Stitch's Revolution

by Bennie Stardust

A reimagining of Lilo & Stitch and its sequels. In deep space, a revolution made of genetic creations mercilessly attacks the expansive Galactic Federation. Sensing betrayal by their creators, a small band of revolutionaries breaks away, only for one to find himself stranded on Earth, where a lonely young girl gives him a far greater victory than the one he was fighting for.

20. Remembrance

Chapter 19:
Remembrance

I

"...Bastard!….Working!….Give a shit!…"

"...Ungrateful!…...Stupid!…."

"...Jackass!…...Don't know…...Unified!….."

"...Selfish!…..Drinking!…..Daniel?!….."

II

For a moment, Lilo was able to forget the hideous violence that had plagued her birthday, and it was thanks to 627's photo of 'Baby Daniel.' Once, long ago, the vengeful assassin's fiery fur had the soft, colorful texture of a teddy bear. His tall ears had only barely stood beside his eyes, as bright as a puppy's. His smile was toothless, and somehow even more radiant than Elastico's.

Lilo wondered what could have happened to a creature with that kind of smile.

"How big were you?" Lilo asked.

"About that big…" 627 pointed to either end of the open album, which was as wide as Lilo's lap.

Lilo held her hands at that length, imagining, even wishing, that she was cradling the infant Daniel in her arms.

"Where did you live? On a space station? Another planet?"

"I lived on the planet Turo," He nodded. "It's just a little farther than the one you call Pluto,"

"What's it like there?"

627 looked up, his small smile trembling a little, as if he saw the dim bedroom around them transforming into Turo.

Lilo crossed her legs on the bed, and leaned her chin on her palms, eagerly anticipating 627's first story.

"The grass is a deep purple…"

III

...Like ripe berries. The afternoon sky was a cool orange, like an Earthly sunset. The violet ankle-high grass was interrupted only be a metallic jungle gym, complete with a slide, swings, monkey bars, and a sliding pole, all hovering a mere inch over the blue dirt as its diminutive jets emitted a soft whirr.

"Alright, Private Sammy," Captain Carley said in her gruffest voice, her brown-furred hands clasped together in the shape of a blaster. "This is a critical assignment. Don't let that sneaky monster get the drop on ya,"

"Okay, Carley," Sammy chirped, lowering her finger-blaster for a moment to scratch behind one of her floppy orange ears.

"Shhhh!" Carley pressed a hand over her comrade's mouth. "We can't let him hear us. You want him to come up behind you and bite your head off?"

"No," The private whispered, suddenly very protective of her ovoid head.

"Then keep quiet. He could be anywhere…" The captain turned, rearming her blaster, and began climbing up the slide.

Once, she stopped to cup a hand around a tall, triangular ear atop her spherical head, and Sammy mimicked her behind her perfectly. When neither heard even the faintest breath, Carley pointed forwards, and they resumed their climb. Captain Carley was about to make the final step onto the black platform at the top, when something else slammed down on it first. Carley's head shot up, her blaster at the ready, and she saw the egg-headed, crimson-furred monster that had been stalking her.

"Rrrroooooaaaarrr!" The monster stood up to its full size; a whole half inch shorter than Carley. He lifted his clawless padded hands to the sky, and smiled from each of his long ears. The monster looked and sounded like he was cheering.

"Run, Private Sammy!" Captain Carley ordered, scared only of laughing and messing up her awesome soldier glare. Before her subordinate could heed the order, Carley was sliding back down, taking her with her.

"Eep!" Sammy spat as Carley landed on top of her on the purple grass.

"Let's go!" The captain hurriedly offered a hand to Sammy, who obliged just as quickly.

Their attempt to run around the jungle gym was thwarted as the monster met them at the bottom of the sliding pole.

"Rrrroooooaaaarrr!" He cheered again.

"Bang!" Carley put a bolt in the monster's gut.

He grabbed his stomach in pain (looking more like he was hugging himself), and fell onto the violet grass.

"Hah!" Carley placed a two-toed foot just above the monster's wound, and pointed her blaster victoriously at the orange sky. "Captain Carley saves the day agai-Hey!"

The monster had sprung back to life and grabbed her ankle, pulling her onto the grass with him.

"You know what kind of monster I am?" He asked in his squeaky voice as he knelt over Captain Carley, his paws hovering mischievously over her belly. "A tickle monster!" He attacked her belly without mercy.

"No! It's not supp-ah-ha-ha-ha-hosed to be a ti-hee-hee-hickle monster!" Carley cackled. "Cut it out, Da-hah-hah-hanny!"

"Cut what out?" Daniel asked innocently, his hands easily resisting any of his friend's attempts at breaking free.

"You kno-hoh-hoh-hoh what!"

"You want me to stop tickling you?"

"Yeh-heh-heh-hes!"

"So you want Sammy to tickle you?"

"Nah-hah-hah-hah-hah!"

Daniel looked up to the private, who had abandoned her military stance to enjoy Captain Carley's hilarious defeat.

"Did you hear a yes, Sammy?"

"That's a yes if I ever heard one, Danny!" She dropped to her knees and mimicked Daniel's attack.

"Hey! You guy-hah-hah-hah-hah-s!" Carley's laughter was so loud that Daniel and Sammy believed that she could be heard from their school.

A wonderful minute went by, during which only five seconds of breath were given to Carley, and then something even louder stopped their game, and almost deafened them.

This sound they knew could be heard from their school.

Daniel thought it could be heard from a school on the other side of Turo.

"DANIEL ZORAN TERRANCE!"

Daniel hated his middle name; it was like his mother's own jagged dagger that could only hurt her son.

He and his friends got to their feet, and looked at them with their hands crossed in front of them.

"GET THE FUCK OVER HERE RIGHT NOW!"

He wanted more than anything in the world to run in the opposite direction as fast as he could, and yet he still walked, head down, with tedious slowness towards his mother. He might as well have been dragged towards her.

"I TOLD YOU TO WAIT AT THE SCHOOL! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH TIME I'VE WASTED WAITING FOR YOU, YOU UNGRATEFUL SHIT?!"

The morning flashed within Daniel's mind. He remembered walking to school with Carley and Sammy, reading Hamlet in Earth Studies class, and getting an A+ on his reading report. But he was absolutely certain that he had never been told to wait at school at the end of the day; he didn't even remember his mother saying goodbye.

She must be confused after a hard day of work.

Or maybe you really did forget, because you really are just an ungrateful shit!

Daniel was four fifths of the way to his mother before he felt her storming towards him. He went to look up at her, and felt something fleshy and furry strike his cheek with all the sting of a whip. Daniel nearly fell as he had when Captain Carley had 'shot' him. He felt like his cheek was being melted with acid.

"GET IN THE POD!" His mother ordered him, although she practically threw him by an ear into the small, grey vehicle.

He scrunched into the only passenger seat as his mother slammed the door; he wasn't sure if she had looked to make sure that his arm or his leg wasn't in the way first. In the minutes, hours, months, years, decades between the pod flying away from Sammy and Carley, and arriving home, Daniel never stopped feeling his ear. Not only did he want to ensure that it was not ripped anywhere (because it sure as hell felt like it was), but because it felt like it was on fire.

The whole flight home, trapped with his mother in the flying prison, Daniel felt tears threatening to pour from his black eyes, but he kept them locked up. If there was anything his mother had taught him, it was that the only thing more infuriating than an ungrateful shit was a crying one.

IV

"...Fucking….Serious…...Can't do that to….."

Daniel wanted to look away from his bedroom door, but he was too scared.

"...Goddamn…..Work so hard….."

Daniel wanted to do his homework, but he was too scared.

"...Tomorrow…..Too much….Mmmmmmmnnnnnnn….."

Daniel wanted to read a book, but he was too scared.

"...Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"

Daniel wanted to brush his teeth before bed, but he was too scared.

Something hit the floor downstairs.

"Fffffffffffffffffff!"

Daniel wanted to go to bed, but he was too scared.

There was a groan and then sobbing outside of his door.

Daniel wanted to stop sitting in the middle of his bedroom, and go hide under the bed or hide in the closet or jump out the window, but he was too scared.

There was silence.

Daniel wanted to stand up, but he was too scared.

Still silence.

Daniel wanted to lie down, but he was too scared.

Silence.

He was also hungry.

V

Lilo was almost scared to speak once 627 had stopped talking. 627's account had begun so pleasantly, as if he had rehearsed it. Once his mother had entered his tale, though, he took increasingly longer pauses, grew quieter, and his soft, out-of-practice smile gradually faded away. Lilo had a gut-wrenching notion that 627 felt like his mother was still outside his bedroom door.

"My sister and I used to yell at each other a lot…" She finally said, only a little louder than 627 had been. "It was pretty scary. But your mom...She sounds even scarier than…" She almost said "627,"; for a moment, she had forgotten that the grown-up little boy who had been hit by his mother was also the powerful assassin who could kill ten Experiments by himself.

"Hitting or no hitting, it's terrifying to hear things like that from your family…" 627 said, as if forgiving her for what she had thought about saying.

Lilo rested a hand on 627's shoulder, finding that his red fur was just as silky as Stitch's.

"So...What happened? Did all of those things ever stop?"

"They did…"

Lilo had to wait for him to continue. She was worried that he was, once again, too scared. Before too long, though, 627 spoke again.

"I had planned to end it anyway, but differently…"

VI

As Daniel crept down the carpeted ramp between the second floor and the kitchen, he could not stop thinking about Hamlet. The scene etched in his mind saw Hamlet lashing out at a curtain-shrouded figure, believing it to be his treacherous uncle. What stuck out in his mind, much like the knife did out of Hamlet's victim, was not the shocking turn of events or Hamlet's rage. It was simply the thought of someone dying on something as commonplace as a knife. The only thing confusing to him was why he was thinking about stabbing himself and not his mother. Maybe he didn't like the thought of becoming known as the boy who stabbed his own mother to death. Maybe he was just scared that his mother would take the knife and try to stab him. It would be easier to save her the trouble.

The deep blue night distorted the kitchen, making Daniel feel like he was wandering into a malevolent forest, stripped bare of its leaves by the winter. The feeling matched perfectly with the nauseating chill that possessed Daniel.

He approached a drawer by the tall, thin cooler, feeling more like he was reaching into a dead, hollow tree. He found what he needed despite the unsettling lighting; a lime green knife. It was a bland object, its only difference from everything else in the drawer being its function. To Daniel, however, it was a monstrous, dark hand with claws like stalagmites, welcoming him, inviting him to receive the same kindness it had already shown to Juliet, Brutus, Othello, and Antony.

Daniel turned the blade to his chest, just beside his solar plexus, where he was almost certain his heart was, and waitedGET IN THE PODfor the dark claws to showDANIEL ZORAN TERRANCEhim their incredible kindness. He waited in the darkTOLD YOU TO WAITfor what felt like days. He thought of little elseGET THE FUCK OVER HEREbesides how great it would be to be somewhere thatINGRATEFUL SHITwasn't here. His ear still hurt.

Suddenly, with a piercing click, the frigid forest transformed back into the Terrances' kitchen. Daniel's body was a statue, but his head darted right, and he found another Turonian with the same red fur as his own, complete with an orange patch on her belly and around her dark green eyes. She was only an inch and a half taller than him, but it seemed to Daniel that some of that height was attributed by her thin ears, whose curved shape reminded Daniel of the slide at his school's playground, but upside-down. Her head was tall, like his, but it was thin throughout, like a withering leaf. Daniel could not see the lower half of her face; it was obscured by two trembling fists. Daniel didn't look at her eyes, only those shaking fists. He gripped the knife tighter, in case one of those fists came for him.

"Daniel…" His mother finally said, as quiet as a breath. She took a step forward, and extended a hand towards him, much like the dark one Daniel had seen moments ago.

He waited for Zoran.

He could see her mouth now, and saw it quivering. Daniel knew the movement instantly; he had felt it himself every time he even considered speaking around his mother.

He set the knife upon the table as if he had just finished mincing herbs with it.

Zoran wasn't coming, and Daniel knew it.

"Oh, Daniel…" His mother ran to him, and he flinched, believing for a moment that she was about to strangle him. Instead, he found himself in a hug that felt as tight as strangulation, but with none of the discomfort.

"I'm so sorry…" She sobbed, her shattered voice vibrating through Daniel's ear, which still hurt. "I'm so sorry...I'm so, so sorry...I'm so sorry…" She repeated it like a newborn repeating her first word.

Daniel looked over his mother's shoulder at the knife for only a few seconds, and then did not look at it again.

He shut his eyes, and sighed with sweet, rapturous relief.

He did not hug his mother.

VII

Lilo felt like a prisoner of silence, and she sensed that 627 felt likewise.

She looked into his black eyes, though they looked down at his lap, and in his crestfallen face, she felt the crippling hopelessness he had just described, and she was haunted by its familiarity.

She heard Elvis' voice echo in her mind, but he sounded soft and disheartened, as if he were performing in a crumbling, abandoned theatre without an audience.

You make me so lonely, baby,

I get so lonely,

I get so lonely I could die…

She curled an arm around 627's shoulders, and rested her head against one. She heard him sigh, similar to a train releasing steam after completing a long and excruciating journey. She felt herself make the same sigh.

627's hand moved to turn the page of the album. Lilo looked at him, and saw his smile returning as he spoke again.

VIII

"Daniel!"

The terrifying fire monster of Turo, who had been sitting atop the monkey bars, never once attacking Captain Carley or Private Sammy, nearly fell over at the sound of his mother calling his name. He quickly steadied himself after realizing that it had only been his first name, and he had not been deafened by the sound. Though he hadn't heard his full name for some time, every time his mother called him, his ears still seemed to hear what used to follow. They also felt what used to follow.

He hopped down from the monkey bars, looking out at his mother, leaning against her dark yellow pod as it hovered above the violet grass. She was smiling and waving at him, and though it was difficult to completely banish the word Zoran from his head, or the ghostly throbbing in his ear, it was easy to smile and wave back.

"Aw, your mom always comes just before your big ambush," Carley complained as she and holstered her finger-blaster. Private Sammy mimicked her closely.

"It's okay," Daniel wrapped an arm around each of them. "Just means that Captain Carley and Private Sammy live to fight another day,"

As his friends embraced him, he heard Sammy whisper in his ear.

"If it ever starts again, you can stay with me,"

"I know," Daniel whispered, surprised when, in all the parasitic thoughts of his mother's former self, he felt no fear of her returning. With that, he left Sammy and Carley, jogging backwards through the grass as he waved to them.

When he turned around, he was facing his mother, who smiled at him as she reached to pat the top of his conical head. He almost flinched when she did.

"How was school today?" She asked with a friendly and eager tone not unlike Daniel had used in class, when he had raised his hand and questioned why Puck would transform Nick Bottom into, of all things, a donkey.

"School was great," He answered in a similarly chipper manner. "We studied sonnets today,"

"Ooh, neat…" She pulled open the passenger door for him. "What's a sonnet?"

"It's a poem with fourteen lines…" Daniel began explaining as he climbed into the pod. When he had finished, his mother repeated her last statement, and then abruptly changed the subject without altering her cheery tone.

"Hey, Daniel, later tonight, there's somebody coming over that I want you to meet,"

"Oh?" Daniel grew quieter in his curiosity.

