I'm not sure how exactly, but this oneshot managed to change from the absolute crack I'd originally meant for it to be, into a frankly comprehensible plot. Well, whatever else, I felt that Onion could use a little more attention than he seems to have received so far, and I couldn't help but wonder what might happen if he and Jasper were ever to meet. If by this story I've guessed correctly, put this O and J together and you get orange juice... that's in any case what Jasper would be rendered as by the end of it!
She couldn't care less how it happened – or else she might have put effort into watching the circumstantial details when they took place. The only part of it that Jasper deems important is that she has in fact broken out of that dratted fusion. If she ever needed a reinforcement of her hatred for the practice, it would be that experience. But no matter. All she cares about right now is finding the Crystal Gems, especially Rose Quartz or whatever Lapis Lazuli claims that thing with Rose's gem is, and finishing what's been started between them. Well, and maybe making sure Lapis doesn't catch up with her before she can do that.
Hightailing it away from where they last dwelt as Malachite proves only half the battle, however. It would seem that Lapis is way too much more than just a pretty face; not only did her extremely controlling hold render an already cheap tactic completely counterproductive for Jasper's cause, but she's also succeeded in driving their fusion in so many weird directions that it's going to be an aggravating job trying to get back to where the Crystal Gems reside. Of course, Jasper never really paid much attention to where Malachite wandered at any given moment, so focused was she on struggling to seize control from that blue brat. She's gem enough to admit – to herself, anyway – that that may be ever so slight a problem...
It takes her what feels to her impatient mind like a millennium to get there, and she never once stops to wonder why Lapis, with her admittedly formidable hydrokinetic powers, hasn't done at least something to locate or otherwise halt her in her course. Who's got time to worry about sidelines, anyway?
At length she does indeed find her way back to the beach where she last encountered them. Grinning in her trademark predatory way, she mentally gears herself up for the second act of this quest. They can't be far away...
Relying on instinct, she chooses a specific direction and stalks off that way, anticipating all the fun she's going to have exacting on her enemies every kind of damage one can inflict on a gem, ultimately doing them in when she's done. If Lapis hasn't made any move to restrain Jasper as of yet, then that ship has sailed. Nothing's going to stop her this time...
Oh, wait. No, more like weight. An odd weight has suddenly appeared on her left leg. In the time it takes her to stop and glance down to investigate, it has traveled up to her waist. She blinks, jaw somewhat slackened, as she discovers something she definitely would never have expected.
It looks like a young human, but a very bland example (not that she ever regarded the race very highly, but from a literal perspective... bland). Having stopped ascending her body, it now looks up at her face with wide, blank, staring eyes. It is so quiet a being, it almost seems to be draining all the sound from the surrounding beach. Nothing in any world she's been to could coerce her into confessing this out loud, but this has got to be the creepiest creature she's ever met.
Remembering her purpose after a few suspenseful seconds, Jasper shakes off those retrospectively embarrassing feelings and retrains her brain to see this as nothing more than a nuisance. "What do you want?" She speaks demandingly though she really doesn't care to receive an answer; she just needed to break that excruciating silence. With her left hand she snatches the human off her torso, only really wanting to throw him out of her way, but certainly not objecting to the prospect of crushing him in her grasp in the process. Get this blip out of the way and get back to pursuing her goal; that's the idea.
Then again... that idea quickly gets thrown for a loop when the child, to Jasper's immense disbelief, manoeuvres his way out of her fist and begins crawling up her arm. Does this anger her? Oh, yes it does! Does his persistently blank stare throughout the whole event strike her as unnerving... Once she gets him off that won't matter any more, will it? The trouble is, this thing is implausibly adhesive, or at least implausibly agile. However many times Jasper snatches at him, somehow he always gets away from her hands, and never once detaches himself from her. Roughly three minutes of this goes by, and had she the ability she could very easily go supernova by the end of it.
Suddenly, the child adds a whole new twist to his infuriating game. Latching on to one of her countless pale locks, the boy sneakily nestles his way into her enormous mane. Okay, that did it. Screw everything that's led up to this. This is the last straw.
