Notes: This story is going to have some darker themes including, as the summary suggests, kidnapping and abduction. The rating may be upped if necessary and there will be warnings on the relevant chapters for some of the worst stuff. Updates on this are going to be kind of slow and random because it's one of six stories I'm working on in my free time, with Father Knows Best being another. Please be patient with me.

Also, you might want to read Big Heroes Oneshots, as those actually take place in the same universe and will probably be referenced at some point.

Chapter 1 - Consequences

Because every action causes a reaction, especially starting a superhero team.

"With the clean-up at Krei Tech continuing on after the incident earlier this week, people are begging to know more about this team calling themselves the Big Heroes. Who are they? Where are they now?"

Alistair Krei muted the TV at that point and steepled his fingers, pressing the tips of his forefingers to his lips as he thought. Multiple computer screens holding various bits of information sat before him, just below the line of sight for the TV. The interview that had played out earlier was a rather brilliant ploy. The Hamada brothers had managed to imply that their involvement was only slightly more than Krei's own - perhaps less even as only Hiro had really been spot-lighted - without actually denying anything outright. While the media argued over who Fredzilla was - money in Las Edos was on the blue one last Krei checked - and on whether it was right for White Knight to keep the stolen tech considering the rightful owner was the reason he could even control it, the Hamada brothers had waltzed through their fifteen minutes of fame and back into obscurity.

Meanwhile, the news had apparently segued into a segment on past vigilante superheroes including an odd fellow who had sometimes worn the underwear on the outside of his outfit backwards or even inside-out. Alistair looked away from the TV back towards the computer screens. SFIT student information was prominently displayed on them.

While SFIT did indeed have student information online, they also had privacy practices that limited the information to little more than a name, picture, and major. What Krei was currently looking at was his own private database. He kept his headquarters in San Fransokyo for a reason and being able to cherry-pick students from SFIT while headhunting was one of the reasons. Between students eager for internships, professors and post-grads looking for grants, and a school board willing to part with quite a bit of information just to keep the money flowing, Krei could find out quite a lot about any person who spent time on campus, even the school mascot. Gathering it all together just made it easier for his recruiters to recruit the right person at the right time in the right way. And apparently they'd been keeping an eye on Tadashi Hamada, judging on the size of his file.

According to the file, Tadashi Hamada had started school at age five, only for there to be a change in schools and grade levels once the adults in his life realized the reason he hadn't been doing well before had been due to a lack of interest rather than a lack of ability. After being skipped ahead a grade, he'd always placed into advanced classes and even then got impressive grades. He'd graduated at sixteen, although there had apparently been a discussion to make it fifteen. If he hadn't doubled his electives during his high school years, Tadashi probably would have graduated a year earlier.

Tadashi Hamada had then entered the SFIT showcase, gained immediate entry to the university about three years before now, and had apparently been making waves among the academics ever since. The reason he hadn't already caught Krei's attention was a combination of the fact his magnum opus was still unfinished by all reports and because, interestingly enough, Robert Callaghan had apparently been doing his best to keep the young man's abilities under wraps. If it weren't for all of the information from Hamada's other professors, Krei wouldn't have had much to go on at all.

As it was, Krei could only stare in awe at what he was seeing. Tadashi Hamada was in the middle of revolutionizing robotics coding. He'd figured out how to code autonomous learning in a robot, and one that wasn't physically bound to a server, either, all as a side-effect to the robot's main programmed purpose. All of his previous, minor projects proved the robotics prodigy could program a robot to learn and even replicate the coding. His major project was combining it as secondary coding to a main purpose, in this case nursing and healthcare. To pull that off, Krei thought, he'd need to build something capable of interacting with and learning from its environment because even something as simple as the different types of cuts one could obtain tended to stymie robots. Just a change in length, depth, or location could throw off an algorithm.

And yet, he'd done it, Krei realized with a slow smile. There was a friendly-looking robot wandering around in armor that was apparently capable of making the decision on its own to blast free and rescue someone. Krei had been impressed enough when it had happened, even when he'd thought it was Hiro Hamada's work. With this new information, it seemed likely that Hiro had been responsible for the armor, but the actual robot itself was Tadashi's. Krei's eyes narrowed. He wanted that robot and, if possible, it's programmer. Even with just one of them, his company could re-write the history of robotics. If he could get Hiro Hamada as well that would just be the icing on the cake.

A knock pulled Krei out of his thoughts and he called out, "Come in, Yaqin."

His assistant did so, holding a rather important looking envelope, the type you put things in when you don't want them folded. Yaqin had it pressed to her front so she could quickly sign who it was from. It was amazing the amount of people who didn't know sign language. He'd taken full advantage of that fact and always got a kick out of the fact people just thought Yaqin was quiet and didn't realize she was entirely mute. She was also the most brilliant assistant he'd ever had and, while it had hurt seeing her run when Callaghan had attacked him, Krei had quickly forgiven her as there really wasn't anything she could've done aside from possibly being taken captive as well. She apparently felt guilty for it, however, as she'd given him an apology in the form of a gift basket.