"Just a friend from work," His mother shrugged. "His name's Allen,"

At the sound of that name, a small but irritating pit grew in Daniel's gut, where the fear he had only moments ago noticed was absent began to fester.

IX

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun

Coral is far more red than her lips red,

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head-

"Allen Critchley - has arrived,"

The door alarm rang throughout the house, and pierced through Daniel's mind and his reading. He momentarily scorned the name Allen Critchley for being the sound that distracted him from his thesaurus of Shakespeare works.

"Allen's here, Daniel," His mother called to him as she passed his armchair, as if the door alarm had not been clear enough.

Daniel stood up and set the thick textbook down on his seat, somehow feeling heavier without its weight. He looked left, seeing his mother press her palm against the panel beside the door, and watched it slide open. For now, Allen was obscured by his mother's back, and all Daniel could see were his blonde-furred ears, floppy like Sammy's, but about twice the size.

"Hey, Lyd," He said, speaking with a gruff voice that Daniel recognized as what Captain Carley always tried to sound like.

Daniel's mother responded Allen with a hug. Daniel saw that one of his three-fingered hands held a tall and exotic flower, with a stem that curled like a corkscrew, and wide, pointed petals of bloody red.

"Daniel, this is Allen," She turned to him, speaking again as if Daniel might have forgotten who their visitor was.

Daniel now saw that Allen's head was almost a perfect sphere, aside from where his nose jutted out like a ledge on the side of a cliff. His green-eyed face reminded Daniel of Earth creatures called "dogs" he had heard about in school.

"Hey there, Danny!" Allen exclaimed. His tone sounded like how a clown looked; intentionally friendly, but mind-bendingly petrifying in actuality.

"I've heard so much about you!"

Before Daniel could even consider a response to his strange madman, he was scooped up in his arms and carried high enough to kick the ceiling.

The madman's arms were loose around Daniel as he laughed like a banshee, making the boy believe that he was moments away from a deathly and deliberate plummet.

Finally, it came; the madman placed Daniel back on the floor like a cumbersome sack of flour. Daniel felt a day's worth of marching erupt in his feet as he landed.

His heart quaking like a tsunami, Daniel fled from the madman as fast as his numb feet could carry him. He snatched up his textbook and darted for his room. All the while, he was certain that his mother had only grown tired of abusing him angrily, and had decided to have this lunatic abuse him happily.

X

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground,

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as-

Knock-knock-knock.

Goddammit, just let me read in peace!

Daniel scowled at the door, as if scorning it for allowing someone a means of disturbing him. He had long since caught his breath, his feet had stopped barking, and much of his terror had been quelled by the Bard. Even so, he could still feel a voice growling in his head, like a vicious guard dog wanting to charge at whoever was behind the door. Daniel fought to banish the irritable voice from his head; it was beginning to sound like his mother's old voice.

"Come in," He breathed.

The door slid open slowly, as if whoever was behind it was afraid of breaking it.

The madman showed his face; he seemed to be possessed by a mellowed and shameful spirit.

Daniel's annoyance transformed into curiosity.

"Hey, Daniel," Allen said.

At least he's not trying to deafen me anymore.

Daniel beat the voice into submission again.

"I, uh...Wanted to say sorry about...That…" Allen stayed in the doorframe, standing with his hands together like a student before a principal, but keeping his eyes up at Daniel.

"I see dads doing things like that with their kids at parks sometimes. I thought it would be fun, but...Clearly, I wasn't thinking at all, was I?"

Daniel was surprised at how pleasant Allen's gruff voice sounded when he wasn't shouting or cackling like a maniac. He thought again of his mother's former self, and how it had taken the threat of his suicide to make her see her errors. This man, however, who did not at all resemble the madman from before, got the picture almost immediately; no knife required.

Daniel hadn't yet thought of what to say, but he saw Allen smile faintly, and felt like he somehow knew what Daniel was thinking.

"You're doing Shakespeare right now, right?" Allen asked, finding the courage to venture a little further into the room.

"Yeah," Daniel answered, feeling nervous as he realized that he had known Allen for about an hour already, but was only now talking to him for the first time.

"We just finished Hamlet,"

"Yeah, your mom was saying," Allen replied. "She also said that you memorized a monologue,"

Daniel had a suspicion that his mother had not used the word "monologue." It only made him happier when Allen said it.

"I have actually," He set his book down beside him, then stood up from the bed.

"It's the part where he finds his old jester's skull in the graveyard,"

"I remember." Allen's steps and his smile became more comfortable as he came further into the bedroom.

"That was my favorite part, actually,"

"...Are you just saying that, or-"

"No, I mean it," Allen's laugh was soft, and not remotely like a lunatic's.

"The graveyard is my favorite part of the whole play,"

"Even more than the ending?"

"The ending always seems like the best part, but there's nothing that great about something being over,"

Daniel was silent for a moment, replaying that last sentence in his head, savoring the sound of it like a piece of music.

"Anyway, let's hear your version of it,"

Daniel's anxiety suddenly tickled him, as it always did before that first like emerged from his lips like a sword from a sheath.

"Alas, poor Yorick…" He said, and floated in behind it.

I knew him, Horatio.

A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.

He hath borne me on his back a thousand times,

And now, abhorred in my imagination it is.

My gorge rises at it.

Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.

Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs?

Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?

Not one now to mock your own grinning? Quite chapfallen?

Now get you to my lady's chamber and tell her,

Let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come…

Daniel let out a quivering breath.

"Make her laugh at that…"

He waited for applause; he did not want any, but he had come to expect it after performing the monologue for Sammy, Carley, and his mother. Allen, however, was silent. It was a silence Daniel had last heard only moments ago, when he had contemplated Allen's statement on endings.

Daniel saw a unique smile under Allen's extended nose; a small one that seemed moved, and please and grateful to have been moved.

"You know…" Allen began, speaking with a softness that seemed strangely fitting with his gruff voice.

"I said that part was my favorite, but you just reminded me why,"

At this, Daniel only smiled and scratched behind his ear.

"You know, I've actually memorized something, as well." Allen mirrored his gesture; Daniel could tell that he was hoping he didn't sound arrogant.

"Oh? Is it another Shakespeare?"

"No. I don't think you've gotten to him yet. It's Eliot,"

Daniel sat and Allen stood, both feeling like they had just swapped bodies as well as postures. Daniel looked up at Allen, whose gaze darkened like a thunder cloud about to deliver a storm called Eliot.

As Allen spoke, Daniel was convinced that when Eliot wrote these words, he had heard Allen's gravely voice.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Daniel didn't applaud; not because he didn't want to, but because he never even considered it while possessed by Allen's voice and Eliot's words.

"Fear in a handful of dust…" He whispered, not quite understanding it but desperately wanting to.

"What do you think?" Allen asked, reverting from the hypnotic storm cloud to the anxious student again.

Daniel looked into his eyes, and saw something that he could tell very few people saw in Allen. It was something that must have existed in Eliot, too. It was not terror, but it was fear. Suddenly, Daniel understood Eliot, and he understood what terrible, beautiful thing Allen had tried to hide behind the madman downstairs.

Fear in a handful of dust.

"Have you memorized anything else by Eliot?" Daniel asked, hoping to calm Allen's beautiful fear with a smile.

"...I think I remember a bit of Prufrock," Allen reciprocated Daniel's smile, but his eyes did not change.

Daniel hoped that his eyes wouldn't change.

XI

Looking at 627's photo of Allen, who smiled with Daniel as they sat on a hovering swing set, Lilo couldn't help but see a familiar buzzing grin on the blonde-furred Turonian's dog-like muzzle.

"Allen kinda reminds me of Sparky," She said.

"Sparky," 627 repeated, savoring the photo for another moment before looking up at her.

"He's the one that can fly, right?"

"That's him,"

"He's like Allen?"

"Well, your story reminded me of him," Lilo shrugged. "When I first met Sparky, he was angry at me because Stitch wanted to stay with me instead of going back to space with him. But then he understood why, and now he's nice and funny, and he likes to fly me on his shoulders, or sometimes holding onto his feet,"

"...And what's that like?" 627's smile grew more eager.

"It's great…" Lilo thought about describing the exhilaration of soaring through the cloudless Hawaiian sky, with Sparky's buzzing laughter ringing in her ears. Seeing 627's smile, though, while comforting, made her worry that he would not be able to continue his story if he stopped now.

She turned to the album's next page, finding another scene set on violet grass. This photo was of a silver-furred Turonian with round floppy ears like large butterfly wings. Her eyes were black, just like 627's. She was sitting, and her bushy squirrel tail, which was as tall as her, was curled beside her like a cushion. She held a canvas in her lap, and lightly gripped a pencil as sharp as a needle, but Lilo could not see what she had drawn. She seemed to be laughing with surprise at the photographer, who Lilo knew instinctively was Daniel. Her beaming face was an uncanny silver twin of Angel's.

"Who's this?" Lilo asked.

627 looked at the picture, and when he spoke again, his smile made Lilo tingle and shiver simultaneously.

He smiled like someone who had never known sadness.

XII

A world without Captain Carley and Private Sammy was a dull one indeed. With the Private home sick and the Captain out at 'Take Your Kid to Work Day', Daniel found himself feeling isolated in his school's bustling courtyard.

Every second, students piled into their parents' pods. The orange sky was dotted with airborne vehicles, but none of the arriving pods, to Daniel's disappointment, contained Allen. Even reading the remaining verses of The Waste Land did not eat up most of the waiting time. The metal step outside the foyer was becoming too comfortable, and Daniel longed for something, anything else to think about besides that Allen was running late.

He looked left, to the other end of his step, and saw a silver-furred girl that seemed familiar to him. Of course. She was in his Earth Studies class. He had never heard her speak, but had always been curious at her consistently being at her desk before everyone else arrived, even Mr. Xenou.

She sat with her poetry textbook over her lap, her head over her textbook, and her arms over her head. Daniel had never seen himself read, but he knew that he didn't look as hopeless as this girl did. The thought of anyone feeling so frustrated at something that brought him peace made him want to cry.

He scooched along the step until there was room for only one between him and the girl.

"You, uh...Are you alright?" He was irritated at himself for not thinking of a better greeting.

"Fine," She grumbled. She lifted her her head, and dragged her hands down her face before turning only her eyes to Daniel.
"Oh, it's Dan Terrance…" She muttered. She grimaced at dead space for a few moments, as if at a boorish salesman calling obscenely for her attention. Then she looked at Daniel again, and her bemused face snapped into one of intrigue.

"Actually, this is perfect. You're a big literature nut; do you know what the hell this Waste Land is about?!" She showed him the pages, accompanied only be an image of a desolate, orange desert, not unlike the sky above them.

Daniel knew that he had the advantage of Allen reading him the poem well ahead of the curriculum, but he could not imagine being so perturbed by its ambiguity otherwise. He wondered if his other classmates felt as this girl did. He wondered if he was the only one who didn't.

"I thought it was about a desert before I read it, but it doesn't seem like it," The girl continued.
"It's not clear, like the sonnets were. There's a lot of lines that I just don't get, like this one; 'I will show you fear in a handful of dust.' What's so scary about dust?!" She let out a defeated sigh.

"I don't know how you understand this stuff so well," Now she looked at the bottom step with her distant, gloomy expression.

Daniel thought for a moment about his response, and resisted the temptation to criticize the girl for hating beauty that she couldn't see.

"It's not really scary like a monster chasing you or anything like that," He began, contrasting her flustered tone with one much more disciplined.

"...Have you ever walked around your house in the dark? When everything's just the same as it always is, but there's something off that makes it seem unfriendly?"

"That'd be the light switch," She said dryly. "But yeah...I have," She managed a smile, and only then did Daniel reward her comment with a chuckle.

"That's the kind of fear Eliot means. It's not the dust that's scary, it's what the dust means. When we die, our bodies decompose and we turn into dust. The fear comes from the thought that, someday, there won't be anyone left to remember us. Everything we do, everything we are; no matter what, one day, it'll be nothing but dust…"

He saw her stare into space again, but now it seemed that the boorish salesman had just performed an impressive and magical fear. In her widened eyes, Daniel saw something nearly identical to what he saw in Allen; that same notion that she, too, knew Eliot's brand of fear.

"Then this line…" She looked to the text again, tracing the words with a clawless finger.

"'You know only a heap of broken images.' Like what you said about walking around the house in the dark, only it's the whole world. Everything looks right, but it's wrong, broken in some way. The world is broken, and we can see it, but all we've ever known is a broken world. It's never been fixed to begin with…" She stopped for a moment, looking up at the orange, pod-starred sky.

"You think?" She looked at Daniel, an eager grin on her face, as if spiting, or enjoying, her grim statement.

Daniel did not believe that he looked like this while he read, either. Reading brought him peace, but it did not bring him this kind of excitement.

"It's not about what I think," He replied, returning her smile. "It's what you think. This is what I love about the literature unit; it's not about getting the right answer, like math or history or science. It's about having an interesting answer,"

"Well, the only problem there is if you don't have any interesting answers," She responded, leaning her palms on the step behind them.

"I don't know; I think what you just said is pretty interesting,"

She only smiled at this.

"...I have this weird feeling that you don't know my name," She seemed amused by this realization.

Daniel just scratched his ear and looked down at the step.

"It's Emma,"

"Emma," He repeated, looking up at her again.

"Sorry if I was a little bitchy before…" Her smile faded. "I just had a shitty weekend,"

Daniel stopped smiling, as if his had been dragged into oblivion with Emma's. He wasn't sure if it was the sound of those words he had only heard his mother's former self use in her ugly, bellowing voice, or the thought of what could bring somebody his age to use those words. Either way, he felt the urge to cry again. Stronger, though, was the urge to ask.

Before he could, he was cut short by two short beeps. Daniel and Emma looked up, and found a cerulean pod from which Allen waved at Daniel with an anxious smile. Beside Allen's pod was a Turonian with the same silver fur as Emma, and the same wing-like ears, too. He had a long snout, like Allen, a wide head that curved like a fin, and vibrant green eyes.

"Daddy's here, Emma!" He cheered, throwing his arms in the air. His voice was deep, but his tone was strangely light; it sounded as if a child were speaking with an adult's voice.

"I gotta go," Emma sighed. Before Daniel could say anything, she did something that left him speechless; she hugged him.

"Thanks for talking to me," She whispered in his ear. She rose from the step and ran into her father's arms, and he did just what Allen had done to Daniel when they first met.

Daniel had to admit; the sight of a child being lifted high into the air was quite heartwarming when done with a lifelong guardian, and not with a complete stranger. He also found it both adorable and curious when Emma's father gently prodded his daughter's closed eyelid with his snout.

"Da-ad!" She giggled. "Come on, it's time to go home,"

"Time to go home," Her father repeated in his aged and childish voice, lifting her to sit on his shoulders.

"Time to go back to 34 Vyxy Circle,"

Daniel had assumed that Emma's father had parked his pod somewhere, but as he watched him strode across the purple grass, becoming a comically tall silhouette against the orange sky with Emma on his shoulders, it dawned on Daniel that he planned to walk all the way to wherever 34 Vyxy Circle was.

"Sorry I'm late, Dan," Allen said as Daniel took a seat beside him. "My trog manager asked me to stay another half hour, then there was this big skyway jam, and...I'm sorry I kept you waiting,"

"It's really alright," Daniel replied, looking out the window at Emma and her father as the pod ascended. Now that he was high above them, he wished that he could walk with them.
"I made a new friend,"

He wanted desperately to know what Emma's "shitty weekend" had involved; he had a wretched suspicion that it was something much worse than a handful of dust.

