Descent
By HorridLittleMonkey
He had felt it coming on for a while now. It had crept into his mind like a gentle fog, long boney fingers caressing his brain into a downward spiral. He rather wished it had caught hold of him roughly and jerked his tired conscience into a raving insanity. Then he wouldn't have been so slow to recognize what it was lurking about in his skull; He was going mad.
"That stupid-head has been quiet lately…" The Hawaiian child stated, tapping the cold ice-cream covered spoon to her chin thoughtfully, "too quiet."
"Eh!" Stitch agreed before clambering under the table and up the other side in an attempt to swipe any unattended bowls and their contents. Jumba picked up his frozen treat, removing it from the voracious experiments' reach, "Hm is odd. He has not tried to capture last two experiments, no?" the once-evil-and-now-semi-reformed scientist said, leaning on the table and making it creak dangerously under the weight, "And Jumba has not seen him around island in veeks. Perhaps leetle girl and 626 should go on exploration mission?"
While Stitch chattered away his agreement in broken English and Alien, Lilo stood on her chair, raising her spoon like some sort of banner, "Yeah! We can find out what that big fish is up to and maybe we can free the last of your cousins while we're at it. We'll call it Operation Fried Pickles! Let's go, Stitch!"
It was the noise that he noticed first. Always there was some sound, some little vibration wiggling through the air and digging it's way into his audio perception organs. Perhaps he could have handled them better if it weren't for the fact that every little sound was a negative one. If it wasn't Hamsterveals high pitched, poorly formed gibberish about his latest failure, it was that annoying little sandwich making trog and his constant snide remarks. There was a time he was hailed as a great captain, an amazing warrior of the Galactic command yet now…now he had been reduced to 'stupid head' by some inferior little Earth girl. Always the noise, always the names and words, burrowing into his head like worms and nesting inside him to whisper their insults over and over, long after the words had died in the air. He couldn't take it any more. He had to make it stop.
"You see him yet?" Lilo whispered, peering through the frilly green plants that surrounded the crashed space ship. She hadn't been there in a while and the girl was a bit surprised at how run down it looked; thick green vines had trailed their way up the sides and she could see paint chipping off under them.
"Naga…" The fluffy blue creature muttered, twitching his ears around and sniffing at the air curiously. He mumbled a bit more in his Alien tongue, carefully and quickly scurrying up one of the large palm trees that had grown up near the ship, "Lilo, meha neeshta?"
The child looked up and shrugged a little, "I don't understand either. Gantu always takes good care of his ship…" she moved forward until she was at the last skimpy line of ferns before the open ground and water that led to the opening, "He must be up to some thing big. We better hurry…who knows wha-"
"Cousin!" Stitched called out suddenly, pointing a long claw to one of the rocks beside the opening of the ship. Sure enough, some thing not very big and furry was sitting there, legs pulled up to its chest and small ears drooped against its head, "Cousin…Ruben?"
Only the sarcastic little sandwich muncher had noticed any sort of change in him. He would point out, with mustard encrusted claws, that he was spending an awful lot of time alone in the dark now and that he had fallen silent in the face of every thing. Of course this was closely followed by a joke about him becoming one of those Earth teenagers and that he should try to grow some hair to go with all the black he wore. He had only nodded and walked out the door, not even taking an experiment container or his blaster. The orange experiment had tried a few more times, trying hard not to show any concern for his large shark-like room mate but quietly wondering what had happened. Eventually he stopped hunting the experiments. Then he stopped going out side, then didn't leave his room at all. He had smashed the communicator to bit's the eighth time Hamsterveal had tried to call, shrieking about the lack of new experiments. He refused to open the door for the little ketchup covered trog, sealed off the windows, and curled up as small as was possible for a creature of his size, clutching a pillow over his head.
"Ruben?" Lilo stepped over the slick little stones and through the shallow water, making her way to the awkward experiment. He didn't move, blank black eyes staring down into the water swirling in gentle circles at the base of his rock. "Where's Gantu?" She demanded, Stitch nodding beside her.
He jerked oddly at the name, ears pinning flat to his skull and claws digging into his arms a little, "Well well…if it isn't little miss save the world and her heroic side kick," He hissed, still not looking at the pair, "Come here to stop me from making evil sandwiches of doom?" he finally looked their way, eyes cold and lacking their normal shine. In fact, his fur had lost any sort of gleam and the once pudgy experiment seemed to have lost a substantial amount of pudge.
"Gantu!" Stitch snarled, flexing his paws as if in threat and baring his teeth up at his wayward cousin, "Na kreeshta miha!"
