What can I say, the thirteenth chapter. Read and be nice.

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Chap. 13: Even More Surprises

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Kasey stopped in the middle of the cabin when she heard a slam. Her pulse began to race... what just happened? And what was she doing?! She was in the middle of a cabin covered in darkness, where there could be anyone hiding in the darkness, just waiting to pounce on her...

Someone tapped her on the shoulder. She screamed, terrified out of her wits---this was a mistake, a terrible mistake! "No! Please! You don't want to kill me and throw my body in the ocean for sharks to eat! I'm too young to be dead!"

"Hey, hey, cool it, Jellybean! It's only me!" Kasey turned around to face 625. She gave a relieved sigh.

"Don't you ever... EVER do that again!" Kasey warned. Then looked confused. "Jellybean?"

"Well, I've always thought you looked like some kinda' purple jelly bean."

"That's stupid."

"Oh yeah?" 625 snorted. "'Help me, save me, I'm gonna' die and be thrown to the sharks! Oh, no... NOO!! AHHHHH!!!" He laughed, obviously mocking Kasey. "THAT's stupid."

Kasey grumbled, but didn't say anything. They walked along in the darkness silently for a while, until 625 started up again.

At first, he only hummed innocently. Kasey looked annoyed, but still didn't say anything. Then he smirked. "Bum bum bum bum, bum bum bum bum... SHARK!! Run for your life!" He taunted Kasey with his eyes, although they couldn't be seen in the dark.

Kasey turned around, and looked straight at 625. "625... you're an idiot." Then she continued to walk forward.

"Ooohh... watch me tremble."

"Shut up!"

"Ooo, cranky today, aren't we?"

Kasey continued to walk in silence, until she bumped into something. "Ow."

"'Ow'!" 625 mocked. "Don't you watch where you're going, Dollcakes?"

"I told you to shut up. And don't call me Dollcakes!"

"Would you rather I call you a Ragamuffin?"

"Don't you ever stop? I didn't start dating you to be ridiculed!"

"The ridiculing is a bonus, Babyface."

"And don't call me Babyface!"

"Ahem?" Kasey and 625 stopped short, 625 bumping into Kasey, when they heard another voice join theirs. A male voice.

625 looked around cautiously. "Did you just do some weird imitation?"

Kasey looked back at him, irritated. "Why would I want to do that for?!"

"I don't know what your personal hobbies are..."

"Will you be quiet!" Kasey exclaimed. "Do I have to remind you that someone is here with us?!"

"That's a'right. Continue on with your hatred, if you have to." said the other person in the room. Kasey tried making him out in the darkness by squinting her eyes.

"Who are you?" she asked. "And what do you want with us?"

"Relax. I'm not going to harm you. But I think we could communicate better if I turn a light on." A light flicked on, revealing everything in the room. They were standing in front of a desk that had a computer with many controls on it, and there were three sets of folders by the computer's side. Sitting at the desk was a skinny, dark-skinned man. He had shaggy black hair and brown eyes, and was dressed in very important-looking clothes. "Ah, so your Jade's experiments, hm?"

"Well, I am." Kasey pointed a thumb at 625. "He's the six-hundred and twenty-fifth creation of Jumba Jookiba."

"Ah, yes. I've heard of them from my cousin, Cobra Bubbles. My names Raleigh, by the way. I'm sorry if I frightened you," the guy explained.

"Me? Frightened? No way," Kasey said calmly. 625 gave her a push, and she playfully hit him on the head in return. "But why are we here, anyway?"

"And who slammed the door?" 625 looked back at the door, still looking shook up.

"I shut it with the computer. Watch this." Raleigh pushed a button on the computer, and the door opened back up, which made both of the experiments jump. Then he pressed the button once more and it closed again. "Now. To get down to business. I was Jade's assistant on Earth before she passed away. I'm the one that gave her information about Earth. We communicated through our computers, most of the time."

Kasey snapped her fingers. "So THAT's how she knew so much about Earth!"

Raleigh chuckled. "Well, how do you think she knew? Telepathy?" He then picked up the folders near the computer. "When I stopped receiving messages from Jade, I knew something was wrong. I used my tracker to track down her ship. Jade was no where to be found, but by the horrible crash, I pieced together what had happened. I also found these folders in her ship. They contain information about her experiments. I had a feeling her experiments survived, and I've been tracking you down for a while now. But look;you're the one that found me! Convenient, don't you think?"

