Author note: the horizontal rule still is't working. I'm going to have to use dashes to seperate scenes.

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Only silence bathed the room after the blowup that just passed. What was just learned by all present was something that would take some time to even get a decent hold on to. What happened next made the entire situation even more confusing. Each person in the room tried to put some words as to what just happened, knowing no one else would be able to. No one could even know what they were supposed to feel then, except for the three so personally involved.

Nani blinked, paused, and blinked some more. This was the most confounding to her. To Nani, Stitch had been family since only weeks after his first arrival, and she loved him accordingly. But it wasn't until almost a year later that she truly learned to appreciate him, and it wasn't until a year after that when she finally learned to like him. But throughout it all, and even now, she never could accept that her life would never again bear any semblance of normalcy, and that it would be a futile waste of time to try to make it that way. How these aspirations were shattered by the sudden knowledge that in the future, Stitch would have children, was something Nani just couldn't put to words, try as she might. And she did try. Nani raised her hand, only her index finger extended, and opened her mouth slowly to talk. The only thing that came out was a soft squeak.

Nani's legs jittered. She fell back and landed with a grunt into the recliner behind her. Her head fell back behind the back cushion. She now stared straight at the ceiling. Nani reach up and pushed the fingertips on one hand against the side of her head as if trying to relieve a headache.

Pleakly fared no better from the news. His life was in judging what was right in front of his face. He was one who lived only in the here and now, never stopping to consider what might be happening in some other place, or what could transpire in some distant time. Maybe it was just him, or perhaps a primitive aspect of the species, but whenever Pleakly was forced to consider something far beyond the apparent, the immediately tangible and foreseeable, it would produce a psychological overload. Now Pleakly knew that in an indeterminate number of years his life and the lives of those around him would change fundamentally. Then hit another realization that was only what should happen. What was going to happen was that in an inditerminant number of days the planet he lived on was going to be reduced to a lifeless, waterless husk, and he would die, at least according to someone he'd never met until a few days ago. He tried to wrap his brain around the logic and implications behind these realizations. He could not. Instead he charged right into an incoherent panic.

Pleakly began to run in small circles around the spot where he stood. His arms flapped to and from in the air as he screamed incoherently.

"What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? We're all gonna die! We're gonna be burned and boiled! We're gonna be fried and baked!"

Without pausing for breath, Pleakly turned toward Sapphire, who was still trying to stand up, and pointed his finger at him.

"It's your fault! We're all gonna die because of someone who hasn't even been born yet!"

Again, without pausing for breath Pleakly turned back around and aimed his finger at Jumba who still stood blank faced holding a can of beer in one hand.

"No it's not it's your fault! Yes it's your fault! You made those theoremajigs in the first place! You did it! If it weren't for you we wouldn't all be about to be destroyed by a tiny evil rodent man from the future!"

Pleakly heaved over and hit his head against the floor as soon as he finished his last word. Still bent over he gasped for air.

Jumba who still stood blank faced holding a can of beer in one hand, stared out at Pleakly and huffed.

"Are you being done?"

Pleakly raised an arm with one finger extended, calling for time as he was still bent in half wheezing for air. With one last great breath, he stood back up.

"Yes." He answered.

Silence returned to the room.

Lilo turned her head about. She looked across the room at Sapphire, barely able to sit up straight and probably not fully comprehending the situation in his inebriation. She looked just behind her at Emerald, lobbed off the edge of the couch and now sitting on the floor. Her fists were clenched and all six of her tendrils were wrapped tightly around her arms. She pursed her lips and squeezed her eyes shut. What exactly Emerald was trying to hold back was not clear, but it was anything but pleasant. She looked off to the side of Emerald at Ruby sitting up on the kitchen floor. All four of her hands were pressed against the floor and her head hung down. She was silent, but were there tears in her eyes? At this distance, and with Ruby's head turned down, she couldn't quite judge.

Out of everyone in the room Lilo was probably the one who could most keen fully understand what was going on and what it all meant. Among the disadvantages of being a child were more subtle advantages, mostly regarding not having to worry about nearly as much. At certain rare times, this quality would actually give a greater insight than an adult mind. It was certainly the case with Lilo now. She could deal matter-of-factly with the notion that Stitch would have children in the future, that they would come back to try to save the past from being destroyed, and would then ultimately fail, meaning there was not much time left within her own present. Still, how she might possibly express her feelings about this, or even what those feelings were, and how to respond was all beyond her grasp, as it would be for the others for a time to come.

