Part 2 of the invasion is ready! I'd put something else, but I'm super energized for this and I hope you all enjoy it too!
As chaotic as the battles occurring around the world were, Steven did not notice any of it. He was too busy falling into a miles-deep hole into the crust of the planet to commune with a sapient superweapon that could potentially blow all of Earth into rubble thanks to Yellow Diamond. While a large part of him was concerned for the fates of his family and all the people suffering thanks to the invasion, a tiny part of him wished he had music to listen to like last time. As awkward as the ride in the drill was, at least there was something to take his mind off of the situation.
Now, all he had was the wind whistling in his ears and the black void around him. At this point he could look down and not even see his own body. If he did not hit the bottom soon, he felt like shouting into the void.
"Now that's not going to help your voice," said his mother's voice, nearly startling half to death.
"Sorry!" apologized Rose, "You just thought about having something else to do so…"
"Yeah, I did…" muttered Steven, still trying to get his heart rate down, "So… Any ideas for what to do now?"
"Well… It does feel daunting but you're not the only one. That… thing… is made of thousands of Crystal Gem shards."
"Oh… Yeah, kinda forgot that…"
"Sorry, you don't need to hear that…"
"Actually… I think I do. I'm gonna lose it if I keep going like this by myself. And plus, you sounded really angry for a second there."
Rose's disembodied voice sighed in his head before she spoke properly. "Steven, I just have to wonder… Why is Homeworld like this? What makes the Diamonds so determined to destroy everything?"
"Isn't it because of Pink Diamond?"
"No, not just destroy Earth, I meant everything. If White Diamond has her way, then the entire universe as we know it will be eventually conquered but why? What purpose does it serve?"
"I… really don't know. I wish I could ask them."
"You and me both but I'm almost afraid to hear the reason. How could any thinking creature believe that just blindly obliterating and assimilating every planet they come across is the answer? They destroy planets with their soldiers, then strip-mine the planets to make more soldiers and then repeat the process!"
"Uh, Mom?" For some reason, Steven started to sweat bullets
"And they've been doing it for aeons! What do they have to show for it?! An entire society filled with prejudiced, warmongering slaves that'll throw themselves into death with a smile for their of psychotic leaders!"
"Mom?! You're starting to scare me!" A deafening buzzing started to fill his ears and his gem started to heat up his stomach like it was cooking him from the inside out.
"And now they turn the CORPSES of some of their OWN soldiers into some sentient superweapon! All to avenge a Diamond that they treated like trash to begin with! If I had it my way, I would find every single one of them and-!"
"MOM, STOP IT!" shouted Steven, halfway to having a panic attack. Before long, his body felt normal again and he could hear Rose panting for breath.
"Steven, I'm so sorry… I don't know what came over me."
"It's… good. I just know to never bring this stuff up again with you and-"
"Steven, are you there?" said a voice through his communicator, breaking his train of thought.
"Cinnabar?" replied the boy, "What is it? You sound really stressed."
"It's Connie! I found her going nuts on the beach earlier and now I can't get a straight word out of her!"
"Oh man, I wish I could be back there but…"
"S-Steven?" said a very shaky Connie, cutting in with her own communicator, "I-I know you're busy but…"
"Connie, what's wrong? Tell me!"
"M-M-My dad… He's…"
"What? Where?!"
"HE'S GONE!" she suddenly wailed, practically breaking Steven's heart as she sobbed and tried to choke out what happened."
"A-A gem… Thre-Threw me i-into the… Ocean and th-then h-he… We-Went out to s-s-s-s-save me a-and then…"
"Connie, stop. You need to breathe, okay?"
"S-Stev-Steven I-I-I…"
"Trust me, just breathe! Don't try to talk right now!"
Back on the boardwalk, now inside the relative safety of a closed-off arcade, Cinnabar watched Connie take several deep breaths and start to regain her composure. Once she could actually speak coherently again, Cinnabar interjected again.
"Okay, she's feeling better but you've got a job to focus on. Steven. I'll start letting the others know about her dad, okay?"
"Yeah, thanks," said the boy, "Can you please look after her until this dies down?"
"I'm not very good at this sort of thing but I'll try."
