Author's Note: Like, oh ma gawd, is this possible? Guille van Cartier has ACTUALLY updated The Hawaiian and the Hunchback! And here I went, thinking she'd just stop two chapters before it ended and NEVER touch it again... but sadly, no... I actually touched it again, and since I haven't written in so long, the style is sort of strange... forgive me. I've been going through this whole "eradicating to be verbs" phase, so I'm trying not to use "was, is, are" and so on and so forth... so this is how it is! Well, read and review, mes amis! Tell me what you think!
Deep in the thick forest that flourished near Nani and Lilo's home, Jumba's gargantuan red ship, camouflaged haphazardly with several palm fronds and random underbrush, lay parked semi-permanently in the wet dirt. The rain continued to patter downward, its fall softened minutely by some unknown circumstance; the drops pinged against the thick alien metal, echoing through the woods with a hollow ring.
Inside, however, the noise went unheard, its metallic ding lost somewhere between the wiring and insulation that sat sandwiched between the roof and the ceiling. Inside, the rain that drizzled constantly was all but forgotten, and the conversation that ensued remained uninterrupted.
Lilo's voice echoed against the high ceiling as she spoke, her businesslike tone revealed ever the more for the slight magnification of her voice. She stood with a regal posture, her back straight and her chin somewhat lifted, while she held her hands patiently against her back. Beside her, Stitch attempted the same stance, only slightly off the mark for his natural fidgetiness. Both looked upon the great, lumbering scientist Jumba Jukiba, who sat not too far away in the spinning chair before his supercomputer, seemingly listening to what the duo had to say.
"So let me get this straight," he said after a short moment, waving a large hand to halt Lilo's speech. "You two are asking me to help you get little girl back to dimension she was being in so that she can be completing her… angle ditties?"
"Angel Duties," Lilo corrected.
"Yes, yes, whatever, isn't mattering; they are both very strange," Jumba said swiftly, brushing off Lilo's words as nothing. "But what is mattering is that you want me to help you do them."
Lilo and Stitch nodded in reply. "It's really important," the Hawaiian told him, a small amount of melancholy sincerity spilling into her once no-nonsense voice. "I have to tell him I'm sorry and that I didn't mean for things to happen." She let out a slow, pensive sigh, her eyes falling from Jumba's large form to the sleek metal of the floor. "I owe it to him."
Stitch looked at the little girl worriedly, maintaining the straight-backed position that Lilo had managed to lose. He pulled a hand from behind his back, its movements hesitant and unsure. But, it made its eventual way onto her shoulder, giving her a consoling squeeze.
"Lilo," Stitch murmured gently, still holding onto her shoulder.
The little girl glanced up to look at her friend, whose face was kind but obviously strained. It reminded her of the task that the both of them had at hand; she didn't want to give Jumba a reason to deny their vital request. So, after passing her friend a sad but thankful smile, Lilo straightened herself out and once again stared seriously into Jumba's four strange eyes.
"We need your help, Jumba," she said at length, and she looked at him almost pleadingly, though her posture and grimace reflected a different feeling.
Jumba knew, or he could at least somewhat understand, the intensity of Lilo's need just by looking at her eyes. Though his expertise tended to lean more toward the sciences than to social or emotional things, he could see such a sadness sparkling beneath the brown and black. It wasn't difficult for him; though many times he old himself off as extremely apathetic, deep down he could admit that even he had feelings that didn't border around the evil man he had made society believe he was. But, a problem still existed that might hinder his helping the two.
"And what is your sister saying about this, hm?" he asked, grinning at them knowingly despite the compassion he felt inside.
For the second time in their conversation, Lilo faltered, the intense expression giving way to uncertainty, as if now she started questioning herself. Her eyes once again wandered to the floor, seeking comfort or answers, it seemed, that she couldn't find within herself. Jumba watched her quietly, able to maintain his unfeeling smile. It was almost as if he knew she would react in such a fashion and had asked her the question purely for the sake of seeing that unhappy face.
And, yet again, Stitch came to Lilo's assistance.
"Nani say nothing," he replied in his slow English, taking a short moment to glance at Lilo curiously.
"Nothing?" asked Jumba, his chair creaking loudly as he leaned back onto it. He easily knew that it meant they hadn't at all asked. But, feeling the kindness that he easily felt for a pair of troublemakers, he just nodded his head in comprehension, one hand stroking his round chin in interest.
