Disclaimer: Big Hero 6 is owned by Disney Animation. Hope you enjoy the finale of this series! Spoilers below.

Chapter 7 – Hard Day's Night

"There he is."

"Are you certain you wish to do this, Hiro?"

"No, but we have to."

Their target was right below them, putting his police car into the driveway. After turning it off, the man stepped out of the vehicle, two bags of Yaki Taco in his hands.

"Now, where did I put my phone?" He put the bags on the top of the car and ducked back into the vehicle. "Megan would never let me live it down if I lost it. I always get on her about-"

"Chief Cruz."

The man stopped, slowly raising his head to watch as the red and black armored robot hover down to the ground, the young kid hanging off of his back. Cruz's hand slowly started to travel down his side, aiming for his weapon.

"That is not the recommended course of action."

"Yeah, I wouldn't do that if I were you." The boy in the purple armor held out his glove, the palm starting to glow. "You know what this can do. I can take that out of your hands before you can do anything with it."

It paused, a finger on top of the holster.

"We just want to talk. That's all."

Cruz brought his hand back up, and Hiro exhaled. "If you think you're going to sit here and convince me to change my mind, think again, Big Hero 6. You won't."

"We didn't come here to convince you of anything," Hiro retorted.

"So to threaten me?"

"We did not."

Chief Cruz took his hat off and set it on the hood of the car. "Then what? Seems like a waste of a trip. Shouldn't you be in bed, kid?"

"I can stay up-" Hiro interrupted himself, clearing his throat. He had to put on his superhero voice again. "That's none of your concern, Chief. Justice can be dispensed at any time!"

"...That sounds like something from a comic book."

It was (one of Fred's) but he didn't need to know that. "Look, Chief, despite what you may think, we're on the same side. We both want what's best for this city."

The chief took a couple steps forward, his eyes still on Hiro. "I find it very hard to believe that a group of vigilantes know what is best for this city and not someone who serves on the force."

One more step.

"I came back to San Fransokyo to fix what was wrong with it. Mainly...you. And I intend on doing just that."

Cruz stopped right in front of Baymax, staring him down.

"So don't sit there, son, and tell me what is my concern and what is not."

Hiro did his best to not blink under his intense glare, but the sweat coming from his forehead was making it difficult. He took a deep breath in. "Sir, with all due respect, we appreciate everything you and the police do. But we fight the same enemies. We saved you from Hardlight. We are on the same side."

"Are you, now? What about Globby?"

"Globby had something inside him that caused him to lash out. That's been fixed."

"How convenient. I'm suppose to take your word for it?"

"Yes," Hiro said. "He helped save this city with us last year. He deserves the benefit of the doubt."

"And why do you think the city needed saving to begin with?"

The teen genius narrowed his eyes at the man.

"The police have a file on you. On all of you." Cruz put his hands on his hips. "Every incident. Every charge. Every sighting. It's getting quite large. And once you are brought to justice, you're going to pay for every single one of them. And I doubt you get much of a salary on a vigilante budget."

Hiro still didn't respond.

"I'm not here to be your buddy. I'm not here to strike some form of partnership. I'm here for one reason, and one reason only. And that's to bring this city back to the way it was. And if I have to expose you for who you really are to do that...then so be it."

Cruz crossed his arms and bore his eyes into Hiro. "Do I make myself clear?"

He had prepared himself for this. Megan's dad not listening to reason. He wished he could say he was surprised, but that would be a lie. Oh well, that only meant that he had to go with his second dialogue.

"Crystal."

"Good." Cruz started to walk off, picking up his hat and food. "Now, if you'll excuse me-"

"I have something to say to you."

He turned back toward Hiro and Baymax, his attention piqued.

"In some other universe," Hiro started, "I would agree with you. But we are here to stay, sir. No matter what you do, my friends and I are going to continue to protect this city. You may catch up to us eventually, or you may find out who we are. But that's not going to make the city better. It will make it worse."

He put on his best stare at the police chief. "There are a lot of people in this city that know the good we do and appreciate it. A lot of people on your staff...and also someone under your own roof."

Chief Cruz took the slightest glance behind him at Megan's window.

"And I can tell you care about your daughter and this city. That's good. We could use someone like you on our side. And maybe when this is all over, we can even still be friends. But until then...don't expect us to go out quietly."

Hiro pressed a button on Baymax's back, extending his wings.

"And I hope that's clear to you. Have a good night, sir."

The two rocketed off into the night. Cruz had to keep his hand on his hat so that it wouldn't blow off.

And just like that, they were gone in the sky.

"Hey, Dad!"

Cruz turned to the house, where his daughter had her head out the window. "Hey there, Megan. Up for a late snack?"

"You betcha!" She looked both ways out of the window. "I thought I heard you talking to someone out here. Is everything OK?"

The chief looked up at the sky one more time, the last remnants of the smoke trail floating away. "Yes, honey. Everything's fine..."

"I still can't believe there are people who don't like Big Hero 6!"

