CRYSTAL FALLS
No matter the hidden secrets, hope springs eternal.
Prologue: Old Stories
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In the old days, before Crystal Falls and before Bill Cipher ruled the Earth, Homeworld was a brutal place. Ruled by the Great Diamond Authority, Gemkind sought to remake everything in the Diamond's perfect image, wiping out all organic life on entire planets in the process. But all that changed when the youngest Diamond, Pink Diamond was given her first colony. The Planet was called Earth and she saw its beauty and its worth. And thus, Pink Diamond came to question her mission and everything it stood. She wanted to save this planet. But little did, she know, Earth was not just sought after by the Great Diamond Authority. His name was Bill Cipher and he was a dream demon. Murderous and obsessed with power, Cipher swore that the Earth would be his. And upon seeing that Pink Diamond had grown reluctant to Colonize the planet, he sensed an opportunity. He was rejected. But Cipher was crafty and the Human species of Planet Earth was corruptible. So when it came to finding followers, he had a certain persuasive ability. But as reluctant as Pink Diamond was to allow the Earth to be ravaged, she was not willing to give it to Cipher either. And when the Elder Diamonds urged her not to take the field against Cipher herself, she created a new line of Gem for the express purpose of protecting humanity from the influence of Bill Cipher.
That was my mom's line, the Rose Quartz line, gifted with healing tears and the power to make organic life grow, the Rose Quartz line was something Gemkind had never seen before and saved many lives. But Cipher was just too powerful and without the aid of the Elder Diamonds, Pink Diamond's army though they fought their hardest just wasn't strong enough. It all came to a head at the Massacre of Strawberry Fields. Thousands of demons, humans and Gems fought, thousands of humans died and thousands of Gems were shattered. They were the lucky ones. Earth now belonged to Bill and the humans that survived now lived under him. Most of them languished, but others thrived. Those who served Bill well, were given great wealth and power. They were given slaves and enormous mansions to live in. And they were given magic stronger than any, humanity had ever seen before. But there was a price. Bill would never settle for just one planet and the Earth Nobles as those who served him were now known were more than happy to share in his power. They built large powerful Starships and with Demons and other creatures at hand they went to conquer as many Planets as possible.
As the Gems who survived, some of them led were able to make it back to Homeworld. They were led by the most powerful Quartz soldier in Pink Diamond's Army, a Jasper. Others weren't so lucky. Bill knew that the Rose Quartz line was created to combat him, so her ordered the entire line shattered. All except one, my Mom. Believing the Great Diamond Authority was planning retribution against him, Bill threatened the life of one of her friends, a Renegade Pearl, our Pearl, in return for the location of Pink Diamond's Moon Base. But when the Demons he sent on the Raiding Party arrived, neither nor her Pearl were there. Some say they fled, others say they were at the Strawberry Fields Massacre in disguise and perished there. There even whispers of Pink Diamond having been at the battlefield, leaning over a fallen soldier. But all anyone knows for sure is that they never returned to Homeworld and no one ever saw them again. And then the Moon Base blew up. As for Mom, even though she'd served her purpose, Bill decided not to shatter her, but instead let her with the guilt. She, Pearl and every other Gem that was unfortunate enough to survive, but not to escape went into slavery. They were sold to Nahum Northwest, the head of one of the rising Earth Noble Families, who had served Bill well and there they stayed for 5,000 years.
The Great Diamond Authority didn't retaliate, not right away. But they were patient. And Pink Diamond's court was massacred and Pink Diamond herself was missing in action, Blue and Yellow Diamond were desperate for answers. They sent a small army of Gems to their sister's abandoned Moon Base; an Emerald, an Aquamarine, two Topazes, three Rubies, and a Sapphire. They had the bad luck of showing up during the raid. The place was filled with Demons. The Sapphire warned that they were wasting their time, but the Emerald and the Aquamarine wouldn't listen and they outranked her so….the results weren't pretty. The Emerald, the Aquamarine and the Topazes escaped but they were never the same and the Rubies were….not so lucky. Two of them were shattered quite gruesomely (the tablets go into pretty graphic detail, but I won't go into it). The other Ruby and the Sapphire managed to escape, but just barely. As they drifted into the cold vacuum of space, they hung on to each other. They hung onto to each other to so hard that fused. Their fusion was a Garnet and she wrote the Tablets on the War.
