Review Responses

To A. Nonymous: I believe the movie you're thinking of is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. And yes, that scene was pretty much the inspiration for chapter 12. The resemblance of the sword in anvil logo to the communist USSR logo was also deliberate.

To Bluefox: Uhh... You're not going to like what I did to Gantu for very long. Don't worry, he's not turned pure arch-fiendish evil, but you're still not going to like it.

To Ovni: You're questions will be answered in this very chapter.

To nukerjsr: I actually thought I made it fairly obvious that Emperor 626 was doing that just to manipulate the crowd. Maybe I didn't.

For a long time Lilo and Stitch lay in the tube that was the entrance to the air vents atop the great pyramid of Capitol City. Inside was very blue and very, very dark. The distance Lilo could see was just equal to the distance Stitch was away from her on the opposite side of the tube. Hot air blew through tube from inside the pyramid and out the vent making a whirring noise like blowing perpendicular to the top of an open bottle. One may think in an aluminum tube like this it would be torturously musty, but the constant stream of hot air made sure everything was dry, a little too dry for Lilo's tastes.

For the half hour Lilo and Stitch must've sat there doing nothing in particular, they found that the slightest movement or knock would reverberate throughout the tube, vibrating one's ears, and vibrating one's chest. After about six seconds it would finally travel down the tube away from you. But a minute later, it would travel back up and hit you again, before going right back down the tube. It would do this four times before the vibration became too weak to notice unless you were looking for it, which they were.

Stitch was frightened beyond his wits at just sitting there, though he showed no exterior sign whatsoever. Causing this much racket inside the air vents was sure to draw attention. Said racket was caused only by the slightest repositioning of one's body, or softly tapping on the wall, but it certainly would sound like racket from a distance. Amazingly, the whole time they were sitting there, nothing happened. Stitch considered the possibilities of what might be going on. One possibility was that such horrible noises coming from the air ducts could be caused by many things other than spies crawling around in them, so there would be no point in using the vibrations within them as a kind of alarm trigger. Another possibility was that the emperor or perhaps the architects behind this monstrosity were simply too overconfident to consider arming the air ducts with any kind of security system. The most likely possibility, however, was that they already have set off some sort of security measure, which was simply lying in wait for them to run right into it.

Stitch sighed. His sigh echoed three audible times throughout the tunnel, at least according to his enhanced inner ears. Lilo hadn't even noticed it, as to her the howling of the hot air blowing through the tubes drowned it out.

"I think we should get going." Lilo said. Her voice rippled down through the tubes and then back again many times. The echoing was now painful even to Lilo's ears.

If we hadn't been noticed before, we sure as are now. Stitch thought to himself. It was of little use though. If whoever lived here already knew that Lilo and Stitch were there, he'd be expecting them to make their move. It would make no sense to disappoint them now.

"Ih…" Stitch responded. "Get going."

Stitch blinked. His eyes opened glowing bright red. The infrared world he now saw was clear as daylight, only different colors. The walls of the tube were orange from the hot air blowing through them. The tube itself went forward, flat for about ten feet and then forked into an intersection with two smaller, square vents on the side. Those probably just went to the vents on the other sides of the pyramid. Go straight forward and the main vent would turn downward thirty degrees. Stitch felt the aluminum paneling of the vent. It was dry, smoothed to a mirror-like surface and had a slight static build up. Stitch could walk upside down on such a surface without even trying. This was fortunate, because climbing through air ducts were bound to make you have to walk vertically at some point.

Stitch hurriedly took off the now damp costume he wore and threw it out the entrance to the air vent behind them. Only his moist fur clothed him now, and it felt good, as the hot blowing air was quickly drying him off.

"Climb on back." Stitch said. "Stitch carry Lilo through vents."

Lilo nodded her head with a quick jerking motion, and then obeyed. She must've felt more at ease in this situation, now that there wasn't anything immediately threatening them. She showed it by sitting on Stitch's back as if riding a horse, and only her hands on his shoulders to steady her. This display of relative comfort certainly put Stitch at ease, which might not have been a good thing. The steps Stitch took through the vent on all fours were not quite as careful as he had planned in the beginning. Each step sounded like the clanging of metal pipe against metal pipe as the vent would bend outward at the combined weight of Lilo and Stitch, and then back inward when that weight was relieved.

Stitch crawled forward and down the bend of the shaft. The shaft soon leveled out into a circular room intersecting with the other three ducts from the other sides of the pyramid on the ceiling. Beneath each of them was another shaft going down in the opposite direction, back toward the sides of the pyramid.

