The general consensus was to find a good place to sit and get comfortable before catching me up to speed. Not a good sign, but it's a better situation than the whole melting thing that I first anticipated. That said, I'm starting to wonder what a band of rebels without a proper leader could want, more specifically, what they could want with me. Was I 22MY's replacement? I didn't exactly agree with the diamonds' decision regarding rose quartzes, but I wasn't willing to prove them right by starting another rebellion. Oh shards, what if I'm not the first replacement? What if there was already more than one rebellion? Were any of them lead by any roses that I knew? What do the Crystal Gems do with the loyalist roses? The mental list of questions grows little by little, eating me up inside.

We exit the lava room, entering an entrance to the base. It's mostly made out of wood with cushioned furniture. I have a seat on the couch and my attention sways toward the human. He's trying to bottle up his feelings, the poor thing. Everyone has a seat and the pearl begins. She's less verbose this time, less hammy. She's uncomfortable with retreading these events, and makes glances towards the human to see… if he approves? If it's to graphic for him? If he has questions like I do? It's hard to tell, even when you're a rose.

"Before the diamonds left Earth," the pearl begins, "they released a weapon that eliminated nearly all the gems left on the planet, corrupting their minds-"

"Including 22MY," I finish her thought.

"No," the pearl dismisses with a wave of her hand, "it's more complicated than that."

For the next two hours (a timespan which got very annoying to the every-returning Onion), I hear that sentence more times than I thought possible.


The pearl, or just Pearl, as she insists, is a great storyteller. The ham returns in full force when describing 22MY, and Pearl even uses her holograms to project the parts she remembers more clearly. The amethyst (just Amethyst. See a pattern here? Their numbers are that low) gets bored quickly and offers me a delicacy of her own creation to pass the time: Caramel popcorn splashed with motor oil. Not bad. Pearl sometimes goes off topic to describe how awesome 22MY was in every conceivable way, but the fusion (a sapphire and her ruby, calling herself Garnet) brings Pearl back on topic with just the right amount of bluntness. I'm starting to respect Garnet a bit; she makes me laugh. Speaking of which, the Crystal Gems don't really like it when I laugh. No, I'm exaggerating, it's more like they find it really awkward. The human (named Steven, and apparently half-human; I'm still waiting on that explanation) doesn't get it either. Around laugh number four, Amethyst clears things up.

"It's because you sound just like her, dude."

Oh. That is awkward. I brush off the subject by leaning toward Steven and asking, "Is dude an insult or a compliment?"

"Neither, I guess," he shrugs.


"So 22MY wanted to become a human," I summarize. "Squishy, skeleton on the inside, clothing not attached to her body, all that business?"

Pearl fidgets with her fingers again. "That's a rough way of putting it."

"Not as rough as what those rubies knew," Amethyst blurts. "Couldn't tell a gem from a human." Rubies? Another question for the list.

I have the urge to defend myself. "Hey, I know my humans," I huff. "You don't get to be a zookeeper without knowing a thing or two, you know." Heads swivel in my direction. Oops. Looks like that motor oil loosened my lips a little. From the looks the Crystal Gems give me, I could tell they have a pretty good idea on what a human zoo was and they have very strong opinions on the subject.

Garnet is the first to speak. "I know that we're not finished with our story, but I believe we forgot to ask you who you are. Care to share?"

"Uh, the name's 7PJ," I gulp. My eyes tried to avoid the glares. "I didn't know 22MY personally, but I did know of her. I worked at my diamond's zoo until she was-" I trail off and my voice dies. The realization is coming back to me again. Pink Diamond was gone. Shattered. Dead. She was dead for quite a while now, now that I think about it. I didn't have anywhere else to go now. None of her gems had anywhere else to go. What was the Diamond Authority without Pink Diamond? What was Homeworld like without Pink Diamond? Sure, she didn't control that many planets, but she was a diamond, for crying out loud. I realize that my list of questions was being written long before I got bubbled. Back then, everything was a rush, and I only cared about my facet surviving, but I never knew what we were going to do if we escaped. I'm starting to get choked up. If we escaped, we just would've been, I don't know, lost. We were lost as soon as we lost our diamond. I begin to cry into my hands. A loud, ugly groan crawls out of my throat. I remember back when the earrings for the domesticated humans shut down for an hour, and they thought it was the end of the world. There was nobody to tell them what to do, nobody to be there when they were alone and confused. Is Homeworld like that now for Pink Diamond's gems? I'm starting to wonder if I was one of the lucky ones. Five thousand years without my diamond? Unthinkable.