Back on Earth, the Earth Nobles were all really rich and always got what they wanted, but others weren't so lucky. Every child over the age of sixteen was expected to join the Space Force, Bill's big planet conquering brigade and very few people who joined made it back alive. And even before that, the poorer families had to struggle to survive. According to Grunkle Stan, they had to give like half their money to either the local Demonlord or the local Earth Noble family and if they didn't the Demonlord would steal their child out of bed at night or the Earth Noble Family would make them give their firstborn to serve as an Indent until the debt was repaid. By the time Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford were born, the Space Force draft age had been lowered to twelve, but they were lucky. My Great-Grandpa Philbrick was a War Hero in the Space Force like a really important one. He was almost made Earth Noble, but then a Land Mine took his left leg. His first child, my Grandpa, Shermie followed in his footsteps and was brilliant like one of the best Space Force soldiers ever. He was so great in fact, but that Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford got to stay out of the Force until they were seventeen. That was when Grandpa Shermie was killed in battle and because my Grandma was still pregnant with my dad then, Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford had to be the ones to uphold the Pines family honor. They were sent to Mars the next day. They didn't get to go home for ten years. But when they did go home, they came home as heroes. Grunkle Stan was hailed for saving a superior officer from a falling Martian Ape. Grunkle Ford had found prominence for creating an especially powerful laser. Bill was so impressed, he sent them into service for an Earth Noble family, the DeMayos and were informed that would soon be joining The DeMayo Family on a whole new planet that they were to conquer.
That planet was Homeworld. But before the DeMayos left for Homeworld, they had to attend a wedding. It was the wedding of Preston Northwest, current Lord of the Northwest Noble Family and his wife, Priscilla Pennywise. By now, my Mom and Pearl had been enslaved to them for nearly 5'000 years and they, along with a small Amethyst who had the bad luck to only come out of the ground after the War was over and became a slave as a result, were desperate to escape. Upon learning the planet that House DeMayo had been given by Bill was Homeworld, they decided to trick Preston into betting them in a Yachting contest with the heir of House DeMayo in order to return to their home planet and warn them. They were aided by a young musician in service to DeMayo family. His name was Greg Universe and he was my dad. He was the one who started the Rebellion against Bill on Homeworld.
Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford didn't know what they were getting into. They thought that signing up with House DeMayo would be easy as pie after fighting on Mars. But once they got to Homeworld, all that changed. Grunkle Ford was put to work building an invention with one of his old army buddies, Fiddleford McGucket and a Gem Slave, a Bismuth. They were told that it was a portal to evacuate any and all human soldiers back to Earth. It wasn't.
It was a bomb. But not just any bomb. This bomb could and would level entire cities. But it would do more than just kill people. It would twist them into grotesque parodies of what they were supposed to be. If that was what Bill was in the mood for. But it could shattered Gems too, or something to them. Case in point, the prototype before Ford and the others got their hands on it. Most of the Space Force got to Homeworld before the heir and his entourage did. Yellow Diamond remembered Pink Diamond's disappearance. And she'd been planning the chance to strike out against Bill for millennia. She charged out against an entire battalion of Space Force Fighters Pilots. Word is she lasted about three hours and took something like fifty Nightmare Bombs (street term for the bomb, Ford and co. were making back in the day or at least its prototype) to the Gemstone before her physical form was taken out. No one ever found her shards. The Author had made it to Homeworld by then and still fused, she tried to warn Blue Diamond about the coming Invasion. But Blue Diamond wasn't interested. Her base was invaded less than an hour later. It's said, she didn't bother to fight. She just held up her hands and told them to do it. Bill had already taken everything from her. No one found her shards either. White Diamond put up more of a fight. The battle between her and Space Force Fighters was furious. They lost so many ships, that they had to call down an entire Horde of Demons. In the end, she was beaten too. Or so they say. Again, her Shards were never found. Or at least that's the official story. Some assume she was only Poofed and that her Gemstone is somewhere on Homeworld.
My Mom says there are still Gems that hope the Diamonds will come back one day. She says it's because they need hope. Since most of Homeworld wound up enslaved and half of Gemkind was wiped up out during the early stages of the Invasion. My Dad was horrified. He'd always known that the Earth Empire was evil and prone to doing some really terrible things, but the conditions he saw there before his eyes was more than he could bear. And he continued to meet my mother and Pearl and Amethyst in private. But especially my mom. They grew really close and eventually they fell in love. So, my dad made the decision then. He was going to save Homeworld from the DeMayos and from Bill.
Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford originally didn't want to get involved in the Rebellion. They were soldiers. They followed orders. But all that changed when Grunkle Ford, Mr. McGucket and Bismuth found out what they were really building.. They weren't going to follow the orders to build that. Grunkle Stan was none the wiser, but he grew close to Steven's father, Greg and he and Grunkle Ford were always close. So, when they wanted to fight Bill, Grunkle Stan decided that he too would fight Bill. Even though he thought it was a completely stupid, suicidal and insane idea. His words, not mine.
