Time for another trip into the surreal with another round gem mind-scape for Steven! Oh, and some Homeworld ships too...
There was a time when Steven Universe would have completely lost his mind with all the chaos and tumult that came with ticking off Homeworld. Had this happened to him months ago when he was more or less the tagalong kid of the Crystal Gems, the boy would have been completely horrified at the prospect of an entire armada of troops led by three megalomaniacal tyrants wanting his gem as a war trophy. Nowadays, it merely ticked him off. All he wanted these days was some peace and quiet and yet they insisted on coming after him again and again. They have kidnapped him, threatened his family, have made it clear about wanting Earth destroyed and have clear intentions to do this on top of countless other atrocities they have committed in the past and plan to continue doing in the future.
These were the thoughts going through his head as he laid with his eyes closed, wondering if he really had pushed himself too hard with training and his body just gave up on him. That notion, as well as the passive-aggressive thoughts about where Homeworld could send their next fleet, left him when he finally opened his eyes to a sight even more surreal than the last time he was unconscious.
He quickly learned that he was nowhere near the DeMayo family field anymore as he could see the sky was now stark white, as if all the clouds in the sky formed into one shapeless mass and no gray or shadows to tell them apart. Actually, he could see various gray masses above him, but something about them seemed wrong as looked at any one of them too long gave him a headache. He also noticed that the ground felt bizarre, as he opened and closed his hand and felt rocks, sand and other bits and pieces he could not identify. As he stood on his feet again, the abnormalities grew even stranger.
The entire ground was made of random flooring materials. Rocks, sand, tiles, wood planks, glass shards, carpet squares and countless bits and bobs of trash made up the ground. To make matters weirder all of them were colored a dull gray, like all of them had the life and vibrancy sucked out of them. When Steven looked up, he noticed those bits in the sky were more random objects. Some were so far away there was no way to tell, but others he could clearly make out a few feet away from him. He reached out and picked up an old cell-phone and felt it was fully solid, but also solid gray. When his fingers touched it, though, the case turned a bright red and even turned on displaying a random screensaver. As soon as he dropped it, it was a lifeless piece of gray technology.
"Well, I'm in someone's head again," thought Steven to no one in particular, "And I can already guess who it is…"
"Hey Steven!" shouted Amethyst as she ran up to him with her arms full of random junk. Much like when Steven grabbed the phone, it was all fully colored compared to the gray mass around them. "Isn't this place great?!"
The atmosphere of the beach house was, to put it gently, horrible. With both Amethyst and Steven out for the count it only made it that much harder for the Crystal Gems to deal with the impending Homeworld attack. Even with so much going wrong, though, Garnet kept her head on her shoulders.
"Alright Rhodonite, tell us everything you know about this Emerald and the ships she's using."
"W-Well, Emerald is a gem enforcer that's been after us ever since Lars first swiped the Sun Incinerator from her and her guards…"
"That makes perfect sense," remarked Peridot, "Emeralds are what humans would equate to law enforcement. They are vigilant, ruthless peacekeepers who look to apprehend any wrongdoers and maintain order in gem society."
"So… We're being harassed by a space cop?" asked Lapis sardonically, honestly not believing what she was hearing. While her comment did bring some much-needed levity, everyone was quick to get back on track.
"And you've also said that Emerald is very attached to her ship, correct?" asked Adamite.
"Yes, she chased across at least thirty galaxies just to get it back. A-And now she's got a huge squad of fighters to keep them occupied up in space-"
"-While they send the big guns down here with no way to fight back," finished Bismuth, grumbling to herself that the enemy had a pretty sound strategy.
"Alright, so we've established that we're in a disadvantageous position due to our limited options," weighed Pearl, "But we need to also acknowledge what we do know. Rhodonite, what can you tell us about this enemy?"
"Well, aside from Emerald being relentless, she commands a huge warship called a Destiny Destroyer-"
"SHE HAS WHAT?!" screamed Peridot, suddenly sweating and shaking like most of the group have never seen. She proceeded to leap onto Rhodonite on all fours and cling to the fusion's midsection.
