Stay Silent

Hiro had been walking home from Morgan’s place late one night when he heard it. One of his brother’s robots, a Baymax. Hiro recognised it almost immediately; for all the countless upgrades those robots had been through over the years, the friendly robotic voice hadn’t been altered at all.

Huh, he thought, stopping in his tracks, casting his eyes about the dimly-lit street for the robot. It sounded like it was outside, but it shouldn’t have been outside. Besides, it was a fairly dense and tenant-heavyarea of the city he was passing through; there weren’t any hospitals or retirement villages anywhere near where he was, and they weren’t even remotely close to the Institute of Technology. What was a Baymax doing in this part of town?

And then Hiro figured it out, upon hearing a loud thwack, followed by the baleful, spitting laughter of several men. The Baymax had been stolen. His own brother’s work, disrespected.

The sounds were coming from a back alley between towering old brick apartment complexes, and Hiro peered down it. It was dark, but what Hiro couldn’t see he could definitely smell; he covered his nose, blocking out the aroma of soggy garbage and rotting food and piss. The back alley went straight through to the other side of the buildings, blocked off by a tall chain link fence and a large skip. He squinted and thought he saw the tubby outline of a Baymax there, surrounded by shadows.

The Baymax was talking to them. It was shudderingly commenting on their unusually high aggression levels and giving them suggestions as to how they could be lowered, including, but not limited to, going for a run or surveying some lovely scenery. The men – there were three of them from what Hiro could see – just laughedand went “oooh” like they had just been dissed on by a robot.

What Hiro saw made his stomach churn with nerves and hatred. They pushed Baymax around, they punched him in his head, they gave base suggestions that made the Baymax proclaim “I fail to see how that would make me a better healthcare companion”. He heard the rattle and hiss of a spray paint can.

Hiro couldn’t just walk away, like he knew he should’ve. Anti-robot protestors had given his brother enough grief already. He had to do something. He had to intervene.

“Hey!” he yelled out, and the thugs spun around so quick that they dropped their spray can. They didn’t scatter, only stared as Hiro advanced towards him. He tried to make himself look big and intimidating, his eyebrows frowning low over his eyes. “What the hell are you guys doing?”

It was only until he came to a stop several feet away from them, as close as he dared to approach them, that they unfroze. Hiro could see them up close too, and it was clear that they didn’t spend the bulk of their days hunched over a desk indoors like he did.

“Beat it, kid,” one of them said, as they began to turn their backs on him. And it really rubbed Hiro the wrong way.

“Fuck you,” he spat. “Where did you get that robot from?”

“Oh, I dunno.” Another one shrugged one shoulder, grinning smug at his mates. “Found ‘im.”

Hiro set his jaw. “Found him, huh,” he growled.

He could see now what they’d done to Baymax. They’d spray-painted an ejaculating penis, right onto his stomach. Right over the in-built screen, which was rolling with static a little. A penis. A fucking penis.

“You are going to fucking pay for that,” Hiro shouted, fists clenched and trembling by his sides. The three thugs gradually faced him again, sighing frustrated. “This is property damage – that robot belongs to my brother, Tadashi Hamada. I know you fucking stole it. It’s not yours so just – Give it back right now and I won’t call the cops. I’m serious.”

They ignored him. Hiro wanted to just grab someone’s arm, spin them around, and punch them right in the head to see how they liked it, but he refrained, on account of not wanting his ass handed to him on a silver platter.

He wished he could’ve refrained from picking up a crumpled can, aiming it at the back of someone’s head and making a perfect toss, though.

“Leave that Baymax alone.”

They rounded on him so fast that Hiro staggered back, bumping into some old trash bins. They’d left the Baymax alone, just as he’d asked. But now they were interested in him.

Before Hiro could even think to look for an exit, they already had him surrounded and backed into a wall, cornering him like an animal. He didn’t have the strength to just bowl right through them, and he didn’t think he could duck out between them without the risk of someone clobbering him to the stinking, wet pavement. His back was flat against the wall and he could feel a scream building in the back of his throat.

