Ok, new chapter. And about time! I wanted to get this done as this was the only night in a long time when I haven't had homework. Stupid projects… Anyway, enjoy!


It was just after dusk when Ari and Stitch went back inside. They had played all afternoon and were now exhausted. Ari was excited to see if Jake was awake, too.

"Hey, Stitch?" she asked him. "I'm gonna go see if Jake's awake yet. Thanks for a great day!" She hugged him, much to his surprise, and then ran ahead of him into the house, almost running into a very flustered-looking Pleakley.

"Oops… Sorry!" she called back to him as she ran towards the elevator. Pleakley looked from her to Stitch, and then walked back towards the kitchen.

Ari was excited as the elevator took her up to Stitch's room. But her excitement decreased when she saw Jake sound asleep in his bed. "Strange… I thought Stitch said he would be awake today… I wanted to talk to him." She went back downstairs.

Jake opened an eye and stared at the same place Ari had been in only seconds earlier. He had heard every word she had said. "She wants to talk to me?" he said to himself. "I'd better not disappoint her!" He crawled out of bed and made his way towards the elevator. He was stopped short when he felt a tug in his rear end. He turned around to find that his tail had somehow wrapped itself around the bedpost.

"Stupid tail…" he muttered to himself as he attempted to untie it. "What good do they serve anyway?"

Several frustrating minutes later he emerged from the bottom of the elevator with a knot-free tail. He heard talking coming from the front room. Peeking his head around the corner he could see Lilo, Stitch and Ari sitting on the sofa watching a movie. He walked slowly over to the couch.

Ari saw him coming out of the corner of her eye and turned her head his way. "Jake!" she cried happily. "You're awake!" She jumped off the couch and approached him. "You feeling ok?" There was a note of concern in her voice.

"Yeah, I'm ok. Why do you ask?" Jake replied coolly. But he couldn't get the image out of his head. Stitch and Ari had been sitting next to each other on the couch…

Ari smiled again. "Good! I wanted to talk to you…" She looked back at Lilo and Stitch for a moment. "Alone." She led Jake away from the front room. They paused in the kitchen for a moment, but cleared out once Nani came in. She shook her head at the sight of the two experiments and mumbled something under her breath. Ari couldn't make out what she had said, but thought she heard "stupid" as one of her word choices. She apparently didn't know they were humans stuck in experiment's bodies.

They finally found a private place, in the closet, no less. It was dark in there, and the only light source other than the crack in the door came from Ari's lavender-glowing antennae. Ari shuffled on her feet nervously before she spoke. "I… just wanted to thank you for saving me yesterday. I never got the chance to seeing as you, well, got conked on the head."

Jake grinned sheepishly. "It was nothing, really. I just couldn't let him take you away."

Ari smiled. "There was another thing I wanted to talk to you about. What are you so sorry for?"

"Well… uh…" Jake stammered. "I just wanted to say I was sorry for letting you get caught by those guys," he pointed back towards the front room.

Ari shrugged. "Ah, well. They didn't know we weren't experiments. Besides, I've finally met my favorite character! Isn't he great? We were playing out side while you were sleeping."

Jake nodded grimly. "Yeah… he's a great guy." The last thing he wanted to talk about right now was the two-foot terror. He was glad when Ari changed the subject.

"And I wanted to show you something. But not in here." She opened the closet door with a creak. Jake had to blink his eyes a couple times to get used to the brightness, but got used to it after a while. "Watch this!" Ari screwed up her face and concentrated hard, and soon a light purple sphere appeared around her. It looked like water, but acted like light. Jake had thought it looked cool when he saw it from his room, but it looked even cooler close up!

"It's a force field," Ari explained. "It can deflect anything! Go ahead, throw something at me!" She pointed to a pillow on the floor.

Jake picked up the pillow and threw it at her. He was surprised how fast it went towards her, but even more surprised when it bounced off the shield and flew back at him! He was suddenly looking at the ceiling above him on his back. The pillow had hit him in the stomach.

