I'm surprised by all the reviews I got last chapter. Thanks a lot!
***
Gantu sat alone in the dark cargo hold, polishing a large plasma rifle obsessively while glancing around the room for any threats every five seconds. When he heard the hum of the descending elevator, he pointed his gun at the doors. They opened, and he fired, blasting the elevator with over a dozen plasma shots. After firing several rounds, he looked to see if anything remained in the elevator. 625 stumbled out, face pale, carrying a tray with a cup of coffee and a sandwich on it. "H-here's the breakfast you wanted."
Gantu glared at his sidekick suspiciously. "How do I know you're the real 625?"
625 blinked, regaining his composure. "Who else would I be, you big tub of lard?"
Reassured, Gantu grabbed the tray. Just as he was about to drink the coffee, he paused. He grabbed one of the capsules from the wall, opened it, and poured some coffee into the mouth of the experiment inside. As the little monster immediately started shaking wildly and bouncing off the narrow walls of its confinement due to the caffeine, Gantu placed it back on the shelf and drank the coffee. He grabbed the sandwich, hesitated, and then ripped off a chunk and offered it to another experiment. The starved captive ate it and fell asleep immediately. "AHA!" Gantu dropped the sandwich and pointed his plasma rifle at 625's nose. "I knew it! You laced that sandwich with sleeping drugs, didn't you?"
625 quivered and held his hands up non-threateningly. "H-hey, what else was I supposed to do? You haven't slept in over a week! You're spending every waking hour guarding the experiments, and you drink nothing but coffee to make sure every hour IS a waking hour! As your sidekick, I think I'm supposed to do something if you start depriving yourself of sleep and making yourself all crazy, it ain't healthy!"
"I'm not crazy!" Gantu protested.
"Oh really? Then why are you wearing that aluminum foil on your head?"
"To protect my brain from that abomination's mind scans, of course!" Gantu said, shifting his eyes around the cargo hold. Then he spun around and blasted a tiny spider creeping on the wall several feet away. "Ha! That's the twelfth spy drone I've destroyed, he's got to run out sooner or later!" he said triumphantly. 625 slowly backed away from the shark-headed alien, convinced the former captain had finally lost his mind.
A communications screen switched on, showing Hamsterviel. "Gantu! Have those teleporter parts arrived yet? I am getting most impatient with you!"
Gantu immediately stood to attention. "Sir, the parts arrived yesterday."
"Then why have you not sent me my experiments already?!" Hamsterviel bellowed.
"Because he thinks the instant he beams one of them over to you, 626 will use some crazy gadget to disrupt the teleporter and redirect the experiment to some other place," 625 piped up.
Hamsterviel snorted. "That's absurd! It's completely impossible to intercept a specimen in mid-teleport with anything less than a black hole! I should know, I've tried it. Now cease with all this foolishness and give me my experiments!"
"Wait a minute…" said Gantu suspiciously. "How do I know you're the real Dr. Hamsterviel?"
The rodent was taken aback. "What are you talking about, you insipid waste of air and brain cells? Of course I'm Hamsterviel! Who else would I be?"
"You could be 626 in a clever disguise, trying to fool me!" He pointed his plasma rifle at the screen. "Tell me something only the real Hamsterviel would know! What's your real name?"
Hamsterviel spluttered. "What do you think you are doing?! That's private! Are you TRYING to make me angry?"
"Answer the question!"
Hamsterviel gritted his teeth. "Gantu, I am warning you…"
"Aha! You can't answer me because you don't know Hamsterviel's real name! Nice try trog, but nothing gets past Captain Gantu!" He fired, blowing up the screen. "There, that should throw him off for a while. 625, make me another sandwich! One without sleeping drugs this time!" He holstered his rifle over his shoulder and started patrolling around the room. 625 shook his head and went back upstairs, wondering if maybe he should quit being Gantu's sidekick and join a somewhat saner super villain.
***
Hamsterviel glared at the static-filled communications screen, eye twitching. A blood vessel throbbed on his forehead, looking ready to burst. He clenched the side of his chair, digging deep grooves into its metallic surface. "GANTU!!!!!!!!!!" he screamed at the top of his lungs.
