Chapter Text
All was quiet in San Fransokyo. Suspiciously quiet even, some might say. There was no news about new villains, despite the fact that Momakase broke out of prison. The average resident, seemingly long accustomed to constant destruction, might have been suspicious of such a day of silence when no one is trying to destroy the city…
Things were a lot easier once you got a little further from the city. Akuma island. The legendary, in a way, place of origin of Big Hero 6 was getting destroyed tonight. Red light seemed to be everywhere.
“Prepare for disintegration,” the voice announced as the siren echoed above their heads and Momakase gave them a smug grin. Catching these so-called heroes turned out to be not that hard at all. Why weren't they dealt with before?
Oh right, she hadn’t had a partner like Obake before. How sometimes it's easy to forget how simple some things become with a decent team…
“That’s my cue,” the villainess drawled almost affectionately, tilting her head for a second, and then threw one of her knives at the door to leave the building and the island before everything here blew up.
Everything was going right according to the plan.
Momakase grinned, “Big Hero 6 is trapped,” she hummed into a walkie-talkie, speeding as far away from the island as possible.
“Perfect.” Obake answered and she could’ve sworn she heard him grinning from here. What a psycho.
“I thought you had plans for the boy?”
Not that she knew too much about these plans, actually. He just mentioned something about it once when they were discussing their plans on Big hero 6 in general. For some reason, she remembered that part.
“If he’s good enough, he’ll survive… though I’d want you to stay not too far away from there for a while. Just in case.”
Momakase raised an eyebrow at the last part, but then just shrugged and stopped the boat, turning at the island. The explosion wouldn’t get her there, so all she had to do now was to wait for… something. Perhaps she’ll even have to go back to the island once the disintegration is over and the heroes get out of there. If they get out in time.
Who knows when these kids run out of their luck.
Meanwhile, Big hero 6 remained trapped in their cage with Karmi. The situation didn’t seem to be too promising. Fred was walking right next to the bars, scratching them with his claws, and they always responded with the unpleasant noise and rare static sparkles while he was trying to think.
Think Fred, think. What was happening right now must’ve had a comic book analog, everything they’ve been through had one, at least somehow similar to their situation. He just needed to remember how it went there and how the heroes got away with it, right?
Fred frowned. “Okay, we’re locked in a super high-tech prison cell made especially to contain us, and the building is about to be disintegrated,” he mumbled as he had finally stopped.
Nothing. Nothing came to his mind.
“But?” Gogo asked, not much hope in her voice. She was almost certain that her friend has just made a stupid awkward face no one could see under his suit hood, and she was completely sure she didn’t like it.
“Oh, there’s no but, I’m just stating the facts here.” He answered and gave a nervous chuckle.
Honey Lemon pulled her own hair in growing panic. “This is not good,” she sighed as Gogo bit her lip.
“Ooh boy, when you say it’s not good… it’s really not good.”
Yup. She didn’t like it at all.
They were locked here and they were running out of time.
“You guys know another way out, right?” Karmi questioned, putting all her hope into her voice, though, not looking too hopeful about it. She didn’t picture it in her head like this. Meeting the heroes face to face, rescuing… not like this. “Right?..”
Has it always been like this to them, on the edge of the blade, seconds away from a disaster? Was all the civilians saw just an illusion of things being under control?
Hiro pursed his lips as he looked at everyone in front of him. He thought of bringing the concept of the so-called Overdrive mode to life and adding it to Baymax’s programming. He has started working on the program for a chip, on the blueprints for the new armor, capable to change according to it.
He just didn’t have enough time, just a little more, to make it work properly.
Think. Think.
What do they need to do to get everyone out, then?
“Chem Girl, I need you to freeze the cell. Red Panda, prepare the rocket fist.”
They work fast and smoothly enough as a team. Honey Lemon freezes the bars with her chem balls. Baymax hits them with his rocket fists until there are first cracks seen. They repeat it several times. It’s not enough to get them out.
“Flamezilla, heat them up! The temperature contrast will make the bars fragile.”
The fire actually makes the cell more fragile. The cycle repeats with Fred’s flames added, then ice, then Baymax’s fists again. Finally one of the bars is damaged enough to break into bits and fall with a loud noise. Several others follow.
That is enough to run.
“Disintegration in one minute.”
They don’t have enough time.
