The stars, blurred into white lines by the Destiny Destroyer's impossible relativistic speed, shot past the spaceship's front window as it was pulled along by the gravity of the miniature black hole at its nose. The ship's captain paid them little mind, her thoughts revolving more around what would happen when they arrived—

"Boingy, boingy, boingy!"

—when they arrived at their destination. Her single eye flitted from one holographic screen to another as she assessed the—

"Boingy, boingy, boingy, boingy!"

—the ship's fuel levels, the power readings of the latest weapons upgrades, the—

"Boingy, boingy, boingy, boingy, boingy—"

"WILL YOU JUST—!"

The crew froze at Emerald's outburst, including the offending instigator, a blue Spinel who had paused herself in midair. Emerald, however, already regretting her actions, spun her chair to face the Sapphire standing on a pedestal next to the hanging Spinel and transitioned as smoothly as possible into, "—grant me a million pardons, Your Grand Clarity, but—was it absolutely necessary to bring her along on such a critical mission?"

Rather unneededly, Emerald pointed at the Spinel.

Unperturbed, Sapphire answered in monotone, "She keeps me sane."

At this, Emerald gave a conceding nod and turned back toward her screens to hide her blush of embarrassment. Now behind her, Spinel resumed what she had been doing, which was bouncing off of the square afros of Sapphire's three attending Rubies as if they were trampolines. The Rubies, for their part, did their best to ignore this, standing in a semicircle around Sapphire's pedestal and maintaining their diamond-shaped salutes, but one had her teeth gritted angrily.

Emerald rubbed her eye, as well as her rectangular gem which rested diagonally where her right eye should be, with two fingers. Her limited depth perception resulting from her gem placement occasionally caused her grief, but privately she thought she had it better than this particular Sapphire, whose gem was on the top of her head, giving her a noticeable bald spot. Of course, she would never say such a thing aloud—Emerald had no desire to be shattered. And given that the Sapphire had been gifted her own Spinel, which even matched her color, she was clearly held in high regard by the Diamonds.

Sitting up and regaining her composure, Emerald barked, "Nephrite! How long until we arrive?"

"Only three minutes, My Emerald," Nephrite responded primly.

"We will find the enemy already engaged in combat," Sapphire announced without preamble.

This caused one side of Emerald's jagged unibrow to rise, but given her faux pas she refrained from questioning the prediction. Sure enough, three minutes of incessant boinging later, they pulled out of warp speed to find the enemy armada assailing a planet, completely oblivious to the arrival of the Gem fleet.

One glance at the design of the enemy ships explained it—the Irkens. Inasmuch as Emerald had the capacity to intensify her hatred of all organics to nurse a special grudge, hers toward the disgusting insectoids was matched only by that for those meddlesome Off Colors. Indeed—what other species would have the gall to name themselves after their ability to annoy people? And furthermore, Emerald had even heard rumors that the foul creatures housed their personalities in their computerized backpacks, without which their organic bodies could not survive, which was almost like a purposely offensive perversion of the way that Gems projected their bodies from their, well, gems.

With malicious enthusiasm, Emerald pushed a button on her chair and commanded to her subordinate ships, "Attack pattern Delta II."

The smaller ships fanned out before her, wreaking havoc on the battle already in progress. Shortly, the room flashed red as an alarm beeped.

"My Emerald," said Pearl, "we're being hailed by the enemy mothership, callsign the Massive."

"Put it on Screen One," Emerald ordered, and leaned forward, touching her fingertips together.

A giant screen was projected in front of the window, on which appeared a display of the Massive's control room. Without introductions, one of the two Irken leaders—the one whose eyes and mechanical outfit were purple—shoved his face right in the screen and shouted, "Hey! No fair!"

His red counterpart pushed him aside and examined the screen, then groaned.

"It's those . . . rock people." He spun his hand in thought. "Uh . . . Jewels."

"Gems," Emerald corrected disgruntledly. Then, attempting a more official tone, she said, "What are you filthy organics doing here? This is our galaxy."

"You can't just claim a whole galaxy!" Red retorted.

"Yeah!" Purple said, reappearing next to Red. "You . . . you . . . geologist!"

Red placed a hand on Purple's shoulder and said quietly, "Ah, I'll take this." He cleared his throat, then jabbed a finger at Emerald. "You're calling us filthy? You are literally a rock, which is literally dirt, which is what filth literally is!"

