When All Q Breaks Loose

Chapter Thirty Five: Don't Give Up

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Fred slumped into the nearest available piece of furniture, which happened to be his bed. The rest of the Big Heroes, minus Hiro and Baymax, settled near or around the dejected mascot. Neither Hiro or Baymax was there to join them. "Guys," Fred spoke up as he rubbed at his sore nose, "I don't know how to say this but it looks like we might not get Hiro back."

"Don't say that!" GoGo admonished sharply. "We're going to get him back. Don't give up."

Honey gave a wistful smile as she smoothed her sweater. "GoGo's right. We can't give up. We just need to do what Hiro does every time he gets stuck. We need to look for a new angle."

Fred fell back against the bed and stared up at the ceiling. "But we're not Hiro," he protested. "Somehow I don't think hanging upside down is going to work."

Wasabi shook his head, something that was getting a bit easier than before. "She's not saying we need to do exactly what Hiro does, just look at things in a different way," he corrected. "For example, are there any clues left behind we might use to figure out what's going on? It can be anything."

GoGo mulled over that for a moment. "I did see a map in the command center that Hiro'd been working on," she admitted. "The Doctors seemed really interested in it. If I remember correctly, he'd compiled all of the recent unusual activity and mapped it out. There were two distinct areas hit the hardest, with a somewhat smaller third area."

Her words seemed to energize Fred as he sat up. "I think I might have seen this map," he confessed. "The two biggest areas were near this place and the café. And the third area was at the school lab. Coincidence? I think not!"

Wasabi looked incredulous as Fred got up and began to pace. "Coincidence or not, we still don't know what any of that means!"

"It means Hiro was interested in some kind of pattern," GoGo pointed out. "And, if you ask me, I'd say that pattern says all these weird things going on are centered around Hiro."

The physics student gave her an incredulous look. "Are you serious? Or maybe you hit your head one too many times in the car the other night. This is nuts!"

Honey watched as her friend folded her arms in a huff. "Maybe GoGo has a point," she said, trying to smooth things over. "Hiro does seem to have a lot of strange things happen to him, especially since he and Baymax went into the Portal to bring Callaghan's daughter back. But we also know it has something to do with Q and the others, because all of the recent stuff didn't start until they showed up."

"You gotta admit," Fred said, turning to face his burly friend, "she has a point. So what if this alien entity is similar enough to Q that his energy keeps getting pulled towards him? Maybe the Doctors were wrong about the two universes trying to pull each other apart. Maybe they're trying to pull together at a common point."

GoGo gave him a skeptical look, not sure she liked where he was going with this. "Are you saying you think Hiro's some kind of magnet for all this energy?"

Honey bit her lip. "Then if that's the case, we really do need to find him, before anything else happens."

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Q resisted the urge to give a triumphant shout. He'd finally made it back to the other Doctor's TARDIS. It was sitting there, right where they'd left it in a little alley of the street with the remarkable sewing machine store. And the streets weren't all that busy, which was a double bonus. Maybe fate was smiling on him once more. He certainly hoped so.