Chapter 7: Saviour
Deep down below the waves, Demon was sinking rapidly, the dark, dank blueness of the sea swallowing her up. She had tried flapping her limbs to propel herself upwards, but to no avail. She just floated downwards, feeling the pressure of the water building up above her.
She hadn't won the fight for Stitch. That one thought seemed to drag her down and crush her with more power than anything Earth's seas could do. She wasn't too bothered that she was dying, that was already certain. At least, she thought, Stitch would be able to carry on without her. And be with Angel. At that she curled herself up into a ball, consumed by bitter despair, and the tears she cried were just lost into the endless water.
-
Stitch turned on Angel. She just stood there, cocky, triumphant, waiting for him to make the first move. He shot her a look of utmost hate. His eyes were determinedly set; there was no decision to be made here. Then he turned and leapt in one bound into the crashing waves.
-
Demon had been falling, sinking, forever and ever. That's what it felt like to her. She couldn't tell how long she had been surrounded by the water. Perhaps there was nothing else one could be surrounded by.
How much more time would have to be spent like this? She wished her end would come quicker. She had been spending the last few agonising seconds saying goodbye to her thoughts. Thoughts that wouldn't have existed without Stitch. What was she without him? She would still be a rampaging fireball of destruction, laying waste to whatever got in her way. It was Stitch who changed all that. He made her what she was, made her able to have these feelings, taught her all the things she treasured.
She was nothing without him.
She must have been sinking for all eternity. She'd long forgotten how to taste, smell or feel. She could no longer recall the touch of a breeze. She couldn't even remember how to breathe. It felt like she'd never breathed at all.
By now all reason had left her mind. It was like she was trapped in a fluffy, make-believe land that you couldn't leave, and got nowhere no matter what you did. But there was one thing she could still remember.
Floating slowly downwards, she could look up at the sunlight streaming through the water. Like a lifeline of light, unable to help her. The brightness had dimmed as she sank, but it still held stubbornly on, reaching all the way down to her. Then, slowly, she watched the bright circle above get darker. This must be it, then. All light was fading.
But soon she realised that it wasn't her vision fading, something was just obscuring the light from above. Something swooping down, becoming clearer as it got closer.
'An angel,' her mind said. 'An angel's come for me.'
And she was right.
The shape got closer until she could see Stitch's form almost clearly against the bright sunlight beyond.
She could barely believe what she was seeing, but reached out a hand all the same. A simple plea made somewhat unconsciously.
Stitch was swimming downwards with all his might, paddling furiously with four limbs to descend faster than she was. At last the two were close enough, and he reached one of his paws out.
Their hands connected in the nothingness, and everything seemed to freeze.
'Why?' she thought. They both understood. They didn't need words. 'You came back for me.'
'Nobody gets left behind,' he answered. And then time started again.
They each pulled on the arm that connected them, drawing them closer together. Once they were close enough they embraced, hugging each other tighter. Down there, it was the only thing that was real.
'This is it then,' Demon thought. 'It's the end…'
'If you go,' Stitch was thinking to her, 'I'll follow. We go together.'
They laid their heads against each other, and for the first time since it all started, they seemed content. Then Demon seemed to become limp. She was going to go first. Stitch hugged her tighter, then squeezed as hard as he could, begging her with all his heart not to go.
Then he felt something. A change. They were moving around in the water. Before there had been no sense of up or down, but now Demon was unmistakably over him. She was rising upwards. In the shock of realising it Stitch has somewhat released her, and now she hovered over him. He was just clinging to her paw desperately. She was floating over him. Floating. She above and him below, hanging on to her hand, she was the only thing stopping them from sinking, so they just hung in mid-nothingness. And Stitch remembered her power. Now, she was peaceful, calm, and unconscious. She had no rage, no anger – no strength. Without strength her body did not have the increased molecular density – she would float in water. He, on the other hand, could do nothing to change the fact his strength was ever present, he would always sink.
He wasn't really able to choose any more. He knew what he was going to do. He gripped her hand tighter for what he thought would be the last time. The two of them could continue to hang there indefinitely. So he was going to let go of her hand, she would rise to the surface, perhaps survive, and he would……
He felt the touch of her hand against his for one last time, and prepared to release her.
-
Up on the beach, the spectators watched and waited with baited breath. Lilo had taken Nani's hand, partly from anxiety, and partly because she would have run into the water herself without Nani to stop her.
After a few more moments, David's head broke the surface of the water. He scrambled up onto the beach, pulling the two experiments' limp forms after him. As he laid them on the sand, Lilo ran to Stitch to see if he was still okay. His eyes were closed, so she grabbed his shoulders to shake him awake. She wasn't afraid of making things worse, he just had to wake up – and usually experiments can endure quite a lot.