"Thanks, Cinnabar. I should go."
And with that the line was dead and the two were now sitting on a pair of disused skeeball lanes with only the sound of wind, waves and the occasional crash off in the distance.
"You don't have to stay here," Connie muttered, "The town needs you more than I do…"
"Now don't be ridiculous! I can't fight out there thinking of you just sitting here alone!"
"But… I can defend…"
"Connie, it's not that your helpless. It's that you need someone for you and, well, I'm all there is."
When a gem overheard her talking, she tried to break in. She was swiftly set on fire and Cinnabar went on talking over the sound of the hapless gem screaming.
"You know, I asked Greg about what a parent is. Someone who looks out for you, tries to teach you right from wrong… It reminded me of Adamite."
"And?"
"And it made me think. It wasn't easy just meandering around the world for so long. If I didn't have her, I probably wouldn't be here. That and a good chunk of your planet would be on fire."
A flash of a smile appeared on Connie's face for a millisecond, making Cinnabar more confident as she spoke.
"I mean, I know I couldn't ever do it! I'm a lot of things but 'responsible' and 'mature' aren't either of them."
"I don't mean to sound rude, but what's the point?"
Another gem came across the now half-charred invader on the ground and tried to pry the grates off of the arcade to get to the pair. Cinnabar just shot her with a flame stream and made her join her friend on the ground before continuing.
"Your dad, I may not know him, but there's a reason you miss him. He was a good parent. He looked after you, did everything he could to protect you… It's okay to miss him."
The girl tried to stop herself, but her eyes welled up and soon she was crying again. As awkward as it felt for her, Cinnabar still reached over and put her arms around the girl as she sobbed.
"I'm sorry…" said Connie through ragged breaths and shivering a bit her dip in the ocean.
"Don't be," assured the gem, warming up her hands ever so slightly to stop the girl's chills, "No one's invincible. If I lost Adamite or Lapis, I'd need someone to stand by me too."
Bismuth and Peridot looked around the beach house and the new damages they racked up from the last team of gems that tried to get in. Half a dozen carnelians tried to overwhelm them, but now all of them were trapped in bubbles inside the temple. It did result in the fire pit being dented, a hole in the left downstairs wall and a busted toilet seat but the home was quiet once again.
"Hope Greg's got enough money to pay for all this…" muttered Peridot, grateful all of her things were now in her room.
"I think he might be able to replace this stuff for free. I don't know how this 'insurance' stuff works exactly, but I think they'll understand where the damage came from here," replied Bismuth, hoping to ease up the tension. The air was so thick now she could cut it with that twenty-foot tall battle-axe she made all that time ago.
As they tried to pick up the pieces of their latest scuffle, they were interrupted again by a completely new figure. The two were immediately put on edge by the silvery gem that stood even taller than Garnet but with a similar physique to a typical amethyst with an sterling ovular gem located on her right knee. The colossal figure had a sheen to her whole body, almost like she was made of liquid metal, and looked down at both of the Crystal Gems with an emotionless stare.
"Oh great, new model," moaned Peridot, "Alright, who are you? Introduce yourself."
"I am Mercury," the gem said flatly, almost sounding like an actual robot, "I am here to ensure My Diamond's mission is a success. Stand aside or I will eliminate you."
"Yeah, let's see…" pondered Bismuth, "I'm gonna tell you the same thing I told the last 5,000 chumps who asked that!"
The dreadlocked gem then changed her right hand into a sawblade, one of the newer shapes she thought of, and charged at Mercury. "Eat chalk dust, clod!"
Her blade landed right in the massive gem's body and started to cut into her, but all that came out were silvery globs until suddenly the momentum died.
"I am capable of shifting my molecular density to appear as if it is liquid," informed Mercury in the same droning voice, "You cannot injure my form." She then gave Bismuth an uppercut so hard it launched her clear through the house's second floor and the roof.
"HEY!" shouted Peridot, "That was Steven's bedroom!"
"Irrelevant. My Diamond's mission is my prerogative. Now stand aside or you will be eliminated as well."
