Review Responses

To mostextremeprincess: I was wondering when someone woul ask that. Unfortunately I never really came up with an explenation for that, I just thought it up as a way to further differentiate Stitch and Emperor 626.

To Ted: What the hell kind of writer would I be if I left chapter 15 as the epic climax? Honestly, I'd think you'd expect a bit more from me.

To Bluefox: Excellent! That was exactly the effect I was going for.

Sotry notes: I would like to give credit to the orchestrated version of the soundtrack for Final Fantasy 8 (most specifically, The Landing and Battle Theme) for proviing me with inspiration for my chase scene. Without those two songs, it never would've been done.

The room was dark. It was dark because that's how Sam liked it. Sam couldn't do any serious work unless it was dark, and there were few times he worked as seriously as he was right now. The room was just smaller than a small bedroom, and there wasn't anything in it, except a ripe bed with no sheets, blankets, or pillows, and a small fiberboard desk with a laptop and a printer.

The glowing screen of the laptop was the only light source in the room, barely illuminating Sam's face, leaving the rest of his head in the shadows. He sat in a stained steel fold up chair holding his chin in his left hand and typing drearily on the laptop with just his right index finger.

There was so much in the DVD that Lilo gave him. Most of it was just an endless index of spreadsheets and databases all containing equally endless arrays of mathematical, geometric, and fractal figures supposedly representing anatomy and genetics. Sam couldn't make heads or tails of any of it, and if he put his best effort into doing so, he felt he'd probably pass out from disorientation. How the hell Jumba could understand any of this, much less write it all himself, was beyond him. Nonetheless, he knew exactly what it all was, or rather, what it was all supposed to be. As soon as Sam had put that DVD in his laptop, a black screen came up with a stylized gold lettering scrolling down from the top. The Complete Anatomical Readout of the Imperial Soldier, is what it said.

Knowing nothing else to do, Sam dug through the sheets of unintelligible numbers and graphs until he reached something he thought he might recognize, a series of slideshows. Thankfully, all the files were written on earthly computers, and could thusly be read by Sam's laptop.

What he saw when he opened that first slide show was the naked body of the imperial soldier sprawled out with images of six arms as a kind of parody of the official symbol of the human species. Stylized lettering scrolled down the screen proclaiming, The Superiority of the Imperial Soldier for His Highness Emperor 626.

"What is that?"

Sam jumped up in his seat and breathed out when he should have breathed in, causing the room to spin for only a second. This was something he rarely, if ever, did, but seeing that picture on the screen somehow made him uncomfortable.

As soon as he regained his composure, about one and an half seconds, Sam turned around to see a curious Lilo standing right behind him with her arms perfectly at her sides. Lilo could only talk in a whisper; she had only talked in a whisper ever since she got back from the great pyramid.

Through all the wild celebrations and newfound hero worship of Stitch, well, they'd eaten half their remaining rations without thinking about what they were doing, but more to the point, the base was so frantic that until now Sam never got to look at Lilo.

She still had that face on her. Everything was totally limp, except the ends of the lips so slightly down turned that it usually only registered unconsciously. And those eyes, they were unblinking, unmoving, untwitching. Her eyes were so wide open that it looked unnatural. It was almost as if she could look through walls with eyes that wide. It seemed more robotic than human.

What Sam had never told Stitch was that there were in fact two versions of this face. There was the tense version you have when you first get it, and then there's a slightly more relaxed version you have after you've gotten used to it. That's how Lilo was looking at him now.

Sam reached down to pick Lilo up and sit her on his lap. Having that physical contact seemed to help her a bit. She was immediately brought only partially back to actually seeming alive. Her breathing became deeper and just a tab less constant in its pace. She finally allowed herself to twitch and blink like normal people do. Her face changed as well, but only to something that was devoid of any expression whatsoever.

Sam looked down at Lilo for just a split second to confirm her change in demeanor. It wasn't good, but it was better than it was just a few seconds ago. It was only when she was with Stitch that she was able to bring herself out of this state completely. Nonetheless, satisfied that he had dome all he could, Sam looked backup at the laptop and began to speak.