"But, what will Jumba get for his kindness, hm?" he asked, crossing his legs and leaning forward as if demanding an answer.
Lilo and Stitch shared a glance, as if they had expected such a question to appear well before it had come along. The little girl nodded her head at the blue experiment, who in turn gave her a nod of his own to suggest his confirmation. A second later, Stitch pulled out a small, red device from some unknown hiding place, presenting it proudly in one claw lifted high above his head. Jumba looked at it curiously, his interest piqued. It was Pleakley's communicator. What could he want with that? He doubted they would give it to him as a reward; the two of them were much cleverer than that.
"In just a short day," Lilo began, her voice becoming crisp and clarion like an infomercial announcer's, "I realized that I can get my older sister Nani to do what I want her to do. She's so happy that I came home alive that she's let me get away with anything!"
"With exception of Angel Duties," Stitch added matter-of-factly.
"With the exception of Angel Duties," Lilo repeated with a nod, her face taking on an annoyed expression for a moment. "Shall I demonstrate?"
"Yes, you shall," Stitch replied, acting as if the whole thing had been planned and rehearsed.
With a quick movement, Stitch played with the controls on Pleakley's little round communicator, which let out a buzz of static and half-finished words that echoed against the ship's walls. A short moment afterward, the noise fell away to an expectant silence, when was quickly broken when the dull familiar ringing of a telephone sounded out.
"Here," Stitch said, politely handing Lilo the device as it continued to send forth a number of regular rings.
"Thank you," Lilo answered graciously as she accepted the communicator, nodding at Stitch thankfully.
After four of the rings echoed through the chamber, the click of a telephone being answered broke the pattern, trailed closely by the sweetly accented voice of Lilo's sister.
"Hello?" Nani asked, her voice loud against the silence that had taken the ship.
"Hey, Nani," Lilo greeted, adopting her usual energized voice. She took a moment to glance at Stitch, who sent her a grin and an enthusiastic thumb up.
Nani was quiet for a moment, as if in surprise, but then said, "Lilo? Is that you?"
"Yup," Lilo answered.
"Why are you talking to me on the phone?" Nani asked, a not of puzzled suspicion apparent in her voice.
"I didn't want to yell in order to get to talk to you," Lilo answered innocently.
"Why not?" You've been doing it since I sent you to you up there." Nani sounded somewhat annoyed upon mentioning it, but her tone retained that sisterly care.
"Well, that was for food and stuff like that," Lilo replied quickly. "I want to talk to you about something important this time."
There was another moment of short quietude, as if Nani were a little taken aback. "Of course, Lilo," she said a moment later, her tone light and happy, almost flattered. "So, what do you want to talk about? Whatever it is, I'll listen."
"Thanks, Nani," Lilo said, and, despite the fact that she did all this to trick her sister, a small, happy smile crept onto her face. "Well, anyway, I was thinking… can we have a special breakfast tomorrow?"
"Breakfast?" Nani murmured questioningly, obviously having expected something of greater consequence. "Well, sure, Lilo," she responded nonetheless. "What do you want me to cook? Oh, I found mom's special waffle recipe! Maybe we can…"
"That's great, Nani," Lilo interrupted, "but I was thinking that we could go out for breakfast."
"…go out for breakfast," Nani echoed, a small, disbelieving laugh mixed into her words. It was apparent that Lilo was beginning to confuse her. "Well, alright, you're the boss… even though I really would've liked to cook mom's waffles… well, where do you want to go?"
Lilo and Stitch shared another one of their secretive glances, sly, knowing smiles creeping across their faces suspiciously. Jumba leaned forward, almost falling off his chair in absolute curiosity.
"How about…" Lilo began slowly, tapping her chin in a deliberating manner, all the while grinning mischievously and passing hinting looks at the scientist. "…the Pancake Hut?"
In a heart-stopping split second, the large purple alien leapt up from his chair, whooping loudly and excitedly, his fists punching the air in triumph. In the sudden explosion of unexpected noise, Lilo nearly dropped the communicator onto the floor; she fumbled to keep in her hands, doing her best to keep her own loud shouts to herself.
"Lilo? " Nani's voice could barely be heard over Jumba's uproar. "Lilo, what's going on?"
"Nothing!" Lilo replied, clapping a hand over the face of the communicator to muffle the loud sound. She made an anxious gesture to Stitch, who nodded quickly in understanding, rushing over to his creator who was busy bounding happily up and down the length of the room.
