Episode 1: Nowhere Man

I

Stitch woke up comfortably at eleven in the morning. He thought it was the perfect time; he'd had a good lie in and it was still a reasonable time to have breakfast. He walked downstairs slowly, letting his body stretch itself awake. On the ground level, his padded feet met a soft wool carpet that almost rivaled the sands of Hawaii. Almost.

He went to the window bordered by walls of sleek, sweet-smelling wood, and looked out onto the streets of Memphis. He'd vacationed here often enough already that it felt like a second home. It felt like so much more as he imagined the King walking down these streets as a boy, oblivious to the hearts he would touch in and beyond his lifetime, including that of a wretched little space monster.

Jumba had hoped that he'd have these feelings for Turo. It was a nice planet, and nicer every year thanks to the Federation's restoration efforts, but it never felt to Stitch like the place he came from. It would always be the place that Experiment 626 came from. But all the best parts of him, if he traced back far enough, came from right here in Memphis.

What better place to have his honeymoon?

He went to the fridge, finding it, as the booking agent promised, with everything he could want. At the moment, he wanted eggs, bacon, hash browns, sausages, and potatoes. He took them from the fridge and started cooking; with four arms, he could easily mind as many dishes at once and still afford to send one hand to adjust the volume on his vintage radio.

"Wise men say,
"Only fools rush in,
"But I can't help falling in love with you."

He let the words and the scents of the budding breakfast soothe his mind as it lit up with last night's memories. His palms rang with the applause he gave Felix and Elastico as they accepted the trophy for the dancing competition. He felt the squeeze of every hug he gave to old friends, from those who'd stuck around like Victoria and Ai to those from far away like Kim and Gretchen. His eyes were warm as he remembered the tears he shed at Lilo's speech. In fairness, Lilo shed plenty at the same time, but they had both smiled all the way through it.

"Shall I stay?
"Would it be a sin,
"If I can't help falling in love with you."

And he remembered dancing as the evening came to a rapturous end. Hammerface played all of their favorite songs on his piano as Reuben and Leroy serenaded them. The memory imposed over the fog of scrambling eggs and sizzling bacon made it all seem like a dream.

"Like a river flows.
"Surely to the sea…"

But it wasn't. He grinned, knowing that it wasn't a dream, that his life truly was this wonderful.
Then, as if to dissuade any lingering doubt in his heart, he felt a nose nestle in the fur on his cheek, warm arms enveloping him, and a voice joining his.

"Darling, so it goes,
"Some things are meant to be…"

He always thought he sounded better when he sang with Angel.

"Take my life,
"Take my whole life, too,
"For I can't help falling in love with you."

II

Lilo listened to music as often as she could. In the average working day of a Galactic Federation diplomatic officer, the most free time one could expect came during ship journeys to and from important missions and meetings. She spent as many minutes as she was allowed reclining to the extent of her pilot's seat, mouthing the lyrics to her personal greatest hits.
She wondered if Stitch and Angel were listening to the same songs in Memphis.

"Sit up, Captain. We're nearly there."

Lilo sat up and stretched. "You don't have to call me Captain, Yuna."

The stoic-faced woman with bun-tied brown hair beside her cocked a sideways eyebrow at Lilo.

"Why shouldn't I?" Yuna asked. "It's a testament to all the good you've done with the Federation."

"So all the good we did before the Federation doesn't get counted?" Lilo said with a smirk.

Yuna searched for a response, then simply smiled and rolled her eyes. "It's when you say things like that when I'm glad I never had to teach you."

They exchanged glances, then burst into laughter.

"Alright, focus up, children." Kurenai said, her nimble, scarlet, white-maned frame perched like a gargoyle on the ship's console.
"We should review our mission before we arrive."

"It's simple enough," Lilo said, opening the file on the console's embedded computer screen.
"We're interviewing an applicant for the Federation's new scientific advisor."

"A Dr. Tyr Zorek," Yuna said. "He comes from the ocean planet of Nyele. Good thing we've got oxygen fields."