XIII

"Emma's dad, Phillip; he had a disability called quaitzism," 627 explained with all the grace and sensitivity of a skilled tutor.

"You have a different name for it on Earth, but...I've forgotten what it is,"

"You forgot?" Lilo repeated, a cheeky grin sneaking onto her face.

"Yeah," 627 smiled with coy guilt.

"You remember all these big, long scenes from Shakespeare and Poe and all the other old guys, but you can't remember the name of the disability your best friend's dad had?"

"I do remember the name," 627 pretended to be offended by the statement, and that he couldn't hear Lilo's giggling.

"I remember the Turonian name, the one we used all the time. Just not the human name that I didn't need to use. And they were not just 'old guys.' They were some of the greatest writers who ever lived. You should feel honored to live on the same planet that they did-"

Lilo was thrilled that 627 was becoming more comfortable, but she still felt that dread that he might find it too difficult to delve back into his past if he stopped for too long. She reached playfully to turn another page of the album, but instead pulled out a piece of paper, folded only once, and with only a few wrinkles. Lilo suspected that it was older than it looked.

"Oh, that was Emma's," 627 answered. "Go ahead; open it,"

Lilo did, careful not to tear any of the aged paper.

She discovered a drawing of black and white, though the black parts were shaded with a hypnotizing perfection, making it seem more colorful. It depicted a hand Lilo recognized as an Experiment's, and 627 recognized it as a Turonian's; furry and clawed, and held palm-up, as if presenting something. Between its splayed fingers rose a storm of precisely-placed dots, forming a cloud of dust. Beneath the hand, written in cursive (which Lilo usually saw as a series of meaningless shapes, but now read as clearly as her own handwriting.), read:

I will show you fear in

Beneath that, in standard letters drawn over several times, giving the appearance of lines scratched onto a chalkboard, was:

A handful of dust.

For a moment, Lilo was speechless, and simultaneously impressed and terrified of the sketch. She turned to 627, who looked upon it like a guest in a diner looking down at his favorite dish as it's placed in front of him.

Lilo had to smile at 627's face.

"Did Emma draw this?" She asked.

XIV

"Did you draw this?" Daniel asked, so entranced by the sketch that he forgot to shut his front door behind Emma.

"Yep," She answered, shifting her textbook from her hand to under her arm before sliding the door shut.

"Drew it when I got home the day you helped me out with the poem,"

Several seconds passed before Daniel replied; it was an effort to tear himself away from the chilling, dusty illustration.

"You would've been able to figure it out yourself,"

"Probably," Emma shrugged. "It's just hard to think sometimes if there's so much...shit going on." She lowered her voice to a whisper for the curse, as if she were worried she would offend someone in earshot, but felt it absolutely essential that Daniel hear it.

"I know what that's like…" He muttered, looking again at Emma's artwork, and momentarily seeing his mother's rising hand. He shook his head to dispel the image from his mind, and then smiled at his guest.

"You wanna meet my friends, Sammy and Carley?" He suggested.

"Not really," Emma said flatly. She waited for Daniel's face to droop with dumbfounded disappointment before perking up.

"Yes, I'd love to,"

Daniel smiled and turned around; Captain Carley was currently contending with a mutated Private Sammy, who tried to take a big bite out of her neck.

"'Ten-shun!" Daniel declared.

Private Sammy suddenly dropped dead, conveniently allowing Captain Carley to stand straight, stomp her right foot, hold her index and middle fingers beside her head, and shout, "Commander!" After a second, she dropped the pose.

"How was that?" She asked. "Quick enough?"

"Perfect," Her commander responded automatically. "Guys, this is Emma; she's gonna study with us today. Emma, this is Carley, and that's Sammy,"

"Great to meet you, Emma," Sammy chirped, rising from the floor to shake Emma's hand.

"You too, Sam." Emma looked past her to the budding captain. "Out of curiosity, do you always play the monster?"

"Actually, Dan usually does," Carley answered. "But he wanted to make sure he'd be free to get the door for you,"

"Ah, of course," Emma pulled her textbook out from under her arm. "Whatever would you do without a monster in your life?" She sighed and smiled.

Carley raised an eyebrow at this comment.

"Anyway, shall we start, Dan?" Emma suggested, flipping her textbook open.

The others gathered their books from the indigo coffee table; Daniel's practically brand new, Sammy's riddled with folded corners, and Carley's cover, which curled open stubbornly, was riddled with wrinkles and creased.

Daniel exchanged his textbook for Emma's sketch.

"I gotta ask," Carley began as they all sat in a circle cross-legged on the floor, as if they were about to perform some kind of otherworldly ritual.

"What is it with humans and being scared of things that aren't scary? First it's dust, now it's a bird,"

"I don't think it's supposed to be scary," Sammy said. "It seems more like a tragedy to me,"

"Really, it's both," Emma replied. "The horror is the tragedy,"

Daniel nearly compared the poem to a short story, but decided that they should start reading first.

"Why don't we go through it verse-by-verse?" He suggested. "We can take turns reading,"

"A superb idea, Mr. Terrance," Emma responded, mimicking a deeper tone of voice.

Daniel blushed a little.

"I can start, unless somebody else really, really wants to," She added.

"Go for it," Carley said, her eyes already on the first line.

Emma cleared her throat, and then, keeping only some of her mimicked depth, began.

"Once upon a midnight dreary…"

XVI

See, humans apparently don't like to just say what they're feeling. They like to describe it with sights that look like their feelings. If you think about it, though, that's actually better. If something terrible happened to you, like your best friend died, or your house burned down, or you got a fatal disease, or something, it wouldn't be enough to just say you felt terrible. It'd feel more like...Like a raven was always standing above you, constantly reminding you that your life will never be the same again, but not helping you deal with it at all. All of us will have a raven over our door at some point in our lives...A lot of us already do. This is the ingenious thing that Poe has done; he's found an image that we, even all the way here on Turo, can see as a frightening vision of our own tragedies-

"Phillip Wiens - has arrived,"

Daniel wasn't mad; he was surprised, but primarily disappointed. He had been comfortably lulled into a wonderful trance, not by Emma's words, but by her voice. She spoke with such a passion that charged every sentence, and the effect was doubled when she chose to stand for her analysis. Half of him was overjoyed to hear and see his love for literature shining in another person, while another half felt a stronger version of the fear he felt for Emma when she had mentioned her "shitty weekend." It occurred to him that it was, perhaps, not fear in a handful of dust that Emma felt, but a raven perched over her door. Not something, but someone.

"Aw, man, already?!" Sammy whined.

"You haven't even been here for two hours!" Carley complained.

"I know," Emma sighed. Daniel saw the faintest smile on her lips, and could tell that she liked, perhaps even needed, her departure being considered a disappointment.

"I wish I could stay longer, but it's really important that I don't leave my Dad home alone."

Daniel stood up with her. They went to the door, slid it open, and Emma's father scooped her up before the door was completely ajar.

"Daddy's here, Emma!" Phillip cheered, identical to how he did the last time Daniel saw him. He may as well have been lip-syncing a recording of that moment.

"Did you have a good day at work, Daddy?" She asked, looking at him as if they he were across the dinner table, and not holding her in the air.

"Yes, Emma," Phillip said absent mindedly.

"Can you put me down for a moment so I can say bye to Daniel, please?"

He obeyed.

"Hi, Phillip," Daniel did his best to imitate Emma's tone; friendly but just a little slow.

"My name's Daniel." He held a hand out to him.

"Hey Daniel. This is Emma's new friend Daniel," He spoke as if he were addressing somebody else. His handshake was weak, but charming all the same, and he showed Daniel a toothy smile.

Daniel couldn't help but feel warmed by the man's quirks. He wondered if Phillip behaved like this around everyone; immediately friendly, and totally unbiased. And why wouldn't he be? Who wouldn't want to be friends with this infectiously charming man? Daniel couldn't imagine who, but he knew that such a person must exist.

He thought again of Emma's "shitty weekend", and became certain that not only did that person exist, but also that they had already become an unwelcome part of Emma and Phillip's life. The thought chilled Daniel; he could barely imagine how it made Emma feel.

He didn't want to imagine how it made Phillip feel.

"Sorry if I droned on there, Dan," Emma pulled Daniel out of his harrowing thoughts.

"If you can't tell, I really like this poem,"

"Oh, it's really alright," He replied. "I liked this poem a lot, too, but after hearing everything you have to say about it, I think it might be my favorite,"

"Well, I'm happy that I influenced your opinion," She chuckled. "Tomorrow, maybe during lunch, I'd love to hear more of what you thought of it,"

"Sounds wonderful," He chirped, and then a critical reminder burst into his brain.

"Oh, don't forget your Waste Land sketch." He nearly turned to go retrieve it.

"Actually, you can keep it," Emma said. "As my way of saying thanks for inviting me over,"

"Oh," Daniel's mouth curled into a touched smile. "Thanks...I'll have to get it framed,"

After that, Emma only nodded, and then there was silence as they looked at each other. Daniel felt something in his gut, like something inside him was tickling him, but in a special, skillful way that prompted smiles but not laughter. The most incredible thing about the invisible tickler, though, was that it allowed Daniel to anticipate Emma's hug.

"Thank you so much," She whispered in his ear. "I needed this,"

They held each other for a few moments more, and the tickler inside Daniel let him know when it was time to pull away.

"See you tomorrow," Emma said.

"Can't wait," Daniel smiled, and she returned it.

"Time to go home, Daddy," She turned to her father, and he promptly lifted her onto his shoulders.

"Back home. Back to 34 Vyxy Circle," Phillip recited as he walked into the violet grass with a spring in his step.

"Yes, back to 34 Vyxy Circle," Daniel heard Emma chuckle.

Watching the Wienses fade into the distance, Daniel was simultaneously warm and frigid; tingled by the sight of such love between a father and daughter, and chilled at the thought of the dark mind that could loathe such a sight.

XVII

"You know, Emma looks a little bit like Angel," Lilo said, holding the photo of a drawing, laughing Emma close to her eye.

"Really?" 627 asked. "...Which one is Angel, again?"

"...She's pink," Lilo answered. She considered adding 'You crushed her ankle during your last fight, and she had to use crutches for a few days,' but decided against it. She wondered, a little disturbed, why she would even think of saying that to 627 now, of all occasions.

"Oh, I know the one," He nodded, then raised an eyebrow. "Does she look like Emma?"

"It's mostly the faces…" She held the photo out to him, framing Emma's laughing face between the index and middle fingers of each hand.

"If you ignore the different ears and fur colors and Angel's antennae, then she does kinda look like her,"

627 took the photo, held it close to his face, and squinted. For once, he frowned at it.

"I don't think I know Angel's face well enough," He soon said, as if he were revealing that he had been diagnosed with a severe sickness.

"Really?" Lilo had hoped that her observation would cheer him up, and show him that she saw some of his family in her own.

"You'd think you'd, uh...You know...Get really close in all the…"

"It's okay," 627 gave her a faint smile and traced a hand over her hair.

"You don't have to worry about hurting my feelings...But yes, you would think, wouldn't you? But I'm realizing more and more, especially while talking to you, that I barely know what most of your friends look like. I remember...Stitch pretty well, but only from being around L.E.R.O.Y. I also remember…" He stopped for a few seconds. "Um, he's got some white fur sticking up on his head, like a mohawk,"

"Chopsuey." Lilo thought about telling him that the marksman had only been named after his last brutal encounter with 627, but feared that doing so would be more distracting than comforting.

"I remember Chopsuey a bit, too," 627 continued. "I'm sure you know why…"

Lilo shuddered at the memory of finding her friend beaten and bleeding on the floor, and its effect was amplified as she stared at the spot only inches from her where he had been. She looked back at 627, who stared at the same spot on the floor, and could feel him running with a more vicious chill.

"But now I realize that I haven't really been looking at them. All I've been seeing are walking blobs of color that I recognize as the things that destroyed my life…"

Lilo thought about the girl she, Stitch, and Chopsuey had encountered at her school earlier that day. The name still eluded her, but she did remember that she used to infuriate her to the extent that Lilo had given her a black eye. Now that Lilo was thinking about her, she couldn't remember quite what she looked like. She envisioned glasses and a head of curly, orange hair, but the face appeared bland and shapeless, like that of a mannequin.

Lilo wondered how she or 627 could have such fuzzy memories of people who angered them so much. She thought, maybe, that the fuzziness came because of the anger.

"You keep talking about something that scared Emma…What was that?" She began, feeling that uniquely dreadful type of anticipation that she also felt when going to the bathroom after a gruesome nightmare; she suspected that some monstrous thing was awaiting her, but the fear was not enough to keep her from moving forward.

627 sighed deeply before speaking. Lilo could see his eyes watering, but he didn't seem sad.

He seemed scared.

"I first found out that very next day, actually," He said. "…I used to sit in the front row in class, and Emma sat in the back, so I couldn't see her without turning around. Every time I did that day, her face was covered by her textbook. I didn't think much of it at first, but then when we broke for lunch…"

XVIII

…She still kept her face in her book as she walked down the hall.

Daniel followed behind Emma, but lost some distance as he cut through the bustling crowd of students and teachers.

Once she looked over her shoulder; not enough for Daniel to see her face, but enough to convince him that she wanted him to follow her.

As far as Daniel knew, he and Emma were still to discuss The Raven in greater depth, and she had made no indication that she had changed her mind.

There was just something so strange about her keeping her face behind her book. Daniel had a nauseating suspicion that she wasn't even reading.

Emma led Daniel through the foyer, down the steps where they had first spoken, and around the left side of the school, where nobody ever went at lunch hour.

Finally, Emma turned around, looking at Daniel with her book-face.

"I'm so sorry, Dan," She tried to steady her trembling voice; the sound only increased Daniel's petrifying nausea.

"I hate to lead you around like that, but…I just wanted to make sure nobody else would see…Nobody but you…"

"See what?" Daniel found his own voice quivering, as well. "Emma, what's wrong?"

"I'm gonna tell you," She breathed. "I'm gonna tell you everything, Dan. I trust you. Just…Just be ready, okay?" She stopped for a moment, and Daniel heard nothing but her soft, stuttering breaths.

"…Are you ready?"

"I'm ready, Emma," He whispered.

She lowered her textbook slowly, and Daniel saw her face. Her right eye imprisoned tears. Her left eye was shut and blackened, like a crater where an asteroid had landed.

Daniel was frigid; he didn't move, he didn't think, and he barely breathed. He couldn't imagine staring at a more frightening, more hellish sight, or that one existed anywhere on Turo.

Emma proved him wrong with a single sentence.

"My Dad has one, too,"

Daniel held his arms out, and Emma walked into them.

"Who did this to you?" He asked in a whisper as they embraced. He felt like he already knew.

"Shelby...My dad's ex-wife,"

He was right. He found it both curious and haunting that she didn't use "mom."

"She stopped living with us ages ago," Emma said through disconsolate sniffs. "When I was too young to remember...I don't know much about what she was like before she left, but from what I can guess...She probably thought she was being progressive by marrying my Dad, but...Raising a child and looking after a grown man with quaitzism...She got too stressed, and the only way she could deal with it was with...substances…" She let out a shivering breath. Daniel held her tighter.