Peridot knew from the get-go that there was no way she could beat this gem in a conventional fight. One hit like that would send her all the way to Europe and she would never fly back in time on her little hoverboard. Instead she separated the sections of her arm into five separate plates and flung them at Mercury like miniature blades before running out the door as fast as possible. The projectiles barely even slowed the new gem down as they just passed through her as she leapt through the hole she made in the ceiling. With one clean jump, she made it halfway up the massive statue outside the temple and ended up collapsing the house in on itself from her force.
Mercury quickly spotted Peridot running, on all fours much to her brief confusion, and quickly put her body in a controlled fall to cut off her escape. Right as she crashed in front of the scientist, though, Peridot forced her breastplate off and used to as a hoverboard to move around her and escape. Unfortunately, Mercury really was faster than her flight and dashed fast enough to leave a streak in the sand behind her and held out her arm. Peridot was sent tumbling from the one blow and scrambled to get up as Mercury was still stepping towards her.
"Okay…" she moaned to herself, "Why did I want to get involved in combat again?"
Bismuth, however, heard her grumblings as she charged right at Mercury with a renewed energy. "Because it feels so good to do this!" she cheered as she leapt and tried to squash the Homeworld gem with a hammer-shaped hand. Much to her surprise, Mercury dodged instead of phasing through it and quickly countered with a palm strike that Bismuth dodged at the last second. Soon the two were exchanging blows at a frightening pace that belied their thicker physiques with each blow generating shockwaves behind them that stirred the sand and sea.
Their clash only stopped when Mercury finally used her unique power in a new way. She made it so her fist splattered into liquid gobs that suddenly hardened into metal that made Bismuth's moves far slower. With so much of a handicap, Mercury started pummeling Bismuth with kicks and her one good hand until she was stopped by an armor plate hitting her in the head. Peridot, having launched it off of her leg, was shocked to see that it actually hit solid mass.
"Aha!" she deduced, "You have to will yourself into being intangible! By default, your body remains corporeal without explicit focus!"
"Impressive," admitted Mercury, "You have exposed a flaw in my design. That means you now must be eliminated."
"Oh… For once I wish I didn't have such amazing intellect. That's a new feeling."
"Good going, Peri!" encouraged Bismuth, "And don't worry, I'm not gonna let this giant tin can hurt you!"
"You will stand aside or you will be eliminated as well," threatened the invader as her gem began to glow. From that light, she pulled out a tube-like shape as long as her arm and soon the glimmer died down to reveal her weapon. It was arm-mounted device with a large spring on the back end facing her elbow and a large silver spike at its front. Aside from the color change and a white diamond logo on the side, Bismuth recognized the design instantly.
"You… HOW?! HOW DO YOU HAVE A BREAKING POINT?!"
"That information is classified," answered Mercury as she pointed the weapon at Peridot, "And now you will remain silent or else I will use lethal force on you as well."
"Peridot, run! That thing will shatter you in one shot!"
Mercury fired the weapon, but Bismuth was surprised to see what happened. Rather than a solid spring fire out, a spike-shaped projectile was released from the device's tip and flew at Peridot like a massive arrow. The techie quickly used her makeshift hoverboard to fly away right as the blast hit the sand making a crater right where Peridot just stood.
"Oh wonderful, you even managed to upgrade it."
"You are far too familiar with the construction and operation of this device," said Mercury, suddenly turning and leveling the new and improved Breaking Point at Bismuth's core, "You are a grave threat to Homeworld. You must-"
"Eliminate this!" shouted Peri as she jettisoned all of her armor plates at once and made them rain down on Mercury before she could fire. With many of the pieces raining around her, the gem's attention was of Bismuth and instead aimed several shots at Peridot who dodged them all flying. It also made her forget about the metallic bits weighing Bismuth down and was finally given a solid hit by Bismuth slamming her with her shoulder.
"Something tells me you're a prototype, aren't you?" asked Bismuth.
"That question does not matter. My objective is all that matters."
"Yep, definitely brand-new out of the Kindergarten," confirmed Peridot as she floated down next to her compatriot, "Her abilities are very impressive, but she hasn't developed them at all."