"Karmi, keep it down. I'm suppose to be asleep."

"I can't help it! Who was that person you were talking to?"

Hiro put the volume down as low as he could.

"Tell me, Genius Boy!"

Nope. That didn't work.

With the lights off and the clock well past midnight, Hiro was, of course, doing the natural thing: talking to Karmi on his laptop webcam. Her internet still was not the best, but Hiro was able to walk her through the process of strengthening her signal booster. It had made things better, but it could only work for so long. So the two decided to use it only on occasion.

Since said internet was still on the fritz, Karmi appointed Hiro the unofficial caretaker of her fanfiction profile. He had immediately objected, but one death glare from her changed his mind. All he really had to do was chart the traffic numbers and moderate the reviews put on her stories. She could still upload (although that took much longer than before), but for some reason certain parts of the website wouldn't load on her computer. It wasn't much, and it was the least he could do.

Hey, and it also didn't require reading any of her stories more than once. Just because he had started reading them doesn't mean that he couldn't tell when it was overkill.

"So, there's this person..." Hiro tapped a few buttons on the keyboard. "He keeps leaving reviews telling you that Captain Cutie would be better off with some girl who's only been seen around the superhero team for, like, ten, minutes."

"Ugh." Karmi slapped her forehead. "That guy. He was doing it when I first started. Just block him."

"Done."

Successful in distracting her, Hiro looked again at the screen. Karmi was wearing a different colored dress than the one in her picture from yesterday (dark blue instead of purple), but it was just as pretty. She also seemed to have foregone putting her hair in a ponytail entirely, which was a nice change.

"OK, so tell me who it is."

So much for that. "It's the chief of police. He thinks they're vigilantes and wants to arrest them."

"He what!?"

Hiro had to bring his hand up to block Karmi's entire face from view. "Look, I don't know why he thinks that. Don't yell at me."

"Sorry. I've just been on edge since I'm being locked away in my room."

"Huh? You can't leave the house?"

"Sort of." Karmi poked at her signal booster, an extra light bulb turning on. "They think I need to relax, so they clear out of the house for a couple of hours a day so I can have everything to myself. My grandmother doesn't like it; she'd much rather stay here and feed me all day long. She thinks I need to gain weight."

She looked up at him with a smirk. "She wants to meet you, by the way."

"What?" Hiro said, blushing. "How does she know about me?"

"She saw me texting you one day and immediately assumed I was talking to a boy. And then she stole my phone during dinner one night and saw all of the messages you sent me." Her cheeks were now going darker as well. "She...likes your hair."

"Oh."

"She also thinks you need to eat more."

"That makes two of us."

The laptop got thrown into the air as the light turned on. Hiro's eyes launched up to see the source of the noise: Aunt Cass leaning against the wall, her finger on the switch. He stared at her, just as the laptop landed back on his knees, now facing his aunt's direction.

"Hello there, Karmi."

The girl sheepishly waved at her. "Hi, Ms. Cass."

"So..." She walked over to the bed and bent her waist down to look at her. "You're the reason why my nephew has been staying up late at night."

"Guilty."

Aunt Cass smiled at her. "I won't pry too much, but I just want to let you know that we're all thinking about you, and we hope you get better."

"Thank you, Ms. Cass. I appreciate that."

She stood up and looked at Hiro. "Sweetie, I hate to be that person, but it's a school night, and you need to get to bed. I'll give you a few minutes to say goodbye, OK?"

The two of them nodded.

As Aunt Cass walked off, Hiro turned his computer to face Karmi. "Yeah, I didn't realize how late it was."

"My family will probably be back soon, anyway," she said, looking at the door out of frame. "They'll be bringing back lunch."

"Let me guess. Rice, and some sort of meat?"

"Nope. Noodle Burger."

Hiro raised his eyebrow at her.

"Oh, come on. We're not savages over here. We like our junk food just as much as anyone else."

They both shared a chuckle, which was followed by a few moments of silence. It was a comfortable one, and one that he wished he could hang on to. But his eyes were staring to get heavy fighting off the sleep. "I should go to bed."

"Yeah, you should," Karmi said. She must've glanced down at the clock, because she recoiled from the computer. "It's almost one AM where you are, Genius Boy! Are you out of your mind?"

"You mean to tell me you've never stayed up late writing fanfiction?"

"...Not on a school night."

Hiro and Karmi looked at each other for another couple of seconds. This was the hard part for both of them. It was still something they were getting used to.

"Say hello for everyone for me, OK?"

Or maybe it was just him.

"I will."

She moved her finger to the close button of the chat program. "I'll talk to you later. Good-"

"When are you coming back?"

The words slipped out of his mouth before he could stop himself. Karmi slowly lowered her hand, looking up at him. She didn't speak immediately, and Hiro knew that he had gone too far.

"I...I don't know."

Hiro always knew that talking about the events of that night were going to be a touchy subject for her. But his brain thought, in that split second, that she might be able to. Turns out he wasn't right.