"The earliest memory I have of her is hearing her shout, 'You can do it your fucking self', and slamming the door…"

Daniel was suddenly transported back to his bedroom.

….Idiot…..Tomorrow….

...Seriously…..Shit…

…..Hate…...Can't….

When he escaped, Emma was already talking again.

"-still has her key...Sometimes she comes after a few months...Sometimes it's weeks...If she feels really shitty, only a few days will go by...I don't know what she does...But she just uses us as an outlet for her own stupid problems...Last night, she got on top of my Dad, and I...I hit her in the face, as hard as I could...Then she hit me harder…"

She buried her face in Daniel's shoulder, and let the tears come.

Daniel said nothing for what felt like years, waiting until Emma's sobbing grew quieter. When it did, he spoke.

"My mom used to hit me, too,"

At this, Emma looked up at him, her face blackened, dampened, and glowing with a ray of tragic relief.

Daniel's vision was muddled by tears, but he felt like he was looking in a mirror.

His and Emma's foreheads touched, and they wept together. Daniel thought about suggesting a trip to the nurse's office, and he would, but not yet. He would wait until they were finished first.

Even if night came before then, he would wait.

XIX

Lilo thought again of the girl from her school, imagining a black eye behind her glasses. She felt nothing; the face still like a mannequin, but now with a black paint spill on it. Then she looked down at Emma's laughing face again, and shifted the paint spill there (and inadvertently onto Angel's face, as well). Now she felt like crying.

"I gave someone a black eye once," She confessed. "I don't remember her name, but she used to push me around a lot, so much that one day I just...Lashed out,"

"You hit her because she bullied you," 627 said. "You might not think it's completely right, but it makes sense, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," Lilo nodded. "Yeah, it does...But what Emma's mom did…"

"It doesn't make sense at all…" 627 said softly. "It's almost stupid," This he said with a nearly animalistic growl, giving Lilo a short but sickening jolt. 627 sighed deeply, and then continued his story.

"It was even worse the next day, because Emma didn't show up at all...I didn't expect that Shelby would strike again so soon, so I feared the worst. And so did Allen…"

XX

"34 Vyxy Circle, right?" Allen asked.

"Right," Daniel responded.

He had been gazing out the passenger window at the ring of cubical houses that interrupted the purple field. A hoverrail track passed behind it, but otherwise, Vyxy Circle was like an oasis in a sea of purple grass.

Daniel spared a moment to turn and look at Allen; beads of sweat shined on his furry forehead. Daniel felt an oasis of hope in his panic; in a world where someone could show such devoted unconditional hatred for their family, at least there was somebody who could feel genuine care and concern for innocent strangers.

The pod descended into the ring of houses, which were connected by a maze-like system of stone paths that cut through the grass. The first one Daniel and Allen saw was number 14. The wait for number 34 was like a wait for the dentist; eternal and all for an excruciating necessity.

The 34th house was nearly identical to all the others, save for the number shown in green letters on a wide screen above the door.

Daniel exited the pod, with Allen following close behind, and knew it was time to approach the Wiens' house. His feet, however, were welded to the stone ground. For all he knew, Shelby could still be in there, keeping her former husband and daughter locked up in the basement, and ready to throw him in there, too.

Or she could be bathing in their blood.

Or feasting on their severed limbs.

Or-

"It's okay…" He felt Allen take hold of his hand. Daniel squeezed, and Allen squeezed, too, exactly as hard as he did.

"I'm here with you. I won't let anything happen to you or your friends,"

Daniel believed him, and though he was still scared enough to vomit, he had no problem reaching the Wiens' front door.

His and Allen's palms grew moist with sweat as they clenched together.

When they reached the door, they were both surprised that the helpful but often grating electronic voice did not announce their arrival.

"That's weird…" Allen whispered. "Bet you that bitch had it taken out, so they couldn't know she was coming…"

They both breathed, "Fuck…"

Their synchronization comforted Daniel a little, but once he reached out and knocked on the metal door as if someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door all his comfort vanished at the ensuing sound.

"Get the fuck away from us, you cunt!"

Emma's voice was clear and trenchant, even from behind a wall. Phillip's was muffled, but equally powerful.

"G-G-G-Get fugg away from us, you cont!"

"It's me, Emma," Daniel called. "It's Dan,"

He immediately heard footsteps, growing louder and louder, and like a soldier's armored boots. The door slid open, and before he could even look at her, Emma had pulled him into her arms.

"I'm so sorry," She gasped, and then her voice shattered into sobbing. "I thought it was her again…"

She squeezed him tight, and he matched her strength just as Allen had done with him.

As he consoled her, he watched Allen walk carefully past them and into the house. The place seemed unlivable; every chair and table was either on its side or upside-down, and the floor was carpeted with crumpled paper, broken frames, and shattered plates. Daniel smelled something bitter, and spotted a metal cannister in a puddle of a pale blue liquid. Allen had to hopscotch his way across the room, where Phillip sat in the corner, pulling his legs close as if the litter were closing in on him like an army of ravenous, deformed snakes.

Phillip's left eye was bandaged. Daniel did not need to pull away from Emma to see that she had one, too.

"Hey, buddy," Allen said softly, brushing away some litter with his foot to kneel down beside Phillip.

"My name's Allen. What's your name?"

"I-I-I'm Phillip Wiens," Phillip stuttered. He did not look at Allen, but he did not try to move away from him, either.

"Nice to meet you, Phillip…" Allen sat down, assuming a position nearly identical to Phillip's.

"Listen, Phillip...This isn't your fault, okay? It's not your fault. Can you say that? 'It's not my fault,'"

"I-It's not my fault," Phillip repeated.

"Exactly right, Phillip. It's not your fault,"

"It's not my fault,"

"Whose fault is it?"

"...Sh-Sh-Shelby," Phillip whispered.

"Shelby's fault. That's right…" Allen gently curled an arm around Phillip. "That bitch Shelby. Can you say that, Phillip? That bitch,"

"...Th-Th-That bitch,"

"Great, Phillip,"

"That bitch," Phillip said again in his deep and innocent voice.

Daniel had to smile at Phillip and Allen. He wanted to laugh, but he didn't. He knew Emma wanted to laugh, too, but he only heard her crying beside his ear.

He cried.

Phillip cried.

A few minutes later, Allen cried, too.

XXI

Lilo had been holding 627's left hand, but she wasn't sure if he noticed.

He stopped talking for about a minute, during which he kept his gaze focused on the floor, as if he were looking down a hole that only he could see. Then he brought his right hand to Lilo's.

"Lilo…" He turned to her, but his gaze alternated between her eyes and the floor beneath them.

"I...What I'm about to tell you...It's something I did, but...I've only ever told Emma…"

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to." Lilo dreaded this next story like bitter medicine. She suspected it was something she needed to hear just as much as the brutal conclusion to 627's tale, which she never completely forgot was coming.

"I should tell you," 627 replied, and Lilo felt him squeeze her hands tighter.

"I've been thinking about this since my first fight with your friends...Perhaps what happened to me didn't change me. It just...unlocked something that was always inside me...And this...This was the first time it came out…"

He breathed again, and squeezed again.

"This was a little more than a week later. Emma and Phillip hadn't heard from Shelby since. I wanted to visit them by myself one weekend, so I took the hoverrail,"

XXII

The station was peaceful like an abandoned battlefield.

It was that precise hour that was too late for the early birds, and much too soon for the sleepers-in. Daniel never thought he could feel so relaxed at such a filthy place. The floor was littered with metal canisters of varying colors, and the barricade in front of him, which would hide the hoverrail's coal-colored path until the vehicle arrived, was coated in prints from at least a tenth of Turo's population. The barricade was as high as Daniel's neck, but its bottom ended with about an inch of space before the floor; Daniel could have stuck the end of his foot through it, looked down the barricade, as if down a bib, to see it protruding from the other side.

He pondered the purpose of the low opening for only a few seconds.

He exhaled and looked down at his hands, each holding a gift wrapped in sleek black paper. In his right hand, The Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe for Emma. In his left hand, a box of assorted chocolates for Phillip.

As Daniel looked at them, he thought about more than just the recipients' reactions to their presents. He thought about telling Emma that he loved her. He knew that she knew it, and even that she returned his feelings. He just wanted to say it. He thought he might be being indulgent by wanting to say it. Then he thought, who cares?

He glanced up at the enormous screen looking down at the station like a weaker sun; the time was 10:06. Less than ten minutes until the next hoverrail arrived.

He was tempted to open Emma's present and pass the time by reading. Instead, he decided to see how much of Emma's favorite poem he could remember.

"Be that word our sign of parting," He recited with a casual tone that he knew was nowhere near Poe's mind when he wrote the poem.

"Bird or fiend, I shrieked, upstarting. Get thee back into the tempest, and the...And the…" The poem had a delicious flow, like literary chocolate. That is, it would once he could recite it without pauses for recollection.
"The Night's Plutonian shore!"

He nearly continued, but then he heard a repugnant burp behind him. It was a rancid, wheezing one, as if its owner had forced it out in an attempt to quell their stomachache.

Daniel looked over his shoulder, expecting to see an obnoxious, perhaps even overweight drunkard wandering into the silent station.

He was right, save for the obesity; the drunk was skinny, and her fur was a dark shade of purple, more akin to an aged bruise than the Turonian grass. She stumbled, almost crawled into the station, clutching a metal canister in each hand.

Daniel sighed with frustration as the drunk grew closer, hoping he wouldn't have to be around her for long. When she was only a few feet from him, he got a better look at her.

He stopped breathing.

A bushy, squirrel-like tail. Round ears like butterfly wings. This wasn't just a drunk; it was a distorted reflection of Emma.

No, Daniel thought, even worse than that.

"Shelby," He whispered.

"The fuck do you want?" Shelby mumbled. Her voice was hoarse, and more belonging to some planet-devouring abomination than a mother. Daniel had only ever heard one other with a voice like that.

DANIEL ZORAN TERRANCE!

Daniel's face felt frigid as he watched Shelby swing her head back and take a long sip. When she was done, she threw the canister to join its fallen brothers, and started on the next one.

Daniel stepped away from Shelby, believing, knowing that he was going insane. He had seen the aftermath of her attacks on her own family; what monstrous things could she do to a complete stranger? I TOLD YOU TO WAIT What if she was on her way to Emma and Phillip's house right now, on the very same hoverrail that he was taking? She must be! It wouldn't take her long to deduce that they were bound for the same destination. For all Daniel knew, Shelby might kill him, and then go and kill Emma and Phillip for having the gall YOU UNGRATEFUL SHIT to make friends.

"Quit staring at me, you little shit," Shelby spat, bearing a few moments without any substances pouring down her throat.

"Your parents teach you to stare?" Another wheezing burp. "Wonder if they wish they had an abortion...Bet you a lot of people wish they had one…" This swirled into another long sip.

Daniel heard these words like an arrow sinking into his head. It wasn't even the insinuation that his mother regretted having him that he found disturbing. As a lover of literature, he was always enraptured by the words of Poe, Eliot, Shakespeare, among many others. No matter how distressing or uplifting the content, Daniel saw beauty captured and shared in every line. What Shelby had just said to him

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore. Wonder if they wish they had an abortion.

was like its own disgusting, corrupted form of poetry. The pinnacle of hideousness brought to abominable life in just two sentences.

Shelby finished her prolonged sip, letting her arm flop to her side. The canister escaped her clawed fingers, rolled across the filthy station floor like a rat released from a cage, and only stopped after entering the inch-wide gap beneath the track barricade.

"Motherfucker," Shelby grunted. She stormed toward the barricade, crawled onto her stomach, and reached into the gap.

"Shit. My fat fucking arms…" She spat.

Daniel continued staring at the struggling drunk, hypnotized by the remarkable and terrible opportunity flaunting itself in front of him. He could sneak up on Shelby and show you fear strangle her or push her eyes in or something. She th-th-that bitch would never expect it. But what if she overpowered him? She had overpowered Emma already, and Daniel knew he wasn't any stronger than her. But had Emma ever had this kind of advantage; an opponent a heap of broken images already on the ground, and with one hand in a tight gap?

He stepped forward slowly, savoring each step like a bite of an exquisite dessert. He set the presents down on the floor, showing more care to the objects than he knew Shelby had ever shown to her family.

"Fuck…" Shelby spat GET THE FUCK OVER HERE. She stood up, and then mounted the barricade like a horse.

Push her, Daniel thought, almost within arm's reach of her that bitch. Push her. Push her. Push her. I TOLD YOU TO WAIT Push her. Push her. Push her. Push her. My Dad has one too. Push her push her push her a heap of broken images push her push her push her be that word our sign of parting push her push her push her push her make her laugh at that push her push her push her PUSH HER.

Shelby slipped off of the barricade. Daniel saw her foot pop out of the gap underneath, heard a disgusting snap and a pained shriek, and then Shelby vanished entirely.

Daniel peered over the barricade, and found Shelby lying on the ash-and-canister littered track. Her left leg was bent at the knee and the ankle, both going in directions they were never meant to go.

Shelby grasped her thigh, which now led into a tree branch instead of a leg, and moaned in a high pitch that was not the same voice that had speculated about abortions.

Daniel's face was burning; he didn't know if he was glaring like a demon or grinning like a lunatic. Everything about the scene in front of him was perfect, as if some higher power wanted to comfort him that he was right for wanting Shelby that bitch dead, and so had saved him the trouble.

He glanced up at the screen again. 10:11; four minutes left.

"Help!" Shelby's withering voice brought Daniel's attention back to her.

"FFFFuck! My leg's broken! I...Please! Help me!"

Daniel looked straight down; there was just enough platform on Shelby's side that he could climb over safely, provided he landed with more grace than she did. With four minutes, it wouldn't be too difficult to climb down to the track, help Shelby up and over the barricade, and heave himself over as well before the hoverrail came.

He looked at Shelby again.

"Help me!" She growled through her teeth.

Daniel looked down again, just to make sure he could save her. He was certain that he could.

He stepped back from the barricade, keeping his eyes locked on Shelby's.

At this, her face became wide and pale; Daniel had a sickly satisfying suspicion that this was the face Emma and Phillip made at her rising hand.

"Please…" She whimpered. Tears streamed down her contemptible face, first a little, and then more and more for every second that Daniel did nothing.

"Please! Please!"

Daniel saw something in Shelby's tear-muddied eyes; something that made him believe that she realized that he was so much more than a random stranger in a station.

I will show you something different from either your shadow at morning striding behind you, or your shadow at evening rising to meet you.

Daniel's chest rumbled and his gut tingled. Shelby moaned, and he made a sound that was either a scoff or a giggle; he wasn't listening.

"Please, I...I swear I'll stop!" Shelby begged. "I'll leave them alone, I promise! Just help me, please!"

You're going to stop, alright, Daniel thought.

A deep crimson light appeared in the space beneath the barricade, casting Shelby in a hellish glow, and a digital bell chimed.

DING DONG DING DONG DONG DONG DING

Daniel looked left, and saw a small silver cube in the orange distance, growing bigger and longer at a deadly speed.

"Please! I'm sorry!" Shelby cried.

