Hullo, and welcome to the first chapter of Hope of Morning! Honestly, I just really liked the song and that one SUMV I saw. . don't judge.
I've honestly been dying to write a canon-divergence story that's more than just a fluffy oneshot. Since I'm not juggling any other stories, and with an uneventful winter break coming up, I have high hopes that this story will kick off and will keep on kicking.
Rated K+ because I don't intend to include many mature themes as of right now! All the angst and sadness and stuff will come later. c= Ha.
I really hope you enjoy! This story takes place at some point beyond the canonical Three Gems and a Baby.
Disclaimer: I do not own Steven Universe. That beauty belongs to Rebecca Sugar.
One could say that the southern hemisphere's rain forest was a place of controlled chaos. The stereotypical chime of endless cicadas in the leafy growth, gnats flooding any unfortunate soul bold enough to brave the elements, and the unearthly shriek of a corrupted gem monster as it barrels through the foliage with three determined figures in tow.
Wait, that wasn't natural at all.
A large brindled creature crashed through the ferns, a brown gemstone embedded into its eyeless head. Its crooked mouth was wide with panic as its pursuers quite literally flew through the mess of trampled greenery. It sent another barrage of mottled spikes whistling towards them from its lower back.
Steven promptly threw up his shield, blocking the impending spines with a hmff.
Amethyst and Pearl skirted around the shield. Amethyst thrashed her embezzled whip while Pearl summoned another spear from her gem, each taking turns to threaten its flanks with a jab or slash whenever it dared ride off-course.
Steven lagged just behind, giving occasional shouts of, "hey guys, wait up!"
Pearl furrowed her brows in consternation.
The chase had been going on for a little longer than Pearl would have favored. It was supposed to have been a moderately easy mission, as over the time since first locating the abandoned place the area was occasionally patrolled for life.
There had been reports of corrupted gem activity relative to the ancient gem ship where Steven's Centipeetle and her corrupted crewmates dwelled. For an instant they had considered the seemingly docile corruptions turning rogue, though it'd been a secretly relieving find to realize it was another type of gem.
A type of gem that was slowly being driven into the waiting hands of their trap after proving ridiculously hard to catch.
"Yo, P! It's heading off-track!" She heard Amethyst holler over the thud, thud, thud of the monster's paws. "Got it!" Pearl answered, twirling her spear in her thin white fingers before giving the tilting monster a threatening strike just inches away from its jaw. It bellowed and immediately dove back towards the centre of the path which was just coming to a rocky stop.
Hopefully, Garnet was hiding among the dense brambles there.
As soon as the bulky creature stumbled on its swollen paws past a wild array of browned bracken a familiar visor-covered face emerged, and quick as lightning she had thrust her powerful gauntlets into the creature's side.
Its cry was silenced by the intense cloud of tawny-coloured dust that caused a small tremor to rock the earth below them.
A marbled brown gem fell to Garnet's feet, rhombus-like in shape.
"Good work, Gems," the fusion congratulated as she bowed to retrieve the vulnerable gem, surrounding it in a bubble and sending it back to the Temple.
"All right!" Amethyst whooped, sprinting over to Steven who was just now climbing, or limping, rather up the rocky incline to the hollow where the gems stood. She closed in around him with a victorious bear hug. "Corruption, none, Crystal Gems, one!" She hooted triumphantly, throwing a peace sign up with her free hand before retracting from the giggling Steven.
"That corrupted gem was certainly harder to capture than we'd originally thought," Pearl dryly remarked as she put a palm to her temple in exasperation. A small smile twitched onto her lips. "We should have put more thought into the plan. The first four failed miserably."
"Hey, it's not they failed!" Steven countered cheekily. He stepped over to Pearl and gave her an innocent look. "It was just that little ol' Steven isn't quite as good at jumping over large logs and rocks as the others."
"Yeah, that huge rock that you couldn't climb over was the size of a. . well, a rock," Amethyst commented from behind. In a flash of brightness Amethyst was gone, replaced by a relatively large purple rock that had eyes looking humorously back up at the other three gems. "Like, this small. It's only up to your chest!"
