Chapter 47, everybody! And if you thought the end of the last chapter was brutal….:3

In other news, sorry Obake but it was indeed just your poor luck that did it. OG!Obake would argue otherwise, though. This also ends up cutting out stealing the little dumplings and the dynamo, and he's quoting The Nightmare Before Christmas there. Also shoutout to Baymaksu for telling me about how Nob Hill is called Nobu Hill in the series—really hoping he's doing alright, wherever he is.

Big Hero 6 © 2014 Disney

The absolute first thing Obake did when he was able to do something above a shamble was run for the warehouse.

It had been complete torture having to wait the couple of days the idiotic robot insisted, had spent those days repairing the garage computers, scrubbing them clean and hardening them from further incursions. Oh he hoped that he hadn't been able to pinpoint the location, if he did and found this place….

But the notion that he had found the warehouse was an even greater risk. Stupid idiot shouldn't have kept all his eggs in one basket how had he found that warehouse how—

No think be reasonable—it wasn't the one he had used to confront Big Hero Six that time or meet the Mad Jacks that other time so it just happened to be that his luck just sucked that badly and yes he could absolutely believe that just take any part of this insanity—

Was trembling by the time he reached the warehouse, higher reasoning wanting to argue that he should have made another drone and sent it to investigate…no. No this he had to see for himself, see just how screwed he was.

Push the door open, put his weight into it—finally get it open, look—

That icy feeling that had refused to abandon him settled in for a fresh chill as he took the warehouse in, registering the absence even before processing it—look up at the ceiling, around at the cracked-open crates—

It was gone.

All of it was gone.

Run through, hoping desperately that something had been missed, unmindful of traps—none of that mattered, he didn't care if he ran headfirst into something nasty—no, no it couldn't be all gone—

All but a graphene blade pinning a note to one of the beams, one with a very familiar snarling monster decal as the signature.

Thank you kindly.

The absolute first thing he had done upon getting everything back to base was to reverse-engineer the drone's coding to track down who was ordering them. It had been fun getting a screenshot of the boy's panic, but he had unplugged the computer before he could track him down to a specific location. Right now, at best, he had a general location to work with, which was better than nothing, but it wasn't enough.

But at the same time, he had to thank the boy for all the new toys he had. These microbots especially—in all honesty after removing any and all tracking devices he had taken to reverse-engineering them and figuring them out. Something about them struck him as familiar, had to do some digging before he found out why—the SFIT exhibition that had ended in flames. One Hiro Hamada, as his entrance exhibit, had created these, bragging that they could reduce the number of people to do a job from ten down to one.

Now that was useful.

Not only that, but the drones had upgrades that had evidently been stolen from Krei as well as a few extras he had to commend, a knockoff neurotransmitter that he was willing to bet was also a Krei Tech theft, and unless he missed his guess on the one insulated container…ah, yes: High Voltage's original energy orb. Well, they certainly weren't needing it now.

So that was him gleefully spending the next several days playing with his new toys, figuring out how to rig up the energy orb to power everything—scratch getting the dynamo off the list, this was much smaller, more effective and quiet even. Didn't have to worry about any of the heavy lifting of assembly, the microbots did all that work. And with him slotting all the information from the journal into the blueprints from City Rises…oh goodness everything was back on track and progressing swimmingly how marvelous how perfectly marvelous. Crossed back in front of his screens, saw the one…ah, right.

Okay, fun was fun, but this needed addressing.

Because here he was, on the cusp of the greatest achievement of his life to date, and this boy had apparently dedicated his life to snarling everything up. Some annoying little brat was doing his level best to ruin a perfectly good scheme. Why?

And did this brat change anything? Would he change anything?

…Could he talk him over to his side?

Think on this as he went back to his scans of the city, had to laugh at the blank spots. Yes, use a scan jammer to keep from being spotted—that just meant he could track the dark spots on the scanner to find his movements. Spent a lot of time nosing around SFIT and SFAI, made sense if he was after Shimamoto's research, more than a bit of time somewhere on Nobu Hill….

And a lot of time in some quaint little neighborhood.

Consider, pull up the schematics for the neighborhood, calculate, layer the two maps…some dinky little café was right in the middle of that dark spot. The Lucky Cat Café, according to information.

Well, he was feeling a bit peckish—besides, he needed a break from Momakase giving him grief over his eating habits (according to the nutritional information on the ramen packets he was getting the recommended vitamins he didn't know what her problem was besides ramen wasn't poisonous like some sushi was).

It was about time he saw this little brat for himself.

"I think it's about time for a vacation."

Cass blinked at him. "I'm sorry, do what?"

"A vacation—a nice, long vacation. Preferably on the other side of the country," Obake insisted.

"Oh…kay…did this come from anything in particular, or…oh wait you did something didn't you is this a you need to be grounded thing or a we need to get our stories straight thing?"

It was actually a I screwed up BADLY and we need to get away from the fallout thing, but he didn't see how sharing this would improve anything about this conversation. "It just seems like the thing to do."

"Okay so while that's nice it's also something that can wait another day—go get the boys will you? I've got breakfast ready to go and they should have left like five minutes ago."

Sigh, head back upstairs, trying to ignore the queasy feeling in his stomach. No, no, no, this was bad he needed to figure out how to stop this—still needed the energy amplifier, without it he simply didn't have enough to power the machine, but he didn't doubt that with the full schematics he'd eventually get bold enough to try again.

He needed a new plan.

"Oh crudcrudcrud I am so late," Hiro yipped, scrambling to throw his shoes on and his homework into his backpack.

"We told you about the time management," Tadashi said, shouldering his own backpack before pulling out a rolling handle on Baymax's charger.

"Hey you were the one who took forever in the bathroom!"

"That's because Obake locked himself in what were you doing in there?" Tadashi demanded.

Honestly he had gotten bored of the nightmares and the staring at the ceiling with a growing feeling of dread that still hadn't gone away, judging by the knotted sick feeling in his stomach. "Cass informs me that your breakfast is ready and you need to be out the door."

"Right—still totally your fault," Tadashi said, breezing by. Ah, if he only knew.

Hiro bounced a little next to him. "Hey listen—tomorrow's the presentation for my project, I want you to be there, okay? Like yeah we lost the invisibility cloak but you can hide in a closet again."

Obake blinked at him. "Why?"

"Because for some reason you don't want Granville seeing you—"

"No, I mean why do you want me there?"

Hiro blinked at him. "Well gee, I don't know, maybe I like your company?" he asked, flicking a hand against his shoulder. "And besides, you helped out a lot, so there's that—"

"HIRO!" Cass called. "You're going to be late!"

"Oop gotta go—think about it, okay?" Hiro asked, bounding down the stairs.

He did, briefly, staring after the chattering brothers as they went downstairs. He wanted to…but he hadn't earned it. Not hardly, not after he had failed so thoroughly as to let him get everything. Might as well knock on the door to the lair and deliver the schematics to him right now.

No—no—no it couldn't be over, not yet, he was just feeling sick to his stomach at the loss on top of still feeling like garbage from the encounter with High Voltage. Just—head downstairs, work on the computer, get past this—he couldn't afford another blue screen of death.

Couldn't quite get himself to do that, had to take the stairs easy—maybe eat something to calm his stomach, it was just that he was tired and hungry that's what this overwhelming feeling of someone stepping on your grave was—

Ice—scramble back, falling down on the stairs and scuttling back as fast as he could—no—no—it couldn't be—not here—

But there was no denying who he had seen, sitting in a corner and hiding behind a newspaper. Not when he had seen that face in a mirror every day before this insanity happened.

It was him.