Baymax’s hands are broken, so he can’t carry the others in them and fly them out, and there's not enough space on his back to carry 6 people. Honey Lemon is out of nitrogen to make more ice for a tiny island to get out of here.
The explosion catches them before they manage to think of any way of saving themselves.
No. This won’t do.
Think. Think. Think.
“Plasma cutter, use your blades on the ceiling, let’s see if we can break the system from the outside.”
Wasabi sits on Baymax’s shoulders, trying to cut through the metal with his blades. It’s not protected much, but thick enough on its own to cause problems, to take time they didn’t have.
Shut off due to malfunctioning, the bars easily break under Baymax’s fists and fall into bits after just one punch. Not much to be happy about, they still needed to get out while they were violently running out of time.
Baymax’s hands are whole and so are his fists and battery, and he flies them all, including Karmi, out as soon as they reach the open field. However, the place wasn’t far enough to escape the explosion that reached them in the air.
Think, think, think…
Enough thinking.
Hiro gazed at the opened door and a knife near it. Lightbulb of the idea snapped in his head and the young genius turned to his friends with a glimpse of hope in his eyes.
“Honey Lemon,” screw the identity secret, no time for this, “I need you to tie Baymax’s fist and Gogo’s disk so the length would be enough to reach the knife from here and it would be strong enough to handle the pressure. Something like…”
“Kevlar?” Honey Lemon suggested, already tapping the formula on her purse when he snapped finger at her with a little smile, silently approving the idea.
“Gogo, how precisely can you aim from here?”
Gogo thought about it for a second, then looked at the knife in the wall. Not that the distance and bars position helped normal aiming a lot, but…
“I guess we can use one of your gauntlets and invert the magnets’ power to give it the proper velocity,” she said with a hand on her chin.
“Oh, like with Momakase’s knives back then?”
“Yes, exactly!” Tomago snapped her fingers and took the chem ball from Honey Lemon’s hand to pop it and tie her disk to Baymax’s fist while Hiro was tweaking his gauntlet.
Meanwhile, Karmi was… silently shocked about what was happening. She knew these names, she heard them every day at the university and she couldn’t believe that the heroes she admired so much, were just… a bunch of nerds in real life?
And Hiro was the one calling the shots here? Not the best truth to find out, despite the fact that they all were this close to their death right now.
Hamada placed a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, you better step back now, just in case,” he said, pulling the girl out of her thoughts.
Screw it, she could think about their identities later, once they get out of there.
“Y-yeah, right,” Karmi mumbled as she moved away to watch Hiro and Gogo launch the disk together from the other half of the cell. The disk opened half way through and crashed into the control panel, stretching the kevlar rope between itself and Baymax’s fist pressed into the bars.
“Baymax, rocket fist in the opposite direction!”
The robot turned his fist to the other side, at which the rope creaked as if it was going to break, and shoot at this side of the cell. Sure, it barely scratched the bars, but the panel was successfully ripped out of the wall with an improvised hook so the heroes could drag it to them ang get Momakase’s graphene knife. With it, Hiro finally managed to cut through the cell.
“Disintegration in three minutes,” the voice announced once again as Hiro cut the rope from the fist and the disk and gestured everyone to run.
He had to grab Karmi’s arm this time so she wouldn’t freeze again. What in the world is wrong with her, Hiro thought and ordered Baymax to take her in his hands. He followed the order. That would be easier.
“Wasabi, the fence!” The young genius exclaimed, hoping they still had at least some time. “Honey Lemon, we need ice! We can’t fly until disintegration is over.”
They only had around 20 seconds left, according to his calculations. The fence has been successfully cut, letting them out, and there was an ice platform set under the cliff and everyone slided to it until there was only Hiro left on the ground.
“Everyone out?” He asked as he pushed Karmi onto the ice. Five seconds. Four…
“Everyone! Hiro, quick!”
Three, two…
He didn’t make it. He was almost there, but he slipped and right at the same moment the disintegration device worked. The explosion and the mild earthquake caused by it cracked the ice and shook their part of the platform, which made Honey Lemon and the others fall, not letting them help Hiro get out from the island.
“NO!”
The next thing the heroes and Karmi saw was the cliff above them was covered in mud and wreckage, and then their ice platform was dragged into the sea with the shockwave.
And no sign of Hiro.
There was a thud behind the heroes’ backs, that was Karmi falling on her knees, feeling she was two steps away from a meltdown.
