Sorry it has taken so long to up-date, y'all. I have had to wait for school to end for the summer, but only have a little window of opportunity to write before attending a week-long graduate course on Art and Technology, but at least I get a free computer to use at school with it! My computer is also being, to quote "Evil Genius" Dr. Jumba Jookiba, a "piece of Bletzgorp", which makes things worse. I will leave it up to your imaginations as to just how "Bletzgorp" translates into English.
OK, the disclaimer stuff: I do not own any of the main characters in the story, not Lilo, Stitch, Randall, etc. They all belong to the Walt Disney Company.
CH. 3- Somewhere, Beyond The Sea
In the yard outside the hula class, the casual observer would have noticed what appeared to be a miniature volcano, spewing plumes of dirt, instead of lava and ash. Upon closer inspection, however, it would have been revealed that this geological upheaval was, in fact, the work of a furiously-digging dog, or at least, what appeared to be a dog. The creature responsible for installing this hole in the ground was medium-sized, stocky in build, rather like some sort of Bulldog in appearance, complete with broad chest and powerful limbs, a large, rounded head with short muzzle, and ending in a stubby little tail. Its fur, however, was unlike any Bulldog's-a thick, insulating (and now quite dirty)double coat, more like that of a Northern breed, such as a Husky or an Akita, but it was the color that most made it stand out. The creature's coat was of different shades of grayish-blue, more blue than gray, bluer, in fact, than the coats of most so-called "blue" dogs. The digger's ears were positively enormous, long, oval-shaped and highly-mobile, more like the ears of the title creatures in the '80's sci-fi movie, "Gremlins", than those of any known breed of canine. The most un-dog-like feature, though, were its eyes-large, almond-shaped and absolutely onyx-black, like the eyes of a Great White Shark.
This creature's name was Stitch, an odd name, you might say, for a dog. Then again, its owner, or rather, its best friend, had a penchant for the odd and unusual. Stitch was presently digging a large hole for the simple reason that he was bored, waiting for someone to finish up hula practice, and the yard had had no large holes, and he felt it really needed one.
A slight sound distracted him from his landscaping, causing him to look up from the task at hand (or would that be, "at paw"?), his dirt-covered face turning towards the door to the hula class, his huge ears swiveling forward to catch the slightest sound. He was not to be disappointed, for presently the one he awaited appeared at the door, the little girl called Lilo. Stitch's nub of a tail immediately began to jiggle like the release valve on a pressure cooker going at full steam, and, shaking the dirt from his coat, he bounded out of the hole he'd created and galloped over to greet his friend, like any good dog would do.
It soon became apparent to Stitch, however, that all was not well. It wasn't the first time he'd seen Lilo's hula practice end this way, and it was unlikely to be the last. It wasn't his duty, though, to question WHY she would continually place herself to be the object of ridicule, but to be there for her when it happened. It was at that moment, approaching the now-unhappy object of his affections, that Stitch did something-well, a FEW somethings-most definitively NOT dog-like.
After lowering his large ears in recognition of Lilo's current mood, he stood erect on his hind legs, walking slowly towards her, peering into her downcast face. Then, his most un-doggy behavior yet-he SPOKE. Not in the usual manner in which dogs "speak", but with actual words, albeit raspy and in a sort of "Pidgen" all his own, a combination of broken English and his native tongue, a language which had not evolved anywhere on this planet. For Stitch, as things would have it, was no ordinary canine, but an artificially-conceived and created, laboratory-bred concoction of the genes of many creatures, from many different planetary systems, enhanced with the cutting edge of bio-genetic engineered features. He was, in effect, a MONSTER, created by a renegade scientist. He had been created to be a creature of pure evil, a remorseless destroyer of life and property, yet through what was unlikely to have been mere unguided coincidence, he had ended up here, on the quiet Hawaiian island of Kauai, as the best friend of a quirky little girl called Lilo Pelekai. Ironic, since 75% of his genes-the genes of Canis lupus familiaris, the domestic dog, had come from this very insignificant little backwater planet in the first place, a planet known throughout the entire galaxy as nothing more than a wildlife preserve for a most critically Endangered Species.