Lilo looked down at her hands and twiddled her fingers, knowing nothing else to do.

"Um…" Lilo's voice was barely audible. "Do you… do you think Stitch? … I mean… Do you think we could… I mean… Do you think we could get Stitch to… not be so angry?"

Stitch, not so angry. Ruby heard those words and it was the last tiny push she needed. She let out a small sniffle, and in a few surprisingly long seconds she was crying softly.

Lilo crawled over to Ruby and put her hands on Ruby's shoulders. Ruby let her head fall into Lilo's arms and cried the tiniest bit harder.

Emerald made the first move of the siblings, causing almost a kind of cascade among them.

Emerald raised her fists fully intent on slamming them into the floor hard enough to plow them through to the lower level. She stopped herself just before bringing them down either out of consideration for the floor, or out of just not wanting to be seen losing control. Emerald took two deep breaths, relaxed and stood up. Her tendrils slowly uncoiled from her now numb arms, though she kept her eyes closed.

"The price of living, always on another's whim, gripped by madness."

Emerald opened her eyes and walked toward the door, paying attention to no one else as she passed. She never looked up when she reached up a tendril to twist the knob on the front door. They all watched, but no one said anything as she left and shut it behind her.

Lilo and Ruby both looked at the door. Ruby growled for only a second, regaining Lilo's attention before going back to crying, and after another second quitting entirely. Ruby pushed Lilo away and stood up to walk to the door herself. At the door she had to hop up to grip the handle, but managed to open the door.

"Where are you going?"

Ruby turned around and looked at Lilo. She couldn't very well leave without giving an answer to her of all people. Anyone else in the room maybe, but not to Lilo. Ruby looked down at the floor and bit at her lower lip.

"I don't know." Ruby answered. "I'll figure it out when I get there."

Ruby walked out the door.

It was now Sapphire's turn. One hand on the side of his head, he pushed the other against the wall to help prop himself up. He took only a few hobbles and reached out an arm to catch himself falling against the doorway.

"What about you?" Lilo asked Sapphire. "Where are you going?"

Sapphire groaned and pushed a fist against his chest.

"I'm going to sleep." He answered.

Sapphire went limp and collapsed into unconsciousness in the doorway.

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There were only a couple times before that she had seen this town, at least not it's current state. The only other times were when Lilo had offered them a tour, and when they accompanied her to find Kelvin yesterday. Ruby walked aimlessly alongside the road, making random turns at intersections and always turning back when she reached the town limits. She wandered for hours, though they seemed like only minutes to her. She was careful to hide her additional extremities as had been told to her countless times by both her siblings.

Kokaua was so different from what she knew, and even though she'd seen its present state twice before, she still couldn't quite wrap her finger around just how unfamiliar the place seemed.

She looked off to the side. Over a few shrubs and bamboo shoots she saw a small parking lot of a small grocery store, the only one in the town. It was the same grocery store she remembered, but things were different about it. The parking lot was a heap of gravel, while the cars and trucks parked within were mostly old and rusting. An old brick red VW bug, a tiny pickup with the paint peeled totally off its bed, a plain gray box of a Honda coupe, from way back before the Japanese had any sense of style in their cars. As she remembered the parking lot always looked like it was freshly paved and freshly painted. The only vehicles one would see there were limos, luxury cars, and rebuilt classics, all glimmering with paint jobs alone that cost more than most standard car. The ground between the sidewalk and the parking lot was filed with exquisitely arranged native and integrated flowers. It seemed like you could always see someone tending to them.

There was a nice novelty to what she saw now, but it didn't quite match the nostalgia of what she remembered. Frankly she was astounded at how her hometown could've ever been so low key.

Ruby kept walking.

