Hiro had holed himself up in Tadashi’s personal lab, the one he had gotten through his grant, but it had swiftly become the Hamada lab since Hiro had entered SFIT. Tadashi had gotten extremely nervous with leaving Hiro alone as well, especially since the second time he had gotten chased down by the guy in the kabuki mask. Even just going to class one building over, Tadashi was sure something would happen to Hiro while he wasn’t looking.
So, Tadashi had left Baymax to defend Hiro. Baymax, in all his fluffy glory, was deflated and charging in the corner. He still had his karate, but that wouldn’t do much considering his huggable design (one Tadashi was slowly starting to hate but not because karate wasn't part of the original plan - this is what Hiro-in-danger does to his older brother: drive him crazy).
Hiro was in the lab to work on the super suits for all these reasons. It had nothing to do with the fact that if Aunt Cass even caught a whiff of what they were doing, then she’d have all their heads. If there was one thing the Hamada Boys had made clear to the rest of the team, it was that they were positively terrified of their Aunt or, more accurately, her punishments.
When the team had time off in between class, they were supposed to meet Hiro in the lab to work through their uni- supersuits (Hiro refused to call them uniforms – it’s what Cass used to refer to the Maid’s Costumes).
The team, however, even in this situation, was their normal selves as ever when it came to their designs…
Honey Lemon
As Hiro looked over, his eyes narrowed in annoyance. “I hate you so much.”
Honey blinked in hurt, flinching back at his words. “Wha-What?” What had she done? Why was Hiro mad at her?
Hiro jumped at her sudden fall of smile as her whole face turned to spare. “No, no, no!” He replied as he quickly threw up his hands. “I’m just, well, I didn’t mean I hate you, but I’m just mad that your project won’t… uh… downsize.” After all, no one could hate Honey. She was as sweet as her nickname implied.
Honey’s hurt turned to confusion. “Uh, what?” She asked as she approached. Hiro turned back to the table as the teen turned back to the table, relieved that one of his few friends was not sad any more. Hiro had to admit, it was different having friends, and he really, really, really didn’t want to have them be sad.
Hiro shook his head and went back to being an angsty, annoyed genius teenager. “I can’t figure out how to get your lab to a smaller size!” He complained as he held up a design of heavy armor. “This one is too heavy.” He threw the sheet to the side. “This one too light.” Another. “And I have nowhere to store your chemicals! A backpack? Unreachapble. Gauntlets? Not enough space. Chest compact? Impractical. Shoes…?”
Honey cut him off. “My shoes?” She shot the boy a flat look. “Really?”
“You have big shoes! You could store a lot of chemicals in there!” Hiro defended before he threw out another sheet. “But the shock from running around could cause a massive chemical reaction!” His head slammed into his desk, particularly loud, as Honey winced for the boy.
“Ow.” She muttered for his pain as the boy groaned. However, the two forgot that there was another occupant in the room.
“Is something the matter?” Both geniuses jumped as Baymax came up behind the two. “I was alerted to your distress when you said ‘ow.’”
Hiro rolled his head around as he ran a free hand on his forehead where a bruise was forming. “Do you know how to compress a chem lab?” He asked sarcastically to the bot.
“I do not, Hiro. However, I detect elevated levels of cortisol, suggesting extended stress periods common in adolescence. Scans also indicate you have a growing bruise on your head. As a pubescent teen…”
“STOP WITH THE P-WORD!” Hiro yelped as he buried his head in his arms. He had even pulled up his hood over his head to hide himself, his face already going brightly red.
While Baymax went on, Honey looked over the number of designs Hiro had come up with. Grabbing a spare mechanical pencil, she took the design that looked most promising – one of the designs for a backpack-armband combination, and made a few changes. “Hiro,” Money commented as the boy looked up to the girl. Baymax had stopped telling Hiro about his puberty when Honey had spoken. “You do realize I could carry a purse, right?” With that, she held up the design he had made with a sketch of a purse-like bag over. It had storage balls along the long strap as she doodled a heart to where the chemical pad could be added.
Hiro made a face. “But that’s so girly. You’re supposed to be cool!”
Honey rolled her eyes as she pulled over Tadashi’s chair. “Hiro, Tadashi has explained that, in fact, I am a girl, right?” Usually, she liked to be nice about everything, but comments like that just pushed out her sarcastic side. She adjusted her pink glasses as she leveled a look at the boy.
Hiro winced. “Well, yeah, but… I mean…” He struggled with his hands as if to explain.
