With a snarl, Callaghan used the microbots to trap Krei against a billboard. Hiro rode Baymax down to the ground, where the team was ready and waiting for action.
“Here’s the plan,” Hiro told them as he looked toward Callaghan. “We gotta force him up. Close to the portal. Honey, Fred, can you give us a little cover?”
“Let’s do this, Freddie!” Honey shouted.
“Like you have to ask,” Fred said as he blew a blast of smoke from his Kaiju nostrils. “Smoke screen!”
“Yes!” Hiro cheered as the two disappeared in the cloud of smoke. “All right, Wasabi, here’s what I want you to do—”
“I’m good, man!” Wasabi interrupted. “I don’t need a plan. Wasabi is winging it.” Wasabi ran in and slashed away at the columns of microbots. Go Go sent discs flying at the columns as well, causing large cracks to appear. Honey threw chem-balls into the cracks. The expanding goo caused the columns to shift.
Hiro smiled. They were finally working together as a team.
Baymax and Hiro flew toward Callaghan, drawing an attack of swirling microbots toward the portal. At the last second, they reversed into a dive, going straight into the microbots, which engulfed them.
Hiro activated Baymax. “Back kick! Knife hand! Roundhouse! Hammer fist!” he called out in quick succession. Baymax went at the microbots with a whirlwind of karate moves.
“This ends now!” Callaghan shouted. With one final push, he threw a swarm of microbots at Hiro and Baymax. But with a mighty blow, Baymax punched thousands of microbots into the portal.
The columns shook and Callaghan staggered. With very few microbots left, he struggled to maintain his balance. “No!”
“It’s over, Callaghan!” Hiro shouted. “Hand over the mask.”
“Never,” Callaghan snarled.
“I thought you’d say that,” Hiro said. “Fred?”
Fred leaped at Callaghan. “Fred time!” he called as he grabbed the mask. Instantly, the microbot columns collapsed, sending Krei and Callaghan tumbling toward the ground.
Baymax caught the two men in midair.
Hiro watched the columns of microbots holding the portal come apart. Then, with a great shudder, the whole thing crashed to the ground!
Hiro and his friends cheered. The portal had been destroyed and the microbots were lying in heaps!
But seconds later, it was clear that the broken portal was still active. “It’s still on!” Hiro said to Krei. “We have to shut it down!”
The portal was sucking in everything around it. Then, pulsing with light and energy, it began sucking in parts of itself.
“We can’t!” Krei cried. “The containment field is failing. The portal’s going to tear itself apart.”
“We need to get out of here, now!” Hiro shouted. Everyone was turning to run when Hiro looked back and saw Baymax staring at the portal. “Baymax!” he shouted.
“My detector is sensing signs of life,” Baymax said.
“What?” Hiro said.
“Coming from there,” Baymax replied, pointing at the portal. “The life signs are female. She appears to be in hypersleep.”
Hiro gasped. “Callaghan’s daughter!” he said. “She’s still alive?”
“Abigail!” Callaghan said. Hiro saw the hope in Callaghan’s eyes. Then he looked to his team. He knew if there was a chance she was alive, he had to try to save her. He looked at Baymax. “Let’s go get her.” He climbed onto the robot’s back.
Krei stood next to the team on the ground. He said, “The portal is destabilizing. You don’t have much time.”
Honey was worried. “Hiro, it’s too dangerous.”
“She’s alive in there,” Hiro told his team. “Someone has to help.”
The team looked at each other and then back at Hiro and Baymax. They understood that Hiro would always be the person who would offer help. Just as Tadashi had been. “What do you say, buddy?” Hiro asked Baymax with a smile.
“Flying makes me a better health-care companion.”
And with that, the team watched Baymax and Hiro rocket into the portal.
Baymax and Hiro dodged debris as they flew through the swirling portal at high speed. “Look out!” Hiro called when a huge chunk of cement whistled by them.
“I have located the patient.” Baymax’s sensor was picking up stronger life readings the deeper they traveled into the portal. The pull of the vortex was growing stronger, too. Hiro pointed straight ahead. A shiny object was coming at them fast. It was the pod. Baymax wrapped his arms around it as Hiro climbed on. He wiped off the windshield and saw Abigail’s face. Her eyes were closed and her face was pale.
Hiro was relieved to see the faint mist her breathing created on the glass. “C’mon, buddy. Let’s get her home.”
Using his rocket thrusters, Baymax began to push the pod out of the portal. Hiro could see the light from the exit up ahead. But a large chunk of debris headed straight for Hiro. Baymax got between Hiro and the flying debris, saving him from the hit, and the debris slammed into Baymax.