The air in this room was so dense that both Lilo and Stitch's ears plugged up and they found it difficult to breath. The air was circulating so fast around the circle of a room that neither of them could hear anything. Lilo was shouting out something but the whistling made by the air blocked out her voice even from Stitch.

Stitch didn't hesitate to jump from his position straight into the duct just below the one he came from.

Stitch hit the floor of the duct with what sounded like the sound of a bomb going off. Stitch slid through the duct for several seconds before it occurred to him to stick his hands to the metal to stop himself. He did so. The screeching from his hands stopping his momentum was like a hand rake dragged across a chalkboard in an amphitheatre. The sound rang out in the distance, and then came back to them, and back to them, like a wave in a slinky.

It occurred to Stitch just then that the ducts were probably designed that way. To amplify the noise of anyone who was trying to crawl through them, just so that no one could crawl through them undetected.

The best thing to do now was to find a duct cover and exit into the actual building. It didn't take long to find it.

Stitch kicked off the cover and hopped out onto the floor of a long square hall of featureless steel walls, floors, and a single track light on the ceiling.

Stitch sighed heavily after landing on his butt on the cold steel floor. This had given Lilo quite a jostle, as she fell off of Stitch onto her side as soon as he landed. When finally the both stood up and opened their eyes, Stitch's suspicions were confirmed.

In front of them was a hovering chrome orb about the size of a basketball. Its front had been cut out to fit a tinted glass cover over what both Lilo and Stitch could only assume was a camera.

Lilo immediately hid behind Stitch.

In its dirty mechanical voice, the orb rang out, "Recognize Emperor 626."

The orb spun around Stitch to look at Lilo. Lilo pressed herself against hard against Stitch who had now turned around to face the orb again.

"Unknown human present," The orb continued. "female, pre-adolescent, activating alarm system."

"NAGA!"

Stitch's scream had caused the orb to shoot back toward the wall.

"Do you wish to cancel alarm activated your highness?"

"Ih! Naga alarm. Lilo friend."

"Recording order. Progressive clearance access granted to human female Lilo."

A small slot opened up beneath the tinted glass and a thick plastic card, similar to a half centimeter thick credit card half-ejected out of the slot.

"Please take you security clearance card Lilo." The orb ordered.

Lilo did not move. She just continued to holding herself against Stitch, scarcely looking at the orb floating in front of her. This was not helping, and Stitch knew it. He tried to subtly push against Lilo, hoping that she would step away from him to grab the card that was clearly meant for her, but she didn't.

"Please take your security clearance card Lilo." The orb ordered again.

At the second command, Lilo finally stepped forward just slightly and swiped the card from the chrome orb as quickly as she could before pressing herself back into Stitch.

"What may I do for you, your highness." The orb asked.

Lilo shouted out before Stitch could say anything. "Are there guards here!"

"Negative." The orb responded. "Emperor 626, Dr. Jumba Jookiba, and Lilo are the only subjects with clearance access to the Empire's Pyramid Labs."

Lilo seemed to relax. She now knew none of those blue skinned men would be with her. Maybe there would be more of those things that she was staring at, but by Stitch's orders, she was now a friend. Lilo let go of Stitch and stared curiously at the floating chrome ball.

"Where's Jumba?" Lilo asked.

"I'm sorry Lilo," The orb responded. "but I am not programmed give you that information."

"Where's Jumba?" Stitch asked.

"Dr. Jookiba is presently located in the organic alkalines lab."

"Take us there."

The single minded mass of people cheered and clapped and whistled all until they just sounded like static. With every emphasized word of the emperor's speech they roared just a bit louder, and settled down again. With every sharp movement the emperor made, many in the crowd would leap up and wave their hands in the air.

Emperor 626 delivered his speech atop a three story high white column overlooking the bonfire of shoes just twenty meters in front of him. On the left side of the bonfire stood the emperor's chosen children, all with their hands over their hearts. On its right side stood count Gantu poised to use an ornate bow and single arrow in his hand.

Emperor 626 delivered his speech atop his column so very unlike what Stitch would or even could do. In perfect dialectic English.

The emperor shouted out to the crowd with all four arms extended. Nothing that came from his mouth was in the slightest bit true. Everything he said about himself, about his origins, about how he came to be here and what he was doing here now was all just a carefully hatched story for the sole purpose of drama. No one in the crowd knew anything more than what the emperor told them, so they just took him at his word. Only Gantu knew better than to believe the emperor, and he wasn't talking.

