CHAPTER TWO
Garnet took a step towards Steven and then froze when he recoiled and clutched Peridot tighter. "Don't hurt her!"
"We wouldn't-" The fusion wavered for a moment, Ruby's hurt momentarily taking control before Sapphire's cooler presence reminded her that of course he would assume that. It was how they had dealt with corrupted gems for thousands of years, after all. "Not now," she said aloud as she stabilized. She glanced down, belatedly realizing that she still had her gauntlet's in place. A second later, they were gone and she knelt down in front of him, dismissing her shades as she tried to look as non-threatening as possible. "We're not going to hurt her, Steven," she said softly. "Why don't you-"
The opening chords of Rick Astley's most famous hit suddenly blasted through the air, making Steven, Garnet and Pearl jump violently. "Amethyst, what the hell!?" Pearl shouted, rounding on the younger gem.
"Music!" Amethyst yelled back. She tapped her cell phone and reduced the volume slightly. "If the Diamond's brown noise causes this, maybe another song will help cure it!"
Pearl and Garnet exchanged glances. It wasn't a bad idea at all... the problem was, Rose Quartz had had exactly the same idea several millennia ago, and nothing had ever come of it. But it certainly couldn't hurt, and so neither of them made any further objection. "Steven, why don't you lay her down on the sofa so we can take a look at her?" Garnet asked again.
Steven gave them all a wary look, but by that point they'd all followed Garnet's lead and dissipated their weapons and so he relaxed slightly and carefully placed Peridot down on the sofa as instructed, gently pushing the hair out of her face before he stepped back out of the way. "You-you promise won't hurt her?" he asked in a small voice.
"We won't hurt her," Garnet said. Until we have to, she added internally. Because eventually, they would have to. In more than 5000 years, they hadn't managed to cure a single gem of corruption.
"It's OK, she'll be fine," Amethyst added brightly, patting his arm comfortingly. "I mean, we must be doing something right already, just look at her! Jasper went all monster in like, twenty seconds... what? Why are you shaking your head at me?"
Pearl bit her lip; she didn't want to be the one to snuff out this little glimmer of hope, but it was a hope based on ignorance and both Steven and Amethyst needed to hear the reality of corruption. "This... this is actually fairly typical of corruption," she said apologetically, looking to Garnet for help.
Garnet nodded and straightened up. "Rose Quartz's army was the primary target when the Diamonds used their weapon," she began, coming to stand next to Pearl. "And every gem in the immediate area was almost instantly corrupted. If it wasn't for Rose's shield, we would've suffered the same fate."
"They were our closest allies," Pearl said softly. She hugged herself and turned away slightly as the old traumatic memories came flooding back. "We didn't want to fight them but we quickly realized we had no choice."
Garnet picked up the story again. "It took us days to fight our way clear. But once we had traveled some distance from the initial blast radius, we began to find gems. They had no form, and we weren't really sure what had happened to them, and so we bubbled them up and sent them to our base for safe-keeping while we continued to search for survivors." She paused in recollection. "Then, once we had traveled almost halfway around the Earth, we began to find them. They were unconscious and scarred, but they still held their forms. We took them back and tried to help them."
She trailed off and glanced at Pearl. Neither one of them really wanted to talk about what had happened next, but the similarities were just too close to ignore. "We all tried our best," Pearl said after a moment of silence. "Rose especially. She spent every moment of the next few years tending to those gems, bathing them in her healing tears, placing them inside her bubbles, singing to them..." She looked pointedly at Amethyst's phone, which was now playing Take On Me. "Nothing worked. Just a few weeks after we found the first gems, the corruption was complete. Five years later, the last one turned. And when we popped the bubbles containing the formless gems we'd found, they all reformed corrupted too."
She paused for emphasis. "No matter what we tried, in the end, every single gem who was exposed to the song succumbed to the corruption."
Suddenly Garnet's eyes widened behind her shades and she spun around and grabbed Steven by the shoulders. "Steven, how do you feel?" she asked urgently.
"What?" Steven stared back at her in bewilderment. "Me? How do I feel?-"
"You were exposed as well, am I right?" she quickly clarified. "We never heard any reports of humans being affected by the song, but you are half gem."
"Oh." He laughed bitterly. "No, other than complete, crushing despair, I feel fine. Just fantastic." He shook himself free and went back to stroking Peridot's hair and Garnet belatedly realized he hadn't been paying attention to a single word they'd said.
Amethyst had though, and she pounced upon a small detail that seemed to have been overlooked. "Those gems you found, the ones like Peridot, you said you found them on the other side of the world. But Peridot was like, three feet away from the song."
"She's still corrupted-" Pearl began..
