The Cybermen came stomping onto their ship's bridge. One of their number was holding Peridot by the waist, while she struggled, threw her arms around, and screamed. Every time she attempted to use her ferrokinetic powers to free herself, the Cyberman holding her would release a painful jolt of electricity.
"Unhand me this second you dim-witted cyber-CLODS, or you will feel the wrath of my unbridled fury!"
Lapis and Amethyst heard Peridot before they saw her. "Peridot?" Lapis called.
"Lapis!" Peridot cried in relief, as she saw her companion. "Oh my stars! I'm so glad you're alright! Are you alright? Did they hurt you!?"
"No no, I'm fine." Lapis lied, for fear of exacerbating the green Gem's hysteria. "Did they hurt you?"
Peridot snorted in relief. "Who cares!?"
Lapis frowned and rolled her eyes, reluctant to admit sincere feelings. "I do..."
With no visible command, Lapis floated towards the centre of the bridge, the white light holding her in place danced along the ceiling and floor as she went. The Cyberman holding Peridot carried her over and placed her on the floor by Lapis. Before Peridot could help lapis or scramble for freedom, a cylindrical forcefield manifested around the Gems, and Lapis' restraints disengaged, dropping her next to her friend.
One of the Cybermen approached the newly-formed prison. "Each of you possess fragments of the energy signature of the Prime Anomaly."
"The what?" Lapis asked, with an angry sneer.
Several images appeared, around the outside of the two Gems' cell. Most of them were blurred or obscured by clouds or bright light, but the subject was clear.
"Jade?" Lapis asked, in quiet confusion.
"You want us to form Jade?" Peridot elaborated, slowly beginning to understand.
Several of the Cybermen shared looks. They had been unaware of the relationship between Lapis, Peridot and Jade. They quickly updated their records.
"You will form the anomaly, and the Cyber ship will return to the fleet." The Cyberman stated.
"Uhh yo!" Amethyst angrily drew the Cybermen's attention. "You can't just fly out of here! There's a whole city up there!"
One of the Cybermen turned to Amethyst intimidatingly. "Irrelevant."
Amethyst's reaction was one of fury. She snarled angrily and her gem illuminated as she renewed her effort to shapeshift her way out of her confinement.
Lapis faced the Cyberman who had addressed her and Peridot, and folded her arms, pointedly. "Well we're not doing it."
Peridot mimicked Lapis' gesture and closed her eyes, smugly. "That's right! We only fuse when we feel like it!"
The Cyberman replied. "Your compliance is not necessary."
Before Lapis and Peridot could query further, beams of white light, the likes of which were restraining Amethyst, appeared between the two Gems, slowly pulling them together. Alarmed, they braced their hands against each other, trying to push one another away, resisting the influence of the Cybermen's technology.
"No, it is!" Lapis frantically insisted. "You can't force two Gems to fuse!"
"Garnet is going to destroy you for this!" Peridot angrily threatened.
It seemed the Cybermen's strategy was more sophisticated than simply pressing the two Gems together, as sparks of white light began to shoot from Peridot's gem, and around Lapis' back to hers, but neither gem illuminated, indicating impending fusion.
"Modify energy relay pattern to those of the anomaly." One of the Cybermen instructed. Others busied themselves at the ship's controls.
Lapis and Peridot cringed in distress as they became shrouded in light. A gleaming ball of whiteness, like a small sun, glared from the prison cell, before an explosion of white smoke swiftly silenced the hum of the machinery. When it cleared, neither Lapis, Peridot or Jade were anywhere to be seen. Two gems lay lifelessly on the floor of the cell.
"Lapis! Peridot!" Amethyst cried, craning her neck and squinting, inspecting the two gems for damage, as best she could. So far as she could tell, there was none.
"Forced assembly of the anomaly- deemed impractical." A Cyberman noted.
"That's right! So you may as well let us go! There's no way you'll get your metal mitts on Jade!" Amethyst optimistically insisted.
Again, a Cyberman turned, to address the boisterous, captive Gem. "Incorrect."
-x-x-x-
Not too far above the ship, the Doctor, Steven and friends were closing in. At the news that the Cybermen could be planning to force a fusion, Garnet had assumed an expression nobody had seen on her since her confrontation with the Gem abominations under the Prime Kindergarten. She had swiftly led the group through the tunnels, and soon arrived at the same cliff, from which Amethyst had abseiled with her eight-legged friends.
Amy offered the Doctor a spare grappling hook, and the pair of them swiftly descended on sturdy cables, attached, via the guns, to secure braces, strapped to their arms. The remainder of the group simply jumped over the edge, with Atlas perfectly bracing their legs on impact with the ship, just like the Gems, and Steven floating gently down, holding Connie's hands.
