Newsflash: there is no light at the end of the tunnel.
Tadashi thinks he should’ve been warned about that, at the very least.
Instead, all there is in here is the dark, too much of the dark, and at his feet, a blazing, whirling inferno. Or maybe he’d just ended up in hell. Seeing as he’d just left the little brother he’d sworn to love and protect to a life where he lost not only his parents, but also his big brother...yup, Tadashi definitely deserves it.
...shit. He’d left Hiro outside, just right beside this blazing mess the building had been reduced to. He didn’t even stay long enough to check if he’d been safely escorted away from the entrance, away from his stupid, stupid self. Crap. What if Hiro had followed him in?
Then again, after he’d grown up and cared about acting cool, Hiro had never really followed him around places anymore. Following around like a lost puppy was Tadashi’s job, now, and now he can’t even do that because by now he’s little more than ashes like the rest of everything anyway –
“Wait a sec, stop there, I think I’m getting something!”
“Yeah, it’s probably another piece of debris – shit, is that a freaking body?”
“It’s unbelievable. Hold on, I think I’m getting a pulse!”
...okay, maybe he’s a little bit more than ashes. It’s a small relief. At the very least, Aunt Cass and Hiro could be sure of the fact that the ashes they’d scatter over the family gravestone would actually be his and not of some dearly departed cardboard box or folding chair.
At the very least, Aunt Cass was still here. After everything Hiro’s got to deal with, Tadashi doesn’t think he’d take too kindly to the idea of fixing up his funeral. Neither does Aunt Cass, as a matter of fact – the Hamada brood is large and stretches far beyond San Fransokyo city lines, but as far as she’s concerned he knows they’re the closest thing she gets to an actual nuclear family – but well, she’s gotten increasingly better at adulting as the years passed. Tadashi thinks his parents would’ve been so proud of her.
Speaking of. Where were his parents, anyway? Weren’t they supposed to be here, chewing his ears out for getting himself burnt to a crisp? Because he’s dead?
“You’re not dead,” a voice says, as if it was behind him, and for a single hopeful second he lets himself believe that it’s a truth someone else told him and not his own mindless wishful thinking. The voice sighs, however. “No, seriously. You’re not dead. Why aren’t you looking at me?”
Because there’s nothing else to be looking at, what with all the black darkness and blazing flame everywhere – oh. Wait. Suddenly he can see his hands again, and they’re not soot-encrusted or crispy golden brown like they ought to be, after that fire – maybe that’s just one of the perks of being a ghost?
Another perk being that, when the medics rushing out a stretcher from the burnt building pass by, they go through Tadashi like he wasn’t even there. It’s actually not a perk, but Tadashi pretends it is anyway. Feeling like your insides were scooped out and turned inside out because a couple of guys decided to go through the side way, yay.
“I’m a ghost.” Tadashi says, deadpan.
“No shit, Sherlock,” the other person says. Tadashi looks beside him and sees a young woman, probably a bit older than he is (was), brown hair, bright eyes, vaguely familiar but definitely nobody he’d seen before. She’s wearing this shiny-ish biker jacket that kind of reminds him of Gogo, but not exactly. “It took you this long to notice?”
“I’m a ghost,” Tadashi says, once more, this time, with feeling. “So I definitely couldn’t be anything else but dead.”
“Nuh-uh. Not on my watch, hun.” The woman says, clicking her tongue in annoyance, whipping out a touchscreen smartphone. It doesn’t look like anything he’d seen before, but it vaguely resembles some Apple-Samsung mashup done right, the kind of thing Hiro might’ve loved if he’d been into flashy phones, all HD graphics and candy apple red backing. “You weren’t even a blip on my radar before you decided, for some reason, that turning yourself into fried human was more fun than, I dunno, breathing. See?”
She thrusts the phone screen into Tadashi’s face, stopping millimeters short from punching him in the face with it, and...well, it’s not an app Tadashi’s remember seeing on anyone else’s phone, ever. It almost looks like some social networking site, what with it having your name/age/location and his SFIT ID picture, but for the fact that there’s a jumble of numbers under it. Some kind of timer?
“See? You’re not supposed to hit your zeroes anywhere near this decade. So believe me when I say you’re not dead. ‘Cuz you’re not supposed to die. Not yet.” The woman says, locking her phone screen with an irritated huff, her hands on her hips. “You dying now would make things go off-schedule. And I hate it when things go off-schedule.”
