Chapter 12: First Half: Sadie
Sadie relished in the power and speed of her ride; nighttime air lifting up her hair and cooling her back. Di raced down the hillside with smooth, elegant leaps, enduring its injuries.
They came up on the Big Donut so fast, Sadie scarcely registered where Di was going. She shielded her face as the monster crashed into the front window, a plume of shattered glass scattering unto the slick floor as the beast collapsed into the front of the store. It knocked into a table and fell to its side, launching Sadie behind the counter.
"Uuuugggghhh." She grumbled, called to her feet by Di's weak cries of pain.
The stab wound that pierced its side looked deep, and Di was suffering. But as Sadie approached, the creature lifted it head and began to pound at the floor, slamming each side of its snout into the titled floor rhythmically. It whined at Sadie, and she saw a vision of the last shard.
It was buried beneath the repaired flooring, beckoning with a glint.
"Ok, hold on… just stop!" Sadie said breathlessly, disturbed by the echo of muscle on thick plastic. "I'll get the shovel! She knew there had been one somewhere in the janitors closest ever since the monster attacks had gotten worse…
Racing back with the implement in hand, Sadie watched Di poured a hot wave of her glowing energy beam into the floor. It melted its target, revealing a layer of sandy dirt sitting on the concrete foundation. Di then collapsed, sides heaving.
"It's ok… I'll find it… I'll find it…" Sadie muttered, trying not to consider the apparent mortality of her companion.
As she dug frantically at the stinking puddle Di had created, searching for a flash of green, Di got to its feet and stood over her, clicking urgently.
Shadows crossed over them. They'd been followed by the gems.
"No, no, no, no… just a few more seconds…" Sadie continued, hearing commanding protests from the arrivals.
A horrific alien scream shuddered out into the night. Sadie shut her eyes, groping blind in the dust, knowing that Di was giving her last breath in the fight to defend this little fetch quest…
"Ouch!" Sadie reared back, her finger smarting.
There it was. The last shard. Sadie felt the sting of tears.
"I did it." She whispered.
The final shard captured the weak moonlight rays, vanishing into her flesh like a drop of dye dunked into water.
"Thank you."
A voice, rich and silky like a rush of shadow over ocean waves, spoke as Sadie felt a hand on her shoulder. The world flushed green and blue.
Slowly she turned around to face the source, a sublime fear taking hold of her.
Cat-like eyes, golden with sharp black shadows cut into them, gazed into hers. A thick mane of tendrils crept around Sadie's face, her neck, her entire body.
"Are you Dioptase?" Sadie managed to ask, the slight electrical tingling rising to a scream of pain.
"I sure am. And I honestly appreciate what you've done, stunning work, but it's time for you to go. I've done using you for now." The face spoke with all the cruel impossibility of a ghost.
"Using? I don't under-"
The Big Donut was gone, replaced by an infinite horizon and a vast sea of thin, glittering water.
Sadie was trapped in the deepest part of the dream. Alone. Abandoned.
Betrayed.
She fell to her knees beside a single tree, staring blankly through a canopy towards a pale blue sky, too exhausted to cry.
Chapter 12: Second Half: Lars
Pearl had stabbed the big dinosaur-wolf right in the throat, and it died trashing and howling among the remains of yet another Big Donut window. Steven had repeated the names of the gems to Lars; Garnet, Pearl, and Amethyst. He was happy that they seemed to be having an easier time in this second round.
He felt a rush of hope, covering his ears as the death wail of the creature pounded on his brain. Maybe Sadie was free now!?
"That was awesome…" Steven was standing next to him, in awe of the scene. Lars felt the tug of curiosity, but he stayed put. His leg smarted where the beast had cut him with its jaws, but the memory of Sadie's coldness stung even more.
Lars watched through the broken window as the beast was torn apart as if by some invisible wind, its long mane shredded into dust. Pearl leapt back as the remaining glow vanished in a rush back into Sadie's hunched body.
Steven and Lars yowled as a blinding white flash exploded from the building, fading into that sickly blue-green glow Lars had come to hate. The group all struggled against a pulsating wind, gathering outside of the Big Donut in a semi circle.
Through the chaos in the restaurant, Lars glimpsed Sadie's body. She was standing up, swaying slightly.
"Sadie!" Lars croaked, starting towards her, but Steven held him back.
"…something's… wrong…" Steven said slowly, and his tone was so unusually nervous that Lars actually obeyed.
Sadie turned slowly and strolled out of the restaurant on bare feet, crunching over glass without flinching. The only sound was the hiss of an ocean breeze blowing from behind the expectant group. The air nipped at Lars skin, cool moonlight drawing long shadows across the ground.
Lars felt ill as a long, tick mane of tendrils lashed out of her arm, not in the form of a creature this time, but an abstract mass far more terrifying, more real. He gasped in horror as the tendrils swung underneath Sadie, lifting her up into the air. A hazy blue-green light glowed from her already pale skin, dying her blonde hair blue.
Sadie raised her head, a blank smile on her face, body relaxing into the throne of pulsating tentacles.
Finally, Sadie spoke, but not in her own voice.
"Look at what I have become! STUNNING WORK!" She opened her arms, the tendrils opening into a fascinating fractal shape behind her.
The gems all stood in shock, eyes narrowed at this bizarre circus that floated before them. Lars felt the world sink beneath him. Surely, this was another nightmare!
