Copyright © 2014 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by Disney Press, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney Press, 1101 Flower Street, Glendale, California 91201.
ISBN 978-1-4847-0191-1
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Meet the Characters
Not quite a big city, and not quite a small town, San Fransokyo had always been a mysterious mix of old and new. On foggy nights, the bright skyscraper lights and the neon of the modern city softened, giving the old Victorian pagodas and forgotten alleyways of the past an inviting glow.
One such night, a young teenage boy named Hiro Hamada was making his way down an old brick alley. He was looking for a place where grown men came to fight.
The boy felt a little nervous when he finally approached a rowdy crowd. Men were jammed around a fighting ring, chanting, “Ya-ma! Ya-ma!”
Mr. Yama, a large, sumo-sized man, strutted into the ring and held up his huge hands in victory. It had been a fight “to the death,” and Mr. Yama’s tricked-out eighteen-inch robot—which had claws for one hand and a spinning saw wheel for the other—had just decapitated the competition. The remains of the defeated robot were unceremoniously tossed onto a pile of other dismembered opponents.
“Who’s next?” Mr. Yama snarled, scanning the crowd. The spectators exchanged money and prepared to place their bets. “Who has the guts to step into the ring with Little Yama?” The crowd stared at the big man’s fierce robot and shrank away. Some even hid their bots behind their backs.
Then a voice said, “Can I try?” The crowd parted and everyone stared at Hiro.
Yama’s eyes narrowed. “What’s your name, little boy?”
“It’s Hiro. Hiro Hamada.”
The four-hundred pound man folded his thick arms over his chest. “Go home, Zero. Bot-fighting isn’t for little boys with toy robots. You have to pay to play.”
“Is this enough?” Hiro asked, holding up a wad of bills. Yama smiled and placed Little Yama back in the ring.
Hiro held up a small, unimpressive twelve-inch robot. He tried to seem confident. He’d learned a long time ago that when you bot-fought in this part of town, you never let them see your fear.
Hiro put Megabot down into the ring. Immediately, the tiny robot toppled over. Yama couldn’t hide his smirk as he sat on his mat. Hiro also sat down, his mat across the ring from Yama’s. The bettors went crazy. Piles of cash grew higher and higher.
The referee stepped up and lowered an open umbrella between the two. “Two bots enter! One bot leaves!” she shouted. “Fighters ready? Fight!”
Little Yama quickly advanced on Megabot, towering over him. In seconds, he had sliced through Hiro’s bot! The crowd cheered.
But without warning, Hiro’s seemingly broken bot reassembled. “Megabot, destroy!” Hiro ordered.
Hiro’s bot counterattacked with such deadly force, the fight was over in seconds. Little Yama was torn to pieces. Bits of him sparked and jumped all over the ring.
With the click of Hiro’s remote control, Megabot gave a cute yet awkward bow. The whole audience was silent.
Mr. Yama was stunned. “But...wha—? How? This is not possible!”
Hiro smiled. “No one likes a sore loser, big guy. But everyone loves a winner!” He held up his bot, and the crowd chanted, “Hi-ro! Hi-ro! Hi-ro!”
“No!” Mr. Yama yelled, and the crowd became silent. “No one can beat Little Yama. You cheated, and I want to know how! Give me that bot.” Several of Mr. Yama’s large associates suddenly moved toward Hiro.
“I can see you’re upset. Here’s what I’m gonna do: I’ll teach you everything I know about high-torque micromotors,” Hiro said as the huge men backed him into a corner. “I charge an hourly rate—it’s pricey, but worth it. Before you know it, you’ll be making robots that aren’t totally junky. First class is free!” Hiro was really starting to sweat when a scooter came out of nowhere and tore down the alley. It skidded to a stop, knocking Mr. Yama and his goons to the ground.
“Get on!” the rider yelled to Hiro.
Tadashi Hamada reached back and shoved a helmet on his little brother Hiro’s head. He gunned the scooter’s engine and took off through the crowd.
It was hard for Tadashi to be patient with his little brother sometimes. He turned and smacked the top of Hiro’s helmet. “You graduated high school when you were thirteen, and this is what you’re doing? You’re wasting that big brain of yours!”
It was well known that both the Hamada brothers were tech prodigies, but Hiro—he was something special. He was a bona fide genius. Not that he did much with his brain other than build fighting bots.
“I’m on a roll, big brother,” Hiro replied, grinning. “There’s no stopping me now.”
Just then, a police car with its red lights flashing pulled up and blocked the end of the alley.
“Oh, no,” Tadashi groaned, realizing they’d been caught up in a gambling raid. It wasn’t long before he and Hiro were headed to jail, along with Yama and everyone else the cops were able to catch.
A short time later, Tadashi sat in his cell, staring across the hall at Hiro. Because of Hiro’s age, he was given his own cell, while Tadashi was locked up with Yama and his goons. Hiro could see that Tadashi was furious.
Finally, a police officer yelled, “Tadashi and Hiro Hamada!” The boys stepped out of their cells and glanced sheepishly at their aunt Cass. She’d come to pick them up, and she looked worried.