Daniel looked down at her that bitch again, his heart pounding with Christmas-like excitement. Shelby buried her face in her hands, and sobbed like a beaten child DANIEL ZORAN TERRANCE like a little girl who once, an eternity ago, thought about marrying someone with quaitzism come in under the shadow of this red rock and about how progressive she would be, how much of a saint she would be for devoting her life to helping someone in such need get the fuck away from us, you cunt only to find herself chained to him and their daughter like a slave bet you a lot of people wish they had one and the only way to forget that she had thrown her whole life away for a childish dream was to smother it in substances and to make sure that the idiot and his daughter knew that it was their fault and not hers my Dad has one too Daniel wanted to climb down and punch her, just once YOU UNGRATEFUL SHIT just to show her how happy everyone was going to be that she was dead show you fear in a handful of dust Thank you so much. I needed this. The hoverrail was only a few feet away and Shelby's crying harmonized with its mechanical whirr wonder if they wish they had an abortion. Daniel could have vomited with excitement take thy beak from out my heart and take thy form from off my door th-th-that bitch take thy beak from out my heart and take thy form from off my door my Dad has one too Take Thy Beak From Out My Heart And Take Thy Form From Off My Door Get The Fuck Away From Us You Cunt TAKE THY BEAK FROM OUT MY HEART AND TAKE THY FORM FROM OFF MY DOOR TAKE THY BEAK FROM OUT MY HEART AND TAKE THY FORM FROM OFF MY DOOR TAKE THY BEAK FROM OUT MY HEART AND TAKE THY FORM FROM OFF MY DOOR

The hoverrail collided with Shelby's head. Daniel heard a metallic thump and a bony crunch. He saw Shelby folding like crumpled paper under the hoverrail, and then never saw her again.

The vehicle slowed to a stop, the barricade sank into the platform, and there was another chime.

DONG DONG DING

The hoverrail doors slid open, and a collective six passengers disembarked. None of them looked at Daniel, and none of them knew that they had just ridden on a life-changing and life-ending hoverrail.

Daniel entered the stark white interior of the hoverrail, and sat in the nearest black-cushioned seat. The doors slid shut, and there was another chime.

DING DING DONG

The hoverrail zipped off again.

Daniel leaned back in his seat and shut his watering eyes. At first he thought this strange, draining exhaustion he felt was like having just fought a glorious battle. Then he decided it was more like the aftermath of a rapturous orgasm.

The hoverrail was out of the station now. Shelby's body was most likely little more than a heap of ashes.

Daniel's chest was still pounding, and his eyes were wet.

XXIII

"Hey, Dan," Emma greeted him with a hug. Once she had pulled away, brought him inside, and shut the door, Daniel found that she no longer had a bandage over her eye; only a faint circle of black, like a tangible shadow.

"Ooh, whatcha got there?" She looked down at the presents in his hands.

"Oh, uh, just some chocolates for your Dad," Daniel said flatly. "And something else for you." He struggled not to return to the hoverrail station; the delicious excitement still pounded in his chest, and he was desperate to stop it. He had to tell Emma, but he couldn't just blurt it out, as much as he felt like he was about to.

"Emma...There's something I have to tell you,"

Emma's soft, wonderful smile faded, becoming a look of care and concern that was equally rewarding.

"Sure. What's up?"

"...We should sit down first,"

"Alright,"

Emma showed him into the living room, where not a trace of Shelby's handiwork remained. Even so, the room was strangely bare, with little more than the small couch that Daniel and Emma sat on, and a dull glass coffee table beside it. He suspected that there had been more furniture before Shelby's last visit.

Daniel sat down, breathed, and looked directly into Emma's black eyes.

"You can tell me anything, Dan…" She held both of his hands.

"I'm ready whenever you are,"

Daniel's chest pounded more vehemently as he spoke.

"Shelby's dead,"

Emma's face froze.

Daniel waited until he saw signs of breathing again before speaking further.

"I took the hoverrail here. Shelby was the only other person there. She was drunk, and she fell onto the track. I could've saved her...But I didn't…"

The words poured out of his mouth. Daniel looked into Emma's frigid face; her eyes were wide and leaking tears, but she seemed far from crying. Instead, she seemed like she had been struck violently with a club of the sweetest relief she would ever know. The tears, Daniel knew, were not for Shelby; they were for Emma and her father. The last tears that would ever need to be shed for them. A grand finale.

Daniel's chest still pounded. He thought his torso would burst open if he didn't puke first.

"It's just...I felt so excited while I was just standing there, doing nothing while watching her die…" He lowered his voice to a melancholic purr.

"I still feel excited...It's scary, Em. I don't know if it's right to...To see anyone die so horribly, and then feel this happy about it...I feel like-"

He never finished; Emma interrupted him with a kiss. It lasted for about ten seconds, and it was all her; Daniel's eyes were wide with surprise the whole time.

"Listen," Emma began once she pulled away. She kept hold of Daniel's hands. Her voice was stable; there would be no sobbing alongside those tears.

"You've done something great. As someone who is directly affected by it, what you've done is the kindest and most heroic thing anyone has ever done for me or my Dad. If it had been anyone else at that station, they would've saved that hideous bitch, thinking that would be the heroic thing. But you know better; you knew that it was better to let her die. You weren't scared to just stand by and let fate give her what she deserves. You have every right to feel happy about it. Don't ever let anyone tell you different…" She leaned in and kissed him again. Daniel closed his eyes this time.

"It affects me the most, and I will tell you; you did the right thing,"

Daniel looked into her eyes, into that face of such intense relief and unparalleled gratitude. He regretted that there were no painters or photographers nearby, because the face in front of him was the most beautiful sight in the universe. He knew that he may never see this sight of incredible beauty again.

His chest pounded more fiercely, and he was beginning to love it.

He leaned in and kissed Emma, getting as close to this rare and remarkable beauty as he possibly could. He felt the softness of her lips and the warmth of her arms curling over his shoulders, her fingers stroking tufts of his crimson fur.

He knew that she saw that same elusive beauty in him. His chest pounded more. God, it was wonderful.

Soon, their lips parted, but only their lips. Their eyes opened halfway, and they smiled at one another.

They kissed again, feeling sweet relief and feeling the incredible pounding in each other's chests, as if there were a drummer inside each of them playing exciting music on either side of the same drum.

They never thought about Shelby.

XXIV

Lilo looked down at the floor, imagining it as the ash-littered Turonian hoverrail track. She saw Shelby; her purple fur, her mangled leg, and her pleading face, burning with fury and melting with fear and regret that may or may not be fabricated.

Lilo felt like she was supposed to find something wrong with that image, that she should prefer seeing Shelby in a clinic or an institution than in the path of a speeding train, but even when she tried, she did not.

She looked up at 627. His eyes were shut. Lilo knew he must be imagining being in Emma's arms. She wondered how many times he had sat in this bed, wanting, needing Emma's embrace.

"Emma's mom…" Lilo began.

627's eyes opened, staring straight ahead, as if disappointed after an abrupt awakening from a marvelous dream.

"Shelby…" Lilo corrected. "Reminds me of someone Chopsuey told me about. She was called-"

"Pig," They both said simultaneously.

"Yes, I know all about her," 627 looked at her, his eyes darkening as they did just before his traditional lunge towards Stitch or Angel or any of Lilo's extraterrestrial ohana.

"I even saw her a few times before she died...It's strange...She always looked angry, as if what happened to her was somebody else's fault. As if what she did was something completely normal, something she shouldn't have been punished for…"

Lilo tried to picture Pig's scowling, broken face in her mind. It was a stretch, since all Chopsuey had described besides the injuries he had dealt her was her yellow fur. Lilo ended up imagining a beaten, bleeding, yellow-furred twin of Shelby, who, even then, she could only imagine as a purple-furred version of Emma. Then she imagined all these grotesque features applied to Angel again, and abandoned the effort entirely with a shake of her head.

"And that was yours and Emma's secret?" She asked 627 out of genuine curiosity, but also in the hopes of forgetting all the horrible things she had accidentally imagined happening to her friend.

"Until now, yes," 627 sighed. "Let me ask you something, Lilo..." He looked into her eyes.

"What I did to Shelby, and what Chopsuey did to Pig...Do you think it was right?"

For the first time in ages, Lilo was reminded of the towering and ominous Cobra Bubbles, whose very gaze had captured all the sorrow and melancholy that had plagued her life before, and a little bit after she had found Stitch. Looking into 627's eyes as he spoke now, Lilo felt like an army of Cobras was staring down at her. Worse was her realization that, with each story told, Daniel Terrance not only grew up, but also grew closer to death. Closer to 627.

"Do you think it was wrong?" He asked when he didn't receive an answer.

"...No," Lilo answered, and she meant it. She wondered why she hadn't answered his first question. For a moment, she wished that she had.

627 stroked her smooth black hair.

"I'm sorry," He said, his ears falling behind his head, and his eyes regaining some of their former light.

"You shouldn't have to worry about these things yet...If I had it my way, you wouldn't have to worry about them at all,"

"The way I see it, I've probably worried about those things even more than most adults," Lilo replied with an accepting shrug.

"Probably...A lot of that being my fault,"

"Not all of it," Lilo reached up and stroked a furry crease at the base of 627's right ear.

"L.E.R.O.Y., Hamsterviel, Gantu. Even most of my ohana did some bad things before they turned good. And just you sitting here, talking about it, trying to make it right, means you're not the worst of them all,"

627 smiled.

"It's no wonder all those Experiments are so fond of you," He whispered.

Lilo couldn't, or rather, didn't want to think of a response to his, so instead, she looked back down at the album in her lap, and turned to the next page.

This turned out to be extraordinarily helpful. The next photo saw Emma and Daniel, who now more closely resembled the crimson assassin. They each wore an elegant blue cape that was too long to fit in the frame. Their hands were joined, their noses touched, and their smiles were brighter than Lilo imagined the orange Turonian sky was.

"What was the wedding like?" She asked.

"On Turo, we call it a unison," 627 replied. "And it was alright. All our friends came. The food was good. My mom gave me away; we would've liked Allen to have done it, but it had to be a blood guardian...Unisons are a little stupid in that regard," He muttered. "But it was cute seeing Phillip give Emma away, even though he still lived with us afterwards. Honestly, though, we couldn't wait for it to end. Couldn't wait to be alone...Just us...Just Dan and Em…" His gaze wandered down to the bed. He caressed the sheets as if they were fur, and his reminiscing smile melted back into the despondent faced that dreamed of Emma.

"Anyway…" 627 tore himself away from the bed just as Lilo was about to do so for him.

"We moved to a new neighborhood, away from anywhere that would remind us of the crappy things that happened to us. We got a house just a short walk away from both a new school and a lovely park. And everything was perfect...Absolutely perfect,"

XXV

"Keep your mouth shut," Emma said politely.

"My lips are dry," Daniel responded, keeping his eyes fixed on the pages of Poe in his outstretched hands. His feet were folded under the rolling chair that seemed misplaced in the living room. That didn't matter, though; he knew Emma wouldn't be drawing the background.

"Let me just finish sketching your mouth." The sound of her voice was followed by the equally soothing sound of pencil lead stroking paper.

"Then you can lick your lips to your heart's content…" A few more musical strokes.

"Alright, that's done. So, how'd the essays go?"

"I've got some real bright kids," Daniel replied once his lips were wet.

"This one, Andrea, did her's on Much Ado About Nothing. She saw it as a tragedy, where Beatrice and Benedick are punished by their friends for not sharing their values on love,"

"Really?" An intrigued chirp, and a few more strokes, like audible dancing.

"I thought I was the only one. Did she talk about how Benedick and Beatrice are bound to remember that they hate each other after they get married at the end?"

"As a matter of fact, she did." Daniel wanted to turn and shoot her a playful smile, but wanted more to maintain his posture for the artist.

"It was actually quite refreshing after reading so many papers gushing over how happier Benedick and Beatrice are together,"

"Well, that's just a crappy problem a lot of us here on Turo share with Earthlings," Emma spoke softly; Daniel could tell that she was making some expertly precise curves.

"Too many people love being in love more than they love each other…" A few more strokes.

"Alright, my muse; you are free once more,"

Daniel immediately hopped to his feet, stretching all the collected numbness out of his arms and legs.

"Now, let's have a look at your latest masterpiece." He set the book down on his seat, then moved to the other side of Emma's canvas, planting a kiss on her furry cheek before looking at her artwork.

Daniel marvelled at the likeness of his pensive self buried in a story. Sketches, he found, had a mysterious way of transforming even the most mundane objects into things of breathtaking beauty, and Daniel felt blessed everyday to live with somebody who excelled in creating that beauty.

He looked to his sketch self's hands, looking to see how incredible the book looked in the illustrated world. Instead, he was pictured holding up a diminutive creature; one that Daniel could only remember seeing in his own baby picture.

"Wait…" Daniel felt that wonderful pounding in his chest again, and it was deadly scared and bursting with hope.

"Is that…?"

"Yep," Emma chirped.

"You're…"

"Yep." She smiled like the burning orange sky outside, and when Daniel looked at her, he reflected her.

Emma stood up from her stool, and she and Daniel embraced. Daniel's chest pounded, Emma's chest pounded, and, faint but definitely there, they felt a third pounding between them.

XXVI

Until now, Lilo didn't think that any of 627's photos would be more heartwarming than his own baby picture. His daughter's baby photo took that cake without contest. It may have been because the infant was not pictured alone, as Daniel had been, but instead cradled in her parents' loving embrace.

The newborn Turonian had her father's fiery fur, and her mother's wing-like ears and radiant smile.

"This," 627 began, matching Lilo's warm smile. "Is Ellen Terrance,"

"Ellen," Lilo repeated, still enjoying the photo of Daniel, Emma, and Ellen.

"How'd you pick that name?"

"We named her after Allen, then an E for Emma. We mostly called her our little Ellie." He was answered with laughter.

"What's so funny?" He asked, amused himself.

"That's what we call our cousin, Elastico,"

"You call him your little Ellie?" 627 chuckled.

"Well, we don't call him little, but maybe we'll start,"

They laughed together, and then looked back down at the photo.

As 627 spoke of his Ellie, Lilo, in a strange but soothing way, was reminded of her own Ellie.

XXVII

The sound of wailing had dulled Daniel's ears.

He pulled himself up from his pillow, yawning and stretching his arms out from under the covers. He did not expect to see any light pouring in from the windows, and he was right.

He snapped his fingers, and the room was illuminated with dim light; just enough to see the relaxing blue paint of the hovering crib, like half of a giant levitating egg, at the foot of his and Emma's bed. What was less relaxing were the cries coming from the crib's occupant.

"She hungry again?" Emma mumbled beside him, performing the same begrudging waking rituals he had just done.

"Yeah," Daniel replied, his voice hoarse with the prelude of another yawn.

"I'll get her,"

"No, it's okay, I can get her." Emma pulled her legs out from under the covers.

"You got her last time." Daniel stopped her with a gentle hand on hers and a nuzzle of her cheek.

"Let me do it,"

Emma pulled herself back into bed and sat up.

Daniel got to his feet, fighting to keep his eyes open as he walked to the crib. Once he peered in at its crying, crimson-furred inhabitant, though, that fight became much easier.

"There, there, my little Ellie." Daniel reached in with both hands. Ellen weighed as much as a thick book, but Daniel held her as if she were porcelain.

