue screen of death as he had before…he'd never stop.

Survival wasn't an option.

"Dude? Hellooo, earth to Obake…."

Snap back to the present situation with such suddenness that he gave himself whiplash. "Uh what?"

"Okay, don't take this the wrong way but I am really worried about you," Fred said, hands spread. "You look like you went somewhere really bad."

No kidding.

"It just occurred to me that…my character…probably won't survive this story," he said finally, not looking at Fred.

"Dude, dark—why not?"

Why not? "He dies, originally, that's why he's sent back in time—or part of the reason, I'm guessing. And if he hadn't been…nothing would have changed. He'd just keep trying to destroy everything. He has to die, to keep everyone safe. And preserve that time loop, I'm guessing."

"Man I hate major character death," Fred said, resting his chin in his hand. "And the main character biting it? You sure we can't do like a rewrite? I mean sure you can write that up and get it out, but I feel like there's a better ending in there somewhere."

No, there wasn't—people like him didn't get happy endings.

"We'll see," he said finally, trying to keep from being dour. That wouldn't help right now.

He knew what the endgame would end up being—he just had to ensure it happened, if it came to that.