"It's supposed to tell us all about those blue men. " He said. "If there's a way to beat the Emperor, it's in them."

This was true, though greatly simplified. It was once thought absurd that there could possibly be any kind of flaw in the design of the Pacific Empire. But now it seemed there was one, and that flaw was in the keystone of the imperial arch, the Emperor's half-breed soldiers. But this was a longshot. If there were something about them that could be exploited to his advantage, it would never be stated outright. It would be something you would have to deduce based on the ways these beings were superior.

Sam clicked through the slide show, finding close ups of various parts of the Imperial Soldier's body, and various grandiose claims about said body which all had to be true despite their ridiculousness.

Lilo stared into the pictures and their corresponding text just as intently as Sam.

The Imperial Soldier has physical strength ten times greater than a human's, and physical dexterity five times greater. The Imperial Soldier can have one collapsed lung, one functioning arm, total failure of the kidney's, liver, and gastro-intestinal system, and only half its original quantity of blood, and remain seventy one percent combat effective for up to five hours, dying at last between thirteen and seventeen hours. All senses on the Imperial Soldier, excluding tactile, are at least four times greater than that of a human. Their eyes have malleable nictitating membranes and protective oils giving them the ability to filter out harmful EM rays as well as to adjust their eyes from point seven to four times the zoom of a human's. Their method of hearing is not based on percussion, but is rather a biological equivalent of a condenser microphone, using changes in the frequency of a tiny amount of static electricity to interpret sound, giving them a sense of hearing more acute than the most sensitive of bats, as well as a heightened sense of balance. Their olfactory senses are eighty times greater than a human's, and are discriminatorily interpreted, as opposed to a human's olfactory sense, in which several odors are interpolated into a single scent.

So many big words to make the whole thing sound impressive, Sam had to read it all twice just to understand it. Lilo couldn't understand it at all.

"How will this tell us how to beat Emperor 626?" Lilo asked.

"I don't think it will," Sam replied "but I think what it says may help us figure out how to beat those blue men the emperor has."

"If we could get rid of them…"

"We could attack the emperor in his own palace, without meeting any resistance."
The screen was just a mass of incoherent pictures and foreign sounding words to Lilo, but she understood what Sam said.

Not having to fight any of those blue men was comforting to her, but having to fight Emperor 626 was not. Caught between dread and relief, Lilo's anxiety just remained the same.

"The sounds have died down," Sam spoke up suddenly. "What's everybody doing?"

Lilo blinked a few times before she would respond. "They're all with Stitch, watching Stitch's video."

"They've watched that thing seven times now."

"Well, they wanna' watch it again." Lilo paused briefly, trying to remember what it was she was going to say next, but was interrupted before she could.

"Where's Nani?" Sam asked.

Nani! That's what she was trying to remember.

"That's why I came here." Lilo answered. "Nani left."

"Why?"

"She said that even if we did find a weakness in the empire, we wouldn't have it long enough to use it. She said the traitor is here right now, in this base. She said he'll tell the emperor where we are, and they'll come after us before we can do anything to them. So she left."

Nani was paranoid. Sam knew that, everyone knew that. It may very well be that her claims were nothing more than speculative ramblings taken just a bit too seriously. Even so, in the Empire of the Pacific, paranoia is an asset for survival.

But dammit why did she have to ditch us! Sam thought. That's selfish and irresponsible!

"What are you thinking about?"

Sam was startled slightly by Lilo's sudden question, though he showed no sign of it. He looked back down at her. His face must've been clenched, and she must've picked up on that.

"Until you and Stitch showed up, only two kinds of missions here in Hawaii have ever succeeded, missions led by me, and missions led by Nani. We needed her to help lead the attack against Emperor 626, once I figure out… whatever this is."

Sam slapped the screen of his laptop with the back of his hand. Lilo glanced over at it briefly.

"Can it work without her?" Lilo asked.

Sam looked down at Lilo for a second before answering. "It might. I don't know. Then again I don't even know if can work with her."

"Do you think the traitor is here with us now?"

Sam sighed and closed his eyes. "Again, I don't know. Ever since loosing her sister…"

"You mean me?" Lilo interrupted.

