Big Hero 7

Chapter 50 - Inactive Hardware

Chapter 50

(Hiro’s POV)

                I awoke mid-Saturday morning to see Tadashi already up and dressed and working at his laptop. I lazily rolled out of bed and stumbled over to him.

                “What are you doing?” I asked with a yawn.

                “Looking for anybody with robotics skills good enough to create me in the San Fransokyo area,” he answered. “Oh, and I had Baymax do a scan of my body and uploaded it the computer. Turns out, I don’t actually need to eat and that’s why I haven’t been hungry when I do eat. There are robotic organs that look like they do what they need to do to look human without actually doing the job. I have a heartbeat, but the mechanism doesn’t do anything other than create a beating noise. There isn’t any blood circulation. The lungs are just little balloons that take in air and release it so it looks and feels like I’m breathing. And my stomach just mashes up food and then- you get the point. Any organs that don’t have any visible changes to my body aren’t there. And my skin is some sort of high-grade latex. My brain is wired to several computer chips that, when I touch something, send a burst of signals that mimic the same signals the brain usually receives when something is touched. And those same signals are what are keeping my brain working properly,” he rambled. I sat down next him and nodded attentively.

                “What about anything that might make you dangerous?” I asked.

                “Well, that’s a tricky question. The metal on the inside that makes up my body is made of tiny plates that can shift and move to rebuild themselves, which could easily become a weapon, but they may have just been used for ease of giving me smoother more human-like movements. There is a chip with a wireless communicator – like a remote - and a locating system near the other chips. The one thing is it’s not activated at the moment and I tried to trace the signal but the digital footprints were covered too well for me to find the source.”

                “So it’s still an unknown whether or not you are safe or dangerous to us?” I questioned. He nodded.

                “Exactly.” A loud knock echoed off the window and Tadashi and I both jumped and looked out. I glanced to Akira’s window, where she was kneeling down on the edge of the frame, balanced in a place where if she moved he wrong way she would fall. I jerked the window open.

                “Akira?! What are you doing?! You’ll get hurt!” I shouted. She grinned and held up a few small pebbles in her hand.

                “Throwing rocks at your window so you’ll let me in!” She shouted back. Tadashi chuckled.

                “What are you doing at your window?! Get down from there and come to the door!” I yelled. She grinned, turned around, jumped into her room, put the pebbles down on a table in her room, grabbed her backpack, and then jumped back up on the windowsill.

                She waved to me, and then turned around, put her hands on the top of the frame, and began pulling herself up.

                “Akira!” I screamed. She laughed and placed her other hand on the edge of the roof and climbed up onto the slanted roof. “Get down from there!”

                “I’m just playing around!” She laughed.  “Besides, I have my hover board in my backpack. If I fall, I’ll just swing it under me and turn it on! Oh, or I could just do this!” To my horror, she leapt off the roof and disappeared out of view from the window. Tadashi and I screamed and then suddenly I was met with soft lips pressed against mine. “You left your garage open,” Akira whispered. Her head was right in front of mine and she was resting her chin on my windowsill. She climbed up over the windowsill and some microbots followed into the room. She laughed and dropped them. I frowned at her and pulled her against my chest tightly.

                “Don’t do that,” I whimpered. “I thought you were dead.” She hugged my tightly back.

                “Aw. Sorry. I thought that’d be funny,” she answered. I kissed her cheek and we pulled away from each other. “I promise I won’t do that again.” Tadashi grinned.

                “You two are so cute. Honey was right. I support the ship of Akiro now,” he said. I rolled my eyes at him.

                “Do you boys want to accompany me to the park with the others? They’re already there,” she asked.

                “Sure,” we both chorused. She took my hand and blushed at me. The three of us left the house and walked down to the park a few blocks over. When we arrived, Honey waved us over and we joined everyone on a blanket by the trees. Wasabi passed out bowls of warm miso soup and we ate it while chatting about various topics. A cool gust of wind blew, causing Akira to snuggle up to me more and Honey to do the same to Tadashi.

                “So Wasabi was telling us he’s got a new girlfriend~,” Honey teased. He blushed and continued to drink his soup.

                “Who?” Akira asked.

                “Sasha Thomson,” he answered. “She’s in your physics class, Akira.”

                “No offense to her, but I don’t have any idea who is and isn’t in my classes,” she laughed. “You guys are the only ones I really talk to.”

                We continued talking for a while, and then were interrupted when Tadashi suddenly stood up.

                “Tadashi? Are you okay?” I asked. He frowned and shook his head.

                “No, something’s up,” he whispered. We all stood up and Wasabi quickly packed the blanket back up. “Something’s wrong. I don’t know what.”

                “I’ll try focusing quickly and seeing if I sense any changes to your energy,” Akira told. Her eyes flickered bright red for a short moment and then she turned to us. “Something changed.”

                “Hiro, remember that inactivated chip I was telling you about this morning?” Tadashi worried. I nodded. “I think it just turned on.”