FOREVER BREAKFAST

All three adults came in together. The early spring nipped at their heels, but the air inside the beachside house was warm and laden with the smells of cooking.

Greg unzipped his sweatshirt and tossed it onto the cushions by the front windows. Doug Maheswaran took his wife's jacket and hung it up on the hooks by the door. Priyanka raised her eyebrows at the two children standing by the kitchen island.

"I must say, Steven, this is an impressive spread," she chuckled, nodding to the newly added table. "No wonder you two needed so much prep time."

"What can I say? We're a good team!"

"This is gonna be great, mom!" Connie said. "Thanks for making the time to come and do this. It's been a little while since our families have had a meal together…"

A memory of Alexandrite and soggy breadsticks made the party all shudder for a second, but Chef Steven stepped in, his apron stained with yolk, fruit juice and flour. He wiped a knife off on the fabric, using it to gesture to their breakfast.

"Take a plate and step on up!" Steven called to the grown-ups. "We've got a little something for everyone."

On the first tray, thick, golden pancakes steamed, fresh from the pan, stacked next to equally crunchy waffles and, in a slightly smaller array, fragile and pale crepes with a pair of metal tongs resting on them. A small pitcher of syrup dripped down from its spigot beside the tray. A fresh can of whipped cream shone, with a white bowel and spoon holding a deep purple blackberry compote. In a larger bowl next to that station was a chilled fruit salad; pineapples, apple and honeydew melon had been cubed, strawberries washed and quartered, with blueberries sprinkled throughout and halved cherries staining the whole container with red.

Strips of curled bacon still popped with the sheen of oil, partnered with links of turkey sausage as plump as could be, cooked to browned completion. The plate beside the meats held a fluffy frittata, potato and egg sizzled together with onion, basil and thyme, with chunks of warm feta on the inside and a sprinkling of the same cheese all over its surface. For drinks, each table setting had a glass and a mug. Two types of tea sat in the middle – the first, a freshly brewed Norfolk breakfast in a sturdy kettle, and the second, chilled and sweetened mint in a glass pitcher. Another pitcher held iced water, which had been sitting overnight with sprigs of lavender, and the last was glowing with the orange of a mango-durian cocktail.

Greg made a sound that Steven hadn't heard since he first drove the Dondai into the wash. Even the usually reserved Maheswarans looked impressed. Steven and Connie shared one of those looks, a smile that only the other could decipher.

"And you kids did all of this yourselves?" Greg asked. "Where are the three caballeros? Out saving the world again?"

"The wh– oh! The Gems! Well, they do have some things, but Amethyst will be eating with us, and Pearl will be taking tea, I think, and I actually don't know where Garnet is."

Doug stepped up and took a plate.

"I'm sure that they'll come when they're ready," he said. "For now, I know that I'm starved. Shall we?"

Each of the grown-ups took their plates, and Steven brought out his phone for pictures. True to form, the three parents more or less tried to ignore the little clicks. With candidness preserved, this was a perfect moment of peace in everyone's tumultuous life.

"Oh, Steven, by the way," Greg said, stabbing a pancake, "I called the phone company and they got all your old pictures back! You know, from the phone that Garnet burned?"

Priyanka fumbled a spoonful of fruit salad and gave Greg an incredulous look.

"She burned his phone?"

"She had to!" said Steven. "For…some reason. There was an evil monster that possessed a scroll, and I wanted to share it online, and then it broke out and took control of some waffles and tried to kill us."

"…right."

Once everyone had their food, the respective families sat intermingled, with spaces for the two possible guests to follow. Greg winked and grabbed Doug's shoulder as Steven snapped a picture of them. The other man blinked and swallowed the frittata before trying to smile for another.

"Do I, uh, do I have anything in my teeth."

"Nnnnnnope. Don't think so."

Priyanka poured herself some much-deserved tea. "Come, Steven, do you have to have that out at the table?"

"It's a modern scrapbook!" Greg interjected, slicing his way through a layered amalgam of waffle and crepe. "If we were back in the Polaroid days, wouldn't someone be taking photos for a family book too?"

"That's true," the woman sighed, pausing with a piece of melon on her fork. "I actually remember, as a little girl, when we sat outside in the summer, and my uncle had a camera like that. He was a lot like you, Steven. Just please, don't post these online."

"Of course!"

As much as he admired all the work that had been done, he couldn't wait to dig in himself. The time that he and Connie had spent in the kitchen was partially an exercise in temptation, and it had been worth it to see the finished product, and worth it more to take a little bit of everything. As he munched, Connie took his phone and scrolled all the way to the beginning.