"I mean the other you." Sam replied. "Ever since she lost her, she's only ever seen things from the most pessimistic of angles. It's possible she's just presuming things, but I don't know. I hope for all our sakes she's wrong."

Lilo turned her head off the side deep in thought while Sam continued to browse through his slideshow. It was a minute or so before she spoke again.

"Sam?" Lilo asked.

Sam immediately stopped and looked back down.

"Yes Lilo?"

Lilo got a look of surprise and found herself speechless for some moments.

"That was the first time you called me Lilo." She whispered.

"Well," Sam responded. "After seeing that video, I now believe you are who you claim to be."

Lilo stared at Sam for a short while before Sam realized she wasn't going to talk first.

"What is it Lilo."

Lilo took a deep breath before speaking. "Before we, do what has to be done, I just want one thing."

"What is it?"

"I want to see my parents. I just want to be able to say goodbye to them."

Sam looked the other way the instant he heard the word parents. He clenched his lips tight but tried to hide it by placing his hand on his closed hand over them. Again, Lilo had mentioned her mother and father, and again I brought about a kind of discomfort in who she asked. It was clear Sam didn't want to talk about this, but this time she would push the issue until he did.

"I want to see them Sam." Lilo continued. "Don't change the subject."

Sam finally turned back toward Lilo, but with a slight angry frown.

"Very well." Sam finally answered. "I will take you to them.

Sam walked slowly into what was once the lobby of the old lava observatory. He held Lilo's hand while he walked into the he room to see everyone who wasn't posted somewhere gathered around the old TV. Everyone was dead silent and intent on watching the movie from Stitch's camcorder playing along. Stitch himself was seated in the very front atop a large pillow. He too, stared intently at the screen, even though this was his eighth time seeing it, and even though he had been there himself.

"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."

Sam cleared his throat loudly and the crowd in front turned around to look at him.

"I'm taking Lilo to Honolulu." Sam declared to the crowd.

The crowd immediately reacted. There were heads turning, murmurs, and shivers of nervousness. Through the moving bodies, Lilo and Stitch eyed each other. From the faces of each of them, it was clear to both of them that neither of them knew what could've been wrong with what Sam was saying.

At last one of them spoke up. "You're taking her to that hellhole?"

At the first comment, others began to speak up as well.

"She's just a kid!"

"That's not the kind of place you should send a kid."

"Stitch needs to go with her."

"Yeah! I'm not gonna' let you take her to that place unless Stitch is with her."

A few more backhanded comments on how Sam could be so mean and the crowd once again quieted. Slowly, they all turned toward Stitch. The comments were clear enough, they didn't even have to look at Stitch for him to know what they wanted.

Stitch got up from his pillow and began walking toward Sam and Lilo. The crowd parted to let him pass. Looks from all of the rebels were like children suddenly being torn from their mothers. That's what they looked like, and that's what they felt like to see Stitch leaving, even though they knew he would be coming back the very next day. But unlike children, these rebels had a great deal of self-control, so they just stood watching, with only their looks as a farewell.

Stitch took Lilo's free hand, and in between him and Sam, Lilo walked out the door of the former lobby. But just before they were outside.

"What's wrong with Honolulu?" Lilo asked.

"There is no more Honolulu." Sam spoke in an unusually serious tone, unusual even for him.

He was right though. What lay before Lilo and Stitch, just down from the hill they stood on in that night totally covered by clouds was not a city. There were no buildings, there were no cars, there were no lights except for a single street lamp once every hundred meters or so. This was not a city. This was not even a town. From the distance it looked more like a cropcircle than anything anyone would live in.

This sight made both Lilo and Stitch shiver and feel cold inside. This was the single greatest difference between the two worlds they knew. What was once a major city was now nothing. It was flat land with no people. This went beyond wrong. This was just plain horrific.

"Shortly after taking power, the emperor personally oversaw Hunolulu being demolished and burned to the ground." Sam continued. "There was no evacuation. Almost a quarter of the people living there didn't make it out alive."

"Why would he do that?" Lilo whispered.

Sam snorted before answering. "He said it was because the major cities of the past were hotbeds of deviant thoughts which must be destroyed."

