Chapter One: Communication Breakdown

Garnet knew something was happening. Around midnight, she sat in meditation in the Burning Room, at the edge of the lava well. Her subconscious mind, too, felt like a roiling mass of lava held in place by mere inches of stone, ready to burst.

Steven was the emotional catalyst, of course. He always was. She loved the boy, she loved his mother, and she took her duty to both of them as seriously as a Ruby can, with a Sapphire's devotion. When Steven was in danger, every part of her reacted at once with an instinct keener than any found in nature. When Amethyst had decided, that morning, to throw Steven to distract a corrupted Onyx, initially, Ruby and Sapphire had thought as one to save him, neutralizing the Onyx in the process.

Later, Garnet had scolded Amethyst, but not coldly and sternly, as usual. She had spoken with heat, and said more words in a few seconds than she sometimes spoke in days.

Later still, Sapphire had spoken to Ruby, somewhere below Garnet's conscious mind. She scolded Ruby for losing her cool, forgetting that Garnet had spoken as one.

So now the fight escalated. Ruby turned her rage more towards Sapphire, and Sapphire tried to redirect it back towards Amethyst, but by now the argument was like wildfire, raging on its own heat now, wildly out of equilibrium.

It had been hours now that Garnet had felt feverish, her mind raging against itself deep inside. As she sat lotus-style six inches from the smooth, glowing surface of the lava, it slowly broke through into her conscious thoughts.

And suddenly everything was moving in quick-time. Accusations flew, some of them out loud in Garnet's voice, and within seconds two gems were picking themselves up from the granite floor at opposite ends of the room. They made eye contact for a moment, then realized thatthey'd taken things too far. They left by different routes, and avoided each other for several days.

It was Pearl that knew it first, about nine in the morning the next day. She was in the kitchen, making Steven a pie, when Ruby stomped out of the temple gate, charring the floor underneath her feet.

"Oh, boy," Pearl muttered.

"I'm going out. Make sure Steven doesn't see me," Ruby growled without looking over at Pearl.

"Do you... want to talk about this?" Pearl shouted after her, but she was out the door and heading down the steps.

Pearl found a chair and collapsed in it, burying her face in her hands, which trembled against her cheeks and forehead with something like sudden exhaustion. It was going to be one of those days.

Ruby took several more hours to cool. She walked a mile out in the ocean and came back only when she saw a giant Gem Worm that had once been a Jasper, twining its way around underwater ruins that she'd once known the name of, thousands of years before. The blue, clear water, though it boiled around her, felt like daggers of ice. She did not cool. When she realized she was in danger, she turned back, but not before making a sign to the Jasperworm with her hand, one that had been obscene on Homeworld millennia ago.

On shore she left tracks of fused glass in the sand, and she nearly barked at the first human she came to.

It was a little boy in a wife-beater shirt, a little taller than her, with hair that reminded her somehow of fried food. He had a sad look in his eyes, and he stared out to sea with a blankness in his eyes that said that perhaps he didn't really see it just now.

Before she could say anything, he said "You're one of Steven's friends, aren't you?"

The question threw her for a moment. She managed to answer calmly. "Yes I am."

"Me too. I'm Peedee." He stuck out his hand for a handshake.

"Don't, little boy. You'll get burnt," she said in a low, guttural voice.

"Oh, sorry."

"Why are you sorry? My damn fault for being so frrrting mad. Later, kid."

She went to go past him, but he said "Why are you so mad?"

"Ame-I mean-Saph-I mean... Shatter that, I ain't got no reason!"

"And that makes you even more mad?" Peedee asked.

"It does!"

"Like, sometimes I get that way about my family. I forget which one I'm even mad at half the time. Try smoking a cigarette, man."

"Aren't you... aren't you too young to smoke?" Ruby asked, taken aback.

"Doesn't stop any of the cool kids, so it doesn't stop me," he said, pulling a fistful of half-smoked, kinked cigarettes out of his pocket. A black Bic came out of the other, and he lit up.

She accepted the least sand-covered one from his outstretched hand and took a drag on it without lighting it. It turned to ashes and she spit out the grey powder that had been the filter a moment before.

"That's one way to do it, I guess," Peedee said.

"Thanks, kid. And don't smoke. any. more." she said, as she walked off slightly calmer than before.

Peedee crunched a breath mint painfully between his back teeth and headed back to work.

Sapphire stayed in the temple longer. When dawn came, she had been looking out from the statue's left eye, fighting back scenes of the future that she did not wish to see. Hours later, she saw Ruby march into the sea. Another hour passed, and while she had not moved, she saw Ruby march back out of the sea and pass out of her sight, back towards town along the public beach.

She went down and in the central chamber she complained to the crystal heart about Ruby, knowing it couldn't hear her.

"Why do we fight? Why?" she asked, and an echo from somewhere asked her "...why?"

"Because, I guess. She's being unreasonable."

"...being unreasonable," a distant wall scolded her.

"I guess I am. Fate, I would remind you, is also unreasonable."

"...unreasonable.

It was afternoon. Ruby was still warm, and ocasionally she would think of something Sapphire had said and then she would get heated up again. She came upon another human boy in a back alley. He was older than Peedee, but not old enough to be drinking out of that blue and white aluminum can in his hand, she thought.

"Hey, do I know you?" the boy asked.

"Yeah, Lars. We've met."

"When?"

"Sometime," Ruby growled. She had to think about it too.

"Coo," he said. He went back to drinking his beer. He remembered his manners and offered the little red alien a can from his six-pack.

"You know," Pearl was saying, "I understand it. I have anger, you know."

"I'd felt that current in you, when we were Sardonix."

"Slavery, Sapphire. You and Ruby never experienced the worst of it."

"I know, Pearl."

Pearl hesitated a moment. "Did you ever...?"

Did I what? Sapphire thought. Own a Pearl? "Yes, yes I did."

Pearl buried her face in her hands.

"Were you...?" Pearl asked from between her palms, trailing off.

"I was kind."

Anger and sadness racked Pearl for a moment, but then she put it out of her head.

Sapphire hesitated. "I could... I could help you, Pearl. As long as I- I mean Ruby and I- are split up, you and I could..."

"Yes," Pearl said.

They went through the temple and found a ledge that brought Sapphire up to about Pearl's height. They slow-danced there for what seemed like eternity, in a dim room not far from the Cloud Chamber. At last there came a certain glow, which shone through into hundreds of little chambers of the temple.

Amethyst was the next to see Ruby. She was ordering fries from Peedee's brother on the Boardwalk, when she saw Ruby coming down the walk. Ruby was staggering and dragging the last two cans of a six-pack of lite beer along the ground by the plastic rings.

"Whoa, sis, what happened to you?"

"This stuff," Ruby said in a strange, slurred voice, holding up the beer.

"I've tried it before," Amethyst said. "It's kinda weird."

"You do enough of it, it's like you're glowing from the inside. But not like, not like glowing with rage. I love it."

They went and sat at the end of the boardwalk, their feet out over the rolling tide, and finished the pack. Later, Amethyst went to get more, and came back to find Ruby in a dancing mood.

[Author's note: Yes, I totally did say Sugilite when I meant to say Sardonyx in the originally published version]