“Hiro is experiencing chemical fluctuations, suggesting stress and memory. Scans match those related to the ‘Maid’s Punishment.’” Baymax explained as he toddled forward. “Treatment as before includes comfort.” He pat Hiro’s head. “There, there.”
Hiro went back to burying his head as Honey giggled, mood turned around. “Are you scared of handling feminine clothing, Hiro?”
The teen genius groaned in response.
Honey smiled as she continued to sketch. She now had some more ideas. If she placed stabilizers in the shoes, then the whole outfit would be balanced in order to run around without unsettling some of the more violent chemicals. She was used to heels, and, if she added a few of her own touches, who would judge?
Hiro was still being “treated” by Baymax when she looked over, so she figured, if nothing else, she could get Tadashi to help her.
And if he had the same fear, well, she’d get Go Go to knock some sense into them.
Go Go Tomago
Go Go had heard the story from Honey, so, when she was in the lab, she had some ideas. Hiro was in there examining one of her reject disks as her specks, the ones she had given him, were displayed on the holographic computer screen in order to “improve” her design.
Psh, improve.
Hiro looked up when Go Go had popped her bubble. “Oh, hey Go Go.”
She blew another bubble, popping it as she dropped into Tadashi’s swivel chair. “Ok, what you got.” She waved at the computer.
Hiro set the disk down. “Well, I was looking at your bike, and I was thinking we could compress the tech into rollerblades.” His whole face lit up in excitement as he rushed over.
Go Go turned to follow the boy, blowing another bubble as he pulled up a picture of her bike. Using a swipe of his hands, he isolated the disks as he attached them to a gender-neutral figure at the feet. She lifted an eyebrow in response.
She examined the specks with a furrow of her brow. She tapped in at a few things, taking interest. She had to admit, the idea had potential.
Hiro, taking her silence well, continued. “Well, that was the start of the idea, then I planned to add magnetic servos here and here, then I was going to add some repulsors here, using magnetic force to push…”
Go Go reached out, simple copying the disks to place another two on the arms. Hiro fell silent as she also added some slick armor designs like a pro, turning the design into a slick outfit. “Aerodynamic, added disks in case something happens to the main ones.” She explained. “Nothing else, too bulky.”
Hiro blinked at her response. “But I could make you look so cool…” Go Go turned to the boy, shooting him a flat look as the teen gulped. “You know what? I like it. Looks good. I can do this.”
Go Go popped another bubble before smirking. She hit two more bubbles as the main armor turned yellow, the rest remaining black. “And I want it yellow.” She added as she manipulated the helmet to make it faster and sleeker.
Now the teen was really confused. “Really? I thought you would say purple.”
She popped a bubble. “I like yellow.”
At least she hadn’t had to knock sense into the Hamada boys about their fear of female clothing.
Yet.
Wasabi
“It needs to be hypoallergenic material, and I need to make sure the whole thing breaths really well because otherwise I chafe…” Wasabi explained as he held up a very detailed blueprint of a heavily-armored man. Wasabi, as ever, was extremely prepared for his own suit designing. He’d brought a detailed blueprint of what he expected, and he was walking Hiro through ever step.
Hiro shot the other student a look of disbelief. “Uh, Wasabi? One question.” The teen interrupted as the other man paused.
“Yeah?” Wasabi cocked an eyebrow at the pause.
“How are you going to move?” Hiro requested as he legitimately pointed to the joints. “With that much armor, you’d never be able to move. On top of that, you have nothing to attack with.”
“What? Why would I want to attack anything?” Wasabi answered, appalled.
Hiro rolled his eyes. “Considering we’re becoming heroes? We need to have something to go on the offensive.”
“Offensive?!?” Wasabi gasped as he jumped back. He nearly bumped his carefully laid table of work pieces, but he was more careful than that. Considering that Wasabi found the recent mess of the Hamada lab too much, he’d only gone in long enough to drag Hiro over to his own corner. Also taking into consideration that it was late on Friday, no one was in there anyway. “I didn’t sign up for that!”
The teen lay a flat look on the taller man. “Wasabi? Hate to break it to you, but part of being a hero is attacking the bad guy to capture the bad guy.” Hiro popped up from his seat as he rounded the other man into the yellow zone.
“Behind the yellow line!” Wasabi threw as Hiro grabbed two pairs of goggles off the wall. The teen tossed one to Wasabi as the man expertly caught it.
Hiro threw his goggles on as he grinned to Wasabi. “Show me your project again, and we’ll work from there.” Wasabi shot Hiro a frown at the shooting-down of his design. Hiro grinned with a sorry-not-sorry smile. “I’ll make sure its hypoallergenic?”