Mercury's eyes twitched for a moment before she leapt into the air and spiked Peridot into the ground faster than the Crystal Gem could blink. Once the metal-wielding gem was down, Mercury all but flew at Bismuth. The other gem tried to dodge, but Mercury hooked her arm around Bismuth's neck and then carried her along all the way to the end of beach before letting go. The dreadlocked gem ended up tearing up an entire street before crashing into a house which collapsed on top of her from the impact.
Peridot, having watched the entire thing play out in less than ten seconds, quickly started sweating and knew now was the time to retreat and find a place where she could concoct a proper plan. In her haste to escape, though, she forgot about the modified Breaking Point her enemy was wearing and had to dodge shot after shot that rocketed past her as she flew away until one of them finally hit her hoverboard. The metal plate under her was blown to pieces from the blast and soon she was tumbling into asphalt with Mercury running up to catch her.
Just as Peridot feared there was no way out this time, a familiar grappling hook launched out from behind her and soon Greg Universe was flying out with his blaster firing right at Mercury. His sudden arrival made her stop in place, giving him enough time to use the momentum from his grappling to land a punch that sent the colossal gem flying backwards.
"Are you alright?" asked the dad once the coast was clear, "What's happening? I saw a huge crash and I can't find Connie anywhere!"
"Long story short, that thing is Mercury and she might be the most advanced gem I've ever seen!" summed Peridot, "You need to get out of here before she comes back!"
"Well, I can't do that. You guys must have a serious problem to be back here instead of guarding the warp pad."
"Greg, trust her on this one…" said Bismuth, still trying to shake the stars out of her eyes from her attack, "You've got skills, but this one's really bad news."
"Well, can't you two just fuse to beat her or something?"
Both the gems stared at him, before looking at each other and blushing slightly. One of them was about to argue with him until a sonic boom erupted from the beach as Mercury launched herself into the air and started firing with her Breaking Point. Greg shot off blasts to stop her attacks before he charged forward himself.
"I'll buy you both some time! You get to work fusing, okay?
"Okay then…" Both of them said, barely believing what was happening. They watched Greg skate forward and begin to engage Mercury. Even then, they stayed firmly in place. They knew Greg's idea made sense but that did not help the painfully awkward feeling between them.
"So… Uh…" stammered Peridot, "How do you… wanna do this?"
"Um, about that… I've never… You know…"
"Wait, really?"
"I-It's just never come up before! I mean, how many times have you done it?"
"Two, but if I did it back on Homeworld with Lapis, we'd be thrown in prison."
They were brought out of their all-important staring at the ground and yammering when Greg was knocked into the air and landed right in front of them with his sparks dancing across his suit and swirls in his eyes.
"Man, that Mercury can turn into metal!" he said woozily, "All three of 'em are real heavy hitters."
Both of them looked down and, while worried about Greg, paid more attention to the damaged battle suit. When Mercury came walking up to them with the same flat expression, the two Crystal Gems glared at her.
"You damaged our suit, you clod!"
"Nobody messes up my work and gets away with it!"
"Your combat capabilities are insufficient to stop me," replied Mercury as she stood in front of them, "And the organic is only marginally better. Now do the logical thing of surrendering since there is no way you can overcome me."
"Maybe we can't…" said Bismuth as she stepped away from Peridot.
"But someone else can!" At first, Mercury was confused when Bismuth started whipping her head in different directions and Peridot started sliding her feet backwards. As the two started to dance closer to each other, she realized that the two were trying to fuse.
"I will not let you advance," Mercury declared as she aimed her weapon at them only to have a grappling hook launch into her arm. Greg managed to stand up and started swinging his body around like he was doing a hammer throw for the Olympics. With one final grunt, he let the line go and Mercury was sent flying again just as Peridot leapt into Bismuth's arms and they were consumed by a blinding light.
When Mercury made it back to the scene, a brand-new combatant was grinning at her. She was only slightly taller than Bismuth, but the major differences were with the rest of her. She had lavender skin with bright yellow-green stripes running down her arms that went up her face and met at the yellow and purple-striped gem at her forehead underneath a star-shaped visor that covered the top of her face. A matching pair of lines went down her knees and met at the rectangular gem in her chest with a similar color. The fusion had four arms, but the lower set was far smaller than the other. Her hair was pastel purple and green dreadlocks that all ended in points. She was dressed in a pale green body suit with pale multicolored stars plastered everywhere with a flap on the front like an apron.
