A/N: Tadashi is alive, and the movie events with Callaghan being the villain and the fire never happened. However, Hiro did get accepted into SFIT.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Warning!: Language and Bullying
Chapter 1: The Nerd
Hiro's POV
"Hey! Nerd!"
Upon hearing those words, I immediately knew they were directed at me. After all, who else in this school would people have the guts to call "nerd?" Everybody else in the school were all average college students; all big and tall and tough looking. No one would want to pick a fight with them unless they were really ticked off. Me? I'm the scrawny fourteen year old kid with nothing but skin and bones. Easy target.
Most people were on the other end of the campus, near the cafeteria. It's lunch time anyways. And it's just my luck that I am all the way on the other side of campus, near the science labs, the farthest from the cafeteria, by myself.
Why did I have to work on my latest design before lunch? Why didn't I just wait until after school? Mentally, I berated myself. Thing was, I stopped by my lab room after Economics class to continue working on my project a bit more, since I left off in the middle yesterday. I thought I could finish it before lunch, but Tadashi, just before leaving for the cafeteria with the others, came by my lab and had told me that if I wasn't at the food court twenty minutes later, he would personally come back and drag me there and force food down my mouth. You see, I sort of always forget to eat when I'm caught up in a project, so Tadashi would always have to threaten me to get me to eat. But it's definitely been longer than twenty minutes, and I'm pretty sure Tadashi is on his way back here now.
Quickly looking up, I spotted a buff young man coming my way, his face twisted into one of anger. Brown eyes were ablaze and his mouth in a deep frown, his eyebrows scrunched together, his dark hair nicely combed to the side, his red shirt pulled taunt against his skin, showing off his hard muscles. His face was neatly chiseled, proudly displaying his manly details, his hands were balled up into thick fists, ready to punch something.
His name is Danny; I recognize him from my Engineering class. He's the kid who always was confident and bellowed out the answer, even if he wasn't sure. He made straight A's, and was liked by almost all of the professors. He's a sophomore here, and was voted Best Athlete last year, hence the intimidating muscles. He seemed like a nice kid at first, greeting people and respecting the teacher, always polite. However, after two-days in his class, I realized that he was a two-faced jerk. I was walking pass his desk towards the front to hand in my paper, when I overheard him leaning towards a guy next to him, saying on how his friend, Ian, is such an idiot and that he shouldn't even be in this class.
I had looked across the room, and spotted Ian; a lean, black-haired man who was bent over his desk, staring at the paper in confusion and writing down answers slowly. However, his brown eyes were determined. In truth, I think Ian is a really smart guy, he just tends to be a bit slow.
Danny would never talk about professors behind their backs; he would talk about other classmates and his "friends" when they weren't in earshot.
"Hey! Answer me when I talk!" his voice bellowed, echoing through the empty halls.
Danny's voice brought me back to my current situation: trying to avoid getting pummeled. I frantically looked around, looking for an escape. However, my lab workshop was conveniently near the end of the hallway, and Danny was coming at me from the other side. There was an emergency exit a couple of doors down the hall, but that would trigger an alarm. There was nothing that I could do, except to wait for my oncoming fate.
"Uh, h-hey, Danny... w-w-what are you d-doing here?" I asked, my voice quavering a little. I tried swallowing to stabilize my shaking voice. "Shouldn't you be at the café like all the others, eating your weight in food?" I mentally kicked myself when I saw his face getting redder. Why do I have to be a smart mouth?
"Just because you're smart doesn't mean you have to be a smartass," he snarled. "Going and shoving your knowledge everywhere. No one likes a show-off."
My eyes darted here and there, trying to calculate an escape route, as Danny came closer and closer. Glancing around, I saw nor heard anyone coming. Great. I'm alone here. Well, at least no one will hear me scream in pain.
"Yeah, well, no one likes a two-faced jerk," I shot back, immediately regretting it. Danny's face was a nice shade of purple now, and he was only a couple of feet away.
"Even if you're related to Tadashi, that doesn't give you the right to be full of yourself," he said.
Before I could register what was happening, I was shoved up against a wall, Danny's breath was on my face. I quickly kicked at his legs, making him loosen his grip for a bit, and I took that chance to run. Too bad I didn't get very far before I was slammed back into the wall, my head bouncing off the hard drywall, emitting a yelp from me. Danny's hands were gripping so hard that they would most definitely leave bruises on my arms.
I tried to do some self-defense moves that Tadashi had taught me back a few years ago, but a scrawny boy isn't going to do much damage to a muscular man, and I was lying limply on the floor a few seconds later.
Just as Danny raised a fist to punch me, a voice that I knew very well came floating towards us from an adjoining hall.
"Hiro? Hiro? You still here? Come on, bonehead. You need to eat something."
Danny looked panicked for a second before he put on a tough face again. He leaned down towards me and said in a low voice, "If you tell anyone anything, you're going to have a lot more than just a couple of punches thrown at you, buddy-boy." Then he harshly kicked me on the side and then glancing around, ducked into a nearby classroom, the door surprisingly unlocked.
