Friendship

C/By: Kenjaje

Edited/Revised by: raVen

(Phase also created by raVen)

Chapter 16: The Storm on Agubada

"Get away from our ship Hamsterveil!" Lilo commanded, stepping into the light of the outer portion of the pillar. Hamsterveil, in his floating pod, and his four remaining Kino's, all turned. They were only a few yards from the vessel, and it would only take one of them to knock it off or destroy it.

"You three think you can boss me around?" He snarled. "You're little 626 could not take on three of my creations all at once, what makes you think you can do anything?"

"We already took down four of your Kino's, rat. All I have to do is sing backward and they're useless." Angel snapped; she was standing a bit back behind Lilo, and slightly off to the girl's left side.

"Ah yes, that is a problem isn't it? I guess I'll just have to deactivate their hearing." In the middle of his sentence he pressed a few buttons on his console. "And now, that problem is solved. Any more bright ideas, 624?" Angel growled.

"Yeah," chimed Phase threateningly, slightly behind and to Lilo's right, "I've got one; four Kino's drifting in the vacuum, I can make that happen in a few seconds." She boasted, hiding her bluff with sincerity. Hamsterveil smiled.

"I'm sorry, but you can't." Phase's teeth gritted. "You probably can't even teleport from level 73 to here; otherwise you would have, and not have taken the elevator. That was a nice try 600, but I'm well aware that the inhibiters have affected you already. Which, by the way, I'm very disappointed; I was hoping that you would let me use that power of yours, I'm sorry to see you betray me like-"

"Me betray you?" Phase snapped. "You rat of a-"

"Phase, calm down." Lilo ordered. Hamsterveil beamed widely. "I don't care what you say; we'll find a way to get rid of your Kino's long before they wreck the ship. You can count on it!"

"Is this a challenge from the little earther?" He questioned. Lilo smiled; he wasn't aware of her capabilities yet. "I see. I suppose I'll be somewhat generous and give you the same offer I gave 626. They will not strike until you do." His smile was a confident counter.

"They'd better get ready then." Lilo said, nervously shifting her right foot back behind her left, and raising her arms, bent at the elbows, poised to run. She took in a deep breath, trying to stifle the fear that welled up her. "All right! Here I-" Her stomach lurched and her knees locked in place, causing her to fall forward; a flash of numbness flooded her head, stopping her before she even began. When the numbing dizziness wore off, Angel was helping her to her feet.

"There you what?" Angel asked with sarcasm. Lilo stood and rubbed the scrape on her knee. She wondered what had made her stop—it wasn't her own fear, she knew that. It was something—or someone—else.

"Stitch?" Lilo asked, looking toward the hangar.

"Huh?" Angel looked over toward the darkness in the hangar; the light filtered in aslant inside the doorway; the glare made it impossible to see anything inside. Angel glanced back at Lilo, to ask what she was looking at, but the girl's stare was rigid. Angel went back to the darkness, peering closer and lifting a hand to allow her eyes to see what was catching Lilo's attention.

Though her eyes failed her, Angel picked up a sound from inside. A light clicking sound that was evenly paced and light. It drew closer to the light leaning in the doorway, and then stopped. Angel's squint sharpened just enough for her to make out a figure standing in the doorway.

The figure—a shadow with a dark blue hue—stretched taller for a moment, as a second set of arms punched out of its sides, then relaxed. The soft crunch of its popping joints seemed muffled in Angel's ears, and the gleam off of its claws seemed vicious as it stood in the dark patch before the little bit of light.

The figure seemed oddly calm and under control, and yet he also seemed as though he were about to snap at the twitch of an eye. Lilo seemed to grow uneasy; her breath started to fluctuate between quick gasps and slow billows, but not dramatically, just subtly. Angel looked back at Stitch, and wondered what was making Lilo so agitated, but she couldn't figure it out.

