avatar: welcome back! I'm finally back to normal schedule with this fic, and everything is on track again. This chapter's got some character development for Maverick, some plot development and foreshadowing, and we're checking in on an old friend.
Drak: avatarjk137 does not own Lilo and Stitch. He does own Maverick, the H-series Experiments, and the contents of this story. He also owns me: I'm the first important OC he's had who was DOI - Dead On Introduction.
Chapter 9
Future Impending
"You wanna come?" Lilo asked Maverick.
"What are you doing again?" he replied.
"We're basically just going to hang around the island, and enjoy being indestructible since nobody is around," Stitch said. "I might drop by and see my girlfriend Angel later where she works."
"Oh, diving off roofs because everybody's at the concert. Nah, I'll pass." He paused. "Why are you really not going to the concert?"
"Tickets were sold out," Lilo responded. "No big loss. I really do prefer the oldies."
"Oldies means old music, right?"
"Right. So, you don't wanna come?"
"No, I need some alone time." Maverick was dressed in the clothing Pleakley had grudgingly made for him. It was a simple jumpsuit made of a deep green material Jumba had on hand that wouldn't be damaged by extreme voltage. It also had four armholes, so that he could extend and retract his extra arms without tearing it. Pleakley's resentment had prevented him from adding anything, which was probably a win-win situation. "I also have a few more things to talk to Jumba about. Maybe I'll come along tomorrow."
"How long are you going to be on Earth?"
"Another few days, at least until I talk to that Cobra Bubbles guy. What's he like?"
"Intimidating," Lilo said as she finished her breakfast. Nani walked into the kitchen. "You're late, Nani," Lilo mentioned. "Why aren't you in a hurry?"
"I'm off until the afternoon," Nani explained. "Then I'm only going in to inventory the items. We're not even opening until after the concert because everybody's going to be there, and I'm not on the evenings right now. Most of the tourist industry is off the late morning and afternoon today."
"Okay. What are you going to do, then?"
"Catch up on my relaxing around the island," Nani said with a grin.
"Same here," Lilo said. "Stitch and I are going to hang out outside a while."
"And you?" Nani asked Maverick, her smile gone.
"I'll be on Jumba's ship," Maverick said simply, leaving out the door.
"I'm going to be honest with you, Lilo, I don't like him," Nani said.
"He says most adults don't."
"I imagine not. Mostly, I don't think he's a very good role model for you."
"Neither do I, but he's pretty fun to be around," Stitch said.
"He's just having trouble adjusting, Nani," Lilo reassured her older sister. "He's had a bunch of changes to go through in the last two months."
"If you say so."
"Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!" The chant was as infectious as the common cold and slightly less pleasant, shouted in a half-dozen different languages by two dozen coarse, harsh, cruel voices. This was a common occurrence during the group showers in the triple-max security GF prison asteroid, and the guards had become rather lax about breaking up the fights. They would get to it in the next few minutes. Besides, these things had a way of… working themselves out. If an inmate died, it was only a statistic.
Both of the current brawlers were serial killers infamous on their own planets or star systems, both had yet to significantly injure each other, and both had nothing to lose. One was a large mantoid creature nearly twelve feet tall, and probably even taller if it fully extended its four long legs and two spindly arms. A few fresh scratches on its shiny obsidian carapace were the only injuries so far. The other fighter, an eight-foot tall gruff creature seemingly sculpted from green crystal, growled as he held a massive hand over one of his glowing red eyes, which his opponent had spat in. "I hope your brain insurance is all paid up," he growled, "because you'll finish your term drooling in the infirmary!"
"Enough," a voice said quietly but clearly in Turian. Both fighters look down to see the poor fool who had stepped between them. A small, crimson-furred creature glared up at them, sporting tall, ragged-edged ears, bent antennae, four arms with paws clenched into fists, light red fur on his chest, eye sockets, and inner ears, and what was obviously a fresh bleeding wound on his forehead covered by a bandanna made from his uniform sleeve.
"What?" The crystalline inmate sneered. "We disturb your suicide attempt, punk? You've broken up a couple-a shower fights lately, and the fighters let you because your Experiment reputation intimidates them. We're different. You wanna get involved, fine, but we aren't stopping on account of you."
"You will stop," Leroy repeated. "You will stop now. You can't hurt me, so don't try."
"Why I oughtta-" Big, Green and Crystallized began, but he never finished. Leroy looked up and locked eyes with him, and the prisoner was paralyzed by Leroy's eyes. The solid black orbs concealed a maelstrom of hate, rage, sorrow, and bitterness just below their surface, and the inmate was momentarily stunned by the weight of the sort of sheer emotional volume that led to a true genocide.
