I do not own Lilo and Stitch.

The Family Tree Mishap

Lips pursed in frustration, Lilo studied the mess spread out on the hardwood living room floor. Hundreds of pictures were clumsily arranged in half-organized piles. Three jumbo-sized poster boards leaned against the couch, their pristine white surfaces seeming to mock her. Several pictures were sitting upside down on the coffee table, glue stuck to their backs and waiting to be plastered to something.

Lilo couldn't bring herself to smack them onto the poster board just yet. Not when she didn't have a single clue how she wanted her project to be laid out. Her pictures were precious, and though she had plenty, she didn't want to waste a single one.

The eleven-year-old rubbed her glue-encrusted hands against her bare knees. "This is way harder than I thought," she said with a huff.

The front door clicked shut, indicating that her sister was home from work. "Lilo! I'm home!"

"'kay!" Lilo shouted, her eyes still looking glumly at her scattered pictures.

Following the sound of her little sister's voice, Nani appeared in the living room entryway. Upon spotting the floor to be nearly covered with Polaroid snapshots, she groaned. "Auwe! Lilo, what are you doing?"

"My homework!" Lilo hissed, raising a hand to smack the one-sheet project outline resting beside her.

Nani gingerly tiptoed over the photographs and crouched beside Lilo. "You don't sound too happy about it."

"No kid is happy doing homework," Lilo informed bitterly. "But this one should be fun, and I'm not having fun."

"What do these pictures have to do with that?" Nani asked, picking up the one laying directly in front of her. She arched an eyebrow. "A photo of...of…what's his name again?"

Lilo let out a sigh. "Sparky, Nani. Do you know the names of any of the cousins?"

"Hey, I'm working on it. There are six hundred and twenty-five of them. I don't even know how you remember them all."

Lilo shrugged. "I named most of 'em, so I guess that's why."

When she did not answer Nani's original question, Nani lightly shook the photo in front of Lilo's face. "And you need Sparky's picture because…?"

"My teacher wants us to make a family tree. But I have no idea how I'm gonna lay it out. I only know how to start it." Lilo pointed to a corner of the room, at a picture that made Nani's heart give a dull pulse of well-known grief. It was a copy of Lilo's beloved Pelekai family picture, the edges blackened with ink rather than charred paper.

Nani eyed the empty poster boards, understanding beginning to dawn upon her. "You…uh, have a lot of space for just one picture, Lilo," she said pointedly.

"I'm not putting just that picture," said Lilo, seeming rather offended by the idea. "That's why I dragged out my whole family photo collection. I have so many more to put on, but my teacher doesn't just want pictures. She wants us to identify how we're related to one another. I don't know how I'm gonna do that in a way Mrs. Kahananui will understand."

Nani rubbed a hand over her face, mentally counting down from five to gain a solid hold on her patience. "Lilo, you can't hand in a project to your teacher that has your alien cousins plastered all over it!"

"It's not just the cousins, it's everyone else," insisted Lilo, leaning over and stabbing her finger at a picture of Gantu. "And I am. I'm putting my entire 'ohana on here! I can't leave anyone out."

"Lilo, your family tree can have us, Mom and Dad, David, Stitch, Jumba and Pleakley," said Nani firmly. "That's it."

"But what about Cobra?" cried Lilo.

"Cobra is a…very private man," said Nani carefully. "I don't think he let us take all those pictures of him just so you could parade his…uh, more relaxed moments to your fifth-grade class."

"But what about the cousins?" pressed Lilo. "If I can include Stitch and Jumba and Pleakley, why can't I include the rest of our alien 'ohana?"

"Because everyone on this island really truly believes that Stitch is our dog, and that Jumba and Pleakley are our human uncle and aunt. You show your whole class six hundred and twenty-five weird-looking creatures, someone is going to ask questions, and Cobra is going to come after me."

"No one's gonna notice," said Lilo stubbornly. "Aliens have been here for five years and the islanders are too stupid to notice. They think the cousins are exotic animals."

"Yeah, but once you tell your class all those 'exotic animals' are your family, it's not gonna go well," said Nani in exasperation. She tapped Lilo's assignment instructions with the tip of her nail. "Besides, it says you have to share a brief history for each family member. You can't do that for every single one!"

"That's where I hit a road block!" Lilo picked up her notebook from where it was sitting in her lap and thrust it into Nani's face, which she quickly batted out of the way. "I'm not just gonna say Jumba created all the cousins. I'm smarter than that! But I'm not smart enough to interlock the family history of all the cousins, and then link them to us."