“Yeah, sorry for that, I guess, but I don’t think there’s anything we can do about it. I’m dead now, okay?” Between leaving Hiro to a cruel brotherless world and leaving everyone else on this lesser plane, Tadashi thinks he’s got better things to be sorry for than this woman and her schedule. Even if listening to her rant about how he’s not supposed to be dead yet awakens some stupid hopeful part of himself.
Before Tadashi could tell said hopeful part of himself to please shut up and come to terms with reality, the woman takes his hand in hers – so ghosts can touch other ghosts without slipping through each other, interesting – and slowly, surprisingly gently, drops something in it. A metal chain and some sort of glass – a pendant, maybe? Why is she giving him jewelry?
“You’re dead now, but you’re really not supposed to be, so here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m giving you forty-nine days. Give me three people crying for you out of love – pure, embarrassing, unsubtle love. Then hey presto, you’ll be alive again, and wouldn’t that be nice and dandy.” Then she gives him a phone, a bit like hers but done up in cyan, with her usual brusqueness. “And here’s how you’re gonna get hold of me. Don’t contact me unless it’s really important – I’ve got tons and tons of work to do, and if you ever mess it up I will bring you back to life just so I can strangle you myself.”
“Um. Thanks.” Tadashi says, curiously looking at the woman in front of him. He wonders what things her ‘work’ entails, exactly. “Thank you, Miss...?”
“Cut it out with the ‘Miss’.” And there goes another point to the idea of this woman actually being Gogo’s long-lost not-Korean-looking twin sister. “You can just call me the Scheduler, that’s my job after all.” The woman says, matter-of-factly, fixing him with an even glare. “Speaking of. It’s time to get you to where you’re supposed to be.”
The Scheduler walks to him, almost toe-to-toe with him, and she has to look up to see his face. Then her hand goes up to touch his forehead, and then –
It’s darkness all over again.
Tadashi doesn’t know how much time had passed, or where the hell this new dark place is, but what he does know is that when he ‘wakes up’ – for lack of a better, more specific term – he wakes up to a flurry of code. Very familiar code.
Code he’s written himself.
Must be Baymax, then.
Wait – Baymax?? Did the Scheduler just seriously put him in Baymax? And if she did, that means that somewhere around here must be...
There. There he is. Still in one of those ratty hoodies he’s always preferred (Tadashi wonders, dimly, if he’s figured out the GPS trackers in them yet), his hair framing his face, which seems to be gaunt and hollowed out with grief. It’s not the look of someone who’s pretty much lost everything, not yet, but it’s pretty close and Tadashi knows that he was the one who put Hiro in that state. It’s all his fault, and he’s sorry, sorry for being hoity-toity selfless for Professor Callaghan’s sake, not even realizing how selfish he had been for not being there when Hiro had needed him the most.
That’s what Tadashi’s supposed to say, but the thing about being in a robot with automatic responses coded into the brain is that he’s not supposed to speak out of turn. Well, maybe he could, eventually – Baymax has a self-teaching AI, of course, and now that Tadashi figures he’s somewhere deep in the midst of his hard drive he wagers he could code a way to let his responses co-mingle with Baymax’s, somehow – but not now, not when Tadashi’s still so busy wrapping his brain around the fact that he is his robot at the moment.
So instead of saying any of those things, Tadashi –no, Baymax – raises his hand in greeting, and says,
“Hello, I am Baymax. Your personal healthcare companion.”
