TEAM HOMEWORLD CRYSTALS FTW!
That is all.
"This is Mike. Or, I suppose Hematite. I have arrived on the planet Earth, and have begun my search for Peridot, Jasper, and Lapis Lazuli.
I haven't yet discovered Peridot's location, but I have found out that Jasper and Lapis Lazuli have fused, with Lapis Lazuli sealing them both at the bottom of the ocean. I haven't yet figured out how to get them out of the ocean, but they will be subdued and brought back to Homeworld, rest assured. As for their ship... I haven't yet figured out what happened to it.
I will provide more details shortly."
"What are you doing Mike?" Steven asked as the two strolled down the beachside.
"Writing a report. Don't worry, I'm leaving you and your friends out of it."
"Why are you writing a report?"
"You're required to whenever you are on a mission. It's so you can remember what you did, and you give it to someone who analyzes you're performance on the mission. If you did good, you're congradulated, but if you did bad, then... well, then you're punished."
Not the most luxiorious job, that was obvious.
"Oh. So, what do you do when you're not on Earth? Gem stuff?"
"Uh... your wording's kinda weird, but yeah. Gem stuff. Although for Gems, it's just regular stuff."
"What kind of stuff?"
Mike closed his screen.
"Uh... well, my job is to go to all the Kindergartens around the galaxy and look for any full grown Gems.
Then I take the Gems back home with me, and I study them to see if they-well, are corrupted or defective."
"What do you mean defective? Like, broken?"
Mike slowed down his pace a bit. He looked down to his Gemstone.
"Yeah...yeah. Broken. It's like... if a human were born with some sort of disability. Not looking the way they should... not being able to do things everyone else can do... it happens if a Gem isn't harvested correctly. It... happens a lot. It can happen to anyone."
"Oh... that's kind of sad." Steven said. "But... you fix them, right Mike? You're able to fix them?"
"...No. No, Steven. I can't fix them. Nobody can. Not even Yellow Diamond. If you are defective... you just are, and you can't fix that.
You just have to live with it. I mean-heck, if a Gem is defective enough to the point Yellow Diamond doesn't need them..."
"...What?" Steven asked anxiously.
Mike shook his head. "No, it's not important. Just... sigh... anyways, back to my job, I study them, and if they're fine, I assign them to a learning program, and write down the details of their Gem, weapon and powers, and give that info to someone else. That's all."
"But... what about corrupted or really defective Gems? What happens to them?" Steven asked again.
The boy wanted to know. Would they be fixed? Would they be bubbled until a cure was found, like what he and the Gems did?
Mike REALLY didn't want to answer, however. He didn't want Steven to know what they did to them.
Unless under special circumstances, corrupts or defects are shattered, their shards used for lord knows what.
"I... I don't know. I just give them to somebody else, and they take care of them."
"Bubble them?"
"Uh... yeah, probably. But... let's just talk about something else, alright?"
"Okay." Steven replied. "So... what's your Gemstone?"
"Oh, it's a Hematite. You like it?" Mike said, looking down to his sparkling Gemstone.
"Yeah, it's cool. It looks like space!"
Steven thought for a moment.
"Say... if you're Gem is Hematite, than why do you call yourself Mike?"
It wasn't often a Gem wasn't named after their Gemstone. There was Steven himself, of course, but that was for a reason.
"I just prefer Mike." He replied, looking down at the beach shore. It was getting dark.
"Are-uh, your friends gonna be home soon?" He asked, slightly unnerved, looking back down to the smaller Gem.
Steven too looked at the distant sky. "I don't know. They usually don't get back home until nighttime."
"Hm." Mike replied. "So, do you actually know where Peridot's foot is, or are we just gonna be wandering around blindly?"
Mike wasn't too familiar with Earth houses, but he knew that they could be pretty big, so finding a foot could be very tedious.
"Nah, it's in the burning room. That's where we put bubbled Gems and stuff. Only Garnet can open the door to it, but there's a shortcut inside Amethyst's room, so we can just go that way."
Mike nodded, before looking back in front of him.
"...Woah." He said, looking up at the giant statue before them. They had reached the temple.
