Hey everyone! I know things look tough in the world, but that won't stop me and Milo F Waters from posting more chapters of this story for you all!
So, here you go!
Let's see how the Steven/Kevin fusion fares now that he's willing to try and find an internal sense of harmony.
Chapter 17: New Roots
The Fusion has spent the night sleeping near the lighthouse, as Stevin didn't feel entirely comfortable sleeping in the bed of either of his components. In the morning, he went to the Crystal Gem Temple, where construction was underway on the remake of the house.
Stevin looked in awe at the large amount of progress that was already made thus far. Indeed, it seemed like progress would be done by the end of the month.
A minute later and the fusion was inside of the temple, walking in nervously. He was then greeted by Garnet. "Well, nice to see you're taking a chance at this," Garner said with a simple smile on his face.
"Y-Yeah," Stevin said, smiling a bit himself, "I wanna make this work, even if it's only for a little while…"
"Fair enough."
"So, uh, what exactly is there to do then?"
"Beats me," she shrugged, "Spontaneity is the spice of life, especially for me."
"Morning, world!" greeted Amethyst as she appeared out of her room only to do a double take at Stevin. "Wait, that wasn't some freaky dream?! That actually happened?!"
"Yep!" Steven said with a nervous laugh.
Then, things got more awkward for a second when Pearl entered the room. Accompanied by Lapis this time. "Oh, uh, Stevin!" She said awkwardly, "Nice to… see you today?"
"Oh, uh, thanks…? Is this the part where you yell at Amethyst?"
The two looked at each other, embarrassed at their past arguments.
Lapis simply looked as bored as usual, "So… who's this?" She asked, casually.
"This is Stevin," introduced Garnet, "A new fusion who's just trying to figure things out for the first time."
"Wait, you mean Steven and Kevin?"
"Yep."
"That smarmy jerk even Steven said was a, and I quote, 'Lean, mean ego machine?'"
Stevin suddenly felt a jolt of pain in his brain. "Sorry about that!" he said to himself.
"Oookay…" said Lapis as she headed out the door, "Good luck with… all of that junk." Stevin then looked awkwardly at her.
Luckily the tension was broken easily with Connie coming through the door, "Um, hello?"
They all turned to face her, "Uh… bad time?"
"No," Garnet said, "You're just in time."
"For what? A training session?"
"No, a mission. Shocking as it may seem, there are still a handful of corrupt gems scattered throughout the planet. I've located one recently, it's somewhere in a jungle. We need to bring in. Now that we've the means to cure them all, we need to double our efforts to bring them all back."
"Alright then," assured Pearl, "Should we bring Peri, Bismuth or…"
"And Stevin is going to help us do it."
A very long silence rang throughout the house. It was only interrupted when Lapis tried walking out the door and it took Amethyst pulling her back in to get a conversation going.
"SAY WHAT?!" yelled the purple wild child Gem, "I mean, I've done some loco stuff on missions, but not something like bringing a brand-new still flaky fusion on one!"
"Yeah," Lapis said in her unfazed tone, "I'm kinda with Amethyst on this one…" she mentally cringed, feeling reminded of Malachite.
"Everyone needs to start somewhere. If I recall, this would be your first new mission too, Lapis."
"Aw crud…"
"Garnet, we're not saying any of this to doubt your conviction," spoke Pearl, "But we can all attest to the fact that first-time fusions need some space to grow into their new being."
"Yeah!" said Connie forcefully, "All Stevonnie did was hang around town and then go to a party where we met Kevin for the first time! And now you want to bring him on a mission to save one of your own friends?!"
"Trust me," Garnet said, adjusting her glasses, "Stevin can handle it."
Connie looked like her birthday was canceled. She then stood right in front of Garnet "Garnet please, Steven may know what he's doing, but… this is KEVIN we're talking about! If anything, this new fusion will just get in the way!"
"N-No," said the new fusion, getting his nerves together, "I need to do this. I've had my time to get used to myself just existing, but I need to know more. Plus… I'm actually kind of excited for this." Connie had a nervous look on her face…
A few minutes later the team of six had arrived, via the Warp pad, into a lush, tropical jungle where there were wild plants everywhere. Even by untamed wilderness standards, the plant life seemed to be going crazy as vines as thick as Garnet's arms and flowers of almost every color covered every surface in sight. The group left the pad with caution as they tried to walk over the mess of foliage beneath their feet. Lapis soon just settled for hovering above the ground.
"Okay…" Stevin said, looking at Garnet and carefully watching his footing, "So… where is this place?"