Krei took the letter from her and quickly opened it to read. He'd been expecting something from the sender, although not precisely what was written. Krei let out a slow breath before ordering, "Clear my schedule this afternoon, if you would, Yaqin. I have some... arrangements I need to make."

Yaqin nodded before leaving, already taking out her tablet to reschedule as she walked out the door. Alistair Krei glanced at the TV in time to see a repeat of the Hamada brothers' interview was playing on mute before looking back at the computer screens. Then he smiled as an idea took hold.

"The hell did you do?" Tadashi muttered as he looked over the coding on the green chip. Baymax was standing powered down in his charging station while the red chip was sitting on the desk nearby. Baymax had been rather adamant that the red chip be removed first and that it be put in last when Tadashi mentioned he'd need to take out the green chip for a bit, which privately thrilled Tadashi. The fact Baymax was even capable of expressing preferences meant Tadashi's programming was working beautifully.

Tadashi had found people tended to fall into two camps when he mentioned he was building a robotic healthcare provider. Those who didn't know much, if anything, about robotics thought that it was interesting but boring goal. Those who actually knew about robotics tended to look at him like he was crazy, at least until they met Baymax, at which point the looks tended to be awed while they raved about how Baymax's coding worked. And it did work. Perhaps a little too well, considering what Tadashi was seeing.

"So did you code him while on a drinking binge or something?" Hiro asked from where he was sitting on a desk, legs swinging.

"No," Tadashi replied, rolling his eyes before frowning at Baymax's coding again.

"Tadashi? Drunk? Now that I have to see," Gogo stated with a smirk.

"What are you trying to fix?" Wasabi asked.

The whole team was currently stuffed into Tadashi's lab as it was neater than Hiro's, more private than their own, and didn't have media hanging around outside like the Lucky Cat. While Hiro's fame as being the microbots' creator seemed to be dying down, there were still a few people willing to trail him about in hopes of catching a glimpse of the Big Heroes, so they didn't dare meet at, say, Fred's house. They all had a reason to be in the Ito Ishioka Robotics Laboratory, though, which had locks and campus security to deter the media from entering.

"Baymax acts drunk when his battery gets too low," Tadashi explained. Normally, he didn't allow people in his lab while he was working but Baymax was not only not a secret to his friends, but he wanted to get this done sooner rather than later - preferably without pulling an all-nighter - and Hiro had reminded him of it after everyone had already agreed to meet at his lab this afternoon.

"Makes sense to me," Fred said after a short pause. "The big guy gets tired, he starts shutting down non-essential programs."

"Yeah, but programming robots doesn't work that way," Hiro pointed out. "They just keep going same as always until the power's gone and then they shut down entirely... unless they've been coded to do otherwise." Hiro gave Tadashi a pointed look at that point.

"You, what, used hundreds of dollars and tons of time to program him to act drunk?" Gogo asked, snapping her gum.

"No. I programmed him to learn, complete with a reward system and the ability to tweak his own coding if necessary, and instructions to mimic the nicer human emotions so he could come across as more approachable. Apparently he decided to mimic human sleepiness much in the way Fred described... battery gets low and non-essential programs turn off one by one. While this has the advantage of making his battery last longer than it otherwise would or probably should, he's pretty much useless once he starts turning off his programs. He also managed to hook it up to the reward system somehow, hence why he apparently acts like a giddy drunk."

"So... he programmed himself to act drunk?" Honey Lemon asked. Tadashi sighed.

"That's what I'm seeing in this mess. And I don't know how to undo it without messing with his reward system - and potentially damaging his ability to learn - or undoing the code up until that point, which could erase everything else he's learned since like how to fight and fly and fist bump, among other things.

"Oh no!"

"Dude, you can't do that to Baymax! That's, like, not cool."

"And having him act like a drunk in the middle of a fight?"

"Are you actually considering continuing with the whole superhero thing? I mean, the whole thing with Callaghan kind of involved us, but there's a reason superheroes don't actually exist," Wasabi stated.

"Yeah, they do!" Fred protested.

"No they don't. Because there's no such thing as a supervillain. Callaghan was pretty much the exception that proved the rule. The only people with the kind of tech the police would have trouble with is us," Gogo pointed out.

"But... but..." Fred sputtered before deflating with a sigh. "I guess you're right." Honey Lemon put an encouraging hand on Fred's shoulder.

"But just because there's no supervillains doesn't mean we shouldn't help people," Hiro protested.

"We can do that without the supersuits, little man," Wasabi stated.

"Maybe," Hiro stated with a rather mulish expression.