"Naga." Stitch interrupted. His voice was different this time from its usual expressive self. Stitch was now somber, and stared out at that next to nothing with a kin of intense gaze usually only found when two nemeses look each other straight in the eye.

"Naga." Stitch continued. "Emperor destroy city, because is programmed to. Is fun. Fun for him."

"That would mean you too are programmed to destroy large cities." Sam said to stitch.

"Ih. Is fun, but Stitch naga wanna' hurt people."

"What did he do with this place?" Lilo asked.

Sam turned from Stitch to Lilo. "On the ruins of Honolulu, the emperor built a monument."

"To what?" Lilo asked.

"To all those who would dare speak out against him." Sam said, presenting Lilo and Stitch with a massive concrete wall.

Lilo and Stitch stood and stared at the wall in front of them. Stare was all they could do when faced with something like what they saw. What looked vaguely like cropcircles from a distance were made of ten foot walls, all three feet thick. These walls were all cement, formed over large jars. The jars were filled with a sickly orangey fluid, and suspended in that fluid, one in each jar, were severed human heads. The skin on all these heads had shriveled p like prunes, and the flesh turned midnight blue. But those eyes, those eyes were preserved perfectly. It was as if living eyes had been placed in these dead, dried up heads. Below each jar was a small bronze plaque stating a name, a date of birth and death, and some outlandish crime such as driving a foreign vehicle, wearing unauthorized clothes, or writing defiant poetry.

"Everyone in these jars acted against Emperor 626 in some way, or so he claims." Sam continued. "Crimes against the Emperor very from publicly denouncing him as an evil tyrant, to owning a grass skirt. Now they reside in these walls, each preserved in his or her own jar of tannic acid, serving to inspire fear into those who would ever consider speaking out against the emperor."

Lilo couldn't say anything, not that she wanted to anyway. What she was seeing was such a shock to her that she was unsure of what to think or feel. Morals and ethics said you had to feel something at this moment, but try as she might, she couldn't feel anything except for the shock and partial disbelief at what she was seeing. She couldn't even feel guilt at the lack of her sadness and disgust.

Stitch eyes these heads with fear, but also a morbid fascination. A long time ago he would've looked at something like this and found it amusing. The emperor must find this amusing, considering those thoughts. Stitch stared at a wall of death and realized that was what he was meant to be. It frightened him beyond reason because he didn't find nearly as disturbing as he thought he would.

"Come with me." Sam interrupted the blank stares of Lilo and Stitch, both of whom jumped slightly at those words, and then turned toward him.

Lilo and stitch passed row after row after row of walls, all of them imbedded with human heads in jars. They both read the crimes their victims were accused of: Unlawful cultural practices, ownership of foreign currency, speaking in unauthorized language, failure to impart offspring to government sanctioned care facilities, Failure to provide biometric signature to government facilities, participation in unauthorized celebration, possession of defiant inborn personality type, public act of defiance.

Public act of defiance, that one got Lilo's attention, not the crime per say, but the name engraved above it, David Kawena.

"David?" Lilo stopped and whispered. She stared up at that head. Shriveled, tightened, warped, discolored, but still recognizable, there was no doubt that was David Kawena. Lilo jaw trembled and tears began to form in her eyes, but there was never enough to drip down her cheeks, as if something were holding them back. Other than that, she found herself unable to make a sound or a movement.

Feeling large hands suddenly pressing on her shoulders broke whatever was holding back Lilo's tears, and they poured out from her eyes, causing her to blink as her vision became blurry.

"Shortly after the establishment of the Pacific Empire, Emeperor 626 began a campaign to systematically eradicate the cultures of the pacific islands. In response to this, David Kawena climbed to the top of a convenience store and shouted out the emancipation proclamation in Hawaiian. This is what became of him."

Sam looked down at Lilo, unable to do anything except quiver her jaw and blink when her tears blurred her vision too much. He looked to the side to see Stitch looking up at him. Stitch constantly shifted from him to Lilo and back again. His expression was clear enough. He didn't know what he could do for Lilo, and was looking to Sam to help figure it out. Sam only gave Stitch a weak saddened face as if to say he couldn't help. Stitch drooped his ears and lowered his head.