She walked past the stunted Mrs. Hasagawa. Her little fresh produce stand wedged between two trinket shops seemed almost an insult to what would eventually spring from it. As far as Ruby knew, the only trinket shops in her Kokaua would be found at the Birds of Paradise hotel. These one's had been torn down and a landscaped meadow built in its place where the town's weekly farmer's market took place. Being allowed a stand there meant your products had to pass the strictest tests, and it meant great prestige for your farm or whatever else you would be selling.

Ruby kept walking.

She passed by many experiments, all of whom would look at her inquisitively, but none of whom would recognize her.

Whirring by came a small green upside down garbage can with crab claws. Ruby immediately recognized Ploot as he suched up wrappers and cigarette butts from the gutters. Ruby waved at him but found herself ignored. He whirred past and into a real garbage can, where he climbed up the sides and belched out the contents of his trash into the can.

Ruby kept walking.

She happened by a familiar sight, the only one in the town that looked identical to what she remembered. Parked on the side of the street, an old fashioned wooden cart with a thatched straw umbrella sticking out of a bamboo pole shaded two experiments, one in particular Ruby was quite familiar with.

Ruby smiled and ran up to the cart just as the last of a few children walked away with cones of shaved ice. Ruby jumped up on top of the cart and saw them waiting for her, Slushy and Dupe. Even though he couldn't talk, it was only dupe she was truly interested in. She knew anyway how good he was at gesturing, and she rarely misunderstood him.

"Dupe!" Ruby squealed as she suddenly grabbed and squeezed him.

Dupe growled and struggled to break free. Ruby was forced to release him as she realized this, then to be met with more growling as dupe crawled backwards with the hair in his back sticking straight up.

"Who are you?"

That screechy, squawky voice rang out in Ruby's right ear. She'd never before heard it speak Tantalog, but it there was no mistaking it. Ruby turned her head to see Slushy staring back at her quite indignant and irritated.

"Me? I'm…"

Ruby suddenly realized that explaining who she was, was now useless. They didn't know, nor did they care except maybe out of curiosity or formality. Ruby closed her eyes, lowered her head and sighed.

"If you're not going to buy something than leave." Slushy continued in his alien speech. "We've got customers to take care of."

Ruby slumped off of the cart and continued walking down the street. As she walked she could sense both Slushy and Dupe giving her vindictive stares.

Ruby continued walking.

She didn't know where she was going, but the route oddly seemed familiar. A right turn here, a left turn there, all seemed to make some kind of sense, even though very few of the sights around her she recognized. She walked always looking down, seeing withered pavement change to dirt, change to grass, change to gravel, and change all back again. The last change was something she didn't expect though. Withered pavement slowly became fresher and cleaner, with brighter paint, until she found the road splitting in two and reforming around a small garden.

Ruby looked up. She was standing right in the middle of a hotels Valet lane. The hotel had pink stucco walls and a thatched roof held up by bamboo columns shaded both the valet lane and the lobby beyond. Inside the lobby seemed to be a fusion of Arabian and Victorian styles. It was the ugliest thing. A Victorian, Arabian cross themed lobby beneath a thatched roof in Kauai was almost obscene. Whoever owned this hotel clearly had no sense of aesthetic.

She looked up a little further and saw a far more stylized version of the logo she was very familiar with. Two parrots, one pure blue, the other pure red, each standing on one leg, the other grasping the leg of the other parrot. They both looked forward after crossing each other, the red parrot looking out from over the blue parrot's shoulder. This logo sat next to a South Beach style cursive banner in hot pink declaring this to be the birds of Paradise hotel.

The banner was even uglier than the lobby. What's more there were no wild parrots in the Hawaiian Islands. It was all indicative of the owner's lack of knowledge and moreover lack of class. The owner of the Birds of Paradise hotel back when ruby was a little girl. His name was Fredrick Jameson. Ruby remembered how she would always laugh at listening to Nani complaining about that man. His name was Fredrick R Jameson.

"I don't know where the hell the guy finds such hideous shoes! They look like yellow and white bowling shoes, and he wears those things to work?"

"That royal suite looks like the inside of a wedding cake. This is supposed to be a place to relax, not go into seizures from too many swirly designs."

"He stuck a golf course right in the middle of a forest! Not counting the habitat issues, how does he expect to get customers there when there's no view?"

