The Blue Werewolf

Part II: The True Hearted

C/By: Kenjaje

Edited by: raVen

Chapter 6: The Torn Pages

October 30: 11:13 AM: Tower Bedroom

"Stitch," Lilo whispered, "Stitch, wake up." He stirred, his eyes blinking rapidly for a second or two. He rubbed them to wake up.

"Gaba?" He mumbled sleepily.

"Nani wants to see you…and I don't think she's very happy," she told him, her voice had a bit of an ominous undertone. Stitch followed her to the elevator, through the hall, and down the stairs, all the while wondering what Nani wanted him for. When they arrived, she was standing before the television set, a sour look on her face.

"Now I know why you weren't such a wrecking ball in the house, Stitch." She began immediately as she heard them approach.

"Gaba ju chisha?" Stitch asked, a feeling of accusation looming over him. Nani lifted the remote and pressed a button, and immediately the news came in.

"The curious vandalism that took place the night before has struck again—only this time it seems to be expanding rapidly. As of last night: seven homes, three local stands, two hotels, and four food marts, have all been leveled. All witnesses that were present while these vandalisms took place each say a few things similar in their accounts: 'There was only one vandal, it was bluish, and looked much like a dog.' Police believe that this 'dog' figure is actually a distraction while the vandals themselves destroy their targ-" Nani hit the mute button.

"There's only one blue, doggish looking person capable of that kind of destruction in this house and he's looking at a major punishment unless he has a good excuse." Nani glared. Stitch's ears fell to the ground as he was suddenly thrown into a feeling of guilt. He tried to think of a good excuse, but he didn't even know if it was him that did the destruction; he tried to think, but suddenly his memory of the night before ended with Bo reading to them by the light of a lamp—the rest was a blank.

"Come on Nani!" Lilo spoke up, "How can you be so accusing? Isn't it supposed to be 'innocent until proven guilty'? I thought we went over this before when Phantasmo framed him. You can't point your finger at Stitch every time something gets blown up, or crumbled, or evaporated, or incinerated, or—" Lilo paused, and then smiled brightly, realizing that naming Stitch's many abilities of destruction wasn't really helping him all that much.

"Oh yeah? Well then where was he this morning?"

"…This morning? He was sleeping…"

"Is that how I saw him walking up the stairs, barking at our new guest? He was coming home from his nightly round of destroying, I think." Her voice pelted Stitch like ice. Whether he was innocent or not, Nani could only see one side.

"You're wrong!" Lilo shouted, stamping her foot, "He fell out the window while he was sleeping! It happens all the time." Of course, Stitch knew that Lilo was lying. A knot tied itself in his throat, another feeling, shame, arising now that his friend had to start lying for him.

He listened to their argument as his mind wandered, struggling to think. He began to recall things: grass, trees, rain. He thought harder: clouds, blurry shadows, blurry figures, blurry—buildings. He saw it clearly, the piles of wood splintered and broken, another place had twisted metal and shreds of paper, another wires and broken tile.

"I don't care what you say!" Lilo protested with fury, her forehead against her sister's forehead, "Stitch—"

"Stitch…did it." His voice came softly. Lilo turned and looked at him with disbelief that he was admitting something she knew he didn't do, and Nani's eyes bore a hole of regret in him.

"And why are you destroying people's homes?" Nani asked bitterly. "Is destroying ours not satisfying enough for you anymore?"

"N…naga nota…why." He admitted. Though he really didn't even know how.

"Well, maybe a three week's of grounding will help you remember."

"No Nani! He didn't—"

"You want to earn him a month?" Stitch put a hand on Lilo's shoulder, as if to say "Nani won", but she countered with a glare that said "Why are you letting her?" He looked back up at Nani's face. "Since you brought the hotel where I work at down, I'm free today; I'll take Lilo to get her Halloween costume. That'll give you some time alone. Lilo, go get dressed." Without a word, she went upstairs. "I'm going to put the tower on Lockdown just to make sure you don't try to escape." He turned, his ears low and shoulders slouched, and he made his way to the stairs.

After the climb, he passed the door to Lilo's old room. It was wide open, and the absence of a presence caught his attention. He peered inside. The window was open, and the wind blew. Something on the desk at the far wall fluttered—an open book. Stitch looked behind him, and quickly slipped into the room. He hastily dashed to the desk, and stopped the pages of the book from flipping. His eyes studied the worn paper, and the strange glyphs that were on it.

Whether it was his curiosity of learning, or the feeling that the text he was reading he somehow understood like a lost memory, he shut the book, and cradled it in his arms as he made his way to the elevator. Just has he arrived, Lilo came down in a green dress and blue sandals. He quickly moved the book behind his back and pressed against the wall.

"I'll talk to Nani." She said as she passed. "I know you didn't do that, you're just taking the fall because we don't have an explanation." He didn't say anything as she went down the stairs. As soon as she was out of sight, he was up the elevator.

"All right, Lilo, all right!" Nani yelled with frustration, bursting through the front door. "One-and-a-half weeks, and that's as low as it goes. Any more and I'll ground you too, and I don't want to do that."

"It doesn't matter, you might as well—it'll be like I'm being grounded anyway."

"Fine, be grounded if you want, I'm going to take a nap to try to get rid of this headache." Her sister stormed up the stairs and slammed the door to her room. Lilo stood in the living room, the bag with her costume clutched in her hand. She sighed.

