Lilo & Stitch's Star Trek
Chapter 65: A Lie Held In Earnest

For a few brief moments, Lilo remembered nothing at all.

And then, a floaty fluffy feeling wafted over her, as if she was quickly sinking into a particularly plush feather bed; the sensation filled every fibre of her, encompassed and surrounded her completely in a sea of warmth. The comfort was almost stifling, and she felt that, if she closed her eyes, she could sleep forever…

No. There are still important things to be done.

Her eyes sprung open.

She was lying down, that much was certain. But as for where she was, well, in front of her lay a vast expanse of emptiness, as far as she could see. Absolutely nothing seemed to be supporting her; indeed, she found she could swipe her hand underneath her without any opposition.

This gave her a very uneasy feeling. If it were darkness all around, at least she could have said she couldn't see where she was. But from her to the horizon she could see no features, no earth, no sky, no creature or person, nothing but whiteness purveyed the surroundings.

She looked around her, in every direction she was able, but the nothing stretched out into infinity every direction her head faced. She strained her eyes, hoping she was missing something, but the blank horizon was absolutely featureless.

It was while she was scanning the abyss – if you could call it one without darkness – below for a third time that a dreadful feeling entered her stomach. She swallowed, but the feeling remained, gnawing at her brain in a similar manner to how she supposed brain slugs did.

Was she dead?

Her finger shifted slightly, and, for the first time, slid across something textured. Ruffled fur at first, and then something nobbly and leathery–

Her hand closed slightly – and her fingers fell into grooves in the object, their tips touching its back. No, not grooves – gaps… and the base of one of them brushed against a smooth surface, something that felt like the keys of a piano, like the control panels on Jumba's ship, like fingernails-

She wasn't holding something, she was holding someone. Someone's hand.

She looked up, and there in front of her, eye-to-eye, was the blue furry grinning spectre of her best friend in the universe.

She beamed at the sight of her comrade. She wasn't alone any more.

"Stitch!" she said – or at least, she tried to say, but she couldn't hear a thing – she couldn't even hear herself through her head. She tried again, but the silence did not cease; she couldn't speak, she realised with disappointment, which meant she couldn't tell her friend a thing.

Was that it, though? asked a thought in her ear. Sometimes some things are less about what they are and more about how they are.

In fact, there wasn't any sound anywhere – no distant breezes, no birds chirping or cicadas humming. No sloshing slushing waves lapping the beach's edge. Everywhere around, the deafening sound of silence roared through the air.

Was there something wrong with her? She attempted to shout, and when that failed, to scream… nothing was working, nothing was happening, nothing was all she heard-

But Stitch smiled and shook his head. Lilo felt a wave of calmness melt over her, and an overwhelming sense of safety bubbled through her chest – she knew that everything would be alright.

For a while – she didn't quite know how long – she just lay there, hand clinging tightly to Stitch's as they both closed their eyes, content with just being together, wherever they were.

A breeze picked up, tickling her face and bristling her hair; her eyes sprung open and she looked for the source, but she could see none. She returned her sight in front of her – Stitch laughed soundlessly as his fur ruffled in the wind, and she smiled as well.

It's time to go.

The wind grew stronger, pushing her hair back and blowing it about in a tangled mess of wires and string; it stung her eyes, and she struggled to keep them open. A gust push past them, and the feeling of fluff unravelled beneath her; she found herself falling with Stitch, wind rushing past as they fell, spraying her face and flinging most of her hair upwards and some of it across her vision. Below them the looming void beckoned, its depths empty of even darkness, yet still threatening somehow to swallow them up.

She didn't want to leave.

She tried to hold on to Stitch, tried to grasp his hand as tightly as she could – but she felt her hold slowly slipping, and she knew she could not maintain her grip. Still, she struggled to stop his hand sliding through her clenching fingers, readjusting her grip to regain precious centimetres as her friend's paw slid even further through-

One final blast of air, and his fingers slipped away.

And Stitch vanished into the blank nothingness, swallowed up by the void, as Lilo was blown further and further away.

Good luck.

She could sense it coming. She could feel the foreboding welling up in her torso, the feeling that she had fallen too far. She looked downwards; she could see a gray figure in the emptiness, a silhouette of a person falling towards her, coming to meet her in the middle-

It was her shadow on the ground below.

And despite knowing that, especially at the speed she was falling, it would do her no good, she clenched her eyes shut, wrapped her arms in front of her head, and braced herself for the impending collision.

The last thing she thought before her shadow filled her view was that she hoped that Stitch would find happiness, even without her, and, for some reason she could not comprehend, that he could forgive her for what she had done.

Lilo jolted forward, and then immediately wished she didn't. Her forehead throbbed painfully from the impact, sending twinging jolts whenever she rocked about. She rubbed her head, and the pain slowly ebbed away, leaving her alone to attempt to make sense of whatever just happened.

