Well... sorry people (especially Witchgirl590) for the long delay of the next chapter. Been busy, as my exams are soon coming up, so all the last minute tests and stuff with school and all are beginning to pile up. ANYWAY... here's the next chapter!
I was wondering whether I should add in any of the Final Fantasy XIII characters at Hollow Bastion as well? Hmm...
PLEASE R&R!
Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts (c) Tetsuya Nomura
: Disney (c) Disney
Claimer: everything else (c) me
Chapter Thirteen: Stitch's Glitch
"Lilo! Where have you been?" Lilo's older sister Nani Pelekai demanded as she first saw Lilo and Stitch walking back home.
"I was following Stitch!" the little girl protested. "Then we ran into these weird people, and all this stuff happened, and then I was trapped in a block of ice, and then people disappeared into black holes out of nowhere!"
Nani blinked at her little sister as if she were insane. "Lilo, what are you…" she trailed off as she saw Sora helping Riku walk while Donald supported Riku's other side. Though the hi-potion had helped, Riku was still tired and weak, mostly from the shock that his girlfriend had actually attacked and half-purposely wounded him. "Who are those people? And is that… a duck? A talking, huge, walking duck?"
"Hi there!" Donald greeted, and Nani stepped back.
"I-I must be going crazy…" she breathed, unsure of what to think.
"No, no, he's real," Sora reasoned. "Hi, I'm Sora, and this is Riku and Donald. We're friends with Stitch."
Nani looked down at the little fluffy blue creature. "You know them?" she inquired in shock.
Stitch nodded. "Eh," it answered in alien language.
"We've met before a while back," Sora said. "He's helped me through some tough situations every time I call him."
"Um… well… hi, I'm Nani, Lilo's older sister," Nani greeted, still a little shaken. "Please, come in."
After they went into the house, they sat down on the couch, before two aliens walked into the room from the kitchen.
"Well hello there!" the large four-eyed purple alien greeted. "Nani, you never told us we were going to have guests!"
"Um… don't be shocked, but these aliens are living with us here," Nani began uneasily. "Jumba, Pleakley, these are Stitch's friends, Sora, Donald and Riku. This is Jumba and Pleakley, aliens from outer space."
The one-eyed yellow alien hurried over to shake their hands. "Oh, it's so nice to meet you," he greeted. "So where are you all from?" Then he stopped at Donald, his one large eye inspecting him curiously. "Oh, I've never seen a specimen like you before. Are you a mutated species of what the humans call a duck?"
Again, Donald began to fume before Sora calmed him down.
"No, Donald's normal, like the rest of us," Sora said. "Riku and I are from Destiny Islands."
Pleakley blinked his one giant eye. "That's not on Earth, is it?"
"What?" Donald said. "No! Destiny Islands are Destiny Islands!"
"Now, I'm confused," Jumba said. "You are from another world?"
All three of them nodded, then they began to explain their journey to them, at least… everything they needed to know, including the issues with Organization XIII, the Heartless, the Nobodies, as well as the recent developments with Yuki.
After they had finished talking, Riku felt a strange change within his heart. He had never loved anyone more than he had Yuki, and it was difficult to imagine what could happen to her while she was under Organization XIII's control.
Riku… a familiar female voice called in his head. Riku…
"Yuki?" Riku murmured inaudibly to himself.
Sora and Donald looked at him.
"Did you say something, Riku?" Sora inquired.
The voice had vanished now, and Riku looked at his friends.
"Oh, sorry," he apologized shyly, half with embarrassment. "I was thinking about something else for a moment there."
"As we could see," Nani said teasingly.
"What were you thinking about?" Lilo inquired curiously.
Stitch's eyes sparked up mischievously. "Lurrvee?" he purred, which earned a sigh from the 16-year-old.
"Pretty much, yeah," he admitted. "I was thinking about Yuki. I just… I really want her back."
"We all do, Riku," Sora replied. "We want her back just as much as you do. But there's nothing we can do right now to bring her back to us. She's still being controlled by Organization XIII."
"I know," he growled in frustration, clenching both his teeth and his fists. "But I just can't stand to see her mixed in with them. Those guys are really bad news."
Jumba blinked his four eyes. "Well, there's nothing we can do until she returns, right?" he said.
"Yeah!" Pleakley agreed loudly. "Then you guys can try and bring her back! Then we could all become friends!"
Riku groaned. "It's not as easy as that," he argued in annoyance. "That potion, whatever it is that is controlling her, it's powerful. It's not going to be easy to bring her really back to us."
"Don't worry," Stitch assured. "Ohana."
He, Sora, and Donald looked at the fuzzy blue alien creature.
"What?" Donald questioned.
"Ohana," Nani repeated. "Ohana means 'family'. Family means-"
"No one gets left behind," Lilo continued.
Stitch nodded. "Or forgotten," he finished.
"We'll get her back," Sora agreed, looking back at Riku.