In their cages, Hamsterviel's experiments cowered. They just knew he was going to take it out on them.
***
"Lilo." The young girl wouldn't respond. "Lilo. Come on, I know you can hear me." Lilo said nothing. "Lilo?" Angel waved her hand in front of Lilo's eyes. She stared right through it at the ceiling. Angel sighed. "Fine. Guess I'll have to do this the hard way." She grabbed Lilo and started carrying her to the elevator.
At this, the little girl finally reacted. "Hey, what're you doing?!"
"Jumba wants to show you something. I think it'll do you a world of good. It made me feel a lot better, so it should work for you too."
They descended to the second floor of the house and went into Jumba's room. Once there, Angel finally put Lilo down, allowing her to see what she had been brought down for. She gaped. "What's he doing here?" she asked angrily, pointing to the unconscious Stitch who was hooked up to a ring-shaped machine linked to Jumba's computer.
"Tell her what you told me," Angel prompted Jumba.
He nodded and input some things into his computer. "I decided I was having enough of all this depression caused by stupid religion, so I abducted 626 to find out what was wrong with him and fix it. Was easy enough to stun him with plasma cannon, but I was not expecting priests to be packing M-16's. I barely made it out." He shuddered at the thought. "I brought him back here and performed a scan, taking advantage of his unconsciousness. I thought there was a problem with his programming, but what I was finding was much worse."
"What did you find?" Lilo asked, her curiosity piqued.
Jumba turned his computer around, showing Lilo a screen with what looked like two different waves scrolling across it. "626 is having no error in programming whatsoever. What he is having is two brainwave patterns."
"…So?"
"Little Girl, every living thing in universe has only ONE unique brainwave pattern. Even entities with more than one brain are still having single brainwave pattern. So if all things, including experiments, are having single brainwaves, why is 626 having two?" Jumba asked, raising a few eyebrows. "The answer is being simple: there is a second consciousness with different brainwave pattern in 626's head. This second consciousness has superseded all normal functions of 626's brain and taken over his body for itself. In other words, mind control!"
"So…it's not Stitch's fault that he's done all these bad things?" Lilo asked, suddenly understanding.
"Exactly!"
"But then who's controlling Stitch? Hamsterviel?" Lilo guessed.
Jumba shook his head. "Doubtful. Although he would be loving to be doing something like this, I doubt he would be capable of doing it right now, what with being in jail and lacking any access to technology that could project consciousness into 626's mind."
"But if it's not Hamsterviel, then who is it?" Lilo asked.
Jumba shrugged. "Could be one of my mind-control experiments. Although I cannot be remembering any of their brainwaves looking quite like this one…"
"I think we're about to find out. He's waking up," said Angel.
And so he was. Stitch groaned and opened his eyes. He blinked, noticing the glares he was getting from the room's other three occupants and the machine he was attached to. He growled at Jumba. "What did you do to me?!"
Jumba waved a hand nonchalantly. "Oh, relax. It was just a harmless little scan. Didn't do anything…except tell us you're not 626!"
Stitch concealed his look of surprise with one of confusion. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't bother lying to us, the scans tell all!" said Jumba, pointing at the waves on the computer screen. "The jig is being up, we know you are not really 626."
Stitch narrowed his eyes. "…Fine. You're right, I'm not Stitch."
"Then who are you? Another experiment?" asked Lilo.
Stitch shook his head. "No. I am Ban-Kar."
They all looked at him skeptically. "The god? What are you doing inside my experiment?" asked Jumba, pointing his plasma cannon at Stitch.
"Stitch read my holy book in a single day and then ate it. That fulfilled some of the requirements that allow me to possess an individual and walk about the mortal plane. His body should help me to fulfill my mission in this world."
"And what would that be?" asked Jumba, still holding the plasma cannon.
"To enlighten all people of the world and save their souls from fiery damnation."
Jumba frowned. "In other words, world domination."
Stitch shrugged as best he could. "If you wish to reduce it to simpler terms, yes."