"You gettin' into trouble?" Asked a voice from the kitchen. Lilo looked over to see Bo sitting at the table.

"Y…yeah, kind of." She said, walking to him. "But it's a long story."

"I see." He said with a nod, then he began again, "Say, you didn't happen to see that ol' book lyin' aroun'; the one with no words in it?" Lilo tilted her head.

"No, I've been gone. Things disappear around here all the time, if I find it, I'll let you know." She told him, lifting the bag.

"What's in there?" He asked, pointing at it. Lilo smiled.

"My Halloween costume; Nani wanted to do something to get her mind off some things, so she took me to get it, but I think I made her angrier." She said, rolling her eyes.

"What costume did ya pick, may I see?" Lilo opened the bag and pulled out a headband, on which was sewn long ears at the top, and a long snout hanging down one side. She put it on her head, the end of the snout covering her nose, replacing it with the big, black bulbous nose.

"That's a nice mask," he complimented, "you a werewolf this year?"

"Uh huh." She said; the nose of the snout bounced slightly as she spoke. "My…friend kinda gave me the idea, and all the other costumes looked really lame."

"Well you cert'nly picked the good'un. Sure to get lotsa candy this year, eh?"

"Well," Lilo's eyes angled down and to the right, "maybe, but I don't want to get my hopes up. It's a long story."

"You sure have a lot of stories," Bo laughed.

"Rest and relaxation just doesn't cure a headache anymore…" Nani huffed, coming into the kitchen.

"Howdy, like the costume you got the kiddo." Bo said, trying to calm Nani's nerves once he saw she was flustered. Nani looked back as if she was distracted, then realized Bo was talking to her.

"Oh, yeah. I suggested something else but she wanted the werewolf. It'd certainly be a lot easier if Stitch was the werewolf this year."

"No way," Lilo joked, "Stitch is nothing like a werewolf. Speaking of which, you're going to let Stitch trick-or-treat right?" Nani's sigh was her only answer, and Lilo rolled her eyes, taking the headband off and putting it back into the bag.

"Well, I have to go comfort my dog, see ya later!" Lilo yelled back at Bo, already up the stairs. When she arrived to her room, her voice excited and ecstatic about the news of his grounding, she rushed toward him, tossing her costume aside.

Before she reached him, however, she tripped over something she didn't see on the floor, and her ears heard the sound of tearing paper under her feet. "What was that?" She asked, as Stitch caught her before she hit the ground.

She looked down on the floor at the open book, its pages blank and its paper worn. Near the spine, several pages were detached, and one was half torn. Her eyes widened. "Stitch, why did you take Bo's book?" She asked.

"Stitch was…reading." He told her.

"Oh man! I just got your grounding down to a week-and-a-half, now Nani's gonna think you tore the pages and—wait a minute…what do you mean reading?" She said, her eyes narrowing on him. He was silent. "You're still going on about the book having words in it? Give it a rest already, there's nothing in there!"

"Naga, words there! Stitch can see—" He paused; debating wasn't going to solve anything. He went to the desk and gripped a crayon and took a piece of drawing paper. "Takka." He told her, leaning over the paper. His hand moved across the page, the motion suggesting he was writing something, but Lilo didn't see anything.

"I think the crayon's broke." She told him. Stitch looked back at her for a second, and then stared down at the paper he was writing on. He could see the strange glyphs in the orange color of the crayon's crumbs, why couldn't she?

"Oketaka…tell Stitch if Lilo see this," he wrote the letter "A", "eh?"

"Yeah, I can see that."

"Iba…" he wrote a letter in his language, the equivalent to "A", "eh?"

"I can see that too." Stitch nodded, then, he slowly copied one of the glyphs. "…I don't see it marking on the paper." She told him, almost immediately after he began to write. He stared at the unfinished glyph.

"Stitch telling truth—Stitch see letters, honest." He told her.

"Well…what do they say?" Lilo asked.

"Naga nota, Stitch cannot read."

"…Try writing them again, but flip the page over, and this time, don't copy them exactly, make some mistake and then tell me how it really looks."

"Oketaka." Stitch flipped the page over and did as she said. He copied a character that looked somewhat like an upside-down "Y" with a "Z" running through the stem, which curved at the top like a "J" curves at the bottom, and had a dot like a lower-case "I". But Stitch pointed out that the "Z" was turned like an "N" and did not have the diagonal line that connected the two parallel ones together, and that the dot was not at the top but in the middle of the character, and that there were actually two.

"Ok…now draw the letter." He did. "Wow…" Lilo said with amazement, "I really can't see it."

"Naga?"

"No…this is freaky…I think we should tell Bo, or ask him if we can borrow it for a while until we figure out why. Here, give me the pages, we'll tape them back in. He can't read the words either, so it won't matter—we'll just tell him the truth, it was an accident." Stitch handed her the few torn pages, and she went to the desk to get the roll of tape. She started with the half-torn page, fitting it to match the sister-half. She reached for her roll, but just as it was in her hand, a strange noise stopped her.

"Gaba…?" They both watched in astonishment as they saw a bright glow emanate from the seam of the tear, and a soothing chime ringed through the air, and as these things faded, the page was mended. The roll dropped from Lilo's frozen hand. Stitch took one of the pages from the pile next to him, flipped the newly mended page over, and fitted the dismembered page with its tear. A moment later, the same thing occurred, and it was over. They stared at each other with uncertainty and excitement.