"Oh, 'up to some thing' is he?" Ruben sneered, uncurling and looking down at them with such a cold malice that even 626 felt a need to go quiet, "Now let me see…what could ol' fish head be up to…oh I know. He's probably decomposing. Evilly, of course. You two better go dig him up before he does some thing really awful, like becoming a skeleton."
It wouldn't stop. Nothing would make their voices stop, even after he had destroyed any thing and every thing in the room that could even think of making a sound. He had clamped the pillows and blankets over his head but still there was noise. He could hear them all, every single insult, every little barb slung into his seemingly thick hide, all the names and there was so much noisenoisenoise. The sound of laughter as the grand council woman stripped him of all meaning, the accursed chattering of that bliznacking gerbil, a constant bombardment from the trog and its horrid 'cousins', the little Earth girls, nothing more than children and yet they had no respect for who he had once been.
The small Hawaiian girl blinked, staring up at the small creature, "What…what do you mean?" she asked, glancing from Stitch to Ruben a few times.
"Do I have to spell it out for you with interpretive hula?" The yellowish experiment jumped down, landing with a small splash behind them, "He's dead. D-E-A-D. No longer among the living. Six feet under, kicked the bucket, pushing daisies! He's gone!" His voice continued to rise with each term, eyes becoming a little overly bright with sudden wetness.
He couldn't stop screaming. Unintelligible roaring ripping its way from his vocal chords because he had to make them stop. Any thing to make them stop. His eyes happened to rest on his blaster and the screaming went silent. If they wouldn't stop…he would make them stop.
Lilo could only stare, her mouth slightly open and eyes wide. Stitch on the other hand, crossed his arms with a smug looking, nodding once, "Good. No more stupid head after cou-"
Two small but very powerful fists had slammed into the blue creature before he could finish, one square to the jaw and the other in the gut, sending him flying several yards and crashing through a few trees. He was almost to stunned to notice the pain coursing through his small body. Almost. He leapt back, snarling out all manner of curses only to find Ruben, all four arms out and ready, spines quivering from his back, and tears silently rolling down his face, "You shut up. Just shut up!" the other experiment screamed, visibly shaking now, "Don't you ever…you…you don't even know. You and your little Earth monkey, prancing around with your stupid 'Ohana' shit…well he was my ohana. The only one I ever had because you-" he lashed one arm out, a single claw pointed at Lilos face, "You never though to try to help me did you? You just left me here while you gave every other stinking experiment a chance. But not me. There was no second chance, was there?"
She was fighting back tears, watching the anguish in the experiments eyes and struggling to think of words, "Ruben, I…I mean we…we never…you just seemed…" She trailed off, still at a complete loss. Before she could try again, a blue blur came out of no where and tackled Ruben to the ground only to be kicked up into the air and pummeled by four clawed fists. Stitched landed hard, coughing and struggling upright again. He had forgotten Ruben had every power he had and it had been a long time since any thing could stand up to him physically.
"Gantu was my ohana…and I was his." Ruben spat, glaring at Lilo again, "But I guess you never thought of that while you were so busy helping every one else. You never once thought what it must have been like for him, did you?" the last words came out quiet and broken, some thing in the experiments eyes changing and looking so miserable and lost, "Stranded on an alien planet after being made a mockery of, forced to work for that psychotic rat, constantly beaten and put down…and I was a part of it. I have no room to talk…"
The moment Rubens arms lowered, Stitched jumped in again knocking him over this time and raising his hand with a snarl.
"Stitch, stop!"
His ears perked up, snarl gone as the blue creature slowly looked over, "Lilo?"
"Just stop…" she whispered, looking down at the ground, small hands clenched into fists, "He's right…Gantu is gone now…we have no reason to fight him." He frowned but obeyed, moving off his cousin and over to the small girls side. Ruben, how ever, stayed down, retracting his second arms and spines before curling into a miserable heap. She walked over carefully, reaching out to touch his shaggy fur, "Ruben…you could come with us if you want…we could be your oh-""Please just go." the voice was soft and quivering now, the experiment having lost any will to fight. Lilo nodded slowly before walking away, Stitch close behind.
It was finally quiet.
End Notes: There are no Gantu stories here. At all. WTF you guys. I'm a little annoyed at how this became about Ruben and started getting shaky at the end, but it'll do for now.
My writing has be come rusty. I need some author WD40.
Thank you for reading and remember, critiques are very much appreciated and comments are nice to get as well.