Ruby would always find those Nani's rants hilarious. But after seeing for herself only a mere taste of what Nani would have seen, they suddenly didn't seem very funny anymore.

It wasn't until after the hotel was renovated that she'd moved in there anyway, so she'd never been truly exposed to what was inside before then. Still, however unfamiliar, however tacky this place might be, she knew why her feet carried her here. In this world, the hotel was the only place she knew of where she might somehow feel even a little bit at home.

She walked inside.

People bustled about with luggage and file folders hoping to find there way to a room or to get one secured. Ruby's feet tapped on the floor with a different sound than she remembered. The marble was fake.

Most striking though, was that most people within the lobby were ignoring her. She stood in the middle of the crowd and a few had stopped to briefly pat her on the head and move one, but that was it. She thought she might feel somewhat at home here, but she was wrong.

Ruby looked out toward the center of the lobby. An ornate three tiered fountain stood there with its carvings and statues of trees and bushes and bamboo. It was the only thing there that Ruby knew remained untouched in her own Birds of Paradise hotel. Looking at it she could imagine herself in the home she remembered, always knowing what even strangers would do next.

The lobby of the birds of Paradise hotel was fully enclosed now, though it never looked it from the glass walls. Only the insides had to be washed since the off and on rainstorms al year round regularly beat down on the outside. The ceiling above one's head was the traditional wrapped and glued bark. The columns too were wrapped in bark so what they were beneath wasn't really important. Not much of the center of the lobby was actual walking space. Genuine green marble walkways and small bridged noodled their way through a great garden filled with streams and rocks and flowers and bushes and grasses and trees and ponds with koi. All of it eventually drew back to the center to that very same fountain. The only difference in the fountain between now and then was that it was a bit more polished. That and there were lily pads in the tiers.

Experiments came and went through the lobby just as casually as people, some of them getting allot more attention than others. Some like Felix, who now seemed to live in the lobby as he was never short of something to pick up and throw away from all the foot traffic, seemed to develop avoiding attention in the middle of a crowd into kind of an art form. Others weren't so lucky, and didn't have that kind of skill.

The glass double doors were pushed open and a large red creature with four arms, two antennae, and three quills sticking out of her back walked inside. She held the door open for a few seconds waving to some unseen crowd before walking inside completely.

"It's Ruby!"

That sound made her press her ears flat against her body and her antennae flat against the back of her head. She knew quite well what it was, and she had to deal with it every time she walked through that front door.

No sooner did ruby get her head all the way turned around was she mobbed by a crowd of little children. They all tried to hug her or to shove papers and ink pads in her direction.

Ruby huffed and got through it as best she could. She put on a fake smile and hugged of them in turn. Or she would press a single paw into an inkpad and make a paw print on the adjacent sheet of paper. The mob followed Ruby all the way to the front desk where the trails at last gave way to real wide walking space. From here she could push her way through the children and maker her way toward a plain sky blue swinging door marked 'employees only'. Once there she would be scott free.

She made it inside just as the last of the papers were marked with her paw print. She leaned back against a filing cabinet just inside the door and sighed. She wiped her paw against her hip staining it with black ink. It took a special kind of soap, a mixture of dishwasher detergent, mechanic's hand soap, and powdered citric acid to get that stuff out.

Ruby stood up and looked around. The lone buffet table in the small office was stacked on one end with half empty doughnut boxes and fully empty pizza boxes, and on the other end with paperwork, none of it in any particular order. The walls were lined with filing cabinets, many of them topped with intricate model pirate ships and Elizabethan mansions built out of actual twine and paper thin iron and wood and cloth and glass and paint and tiny hand carved bricks and things like that, all of them the legacy of her father.

Speaking of which…

Ruby found the only gap in the walls' lining filing cabinets where two plain metal foldoud chairs stood. It was where customer service was parked after eleven PM and before seven AM. Now it was empty.

Ruby climbed atop a chair and looked out through a window into the lobby she'd just been in. She saw in the distance the front doors opening again. This time it was Stitch who walked through.

"It's Stitch!" The children shouted, and they all rushed to him wanting hugs and pawprints.

Unlike Ruby, Stitch could not hide the discontent, and actively cringed and reached out toward something that wasn't there.

