There were a lot of things Pearl missed about Rose. Her kind, innocent naivete. Her long, coiling pink hair, brushing the ground every step she took. Her lovely, tinkling laugh, and the way that she looked at Pearl like she was the most precious thing in the world. Her wondrous curiosity about everything, from the metamorphosis of butterflies to the shifting of the Earth's tectonic plates, and how even the most mundane things on Earth fascinated her.
There were a lot of things Pearl loved about Sheena. Her boisterous bravado, willing to challenge anyone and anything who dared to hurt her or her girl. Her wild, shaggy mane, changing to a different beautiful color every month. Her fierce, white-hot passion for everything she cared about, including Pearl. Her way of easing Pearl into human concepts, such as sleep and goodness, video games, and how it was so easy for Pearl to appreciate them when she was with her. Just thinking about Sheena made Pearl smile.
But Sheena couldn't replace Rose, no matter how hard she tried. Pearl loved her, she truly did, loved her like nothing else on Earth, but… there was something missing. Some piece of the puzzle that refused to slot into place, no matter how hard Pearl had tried. It troubled her every night that she spent at Sheena's house, whenever she awoke and turned to her lover and thought, just for a brief second, about Rose.
Pearl was expecting to experience the same twinge of guilt that night when her Gem began vibrating, disrupting her dream and forcing her to the waking world. When she had started spending more time at Sheena's apartment, Steven had given her a cell phone for whenever he or the Gems needed her and she wasn't home. Groaning, her eyes fluttered open and she pushed off the sleep mask that Sheena had insisted upon her wearing when she was rudely awoken by one of Pearl's dreams for the first time. Fumbling around in her gem for a few moments, Pearl retrieved the phone and read the text with bleary eyes, something about a corrupted Gem occupying Fish Stew Pizza and refusing to come out.
"I'm sorry, dear, a situation in-" Pearl's eyes snapped open fully upon seeing that Sheena, unlike most nights, wasn't passed out on her side of the bed. Rather, she was completely missing, the only sign of her presence the rumpled sheets from which she must've gotten up from. Usually, if an emergency arose in the studio in the middle of the night, she at least left a note.
Anxiety fluttering in her chest, Pearl swung her legs out from the bed and rose to her feet. "Dear?" she called. No answer. Pearl crept out from the bedroom into the rest of the apartment, ready to summon her spear at a moment's notice. However, instead of finding Sheena grappling with some criminal or, worse, nothing but a bloodstain on the floor, a situation far more pleasing to the eye was unfolding.
Sheena was seated at the table, frozen in place. A nearly empty tub of chocolate ice cream sat on the wooden table, some of its contents splattered across Sheena's tee and droplets of dairy splashed across her face. The remnants of a pack of mini-cookies were also evident, crumbs scattered across Sheena's lap and the table. However, most of the meal Sheena had obviously consumed, judging by her swollen stomach which peeked out a few inches past her waist, and the spoon piled high with chocolate confection.
After a moment of silence, Sheena shoved the spoonful of ice cream into her mouth and spent a few seconds chewing, some of the massive bite dribbling out of the corner of her mouth. She swallowed, the food quite visibly traveling down her esophagus. "Um, hi, hun!" she said, chuckling nervously. Absentmindedly, she licked some of the cookie crumbs from the corner of her mouth, then the melted ice cream from the other corner. "Just… got kinda hungry. What's up?"
Pearl incoherently stuttered for a moment, her cheeks blushing blue. She cleared her throat and regained her ability to speak. "There's, um, a-a thing… Happening. Down at Beach City. I, I have to go. Take care of it." Perhaps her faculties hadn't returned completely.
Sheena nodded, apparently oblivious to Pearl's state of distress. "Cool." She fished around in the package for another cookie and popped it into her mouth, the crunching of her chewing seeming to echo across the apartment. "You'd probably better get going then, hun."
Pearl nodded. "R-right! Of course!"
She'd found what was missing.
"Welp, that was weird," Amethyst summarized as Pearl surrounded the monster with a milky-white bubble.
"Yeah, that was super crazy!" Steven said, eyes wide. In the past few years, the young man had finally hit his growth spurt, nearly equaling Garnet in height and wearing a massive Quartizine mane, his rambunctious hair barely contained by a band. "What did that Gem even do before she got corrupted?"
"It was a Tiger's Eye," Garnet explained as Pearl tapped the bubble, sending it off. "They had the rather… unpleasant jobs of removing 'undesirable' aspects from Gems Homeworld found problematic, but were necessary for some reason or another. The corruption must have inverted that power, and… enhanced the local psychic resonance of wherever it was." She glanced towards the Cool Kids and Ronaldo laying on the wooden boardwalk, groaning and clutching their stomachs.
