This. Is. Impossible.
"You should have seen Greg's storage unit," Amethyst chortled, slapping her hand to her knee.
"Hey! My unit wasn't as wreck as your room!"
"Duh..! Your unit sucks," said Amethyst. "Yo Peri! Where are you?!" Amethyst screamed in a general direction, the said green gem was nowhere to be found, lost her way as soon as they entered the maze-like room. Amethyst kicked a bust out tire to the nearest pile of hoarded memorabilia, a.k.a. garbage, nearly hitting Greg along the way.
Lapis watched as the two bicker and finally broke apart by Pearl. She was on a mission: Operation Organize Amethyst's Room. The purple gem finally agreed to it. Probably to decrease poofing incidents due to wayward corrupted gems in her room and to protect Steven. Greg and the gems just "rolled with it" as insisted by a flushed Amethyst.
Lapis found herself helping her new family? Friends? Earth-bound-fun-buddies? Passively, she kept a ankle-high flow of floating river around the room, kinda like a water conveyer belt directed towards the dumpster truck outside the temple.
"I must say, I'm impressed," Pearl said, nodding appreciately at Lapis and her floating river, "with you and your hydrokinesis and my superior decluttering skills, we will be able to finish cleaning this junkyard of a room in no time!" Pearl exclaimed, starry-eyed.
"Hey!" the room-owner faintly yelled from a distance, "I'll take that as a compliment!"
Pearl deadpanned then grinned awkwardly at Lapis, "All right. Let's do this!".
"Sure," Lapis smiled, then openly laugh when Steven came floating down her river on an inner tube, strumming his beloved ukulele.
"—ohhhhhhhhhh…
floating down a floating river,
Like how a garbage can.
ohhhhhhhhhh…
Floating down a floating river,
Towards the garbage can—"
"You are not garbage," said Garnet, picking up Steven from the garbage river and relocate him on her hair, "You're a cutie pie". Steven laughed adorably and proceeded to sing while Garnet carried a pile much taller and bigger than her towards the door.
"Oh Steven," Pearl bemoaned but amused.
Chuckling, they finally started to clean up. Five clones later, each from Lapis and Pearl, the huge pile in front of them started to look smaller and more manageable.
Pearl was directing one of her clones when Lapis gasped behind her, her starry-eyes directed at what looks like a television with a stand studded with numbered buttons. Pearl doesn't know what it is but it looks like Lapis does. She watched as Lapis excitedly extracted the thing from their pile without using her water clones. Pearl haven't seen her this enthusiastic since the day Peridot showed her the news of the Camp Pining Hearts remake.
"Amethyst! Hey, Amethyst!" the blue gem called, her voice brimming with excitement.
The said gem literally came in like a wrecking ball, destroying a pile not far from them with a whoop. "Yo Lapis! You called?"
"Amethyst!" Pearl shrieked disapprovingly.
"Yes!" Lapis grinned. "Say Amethyst, can I have this?" she said, gesturing to the excavated contraption that captured her attention.
"What? That old thing?" she eyed the thing and Lapis' giddy smile. "Sure, knock yourself out, gurl."
"Thanks!" the blue gem shouted at Amethyst's rapidly retreating ball form. A vague shriek told them that she found Peridot.
"Er… So what IS that?" Pearl asked as Lapis loaded the thing on a frozen platform and finally on a separate floating river.
"I'll show you later in the barn after this," Lapis said, "It might get destroyed by Amethyst or by my water here." The grin on her face tamed down to a small smile but Pearl could tell that she is still excited and decided that she like it when Lapis is this happy.
"All right." Pearl left it to that to enjoy the lighthearted and productive silence between the two of them.
"That's the last of it!" said Greg as he clambered on the driver seat of the borrowed dump truck.
"Thanks for helping us dad!" said Steven.
"No problem, son. I just got the coolest hook for a song just now!" he playfully hit the trunk horn in a beat and reached out through the window to ruffle his son's hair, "And after all, some those garbage are mine. It's the least I can do for helping me clean the storage unit". He looked up to the gems with a faint smile.
Amethyst flushed. Pearl gestured an "it was nothing" wave of her hand. Garnet gave him her signature thumbs-up.
Greg waved at the new additions to the gems. "Bye kid!" he addressed Peridot. ("I'm thousand years older than you!") "And nice to meet you, Ms. Lapis!" and finally drove away.
"Ms. Lapis…" Lapis mumbled while walking up to Pearl, "Yup, I like this human universe" she decided.
"Like..?" Pearl looked bewilderedly at Lapis.
"It's nothing" the blue gem replied nonchalantly. Pearl watched as the other's casualness slipped to give way to unwanted awkwardness.