Wasabi rolled his eyes as he threw on his goggles. It was a start.
Fred
For everyone else, Hiro had been basing their super suits on their projects. Fred wasn’t a STEM major, so Hiro ‘s influence was all that of pop culture and literature when it came to Fred. Not that Fred wasn’t going to throw in his own two cents.
“Can you make me a serum that turns me into a monster?” Fred held up a comic to show Hiro.
“Not science.” Hiro felt like he had said for the seventh time in the last ten minutes as he worked on a tablet, sketching away at something.
Fred wasn’t deterred as he grabbed a book. “What about a portal gun that could let me travel across the universe…”
“Not science.”
Fred grabbed another comic. “What if I had fire blasters on my arms?” He showed another comic.
“Not… Wait, no, that’s science.” Hiro grinned into his tablet as he added something to his sketch suddenly. “How about this?” He turned the pad around.
Fred leaned over, stroking his chin as if there was a beard there. Finally, a huge smile overtook his face. “Dude…!”
“I know.” Hiro grinned as he shared a high-five with Fred. “I knew you’d like it.”
“Little man, this is awesome! Like, even worth the punishment if we get caught!” Fred added as Hiro turned, quickly knocking on the wooden end table Tadashi had in the lab. He wasn’t superstitious until it came to anything and everything related to his aunt and her punishment.
"Nothing is worth the Maid's Punishment." Hiro muttered as he shivered just thinking about it.
“But, can it have three eyes?” Fred cut in as Hiro looked around.
“Three? Meh, why not.” Hiro began sketching, earlier scare forgotten like that, as someone walked in the door.
“Why not what?” Tadashi asked as Fred danced around in happiness, hugging his comics to his chest.
“Dude, so worth it!” Fred cheered as Tadashi continued towards the desk to set down some books he had tucked under his arm. Fred had been so excited that, by accident, he’d stubbed his toe.
“OW!” He yelped as Baymax activated.
“Hello, I am Baymax. I was alerted to your distress.” Baymax noted as he toddled forward. Hiro had set down his pad as Fred, jumping around on one foot, nearly rammed into Hiro. “I will scan you. Scan complete.” He noted with a nod of his head. “Fred seems to have a small abrasion of his large toe. You should sit down and rub it.” Fred did as he was told as he jumped up to a counter to sit down.
“Still worth it.” Fred grinned as he rubbed his tow.
Baymax, however, was not done. “Hiro seems to be experiencing decreased levels of chemical release in his nervous system as well as continued release of higher levels of cortisol. As you are an adolescent, these are common in puberty. Treatment includes breaks and naps. In addition to this...”
Hiro just had enough as left the pad at the table, sat down, and face planted into the linoleum floor. “Tadashi, I hate you so much. I hate you, I hate the p-word, I hate your robot who keeps saying the p-word…” Hiro went on, but Tadashi wasn’t listening anymore.
Instead, the elder brother had picked up the pad to look at the sketches. He blinked a few times, sighed in disbelief, set the pad back down, and left the two to their monster-superhero-costume-thingy, injuries, and talks on puberty…
At least Fred finally had someone to geek out over comics and monsters with. Figures it was Tadashi’s kid brother. They were on the same level of overly-excited-ness when it came to all this stuff.
Tadashi
“No.” Tadashi had simply said when he saw what Hiro was working on.
“What?” Hiro looked up far too innocently as he shoved his notes behind his back. He had been sitting at Tadashi’s desk all day working, and Tadashi knew exactly why.
Tadashi threw up an eyebrow as he used his height to simply reach around Hiro. Hiro tried to smack his brother’s hand away, but the other boy was too fast as he snatched up a sheet. On the sketch was a man in all white armor with red stripes. On his chest was a giant red plus with fluffy hands, medication dispensers, and gauze shooters. As far as Tadashi could tell, that was the extent of the offensive capabilities.
“Really?” He flashed the sheet to his brother. “I’m a glorified nurse.”
Hiro chuckled guilty. “Well…. I mean, I was trying to base them on projects…” He glanced over to a corner where the two boys had rolled in some chairs. All about, the others were working on parts for their projects (or the parts Hiro let them work on – he was being overly protective of it all). Wasabi was examining the chest armor for marks, Go Go was tinkering with her disks, Honey was reviewing chemical reactions from a chemistry textbook, and Fred was still bouncing around in excitement at his super suit. Hiro looked back to his brother, who still looked unimpressed. “And, well, you built Baymax, no offense.”