One man got uncomfortably close. He smacked a hand to the wall beside Hiro’s head and leaned in, his eyes searching and his smile mirthless. “Why are you doing this, kid? Hm? What’s so important about a stupid robot that you would actually try to pick a fight with three big, shady guys in a place like this, huh?”

“I wasn’t trying to pick a fight,” Hiro said, and he hated the way his voice squeaked, just a tiny bit.

“Yeah? Sure fucking sounded like you were trying to pick a fight.”

The men drew closer, enclosing Hiro in a tight, dark circle. He was vaguely aware of other sounds – of a motorbike racing in the street, and Baymax trying to speak, and trash bins spilling open as he knocked them over – but it was hard to hear over the noise of his heartbeat in his head. He was just about to stammer something like “get away from me” when a look of pure enlightenment overcame one man’s face.

“Hey,” he said, stopping his threatening advance, and the other two thugs joined him. The enlightenment turned sneering as he raised a dirty finger and pointed it right at Hiro. “I recognise this clown. He’s that guy everyone’s been talking about, from those campaigns – the one who thinks he was raped by his mom or something.”

Hiro’s heart felt like it had stopped, even though he could still hear it thumping in his ears. He’d never heard anyone say it like that before, so barefaced, so indiscreet, so… wrong.

They started to laugh.

“Yeah, yeah!” they cried, holding their sides like they were seconds from splitting, barking with laughter and stumbling about. Their speech slurred and blurred together as Hiro’s body went numb and cold, and he watched with a lifeless gaze as they mocked him derisively, and made fun of the experiences he had so bravely shared. They said to each other in high-pitched, distressed damsel voices “oh no, how did I get balls deep in this pussy, I must’ve been raped!” and laughed some more.

And then he was being shoved back into the wall, his body unguarded and helpless against the blows that connected with it. Someone was curling a fist into the front of his shirt. “You think you’re on the same level as my little sister?” someone growled in his face. “She was raped by my uncle for years. She needed help, not horny lying little brats like you. You’re just trying to take away from real victims. Aren’t you?”

He waited for Hiro to deny it, but Hiro didn’t respond. The man spat in Hiro’s face.

“You piece of shit.”

Someone grabbed a handful of his hair, drew his head back, and slammed it into the wall, all in one fluid motion. Hiro couldn’t pretend not to feel that one this time. He winced, crumpling to the ground, his head loudly rippling with pain. He instinctively curled in on himself, preparing for the worst, for a merciless beating, for whatever lesson they were going to teach him, but then they were patting each other and telling each other to look, look, look.

Hiro didn’t need to raise his head to look. He could already hear the sirens in the distance.

The thugs’ shoes scuffed against the pavement as they sprinted away, the skip lid banging and the fence chiming as they made their way over. They were fleeing the scene. The cops were coming.

Get up.

A small part of Hiro didn’t want to, but he forced himself. If he didn’t get up now, then he never would.

Get. Up.

Hiro woozily pulled himself back up to his feet. His head was spinning. His jeans were disgusting now; he tried to brush the grime away, but all that did was smear in the stains and dirty his hands.

Flashing red and blue lights were reflected in the wet pavement. At the entrance to the back alley was just a standard police vehicle, and two uniformed officers were brusquely walking towards him. Hiro leaned against a wall for support, one hand tenderly nursing the aching throb that was his entire head.

“Sir?” one of them asked. “Sir, what seems to be the problem here?”

Hiro shook his head wordlessly. They mustn’t have seen the thugs take off. Well, they had been quick. But then Hiro didn’t understand what the hell two cops were even doing here.

“…Sir?”

“No, nothing – there’s no problem,” Hiro muttered, and he forced himself to look into both sets of quizzical eyes. He tried to assure them again, “There’s no problem.”

The cops shared a look that meant nothing to Hiro, and then the one speaking to him gave a small frustrated sigh. “Then why were we called out here?”