Lilo looked at Stitch. "That girl was really scary, wasn't she?" she said, which caused a pang of anguish in Riku's heart. "The one that attacked me?" Apparently she didn't understand that the Yuki Riku wanted back was the same Yuki that attacked her.
Stitch growled quietly in a kind-of hatred. "That meanie," he agreed. "I promise to protect you, Lilo."
"Thanks, Stitch," she replied happily, patting the alien on the head.
Their close relationship stung at Riku's heart like a bee.
Oh… I miss her so much, he thought depressingly. I have to get her back as soon as I can. Hopefully her heart hasn't been consumed by darkness yet. Maybe I should let myself fall back into the darkness… if that will help her….
"So… what's the May Day festival we keep hearing about?" Sora inquired.
"It's kinda like a spring festival," Nani explained. "Lilo's participating in the hula competition."
The little girl sighed. "But I'm still not a hundred percent sure what we're going to do yet," she said depressingly. "Stitch is going to help me though. We've been trying to figure out something all day."
"Eh!" Stitch agreed cutely.
Sora looked at Riku and Donald. "Well… it doesn't seem like there's a lot of Heartless in this world," he said. "But then again… without Yuki, it's a little harder to tell." Turning back to Nani, Lilo and Stitch, he asked, "Has there been anything weird happening lately here? Any dark shadows attack?"
They looked at each other and shook their heads.
"Not that we know of," Nani said.
"We haven't seen anything strange either," Lilo agreed. "Everything seems pretty normal to us; at least… to Stitch and me."
"Hmm…" Sora hummed thoughtfully. "So I wonder why I feel like we should be here…"
Riku looked at him with a sigh. "Maybe it's because of Yuki?"
"Maybe…" Donald replied. "Every world we've been at has had something special for us to accomplish. Maybe in this world, it's our duty to get back Yuki. Unless you guys can think of some other reason."
"Maybe we're to help out with the May Day festival?" Sora suggested.
"Sora," Riku retorted, "it's never that simple. There's some sort of catch. There's probably going to be some sort of Heartless or Nobody trouble here. At some point…"
Hopefully we'll be able to get Yuki back, Sora thought. We all need her. More importantly, Riku needs her. She's like the heart of our group.
"Um… what's a Heartless? And what's a Nobody?" Lilo inquired, looking up between Jumba and Pleakley.
"A Heartless is a… um…" Pleakley began, "something without a heart! And a Nobody is a nobody; Uh… the opposite of a somebody!"
Riku, Sora and Donald couldn't help but laugh.
"Well… you're kinda right," Sora said.
"A nobody is an entity without a heart, but is much smarter than Heartless, which are, as you say, beings without hearts," Riku explained. "Nobodies have the capability to think for themselves, while Heartless are also lead by a master of darkness. In this case, a powerful witch named Maleficent."
"The strange thing that we recently discovered is that Riku's girlfriend, Yuki," Donald added, "is that she is in fact, a Nobody herself. Except the strange thing is that Yuki's heart has been turned to her Nobody's body. The girl herself, Yuki's true self…"
"We have no idea where she is," Sora finished, "or what's happened to her."
Pain flashed in Riku's pale blue eyes, every muscle in his body tensing. "I need to find her and get her back," he said.
"We'll get her back," Sora promised. "We will, I'm sure of it."
Nani sighed, "Well… this is a little sudden, but to clear the dark atmosphere, do you three want to stay for movie night? We're watching a sci-fi movie."
xXx
"Mmm…" Yuki murmured as she opened her red eyes. "Where am I?" she looked around to find herself in her white, empty room. She was laying on the bed, her hands folded over her stomach, her head resting against a pillow.
Xven had his head bowed by her side, and now he looked up at him. "Yuki! You're awake!" he gasped in relief, swiftly moving to kiss her powerfully on the lips. "I thought I almost lost you!"
"Xven," she breathed in relief, throwing her arms around his neck in a hug. "Oh my gosh, what happened?"
"That dratted brat, Sora," he hissed in hatred, his eyes filling up with rage, "he shot you with his Keyblade, and you collapsed. Vexen came and healed you, and then we brought you back here, and I took you back here to rest. You've been out for a while, and I've been staying by your side for the past few hours because I'm worried about you. And… because I love you."
She smiled. "I love you too," she whispered back, and they shared another passionate kiss before Xven pulled away, staring her directly in the eyes.
"I promise I will make those dratted Keybladers pay for what they did to you," he swore. "I'll make sure they pay. They will rue the day they decided to mess with my girlfriend."
xXx
Nani had placed all the late night snacks on the table, with help from Sora, Riku and Donald, who had gotten a change of clothes to match the hot temperatures of Hawaii, consisting of t-shirts, sweatshirts, and shorts. They all sat in front of the TV, along with Nani's boyfriend David, all of them with their little hats and creative antennas on their sci-fi movie theme.
"We have deep fried marsh cockroach," Nani announced, picking up a red cockroach-looking thing and eating it. "Mmm… delicious."
Pleakley looked pale. "I think I'm about to throw up," he said.