If it wasn’t for the fact that Baymax was deflated after the eighth time in an hour he’d brought up Hiro’s pubescent mood swings, Tadashi was sure the robot would chime in. Granted, it would be that the robot couldn’t take offense, but that wasn’t the point.
Tadashi, on the other hand, could take offense. “I am not playing nurse to this all.” He threw as he set down the paper. “We have Baymax for that.” He nodded his head to the deflated box.
The teen rolled his eyes. “Well, I need some ideas then!” He turned back to the computer where another design stood. Tadashi was sure it was the rough for the nurse costume Hiro had been making. “And you better come up with something fast! You haven’t been around all week to help plan!”
Tadashi rolled his eyes in return to his brother's dramatics. “Hiro, I was here the whole time. Who do you think ran simulations on your gear? Safety testing? Stress testing? We are going to put these things through the ringer, after all.”
Behind him, the team paused in their tinkering. “Wait, Hiro, you did run these designs through safety testing, right?” Honey questioned to the teen.
Hiro’s shoulders hunched. “Ah, well…”
Tadashi, however, looked back to his friends as he leaned against the workbench. “Hiro has a tendency to work things with trial and error. It’s the reason he lost quite a few bot fights at the beginning, not that I’m happy about that to begin with…”
“I quit, ok?” Hiro threw to his elder brother with the stink eye for good measure.
Tadashi continued to his friends. “I did stress testing on Wasabi’s armor, added a recall feature to Go Go’s mag-disks, double checked the casing balls because I found a few that hadn’t set right, and I added an internal AC system to Fred’s suit considering you'll be working with fire.” He smirked as his friends’ and brother looked at the teen in awe. “On top of attending all my classes.” He shot a glance at Hiro, who had been skipping classes this week. In the teen's defense, this was way cooler. “And designing something for Hiro.”
With that, he withdrew a USB drive to plug into the computer. With a few clicks, he brought up a purple and red suit design with added pockets for supplies, mag-gloves and shoes, a helmet with full retinal display and communication system. There were also small boosters in the shoes that could, theoretically, propel a small enough human through the air a good distance using a powerful blast (and Hiro was definitely small enough) for extra jump or short flight. Additional padding protected the major organs and joints.
Hiro examined the design as he realized, true enough, that he hadn’t started on his own suit. “Well… Ah… Why do I need Mag-gloves?” Hiro tried to turn this conversation around. He was a teenager, and if he wanted to be stubborn, it was fine with him.
Tadashi grinned as he tapped at a few things on the screen. “I spotted one of the sketches you made for Baymax. If you’re hijacking my project, I’m going to do the same to you. You’ll need to stick to Baymax to give direction, and this way I know your safe.” Hiro shot him a face. “So, bonehead, questions?”
It wasn’t Hiro who responded but Fred. “Dude, you’re already a super! You’ve thought of everything!”
“Except his own uniform.” Go Go threw as she bit into her gum bubble.
Tadashi’s ego, just like the bubble, was popped as he frowned. “Isn’t it enough that I thought of everything else?” Tadashi threw to his friends.
“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of your earlier point?” Wasabi noted as he went back to shining his armor, looking for any slight weaknesses just in case because, honestly, Hiro hadn’t told him how his lasers were going to be worked in yet. If anything, though, Tadashi would be there to safety-test the gear. He was probably the king of safety, beating out Wasabi by a mile of gauze and Neosporin.
Hiro smirked as he pulled up a blank figure. “Well, if we’re going to be hijacking projects, get over here, nerd.” Tadashi looked over as Hiro brought up his micro-bot design. He’d kept the designs to eventually rework them, but he hadn’t had the chance to do anything with them since getting back. “I can use the servo design to maybe augment your natural strength, and I could add a mental interface, and there could be racing stripes…”
“No racing stripes.” Tadashi rolled his eyes as he leaned over. He pointed to another part. “You’re going to have to reinforce that part, Knucklehead. The stress from the strength enhancers runs the risk of breaking things off if you applied force here and here.”
“Ok, mom.” Hiro rolled his eyes as he subtly took notes. His “sneaky” tactic was foiled, though, as Tadashi could clearly see the notes on the screen.
The others got back to their projects, but Fred was standing there with a random thought…
Wait, couldn’t we just make another transmitter to stop the kabuki guy? Fred wondered before he pictured the battle in his mind. Six college students and a villain standing around as the micro-bots rushed back and forth with no winner.
Fred decided that they should just stick with the current idea.
It was so much cooler anyway.
The team would agree.
…Ok, maybe only Hiro would agree.
The end!
Why do I even try?