"Come Lilo," Sam said. "There's more to see."

Despite her condition, Lilo continued to follow Sam through the simple labrynth of walls. This time she only looked straight ahead, never glancing at any of the heads, or their labels, especially their labels. Stitch, on the other hand, continued to read them all intently just to give himself a better picture of what this empire of love was really about. All the crimes were just as ridiculous as the ones before: Publicly performing unsanctioned form of dance, ownership of unsanctioned literature, employment within non-public business, ownership of foreign vehicles, familial association with foreign enemy.

There was something special about that last one though. Familian association with foreign enemy. Stitch thought at a glance that one was somehow familiar, so he looked a bit harder, at the name.

Keoni Jameson.

Oh shit!

If Lilo saw that she would absolutely freak, and they were walking right toward that one!

In a flash stitch jumped out in front of Lilo with his arms out stretched and shaking his head violently.

"Naga! Naga!" Stitch shouted. "That way! Other way!"

Despit his words, Stitch never pointed in any direction, only blocking the current one.

"Stitch what are you doing?" Sam said in quite a harsh tone.

"Stitch!" Lilo shouted. "What are you keeping me from!"

Lilo looked up above Stitch and then saw it, the head of a child in a tank of tannic acid. Below that, Keoni Jameson, 1992-2006, familial association with foreign enemy.

Lilo froze up in utter shock and disbelief at what she just saw. It was enough to tell Stitch his efforts had failed, so he just slapped his head and fell over backwards.

Lilo was still in shock. Her mind was a blank. For a few seconds she didn't even know where she was or what she was looking at. When she at last came to her senses, she ran over to the tank, over Stitch, and grabbed it with both hands, trying to pull it out of the wall, even though she knew she couldn't.

"No!" She screamed at the top of her lungs. "No! No! No! No! No! Why Keoni! Why'd he have to kill Keoni!"

And with that, she fell down on her butt and hit her head against the concrete of the wall, and pressed her eyes shut as tight as she could. That didn't stop the tears from flowing, or the feeling of mild nausea in her stomach. How could Keoni deserve something like this? It wasn't long before Lilo got her answer.

"Fredrick Jameson was caught trying to smuggle a shipment of ammunition to one of our former bases in Maui through the port of Wailua." Lilo heard Sam's voice, but it only partly registered with her. Sam most likely knew this, but he kept talking. "The emperor had something special in mind for him. Instead of killing Fredrick, he locked him away and then killed the rest of his family living in Hawaii, including his son Keoni. To this day Fredrick is alive in a prison cell somewhere, surrounded by blown up photographs of his family members being mutilated.

Lilo couldn't speak, she couldn't feel, she couldn't think, she could only cry, even though there was no emotional impetus for it. One thing was for sure, she would be feeling it in the morning. But while she was numb, Sam took the opportunity to take her by the hand and lead her further into the simple labyrinth of walls.

Stitch reluctantly got up and followed.

It was a long time of walking. Lilo looked at the ground the whole time. It was when she finally stopped that she looked up. She was inside of a perfect circle of these concrete walls, except for just behind her, where she entered. Directly in the center of this circle was a tiny section of wall, facing the direction of the entrance, just large enough to fit two jars. From the distance, Lilo couldn't quite make out the faces of the disembodied heads in the those jars.

"Go read the plaques." Sam said.

Lilo just shook her head. "I don't want to." She whispered.

"You have to."

"Why?" Lilo answered, with tears beginning to well up.

"Because this is the only way you will truly understand what has to be done."

Lilo swallowed, even though there was nothing to swallow, her mouth and throat were bone dry. She took one tediously slow step after the other until finally, the faces in the jars becoming more and more familiar the entire time, until finally, she could read the writing on the plaques below.

Eric Pelekai, 1963-2005, conspiring against the sovereignty of the Pacific Empire.

Keala Pelekai, 1961-2005, conspiring against the sovereignty of the Pacific Empire.

It was Eric and Keala, It was Lilo's parents, it was their heads mummified in jars for the whole world to see, right in the center of this monument to death. David was bad, Keoni was worse, but this, this was beyond words.