Kasey nodded. "Yes." She looked curiously at the folders. "May I see them?"

"Sure. You're her experiment." Raleigh handed Kasey the folders. "But where are Jade's other experiments?"

"Well, Susan lives with Lilo and Stitch. And me... I live with Gantu and 625. Or... at least I did," Kasey explained.

"And what about her third experiment?"

"Third experiment?"

"Yes. Don't you know? There's three folders there."

In utter perplexion, Kasey looked through the folders until she came to the last one. As she opened it up, she read at the top of the paper, "Third experiment: Experiment NIC. Special ability: Imagination Reader." But Kasey could not read the rest, as the writing was too complicated;it looked like a bunch of scientific figures. Probably the readings of Experiment NIC's DNA, Kasey figured. But she kept staring at it, even though she couldn't understand most of it. "Wow... Jade was going to make another experiment. I expected it, but I didn't know it was this near completion."

"So, she didn't even finish Experiment NIC, eh? Shame. If she had lived about a month more, she would've finished Experiment NIC. But she didn't even give the experiment a name yet. Where it says 'Call name:', there's a blank." Raleigh explained.

"Ohh... so for our scientific names, she classified us with letters?"

Raleigh nodded. "Your call name is Kasey, and your scientific name is Experiment KC. Makes a heck of a difference, huh?" Raleigh chuckled. "Susan is Experiment SUE. Kinda' corny, if you ask me, but Jade liked to be unusual."

"I get it. So she added on and/or improved our scientific names for our call names," Kasey said, finally understanding. "So, why're we here for?"

"I thought you'd might like to know these things. And I wanted to know for sure if you experiments survived. You can keep the folders. And you can leave now, if you want." Raleigh nodded to the door. "Don't worry;I don't plan on scaring you again." He smiled.

So, Kasey and 625 made their way to the door and went back outside. Kasey continued to look at the folder of Experiment NIC as they walked. "It's so sad. If only Jade had lived a little longer... but now, this experiment will probably be nothing more than scientific words and figures on a piece of paper." She shook her head.

"Well, if that's all it is, why do you look like you're going to give an eulogy?" 625 asked. Then he looked wary. "You're not, are you?"

"No." Kasey sighed. "I just wish that this experiment could've been made. It would be neat if there was another one of Jade's experiments here on Earth. It's the way she would've wanted it."

625 feigned crying. "Oooh... that's so beautiful!"

Kasey playfully punched him. "Stop it, okay?"

"Sor-ry, but this whole Experiment NIC thing has seemed to clog your memory or somethin'. Have you forgotten the real reason we're out here in the first place? Hello?! We don't have a place to live, remember?!" 625 exclaimed, desperately throwing his arms up in the air.

Kasey groaned. "Did you HAVE to go and remind me?" She shook her head. "How did we ever get ourselves into this mess...?"

"Well, if I remember correctly, YOU made Gantu mad."

"Me?! I---" Then Kasey stopped, mid-sentence. "Oh, let's not start this again. Let's just try to fix our problem. ...Why me...?"

"Oh, come on, Punkin', whinin' never fixed anything." 625 put an arm around Kasey's shoulder.

Kasey glared at him. "Neither does sweet-talkin'."

625 folded his arms. "So what do you propose we do now, Ms. Perfect?"

Kasey looked annoyed. "What's that supposed to mean?!"

"Come on now, you can't keep avoiding it forever," 625 said with his paws on his hips. "What are we going to do?"

Kasey heaved a sigh. "I wish I knew..."

Susan sat on a park swing, unenthusiastically pushing herself back and forth with her right foot. She sighed, looking sullen. "Stitch likes Angel more than me. Kasey has no home. I'm sure Jade didn't picture it all like this. Why did she have to leave us? What would she say if she were here? Things couldn't get much worse." After she had said this, stomps on the ground that felt like an earthquake made her fall face first onto the ground. She spit out dirt and held her head up with her fist. "Apparently, I was wrong."

She got up, brushing dirt off of her fur, then watched as Gantu started walking up the path. "I might've known." She looked suspicious. "I wonder what he's up to...?" She ran up to the path in front of Gantu. "Hey, Fish Boy---what ya goin' to do?"