This just couldn’t be happening. Couldn’t. Hiro or not, this idiot or her hero, it didn’t matter, he should have gotten out from the island with the others, he should have!
“Come on Hiro,” the girl whispered with a fainting hope in her voice as she covered her face with her hand. “Come on, show yourself…”
“Shut up," Gogo hissed at her, balling her hands into fists. Damn it, of all the things that could have happened, after all they'd been through together... “Just... just shut up, Karmi.”
Her voice cracked. Her hands were trembling. She was trembling with her whole body, gazing in boiling rage toward the island, where the fire in the ruins of the lab was burning faintly. Little by little, the others were coming out of their stupor, too, realizing what had just happened.
“Baymax, scan for Hiro,” Gogo commanded, trying to keep calm as hard as she could. Not that it looked too convincing.
Baymax scanned the island. And then did it again. And again. And again, before he answered:
“I cannot detect Hiro Hamada. Perhaps, the island’s destruction—”
“Then we’re going back to the island to search for him! Now! And you,” the hero whipped her head at Karmi and gave her a gaze the girl instinctively flinched at, holding a scared squeak. “Damn it, you better pray he’s fine or I will bury you there myself. Fred, call Heathcliff, don’t wait for us two. Keep Karmi close for now, we’ll figure out what to do with her once we find Hiro,” she added in a calmer tone, jumping on the robot’s back. No time for hysterics, it won’t help her.
“Baymax, head back to Akuma,” she commanded and Baymax left the ice island, leaving the three heroes and Karmi to wait for Heathcliff to get them.
What the heroes didn’t know is that at the same time there was another person on the island with the same purpose as Gogo.
“Could you remind me why I am doing this?”
In fact, she already knew the answer. That ‘you can thank me later’ didn’t sound too good from the very beginning. Knowing the question didn’t actually need to be answered, Obake only gave a chuckle, waiting if there would be anything found.
“If I see a dead body, I’m officially out of this,” Momakase said into her walkie-talkie, hopping off the motorboat and throwing a life vest in it. Not that wearing it was too comfortable… but who knew what could’ve been if she somehow didn’t get out before the explosion, too. Some precautions couldn’t be too much.
“I’m almost certain that if there really is someone left, they survived it. At least, if they all managed to get far enough from the explosion center.”
The villain rolled her eyes at this, but went further on the island, grimacing several times as she saw the lab’s and tech parts wrecked and half-buried in the ground.
Several minutes later she reached the place from where, if she was right, the heroes must have run from. Not a trace of blood, nothing. If there was someone trapped from Big Hero 6 and not that girl, they’d have a chance to get out even from the wreckage.
So, not there. Momakase raised an eyebrow as she walked further, carefully examining every foot around her until she saw melting pieces of ice mixed with dirt.
And then, from behind a piece of artificial iceberg that had crashed into the cliff, there was a barely audible creaking sound, like a muffled cry or a painful groan.
“Looks like I’ve found someone,” the woman drawled, not willing to make sure Obake heard her. She took a knife in her free hand and took several steps closer, flinching a little when she saw some blood on the ice.
Oh, was Momakase surprised when she saw none other than Hiro behind the iceberg piece, still alive, but…
“Huh. I’ve found your favorite Big Hero 6 member,” she said as she got even closer, now looking at the young genius not further than from several feet. “Though he is, let’s say… disarmed.”
There wasn’t an answer from the other villain for a while. It seemed like he didn’t expect something like that to happen. Not from Hiro, at least.
Disappointing. Momakase could hear disappointment in his sigh clearly when the man decided to give the answer.
“Stop the bleeding, if any, and bring him to me. We'll figure out what to do with him... but it's better than leaving him here anyways.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just leave it for the heroes? Pretty sure they will come back for him… sooner or later.”
“By the time they finally show up, it might be too late. Bring him.”
“Tsk… whatever you say.”
After shaking Hiro a couple of times and making sure that the child was unconscious, she carefully took him in her arms and carried him to the boat, where the first aid kit was. The boy was surprisingly light, even for a fourteen-year-old in armor, and for some unknown reason it gave Momakase a pang of conscience when he was placed in the boat.
The fact that Obake was probably right that the heroes would show up rather too late to successfully rescue their own friend didn't give her any positive feelings either as she worked on stopping his bleeding.