"Now's no time to be shapeshifting, Amethyst," Pearl chided almost immediately, grabbing Steven by the shoulders and directing him cheerfully towards the path home. "We never know if there's going to be any more corrupted gems coming out of the forest."
Amethyst frowned, unimpressed. "Didn't we just capture the one Garnet picked up?"
"Yeah," Steven chipped in from in front of Pearl, turning give Amethyst a glance. "But remember that Centipeetle and her crew are near here? I mean, they're not. . . near, I think, but they're in the same forest! Apparently this forest is huge! It takes up like, half the continent!" He looked up at Pearl who was beaming down at him approvingly. "Right, Pearl?"
"Actually, it's only forty-eight percent of the continent," Pearl corrected knowingly, retracting her hands from Steven's shoulders as he dramatically aww'd. "Come on, Pearl, I was two percent off!"
Amethyst cackled from behind and jogged up to pace beside Steven, raising her stoutly arms behind her head and giving them a luxurious stretch. "Two percent basically means too far from the answer in Pearl's dictionary."
"Hmm," Pearl hummed from the front, picking up on the tail end of where the conversation behind her was headed. "Two percent can make a load of difference, Amethyst," Pearl sang as she stepped daintily over a large, upturned root crawling desperately out of the mulch.
"Like how you're two percent more like to-" "Umph!" "-trip over that root than you were on the way to the rendezvous."
Amethyst lifted her face from the dirt and gawked at the slim gem smiling good-naturedly down at her, before brushing a hand through her pale lavender mane and pushing it away from her eyes as she hobbled up. Steven laughed beside her before asking if she was all right, which she quickly shoo'd with a "yeah, yeah. It's just a root, dude."
Garnet was silent in front of all of them, leading the party home via the nearest warp pad, which unfortunately happened to be a way's away.
An approximate hour of sometimes chatter-filled, sometimes comfortably silent, and sometimes stopping for Steven whose legs were absolutely killing him-Pearl wasn't sure how that was possible, honestly-passed. Soon the warp pad was in their sights.
"Oh thank goodness!" Steven gasped as his feet touched down on the bed of jungle sand surrounding the old warp. "I thought we'd be walking in this jungle forever."
"That's impossible, Steven," Pearl said with a small scoff. "Like I corrected before, the jungle only takes up fo-"
"Gems, I'm going to check on something."
Pearl was cut off by Garnet, who had fixed the warp pad with a staid stare. "On what, Garnet?" She asked, strolling over with a bit of worry.
"Nothing large, I'd just like to revisit someplace. I have a hunch," the fusion stated, turning her stoic eyes, or lack thereof, to the other gem.
Pearl hummed in consideration, two fingers coming up to rest on her cheek as she regarded the two Quartzes now gawking to each other and pointing to something in the distance.
"I'll come with you, then."
"It's not necessary."
"And neither is this argument, I'm going with you," Pearl affirmed with a proud glint to her eye. "It's nothing, anyway."
Garnet's visor remained transfixed on her before she okay'd Pearl's tenacious request with a hum and a hop onto the warp pad.
"Uh, Pearl, Garnet?" Steven piped up, hope ablaze in his eyes as he stared longingly at the abandoned gem ship hidden in the nearby copse before peering back at them. "Can Amethyst and I go see Centipeetle? Please? I haven't seen her in so long and I'm wondering how she's doing with all her crew an-!"
"Yes, Steven. You may go check on her," Garnet curtly agreed, raising her right palm to stop the boy's rambling.
"Garnet?" Pearl inquired, looking up to the stoic gem before back at Steven and Amethyst.
"We'll be fine! We're only gonna take a little peek. Right, Steven?" Amethyst jibed, edging Steven's starred gut with her elbow.
"Roger!"
"In that case, please be careful and be prompt! We don't know if there's anything else. . unpleasant. . wandering around here," Pearl finally relented, sucking at her teeth before letting her bare shoulders droop with defeat. "Garnet and I will be at the Temple in a few moments."
She marched up onto the Warp Pad beside Garnet, giving Steven and Amethyst a final wave farewell and shouting a "be home before we are!" before the blue light evaporated their forms and tossed them to Garnet's desired location.