There were so many pictures before she was in his life, a little glimpse into the boy next to her. The beach, the sunrise, his father – the little domesticities were just what she expected. Connie grinned at the old images of the Gems staring at the lens (mostly Pearl, at least in terms of incredulity) and smiling with Steven. Her fingers scrolled, then paused.

"Hm."

"Mhmpg?"

"Steven?" Connie lifted the phone up to Steven. "Is that the scroll that you were talking about?"

Steven's head whipped around, and he swallowed without tasting. That was definitely the scroll, with its deep purple, the psychedelic hands, eyes and sigils scrawled on its surface. Connie saw the panic in Steven's face and held the phone at arm's length like it was going to jump out and attack her. Steven grabbed it from her hands, juggling it like a hot potato before – much to the surprise of the three adults – tossing it as far away from them as possible, towards the hard surface of the house's warp pad.

Garnet moved her hand about three inches to her left to snag the device out of the air. Steven breathed a sigh of relief.

"Hello, everyone!" she said, her enigmatic smile fading as she glanced at the phone. "Sorry, Steven. You know how it is."

"Now hold on!" Priyanka gestured with her fork as non-threateningly as she could in the Gem's direction. "Is there some way to resolve this without property damage?"

"Unfortunately not. The volatility of this particular corruption means that at any moment it could sense the moment of escape, and –"

The phone hissed suddenly in her hand, electrical smoke pouring from its case. Garnet raised her hands to bubble it, but no sooner had she lifted them that the screen billowed and burst forth with a horrid screech. Steven jumped back from the table with his shield already out, with Connie running right behind him.

But the smoke cloud doubled back, dodging Garnet's grasp and going towards the door behind the warp pad to the inside of the Temple. With a squeeze, it slipped between the crack and into the halls behind; where it was now, nobody could know.

The door to the temple cracked into blueness, and slid open as Pearl and Amethyst strode out giggling to themselves. They stopped as soon as they saw the crowd gathered around.

"Um…"

Priyanka pointed accusingly at the door.

"Where did the smoke go?" she demanded. "Did you see it?"

"The what?" Amethyst said.

"The smoke! It was just there where you came from!"

"I'm sorry, the…smoke?" Pearl asked, looking to Garnet for some guidance.

Garnet adjusted her visor. "The one trapped inside the Cursed Scroll. It's in the temple, so all we have to do is herd it to the Burning Room."

"The WHAT."

Pearl hurried over to the concerned Priyanka as Amethyst strode in her wake, tying her hair back like she was about to spar. Steven looked over to Connie apologetically. Apparently, their peaceful family plan had hit a snag.

"It's much more of a nickname, really," Pearl explained, "just a place where we keep the corrupted Gems and Gem shards, for safety. It's a perfectly safe storage facility, much safer than anything outside of the temple."

Priyanka let out a breath, but still appeared unconvinced.

"Greg." She turned to the man, with half a strip of bacon frozen on the edge of his lip. "Did you know anything about this…burning…place?"

The bacon crunched. "I don't know much about the inside of that thing at all. I'm not the Gem here."

"We can take care of it!" Steven exclaimed, his hands up in a mixture of self-defense and reassurance. "We've done it before! Right, Garnet?"

Both Priyanka and Pearl opened their mouths, but Garnet's smirk and a single raised hand overruled their concerns.

"Steven, Connie and I can take care of this," she said. "And we'll be back before you know it."

Doug Maheswaran interrupted yet more objections by the two women. "That sounds like a fantastic idea!" he said. "Connie can get to know more of the temple, and the rest of us can eat and chat like adults. Right, dear?"

His wife looked back with concern, but the man was already cutting into a pancake. She sighed and sat back down. Pearl took a seat opposite her, but cautiously, turning back to Garnet.

"Are you sure that you don't want some auxiliary backup?" she asked.

"I have a plan. Amethyst?"

"Got it." The purple gem, who was already serving herself at the counter, tossed a waffle over to Garnet. She caught it and looked at Steven knowingly.

"It possessed a stack of waffles last time," he explained, turning to a rather confused Connie. "We're hoping that it likes them again."

Garnet unsheathed her gauntlets, flexing her fingers. Steven put the knife on the counter next to the bottle of cooking spray and summoned his shield. Connie was already running back to the bedroom loft to grab Rose's sword from her bag.

"Are you sure this is safe?" Priyanka said, pouring herself some more tea as she watched her daughter.

Pearl took the kettle with a soft smile. "It's safer than some of the other things Steven's done, that's for certain."