“No one called,” Hiro said, but then he realised as soon as the words had left his mouth. He turned to the Baymax standing a ways behind him, still battered and deflated and blinking jerkily. The offensive graffiti on his stomach had already run and dried. “Baymax,” Hiro addressed the robot, confused. “You… called the police?”

“I eeeelrted the authorities to your assaullllt.” The robot sounded so broken. “Since I could not interveeeee-ene.”

Hiro hated to think what would’ve happened if Baymax hadn’t done that. He shouldn’t have needed a robot to save him; he should’ve just called the cops and walked away. He’d never felt so stupid in his entire life.

“You should’ve alerted them to your own assault, buddy,” he said quietly as he began to distract himself, inspecting the damage. Minor blunt force trauma. Partially operational. But he couldn’t be sure the Baymax wasn’t going to fizz out at any second without taking a proper look at the hardware, in better light, and maybe somewhere else that wasn’t a filthy back alley in the bad end of town.

He noticed that the officers were still there, just staring at the robot like it wasn’t a thing of this world. Hiro wondered if they were staring at Baymax like that because he looked so broken and defiled, or if it was because they wouldn’t have minded taking a few shots at the robot either.

“Thanks, officers,” Hiro said, directing their attention back to him. He looked down at his feet and rubbed at his temples with one hand tiredly. “I’ll… file a complaint later. I’ll send you his,” he gestured Baymax, “footage, and… you can get the guys who stole him and beat him up. I’ll take him back to his owner now.”

“His owner?”

“His creator – whatever,” he murmured, and he froze to think that he’d sounded so dismissive in front of police officers. Police officers who didn’t even want to be there.

“Whatever,” the speaking one echoed curtly. The other cop had already started walking back to their vehicle, shaking their head and crossly muttering under their breath something about stupid kids and their stupid toys. The remaining officer gave an insincere smile and a tip of his hat. “Have a good night, Sir. So sorry to have wasted your time.”

Hiro waited until both cops were in their car and had driven away from the mouth of the back alley before he turned back to Baymax. “Come on, buddy,” he whispered, wiping a sleeve across his face. He tugged at the robot’s arm, but it didn’t seem to understand that it wanted to be led somewhere. “We’ve gotta…” He swallowed. “W-We’ve gotta get you home to Tadashi, to get repaired. How’s your battery?”

Baymax shuddered out a corrupted voice recorded percentage that Hiro couldn’t quite make out. He sighed.

“Great, that’s… just great.” He sniffed. “Is your charging station with you, or…?”

He looked around, since Baymax wasn’t much help anymore, and he found it a few feet away amongst some piles of trash. He must’ve mistaken it for some old red child’s toy box before, when he’d almost landed on it. He opened it up, popped out the dents, and put it down for Baymax to awkwardly step into. “I’m satisfied with my care,” he said, sounding anything but.

-------

He took a cab to Tadashi’s place, even though it was only several blocks away, even though the Baymax was compact and weightless, even though it was costing him. He shuddered to think that he could just walk the short distance to his brother’s house, after what had happened. What had almost happened.

They probably hadn’t been expecting company. He was standing on the porch for at least a minute after he rang the doorbell, with his head bowed and the Baymax wedged between his arm and his side. Not that he minded being left to wait. It gave him more than enough time to just focus on his breathing.

Mei was the one to open the door. She was a nurse, and Tadashi’s partner of five years. They weren’t married, but they may as well have been. She was lovely anyway. She smiled her surprise, gave him a hug, and welcomed him into the warm kitchen, where the smell of a good dinner still hung in the air, mixed with some kind of citrus detergent. She talked at him for a bit, asking him this and that while they waited for Tadashi, and Hiro responded perfunctorily, not really listening. He accepted a can of soda from her and drank, and he didn’t stop drinking until it was almost empty. Well, that had fucked up his breathing.

“Hiro?”