"Superheroes or not, I still need a way to fix this problem. Baymax acting drunk in any kind of emergency situation would be a bad thing, so I need to figure out a way to nip this before it causes trouble."

"Couldn't you just force him to tell us his battery's low before it impairs his judgment?" Hiro asked. Tadashi blinked.

"What might actually work," he replied before turning back to his computer. Hiro snorted and gave his brother a fond smile while he shook his head. Tadashi ignored it in favor of putting a low battery alarm into Baymax's coding, although he frowned slightly as he worked. The others had a point about not needing to be superheroes any longer. Even the media frenzy was dying down because, honestly, what the heck was a team of superheroes supposed to do in San Fransokyo? Rescue cats from trees?

But Tadashi couldn't deny that there'd been a certain thrill to saving the day with his own two hands (and Hiro's microbots). He knew Hiro felt the same because they'd fallen asleep more than one night discussing ways they could upgrade their tech and practice working together as a team and everything. Fred would also be more than willing to continue on. But they'd only become heroes in the first place because someone had needed to step in and help. Now they didn't.

Tadashi threw his full attention back to what he was working on because he just needed to work out the kinks in the code that were showing up now that his prototype was being real-world tested. Baymax would help a lot of people, even if it wasn't as a superhero. For some reason, that thought no longer seemed quite enough any more.

"Uh, Boss? We think we've found that kid you've had us looking for," a tattooed thug stated nervously. Big Yama leaned forward.

"Where?" he demanded.

"Uh, TV," the thug replied, waving at the screen that was playing a scene from one of the private rooms in the host club Big Yama owned. "On the news."

Yama scowled but grabbed the remote and flipped to the local news channel. The devastation at Krei Tech was still plastered all over the place, but pictures of the damage were slowly giving way to other things. Yama was aware of it - who in the city wasn't? - but hadn't worried about it much. Apparently a group of would-be superheroes had put the guy responsible behind bars.

Those so-called Big Heroes concerned him a little. There were seven of them, a lucky number to be sure, and Yama studied the vague picture of them that was on the TV intently. So far, they hadn't interfered with Yama's various business ventures and he wasn't about to go borrowing trouble by having his people go looking for them, but that didn't mean he didn't want to have some contingency plans in place just in case they decided to go after him next. Blackmail would be good. It would allow them to co-exist somewhat peacefully.

The problem at the moment was that he didn't recognize any of them. They were all wearing helmets of some sort, although the large black man in green had the least coverage as he was showing off his dreadlocks. Unfortunately, lots of large black men wore their hair in dreads in San Fransokyo. Yama could think of nearly a dozen right off the top of his head and he was certain none of them were playing superhero on the side.

The yellow one had enough covering that only the fact the suits were fairly tight made it even clear she was female. Nice shape. Well balanced. Even had wheels like his roller geisha, the Fighting Fujitas. Yama wondered what she'd look like in a kimono before shrugging the thought away. The pink one was the other obvious female and had long blonde hair, but it was impossible to say more and there were lots of blondes, both natural and bottled, in the area so that didn't help.

The other short one, the one in purple, struck Yama as a teenaged boy. There was a possibility it was a tomboy girl, but something about the stance made Yama think otherwise. That potential weak link had been paired up with the big red bruiser in what looked like a double mask, so no help there.

The blue one didn't show off anything at all, so that was a dead-end, and the white one showed as little as the yellow one and controlled those little robots. That other guy had shown exactly how dangerous those microbots could be, so that was also an out.

Yama huffed and eyed the nervous thug who'd mentioned the news. Before the guy could say anything, the news segued into a new bit Yama hadn't seen before, something that made Yama stare.

It was that kid who'd played him for a fool during a bot fight months ago and the young man who'd rescued him on a scooter of all things. The story made it clear the kid's name was Hiro Hamada and that he'd been the one to invent those microbots. Huh. No wonder those little robots had looked oddly familiar. They looked a lot like the kid's fighting bot.

Apparently the kid was making it clear he was aware the Big Hero in white had his microbots and that the guy had his consent to keep them, glad they were finally being put to good use after being stolen. It was also obviously only part of the whole interview, but Yama had what he needed. The kid was wearing an SFIT shirt. A quick online search for Hamada in SFIT's student database pulled up both the kid and his brother.

"Go to my flower garden. Tell them we've got a name and location for them."

"Yes, sir!" the thug said, saluting before running out of the room. Yama smiled as he sat down and flipped back to what he'd been watching previously. He might not be prepared to take on a group of would-be superheroes, but Hamada? Was a different story entirely.

Notes: Yaqin is a Chinese name and is basically pronounced "Yeah-cheen". My decision to make her mute is a headcanon based on the fact the character has no speaking lines and seems to communicate primarily through gestures and facial expressions.