"Well? Too moved to speak?" Sadie-not-Sadie purred, her eyes glancing over to Lars; and he recoiled as he saw that the pupils glowed a pure white. Sadie's hair undulated in sync with the tendrils, her curls unwinding.
"Dioptase!" Garnet roared. "You must let that human go free."
Dioptase, as the thing possessing Sadie was apparently called, ignored the gems command, gently touching the blue-green stone that was soldered into her left arm. Lars recognized the spot where Sadie's cut had been.
"What did you call me?" Dioptase purred. "Oh, yes. "Underwhelming." I remember it like it was YESTERDAY!" Her voice rose to a scream, making the air shudder.
"And YOU…!" She turned to Amethyst, the tentacles becoming aggressive. "I believe you said I was "stupid" and "weird" and "air-headed."
"And finally…" Dioptase soared over to Pearl.
"A selfish, careless plagiarist." Harsh critics, the Crystal Gems." Dioptase sneered through Sadie's face. "As if I was the only one to take some cues from the humans!"
"And look," her voice softened again, "now it seems I AM one. Surely, THIS must have impressed some part of your limited sensibilities!"
Pearl held her spear at the ready. "You can't use living things for your own self centered experiments!"
"EXPERIMENTS?" Dioptase laughed. "As if I would waste my energy on EXPERIMENTS! This is an EXPERINCE! A full, complete expression of what I SENSE and how I FEEL as told to you through a set of SYMBOLS. This is ART!" As she spoke, the tendrils continued to produce complex, swirling shapes, hissing as they soared through the air.
Amythest grunted. "Pffft, what an attention loving hack. She hasn't changed a bit."
"The home world told me to use my abilities only to FIGHT for THEM! They denied me the RIGHT of the creative struggle… and YOU rejected me as well, so now you despise me as I am doomed to practice on the edge of MEANING… we are ALL selfish!" Dioptase was ranting now, her head facing the sky.
"Surrender the human or we will defeat you, in the name of Rose Quartz!" Pearl hollered.
"Oh?" Dioptase stilled the many tentacles. The sight of Sadie, her body twisted in so many unnatural ways, continued to make Lars nauseous.
"But you MUST witness my latest work…" she muttered, her voice scarcely a whisper, but somehow painfully loud. "It's a collaboration between myself, this girl, and the other humans of this town. Dreams are my latest medium, such a quality canvas you would never try to understand as I have, ABSTRACT and then CONCRETE and then abstract once more… EMOTION and MEMORY colliding into a billion different hues…"
"We know what dreams are!" Steven's voice rang clear in the tense air. "What did you do to Sadie?!"
Diopsate suddenly turned her vacant eyes towards them, twisting the gem in her arm.
"Imagination and emotion made real; is there any higher art form?!" She spoke calmly at first, but then her voice exploded in a shout.
"I ONLY WANT YOU TO KNOW ME AS I KNOW MYSELF!"
The world was torn apart in a blue green flash, a painful electrical current flowing through Lar's body. He opened his eyes, blinking, and everything looked the same for an instant, but…
Emerging from the rippling air was some kind of… person, no, an animal, it was… the Sneople?!
The Sneople from the nightmare?!
Lars mind reeled as the creatures lunged towards the Crystal Gems, a very real fight breaking out between imaginary monsters and concrete ones. With a cracking hiss, the Big Donut exploded into a green flame, illuminating the horrifying scene before him.
Lars felt that familiar darkness of panic closing in on him, his legs ordering him to run, run, far away. This… thing that had taken hold of his friend was bringing her nightmare to LIFE?
"IT MUST BE AN ILLUSION!" He heard Garnet call out in the confusion. "DON'T LET HER FOOL YOU!"
"Are you so SURE about that?" Lars heard Dioptase call back, hanging upside down in the air and swinging her arms. "Look at what I can DO with these DREAMS made REALITY! STUNNING!"
He watched as massive chunks of glass shot out of the earth, filling the air with sand as the gems were forced to dodge them. Dioptase seemed focused on the gems, with Lars and Steven was simply caught up in the crossfire.
Why is my life so horrible? Lars wailed inwardly.
What could Lars he do?! He was just one weak human… He couldn't help Sadie or Steven or anyone…
He turned on his heels to run.
The next breath he was about to take was crushed out of his body unexpectedly. Something knocked him back, but as he jerked his head around to find it, he saw nothing. But he heard loud footsteps, and a deadly sense of dejavu came over him.
Something reared before him, suddenly coated in thick gray mud. It was the monster from the island; come back from the depths of a nightmare to finish the job it had started.
As the monster slammed back down, Lars looked the beast straight in the face and saw that it was a mirror reflection of his own, so close it was breathing on him.
It grinned, and Lars felt faint with fear. Somewhere, he seemed to hear the crackle of a fire and wail of a child in distress. He had returned to that nightmare, and in that moment he was convinced he'd die in it too.
"You never said you were SORRY!" The creature slurred, and Lars leapt back as it swiped at his head.
Lar's felt his heart darken with fury. His fear boiled into a thick paste of self-hatred.
Why was he running away!?
If he survived, he'd just spend the rest of his life living in regret! It wouldn't get any better if he just ran from everything that hurt. It would just keep getting worse. At some point, he had to end it.
"Shut UP!" he screamed, punching towards the monsters face but whiffing his only shot.
Laughing uncontrollably, the beast brought its massive hands down on his head, and he blacked out instantly.