Instantly, Susan's charms began to work their effects on Gantu again. "Why, I was just heading to your place, sweetie pie."

Susan looked deeply embarrassed, mumbling quietly under her breath about how the only guys she managed to attract were fish. She shook her head, not trying with very much effort to hide her disgusted expression. She sighed. "And why were you going over there for? I'm not going to go on a date with you."

Gantu sighed. "I'm going over there to ask the two abominations back." He looked slightly embarrassed in front of Susan. "Not that I really need them or anything---Dr. Hamsterviel ordered it."

Susan didn't look as if she bought that. "Sure..." She shifted her weight. "Well, you'll be wasting your time if you go over there. Nani kicked them out. Apparently, they've been getting a lot of that lately." Susan glared at Gantu. "I don't know where they are, though. Good luck."

Gantu groaned at this misfortune, and stomped off, resulting in Susan falling on her bottom. She grumbled. "I am losing my patience..."

"I'm hungry..."

Kasey frowned. "You've been saying that more times than I can count in the last half hour, 625."

"Yeah, well, you've been looking through that folder more times than I can count. What's so interesting about it, anyway?" 625 looked over Kasey's shoulder at the folder she kept thumbing through.

Kasey quickly shut the folder. "Nevermind."

They were walking closer to the park, where Gantu had been only seconds ago. As they passed through the park, they met up with Susan, who was just walking around.

"Susan!" Kasey exclaimed. "Hey, what're you doing here?"

"Just having a leisurely stroll," Susan replied. "Oh, and you'll never believe the news I have!"

Kasey grinned. "I bet my news is more amazing than yours!"

"No way, girl! You'll die when you hear my news!"

625 rolled his eyes. "Will you just get on with it!? I already know her news," 625 poked Kasey, "so tell us yours, Fantasia!"

Susan raised a brow, but shook it off and got on with it. "Eh, erm, anyway, Gantu came by here about a couple of minutes ago, and you'll never believe it! He's searching for you two! He wants to ask you back!"

"No way! Really? He sincerely, honestly wants us back? He really does need us? Well, that takes care of that, I guess. But wait until I tell you..." Kasey looked around as if she was about to discuss a crime in the making, "Jade made another experiment! Well, she was going to. You see, she had an assistant on Earth named Raleigh. And he found our experiment folders, but he also found a third one. See?" Kasey handed Susan Experiment NIC's folder.

Susan looked through the folder like Kasey had, and looked just as amazed. "Wow... so, there WAS going to be another one, but I didn't know it was almost done!" Then Susan smirked, looking thoughtful. "Hey--- mind if I take this home?"

Kasey sighed. "Go ahead. There's nothing more I can do with it."

"Are you sure? You seemed to do plenty with it earlier. You looked at it, you looked at it upside down, you looked at it sideways... I think you even made it float WHILE looking at it once," 625 pointed out.

Kasey stared at 625. "How much free time do you have anyway, 625?"

"Well, you didn't have anything better to do than stare at what's in that folder, even though you can't understand 99.9% of it!"

"Okay, okay... whatever," Kasey excused the argument calmly. "Well, I guess we'd better go now... nice chatting with ya, Susan!"

Susan nodded and waved as the couple walked away into the distance.

Gantu walked back to his ship, grumbling. He had failed in his search of Kasey and 625, and wasn't in a particularly good mood. Well, he never really was, was he? But as he walked into the ship, he found something he never expected.

There were 625 and Kasey, both leaning against the wall. "Hi, Gantu," they said in unison.

Gantu stared at them. "What---how---when---what're the both of you doing back here?!"

625 looked at Gantu in a phony sympathetic way. "Susan told us how much you needed us, Gantu. And now we've come back to take care of you." 625 held Kasey close, and she began to laugh. "And if you're a good little tadpole, we won't put you in a home."

Kasey burst out laughing, leaning against 625 to prevent falling against the floor. Gantu didn't look quite pleased with their behavior... although in a way, he seemed relieved. "All right, all right, you can stay here. But I expect a little more respect from you two!"

"Aw, Gantu, we always respect you. It's just that we don't think you can handle it." Kasey nodded.

Gantu growled, staring angrily at them, but he left the room without another word.