The tears never came to Lilo. Instead, the tears that were already there were sucked dry, and she could no longer cry anymore, even though she wanted to, she wanted to more than anything else at that moment.

"Mom? Dad?" Lilo whispered. Her voice was hoarse and raspy, not from strain, but she simply could barely bring herself to speak. "Why? Why? Why? Why?"

Lilo was like a broken record, she couldn't say anything other than why, and she couldn't take her eyes off of those faces.

A shadow overtook Lilo. Sam was standing above her.

"Eric and Keala, as well as myself, and a few others were the founding members of the resistance. Just a year after it was formed, they were caught. I watched on television for six months as the emperor personally tortured them, drugged them, as he had machines drill into their brains, and finally, as he broke their souls.
"I saw them as they bowed down before the emperor, and called him God. And with the sweetest smile, he laid his hands on their shoulders, and snapped their necks.
"Though I can' speak for you're parents, I believe i would be safe to assume that they would much rather die in a car accident, than by what the emperor would do to them."

How? How could Emperor 626 do anything like this? It dawned on Lilo at that moment more than any other moment, that Stitch and the Emperor were one in the same. Emperor 626 was who Stitch once was. Emperor 626 was who Stitch was meant to be. Emperor 626 was who Stitch could have been. Even when he was evil, how could Stitch do anything like this? Stitch was her angel, the nicest angel there ever was. An angel couldn't possibly murder Lilo's mother and father, or could he? Lilo had always known that Stitch was evil before he met her, but until this moment she thought of it as a kind of Loony Toonsish supervillainy. Until this moment, she never truly understood what the word evil meant. Could that still be inside Stitch somewhere? Deep down, could Emperor 626 still be lurking somewhere inside him?

Lilo turned around to face Stitch, with his ears down and hiding behind Sam's leg.

"How could you do that Stitch?" Lilo whispered. "How could you kill them."

"Lilo." Stitch said pleadingly. He crept out from behind Sam's leg and tried to put his hands on her shoulders, only to be met with an ear piercing shriek.

"Get away from me! I hate you!"

Hearing those words, I hate you, Stitch's heart stopped for almost a whole second before it began to beat again. What he had just heard was frightening and hurtful beyond anything that he had ever experienced before. It might have been easier on him if he thought she didn't really mean what she said. But right now, Stitch couldn't tell if Lilo actually meant those words or not.

Now it was Stitch's turn to cry.

"Lilo." Sam said loudly. "Stitch didn't do anything wrong."

Lilo tried to believe what Sam had just said, but still found that she couldn't.

"Lilo, the reason I showed you this was so that you could better understand Stitch, and the Emperor, and just how important you really are. If you want to know if there's anything of the emperor within Stitch, I'm afraid I don't have the answer to that question. But if you want to know if there's anything of Stitch inside the emperor, I'm afraid I have to say no."

"But how do you know?" Lilo whispered in that hoarse, raspy voice.

"Lilo, there's something you must know. When there's only a little bit of good inside someone, well, that good is up against allot. If it's not given some way of expressing itself, then that good can't hold out forever."

Sam reached his hand under Lilo's chin and brought it up so she was looking at his face.

"You saved Stitch, before it was too late for him. But it's already too late for the emperor."

"Ih!" Stitch yapped out in confirmation. He walked up to Lilo slowly and put his hands on her shoulders. This time he was met with no resistance.

"You saved me." Stitch said, looking right into Lilo's eyes. "You saved me and… I never… thanked you… like I should have… Lilo… Thank you."

Lilo collapsed into Stitch's embrace, and the shock, disbelief, and fright that dammed up her tears was gone. They now flowed like rivers, soaking Stitch's fur.

From over her shoulder, Stitch looked up at Sam.

"Promise me one thing Stitch." Sam said.

Stitch didn't answer, but only nodded his head in confirmation.

"Promise me that no matter how angry or sad this world ever makes you, promise me that you will never give up hope. If you do, if you loose hope entirely, than part of you will die, and you will become just like the emperor."

Stitch retorted loudly the instant Sam was done talking. "Stitch never give up hope! Stitch never be like emperor!"