Newsflash: มีไม่มีแสงที่ปลายอุโมงค์Tadashi คิดว่า เขาควรได้ถูกเตือนว่า อย่างน้อยแทน ทั้งหมดที่มีอยู่ในที่นี่เป็นมืด มากเกินไปมืด และ ที่ เท้า เห็นได้ชัด whirling นรก หรือบางทีเขามีเพียงสิ้นสุดในนรก เห็นเขามีเหลือเพียงพี่ชายน้อย เขาได้สาบานจะรัก และปกป้องชีวิตที่เขาหายไปไม่เพียงแต่พ่อแม่ของเขา แต่น้องบิ๊ก...ยุบ Tadashi แน่นอนสมควรก็...คนนั้น เขามีซ้ายร้ายนอก เพียงขวาข้างนี้โชนระเบียบอาคารได้ลดลงไป เขาไม่ได้พักนานพอที่จะตรวจสอบถ้าเขามีได้อย่างปลอดภัยคุ้มกันเรือสัญชาติจากทางเข้า จากตัวตนของเขาโง่ โง่ อึ ถ้าร้ายก็ตามในอีก หลังจากที่เขาได้เติบโตขึ้น และห่วงเย็นทำหน้าที่ ร้ายได้เคยตามเขารอบ ๆ สถานอีกต่อไป ต่อรอบเหมือนลูกสุนัขหายมี Tadashi ของงาน ขณะนี้ และตอนนี้ เขายังไม่ เพราะตอน เขาน้อยขี้เถ้าเหมือนกับทุกอย่างหรือ –"รอหยุดวินาที มี ฉันคิดว่า ฉันได้รับบางสิ่งบางอย่าง""ใช่ มันเป็นเศษขี้คงอื่น เป็นที่ตัวซมัน""ก็ไม่น่าเชื่อ เก็บ ฉันคิดว่า ฉันได้รับชีพจร"...เอาล่ะ บางทีเขามีน้อยมากกว่าขี้เถ้า บรรเทาขนาดเล็กได้ ที่ Cass ป้าอย่างน้อยที่สุด และร้ายอาจจะแน่ใจว่า ของจริงที่สุดที่พวกเขาจะกระจายผ่าน gravestone ครอบครัวจริงจะเขา และไม่พรากจากกันมาลองกล่องกระดาษบางหรือเก้าอี้พับอย่างน้อย Cass ป้าได้ยังนี่ หลังจากทุกอย่างร้ายก็จะจัดการกับ Tadashi ไม่คิดว่า เขาจะใช้เวลาเกินไปกรุณาให้ความคิดในการแก้ไขค่าศพของเขา ไม่ไม่ Aunt Cass เป็นแท้ – คอกฮามาดะมีขนาดใหญ่ และเหยียดไกลเกินบรรทัดเมืองซาน Fransokyo แต่เท่าที่เธอเป็นกังวลเขารู้เป็นสิ่งใกล้เคียงที่สุดที่เธอได้รับเป็นจริงนิวเคลียร์ครอบครัว – แต่ดี เธอคืออากาศดีมากที่ adulting เป็นปีผ่านไป Tadashi คิดว่า จะได้รับพ่อภูมิใจมากของเธอการพูดของ ที่มีพ่อแม่ พวกเขาไม่ควรจะเป็นนี่ เคี้ยวหูเขาออกการเองเผาเพื่อเป็นกรอบ เพราะเขาตายแล้ว"คุณไม่ตาย เสียงว่า ประหนึ่งว่ามันหลังเขา และสองมีความหวังเดียวที่เขาช่วยให้ตัวเองเชื่อว่า เป็นความจริงสำหรับ ใครบอกเขาและไม่ดีของเขาเอง mindless wishful คิด เสียง sighs อย่างไรก็ตาม "ไม่มี อย่างจริงจัง คุณจะไม่ตาย ทำไมไม่ได้คุณดูฉัน"เนื่องจากไม่มีอะไรให้ ดูที่ what with ความมืดดำ และโชน flame – ทุกโอ้ รอสักครู่ ทันใดนั้นเขาจะเห็นมือของเขาอีกครั้ง และพวกเขาจะไม่ฟุ้งหุ้มห่อ หรือกรอบสีเหลืองทองเหมือนพวกเขาควรจะเป็น หลังจากที่ไฟ – บางทีที่เป็นเพียงหนึ่งของ perks เป็นผีAnother perk being that, when the medics rushing out a stretcher from the burnt building pass by, they go through Tadashi like he wasn’t even there. It’s actually not a perk, but Tadashi pretends it is anyway. Feeling like your insides were scooped out and turned inside out because a couple of guys decided to go through the side way, yay.“I’m a ghost.” Tadashi says, deadpan.“No shit, Sherlock,” the other person says. Tadashi looks beside him and sees a young woman, probably a bit older than he is (was), brown hair, bright eyes, vaguely familiar but definitely nobody he’d seen before. She’s wearing this shiny-ish biker jacket that kind of reminds him of Gogo, but not exactly. “It took you this long to notice?”“I’m a ghost,” Tadashi says, once more, this time, with feeling. “So I definitely couldn’t be anything else but dead.”“Nuh-uh. Not on my watch, hun.” The woman says, clicking her tongue in annoyance, whipping out a touchscreen smartphone. It doesn’t look like anything he’d seen before, but it vaguely resembles some Apple-Samsung mashup done right, the kind of thing Hiro might’ve loved if he’d been into flashy phones, all HD graphics and candy apple red backing. “You weren’t even a blip on my radar before you decided, for some reason, that turning yourself into fried human was more fun than, I dunno, breathing. See?”She thrusts the phone screen into Tadashi’s face, stopping millimeters short from punching him in the face with it, and...well, it’s not an app Tadashi’s remember seeing on anyone else’s phone, ever. It almost looks like some social networking site, what with it having your name/age/location and his SFIT ID picture, but for the fact that there’s a jumble of numbers under it. Some kind of timer?“See? You’re not supposed to hit your zeroes anywhere near this decade. So believe me when I say you’re not dead. ‘Cuz you’re not supposed to die. Not yet.” The woman says, locking her phone screen with an irritated huff, her hands on her hips. “You dying now would make things go off-schedule. And I hate it when things go off-schedule.”