He kept them low to the ground, dodging between rust-colored boulders and tall cactus reaching their needle-wrapped paws up toward the sky. He could feel the heat of the sun even through his armor, sweat slowly soaking into his clothes. He expected a red and gold bot to come barrelling down at them at any moment, but whatever Baymax had done while he was falling seemed to have dissuaded it for now.

His mind seemed to hum in desperation as Baymax guided them safely through the tight swoops, discarding plans as soon as he could make them. This wasn't his world, and he wanted to go back. Wanted to see his friends again. The robot's soothing voice filtered into his helmet, telling him about the bruise forming on his shoulders, and the strain put on his neck from whiplash. The deep, aching bruise on his shoulder, still healing from his fight with Callaghan. Nothing serious.

A small part of him whispered that he wouldn't be in this situation if he'd just left Abigail behind - if he hadn't thrown himself into a collapsing portal to save someone he couldn't even know was still there - or still alive.

Or…

What if she'd gotten through to the other side? If she was in this world, too?

Hiro licked dry lips, realizing he'd never recognize her, even if he did stumble across her. She'd been gone for years. He saw a video of her, once. There was no way.

Ahead, a small town blipped into existence on Baymax's scanners,

The bot's sweep caught a dozen wifi signals, and it was easy for Baymax to find one with a weak enough password to crack with automatic attempts. Hiro quietly asked him to search for more information on that bot that had attacked them, and on…. That eagle symbol some of the people had been wearing.

Hiro would have asked for more, but Baymax was slowing his flight without prompting, and he realized the bright armor below him was trembling alarmingly. The battery was lower than he'd anticipated, sucked away by the flight and his internal fans trying to keep an inflated exterior firm enough to support the shell.

He was an idiot, they should have walked.

Already feeling miserable berating himself, Hiro hopped off onto stone and scraggly yellow grass, turning his options over in his head. Those people in the vans would probably try to find him again. He wasn't entirely sure how they had initially tracked him, but it seemed like a good idea to lay low for now.

Still, that decision meant-

Hiro exhaled slowly, trying to stay calm as he pulled off his helmet, fingers trembling slightly as they unlatched the rest of his armor. The carbon-fiber composite bounced a little as it fell upon the stone, and a dry breeze felt fantastic on the sweat-soaked spot on his lower back.

"Alright, buddy. Armoring down."

Baymax obeyed without questioning, the two of them carefully pulling red and purple pieces away from the white body. Curious black eyes stared back at him from the round face, head tilted slightly in question.

He didn't think he'd ever get over how much emotional nuance Tadashi had programmed into the bot's AI.

Hiro gave him a wane smile, reaching up to accept the helmet as it was handed to him. He moved everything to a rocky outcropping, wedging the bright armor out of sight.

"I want to preserve your battery life as much as possible." He explained, crouching down to gather up some sand, tossing it over the glossy plates to dull it a bit - maybe hide it from distant prying eyes. "So, I'm going to run into town and try to find a...backpack, or a suitcase or something. To carry you in. Not the best of plans-" Hiro forced a laugh, ruffling the back of his hair as he turned around to face his companion. "But it's really all I've got."

Baymax tilted his head the other way, blinking as he processing the words.

"If I go into hibernation, I will not be able to protect you."

"I know. I just… we've gotta get back home. To our real home. I need you for that, but I don't have the supplies to keep you charged right now."

"If you require assistance, please say 'ouch'"

His smile became a little more real.

"Yeah, I will." He took a breath, steeling himself. "I am satisfied with my care."

Baymax waddled to the armor, carbon skeleton compressing, elbows tucked in, fans reversing the suck the vinyl exterior close. He condensed down to a cube just shorter than Hiro's knees, the closed eyes and a familiar beep-hum letting him know the bot had put himself into hibernation.

"Alright, buddy." He brushed off his hands, not wanting to risk getting sand into his actuators.

"I'll be right back."

Hiro took a small step backward, before getting the nerve to tear his eyes away from the huddled down form and focus instead on the town in front of him.

"Alright.' he repeated to himself, the first few steps away almost agonizingly difficult. It became easier, the further he got, goal solidified in his mind. Backpack or Suitcase. Something to carry Baymax. Sturdy..

The slope wasn't terrible, and he found plenty of footholds in the rocks and sand as he descended toward the town. It was already obvious he'd be getting a wicked sunburn on the back of his neck.

If pressed, Hiro would readily admit he hadn't traveled outside San Fransokyo very much. Maybe a field trip or two, but the sprawling city had so much to offer, and his Aunt was so busy with the cafe, they'd never felt the urge.