The mantoid, however, did not see Leroy's eyes, and did not receive a final warning to stop. It whistled something that loosely translated to "I never could follow directions," and punched Leroy in the head with a brick-sized fist mounted on a nine-foot arm. Leroy didn't flinch, but the creature's carapace split open up its forearm, causing the mantis to screech and jump back.
"Why are you fools fighting?" Leroy asked, with the air of asking for the score in a ball game currently on TV, and giving no indication that he had noticed the punch.
More hissing and whistling from the mantis more or less meant "He insulted the memory of my mother!"
"You started it by insulting my pride and my dignity!" the crystalline brute replied.
Leroy spat on the ground. "WHO CARES?! Does your pride make your stay here any more comfortable? Does it make the food taste better? The cots softer?" His voice was soft and mocking now. "Or maybe your dignity can dig us a tunnel to freedom, while the memory of your mother sings and dances to distract the guards?"
"I should mount your head on my cell wall!" the crystal inmate yelled. The mantis buzzed its agreement.
"Don't get me wrong," Leroy warned, "I love violence as much as the next prisoner here, and I'll shred you like wet paper to defend myself. But I'm not going to let anybody kill each other like you two are doing. It sickens me to watch you all fight… when you have nothing worth fighting for." He walked over to a showerhead, and let the icy water stream down onto his head, removing the bandanna as he did so.
Underneath, pink blood poured freely down into his face as the water washed out the new wounds. The deep slashes across his forehead could've only been inflicted by Leroy's own claws; nothing else he could access in the compound would've pierced his skin. Leroy left the stream of frigid water and checked his reflection in the mirrored wall of the shower room. He inspected the wounds long and hard, until the buzzer sounded that marked the shower period as over. Only then did he leave, satisfied that the scars that would form on his sanguine forehead spelt out VAKIKUTA, the English translation for which was 'ONLYONE'.
627 pulled out of the dive and surveyed the beauty of the Hawaiian islands from his cloaked aerial vantage point. "Who says you can't go home?" he sneered. He dipped the ship until Kokaua Town filled his view, and watched the whole town moving toward the stadium. "Looks like there won't be too many people around. Nobody to kill, but then again, it'll be nice and quiet." He opened the airlock and leaned out into the clear, warm air. He then grabbed the H4 pod and dropped it into a small stream he saw below. He threw the H5 pod in a different direction, toward the Pelekai household. "A present for the folks." Finally, the evil Experiment touched his cloaked ship down on a supermarket rooftop. "A perfect parking job. Today must be my lucky day."
627 walked onto the roof and enjoyed the fresh air. He noticed a large, fat, sunburned tourist with an ice cream cone. "Well, it is pretty hot out." He blinked, and disappeared from view. Seconds later, the ice cream cone vanished from the man's hand as he was about to take the first bite, and he stared at his empty hand in confusion. 627 reappeared on the rooftop with the ice cream cone and ate the ice cream and the cone in one bite. "Much better." He then walked into his ship's cargo hold to grab a 'toy'.
Maverick walked into Jumba's lab, and looked around. The room was filled with bubbling beakers, half-finished small machinery, and gleaming chrome. There had to be more technology in the room than anywhere else he had ever been, and he had to stop to admire it. When he closed his eyes, he could feel the sheer… newness. He didn't know a better word, it was as if the whole room simply radiated a vague sense of being cutting-edge. He noticed a large figure poring over something, and whistled, causing Jumba to look up from the blueprints he was absorbed in. "Hey Jumba, do you have a quiet room I can go to think in?"
"Yes 628, one of the ship's rooms is still designed to being normal Earth inn room. It is being thru second door on my right. As an evil genius, I am always being glad to see people thinking." Maverick nodded, already on his way, and walked into the room. It was a passable imitation of an actual Earth bed-and-breakfast bedroom; the walls and ceiling were still chrome, and there was a control panel poorly hidden by a picture frame containing what was apparently an unused sheet of canvas. Also, the emergency sprinklers on the ceiling were actually a laser security system, but that was less than obvious to the untrained eye.
Maverick sat down and closed his eyes, breathing deeply and evenly. This had only begun to work recently, mostly when he was trying to sleep, but he could meditate to see a more in-depth glance of his future, as opposed to the flashes he usually saw. The tips of his spines changed in color from yellow to green, finally moving to a soft sky blue. He opened his eyes, and the room appeared dark to him. A luminescent white line extended from the floor directly in front of him forward, but it soon forked in two. Each of the new lines soon forked, and this continued until a treelike image lay on the dark ground in front of him. It was filled with different ends, due to each line having many forks, and some three-pronged forks littered the tree as well.