As the adults lapsed into conversation, Steven watched with a sigh. Perhaps this wasn't exactly the kind of breakfast he had planned, but at least most of them were together. The dads and Amethyst joking around, Pearl and Priyanka discussing their concerns with the children, and plenty of warm food still filling the air – it was the right kind of atmosphere, at the very least. Still, it would be nice to have a family breakfast for once, he thought, without monsters interrupting them.

Connie ran back to them with her sword over her shoulder, a freshly energized smile infecting Steven as well. It was time for a new mission.

"Oh my goodness."

The Burning Room did indeed burn, a heated atmosphere that seemed to waver and pump with the heart of the temple. Connie gaped up at the hundreds, if not thousands of Gems bubbled above them.

"These are all Gem monsters?" she whispered, peering from stone to stone. "Garnet, I can't believe you fought all of these! How many are there?"

"I wasn't here for all of them. In fact, the ones higher up were the very first, from the beginning of the War."

Garnet paused.

"Most of these aren't monsters or corrupted Gems at all," she said.

Steven stood near the center of the room and looked up, wondering if Rose Quartz had bubbled most of the Gems here. Where did hers end and Pearl's begin? Then Garnet, then Amethyst, and then his own. Connie ran up next to him, following his gaze before looking at the pool in the center of the room.

"Is that lava?"

Garnet was still searching the room, walking slowly around the brickwork. She still nodded solemnly in the children's direction.

"Watch out," she mused. "It's hot."

Connie nodded and took a step back from the pit. Steven raised his shield cautiously, and he and Connie stood back to back, pacing around the room and glancing in every direction that could hold a smoke monster. Steven paused.

"Garnet? What exactly are we looking for in here?"

"Traces. Clues. Something that could lead us to its whereabouts. It requires a host, but I don't think it's going to find one here."

"Well, what happened last time? With the waffles?" Connie asked.

"Organic material!" Steven snapped his fingers. "We should go to Amethyst's room! She's got things growing all over the place."

"…Eugh."

But even Garnet knew it was true, and she came over to one of the pipes and beckoned the children. "Come on! We don't have much time to lose!"

The Gem lowered both hands, the fingers of her gauntlets extending. Steven retracted his shield with an excited whoop and jumped up into the massive palm, with Connie following cautiously. She sat down in Garnet's hand, trying to get comfortable against the massive arm.

"What are we doing, exactly?"

Garnet's visor flashed as she looked to the top of the vein far above them.

"Going up."

The crouch took half a second, and the other half launched the three of them into the air. Connie held on for dear life, yelling incoherent fears with one hand clutching the sword and the other clutching the warrior. Steven was yelling with shared excitement as Garnet kicked off of the walls, dodging bubbled Gems as they ascended rapidly towards the light of the Crystal Heart. Heated air rushed past them and blew the children's hair back.

The three of them sprang over the lip of the chasm in what seemed like no time at all, with Garnet's hefty landing shaking the floor beneath. As gently as she had picked them up, she let Steven and Connie onto the floor. Connie had to shake the dizziness out of her head, watching as Steven twirled for a moment before spinning his arm around, shield out and gemstone glowing. Back in business, Garnet beckoned them towards Amethyst's room.

"Have you considered an elevator?" Connie joked, her legs still shaking from the rapid ascent.

"I dunno if the Gems would be…down with that."

"But it might…lift their spirits instead!"

Garnet cleared her throat, arms crossed in front of the doorway. The two kids rushed over, and Steven wasn't sure if this blank expression was a 'this is a serious mission' blankness or an 'I'm containing my laughter just barely' blankness. They were hard to tell apart.

"Elevator puns can wait, Steven. They're starting to push my buttons," she said.

Steven opened his mouth, but Garnet had already walked through to the jungle that was Amethyst's abode. He stepped through, looking around the archway in confusion. The last time he had been here, there were floating crystals, a hallway that changed gravity, so many other things that had made the magical temple, well, more magical.

Garnet was answering his questions before he could even ask them. "Pearl helped Amethyst simplified a bit," she explained, "just in case something like this occurred. And because it was actually a mistake in the Temple more than a feature. These things happen with disrepair."

Steven remembered the twists and turns clearly, and the direct route was certainly more convenient. Despite that, Amethyst's room was just as messy and twisted as usual. Now that he noticed, the smell rising from the room was less like garbage and more like a wet forest. Otherwise, not even Amethyst herself could probably live here.

"Disrepair is right," Connie commented. She stepped over a pile of scrap metal, something that looked like it could have at one point been an engine.

"Amethyst has a system! I think. It's her own little way of keeping things her own."