"THAT'S your house?" He asked, surprised.
The statue was in the shape of a giant woman, most likely a Gem, judging by the multiple Gemstones around it's body.
It was at the backside of the giant mountain he and Steven were just walking around.
It had six arms, only three of which weren't broken off. And two of the arms were held together at the base of the statue,
where a small wooden house with a staircase leading up to it from the beach resided.
"Yeah! Pretty cool, huh?" The boy replied. "Come on, the door's just up the stairs!"
Steven ran over to the staircase, Mike following.
They walked up the stairs. "The entrance to the temple is just inside."
They approached the door, which was mostly made of glass, so pretty much anyone could see inside.
Mike looked down to the doorknob. He grasped it in his hand. It was pretty hot due to the summer weather. He turned the knob, and pushed.
It wouldn't open.
"Steven, the door's locked." He said, looking down to the boy.
Steven then reached up to the doorknob himself. He grabbed it, twisted it, and pulled it. The door opened.
"It's a pull door." He said, entering the house.
Mike watched the boy enter with a disdainful look on his face, before slapping it with his left hand.
"Idiot." He said, also entering the house.
Little did the two know, they were being watched from afar.
Behind a giant piece of one of the statue's arms, relatively far from the beach house, was Peridot, who watched the two Gems enter the house. She held up her arm, and watched as four of her fingers floated away from her hand, arranging themselves into a square, which created a screen.
"This is Peridot. I'm still stuck on this stupid planet. After these so called Crystal Gems have countlessly gotten in my way trying to activate the Kindergarten and such, I have begun spying on them to see what kinds of things they do when they're not breaking my things.
Oddly, one of their members, the Steven, has just entered their base with another Homeworld Gem, Hematite.
I don't know if he's been captured or is going willingly, but it's likely that he's the one Homeworld sent to retrieve me.
I shall continue my recon until I can manage to get the Hematite Gem's attention, and hopefully return to Homeworld."
She closed her screen and let out a huge sigh. She looked down to the stub where her foot used to be.
After those Gems got a hold of it, she'd replaced it with a small green beach bucket. It was NOT a comfortable replacement.
"Stupid Crystal Clods... break my stuff, now you take my stuff..." She muttered under her breath, taking a few steps.
It was hard having to walk using a children's toy, but at least it was better than nothing.
Still, she wouldn't have to deal with it if those Gems would just leave her alone and let her just leave.
"All I want to do is go home. Is that too much to ask!?" She thought to herself angrily.
She may be punished for failing, but anything was better than being on this dump of a planet...
"Wow. Your friend Amethyst is a... bit of a hoarder, isn't she?" Mike asked, looking around the purple Gem's room.
The entire place was a complete mess, all kinds of junk cluttering almost every area of the large room, which was like a cave in design,
being made entirely out of crystals, and had puddles of what was probably water everywhere.
There were simple things like bottles and containers, and then there were odd things like barrels and trees, and even a utlility pole.
"Yeah, she likes collecting stuff. And being messy." Steven replied.
"Uh-huh, I could tell." Mike said, picking up one of the many objects, which was a block with a big ? on it.
Mike tapped the block with his hand, and was surprised when it made a big, red mushroom with eyes pop out of it.
The mushroom slid off of the block, and Steven and Mike watched as it slowly slid across the ground.
"...What have humans been doing to this place?" The tall Gem asked, before tossing the ? Block back into one of the many piles of junk.
"Honestly, I didn't even think those were real." The short Gem replied. "But unless you wanna grow slightly bigger, I wouldn't eat that mushroom if I were you."
"Alright, so where is the burning room?" Mike asked, picking up a strange cat figurine holding a coin.
The boy started scanning the various puddles around the room. "Hang on. It's in one of these puddles..."
Mike tossed the cat toy behind him, and his eyes went wide when he heard a loud shatter.
He looked back, and saw that the cat figure broke into a bunch of pieces on the ground.
He looked at Steven, who was still searching puddles, before casually whistling and brushing the pieces under a nearby fridge.
That thing probably wouldn't be missed, right? I mean, why have a fake cat with a coin when you can just get a real cat and give a coin to that? Besides, real cats don't shatter when they hit the ground.