It was this point that she realised that, for one, she wasn't squashed like a watermelon against a ground of uncaring blankness, which was always a good start. The second thing she realised was that she could still feel the wind pulsing through her hair.

And isn't that a motor?

She opened her eyes. She was staring at a dashboard, dials whirring with the engine's roar; she rubbed her head again at the sight of it. Above it was – as you'd expect – a windscreen, and through it she could see a rather square red bonnet–

She was in the buggy.

And, beside her, Stitch was driving like a maniac. His eyes were narrowed as he altered the wheel's angle in small, precise increments, and his grip on the wheel far tighter than usual – something important must be happening.

They were weaving through the trees of some sort of forest, in one gap and through another, narrowly avoiding bristled trunks and gnarled branches by inches (although not the roots, she noted to herself as the buggy jolted and pitched over two large root-laden lumps in a row.)

A fair distance ahead, a purple creature was visible; it was running on all fours, dipping in and out with the motion of the buggy. She couldn't make out very much detail, except that it had two antennae and two rather long rabbit-like ears…

"Urgh..."

She tried to make sense of the situation, to figure out where she was and what had happened, but everything inside her head was a hazy, confusing mess; her thoughts were jumbled, out of focus, and she found it hard to concentrate. Whenever she tried to ask herself a question, her brain refused to answer; it felt as if someone had wedged a wrench in the cogs, which were spluttering forward in an attempt to dislodge the jam.

She took a deep breath, rubbed her eyes, and attempted to focus her mind. She must have dozed off at some point, because… because that's the only thing that made sense. It's the only thing that could make sense. She could grasp that she had a dream – and she was able to remember what a weird dream it was – but it was slipping from her mind, slipping as fast as Stitch had been slipping away from her-

But what had they been doing before she fell asleep?

She tried to concentrate. They had been… chasing something in the buggy. Someone. It was very fast… and Jumba had something to do with it… there was a space cruiser… and it had said to her, 'you will find me to be more than a match for you.'

They were chasing Experiment 628.

With a cascade of thoughts, the gears in her head ground and clattered back into action, and everything now made sense. Jumba had created another experiment (she'd have a word with him about that later) and now they were trying to catch it! And Gantu had smashed his spacecraft – actually, where was he now?

Never mind, the important thing was getting the experiment.

A hissing buzzing noise caught Lilo's attention; the communicator crackled to life, static spurting out in starts and stops as a voice faded in over it.

"...26! Little Girl! 626! Are you being there?" said the voice of Jumba.

"Jumba?" She didn't know why, but she felt relieved to hear his voice - but then she remembered the experiment.

"You've got some 'splaining to do!"

"Yes, I know, but there isn't being time for that! Experiment 628 has escap-ed from my laboratory, and you have to catch him. I-"

"We're after him right now." Lilo peered into the distance. "He's a fair way ahead, though… I dunno if we can catch up to him."

"Look, he is not going to be stopping unless he is trapped – and you cannot be catching up, he is being too quick for that. You need to be chasing him to a place where he cannot go any further, and then catch him with the device in the glove compartment."

Lilo opened the draw, and took out of it a small, grooved silvery orb.

"What is it?"

"Just be trusting me, Little Girl. When you are having him cornered, point it at him and press the button on top."

Lilo rotated the orb around; on the other side, embedded in the groove, was a small button.

"Uh, okay." She placed the device back and closed the compartment. "But, how to trap him? I mean, he's not likely to just go where we'd want him to."

"Use your head. You are smarter than you are thinking."

"Right." She nodded, although she knew Jumba couldn't see her.

She stared out into the distance, seeing if she could see any landmarks. A rather long way away to her left, she could see a dirt pathway winding through the forest, a concrete set of stairs taking it down a small dip before continuing towards the road. She recognised the trail almost immediately – the Kumuwela-Kokee Trail, one she had travelled down many times.

To the right, the ground was sloping upwards, and, as she saw checking behind her, continued to do so a fair way back; it was fairly gentle at its foot, but as it went up it became rather steep indeed. She knew there was a cliff somewhere around – she had gone there once or twice to think about various things – and she figured the slope made the sides of the bottom of the protrusion. The trees were closer together there, and there was a not unsubstantial amount of brush; some trees were jutting out at odd angles, growing lopsidedly in their attempts to make the most out of what little space remained.

The experiment was still running away from them, of course. He would be scared of being captured, even if he didn't show it – he wouldn't be running if he wasn't scared on some level. The best way to control where he went would be to take advantage of his fear of capture; place pressure on him from one angle so that he turned the other direction.

"I've got it!" she exclaimed, clapping her hands together. "Stitch, can you hold the buggy as steady as you can?"

Stitch groaned, but nodded all the same.

She pressed a red button on the dashboard; a panel below it slid out of sight, and a joystick replaced it. In front of her, a section of the bonnet slipped below the rest, and with a whirring sound a large plasma cannon jutted out of the gap. As it came to a rest, a square crosshair flickered onto the windscreen, aimed in the same direction as the cannon.

