Chapter 1: Sand

Connie should've realized it wasn't going to be a normal day at the first sentence.

"It's a surprise!"

Peridot's shrill voice called out in indignation, the subsequent protests from Connie and Steven silenced as she tossed them blindfolds. Might as well see where this was going, they thought.

"Nyehehehe." Peridot's laugh jittered in the air, as she pushed her audience towards the exhibition.

Leading the two out the front door of the house, Peridot rushed down the stairs to the beach in a flurry. Steven giggled along with her intoxicating laughter, Connie following soon after. The two had to admit, they were somewhat enjoying this.

"Hmmm, okay now! Detach your vision exacerbators!" Peridot ordered, pulling at Steven's blindfold as he laughed. He couldn't help but enjoy the few quirks Peridot still had in her vocabulary.

Removing their blindfolds with a swipe of their hands, Steven and Connie came to a pause almost immediately. Peridot stood before the two, her arms splayed out in presentation of a... contraption, embedded halfway in the sand.

It was a mess of wires and tubes, of flashing metal and rotating cogs that didn't seem like they should work, yet did anyway. The most striking feature of the device, however, was the material flowing through the numerous exposed tubes and drums.

"Sand?" Connie asked, stepping forward with her hand extended out. All at once, Peridot smacked her palm away, causing her to yelp in surprise and take a step back. "Ow! What was that for?"

"An astute observation," Peridot began, ignoring the question entirely, a grin carved onto her face. Her own hand went to the device, gripping one of the sand tubes and squeezing it tight. "It seems as if my ingenious has created a machine that is processing your normal earthly Calcium Carbonate, also known as sand."

Connie remained silent as Steven beamed at Peridot's explanation. He was always enraptured when she talked about science stuff.

"But! I can assure you that this is far more than that!" Peridot began to pace around the device, her hands wrapping around every nook and cranny she could find in it. "Steven, do you recall ever coming across a glass bauble filled with sand whilst working as a Crystal Gem?"

Steven's eyes lit up as he realized he could contribute.

"Yeah actually! The hourglass! Me and the Gems found it in this underwater place forever ago!" Steven recalled his short journey with the finicky time travel device. The memory of his alternate self disintegrating into sand replayed in his mind, making him gulp. "Why— why do you ask?"

Peridot glanced down at the machine, directing Steven's gaze towards it. He watched a shot of sand fly past in a tube before the realization dawned on him.

"It's like that?! It's a time thingy!" he exclaimed, startling Connie with his sudden outburst. Stars grew in his eyes as he stared at the device. "Peridot, you remade it!"

"Time thingy?" Connie asked, an eyebrow raised as Peridot walked around the machine again. Yet, as soon as she reached Steven, the two fell into their own world, bantering back and forth the specifics of the machine at hand. Catching the details as they flew at her, Connie quickly put together a vague image of just what she was looking at.

A. It was related to time in some way, manipulating it at that.

B. Steven had apparently dealt with something like this in the past, albeit, not to the best results.

C. Steven was really getting into his conversation with Peridot.

Connie smiled at the two, watching the conversation bounce back between one subject or another, never sticking to one for more than a few moments. Those two were a treat.

But, now for that first point.

"So what is it, exactly," she spoke up, catching their attention as she got closer. Peridot paused, shaking her head as she returned back down to Earth. Her cheeky almost embarrassed grin disappeared, replaced with a simple and calm smile.

"It's, as the Earth colloquialism goes, a time machine," Peridot explained. "The last one there is, in fact! As it turns out, the previous hourglass object was the only one Homeworld had at hand. And it was specifically brought to Earth by Rose Quartz, back when she was still Pink Diamond."

"Why'd my mom do that?" Steven asked, the sudden topic shift to his mother confusing him somewhat.

"Maybe she didn't want Homeworld to have a time machine?" Connie suggested. Peridot's face lit up.

"Exactly! It was a strategic move by Rose Quartz to cut Homeworld off from any massive technological advantage." Peridot's grin turned sly as she rubbed her chin. "Now, however, your grand and illustrious Peridot has flipped the table on those crumby diamonds!"

Steven laughed.

"Are you ready for the device's first test run?" she offered, walking to the back of the machine again. All at once, Connie's face went flat.

"Wait, first test run? You haven't tried this out before?" she asked.

"Well, of course," Peridot said with a snort, her head cocking. "I can assure you that I've more than perfected the device's design and functionality."

Now Steven's excitement fell, as Peridot dropped down behind the machine to do something.

"Uh, I'm not sure if this is safe, Peridot," he said aloud. Beside him, Connie took a step back.