Stitch caught up with him in a matter of seconds, clambered up to stand on the scientist's shoulder, and slapped an unceremonious paw over Jumba's large mouth.
"Shh!" he hissed through an inch long finger nail that he pressed against his two lips. "Jumba must shut up!"
Jumba did little more than nod stupidly at the experiment, an excruciatingly happy smile on his large face.
Letting out a relieved sigh, Lilo lifted her hand from the communicator's screen, only to be greeted by her sister's suspecting questions.
"Lilo!" Nani yelled, intent on getting Lilo to listen to her after several moments of ignored inquiry as the little girl had her hand on the screen and her attention on Jumba. "Lilo, what was that? What just happened?"
"It was nothing," Lilo replied swiftly, laughing nervously as she answered. "Probably just Jumba doing some of his crazy experiments again… You know how you can hear him blowing things up all the way into town."
Nani murmured softly, as if in consideration of the suggestion, but she gave no real response, probably doubting the little girl's words. Lilo held her breath, awaiting some sort of answer from her sister, who seemed to be taking a long, tormenting time of giving one. It seemed that she was listening, hoping to catch another snatch of that mysterious noise in hopes of finding out its true meaning. Lilo's eyes wandered incessantly over to where Jumba and Stitch stood, the experiment's hand still holding the large alien's mouth closed. She could just imagine how Nani would react if he made another noise…
But, after a minute passed with Jumba miraculously finding the self-control to keep himself quiet, Nani just muttered out an "okay", and gave up on her quest. Lilo and Stitch let out a sigh of relief.
"The pancake hut, then?" Nani asked, a small trace of her distrust evident in how slow she spoke.
"Yup," Lilo replied, glaring at Jumba when he released a soft but excited chuckle at the restaurant's name.
Nani didn't seem to notice the laugh, though, a little too engrossed in her own giggle to hear it. "You know," she began, snickering at a thought, "Jumba's been begging me to take him there since it opened a month ago."
"Really?" Lilo asked, feigning ignorance in hopes of keeping some of her credibility. After that little mess up with Jumba just a moment ago, she needed to seem a little more innocent, even though she and Stitch had spent many days laughing and joking at Jumba's childish whininess.
"Yeah," Nani said, laughter evident in her tone. "But I told him 'no'. He wouldn't go alone; it's only all you can eat if you bring your family with you, you know? And you know how Jumba is when something says 'all-you-can-eat'."
"Yup," Lilo said with a snicker of her own. "He eats it all."
Jumba almost made a noise at this, but Stitch, still sitting diligently on his shoulder, shushed him yet again. Disallowed to talk, the man stood there in a huff, his arms crossed against his chest.
"Yeah… But I guess we can't avoid it forever, right?" Nani said. "Pancake Hut it is… Let's just hope Jumba keeps it cool this time."
"If he doesn't promise to behave," Lilo told Nani, "we could make it so he doesn't get to go."
She glanced at Jumba, who looked extremely hurt where he stood.
"That's a good idea, Lilo," Nani agreed. "I'll tell him that."
"Don't worry," Lilo said, grinning to herself. "I'll do it. Thanks, Nani!"
"No problem," the young woman told her genially. "Talk to you later."
"You too." Lilo pushed the antennae down, and the communicator screen blanked out.
The scientist looked at Lilo with four sad eyes, a frown on his face. "You wouldn't go to the Hut of Pancakes without your dear old Jumba, would you?"
"That depends," Lilo said, tossing the red device to Stitch, who leapt easily off of his creator's shoulder and caught it in midair. He scuttled across the floor to his friend's side and tucked Pleakley's communicator away in that unknown place. The two of them made their way up to Jumba.
The scientist looked down at them, his head tilted curiously. "Depends on what?"
"Will you help me?" Lilo asked him, staring up at him with a look too serious for such a little girl.
Jumba let out a sigh. Of course that would be the case; he had almost forgotten about it. A breakfast at the Pancake Hut wasn't too much of a reward, no matter how sorely he wanted it, but of course that nagging conscience, who seemed to be growing bigger every day he spent in that house, told him to be nice.
"Deal," he replied, and he extended a large purple hand to seal their agreement.
Lilo twisted the claps of Stitch's transmitter to a close.
"There you go," she said with a smile, tugging gingerly at the metal band to test the clasp before pulling her hands away contently. "Yours is good and tight, so you won't get swept away and deposited in a random place in time like I did."
Stitch gave her a nod of his head and patted his wrist gladly. "And you?" he asked.