"Alright." She took a deep breath and grabbed the yoke. Looking up at the position of the experiment, she held it upwards so that the crosshair centred on a point just in front of him; when it had, she adjusted the stick slightly to the left. She then nudged it as slightly as she could, attempting to get as close as she could and adjusting for when the experiment moved too far towards the holographic sight.

When she was confident she couldn't get any closer without injuring the experiment, she flipped the cover at the end of the yoke and pressed the red button.

A sizzling zat resounded through the air; jets of dirt flung themselves skyward as the ball of plasma made contact, a dust cloud forming in their wake. 628 dug his claws into the dirt, puncturing the cloud as he skidded through it; the dirt clods pelted him from above as he began to run towards the slope. Growling, he shook his head and continued his dash, zig-zagging the trees as he went.

Lilo turned to Stitch to see what he was doing; he looked puzzled for a moment, but then a huge grin spread across his face. He turned the steering wheel and jammed the handbrake down; the buggy's back slid out and a shower of dirt lurched from the left-hand wheels as they drifted through the turn, almost slamming into a nearby tree. As they came to face the hill, Stitch switched the gearshift, pulled the handbrake back up, and pushed down the accelerator as far as it would go. For a moment, the wheels spun in the dirt, but then the buggy lurched forward.

As they had progressed up the slope, the trees had grown closer and closer together, and though Stitch still managed to wind a path through, they had gotten uncomfortably close to imprinting themselves upon mossy trunks or thick vivisected stalks, and several times Lilo had to duck to avoid low-lying branches. The undergrowth was also becoming a problem; while ferns fell easily, the buggy had had a bit more trouble with the few bushes that lay in the path.

They plunged into another one, and leaves, separated from the twigs by the impact, flew in all directions; branches lashed across the windscreen as the buggy pushed through. The experiment, of course, had just crawled under it, but each time they had gone through a bush, it had slowed them down considerably.

That said, each time that had happened, they had been able to make up the lost ground again; the experiment tripped, or had gone one way and then back again, perhaps having made a mistake. Lilo was surprised that one of Jumba's experiments was so clumsy, or could make so many mistakes, but it could be possible that he was just exhausted from all the running.

Eventually, the ground flattened out again, and the gaps between the foliage widened again; at this, Stitch sighed with relief. Lilo took aim of the cannon again and shot another blast before the experiment to ease him in the right direction; 628 turned to his right, just as she anticipated.

They burst through a shrub and out into a clearing, littered with browning leaves and small seed pods. Ahead of them, the curve of the hill sharpened and turned inward on itself, as dirt gave way to craggy rock; past that, the land narrowed quickly until it ended in a point, beyond which, a hundred meters down, lay the forest below.

The experiment slid to a stop, spun around, and began to double back, but he found himself trapped by the buggy as it skidded to a halt in front of him.

"Alright, Jumba, we have him trapped!" said Lilo into the radio as she grabbed the orb.

"Right! Point the device at him, and press the button."

"What's it going to do?"

"628 is too dangerous – he cannot be convinced to be turning to good. This device will be storing him as pure energy. It's entirely harmless – he won't be feeling or remembering a thing."

Lilo paused for a moment before replying. "Really? You sure?"

"Yes, Little Girl. Now quickly, before he figures something out!"

"O-okay…".

She leapt out of the buggy, and ran towards the experiment; he had frozen, as if he was unable to figure out what to do next. She held the device in front of her, and squinting at the panicked experiment, she pressed the button.

The image of Experiment 628 began to flicker, and waves of static pulsed through him for a few seconds.

And then, he was gone.

Jumba stared through his binoculars towards the clearing in the distance, attempting to keep an eye of the proceedings there. He could make out the buggy through the trees and brush, but it was hard to see anything else from this distance.

"Has she done it?"

He lowered his binoculars and glared at Pleakley, who was nervously staring at Jumba. Pleakley quickly turned his gaze back to the clearing.

"I am not knowing yet," Jumba muttered as he returned to the binoculars. "It is hard to be making out… too much vegetation. I am not sure where…"

But then, a grin spread across his face; he had spotted a red spot moving towards the buggy. "Ah-ah, there she is yes, she's, well, 'captured' him." He turned to Pleakley, still grinning rather widely, and clapped his hands together. "Well, that is that being taken care of."

"So, how did you get the little monster to go along with your plan?" asked Pleakley, raising his eyebrow. "I mean, you said it yourself, he's not exactly the most co-operative of creatures, and especially after what happened-"

"Ah… I didn't," Jumba replied. "He was just a hologram, projected by the car's headlights. The device was a replica I had made overnight, and the button just turns off the hologram."

"Oh." Pleakley turned back to the cliff, and Jumba busied himself with the binoculars again, attempting to track the buggy as it returned through the bush.