Nani threw back her head with a frustrated groan. "Lilo, you're not getting it! Your class, and all of Kaua'i for that matter, cannot know that all these strange little creatures on the island are related to you."

"But why?"

"Because people will start to get suspicious. Do you know how much time Cobra spent making sure that the local population and the non-alien-involved government believed they were just wildlife? Not extraterrestrial lifeforms? How hard he works to make sure they don't get too much attention?"

Lilo pressed her hands together and looked at Nani with an equal amount of frustration. "The. Islanders. Are. Stupid."

Nani's eyes narrowed. "David. Stitch. Jumba. Pleakley. Mom. Dad. Me. That's it."

"But—"

Nani leaned close. "Don't make me call Uncle Cobra."

Lilo clamped her lips shut. She knew Cobra would definitely be on Nani's side and disobeying Cobra was scarier than disobeying Nani. "Whatever."

Taking this as a surrender, Nani ruffled Lilo's hair. "We'll do a family tree just for us, so we can have the whole 'ohana on it. Okay?"

"Mm-hmm."

When Nani left the room, Lilo let her determination show. "She's overreacting. Putting the cousins on my project isn't gonna cause chaos. Everyone will just think I'm a pet freak. Nani didn't call Cobra, so he didn't technically tell me no. And they're not gonna find out I did this because nothing is gonna happen."

Lilo grabbed her glue stick and a pile of pictures. If her teacher wanted a family tree, Lilo was going to give her one, and she wouldn't leave a single beloved member behind.

...

On the day of her presentation, Lilo was forced to admit that yes, Nani had been right.

"You really messed up this time."

Mertle was taking great enjoyment in the mayhem unfolding before them. Lilo looked out over the edge of the school roof, watching in horror as her classmates stampeded across the lawn and spilled into the street, their screams mingling together in one incomprehensible, ear-ringing mess.

"I didn't mean to!" cried Lilo.

Mertle scoffed. "I can't believe you didn't think anyone would find it weird and freaky that all the colourful odd 'animals' on the island were yours. Besides Gigi, of course."

The Shih Tzu-looking alien was sitting comfortably in Mertle's lap. She had gotten special permission to bring in her dog for her presentation. Lilo had not been so lucky. But given Gigi's calm personality, and Stitch's destructive instincts, Lilo figured she knew why Mrs. Kahananui preferred Mertle's dog to hers.

Especially after the science fair incident.

"Gigi's technically mine too," mumbled Lilo pettily under her breath.

"What?"

"Nothing." Lilo crossed her arms over her chest, her expression pained. "It's not my fault. It's Elena's. She started this."

The favourite insult amongst Mertle's posse was to call Lilo an alien, and mock that she must have been from Planet Weird. Mertle, of course, had started it, inspired by the knowledge that aliens were in fact real. Elena, Yuki and Teresa were happy to follow along. But this time the diss seemed to ring a bell in the heads of her peers that had long been dormant.

The cousins looked strange. Most of them could do impossible, unexplainable things. No one really thought too much of it, and Lilo had counted on that not changing. But apparently all her peers ever needed was to hear the word 'alien' whilst staring at all six hundred and twenty-five of her cousins in order to connect the dots.

The class had started to buzz at that point, theorizing that maybe, just maybe, all those creatures with antennas and multiple arms and otherworldly abilities might be aliens.

Lilo could have done damage control. Absolutely. But Elena had made things worse by snorting, "Well, Lilo always told us she's been to outer space. Maybe she brought them all back with her."

For reasons Lilo did not understand, no matter how hard she tried, her class latched on to this piece of information. For three years, from the age of six to nine, Lilo tried to convince her peers she had been to space. They mocked her and laughed at her.

And now they were absolutely convinced she had single-handedly brought over six hundred aliens to Hawaii.

The class erupted.

Ignoring their teacher's orders to calm down, Lilo's classmates sprinted through the halls. They hauled Lilo's poster boards with them, screaming at every other classroom in the school that they were being invaded by aliens.

Since the claims were coming from everyone but the local weirdo, they now had merit.

That was how the entire student populace ended up in a mob on school property, with the teachers and principal trying fruitlessly to control them.

Lilo had managed to rescue her poster boards before retreating to the school roof with Mertle in tow. Elena, Teresa and Yuki were the only kids still in a classroom, choosing to observe the bedlam through the window.

With the situation already out of her control, Lilo decided to go home. She started for the metal ladder affixed to the side of the building. "I'm getting out of here before I get arrested."

Mertle followed her off the roof. They snuck through a few neighbouring yards to avoid being spotted by any of the teachers, but they needn't have worried. They were well occupied.