So if he were honest, he wasn't sure if this level of technology outside a major hub was normal, or if it was due to the alternate world thing. They were in a desert and there wasn't a solar panel in sight. Criminal.

No, really. They'd made solar and wind power a legal necessity decades ago - Wind koi and transparent solar arrays replacing windows had become commonplace. To have an empty sky above him, it still seemed…

Hiro adjusted his sweatshirt, ducking into what looked like a military overstock store, offering the man at the desk an innocent smile as air conditioning washed over him in a delicious snap of cold. He scoped the place out, examining windows and exits as he browsed the shelves, absently flipping a price tag in his palm. His brain stalled for a moment, before he recognized the symbol as a dollar sign, though he couldn't even begin to try converting it to yen.

The man at the counter stayed in his place, and the floor layout had too much open space by the front door to even think of smuggling something out of sight. He sighed, waving to the man again as he stepped back out into the midday heat.

Another store, another disappointment.

He slunk into a tiny pawn shop, desperate enough to get a bag that he was willing to actually obtain money in a somewhat legal fashion. Hiro swept his eyes over the offerings, heart already sinking. The likelihood he'd find anything worth repairing was starting to look unlikely. Still, he trudged through the shelves, prodding at cracked electronics and TV's that looked older than he was. When did they stop making them with actual cathode ray tubes?

"Look, you don't need an ipod, just something that can hold MP3s. I'd take one of those shitty sasmsung things, a flash drive, a Floppy disk! Well, actually, no, not floppys, I don't think my computer can even read those."

Hero glanced toward the woman at the counter, and the… whatever that was, in her hand. It looked a bit like a phone. He put down the dusty keyboard he'd been examining, drifting a bit closer. He couldn't understand a word of what she was saying, but he could read the irritation in her voice, and the way she gestured to its black screen.

"Look, darling-" The pawn shop's owner rasped through a cigarette-ravaged throat, wrinkles casting her expression into a much fiercer scowl than she probably intended. "I know you want your music, but I just don't have anything in right now. There's a Best Buy in Phoenix-"

The woman groaned, rocking back on her heels and looking up at the ceiling.

"I can't drive all the way to Phoenix, I've got stuff to do!"

"Um-" The two jumped a little at his voice, turning in sync to stare at him in surprise. Hiro let himself shrink back behind the display of sun-bleached rotary phones and boxy computer screens, playing up his appearance a bit.

"Do you speak japanese?"

The old woman squinted at him, but the younger one lit up.

"Hello!" She chirped. "lost?"

"N-no, not lost. Sorry for evesdropping, but what's wrong with it?"

The woman gave him another long, blank stare, cheerful smile fading into something a bit more strained.

"Sorry. Do you speak english? I don't understand." Hiro licked his dry lips, realization dawning that her accent wasn't just an accent - she probably didn't know much of the language.

"Your…" he made a gesture with his hand to mimic the grip she had on her little device. She looked down at it, and waved it.

"Ipod."

"Ipod." Hiro echoed the word, voice cut off as she suddenly started talking to him instead of the shopkeep. He peeked out a bit further, mentally rolling his eyes at the shy persona, but knowing women tended to soften up faster when someone his age seemed more childish.

"It won't charge. It went through shady government confiscation, and two years on the road, and now it won't freaking charge for no freaking reason. I have like, six hundred hours on there. I haven't even backed it up in months."

He held his hand out, amused at the exasperated, wary look she gave him as she pulled a knotted up charger from her back pocket..

"I swear to god if you run off with it, I'm going to be so pissed at you, and myself for trusting some random foreign kid. I will hunt you down. Where's your parents, anyway?"

Hiro took the device, and accepted the charger in his other hand, trying to ignore the sharp glare drilling into the top of his head. He plugged it in and, predictably, nothing happened. Well, almost nothing.

He leaned his ear in close, wiggling the cord to hear a faint click-click-click. Oh! Well, that was easy enough to fix, if it was what he thought it was.

"Do you have a…" Crap, language barrier. He mimed a soldering gun, and jumped a little as a notebook and pen was shoved in his face. Well, that would work, too. He skipped trying to write, instead deciding to draw a little soldering gun with smoke around the tip, next to her device.

The woman stared blankly at the paper for a moment longer, before straightning and turning so fast her dark hair whipped up and over her shoulder.

"For the love of god please tell me you have a soldering gun."

