"Wait!"
At Garnet's instruction, Pearl and Amethyst had stayed in the house, while she and Steven pursued their new acquaintance, for fear of overwhelming him. The Doctor was walking briskly down the beach, towards his TARDIS, and gave no response to Steven's call.
"Doctor, thank you." Garnet said, as they caught up with the Time Lord. "The Crystal Gems owe you a great debt."
"Your future vision will come back." The Doctor sensed what Garnet was building towards. "I just dulled it until the timelines restabilise."
"That's great, but... you don't have to leave!" Steven implored him. "I only just found out there are aliens besides Gems! Can't you hang out for a while?"
"Nope. That Gem creature hasn't gone far. It came to Earth from space because of something I did, now I have to take care of it before it hurts someone."
"But that's what we do, too!" Steven reasoned.
Garnet stood commandingly in front of the Doctor, just before he reached the TARDIS. "Doctor, protecting the Earth from creatures like this is the sworn duty of the Crystal Gems, no matter where they came from. Anyone who can say the same, is a brother or sister in arms. Let us help you."
The Doctor seemed to consider Garnet's offer for just a second, before calmly walking around her.
"I can handle it."
He drew his key from his pocket and tried the door. The key turned, but the door wouldn't open. The Doctor jiggled it a few times, before frowning in concern.
"I know you've finished repairing..." He said, quietly, after shooting an awkward look at the Gems. "I'm sorry for what I did... to them... You know I didn't have a choice. Let me in!"
"Is the lock broken...?" Steven asked, unsure of why the Doctor was talking to his ship. "Pearl is good with machines, maybe she can help?"
"No... She's fine... I'm the problem..." The Doctor said, quietly.
There was a moment of silence, in which Steven and Garnet shared a confused look. A few seconds later, the Doctor span around to face them, with a cheerful grin.
"Well, no use standing around. We've got a Gem monster to fight, haven't we?"
-x-x-x-
Resigned to the fact that the TARDIS wouldn't permit him access, the Doctor had returned to the house at the base of the temple, where he had begun examining the architecture and furnishings with keen interest.
"So... if you're all Gems, then why have you got a house?" The Doctor asked the room in general. "Gems don't need food or shelter."
"The house is actually Steven's." Pearl replied.
"Who's Steven?"
Steven eagerly lifted his hand and jumped on the spot. "Ooh! I'm Steven!"
"And you are?" The Doctor had been curious as to what relationship the boy had with these Gems. Although he had been suffering from severe regeneration trauma at the time, the Doctor could have sworn he remembered the boy wielding the powers of a Rose Quartz earlier.
"My mom was the leader of the Crystal Gems..." Steven said, with a hint of remorse. "I have her gem now." He elaborated, lifting his shirt to demonstrate.
Steven's words washed over the Doctor slowly as he processed them. "Your mum!?" He asked, incredulously. "What do you mean you have her gem? You can't just give your gem to someone, how does that work?"
"What Rose did is... unprecedented." Pearl admitted. "None of us are quite sure how or why she did it..."
"I asked my dad how, once." Steven told Pearl. "He said he'd tell me when I was older..."
"And who's your dad?" Asked the Doctor.
"His name's Greg Universe. He runs a car wash on the other side of town."
"Human?"
"Yup."
The Doctor's mind reeled. Of course, there were countless species who were able to have children with other species, depending on their genetic compatibility and the medical assistance available, but Gems couldn't have children at all! Never mind with organic life forms!
Before the Doctor could question the Gems further, Pearl steered the conversation in a different direction. "So what about you, Doctor? Even if you are a Time Lord." She emphasised the word 'are', to advertise her persistent skepticism. "What are you doing on Earth?"
"I spend a lot of time here. My ship sort of has a mind of her own, she beings me here a lot." Even more so now, the Doctor thought to himself, sadly.
"You wouldn't rather keep to 'planet of the Time Lords'?" Pearl mocked, with almost a threat of a smirk.
"Gallifrey..." The Doctor scowled. His sudden, dark tone surprised the Gems, especially Pearl.
Garnet was the quickest to pick up on the Doctor's reluctance to talk about his home. She placed a hand on Pearl's shoulder. "Where the Doctor's from isn't important right now." She said, gently. "Doctor, what do you know about the Gem monster?"
The Doctor's expression changed as though a switch had been flipped. "Right, the monster! It's an ancient Gem geoweapon called the Forged."
"Geoweapon?" Steven repeated. "Like the Cluster?"
"What's the Cluster?" The Doctor had never heard of such a thing.
"The Cluster is an enormous ball of broken gem shards..." Garnet began, frowning uncomfortably. "Forcibly fused together..."
"It was planted in the Earth's crust while the colony was being built." Pearl finished.
"Well what happened to it?" The Doctor asked, intrigued.
Amethyst snorted. "We totally kicked its butt." She invited Steven to high-five her, which he quickly obliged.
"We bubbled it." Steven elaborated, with a smile. "They're safe now."
"Well that makes sense." The Doctor said. "That the Diamonds would make something like that, I mean. Because the Forged was very similar, but it didn't work, at all. Rather than shards, the Forged is made up of hundreds of gems, which were ground to dust before they could even form for the first time, and turned to glass."
The Gems gasped and cringed in disgust. "I... I can't believe the Diamonds would do something like that..." Pearl whispered, her voice shaking.
"It was a long time ago, thousands of years before any of you were made, I'd reckon, and the Diamonds have gotten a lot cleverer since then. The Forged was supposed to destroy enemies of Homeworld, at the Diamonds' command, but because it's a solid Gem, it got too clever to do as they said anymore, so it left the Diamonds to be on its own, but as far as its appetite for destruction went, it was a shining success."
"So... how do we kill it?" Amethyst asked.
"After you all poofed on the beach, its Gem just flew into the sky on its own..." Steven said.
"That's right, we'll have to find it first." The Doctor said. "It's not like a normal corrupted Gem. It was drawn to you lot and the temple once, but it'll be clever enough to not come back..."
"Except..." Pearl began, stroking her chin and staring thoughtfully at the wall, next to the Doctor. "If there was a way to amplify our natural resonation pattern with other Gems, could it be possible to draw it back?"
While the Doctor considered it, Amethyst lifted an eyebrow in confusion. "Huhh?" She grunted, quizzically.
"All Gems are connected by a low-level psychic field." Garnet explained. "It makes us more efficient in both the battlefield, and Gem councils. It's too subtle for us to notice, but for a corrupted Gem, it's usually all they have to guide them."
"Ooooh, so that's why corrupted gems show up here so much." Amethyst realised. "Man, Ronaldo was right, we really do put people in danger..." She said, with a carefree smirk.
"That might work... I'll need some compatible Gem tech." The Doctor said, looking around the room at the Gems.
"We don't have a lot to hand." Pearl admitted. "Certainly nothing that could perform a task like that."
The Doctor wasn't discouraged. "Right then. You lot stay here, in case it comes back. I'll go to the original Gem landing site, and see what I can find."
As the Doctor walked towards the warp pad, Steven excitedly ran after him. "Wait, I'll come too! You might need a Gem to show you around."
Pearl seemed nervous. "Steven, that... place, is a little too dangerous..." She began, poorly disguising her slight remaining distrust of the Doctor.
Garnet evidently didn't share Pearl's skepticism. "Steven and the Doctor will be fine." She consoled her. "Take care of each other." She said, giving the Doctor his first order, now that they were embarking on a mission. "We'll keep an eye out, here."
Steven joined the Doctor on the warp pad, and was about to activate it, when he got first hand proof that the Doctor was able to do it on his own, as it burst into life, and the beach house vanished with a flash of light.