Chapter Fifteen

I sort of nervously remained rooted to the spot, fingers curled into fists, arms rigid to my sides, while the gems nervously milled around me. Normally, I would be annoyed at getting all these stares, but I had just fucking accidentally fired a bolt of lightning from my fingers.

"What the heck was that?" Amethyst shouldered her way through the crowd, eyes wide. "Ying, are you alright?"

"I don't know!" I squeaked, finding my voice. "I'm not hurt but I am freaking out. "

Amethyst darted up, skidding a few feet back. "Okay, uh… We'll try to find out what's going on! Garnet has some electricity powers, maybe she can help."

" Anything ." I begged weakly. I shifted my fingers slightly, squeaking as sparks danced between my fingers and my palm. "Oh this is terrifying. "

Several gems milled around as Amethyst darted off. Luckily, Garnet was soon to arrive, frowning uncertainly.

"How are you feeling?" She approached without an ounce of fear in her stance. It was calming.

"Freaked out. Kind of worried that I'll accidentally blast someone." I admitted nervously. "I'm scared to open my hand."

"Here." Garnet offered her palm. "Don't worry. I can deal with electricity just fine."

Slowly, I extended my closed fist, fingers uncurling. At first, like I worried, sharp sparks began splitting from my fingers, but they directed themselves onto Garnet's own hand. She seemed unaffected by the bolts, so I began to relax slightly. I allowed my hand to rest cautiously atop her own, still feeling the tingling sensations.

To my surprise, the shocks seemed to lessen slightly. Garnet nodded. "For now, just try to calm down." She encouraged me softly. "We can figure out how to control this, but right now you need to relax so that we can hold them back."

I bobbed my head in understanding. Made some amount of sense, I guess. Better than anything else I could think up. For now, I rested my hand on Garnet's, watching the sparks occasionally flicker between us. It was unnerving, but Garnet seemed utterly unaffected.

"Don't worry!" Amethyst called. "Garnet's been struck by lightning and didn't even flinch ."

That was actually pretty encouraging. The arcs of electricity I'd been shooting probably didn't compare to a lightning bolt. I took some deep, slow breaths, and tried to think of the best way to not let the electricity flow.

Maybe I could get some rubber gloves until I put it together. For now though, I just focused on steadying my nerves. I took a few breaths, and calmed down. "...Okay."

"Good." Garnet smiled a little. "You're doing well."

"Okay." I murmured again, drawing my hands away from Garnet's, resting my hands at my sides. "I think… I don't think it's happening anymore. As long as I don't point at anything for now."

"The closest thing to experience we have with this is Steven." She hummed, arms crossing loosely. "But it's still something new. We'll help you work it out."

"Hm." I nodded, carefully studying my fingertips. "I feel like I have a handle on making it stop ."

"That was the hardest thing for me when I learned how to shapeshift." Amethyst grinned. "I could turn into stuff but couldn't figure out how to turn back."

"Ruby still sets things on fire." Garnet chuckled.

I felt a little bit better, and rubbed the back of my head.

"At least it's all gems here. It's a lot harder to hurt them by accident." I concluded. "But anxiety and superpowers probably don't mix great."

"Uh." Amethyst's smile was visibly strained. "Yeah, that's an understatement."

Garnet winced.

I had a feeling there was a story behind that. I waved my hand around a little, sighing in relief when no lightning emerged.

"Okay. Well. Until I can get a handle on how to control this," I nodded at the scorched and smoking grass. "I am going to be getting some insulated gloves before I fry something else."

"I'll see about having Bismuth install a few lightning rods." Garnet nudged her sunglasses. "Just in case."

I have to admit, being back in class again was kind of nice, even if I was wearing thick gloves, and no glasses, and my eyes were different.

Everyone was whispering, when I came in, after them for a change. I couldn't blame them; I'd been gone, and now I had electricity powers and perfect vision, things that were definitely not there before.

"Hi." I grinned awkwardly. There were a few chuckles, the tense mood broken. "Things are weird right now. So, I'm just gonna try to treat class as normally as I can."

I slapped a paper on the desk, taking my usual position seated on the desk. The troublemaking duo, Eyeball and Aquamarine were staring, baffled. They probably hadn't heard about my current… condition .

"So, few classes back, before the world went insane for me, I asked you all to find a topic that you wanted to suggest, and it was a pretty varied number." I glanced at the list. "We'll probably go over a lot of these, but the one that most of you wanted to know was one that I've been pondering too…"

I shifted, leaning back. "Ignoring physicality, gems and humans are actually very similar in many ways. While our cultures evolved in different directions, a lot of things are similar. Like, for example… Both humans and gems can suffer from similar forms of trauma, anxiety, fears… The fact that we're standing here, speaking the same language… Even our general body shapes; singular, standard gems, when formed, have two arms, two legs, a head… In more or less the same configuration as humans, give or take a few exceptions."

I shifted so that I was sitting cross-legged on the desk. "So… why?"

Dead silence. The whole class was mulling this over. Many had been pondering it already of course, but now everyone was thinking that.

"Now I've only got theories to work with." I grinned. "And gems didn't really actively take an interest in humanity as a whole for a while, but… I might have at least a few ideas. One of the big ones has to do with the initial entrance of gems on earth."

I gestured at a map I'd stuck on the wall. "For example, most people know that here-" I gestured towards a large body of water near northern asia. "Used to be solid land, part of what's modern Russia. If it wasn't for this body of water, Russia would be nearly double its size. For a long time, humans didn't quite put together the fact that gems did that, during the very first beginnings of terraforming. If they could change the actual face of the planet before being even close to finishing their colonization… Who's to say they didn't influence the humans here?"