"You know, I dunno about this lying business," said Pleakley after a few minutes of silence had passed between them. "It seems a bit… I dunno, unethical."

"It is being for best," replied Jumba, all the while not breaking his concentration on the sight through the binoculars. "You heard Temporal peoples, it would be causing too much troubles with the timestream. All we are doing right now is patching together the then with the now."

"If you say so," Pleakley said, although he did not sound at all convinced.

A minute more of silence passed before he spoke again. "How are you going to explain the missing days? I mean, it's not like she isn't going to notice that all the calendars are three days ahead."

Jumba put down the binoculars, turned to Pleakley, and smiled. "I am having idea for that as well."

It took a few minutes for the buggy to reach them, Stitch, not being the most careful driver in the world, decided to take the short way, which in this case meant sliding down the side-slope of the hill in a wave of loosely-compacted soil before turning and flinging the car down the concrete steps, tossing Lilo and himself around in their seats as the vehicle jiggled up and down.

"H-e-e-e-y, J-j-u-u-u-m-ba a-a-and Pl-e-e-ea-k-ly! Ho-o-o-ow-'s it- ha-a-a-ng-ing-ng-ng?"

"It is hanging with the very well, Little Girl" said Jumba, a very amused look on his face, as the buggy stopped in the flat driveway in front of him.

"I suppose you two want a lift?"

"A lift would be being very nice, thank you."

"Alright then," she replied, smiling a very big smile. "Hop in!"

As she rose out of her bed the next morning, Lilo stretched her arms and yawned. She felt very refreshed – unusually refreshed, actually. Perhaps it was the sunny morning, the beams of yellow sun and orange sky that threaded through the window?

Or perhaps it was the lack of nightmares. In fact, she couldn't remember dreaming at all.

In any case, she decided, she should probably make the most of it.

Gingerly, she slid her way out of the covers and onto the floor, careful to land as softly as she could in case she woke up Stitch. She tiptoed over to her hamper, lifted it and the large piles of clothes it contained, and took it to the elevator.

Tensely balancing the stack, she manoeuvred her way to the laundry, where she proceeded to load the washing machine with her clothes. Then, after filling a measure with powdery white powder, she emptied it into the machine, before swinging the door shut, fiddling with the setting dial, and turning it on.

As green and yellow dresses sloshed and spun around the glass portal before her, Lilo felt lighter, more cheerful, as if a burden had fallen off – like the clothes that were now cleansing in the slosh of bubbles and water represented some kind of bad, the kind of bad that was now being banished away by the power of soluble detergents – or something. She figured it was probably just guilt from having left washing her clothes for so long this time.

After washing her hands in the bathroom, Lilo walked down the hallway and entered the kitchen, where Nani was patiently waiting for the microwave to finish – inside which, a plate of spaghetti from the previous night slowly revolved. Jumba was sitting at a table, idly humming a tune as he focused his microscope; beside him sat Pleakley, who was nervously trying to eat a bowl of cornflakes (although his arms was shivering so much that he was spilling more of it on the table than was entering his mouth.)

Lilo took a seat opposite Jumba and watched him as he rotated a nob on the device.

"Hey, Jumba," she said. "What'chya doing?"

"Making sure antibacterial works on this sample," replied Jumba.

"Whatever it is, please make sure you wrap it up by nine," said Nani. "Mr. Jameson has me on the busiest shift today, and the last thing I need is to miss it because you've infected the world with a zombie virus or something."

"Ah-ah-actually, that is not quite being true – your shift is beginning at eight today, I believe."

"What do you mean, Jumba?" said Nani, checking the radio on the bench for the date. "It's Tuesday, isn't…"

She stopped, then turned and glared at Jumba.

"What is this?" she said, gesturing at the radio. "You haven't been playing around with time again, have you?"

"Ah-"

"N-no, not at all!" piped up Pleakley suddenly. "No time-manipulation here! Right, Jumba?"

Nani raised an eyebrow.

"Eh, ignore him, he is just nervous from the cornflakes." He took a deep breath before continuing. "There was a bug going around that was making you all very tired and delirious. I am keeping you all in bed while making an anti-bug for you to be taking."

"I was in bed for three days? Mr. Jameson is going to kill me-"

"Not to be worrying. I left messages with all of your bossing peoples, and they are fully aware you were being sick. Everything is fine."

Nani sighed. "Well, okay. But if I go to work and find the space-time continuum starting to break down, it's your head on the line first."

Jumba nodded and returned to his microscoping.

All through hula practice, Lilo pondered about Experiment 628. What did it do? Was it really that bad that Jumba had to lock it up? And what had it meant when it had said it would be "more than a match"? Did it overestimate its abilities? Or was there something else?

She was so focused on these thoughts that she ran into a fellow dancer several times due to either missing a cue or performing a move too soon, and it wasn't long before the hula teacher silently waved her over.