"Hey, what's wrong?" She finally asked. Lilo appeared to flinch as though being disturbed from deep concentration. "I'm surprised to see Stitch up and about too, but not that surprised." She commented. Lilo replied quickly, and flatly.

"That's not Stitch."

"Not Stitch?" Angel questioned, dropping her ears. "What do you mean?" Lilo's voice gradually moved to an alarmed quiver.

"I'm not sure." She said, shaking her head. "But that's not Stitch, somehow."

"Well then who is it?" Angel's head leaned to the side, one eye squinting and the other bulged at Lilo.

"Whoever he is, he wants us to move." Lilo said, grabbing Angel's arm.

"What?"

"Move!" Lilo pushed Angel, causing her to side step out of the way. She quarter-turned to see Lilo stepping the opposite direction, and for a fraction of a second, an almost invisible blue smear caught Angel's eyes, and her inertia. Both the girls were blown off-balance by a powerful wind, and staggered to keep their footing.

Angel fell, but only because her eyes were concentrating on following the blue wisp that headed straight for one of the four Kino's. The small dinosaur apparently saw it coming too, as it prepared to attack, but the blue smear was too quick. Flickers of light streaked across the smear in circles as its claws crossed the Kino's body. It jumped up in its process, scoring the metal on the front of the Kino like plastic clay.

The blur was visible once it landed; Stitch was on one knee, his lower arms at his side, their palms on the ground, his upper-left arm rested on the raised knee, and the upper-right was extended out and bent at the elbow, so that its wrist was relaxed near his head, yet poised; claws ready for another strike.

The Kino recovered from the attack, its surface rough and scratched, no longer reflecting the light that peeked in through the clouds. It seemed to search the ground for the attacker, and when it spotted Stitch it immediately ran toward him, swinging an arm down. Angel winced as she heard the shattering, smashing noise, and after a second opened her eyes to look.

The Kino struggled, trying to pull away. Stitch was latched onto its hand, his claws at the end of large holes bored in the metal, and as it struggled, jerking and thrusting away from him, he didn't move a muscle. He let the Kino struggle for a second or two, as if taunting it, and then he took action—vicious action. He twisted the wrist of the Kino and slammed the hand down onto the metal flooring, and like a lead ball the Kino fell with it.

Stitch twisted the wrist a little more, and pulled; with little effort the arm of the Kino snapped cleanly from the socket. Electricity spit onto the ground from the exposed wires in its connective shoulder-socket, and even more spat as Stitch landed on top of the Kino's chest and tore into its sternum, pulling out the wires and snapping them on either end. In less than a minute, the Kino was permanently shut down.

But the fight wasn't over. Two of the three remaining Kino's roared into the fray. Stitch back-flipped from the fallen Kino and took up the dismantled arm. Both Kinoe's came down, and both were blocked with the severed bar of metal and electronics. A second and third attack were blocked, and even more after that.

The arm, nimbly weaving between Stitch's four ambidextrous hands, expertly met with each of both Kinoe's blows. However they were quick tacticians; they began to attack more quickly, and feign a blow every now and again, attempting to be unpredictable. But Stitch was toying with them it seemed, as even when they managed to flank him from both sides, he managed to block them again by snapping the arm in his grasp in two.

The playing was over; Stitch was growing tired. These machines were nothing compared to the original Achie-baba Kino for some reason. He dodged another two blows, landed in between them on his upper palms, and his lower arms spun the two twice-severed metal poles like saws, cutting through the Kinoe's metal shell and tearing the wires inside. More electricity and the Kinoes slumped over, defeated.

Stitch threw one chunk of arm at each Kino, knocking them over. As they fell, the last Kino could be seen standing by the ship. Hamsterveil, situated next to it, was gaping with appall. Stitch cracked his joints again, slowly, confidently, and eyed the Kino next to the rat. The monster seemed confident, but Stitch felt it didn't have a personality, or if it did he disregarded it. He hated them, right from the very beginning. He wanted to know what they were for, he wanted to know why Hamsterveil created them, but those wants were stifled as he began to step toward the last Kino that would ever be made.