Why didn't I see that door? Would've saved a beating. Or maybe not.
"Hiro, I promised you that if you didn't show up in the café in twenty minutes I would shove food down your mouth for you, and I will." Tadashi rounded the corner, his mouth lifted into one of a small, teasingly smile. However once he saw me on the ground, that smile was wiped off his face and he quickly ran towards me, his eyes brimming with concern.
"What happened? You okay? Why are you on the floor?" He began to spew out answers, kneeling beside me while scanning my body up and down, looking for injuries. "Do you need to go home? Or we can get Baymax to scan you and patch you up. Oh no, wait... Baymax is at home! Dang it, I forgot to bring him here! Darn it. But I'm sure—"
"I'm fine, really," I quickly cut in, pushing myself off the floor. "I just fell, that's all." I quickly glanced at the door leading to the classroom that Danny had ducked into.
Tadashi narrowed his eyes. "You... fell?"
"Uh-huh," I nodded, standing up, trying to hold back a wince as I stood. Guess Danny got my legs too.
My older brother quickly glanced at the floor, then looked at me with a raised eyebrow. "So you fell in an empty hallway with nothing on the floor."
"My shoelace came untied," I lied.
"Your shoelaces are just fine," Tadashi shot back, glancing at my shoes to see them tied properly.
"I tied them back up before you got here."
"You have an ugly bruise just above your left shin."
Quickly looking down, I did see a bruise forming on my leg, just above my shoes and just below my Capri pants. Guess that's why it hurt a bit when I stood up.
"I got that... in my workshop. I wasn't paying attention and accidentally hit my shin against the edge of a table." I answered.
"Really?" Tadashi asked, not believing a single thing I just said.
"Yep."
Before Tadashi could question me further, I quickly grabbed his arm and dragged him along towards the café.
"Come on. I'm hungry. Let's go get something to eat." Glancing back, I still saw the look of doubt in his eyes. "I'm fine, Tadashi. Really, I am. It's just a bruise."
Tadashi's eyes didn't waver.
"I promise I'm fine," I repeated. I rapidly thought of a way to make the situation lighter. An idea came.
"In fact," I stated slowly, catching Tadashi's confused eyes at the tone of my voice, "I bet I can beat you to the café!"
And with that, I took off running down the hallways (even if we weren't suppose to), laughing as Tadashi yelled a "hey!" and I heard his footsteps quicken, catching up to me, both of us sprinting pass doors and classrooms, his baritone laughter echoing along with mine.
"When are you going to do something useful? Huh, Hiro? When?"
"What? Be like you and go to 'nerd school'? No thanks, big brother."
I stared at the ceiling above me, the pale moonlight glow shining on the edge of my bed through the thin gaps between the blinds of the window above. Across the room, I could hear Tadashi's soft snoring and the quiet beep of Baymax's charger charging.
My leg was still a little sore from Danny's beating earlier today, but Tadashi had cleaned it up and applied a Band-Aid on it once we got home. Tadashi had wanted Baymax to scan me to see if I had any other injuries, but I quickly said no and had excused myself from the room. I didn't want anyone to see the bruises on my arms made from Danny's hands or the small bump on my head from when I hit the wall. And I didn't want anyone to see my ribs that were apparently bruised either, even if they did hurt. Maybe I should've put some ice on my head when no one was looking though. I could feel a prominent bump on my head.
It was probably around two in the morning, I guessed. We had school tomorrow, and afterwards Tadashi wanted my help and advice for improving Baymax. But even so, I stayed awake, reflecting on one of the many argued conversations Tadashi and I had had...
That night was the night that I finally got to see the "nerd lab" and Tadashi's friends that he had always talked about. I remember that I had wanted to go back to another bot-fight, and Tadashi had tricked me into letting him take me there.
In the end, I was so fascinated with the experiments and inventions and the fact that Professor Callaghan was also there, I had begged to get in. I created these little robots called micro-bots and had impressed Callaghan enough to get a personal acceptance letter from him.
That was two months ago.
Shifting, I turned to my right side and stared at my dark computer screen, wincing a bit at my ribs.
Even now, I still think the university's classes are easy, but I always looked forward after class, so I could retire to my lab room next to Tadashi's and continue on with my own inventions. I was trying to create a flying suit for Baymax, so that he could help scout for victims overhead, making search and rescue easier with a bird's-eye view and giving victims medial attention sooner. Tadashi doesn't know yet though; I want to surprise him.
Feeling uncomfortable, I adjusted the pillow beneath my head.
Tadashi had always bugged me about college, saying to "expand my horizons" and "use my brains for something useful," instead of going bot-fighting all day and having him save my behind.
I retorted saying that I didn't want to go to "nerd school" and learn stuff that I already knew.
Sighing, I shifted the blankets as I turned to my left side, as to get in a more relaxed position.
Truth was, before I graduated high school, I really actually did want to go to college, especially SFIT. It was the best university of science and engineering... and robotics. In fact, I love school. I was always intrigued with the lessons, even if they were way too easy. You just need to think the right thought to solve the problems. Once I got a hold of that, I passed school with flying colors, skipping grades here and there. And even though SFIT may be teaching me stuff I already knew, I was always looking forward after class to experiment on my own. I finally had a place to my own and enough supplies to experiment by myself.
