The Rubber Band Theory

Chapter 6: Upgrades

     They met in the Hamadas' garage the next morning. After a quick scan, Hiro had all the measurements he needed to make everyone armor. They spent an hour analyzing the footage Baymax had taken from their encounters with the masked man, looking for anything that could give them an advantage.

     "The neurotransmitter must be in his mask." Hiro brought up a model of the mask on the display, spinning it around. "We get the mask, and he can't control the bots. Game over."

     The next day was spent getting Hiro acquainted with everyone's tech. He figured that it would be easiest to give their suits abilities and weapons that they were familiar with. With their inputs, he started working on the designs, printing and assembling them as quickly as he could. The end of the weekend meant that the Nerd Crew had to go back to school, but Hiro stayed home from his usual shadowing to work.

     The first suit to be ready was Honey Lemon's. They met at Fred's to test it out, pitting her against a very unenthusiastic Heathcliff. Her suit was pink and orange, complete with a snug but resistant set of underclothes. Her helmet wasn't far off from a sleek bike helmet, only built for protection and aesthetics rather than for aerodynamics. It had two long ears that doubled as antennae for the comms system. She typed away easily at the screen of her orange chem-purse, the strap serving as a conveyor belt for the assembly line within the orange 'bag'. With her history in softball, her aim was good. Poor Heathcliff never stood a chance. Not that he tried, anyway.

     Go Go's suit was ready next. Hiro had thrown out the bike entirely, condensing her tech into four yellow and red disks. Her helmet was built for speed, ditching the tall ears in favor of a long protrusion at the back. Go Go had more armor along her shoulders, arms, and hands than Honey Lemon did, needing the extra protection in case she wiped out at high speeds. Her gloves and boots housed the suspension tech for the disks, the two disks at her feet having the ability to separate and give her two smaller, throwable disks. Her undersuit was sleek and black, small red detailing for style.

     Hiro started on Baymax's suit next, needing more time to manufacture all the parts for the big guy than for the others. He only worked on it when no one else was around, not even letting Tadashi have a look at the designs, much to his brother's exasperation. He kept making tweaks and alterations to make it easier to put on and take off.

     Fred's suit was an entire ordeal of its own. Since Fred didn't have tech to work with, they had to start from the ground up. The upside was that Fred knew exactly what he wanted. Before long, Fred had been transformed into a blue kaiju, complete with super-jumping capacity and flame-breath. That had taken a while to implement safely. His visor was disguised as one of the suit's three eyes, set in the center of the hood.

     Wasabi's suit was next to be completed and boy was it fun to make. His helmet was replaced with a slim visor-and-headset variation, letting his hair fly free. Hiro broke up the norm of the rest of the suits, giving Wasabi a black undershirt and loose blue pants that tucked into long black socks. His green armor covered his shoulders and his chest, segmenting farther down his torso than most of the others'. He didn't have any specially reinforced shoes like Go Go or Fred, just a simple pair of traditional sandals. The fun though? That was had while making the plasma blades in Wasabi's gauntlets. With a flick of his hands, Wasabi could deploy long plasma blades that could cut through most anything. A simple flick of the hand was all it needed to reactivate the safety and turn them off. When Hiro and Wasabi went in for a high-five at the end of training though, Tadashi nearly had a heart attack. The shield was barely up before the other two noticed on their own, and Wasabi turned off the blades.

     Tadashi's suit had been somewhat difficult to come up with. Everyone else had either their tech or tech that was tailored specifically to them. Tadashi's tech was Baymax, and he was already taken as an independent member of the team. Not to mention that Hiro had privately claimed Baymax and his services for himself. In the end, Tadashi and Hiro decided something new had to be done.