"Is this it?" Connie asked, somewhat awed to be standing on top of the ship, of the creatures which had invaded her world.
The Doctor disengaged the cable from his gun and returned it to Amy. He took his screwdriver from his pocket and waved it around. "Yup, genuine Cyber ship. Old one too! This was a relic even before it crashed here. No wonder the fleet didn't come looking for it. Oh... Hang on..."
The Doctor rotated the screwdriver like the needle of a compass. Once he seemed to find what he was looking for, his face lit up in alarm, and he ran from the group, across the surface of the ship.
"Doctor! What is it?" Steven called, before leading the group, in pursuing the easily-distracted Time Lord.
The group arrived at the crack, through which Amethyst had made her way into the ship. They stood around it, inspecting the damage. The Doctor, Amy and Pearl were the only ones who had a working understanding of what had happened. They made corresponding sounds of sudden understanding.
"It's the engine..." Amy began explaining, for the rest of the group.
"It must have given out, as it entered this planet's gravity!" Pearl continued. "It overworked under the strain and all but exploded!"
"And now, whenever they try to fire up the ship, it leaks energy at a massive rate." The Doctor finished.
"And that's the energy vampires..." Amy realised. "They suck power from the city, put those disgusting things in the brains of anyone who could find and stop them, and try to take off whenever their power cells are full, leaking energy back up to the city!"
"But what do they need Jade for?" Pearl asked. "If a century of draining the city didn't help, then what good would she be?"
"Jade can generate power much faster than the whole city combined. She could probably power this ship faster than it's leaking." The Doctor said, worriedly.
"And what? Fly the ship through the rocks, and destroying the city?" Amy asked.
"Yeah, or the planet..." The Doctor said, through gritted teeth. Before anyone could question what he said, he turned to Garnet. "Garnet, where are Peridot and Lapis?"
Garnet adjusted her visor slightly. "They're on the bridge. Amethyst is here too."
Most of the group breathed a collective sigh of relief.
"Right, I need to see the engine room. I'll need Pearl and Amy. I'm sending the rest of you to the bridge, try and slow them down." The Doctor ordered. As he spoke, he opened a small panel on the side of the ship, and pulled out a small, black box, attached to the ship by a series of multi-coloured cables.
"Wait, you're sending us there?" Connie asked, confused. "How?"
"Like this!" The Doctor held the box to the tip of the sonic screwdriver and, with a monotone buzz, the group vanished with two separate flashes of blue light.
Instantly, the Doctor, Pearl, Amy and Atlas appeared in a long, rectangular room, the walls and ceiling of which were made up of the ship's glowing, metallic engines, on which, several display monitors were lined up, each one consistently reporting on the damage to the ship. There was a single Cyberman in the engine room. The group had barely appeared, before Pearl drew her spear and launched it through the cyborg's head, while barely looking at it.
The Doctor and Amy raced to the nearest display and examined the data it displayed. Just as they had deduced, the Cybermen were repeatedly charging their ship and attempting to free themselves, to no avail. The Doctor delved into the data further, seeming to know what he was looking for.
"Doctor, if the Cybermen can't fly out of here, why did they keep trying, over and over?" Amy asked. "And why didn't they just get someone from the city to repair their ship. I mean, not everyone can fix a ship this banged up but... I mean... I probably could."
"Both the same reason." The Doctor replied. "Because they're thick! Cybermen are normally led by controllers, with more organic brains than the others, but a small ship like this, on its own? They've got all the problem-solving skills of a pocket calculator. The energy leaks from their ship, so they think 'let's add MORE energy!' And repeat until insane." The Doctor rolled his eyes.
"Doctor, we should head up to the bridge!" Pearl insisted, concern for Steven and Connie, clear on her voice.
The Doctor cringed, he was concerned too, but there were more pressing issues which had brought them to the engine room. "There's enough power running through this ship to crack this planet like an egg. If they manage to force Peridot and Lapis to form Jade, then whatever we do, this ship is either going to take off, or detonate. Either way, it's a bad day to live in Shipyard City..."
"What do we do?" Amy demanded, with a touch of hysteria in her voice.
"Amy, go to that display over there, open the energy matrix database and reverse all the positive and negative energy levels. Pearl, find all the data relating to energy acquisition and delete it."
While the trio worked, Garnet, Steven and Connie were confronting the Cybermen on the bridge. The group had appeared just as Lapis and Peridot were reforming.
"Lapis! Peridot! Amethyst!" Steven cried out, in relief.
"Steven! You gotta get us out of here! They're trying to force us to form Jade!" Peridot cried.