"He's a cute little guy." Lilo examined his photograph in the file - he looked just like the octopi she'd spotted several times on the ocean floors by the beach back home. His skin was a pale shade of purple, freckled with black dots, a few of which formed a shape like a shooting star flying straight up his forehead.
"And apparently he's invented lots of things to help out his colony. Generators that turn water into clean energy, metal suits to let them go up on land. Sounds like he could do a lot of good for people all over the galaxy."

"Should be a piece of cake, then," Yuna said. "Alright, let's suit up. We'll have a great interview with Dr. Zorek and then go out for sushi on Jupiter."

The oxygen fields were simple microchips that slid into the gloves of Lilo, Yuna, and Kurenai's navy blue Federation jumpsuit uniforms. They created a thin, invisible force field that generated enough oxygen to last them a full day. With them installed, they headed for the airlock, which quickly and gently ejected them into the depths of the ocean world of Nyele.
Lilo couldn't believe she was underwater; the ocean floor was so bright and clear that, were it not for the pressure restricting her dexterity, she might've thought the people of Nyele lived on the most beautiful landscape in the galaxy. Buildings of the most glistening shades of blue and green blended in with the surrounding coral like the strokes of a watercolor painting. Everywhere she turned, she could find little octopus people swimming to and fro, enjoying every little aspect of their submerged neighborhood.

Lilo slowed for a moment when she found a blue flower in front of her. Its stem was a sturdy wand of violet coral and its silky petals flowed into a delicate goblet shape. Lilo traced the tentacle holding it to an octopus floating amid a rainbow bed of aquatic flowers, his black eyes squinting in the best approximation of a smile he could offer. Lilo smiled back and accepted the flower; as they passed, Yuna and Kurenai accepted flowers of their own.

"Wow," Yuna said. "We need to come here for our next vacation."

Lilo let out a small chuckle.

"What?" Kurenai asked.

"I remember swimming in the sea when I was a kid," Lilo said. "I used to pretend that all the coral and seaweed and rocks were all parts of a big city and the fish were all the people who lived there."

"So it's like a dream come true," Yuna said.

"Yeah," Lilo said. She took in a breath, feeling sorely tempted to take off her suit and swim around the Nyelian village and return to her childhood.
"It really is."

III

Tyr watched as the serpentine arms of his Executor obeyed his commands flawlessly. Their metal pincers rolled the violet seaweed around the rice and cucumber into a perfect tube - a power cell for the human body, he thought. With a thought, the pincers flipped to their knife attachment, slicing the roll into tender tokens, then sliding them off the cutting board and onto the wide, circular tray. He'd prepared a small model city out of sushi.
He relished in all of his creations, even the most inconsequential ones. He savored the feeling of his brilliant Executor carrying out his mental commands with greater dexterity than his natural tentacles could ever possess. It was more than a part of him; it was the key to his best self.

He heard a buzzing noise resonate through his laboratory; his guests were in the airlock. He bid his Executor to hurry to the foyer; it floated him there within five seconds. It set the tray of sushi down in the center of the table he'd moved in earlier, then went to the door to greet his guests.
They entered cautiously, taking their first breaths of the air generated by his laboratory's oxidizers. His brain tingled warmly with the faint psychic echo of surprise as they realized that the supposedly artificial air felt as clean and fresh as what they knew on their homeworld. It doubled as they took in the sight of their host; a simple octopus kept in an ovular water tank, carried by a floating machine like a great steel squid.

"Welcome, Officers of the Galactic Federation," he announced in his and their heads. "I'm so pleased you could come to see me."

They each brought a hand to their foreheads. He knew his telepathy could not possibly harm them, but there would always be initial misgivings about hearing thoughts from the wrong head.

"Was that you?" The tall one with dark hair and skin asked.

"Yes," Tyr said. "My people are telepaths. I hope you don't mind me communicating in this way?"

"That's fine," she said. "Just unexpected. I'm Officer Lilo Pelekai, these are Officers Yuna Kamihara and Kurenai. You must be Dr. Zorek."

