'Why did you drag me out here? It's FREEZING.' Rena snapped, disgruntled. It was late, she should be at home right now drinking coffee and studying for her chemistry test with Honey Lemon and Tadashi. But instead, she was in the middle of the city in her superhero gear. With Fred.

It was safe to say that she was not very happy about it.

'Rena, we need to protect the city! It is our sworn duty as superheroes to protect the citizens that dwell here!'

Rena sped up slightly to catch him, he was bounding ahead in his excitement. 'Right.. Fred, I hate to break it to you but that whole deal with Callaghan was like, a month ago. It's over, we're not superheroes!'

'Well not with that attitude we're not!'

'FRED! I swear to god-' She yelled as he jumped to the top of a rooftop. Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she pulled it out, squinting at the bright light in the darkness.

Tadashi: Where are you? We're meant to be studying?

You: ye i know. be there soon, doing something w fred.

Tadashi: That sounds suspicious. Don't be long cause Honey's brought cookies and they're rapidly disappearing.

You: fatass.

You: jk :)

Tadashi: :(

She slid her phone in her pocket again and craned her neck up to look at Fred atop the building. Reluctantly, she used her plasma to scale the building and she clambered on top of the rooftop to stand next to him. She straightened out and looked out across the city.

'Huh. It is beautiful.' The lights twinkled attractively in the darkness and the air was still up above the tiny cars and people below them. In the distance, she could see the Golden Gate bridge and various neon fast food signs.

'Okay yeah, but do you see any supervillains? Everyone knows that the best place to spot one is obviously at the top of a high building!'

Rena facepalmed. 'Fred, we're not superheroes! We haven't sworn to protect the city or some shit-'

A loud crash from the alley below them made her stop mid-sentence. She ran to the side of the building, Fred hot on her heels. She dropped to her knees and peered over the side of the building. Below them, a stranger was dressed in black and he (or she, but the posture suggested male) was pacing up and down the narrow alley. Rena gave Fred a quizzical look and he pointed down to a small collection of dustbins that clearly belonged to some kind of restaurant in the area. They were... glowing? They lit up the alleyway with a luminescent green colour. The man strode towards them, hauling up the lid of the one closest to him and peering inside. He reached in, and the light was stopped as he pulled something out of the trash and tucked it away inside his coat. Rena could hear him faintly muttering to himself but she didn't have the faintest idea of what he was saying. Then, he turned on his heel and he was gone.

'Wait what?! Where'd he go?!' Rena whisper-yelled, still in shock about what they had just witnessed. Meanwhile, Fred was punching the air behind him, absolutely behind himself with excitement.

'SEE! I TOLD you! This city is crawling with villains and we need to capture them!'

'I swear, stop this! Fred, forget about that guy. It was probably nothing, just some random guy collecting some drugs or material for an invention or something. Besides, it's not like we can find him. Baymax wasn't here to scan him this time.' She felt a twinge of sadness as she said this. It had been a while since Baymax had 'died' in the portal, and Hiro and Tadashi were trying to recreate him together, but it was taking ages. You'd think that they would have the advantage this time, but the healthcare chip that Tadashi had so carefully programmed was lost somewhere in that strange, alternate universe. 10,000 medical procedures took a long time to programme.

'But RENAAA!' Fred whined dramatically, 'I wanna be a superhero and this guy is a villain! We need to find him!'

'If you want to find him, be my guest buddy. But I have a test tomorrow and I need to get home.' She turned away from him and pulled out her phone. 10:56. Wow, they had been out there a lot longer than she'd thought. She sighed, looks like it was gonna be another all-nighter. Whoopie.


'Question 17 was, like, the only difficult one on there.' Honey Lemon said matter of factly, stabbing her salad leaves with her plastic cafeteria fork.

'Speak for yourself!' Rena grumbled. They were at lunch, having just taken their test. In her opinion, it certainly wasn't as easy as Honey Lemon was saying. But, it could have been worse.

'Aww come on!' Tadashi said, elbowing her. 'You said that last time and you got 97%!'

'STILL!' Rena protested, budging along the bench as Gogo and Wasabi came to join them.

'Hey!' Gogo said, spitting her gum out into the nearby trash can so she could eat her sandwich. 'What we talking about?'

'The chemistry test we just had! You know-'

'Yeah I'm already bored.' Gogo interrupted, stretching out across the bench. 'Sorry.' She tore into her sandwich and Honey Lemon eyed her reproachfully.

'You know, it would be a lot better for the environment if you went vegan - or at least vegetarian!' She added hastily when she saw the look on Gogo's face. 'There are so many benefits to it! You would be less cruel to the animals, it's a lot healthier...' She listed off a great long list of 'benefits' to being vegan and Gogo rolled her eyes. Rena sniggered as Honey Lemon lectured Gogo and she turned on her. 'You too Rena! We have a responsibility to help ourselves and this plant and-'

Rena held up her hands. 'Keep me out of this. You know I'm never giving up my Aunt's hot wings!'

'Too right!' Tadashi butted in, 'she makes the absolute best chicken!'