"Jeez…" he muttered. "Good thing it was only a pillow." Ari's head suddenly obscured his vision of the ceiling. "Oops," she said. "I forgot to tell you. Stitch and I figured out that whatever deflects off my shield will bounce back at the attacker. You aren't hurt, are you?" That last sentence she said with such obvious sincerity that Jake had to smile.

"Nah, I'm fine." He got to his feet. "Cool powers. Do you think I have any?" He fidgeted with his tail.

"Well, that tail of yours has to account for something. Maybe it's poisonous?" Ari pondered.

"Hmm… maybe. Maybe we should try it on someone?"

Ari shook her head. "No, we don't want to put them in a coma, just in case it's that strong. We'll ask Jumba if he's got any dummies or something like that." She took Jake's brown paw in her own white one and took off through the house. Jake wasn't too keen on seeing the guy who had tricked him into coming here, but if Ari thought he was ok after what he did, maybe Jumba wasn't so bad.

Ari skidded and slid around corners with Jake in tow until they reached Jumba's door, which was open for once. Jake could see he was working on something.

"Jumba?" Ari asked. "Someone wants to see you." She pushed Jake into the door and followed him in.

Jumba turned and a big smile spread across his face. "Jake! You are being awake!"

Jake didn't say anything. He just gaped at the alien in front of him. "You… you're…" He stammered. He continued to stammer like this for several seconds, until he finally shouted out, "I worked for YOU!?" He wasn't mad; he actually thought it was pretty cool. "No wonder all those things you sent me were weird and filled with weird stuff!"

Ari looked at him with an eyebrow raised. "You worked for him? How? When?"

"Er…" Jake stumbled. "I, er… worked for him in government?"

"Now is not being time to lie, Jake" Jumba said to him.

Jake sighed. "Well… I needed some money, so when I saw an ad in the paper that he wanted a helper for some experiment thing he was gonna do, I stepped up. He gave me this formula that brought us here. So I, er… guess it's my fault we're here." He tensed, waiting for the winding blow that was sure to come.

Ari didn't say or do anything, just stood there with her mouth gaping open. Jake thought he could see her uvula behind her sharp teeth.

"Aren't you gonna hit me or something? Choke me?"

"Jake… WHY DIDN"T YOU TELL ME?" Ari exclaimed happily. "You didn't have to lie to me in the closet. I think it's genius that you helped him with a machine that could make you change dimensions! But…" she paused. "Why me?"

"Well, there wasn't much question after one look in your room." Jake left out the part about him liking her.

Ari smiled. "I suppose so." She suddenly noticed Jumba was still watching them. She cleared her throat nervously.

"Well, now that that is being out of way, what is reason to come?" Jumba asked.

"Well…" Ari began. "We were wondering if you had any dummies or something we could use. Jake still hasn't found out what his powers are!"

Jumba let out a huge yawn. "I do, but in the morning. It is already being past nine."

Ari made an annoyed huffing sound, but said no more. She motioned for Jake to follow her out the door and they stopped outside the elevator leading to Lilo and Stitch's room.

"Nani told me we could sleep in their room. We'd better get sleeping bags…" she trailed off as she ran off back down the hallway and opened up a closet. Jake smiled. If Ari was obsessed enough to know her way around Lilo and Stitch's house, he knew he had chosen the right "volunteer".

Ari returned with two thick sleeping bags in each of her arms. Jake wondered aloud how she could carry them without dropping one, and she answered she could lift 1,500 times her weight. Jake said nothing, just raised an eyebrow in interest.

Ari had to send the sleeping bags up first, as all of them couldn't fit in the elevator at once. Upon reaching Lilo and Stitch's room, she could see that they were already there, obviously banished from any other area of the house for the night. They were listening to Elvis records.

Lilo looked up and smiled when she saw Ari and Jake. "You're here! Great! C'mon, Stitch made popcorn!" She motioned to a bowl almost overflowing with popcorn in between her and Stitch.