Ruby laughed at this, but at the same time she couldn't help but feel empathetic.

Ruby sighed. All who ended up having to go through them, herself included, dreaded the mobbings. But now that they were gone, and Ruby found herself able to wander freely with little more than the occasional pleasent pat on the head, she found herself wanting them all back.

A single tear welled up in her left eye causing her to blink.

Maybe there were things here other than the fountain she was familiar with.

Ruby waited until no one was looking and dashed toward the wall on all sixes. Hitting the wall did nothing to impair her movement; she only made a ninety degree change in her direction. She ran straight up the wall and stopped just short of the ceiling. Always avoiding sight, she snuck into the nearest hallway looking for something else within that she might recognize.

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Ruby had wandered endlessly across the ceiling of corridors with doors every ten to fifteen feet. It seemed an endless looping maze of nothing but light tan, sky blue and sea green art deco. It was a grand monument to the ordinary.

It must've already been well past sunset. The lights in the halls had been dimmed for some time. Ruby paid no attention to the time, to the scenery, or even to where she was going. Her mind was a blank. She stared unfocused at nothing, letting her paws take her wherever they for her to go. She was only half aware that she was even still moving. It was certainly no concern of hers as she entered a hall she hadn't been in before, and pushed a flapping sign out of her way labeled "private suites".

This area was much shorter than the last, only a few halls with a couple turns. On her way through ruby slowed down and sniffed the air. There was something familiar here. Something familiar… Ruby was brought back to the realization of why she was wandering in the first place, to find something familiar.

Ruby dropped from the ceiling. Flipping over in midair she landed on her feet and only now realized just how much her wrists and ankles hurt, but that didn't matter at the moment. She sniffed again, the sent led her a few feet back and to the side, to a door that was open only a couple inches with light pouring out of the crack. She sniffed at the crack in the door. The scent was strong enough here for her to put her finger on just what it was she was remembering.

"Keoni?"

Ruby opened the door to a room that consisted of a mini kitchen behind a small living room, with a door on one wall of the living room. All the lights in the room were on and the sliding glass door at the end of the living room was open, leading to a balcony overlooking the beach. Other than that much there was little more than a couch, a chair, a coffee table, and a TV stand. There were also clothes thrown just about everywhere giving one a limited view of the floor.

Ruby walked forward a little more, past the kitchen, and twitched her ear to some kind of scraping to her right.

She turned her head. Keoni sat on a barstool in khaki shorts, socks, and a plain white undershirt scribbling on a stack of notebook paper set on the countertop. Books, three different types of calculators, and a laptop all surrounded him on the countertop.

Keoni stopped scrawling and looked down to his side, clearly aware of some presence.

"Hey there." Keoni whispered.

He stepped down onto the floor and kneeled over Ruby, placing one hand on her head. Ruby didn't respond but to keep staring at him. She wasn't sure of much of anything at the moment. Smelling someone she knew, but seeing him a foot shorter than she remembered certainly didn't help it.

"How'd you get in here?" Keoni continued. "Man you're a funny lookin', whatever you are. Hey you look like… you look allot like Lilo's dog!"

"Well there's a good reason for that." Ruby answered, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Keoni had never before seen something so out of the ordinary.

Keoni nodded his head for a second and opened his mouth about to answer when he suddenly became aware of what was wrong with what just happened. He paused still and silent for a few seconds and then jerked his arm back from Ruby's head. He stood up and took several steps back. Ruby stepped forward keeping the distance between them constant. Keoni backed himself up into the wall and slid down until he was sitting. He reached his arm straight out forward with his palm flat open. He stared right into ruby's eyes, his own eyes pulled as wide open as they could be.

"What are you?" Keoni wheezed.

The words brought Ruby now completely out of the trance she had still slightly been in only moments ago. She was trapped twenty years in the past, five years before her own birth. No one knew who she was, and few people even knew of the true nature of the experiments.

She started to cry.

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Keoni didn't know what else to do given the circumstances, so he just kept doing what he was doing. A bright crimson talking animal of some sort was clinging to his shirt and pressing its head into his chest, sobbing away and talking on about something having something to do with time travel and an apocalypse of some kind. He shut his eyes and held onto the animal as tightly as he could and tried not to listen.