Omake 4 (I think? Yeah, let’s go with 4):
Tadashi had a heart attack when he saw Baymax’s boosters falter before shooting Hiro off into the sky. Even though he’d warned Hiro about the calibration period the bonehead had freaking ignored him!
Tadashi flailed around before he grabbed Fred, shaking the boy frantically. They were all on Fred’s expansive and expensive, partially-destroyed veranda in their super-suits, but that didn’t stop Tadashi. “FRED! DO SOMETHING! THIS IS YOUR HOUSE!!!” He freaked as he shook the monster-suited boy too and fro. It was probably good that Fred was in the suit because the force of his enhanced strength might have actually injured Fred.
Fred, as expected, fell over in a dizzy spell when Tadashi let go. Of course, the frantic brother was currently dedicating all of his freak-out to Hiro, so he missed Fred’s fall altogether. “What if he crashes? What if he falls off? What if he crashes AND falls off? What if…”
“TADASHI!” Go Go, Honey, and Wasabi all yelled at the frantic college student. He snapped around at his friends.
“He’ll be fine, women up.” Go Go assured. “He’s smart, and you safety-checked everything.”
“But what if I missed something?!?” Tadashi feared as he pulled off his full-face helmet (he’d insisted full face to protect the neuro-cranial transmitter from damage) as he ran his free hand through his hair. “I mean, what if I missed some design flaw? I should have put in a parachute, but I didn’t know how to compress it enough! I’m such a bad brother…” He bemoaned as the others rolled their eyes.
And people thought Hiro was the drama queen.
“Don’t you still have a tracker on Hiro?” Fred muttered in his still-dizzy state.
Tadashi blinked before taking off for the mansion. Go Go popped her bubble as he ran past, rolling her eyes at the young man. “Brother complex.” She commented as she looked back at her friends.
“Uh, guys?” Honey reached into a hidden pocket of her purse, a normal pocket not filled with chemicals as per her design, as she withdrew a phone. “Tadashi gave this to me to hold when he was testing his suit.”
Wasabi was the first to react as he gently took it from her hands, entering the code Tadashi used (he noticed these things, alright?). The screen flipped open with ease to the home page. He pulled up the tracker as the others, including Fred who had recovered, came to look over at the dot representing Hiro.
It was frantically flying around San Fransokyo as it barely missed building after building. It was additionally terrifying as the dot was running over a 3D plane (how Tadashi had programed that would be a question for another day). Then, at one point, it stopped above the bridge before crashing into the water and leveling out. The whole span of nerve-racking flight took about twenty minutes before the whole thing evened out. Heathcliff, as if written into a story by some crazed fanfiction writer, came out just a few minutes later.
“Master Fred and guests,” the butler noted to the team. The turned to him as he cleared his throat. “Your friend Mr. Hamada is turning the mansion upside down in search of a phone. Might you know which one he is talking about?”
The others shared a look before Fred spoke. “All in favor of NOT telling T-man that the little man just about crashed into every building in downtown, say ‘aye.’”
No one spoke a word to Tadashi as they handed him his phone back another twenty minutes later just in time to see Hiro safely returning.
This is really the end.
Really.
I couldn’t resist.
Special Omake:
Aunt Cass
Aunt Cass had been driving all day. One of her ingredient distributors had an issue getting a necessary ingredients to her that day, so she’d had to get a girl to sub in while she drove around town to get what she needed. She had decided to take the long way around down the shoreline on the way back given that the boys had said something about a sleepover at Fred’s house. She wasn’t too concerned because Fred seemed like a nice enough boy. She just hoped he had enough space for everyone.
She stopped at a stoplight as she looked out her window. The sun was high on the horizon, casting a beautiful glow over the city. She was always awed by the natural beauty San Fransokyo held.
Then, something big and red shot past her car as, through the open window, she heard the scream of a young man fill her ears. Cars came to a halt as all looked over the bay, including Cass, as something that looked like a large metal man flew over the bay. He shot up onto the bridge, landed, only to fall off moments later as Cass held her breath.
When the man took off once more, she let her breath escape as someone honked a horn. In the excitement, she had missed the light change, and it seemed some other commuter could care less. Cass scrambled to get her car into gear as she rolled through the light, eyes darting to where the man had gone. It was a little scary how everyone else seemed so calm about this…
Shouldn’t people be freaking out about metal men falling from the sky?
Maybe I should call the boys, just in case. She thought as she changed direction straight to the café. The two had been upright citizens the last few weeks, and she usually trusted their judgment. Usually.
And, if they disappointed her, if they ran into trouble, if they did anything she dubbed as knucklehead stupid, then there were some dresses with the Hamada boys’ names on them.