"And you're telling me now there's THREE of them?! We need to get out of here before we're all atomized!"
"Peridot, calm down!" ordered Lapis, "What's so bad about these ships?"
"The Destiny Destroyer was still in the prototype stages when I was on Homeworld, but when I heard the specifications of it, my mind was blown. A massive vessel with a crew of over a hundred gems with enough firepower to blow through practically anything that stood in its way! It blew up meteors the size of equal to the size of the statue above the temple just for testing! If Homeworld has those pointed at us, we don't have a chance of matching that kind of power!"
"But I thought that's why you made this force field?" asked Cinnabar.
"While it may have the defensive capabilities to withstand laser fire from common gem fighters, I never tested it for assaults of this caliber…" Peridot visibly deflated when she realized her own mistake.
"The downside of hijacking enemy tech is sometimes you don't know what you're working with," added Bismuth, also kicking herself for overlooking such a critical aspect.
"But that shield was still up after the planet-wide Corrupting Light hit," added Pearl, hoping to raise the morale, "Surely no common weapon would be able to pierce a shield of that strength!" Adamite disagreed.
"I sincerely doubt that. Considering that Cinnabar and I managed to evade such an attack by burrowing underground far enough, I would guess that whatever sent that attack was designed with range over destructive power in mind. If this is an actual weapon with that much tonnage behind it, we are in an even worse position than we realized."
"You're right…" whispered Garnet, who looked like she had just seen a ghost.
"What's the matter Garnet?" asked Pearl.
"If those ships hit… Beach City won't survive even if the shield holds…"
Steven was more confused than ever. When he did this with Garnet, she was clearly suffering from depression and misery. The otherwise immovable object was starting to crack and almost crumbled right in front of him. He honestly never wanted to consider what might have happened had he not intervened, especially with him being held hostage at the time.
"Amethyst, what's going on? Are you okay?"
"Uh yeah," she answered lackadaisically, "Why? You got your banana jammies in bunch and want to talk it out?"
"I'm asking you that! There must be something wrong with you!"
"You know Steven… There is something wrong." Amethyst suddenly dropped her entire junk pile, returning it all to its grayed-out state.
"Really? What is it?"
"It's a super serious problem that only you and I can tackle together. Will you help me, Steven?"
"Of course! Tell me what it is, and I'll help!"
"I…"
"Yes?"
"Need you…"
"Uh-huh?"
"TO LOOSEN UP!" The purple hooligan fell on her backside from laughing so hard, while Steven just looked at her in confusion.
"Oh and watch this!" Amethyst picked up a handful of scraps from the ground, turning an assortment of colors in her grasp, but with one squeeze of her hand the bits and bobs became a bag of potato chips.
"Whaaa?"
"Awesome, right? This place can be anything you want!"
Just to prove her point, Amethyst looked to the side and made a twenty-foot-tall pile of snow to form out of the field of hodgepodge. She then grabbed several pieces of scrap out of the air and made an old-fashioned wooden sled.
"Come on man! Make yourself something and go nuts!"
"Garnet, you saw this happening?! Since when?" asked Lapis, possibly missing her cozy home in the mirror for the first time in millennia.
"Just now. And almost every outcome is the same even if the shield holds; Beach City is little more than a crater after the attack is over."
"Then we need to inform everyone in town immediately! I'll call Connie and Greg right now and tell them to start spreading the news and get everyone to evacuate." Pearl brought out her cell phone and began dialing as fast as she could. She would have Mayor Dewey's number, but the man kept sending far too many romantic texts for her liking so he was permanently blocked.
"So now what?" asked Cinnabar, "Do we just run away? I thought we weren't going to let those Homeworld jerks walk all over us!"
"If we must strategically retreat in order to survive, then that is what must be done. We have little chance to retaliate without access to our best weapon," commented Adamite only to immediately be scolded by Lapis.
