To Tortured Artist:
As I thought of it, Lilo probably was hurt in that accident. I
know a sudden halt like that would cause a fair case of whiplash. And
I know little children in such accidents are usually sedated to keep
them from freaking out.
Yes, morphine does
really make you THAT delirious.
Victoria's not in
this story. Although it has SOME things that were in the series, I'm
generally trying to separate the two.
To A. Nonymous:
Linda Trip was an abhorrently obese woman who was obsessed with
sticking her nose into the Monica Lewinsky scandal for the purpose of
selling all she found out to various tabloids.
Thank you SO MUCH for
that info. I've been trying to track down their names for god only
knows how long, and thus far I've never been able to do it. Thanks
again.
The title of the book
is No Malihili Ohana. 'A Family of Strangers' is the
translation of that phrase. That book was actually an out of context
joke because No Malihili Ohana was the second line of the
intro song to the series.
As for the silhouette,
you are going to be SOO surprised when you find out what really
happened. Though it WON'T be in the next chapter where you discover
that.
And if anyone thinks they know, DON'T BLURT IT OUT! Because there are still others who don't.
The curtains were closed and the room was dark. Jumba preferred working in the dark. He typed busily on his ovalesque laptop, too busily to notice what was going on just downstairs.
The handle to the front door turned and the door slowly slid open. Stitch turned his head away from the TV to see Lilo standing in the doorway with her head down and no expression on her face. Stitch coked his head to the side. Lilo wasn't supposed to be home from school for another three and a half hours.
Lilo glanced over at Stitch with his ears back and his mouth barely open, and just as quickly looked back down. Lilo stood there for a moment. Stitch crawled to the end of the couch near her to look at her closer. Lilo then turned around and slammed the front door shut as hard as she could with both hands.
Stitch flinched and grit his teeth at the noise. It was loud enough to get the attention of Jumba in his room upstairs, and of someone else in the kitchen.
As Lilo entered the kitchen, Pleakly stopped stirring whatever he had in a pot on the stove to turn his head and track her movement.
Lilo walked right by Pleakly, ignoring what he was cooking, and opened up the pantry next to the stove to grab a can of ravioli. Pleakly continued to follow her with his eye as she opened up a drawer near the fridge and pulled out a fork.
Pleakly had to say something to her. He couldn't figure out what though, and as Lilo reached to doorway to the kitchen, all he could come up with was a happy, "You're home early today!"
Lilo turned her head to look at Pleakly for only a second. She then turned back and continued toward the couch, sitting down next to Stitch. Stitch crawled up to Lilo with his ears down and biting his lower lip.
"Could you open this for me?" Lilo said, handing Stitch her can of ravioli, not turning her head from the TV show as she did.
Sttich took the can in one hand, extended his claw on the other, and carefully sliced off the lid of the can at the rim, and handed it back to Lilo, and then promptly swallowed the lid without chewing.
Stitch and Pleakly continued to look at Lilo as she ate her uncooked raviolis out of the can while watching TV.
It was then that Jumba peaked his head out from the hallway to look at Lilo eating her ravioli and watching TV on the couch. Stitch Looked at Jumba with his ears still down and still biting his lower lip, and then looked back at Lilo, and then back at Jumba, as if trying to tell him that there was something wrong with her.
Jumba came out from behind the wall to the hallway and approached the couch.
"What is being wrong with little girl?" Jumba asked.
Lilo didn't move her head as she responded. "I got sent home today for exercising my right to free speech."
Jumba looked down at Lilo's can of ravioli and raised one fleshy sack above a pair of his eyes.
"That cannot be only thing being wrong." Jumba said. "Little girl would not be ingesting uncooked canned and processed meat stuffed dumplings unless something was truly troubling her."
Lilo sighed and finally looked up at Jumba.
"It's my parents." She said.
Jumba frowned in wonder. "What about them?"
"When they… uh… when they crashed into that tree. There was someone else there. I know there was because I heard the hospital guys talking about someone watching them from the ledge."
"And this mysterious figure is what is upsetting little girl?"
"No!" Lilo yelled at Jumba angrily, and then lowered her head as if to apologize. "It's just that. No one believes me. They all think I was hearing things. But I know he was there! He caused that accident! I don't know how he did it, but he did."
Stitch slowly crawled over to Lilo and nudged her shoulder with his nose. When Lilo turned to look at him, he crawled onto her lap and put his arms around her neck.
"Uhmm… Stitch believes Lilo." He whispered into her ear.
Lilo turned toward Stitch and returned his hug. "I know you believe me Stitch."
No one noticed that Pleakly was now just behind Jumba, who just noticeably jerked as he heard the one-eyed alien interrupt.