Garnet gritted her teeth and snarled angrily. He summoned her gauntlets and pointed at the nearest Cyberman with an armored finger. "A fusion's power comes from trust and comradery! You can't force it!"
As though to demonstrate Garnet's point, Steven and Connie exchanged consent with a curt nod and, with a gleam of pink light, Stevonnie stood at Garnet's shoulder, sword in hand. "That's right!"
In an instant, the two fusions shot forwards, Stevonnie shielded Garnet from a barrage of laser fire, and ducked at the last second, allowing Garnet's fist to collide with a Cyberman's head, sending it flying into the force field prison. The Cyberman writhed helplessly as the blue light of the forcefield crackled over it, and it collapsed to the ground.
The duo were about to split up, around Lapis and Peridot's prison, to take on the Cybermen on each side, when there was another flash of white light, and the ship's security system struck once more. Stevonnie was instantly pulled into a vertical position, Garnet resisted for several seconds, but she too, succumbed. One of the remaining Cybermen approached them.
"You'll never get away with this!" Stevonnie spat. "The Doctor and Pearl are gonna tear this ship apart!"
Amy's voice came from the entrance to the bridge, behind Stevonnie. "What am I? Chopped liver?"
Stevonnie craned their neck, to see over their shoulder. The Doctor, Pearl, Amy and Atlas came walking slowly onto the bridge, with a Cyberman escorting them from behind, its hand raised, ready to fire. The Doctor had a cheery grin on his face, and his hands in the air, in surrender. Pearl had her arms folded, and was frowning.
"I don't see why we couldn't have just destroyed this one, and taken the bridge by storm." Pearl whispered, but not quietly enough to conceal her voice from anyone on the bridge.
"Come on now, Pearl." The Doctor critisised. "Learn to accept a vastly superior opponent." He said, with a wink, that also failed to go unnoticed by anyone in the room.
The Cyberman who had approached the cell in the middle of the room, faced Peridot and Lapis, and aimed its hand at Stevonnie. "You will form the Prime Anomaly, or all of your associates will be deleted."
Pearl, Amethyst, Lapis and Peridot burst out in distress, pleading and insisting for Stevonnie's safety. The Doctor quickly placed a hand on Pearl's shoulder. She looked at him angrily and he shook his head, with an urgent look in his eyes which said, 'trust me.'
"Peridot, Lapis, it's alright." Garnet said. "If it's alright with you, please form Jade."
"But... the city..." Peridot said. Her morality almost, but not quite, outweighing her compassion for her friend.
"Stevonnie is more important." Garnet said, bluntly.
Stevonnie looked at Garnet, quizzically. They were sure Garnet wouldn't really let a city full of people perish, any more than she would let any harm come to Steven. In a situation like this, Garnet would fight with every fiber of her Gems, to save everyone, unless she had a plan. Hoping they were right, Stevonnie nodded their head. "Yes, please form Jade, so I can not die!" They said, with less than amazing acting.
With more than a bit of uncertainty between them, Lapis and Peridot faced each other, smiled nervously, and joined hands. A glow of turquoise light shone from the two Gems, concealing them, until it faded away, revealing Jade. No sooner had the fusion appeared, when she collapsed to her knees and cried in pain, as bolts of green lightning shot from her gems, to the ceiling, where a small, pylon-like device had descended.
"Let... my friends go... now!" Jade demanded, between grunts.
The Cyberman holding Stevonnie hostage turned to one at a terminal, on the outside of the bridge, who was measuring Jade's energy output. They relayed the information non-verbally for just a second.
"Delete the prisoners." Said the Cyberman at the terminal.
"NOW!" The Doctor cried.
With a flash of light, Ruby and Sapphire separated, each flying clear of Garnet's confinement. Sapphire immediately leapt at the Cyberman threatening Stevonnie, and tried to wrestle its arm away, despite her diminutive strength. After a moment of one-sided struggling though, the Cyberman was encased in a sturdy layer of ice. Meanwhile, Ruby scurried across the bridge, with Garnet's future vision fresh in her memory. She summoned her gauntlet and punched through the wall, pulling out a handful of red cables, with an accompanying burst of sparks.
The electronic shackles confining Amethyst and Stevonnie vanished, as did Jade's prison, but energy continued to fly from her gems. While the Crystal Gems and the Cybermen fought, the Doctor raced across the bridge, and over to one of the control consoles. He frantically tapped on the keys, his fingers a blur. Sure enough, Jade was pouring energy into the ship's power cells, which were already at 400% safe capacity.