"You mean we should just run away and let Emerald level the town?! No way am I letting all those people lose their homes! Go ahead and leave if you want, but I'm staying and keeping everyone safe!"
"That's a very admirable thought, but logic dictates that we have little other option if we wish to avoid being potentially disintegrated."
"Logic dictates we should've lost to Homeworld the first time, yet here we are," added Bismuth, "And I know for a fact that Rose would never leave dozens of people to get obliterated by some overpowered upper-crust. We need to buckle down and find some way to survive this without putting everyone in danger." Lapis looked at her and gave a small nod in appreciation.
"Fighting between ourselves is still going to solve nothing, though," added Garnet, "We need to prioritize getting the people of Beach City to safety. Once that's taken care of, we can address how we are going to withstand this attack."
"I've already called Connie and Greg to spread the word and get everyone involved. They should be able to help the mayor handle this," assured Pearl.
The benefits of living in such a small town like Beach City was that news always traveled fast. If a business failed a health inspection, it took only a day for everyone in town to distance themselves from the place. In the case of a town-wide emergency, it took exactly eighteen minutes to have the entire town assemble on the boardwalk with the news to immediately flee their homes until further notice.
This naturally did not sit well with the usually relaxed population of the town considering the debacle that happened months ago with the spaceship and one of their own recently being abducted.
Mayor Dewey, standing in the back of his old reelection van, was barely keeping the outrage down even with the help of Greg and Connie.
"What do you mean, we all need to flee town?!" cried Kofi Pizza, "We thought this town was safe now that Lars was back!"
"Everyone, just calm down!" yelled Connie, "This is only a temporary thing! The Crystal Gems will handle the situation and then everything will be fine."
"For how long?!" asked Mrs. Barriga who looked already on the verge of a panic attack, "First they kidnap my son and now they want to attack our town?! Maybe they should just surrender to those aliens and save us all the trouble!" That unfortunately appealed to most of the crowd and caused many to start yelling for the Crystal Gems to hand themselves over.
"Now come on guys," assuaged Greg, "Those guys have been saving your bacon for years now, longer than any of us have been alive. We need to calm down and do what they say because they just want people to be safe."
"And how do we know that the gems and these invaders aren't in some sort of alliance?" asked Ronaldo, "Maybe this is all some conspiracy between them and the canned vegetable industry to-"
"SHUT UP, RONALDO!" yelled every single person in the assembly. They might have been filled with delusions and paranoia, but everyone knew better than to take what that boy said to heart.
"Now I understand why everyone is afraid at the moment," assured Mayor Dewey, for once not sweating despite the severity of the situation, "But I for one put my faith in the Crystal Gems. They have never let us down before and if these two, who know that group much better than I do, trust them then so do I."
That actually made the crowd pause and consider his words.
"SO YOU TRUST THEM MORE THAN US?!" shouted Kevin, his normally flippancy causing yet more grief. That got the crowd whipped up again and about ready to charge the van in a frenzy until one voice called out.
"WILL YOU ALL JUST SHUT UP?!" shouted Lars, wearing his old Big Donut uniform along with his new skull earrings, as he shouldered his way through the crowd and stepped up to the van.
"Connie, get me one of the gems on the phone." The young girl pulled out her own cell and dialed Pearl. As soon as she picked up, she handed it over to Lars.
"Pearl, it's Lars. What's going on?" He stood there simply absorbing everything she said, completely ignoring the staring crowd. The onlookers, his parents especially, were stunned by his bravado. Those who knew the old Lars knew he would practically be losing his bladder had he spoke in front of a crowd like this before.
"Alright, listen up!" he spoke up after hanging up, "The problem is three giant alien warships that want to blow up the Crystal Gems and they don't care about the collateral damage. They're headed by a psycho named Emerald who chased me across the galaxy to get her ship back. The best thing to do now is stop whining, get a grip and do what you're told unless you want to get vaporized."
While a select few in the crowd, namely Sadie and the boy's parents, were stupefied by his compelling tone the rest fell into a panic. Lars rubbed the bridge of his nose as the citizens of the town all but started a riot.