"So, you made it," spoke the new fusion, her voice dripping with confidence.
"Unknown combatant detected," Mercury analyzed, immediately on guard, "Identify yourself."
"I'm Ametrine and you're the very first clod I'm gonna clobber in my whole life! You should feel honored!"
The newly minted Ametrine wasted no time running right at Mercury even as several shots were fired at her. She simply skirted past everything the still-larger gem threw at her before shapeshifting her larger hands into spiked gauntlets like Garnet's and sending the silver gem sprawling from the blow.
"Hm, not bad," Ametrine said, admiring her own hands, "But I'm missing something…"
She looked back to the street Bismuth just plowed into and saw a pair of cars that got kicked up from the earlier attack. As Mercury got up and chased after her, she ran towards them and picked them both up with her hands. Once her enemy tried to leap at her, she clapped both of the cars around with enough force to break them into pieces. As pieces of metal, glass, plastic and upholstery scattered all over the ground, she was more focused on that than the now grimacing Mercury in front of her.
"Your tactics are ineffective," said the gem, "My abilities still outpace yours."
"Ah-ah, patience! A seasoned artisan like myself needs to time work."
With a flex of her smaller hands, Ametrine made the metal bits from the wreckage assemble around her larger arms. Once it was all collected, making her upper arms look like scrapyards, she slammed her fist into Mercury's face.
"Now that my material is ready, I just need to POUND it into shape!"
Soon Ametrine and Mercury were trading blows with neither one giving ground. The Homeworld gem tried to aim a shot at the fusion, but that only gave Ametrine an excuse to send a fist into her unguarded body. Eventually the two broke away and now Ametrine was wearing a seamless pair of blue armored sleeves that fit her shape exactly.
"Not bad for my very first time!" she boasted, admiring how her new armor glinted in the sunlight, "Now let's really get into it!"
Thousands of miles away from the new fusion, one of the Alexandrites acting as the main defense force of Earth flung another few dozen gems out of Paris. She had no idea where they landed and at this point was less than concerned if they would survive the trip. She was more concerned with a pair of fighters flying towards her. She summoned her bow and shot one of the crafts down, but the other one managed to escape with a barrel roll.
The surviving flyer opened fire with its lasers, but the titanic defender nimbly leapt out of the way and sent a flail crashing through the cockpit. As effortlessly as she made the fight look, she was running herself ragged along with the rest of the clones. For every ship she took down, dozens more filled the sky and she could hear panicked screams and crashes coming from all around her. She looked around saw the street she was on went from beautiful storefronts to being filled with craters and debris.
She was desperately trying to keep her spirits up when a young boy's voice hit her. "Alexandrite, are you still okay?"
"Steven! I'm fine but what about you?" she asked while casually kicking away several enemy gems trying to climb her.
"I'm pretty sure I'm almost there!" he reported, a tiny pinprick of light entering his vision while the sounds of the fusion's battle rang out in the background through his communicator. Soon the light grew until he was overlooking what looked like a field of gem shards of nearly every color. He quickly then had to clasp his ears shut, though, as thousands of screams hit him all at once.
"Steven?! What's all that?" asked Alexandrite.
"Guys, I gotta go!" the kid replied, yelling at the top of his lungs, "The Cluster really is in trouble!"
The six-armed fusion sounded like she wanted to protest but Steven killed the line. There was no point trying to talk to her when it sounded like an entire country's worth of people were shouting around him.
"Steven," said Rose, her voice somehow sounding clear despite the immense noise, "Just concentrate. You can do this!"
"Thanks, Mom!" he said out loud as he tried to block out the noise going on around him. When he opened his eyes again, he was no longer in the massive cavern but floating in a white void. The only problem was that all of the gem bubbles the gem shards around him made were popping by the second!"
"Cluster, can you hear me? It's Steven! I'm here to help!"
"HELP! HELP!" the voices of the Cluster spoke, clearly desperate. Steven pushed himself forward, thankful for his floating powers and all the training since the last time he was here and started bubbling every smaller cluster he came across. He must have bubbled over a hundred in the first few seconds of darting around, but when he looked behind him they were already being undone.