"Gaba?", he inquired. "Why Lilo naga happy?" Stitch, of course, knew that the answer to his questions had something to do with the other girls inside, girls whom for some reason, Lilo insisted upon calling her "friends".
"They hated THIS one, too, Stitch. I thought they would LIKE it-it had princesses and EVERYTHING, but still it STANK!", came the little girl's sad reply. "No matter what I do, I'm still too DIFFERENT!" She was fighting a losing battle with tears.
In an attempt to console his companion, Stitch ventured, "Stitch LIKE different! Different GOOD!" Like many other times before this one, though, he knew that his words would fall upon deaf ears; for some reason, the acceptance of the other little girls meant much to Lilo. Rubbing her eyes, she simply turned away from him, her only reply, "Come on, let's go home." Dropping back onto all-fours, Stitch simply walked along in silence beside her, close enough that her fingers could find and take comfort in the soft thickness of his gray-blue fur.
Many thousands of miles across the Pacific ocean, to the northeast of the Hawaiian island chain, another monster, one NOT created by a rogue genetic scientist, but just as alien to this world as the blue-furred quasi-canid Stitch, was having problems of a different sort. Five nights prior, Randall Boggs had departed the steamy swamps of south Louisiana on what he had hoped would at least bring him some improvement in his situation. As it turned out, he had made a leap right out of the proverbial frying pan, and into the proverbial fire.
His impromptu journey inside an empty cargo car of a west-bound freight train, his ticket out of the swamp, had ended some forty-eight hours later in the heart of the Texas desert, a vast change from the humidity that had been the hallmark of his previous home (IF you want to call it that). The train had lurched to a stop, with the screeching and grinding of brakes, in a large rail yard somewhere just outside El Paso, not too far from the New Mexico border. It was the cessation of movement that had awakened the occupant of that rail car from a long, fitful sleep.
Almost immediately, Randall's brain was on high-alert, but the rest of him failed to comprehend the potential seriousness of the situation. His muscles protested fiercely, having become stiff during nearly two days of deep slumber on a less-than-comfortable bed of burlap sacks. Minor cuts, acquired during his daring tree-top flight from a pack of ferocious dogs, now made their presence known as well. On top of these discomforts, he also had the Mother of All Headaches, compounded by the fact that the last meal he'd eaten had been two days ago, and THAT had been an overcooked, oversized water rat. His system had almost gotten accustomed to going without nutrients for days at a time, since his unfortunate exile, but one can only tolerate one's blood sugar becoming just so low.
Listening out for human voices, Randall carefully, and painfully, stepped closer to the door of his box car. The lack of light from the crack around the door told him it was night; how many days had he ridden this thing, anyway? He had lost all track of time, and without being able to witness the sun's passage across the sky, he had no idea how long he'd been on this particular train, nor how far he'd traveled. All he could tell was that wherever he was, it was HOT.
Hearing nothing to indicate the proximity of humans, Randall gradually eased open the door to his traveling compartment. After his eyes had taken their prerequisite few seconds to adjust, he could tell that he was in a rail yard of some sort, surrounded by other trains, box cars, switch boxes, and large buildings, with many security lights on tall poles. He was about to step out when he heard the first voices, speaking in a language he couldn't understand. Two human males, chatting and laughing, were approaching the car in which Randall had arrived. Panic gripped him, what NOW? If he leapt out at this point, he'd be seen. If he waited inside the car, there would be a good chance that one of them would open it, THEN he'd be cornered! What if one of them, or both, was carrying a firearm? It was at moments like these that Randall especially cursed that wretched human woman with her shovel, for it was SHE who had deprived him of his primary means of defense-the ability to change the color and pattern of his skin, so as to blend in with any background, with ease.
