Chapter 43, everybody! Obake's got to socialize again. D:
Wasabi's used a variation of that comment before in one of my other fics, Safe in Brother's Wings. Pretty sure they've got an agreement where if one of the others is properly baffling they can ask for clarification. Also the return of the Blues Brothers outfits. XD
So when I was writing…I think the whole sequence for the "Big Hero 7" episode in this started with me writing that one chunk with Obake accidentally slipping and building from there. And since these guys aren't superheroes in this story and therefore aren't obligated to save anybody, especially Mole. Also references to Portal, Ice Age, Terminator, and Into the Spiderverse (won't be seeing the sequel, I don't support sneaking propaganda into movies :\). And yes, a twist should be I should have seen that coming over I didn't see that coming.
Also when I wrote this my computer had downloaded the latest Windows update and crashed, hence my shade thrown there, which was written on my laptop that I am currently on because my computer crashed again. At least it's getting fixed. And Hiro is learning the difference between practical effects and CGI effects, so that's fun. In other news, when I was writing this I looked up cooties to find out if they were really a thing and I was much happier before I looked it up. D: Moving on, Tadashi's referencing a Tumblr post I found on Pinterest one day—the next step is if you're systematic, ultramatic, and hydromatic, why then you must be greased lightning! *cue music*
Big Hero 6 © 2014 Disney
Much to Obake's annoyance, Fred insisted on dragging him to SFIT and telling the others about the theft.
"Momakase totally robbed Mole!" Fred declared dramatically. "Stole High Voltage's energy orb and sliced everything else to ribbons! All those beautiful comics, GONE."
At least the rest of the little group shared Obake's general opinion of the matter: dumbfounded looks, reserved for Fred.
"Okay," Wasabi said finally. "Fred. Remember when we agreed to tell each other when we weren't using real words or speaking plain English anymore? Yeah guess which one you're doing."
"I…vote the second one," Fred said, pointing.
"Yeah."
"So I'm guessing part of the explanation involves telling us why you two are dressed as Jake and Elwood," Tadashi said, sounding amused. "Oh wait let me guess you're putting the band back together."
"This was Fred's idea," Obake ground out.
"And you went along with it?"
"Shut. Up," he hissed, tugging the tie off.
"But back to the energy orb Momakase stole," Fred said.
"And again we ask why you were going to Mole's store," Wasabi said.
"For research, but I digress," Fred said. "Momakase totes stole the orb and my money is on her and High Voltage teaming up for some girl-power villainy."
"Or she's going to turn around and sell it like she did with City Rises," Gogo observed.
"This is also a possibility."
"That wasn't even the real energy orb Momakase stole," Obake said, irritated by this whole thing.
"And how do you know that?"
Yes, Obake, how did you know that. "Oh you're right I'm sorry I forgot that we're taking everything that Richardson Mole says at face value now."
"That ratty little kid?" Gogo asked. When Obake nodded: "Then yes I agree chances are it's fake."
"But what if it isn't?" Fred asked.
"Then that's bad. But if it is, then she goes after Mole, and I'm calling that a win."
"I knew there was a reason I liked you," Obake told her.
"Okay you two," Tadashi said, pointing at them. "We are not condoning murder at this time."
"At this time, he says," Gogo said to Obake in an undertone.
"I'm trying to be a good influence on him, I really am," Obake said, acting put-out. "It's just so draining being the proper example."
"Proper example Obake you keep suggesting murder when someone bugs us," Tadashi scolded.
"Remember my offer of swapping you and Honey Lemon?" Gogo asked Obake, earning a hey from both Honey Lemon and Tadashi.
"No, no, we are not compounding the chaos at least let me get it wrangled to someplace I can manage."
"Back to High Voltage," Fred said.
"Fred, can I be honest with you right now?" Wasabi asked. "I have no idea why you're invested in this, you have told us that Mole is your arch-nemesis, and currently he's being targeted by super-villains. What part of this is our problem?"
"It's called being the bigger man," Fred said.
"Fred, you achieve that by being a foot and a half taller than he is," Obake said drily.
"Well yes, but like, morally it's being the bigger man."
"Fred, a cockroach is morally superior to this brat. For once, let the fool reap what he sowed."
"But will I be able to live with myself? Will I be able to sleep at night?"
"Yes, yes, my goodness yes," Obake insisted. "Like a brick. Like a log. Like the dead man you're going to be if you don't drop the topic."
"Are you threatening me?"
"Gogo I need help killing Fred."
"Let me get my impact drill," Gogo said, heading for her workstation.
"Gogo, no," Tadashi said, running after her.
"Bro," Fred said. "Uncool."