The first thing Pearl could make out was the broad outline of sky overhead dug into only by a few aged crystalline spires, complimented by the sounds of restless waves tossing and turning whispering from all directions.
"The Galaxy Warp?"
She looked to Garnet for answers, but only received a small hum of assent as the taller gem left the warp.
She watched her friend amble, in no particular direction, with her visor tilted towards the sky.
Pearl tread off of the pedestal and inspected the disabled warp pads littered across the place, pale blue eyes dark with confusion about why Garnet had wanted to warp here, of all places? They hadn't set foot here since they'd first captured Peridot.
The thought of seeing Peridot clunking around in her old metallic limb enhancers seemed almost comical now, unfitting to her loud and outgoing attitude.
They had tried sending the Shooting Star, a rare and dangerous artifact the Gems had found in the Ice Caverns, over once to demolish the ancient devices once and for all, but their calculations must have been inaccurate.
A brief once-over and the slender gem was ready to dig into what was nagging at Garnet to stay here without a word of explanation.
"What made you want to come here?" Pearl cautioned as she evenly strode over and rested a hand pensively on Garnet's elbow. For a moment, her eyes darkened with concern as she regarded the crumbling Homeworld Warp. "Did your future vision predict something happening?"
Garnet's face depicted nothing, her emotions easily hidden behind the reflective visor. Pearl grimaced slightly, but perked up when Garnet looked down at her.
"I suppose it was nothing," she shrugged nonchalantly. "You shouldn't have insisted on coming for something so minor."
Pearl clasped her delicate hands thoughtfully together as she scrutinized Garnet. Her hand was cupped around her chin.
"Oh, don't worry, Garnet! I'm sure Amethyst and Steven can make it to the Temple on their own," Pearl digressed, chipper, before seeming to register her words and narrow her eyes a bit. "But Steven gets these kinds of impulses all the time, remember? It's better to be safe than sorry." She pointed out reassuringly afterward when she was met with no reply.
She straightened her back as she made her way diligently back to the crystalline warp pad. She hopped onto the smooth slab of bright rock before turning elegantly back towards her friend, brows quirked in curiosity. Garnet hadn't moved but an inch, and was now staring up towards the expanse of unpolluted night sky dancing on above the Galaxy Warp.
"Garnet?"
This seemed to drive the fusion out of her stupor, as she promptly swept a hand across her face as she turned back to face Pearl. "Yes, coming," she acknowledged as she walked back and stood on the pad beside the thin gem.
Pearl beamed at her and willed the warp pad to life, and soon a brilliant blue light engulfed the duo as they were transported safely back within the walls of the beach house.
"Wonderful!" Pearl chirped as she hopped off of the platform and padded purposefully into the middle of the floor. "Now, we've got to make sure that Steven gets to bed early tonight because Connie is planning to come over tomorrow evening for sword training, and someone - most likely me - is going to need to clean the kitchen because it's still an absolute mess after Amethyst. . . "
Garnet, who had not moved since stepping foot upon the warp pad, only gazed after her with apparent stoicism. Now, with all eyes off of her and the only other being in her vicinity already busily swiping down the marble counters, a small frown twisted on her lips.
She remembered boring up to the distant nebulae and the faint speckling of Homeworld's ever-looming galaxy behind them. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, a calamitous thought had broke loose: a vision of a future so terrible and so tragic that her visor had subconsciously vaporized from such a raw wave of feeling.
Only when she heard Pearl's melodious humming as she opened a kitchen drawer to grab out a clean cloth did she snap out of her stupor.
The odds were one in billions upon billions. To think that it actually had a chance of occurring was utterly ridiculous.
Wasn't it?
Clack.
That's the sound those clapperboards in the film industry make when the crew cuts a scene, right? Maybe.
Woo! The first chapter's done and over with. I hope you liked it - I enjoyed writing it; I'm honestly just so pumped to push out this story. Stay tuned for the next chapter of this! It should be out soon, I hope. This chapter was fairly shorter than what will be the norm for this story, since I plan to pack much, much more into it. ;)
Au revoir!