"Just let it all out,"

He held her against his shoulder, patting her back as he returned to bed. He passed the weeping Ellen to Emma as delicately as a cake topped with a flurry of joyously burning candles.

"It's okay, Ellie." Emma held her to her chest, and the crying became replaced by a much softer sucking sound.

"There you go. Don't you worry. Mommy and Daddy are here. Mommy and Daddy will always be here,"

Emma stroked Ellen's head as she fed, and Daniel held one of her diminutive hands, gliding his thumb through her fiery fur.

Daniel looked at Emma, who smiled upon Ellen with happiness that must have seemed like a foolish dream to her long ago. Once, perhaps even longer ago, it had been his foolish dream, too.

They leaned down in unison, each planting a kiss on their daughter's head. There they stayed, amazed that their foolish dream was sitting beside them, and drifting to sleep in their arms.

XXVIII

"Ellie was born on the fortieth day of the third quarter," 627 said with the enchanting softness of a storybook reader.

Lilo smiled, hoping 627 would see that what he had said, while both interesting and pleasant, was also confusing.

"Sorry," He said. "I forgot; you've got your twelve months instead of our four quarters. Should've remembered that, considering Poe. In the bleak December,"

"When's your birthday?" Lilo asked, as if to forgive his forgetfulness.

"The seventh day of the second quarter," 627 answered.

Lilo immediately regretted ever asking, because once the question had left her lips, she already expected and feared the assassin returning it to her.

"When's your birthday?"

Lilo almost lied. She almost said December or April or August, but they never reached her tongue. Then she thought, after Daniel had just divulged all of his truths to her, even one that had previously been his and Emma's secret, it would be criminal to forbid him one of her simplest truths.

Regardless, her silence was louder than if she had shouted.

"Oh, God…" 627 whispered. He made a terrified, broken face that Lilo had only seen once before; when she had shot at and berated him for hurting her ohana. He reached out to her with repentant claws, and they pulled each other into a mellow embrace.

Lilo had thought that she'd accepted her birthday's gruesome turnout, but now she realized that she had only forgotten it. She didn't cry, but she wanted to, just a little.

She felt 627's fingers glide through her hair, felt that most fatherly of affections, and felt like she was in the arms of a ghost. A ghost from long before Stitch. Even before Scrump.

Then she did cry.

"I'm sorry…" He whispered.

"It's okay…" Lilo sniffed. She thought about pulling away, but didn't. She buried her chin in 627's shoulder, her fingers tracing tufts of his crimson fur.

"Do you...Do you have any more stories?" She asked, knowing there was at least one horrifying one left.

"A few more," 627 said. "I'm nearly done...Nearly done…"

XXIX

"Right there,"

"Ouch." Daniel rubbed the spot on the back of his neck where Private Carley had just pinched him. He felt light-headed, and was tempted to lay back and sleep on the purple grass.

"A little harder and you'd be having the best sleep you've ever had," Carley declared.

"Hey, don't you be hurting my son too much, alright?" Daniel's mother reached over Allen's lap to point a joking finger at her.

"Relax, Lyd," Allen said, scratching behind one of her long ears.

"She knows what she's doing. She's been trained and everything,"

"And I'm, as Allen puts it, a grown-ass man," Daniel added.

"I know," Lydia replied, her voice softening.

"But you're still my boy,"

Daniel turned away from his mother, still, after all this time, finding it strange to look at her and feel warm instead of excruciating cold.

He looked out at the playground, identical in every way to the one from his, Carley, and Sammy's childhood, only the swingset, the slide, and the monkey bars were placed differently. It also had a teeter-totter.

Phillip, with Emma in his lap, and Ellen in hers, cheered as they all slid down the dark blue slide. Nearby, Sammy held Rowan up in a tight hug, letting him grasp each monkey bar.

The boy had bright green fur, like a luscious forest. He had a small black nose, tall ears atop his head, two fins between them, and bright blue eyes. He didn't resemble either of his mothers in any way. Of course, Daniel knew neither Sammy or Carley was his true mother, but it felt like it. That was good enough for Rowan, who laughed as Sammy spun him around and hugged him close, and that was all that mattered.

"So that's the kind of stuff they have you doing?" Daniel turned back to Carley.

"Close-quarters stuff like that, and also marksmanship," She answered. "Shooting. Honestly, though, that's taken up almost all of our training since Hamsterviel's creatures started their big crusade,"

"Hm…" Daniel nodded. "And, uh...How long do they want you out there for?"

She didn't answer right away; she rolled her head back and looked at the orange sky. She looked as if she could see millions of miles into space, and all the carnage being wrought by these strange creatures that Daniel shuddered to think of. He wondered, if it frightened him to imagine them, what kind of terror was in Carley's mind, knowing she would have to face them soon.

"As long as it takes," She finally said, tearing herself away from the sky and back to her old friend.

"They keep telling us; every family in the Federation needs your service more than one family needs your presence," This came from Carley's mouth like drool; something that had been hammered into her head despite all of her disbelief in it.

"Just...Be safe, alright?" Daniel rested a hand on her shoulder.

"It doesn't matter how long you're gone. Just come back. Alright?"

"That's the idea." Carley pulled him close with one arm.

"Just...Promise me you and Em will an eye on Sam and Rowie while I'm gone, will you?" She spoke quietly, not with the voice of a loyal soldier of the Galactic Federation, but that of the little girl who had battled the red-furred tickle monster with nothing but a finger blaster.

"Two eyes," Daniel replied. "It's the least I can do for you guys, after all you did for me when we were little,"

Sammy let out a single weak chuckle.

"I just hope I can be at least half as tough as you were,"

Daniel held her for a while. He felt her fingers grasp a tuft of his fur, as if she would be dragged off by the military to her next assignment the instant she let go.

"Why don't you go play with them?" He suggested, nodding towards Sammy, who was now spinning Rowan around like a cape on the violet grass.

"Satiate their appetite,"

Carley sighed and looked out at her laughing family. She smiled, and yet seemed crushingly mournful.

"I think I will."

She got to her feet, playfully leaning on the rounded top of Daniel's head, and then raced to where Sammy and Rowan's spin had landed them. She scooped their son up from the grass and swung him up and down like a toy spaceship, spitting thruster noises over his laughter.

Watching them, Daniel felt overcome with an aching need, as if he would be accompanying Carley on her perilous mission against Dr. Jacques Hamsterviel's creatures. He leaped to his feet and ran to the bottom of the slide, where Ellen, Emma, and Phillip were just finishing another ride.

"Daddy," Ellen said, not as a greeting, but as if to state the fact of his presence. To Daniel, she might have been saying, "I love you."

Daniel picked her up and set her on his shoulders.

"Were you sliding with Mommy and Grandpa Phil?" He wobbled from foot to foot, keeping a tight but gentle hold on his daughter's legs.

"Yes Daddy," Ellen said in one mundane breath, but it rang with a delighted hum that tickled Daniel as much as any other child's laughter would.

He looked back to the slide, and saw Phillip struggling to lift Emma up from under her arms.

"Daddy," She laughed. "I'm too heavy to sit on your shoulders now,"

"No, Emma's too old for that now," Phillip replied, as if he wasn't the one trying to pick his daughter up.

He released Emma, and she pulled him up into a huh, which she invited Daniel and Emma into, as well. She then reached up for her daughter, shifting her so she sat on both Daniel's left shoulder and her right shoulder.

"Ellie, I think you have the two best Daddies in the whole universe," She said, and then kissed Phillip on the cheek and Daniel, for longer, on the lips.

"Daddy and Grandpa Phil," Ellen stated.

Emma brought her down and she, Daniel, and Phillip each kissed her on a cheek. (Phillip seemed to only tap her face with a shut mouth.)

With each kiss, Ellen made a distant but irresistibly warming smile. It was not a smile that any of her classmates had, nor was it a smile that Daniel would trade for any other child on Turo.

Daniel turned to look at Carley again, and found her playfully sandwiching Rowan in a hug between herself and Sammy, in which their noses rubbed intimately against one another.

Daniel turned to his mother and Allen, both still sitting on the violet grass, each with an arm around the other.

His mother was smiling, but her eyes seemed mismatched to it, not unlike Carley's had been only a minute ago. They watched the new generation of Terrances together, overjoyed at the sight. They also longed for it, like a novice painter disheartened by another student's superior artwork.

For a moment, Daniel was hypnotized by those eyes that he had once been too terrified to even look at.

Had Shelby's eyes been the same on the hoverrail track?

Daniel turned away from his mother before he could remember.

XXX

The last few pages were coated with photos of an adult Daniel and his family and friends, always caught in a moment of unparalleled joy.

As much as Lilo loved seeing him and the others so happy after all they had been through, she felt a leaching anticipation that Daniel's next and worst misfortune was about to rear its misshapen head.

"That was the last time we saw Carley…" 627 said. He looked down at his childhood friend, immortalized as hugging her adoptive son.

"Sammy and Rowan received a transmission about three weeks later. They came to our house straight away to tell us…" He made a petrified, staring face, like when he had talked about hearing his mother's scathing shouting from the other side of his bedroom door.

"Poor little Rowie...I never imagined anyone could cry like that...It was frightening how he cried…"

He looked at the happy photos as if he was about to demonstrate how Rowan had cried. Then he reached to the album on Lilo's lap and pushed it shut with excruciating slowness. The ensuing, nearly inaudible thud met Lilo's ears like deafening thunder.

This was it.

"I…" 627 began. "I...I've never had to tell anyone about this last one. I'm not…I'm not sure that I can…"

He looked at Lilo, and she saw a look of terror that Lydia Terrance must have seen every day until the night of the green knife.

"If I told you a story…" Lilo held both of 627's hands, gliding her thumbs through their fiery fur.

"Would that help you finish yours?"

627 breathed deeply.

"I think it would,"

Lilo breathed herself. As she spoke, she reeled with the realization that this terrible memory, though never distant from her mind, had barely bothered it for a peculiarly long time.

"One day, I was waiting for my parents to pick me up from school. It was raining, even though it almost never rains where we live. I was standing under the roof, and all the other kids were already gone, but my parents still didn't come...Then I saw some police cars go by with their sirens on. I ran after them. I don't know why, but I was scared that they were going to where my parents were...And I was right. There was a car crash, and one of the cars was my parents'..."

She stopped for a moment and looked down at her's and 627's hands. She saw them shift like a mirage; the wreckage of ocean blue and sickly green occurred twice in her lap. 627's fur was the damp red light of police and ambulance sirens.

Lilo felt the wreckage squeeze her hands, and was brought back up to 627. She saw his face, and also Nani's, broken and tearful and scarcely able to utter those horrible but truthful words.

"I found out later that the guy driving the other car had been drinking," She continued.
"But for ages, I thought...I still think, actually...That the rain was a warning. That we should've looked outside and thought, let's stay inside today. Just today. And then everything would still be okay. We'd all still be together…" She trailed off, thinking she should say more, but either couldn't think of anything else, or she didn't want to.

627 released one of Lilo's hands to run his claws through her hair.

"I know…" He whispered. "It isn't fair. And no matter how many good things happen to make up for it, it will always be cruel and unfair,"

He breathed again.
"Thank you, Lilo...That was brave of you to do...I'll try to be brave, too,"

His breathing was that of both stifled tears and withheld anger. Somehow, Lilo knew that he also saw the wreckage in his lap, but also the blazing jets of the hoverrail, and was silently screaming at the similar brutality between their totally dissimilar victims.

627 spoke, and Lilo could see that each word was a battle in a memory that was going to be a war.

"We were at a memorial service for Carley and other fallen soldiers…"

XXXI

A field of hundreds of strangers, and Daniel felt like a brother to all of them.

Perhaps a quarter of them were Turonians. The rest ranged from having scales, horns, tusks, antennae, one eye, or a myriad of other unique features, but they all had the same crestfallen face.

Daniel spotted a few familiar ones in the front few rows. His mother and Allen, if not sad for Carley, who they only knew as "our son's friend", then for their grieving son and his family, and those of the otherworldly creatures who they sat with. In the front row, Sammy hugged Rowan tightly on her lap. She wept into her son's head, while he seemed depressed and bored by the whole event.

Daniel knew Rowan would rather grieve at home, where he could consider everything without anyone rambling into a loudspeaker and polluting his thoughts. Daniel could not blame him, even though he himself would be the rambler.

He felt Emma holding his left hand and Ellen holding his right. He felt their eyes on him, as well as Phillip's, as he held Ellen's other hand; warm, loving, Ellen's confused. He felt the eyes of every planet and race under the Galactic Federation, and felt them unified by something greater and worse than any government.

He remembered the eulogy which began with something about how he and Carley were childhood friends. He remembered the eulogy which he had forced himself to vomit out in front of the mirror for the last four nights. Now, as his reflection was replaced by those of the whole quadrant, the eulogy did not even enter his throat.

Daniel stepped up to the miniature microphone protruding from the ebony podium. He sighed, stopped himself from sobbing, and spoke.

"There are no words,"

His voice resounded from the speakers above him, and filled the silent air like the words of a God, but his words had given much more comfort than any God could.

"May we have a moment of silence?"

The eyes left Daniel alone, and retreated into the solitude of their owners' hanging heads.

Daniel saw the audience take the hands of members of their own species beside them. After a minute, he saw a few join hands with a stranger from another planet on their other side, Allen amongst them. More and more began to take the hands of people they might have nothing in common with aside from the agony of losing a mother, father, brother, sister, friend. Daniel even saw Rowan reach over to rest a hand on that of a red-scaled creature sitting beside him and Sammy.

Everyone looked down, but Daniel looked up. He saw the orange sky, but looked beyond it, seeing blue and black and white and red and every color he could and couldn't imagine, and all the wonderful and horrible things Carley saw in her final days. He imagined her flying up there in a spacecraft, and might have smirked at the perfect visual metaphor were he not feeling so broken. So robbed.

He saw something black emerging from the orange sky. A passing pod; somebody free of the shackles of loss, and as distant from the feeling as their pod was from the service. Daniel ignored them before he could envy them.

This, he quickly found, was not easily done. The pod was not passing over the service; it was frying toward it. Flying at it.

Daniel backed away from the podium, nearly falling over, and pulled Ellen behind him.

An enormous blaster with at least sixteen barrels sprouted from the pod's underside. The vehicle was now a nightmarish ebony dragon, and it spat green fire.

"GET DOWN!"

Daniel wrenched Emma to the right, and she instinctively shielded Phillip while Daniel protected Ellen.

They fell to the right side of the metal stage. They heard and felt the boisterous, slimy crashed and the shocked, brutalized screams, but only saw Ellen and Phillip's faces, excruciatingly confused and terrified beyond sanity.

Daniel darted to his feet, picking up his daughter and holding her against his chest like a bag of flour. While Emma helped her father up, Daniel looked out at where his united, grieving audience had once been. Between the noxious green fumes that clouded the field, he could see a wasteland of destroyed chairs, and at least a third of the otherworldly guests in similarly broken condition. Bodies were strewn about the place, and very few were still intact. Creatures of every race ran in all directions, but they were nearly always stopped by monsters Daniel couldn't quite see through the smoke. What little he could make out was a creature with towering legs that curved around the field like monstrous snakes, and another one flying over the smoke, illuminated by gold light like a malignant sun.

Daniel was deafened by cries of agony, as well as another sound that he swore was laughter.