Pearl took a deep yet unneeded breath, raised a hand in a slightly reaching out fashion, and smiled timidly, "So…do you want to show that thing in the barn to me?"
At that moment, Lapis decided that she may also like Pearl.
In hindsight, she didn't know what she was expecting.
Her first meeting with Lapis was, for the lack of a better term, unfortunate. More unfortunate for the blue gem with being stored in Pearl's gem for more than five millennia added to being cracked and literally trapped in a mirror. Lapis wasn't bubbled unlike the salvaged and hibernating gems in the Burning Room. She wasn't spared from living through thousands of years, fully aware of the nothingness inside Pearl's gem.
It made sense that she wasn't fond of the Crystal Gems, particularly Pearl; "wasn't" being the operative word.
Gradually, the former trapped gem opened up to them. With the effort of the ever charismatic Steven, Garnet, Pearl, Amethyst, and even Peridot were able to slowly reach out to the indisposed Lapis. Although the said gem was still relatively distant, Pearl and the others could see the walls Lapis sprung around her were slowly melting away. They left her to her own devices in the barn or in the sky, with an exception to Steven of course, but always leave her the option to join them if she wants.
First, Pearl didn't expect her to agree when she asked Lapis to help them clean Amethyst's room. Pearl is no Steven and Lapis being trapped in Pearl's gem is an elephant too big to ignore while existing in a same room. Yet Lapis acknowledged her and agreed. Steven or not, she managed to interact with the elusive girl, albeit in a purely civil manner. Granted, she managed to get a friendly encounter with Lapis while cleaning Amethyst room, a course of events also beyond Pearl's expectations.
Pearl frowned. It was obvious that Lapis is very fond of Steven, though that is as good as a fact. She might have adapted to Peridot by now, being her barn mate and all, even though they have frequent petty fights. She was also relatively lax around Garnet and seemed to respect her. Even Amethyst might have slowly been able to connect to her, judging from their zealous interaction earlier over some unidentified machine.
The skin around Pearl's gem tightened as her frown deepened. What is that machinery anyway? The technician inside Pearl was brimming with curiosity to tinker the unknown device until she remembered Lapis' excited face. She like to see her that happy again. If that machine can make her smile like that, then maybe Pearl can know the blue gem better while learning about that thing.
"Yup, I like this human universe", she heard Lapis declared.
"Great, now even Greg…" Pearl thought disdainfully. In contrast, her interaction with Lapis was still near all time low. Not for the first time, she felt left out.
Pearl took a deep yet unneeded breath, raised a hand in a slightly reaching out fashion, and smiled timidly, "So…do you want to show that thing in the barn to me?".
Lapis looked at Pearl's uncertain hand. It was somewhat wavering with hesitation but certainly reaching out for her. A tense moment passed and Pearl took it as rejection. Before she knew what she was doing, the blue gem motioned to reached out for it but changed the course of the action to a very weak low-five.
Nailed it.
On a second thought… Steven can live without knowing about that shameful five.
"Okay," she remembered her earlier invitation, "I may need a pair of technician hands that are not Peridot's."
Lapis smirked when Pearl proudly pumped her chest at the word "technician". She was certainly an exceptional Pearl compared to the other Pearls in the Homeworld, before and after the war. At the thought of her old home, Lapis' lopsided smile fell along with her mood.
"Let's go." She said with an about face, her gem stone shone to reveal a pair of water wings and got down on her knee. "I'll fly us there."
If Pearl saw the subtle shift in Lapis' mood, she didn't show it. She did however cross her arms uncertainly and stared down at the kneeling form before her. "Um… Am I supposed to ride your back? I might get in the way of your wings."
With a sigh, Lapis said "Fair enough."
Pearl perceived a burst of air and sight of floating blobs of water before she found herself suspended five meters above the beach. Lapis had her on a hold— one arm under her legs and the other supporting her back. Unsure where to put her hands, Pearl opted to resume her earlier crossed-arms pose.
Lapis smirked.
As an adherent of form and balance, Pearl admitted that there is a certain grace in Lapis' form. Powerful yet malleable. Forceful yet peaceful. Sad and yet, as the forming grin suggested, playful.
"You might want to hang on," she said lightly.
Pearl scampered to take her advice and was just able to fix her arms around Lapis' neck before the latter abruptly flew them higher in the air with a laugh. Terror of falling to their untimely poofing aside, the rushing wind on their faces was liberating and, to Pearl, the once water-logged gem never looked so free until now.
With the initial fear flushed out her system, Pearl found herself laughing along the blue gem. Encouraged by this, Lapis flew up and down the bruising sky, following an invisible roller-coaster track only she can see.