"I know what you're thinking. You think I haven't talked to my parents at all about it. I've tried to. Multiple times. The problem is that they either refuse to talk about it or they pretend to not hear me. I love them, but they're so-"

"Stubborn?" Hiro whispered.

"Yeah."

He put his elbows on his legs, resting his head on his hands. "Well, you are their daughter."

Karmi chuckled.

"Karmi, if there's anything that I can do-"

"There's not."

The response was so sudden that it threw his mind off track. Karmi saw the hurt in his eyes and backtracked. "I mean, what you're doing is more than I could ask from anyone. And I want you to keep doing that. But when it comes to my parents, I have to be the one to convince them. Not anyone else. And I think on some level they know that. They know at the end of the day, it's my decision. It's my choice. And they'll support whatever I want to do."

Hiro had one more question to ask. One that he was even more scared to get the answer to.

"You still want to come back to SFIT, right?"

Karmi averted her gaze. Her left hand traveled to the side of her neck, grazing her surgery scar from the bio-chip. The fact that she wasn't answering him was what he was afraid of.

"...Right?"

"Hiro, listen to me. Please."

Karmi leaned into the camera, the light dancing off of her eyes. "I want to come back...when I'm ready to come back. And right now, I'm not ready. I still have...I still have a lot of things I need to work out. Some scars take longer to heal than others."

"She's in jail. She can't get you. I won't let her."

She stared into his eyes even more, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Can you promise me that?"

Hiro's mouth opened and closed several times, trying to find the words. Karmi wasn't having any of it, though. "Hiro, that's very sweet of you, but you can't make that promise. And that's part of the reason why I'm not ready. I can't go back into a situation where everything is the same as before."

"Not everything is the same, though."

Karmi raised her eyebrow at him.

"You have me now."

Now the blush was filling out her cheeks, a smile growing on her face. "Yeah, a scrawny fourteen-year-old. That'll show everyone."

He was laughing now, and the tension was eased a little bit. His mouth continued opening until it went into a full-fledged yawn, and Karmi saw it immediately. "You need to go to bed. I have to go, anyway; I can hear everyone downstairs."

"OK."

"Good night, Hiro."

"Good...night? Morning? Oh wait." He mentally clicked the time zones in his head. "Afternoon? Yeah, afternoon."

Karmi smirked, her finger traveling to the close button again. "Weirdo."

Hiro closed his laptop and put it on his desk. He put his head on the pillow, throwing the sheet over his body. The conversation had been tense at the end, but it finished with the awkwardness that always seemed to make up their talks these days.

"She needs time, Hiro."

He felt Aunt Cass's body sit on the bed. He didn't even care that she had probably been listening to that entire exchange. "I wish I could give her what she needs."

"You are. You're giving her time. Your time. And that means a lot to her. But you're just one person, Hiro. You can't do everything, even though I know you want to."

Hiro shuffled his head on the pillow, not responding.

"Don't remind her of the reason why she left. Give her a reason to come back."

Her lips hit Hiro's cheek, causing them to burn.

"And don't you dare think about running away from home to go visit her. At least buy me a plane ticket too."

Hiro shared a laugh with Aunt Cass, who got up off of the bed. "Good night, Hiro. I love you."

"Love you, too."

He laid in the darkness for a moment to gather his thoughts. He hadn't actually been thinking about flying all the way there, but now that she had mentioned it…

Hiro shook his head. Yeah, that sounded like a terrible idea. Getting bombarded by her extended family and embarrassing Karmi wasn't a good plan. But at least her grandmother would feed him.

He grabbed his phone off of the desk and opened up his pictures. There it was, waiting for him: Karmi lying in her bed, staring up at him. It was the photo he took in secret during their first phone conversation after that night.

The one that she didn't know he took. And the one he had been sleeping with every night since.

"I hope you never find out I have this," he muttered, placing the cell on the bed next to him. "Or else you will murder me."

Hiro put his arm out, resting on the phone. It wasn't her, not by a long shot, but it would have to do.

"Good night, Karmi."

The phone dimmed after a minute, and then went to sleep entirely. And for the first night since she left…

So did he.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: There is something up with Chief Cruz. There's a reason why he hates superheroes, and I'm beginning to suspect it's because he has certain ties to villains. Certain...marital ties. But that's a theory for another day.

A lot of the stories that ended up in this series ended up being part Hiro/Karmi. You may think that's because of the quality of the episodes, but that's not true. I actually enjoyed all of the episodes, including the ones in the second arc. I don't agree with the release schedule and certain other things, but again, that's something I'll touch on in the future.

Continuity, Part 2 is not anywhere near as popular ass the first part, but I don't regret doing it at all. I would like to do a Part 3, pending when the episodes come out. We'll just have to see, though.

Thank you to everyone who read this, or left a comment/review/kudos. It feels good to know that I have support from people no matter what I write.

Speaking of which...we still have two more chapters of Overnight to go. The next one will be up tomorrow. Can't let the awkwardness die, now can we?

Read and review, if you like. Until next time.