'To be fair, they do have a good point.' Added Wasabi helpfully, and Honey Lemon glared at him. 'Hey, I'm just telling the truth!'

'Oh look here comes Hiro!' Gogo said quickly, 'let's focus on that instead!'

'Hey.' Hiro said, sliding in next to Fred on the bench. 'What'd I miss?'

'Not much.' Rena said, picking at her sandwich.

'Now that the gang's all here...' Fred said, a stupidly big grin plastered on his face. 'The city needs us!'

Rena groaned, 'Fred, we're not getting involved with your stupid schemes to be superheroes!'

'Keep your voice down!' Hissed Gogo as a couple of people turned to stare at them, 'do you want the whole cafeteria thinking that we're weird?'

'They already do.' Rena said, 'we hang around with Fred and a 14 year old kid. No offence guys.' She added as Hiro shot her an outraged look.

'Back to the SUBJECT AT HAND...' Fred started.

Tadashi clapped a hand on his shoulder. 'Not happening buddy. Sorry.'

'Yeah sorry Freddie, but I'm out too.' Honey Lemon said, looking as though saying this was causing her actual pain. To be fair, knowing Honey Lemon, it probably was.

Fred looked crestfallen. 'You guys are so boring! What if another supervillain struck? THEN would you?'

Rena snorted. 'Yeah, because I heard that supervillains pop up all the time to try kill your family! Face it Fred, this is real life. Not one of your comic books. But sure, if it makes you happy then yeah.'

'Well if Callaghan breaks out of prison then we'll need to stop him! I reckon he's smart enough to manage it!' Fred said loudly, clinging onto his only hope of actually being a superhero.

'Oh my god SHUT UP!' Gogo snapped as a couple of people turned around to stare at them. 'Fred, people here are actually smart. They'll figure it out eventually.'

'Yeah.' Said Wasabi, turning his head from side to side anxiously, as though he was afraid that people would pounce on them. 'And don't go shouting about Callaghan being a raving loony with his daughter hanging around. It may not sit very well.'

Abigail Callaghan had been at SFIT for only a week. She'd recovered surprisingly quickly from her coma, and had gone straight back to looking for employment. She got some money from her imprisoned Father, but it wasn't nearly enough to live on. She was an ex-student at SFIT, previously taught by Granville. Granville had taken pity on her and hired her as a kind of assistant teacher. It was her job to act as an extra pair of hands for the students - at basically any time of the day she could be found in the student lab, both encouraging students with their work and working on her own stuff. The kids at SFIT didn't often need actual help, they just wanted new ideas. Abigail was perfect for that, she literally was a mini version of her Father. As well as everyone else on the planet, she was clueless about the identities of her saviours. Which was good, because if she knew then it probably would have been very awkward. In fact, she never even spoke about what had happened to her, and she never publicly advertised the fact that Callaghan was her Father. Rena didn't blame her, but because of this silence they never actually knew if she was very close with him. Despite this, she probably wouldn't appreciate students boasting about how much they hated him or how crazy they thought the old professor was.

'Anyway!' Honey Lemon said quickly, clearly trying to change the subject before Fred outed them as accidental superheroes to the entire school. 'Anyone down to do something tonight? That film we wanted to see is finally at the movies.'

Rena started to accept this offer when Hiro answered first. 'No can do, sorry. Tadashi and I are staying back tonight to work on Baymax.'

Rena whirled around to look at Tadashi. 'What? Again? You didn't tell me about this!'

'Sorry! I forgot!'

She bit back a sarcastic retort, not wanting to argue with him. Deep down, however, it stung. She knew that working on Baymax was important to him but they had spent the last few weeks blowing her off to work on the robot. She had offered to help but they had insisted that they didn't need it, leaving her alone in the empty apartment when Aunt Cass was hosting book club or poetry night or a 'fun cafe quiz!'

'Tomorrow then?' Honey Lemon said, producing a pink notebook out of her handbag and scribbling something down. Everyone around the table murmered their agreement and she snapped it shut, satisfied. 'I'll text you all the details!'

'Hang on is that a daily planner?' Gogo sniggered, 'what are you, 80? Who actually uses a daily planner?'

Honey Lemon stiffened. 'It helps me to stay organised!'

'Yeah what's the issue?' Asked Wasabi, 'I have one!'

Gogo snorted. 'Yeah. That explains a lot, actually.'

They bickered about this for the next few minutes but Rena sat back, ignoring them completely. This sort of stuff happened literally happened every 10 minutes so she had become pretty accustomed to tuning them out completely. However, today it was just a hell of a lot more annoying than normal. maybe that was just her, but she found that she couldn't stand it after just a couple of minutes. She stood and tipped the rest of her lunch into the trash.

'I'm going to my lab. I'll see you in a bit.'

She ignored their questions and slung her backpack over her shoulder. She made her way across the cafeteria and pulled out her phone, checking the time. She still had half an hour of lunch left and decided she may as well make good use of her time and work on her project. However, she found that as soon as she opened the door to her private lab all motivation was sucked out of her. Instead, she collapsed at her desk and shoved some papers aside. Resting her head on the desk, she debated about whether or not it was worth going to sleep. But she decided against it - she'd done it once before and missed the bell. It was fun explaining to Granville why she was 30 minutes late to her class because she had fallen asleep.

