Chapter Three

"What are we doing at your nerd school?" Hiro cried as soon as he saw a sign advertising the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, "The bot fight's that way!"

So, this is what he had planned, Akari thought as Tadashi parked his moped in front of the Ito Ishioka Robotics Lab.

"Relax," Tadashi replied as he hopped off the front seat and put his helmet on the handlebar. Akari slid off the back of the moped and dropped her helmet where she'd be previously sitting, "I gotta grab something."

Akari followed Tadashi up the stairs to the entrance of the building while Hiro is still sitting on the back of the moped in disbelief. Finally, he reluctantly got off the moped and left his helmet there.

Tadashi led the twins through the main corridors of the building before they soon reached the more private area of the building, reserved for students working on projects in personal labs.

"Is this gonna take long?" Hiro complained.

"We'll be in and out. Besides, you'll finally get to see my lab," Tadashi responded without missing a beat, as he'd anticipated the question. He approached one of the many sets of opaque double doors along the walls and pulled one of them open.

"Oh great, we get to see your nerd lab," Hiro retorted with obvious sarcasm. He yanked the door opened and was immediately silenced by the sight of the amount of technology in the room. He attempted to walk further, but was pulled backward by his hood as Akari grabbed it.

"Careful!" She exclaimed as a blur sped by the both of them.

The blur turned out to be a girl wearing a blacked-out helmet on a bike. She lifted the bike onto a stand and pulled the back tire off with ease. After briefly inspecting it, she threw it back, and walked away.

Curiosity took over the twins' minds, and they walked over to where the bike was stationed. Akari walked underneath and noticed there was no connection between the body of the bike, and the back tire the girl had previously been messing with. She put her hand in the space between and her hand was met with a slight resistance.

"Electromagnetic suspension?" Akari questioned in awe.

"Really?" Hiro asked. Akari nodded as he proceeded to do the same thing she'd done.

"Hey!" A voice cried out behind them. Startled, the twins turn around to see the girl who'd been riding the bike when they walked in, "Who are you?"

"Ah… no… um…" Akari stammered.

"Gogo! This is my brother and sister: Hiro and Akari," Tadashi came up behind the twins and introduced them to the girl, now dubbed 'Gogo.'

Gogo took of her helmet, revealing an Asian girl with Korean features and short black hair with a purple streak in her bangs. Before saying a word, she stared at the twins with a blank look and blew a bubble with the gum in her mouth, popping it in between her teeth.

"Welcome to the nerd lab," she said before walking to their left and putting the helmet in her arms on the counter against the wall.

"Yeah…" Hiro laughed nervously. He cleared his throat, "I've never seen electromagnetic suspension on a bike before."

"Zero resistance, faster bike," Gogo explained simply as she turned the gear on the bike to rotate the back tire. She pulled it off the bike, "But, not fast enough…" She then threw it in a bin full of tires that looked exactly the same, "Yet."

Akari heard a buzzing sound around the corner as Gogo walked further into her station. Intrigued, she walked across the wall to see an African American man using a wrench on a vertical bar. Hiro followed and tried to walk closer, but was stopped by the man, "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Behind the line please!"

It was then that Hiro noticed the yellow and black striped tape on the floor. He crossed his foot back over the line and stood next to Akari.

"Hey Wasabi; these are my siblings: Hiro and Akari," Tadashi introduced them once again.

Wasabi lifted his safety glasses, "Hello Hiro, Akari."

He put the wrench in his left hand to grab an apple off his workstation table with his right. Tossing it lightly in the air, he looked towards the twins, "Prepared to be amazed. Catch."

Wasabi threw the apple between the two bars. Akari, ready to catch the apple, recoiled when it suddenly split into thinly sliced pieces before her eyes.

"Laser induced plasma?" Hiro questioned as he grabbed one of the slices of apple in front of him.

"Oh yeah," Wasabi answered, placing his wrench in a designated area on his perfectly organized desk, "With a little magnetic confinement for uh… ultra-precision."

Hiro picked up a magnifying glass near the end of the table. Sarcastically, he asked, "Wow. How do you find anything in this mess?"

"Ah, ah!" Wasabi grabbed the magnifying glass and methodically put it back where Hiro had picked it up from, "I have a system: A place for everything, and everything in its place."

As Wasabi slowly removed his hands from the table to prevent and jostling of his pristine, organized desk, Gogo quickly walked up, grabbed a wrench, and walked away.

"Need this!" She called as her hip hit the table, ruining Wasabi's precise organization.

Wasabi cried out in her direction, "Y-You can't do that! This is anarchy! Society has rules!"

As Wasabi ran after Gogo, a female voice sang-shouted behind the twins, "Excuse me! Coming through!"