"I came to this world to hide from the forces of death and oppression. My people, millions of them, were slaughtered! My homeworld destroyed! We were not even given the dignity of trials! All this just because the powers that be were afraid of our powers. But never once did they consider that we could ever possibly be reasoned with. Never did they ask us to show them that there was something inside us that was good. No! They just took one look at what we were capable of and decided to do away with us! I alone escaped that fate.
"I came to these islands of Hawaii to hide, and what I saw here was something I thought I had escaped from. You were a conquered and subjugated people! You were all subject to the petty whims and dominance of the mainlanders! The mainlanders in their gold and leather clad offices, not caring about anyone or anything but their own luxury. Where were you in all this! You were their slaves! That's where!I would not stand idly by and watch this all happen. For once in my life I knew I had the ability to fight the oppressors, and so help me God that's exactly what I was going to do!"

The swarm of people roared and cried out in elation at the emperor's words. Each of them scrambled to throw something into the air in celebration. Pieces of their costumes, beads, undergarments, the most entranced of them would even throw their own wallets into the air, never to see them again.

A thick steel door slid slowly open to a large rectangular room. It was dimly lit, about the size of a high school gymnasium, and littered with tables. The tables were littered with books, computers, containers full of vials and test tubes. Machines sprawled out all against the walls were used for unknowable reasons. The dim light gave the room a reddish tint, and it was uncomfortably cold. Cold enough to see one's breath.

Side by side, Lilo and Stitch slowly walked in the door, which shut behind them with a loud clang as it hit the wall. Lilo jumped and turned at the sound. Stitch was not at all startled.

Lilo and Stitch surveyed the room. There was nothing in particular that seemed to give away that anyone was there, other than the fact that the place was generally a mess.

Lilo stared off to the side, zoning out just a bit. Stitch continued to look around the room for any signs of life.

"Maka maka! Sasa!"

"Huh?" Lilo turned to see Stitch pointing at the opposite side of the room. She looked. She could see anything. She leaned forward a bit and squinted her eyes.

Movement! That had to mean someone was there, and the person who could be there was Jumba.

Lilo and Stitch quickly made their way to the other side of the lab to get a closer look. As they approached the figure, Stitch brought out his camcorder and started recording.

It was certainly Jumba. But he was in an electric wheelchair. His back turned to them. Lilo and Stitch were only feet away from him and he didn't notice them. There was something wrong with this. Both Lilo and Stitch sensed it, and they both tensed up and slowed down as they approached him. Stitch, however, had a far better idea just how strange this was than Lilo. His sensitive ears could pick up the sound of Jumba's breathing. It was not like breathing at all. It was more like gargling. His nose could pick up what condition Jumba was in. Though physically he smelled fine, well fed and well slept, he reeked of hazardous chemicals and stale blood.

Whatever happened to Jumba, all fears of him being the villain were cast aside, but all new fears took its place.

"Jumba?" Lilo whispered.

The great blob of a man did not even notice his name being spoken. He continued working on whatever he was working on as if nothing happened.

Lilo reached up her hand and knocked on the back of the electric wheelchair. This got Jumba's attention. He lifted up his head, and reached down to the joystick on his armrest to turn the chair around.

"626!" Jumba gasped, and lowered his head, not daring to look into Stitch's eyes, or give away any clue that he would be curious of the little girl next to him.

Jumba was different all right. He was different in ways that made both Lilo and Stitch shudder and feel a wave of cold running down their spines. Jumba's face was a mass of matted scars. Only his two main eyes were open. His secondary eyes were also covered in scar tissue. As for the wheelchair, both of his legs appeared to have been amputated.

"What may I be doing for you 626." Jumba tried to speak loudly, but it was clear he couldn't. His voice was hoarse and raspy, and every sentence he spoke ended in a quiet cough.

"What happened to you?" Lilo asked, walking up to Jumba and putting her hands on the stumps that were once his legs. Jumba's face tightened as he tried his hardest to ignore the girl.

"Please 626." Jumba wheezed out. "Be giving me your commands."

"No commands." Stitch said.

Jumba finally looked up. He seemed puzzled and speechless by what he just heard.

"I am not Emperor 626." Stitch said. "My name is Stitch."

Jumba's face went pale at those words. He shook his head, softly at first, but then harder.

"You are being the imposter!" Jumba screamed, pointing to Stitch.

Jumba looked down at Lilo. He smiled only briefly at her and then scowled before pushing her down. He turned his wheelchair back toward the table he was working on.

Jumba reached his hand down to grab a black plasma carbine strapped by Velcro to the side of his wheelchair, and pointed it at Stitch.

Lilo was still on the floor holding her head, just a bit disoriented. Stitch was too stunned by Jumba's actions to move.

"By orders of 626, you are to be taken prisoner on sight!"

As soon as Jumba finished those words, his elbow bumped into a rack of vials on the table and knocked them on the floor. They all shattered. Blue and brown slimes began to mix together and then poured out a choking black smoke that would quickly fill the room even as large as it was.