"Found it!" Steven shouted, pointing to one of the puddles, waving Mike over.
He walked over to the puddle the boy was pointing to, and looked at it.
He didn't see anything but his own reflection.
He was surprised how bad he looked. He had bags under his eyes and looked pretty worn down, and what hair he could see under his fedora was greasy and mussed up. But he didn't see any burning room.
He looked to Steven.
Steven looked at the puddle, and back to Mike. "Stick your head in." He said.
Mike looked back to the puddle. He got down on his knees and placed his hands on the sides of the puddle, and shoved his head in.
Instead of water like he expected, he found a large room.
There were what appeared to be roots flowing around the room, as well as bubbles containing Gems floated throughout the room,
and in the center, was a lava pit.
Suddenly, Steven's head popped up next to Mike's.
"This is the burning room! Pretty cool, huh?"
"Wow. You guys have... quite the Gem collection." He replied, looking around at all the Gemstones decorating the room.
"Yeah, those are corrupted Gems. We put them here until we can heal them." The boy replied optimistically.
The Homeworld Gem appreciated Steven's optimism. Optimism was in a Hematite's blood, yet he himself could hardly be optimistic due to the circumstances surrounding corrupted Gems.
Still, it was nice to see that someone was confident that they could heal corrupts one day.
"Alright, so is Peridot's foot in one of these bubbles?" Mike questioned, scanning the various bubbles.
"Probably. I know Garnet bubbled it, so it's in a pink bubble." Steven answered.
"Got it." Mike said, before hopping down into the room.
The temperature was pretty high due to the lava pit.
He began scanning the room for any signs of Peridot's foot, seeing all kinds of Gems, and curiously, a bag that had 'Chaaaaps' written on it.
"See anything?" Steven shouted.
"Just Gems!... and chaaaaps!" Mike replied, before he spotted something green. "Wait..."
He approached the object, which was green and black in color, in the shape of a boot, contained inside a pink bubble. Peridot's foot.
He lifted his hand up to the bubble and popped it with a quick jab from his index finger.
"I got it!" He exclaimed, holding the foot up for Steven to see, who's head was still
But he was confused when he saw Steven with a frown on his face.
Mike then also frowned, and lowered the foot. "Is... something wrong, Steven?" He asked.
"Mike... do you still have the Gem from before? The corrupted one you fought at the pier?" The boy asked.
Mike remembered it. It happened maybe only an hour ago.
"Yeah, I still have it. Why?"
"Well, I was wondering... why don't you leave it here? Y'know, with all the other Gems, so you don't lose it? And... maybe it won't feel lonely if you do."
Mike furrowed his brow. He didn't like that idea.
Sure, Steven and those Crystal Gems believe they can heal corrupted Gems, but could they really?
Steven doesn't even seem to know anything about Homeworld, the place where Gems originated from, so he obviously had no idea what corruption is.
It's like a parasite. It infects you. It eats away at your insides, a process that would leave a human devoid of any organs, killing them and leaving their bodies behind to rot. But Gems... it takes over. It takes over your body. Your mind. Everything you once knew,
everything you once were, is no more. Your body is hideously deformed, as is your mind, and all you do is destroy.
You destroy everything you can until you're eventually crushed. He's witnessed it before. Watched over. Observed.
It was horrible. Going through such a painful process, destroying their home, attacking and hurting those who they used to be close to...
Going through all that pain and suffering, knowing deep down that the only pleasure they could ever feel again was being beaten senseless,
and their Gem shattered. Crushed, stomped on, grinded into the dust. It was a living hell outside of hell.
A pain no Gem, no anything, should ever have to feel in their entire lives.
But fate is a cruel force in the world. Determining other's fates, determining whether they live or die...
Many, many, many unfortunate Gems became corrupted in Gem history. Hundreds, thousands, millions. Perhaps even billions.
And many of those Gems tried to resist. They tried to fight it, use all of their physical and mental power to resist being corrupted.
But you can't stop it. Not strength, not willpower, not anything.
Even if Yellow Diamond were corrupted, even she probably wouldn't be able to resist it.