The old woman waved her hand toward a shelf behind Hiro, and he found it nestled between some sort of red, fuzzy monstrosity of a robot, and a gyroscope with one of the rings missing.

It took some trial and error to get the screen off, but the gleam of circuitry and resistors called to him. The port on the top told him it was a music player of some sort - he could see her headphones tucked into her shirt collar. The port on the bottom had come loose - probably from the charger being jammed into it too rough for too long.

The old woman seemed content to ignore the two of them, leaning back to work on a crossword puzzle in an old newspaper. The younger one, however, hovered over him, watching his every move with her lips held between her teeth like she was afraid she'd blurt something out and mess him up.

A tiny application of heat to the old solder, a careful press, and an even more careful maneuvering with dexterous fingers let him plug the screen back in, line it up, and gently pop the connectors back together. He blew into the charging port, just to make sure it was cool, before plugging the charger in.

For a heart-stopping moment, he thought he'd misjudged the problem.

Then, the screen lit up with an empty battery symbol, and the woman behind him wooped in delight. He yelped when she scooped him up into a hug, feet lifting off the floor for a moment.

"Oh my god, thank you so much. You are a LIFE saver!" She unplugged everything, shoving it back into her pockets. "Friggin amazing, thank you. Here, I gotta thank you somehow - let me grab you something to eat. I hope you don't think I'm kidnapping you, I swear I'm not a creep or anything. JAAAAAAAAANE!"

Hiro let himself be pulled along, wondering if he'd be able to ask her for payment without sounding like a scam artist. He regarded the roadside trailer with no small amount of suspicion, but the yelled word prompted a brunette to poke her head out, clearly irritated.

They exchanged some words, but Hiro was a bit distracted by the mess of technology perched over their heads. Was that a Spectrograph? He tilted his head, trying to get another angle. No, seriously, it looked like a spectrograph. Like someone had taken Baymax's voice processing array and made it… huge and old-looking. Hiro held in his laugh, real interest buoying him up at the idea of talking to someone who actually knew technology.

Except- No, he still needed to get back to Baymax before something happened.

"Oh my god you kidnapped someone."

"I did not! He fixed my ipod in like, a second! I wanted to give him a snack as thanks, since he doesn't understand English. Speaks Japanese, though. I really need to brush up on it-"

"You actually kidnapped a kid."

"I just said-"

"Darcy, put him back."

"Hello?"

The two of them stopped their argument, and the woman let him tug his wrist out of her hand. She lifted a finger, and pushed into the the trailer. The older brunette grumbled, but stepped down out of the trailer, pulling out what looked like a phone.

She turned the screen to face him, words appearing on both sides of a line - Oh! A translation!

I'm really sorry about this, we will allow you to get home.

He cracked a small smile, and gently took the phone to type in his response.

It's fine. I fixed her thing.

He paused after showing it to the woman, and continuing to type without giving her a chance to respond.

My bag broke, and I want to afford a new one. Do you have an extra bag, or a job I could do? I can fix a lot of things.

She took the phone from him when offered, reading over the request and giving him a questioning look.

where are your parents?

He folded his arms, frowning. He could lie, but… No, she'd already read into his expression.

How old are you?

Well, shoot. So much for this plan.

He took a step back, planning to just run off and find another way around this - maybe he could find a place to gamble, but a hand fell on his shoulder. The woman typed furiously, as furiously as one could type while prodding a screen with one finger.

If you don't have a place to stay, I have a couch open.

He gave her a considering look, calculating the odds that she'd just call whatever the equivalent of Child Safety Services was here, or the police. His logic told him that was a very high chance, but the exhaustion and ache of his muscles told him to accept a good deal when it presented itself.

I'll make dinner.

Welp, that solved it.

He gestured for the phone back, and prodded out

I'll be back tonight. I've gotta get some stuff.

She let him scamper off, jogging into the brush to circle back toward the nook he left Baymax in. If anything, a lady who kept a Spectrometer on her roof probably had the tech to make another charging port - Maybe even some adhesive to close the punctures in his vinyl. Baymax could act as a translator again.

Plus, he didn't have to worry about snakes or scorpions crawling into his pants while he slept.

Yeah, a couch sounded awesome.

A/N:

I know, I know, I'm retconning what I wrote earlier in the story, but I've hammered out some details of where I want this story to go, so it needs to be set between Avengers and Thor: The Dark World. So Hiro would be heading to New York, only knowing about that portal, and Jane/Darcy wouldn't have been summoned to London yet. Still doing Astrophysicist stuff in the desert.