"The resonance is locked into its current mode, but still active." Garnet adjusted her shades, frowning. "Steven, stay out of the Burning Room until we find out a permanent way to suppress the resonance the gem generates. We don't want another Together Breakfast problem." Steven saluted, his face grim, while Pearl's mind was whirling with the possibilities.
She really shouldn't. She really, really shouldn't. But… her mind flashed to Rose, her beautiful curves seeming to pull Pearl to her like gravity.
What could a few pounds hurt?
In the cavernous space of Pearl's gem, a Tiger's Eye slowly rotated inside its bubble.
Sheena rolled over in bed, rueing the day that she bought an alarm clock and cursing the job that necessitated her having one. Making games was beyond fun, but the hours were liable to make her a total zombie in the mornings.
She glanced down at Pearl, still peacefully slumbering with her mask on. At least she was back. Every day, Sheena worried that her beautiful bird wouldn't come back from whatever mission she was on, or would be hurt by a terrible monster she had to slay. It was romantic to date a thousands of years old chivalric knight, sure, but it had its downsides.
Sheena's stomach growled fiercely, bringing her back to reality. A vague worry niggled in the back of her mind - she'd had a huge snack last night, right? - but she quickly dismissed it. She turned into an absolute monster if she was hungry. Yawning, Sheena tumbled out of bed and pulled on the classic crop-top and jeans that had so enthralled her girlfriend when they first met over three years ago. She lumbered over to the fridge, opening it to reveal…
Sheena whistled. Pearl had apparently taken a cue from last night's events and stocked the fridge full of delectable, delicious delights that had absolutely no nutritious value. There were still the regular fruits and veggies, of course, but they were vastly outnumbered by the cakes and the brownies and the cupcakes and everything else. How… unlike her. Sheena's stomach roared in response to the feast laid in front of her eyes. She couldn't exactly complain, though. In truth, she was starting get tired of nothing but health smoothies for breakfast. Shrugging, she grabbed a few cupcakes and was about to close the fridge when she hesitated. She was absolutely ravenous. She might as well indulge herself.
Pulling out an entire cake, ignoring the logical part of her mind screaming that she wouldn't be able to fit that in her stomach, let alone eat it all in the twenty minutes that she had before she had to get on her bike and drive to work, Sheena sat down at the table, then stopped before she dug in. Just a little bit more.
Just a little bit more turned into about a dozen cupcakes, an equal number of brownies, a glass of oddly thick milk, and a box of donuts. Sheena started on the cake, efficiently slicing it into pieces as the part of her brain protesting the ludicrous binge gave up. With a single motion, she picked up the slice of cake and began shoving it into her mouth, crumbs falling out of her lips like a waterfall. She chewed and swallowed, savoring the rich strawberry flavor frolicking along her tongue - nothing had ever tasted so good in her entire life - and barely took a breath before cramming the rest of the slice into her already overfull mouth. Even after eating an entire eighth of a terribly thick cake, her stomach barely felt the change. Shrugging, Sheena continued, shoveling bite after bite of the cake into her greedy gullet and barely stopping to enjoy the taste before swallowing and moving on.
Sheena's feasting on the cake ravaged her surroundings, leaving behind crumbs all over her body and in the immediate area around her. She took a pause, and considered the conundrum. It would be rude to leave Pearl to vacuum all that up, and the floor was always clean due to her girlfriend's efforts anyways… Sheena dropped all pretense of civility and grabbed piles of cake crumbs, tossing them into her mouth. When the table was pristine, she got down on her hands and knees and began to delicately pick the specks off the floor and pop them into her mouth, savoring the explosion of sweetness they brought. Looking down, she noticed that her enlarged stomach and every other part of the front of her body was covered in crumbs, and moaning with delight, she began pick the crumbs off her body as well.
She took a long, satisfied burp when all remnants of the cake had disappeared into her grossly distended belly, which now hung several inches past her waist and shoved her shirt completely out of its way, its tan surface glistening with sweat and shining with nascent stretch marks. Sheena fumbled for her phone, then breathlessly dialed up the office, barely managing to resist the pull of the rest of her morning snack. "Hey, uh, boss? I don't think I'll be able to make it into work today. Or tomorrow. Actually, don't count on me showing up for the next week or so." She paused. "Could we talk about the possibility of moving my office to the apartment? I don't think I'll be able to leave for a bit, actually."