"Lilo, is there something on your mind?"

"Uh… what gave you that idea?" she asked sheepishly.

The teacher glanced at Elena rubbing her hip where Lilo had fallen over and crashed into it.

"Oh."

"If you're preoccupied with something, like at home or with your… friends, just remember that you can always talk to me." The teacher leaned over to her ear. "And also, get better friends."

Lilo giggled. "I'm just waiting for them to mature – I kinda have a sense about them. Anyway, after all, he puko'a kani 'aina!"

The teacher smiled. "Just don't wait too long, okay?"

"Sure thing," Lilo replied.

The teacher nodded. "The ancient Hawai'ians believed that words could have a healing power, that you could talk a person from the brink of death with the right words. They might not have been literally correct, but they did have the right idea – you see, rather than the physical world, words can be healers of the soul." He paused for a few moments. "Basically, if not me, talk to someone. But remember that my ear is always around if you need someone to listen to."

"Alright, Kumu," said Lilo, nodding.

She couldn't tell her teacher about her thoughts, though. He'd just think she was crazy.

She tried to focus on her dancing for the rest of the class, but her mind kept returning to the enigma that was 628. Indeed, so focused was it on this that she didn't notice something else – a thing that was rather unusual indeed.

It was only when she saw Mertle approaching her after the end of hula practice that she realised what that was. Mertle hadn't insulted her once.

She stopped in front of Lilo, and quickly glanced around the room, doing so in a manner that suggested she was checking to make sure no-one was watching. She then chewed her lip, looked down to her dress, and, sighing, pulled an envelope out of her pocket.

"Uh…"

She stared at the envelope first, and then at Lilo, and back to the envelope, as if she were in the middle of deciding whether or not this was a good idea.

Finally, she nodded determinedly, as if confirming to herself that this was the best course of action.

"Um… hey, Lilo…"

"Uh, hi Mertle," Lilo replied nervously. What was going on?

"Well, er…"

She took a deep breath.

"My mum accidentally printed out an extra invitation, and, well, she was all 'you shouldn't waste paper, dearie!' So, um… here you go."

She handed Lilo the envelope, glanced around several more times, and then rushed as fast as she could through the doors, leaving Lilo quite perplexed.

"To Lilo Pelekai and company," she read aloud to Jumba as he drove the buggy along. "You are cordially invited to my nine-and-a-half birthday party. You may bring your dog if you wish, as well as any of your family members, as long as they are polite and proper. It's about a month away."

"That doesn't sound like Mean Girl at all," Jumba replied.

"Well, I'm glad she's finally coming around to ya, Lilo," said Pleakley. "And besides, I'm sure we can all be 'polite and proper'!"

Jumba grunted.

"Well, at the very least, I'll be there to rein him in."

"I am not sure I want to be going to Mean Girl's birthday," said Jumba. "It could be trap so they can all be laughing at us again."

"Oh, come on! Just because you've been endlessly ridiculed and mocked by your peers for decades on end-"

Jumba rolled his eyes at this remark.

"-doesn't mean we are all so lacking of basic faith in humanity!"

"I am standing by what I said."

"What about you, Lilo? It's your invitation, after all, so it's your decision."

Lilo sat in silence for a moment before replying.

"I want to go."

"But they are being so mean to Little Girl! Why would you-"

"I figure, if it's genuine, then why reject that out of hand? And if it's not, well, it's not like whatever they'd do will be any different."

"Good reason," said Pleakley.

"I am still not liking this one bit," said Jumba. "But, as Pleakley is saying, it is your decision. Hey, Mean Girl may be changed after all, and if not – well, if you are needing someone to talk to, Jumba would be happy to be providing assistance."

"Me too," said Pleakley. "We're always there for you."

"I know, guys," Lilo said. "Thanks."

A few moments passed before Jumba remembered something.

"Eh… speaking of being there for each-othering-"

Lilo raised her eyebrow. "Jumba, what is it?"

"Ah, well… a few of the experiments are holding a splortzball competition, and they were wondering… if it's not troubling at all, if you could be joining them?"

"Splortzball? You mean that game Pleakley's good at?"

"No, that's prisinolabrak," said Pleakley in a rather offended tone.

"Splortzball is actually a game the experiments invented as an outlet for their powers," said Jumba somewhat proudly. "Oh, don't worry, they will be going easy at you!" he added when he saw the look of concern on her face.

"Well… okay, but I'd like to also play something I know about as well. How about baseball?"

"Or maybe 'basket-ball'?" added Pleakley hopefully.

Lilo laughed. "Maybe. But we'd have to handicap you somehow or else you'd score all the goals! "

"True, true." He thought for a moment. "Two legs tied behind my back?"

"I've seen him walking tippy-toed on one of the foots before," said Jumba. "It is vary little impediment, be trusting me."

"Well, we'll think of something," Lilo said, smiling.

