Dedicated to the Santoso family. Rest in peace.
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Hiro is dead, and Tadashi stares at the paper wall. He keeps the divider between their rooms closed.
His phone keeps ringing. His friends are worried. Tadashi says, I'm fine, and repeats it, like a broken record. His mind seems like a broken record too, playing the explosion and crackling of fire over and over. Sometimes, he hears a screech of brakes and smash of glass from an older memory. Underneath both sounds, he hears the scream that lodges in his throat.
Everything seems so unreal. His parents gone. Hiro gone. Why is he even still here, like the sole survivor of a malevolent deity's sick joke?
Baymax activates when Tadashi's left wrist is covered in blood and the fingers of his right hand are sliced to ribbons from the blade he is clenching too tightly. Tadashi sits back in a daze, lets Baymax treat him while he stares at the wall. He doesn't remember getting the knife.
Eventually, he remembers bits and pieces. Cold steel parting his skin and watching in blank fascination as red ran down his arm. Hazy memories, where he feels like a detached observer rather than the perpetrator. He remembers thinking vaguely, blood means pain this should hurt what do people do when they're hurt. He remembers saying a flat, half-hearted "Ow." The hiss-whoosh of Baymax's inflatable body.
"Are you satisfied with your care?" Baymax asks, programmed voice warm and free of judgement.
"No." Tadashi tries to say, and he gets the impression that he hasn't spoken in a long time. He clears his throat and tries for a voice that doesn't crack like sandpaper.
"On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain?"
Eleven. When Tadashi doesn't answer, Baymax scans him again.
"My scanners do not pick up any additional injuries. Your cortisol levels, however, are high. This indicates that you are experiencing depression or stress. Would you like a hug?"
Tadashi stares at him because he does not remember programming Baymax to hug, but then, he doesn't remember a lot of things. He nods hesitantly, and is immediately swallowed by the robot's warm marshmallow body.
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Hiro was exceptional, a true genius. Tadashi isn't as brilliant as Hiro, but he is smarter than the robot-builders in the slums. He dominates the ring easily.
It isn't enough, and he has Yama teach him how to run the underground ring, and then he takes Yama's place as head.
He likes to think he doesn't see fear in the players' eyes. These people are from the slums, most are hardened criminals - he is a run of the mill college student. (At least, he thinks he is. He likes to think he hasn't changed too much from the brother Hiro loved.) They couldn't possibly fear him.
He's become good at lying now, even to himself.
(There are the unbelievable lies that even self-deception can't cover.
- Hiro never went to the fair, stayed in the stupid robot ring, is alive somewhere in the slums.
Didn't die, is alive in a coma in San Fransokyo Hospital as a John Doe -
Tadashi can't quite let go of these lies. But he doesn't believe them either.)
He still doesn't dare look in the mirror. Those dead eyes don't belong to Hiro's brother.
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The man wears a kabuki mask, white lined with red. Tadashi has Japanese roots, and he remembers bits and pieces of its culture - the red patterns symbolize demonic anger, stubbornness and cruelty.
It looks ridiculous offstage, but the surge of black it controls is terrifying.
Gogo swerves and the car is flung into the river where water fills their lungs and, for a split second, Tadashi's mind races as he thinks I'm going to die
I'm going to die - with Honey Gogo Wasabi and Fred and it's because of -
-because of the person who stole Hiro's robots - probably also killed Hiro -
Tadashi's ancestry contains legends of demons and beasts. There are tales of deals and trades, and he thinks viciously that if he dies, he will sign his name on every contract to go after this man, this murderer who took the lives of his brother and his friends and his.
Then Baymax inflates and drags them all to the surface.
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Fred talks about heroes and villains. They turn themselves into colorful superheroes, creating advanced suits that Callaghan would have been proud of.
Tadashi equips his with thrusters. It seems mundane, but his friends accept it.
He doesn't tell them about the retractable blades hidden in the suit.
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He knocks the mask off and sees his teacher, twisted to an alien face full of anger. Tadashi has never felt so betrayed.
He slides a katana out of the suit's wrist.
And everything becomes a blur, but Gogo is suddenly there, holding his arm back and screaming something desperate about how no one signed up to kill -
"Then stay back and let me do it," Tadashi snarls and pushes her off, but now Wasabi is also restraining him and Honey shoots something at his sword. It breaks in two with a muffled clang.
In the commotion, Callaghan, bleeding badly, scrambles for the mask and runs.
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"You've done some serious coding on this thing, huh?"
Hiro's voice is loud in the silent room and Hiro's face is frozen on Baymax's chest, examining the camera but looking like he is examining Tadashi.
And Baymax asks, "Is this what Hiro would have wanted?"
Hiro was rash. Young. Young enough to be belligerent, young enough to still believe in strong morals. Too young. Would he have wanted this if he were older, if he knew more of the world's corruptness?
"I don't know," Tadashi says finally. "And I'll never get the chance to ask. Because of that - it's what I want."
Baymax is programmed to be sympathetic and helpful, but a robot does not have free will or the emotions to use it with, and he does not protest when Tadashi pulls out the green chip and replaces it with a newly made kill code.