But a noise distracted him; at first it came from behind, but then above, and then both. He looked upward at the metal disks above his head, to see a dark blur plummeting toward him. Not a second later he found himself in the clutches of another Kino; one that Angel realized she had shut down, but hadn't been destroyed. Instead she left it in the hallway, dormant, leading Lilo toward Stitch. Angel started to run toward them, but Lilo stopped her.

"What are you doing? We have to help him!" Angel said, looking back at Lilo while trying to escape from the girl's enhanced grip. Lilo looked back with stern eyes.

"He doesn't want us to interfere; we'll only get in the way."

"How do you know?" Angel snapped with desperation.

"Because that's what he's feeling." Lilo replied calmly. "And whatever he feels, I feel." Angel looked back at the Kinoes, Stitch's head protruding between the thumbs of the Kino that held him. He was struggling, screaming, one ear caught with his body in the Kino's grip. Angel closed her eyes, still trying to get away from Lilo, each of Stitch's furious yells making her heart skip a beat. The last sound Angel heard was Hamsterveil's cackle, before another sound slowly gained dominance in her hearing.

She mustered the ability to open her eyes, and search for the body of the sound, and when she did she saw the most curious occurrence: what appeared to be balls of water, nearly two feet in diameter, slammed through the Kinoes, and into the wall behind them. It was numbing, and the tremor that resonated through the pillar was even more numbing. Angel looked out toward the ocean, where she identified the source of the sound: four edifices of swirling water shot up from the mother body.

Another volley of large water balls exploded from the hurricanes, all aimed precisely at the pillar. One made contact with the Kino holding Stitch, and immediately, to Angel's amazement, the Kino melted before her eyes, and Stitch fell to the ground, dazed, but completely fine. What was more amazing, the metal pillar began to melt where the water impacted it as well.

"The water." Lilo muttered, barely above the sound of the hurricanes. "It has so much salt in it the acidity is eating away at anything that's metal." As if to confirm the theory, another ball of water hit the last Kino, taking away everything but its legs, which quickly vanished through disintegration.

Hamsterveil screamed, and ran past Lilo and Angel, who didn't even acknowledge his presence, toward the entrance of the hanger. Phase appeared before him as he came close to the entrance, and he fell over, running into her.

"Where are you going?" The green experiment snapped.

"Out of here!" The rat ducked as a ball of water passed over his head. Phase quarter-turned; the water barely missed her nose, and splattered against the back wall with a hiss.

"You're not going-"

"Phase!" Lilo shouted. "Leave him alone, we have to get off this thing now; the water is going to eat it and if we don't out of here it'll eat the ship too!" Phase glanced down at the rodent in front of her, angry that she was going to miss her opportunity to teach him what happens to a betrayer, like Angel had mercifully taught her. With another tremor of the pillar, she ran past the rat as he ran past her.

She paused for a moment, to watch a ball of water fly up under the metal flooring above her, and smack into it, causing the pillar to tremor again. She continued to stare in a slight awe as it ate away at the metal. However, she would have done wiser to run when she had the chance. The metal ate away in such a fashion, that before she had time to get out of the way, a boulder of metal was headed toward her, picking up speed as it closed the gap, and growing larger in her vision as it neared her petrified body.

She barely had time to gasp, much less react, to the chunk of metal that rapidly fell down on her. The backs of her knees tensed, and when she tried to get out of the way she fell onto her back. The metal ball quickly took up her vision, and instinctively she held out her hands to attempt to stop it, even though she knew it was too heavy for her to hold up, especially at its momentum.

However, just as her fingertips touched the surface, it jerked, and for moment she winced. In the middle of that moment, she realized that the chunk was somehow not falling; something was stopping it just inches away from her palms. Breathless, she glanced to the side, barely able to move her head, and saw what had stopped the falling chunk; Angel's legs, the right down on its knee, and hands trembled underneath the metal boulder.