But you know what else is unthinkable? Becoming all buddy-buddy with the ones that thought shattering my diamond was a good thing. Steven looks uneasy. I look at Pearl with hot tears flowing through my eyes. How dare she idolize a traitor like that?

"We getcha, sister," Amethyst nods, patting my back. "Losing someone that important sucks tits."

"No, you don't," I say. "You never had a diamond. You never knew how Pink Diamond always knew what to do. You knew how kind she was, yet she was so strong. You never saw how much pride she had in owning such a beautiful planet, how much passion she put into it. You don't know how inconceivable it was for a rose quartz to disobey a diamond, much less shatter one. Roses are supposed to be loyal, caring, and quick to learn in a crisis. We're supposed to help gems get back up when they're cracked, not deliver the final blow! 22MY was a disgrace to all of us. I hate you. I hate all of you!"

Or, least that's what I would've said, but it all comes out as three straight minutes of red-faced blubbering. It still feels good to say it.

"Garnet, what do we do?" Pearl asks. Garnet shrugs in response.

"You know what cheers me up when I'm down?" Steven suggests with a raised finger. "I watch Crying Breakfast Friends!" He's straining to keep a smile. I'm in a fetal position on the floor.


Crying Breakfast Friends is apparently a one-way video communication documenting what the food humans eat do before the humans come and eat it. Apparently, they hurt each other's feelings, cry about it, and resolve the conflict afterward. It's very different from how Amethyst prepared the caramel popcorn. Outside the window, the Earth's sun had set into the horizon, and the stars had become visible now.

Yeah, I know it's a distraction. Pink Diamond would've loved these stories, though. The concept of arguing fascinated her. Whenever two gems of equal stature butted heads, they would try to bring their problem to their diamond. Most diamonds thought that doing this with every other trivial matter was petty and a waste of time, but Pink Diamond loved to see both gems try to paint themselves as the victim. She always listened, and in her own way, she always cared.

Strawberry was in the middle of one of her monologues when out of the blue, Steven says, "Thanks for not trying to kill me."

"Why would I want to do that?" I respond, my eyes still sore and puffy. I was sitting cross-legged in front of the screen. "You're just a human. Kind of. And even if you've got 22MY inside you, you had no control over what she did. What would killing you accomplish? You're weird, Steven."

"It's just that every Homeworld gem has tried to kill me," Steven thinks out loud. "I guess I expected you to hold a grudge."

"Trust me, I can hold a grudge," I lightly snap at him. "I've got a grudge against the diamonds and 22MY. As you've thoroughly explained, you're neither."

"So, uh, does that grudge happen to extend to my mom's friends?" Steven asks. His voice quivers and a bead of sweat trickles down his brow.

"I'm still thinking about that," I say coyly. I knew that my answer wouldn't put him at ease before it leaves my lips. He needed more convincing. "But I'm grateful for you all for saving me. Speaking of which-" I faced Steven directly. "We never got to the part when you found me. Where was that, anyway?"

"The zoo," Steven answers me. "Blue Diamond keeps all the roses bubbled there. It was crazy." I could see his brain rethinking (that was the organ humans use to think, right?) what he just told me. "And it's a very bad idea to go back!"

"How so?"

"Because it's crawling with guards and Blue Diamond visits there regularly!"

"So why didn't this stop you before?"

"Well, because she abducted my dad."

"Dad?" I parrot. "Ah, Greg the human. He must've been important to you."

"PJ, we can't take all the other roses from the zoo," Steven tells me directly. "The staff there would notice in a day, and Earth would be the first place Homeworld would look."

I clicked my tongue. "So what if we weren't on Earth when they came looking?"

"The gems and I can't leave the Earth, it's our home," Steven groans out of explaining the obvious.

"Not we as the Crystal Gems," I say. At this point, I'm the one thinking out loud. "We as in the roses. All the roses and me. We'll never bug you again."

Steven's more firm this time. "I'm not letting you give the Earth the amount of attention we're talking about, PJ."

I decide to change the topic slightly. "So, what's your plan for the humans?"

"What?"

"For the humans. In the zoo. Are you planning to break them out someday?"

"Yeah, I guess. Someday."

Now, that's what convinces me that Steven's a rose quartz. Steven says that he needs to sleep and I spend the rest of the night watching the stars on the porch.