"Yup," she said with a sincere grin. "Me too."
Behind the pair, the hum of mechanics gradually loudened to a constant buzz, the lights and screens of the Dimension Hopper slowly flickering to life as Jumba worked diligently at the controls. His fingers, though large, played skillfully across the keypads and switches, every button pressed bringing Lilo and Stitch all the more closer to their impending journey. Paris awaited them, just a few dimensions past the closed door of the Dimension Hopper's compartment, and Lilo could barely wait.
After taking a few more moments to punch further directions into the control panel, the great scientist turned around, greeting the two inter-dimensional travelers with a subtle smile.
"Are you being ready now?" he asked.
"Ih," Stitch replied, nodding his head.
"Transmitters?" Jumba demanded.
The two friends lifted up their right arms in response, showing the lumbering alien the mechanical bracelets with their glowing green screens.
"All on good and tight, yes?" the scientist continued.
"Good and tight and ready for inter-dimensional travel, sir!" Lilo replied, sending him a militaristic salute.
"Good, good!" Jumba chortled, his grin widening into an enormous, open-mouthed smile. "Now, we can be getting on with this angle ditty business."
"Angel duty," Lilo corrected.
"Didn't I tell you already that it didn't matter?" Jumba asked, throwing his arms up into the air and shaking his neck-less head. Rolling his four eyes, he turned back to the block of mechanics that controlled his machine and focused on a screen that lay nestled amongst the numerous knobs, switches, and buttons of the panel.
"Wait, Jumba," Lilo began, walking up and tugging on his white lab coat. "What about my translators? I need those to talk to Quasimodo; he lives in France…"
Jumba started, his four eyes widening, and he looked down at the little girl, scratching at the back of his head guiltily. "Well… about that…"
Lilo looked up at him suspiciously. "What happened?"
"Well, your sister was up on Jumba's back about Dimension Hopper, you know," he explained with an embarrassed shrug of his shoulders. "I had to get rid of something to make her go away; evil scientist doesn't destroy genius device without a little fight, you know…"
"You broke the translators?" Lilo asked, aghast.
"Well, exploded the translators is more like it," Jumba said with a slight embarrassed chuckle. He reached into a pocket on his lab coat, pulling out a fist that opened before Lilo to reveal the few charred remains of the translator that Jumba had managed to collect. They sat upon his open palm, barely holding themselves together; she moved to touch one, and it crumbled away into dust.
"Well, I guess that means no translators," Lilo murmured after a moment, staring at the black dust that the dead machinery had left upon her fingers. It took her a while to look up from her hands, Stitch and Jumba noticed; it looked as if she'd lost herself in thought yet again.
They didn't completely understand just why she had become so plaintive. Stitch had a greater understanding than Jumba, having gone through an incident that related to the little girl's to a certain extent, but even he didn't know what made her act in such a way. She wasn't always a carefree girl; she went through the difficulties of alienation almost every day that she spent away from the house. But, she seemed to have matured somehow; it confused the both of them.
Lilo finally lifted her face up, rubbing the soot on her fingers upon her red dress.
"Well," she said, smiling weakly, "whatever, right? We have to get this done."
She made her way over to the dimension hopper's compartment, her hands tucked behind her back. Stitch and Jumba exchanged a glance, and both of them, reading each other's looks, shrugged their shoulders in reply. Neither of them knew the answers to their questions.
No translators, no translators, no translators! Lilo rested her head unceremoniously against one of the cubicle's walls. This was bad… She was pretty sure Quasimodo didn't know how to speak English… he was French, right? She bowed her head unhappily, feeling a bout of frustration coming on. What could she do? Could she pull this off without even being able to talk to the guy? How can she do this?
"Lilo?" Stitch approached his friend tentatively, one of his eyebrows furrowed in slight puzzlement. "Something wrong?"
"How can I be an angel if I can't even talk to him?" she demanded, holding back the urge to bang a fist against the dimension hopper's wall. "How will he know that I'm sorry if I can't even tell him? How will he know?"
Stitch looked at her for a quiet moment, his head tilted to the side. "He will," he said after a moment, and he took Lilo's hand and patted it kindly. "He will know."
Lilo looked at Stitch curiously. She didn't completely understand what he meant when he said that.
"Angel no need to talk to be understood," he said, grinning.
Lilo smiled. "Yeah," she said, and she gave him a hug. "They can just bark if they want to."