"GET OUTTA THERE!" Jasper snarls, reaching back into her hair in order to phish the eerie little pest out, beginning to canter in circles in the process. She's always prided herself on her hair; it adds so much to her overall imposing size and demeanour, but right now what's probably its only (but decidedly devastating) drawback has reared its ugly head. Actually, one could sort of take that at face value – there's another pun if you like – when considering that the child periodically pokes his head out of her hair to gaze back at her. Is it just her growing paranoia, or is that emotionless face nevertheless taunting her each time? Does she even need to wonder about this?
"I said GET OUT!" she yells again, snatching at the boy when he emerges right atop her head. Snarling, she reaches up for him, but this brat is so slippery! He puts the craftiest of the oceanic creatures her fusion with Lapis encountered to shame.
Jasper is momentarily startled to such severity that she ends up falling backwards, as the little human crawls over her face and, in a matter of seconds, vanishes into her gem! How the heck did he even get in there without her consent? Though it isn't as if she's going to evade him by doing this, Jasper's initial reaction is to back away. Realizing why that's totally useless, her rage resurfaces and she draws herself up from the ground, furiously trying to reach inside her gem and extract that brat. A sharp pain on her hand forces her to withdraw it soon after. She doesn't need to examine the bite marks on her hand; she'd bet her military rank that nothing she keeps in her gem by choice possesses the ability to cause this kind of damage.
Jasper is so busy trying to defeat this human trickster that she has not observed the blue gem who's been standing in the shallow waters near the shore, witnessing her ordeal with considerable relish. Lapis is meanwhile giggling to herself as she watches her escaped prisoner desperately grab a driftwood stick off the beach and jam it into her gem, in the hopes of accomplishing what it's seemingly too dangerous for her own bare hands to attempt. She is even more amused when a tiny, milky hand snatches the stick out of the giantess's hand and starts using it to drum on her head. Her ensuing pained threats and curses add the finishing touch to the whole scene. Who would've guessed one little human boy could reduce a crazed, egotistical warrior like Jasper to this sorry mess?
Well, it looks like she's going to be crazier than ever by the time this is over. She probably thinks things are on the up for her at last when she succeeds in pulling the boy out of her nose by reclaiming hold of that stick, before it can strike her for the zillionth time. Her lips curl upwards, her teeth are bared, as she smiles wickedly at the finally helpless child in her hands. She may very well savour pounding this victim in even more than she would Rose Quartz... Maybe...
Once again, however, her thoughts of fulfilled bloodlust have to be put on hold when the child, never having outwardly displayed even the merest hint of fear, suddenly reaches with one free hand and punches her in both eyes. One at a time. All in a matter of seconds. How can an inferior being like this human possibly be so fast?
In the short time it takes her mind to play that question on repeat, the boy seems to have applied something to her scrunched eyelids. Something mildly scratching, vaguely moist. Opening her eyes again, she sees him gazing at her, some odd black stick-like thing in his hand. His expression has broken into a wide-eyed grin for the first time in all the duration of this madness.
Somehow, taking in this adjustment to his features proves more than Jasper can handle. She could no longer deny to anyone who might accuse her of such; this child has downright freaked her out. Dropping him onto the sand, she glances side to side and around, trying to gouge out the most likely route of escape. In her frenzied state she opts to randomly pick a direction and just dash off, only to find upon looking over her shoulder that the little hooligan is quite skilfully keeping pace with her. Even with her much longer, more muscular legs at work, he's keeping pace with her. Why does he have to have great running velocity on top of all his other horrible abilities?
The sound of a mirthful feminine voice nearby draws Jasper's attention, even as she begins to run in zigzags and circles trying to avoid her tormentor. Immediately upon locating the giggling blue gem perched on a rock near the shore, she cries out, "Lapis, help me! Use your water powers and get rid of this THING!"
"Get rid of him? Why? You look like you're having so much fun together!"