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Callaghan is insane, insane but brilliant, and he manages to build a new portal and intends to toss Krei into it.
Tadashi clenches his fists, and wonders how someone so smart could be so stupid. Callaghan was blinded by rage and would kill the citizens of San Fransokyo if the portal malfunctioned. The microbots were unnecessary - Callaghan could have made his students make the portal and claim it was a new project. The portal itself was unnecessary - Krei was one person, he could have been killed any other way.
His friends annihilate the microbots. Tadashi can't help but be impressed, and a warm feeling spreads in his chest at the show of camaraderie. But Tadashi also can't help but be disappointed, since those are Hiro's designs they are destroying.
Baymax is about to obey Tadashi's orders and eliminate Callaghan, when his sensors pick up signs of life inside the portal. His friends are too far away, and only he and Callaghan hear Baymax's assessment. It is when Callaghan looks up at the portal with eyes full of hope - hope that Tadashi didn't have when Hiro's remains were found - that Tadashi realizes it could be - likely is - Callaghan's daughter. Partly out of pragmatism, but mostly out of spite, Tadashi tells Baymax to tear down the portal. Callaghan howls, and Tadashi watches with hollow satisfaction.
No one else asks, because Callaghan's ramblings are dismissed as a madman's before he is sent to prison. His friends slap him on the back and hug him, and Honey Lemon kisses him on the cheek, and they congratulate each other on a job well done. Except for Gogo. Gogo watches him with sharp eyes, watches the distressed Callaghan, and Tadashi can see the way things click into place.
"It was too dangerous," he reasons when she confronts him. "The portal could have imploded at any second."
She doesn't believe him. She won't bring it up though, because she understands (because she doesn't know the extent of Tadashi's actions), even if she doesn't condone it. She's loyal. They all are, to a fault. Tadashi wonders when he stopped seeing them as friends, and started seeing them as pawns.
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Gogo, Honey, Wasabi and Fred find superhero life glamorous. They adjust to it and have fun with it and sometimes, Tadashi goes with them. Most of the time the extent of his involvement is to have Baymax on hand to heal their injuries.
In the aftermath of their first battle, first victory, only victory in his book, Tadashi remembers thinking this:
His friends stop him from killing Callaghan, and stop Callaghan from killing Krei, and Tadashi only goes along with it because he's lost too much. He can't lose his friends either.
But Callaghan's caused too much trouble. He'll be sent to jail after this. People die in prison all the time, don't they?
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When Tadashi is sure his friends are occupied, he sees Callaghan. On his first visit, when he was mapping the layout of the prison, Tadashi saw a mixture of brokenness and hope in Callaghan's eyes. And Tadashi knows that look, he runs an underground ring now and knows the desperate look of a dying man.
There is no point in killing Callaghan. Not directly or quickly, anyway. So he visits often, and tells Callaghan about many things. He talks about old school days and his brother, and he talks about the temporal portal and the destruction it would wreak if San Fransokyo had been sucked in.
The guards who monitor him think this; Tadashi Hamada is a decent person. Tadashi Hamada reminisces because he misses his old professor, and admonishes because he is disappointed in the criminal shell of his teacher. Possibly, he sees the hope of redemption; Tadashi Hamada seems like the kind of idyllic person who'd wish for second chances. If he sounds a bit accusatory, there is nothing unusual in that. The criminal killed his younger brother, after all. There are often worse reactions from the victim's family.
Tadashi Hamada is none of these things.
What Tadashi sees is this; Callaghan's face crumples in regret and longing when Tadashi brings up memories of his teaching days. Callaghan's eyes fill with tears when Tadashi expounds on his guilt and tells stories about Hiro. Callaghan slumps like a rag doll when Tadashi talks about the portal's effects, not because he is thinking about San Fransokyo, but because he is thinking about his daughter and that she is still in there and he is useless. Tadashi talks about the portal at length and in detail, the likely repercussions, but avoids the technicalities lest Callaghan become motivated to build a new one. Callaghan is usually silent until the very end of the visit, and then he pleads at Tadashi to not come back. When Callaghan isn't staring mournfully, he sometimes asks about Krei.
Krei is on the verge of bankruptcy. After the portal's origins were leaked to the media, a thorough investigation of Krei Tech was launched, and Krei's connections to the black market and shadier dealings were revealed. There were mass numbers of unpatented inventions he has been taking from people like Hiro, a staggering amount of illegal technology in underground labs. Krei is currently awaiting trial.
When he first hears about this, Callaghan is confused. Callaghan knew Krei, being his daughter's employer. Krei is impatient and dishonest, but he isn't a thief and prefers not to take risks that involve blatantly going against the law. I don't believe it, Callaghan says incredulously, and Tadashi thinks, then you're smarter than the rest of the world.
Tadashi's underground ring might revolve around robot fights, but it is...not difficult to branch out into forgeries and illegal tech, and it is easier still to plant them in an already-chaotic company.
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Aunt Cass worries, but doesn't pry. His friends throw occasional concerned glances, but ultimately go back to superheroing.
Tadashi feels oddly hollow.
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Broken glass and machinery. Prologue, end.
Rnr!