The reason why I ended up bot-fighting and not going to college was not because I could make good money from bot-fights. It was because I always got teased and picked on by other kids.
Preschool was fine, though I spent most of my time reading a book or doodling figures of robots than socializing. But it didn't matter, because when I was three, my parents died in an auto-wreck, and we had to move school districts to live with Aunt Cass. Tadashi had to leave his friends, while I didn't have any.
Kindergarten was when people started to realize that I was a genius, and, after a month, the teachers encouraged Aunt Cass to let me skip on over to first grade, since I already knew the alphabet and basic math. No one really grasped the concept of addition, but I had learnt it in under five minutes.
First grade really wasn't that bad, my classmates actually looked up to me as a "hero" or something. But even so, during recess and lunch, I would always be alone since my classmates were older than me and had already made their own friends to play with, leaving me by myself. I remember sitting on the edge of the playground, looking towards the fenced-off Kindergarten playground area, my former classmates playing with each other and making new friends.
Second grade was the same, except that the kids would constantly raise an eyebrow when I got picked to do something special, like getting to show the class how to solve a math problem or explain the science behind a class experiment.
Third grade was slightly worse, as the kids would seemingly get annoyed at me for always making high-marks and always having the right answer. They also stopped acknowledging my presence unless it was to glance at me with a hateful expression.
Fourth grade was when it really started to go down hill. The kids would either be completely ignoring me or doing little things to bug me, like calling me "nerd" or sticking out their legs and "accidentally" making me trip. On top of that, everybody who sat near me would constantly look at my test and copy when the teacher wasn't looking.
Back then, I didn't really know what was bullying. Yeah, we were taught to always report to a trusted adult if we ever felt "bullied," but the teachers never taught us what exactly was bullying. So I thought this treatment as nothing and didn't tell anyone.
It was at towards the end of fourth grade, the teacher suggested that I skipped grades again and go on to sixth. By then, I really didn't like my classmates, so I thought that if I skipped grades, I could make new friends. Besides, Tadashi was going to be an eighth grader, so we would be in the same school.
Too bad I didn't realize that it only made it worse. I was not only the smartest kid in the class, I was also the shortest. I finally figured out that the others were jealous of me, and thus didn't like me. Plus, my stature made me an easy target.
That was the year that Tadashi had found out that I was being bullied. He was waiting for me afterschool one day so we could walk home, but it had already been thirty minutes since school let out, and I wasn't there at our meeting spot. That's when he heard some yelling. He followed the noise to the back of the school near the baseball field on the black top to see me being beaten by three of my classmates. He chased them away and then dragged me home and cleaned up my wounds. I was screaming in pain the entire time that he was applying disinfectant. After my mini-tantrum I threw during the time that Tadashi had tortured me with that stinging liquid, I had begged him not to tell Aunt Cass or anyone else. I didn't want anyone to worry. It took awhile, but Tadashi agreed on one condition: I go to him immediately if this ever happens again. Reluctantly, I promised him.
I shifted a bit on my bed.
I hadn't exactly kept that promise very well.
As the years progressed, the bullying gradually became worse. I only went to Tadashi if my injuries were too bad for me to treat on my own. By then, I didn't go to school to learn; my goal was to zip through as fast as I could so I could get out of the torture I had to endure everyday and live my life without having to worry about being shoved into a trashcan or a locker every five minutes. That's why when my teachers asked if I would like to skip ninth and eleventh grade of high school, I quickly agreed.
Hesitantly, I lifted up the edges of the sleeves of my t-shirt that I wore to bed, examining the blue and black bruises I got earlier today, courtesy of Danny. They didn't look too bad. If I kept my sleeves down, no one would see them.
Hearing a shuffling of blankets from the other side of the screen door on Tadashi's side of the room, I stiffened.
"Hiro?" came the groggy voice of my brother. "You okay? You've been tossing and turning for a while now."
"Uh, yeah, I'm fine," I muttered back, mentally kicking myself for forgetting that Tadashi was a fairly light sleeper. "I just couldn't sleep."
"You okay?" Tadashi's voice sounded more awake. I immediately knew he was worried.
"I'm fine, Tadashi. Go back to sleep."
There was a moment of silence of where I could almost sense his mental debate: let it go or keep pressing?
"Really, Tadashi. I'm fine. I promise," I said, trying to convince him.
With that promise, I guess I finally convinced him, since he said, "Okay then. 'Night bonehead." Then there was a rustling of bed sheets and Tadashi's snores filled the room a few minutes later. I let my mouth kick up into a small smile. Tadashi may be a light sleeper, but he was also quickly able to doze off.
Glancing back at the bruises that littered my arm, I let the sleeve drop back down, covering them.
I sighed, turning on my back, trying to relax and drift away to sleep. I mean, today was just bad luck, running into Danny. Right?
Well? Good or horrible? Continue or trash?