She's strong, and she's smart, but even she's most likely aware that if she's corrupted, she's finished.
She would be corrupted, and she would be shattered. Who would take her position? Most likely another Diamond.
So the chances of what is basically the equivalent of an Earth child and some traitor Gems fixing corruption? Zero.
Zero, zero, zero. They can't fix it. They won't fix it. If Yellow Diamond can't, then they certainly can't.
He wasn't going to hand this Gem over. He was going to take it back to Homeworld. Study it. Maybe find what corrupted it in the first place. Then maybe it could be prevented from ever happening again.
It would be better off on Homeworld than it would on this ape-inhabited planet.
Earth makes good donuts and mole-abusing games, but they could not even BEGIN to comprehend corruption.
They should just be thankful it can't happen to them. They think their cancer is bad? They don't know what a real disease is.
Mike tossed Peridot's foot up to Steven, who was surprised by the sudden toss, but managed to barely catch it.
"No, Steven. I'll just take it home with me." He replied.
He approached one of the many vines covering the walls of the room and began to climb back up to the portal puddle.
"But-
"End of conversation." Mike interrupted in an assertive, mildly agitated tone, climbing up the massive vines.
Steven was curious as to why the Gem didn't leave the corrupted one here. Did he not think it was safe or something?
The room was practically impenetrable, y'know, other than the puddle in Amethyst's room that literally anyone could enter...
Although, that lava pool could be a potiental hazard, if a bubble were to pop and a Gem fell in there.
Mike reached the puddle where Steven's head was sticking out of.
"Mike, if this is about the room being unsafe-
"Get your head out of there, Steven." Mike interrupted again.
The half-Gem hesitantly pulled his head out from the puddle, finding himself back in Amethyst's mess of a room.
Why was he not wanting to leave the Gem there? Steven wondered.
Mike didn't seem to have any interest in discussing it, but there was clearly a reason he didn't want to leave the Gem there.
Steven didn't want to annoy him with questions, but he felt inclined to learn more.
Mike's head and shoulders soon emerged from the puddle, and he proceeded to climb out.
He looked down to Steven.
"That was surprisingly easy. Alright Steven, you can give me the foot back now." He said, holding out his hand, expecting the boy to hand it over.
To his surprise, he didn't, and instead held the foot away from him. "Hang on. Why don't you want to leave the Gem in the burning room?"
Mike lowered his hand ever so slightly, his expression suddenly turning into a narrow-eyed glare.
"Steven... give me the foot." He asked again.
"No." The boy replied stubborningly. "First you tell me why you don't want to leave the Gem in the burning room!"
Mike lowered his hand completely. "Steven... give me the foot now. Or else." He said rather darkly.
The boy backed away a little. The Gems tall composure was suddenly frightening.
His face was shaded by his hat, and his glaring eyes were narrowed directly at Steven. The Gem was much bigger than Steven. Perhaps even taller than Pearl. He clearly didn't have a lot of patience, but Steven was definitely testing it. He started backing away more.
Mike started following Steven's cowering form. "Steven. I want that foot. Give it to me."
And his tone was terrifying. It was angry. But it was so calm, it was unsettling. Like he'd explode any second.
However, that wouldn't stop Steven from getting answers.
The boy stopped backing up.
"No, you tell me why you don't trust me!" He shot back at the tall Gem.
"W..." Mike began, his expression turning to slight confusion.
"Mike, I'm just trying to help corrupted Gems like you! Why don't you trust me enough to leave the Gem in the burning room, huh?!"
"What? Nonono, Steven, you don't understand, that's not what I mean at all!" Mike replied, holding his hands up in defense.
"Well, then what do you mean? What's wrong with leaving it in a safe place?" Steven asked, taking a few steps back towards the Gem.
Mike looked down to the boy. He wanted to know. He wanted to know so bad, and he wasn't going to give that foot up until he got answers. Arguing would get them nowhere, clearly.
He let out a sigh of defeat. "Steven, walk with me." He said, leading the boy to the exit.
"Look, Steven. It's not that I don't trust you, okay? I do. You're a really nice Gem, to want to help corrupted Gems,
but you've got to understand something, alright? And it's simple. You can't help them. And before you say anything, let me explain.