Now the class was murmuring.

"Basically I'm saying that gems inadvertently caused a massive shift in the way humans think. While it doesn't explain things like physical similarities, it might explain a few other things." I grinned, fully in my element now. "Now that earth as a whole understands and accepts the presence of gems, it sure does make a lot of mysteries we've been pursuing make a lot more sense. A lot of gem-made buildings, artifacts, and more… All things that humans had no idea about. We studied them under the totally wrong impression that some ancient human race built them, when in reality…"

"We did!" Someone laughed.

"Yep. Bonkers, isn't it?" I grinned, spreading my hands. "There's so many questions that we can't answer, but… I do think it's very probable that many of our myths and legends are simply the product of six thousand years of stories getting warped by time."

"We got some weird stories about humans. I'm so glad you guys can't actually spit acid!" A quartz in the back chirped and I laughed.

"Guess life and history has a time of confusing us all, huh?" I gave my head a shake. "Although at least one human can apparently shoot lightning bolts now."

"Wait, she's stronger? "

She was trying to be quiet, but I could hear Eyeball's stage whisper. I ignored her. Aquamarine groaned.

"I suppose it could be worse…" She murmured.

I hummed, flipping through the list of topics. "We'll dig more into this mysterious similarity between our kinds. I'd also like to give a sneak peek to our next topic, which we'll cover once we've looked at this one for a few classes… Huh, apparently the number two topic that was picked is about courtship stuff."

I didn't even have to look up to know that the thud I heard was Aquamarine's head against her desk. "It can't get worse."

The class continued as I pointed out more similarities, gem artifacts that humans mistook for their own, and the influences of both regular and corrupted gems on human myths. It was definitely a fun topic.

Eventually, the class filtered out. I silently noticed that Aquamarine and Eyeball didn't have anyone chaperoning them, and glanced to the back of the room where Pearl lingered. She had an amused smile on her face.

"They've been behaving quite well." She said to me once the duo was out of the room. "For the time being, I've allowed them just a little more freedom."

"Seems they're taking to earth surprisingly well."

"Or it's an act." Lapis had been in the room too; I hadn't even seen her, and her flat voice startled me. She snorted, seeing me jump. "Just sayin', it wouldn't be the first time someone faked it…"

"Right." Pearl nodded, pursing her lips. "We're not just leaving them to their own devices, but we do want to encourage this sort of good behavior. They're still rude and belligerent but they haven't attacked anyone yet."

"I found them as Bluebird the other day. They were really embarrassed when they saw me." Lapis smirked a bit.

"Fusing for reasons other than violence does seem like a potentially positive thing." I hummed, slinking off the desk and into my chair. "Good for them, I suppose." For a moment, I leaned back, before a thought occurred.

"What did you two think? Of what I was saying?"

"It's certainly plausible." Pearl nodded. "I do know that the Crystal Gems still on earth after the war still managed to shape history… Sometimes intentionally, sometimes by coincidence. If we could do that and it was just Garnet, Amethyst, Rose and I, well…" Pearl waggled a hand.

"I didn't see much." Lapis shrugged. "I was stuck in the galaxy warp. Then I got stuck in the Temple." She shot Pearl a look and the taller gem winced.

"That was… not our finest moment." She admitted weakly. Lapis scoffed, but was smiling.

"Meh. I've already forgiven you guys." The blue gem shrugged.

Geez. These gems have had a really rough life. I thought. It seemed almost part and parcel of being a gem on earth- so many wonderful things, juxtaposed with what I could only think of as trauma.

"Hm. Maybe we should find a few therapists for Little Homeworld too." I mumbled to myself.

After that, came what was quickly becoming my favorite time of day.

Which was basically just hanging out with Spinel.

We didn't do this every day of course- even an attention-starved human and a gem terrified of being alone needed space once in a while. But we still spent a fairly decent chunk of our time just walking hand-in-hand, exploring Beach City, and so on.

It was also approaching Samhain. Autumn's spooky festival. One of my favorite holidays. I grinned as my eyes glanced at a banner just below funland's sign, promoting the festival.

"Hm." Spinel tugged at my arm, and pointed. "What's… Sam-hain?"

"You say it like "Saa-win." I explained. "It's a holiday. Do… Gems have holidays?"

"Not really." Spinel shook her head. "We had celebrations pretty much whenever the diamonds felt like it… But they were pretty similar. I used to do tricks and juggle and sing for Pink, and the other gems in her court." She smiled nostalgically.

"Well, this one's a little different." I giggled. "It's a lot different now, but the original holiday was supposed to be when the spirits of the dead were closest to walking the earth, and the holiday was meant as both a celebration of that, but also a way to try and keep them from wanting to stay." I pointed at a costume store. "People'd dress up and pretend to be monsters and decorate their homes with lanterns that had face patterns on them to scare the spirits back to the afterlife. We still dress up, and make lanterns out of gourds, but most people don't believe in spirits."

Spinel looked more excited as I began explaining all kinds of customs- trick-or-treating, scary stories, dressing up, candy and snacks.

"A lot of human holidays have sort of melded into an excuse to party, have fun, eat food, and just hang out with each other." I grinned. "They still hold significance to people in the old way too, but it's kind of nice seeing how different people can enjoy a holiday in different ways."

"Sounds like a lot of fun. Are you gonna dress as something?"

There was an odd gleam in her eye. I couldn't help myself.

"Already thinking of dressing me up~?"

Spinel flushed, but was quick with a comeback; "Well, you are my doll after all…"

Fuck she is way too smooth for me. How could I compete with that?

We both laughed and flirted and blushed like idiots, walking hand-in-hand.

Maybe I should dress up, just to see how flustered Spinel could get...