Hiro looked up to see his older brother at the top of the stairs, leaning over the railing. Tadashi looked like he didn’t know whether to be alarmed or excited to see him there. “Hiro, it’s almost ten – what…” He broke into soft, confused laughter. “What are you doing here?”

“Hey bro.” Hiro smiled faintly and held up the battered case of a Baymax. “Saved this for you. Thought you might want to have a good look at it. Definitely needs some repairs. Some audio got corrupted, uh, I think one of the camera lens got fractured – he’s definitelygonna need a new vinyl cover, or at least a good wash–“

“Hiro, Hiro.” His brother waved at him to stop talking. “What happened? What do you mean you savedhim?”

“Well, he got stolen.” Hiro stared up into his brother’s wildly perplexed gaze. He shrugged. “Some thugs roughed him up, so I got him back for you.”

“Thugs?”

Tadashi was down in an instant, and then he was dragging Hiro upstairs and into a rather large and cluttered room that he’d made his unofficial home workshop. “Yeah, thugs,” Hiro murmured as Tadashi said “ow” and watched the robot take almost double the time it should’ve to inflate. And it didn’t even inflate to the fullest that it could.

“Wha-!” Tadashi gaped at the crude art on his robot’s belly and groaned wearily into his hands. It actually made Hiro chuckle a little. “Oh my God,” Tadashi bemoaned his gentle and pure nurse robot. “What is it with punks with spray cans and wanting to draw dicks all over Baymax?”

Hiro gave a shrug, smiling lopsidedly. “He said, he failed to see how this would make him a better health care companion. Nice to see that the big guy can still keep his sense of humour in difficult times such as these.”

Tadashi glanced curiously at his younger brother, his eyes dropping down to Hiro’s legs. “Your jeans are dirty,” he commented, taking up some tools and kneeling beside the robot.

“I tripped,” Hiro answered without even really thinking about it. He rolled over a chair and sat beside Tadashi as he peeled away the vinyl skin, inspecting the robot’s carbon-fibre skeleton and actuators – testing out what still worked and what needed fixing. Hiro just watched him for a while, his head resting on the back of the chair, taking stock of how quiet and warm and peaceful the room was. He wished he could fall asleep there and never have to wake up.

“So,” Tadashi said suddenly. He was occasionally looking up from his tinkering, staring concernedly at Hiro. “You said some thugs did this? You saw this Baymax in the street?”

“Yeah.” Hiro rubbed at his head. It still hurt when he prodded the back of it, but there was definitely no blood. Just grime. “I was just passing through, and… I don’t know. Some assholes had him.”

“What were you doing out this late?”

“Oh…” Hiro looked off to the side and tried to think of something less implicating to say than I was walking home from Morgan’s. “I’d just seen a friend. I was going home.”

“You should’ve called a cab.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“It gets dangerous out there.”

“Yeah.”

Tadashi stood up then. He mumbled some diagnostic information that even Hiro didn’t much care to listen to right now, and he watched as Tadashi opened up the port on the robot’s chest. It seemed to go deathly still as the green chip was removed, and Tadashi slid it into his computer and opened up a whole lot of programs.

Hiro slapped his cold cheeks. He still didn’t feel… all there, yet.

Tadashi noticed. “Are you OK?”

“Yeah, fine. Um… I’ll be back,” he murmured, getting up and wandering out of the room. He didn’t know where a bathroom was, so he tried every door on the floor until he found a tiled room with a sink. He ran the tap until the water was warm and splashed some over his face, again and again, washing away some of the grime people were too polite to say he was covered with. He stared at himself in the mirror and he looked so… pale. So spooked.

When he went back to the workroom, Tadashi was seated in front of his computer, watching jerky footage from the Baymax’s cameras. The robot appeared to have come from a small clinic, Hiro didn’t know which one. Several mysterious hours were skipped over in a second, and then the robot was suddenly on the street of a dodgy neighbourhood at night, absorbing visuals of vandalised garages and rundown cars and the three men who’d stolen him. The Baymax had already scanned them, as he did with every new human he met, and it didn’t take a few seconds after he asked how he could help before the thugs laid into him.