"It's just up ahead," the fellow fusion replied, walking forward and down a makeshift path. The others began to follow here. Lapis noticed something shifting in the shadows, but none of the plants seemed to move, so she simply shrugged and wrote it off as just her imagination.
Eventually, the group had reached their destination and found something much more magical in nature. A twenty-foot tall open-air temple with stone floors and crystalline walls. While the architecture was beautiful, they were more keen on the overabundance of flora still covering the place.
"Man, good thing I don't have allergies," said Connie as she walked into the temple.
"Yeah," agreed Amethyst, "But I bet Pearl's going crazy with all these plants."
"And just what are you referring to?" she asked.
"Well, look at them! Aren't they all asymmetrical and out of order?"
"Please, Amethyst, I can respect nature enough to know that's just how plants are in their natural habitat."
"Really?" added Lapis, "I heard you once had a meltdown over some brambles in a fountain."
"That was completely different!" she shouted much louder than she intended. While it got a laugh out of Amethyst, Garnet and Stevin just watched them all in amusement.
"Are all these missions this… entertaining?" asked Stevin.
"Uh, dude," Amethyst said to him, "You're part Steven, you would know the answer to that question by now." She then walked past him as he began to think, a brief set of memories of Steven's adventures flashed in his mind, along with some of the emotions that Steven felt throughout. Then a thought rang out, a thought from Kevin… They… seem to really have fun…
At that moment though, the gems all heard a loud rumbling sound from nearby. "What was that?" Pearl said, cautious.
"Our target," responded Garnet, "Everyone, stay on your guard."
All of the gems summoned their weapons while Lapis flew off to find some water to use. Stevin tried concentrating on summoning Steven's shield, but got nothing. The only exception was Connie who only now remembered that her sword was broken by the Diamonds.
"Ehehehe… Pearl, do you have a backup weapon I could- ?"
"Sure," she then pulled out one of her fencing sabers from her gem and threw it to her apprentice. She was thrown off by how much lighter the blade was than her old one, but it would have to suffice. They all tensed up as they heard what sounded like something slithering across the floor. The only other thing they heard was Stevin now working himself to the point of sweating trying to get his shield.
"Come on… You… Dumb… Light thingy…!"
"Yeah, great idea…" lamented Connie when she heard a twig snap behind her.
"Got you now, chump!" yelled Amethyst as she charged with her whip at the ready. She struck down at the stone beneath her, but was knocked back into the air by a black withered root smashing into her face.
"Welp, found it…" she muttered with her face still kissing the ground.
"What the-?!" shrieked Stevin, "Was that some kinda mutant plant?!"
"Looks like it," remarked Garnet before she had to leap aside as more dead roots tried to impale her. Pearl was almost knocked off her feet by a blackened vine trying to tie her up, but she managed to leap away in time. A few managed to reach her, but she was able to slice them apart easily.
Amethyst slowly got up, only for another blackened vine to wrap itself around her lower leg, and hoist her up rapidly!
"Amethyst!" Connie said, and ran over to the short Quartz and tried to cut her free. While it did the trick, it left herself open to be attacked from behind by vine covered with thorns.
"Watch out!" shouted Stevin, the fusion then began to run up to them, unaware that his gem was glowing… And soon instead of running he was sliding and almost tripped over himself. Thankfully, it did serve as enough of a distraction to get Connie's attention and slice apart the barbed vine.
The fusion, confused, looked to his feet and found his footwear was different! He seemed to be wearing an ornate pair of… skates? "What the?" He reached out to grab them only to find that he was also wearing a pair of matching metallic armbands on his wrists. He tried reaching for those instead but only got more confused. What came out of them was a pair of giant bladed gauntlets that looked like two serrated swords strapped to Garnet's weapons. And then quite possibly the strangest thing yet happened as Stevin started skating along the ground and slicing up the vines left and right.
As if he literally flipped a switch from clumsy to confident, Stevin turned into a one-man weed-whacking tornado that started utterly annihilating everything the plants threw at him. Leaping through the air, slashing plants behind him backhanded while barely looking and even using his new skates for even more cutting power, he managed to slash dozens of the menacing plants to ribbons until they seemed to finally give up and settled down.
When he was done and put his weapons away he saw four promptly dropped jaws from everyone present, except Garnet.
"W-W-W-What…" sputtered Connie, suddenly feeling like going back home and calling the whole situation a wash.
"I… I… I'm sorry for doubting you?"
"That was bananas!" shouted Amethyst, her mind completely blown. "I gotta do that! Pearl, teach me to do that! I don't care how many boring lectures it takes, I wanna dice up spooky vines with knives on my arms like I drank fifteen liters of cola! DO IT!"