"You know; I think I would actually rather see Emerald again than deal with this…" he muttered to himself. Mayor Dewey decided it was time to finally speak up.
"Everyone, settle down right now!" he yelled with far more force than anyone, even his own son, had ever heard. For once he had everyone's undivided attention and staring them all straight in the eye.
"I am beyond terrified right now. I've tried running away from my problems or dusting them off or, I'll admit it, pushing the blame onto someone else. But right now, this town does not need a politician. It needs an actual leader, someone who can keep a level head no matter what's coming. Now we can either stay here screaming at each other and getting nothing done, or we can buckle down and head out before the worst happens. Anyone else agree?"
It was slow at first, but the audience began clapping for him. Not the usual polite bout of clapping that was expected in response to the mayor making a public statement, but genuine applause out of respect and admiration. Even Dewey himself could hardly believe his own words, but he simply smiled as the crowd fell away. He could overhear several people making plans to evacuate as soon as possible with Connie eventually leaving with her parents. That left only Greg, Lars and the mayor atop the van on the boardwalk.
"Bill, that was really something," complimented Greg, "Where did all that come from?"
"From you, young man," he looked at Lars, "Your words inspired me like I haven't been in years. It took me back to a time when I was a wide-eyed kid who just wanted to make his hometown an even better place. Thank you."
"A-anytime, s-sir," stuttered Lars, some of his old anxiety returning. He never imagined he could actually move people, but then again he remembered his weeks of time aboard the Sun Incinerator. He kept everyone at their peak no matter how troubling the straits were. He enjoyed a brief reprieve from his captain duties, but now Lars felt ready to do something more productive with his life. While he knew the ship was in good hands with Steven and his friends, he wondered what else he could do to help. For now, though, the boy simply went on his way back to his house to pack up his things in case Emerald decided to level his home.
The boy took a brief moment to chuckle over how insane his life had gotten. A few months ago, his biggest problem was the drudgery of his day job or the pain of public schools. Now he was in life-or-death situations involving psychotic alien rock women. And yet here he was smiling more at this than in all the years of his first-world problems.
The boy walked home, wondering about all the ways he could help once this particular debacle was over. His coat was hanging in his closet for just the occasion.
Steven had mixed feelings about this situation. While he was grateful that his mental realm was not collapsing around him and Amethyst was not having an episode, he knew something was deeply wrong.
What did not help was how Amethyst seemed dead set on talking about anything except what brought him here. All she kept doing was cracking jokes, making bad puns and sometimes literally pulling shiny objects out of midair to distract him.
"Hey Steven, want to see me eat a bag of chips in ten seconds?"
"Yo Steven, try pushing a screwdriver into a watermelon. It looks super weird!"
"Man, Pearl would be having a heart attack if she saw this!"
Although Steven did have to admit that last one was funny to imagine.
Even still, while he did miss Amethyst's quips and sense of humor with how serious everything had gotten, he knew something was amiss.
After several minutes of pondering to himself on how to best handle the situation, he eventually just tried to play along and let Amethyst open up on her own terms. The problem was that while the gem may have run out of potential distractions in the real world, she had literally infinite resources to keep herself occupied with. One second she was bowling with a giant gumball and copies of Seventy Hues of Alabaster as pins. The next second she was just literally throwing things into the air and making them change into different forms as they fell. The kid all but lost his head when she chucked a bicycle wheel that came down as a bowling ball.
"Dang, man, this place is the best!" she boasted, "No more of that serious junk here. We can just goof off all we want!"
Steven's eyes lit up hearing that. Now he had an idea about the issue.
"Sooo… you don't like how serious everything is now? Why is that?"
"Dude, I think we both know why. Everyone's all scared of Homeworld because 'Oh man, they've got stuff to blow us up with!' Who cares?"
The hostility in her voice did not escape Steven. "So, you're saying you don't care about Homeworld? I thought you wanted to protect Earth."
"What?!" she gasped, "I didn't say that! Of course, I want to save Earth. It's my home for crying out loud!"