Three hours later, when midnight came and the city finally began to slowly quiet down in most areas, Gogo came back to the Frederickson manor with barely anything. All she managed to find in dirt and ice was his broken helmet and a puddle of blood. In other words, nothing too good or telling that Hiro was alive.
None of them was sleeping, and yet none of them paid much attention to the sound of the opening door. Karmi was sitting on the floor, her arms wrapped around her knees, and looking at the wall in front of her. Honey, Fred and Wasabi, already without their armor, were quietly talking about something at the other end of the room. Only Heathcliff gave her and Baymax a nod as he walked by when they showed up in the room, and her face expressed so much pain and shock that nobody even tried asking how it went.
“Congratulations, he really is gone,” she said in emotionless tone as she crashed on the sofa and placed the helmet on her knees not too far from Karmi. The latter flinched and gave her a terrified glance, not feeling brave enough to say a word, although she had so many questions right now and the most important of them was… why?
Why Hiro? Why him, out of all the people here? This just couldn’t be happening for real.
“So… what now?” Honey Lemon asked carefully, as she walked closer to the young woman and she gave Karmi a meaningful gaze after thinking for a while.
“Well first, she can’t stay at the university. Or in San Fransokyo in general. Obake already used her to lure us into a trap once and now Hiro is gone, and who knows whose life it might cost us next time,” Gogo said harshly, keeping a cold gaze on the biotech student. Former biotech student, they could say. She wouldn’t dare disobey after everything she’s seen and experienced today. “And of course, for everyone else including Karmi two people died there, Hiro and the Big Hero 6 leader who tried to save the civilians before the explosion. We don’t know for sure why exactly Momakase kidnapped specifically these two, but we assume that the villains wanted to use them for their brains and the kidnapping to the Akuma island was meant to be a distraction to lock us in the lab that’s about to blow up and deliver them to where she needed them to have. However things didn’t go as Momakase planned and Hiro and Karmi ended up being locked with us, so she had to leave the island with nothing and we, on the other hand, needed to save not only ourselves, but them too, which gave us some complications. Karmi, deeply traumatized with the events of this night, and especially losing her friend and almost seeing it with her own eyes, decides to leave the university and the city not to remind herself about it more than needed and to keep herself from the danger living in San Fransokyo holds. Does it sound credible?”
Everyone watched in shock as Gogo said all of this in a completely calm tone, never stopping to look into Karmi's eyes for a second and not reacting to the fact that tears were slowly gathering in her eyes. Oh, she hadn't even done anything to her, though her desire to hit the girl several times during the evening almost outweighed her common sense and reason.
“You’ve got one week,” she added in a suddenly much colder tone, and she couldn’t hold back a violent grin as she saw the first tear run down Karmi’s cheek. “And you better not run into me after that.”
“Gogo, that’s too much,” Wasabi tried to interject, but only squeaked, frightened and didn't dare contradict her gaze again. Everyone knew that to defy Gogo now would be a fatal mistake for anyone while she was like this. Perhaps, just perhaps, she could still be reasoned with later, when her anger and bitterness had cooled somewhat.
But not now.
“You should really go back to your dorm now, Karmi,” Honey Lemon said quietly as she put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. Karmi sobbed and nodded to her, putting her last energy not to let herself cry in front of everyone else. THe both left the room, flinching under Gogo’s stare, but no one said any more words.
They all needed to at least process everything that has happened today.
“How did you know I would have to get the boy from the island?”
Momakase crossed her arms, looking at her employer. Hiro had been dealt with by that time and was already in a separate room with his wounds treated properly while Obake was waiting for him to wake up. It was hard to predict now how the boy would act when he did, and losing a whole arm sure was a pity, but at least he was alive.
“I didn’t,” the man simply shrugged, grumbling about something in his calculations. “I just assumed Hiro’s heroism could cost him much more than his friends. And as you see, I was right and we managed to get him before Big Hero 6 found him dead from bleeding out or freezing. After all, you said you’ve found him in the ice.”
“So what do we do now?” the villainess questioned, taking a step closer. Obake hummed thoughtfully at this, folding his arms in front of him.
Not that they had many options right now.
“Now we wait until he wakes up and see how it goes after that.”
Momakase gave him a nod and left the lab, thinking about their little dialogue. She didn’t know what waited for them with this kid when he would wake up, no one knew. But what she did know is that it was going to be… an interesting experience.
Who knows what it will give them in the end. Time will tell.