"Did anyone notice a bunch of Leroys invading?" ranted Lilo. "No! Did anyone at the aluminum recycling plant question it when Melty could melt things with one plasma blast? No! Did you question it when a charm from your bracelet turned into a blackhole-making experiment that nearly demolished your house?"

Mertle sniffed. "I was just in denial. I didn't want to admit that you infected the island with your weirdness."

Lilo shuffled miserably along the sidewalk, wishing she had Stitch to comfort her. But she took solace in Gigi, who licked her hand in an attempt to cheer her up. "Don't worry, Lilo. Cobra will take care of this for you, right?"

Lilo's stomach dipped with dread. "That's what I'm afraid of."

"Qu'est-ce qui ne va pas, mon cher?"

Lilo came to a halt and raised her eyes from the ground. She realized they were in front of Frenchfry's snack shack, and the experiment was peering at her with worry. Lilo tried to wipe the despair off her face with a smile.

"Nothing! Everything is fine." She paused for a second before adding, "Uh, maybe you should take a break today. Close up shop. Have a little vacation. Away from people. Especially elementary-aged children."

Frenchfry stared blankly at her before turning to Gigi. "Qu'est-ce qu'elle a fait cette fois-ci?"

"She put all us cousins on her family tree and now her class thinks they're being invaded by aliens," explained Gigi.

"She screwed up big time," said Mertle with a snicker.

"I didn't even get to introduce anyone," said Lilo sadly.

"I'm just glad no one noticed Gigi on the board," said Mertle, fondly stroking her alien experiment's soft fur. "We need to keep ourselves distanced from the alien craziness. It's not good for our reputations."

"You threatened me with the world's worst wet willy if I even thought about putting you on the family tree," grumbled Lilo.

"Again, distance. We're family in private, barely, and definitely not in public."

"Your loss. Victoria was more than happy for me to put her on our family tree." Lilo thought back to the chaos unfolding in front of her elementary school. "She's gonna be real sorry she missed this. I hope she's feeling better."

Sirens blared, sounding as if they were coming in their direction. A few minutes later three police cruisers appeared down the road and Lilo watched helplessly as they continued on towards the school. Mertle raised a brow. "I think you need to stop worrying about Victoria and start worrying about yourself."

"I'm doomed," Lilo whimpered.

Frenchfry peeked down the empty street, spotting a lone, sleek black car crawling to a stop at the far intersection. "Monsieur Bubbles est là pour vous."

Lilo did not exactly understand what Frenchfry was saying (she was still in the beginning stages of learning French and understood just a few phrases) but she knew the name Bubbles very well. Her eyes zeroing in on the familiar car, Lilo squawked and dove into the nearest alley.

"Did he see me?" she asked nervously when Mertle lazily followed after her.

"I don't think so. He's got a fear-induced riot to calm. You're chump change compared to that."

"I didn't mean to start a fear-induced riot!" Lilo wailed. "I just wanted to show the whole 'ohana, for crying out loud!"

"How much you wanna bet that this will be in the papers by tomorrow?"

"Not even gonna bet you. It's one I know I'm going to lose," Lilo muttered. "Ugh...I should have listened to Nani."

Mertle grinned. "How many people are gonna be after you?"

Lilo ticked them off her fingers. "Cobra. Nani. Officer Kahiko, 'cause if he's not there already, someone's gonna tell him it's my fault. Alae." At Mertle's blank stare, Lilo clarified, "The Grand Councilwoman, remember? Um…maybe Jumba and Pleakley, 'cause sometimes they back Nani up on the whole 'lecture and discipline' thing. And probably the parents of all those kids." Lilo slouched against the wall. "That's it. I'm never doing my homework again."

The black car suddenly rolled up to the entrance of the alley and Lilo shrunk back with a small yelp. The window rolled down, revealing the tight-lipped scowl of her honorary social worker/semi-retired CIA agent uncle.

"You." Mertle recoiled when Cobra aimed a finger at her. "Go home. Stay there until we disarm this situation. Your mother is already expecting you."

Mertle didn't understand why he was grumpy at her, but there were few people who truly intimidated her and Cobra Bubbles was one of them, so she didn't try to sass. She nodded, whispered, "See you in twenty years," to Lilo, and took off with Gigi on her heels.

"Uncle Cobra, I can explain," said Lilo feebly when the tinted black sunglasses fell upon her.

"Get. In. Now."

Translations (as provided by Google);

1. "What's wrong, my dear?"

2. "What did she do this time?"

3. "Monsieur Bubbles is here for you."