Author's Notes: I strongly felt the need to write something silly and light for this fandom after my last fic. ^^

Small Problems - Chapter 1

It was only kind of a shrink ray.

It wouldn't touch living things – so no tiny zoo animals or minimizing classmates as pranks. Hiro'd built that exception in early on when Wasabi, looking equal parts fascinated and horrified, had peered over Hiro's shoulder and asked how he planned to mitigate the damage in the event of an uneven reduction rate.

Hiro, who'd been about five minutes from performing the first test run on himself, had thought about the possibility of, say, his lungs shrinking at a faster rate than the rest of him. He'd grinned a gap-toothed grin and waved an unconcerned hand, and said, "Don't worry so much. It'll only work on inorganic material."

Then he'd spent the next week and a half coding to make it true.

Still, exceptions aside, it was a pretty sweet piece of tech – exactly the sort of thing Fred would lose his mind over, when he got it for his birthday. It might not have been science the night they met, nearly two years ago, but that was the beauty of science. It was always pushing boundaries, if you had the brains to know where to push – and Hiro loved finding the spots no one had ever pressed on before.

So here he was, sitting on a cutting-edge technology that the world's biggest sci-fi fanboy would go crazy for. He'd even managed to keep it secret – no small feat, with Fred in and out of their workshops at odd hours, on the lookout for new inventions. It had taken a rotating placement in a disused storage closet, the back of Gogo's spare parts drawer, and behind smoked glass in Honey Lemon's DO NOT TOUCH – MAY CAUSE SERIOUS BURNS shelf, but they'd done it in the end.

Six days left till the party, and all Hiro had left to do was find a gift bag for the thing. He might even have time to help Honey Lemon put the decorations together like she'd been asking.

Hiro laced his fingers together and pushed his arms out in front of him – let the long stretch work out the tension from the hours he'd spent perched in the workshop, hunched over his newest bright idea.

He kicked out the chair and stood, already reaching for his phone – tapped in a text that read "Project: Good Things Come complete." He'd just hit send when he heard the sound behind him. It was a soft, rubbery sort of squeak, like Baymax was down the hall, waddling closer.

Nothing appeared in the doorway, though – not like Hiro was expecting it. Baymax should have been powered down, recharging after the late night they'd pulled stopping the bank heist on Hamakiri Street.

Still, the sound persisted – and Hiro frowned, starting for the hallway to see if someone'd accidentally activated the carebot with a stubbed toe or a papercut.

There was no Baymax, just as he'd expected – only Professor Ido, on the way back from class with a stack of papers tucked under one arm.

"Losing it," Hiro muttered, and shook his head. "One too many all-nighters."

He circled back around to his desk – snagged his backpack and his phone. He'd go pick up the shrink ray from the storage closet and head home for some shut-eye, and tomorrow he'd see about that gift bag.

He took all of three steps before Baymax's voice stopped him.

"Hiro," said the carebot, very quietly, seemingly out of thin air. "You have grown."

Hiro glanced toward the doorway again – came up empty. Then his eyes raked the room over, searching for the source.

He found it where he never would have expected it.

"Oh," Hiro said, distantly.

Because there at the base of his chair, Baymax stood round and white, no larger than a baseball.