"Look, if it'll make you feel any safer, we can stand at a distance." Peridot popped out from the back of the machine, her hands full with a panel bearing a thick wire hanging from it. "Will you trust me then?"

"Sure!" Steven said, his grin returning.

Connie, however, wasn't so convinced. This thing could be dangerous, she posited. Who knows what could happen if it went wrong; They could be shattered throughout time, flung into the distant past, or just erase time in general! Connie had read a lot of sci-fi books, she knew there were reasons to worry.

But…

Peridot is a genius. She had done things as crazy as this in the past and it all turned out well enough. Maybe it wasn't right to doubt her here. Maybe.

Connie decided she'd stay and keep watch, perhaps from just a couple more meters back than those two.

Connie couldn't believe she decided to stand so close to the thing. Her infallible curiosity had gotten the better of her, and she ended up joining the two in what could basically be amounted to front row seats to the time machine's maiden activation. A part of her had to admit, though, she really did want to get an up close and personal look at it in work.

That part of her was quickly regretting it.

"Successful test run number one is commencing!" Peridot cried, her hands jittering in excitement. She looked on her device from the group's obviously safe distance of a few meters, her arm hooked onto Steven as she shook.

"This is so exciting!" Steven exclaimed, turning to Connie as the machine began to hum to life. The girl nodded quickly, her lips flat. "What do you have it set to do, 'Dot?"

"Oh, I decided to go for a simple twenty-second jump." Peridot pulled a small note pad from her hair, looking over it once. Just then, the machine began to vibrate, the sand inside the tubes shuddering before stabilizing again. "It should disappear from sight, then reappear again in approximately twenty seconds."

"And if it doesn't?" Connie asked then, turning to her. Peridot snorted.

"Pfft, how should I know?" A cocky smile graced her lips as she shrugged. "I don't plan for things to fail."

Just then a tube burst, a spray of sand shooting out like a blade into the sea. The three leapt back in shock, eyes turning to Peridot almost immediately.

"I, uh, that was meant to happen," she lied through her teeth, eyes shooting down to the notepad in her hand. "Yeah, right here, stage four. Calcium Carbonate tube six will… burst open… violently."

Another tube burst then, shooting sand out to rain down on the group.

"...And tube eight," Peridot said, biting her tongue.

And then, it all went wrong.

An explosion ripped through the beach, the device shattering with a shock wave that filled the air with a tall pillar of sand. Steven summoned his shield, but it wasn't enough.

The three were blown back, the ground beneath them giving away as a crater in the beachside formed to almost swallow them up. Landing on his feet, Steven had only a moment before Peridot crashed into him, knocking both back another meter. A moment later, Connie crashed onto the ground herself, rolling to her feet.

There wasn't a moment to catch their breaths, as a new sound crashed into them, a reverberating bellow. It caught them off guard, made them stumble as they were still trying to get their ground. It wasn't the sound of the machine failing, or gears grinding against each other. It was like the very Earth itself was screaming.

Something was very very very wrong.

A deep crater of sand stood before the three, water from the ocean trickling in and pooling in the bottom. And there, the crowning horror of the sight, was a mass of convulsing light. It shook and shuddered, trembled at every breath. It was like its very existence brought it pain.

Bright pastel light poured out of the construct, churning, turning in on itself like it couldn't decide what it was in this universe, as if it could only be one thing. Voices poured out from the bellowing sound it made, whispers and screaming and cries of joy and pain, fading in and out.

"Oh my stars," Peridot whispered, a hand going to her mouth in an instant. After a moment, her other arm, free and shaking, moved to remove her long visor. "I, what, how—"

"We don't have time to question this, Peridot!" Connie called out, walking past Steven. He summoned his shield again after a split moment, eyeing the mass of light with horror and amazement.

"You're— you're right," Peridot said, shaking herself from her stupor. Connie smiled.

"Good!" she said aloud, turning back to Steven. "Let's fix this, Crystal Gems—"

Unfortunately for Connie, she had taken a step too close to the crater, the unstable sand beneath her collapsing under her weight in a moment. Slipping, her entire life flashed before her eyes, as she saw Steven react in practically slow motion.

"Connie!" he screamed, reaching out for her but just barely missing, as she rolled down into the crater. It all happened in less than a second. One moment she stood at the edge of the beach, the next she had fallen into the crater and straight into the mass of light.

With a flash, it all disappeared.

Hiya everyone! Welcome to a new short series I'll be releasing whilst I work on the edits to the early chapters of my fic, Steven Universe: Return of Cinnabar! Updates will be every Saturday, so I hope you enjoy!