"Then why are we just sitting here and doing nothing? We should be back at the temple helping everybody!"
"W-well, when did you start becoming the fun police?!"
"What?!" Steven could tell he was breaking through, but her constant dodging the question was grating on him. He would have to ask Garnet for some tips on mentoring later.
"Man, can you just let me have this?! What's gotten into you?!"
"I have a responsibility now to keep Earth safe, Amethyst, and so do you!"
"Fighting a random gem monster is one thing but fighting an entire war?! That's insane!"
Steven was taken aback by that. "You mean… like the first time?"
"Uh, I wasn't around the first time, remember?! If you all want to run off and take on an entire planet, fine then, but I'm not doing it!"
"Really?! You're just going to abandon everyone and stay in your own head forever?! That's the real insanity!"
"Who are you to tell me what to do?!"
"I'm your friend and your family!" choked Steven as his emotions started to get the better of him, "Please Amethyst, just tell me what you want so we can get out of here!"
"I don't want your help!"
"Why not?!"
"Because it's none of your business!"
Steven had to bite back a groan as his patience started to drop. "Amethyst, I can't help you if you don't tell me what's wrong! You don't want to fight, fine, then you can maybe help out someone in the back! We can find something for you to do if you don't want to be up front."
"I don't want that either! Just drop it already!"
"Not until you give me a straight answer! If you don't want to fight, but you don't want to not fight, then what do you want?"
"I DON'T WANNA DIE!"
The purple gem dropped to her knees. Her eyes were already streaming tears. The white sky above them suddenly turned black and the grayed-out objects around them suddenly became stark white instead before losing all shape and turning into a field of endless paste.
"Amethyst…"
"There…" she whimpered, "Happy now?"
The Crystal Gems were all on edge now more than ever. After Pearl received a phone call from Lars of all people asking for the details about their crisis with Homeworld, Connie called back not long after and told that her family along with everyone else in Beach City was heading inland away from the oncoming attack.
"Well, at least collateral won't be an issue now," commented Bismuth, trying to look on the bright side of their situation. Garnet decided it was time to move forward.
"Now that people won't get hurt, we need to buff up our defenses any way we can. Lapis, I need you to stay outside and put up the sturdiest water wall you can."
The maritime gem wordlessly flew outside and put up a staggering water wall on the edge of the shore, easily as tall as the temple. An ethereal blue glow entered the house as the sunlight shone through the aquatic barrier.
"Adamite, in case that's not enough, stay outside and send up a rock wall. Also make sure Lapis doesn't get discouraged or upset and remains focused."
"Understood." The green elemental went outside and joined her blue-coated doppelganger.
"Peridot, I want you and Bismuth to ensure the shield is at full capacity. If you can find any way to potentially boost its strength, do it."
"Right!" exclaimed Peridot, eager to have anything to distract her from the looming dread. Her dreadlocked partner in crime followed behind, appreciating that Garnet was doing her best to keep everyone's spirits up.
"Garnet…" muttered Pearl once everyone else was out of earshot, "Do you honestly think we can survive this?"
"We've been through worse," she shrugged, "And besides, I have a hunch Rose would think the same thing."
"Yeah. She would," remembered Pearl, who could practically hear her mentor driving them forward.
That left Rhodonite with little to do but watch over the senseless Steven and Amethyst laying side by side on the former's bed upstairs. She twiddled all four of her thumbs as she felt the minutes crawl by, hoping that her old crew was alright above the atmosphere while her new friends around her could figure out a way to survive Emerald's wrath. She did feel that would be a pretty cruel twist of fate for her to finally get the freedom she desired for so long only to have it taken away a split second later.
When she looked down at Amethyst again, though, she was snapped out of her pessimism.
"Guys, get up here! Something's seriously wrong with your friend!"
Rhodonite had never seen a gem start fading into nothingness before.
And so next time, it all comes to head. Until then!
Thank you all so much for reading! Please feel free to leave questions or comments in the review section!