He concentrated on one particular ending, and saw himself reflected in it. And yet, it was not himself… at least, not yet. He saw himself as an accomplished pirate captain, a virtuous rebel who fought an evil regime that had replaced the Galactic Federation. He was battle-scarred and much, much older, but he still had some fight left in his eyes. But this wasn't the only way he saw himself.
He turned to another path ending, and saw himself as a king. But not as a kind king; he was a cruel tyrant, strange black lines crossing his fur in a grid, ruling his home planet with four iron fists. Then he saw another, nearby ending, and he was still king, but a wise and benevolent one who led his people into Omnitaurus's greatest golden age ever. He would eventually step down to let another rule, but the people would remember his rule forever.
He turned to still more endings. He saw himself as a scourge of the galaxy, a heartless killing machine both literally and figuratively: nearly all of his body was replaced by mechanical parts. He saw himself as an avenger, fighting across eternity to stop a single shadowy figure; they even continued their battles eons after their rivalry had started, eons after everything they originally fought over was gone. He saw himself as a forgotten, broken old hermit, defeated and hopeless. And he saw many, many paths that led to nothing but an early grave.
Maverick saw all these possible fates for himself, and he was horrified. He was horrified that he could cause so much good or so much evil. He was horrified that simple heat-of-the-moment choices were all that separated these massively different fates. And most of all, he was horrified that he couldn't see what decisions led where. He could see the ends, but not the means.
Maverick was suddenly snapped out of his meditation by the sound of a phone ringing. The darkness, the white lines, the visions of his many possible fates, all melted away in an instant. He was back in the guest room, and a phone was ringing in the other room. He heard Jumba get off his chair with a groan and walk over to the phone. "This is being lab of Dr. Jumba Jookiba. Ah, Little Girl, hello…What? I have never been hearing of such a thing!"
"Whee!" Lilo jumped off the cliff, plunging twenty feet and slamming into the dirt below. Lilo was indestructible now, thanks to Absolute, and whether Nani wanted her to or not, she was going to enjoy it. She got up from what would have been a nasty, limb-breaking fall, and dusted herself off. "Your turn, Stitch!"
"Yeeehahaaha!" Stitch did a triple backflip and landed smoothly on one hand, launching himself off of it with another backflip to a standing position. "How was that?"
"You're such a showoff," Lilo said with a shake of her head. "So, want to go see Angel?"
"Actually," Stitch said, "I just remembered that she was going to be at the concert, representing the local talent."
"Oh, okay then," Lilo said. "What should we do next, then?" Before Stitch could answer, Lilo's watch lit up. Jumba had given the watch to Lilo for her ninth birthday; it had a portable Experiment tracker in it. Unfortunately, by the time he had completed it, only a dozen or so Experiments had been left unactivated, so that feature had been largely useless. It was still an excellent digital watch, and it also functioned as a camera, flashlight and cell phone. "What?" Lilo exclaimed. "New Experiment activated?"
"Warning," the watch said in a smooth computerized female voice, "Experiment H4 activated. Primary Function: Unknown. Uploading data… please wait"
"Experiment H4?" Lilo echoed. "Have you ever heard of H4, Stitch?"
"Naga."
"I'm calling Jumba." She opened up the cell phone and called Jumba's lab.
After a few seconds, the familiarly accented voice picked up. "This is being lab of Dr. Jumba Jookiba."
"Jumba, it's Lilo."
"Ah, hello, Little Girl."
"Jumba, the watch just told me Experiment H4 activated."
"What? I have never been hearing of such a thing!"
"So you didn't make an H4?"
"No. I am crossing my heart and wishing to expire."
"Then who do you think… of course," Stitch said. "What evil genius would sign all of his creations with his own initial?"
"Hamsterviel," Lilo said grimly. "We'll go find this H4, Jumba."
"Please to be proceeding with much caution," Jumba warned. "Thinking of fake evil genius Hamsterviel is not thinking like evil genius Jumba. Experiment will be differing significantly from my own, and we are not knowing how."
End of Chapter
Leroy wasn't originally supposed to be in Rebel Without A Cause until the conclusion, probably the last chapter. However, just this week I decided to grant him this scene and another extra scene later in the fic. The reasons why he's acting so oddly will become clearer over time, unless my writing sucks too much for you to figure it out. On a side note, the crystalline inmate is basically one of the aliens from Ben 10. The mantis inmate is off the top of my head.
Next Chapter: We meet H4 and H5. I wish I had a more dynamic way of saying that...