See, Homeworld... it's a big place. Filled to the brim with the smartest this universe can offer. Much, much smarter I'm sure than any scientists that you're Earth has. You're aware of what cancer is, right?"
The boy nodded. He was aware of such a sickness.
"Good. Now see, corruption, it's sort of like lethal types of cancer, in a sense. And when I say that, I mean... it's something you can't get rid of once you get it. There's no outright cure, and depending on the type of cancer you have, all you can do... is lay back and die.
Now corruption, it's much more worse than cancer can ever be. It takes over your mind and body, it turns you into something bad.
Something... evil. And when that happens, it's irreversable. Un-curable.
Now what I'm basically saying it this: if Earth still hasn't found a cure for cancer, than what makes you think they can just whip up a cure for corruption? Even you and the Crystal Gems, they've been gone from Homeworld for so long, and you've never been there. Technology advanced, Gems changed, became smarter, and yet they themselves still haven't figured out how to cure it.
So the chances of the Crystal Gems fixing it are even lower than zero. That's why I'm not just going to leave it here on Earth.
I have a better chance of curing it if I take it home with me than you do if I leave it here. You understand?"
Steven just stared ahead of himself. Was he right? After all, Peridot did seem to be a lot smarter than the Gems, even Pearl,
who seemed like the smartest of the group. But could they really not cure corruption? Surely that couldn't be true?
But then again, he himself has no idea how corruption even happens. And if the Gems knew how, they haven't told him.
"If you think that's what's best..." Steven agreed, dissapointingly.
During their lengthy conversation, the two had made it back to the living room of the beach house.
It was now nighttime. The moon shone down into the house through the windows, lighting up the dark room.
Mike noticed this. "It's pretty late. I should go."
"Go where?" Steven questioned. "You don't really have anywhere to go, do you?"
Mike wasn't entirely sure, but one idea did come to mind.
"I can just hide out at the Kindergarten. It's pretty big, and there's a lot of places to hide. I'll be fine." He said before heading for the front door.
The Kindergarten on Earth wasn't exactly a very luxorious place, as it had been wiped of all the Gems long ago, leaving the place pretty barren. Although there wasn't any need to worry about being attacked by Gems. Although that cluster project was a potiental hazard,
but it could be easily avoided. Not that he'd even want to be near it if it wasn't hostile.
"Okay, then." Steven said, as he watched the Gem walk towards the door.
But he spoke up again when he opened it.
"Mike?"
The Gem stopped when he heard his name. "Yeah?" He responded, looking back to Steven.
There was a bit of silence before the boy replied. "G'night." He answered with a smile.
Mike returned the smile. "G'night to you too, Steven." He repeated the boy's goodbye, before exiting the house.
Steven watched him go. Sure, they had hit a few bumps along the way, but he and Mike seemed like they'd make a good team.
He's definitely A LOT nicer than Peridot and Jasper. Although Steven still had little flicker of hope, that little thought bouncing around the back of his head, that maybe, he could redeem them. After all, Peridot didn't seem that bad, she actually acts like a kid a lot,
and it seems like she's just doing her job, as bad as it may be.
Although if there was one Gem Steven was worried about more than any other, it was Lapis.
The one thing Steven had been wondering ever since she and Jasper had fused. Was she alright?
Judging by that dream he had before, it was obvious she was still in pain, having to keep them both trapped as Malachite at the bottom of the ocean. Having to endure that kind of pain after being a prisoner so many times already.
But he had hope. He had hope that maybe, when they find Malachite, maybe he can convince Lapis- and maybe even Jasper, to leave Homeworld and join the Crystal Gems one day. That was his goal, and he was determined to reach it.
He would reform the Homeworld Gems, and get them to join him and the Crystal Gems.
And that goal started with Mike. He would be the first one he'd reform.
He just had to find out how to do it. And had to make sure the Gems didn't find out about him until they were ready,
because they aren't very trustworthy, especially to a Gem from Homeworld.
Although it never was easy for the boy to lie to anyone.
And it never was hard for someone to get the truth out of him.