"Literally!" added Purple.

Emerald was unfazed. "Well, good thing I literally know your weakness." She put on her best evil smirk. "Nephrite. Target the . . . snack pod!"

At this, Purple began wailing an extremely drawn-out "No!" while Red lunged to one side and commanded, "Evasive action!"

One of the high-collared Irkens sitting at the consoles around them turned and replied, "Uh, that would require not flying in a straight line, so . . . ?"

With that, Emerald knew she had them, and ordered Pearl to turn off the screen so she could watch. At the two upper corners of the window, she saw two of the Destiny Destroyer's energy cannons charge up, and the two blasts from these combined with two more from the lower cannons out of view, all converging on one of the gigantic ovular storage units attached to the red Irken mothership.

"Pew pew!" Spinel annotated, making finger pistols. "Pew pew pew!" Emerald ignored her.

The attack blew a smoking hole in the pod, and out of it poured thousands upon thousands of tiny plastic bags containing—Emerald shuddered—food. These floated out into open space, creating a sort of billowing cloud.

Some of the smaller Irken ships turned to engage Emerald's fleet, and so the battle commenced—

"Fall back for a moment," said Sapphire. "Something's coming."

"Uh . . ." said Emerald. She pressed her button. "All craft retreat."

The sight of her ships seemingly fleeing from the organics made Emerald's light-comprised skin crawl, but indeed, as they formed up back around the Destiny Destroyer, the pursuing Irken ships were suddenly bowled through by two small, speeding objects, sending them spiraling every which way.

Emerald squinted. "What is that?"

Dutifully, Pearl brought up a screen in front of Emerald that showed a closer view of the two things.

The first thing was a transparent bubble containing two individuals, one riding on the back of the other. The mount, with feet running in place to propel the bubble, was a blue-and-pink dinosauroid that Emerald was fairly certain was called a Zbornak, as if oragnics' names mattered. But it was the other figure, covered in orange fur and playing a banjo, that made her eye widen.

The second thing, chasing the bubble, was some kind of ship shaped rather impractically like some kind of organic's skull. From this, despite no communication channel being open, an apopletic voice emanated, shouting a single word loudly enough to shake the interior of the Destiny Destroyer.

"WAAAAANDEEEEER!"

Most of the crew covered their ears, but Emerald remained unmoved, hands gripping either side of her chair, as she stared at the image of the orange figure wearing the green hat.

When the ring of the shout subsided, Emerald said urgently, "Nephrite, what is the trajectory of—"

"Emerald," Sapphire interrupted, and all eyes turned to her. "We have a mission."

Emerald processed this slowly, but not because it was complicated. It was simple. The Diamonds gave orders. Gems followed them. The whims of individual Gems didn't matter, even high-ranking ship captains.

Still, Emerald couldn't help but let out a sigh. "Of course, Your Grand Clarity," she said, and turned back to the battle. Slumping her head on one hand, she muttered, "I suppose I'll get another chance someday."

After an uncomfortable pause, Sapphire spoke, sounding reluctant. "Actually . . . you won't."

The silence pounded in Emerald's ears. In an even more awkward voice, Sapphire added, "I'm sorry."

Emerald stared down at the buttons on her chair's arm. Coming to a decision, she replied, "So am I."

With a few quick beeps, a translucent tube extended down from the ceiling, trapping Sapphire and her Rubies and Spinel inside. Emerald's crew gasped at this, and Sapphire parted her hair to reveal her single eye, which looked around in confusion. But before she could do any more than this, the ground disappeared under her, and she and her attendants were fired out into open space.

"Nephrite!" Emerald roared. "Follow those interlopers!"

Nephrite's head snapped back and forth between Emerald and where Sapphire had stood, uncomprehending.

"Now!"

To the utter confusion of everyone present, the Destiny Destroyer suddenly turned and veered away from the battle, following after the skull ship with engines full blast.

Where it had been, Sapphire floated in the void, Rubies and Irken snacks drifting around her at random.

"Well," she said dully. "I did not see this coming."

Spinel, upside-down as she passed by, giggled, shrugged, and said, "Oopsie!"

On the surface of a rocky, lifeless planetoid, a blue speck sped along the ground, throwing up clouds of dust behind it. Reclined on its back, an orange speck continued its carefree banjo playing.