The enormity of the room dwarfed all three of them as they paced around. Steven and Connie found themselves having to jog a bit to keep up with Garnet, who seemed to be moving faster despite her stride appearing unchanged. The Gem finally stopped after a full circuit, clenching her gauntlets irritably.

"It's not supposed to be this quiet. It should have attacked us by now. Some part of it should have been here," she murmured.

"What exactly is it? Is it another kind of Gem monster?" Connie asked. "It's not as, well, as corporeal as most of the others."

Garnet didn't move for almost a full second. Steven knew that meant something was upsetting her, and he moved closer to Connie for the answer.

"The scroll was created with pigment from shattered Gems, before the war. Their bodies were pulverized, and their gems were used to…paint their anguish."

Her lip curled in disgust.

"They were dissenters. Artists themselves. They were a tiny group of 'defectives,' and they were seen fit to be turned into a lesson."

Steven's mind sank back to the bubbles of stasis in the Burning Room, then to the ferocity of the Breaking Point. He shuddered as Connie put a hand over her mouth in shock.

"That's horrible!" she said. "They must be in so much pain…"

But Garnet merely turned and started to walk forwards, with the children following obediently.

"Nobody really knows what they are anymore."

Or where they are, Steven thought. He tried not to think about the horrendous punishment inflicted upon them, striding in Garnet's wake with Connie at his side. For now, the smoke monster was just that – a monster, to be pacified before it could hurt anyone. With their parents upstairs, the situation grew direr with each second.

Once more, they came back around in a circle, demarcated by a particularly holy mattress with plastic balls stabbed into the ends of the springs. Garnet shook her head.

"It's not here, either. There's nowhere else that it could realistically be in the Temple."

Amethyst's room was, after all, the only place with real organic material. In its weakened state, chased away from the outside world, the junkyard jungle appeared to be a safe haven. They needed to defend from all sides here. Steven glanced down at his shield, rubbing away a bit of whipping cream with his thumb from where they had been cooking earlier.

He licked it thoughtfully, drawing his digit away from his lips. The smoke could seep through anywhere, chased around the rooms by the three of them. There were only so many places for it to hide.

Unless it wasn't hiding.

The taste of cream on his tongue made Steven gasp, and the other two turned to him as he whipped around to face the door at the end of the room leading to the warp pad.

"Steven? What's up?"

"It knows we've been chasing it," he said as his thoughts fell into place, "and it knows that the Temple isn't safe for it! So the best place for it to be safe would be – "

The faint sound of a pitcher crashing to the ground finished his sentence for him. The three took not even a beat before sprinting back to the door to the house, back towards their families, and back to the breakfast table.

Steven, Connie and Garnet burst through the door straight into confectionary chaos. Pearl and the Maheswarans were cornered by the stairs, with Pearl's spear jabbing a tendril of bacon attempting to swipe through. Priyanka ducked pieces of egg tossed onto the wall, while Doug, brandishing a spoon, tapped angrily at the monster's reach.

Amethyst snarled obscenities with her whip in a tug-of-war with a particularly violent sausage appendage. Greg had a plate in each hand, beating back a set of pancake arms as much as he could on the opposite side of the living room. As soon as his son and the cavalry appeared, he turned with a relieved, terrified laugh.

"Nice of you to show up!" he yelled, grabbing one of the butter knives from the table. "This thing's gonna tear the house apart!"

Even as he spoke, an errant mug conked him in the side of the head, making him drop the plate to the ground with a crash. Steven gaped at the size of the monster, its spread reaching to all of the dishes that they had made earlier in the morning. The fruit salad served as a kind of nexus, rings upon rings of melon and strawberry condensed into a brain-like mush, multiplied to fill the beast's whims. Each of the entrees was a blind tendril, whipping out towards the aggressors. Crepe swirls stabbed rapidly at the diners, dripping syrup onto the floorboards. Garnet rushed into the fray only to get pummeled by the strength of a muscular frittata, the power of potatoes forcing her backwards.

"Steven! What are we going to do?!" Connie cried, brandishing the sword to bat away the projectiles flying from the monster's body.

The boy raised his shield in front of them both, glancing in every direction for something to stop the beast. It had taken all the organic material it wanted, apparently, but it could grow at any pace until it had broken through the house, and once it got outside, there was no telling the damage it could do to the town.

Before, they had pushed it into lava, brute force neutralizing its essence. But there was also the burning, the fire damage. Steven's eyes locked on a can of cooking spray knocked over on the kitchen island.