Lilo, Stitch and Jumba were hacking and coughing at the smoke. It burned their eyes and their sinuses. They couldn't see a foot in front of themselves. But Jumba would have it be necessary.

"Be climbing aboard mobility device!" Jumba screamed out, barely intelligible with all his hacking and wheezing from the smoke. "I will bring us into lavatory! Is being safer to talk there!"

Stitch didn't even think before acting. He grabbed Lilo in two of his side arms and jumped onto Jumba's shoulders.

It was some time before Lilo or Stitch could open their eyes again. When they did. They found themselves in a small, green tile bathroom with an industrial steel sink and no mirror, built only for one.

Stitch looked down at his top right hand. Thankfully, his camcorder was still recording. He pointed it up at Jumba.

Lilo dared to look up from Stitch at Jumba. His face full of scars, stumps for legs, and missing eyes sent another shudder through her. She held Stitch a bit tighter, seeking comfort from that upsetting sight, not from fear. She remembered Jumba always so jovial and full of excitement. The Jumba she saw now was a sorry, limp water balloon. He would never look right into the eyes of who he was talking to. His face, once always clenched with expression, was now just as limp as the rest of him. His eyes were always half closed, and would never focus on anything except what was right in front of his face. It was as if his spirit was as broken as his body. But one thing he still had was his will. He had to, since it was clear he was trying to help them.

Jumba spoke unusually quietly and smoothly in his scratchy voice. "You are being imposter 626, correct? Who is being younger Terran female?"

Lilo stood up a bit taller, still holding Stitch. "His name is Stitch! I'm Lilo!"

"Names are not mattering. All that is important is where you are coming from, and how you came in service of Hawaiian rebel movement."

Stitch put his arms on Lilo's shoulders. Lilo looked at Stitch who nodded his head. Lilo immediately understood that this meant Stitch could tell their story better than she could. Lilo released her grip on Stitch, who walked slowly and methodically up to Jumba. Stitch took a deep breath and began to speak.

The horde of imperial loyalists were ablaze with righteous fury as Emperor 626 reached the climax of his speech. The emperor was on his knees, bent over backwards, screaming and reaching into the night sky with tears flowing from his eyes like fountains. The more agony he appeared to be in, the more euphoric and hysterical the crowd in front of his became.

"Their insatiable greed and malice sealed their fate! That I would see the kinds of things they do to you, the same things done to me so long ago! I would burn these islands clean of the scourge of the mainlander dictatorship!"

At that time, a sprinkler head at front of the column the emperor was standing on would activate, spraying and soaking the emperor with gasoline. It was however, too subtle for the crowd below to notice.

"And I swore they would pay for what they did! And they paid! They paid dearly! But there is still retribution to come! What once the mainlanders dominated you! One day, we will rise up and dominate them!
"To my children! For those who would dare raise their hand at you, I am the angel of death! For you, through the great inspiration of my dearest Count Gantu, I am your flaming angel of mercy!"

At that line, Gantu drew back the arrow on his bow, and shot it straight up at the emperor. The arrow flew through the flickering flames of the bonfire, igniting itself on the way, and straight toward the emperor's face. Without even looking, he caught it in his hands, and his whole body was set ablaze in a massive blue flame.

The crowd of people below him went wild like they never have before to see their emperor as a body of fire so high above them.

Before the flames would dry his throat and steal his voice, Emperor 626 thrust his arms toward the crowd below and screamed out. "RECLAIM!"

Everyone in the crowd brought their clenched fists together above their heads and screamed, "EVERMORE!" in response.

Jumba's wheelchair was now facing the wall as he finally finished listening to the story of Stitch.

"So you are claiming to be needing time travel device to ensure 626 is to be learning of his capacity to be caring for others, thus preventing his uprising as emperor?"

"You don't believe us." Lilo said. "Do you?"

"Actually, I am believing you." Jumba answered. "Why would I be being able to be reverse engineering time travel device so easily if maching was not of my own design."

"You mean you have it!"

"I am afraid not. After reverse engineering device and learning of its nature, I refused to divulge said information to 626. This accounts for majority of my scarifications in his attempts to loosen my lips. But I will not put such knowledge as time travel in the grasp of a barbaric creature such as 626. I will be building many absurd weapons for him, but never something so incredibly powerful."

"But Jumba create Stitch!" Stitch interrupted loudly. "Stitch supposed to be barbaric!"

Jumba sighed, and turned his chair around to face Lilo and Stitch.

"It was true." Jumba said. "I originally built you, 626, to be perfect evil machine. But my time with myself has been making me be seeing my efforts in different light. I was never truly being evil, just lonely."