"I'm gonna die in this world!" Ruby bawled into Keoni's chest. "And my family doesn't even know who I am! They hate me! Why do they have to hate me?"

Those were the last of the words as the sobs took over, and in a few minutes even those died down.

Keoni looked down at the bizarre animal, now apparently asleep. It twitched its hand and ear. He let go and it softly rolled off of him onto the floor, quickly curling up.

Keoni stood up, he looked down at his now soaked shirt for only a moment before looking back up and heading toward the door in the living room. It led to the bedroom, it with just a bed, a dresser, a couple end tables, and just as much clothes thrown about on the floor. He turned and headed into an adjascent door into the bathroom, littered only with a few pairs of underwear and towels. He flicked on the light and reached forward behind the mirror. It opened into a cabinet filled with little bottles. After popping a small handful of headache medicine Keoni put his head under the sink and turned it on cold. The freezing water felt anything but pleasant flowing over his air and face.

Keoni brought his head back up and shut the cabinet. He never bothered to dry off his head. Cold water dripping from all points of his face, Keoni looked at himself in the mirror.

"You've had too many iced mint mochas Keoni." He said to his reflection. "You've only slept five hours in four days. Just put away your homework and get a good nights sleep, it'll be gone in the morning."

Keoni looked to his side, and dirty cell phone sat on the counter half covered by a video game magazine. He grabbed it, opened it and pressed just a few buttons. He stood tapping his foot against the ground with the phone to his ear several seconds before…

"Dad?… yeah it's me… … Listen, I need to go to the doctor's… as soon as I can… … Well I'd rather tell him that… … … Ok, bye."

Keoni flipped the cell phone shut and dropped it onto the floor. He turned around, but the instant his eyes came into focus, he saw a massive gray, four fingered fist heading toward his face. That was the last moment he stood conscious.

Ruby slept restlessly on the floor in the dirty living room. Sometimes she snorted. Sometimes she jerked her body in one direction and then back a few moments later. Sometimes she whimpered in her sleep.

Two furry pink nubs poked at Ruby's nose. She batted them away in her sleep and was none more aware. The poking continued. Ruby fluttered her eyes open and wiped away a bead of saliva that had fallen from the side of her mouth. In front of her Ruby saw only a pink blur. But she soon gained focus. Standing in front of her was a very familiar experiment to her indeed. It was a pink experiment, slender, and with two prehensile antennae spanning twice the length of her body.

"M… mu… mom?" Ruby whispered.

"That's right." Angel answered. "It's me."

Ruby sat up straight, not yet fully lucid. Her sight was still a bit dreamlike, especially with what she saw.

"I've come back to the past to take you away." Angel continued. "I've come to take you home."

Ruby stared transfixed at angel, not noticing a slight yellow glow from just behind the chair.

"Yes!" Ruby squeaked. "I wanna' go home!… no. No it can't be. But Jumba said you died."

Angel stepped closer to Ruby. She touched the tip of her antennae to Ruby's, grabbed her upper hands, and pressed her nose against Ruby's own. The glowing from behind the couch became brighter, but Ruby still didn't notice, still transfixed on Angel.

"I'm alive Ruby." Angel implored. "If I wasn't, how could I be touching you."

"You… yes." Ruby answered. "No!"

Ruby pulled her nose away from Angel's.

"You're not my mother." Ruby whispered.

"You're right. I'm not your mother."

A flash of light blinded Ruby and she found herself wrapped up in three glowing white rope ending in faces looking like a cross between Chinese dragon and a Chihuahua. It was Sparky. It was three Sparkies. They surged power through Ruby's body. Ruby felt as if she was burning on fire from the inside out. Her body stiffened, her muscles tightened till they were as solid as wood. The Sparkies surged her body even harder. Ruby was completely numb, she could only see white, and then black.

The Sparkies untwined from around Ruby and their bodies solidified back into their normal states. Their glowing dimmed revealing their fur to be a dull gray. Kixx walked into the living room from the bedroom, he to a dull gray.

Angel closed her eyes. Her fur ruffled. It too began to loose color until se turned monochrome.

She opened her eyes and looked over the other replicas.

"Let's get this one back to the ship."