"And you must be tired after coming all this way. I've taken the liberty of preparing a dish you may recognize from your homeworld. Please, sit, eat, and we'll discuss all that we wish to know about one another."

As they sat down, he noticed them marveling at the towering steel walls of his laboratory. He wondered what they would think once they saw the true extent of its labyrinthine depths.

"Thank you very much for the sushi, Doctor," Officer Kamihara said after swallowing a mouthful. "It might be some of the best sushi I've ever had."

"The rice and the cucumber were grown by a farmer who lives at the edge of the city," Tyr said, "on a slope just a few meters below the shoreline. The seaweed is from a patch that grows naturally not far from there. Although we've never considered combining these ingredients in such a way; I researched you all as I'm sure you did me once the Federation organized this meeting. I thought you'd appreciate some familiarity in what I'm sure must be a decidedly unfamiliar place."

"We do," Officer Kamihara said. "Thank you."

"But it's a good kind of unfamiliar," Officer Pelekai added. "Your people have a beautiful home, and it seems it's all thanks to you."

"There is little we cannot have here," Tyr said. "If we want for anything, it is a mere matter of finding the means to create it. If we lack the resources, then we find a way to procure or produce them. If we have them, then we need only find the best way to use them. The same could be true of any place in the galaxy."

"That's why you applied for Scientific Advisor?" Officer Pelekai asked.

"I feel that I've accomplished all I can here, and it wouldn't be right to hoard my skills for the sake of only one world. I want to challenge myself to go further, to do more. I think your Federation and I could help each other; you offer me a challenge and I offer you any solution I can muster for any problem you task me with."

"We'd be lucky to have you." Officer Pelekai offered him a kind-hearted smile. "I joined the Federation because I realized long ago how many people out there need a helping hand. It means a lot to know there are people on other worlds who feel the same."

Tyr gave her the smile he thought she wanted. "I think we'll do great things together, Officer Pelekai."

He watched as the officers' smiles wavered. Their eyes fluttered as they looked down with sudden suspicion at their sushi.

"Is something wrong, officers?" He asked.

Officer Kurenai darted up from her seat, pointing an accusing yet faltering claw in Tyr's direction before collapsing over the table. Officer Kamihara promptly joined her.
Officer Pelekai rose to her feet, clutching the edge of the table as her narrowing eyes darted between Tyr and her empty plate.

"Don't worry, Officer Pelekai," he said. "I didn't poison your food. That would be uncouth for me as a host. Besides, all Federation officers are trained to detect even the faintest trace of any poison or sedative, are you not?"
He gave her the smile that he wanted to give.
"But who can resist the scent of a beautiful flower?"

IV

As soon as Yuna was awake, she pulled against her restraints. She knew that anybody who'd want to tie her and her friends to a table would be sure to use a metal too strong to be broken, but she had to try nonetheless. She wouldn't be able to look at herself in the mirror otherwise.
As she squinted through the blaring white light coming from the ceiling, her mind raced with her last memories from before the darkness took her. She tried to rationalize that there was something missing, some detail she and her friends had overlooked. In the end, she had to accept that they'd all walked into a trap.

"Are you awake already?" Zorek's voice asked in her mind's ear. "I knew that sedative wasn't potent enough yet. No matter; I've plenty more."

"Wait!" Yuna demanded, trying to sound more authoritative than afraid. "What's going on here?! What are you doing to us?!"

"Would you like me to explain the procedure now?" Zorek sounded both far too pleased and far too casual.

"The procedure?"

"It's a simple process, really. I'm going to install one of my CC chips into each of your brains."

"CC?"

"Computer Control."

Yuna felt her skin turn to ice.

"What do you mean 'computer control?'" Lilo asked. Yuna wished that she hadn't, but she knew that the Federation would want to know when they gave their report.
And they would be giving their report, she assured herself.

"Well…" Zorek's telepathic voice stuttered. "It will let me control it with a computer. I can't put it any simpler."

"Control it?" Kurenai said. "You mean… Us?!"