"Ahhhh!"

"Wuh?" Kasey woke with a start. Did Gantu just scream? Well, there was one way to find out. She got up from her "bed" on the floor of the storage room and went out into the hall, only to bump into 625 who was on his way out, too.

625 rubbed his forehead, where their heads had hit. "Ow! Hey, watch where you're goin'!"

"Well, sorry!" Kasey looked 625 over. "Why are you covered in breadcrumbs?"

625 brushed crumbs from his fur. "I had a midnight snack. Why, is that suddenly a federal crime, Officer Know-Nothing?"

Kasey sighed, ignoring 625's clever response, which made him scowl. "You heard Gantu scream, too? I wonder what happened?"

"I don't know. Maybe he looked at himself in the mirror." 625 chuckled. "Besides, Gantu doesn't scream. He bellows."

Kasey nodded, then felt the floor shake. "Oh, I think we're about to find out." Gantu headed their way, with something grasped firmly in his hand. He went past them, knocking 625 down. Kasey went after Gantu, and after a moment, 625 got up and followed, too.

"Hey Gantu? What happened? We heard you scream!" Kasey exclaimed, watching Gantu get a teleporter ready.

"I didn't scream!" Gantu exclaimed in annoyance.

"That's right! You bellowed!" 625 pointed out.

Gantu glared at 625, then looked back to Kasey. "If you must know, an experiment woke me up, and I'm going to send it to Dr. Hamsterviel before something goes wrong."

"Something ALWAYS goes wrong," 625 told Gantu.

"Well, it won't this time! For your information, I---"

"Wait a sec!" Kasey went over to the container computer. "If an experiment is activated, isn't this thingy supposed to say so? You said it woke you up, so I assume it's been activated."

"Strike one!" 625 slapped his left paw, and Gantu glowered at him.

"So, may I see the experiment?" Kasey asked. "Please? If you don't let me see it, I'll bug you about it until you do. And you know perfectly well that I am more than capable of that." Kasey smiled innocently.

"Strike two!" 625 slapped his right paw.

Gantu groaned. "Oh, all right! But only for a minute. Dr. Hamsterviel doesn't like it when I delay giving him experiments."

"But he's probably used to it by now anyway," 625 commented.

Gantu sent another Look in 625's direction, then held out something in his right hand in front of Kasey, then opened it. And what they saw was a light pink, yellow-spotted furball. It opened itself up out of the furball, shaking it's head, then it sneezed, and looked straight at Kasey. Its whole body was the light pink color, and its face was the only part of itself that wasn't covered in the yellow spots. Its ears stuck straight up, making it look somewhat like a baby wolf. Its fur was very shaggy, and its claws in sequence were light pink, yellow, light pink, yellow... oh, and its eyes were brown. Like Susan and Kasey's.

It flicked its long, wolflike tail out from behind itself and twitched its little black nose, which looked completely out of place with all the pink and yellow. Then it quickly jumped out of Gantu's hand and ran out of the room.

"Strike three!" 625 slapped his paws together. Delightfully, he pointed a thumb in another direction. "You're out!"

"Shut up!" Gantu shouted at 625. He looked to Kasey. "This is your fault, female! If you hadn't---"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute." Kasey held her paw out in a stop gesture. "Why do you always call me 'female'? Because I'm a girl, does that make me inferior to all of the other experiments? You complain about us not respecting you... well, I think I should be respected once in awhile, too!"

625 nudged Kasey. "Hey, what about me?"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Kasey waved 625 away. He frowned.

"Hey, I---" Gantu began, then grumbled, "oh, I have no time for this! I have to catch that experiment!" He ran in the direction that the experiment had gone in.

That's when the phone rang. 625 went for it, but Kasey pushed him out of the way and grabbed the phone. She put it to her ear. "Hello? Oh, hi, Susan!"

625 sighed. "Here we go..."

"What? You what? He what? He did? Wow... it what?! ...Escaped? ...Oh, my... Susan, it's here! Listen, I'll call you back, okay? Yeah, goodbye!" She hung up the phone, then turned to 625, looking dumbfounded.

"What? What is it?" 625 asked curiously.

"625, it's... it's amazing. You'll never believe it..." Kasey looked to 625 and smiled, about to tell 625 her news...

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THE END

To be continued

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