"-But it's not the same!" Amethyst waved her hands wildly for emphasis. "Everything about this is different! She's not even an Era 1 gem, that's gotta change things, surely. And she wasn't infected the same way either – it might not've even been the same song and-" She stopped and snapped her fingers as inspiration hit. "You know, I saw this TV show once about this Navy boat that saw a UFO, and the next day like, pretty much everyone on board was dead-"
Garnet frowned. "Is this relevant?"
"Yes, I'm not completely stupid," Amethyst snapped back irritably. "Anyway, when the, yknow, government people investigated, they found a recording of the whole thing and watched it and it turned out the UFO played a signal to try and convert people into aliens. The dead people were ones where it had gone wrong, but some of the crew did get converted and had escaped already. And the people who watched the tape were affected, but not completely, because they hadn't seen the real thing, so they just had all these weird dreams and hallucinations and shit."
"Hmm." Garnet mulled over that for a moment. "Maybe humans were affected more by the Diamonds song that we realized-"
"Yeah, maybe, whatever, that's not the point." Amethyst waved away the comment dismissively. "The thing is, Peridot didn't get blasted with the song straight from the Diamonds, or even catch it from someone else who was corrupted that way, like Jasper did. She only heard a little bit of a recording of the song, through a cheap computer speaker. I mean," she added, "You've been to concerts before, you know that's a totally different experience to just hearing a song on the radio, right? This is kind of the same thing. We have no idea how much of a difference that makes, but we already know that it does make a difference, because she's not a monster already!" she finished triumphantly.
Garnet opened her mouth, and then closed it again. "That's a fair point," she admitted.
Pearl glanced over at the other gem. "Should... should we try taking her to Rose's fountain then?" she asked timidly. "It never worked before, but if Amethyst is right..."
Garnet shrugged. "It can't hurt to try." She knelt down and gently shook Steven by the shoulder. "Steven?"
"I heard," he said dully.
"Do you want me to take her?" she offered.
"No." He sniffled and wiped his eyes. "No, I'll do it."
"Then let's go."
xxx
Ever since the incident where Amethyst had been cracked, the Crystal Gems had made sure never to let Rose's fountain fall into such a state of disrepair and so only a few short minutes later, Steven was able to lower Peridot's body into the water, making sure to keep her head above the surface so she wouldn't drown. All of the Crystal Gems leaned forward hopefully, but nothing seemed to happen.
"What do we do now?" Pearl whispered to Garnet.
"I... I don't know," Garnet admitted quietly. She looked over at Steven, who was methodically scooping up water and dribbling it into Peridot's mouth, apparently in the hope that ingesting it would give a different result. She didn't really want to tell him to stop, but she was pretty sure he wasn't going to move until they made him.
"Let's try some more music," Amethyst said, and started tapping on her phone again. "There," she announced proudly as Bohemian Rhapsody started to play. "If she doesn't respond to this, she's dead."
Pearl winced. "Possibly not the best choice of words, Amethyst."
"Peridot has a Spotify account," Garnet said suddenly. "Music she likes-"
"Everybody likes Bohemian Rhapsody," Amethyst objected.
"Music that's important to her," Garnet continued as if she hadn't heard her. "We should try playing some of that to her."
"OK, but I don't know her login deets."
"She'll be logged in on her tablet," Garnet pointed out. "Which is back at the house. Steven," she called out in a louder voice. "We need to go back now."
"Just a few more minutes," he called back, making no effort to move.
She frowned and took a few steps over to his side, placing a stern hand on his arm. "Now, Steven. We have another idea," she added when he turned to protest.
"But-" He looked from Garnet down to Peridot's unresponsive face and sighed in defeat and hauled her out of the water. "OK. Let's go back."
Other than the music still playing on Amethyst's phone, the journey back to the warp pad was made in silence, each person lost in their own gloomy thoughts, and every single on of them was taken by surprise when they warped back into the beach house to find Connie pacing the floor, clutching a carving knife.
"What's going on?" she demanded before anybody could react. Her gaze flickered to Peridot laying limp in Steven's arms, and she gripped the knife harder. "What did you do to her!?"
"Nothing!" Amethyst protested as Pearl winced beside her. But she had to admit, it was a somewhat valid accusation. "Honest, we didn't do anything. Right, G?"
"She's been exposed to the Diamond's corrupting song," Garnet explained shortly.
"What!?" Connie's mouth dropped open. "How!?"
"It was the file." Steven's eyes welled up with tears again. "I wasn't fast enough, I c-couldn't stop her-"
Connie still didn't quite understand what was going on, but she immediately knew questioning her friend wasn't going to help at that moment. "Come and put her down here," she said softly, waving the knife in the direction of the sofa.