"I can totally empathize with you Lilo." Pleakly said. "When I was young, Ihad a pet Zephumese Glassfish, and I even taught it to pull a rope for food! And of course you know Zephomese Glassfish are seventy percent ethyl alcohol, not water, so they have to be kept at a constant temperature of minus eighteen to minus twenty four degrees at all times!
"Well, my brother had it in for me, so you know what he did one night? He turned off the tanks cooling system! When I woke up in the morning, my little trained glassfish had been boiled alive! And nobody believed me when I told them my brother did it!"
Upon finishing his spiel, Pleakly was met with appalling glares from Lilo, Stitch, and Jumba.
Pleakly put one hand behind his head and laughed. "Ooookay… So maybe that wasn't the best example. I… uhh… I'm going back into the kitchen!"
Pleakly scurried off as soon as he was finished. Jumba turned back toward Lilo who was now resting her forehead on Stitch's shoulder.
"Little girl?" Jumba said softly, causing Lilo to look back up at him. "There may be being way for you to be discovering just who or what mysterious figure was at scene of your parents accident."
Stitch cocked his head to the side at Jumba's statement. Lilo narrowed her eyebrows and hung her mouth open just enough to see her teeth.
"How?" Lilo asked.
"Be following me." Jumba said.
All was dark and silent, but not for long. First, lights lit up around the walls and across the floors in patterns of symbols and walkways. Then, monitors turned on to reveal blue for a few seconds, and then information in graphs waves, reports and numbers all flying by too quickly to register any particular one.
A solid metal door raised up and disappeared into the roof, and Jumba entered the lab area of his ship, followed closely by Lilo and Stitch.
Jumba walked straight forward toward the end of the lab area, ignoring all of the devices surrounding him. Lilo and Stitch followed more slowly, taking time to look carefully at anything and everything that was even the slightest bit interesting. It was rare that either of them were allowed inside of Jumba's private lab.
Lilo and Stitch finally caught up with Jumba who was now standing at another metal door with several panels on it. Jumba was punching buttons on one panel like mad until it changed from red to blue. Then the panel above him lit up red, and he licked his finger and smeared the saliva on the panel, causing it as well to turn blue.
Many sounds of clangning metal and large locking mechanisms echoed throughout the lab area, making Lilo jump in fright.
The door rose into the ceiling and the light inside turned on automatically to reveal a small circular room with copper colored walls no bigger than a closet.
Jumba stepped to the side, and smiling at Lilo and Stitch, extended his arm toward the small room.
Lilo and stitch looked inside to see only one thing was kept there. And it was a thing they were both very familiar with.
"You're time board!" Lilo shouted. "You rebuilt it!"
"Mega bootifa!" Stitch also shouted.
"I could not be letting such incredible stroke of genius be going to waste. And it would be seeming now that such technology is to be put to good use."
It was sometime later. Lilo, Stitch, and Jumba were all outside, the former of the two both dressed in yellow rainslickers with matching wide-rimmed nor'easter hats. Jumbas time machine attached to a surfboard was standing in front of them with its engines hot, its coordinates entered, and just waiting to be used.
Jumba reached into his bak pocket and puilled out what looked to be a credit card thin two by four inch flat panel TV with screens on both sides.
"This simple digital camera I built is possessing of sixteen thousand by eighteen thousand DPI, and is automatically adjusting to any light conditions." Jumba said as he handed the card-like camera over to Lilo.
"Cool." She whispered to herself, turning the card over and over looking at it from every angle.
"Is indeed very cool!" Jumba continued. "Be pressing blue light to turn on, red light to turn off, and green light to be taking snapshot. Side without crosshairs is picture taking side and must be pointed at target of photograph."
Lilo looked back up at Jumba. "But why do we need it?"
"For to be taking picture of person who caused parents' fatal crash. You can then be bringing camera back to present and using picture for to be tracking down and confronting said person."
"Can't we just stop him from causing that accident?"
"NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT!"
"Well… why not?
"Because! Effects of tampering with natural flow of timestream are being unpredictable. I am being sorry little girl, but you must not be interfering with natural flow of previous events. Are you understanding me little girl."
Lilo's eyes narrowed and began to water. Her fists clenched and she grit her teeth. She was on the verge of screaming some horrible obscenity at Jumba, and Stitch could see it. He was sneaking up behind Lilo and was about to wrap his arms around her face when she suddenly calmed down again.
"Yes." She whispered to Jumba with the slightest of smiles. "I understand."
"Good!" Jumba quickly spat back at her, and handed her the camera.
"Now get on the time board and I will be sending you to place of accident exactly twenty minutes before it took place."
Lilo stuck the camera inside her rain slicker and they both stepped onto the surfboard.
"Be having good luck." Jumba said.
Lilo and Stitch both nodded, and Jumba pressed one button on the surfboard, and it began hovering a few feet in the air.
Jumba gave one last wink as Lilo and Stitch's world disappeared into a bright white light, and they were off.