Tadashi was still, with a hand over his mouth. Like it was hard to watch.

“Hey.” Hiro stood behind his brother to put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You can get those guys with this footage – just send it to the cops.” Tadashi didn’t respond, but Hiro felt him wince when the cameras showed Baymax smacking to the floor. Hiro squeezed his shoulder a little. “I told you the Baymax series would need some armour,” he mumbled.

“A nurse,” Tadashi got out, “shouldn’t need armour.”

“These ones do.”

Tadashi sighed. They watched together in silence as the Baymax was led to the back alley like a lamb to the slaughter. From the way those thugs talked, they were clearly intent on destroying the robot – just as something to do to fill in their time, just as a laugh, just to see what kinds of wires and circuitry were inside of him.

Hiro wasn’t thinking ahead; he didn’t remember to tell his brother that he could stop watching the footage now, until it was too late, and they were already watching it. He heard his own outraged voice come from off-screen and his throat closed up. The Baymax had moved its head towards the source of the noise and it was pretty obviously Hiro’s short, angry silhouette coming closer.

“Bro, I gotta go now,” Hiro said, clapping Tadashi one last time on the shoulder. “I’ll see you later.”

Hiro turned, but Tadashi’s hand shot out and grabbed him roughly by the arm, holding him there. Tadashi wasn’t letting him go anywhere.

Hiro stared at the back of his brother’s head for a stunned moment before turning his attention back to the screen, and he watched on helplessly. The Baymax observed everything that had happened since Hiro had shown up to intervene. Hiro making a fool of himself, picking on three threatening men twice his size, yelling at them to leave the robot alone because it was property damage and the robot belonged to his brother and he was going to call the police soon if they didn’t stop...

Not only were the robot’s cameras good, but the microphone was in excellent condition too. The Baymax could even pick up the sound of the can Hiro had thrown at the thugs hitting the ground.

“Dash.” Hiro tried to pull his arm away until it hurt. “Bro, I have to go. I’ve got work in the morning.”

The Baymax picked up everything, every small sound. Even though the thugs were a short distance away, even though Hiro’s face could barely be seen over the shoulder of the guy between him and the cameras, Tadashi needed only to increase the volume on his computer to hear every word. He heard every awful, sneering thing they said to his poor younger brother. He saw that they’d hurt him and had been preparing to hurt him some more.

The rest of it was no less relieving to watch. The strained interaction with the cops, Hiro wiping a sleeve over his face right in front of the camera, and then the footage cutting off after Hiro had practically sobbed “I am satisfied with my care”.

Hiro was holding his breath, waiting. He braced himself for it, whatever it was. His brother’s inevitable outburst, he supposed. He couldn’t see his brother’s expression, but the grip on his arm now was tight.

Tadashi spun around to face him, and Hiro flinched pre-emptively. “What the hell did you do that for?” his brother shouted, anger mixed with fear. Tadashi leaned forward to grab Hiro by the shoulders and actually shake some sense into him. “What the hell were you doing just walking up to those guys like that? You’re so smart – why did you do something so stupid?”

Something broke in Hiro then – he’d lost his calm, which hadn’t even really been a calm at all, and he started reeling like he was still fresh from the terrifying scene. He trembled and yelled right back at his brother, “I was getting that Baymax back for you! I was trying to defend your property!”

“Hiro,” Tadashi cried, and he looked so in pain all of a sudden. “Hiro, even if I had just one Baymax… I would still prefer losing that than losing you.”

Hiro wrestled his shoulders free and turned away from his brother, pressing a hand over his eyes and contorting his mouth with the effort of keeping his tears in. His throat strained against his will. Don’t cry, he told himself, over and over again, Don’t cry, not now, not here, don’t cry. What made it even harder was that he knew what his brother meant to add onto the end of that sentence. Don’t make me lose another member of my family. Please.