Stevin was alarmed at this remark, "Was… was I really intense out there?"
"Dude, you were awesome! You were like some dancing demon out there! Just skating around, then, SLICE AND DICE!" The fusion then began to smile at this praise, almost smirking, "Heh-heh, thanks Amethyst. I guess I'm better at this than I thought! I mean, I was just doing what naturally came to me and-"
At that moment, the group heard a loud raspy roar, "What was that!? Connie asked, brandishing her blade once more. At that moment, the ground beneath their feet seemed to tremble. Then at that moment something began to rise from the ground beneath their feet!
It turns out those vines were just the start as the mass of plants on the floor and walls began to rapidly shrivel up and die as the source of the rumbling seemed to drain all of the life out of them. And soon, once every vine and flower in the temple was a blacked husk, a massive being broke through the stone floor and revealed the corrupted gem the heroes were after.
A fifteen-foot tall tree with bark as black as the night sky arose with the body of an ordinary looking Quartz soldier was absorbed into the tree with only her torso and face being exposed, both looking as if they too were made of bark. The hundreds of dead vines suddenly writhed and spasmed as the gem creature somehow took control of them and forced them to form into two massive arms that looked large enough to break a car in half. While the mouth of the creature itself never moved, the plants let out a high-pitched scream that made all of the Crystal Gems cover their ears and all the easier for dozens of vines to assault them.
"Everyone scatter, now!" ordered Garnet as she was suddenly met by a massive flytrap mouth that appeared out of the ground.
Luckily everyone jumped out of the way. However something unexpected happened, a small barrage of projectiles, seemingly made of water began to surround and zone around the gem-monster and grab its attention.
"Guys!" Everyone looked up to see it was Lapis, "I've distracted it, now's your chance!"
With this new backup, the Crystal Gems had much better odds. More flytrap mouths appeared out of the ground, but now they were beaten down with literal water rockets or sliced apart by Stevin's new crystal blades. The swarm of vines went after the rest but all of them, even Connie with her unfamiliar weapon, were slicing them away by the dozens. The only problem was that it seemed like they were not getting any closer to the creature as every vine they cut down was quickly replaced and came at them again.
"Argh, this is getting ANNOYING!" Amethyst said, expressing her mood. "Pearl, Garnet, one of you brainiacs come up with an idea!"
"I don't know!" yelled Pearl as she was dodging a new type of enemy: pitch black flowers that were secreting an ominous green pollen, "But I feel like this thing is actually getting stronger!"
"Come on, you stupid weed," urged Lapis as she kept up her assault, "Why isn't this working?!"
Suddenly, some of the vines were able to absorb some of the water projectiles, causing them to get thicker and stronger! "Oh…" Lapis said looking at this realization, "That's why…"
The monster roared once again as some of the vines began to approach her! The flying Gem was quickly yanked out of the sky and was being dragged towards the corrupted Gem.
"No!" yelled Stevin as he tried skating after her, but he quickly found himself being swallowed up by dozens of the strengthened vines all at once. He managed to free himself with a bubble, but his situation made the other Crystal Gems all lose their focus.
"Hold on, dude!" started Amethyst, but was soon caught by three of the flytrap mouths. She tried whipping herself free, but the carnivorous plants just ate her whip and started tossing her from one head to the other.
"Let go of him!" yelled Pearl, but the flowers had other plans. The blossoms were now as large as her head and one of them lodged itself right into her gemstone. It began soaking her core in its sickening pollen and suddenly she was paralyzed.
"Pearl!" Stevin yelled as he struggled desperately to break free, but to no avail! The vines simply reinforced their grip on him. He tried even harder but felt something else, a sudden chill in the air around him but it didn't bother him. Rather, it seemed to feel right, comforting even. Once his bubble gave way, the plants tried to grab him but they suddenly began to literally freeze up as a chill began to seep into the air. Stevin looked at the scene, shocked and then looked at his hands. He reaches out with one hand to the ground, suddenly a small sheet of ice froze over that spot, a few of the vines at that spot froze as well! "Whoa…" he was shocked at this new revelation; he could control ICE! With a smile and look of determination, he focused on the vines around him…
Many of the plants tried rushing at him, but they were frozen solid in an instant. He summoned his skates and swords again and took off with an aura of cold surrounding and even bits of pink ice following him. He slashed the pollen-spewing plant holding Pearl down in a second and made sure to clean off her gemstone with his shirt as much as he could.
"W-What?" she said sluggishly, "My head feels so foggy…"
"Sorry, don't have any soap with me, gotta run!"