'Stitch? Are you okay?'
He suddenly sprang into life, and automatically used all his strength to scramble over to Demon's side. He threw himself onto her and pulled her up, desperately trying to get her to wake up. He didn't consider the fact that she might not be able to.
'Demon! DEMON!'
With a jerk her eyes opened, and she choked for air while trying to dislodge some water from her lungs. He allowed her a few seconds to gulp down air, then grasped her again. She hugged him gratefully back.
'You saved me!' she said, her voice sounding a little whispery and rasping.
'Naga,' he replied, 'You saved me! Stitch would have sunk without Demon.'
'Okay then,' she sounded very relieved. 'We saved each other.'
'David saved you too,' Lilo interjected. The party looked at him.
'Oh no, it was nothing!' he insisted. 'Just a dive. Although, if you two had gone any deeper, I probably wouldn't have been able to get you.'
Then, in the rush of understanding one has just after waking up, the experiments remembered what had happened before.
'Angel?' Stitch asked quickly, looking around.
'She's gone,' Lilo replied. 'She got all upset and stormed off.'
'Excusing me,' Jumba intervened, 'but I have reason to believe 624 is presenting us with serious problem. You human peoples did not understand what she was saying before she left, but I did.
'She seemed to be angry not at loss of 626, but other reason. Her actual words were something about "most powerful experiment alive". And she was very jealous. During this yelling, Mr. One Eyed Noodle,' he indicated Pleakley, 'happened to mention the existence of 627 to her. And that his pod was located on my ship. And 624 ran off.
'I did have doubts about 624. You see, when I programmed all the experiments I neglected tiny detail – the experiments have a built in overwhelming instinct to do whatever purpose it is I set for them. But with almost all experiments I did not give them a desire to do it. That is why most experiments can be turned to good relatively quickly once they are shown the error of their ways, and they can think for themselves. But when I built 625, the importance of the behavioural desire programming became apparent. He has all abilities of 626, but does not want to use them. After the failure of 625, I installed special feature in 626, and later, 627, so they actually want to use all their powers. They gain pleasure from doing it.
'This may have affected 624, in a way. She does not have desire programming. And experiments without it have their own personality which can conflict with their programming. For example, a destructive experiment could essentially be a pacifist, because they dislike fighting. And that conflict of destructive instinct and calm personality can have repercussions on the individual concerned. I think that 624 is actually power mad.'
There were three cries of 'What?' and two of 'Gaba?'.
'624 likes mayhem and chaos,' Jumba explained. 'She enjoys having people follow and obey her – that's to be expected, it's part of her programming. But it's gone too far – her actual personality craves power. And yet, she physically has none, unlike her cousins. This has created a complex in 624, a need for power, and she must attain it from others. I believe this is what led to her interest in 626.
'But what now? She has lost 626 for good; he was choosing 623. So she was distraught until Pleakley mentioned 627, being the noodle brain he is. She's after 627's pod, and she knows where it is, because he's the most powerful.'
'Meega chubi-chiba 627!' Stitch cried defensively.
'Let us hope it does not come to that,' said Jumba.
'So… what do we do now?' asked Lilo. 'Do we go home and get 627's pod, if that's what she's after?'
'No… 624 will have been there and gone by now. She knows where I would keep it, or has turned my ship upside-down looking for it. It'll be gone. But this is where hope comes in – I do not believe 624 knows how to activate the pods correctly. We have some time – just a little – to get the pod away from her before she figures out how to activate it, or gets it wet by accident.'
'All right,' Lilo said optimistically, coming into her role as the organiser of the team. 'We've got a job to do, and not a lot of time to do it in. Pleakley, Jumba, you should go home and check your chip, just in case. Nani and David, you guys go back home or something. Demon, Stitch…'
The two of them looked up at her inquiringly.
'You're with me. We're gonna figure 624 out, and I think we're going to have to enlist the help of some old friends of ours.'
-
Thank you so much for reading. Thank you also to my reviewers, and I hope you, too, will consider it. To answer some of them:
Spirits Shadow, when I say Demon's accent is English, it means she sounds like she comes from England, the country. But I also strongly agree with you. I've seen Angel fans flip-flop all over the place, some say that she isn't actually evil, because in her episode she was acting only on her programming. But then, she is only 'un-evilled', in some people's opinion, at the very end, leaving no time at all to show any character. How can she be out of character when we haven't been shown any at all?
I'm not trying to start a war here. That's just my view.