"What do you mean?" Lilo asked.

Jumba sighed again before answering.

"I have been discovering in my isolation and torture, the reason I had been creating my experiments to begin with. The life of a genius is being a very lonely one. Others are constantly naming you of freak, villain, psychopath, EVIL! I thought to myself, if they are wanting evil, I will be giving them evil!
"But that was only reason being for nature of my experiments. Reason being for very creation of experiments… was need for companionship… I did it all wrong. My pathetic shell of body is being result of my self delusionings."

"But you didn't make Stitch totally evil!" Lilo shouted back at him. "You did put some good in him! I know because I found it!"

"Ih!" Stitch added in. "Lilo find good in Stitch! Stitch good now!"

"Yes." Jumba responded. "As difficult as it is being to believe, I must assume what you say is true, considering Stitch before you right now being is as sweet as puppy dog."

"What happened to Pleakly?" Lilo asked.

"Who is being this... Pleakly?"

"Big noodle man!" Stitch shouted with great expression in his hands. "Only one eye."

"Oh him... 626 found no use for cycloptic sapient. Had him killed."

Lilo and Stitch both lowered there heads at this. Lilo fell down to her knees, constantly on the verge of crying, but never did.

"Was one eyed noodle man being friend?" Jumba asked softly.

"Yes." Both Lilo and Stitch said at the same time. Only Lilo continued to talk. "A very good one."

After everything that she had seen and heard, strangely it seemed natural to her to hear that Pleakly would've been executed. Such an occurrance, in the midst of all else she had to deal with, seemed only to call for a moment of silence before moving on to other matters. Lilo didn't know whether to feel good about her strength, or horrible about her heartlessness at just wanting to move on. Either way, it seemed the proper thing to do.

"So where's the time board?"

"Is inside of palace of 626. Is under guard of countless imperial troops."

"Imperial troops." Lilo fluttered her eyes a bit and swallowed. The thought of those things caused her to wince. Stitch was not blind to this, and nudged her face with his nose. Lilo looked toward Stitch just long enough to give him a weak smile.

"What are those things?" Lilo asked Jumba.

"Genetic abhorritions, products of 626's demands for to combine DNAs of human and 626. Troops of 626 are being ten times as agile, and twenty times as strong as ordinary human. They are being programmed for absolute, unquestioning obediance to 626. They are having insurmountable threshold for injury, and feel no pain."

Stitch wrapped his arms around himself. The thought that part of himself was in those things he was fighting made him feel dirty inside.

"But Stitch can get past them right?" Lilo pleaded.

"No. 626 is indeed many times mightier than imperial troop, but not even he can be standing up against hundreds at once."

"What about the other experiments? Can't we get help from them?

"Other experiments?" Jumba closed his eyes and shook his head. "I am being sorry Lilo. 626 had all other experiments destroyed."

"What! Why!"

"He was not wanting them to be competing with him. He was refusing to allow anything to be competing with him."

"What about the federation? Won't they help."

"Hmmmp!… Federation! All federation is being concerned with is keeping 626 away from galactic society! To said effect, they have turned all of Sol system into single gargantuan minefield.
"And do not be expecting other nations to be helping either. My island point defense systems are being too great. Missiles, torpedoes, planes, boats, submarines, all of them are being blown to smithereens only half way to their destinations. One cannot be sending troops to shore, if shore cannot be being reached."

"So there's no hope." Lilo slumped onto the floor upon hearing this. She began crying to herself quietly. Stitch wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin on her head in a futile effort to comfort her. But comfort would soon come from Jumba.

Jumba's face suddenly lit up in a way Lilo and Stitch never thought possible for such a tortured man. "There is hope!"

Both Lilo and Stitch looked up confused at Jumba.

"There is being one fatal flaw in my imperial designs. This flaw can be easily taken advantage of, and used to crush 626's empire! Leaving him naked to attack."

"Jumba make flaw on purpose?" Stitch asked.

"Heh, heh, heh. Let it not be said that there is nothing to be said for passive-aggressive revengings!"

Jumba reached down to a leather side-pack strapped to the other side of his wheelchair. He reached in and pulled out a DVD.

"This disk is having said weakness on it. Take it, and be running. Smoke should be beginning to clear now, be using this chance for escaping!"

Lilo snatched the DVD from Jumba and stuck it in the pocket of her sweatshirt.

"Thanks Jumba." Lilo said. "I knew I could count on you."

Stitch closed his camcorder, placed it in his lower right hand, and retracted his lower arms, hiding the camera inside his body.

"Taka Jumba." Stitch said.