As the apricot glow of the setting sun lit the skies above, Stitch, Pleakley, and several of the experiments, along with the Little Girl, ducked, dodged, passed and weaved between each-other, each beaming as they played.

Experiment 426 watched from the roof of the Pelekai residence in silence. Every now and then one of them would score, and 426 would raise his fist in a silent cheer, but otherwise he did not move, content to watch events unfold below.

"You're taking quite a risk sitting there," called the voice of 419 from his left, drawing him from Slushy's goal attempt. He looked to his side – his sister climbing out of Jumba's bedroom window.

"I don't think so," 426 replied. "It's not like anyone will look over here."

"Well… Jumba still… wants us to… keep out of sight," she continued as she (rather nervously) navigated the tiled roof, arms balanced out beside her. 426 wondered why she couldn't just crawl along on all fours like he did before remembering that the only claws she had were on her feet, so she couldn't just cling to the surface.

"I'm… sufficiently out of sight," he said indignantly, as Kixx blocked a goal in the distance.

"Well, okay." She sat down beside him.

"Besides," he said as he returned his gaze back towards the players, "I didn't want to miss the game."

"Yeah, it looks like quite a good one," 419 said. "I heard one of them suggested it after hearing about… what happened, and they kind of wanted to do something for her. Even though she doesn't remember it… it'd be kind of like salve for the soul."

426 glanced back at her. "Whoever it was, it's a good thing to do."

He returned his attention to the game, where Spike had just accidentally punctured Squeak with his tail, but out of the corner of his eye he could see 419 staring at him, as if she was trying to decipher something. She stared for half a minute, and then looked out to the field – maybe now he could watch the game without being distracted.

Squeak had sat down on the side bench, clearly out of sorts, and the Little Girl now had the ball. She weaved and jumped and darted and twirled; she danced with the ball, a grand and splendid dance, painting a picture in motion with the brush of her feet-

Until Digger suddenly plopped out of the ground in front of her, and 426 felt himself growling.

Quickly, she tossed it ahead to Slugger, who wacked the ball – but much softer than usual, as it flew in an arc and fell in the scoreblot.

And 426, caught up in the excitement, stood up, shook his arm and opened his mouth wide to shout a long loud "Whoo!" – before, realising what he was doing, he slumped back down into the two grooves of the corrugated roof that he had been sitting in and sunk his head back into his arms.

419 was staring back at him again. But her expression had changed – it was as if she had grasped something, as if the pieces of a puzzle she'd been chewing on for a while had fallen into place before her eyes.

"You really care about her, don't you."

426 felt his eyes flicker towards 419 and back again, but he otherwise maintained his stature. Instead, he thought for a few moments on what he should say next.

"Sure I do. I care about all of them."

"You were pretty courageous, you know. Even if things got in the way, you still tried to help. You risked your life to try and save someone. That's pretty admirable."

"Not that it helped."

"Unforeseen consequences can't be helped."

419's eyes widened, as if she had just thought of something.

"You know, Jumba told me when we were on the cube ship after you went missing, he said that he regretted what he'd said to you and that he was proud of you and your bravery and determination."

426 couldn't help but smile a bit. "Really?"

419 nodded. "Really. He said he was confident you'd make it back. And here you are!"

"Yes, here I am."

A few more minutes passed before 419 spoke again.

"It must bother you not to be able to talk about it with them. That they don't remember what happened and you can't say anything to them, or reassure them about anything."

426 sighed. "It does. But, you know, it doesn't matter that they don't remember. I remember. I can remember for both- for all of us."

The days passed quickly – or at least, so it seemed to Jumba, although he somewhat wondered if their ordeal had anything to do with this perception. Nevertheless, it certainly felt as if very little time had passed by the moment, a month-and-a-half later, that he, Lilo, Pleakley and Stitch arrived in the buggy in front of Mertle's house.

"Don't forget the cake!" Pleakley called as he exited the vehicle. "I worked hard on that-"

A ripping noise filled the air, and Jumba glanced over at the source – the frill of his butter-yellow dress catching in the door. "Oh, now it has a tear," he muttered as he opened it again.

Jumba, who was not at all worried at the state of Pleakley's disguise, grumbled as he walked around to the back. He had not asked to come – indeed, he did so only at Nani's bequest, to, how she said, 'keep an eye on things'.

"Now remember," said Pleakley, this time bunching up his dress with one hand while he closed the door with the other, "Nani said that you could go only on the condition that if Mertle is mean to you…"

"Yeah, I know – she said, 'tell me about it, don't solve it your own way'."

"That means no fighting for you… and no evil mutant acid spit for you."

Stitch, who had been attempting to sneak around Pleakley without being detected, spun around on his foot and attempted to give him the most innocent look he could."

"Ih!" he said, smiling a rather large grin while nodding furiously.

"He didn't say you couldn't fight her," whispered Lilo to Stitch as she walked up beside him.