"I am afraid I cannot be letting you do that." Jumba started to pull the trigger. Just as he fired, Stitch ripped free from the scanner, avoiding the shot and destroying the bed. Before anyone could stop him, he ran towards the end of the room and jumped through the window, shattering it and falling to the ground outside. Jumba raced over and opened fire, raining plasma bolts on the possessed experiment. Stitch dodged the barrage and ran into the forest behind the Pelekai household. "He's heading for my ship!"
"I'll stop him!" Angel jumped out the window and ran after Stitch.
Jumba grabbed Lilo. "Come on, we have to be catching up to them!" He ran outside, carrying Lilo in one hand and his cannon in the other.
They arrived at Jumba's big red spaceship a few minutes later, just in time to see Angel get kicked down the boarding ramp and onto the ground. Stitch appeared in the hatch, carrying a large cylindrical device over his shoulder and holding a few small marble-shaped objects. He was bleeding slightly from a wound on his chest where Angel must have scratched him, but he didn't seem to mind it. He jumped off the boarding ramp and ran over to his red police cruiser as Jumba opened fire again. He threw the machine into the passenger seat of the cruiser, jumped in, and turned the ignition. The ship's engines hummed and came to life, rising into the air. Jumba held his fire, not wanting to hit a fuel line and blow them all to kingdom come. "I thought you said stealing was against your religion!" Lilo yelled as the cruiser rose higher into the air.
"Not if I only do it to heathens and tools of the devil!" Stitch yelled back. Angel bounded over and leaped, trying to grab onto the ship. Stitch blasted her with a low-power shot from one of his guns, knocking her back to earth. The thrusters ignited with a roar, and the cruiser rocketed away.
They ran over to Angel, who had shakily gotten back on her feet. "624, what did he take?" Jumba asked urgently.
She groaned and shook some cobwebs out of her head. "He took one of your antigravity generators and some pods from the vault where you keep all the experiments too dangerous to be released. I'm sorry I couldn't stop him."
Jumba stroked his chin. "What could he possibly be wanting with an antigravity generator?" he wondered.
"What do we do now?" asked Lilo.
Jumba chewed his lip in thought, looking at the sky where Stitch had flown off. "Okay, here is what we are going to do," he said at last. "Little Girl, you and 624 must chase after evil god and try to put a stop to his plans. I will stay here and do research to find out how we can be exorcising spirit of Ban-Kar and returning 626 to his normal self."
Lilo nodded. "Okay. Angel, can you drive the jeep?"
"Not as well as Stitch can, but yes," Angel responded.
"Great! Then you can take us to the beach," said Lilo eagerly.
"Why the beach?" asked Angel as Lilo headed back towards the house.
"We have a cousin there who might be able to help us…"
***
Meanwhile, at a birthday party elsewhere on the island, Experiment 383 AKA "Swirly" was doing what he did best: hypnotizing people and causing them to do really embarrassing things. He locked eyes with a random partygoer. Both of their eyes degenerated into purple and black swirls. Swirly broke off and waddled away, but the partygoer's eyes remained clouded. "Act like Britney Spears!" commanded the birthday boy. The guest immediately jumped on a table and started singing "Oops, I did it again" while shaking his body parts around in a lame attempt to be seductive. Everybody laughed.
Swirly headed over to a refreshment table to get himself a cookie. As he was munching on the chocolaty snack, he thought he heard what sounded like a spaceship landing. Curious, he hopped off the table and waddled around the corner of the house, looking for whatever had made the sound. He was surprised when he bumped into Stitch. What was he doing there? Careful not to look directly into Swirly's eyes, Stitch smiled. "Hello Swirly. I was hoping you could help me with something." The hypnosis experiment tilted his head in curiosity. Stitch pulled out a mirror. Swirly saw himself in the mirror and immediately froze as his own powers were used against him, rendering him into a state where he would perform the next suggestive thing he heard. Stitch grinned sinisterly. "Excellent."
***
This doesn't look good. The evil behind Stitch's sudden change has been revealed, but can it be stopped before it takes over the world? Find out next time!