A tall blonde woman rolling a large black ball across the lab passed between Hiro and Akari as they made room for her to pass. The twins followed her to her station – with Tadashi close behind – and watched as she pushed the black ball towards a stand near the counter she was using as leverage. Once she had the ball in the center of the stand, she was lying with her back on top of the ball.

"Tadashi!" She beamed once she noticed the siblings' presence. She stood from her previous position and walked over to the twins, "Oh my gosh! You must be Hiro and Akari!"

Bending down and leaning closer to the faces, she shouted, "I've heard so much about you!"

She pulled out her earbuds and separately grabbed Hiro and Akari, kissing them on each cheek. Stunned, all the twins could do was just stand there and let it happen. She then pulled them over to the edge of the counter where she pressed a button on the floor which rose the ball off the ground, "Perfect timing, perfect timing."

"That's a whole lot of tungsten carbide," Hiro observed, eyeing the black ball in front of him.

"Four. Hundred. Pounds of it. Come here, come here, come here," The woman grinned as she pulled them over to her workstation and began mixing things together, "You're gonna love this,"

"A dash of perchloric acid, a smidge of cobalt; a hint of hydrogen peroxide, super-heated to five-hundred Kelvin and–" She began spraying the chemical mixture around the ball and pulled down the lever on the wall behind her, causing all of the mixture to stick to the tungsten carbide, "Ta-da! Pretty amazing, right?"

"Interesting…" Akari answered truthfully.

"It's so… pink," Hiro added.

"Here's the best part!" She lightly tapped the pink ball with her index finger and it burst into a pink cloud before dissipating away.

"Whoa…" The twins said simultaneously in awe.

"I know right?!" The woman turned around, revealing her pink dust-covered face and lab coat. She wiped her glasses off with her thumb and brushed the dust off her shoulder, "Chemical metal embrittlement."

"Not bad Honey Lemon," Tadashi complimented as he came up behind the twins again.

Hiro and Akari both smile before something hit them. Akari spoke up, "Wait a minute… Honey Lemon?"

"Gogo? Wasabi?" Hiro finished her thought.

The group of four heard Wasabi shout in the distance, "I spilt wasabi on my shirt one time people! One. Time!"

"Fred is the one who comes up with the nicknames," Tadashi explained simply.

"Uh… who's Fred?" Hiro asked, looking up to Tadashi for the answer.

"This guy, right here!" a muffled voiced appeared behind the twins.

Akari jumped at the sound of someone being directly behind her without her knowledge, while Hiro cried out a startled, "Ah!" when he turned to see a man in a mascot uniform behind him.

"Ah, ah. Don't be alarmed," Fred pulled his arm from the arm hole of the suit and lifted the head, so the twins were able to see his face, "It's just a suit; this is not my real face and body."

"That's not really why we were so…" Akari mumbled to herself, trailing off as Fred continued.

"The name's Fred," He introduced, dropping the head of the suit and shaking Hiro's hand through the mouth hole of the suit. He began to spin the sign that was in his hand, "School mascot by day, but by night… I am also the school mascot."

"So, what's your major?" Akari asked.

"Oh no, I'm not a student. Although, I am a major science enthusiast," Fred explained as he plopped into an armchair in the corner of the lab, pulling out a DPIX comic of a human transforming into a lizard, "I've been trying to get Honey to develop a formula that can turn me into a fire-breathing lizard at will."

"But she says that's 'not science,'" Fred makes air quotes and leans back in his chair.

"It's really not," Honey Lemon responded.

"Uh-huh. Then I guess the shrink-ray I asked Wasabi for isn't 'science' either," Fred eyed Wasabi as the man walked towards him, expecting an answer.

"Nope," Wasabi answered quickly.

"Well then, how about… an invisible sandwich?" Fred waved his arms for dramatic effect. Akari chuckled at the science fiction enthusiast, "Imagine eating as sandwich, but everyone thinks you're crazy."

"Just stop," Wasabi deadpanned.

"Hiro. Akari," Tadashi called from across the room at the front doors. He gestured his head in a motion that said, 'follow me.' The twins walked from the group and followed their brother into the next part of the building.

So I dropped off the face of the Earth... again.

*sigh* Adulting is harder than I assumed hahahaha...

Anyway, I've been picking up more hours at work as of late, but my finals are over and I'm officially on winter break until mid-January.

Hopefully this means I'll be able to write some more content during this time, but honestly I'm currently trying to cope with the fact that Christmas is NEXT WEEK, and I don't know where the time went, so who knows.

I'll try to get you all a chapter if not before the New Year, and within the week after.

Thanks for your patience all! I appreciate it, as well as your feedback.

Signing off,

ellieisnotonline :)