"You two are being ready now?" Jumba inquired. He sounded slightly annoyed, as if the whole operation took too long to get through with.
Lilo gave Stitch a grateful smile, and then scurried over to Jumba. "Ready!"
"Ready!" Stitch echoed, rushing to her side.
"Alright, then!" Jumba roared gladly. "Now, the two of you are only having thirty minutes to finish your duties—"
"Thirty minutes?" Lilo frowned at the sudden arrangement.
Jumba looked at her for a long while, a brow lifted in curious surprise, before answering.
"Yes," he said. "Thirty minutes, or half an hour I could say. Maybe, even one episode of X-files with all the commercials and such. That long."
"First off," Lilo began, "X-files episodes are an hour long! Second of all, I know how long thirty minutes is, and it's not enough time for me to finish my angel duties!"
"Wouldn't that be a third of all?" Jumba asked with an offhand laziness, acting as if none of what Lilo said really meant anything.
"Jumba!" Lilo exclaimed, suddenly feeling that familiar aggravation creep into her tone.
Jumba shook his head. "Thirty minutes," he repeated.
Lilo couldn't believe it. "But—"
"You and 626 have told me that you are wanting only to say sorry and that you were not meaning not to come back," Jumba interrupted. "I am not thinking is to be taking very long, hm?"
Lilo opened hr mouth to reply, but, after a short moment of thought, she said nothing, declining her argument. When she lingered on the subject, she understood why Jumba would think of the situation in that sort of light. She had only stayed with Quasimodo for a very short amount of time, too short of a time, most would conclude, to forge any real bond. But for some unexplainable reason, Lilo felt as if she understood what Quasimodo experienced more than any little girl every should. The alienation that society put him through, the curse of being different and having little to no one to understand him for it. It might seem that Lilo and Quasimodo should treat one another as little more than acquaintances. But, Lilo knew that just because something seemed one way didn't mean that reality saw it as such. Something deep, something unexplainable, something locked away had made her appreciate the poor hunchback. Something that now told her that, no matter what obstacles would move to stand in her way, she should endeavor her hardest to seem him again.
Lilo knew that there existed no possible way for her to explain everyone of her feelings toward the subject to Jumba. To be truthful, she didn't completely understand them herself. The longer she waited before taking this final trip, the better a chance she had of getting discovered by Nani; she needed to get this done as quickly as possible.
Finally, Lilo released a long sigh that signified her unhappy defeat.
"Alright," she said at length, bowing her head in calm resignation. "Thirty minutes."
"Glad you are seeing my way," Jumba said. He lumbered his way over to the compartment of the Dimension Hopper and pulled open the creaking door. "Now, we cannot be fitting the both of you into one compartment, so we have to figure out who will be going first."
Stitch let out an irritated groan as he remembered that little glitch in the system.
"Why Jumba not build Dimension Hopper in the ship?" he questioned in exasperation, gesturing to the whole of the room that they stood in. "More power, not have to make compartment so small!"
"I thought that it would be a good use for the holo-wall," Jumba said in reply, shrugging his shoulders passively. "Very saddening seeing very good evil genius invention sit on shelf without use, you know."
Stitch growled in reply. "Stupid Jumba," he muttered.
"Hey, hey, hey!" Jumba said, shaking a finger at the experiment. "Think about it. Is stupid Jumba who is getting little girl to where she wants to go! Now, who is going first?"
"I will," Lilo said. She walked into the chamber, which Jumba closed behind her with a slight creak.
Jumba went to stand at the control panel, just within Lilo's view through the small window set in the door, and she saw him countdown with his fingers yet again.
5…4…
She let out a sigh and crossed herself, begging to Elvis that she would get through this ordeal safely.
3…2…
Lilo glanced out the window at Stitch, who waved at her, looking extremely worried.
1…
Lilo waved back, mouthing the words "I love you" just as Jumba sent her traveling. She felt that familiar buzz of electricity coursing through her, the frightening sensation of being pulled into some portal, the whole ordeal of the world being "flushed down the toilet". And, then, there was a flash of bright light, and she felt herself flying through a blinding unseen world.
A/N: That is so strange, isn't it? It's done... now, what's left is the whole Quasimodo confrontation, and Guille's going to try to end it pretty... hm. That's so sad... Isn't it? Oh well. sniffles It's so close; the end is so close... Ah well... Someday, it'll get done, you know? Well, READ AND REVIEW IF YOU LOVE ME, OR AT LEAST THIS STORY!