At the roar of a motorcycle engine, Sylvia glanced over her shoulder to see Hater's ship still hot on her tail—literally, as it spewed flames from its exhaust pipes. These and its skull shape gave it a truly demonic appearance as it loomed behind them, but it was nothing she hadn't seen a hundred times before, and she gave Hater a teasing yawn just in case he was looking. The ship, in response, seemed to grit its teeth harder, so clearly he was.

The part she didn't expect was what happened next.

With a rubber-band-like snap, a green, diamond-shaped ship with four prongs sticking out around it—Sylvia vaguely recognized it from one of the fleets they had barreled through—warped in, a tiny black hole dissipating in front of it as it did, and immediately fired on Hater's ship with energy blasts from all four cannons.

Sylvia backpedaled with her feet to skid to a stop as the giant skull spun uncontrollably over her head, now trailing black smoke instead of fire. It face-planted into the ground some miles in front of her, carving a trail in the rock, before flipping over onto its back, flinging its jaw open, and launching its tongue straight up into the air, which then slumped over to one side in defeat.

The green ship arced overhead as well, making a proper landing closer by, facing Sylvia. She turned her head to assess Wander's reaction, and was surprised to find him stiff with fear, arms frozen in their banjo-strumming pose. His pupils shrank to tiny dots as he stared at the green ship, and he whispered, "Oh no . . ."

Sylvia raised an eyebrow as she glanced back at the ship, and from it flew a lime-colored, opaque sphere. This moved quickly until it was several yards away from them, at which point it touched down on the ground, opened at the top, and folded into nothing, revealing a lone, tall figure who was also green.

Between the spiky hair, thigh-high boots, crystalline shoulder pads, fluffy collar, and bizarre lightning-like unibrow, this green lady was obviously a villain, and that wasn't even accounting for the sharp-toothed evil grin she wore as she stared at them, nor the gaudy gemstone eyepatch. For grob's sake, she even had her arms folded behind her back!

But it was more Wander's shivering that had Sylvia concerned, and so she said to him, "Whatever this is, I don't want nothin' to do with it!" And she ran off the other way.

Only problem was, a short distance in she realized that Wander had fallen off her back.

She returned promptly to his side; his banjo was on the ground, and he stood rigid, staring at the green person, who had begun taking slow steps toward him, her high heels clicking against the rocky terrain.

Sylvia grabbed Wander's banjo and his hat, stuffed the one inside the other, replaced the hat on his head, and said, "Come on, buddy, we gotta move!" She gripped his arm and tried to take off again, but despite his small frame, he proved rooted as the toughest tree and she ended up only stretching his arm out a ways before her feet slipped from under her and she was pulled back elastically, crashing into him and crumpling to the ground without budging him an inch.

The clicking of the heels was joined by the knocking of Wander's knees and the chattering of his teeth. His mouth stretched into a nervous grin as Sylvia, getting back up, grimaced at him, thinking.

Sylvia spat into one hand and then the other, rubbed them together, and then jammed them both into the ground on opposite sides of Wander, and made a prolonged grunt of effort as she pulled at the rock. Finally, with a crunch, it gave way, and she held the piece of land over her head triumphantly.

Unfortunately, the piece she had severed was donut-shaped, and Wander still stood where he had, now on his own little pillar. Sylvia's eyelids drooped, and she limply let the donut slide off her hands, filling back in the hole it had left like a jigsaw piece.

By this point, Wander's head was leaking sweatdrops the size of his swollen eyes, and the mysterious green woman was almost before him. Giving up on avoiding the situation, Sylvia folded her arms and stood firm at Wander's side, glaring challengingly at the person causing her friend such distress.

This person stopped just in front of them, towering over them both. Her gaze had been fixed on Wander as she approached, but now she did give Sylvia a look, albeit one of dismissive disdain.

Speaking apparently to Wander, she inquired sarcastically, "Please tell me this isn't your new owner."

"Owner?" Sylvia parroted, confused and displeased.

The green lady sighed melodramatically, covering her eye and the gemstone where her other one would be with one arm as she tilted her head back. "Associating with organics? You're a disappointment as ever . . ." Her eye shone piercingly out of her arm's shadow, aimed at Wander as she concluded gravely, "Spinel."