"FUN? You call this FUN?" Inexplicably (as if she'd care anyway), the human stops chasing her all of a sudden, and Jasper seizes the opportunity to stop running, falling to her knees at the base of the rock Lapis rests upon. "Lapis, take me back! Fuse with me again, imprison me at the bottom of the ocean again, do whatever you want! Just do something! I can't take another minute of this. I had more 'fun' when that fusion Garnet defeated me! If I've gotta spend one more second around that little monster, I'm gonna shatter myself!"
Lapis can't help but grin, watching Jasper's normally so-frightening-they're-kind-of-gorgeous yellow eyes dart helter-skelter in her panic. At the end of the orange gem's plea, however, she takes on a mock-serious tone as she thinks it over, "Actually, Jasper, that might not be such a bad idea. You'd be free of this torture you've been enduring, I'd be free of you, and I wouldn't have to worry about you trying to hurt Steven any more!"
Jasper's jaw drops upon hearing her sole lifeline state such a cold calculation. A glance over her shoulder reveals that her diminutive adversary has for some unknown length of time apparently been standing right behind her. Screaming a bit louder than might be permissible for a high-caliber military gem like herself, Jasper has rounded Lapis' rock in one swift motion. Lapis turns to face Jasper, her lips once more curled up in a teasing smile as the larger gem begs for her mercy again.
"Lapis, please! Please, help me! I'll do anything you say! Go wherever you want, ANYTHING! If we fuse again, I promise I won't fight you this time! Just get me away from here!"
The blue gem drags the suspense of the moment on as she pretends to think it over. "I'm impressed, Jasper," she muses at length. "All that flattery and sweet-talk, and you never even batted those huge eyelashes once!"
Thrown off guard by this puzzling remark, Jasper peers at her reflection in the water beside her. So that's what the boy did to her eyes. Groaning in disgust, she splashes her head into the water, hastening to scrub the ink off with her hands.
Lapis meanwhile considers Jasper's frantic appeal. Knowing the ill-tempered, mercurial gem as well as she's come to, her promise to take a passive stance over re-fusing can only be taken as with a grain of salt, but at the same time a small part of her kind of pities Jasper in her terrified present state. Also, as temporary as the effect may be, in the here and now it just feels like re-subduing her would be a more satisfying conclusion to this amusingly humiliating spectacle.
"Alright, Jasper," Lapis declares after the orange gem is finished alternating between washing her face and keeping lookout for her newest enemy. "I'll re-fuse with you. But," she adds, stifling the insanely joyous grin that started to spread across Jasper's face, "I want you to wait for me underwater, for just a few minutes first."
"Lapis, don't waste any more time -"
"You do want me to make sure he doesn't try to follow us, don't you?"
Jasper's jaw falls again. She hadn't thought of that. Seeing the little human standing a ways off, waving at her now, she gasps and hastily complies with the blue gem's orders. Lapis waits until Jasper's well below the surface, then turns to the little boy, as well as several other figures who are now peering out from behind another rock.
"It's okay! She's gone," she calls out to them.
Stepping out from hiding together with the Crystal Gems, Steven says, "Thanks for warning us, Lapis! And nice work, Onion!"
Onion silently nods in reply.
"I'm just glad she never caught you, Steven," Lapis says, approaching and embracing him. Turning to Onion, the real hero of this occasion, she adds, "Thank you Onion, for helping me protect Steven." Again, the small boy nods. When she warned Steven that Jasper had escaped her, she'd intended for him to flee to safer grounds, but this works too.
Lapis and the Crystal Gems then exchange rather stiff, but genuine declarations and acceptance of gratitude, before she returns to the ocean to secure hold over Jasper once again. Steven bids farewell to Onion, who goes on his way as well. As Steven and the Crystal Gems head back to the temple, Amethyst remarks, "I still don't get why we didn't smash or bubble Jasper when we had the chance."
The End.
AN: And that's that. It may not have been what I was going for, but actually, I think this works better as a full-out short than it would have as a kooky drabble, anyway.