Zorek didn't say anything for an agonizing few seconds. "I can't tell if you're asking me a question."

"Why?!" Yuna, Lilo, and Kurenai all demanded at once.

"Why am I performing this procedure on you?" Zorek said. "It's more efficient and effective than schooling and propaganda, which all of you at the Federation seem to prefer."

"You're insane!" Kurenai shouted.

Again, Zorek said nothing for a while. Yuna couldn't tell if he was even in the room with them.

"You don't…" His voice sounded almost meek. "Have to shout."

"What is all this for?" Lilo yelled, as if to rephrase their last question.

"So I can win," Zorek said. "If I want to win, I have to play quicker and more aggressively than the rest of you, or you'll make sure I never get the chance."

"We weren't trying to beat you at anything," Yuna said. "We wanted to see if you wanted to work with us."

"And I do. We'll simply be working my way, not yours."

Yuna was spared from the blinding light as a silhouette blocked it. She blinked until her eyes could make out the image of Zorek looking down at her from behind the glass shield of his tank. She remembered thinking he looked cute in his file's photograph, like the fish she used to find at the seaside when she was a kid. She didn't think he looked cute at all now. He just looked hungry - starving, in fact.

His machine's pincers lowered into view, clutching a pen-like device with a glowing red light aiming for Yuna's forehead.

Yuna had often heard her colleagues talk about seeing their lives flash before their eyes during a brush with death. She also remembered her old friend, Taro, back in Okinawa. She remembered the video games he used to play; he would talk about levels where he got stuck, and how he would go back to earlier sections to check if he'd missed the solution somewhere else. So while Yuna appreciated the bittersweetness of revisiting meals with her grandparents, her first duel with Kurenai, and her valedictorian speech, she took the opportunity to take Taro's advice and check to see what hints she'd missed.

She recalled months training under Drill Sergeant Krennoh; a tough old war horse, literally and figuratively. She remembered every wisdom-fueled bark he gave through afternoons full of push-ups, miles-long runs, and miles-high antigravity climbs.

"When death is eyeing you for his next meal, there is no dishonorable way to get off his plate! Even if you have to fight tooth and nail to do it!"

She shot back into the present, arms bound, legs bound, and Zorek's handheld laser device in kissing distance.
Tooth and nail.
She pounced with her neck and seized the device with her teeth. With one more jerk, she cast it down to her left hand.
She missed it.
Kurenai caught it. Yuna felt hot air around her left wrist.
She halved her first wooden plank when she was four. By the time she was ten, she could halve five in a stack. On her sixteenth birthday, knowing she could do it, her friends boxed her gift in a wooden crate, knowing she'd be able to punch it open. At the Federation's Academy, Krennoh, upon noticing her strength, upgraded her to minor metals. She began collecting sheets of tin and copper that bore her knuckles' silhouette.
Knowing all this, upon the very instant her hand was free again, she punched Zorek's machine at the corner of his glass shield's border. It created the faintest of dents, only enough to stagger him for a second. But it was enough. Yuna grinned, knowing that she'd trained her whole life up until then to deal the blow that would save it.
Kurenai only needed that much time to cut the rest of their limbs free. With that, they sprinted out of the operating theater.
Yuna's knuckles burned; the pain was like every plank of wood, every sheet of metal coming out of her past to enact their revenge on her. She savored it as she ran; this pain meant life, and where there was life, there was hope.

V

Lilo couldn't tell how long the silent alarm hidden in her right glove had been beeping. She'd managed to hit it just before she lost consciousness at dinner, but she couldn't know how long ago that had been. She and her friends may have been out for half an hour to a full hour to eight or twenty-four or a hundred. But she knew they must've heard her call.
She tried to think about them heading on their way and not already captured somewhere in this sprawling steel labyrinth.

"What did he mean back there?" Kurenai asked as they sprinted through the corridors.
"About computer-controlling people and… Winning?"

"That's what we need to find out," Lilo said. "I think we've got time to do just that."

"Time until what?" Yuna asked.