"Hmmm… looks good," Sora said, picking up and trying one. "Tastes good too."
David picked up one of the eyeballs in a red liquid, looking at his girlfriend. "Um… Nani? What's this?"
"Alien eyeball dumplings," Nani answered spookily, though failing.
Pleakley picked one up with two of three fingers and looked at it. "What kind of sick joke is this?" he demanded, slightly offended at how similar it looked to his own single eyeball.
"Don't make her mad," Jumba whispered, pushing the dumpling into his mouth, "eat it."
The one-eyed alien grabbed at his throat as if in choking as it went down his throat. He 'choked' for a moment before stopping and commenting, "It's good."
Stitch was slobbering in the nacho bowl all over the place while Lilo depressingly watched. Stitch stopped, looked at Lilo and opened his mouth wide, pulling out a small red bug.
"Cockroach?" he offered.
Lilo looked away. "I'm too upset to eat," she sighed, still confused over her May Day performance routine.
Stitch looked at Donald, offering out the cockroach. "Cockroach?" he inquired.
"Uh… no thanks…" the duck replied uneasily, mentally shivering.
Stitch threw it back into his mouth and ate it.
"I'm hula-less," Lilo groaned.
"Aww, honey, I'm sure you'll come up with something," Nani reassured.
Sora and Riku grinned.
"Don't worry, Lilo, we'll help you out," Sora said.
Riku nodded. "Sounds like fun," he agreed. "With our help, we'll help you make the best hula ever." And I'm sure that if Yuki was here, he added silently, she would love to help out; costumes and everything.
"Come on, let's watch the movie," her elder sister said.
xXx
Halfway throughout the movie, Pleakley was toying with the fake antennas on his head and looked at Jumba. "It's a little bit redundant, don't you think?" he commented.
"Shush," Jumba hushed immediately, "I am trying to watch movie."
"It's pretty interesting," Sora agreed. "Very cool."
David continued to stare at the television as he whispered to Nani. "Nani, I think you did a great job with family… fun… night…" he trailed off as he saw that she was asleep.
"Psst," Pleakley whispered, "I know what your problem is."
"What?" he demanded.
"I'm sorry to break it to you," the one-eyed alien continued, "but your relationship has fizzled."
"But we've been only going out for three weeks!" he defended.
Pleakley stared back at his magazine. "A fizzle, is a fizzle," he replied, showing him his magazine, "according to this, comfort plus time equals boring."
"Personally, I disagree on that logic," Riku argued. "My girlfriend and I can always afford comfort and time with each other, and we're most definitely not bored with each other. In fact, we love each other much more."
David looked at Nani. "I think she's just tired," he suggested.
"Tired?" Pleakley said, raising a thoughtful finger, "Or tired of you?"
"Shhh…" Jumba, Lilo, Stitch, Donald and Sora hushed.
"Fine," he sighed, "I just wanted to dance at your wedding, but-"
"Shhh…" they hushed again.
"Fine," Pleakley retorted stubbornly, reopening up his magazine.
xXx
Not too long afterwards, Lilo and Stitch was laughing at a part in which the giant mutant was breaking through the glass of a store. Jumba, Sora and Pleakley were watching intensely while eating Nani's eyeball dumplings. Donald was eating the strange nacho dip.
All of a sudden, Stitch began to spasm, his eyes glowing green. As quick as it came, it stopped, and Stitch raised his paper bag mask to look at his fur before shrugging and putting his mask back on. Another spasm came, and this time one of Stitch's extra arms stuck out from his torso, and after the spasm stopped, he removed the bag to look down and inspect his extra arm carefully before hiding it once more.
"Something wrong, Stitch?" Riku inquired, noticing something was up with the little guy, and immediately Stitch shook his head.
As they all returned to the movie, Stitch had another spasm, and this one caused him to fly and hit the wall with a silent smack. More spasms continued, and suddenly Stitch threw himself on the table, making a mess and causing everyone to be in surprise as food was splattered all over the walls and the others.
"Oh, Stitch!" Nani gasped as the alien creature was flung to the back wall behind the couch, continuing his spasm.
Immediately Jumba turned back to look at the creature he had created. "Oh Stitch," he gasped, "oh no…"
xXx
"Yuki, Xven, are you both ready?" Saix inquired.
Xven nodded, looking at his girlfriend. "Are you well enough?" he asked.
She sighed tiredly, "I'm still tired, but I have enough magic to do this."
"I'll protect her if it should come to that," Xven promised, holding her against his chest, pressing his lips into her hair.
"Hmmm…" Saix murmured, turning to look at Zexion. "Zexion, I want you to go with them. Make sure the Keyblade Master and his pesky friends aren't able to harm this precious couple." The No. 2 of the Organization walked over to him to add, "and don't allow Riku to get close to or be alone with Yuki. It may be able to break the potion's spell."
Excellent, Zexion thought, maybe this will be the key to helping her.
"Of course, you know your mission," he added.
Zexion twisted his head away, pain reflecting in his eyes. "I know…"
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