“Yeah, sorry for that, I guess, but I don’t think there’s anything we can do about it. I’m dead now, okay?” Between leaving Hiro to a cruel brotherless world and leaving everyone else on this lesser plane, Tadashi thinks he’s got better things to be sorry for than this woman and her schedule. Even if listening to her rant about how he’s not supposed to be dead yet awakens some stupid hopeful part of himself.Before Tadashi could tell said hopeful part of himself to please shut up and come to terms with reality, the woman takes his hand in hers – so ghosts can touch other ghosts without slipping through each other, interesting – and slowly, surprisingly gently, drops something in it. A metal chain and some sort of glass – a pendant, maybe? Why is she giving him jewelry?“You’re dead now, but you’re really not supposed to be, so here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m giving you forty-nine days. Give me three people crying for you out of love – pure, embarrassing, unsubtle love. Then hey presto, you’ll be alive again, and wouldn’t that be nice and dandy.” Then she gives him a phone, a bit like hers but done up in cyan, with her usual brusqueness. “And here’s how you’re gonna get hold of me. Don’t contact me unless it’s really important – I’ve got tons and tons of work to do, and if you ever mess it up I will bring you back to life just so I can strangle you myself.”“Um. Thanks.” Tadashi says, curiously looking at the woman in front of him. He wonders what things her ‘work’ entails, exactly. “Thank you, Miss...?”“Cut it out with the ‘Miss’.” And there goes another point to the idea of this woman actually being Gogo’s long-lost not-Korean-looking twin sister. “You can just call me the Scheduler, that’s my job after all.” The woman says, matter-of-factly, fixing him with an even glare. “Speaking of. It’s time to get you to where you’re supposed to be.”The Scheduler walks to him, almost toe-to-toe with him, and she has to look up to see his face. Then her hand goes up to touch his forehead, and then –It’s darkness all over again.Tadashi doesn’t know how much time had passed, or where the hell this new dark place is, but what he does know is that when he ‘wakes up’ – for lack of a better, more specific term – he wakes up to a flurry of code. Very familiar code.Code he’s written himself.Must be Baymax, then.Wait – Baymax?? Did the Scheduler just seriously put him in Baymax? And if she did, that means that somewhere around here must be...There. There he is. Still in one of those ratty hoodies he’s always preferred (Tadashi wonders, dimly, if he’s figured out the GPS trackers in them yet), his hair framing his face, which seems to be gaunt and hollowed out with grief. It’s not the look of someone who’s pretty much lost everything, not yet, but it’s pretty close and Tadashi knows that he was the one who put Hiro in that state. It’s all his fault, and he’s sorry, sorry for being hoity-toity selfless for Professor Callaghan’s sake, not even realizing how selfish he had been for not being there when Hiro had needed him the most.That’s what Tadashi’s supposed to say, but the thing about being in a robot with automatic responses coded into the brain is that he’s not supposed to speak out of turn. Well, maybe he could, eventually – Baymax has a self-teaching AI, of course, and now that Tadashi figures he’s somewhere deep in the midst of his hard drive he wagers he could code a way to let his responses co-mingle with Baymax’s, somehow – but not now, not when Tadashi’s still so busy wrapping his brain around the fact that he is his robot at the moment.
So instead of saying any of those things, Tadashi –no, Baymax – raises his hand in greeting, and says,
“Hello, I am Baymax. Your personal healthcare companion.”
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