"Until help comes." Lilo skidded to a halt at a turn-off that opened into a vast office filled with shelves upon shelves of metallic orbs. She noticed that each shelf bore a series of numbers.
"Let's try in here," she said as she entered. "I think these are dates; 12-30-23, 11-30-23."

"But what are they?" Yuna asked. "Anything important? Or just a weird collection of his?"

Lilo took an orb down from a shelf labeled 02-29-23. As she picked it up, she felt a tingling in her ears, as if somebody nearby were whispering. She squinted at the orb, examining its sleek texture, and the whispering grew louder.
Instinctively, she placed the orb against her forehead, and the voice spoke clearly. The sound made her skin crawl; it was her voice, but not her tone, her inflections - they were Zorek's.

"Continued from last entry. The Federation has responded to my requests; they will send Officers to interview me soon. This is an exciting development; while I already have a few Converts within the Federation, these Officers will be the first ones to possess any real notability. I can only go so far with pencil-pushers, assistants, secretaries, and recorders. If I wish to make any real progress, then I must gain control of those capable of making more significant decision, not merely augmenting those already being made. But I don't expect it to be easy; it never is. Even the entry-level desk slaves fight for their clouded minds, unaware how much they seem like drowning mariners clinging to anchors. They scream for their righteousness, desperate to keep up the curtain I tore down years ago. I hate the sound of screaming. I anticipate these Officers will scream more than most, fight harder than most to keep the curtain up. I take comfort, as I've always done, in knowing that I can stop the screaming. I can stop everyone from screaming, one by one, if I must. Each one brings me closer to a quiet universe."

"What is it, Lilo?" Yuna asked.

Lilo pulled the orb away; it was wet with beads of her sweat.

"We need to get this to the Council," she said. "They have to know-"

She suddenly found herself pinned against the floor by a metal claw. She recalled the months of her training comprised of crash simulations. Her trainers found every way imaginable of tossing her around in cramped spaces, steeling her body to withstand any kind of brutal force until she could take a crash landing like a bicycle wipeout. She couldn't bear to imagine how much more Zorek's pinning blow would've hurt had she not endured all that training.

"This is my fault," his voice echoed in her skull. "I should've known you'd be more tenacious, more desperate."

His squid-like vessel hovered in the center of the room, glaring down at Lilo as its other clawed tentacles pinned Yuna and Kurenai to the walls and ceiling.
Lilo stared back at him; somehow, it was easier to look at the little octopus creature piloting the nightmarish machine than the machine itself. He hadn't changed at all since Lilo and her friends had arrived, yet she struggled to find why the sight of him suddenly made her blood run cold.
Then it dawned on her; she remembered the late, great Pudge, Lord of the Sun and the Rain. She remembered the exciting yet terrifying skip her heart would make at the sight of him during her early morning swims. The sight of Zorek reminded her of Pudge; a fragile little thing that wrapped itself in the image of an almighty beast.

"I don't expect you to understand," he said. "You're in too deep. You've spent too long convincing yourself that you're doing the right thing, as if any of you ever solved the very same problems you collectively compound. But it's okay; we're all guilty of it. I can help you with it; you don't have to pretend that you can lift us up anymore."

That tone - that calm, reasoned tone that somehow made her burn up; she'd heard it before. She realized, in fact, that she'd heard it too many times to count.
It was the tone of the Grand Councilwoman briefing her on the importance of her next mission.
It was the tone of her sister urging her to wait for her after school.
It was the tone of her old hula teacher asking her not to be late.
It was the tone of all the guilt Lilo ever felt at hating the people she cared about, even for a single moment of weakness. Hearing Zorek use it now, she wished she could punch him.

Zorek squinted at her.

"I see…" he said. "In that case…"

Lilo's wish was promptly granted by a big red battleship crashing through the ceiling, crushing Zorek's machine beneath a torrent of jagged metal and rushing water. Lilo, Yuna, and Kurenai quickly found themselves free of Zorek's machine's claws, and used their first moment of freedom to strike buttons on their gloves to reactivate their oxygen fields.
Once she could breathe and float safely in the newly-flooded room, Lilo looked up to find a familiar blue-furred form perched on the side of the vertical ship. He was clad in an oxygen field of his own, clutched an unconscious octopus in one hand, and greeted her with the same grin she recognized from the very first day they met.