"I heard that!"

Jumba lifted the cake box and sighed. The last month had been somewhat of a balancing act, he mused as he walked through the gate – somewhat like the balancing of cake between his arms. He'd had to be careful about controlling his impulse to hold Lilo back after… after what happened – a task made tougher by the fact the only person in the universe he could talk about it with was Pleakley, and he didn't really want to talk about it.

Well, at least she was happy now.

Surprisingly enough, the party proceeded rather, well, normally. Lilo had convinced the initially hesitant Yuki, Elana and Teresa to play a few rounds of an Earth game called Octopus – something that looked to Jumba like a cross between tag and rugby-but-without-a-ball – and soon they all appeared to be enjoying themselves as they ran, tagged and swished their arms about.

All except Mertle, who stood beside her mother and watched the game unfold.

"Come on, Mertle, this is fun!" shouted Elena as she made it to the goal after narrowly avoiding being caught by Teresa.

"I… I… I don't know. It looks… it looks messy. And… and I don't want to ruin my new clothes."

"Ah, don't worry 'bout that," said Ms. Edmonds, nudging her daughter forward. "I can wash those easily, clean as new! Go on, play with your friends!"

Mertle looked from her mum to the other girls, and then back again. "I… uh…"

Jumba watched her indecision with confusion. Mertle had always seemed confident – arrogantly and brashly so, but certainly confident – in all her interactions that he had seen. It was really, really weird to see her uncertain of anything.

Finally, she shrugged her shoulders and sighed. "Okay."

"Alright," said Yuki, who stood by herself on the starting line. "You can join the team of runners – goodness knows we need more people."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something moving by the cupcake table – a clawed blue hand reached out from under the cloak of the tablecloth, grasped for a cupcake, and having dug into it, disappeared back into the table's stomach. Jumba smiled – Stitch had been oddly content to just sit back and watch the proceedings that unfurled before him. Perhaps he was wary of causing trouble? Whatever the reason, he appeared to be fine just watching Lilo and the girls play.

About halfway through the game, Victoria arrived – and was so surprised to see Mertle and her friends in a game with Lilo that she almost dropped the present she'd brought.

"'Bout time ya loosened up!" she shouted, smiling as she caught. Mertle rolled her eyes – and in that moment of inattention, she ran straight into Elana.

"Are you okay?" shouted Teresa.

"Got you!" Elana exclaimed, hoisting Mertle to her feet. And Mertle smiled, even laughed a little, it seemed, in spite of herself – or perhaps because of herself – before she caught it and attempted to return her face to one of indifference.

"You're not supposed to play that way!" she said. But her expression seemed softer than it had before.

"Of course you're allowed to play like that, it's just taking advantage of someone else's mistakes," said Yuki. She paused for a few seconds before continuing. "But if you'd rather not be an octopus, we can have it your way."

Mertle seemed taken aback. "N-no, I'm fine with that. So, how do you…?"

"You stand still like this, and wiggle your arms like this. And when someone goes past, you try to catch them…"

It was close to an hour before Ms. Edmonds called them all to gather around the porch, where she had laid out two tables, both covered in orange blankets. Sitting atop the larger of the two was a two-layer cake almost smothered in pink icing – such was the quantity of icing that Jumba noticed a not-small globule of it slowly sliding down the top layer – alongside the smaller cake that Pleakley had brought. Sitting on the smaller pile in a rather neat pyramid was a pile of presents almost twice the height of Ms. Edmonds' cake.

Once Mertle, Lilo, Victoria, Yuki, Elena and Teresa had taken whatever vacant seats they could find around the cake, Ms. Edmonds lead them all in a round of "Happy Birthday"; when that was done, Mertle blew out a third of the candles in one short breath and the rest in a much longer one. After that, Ms Edmonds divided the top layer of the cake onto small white saucers, and distributed them among the kids.

"You enjoy your cake, and I'll be right back!" she called, and strode back into her house; when she returned, she was holding a platter filled with bowls of green ice-cream and purple jelly.

"Oh my gosh, yum!" Mertle exclaimed when she saw the platter.

"Ms. Edmonds, please can I have some!" Elena called.

"Now, dearies, everyone's going to get a bowl," said Ms. Edmonds, and she went about divvying up the bowls.

"Cake and ice-cream, Mr Jookiba?" chirped a voice next to Jumba, and Jumba, who'd been watching Lilo devour her cake, turned to the side to see who it was.

It was Ms. Edmonds, holding out a bowl.

"Oh, yes, sure," he said. "Thanking you for the cake, Ms. Mertle."

"Oh, it's no problem!" she beamed.

After receiving the desserts, Jumba took the spoon that had been submerged in the ice-cream and clumsily attempted to scoop a spoonful of ice-cream into his mouth; he kept on missing, however, due to the spoon being far too small for his fingers to pilot.

It was as he was failing a third attempt at this when Ms. Edmonds spoke again.