Ari settled herself down next to Stitch, with Jake next to her. The whole group formed a circle around the record player, which was now playing "Devil in Disguise".

"So… what did you want to talk to Jumba about?" Lilo asked before shoveling another handful of popcorn in her mouth.

Ari shrugged. "We just wanted to know what Jake's powers were. I asked if he had any dummies we could practice on, but he claimed it was getting late and we would find out in the morning." She shrugged again.

Stitch looked over to Jake. "Jake oketaka?" Jake had been continually reaching for the popcorn bowl and coming back with nothing but air, but still tried to put it in his mouth. He also had a blank look on his face.

"He… is… coming…" Jake said in a voice that wasn't his. "Soon…"

Everyone widened their eyes. Ari leaned over and shook Jake's arm, causing his to shake his head and blink a few times.

"Whoa…" he whispered and rubbed his head. The deer-in-headlights look was gone and the usual twinkle was back in his eyes.

"What happened?" Lilo asked.

Jake shook his head again. "I dunno. One moment I was listening to your conversation, and the next I had these… images… in my head and I talked in that weird way."

Ari's eyes twinkled. "Do you think you're psychic? Is that one of your powers?"

Jake shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe. But do psychics see pictures in their head and talk really wired?"

Ari bit her lip nervously at the mention of the pictures. "What did you see?"

"It's a bit fuzzy. There was a yellow figure next to… to something… a whale, I think… They were talking... The whale was telling the yellow thing he would 'return with the abomination.'" He rubbed his head. "And then everything went blank."

Lilo let out a little gasp. "It's Gantu!" she exclaimed. "He must be after another experiment! And it's probably one of you two!" Stitch growled at the name.

Ari shuddered at the memory of their last encounter on the beach. "We've met…" she muttered.

Lilo wasn't listening. She was looking around the room with a wild gleam in her eyes. "You have to hide!" She let out a little "Aha!" when she spotted a dark corner in the room. "You can sleep here!"

Ari looked at her like she was insane. "Are you mental?! It's out in the open!"

Lilo let out another little "Aha!" Ari rolled her eyes. "That's the point. He won't be expecting it! He'll probably look in the closet or under the bed! He'll totally miss you! Now help me get these sleeping bags over here." She moved to drag one of the bags over to the corner.

Seeing that Lilo had made up her mind, the three experiments helped her move the sleeping bags. None of them made any comments, but Ari mumbled just loud enough for herself to hear, "This had better work."

After every sleeping bag was moved and every light was turned off, the experiments and Lilo got settled into their beds.

"G'night, Lilo," said Ari.

"G'night, Ari."

"G'night, Stitch."

"Night, Ari."

"Night, Jake." Ari concluded. There was no response beside her. Jake had apparently fallen asleep.

"See you in the morning," Jake finally said after a few moments.

Ari's heart leaped. They'd have to evade Gantu first… "Yeah…" she whispered. "In the morning."

"C'mon, G!" 625 complained. "Which one are ya after now?"

Gantu didn't stop rummaging through his weapons as he spoke. "It's 623 and 622."

625 raised an eyebrow in amazement. "Ya think you can handle it? I mean, I'm not too keen on paying for your medical bill, ya know."

Gantu grumbled something under his breath. "I'm going to be prepared for these two! One of them doesn't even know what it does." He motioned towards the computer, which was displaying Jake and Ari's pictures.

625 approached the computer and pressed a button. The computer said in a monotone voice, "Experiments 622 and 623. 62's primary function: unknown. 623's primary function: deflecting force fields."

"Gee, ya really think you're gonna get these two?"

Gantu emerged from his closet wearing two plasma blasters, a glass container, and the gun containing the nets. (I dunno what it's called.)

"I will come back with the abominations this time. Hamsterveil threatened to fire me if I didn't." He left the ship without another word.

"Hmmm…" 625 inquired. "I think Ill go make a sandwich to calm my nerves about this guy." He headed off towards the kitchen.


Woo-who! Six pages on Word! I really like this chapter for some reason… R&R, please!