Instead, she sat up and picked up a random notebook that she had previously thrown on her desk. She rested her feet on the desk and thumbed through the pages until she found a blank one. She grabbed a pencil from the pot by her laptop and sat with it poised over the paper.

'Come on.' She muttered to herself, tapping it against the blank page impatiently, 'think of something!' But no ideas came to her. Nothing at all - not even the hint of an invention or even what to do for Granville's stupid project. She wanted them to create a defence mechanism for a seaside building in the event of a flood. It was a task just specific enough to make it actually difficult, they had to make sure it was under a certain cost and she had forbidden them from working together, they had to cater to certain foundations, etc. Rena was expecting it to be easy, but she set it over a week ago and as far as she was concerned, she was the only person who hadn't come up with a single idea. Sighing, she slammed the book down on her desk in defeat. For just a second, she debated about going to Abigail for help. But she quickly shook it off, Abigail probably would just tell Granville and she'd get marked down. Besides, she wanted to avoid talking to the girl as much as possible. Even the mention of her name brought up bad memories of the fight that she'd definitely rather forget.

Rena was so busy brooding grumpily that she didn't notice someone leaning in the doorway, arms folded and staring at her. He cleared his throat and she jumped, her phone slipping out of her pocket onto the floor with a clatter. She swore and bent down to pick it up, but he was there before her. Deftly swiping it from under her nose, he straightened out and looked at the screen briefly before passing it to her. She snatched it from him, mumbling a quick thanks as she stuffed it into her pocket. He stepped back, holding his hands up in mock defeat at her hostility and she felt a little embarrassed. He looked a couple of years older than Tadashi, so she deducted pretty fast that he probably wasn't a student. He had blonde hair that flopped over his forehead, horn-rimmed glasses perched on the end of his nose and a piercing in his nose. His face was kind and dusted with freckles and he was wearing jeans, a battered old pair of converse and an old t shirt with the logo of a band on. Rena vaguely recognised it as one of the rock bands that Gogo listened to. Looking at him, though, you wouldn't expect this guy to be anything like Gogo. Where Gogo was actually kinda intimidating (although Rena would never admit this to her), this guy seemed to be nothing but friendly.

He extended an arm out and Rena shook his hand. 'Hi. My name's Cain.' His voice was a bit deeper than she'd expected.

'Uh, hey.' She replied, more out of politeness than actually wanting to get to know him. 'I'm Ren-'

She looked into his eyes and faltered, dropping his hand. She recognised those eyes from somewhere - she just had no idea where. They were a stormy grey, and they looked a little dead behind the glasses. Something about those eyes had thrown her off completely and it was a second before she realised that she was just staring at him with a mingled look of shock and confusion on her face. She tore her eyes away, desperately trying to think where she recognised the guy from. The more she looked at him, the more familiar he seemed.

He chuckled. 'Hi Ren. Nice to meet you.'

'It's Rena. Sorry.' She said, slightly embarrassed. Great. She'd only just met the guy and she'd already embarrassed herself. So much for good first impressions.

'Rena.' He said, nodding. 'Nice name. Means 'joyous melody', am I right?'

Rena stared at him. She had no idea what her name meant. Funnily enough, she had never actually gotten round to asking her parents what her name meant. It wasn't really something that you tended to think about at the tender age of 7. But she decided not to mention this. She felt as though the whole 'dead parents' thing might put a damper on things. 'Uh, yeah, I think so.'

'Cool. Anyway, I just came by to say hi. I've just been recruited to be one of the lab assistants, working with Abigail Callaghan.'

'Oh right. I didn't realise we were getting any more of those.' Rena said. She knew she sounded unenthusiastic but she didn't really care. Why did Granville keep wasting the budget on hiring helpers that they simply did not need? Also, this guy and his too familiar eyes and posture and face shape was unnerving and she wanted him to leave so she could focus on her project.

'Yeah well. Here I am!' He said brightly, sticking his hands in his pockets and rocking back on the balls of his feet. 'Anyway, I'll be off now. Callaghan said she'd give me a tour, just thought I'd come introduce myself! Catch you around, Rena Hamada.'

And before she even opened her mouth to say goodbye he had gone. Later, she would wonder how he knew her last name when she did not recall giving it to him. Instead, she didn't even bother to think about it. She lifted her phone out her pocket and glanced at the text she'd received just before Cain had come into the room.

Tadashi: You coming back this evening with me and Hiro?

You: idk. why?

Tadashi: Aunt Cass wants to know.

You: yeah i can do then. i need to work on this project anyway

Tadashi: Cool. Also, you alright Squish? How come you stormed off?

You: i was until you called me that

Tadashi: Oh come off it, you drama queen.

You: fuck off

Tadashi: Wow okay. Watch the tone if you want a ride home!

You: lmao alright then

She slipped her phone back in her pocket as the bell rang. She put her bag back on and clicked the light off. Double advanced mathematics now. Yay.