"Ah... may I?" Pearl stepped forward and held out her hand.
"Huh? Oh, right, sorry." Connie flushed and handed the knife over. "Steven and Peridot were supposed to meet meet me for brunch," she explained. "When they never showed, I thought there might be trouble, and I don't have Rose's sword."
"And you seriously thought we'd done something to them?" Amethyst clutched her chest theatrically "That stings, dude."
"You sicced Jasper on us," Connie dryly reminded her. "But no, I didn't really think you'd done anything. I thought maybe it was Homeworld or a corrupted gem..." She trailed off and bit her lip as she realized how right she was.
"Peridot's computer decoded one of the files from the kindergarten computer," Pearl explained quietly. "She had a theory that some of the data there might be information about corruption."
"Looks like she was right," Garnet added bitterly. "It seems one of the files was an audio file containing the corruption song-"
Amethyst snapped her fingers. "That reminds me, be right back." She zipped into Peridot's room and reappeared a moment later with her tablet. "OK, Spotify, Spotify... ah ha!" A pained look crossed her face. "Oh no."
"What?" Garnet asked in alarm.
"There's like, 50 Ed Sheeran songs on this playlist." Amethyst shook her head. "Steven, are you really sure you want her back?"
"Amethyst!" Pearl exclaimed in horror, but to her surprise, Steven let out a small snort of laughter.
"Some of her music taste is a bit... questionable," he said fondly. "We've had discussions about it." Behind him, Amethyst gave Pearl a smug smirk and hit 'play' before placing the tablet down beside Peridot's head.
Meanwhile, Connie watched as Steven knelt down next to Peridot and stared intently at her face. "This corruption file," she said slowly, turning to face Garnet. "It's still on Peridot's computer? All decrypted and ready to go?"
"Yes," Garnet said simply.
"And the sound doesn't affect humans?"
Garnet hesitated, remembering Amethyst's TV show. "Not as far as we know," she hedged. "Why do you ask?"
"Well, why don't we get Steven's dad to have a look at it?" Connie suggested. "Music is his thing, isn't it? Maybe he can compose... I don't know, a song that's the opposite?"
"Oh, of course!" Pearl exclaimed.
"Yeah!" Amethyst cheered. "That's a great-"
"I broke the computer," Steven interrupted. He closed his eyes and inhaled shakily. "I... I hit it with my shield," he admitted. "To make the noise stop."
The Crystal Gems visibly deflated, but Connie was undeterred. "When you say you hit it, do you mean you hit the computer or just the screen?"
He stared quizzically back at her. "There's a difference?"
Instead of replying, Connie turned and marched across the house and into Peridot's room. The impact from the shield had actually pushed the shattered monitor and speakers into the wall itself, but sure enough, when she bent over and peered under the desk, the computer tower appeared to be perfectly fine. Then she stood up and examined the wall-mounted TV.
"You only broke the screen," she said, stepping back out again. "So I can plug the computer into the TV and use that instead."
"Do-do you need any help?" Pearl offered tentatively.
"No, that's OK." Connie bit her lip in thought. "Actually... maybe you guys should take cover or something? I mean, I'll make sure everything's muted first, but... just in case-"
Before the words had even finished leaving her mouth, a large, pink bubble at least an inch think sprang up around the gems. Connie blinked and stepped forward, squinting a little as she tried to focus upon the blurry forms inside. "Yeah, that should do the trick," she said dryly. "I doubt the Diamonds themselves could get past that."
"Good," Steven flatly.
Connie lingered by the bubble for a moment longer, but there wasn't really anything she could say to that, so she dove back into Peridot's room and set to work, reappearing a few minutes later with a flash drive in her hands. "Got it!" she declared triumphantly.
Steven didn't appear to hear her, but the bubble shield popped and the Crystal Gems almost fell over. "Is it done? Do you have it?" Amethyst asked at once.
"Right here." Connie held up the flash drive. "I'll take it over to the car wash now."
"I'll come with you," Garnet said at once.
"Wait, is it safe now? Peridot's computer," Pearl quickly clarified. "I'd like to check and make sure the decryption program's still running and look at some of the other files from the Kindergarten." She shrugged helplessly. "I just... there still might be something that can help."
"It's safe," Connie confirmed. "The file isn't running and I turned off all the sound."
Pearl nodded and vanished into the other room. Connie and Garnet left a moment later, and Amethyst suddenly found herself alone with Steven and Peridot. "Um..." She looked around for a distraction. "I'm gonna... go see if Pearl needs some help," she muttered.
"OK," Steven said listlessly.
Amethyst hesitated, then lunged forward and gave him a hard hug. "We'll get her back, buddy," she said fiercely. "I promise."