While the Doctor was trying to stabilise the ship's energy levels, before it killed them all, a laser blast hit him squarely in the shoulder. He gasped in pain and fell backwards, clutching the laser burn. It hurt a lot, but it would take more than that to cause him to regenerate (four knocks, to begin with). The offending Cyberman hobbled towards the Doctor, compensating for a hole in its shin, left by Pearl's spear.
"Doctor!" Stevonnie called across the ship, while holding off a Cyberman, with their shield.
"I'm fine! Get Jade!" The Doctor called.
Looking at the ceiling above the fusion, Stevonnie kicked the Cyberman away and threw their shield, sending it soaring through the air, and slicing through the pylon, siphoning Jade's power. The lightning ceased emitting from Jade's gems and, with a gasp of relief, the fusion separated.
"Energy levels at 390% and falling." Said the Cyberman who had shot the Doctor, after it took his place at the console. "Engaging thrusters."
"No!" Amy cried in distress.
She sprinted towards the Cyberman, with her taser device in-hand, but slowed to a halt half way across the bridge, as she noticed the Cyberman step away from the console. A range of emotions boiled within her. First, she felt a crushing defeat and remorse for the millions of people in the city above, then confusion at the sounds that followed, and finally, relief. Amy had heard all manner of spaceship thrusters in her time, and whatever the Cyberman had done, she wasn't hearing thrusters now. Instead, a whirring, crackling sound came from the opposite end of the ship, getting gradually louder.
The Doctor quickly stood up and rested an arm on the Cyberman's shoulder, playfully. "Ooh, didn't I mention?" He began, with a triumphant grin. "I had a bit of a play around in the engine room, did some rewiring. You didn't just engage the thrusters, you..." He pulled his glasses from his pocket, put them on, and squinted at the display. "Ooh... that doesn't look good at all."
"Uhhh, what's happening?" Amethyst asked.
The group slowly gravitated together, as the crackling sound intensified, and the ship began to rattle, as though there was a train approaching.
"The energy cells are being emptied into the ship's perimeter defense, except... that only needs 2% power, which means the excess energy will go coursing through the ship's infrastructure." The Doctor explained.
As if on cue, several of the bridge's displays exploded with bursts of sparks, as the ship rattled with more intensity.
"Isn't that dangerous!?" Peridot insisted, rhetorically.
The Doctor scoffed. "Nah! Well... yes, incredibly... But only if you're on this ship. Come along, Clems and Gems!" He grinned. "I've been waiting to say that."
The Doctor flourished his sonic screwdriver and, with a flash of blue light, the ship vanished, and the group found themselves in the alleyway, where they had discovered the teleport feed. Before any of them breathed a triumphant sigh of relief, Amy's attention was drawn to the nearest street lamp. The crimson glow of sunset was filling the sky, and the lamps were beginning to illuminate, but the one Amy was looking at wasn't only lit up, but glaring so bright, it scolded her eyes, and shortly after the group appeared, the bulb exploded violently.
"Doctor..." Amy began, worriedly. "You said there was enough energy in that ship to destroy this planet... Where did that energy go?"
The group ran from the alleyway to the street. One after another, street lamps were exploding, the interiors of skyscrapers glowed like Christmas ornaments, and bolts of lightning were dancing from the repulsors. Dozens of Clems were running back and forth, crying in distress and panic.
"If everything in the city is getting overloaded... Doctor, we have nuclear power plants, here!" Amy all but shrieked.
"Right... come on then!" The Doctor sprinted down the street.
The group, including a newly formed Garnet, raced after him, ducking back and forth, between panicked pedestrians. It didn't take long, to realise where he was going. With a buzz from the sonic screwdriver, the Doctor burst into Amy's garage, with the group assembling behind him. Inside, the Roaming Eye was glowing faintly, and floating back and forth, through the garage, restrained by the power cable Peridot had run through the open door, and connected to the console.
The Doctor leapt into the ship's open door, and over to the controls. Peridot and Pearl joined him. "Right gang!" He cringed. "Team...? Allies! Anyway, everyone open up the power cells and suppress all other systems. As long as the eye is charging, nothing too... explosive will overload."
While the trio worked, Garnet, Steven and Connie helped Amy attach more sturdy power cables, to the garage's outlets, which were beginning to spark menacingly, and attach them to the interior of the Eye. After almost an hour of frantic working, the chaotic sounds from outside began to quiet, and the Roaming Eye stood proudly, in mid-air, in the center of the garage.
"Energy levels outside are stabilised!" The Doctor announced.
"And the Roaming Eye is at 82% power!" Peridot added. "We can go home!"
"We can!?" Connie led the rest of the group into the ship, beaming in joyous relief.
"Wait, what about the Cybermen?" Amy asked. "Is it over?"