"Okay, we're dragging you away to cool off now," Hiro said, grabbing Obake by the wrist and dragging him to his lab. Obake went with it, more than happy to get out of dealing with the nerd herd in general and Fred in particular. "So I think us being here last night was noticed," Hiro said quietly. "The building was closed for maintenance all morning."
"Or, it was just closed for maintenance, as it was last night," Obake pointed out. "Sometimes you just have to go with the reasoning Occam would prefer."
"Yeah sure whatever that means—anyway I have concerns that our new security is basically mobile versions of the turrets from Portal, that sucks and makes me think that the robots are plotting against us."
"They probably are," Obake conceded, looking around at the still-messy side of the lab that was designated as Hiro's. "Someday soon, they'll stage an uprising and overthrow us organics. Our only hope is that they think of us, their crafters, fondly."
"Or that John Connor is handy," Hiro pointed out, flicking through something. "So—get over here," he said, waving him over before brandishing a DVD case at him. "So I was thinking of this and—I have a suggestion for the squid arms but I'm also torn because this is a big cool twist in the movie and you have to watch this one Into the Spiderverse is a cinematic masterpiece—"
"If you can't appreciate a twist after learning of it, it wasn't that much of a twist to begin with," Obake pointed out.
"Ooh nice, tell that to Fred so he can pass it on to his classmates—anywho." Pause the movie on some woman, pull it up nice and big. "Now watch this and how the arms work—hold on—okay starting there."
Obake did so. "So my first thoughts is that those are rubber filled with air, which would affect the ballast terribly."
"My thought too—so maybe we have it so it can do water too? Or—maybe super-articulated device I don't know these squid arms are a lot harder than I thought," Hiro admitted. "But at least we got the suckers down."
"How is that particular project coming along?"
Hiro grinned at him. "Okay so testing is going pretty well but there's this one patch of code I need help with ironing out—hold on let me pull it up," he said, clacking away on his keyboard. "So this patch right here keeps causing a critical malfunction when I try to run it—can't get it past that just yet, I'm wondering if it's conflicting with some other code packet I have in here."
"Or it could be a confluence of coding issues that just all collided right there."
"Now see, I doubt that because I went through everything and made sure it hooked up and it was running just fine before—as far as I know my remora downloaded the latest Windows update."
"That is bad," he agreed, looking it over. "Let's see, biometrics, GPS, taser…are you sure it's the new code?"
"Pretty sure."
"Well, only one way to be certain: be systematic."
Hiro nodded, started going through everything with him, them chatting about coding and occasionally other things of vague interest. The maintenance pause on the labs and Fred's squid and kaiju were high on the list, although sometimes it dipped down into nonsense things—it was calm and domestic by his standards, but it was something he surprised himself by caring for.
It also went someplace else when they were done.
"Something just occurred to me about the tentacles," Hiro said, dragging a notebook over and flipping it to a fresh page. "Like…we still use them as extensions of the ballast system, maybe, have the articulated metal joints inside…but…also this." showed him the sketch.
Obake couldn't help the little flip-flop his stomach did. "Nano-Dex?"
"Yeah—it'll be part of the tentacle covering so the metal doesn't have to be bulky, and we can control how strong it is that way too."
Obake considered this. "It could work…you know, if you test it."
"Hey, that was the plan!" Hiro protested. "What, you think I'm just going to rush out with some half-baked experiment?"
"Prior experience suggests so, yes." Especially with what he did with the Nano-Dex the first time around.
"Okay so firstly, you're lame," Hiro said. "Secondly, this'll totally work and is worth a try. Thirdly, this film Fred's doing had better be awesome with a ton of sequels if it's this labor-intensive to try and figure these stupid tentacles out."
"You'll get it," Obake assured him. "You figured out your remora, did you not?"
"I did, which was awesome," Hiro said, combing through the data again. "And I think we're into the physical testing stage, which is also awesome—so glad Granville gave us a few extra days on our midterms, I was not liking that deadline."
"Hence our little midnight escapade."
"Yeah," Hiro agreed—clammed up quickly when Tadashi came in.
"So in other news, I don't exactly understand Fred's whole thing with this Mole kid," Tadashi announced.
"To hear him talk, Mole is his nemesis," Obake said. "Which, to be fair, he does fill all the checkmarks, but still. As nemeses go, it's very weak."
"This isn't going to turn into you lecturing me on being nemeses with Karmi, is it?" Hiro asked, squinting at him.
"Unless you'd rather have Tadashi's discussion about you and Karmi dating."
"Ew no," Hiro said, shuddering.
"Okay firstly no nemesis-ing," Tadashi said. "Secondly…Hiro eventually you'll learn that girls don't have cooties."
"You don't know that."
"Karmi: does not have cooties, or any other parasitic form," a now-activated Baymax offered.
"See? Baymax knows," Tadashi said, gesturing at the robot. "How's the new upgrades working, bud?"