He charged forward towards Amethyst, petrifying more vines as he flew across the ground and quickly got to work freeing her from the flytraps. One of them tried swallowing her while the other two went for his head. They knew how to dodge and be more strategic than the vines, but their movements began to slow down as his cold aura slowed them down until he sliced one clean in half and then grabbed the other one and fully froze it.
He planned to help Amethyst, but she had already taken care of that by shapeshifting into the Purple Puma while inside the plant and becoming too big for it to handle. Unfortunately that meant the thing literally burst open with bright green chlorophyll flying everywhere and coating her.
"Okay, don't tell Pearl," she told him as she shapeshifted back to normal, "But even I think this is gross."
Stevin actually giggled at this comment until another roar got their attention - a horde of vines began to rush at them from all sides!
Stevin however, smirked at this. He then focused his powers and said, "You guys need to chill…" He held his hands out to his sides, then suddenly a wave of sheer cold emitted from his body. Heck, he even began to emit snowflakes! The vines all slowly began to freeze over!
Oh, but he wasn't done yet until he then leapt up into the air and started twirling, flipping, and moving around, using his unique gem weaponry to slice all of the freezing vines into bits and pieces of ice.
He then landed on the floor gracefully. Needless to say, Amethyst was truly impressed. "Dude, that was AWESOME! You made ice cubes out of those chumps!"
"Well… yeah," Stevin said with a mixture of bashfulness and pride, "I was pretty awesome, wasn't I?" They then heard another roar and faced the monster directly, "Be right back."
Stevin then began to skate up to the creature which Garnet was trying to free Lapis from the creature's grasp. The flying gem was clasped in one of the monster's massive hands with Connie helping by keeping Garnet's flanks open. She was holding her own at the moment, but it was obvious she was beginning to get exhausted.
"Hang on, Lapis!" yelled the girl, "We'll save you!"
"I-I'd like that! I-I can't control any water like this!"
"Heads up!" called Stevin as he leaped into action. He aimed straight for the arm holding Lapis, but six massive thorns tried to impale him and forced him to retreat.
"Stevin, make a distraction!" ordered Garnet, "Connie, you help him while I get Lapis out of there."
Stevin nodded to Garnet and began to circle around trying to get the monster's attention. When a few vines tried to reach him, he leapt over them and froze them solid in the process. Then he began to skate atop of one of the frozen vines to get closer to the monster. This distraction seemed to work as even more vines lashed out at him. Before they could get to him, however, he went into a spin-kick and slicing them up with his four blades like a living tornado. All the while, he felt alive like never before, like he was dancing his heart out. Another vine, this one covered with thorns, tried to tangle him but he just slid forward and froze the vine, before shattering it. The Gem-monster then faced Stevin directly. Now he had the thing's FULL attention. The tendrils all shrieked as dozens of them came after Stevin all at once, but he summoned a bubble that actually froze the plants on contact.
"Stevin, HELP!" yelled Connie, starting to get overwhelmed as the vines went for an easier target. She had sliced a few apart before, but now there were over twenty of them on her at once.
The fusion popped his bubble with a thought and raced over to the girl, grabbing her and pulling her along as he skated and continued dicing the endless barrage. Connie, while still trying to keep her footing on the icy path her partner made, refused to just be rescued as she held up her blade and cut down more vines as they tried coming up around her.
However, one vine managed to grab at her hand, twisting and pulling enough to make her drop her sword and yank her away.
"Connie!" Stevin finally made it over to her and began to slice apart several of the vines, "Here!" he was able to pick up the sword and hand it back to her. She immediately took it and began to combat the vicious flora further.
While they held the creature's attention, Garnet was busy having a boxing match with the monster's main body. The thing summoned another flytrap mouth to hold Lapis while it's gigantic hands tried to pummel Garnet into oblivion. For minutes now they were deadlocked thanks to Garnet's future vision letting her stay one step ahead of the monster, but her foe was strong and resilient enough to keep fighting on no matter how many blows she landed. This all finally changed, though, when the monster roared in anger and tried redoubling its efforts, however, it began to slip, which allowed Garnet to finally gain the upper-hand. The monster's punches became lightning fast, but also became far more predictable and let her simply block everything until the thing finally ran out of energy and let her charge in with a kick hard enough to send one of its wooden arms flying into the stratosphere.
"Whoa…" gaped Lapis, but soon she had other problems. The flytrap monster wnet from leaving her head exposed to swallowing her whole. The plant tried to siphon the water out of her gem, but Garnet was ahead of that too and was already behind the plant ready to rip the flytrap out of the trunk and free Lapis. In a few seconds, the plant was completely uprooted and flung miles into the air before crashing into the temple.