When he'd first been thrown, like a piece of garbage, as it were, into the Human World, he'd found himself in a tiny scrap-heap that passed as a trailer, deep in the Louisiana bayou. The idiot who lived there, along with her pea-brained son, had mistaken Randall for an ALLIGATOR, of all things, despite his upright stance, eight limbs, and purple-and-turquoise coloration, and had done her best to beat him to death with a shovel. Taken totally by surprise, Randall had had no chance to even try to fight back, and his only hope of survival had been to literally play "possum", like the victim of a grizzly bear attack, to lie there and endure a horrific pounding, nearly to the point of unconsciousness. It had been the plan of these two barbarians not just to kill this "'gator", but to EAT him, but skinning and butchering a large animal can be a messy affair. So as to avoid soiling their humble little abode, the two had dragged their would-be main ingredient for a pot of jambalaya outside, and left him on the ground. Imagine the surprise of the would-be chef when she returned from her search for an appropriate skinning knife inside the trailer, to find her erstwhile meal getting to its feet, if somewhat shakily, and making good its escape into the blackness of the swamp! Randall's escape from Death By Cajun Cuisine had not been without injury though; he'd suffered a deep gash to the left side of his head, which was bleeding freely, and a fractured left wrist-his dominant hand-from trying to fend off the blows of the shovel. He had a hairline fracture to his lower jaw, and bruising to his kidneys from blows rained down upon his lower back. Worst of all, though, had been the head injury. It would plague him with excruciating headaches for months, and would make very difficult, at first IMPOSSIBLE, for him to muster the necessary mental concentration to blend in to any background. The other injuries would gradually heal, though thinking back upon that awful night, Randall was still surprised that he'd even survived. Whether to chalk it up to his indomitable Irish spirit, or some other factor, as though something had bigger plans in mind for him, he didn't know, but what he DID know was this: even now, the skill of blending, which he'd developed way back in his childhood as a defense mechanism, and on which he'd based his career, took more energy and concentration than he was physically capable. He would have to depend on some other means of staying hidden from humans, or risk an encounter.
His moment came when a third man, unseen down the length of train cars, called out something in Spanish to the two that were approaching, causing both to pause and turn to look back the way they'd come. Seizing the opportunity, Randall leapt from the rail car, dropped to all-eights to facilitate a quicker getaway, and zipped quickly into the shadows. One of the men, hearing a movement behind him, turned again, only to catch a very brief glimpse of a long tail vanishing into the darkness in between two trains. When his companion turned to ask what had caused the noise, the first simply shrugged and replied, "el lagarto"("a lizard"), and the two resumed their inspection of the cars.
Slipping from one train and under the next, Randall found himself staring out through a chain-link fence into what appeared to be an endless expanse of desert. To his left were several large warehouse-type buildings, where he could possibly stay hidden in the shadows until an alternate means of transport came along. There was NO WAY he planned on heading out into that desert, with no food or water. Unpleasant visions of his parched carcass, lying in the sand, shadowed by circling vultures, filled his mind with dread even worse than facing down a couple of humans! Already his throat was going dry, unaccustomed as he was to this arid climate, so different from that which he'd just left, and he was becoming desperately hungry. Suddenly, a movement and some whistling near one of the warehouses caught his attention. A man was exiting the building, pushing a large hand car loaded with boxes. Moving around in the shadows to keep track of the human's movement, Randall then nearly leapt with joy, if his strained muscles had allowed it, that is. The man was loading the trailer of a large truck, which appeared ready to pull out. There was a brief interchange between the driver, already seated in the cab, and the one loading the truck, then the loader disappeared back inside the warehouse, presumably for one more load. This, Randall figured, was his chance, if he could just make it inside that truck before the loader returned, and could hide himself back in the darkened recesses of its interior, he could at least make it out of this desert. As with the train, he really didn't care where the truck was headed, as long as it went.
"Well, it's now or never-you know what they say; no guts, no glory!" he told himself as he forced his sore, aching muscles to respond just one more time, and made the dash for the open truck trailer. With one almost-feline bound, he'd made it, flowing inside, all the way to the back nearest the cab, to hunker down behind the boxes inside, just as the man with the hand car approached, still whistling, totally unaware that in his brief absence, a stowaway had come on board. In his hurry to finish loading the trailer, the man also conveniently forgot about the sub sandwich he'd left on top of one of the boxes he'd loaded inside, with just one bite taken out of it, along with a soda he'd never even gotten the chance to open. By the time he would realize his mistake, the truck bearing his meal would be some five miles down the road, heading west, and his meal and soft drink would have long since been put to good use by the unseen stowaway!