"The ship is fried, along with all the fully converted Cybermen, and its batteries are dead." The Doctor said, confidently. "Which means there's no way of controlling the bugs and the partially converted. Job's a good 'un."
"So, I suppose now we can finally leave this planet." Pearl said, tastelessly.
Garnet turned to Amy. "Thank you for your hospitality."
"Yeah." "Thanks a lot." Stene and Connie affirmed.
"Well thanks for crashing rent-free in my garage." Amy said, with mock irritation, betrayed by a fond smile.
"Ohh, I wouldn't say that." The Doctor said. He opened a panel on the Roaming Eye, and a tray, featuring dozens of red crystals rose out. The Doctor took one of them, and threw it to Amy. "That's a Gem micro-processing crystal, it's used for calculating and predicting the motion of galaxies, it stores millions of exabytes of data. Should be room for Atlas' personality on there, if you can figure it out."
"Help yourself, why don't you?" Peridot droned, from the pilot's seat.
Amy stared at the crystal in wonder. After all she had seen, she had no trouble believing that the crystal was an alien hard drive, but she was sure the Doctor was exaggerating about its capacity, even if it could help with Atlas. "Wow... thanks!"
After some more heartfelt goodbyes, the Doctor, and the Crystal Gems boarded the Roaming Eye, and it swept from Amy's garage, and shot into the sky.
-x-x-x-
Having received a call from Connie, during their flight back, Dr Maheswaran was waiting anxiously at Steven's house, when the Roaming Eye landed. They embraced one another tearfully, with respective cries of relief and gratitude. Lapis and Peridot used the warp pad in Steven's house to return to the barn, and Amethyst and Pearl retired to their rooms in the temple, to recuperate from their adventure, leaving Steven and Garnet, to offer the Doctor a lift to his TARDIS, in Empire City.
"So, what's next for you, Doctor?" Steven asked, curiously. "Have you got any more adventures planned?"
The Doctor stood motionlessly, staring out the window, at the clouds, whizzing past. He could almost see Ood Sigma, standing in the snow, the urgent look in his eyes. "You know... this and that..." The Doctor lied, half-heartedly.
Garnet frowned, without looking away from the ship's controls. "Doctor, you don't have to tell us anything you don't want to... but you're running out of time."
"What... what do you mean?" Steven asked, a hint of worry in his voice. "Doctor, what did she mean?"
The Doctor looked fondly at Steven, grateful for his concern, but didn't answer his question. "You know what happened in 2059... on Mars." The Doctor said, to the back of Garnet's head.
Garnet sighed. "Sapphires can see the one, possible future. I can see all the possibilities that could happen if I intervene. But there are some points, where even I can only see one outcome."
"Fixed points in time..." The Doctor explained. He looked down, to see Steven looking at him, wide-eyed, in apprehension. "There were some people, on Mars. Good people. Brilliant people. But they died... it was an important part of human history... Except I changed it... I saved them."
Steven wanted to say that that was a good thing, but he could tell from the Doctor's expression that it wasn't.
"Now I have to go and help someone make it right, except... I'm going to regenerate again." The Doctor frowned sadly.
"You seem a lot happier now, than you were the last time I saw you..." Steven said, understanding why the Doctor was hesitant to lose his current form. "But you always do the right thing, no matter what, right? I mean, you could be hiding on the other side of the universe right now, if you wanted to stay alive, but you'd never do that!"
The Doctor smirked. "Yeah... Well maybe I have put it off for long enough."
Garnet brought the Roaming Eye down on a street corner, immediately adjacent to the TARDIS. It was late evening, so there weren't many people around to stare at the unidentified craft, or the maroon woman walking out of it. The Doctor produced his key, and opened the door to his beloved ship, with a creak.
"Maybe we could help you?" Steven offered, although he had a feeling he knew what the Doctor would say. "Whatever you have to do, if we do it together, maybe we can save you?"
The Doctor smiled weakly. "There is something you can do, actually." He sighed, resignedly. "Keep protecting the earth for me, yeah?"
With tears welling in the corners of his eyes, Steven stepped forwards and hugged the Doctor's legs. Unable to return the gesture, the Doctor merely smiled and ruffled Steven's hair. He offered his free hand to Garnet, who shook it, firmly. Their farewells concluded, the Doctor entered his ship and, with a flash of the bulb, and an unearthly wheezing, vanished from Steven's life once again.
And we're done! That's it for my SU/Who crossovers for now. I have a couple more SU stories planned; a Pink Diamond origin story I've already started, and another crossover of nondescript nature (nudge nudge wink wink). So you know, stay tuned, or whatever, it's your life. Thanks for reading!