Dominion (Futuristic Four)

"Sometimes You Can't Change Time."

It was a couple of minutes before Hiro felt he had recovered sufficiently to move, but it felt like an eternity.  Eventually the others found him.  Violet took a step forward.

"Hiro?  Do you . . . remember?"

"I remember too much," he groaned.  "It's like I have two lives stuffed in my head."

She wrapped her arms around him as Penny and Wilbur hung back.  "It's going to be ok.  Everything is going to work out in the end."

"I hate to break this up, but we need to get out of here," Wilbur warned.

"Right.  Let's go."

Wilbur supported Hiro on one side while Violet took his other.  Penny led the way out the door and into the night.

The street was flooded with people leaving the convention.  Penny steered them away from any potential threats until they were a good ways away from the building.  They sat Hiro on a park bench.

"I'm going to get the time machine," Wilbur announced.  "Now that you've got your memories back, we can return you to your proper time."

"What?"  Penny grabbed Wilbur's arm and dragged him a short distance away.  Hiro closed his eyes.  He could still hear what they were saying, but he didn't bother telling them that.

"Are you crazy?" Penny whispered.  "You want to just put him back where he belongs and let the future play out?  The whole reason we came back here in the first place was to fix the future!"

"But don't you see what fixing his memories did?  He's exhausted.  I don't think it's fair to being him back to the future now."

"If we don't, everyone dies."

"Not everyone."  There was a pause.  "Do you think maybe we should try to fix the future from our own time?"

"We go back there without Hiro, we're dead.  He's the only one he'll listen to.  Maybe not even that."

"But maybe he'll remember all this.  Maybe in the future Hiro will be different.  He'll be braver.  Stronger.  I don't know."

"Hiro?" Violet asked.

"Yeah?" he replied.

"How are you feeling?"

"Better, I guess."

"We're going to get the time machine," Wilbur announced.  Hiro opened his eyes.  Wilbur and Penny had returned to the group, leaving Hiro to wonder what they'd said that he missed.  "Will you guys be ok here?"

"We'll be fine," Violet replied.  Wilbur and Penny vanished into the night, leaving Violet and Hiro alone on the park bench.  They sat in silence for several moments.

"Who is Kyuubi?" Hiro asked.

"You can't remember?"

"I only have my memories up to the point just after we got back from stopping Syndrome."  He didn't mention the strange slivers of other memories which had appeared, memories which he knew didn't belong there.  Violet sighed.

"Kyuubi is just a really confused guy.  He's doing the right things, but he's doing them the wrong way."

"But who is he?"  Hiro hesitated.  "He's someone I know, isn't he?"

Violet tugged at her hair, refusing to say a word.  She neither confirmed nor denied his guess.  Hiro turned his attention to the ground.

"I saw him," he said.  "Kyuubi.  Twice."

"You saw him?"

"Don't worry, he didn't do anything.  The first time was the night I ran out on you guys.  He was there talking to the past me when I got home.  The second time was just now, when we fixed time.  He knew who I was.  He said I shouldn't trust you guys.  I think he's going to do something terrible."

"Of course he's going to do something terrible.  Like I said, he's misguided."  She took a deep breath.  "I like to think I know a side of him that the others don't see."

"Do you think we should let the future fix itself, or that we should fix it?"

"I don't know.  Everything is just so complicated."

A powerful boom rattled the ground, followed by sirens.  Hiro raised his eyes.  In the distance he could see the building where the presentation had been held.  Flames sprouted in every direction.  In his mind he knew what had happened.  Tadashi was dead.  The past was fixed.

"When all this is over," Hiro began, "I'm going to make one last trip back in time."

"Really," Violet said.  She was watching him as if trying to guess what was going to happen next.

"Yeah.  I'm going to come back to this moment and save Tadashi."

"What?  No, you can't!"

"Why not?  I'd be careful.  I'd save his life just before the explosion, explain to him that he can never say what happened, and then I'd bring him to the future at some point after I'd become a superhero with Baymax.  Tadashi wouldn't blab about it, I know he wouldn't!"

"But we can't mess with time, Hiro!  Even if we think it means saving lives!"

"But this is Tadashi!  My older brother!  He wasn't even supposed to have died.  I've seen what life was like with him alive."  She just doesn't understand, Hiro realized.  She never will, not until I prove that it works.

Violet turned away.  Her eyes looked extra shiny in the moonlight, almost as if they were wet.  But that was ridiculous.  What did she have to cry about?

"Sometimes you can't change time," she said, "no matter how hard you try."

Hiro glared at the flaming building. She was so set on the fact that Tadashi had to die, but he didn't! Not now that Hiro could go back and fix it.  And it didn't have to end at Tadashi.  Hiro could save anybody!

The words echoed back in Hiro's mind.  We're going to save lives.

Yes I am, Kyuubi.  I'm going to save lives, and I'm going to stop you.