“Oh, no,” Baymax said as most of the armor broke off his body. He was floating in the whirlwind of the portal, badly damaged.
Hiro reached for him. “Baymax! Grab hold!” he yelled, and they reconnected.
But Baymax had bad news. “My thrusters are inoperable,” he said.
Hiro’s heart sank. He knew it meant they were stranded.
“There is still a way I can get you both to safety,” Baymax said, and he began to fire up his rocket fist. He aimed it toward the exit.
“What about you?” Hiro asked, knowing it was the last bit of power Baymax had left. If he used it, he wouldn’t have the power to get himself out. He’d be lost in the vortex forever.
“You are my patient. Your health is my only concern,” Baymax said.
“No!” Hiro shouted. “There’s got to be another way. I’m not going to leave you here. I’ll think of something!”
“Hiro, there is no time,” Baymax said.
“Please, no,” Hiro begged. “I lost Tadashi. I can’t lose you, too.”
“Tadashi is not gone,” he responded, touching Hiro’s chest. “Tadashi is here. I am here.”
Tears welled up in Hiro’s eyes as the seconds ticked away.
“I cannot deactivate until you say you are satisfied with my care,” Baymax said.
Hiro shook his head, and tears fell down his cheeks.
“Hiro, are you satisfied with your care?”
Hiro threw his arms around Baymax and finally said, “I am satisfied with my care.”
The two friends hugged for as long as they could. Then Baymax nodded, and Hiro attached his magnets to Abigail’s pod. Baymax fully powered-up his rocket fist and, whoosh, in an instant, Abigail and Hiro were pushed toward the portal opening.
Hiro looked back. With his rocket fist and the last of his armor gone, Baymax looked just like he did when Hiro first saw him, all soft and marshmallow-white. He watched as his friend faded slowly into the distance. Then he closed his eyes.
The area immediately outside the portal had become completely unstable. The Krei Tech buildings were starting to bend and crack toward it. Krei nervously looked at his watch. Only five seconds until implosion.
There was nothing Hiro’s team could do but wait. Then just as the portal began to cave in on itself, the pod came shooting out with Hiro riding on top. He and Abigail safely crashed into a pile of inactive microbots.
“Hiro!” Wasabi cried as the team ran up to him.
“They made it!” Fred cheered. But their faces changed when they saw the rocket fist.
“Baymax?” Wasabi asked. Hiro shook his head.
The lights of police cars and emergency vehicles flashed as they approached the scene. The EMTs removed Abigail from the pod and placed her on a stretcher. “Miss, can you hear
me—what is your name?” one of them asked.
“Abigail Callaghan,” she responded weakly.
“Okay, Abigail, you are going to be fine. We are taking you to the hospital.” The EMTs pushed her stretcher quickly toward the ambulance.
Callaghan, who stood next to a police car, watched his daughter move away. “Abigail...”
The following morning, it was all over the news. “A massive clean-up continues today at the headquarters of Krei Tech Industries,” one TV anchor reported.
A live video showed excavators and bulldozers working on the decimated Krei Tech campus. “Reports are still flooding in about a group of unidentified individuals who prevented what could have been a major catastrophe,” the anchor said. “The whole city of San Fransokyo is asking: Who are these heroes? And where are they now?”
But Hiro didn’t hear the broadcast. He and his friends were heading out of the Lucky Cat Café when they walked by his aunt Cass. “Hey, sweetie!” she called, and they hugged. Then he held his arms out, ready for another. “Last hug,” she said, grabbing him close again. “All right, I’m good,” she said.
He smiled as he continued on to SFIT. Hiro felt good about it. He knew this was where he belonged and where Tadashi would want him to be.
At the robotics lab, Hiro unpacked one last box that he had brought from his garage lab at home. He took out Baymax’s rocket fist and set it down on his desk. He gave the fist a little fist bump and it opened slightly. Hiro spotted a glint of something inside. He peeled open the fingers and found—Baymax’s health-care chip!
Hiro could barely contain his excitement. He knew just what to do.
After working late at the lab for several nights, it was finally ready. Hiro held his breath. Then he let out a big “OW!”
The red suitcase opened and the soft, familiar shape Hiro had come to love inflated in front of him. Hiro shouted with joy as the robot voice he’d missed so much said, “Hello, Hiro. I am Baymax, your personal health-care companion.”
On a wind turbine overlooking San Fransokyo Bay, six friends who happened to be superheroes looked down on the city they were committed to protect.
“We didn’t set out to be superheroes. But sometimes life doesn’t go the way you planned,” Hiro said. “The good thing is my brother wanted to help a lot of people, and that’s what we’re going to do. Who are we?”
The answer was clear, and they said it together: “Big Hero Six!”
Big Hero Six Page 7