"Come on!" He and Emma said the same thing to each other as they grasped each other's hands. They leaped down from the stage, Daniel holding Ellen, and Emma guiding her hyperventilating father by the hand. They ran to the left, hoping to get around the carnage and run far away before the monsters could spot them. Only a few more steps later, Daniel spotted his mother between two of the beasts.

"You pieces of shit!" She screamed at the one on her left; a short one with dark green fur. She seemed to be the runt of the pack, and Daniel thought she might be tackled and pinned easily. The gleefully ominous sneer on her face, however, told him that she could take, had already taken, and could easily dish out much crueller than a tackle.

"We're only civilians! Children!" Lydia spat at the monster on her right. This one was the opposite of his partner; the tallest, largest, and thickest of the lot. He could probably kill his victims just by standing on top of them. Daniel shuddered, knowing for sure that a decent number of poor creatures must have met that gruesome end in the last few minutes.

"You'll die for this!" Lydia continued shouting, and Daniel saw his mother's former self emerge for the first time in ages.

"I swear, you'll die for this!" She raised her fist and marched towards the shorter monster.

YOU UNGRATEFUL SHIT!

The monster caught Lydia's arm and silenced her with a firm backhand. Blood flew from her face and landed only inches away from Daniel and Emma's feet.

For a moment, Daniel felt fear mixed disgustingly with seething contempt. He imagined the two monsters stalking him as a child, watching his mother hit him for the stupidest reasons, and snickering to themselves as they planned to do nothing about it until after it had stopped.

"Make a wish, bud?" The short monster asked her partner.

"Hope this one's not a dud." The bigger creature grasped Lydia's other arm with his left hand, which Daniel now saw was made of metal. He heard his mother scream at his clutch, and knew that the prosthetic must be like a vise.

The two monsters pulled on their respective limbs, and Lydia's screams became more terrifying even than those that Daniel had heard from his bedroom all those years ago.

"DANNY!"

DANIEL ZORAN TERRANCE!

Daniel looked straight ahead, and saw Allen, down on his back and an elbow on the grass.

"Lydia!"

Daniel ran for him, with Ellen and Phillip following him like shadows. He never looked at his mother again. He only heard her screaming abruptly silenced, and then Lydia Terrance became nothing more to him than a grotesque ripping noise.

"Come on, Al!" Daniel called to his father before he was even beside him.

After a single look at the running Terrances, Allen was on his feet in time to run alongside them.

They were well away from the stage, but the carnage seemed to follow them no matter how fast they ran. Before too long, they looked right and saw Sammy running just a few feet away, carrying Rowan as Daniel carried Ellen.

"Sammy! Sammy!"

They each called out to her at least once. Finally she heard them, and was about to change direction to join them. Just as she did, the flying monster of gold light appeared above her. Daniel saw that he had two long antennae snaking out from between his eyes, and they seemed to look down at Sammy and Rowan like starving vultures.

A blast of blinding light shot out of the monster's antennae and engulfed Sammy. The instant it touched her, she flung Rowan out of her arms. Daniel heard her gargle something unintelligible as she shook in a violent seizure, silhouetted in the cloud of lightning like a fresh gravestone.

If it ever starts again, you can stay with me.

The lightning vanished, and Daniel was allowed to see his friend, red and black and fuming like the ground of the service they had left behind, fall on her back, moving no more than the violet grass.

The golden monster then flew back into the sickly smog, searching for more mothers to electrocute to death.

"Rowan!" Daniel and his family ran for the child, who crawled to his mother's corpse.

"Get up, Mommy," Rowan coughed, reaching her charred right arm and pulling on it.

"Mommy, come on! We've gotta go! Mommy, get up!"

Daniel was only two feet away from the boy when he noticed a puddle a few inches away from the boy. The fact that it had not been raining was not the puddle strangest quality; that was its ability to crawl closer to Rowan.

Suddenly, the puddle had grown into a gigantic pale worm. Its cage-like jaws rained drool upon Rowan, and its icy yellow eyes glared at him with hungry contempt.

Daniel, Emma, and Allen all reached out for the child, but the worm was faster.

"MOMMY!"

Rowan's scream matched the volume of the worm's thunderous chomp.

Daniel was frozen. He clung tighter to Ellen, who clenched tufts of his fur as she wailed into his chest. The worm licked blood from its teeth. Daniel saw its icy eyes look in his direction, but somehow he knew that it was eyeing his daughter like a turkey dinner in the oven.

MOMMY!

MOMMY!

MOMMY!

He couldn't think about Rowan, or Sammy, or how he had just watched Carley's family follow her in the most wretched manner possible, or how wise Rowan had been for wanting to stay home instead of coming to the service. All he could think about was getting his own family away anywhere in the universe besides right here.

Daniel fled from the worm, Emma and Phillip and Allen right beside him. It didn't take long for him to realize that the worm, or whatever it had transformed into next, wasn't following them. Daniel thought he should be pleased to realize this, but he knew that they had only gained a new pursuer.

His suspicions were confirmed at the sight of what appeared to be a furry green snake flying in front of them. Daniel looked at its head, and where he thought he would see an open, ravenous, but instead he saw a hand.

The hand dived towards the Terrances and clutched Phillip's throat. He hacked out a gargled yelp that must have been the result of a heart attack, and was pulled onto his back.

"It's alright, Daddy! It's alright!" Emma panted as she dropped to her knees and pried at the green fingers.

"We're gonna get you up!"

Daniel looked at her as he aided her against the clamped fingers, and knew that she was not only lying, but believing it herself. Believing because it was infinitely better than the alternative.

"Emma-" Phillip heaved, his breathing distorted by both the hand pulling on his neck and his own cruel panic.

Allen moved to the elongated arm, grasped it, and smashed his elbow down upon it. To their disappointment and horror, the arm only curved to fit Allen's elbow like a long strip of rubber.

Then, as if to signify that they had run out of time to save Phillip, another malevolent creature emerged from the green smoke, running along the elastic arm like an unnaturally skilled gymnast on a tightrope. This one had pink fur, and two antennae that floated from out of her head like two loyal wolves alongside the fearsome leader of their pack.

She smiled at the Terrances. It was a smile full of loathing, and a smile that loved to loathe.

The monster leaped from her ally's arm and swung her leg in a roundhouse shared between the three adult Terrances' faces.

Daniel's arms were like tightened belts around Ellen as he skidded across the grass. He sat up the moment he stopped sliding, the shoulder he had landed on burning. The cheek that the monster's heel had struck screamed; Daniel thought the teeth inside it would erode and tumble from his lips. GET THE FUCK OVER HERE He opened his mouth, and while no teeth fell, he spat out enough blood to gain a hot, wet beard from his lips to his chest.

"DADDY!"

Emma was on her feet again, running for her father, who was being dragged into the smoke behind the pink monster.

Phillip was eaten by the green mist before Emma was even in arm's reach of the pink monster. The throbbing in Daniel's jaw encompassed his whole head, and all the screams and blasts around him were muted by Phillip's piercing scream.

Daddy's here, Emma!

Hey Daniel. This is Emma's new friend Daniel.

Time to go home. Time to go back to 34 Vyxy Circle.

"EMMAAAAAAAA!"

Emma ran for her father even after he had vanished into the green.

Daniel rushed to his feet, and he saw Allen already up, but they were both too late.

One of the pink monster's floating antennae coiled around Emma's neck, hoisting her into the air like a noose dropping a hanging prisoner into the gallows.

"Don't run off just yet!" The creature spoke with the ardent yet casual tone of a bouncer to a patron trying to skip out on their cheque.

Emma gagged and pried at the wiry antennae. She was hung so high that if the monster reached up at her, she would not even be able to prod the sole of a kicking foot.

The beast's other antennae bound Emma's legs together, then held her sideways like a rotisserie. The monster dropped to one knee, leaving the other exposed and aligned with the center of Emma's back.

Daniel looked up at Emma, and saw the same face of pleading desperation and mind-shattering fear that Shelby had shown on the hoverrail tracks. Gasping, she shouted to Daniel as loud as she could with what would be her final breath.

"Take Ellie and run!"

Daniel heeded her without another thought. He hugged Ellen even tighter, then ran without ever looking back at the smashed, folded thing that the pink monster made out of Emma's body.

Thank you so much. I needed this.

What you've done is the kindest and most heroic thing anyone has ever done for me or my Dad.

Ellie, I think you have the two best Daddies in the whole universe.

An orchestra of snapping, screaming, and crying flooded Daniel's ears.

He ran until his legs burned and then kept running. He incessantly turned his head to look for Emma and Phillip running beside him. He wept like an infant, much worse than he ever had at his mother's outbursts I TOLD YOU TO WAIT and just as painfully as Ellen did into his chest. He looked at Allen beside him, and saw him reduced to tears as well.

Something dropped from the sky and landed right in front of them. Daniel thought it was a blue boulder at first, thrown by one of the monsters in an attempt to crush him and his diminished family. His theory was helped by the way the ground shook when it landed. Then the blue boulder unfolded, and revealed itself to be another monster.

Though he was male, had blue fur, and lacked antennae, his sinister smile reflected that of Emma's murderer, and this alone chilled Daniel enough to knock him on his behind. He would have felt humiliated if he wasn't being bludgeoned with grief and groped by insanity.

"Am I really that scary?" The blue monster laughed, gleefully feigning flattery at Daniel's fall.

He was about to step closer, but Allen stepped up first and struck his jaw with the hardest punch he would ever throw.

The blue monster barely flinched.

"You stay the fuck away from them!" Allen roared. His voice was a concoction of fury, sobbing, and the extraordinary agony that encompassed his fist.

"I'll kill you, you hear me! I'll fucking kill you!"

The blue monster clutched Allen's head with two hands, and then something happened that made Daniel dart desperately to his feet and cling even tighter to Ellen. Either side of the blue monster's hips bubbled like boiling water, and five black needles emerged from each one. Then Daniel saw that they weren't needles at all; they were claws, followed by fingers, followed by entire arms that dragged themselves out of the blue monster's body and seized both of Allen's arms.

"Who's killing who?" The monster wasn't coy anymore; he looked at Allen with a face that Daniel never seen, but he had felt it before. He had felt that face when he glared at Shelby as the hoverrail pulled into the station.

That's what this all must be; Shelby getting her revenge on him for letting her die.

The blue monster pushed on Allen's chest with his foot, and pulled on his arms and head.

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water.

Daniel turned and sprinted again. He tried not to listen to the short screaming, which was silenced by an even shorter rip.

Make a wish, bud?

He still had Ellie.

We've gotta go! Mommy, get up!

He could still save Ellie.

Emma-

If he escaped with Ellie, it would be alright.

It's alright, Daddy! It's alright!

He'd never sleep again, and he may never smile again either. Ellie would cry every day, but it would be alright.

Take Ellie and run!

As long as he could hold Ellie to him every night, and take her to school every day, and feed her and take her to the park and watch her grow up and and she could watch him grow old, it would be alright.

You stay the fuck away from them!

Ellen cried into his chest.

Who's killing who?

Please let it be alright.

BLAM

Daniel's hand was soaking and burning. The pain was unbearable, but not enough to slow him down. He held Ellen tighter, his blood trickling down the back of her neck. A few more steps, and he noticed that she had released the tufts of his fur which she had been clinging to, and her contagious crying had ceased. Daniel felt her again with his wounded hand, and felt the soaking and the burning on her head as well.

Daniel dropped to his knees. His legs were light and numb, and they wanted never to run again.

He clung to his daughter, now nothing but a heavy doll. He didn't sob; he was only petrified.

Daddy.

Take Ellie and run!

Daddy.

Daniel looked up, and through the cloudy film of his own tears, he saw yet another monster. This one was a dark green, with white fur on his chest, his four three-fingered hands, and his two-toed feet, making him seem like he was wearing gloves and boots like Carley and her comrades wore. He had a mohawk of white fur curving from his head like the pointed end of a scorpion's tail. He clutched a blaster in each hand, and as he approached the site of his bloody handiwork, Daniel saw that he wore belts around his torso carrying bigger blasters than the ones he was currently wielding.

The sharpshooting monster was almost standing over Daniel, and his glare pierced him much more deeply than the pink and blue ones before had done. It was not the face of a creature who enjoyed the chaos and bloodshed around him, and it was more than the face of a creature who excelled at it. It was the face of a creature who looked down at the child he had killed, at the father and widow he had destroyed, and only saw another shift at work.

The sharpshooter looked past Daniel, and then the blue monster ran to his side, splattered with Allen's blood from his face to his feet. They spoke for a minute about Daddy how the sharpshooter had intended to shoot through the kid and hit the dad, too Take Ellie and run but the bolt stopped inside the kid's skull You stay the fuck away from them and then some other shit about how many they'd each "gotten" Who's killing who and then the blue monster looked out at whatever was going on behind Daniel with a dreamy look on his goddamn face BLAM and said something about how incredible 624 was at doing some fucking thing he wasn't listening Take Ellie and run for fuck's sake will you just get on with it already BLAM and then the sharpshooter told the blue monster to focus 626 Daddy...

"Will you just fucking kill me already?!" Daniel shouted so loud that his throat ached.

The two monsters looked down at Daniel as if they were sitting around a dinner table, rather than in the middle of a field and all of them covered in a reasonable quantity of Daniel's family's blood.

"Oh, relax, little guy," The blue monster scoffed, stepping closer to his next victim. "You'll get your turn,"

Daniel cradled Ellen. He felt her limp fingers brush his knees Daddy he wanted to look down and kiss her head, but he kept his eyes locked on the blue monster, who raised his hand in a manner that was too familiar to Daniel I'm so sorry...I'm so, so sorry...I'm so sorry Daniel kept his eyes on the bastard's smirking face, and waited for his hand to fall. He wanted his hand to fall If it ever starts again, you can stay with me he wanted it so badly I just hope I can be at least half as tough as you were he wanted it so badly This is Emma's new friend Daniel he was bursting with excitement at the thought of the hand plunging into him and taking him away from all of this Mommy and Daddy are here. Mommy and Daddy will always be here he wanted the hand so badly why the fuck wasn't it here yet-

The back of the monster's hand was like a club made of steel. Daniel's face hit the ground like he had just fallen off of a cliff YOU UNGRATEFUL SHIT his head was hollow and his face leaked so much blood that he swore part of it had fallen off Get the fuck away from us, you cunt the violet grass was turning red G-G-G-Get fugg away from us, you cont Daniel saw the two monsters' clawed feet, and saw one of the blue one's rise Hey there, Danny! I've heard so much about you he felt the blue monster's foot on his head, flattening his ear against it and prickling his skin with his claws Wonder if they wish they had an abortion Push down, Daniel thought. Please push down right now I don't care if it hurts just do it already please get on with it push down I want you to do it why the fuck won't you do it already you fucking psychopath the violet grass was turning red…

OhShItThEyVeFoUnDuScOmEoNwEhAvEtOgO

The blue monster's foot left Daniel's head Make a wish, bud there was a whirring sound like the jets of a descending pod I'll leave them alone! I promise! Just help me! Please! Daniel could only see black, but through his bleeding cheek against the ground, he could feel footsteps leaving him MOMMY Where are you going, he thought. I'm the only fucking person who wants to be killed by you, and now you don't have the goddamn time You'll get your turn Daniel thought about reaching out and grabbing the blue monster's foot and pulling it back to his head and ordering him to finish the job I'll kill you, you hear me?! I'll fucking kill you but he wasn't sure if he didn't have the energy or if he simply couldn't bear to let go of Ellie for even a moment BLAM the monster might already be long gone anyway.