Through sheer will alone, Hiro swallowed it all back like a large, bitter pill. Something he would deal with later. He faced his brother again, glaring indignant, wiping little tears from his eyes. “You weren’t going to lose me,” he croaked.

“They could’ve killed you.”

“At worst, they could’ve put me in the hospital,” Hiro said, aggressively dismissive, like it was nothing to get so worked up about. Tadashi just gaped at him. “And then another Baymax could’ve fixed me right up… Look, I get it – I’m lucky. I’m fine, everything turned out OK, so just… forget about it. I’m going home now.”

Hiro turned to leave, full well knowing before he even took the first step that his brother wasn’t going to just let him go. He never did. Hiro was caught and pulled back to face Tadashi and stare at that insufferable look on his face. That Doting Big Brother look that just never seemed to go away, no matter how old they grew together.

“Are people giving you shit for this campaign,” Tadashi demanded to know. “This sexual violence campaign you’re heading?”

Tadashi hadn’t even so much as congratulated Hiro on his bravery yet, and already he was jumping straight to this.

“I’m not heading anything,” Hiro denied. “Yeah, there are some real assholes out there but thatdoesn’t matter.” He shouted it out like he was trying to convince more than just Tadashi. “I’m doing a lot of good work, trust me. If only you could see me–”

Tadashi cut him off.

“Hiro, listen to me. I don’t want you getting hurt because of this. You’ve been through enough as it is. Maybe,” he suggested, and his voice was now low and soft and honeyed, “You should just quit this thing now, while you’re ahead.”

“No.” Hiro shook his head, a fierce look in his eye. “No. You don’t… You don’t see all the good that I’m doing, Tadashi! I’m really useful! I-I’m really helping people – just like me! Seriously – I am loving this and I am fine, Tadashi!” Hiro opened out his arms and showed off just how fine he was. “I’m not getting hurt by this, I’m not getting triggered every second I spend talking to these victims. My own victimisation happened a long time ago.”

“Not long enough that you’d just leave all this stuff behind.”

Hiro wondered why his brother didn’t just shoot him through the heart. It would’ve killed him quicker and been no more painful.

“All this stuff?”

“Hiro…”

Tadashi raised a hand to hold his younger brother’s cheek, but Hiro slapped it away. He forgot to hold back on his swelling fury and he gave his older brother several more hard slaps until Tadashi was as close to cowering as he could be. “You don’t want me helping anyone,” Hiro cried, his throat and eyes stinging. He’d thought he’d left this all behind. He thought he wouldn’t have to do this with his brother again, and it hurt. “You don’t want me helping with your robots, and you don’t want me helping people to get support and recover from their trauma. I’m just trying to be nice, and you’re holding me back. You always do this,” he shouted, throwing his hands down. “You always try to micromanage me, even though I’m an adult now. You’re just like you’re stupid fucking robots – no wonder everyone wants to destroy them.”

“Hiro.”

As Hiro swept past the offline robot, he thought about doing something he hadn’t done since they were still petulant kids, no matter how mad he got with his brother. He put a hand on the robot’s face and gave it an enormous shove, pushing it to the ground.

It didn’t make him feel any better. That defenceless, harmless robot crashed straight to the floor, and it somehow made him feel even worse than he already did.

He raced down the stairs, ignoring his brother’s desperate pleas for him to come back. He brushed past Tadashi’s bewildered partner, warbling out something he hoped sounded like “thanks for the drink, Mei”, and then he was out the door.

He ran down the quiet street until he was out of breath, which didn’t take him very long. He caught himself on a tree and held it with one hand, rested his pounding head against its cooling trunk. His other hand clutched at the raw, grating feeling deep in his throat and his chest.

You’re fine, he promised himself, struggling to breathe, you’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine. He was just angry – he was just really angry. At those thugs, at his brother, at that Baymax, at all of the hate mail he’d ever received – just everything. He was so angry that he was shaking. So angry that he started to whimper.

Because even when he was angry, he was still miserable and scared.