"Aloha, Lilo," Stitch said. "Busy day at work?"

VI

Stitch and Angel frowned at the metal orb, which stood out on their ship's dashboard like an oncoming meteorite from the stars beyond.

"Did you guys hear..?" Lilo asked.

They both nodded as the color fled from their faces.

"I'm sorry to interrupt your honeymoon for this."

"Hey, nobody does anything like… Whatever this Zorek creep was gonna do to you, no matter where we are," Angel said.

"This has already gone too far," Kurenai said. "If he's already got control of some people in the Federation, then we need to root them out as quickly as possible."

"It should be easy now that we've got hold of him," Yuna said.

Lilo found herself staring at the orb. She wanted to talk to Stitch and Angel, to ask them how their honeymoon was, about the sights they saw in Memphis. But the whispering wouldn't let her think of anything else.
She felt Stitch's hand on hers; suddenly, it was easy to look into his dark, warm eyes.
He didn't need to ask; he never did.

"It's not anything he said that bothers me," she said. "It was his voice. He didn't talk like how Gantu or Jacques or any of the others did. With them, they always let us know how much they hated us, so it never seemed to matter. But with Zorek… I couldn't tell if he was trying his hardest to hide how much he hated us, or if, maybe… After everything he did, he actually cared about us. In some demented way."

Stitch seemed to fall deep into thought. He searched for some time, then finally came back to Lilo with a faint smile.

"Well, we have him now," he said. "We'll tell the Council about his plans and it'll all work out."

"Yeah," Lilo said. She scooped Stitch up for a hug. "Like it always does."

She already felt lighter as their ship pierced the oxygen forcefield of the Federation Mothership's docking bay. As she disembarked, she looked forward to an evening of music and catching up with her favorite cousins. Even the thought of facing an unconscious Zorek restrained in the ship's cargo hold didn't frighten her.
It turned out that she didn't have to. As the cargo bay door whirred open, Lilo and her cousins stared agape at the befuddled octopus who looked back up at them. There were no shooting star dots, no malevolent eyes.
All he could offer them was a single blue flower.

VII

Zorek's body was a supernova of pain. The putrid green chemicals of his medi-tank couldn't heal him fast enough, certainly not after a psychic attack of such a magnitude. As agonizing as he knew his time in the cylindrical machine would be, it wouldn't be enough to keep him from the work.
He ordered his Executor outside to activate his computer and show him the security footage. He watched as his younger self unpinned the three Federation officers, letting them walk calmly outside to meet their rescuers. Another camera revealed the ship parked clumsily outside; it was the best Zorek could coax out of its pilot with mere seconds between his Executor's radar detecting it and its desired impact with his base.
He watched the officers take Leren the botanist and go. For the strain such an illusion had put him through, he would've preferred to have kept the officers, but if he wished to keep his base and his freedom, he knew he would have to make sacrifices.
He did not get a chance to see the new ship's pilot, but already, the stranger intrigued him. Zorek had already converted plenty of fighters, but none had gone to such extreme lengths to defy him. Were they truly so determined to reject him? Or were they something else - something that needn't think twice about using a crash landing to stop him?
Zorek was determined to know more. Fortunately, the officers had left behind their first ship, no doubt full of informational treasures.
He ordered the Executor to play the recovered files. The ensuing sounds were more alien than he could've ever imagined.

"He's a real nowhere man,
"Sitting in his nowhere land,
"Making all his nowhere plans for nobody…"

The thrill of new discoveries, even ones as disturbing as these noises, numbed him to the pain.

"Doesn't have a point of view,
"Knows not where he's going to…"

He wished more than ever that they could all know what it felt like. Perhaps, with this, he was a little closer.

"Isn't he a bit like you and me?"