Chapter 4

Over on Empire City's Millenial Bridge, the view of Empire City stretched across as far as the eye can see. Labra leaned out from the window to look at the sight as her eyes had stars in them, "It's so graaaaand~!" Her moment though was sort of cut short by Zircon's honking, "Dangit come on! Move faster!" The two were stuck in the always blocked up, Millenial Bridge traffic. "We're so close too…the longer it takes us to get there, the shorter the time we have to look for Carnelia!" Zircon then banged his hand against the steering wheel as his pupils were switching back and forth between his normal black color and the eerie, Nega-Dust's orange. "Zircon…" Labra looked at him worried. When Zircon saw her reaction to his anger, his pupils quickly returned back to normal, "I-I'm sorry…it's just my Bloodstone's prone-to-anger and this Nega-Dust don't exactly mix well with each other…That Carnelia definitely knew what she was doing."

"And you know that's not your fault, right?" Labra smiled at the half-gem, making him sigh out, "I must've told you that story hundreds of times, huh."

"I like it though." Labra chirped. "I like it when I hear you telling me about you and your friends back in Beach City. Whenever you do, you just have this…oooh, what do you call it. Ah, Aura! You got this warm aura around you." Labra explained as Zircon wasn't exactly sure he was following her.

"I'm just wondering what exactly they're doing right now." Zircon looked ahead at the clogged up road.

Inside the premises of Empire City

"Hey watch where you're going!"
"Did you get your license from a cereal box?!"
"I'm walking here, lady!"

The sounds of the traversing, Empire City civilians rang throughout the crowded streets as Pearl would flinch from almost every insult thrown at each other, "Geez, why exactly do these people talk to each other like that? It's very repulsive almost."

"Dad told me that Empirians have a strange way of talking compared to everyone else." Steven explained. "These things that they're saying are apparently as normal as saying "Good morning"."

"Humans are weird, man." Amethyst muttered as her and another male bumped into each other, "Hey watch where ya going, small fry?" The male sniped at Amethyst.

"You don't own the sidewalk! Now get your rear gear into movement, buster!" Amethyst snapped, scaring the guy away. The others turned to look at her with sweat hanging from the side of their heads. "Well, someone definitely fits in here." Garnet commented.

"It's gonna be kinda hard to tell which people will be affected by the Nega-Dust." Pearl pointed out.

"But it makes perfect sense why Carnelia is here in the first place." Garnet started, "Carnelians breed off of negativity and to be honest, everywhere I see here is negativity. It's like heaven to her gem types."

"There's still something I don't quite get though." Steven pondered. "From what I heard on the news, California was attacked by the Nega-Dust within 5 hours from Washington DC."

"Yeah? So?" Amethyst looked up at the sky with her hands behind her head.

"So, no matter how you slice it, it's almost impossible to treck across the entire country in that short amount of time, even by plane." Steven explained.

"Maybe she must have some sort of Homeworld ship?" Amethyst tried to rationalize.

"I don't know…something's attacking my gut, telling me that there's more to her attacks." Steven finalized before the group arrived at the hotel they're supposed to be staying at, courtesy of Greg Universe.

Somewhere else in Empire City
"Ugh, finally…I never thought we'd be able to find a place to park at." Zircon sighed out in relief as he turned into one of Empire City's many, public parking lots. However, just as he was about to turn into a spot, someone cut him off and took it, "Wh-What?!" Zircon eyes widened.

"Hey, that's not right! We were signaling!" Labra pouted. Zircon got out of the Hummer as he walked up to the other car's window, "Hey buddy, you saw us signaling, and I didn't a blink of light anywhere on this rusty garbage of yours." The window rolled down as inside was some rugged, skinny looking guy in a tattered suit. It looked like someone who worked a boring and torturous 9 to 5 job. He did not look like or even smell like a spring breeze. He took a puff of the cigarette he was using and blew the smoke right into Zircon's face, who was standing unfazed. "What are you gonna do about it? I'm in it, and you're not." The guy smirked. The attitude of this guy was starting to make Zircon's pupils change again. Labra noticed this as she slowly sunk down in her seat. Taking the man's car by the bottom on the driver's side, "Hey, what are you-" The man was interrupted as Zircon flipped the man's car over on the car that was parked next to him, with both alarms going off from the crash. "Aaaaaaah!" The guy yelled out as he slipped out from the broken off driver's door to look at his now ruined car while Zircon parked the Hummer in the spot, still peeved off as all heck.

"Z-Zircon, was that really called for?" Labra looked at her friend in deep worry.

"He's alive, isn't he?..." Zircon growled, making Labra flinch. Seeing that once again brought Zircon back to normal as he held his head, "I don't like this place Labra…ever since I've got here, the Nega-Dust in me has been going crazy…" He grunted out.

"Th-That must mean we're in the right place, right?" Labra muttered.

"I hope…" Zircon looked out onto the streets before getting out to walk about the city with Labra.

Empire City Hotel
The Crystal Gems were sitting about on the beds as they were watching the news to see if anything has come up. "Anything yet?..." Steven whined out as he was laying upside down over the bed's edge.

"Still nothing." Garnet replied as blunt as usual.

"Steven, you need to be patient. We've only been in the city for about a couple hours now." Pearl reminded. "Here, why don't you go with Amethyst and get yourselves some snacks downstairs."

"Yeah, come on Steven." Amethyst headed on out of the room with Steven in tow as they headed on down to the main lobby. When they picked out the food and drinks they wanted, they walked over to the front desk to see that the lady wasn't working there. "Huh, that's strange. She was just here a moment ago when I was last down here." Amethyst said.

"Uuuum, maybe she's on break?" Steven shrugged until both of them heard a women screaming coming from the back. "That doesn't sound like one!" Amethyst panicked before jumping over the desk to head on through the back office's back door, "Ah! A-Amethyst wait!" Steven ran after her, not wanting her to be by herself if it was something dangerous.

Outside, the attendant lady was standing up against a wall as something was growling and snapping at her, "N-N-Nice dog…nice dog…" She tried to do whatever she could to calm down whatever it was that was attacking her until Amethyst burst right through the back door, "Someone call for a dog cat-…cher?..." Amethyst's eyes widened, "That's no dog…" When Steven finally got outside, he looked to see what Amethyst saw. "Wh-What?..." Before them was a creature whose body seemed to be made of a malleable, metal structure, something that they've seen before. "That's a Chromite!" Steven panicked.

"But…why is this one all orange?!" Amethyst questioned, readying her whip.