And it wasn't just them. My Dad rallied tons of people, both Gem (with my Mom's help of course) and human to his cause. Among them was Sheena, a secretive young woman who grew close to Pearl and who eventually fell in love with. The two of them were inseparable almost as inseparable as my parents. They all grew close and became great friends and fought against Bill with all their might. Of course, there were things that they were unable to stop.
Among other things, a major part of Space Force Conquest was Terraforming Planets so Humans could live on them. They actually wound up taking out a fair two hundred miles of Homeworld and turning into a forest paradise. That became our home, Crystal Falls and most of Gemkind grew to love it. But there were other things that the Rebels couldn't change that were much more terrible and horrifying.
That included Bill finding out who they were. Like Mr. McGucket. He wanted to make a point to the Rebels. So he had Mr. McGucket's wife and his son, Tate who was nineteen years old, killed via smoke bomb. A random, but loyal Space Force Soldier was caught in the crossfire. So, the Rebels took in his twelve-year-old son, Jesus and his widowed mother, not the soldier's not the son's. He became a Medic for them. He was really good too. And he's still really good. They always called him Soos. And this was, Grunkle Ford says, a dark warning of worse things to come.
Worse things did come. McGucket went entirely insane, hijacked a spaceship, took out multiple Space Force Fighters and mysterious disappeared into the stars. All in less than a day. I couldn't make this up if I wanted to.
After that, my Mom got pregnant with me and my Dad decided that enough was enough. He sent a message to Bill to meant him at the Crystal Falls canyon to fight him one last time. It was a huge battle and loads of people, Gem and Human and even some Demons died. But they won. Unfortunately, though, Bill had one last trick up his sleeve. Mr. Ford's bomb. It wasn't complete, but it was powerful. It took less than an hour for the bomb to go off and Bill to work his "magic". Almost every human on Homeworld, save for my Dad, Mr. Stan, Mr. Ford and Soos was mutated into a mindless parody of their former selves, including Sheena and Soos' grandmother. Pearl's never really gotten over it. Neither has Soos. All of this happened on the night I was born. But still, Bill's ability to manifest on Homeworld had been stripped from him and he and what was left of the Space Force (that wasn't killed or mutated) fled back to Earth. The Gems rebuilt and founded Crystal Falls upon the Terraformed land and gave us a place to live. They developed something resembling a governing system without the Diamonds and cut down on the use of Kindergartens in favor of using shattered Gem Shards to create new ones.
Grunkle Stan created a monetary system for Homeworld. Or at least, he says he created it. Grunkle Ford says he conned it in. He also says that the story about how is "inappropriate" and he and Grunkle Stan both agree they'll me when I'm older.
My Mom says that if the Great Diamond Authority ever returns that Mr. Stan can explain exactly how he did that to them.
The Tablets actually have an entire section pertaining to this. But I skipped it. It went on forever and added nothing to the story.
For a while things were great. That is until I was seven months old and Mr. Stan and Mr. Ford and my Dad were tracking down what they hoped would be a good lead into figuring out what happened to Diamonds at the Canyon. My Dad stepped on a land mine. He didn't make it out.
Back on Earth, another tragedy was brewing. Because of Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford's roles in the Rebellion. Bill decided that he wanted our entire family dead. When my brother, Dipper and I were just a few days old, the Space Force showed up at our family home on Glass Shard Beach. My Great Grandma sent Mom and Dad out into the backyard, while Great Grandpa Philbrick let them in. He thought that was definitely going to be made Earth Noble. My parents made their way to a large Spaceship Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford had built in case the family ever needed to flee the planet. It was called the Stan-o-War. The Space Force got to them, but not before they were able to get Dipper and me aboard on a course to Homeworld. We made it there in less than a year.
The Tablets get ridiculously muddled after this. I think this is when the Author disappeared or around that time anyway.
For a while everything was perfect, but when we were five years old these creepy guys in masks broken into our house, The War Museum, and they carried my brother away. To this day, we haven't found him.
My Mom and Pearl wouldn't let me out of their sight for a year after that. They were horrified to learn that there were Space Force Soldiers on Homeworld.
After that, we weren't allowed to leave Crystal Falls, but I know that Dipper is still out there.
So do I. And we'll find him. And we'll solve all the mysteries that were left behind here in Crystal Falls. I just know we will.
There are so many mysteries here to find and we're waiting for them, searching for them.
It's gonna be the best summer ever.
A/N: Okay, here's my take on the Universe Falls AU, Crystal Falls written with Minijenn's permission. Please note that this prologue is told from the points of view of Steven, Lapis and Mabel and it should be noted that a lot of this should probably be taken with a grain of salt. You know which parts.