Pearl and Amethyst, now free from the vines still trying to tie them up, walked over to the fallen Gem with the rest of the team.
"Phew, that got seriously intense," sighed Lapis, "Thanks Garnet."
The permafusion nodded, giving Lapis a small smile, before she and the others turned to face the monster itself.
Stevin and Connie were gasping for breath, hoping that the thing would not spontaneously start attacking again. They both kept their swords out just in case, but the other Gems were more relaxed.
"Well, that's another one taken care of," said Garnet as she punched the monstrous tree hard enough to finally poof it. The tree covering the gemstone disappeared leaving a speckled blue and brown gemstone behind.
"T-That's it?" asked Stevin curiously, "All of that for some little stone?"
"Not one I recognize," mused Pearl as Garnet put it in a bubble, "Must be another Homeworld soldier."
"Yeah, but that might mean she still has friends here," thought Connie brightly, "And now they can all be together again."
"Yeah…" Stevin said in deep thought. Then, in a soft glow, he separated calmly and safely into his two separate selves.
Kevin had a confused look on his face, "So… this is how you lived most of your life outside your free time? You hunt down these monsters and… you just forgive them?"
"They aren't in their right mind, Kevin," Steven explained calmly, "They're pretty much lost, gone feral from their corruption."
'"Feral?'"
"It's a very long story, though one you should at least know a bit of now," said Pearl, "But Steven's only been doing this for about a year. For most of us, we've been at this for thousands of years."
"And for the longest time," continued Lapis, "They had no way to fix these guys. They just kept them in those bubbles for all time because it was better than being some freaky monster the whole time."
"Until now!" Steven said joyfully, "After convincing the Diamond Authority to change their ways, they can help. And the four of us are able to reverse the Gem corruption and turn them back to normal… with some new horns!"
"You mean, all of those other weird Gem-things you hang out with? All of them were monsters?"
"Plus, there's the fact that the three of us once kidnapped him and Bismuth, Peri and Lapis all had problems with him. Good times!" joked Amethyst.
"I always liked Steven," replied Lapis, "It's you three who I didn't like because of that mirror… but now I know that wasn't your fault."
"And let's not even start with Jasper," added Pearl, "That Gem still needs a major attitude adjustment. Why just yesterday I politely suggested she help out with the reconstruction and she told me to jump off a cliff!"
"But you can float so maybe she just wanted to see that?" offered Steven.
"Okay, that's enough!" yelled Kevin, feeling a serious headache coming on, "Can I… go home now? I feel like I have a lot of stuff to get done."
"Seriously?" asked Connie, "After all that, you're just gonna go back to your big house and what? Style your hair for an hour?"
"As if. My stylist is the only one who gets to go near this coif…"
"Connie, it's okay," assured Steven, "Don't worry, we can warp back no problem."
Kevin looked at Steven for a second. Then he nodded, "Okay. On your lead then."
Steven then began to make his way back to the warp pad, with Kevin walking with him, making a passive remark, "Y'know some of those vines were pretty slimy, I think it'd prefer an urban environment or something.
"Y'know, I took a trip to Empire City once."
"Really? That sounds pretty rad! I usually go there every year..."
Everyone else was left dumbfounded at how the two were able to get along now and continued chatting as they made it back to the pad
"What… just happened?" Connie said, pretty much saying what everyone was thinking.
"Steven's done it again," chuckled Garnet, "Now if only we could get that crazy Diamond to befriend him that fast."
Once the rest of the gang managed to pick up their jaws and headed to the warp pad, they found the boys had already left.
Garnet brought them all back to the temple and they spotted Steven waving Kevin goodbye as the older teen left the house. They all watched as Kevin walked past all of the houses quickly and seemed to be heading into town.
"Hey dude," spoke Amethyst, "Where's your new pal going?"
"Not sure. He just said he had someone he needed to talk to, but I've got a good feeling about him."
"Well, I guess that's one less problem," remarked Connie, "But it still feels way too weird."
"I get it, but we both fusion is a strange thing. It's really weird on the surface, but it can really be something great."
"Yeah, you're right. So now what should we do?"
"Well…" suggested Pearl, "Since you're both here and succeeded on our latest mission, who wants a treat? Maybe… ice cream"
"Works for us!" cheered both of the kids while Amethyst just gawked at her.
"What the heck?! You just offered sweets to someone?! I thought you were gonna give them granola or kale chips or some other weird health junk!"
"Looks like today's full of surprises," Garnet said as Steven and Connie ran out with Pearl close behind.