"Y'know, sometimes I really worry about Mertle," she said, apparently oblivious to Jumba's spoon problems. "Sometimes I fear she gets a bit bossy with her friends. But then I remind myself, she's growing up, and with friends like the ones she has – especially your niece – she'll grow out of it. She'll have her ideas challenged, and be the better for it."

Jumba didn't quite know what to say, so he just nodded.

"Well, thanks for coming."

She then moved on to Pleakley, who'd been involved in a cupcake tug-of-war with Stitch. Or, at least, that was until her voice broke his concentration and he accidentally let it slip from his yellow fingers, causing the experiment on the other end to fall head-over-heel onto the ground.

Stitch shook his head, gathered himself to his feet, and held his prize in the air like a trophy, before dropping it into his wide-open mouth.

After the cake was eaten and dishes dotted with crumbs and frosting put away, Mertle began opening her presents. They were, for humans at least, average things – a water pistol, a plastic tiara, a doll house. If this was Qwelta Quaam, Jumba mused, they'd be getting their first laser-casting equipment with which they could make their own toys – but humans were so… unpredictable, so he supposed it was for the best.

Even Lilo's present was rather subdued – a necklace with a carving of what looked like a whirlpool on the pendant. Mertle nodded when she saw it, almost appreciatively, before laying it aside with the water gun.

Eventually, she had gotten to Victoria's gift. She tore open the wrapping, sliced the sellotape that held the box shut, and retrieved the object inside.

It was a small, somewhat fluffy (if slightly ruffled) plush penguin.

Jumba gave a start. It couldn't be. Could it? After three-hundred years-?

After three hundred years, they had to have made millions of the things.

It had to be a coincidence. It had to be.

But the feeling of unease lingered, and Jumba could not concentrate on the other gifts. It was only when Pleakley poked him on the shoulder that he broke out of his thoughts.

"Jumba, it's time to go!"

"Oh. Yes."

Mertle was standing by the gate, thanking everyone as they left. When she saw Lilo, she audibly sighed and shook her head.

"T-thank you. For coming. A-and the present."

She almost struggled out these words in a mumble, as if she was trying to overcome years of animosity and her own gut feelings in a single moment. Lilo didn't seem to mind; indeed, she almost beamed at the greeting.

"Thanks!"

She then glanced around as if she didn't want anyone overhearing, and said, "Good thing no Gekolikis showed up, right?"

Mertle gave her a very, very small smile. "Heh, right."

"See ya!"

Jumba filed out of the gate after Stitch, who was still munching on one of the cupcakes, and turned towards the buggy.

"Well, this was an interesting few months," Lilo said to Jumba. "You created an experiment, we caught it again with that device from the attic, and Mertle's finally coming out of her shell."

"Interesting?" Jumba groaned. "You are having no idea, little girl."

"What he is trying to say," added Pleakley rather quickly, "is that the past few months have been a little… time-consuming for him and it's given him a lot of stress."

"Another experiment, Jumba?" She smiled and winked. "I won't say a thing to Nani."

"No," said Jumba. "It is… to do with Turo."

That wasn't quite a lie. They had, after all, believed 628 was going to Turo.

"Ooh, is it about your sentence? Do you think the Grand Councilwoman will let you leave Earth?"

"I… don't know."

If that Temporal Investigations report got into the hands of the council, he'd probably never be allowed to leave.

But then, he smiled. "Not that it is mattering. I am having family here, after all, and that is all I am needing."

Lilo nodded as she climbed into the buggy. "And no matter what the future holds, we're all here for each other. That's what an 'ohana does – we look out for each other."

"Indeed," said Jumba as he sat down in the driver's seat. If there's one thing that this whole thing had shown, it was that.

"Alright, everyone in? Seatbelts being buckled? Then, let's be going home."

And with those words, he began to drive down the street, homeward bound, towards the setting sun.

Note: He puko'a kani 'aina: "The coral reef strengthens into land." A saying that means people may start small but will eventually mature and succeed.

Author's Notes: Well, here we are, finally finished after ten years! Whew! A huge thanks to anyone who's read this story, especially those who have read the whole darn thing. :)

Through writing this and other stories, I've significantly improved my writing skills (at least, I like to think I've gotten a lot better!) As a result, there's a vast difference between early and later chapters in terms of writing style and technique. I've also had a lot of time to chew various plot-points and other things over, as well as time to regret certain decisions. As a result, I've been writing a rewrite of this fic for some time now, which I've decided to call 'Starlight'. It will be a bit before I put the first chapters up here - I want to go over it with a fine-toothed comb before doing so - but hopefully it won't be too long, and hopefully it wont take another ten years to finish!

In the meantime, I'd still love to hear your thoughts about this version (and this chapter, of course!) So, keeping in mind how old the earliest chapters are, feel free to leave any feedback you can! Again, thanks for reading, and a great big aloha to all!