Steven jumped and attempted a summersault to the kitchen, rolling clumsily enough to dodge the monster's attacks. Climbing on top of the stool, he grabbed the cooking spray in one hand, then released his shield to grab a box of matches from the other side. They had decided against candles for this morning, but they had kept them out just in case. He fell back to the floor just as a writhing tentacle swiped across the room, a pancake attack that nearly clobbered him.

Connie held up her sword and cut an approaching blueberry hand, making the monster shriek in agony. Shaking the can, Steven stayed Connie's hand, pulling the sword back from the fracas.

"Wait, what's the – whoah! – what's the plan?" she said, dodging a glass.

Steven began to spray down the sword's blade until it began to drip with the oil. Connie's eyes widened as he threw it to the side, taking a match from the box. Despite the dire situation, they couldn't help from grinning.

"Let's get cookin'."

Striking the match, Connie lifted up her sword to the flame. Immediately, Rose's saber was engulfed in fire, glistering with heat. It took to the flames hungrily, as if it had seen this tactic before, the fervor and temperature rising in equal measure. From across the room, Pearl and Priyanka both looked equally aghast at the weapon, yelling Connie's name as she dashed forwards underneath the monster's stomping arms.

Steven ran with her just in front, pushing back the flung food and animated snacks, shoving them out of their way. From below, when they got to the center, he raised it above himself and Connie as blackberry dripped bright purple on their clothing. A mouth-like orifice appeared above them, screeching a defensive cry and spraying them with noxious juices.

He whipped the shield away, and he barely had a chance to yell the command before Connie was already thrusting upwards.

"Now!"

The arc of the flaming sword seemed to sear the very air around the children as Connie swung, yelling an incoherent battle cry as she pushed the weapon into the monster's gullet. The flames from the sword intensified as her voice raised, fighting against the cursed beast. Fire spread across the brain, and all the connected tentacles thrashed in agony as discordant, high-pitched gurgling filled the air.

As strong as she was, Connie's arms were shaking with the power of the sword. Steven's fingers gripped around the hilt as the monster's cry reached a zenith. Both of them shoved Rose's sword inside the monster's guts, burning chunks of fruit salad raining down around them. It was too bright to see the other Gems and adults, too loud to hear their warnings.

But the power of the sword cut straight to the wailing brute's core. With a splattering eruption, the Gem monster's core burst in a fireball, sending organic shrapnel around Steven's house. As suddenly as the screaming had started, the smoky silence fell over them. The children dropped the sword to the ground, the steaming blade squishing into a lump of pulp.

"…we did it!" Steven cried, raising both fists in the air.

"Ugh…"

Greg Universe's groans made Steven whip his head around, rushing over to his battered father. But he was sitting up, nursing a lump on his head without any other visible injuries. Everyone's clothes were, at this point, ruined with breakfast food.

"I'm okay, kiddo," he assured the boy. "Just bumped about a bit."

"Mom! Dad!"

Connie rushed over to her family, hugging both of them together. Doug bent to give his girl a relieved kiss on the forehead, and Priyanka stroked her hair absently as she stared at the carnage that had once been a quiet meal.

"Great moves, Connie," her father chuckled.

Priyanka cleared her throat. "I'm…glad you're safe," she said, "but does this have to happen every time we try to have a meal together?"

Steven and Greg came over, both of them looking equally sheepish – almost identically sheepish, really, although Steven looked more disappointed than the slightly bewildered adult.

"I'm sorry about all this," he sighed. "We just wanted a quiet breakfast, together! But we always kinda mess it up, don't we."

"Steven, it wasn't your fault that the monster escaped. I mean, you did capture an unspeakably violent entity in your cell phone and unleashed it in the house, but you couldn't have really known," Pearl chided.

"Yeah, ain't the worst that could happen!" Amethyst said, pulling a piece of bacon from her hair and crunching it. "And you two did save us, so."

Garnet walked over to the group, resting a satisfied hand on Connie and Steven's shoulders, smiling down at them. A stray sausage was stuck in her hair, and she shook it to the ground with a roll of her neck.

"You solved the problem, and nobody got hurt, right?" the Gem murmured.

"Right!"

"Yes ma'am!"

A beat took over the household, and a pancake fell from the ceiling, splatting down in the middle of the room with a wet thunk.

"…cleanup is going to be another problem."

Steven and Connie gave each other a look. Even with help from the Gems, this was going to take a while. But again, they were doing it together. And out of all the breakfasts that their families had had, Steven knew that this one would probably go in Connie's family stories forever.

"Ready?"

(This story was a lot more lighthearted than I'm used to, but it was still a blast! Thank y'all for reading!)

-Abel Quartz