“Uh, hi, Aunt Cass,” Tadashi said.
She rushed to embrace them both. “Are you guys okay? Tell me you’re okay!”
“We’re okay,” Hiro said, ducking his head.
She twisted both their ears. “Then what were you two knuckleheads thinking?”
It was a long ride home. Aunt Cass started in on them as soon as she got behind the wheel. “For ten years, I’ve done the best I could to raise you. Have I been perfect? No.”
Hiro and Tadashi nodded. They had expected her to lecture them, and they knew they deserved it. They hated making her upset.
“Is it like the blind raising the blind? Yes,” she continued as she parked her pickup in front of the café she owned, the Lucky Cat. It was on the first floor of an old Victorian, and they all lived together in the apartment upstairs.
“We’re sorry,” Tadashi said as they got out of the truck.
Hiro knew he had to say something, too. “We love you, Aunt Cass.”
Hiro and Tadashi cringed at the Closed sign hanging in the window. They knew she’d had to close up to get them out of jail.
“Well, I love you, too!” she grumbled as they entered the café. She grabbed a giant pastry from the counter and took a bite. “Stress eating! Because of you,” she mumbled with her mouth full. Then she walked upstairs to their apartment with her fat cat, Mochi, following her.
Hiro and Tadashi also went upstairs, to the bedroom they shared. Hiro gathered some tools that were scattered on his desk while Tadashi watched.
“I hope you’ve learned your lesson,” Tadashi finally said.
“Absolutely,” Hiro said.
“You’ve got your priorities straight?”
“I really do,” Hiro replied, making an adjustment to his robot, then heading for the door.
“Wait. Where are you going?” Tadashi asked.
Hiro smiled. “There’s another bot fight across town. If I book it, I can still get there on time.”
Tadashi threw up his hands in frustration. “Seriously? Are you gonna keep hustling bot fights, or are you gonna do something with your life?”
Hiro fidgeted for a second. “What, like go to college like you so people can tell me stuff I already know?”
Tadashi shook his head. “Unbelievable. What would Mom and Dad say?”
Hiro shrugged. “They wouldn’t say anything. They’re gone.”
The answer hurt. But it made Tadashi realize he was the only person who could steer Hiro in the right direction. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll take you.”
“Really?” Hiro said, surprised.
“I can’t stop you from going, but I’m not going to let you go on your own.”
Tadashi rode off with his brother on the back of his scooter. But suddenly, he made a turn.
Hiro looked around as Tadashi drove through the gates of the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, often called SFIT for short. “What are we doing at your nerd school?” Hiro asked. “Bot fight’s that way.”
“Pit stop,” Tadashi replied as he pulled up to a gleaming steel-and-glass building.
Hiro impatiently followed Tadashi into SFIT’s robotics lab. “Is this gonna take long? Megabot wants to fight!”
“Relax, you big baby. We’ll be in and out,” Tadashi said as he led Hiro into the enormous lab.
“Oh great, I get to see your lab,” Hiro said sarcastically. Out of the corner of his eye, Tadashi saw Hiro’s attitude change. His lab was high-tech heaven. Tadashi smiled.
“Heads up!” said a girl with purple-streaked hair as she whizzed by on a bike. She stopped short and tossed the bike onto a rack. Tadashi walked over to her and smiled.
Hiro couldn’t help himself. He had to touch the bike. “Whoa...electro-mag suspension,” he said.
“Who are you?”
Hiro turned around to look at the girl. “Um, I’m...Tadashi’s brother.”
“Go Go, this is Hiro.”
Go Go Tomago chewed her gum and nodded.
Hiro looked back at her bike. “Never seen electro-mag suspension on a bike before.”
Go Go spun the bike’s back wheel. In place of an axle, the wheel was suspended between two magnetic forks. The wheel seemed to float like magic between the magnetic frames.
“Zero resistance,” Go Go told him. “Faster bike. But not fast enough.” Then she took the wheel off and threw it in the trash. “Yet.”
Hiro stared as she fired up a 3-D printer on the spot and began to create a new wheel. Then he heard a high-pitched hum coming from the other side of the lab. He saw a large, muscular guy with dreadlocks experimenting with lasers there. His work space was immaculately organized. Hiro headed for the machine.
“Whoa. Do not move. Behind the line, please.”
Hiro stopped and looked down. He took one step back behind a white line that was taped on the floor.
“Hey, Wasabi,” Tadashi said to him. “This is my brother, Hiro.”
Wasabi, a physics student, nodded. “Hello, Hiro. Prepare to be amazed. Catch.”
Wasabi tossed an apple up into the air, but when Hiro reached for it, the apple fell down in hundreds of wafer-thin pieces.
“Wow,” Hiro said.
Wasabi grabbed a bottle and sprayed its contents into the air. Hundreds of green lasers were immediately visible. “There has never been an optic system so precise.”
Hiro nodded, noticing that Wasabi carefully placed his spray bottle back into a particular circle on the table.
“I have a system. A place for everything; everything in its place,” Wasabi said.