"Steven, this isn't enough!" warned Rose, "There's hundreds of thousands of shards in here!"
The Cluster then seemed to gasp at shock at her words before chanting her name. "ROSE! ROSE! ROSE!"
"Huh, they… She…? The Cluster can hear you?" asked a baffled Steven as he worked faster.
"I'm in your mind, your mind is linked with the Cluster, so yes now I'm linked with it too! But Steven, listen to me! You'll never be fast enough like this! You can feel the drills trying to burst open the bubble, right?"
"Yeah so help me out! Can you appear here too?"
Much to his own surprise, Steven's mother actually appeared next to him and soon the screams of the half-formed gems around them changed to cheers for a moment as they recognized Rose's form.
"ROSE! SAVE US!" the thousands of voice cried as they were quickly pushed back into screaming.
"Mom, this is great!" said Steven optimistically, "You're way faster than me and now we can cover twice the space!"
"Steven, it's not enough!" pleaded Rose, "I can hold out longer, yes, but that's not the problem! You can stop all of this by yourself!"
"Um, WHAT?! How am I supposed to do that?"
"You have the power to bubble gems…"
"Yeah, but so do you!"
"But you can do something I can't: transform."
Once Steven knew what she meant, he immediately pushed himself away and focused back on bubbling as many mini clusters as he could.
"Steven! Please, trust me! You can do it!" Rose pleaded, but her words fell on deaf ears as her son rocketed away from her. Knowing the Earth was doomed otherwise, the veteran Crystal Gem started flying after her son and hoped he would see reason.
Yellow Diamond had her eyes locked on the surveillance footage that her commander's ships were taking of the battle. As strange as it was to see eight identical copies of a six-armed gem with elemental breaths and a small arsenal fighting her fleet, the purely tactical side of her actually had a smidge of respect. Most other forces would have just buckled under this immense pressure, but the Crystal Gems actually formulated a plan to deal with it.
Now if only that resilience did not make them so infuriating or involved defiling her culture to do so, she might actually be impressed.
Her attention was taken away from the ongoing battle, however, when her Pearl came onto the bridge.
"My Diamond," saluted the servant, "The Cluster is currently 45% reactivated, but we've recently come into some resistance."
"How so? Do the rebels have some ship or technology sabotaging my drills?"
"Not quite… The scanners for the drills have detected the frequency of a foreign gemstone interfering with the Cluster's reopening."
"Preposterous! Let me see these results!"
Yellow Pearl did as she was told and sent the information to her master. Once she had it, the Diamond ran a search through her database to match the resonance of the gem with this supposed intruder. As much grief as White Diamond made, she did create some immensely useful tools as every Emerald in the quadrant had these for tracking down fugitives.
When the results came up, however, what she saw made her temper blow.
"A ROSE QUARTZ?! How is that possible?!"
"Um, well… We have no idea, My Diamond, but her interference is very slowly halting the progress on the drilling."
"That abominable little… Now I see her plan! Have her minions form that hideous fusion to hold off the bulk of my forces while she deals with the Cluster herself!"
"My Diamond, at most, the drilling's time will only need an extra 3% to complete at the latest…"
"I DON'T CARE!" erupted Yellow, her energy flaring up for a moment and causing cracks to appear in her throne, "I have underestimated that gem before and as much as I loathe to admit it, my carelessness has cost me before."
The matriarch opened the channel to all of her commanders and prepared to give them their new orders.
"The diversionary tactic is a failure. Rose Quartz knew from the beginning and is somehow sabotaging the releasing of The Cluster herself. I have the coordinates for where she is intercepting our operation. You are to recall all of your forces immediately, storm this location and finish Rose Quartz once and for all. If any Crystal Gem or organic stops you, you shatter them without a second thought. Is that clear?"
"YES, MY DIAMOND!" the commanders all hollered.
"Excellent. The commander responsible for her shattering will receive a promotion to any position they wish in the Gem Empire. That will be all."
And now an entire planetary invasion force will be heading towards Steven and Beach City... Tune in to see the answer for this one next time!
Thank you all so much for reading! Please feel free to leave any questions or comments below!