MOMMY!

Daniel felt footsteps approaching him.

EMMAAAAAAAA!

He couldn't see. He couldn't hear.

Take Ellie and run!

He couldn't even feel anymore.

You stay the fuck away from them!

He hoped it would stay that way.

Daddy.

Please let it stay that way.

You'll get your turn.

The violet grass was turning red.

XXXII

"...Doctors Jumba and Hamsterviel found me and took me back to their lab…" 627 continued, his voice barely louder than a whisper, and his eyes on the floor all the while.

Lilo said nothing. She barely thought, either. She only listened; listened to everything 627 had said, and wondered now how she could ever have been frightened by the imaginary horrors her father had once told her.

"They injected me with some formulas that made me as strong as their creations…" Long pauses began to plague his storytelling.

Lilo knew he was finished, but didn't dare say a word. He wasn't looking for a response. He just needed somebody to listen.

"They also gave me some other powers and…"

This pause was the longest.

627 looked up from the floor, and stared straight ahead.

"Lilo…" He finally said. "I don't know what I did…" His voice weakened on the last word, as if he were going to clear his throat and then finish his sentence. He never did, though; that was it.

"I don't know what I did…" His voice stayed weak.

"I don't know what I did…"

Lilo put a hand on his shoulder, and in the next moment, he was holding her as tightly as he must have held Ellen.

He cried.

It was loud. It was wet. It was filled with stammering sobs and pained sniffs. It was the most terrifying and the most beautiful sound Lilo had or would ever hear. For everything it was, though, it was not a new sound, and Lilo knew, as well, that it was not one that only she and Daniel knew.

This was how Chopsuey cried as he watched the wretched inferno that consumed 501 and 502.

This was how Elastico and Felix cried shortly after they had helped beat Jumba to death.

This was how Stitch cried when Lilo showed him her parents' grave.

This was how Lilo and Nani cried as they held each other that rainy night, and for too many nights thereafter.

Lilo clutched tufts of 627's fur, and then she cried like that again.

His fur and her muumuu were stained with each other's tears.

Hit by a car, caught in an explosion, beaten to death, mutilated at a funeral; Lilo knew 627 just needed someone who had felt something like the unbearable pain that tore at him every second.

She now saw that the assassin was not only the little boy who had been hit by his mother, or the teen who had let someone die to save someone else's life, or the father who had run as far and as fast as he could for his family. In spite of all his battling and hunting and unmitigated rage, he was still the decimated man lying on the blood soaked grass, waiting for the blue monster's foot to stop his agony.

XXXIII

Ellie was gone.

Daniel knew it before he even opened his eyes.

MOMMY!

EMMAAAAAAA!

Take Ellie and Run!

You stay the fuck away from them!

BLAM

You'll get your turn.

There was a split second where Daniel's heart pounded with hope. He was going to feel the warmth of the pillow beneath his head, and Emma's arm around him. He would open his eyes, they would kiss, and they would go to the soldiers' memorial and mourn Carley. It would be painful, but it would be heaven compared to what he had just dreamed up.

He didn't feel Emma's arm. He didn't even feel the pillow. There was only cold metal.

BLAM

Daniel sat up and looked around; he was encased in glass, with enough room to fit his horizontal body and then only another inch more.

He thought about all the stories and poems he and Emma had loved reading. Hamlet lamenting the death of his father, Juliet heartbroken at Romeo's suicide, Othello grieving at his wife's murder, and, of course, Emma's favorite, Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven. The scenes zipped through his head, but somehow could not focus on their words. Now, as he sat in a cold glass cage in a dark metal room, he thought that he should say something like all those other characters and poets had said. Something raw and poignant to perhaps give some beauty to this wretched feeling, especially considering that he had just witnessed horrors a thousand times worse than any of those others had seen. Despite all this, he could only think of one word.

"Fuck,"

The word dropped from his mouth like drool. Daniel looked down at the metal floor of his cell, feeling naked without Ellen in his arms, and let the tears come. What the fuck else was there to do?

His throat ached with sobs, and his eyes burned with tears. Before long, his eyes got hotter; he assumed he was crying an amount that was unhealthy for his eyes, but why should he care? He cried longer, louder, and soon his eyes were really burning. A second later, they burst into flame, and Daniel saw nothing but crimson fire.

His crying became screaming. His eyes were scorching hot, and he knew why. The monsters had captured him, and had decided to use him to fulfill their torture fetish. Somehow, they had found a way to make his eyeballs combust upon their command. Soon they would melt like scoops of ice cream, and Daniel would be blind, fumbling around as the monsters beat him, but never killed him, at least not for a good long time.

But Daniel's eyes weren't melting. The heat was torrid, but it was constant. He never felt anything worse than that initial burst of pain. He almost stopped screaming, but then there was another pain, a much worse pain in his hips. At first he thought it was vomit bubbling in his gut before diving up his throat. No; it was something much worse; multiple things, and they were clawing their way out of either side of his waist. There was an orchestra of slimy, repugnant pops, and Daniel's screaming was reborn. The fire still blinded him, so he could not see what grotesque things had burst from his body. They felt like gigantic tumors, constantly smacking the metal floor in their own version of Daniel's screaming.

"You can control them, Mr. Terrance," A kind but authoritative voice shouted over Daniel's cries.

"WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!"

"You can control them," The voice repeated, firmer this time.

"Just concentrate on your eyes and tell the beams to stop, just as you would control any other part of your body,"

Beams? Was that what the burning was? Daniel did as he was told; he squinted as if he were trying not to cry, hoping he was not too rusty after all those rides home with his furious mother GET IN THE POD! He blinked, and saw the glass cell again. His eyes almost immediately cooled to a more reasonable warmth.

Daniel controlled his breathing and looked down at his hands. His eyes must still be readjusting after the "beams", because he was seeing triple. He closed his fists, and only one pair of hands in front of him closed.

He was not seeing triple.

"What the fuck have you done to me?" Daniel whispered, his real fists remaining clenched while the four things that had been shoved into him spasmed like the arms of an overgrown infant.

He looked up, and saw a purple-skinned creature bigger (or at least fatter) than any of the monsters. He had four eyes and wore a white lab coat, as well as something over his head that seemed like sunglasses for his four eyes. Behind him was a shorter creature resembling one of Earth's rabbits (which Daniel mainly knew from reading Watership Down in school). This one's coat was red, and he wore black boots. Daniel assumed his gloves were black, too, but his arms were behind his back. He did not wear protective glasses like his partner did; his stone glare told Daniel that he had seen much worse than a bit of bright "beams."

Then again, so had Daniel.

"My name is Dr. Jumba Jookiba," The bigger scientist began, ignoring Daniel's question.

"This is Dr. Jacques Hamsterviel-"

"Hamsterviel?!" Daniel repeated, getting to his feet.

"It was you! You two created those-Those fucking psychopaths! It's your fault that my little girl is dead!" The beams blinded him again. Good. He wanted them back.

"You killed them! You killed them all, you pieces of shit!"

"The Experiments you saw are a rogue faction!" Jumba objected. Daniel heard stifled fear in his otherwise stolid voice.

"Our cause is focused on the Federation itself! Political figures! Military commanders! Never their loved ones! The ones down on Turo are unstable! And believe me, they would kill us as mercilessly as they did your family!"

Was that so? The fat bastard may just be lying to save his own skin. Then again, he wouldn't need to do that had he just left Daniel to die as he wanted. Daniel blinked, and the beams retreated. The four new arms were still wiggling wherever they pleased. Baby steps, he supposed.

"A rogue faction?" Daniel began, his voice a low growl he did not know he was capable of. He stuck to it. It kept the four-eyed scientist's attention. The rabbit one barely budged. Baby steps, remember.

"So your abominations aren't supposed to slaughter innocent people at a memorial service?"

"Of course not," Jumba replied, his voice calming but still anxious.

"The Experiments you saw are absolutely bloodthirsty. They'll go anywhere where they can fulfill their violent fetishes, and they've been hunting us and any Experiments loyal to us just the same,"

"So why are you dragging me into it? After everything I had to watch, I was happy to have your things kill me like they killed my dear Emma and our little girl and everyone else we love…" His voice nearly broke, but he kept hold of the growl. Held it tight.

"Are you sure?" Jumba asked.

"We thought you might want a chance to put it right. The rogue Experiments antagonize us, and they've killed everyone you love and practically killed you as well. You don't think creatures like that should be allowed to keep doing what they do, do you?"

Daniel said nothing.

"You don't think there's somebody else out there like you? Somebody living happily with their family, mere hours away from having it all taken from them in the most violent manner imaginable? You don't want it to happen again, do you?"

"...No,"

"You think the rogue Experiments should be stopped, yes?"

"I think they should be eviscerated!" Daniel spat.

"They should be ripped apart! They should be drowned in their own blood! They should feel everything that they've done to Ellie and Emma and Rowie and Allen and everybody else!"

"And we've given you the power to do it!" Jumba spoke louder; his words invigorated Daniel like a skyful of beautifully macabre fireworks.

"Even more than what you've already seen! You're stronger than any of them! You have what it takes! Will you do it?"

"Yes,"

"You will?"

"Yes!"

Daniel clenched his fists, and felt them warmed by a fiery heat, like the beams in his eyes. He was not scared this time; he only held his fists up to his face, while the other four continued to wiggle at his side, and opened them. In each palm he held a sickly green flame, just like the one the monsters-the "Experiments"-had fired upon the service.

You'll get your turn.

He remembered being under the blue Experiment's foot, waiting, wanting it to crush him and end his suffering.

Thank you so much. I needed this.

This is what you get, you bastards, for killing them all.

Be that word our sign of parting.

And for not killing me.

"Oh, God, yes…"

XXXIV

Stitch felt like he was walking through a nightmare. The grey and dim design of the hallway would be gloomy enough, but the effect was worsened as he and his ohana were still reeling at the video files Hamsterviel had shown them.

Emma. Ellen. Phillip. Allen. Sammy. Rowan. Carley. Lydia. And none of the Experiments remembered any of them.

Hamsterviel had already told them why. That wasn't what scared them; they were scared by what would happen when he told 627. Daniel, Stitch corrected his thought.

Daniel's room was only a few steps away now.

Stitch squeezed Angel's hand, and felt her squeeze back. One of her antennae rested in the curve between his ear and his head. He knew that she was shaken at the sight of herself breaking Emma's neck over her knee, just as he was shaken at the sight of himself decapitating Allen. The creatures they had seen were not them; they were some strangers named 624 and 626. Yet they were identical to them, and so it was still horrifying.

Stitch and Angel looked around them, and saw hands joined all around them; Nani with Spooky, Felix with Elastico, Bonnie with Clyde, and Sparky with Chopsuey, whose other three arms carried Reuben's body. His arms and legs swung listlessly with every step.

Goddammit. Stitch kept forgetting that Reuben was dead, and he scorned himself for it every time. He could see that all the others were every bit as distraught as him and Angel. They still had one of their ohana to bury and mourn. The last thing they needed was to watch themselves returned to their former violent, rebellious, and numbered selves.

Stitch and Angel looked up at Nani. Her eyes were locked on Hamsterviel, who led the way. They could tell that she was holding in tears. They wanted to tell her that it was okay to cry now, but they restrained themselves. They knew she would when she was ready.

They only saw Hamsterviel's back. He seemed like he also wanted a hand to hold.

The Pelekais did not think he deserved it.

Finally, Hamsterviel stopped outside a door on their left. Nani, Chopsuey, Felix, and Elastico had already seen it. None of them were frightened of opening it; they had seen the security footage before the walk up, and knew that there was nothing inside but two creatures mourning their unfathomable losses.

"They're in here," Hamsterviel said, his eyes on the Pelekais' feet.

"After you,"

Nani was the first one in.

Lilo looked up from 627's tear-stained shoulder.

"Hey guys," She sniffed.

She was surprised to find 627 releasing her so willingly. She didn't look at his face again before Nani knelt down to hug her.

Neither of them thought of anything to say. They both thought it was better that way.

Lilo opened her eyes and saw her wonderful Experiments gathered in 627's bedroom, just as they had been at her birthday party. This time, though, their lovable faces were polluted by tears, and where Angel and Bonnie had once held up a pretend cake with Elastico inside, now Chopsuey held a body that Lilo knew right away was a corpse.

"Reuben…" Lilo intended to shout his name, but all she could manage was a sob.

Nani released her, and joined her in running to the late Reuben's side.

"Meega sorry, Lilo," Chopsuey, the moment after he opened his mouth, was reduced to a crying mess.

"Try to save Reuben. Try to stop L.E.R.O.Y. Could not-"

"It's okay, Chop…" Lilo reached out and ran a hand through his snowy mohawk. They both dropped to their knees, and Nani and the other Experiments joined them.

"It's okay. It's not your fault…" Her forehead was against Chopsuey's, and their tears rained upon Reuben's stiff, indifferent, sleeping face. Lilo was surprised and distraught that she could still have tears for Reuben after giving so many to her parents and to the Terrances.

She felt Nani's hand on her shoulder, Stitch's hand squeezing hers, Spooky's watery fingers through her hair, and Elastico's rubbery finger and Angel and Sparky's antennae fruitlessly wiping tears from her cheek. Her ears were filled with their mismatched and harmonizing sobs.

Happy Birthday, Lilo!

"It's okay…" Lilo whispered again. She felt warm with their arms around her.

She realized that 627 must be freezing.

"You really are a piece of shit, you know that, Jacques?" She heard him growl after they had been allowed a good few minutes to weep.

The Pelekais looked up, keeping hold of each other and taking a single step away from Reuben.

Daniel was on his feet now, and he stared down at Hamsterviel, who stayed in the doorway. They looked like two gunslingers about to have a final showdown. These, however, were not fresh gunslingers ready for a day of glorious battle. They were exhausted, beaten, out of bullets, and willing to drop dead if it meant that their standoff would just fucking end.

"That's two of my only friends that you've gotten killed now," 627 continued.

"And now it's one of Lilo's friends, too...I know you've told them what you've done to me. There's no way they'd take so long to get here otherwise…" He sighed, and when he spoke again, his growl was gone. Perhaps, the Pelekais thought, the tender voice of Daniel Terrance returned for just a moment.

"I know there's something wrong here, and I know that you know. Please. I'm so tired of it. We're all so goddamn tired of it. Just tell me everything. Tell me everything you've done so I can understand. So maybe tonight I don't cry myself to sleep, and maybe Lilo and Nani and Stitch and Angel and their family can go home without worrying about when I'm going to come for them again...Just tell me. Please,"

Hamsterviel looked at him for a while, as if he hadn't yet realized that 627 was addressing him. Finally, he raised his hanging head, and looked into his creation's eyes.

"As you wish, Daniel Zoran Terrance,"

XXXV

There was still silence outside the door.

Daniel stood up, even though he was scared.

Still silence.

Daniel took a step towards the door, even though he was scared.

Silence.

Daniel clenched his fists, even though he was scared.

Silence.

Daniel waited for his mother to burst into his room.

Silence.

Daniel wanted his mother to burst into his room.

Silence.

Just get it over with.

Footsteps.

Just get it over with.