Just then, Go Go grabbed something from Wasabi’s table. “Need this,” she said as she whizzed past him.
“Hey, what are you...” Wasabi shouted, and went after her. “You’re messing up my whole system!”
The boys were watching Wasabi chase Go Go when a sweet voice said, “Coming through.”
Hiro and Tadashi turned to see Honey Lemon, a blond chemistry genius, rolling a large ball of metal across the floor. They stepped aside.
Tadashi smiled. “Honey, this is my little brother, Hiro.”
Honey was thrilled. “Omigosh! Hi,” she gushed. “Perfect timing! You’re going to love this!” She pushed the ball onto a hydraulic lift. Then she dashed over to a large machine that held many chemical elements and used the touchscreen to select several of them.
“That’s a whole lot of tungsten carbide...” Hiro said.
“Four hundred pounds of it,” Honey responded.
They watched as the machine combined the elements. Honey smiled and said, “Super-heat to eight hundred degrees, and voilà!”
The boys saw a stream of chemicals shoot out of the machine and spray the metal ball. Instantly, the entire orb was encased in a bright pink glow.
“Pretty great, huh?” Honey asked, and used her cell phone camera to snap a selfie of the boys and herself standing in front of the ball.
Hiro didn’t know what to make of it. “So...pink,” he said.
Honey nodded enthusiastically. Pink was her favorite color. “And here’s the best part,” she said. With one touch, the metal ball disintegrated into dust.
“Wow!” Hiro said, stunned.
“I know, right?” Honey said. “I call it chemical-metal embrittlement.”
“Not bad, Honey,” Tadashi said with a smile.
Hiro thought Tadashi’s friends were nice, but he was a little confused about their names. “Honey, Go Go, Wasabi...?”
“I spill wasabi on my shirt one time, people—one time!” Wasabi said.
“Hey,” Tadashi laughed, holding up his hands. “Talk to Fred. He gives out the nicknames.”
“Who’s Fred?” Hiro asked.
“This guy!” someone said behind Hiro. Turning, Hiro came face to face with a giant Japanese-style Kaiju monster—and screamed!
The monster took his big head off, and the smiling, friendly-looking kid underneath said, “Do not be alarmed. Name’s Fred. School mascot by day.” He spun the SFIT sign he was holding. “But by night, also school mascot.”
Hiro nodded. “Hey. So what’s your major?”
Fred plopped down on a couch strewn with comic books. “Oh, I’m not a student here,” he said, grinning. “But I am a major science enthusiast! I’ve been trying to get Honey to develop a formula that can turn me into a fire-breathing lizard at will.” Fred sighed. “But she says that’s not science.”
Honey nodded. “It’s really not.”
Fred called out to Wasabi, “Right. Then I guess the shrink ray I asked Wasabi for isn’t science either, is it?”
Wasabi shook his head.
“Laser eyes? Tingly fingers?” Fred asked, following him.
Tadashi smiled and led Hiro to another part of the lab. “What have you been working on?” Hiro as
ked his brother.
“I’ll show you.”
Tadashi took Hiro to his workstation. He rooted through a drawer and held up a roll of duct tape.
Hiro sighed. “Hate to break it to you, bro—already been invented.”
Suddenly, Tadashi slapped a piece of the tape on Hiro’s arm. “Hey! What’s your deal?” Hiro asked.
Tadashi pointed to a small red suitcase on the ground, and yanked the tape off Hiro’s arm. “Owwww!” Hiro yelled.
A loud BEEP filled the room. The suitcase began to hum, and lights on it blinked to life. The top opened and a white vinyl form began to rise. When it was fully inflated, a huge, puffy figure stepped out of the suitcase
“Hello, I am Baymax, your personal health-care companion,” it said.
“This is what I’ve been working on,” Tadashi said, gesturing at the robot.
Baymax turned to Hiro. “I was alerted to the need for medical attention when you said ‘Ow.’ What seems to be the trouble?”
Hiro rubbed his arm and snapped, “Sibling abuse.”
“I will scan you now,” Baymax said. “Scan complete. You have a small epidermal abrasion on your forearm.”
“You’ve done some serious coding on this thing, huh?” Hiro asked Tadashi. Even though Hiro was still annoyed at his brother, he was also impressed.
Tadashi walked over to Baymax and removed a chip from his access port. “I programmed him with more than ten thousand medical procedures and a caregiving interface that makes Baymax...Baymax.”
“I suggest an antibacterial spray,” Baymax stated.
Tadashi slid the chip back in. Hiro was impressed. “Vinyl?” he asked.
Tadashi smiled. “I was going for a nonthreatening, huggable kind of thing.”
“Looks like a walking marshmallow.” Hiro said, turning to Baymax. “No offense.”
“I am a robot,” Baymax said as Hiro poked and prodded him. “I cannot be offended.”
Hiro waved his hands in front of Baymax’s eyes. “Hyperspectral cameras?” he asked before pushing his face into Baymax’s stomach. “Titanium skeleton?”
“Carbon-fiber,” Tadashi responded. “He can lift five hundred pounds. He’s gonna help a lot of people.”
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