"You programmed your robot to scan for cooties?" Obake asked.
"Cooties are an existing parasite, which frequently reside in undergarments—" Baymax started.
"OKAY bud we're not going there today," Tadashi said.
"Okay firstly ew," Hiro said, shuddering. "So. Much. Ew."
"Yeah I didn't need that information when I learned the deets either but at least I'm not the only one cursed with the knowledge," Tadashi said.
"You are both children. I need you to know this," Obake said.
"Bold words coming from someone between us in age."
HA—not hardly. Was cut off from some scathing comeback by Hiro saying "Besides, I don't have to date, Obake says there's a get-out-of-jail free card but for dating. A-something."
"Okay firstly, if they had those cards I never got one. Secondly, what are you telling him?" Tadashi demanded of Obake.
"Asexual aromantic," Obake said. "Asexual means you're not interested in carnal relations, aromantic means you're not interested in the romance."
"Ha," Hiro barked at Tadashi. "See? There's fancy words for me not wanting to date!"
"And I'm guessing aromatic means you have a nice smell," Tadashi said. "Okay fine but you get to babysit when I have a boatload of kids."
"No I won't—get Baymax to do it."
"I will form a new database on: babysitting," Baymax offered.
"Okay we'll start with 'don't actually sit on babies,'" Tadashi said, checking Baymax's coding on a tablet plugged into him. Currently he was lacking his vinyl, resembling too much the cadre of robots that Yama had reverse-engineered—probably the only brilliant moment the man had had. "Come on, ask, you know you want to."
"I'm sure it's either from Fred or some inane show," Obake said.
"Eh, Lion King II and the Beetlejuice cartoon both did it, but my thing is you know you want to ask about the upgrades."
Well this could be promising. "What upgrades?"
"Well we can't deny that the titanium alloy got away with only light scratches—"
"Still say carbon fiber would work better," Hiro offered.
"We'll try carbon fiber and see if it holds up better under comparable stress. Anywho, made Baymax have a faster mode so we don't have him waddling away from a monster again at the speed of slug. No offense, Baymax."
"I am a robot—I cannot be offended," Baymax said, blinking. "Being able to reach patients faster will be important to my capabilities as a healthcare companion."
"Good. Also took some opportunities to do some adjustments—not sure if anyone has any suggestions…."
This was bait, this was obvious bait, Tadashi was in the same boat as Hiro in wanting to con him into accepting this cozy domestic life, and while he couldn't yet—not with that major issue still hanging overhead—he…was honestly heavily tempted.
It was why he did finally agree to it, giving some suggestions to both brothers as they worked through the afternoon, him sitting on the couch and doing some of his own tinkering…eventually he'd have to make his move, he needed to get that journal before he did.
It would probably be the act that lost him the invisibility cloak, but he was going to have to sneak into SFAI again and scour Shimamoto's house from top to bottom. There had to be a way into her basement, and he had to be the one to find it.
The alternative would only see all this gone.
So. In trying to track down the missing energy orb he instead found out that it had been stolen from High Voltage by a very familiar drone, in what was becoming a maddeningly familiar narrative. Scanning the city for high spikes of energy wasn't doing it, he just had to admit that whoever this was that was snafuing his plans had stolen the energy orb as well and hid it.
He was so going to wring this kid's neck when he caught him.
But in the meantime. On the off chance that High Voltage succeeded, he needed to have something to act as a reward. On the likely chance that they didn't…well, he could think of some use for the energy orb. Substituting for a dynamo, perhaps, or the energy amplifier he was definitely going to need…hrm.
Sort through his salvaged notes on that, scowling—yes, his last attempt at an energy amplifier had been a disaster, there was no sugarcoating it. Yes, it had led to a better version of himself. No, he was in no hurry to chance a repeat of that.
If only there was a way to outsource that particular tribulation.
Dismiss that thought—he trusted no one to handle the tech needed for this, and unless some brilliant potential cohort showed up he doubted very much that anyone else would be able to handle this. Debate on the little miscreant…no, he was obviously gunning against him and knew the specifics of what to target. If only his deep dive of Sycorax had turned up something…but it still bore the question of how this little toerag would have gotten the information he was acting on. If he didn't know any better, he'd say he was tapping direct into his own thoughts.
Except he did know better, that was nonsense. So…likely scenario, someone who was also a fan of Shimamoto, but who had seen the disaster caused by her work and decided to stop it.
How narrow-minded.
But moving on—he had a new project to temporarily distract himself with, something he could cut his intellectual teeth on while High Voltage worked and Momakase groused at having what she viewed as her job outsourced. She'd get over it eventually, he was sure.
In the meantime…time to start reverse-engineering High Voltage's energy orb.