Honey yelped as a sputter of hot water hit her wrist. "Ow," she said, rushing to run it under cold water.
"You okay?"
"Yeah. At least it's water and not acid or anything funny," the chemist said. She looked a little worse for wear, her fingers covered in plasters and part of her bangs slightly singed. As Honey treated her scald, she glanced over to where Go Go sat rewrapping her ankle bandage. Go Go glared back at her, but Honey didn't take it personally--the girl was just mad, and with good reason.
Right now, the reason was lounging in his favourite armchair, admiring the impressive bruise on his face. Yesterday, Fred had put on a new suit, one with flailing octopus tentacles, long, slender antennae, and squishing sound effects. When he stepped through the lab door, he had startled everyone, causing Honey to break a beaker and Go Go to lose control of her bike, crashing right into him.
Fred had narrowly escaped a broken nose and Go Go had sprained her ankle. Neither had appreciated Wasabi's long lecture on lab safety.
It was clearly not a good week, and Baymax had been busy patching up injuries and warning the stubborn Korean girl to stay off her bike.
So far, only Wasabi and Hiro had escaped injury. The latter had just come out of his lab for a break, still wearing his neurocranial transmitter and followed by a train of microbots. Honey laughed, but her giggle turned into a cry of "watch out!" as the fourteen-year-old, intent on his hologram tablet, tripped over a pile of stray comic books and fell flat on the floor. The headband flew across the room.
"I'm okay!" he called as Honey, Go Go, and Fred rushed forwards anxiously. Then they all turned to watch in horror as the microbots, no longer under Hiro's control, dropped downwards, clattering onto the floor and onto Wasabi's project.
"Oh, no," Hiro said. His microbots would be fine--they were tough little things--but Wasabi's project was another story. He'd gone to pick up an important tool and had, uncharacteristically, left the cover of the machine open in his hurry. Now the bots had descended into the inner workings of his laser cutter, dodging multi-coloured wires and emergency switches to collect at the bottom.
Hiro picked himself off the floor and stared down into the deep, complicated mass of machinery, joined by the other three. With a sigh he picked the transmitter off the floor and placed it on its head. "The bots might have knocked a few wires out of place. Think I can get them all out without doing any more damage?"
Realising what he was about to do, Honey shook her head slightly. "Hiro, I don't think this is a good idea."
"Shhh, let me concentrate." The boy guided the bots out of the dense network of circuitry and wire as carefully as he could, while the others winced whenever a stray bot bumped into anything.
Finally all the bots were out, and Hiro let them fall into a pile on the floor, then peered into the machine again. "Hey, was that wire there in the beginning?" He poked experimentally at it with one finger. "Uh-oh. It's loose. Maybe I can solder it back."
"That," said Honey decidedly, "is definitely not a good idea."
Baymax agreed. "Hiro, it might be better to wait for Wasabi's return." This prompted a nonplussed "you don't trust me to do a simple solder job?" from the robot's owner.
"How do you know it wasn't loose in the first place?" Go Go challenged, folding her arms.
Fred frowned and pointed. "No, I think it was attached there."
Picking up a solder gun that sat on Wasabi's tool table, Hiro hefted it in his hands. "All right, here goes nothing."
Suddenly he sensed rather than saw a large, forbidding form behind him. Hiro turned, clutching the solder gun and smiling uneasily up at the man. "...Hi, Wasabi."
"What are you doing?" Wasabi took the gun from Hiro and placed it firmly back on the table.
"Uh, nothing?" Caught red-handed, Hiro subconsciously moved backwards.
Honey stepped forward to explain, while Go Go turned away resignedly. "Well, some of Hiro's microbots fell in, and he was worried they'd broken something, so he was about to fix it." She shot Wasabi a hopeful expression, but his face darkened.
"Without me?" Hiro opened his mouth to defend himself, but Wasabi hurriedly pushed past him and dropped to his knees before the enormous cutter, his frantic eyes searching the machinery as he muttered to himself. "You can't do that, Hiro!" he said in a panicky voice, twitching slightly. "Only I know how to work this thing! How many times do I have to tell you not to mess with my stuff?" After a few minutes he stood up. "Everything looks fine," he said grudgingly, glaring at Hiro, "but I'm going to run a test, just in case."
The physicist replaced the cover and switched the laser cutter on. It whirred to life as he fed in a sheet of clear acrylic and punched in a design. After he pressed the button to start cutting, though, the machine rumbled stubbornly for a few minutes but produced nothing.
"That's not good, right?" Fred asked. No one answered--they were all occupied with watching Wasabi try to fix the issue, his fingers flying across the buttons to no avail. The machine's whirring rose to a high whine, and it seemed to tremble slightly while Wasabi's expression grew increasingly alarmed.
"Guys, it's starting to overheat," Honey warned, putting a hand to the increasingly warm metal.
"IT'S GONNA BLOW!" Fred yelled, ducking for cover.
"No it isn't," Hiro protested, but a loud crack and a shower of sparks cut him off. Then the machine, and the lab, went dark to the sound of students' surprised cries.
Groaning, Wasabi pressed his forehead. against the dead machine.
Snapping into action, Go Go commanded Hiro to go get a flashlight and come with her. Honey rushed back to her lab, worried that the power failure would affect the reactions sitting in her fridge.
Go Go looked down at Hiro and shook her head, even though he couldn't see her face in the dark. "You should probably apologise to Wasabi."
Giving a little shrug, Hiro nodded assent. "Okay. I will."
A couple minutes of work, and the lights flickered back on. Students cheered, and quickly returned to their routine. Meanwhile, Hiro took Go Go's advice.
"Sorry, 'Sabi. I should have waited for you to get back."
"That's okay. I think I can fix it with a little more work. Accidents happen, buddy," Wasabi said. He seemed to have calmed down somewhat, surprised that Hiro was actually apologising. "Just...never do that again!"
"I can cross 'caused a school-wide blackout' off my bucket list, though," Hiro added with a characteristic smirk.
"Has it been a week," Go Go sighed, examining her ankle.
Fred clapped his hands together and sauntered off. "Well, show's over."
Just then a shriek sounded from the other end of the lab, followed by a string of excited Spanish. The team rushed over to see Honey staring down at her lab table, which was covered in shattered glass and bright blue liquid. She shrugged and then giggled.
"It blew up."
Authorly Notes:
1. Is this even how machines work?
2. 3-D laser cutting is very cool. The joys of being a writer--you get to research awesome stuff!
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