By the way, the full title for this chapter is "If Every Pork Chop Were Perfect, We Wouldn't Have Hotdogs", but apparently, that's too long to put as a title.
The sun was setting in Beach City. Steven and his dad, Greg Universe, were sitting in the back of Greg's van and having a jam session. Their father-son bonding time was interrupted by the ringing of Steven's cell phone. He took it out of his pocket and answered it. "Yello?"
"Steven?" It was Pearl.
"Oh, hey, Pearl. What do you need?"
"Steven, we need you back at the Temple. It's an emergency."
"Don't worry, I'll be right over." Steven hung up and started making his way back to the Crystal Temple. "Sorry, Dad. The Gems need me back at the Temple."
"That's okay," Greg assured him as he stood up and put away his guitar. "We can rock out again later. Whatever Gem stuff you gotta take care of is more important. After all, if every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn't have hotdogs!"
The Crystal Temple was a massive, woman-shaped structure carved into the side of a cliff on the beach. Four of its eight giant hands held Steven's beach house, and its two stoic faces stared out at the sky and the ocean respectively. Steven saw Pearl, Ruby, and Sapphire standing on the beach below and looking up at the sky. Ruby and Sapphire were standing side by side, holding hands as usual, and Pearl was standing nervously next to a pink cannon that looked about 9 feet tall, its nozzle pointing up at the sky.
"So what's the emergency?" Steven walked towards them, his eyes focused on the cannon. "What's this big cannon for?"
"It's called the Laser Light Cannon," Pearl started explaining, putting a hand on the cannon's glossy exterior. "Your mother, Rose Diamond, constructed it to blast enemy ships out of the Earth's atmosphere to prevent them from landing here."
"Enemy ships?"
"Enemy ships like that," Ruby said, pointing to a distant, red object in the evening sky with the telescope she had on hand. Steven took it from her and peered through it to look at a red spacecraft vaguely shaped like an upside-down cone that had what looked like a yellow window on the front of it, and three small legs on the bottom.
"We believe it might be a group of soldiers sent from Gemworld to take us prisoner," Sapphire said.
"Yo. Sorry I'm late." Amethyst walked over to the rest of the group, stuffing her mouth full of french-fries from a greasy paper bag she had in her hand.
"There you are, Amethyst!" Pearl said. "Where have you been?"
"Eating fries."
Pearl pinched the bridge of her nose in annoyance. "Anyway, we need to figure out the activation phrase before the ship reaches Earth."
"But we have no clue what that could be," Ruby said. "And if we don't figure it out soon, we're as good as cracked!" She held her head in anxiety.
Sapphire began massaging Ruby's shoulders. "Rose had a history of changing the activation phrase every now and again to make her attacks less predictable," she explained. "She usually chose phrases that carried a lot of meaning to her."
"Well, if it's a phrase that meant a lot to her, then it must be something my dad would say!" Steven concluded.
Ruby raised an eyebrow at him. She didn't seem upset, just rather skeptical. "You think?"
Pearl nervously fiddled with her tie. "Steven, Greg is nice, but I don't think-"
"Your dad's kinda dumb, Steven." Amethyst bluntly interrupted as she shoved more fries into her food hole.
"Amethyst!"
"What? I'm just telling the truth. I mean, when has he ever said anything really profound?"
"I'm sure he's got some wise words," Steven said. "I'll go ask him." And he took off back to the van.
"Good luck!" Pearl called out to him as she glanced uneasily at the ship. "We'll just keep guessing until you figure it out!"
"Hey, Dad! I need your help with something!" Steven knocked on the back doors of Greg's van to get his attention. No answer. He knocked harder, using both of his fists to bang on the doors. "Dad, c'mon! This is kinda important!" Steven stepped back and rammed his body into the back of the van as hard as he could. "Dad, wake up! The world is at stake!"
"What's going on?! Who's there?!" Greg's startled voice called.
"Dad, it's me!" Steven called to him. "The Gems and I need your help."
Greg stepped out of his van, scratching his balding head incredulously. "The Gems need my help? I thought normal humans weren't supposed to get involved with Gem stuff."
"The Gems need the activation phrase for Mom's Laser Light Cannon so we can blast away the enemy ship in the Earth's atmosphere." Steven pointed to the red shape in the lilac evening sky. "They said she picked something that held a lot of meaning to her, and I figured it might be something you always say."
Greg sheepishly smiled as he rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, well, heh, I don't know if anything I ever said could be that important."
"Sure it could! Mom was the only one who attended your first concert. That's how you guys met."
Greg gave a fond chuckle. "Yeah, I remember that night. I still don't understand what she ever saw in a big ol' dope like me."
"So, what wise words do you know that could help us?"
"Well, the more, the merrier, I always say. Or, the early bird gets the worm. I don't know. I think I wrote a few things in my old song book. Let's go check my storage unit to see if it's in there."
Greg got in the driver's seat of his van while Steven took the passenger seat. They buckled up and drove to the other side of town.
"Can we put in one of your CDs?" Steven asked his father.
"I guess," Greg replied. "Some of those songs don't really hold up all that well."
Steven popped one of the CDs into the slot underneath the van's radio, which he turned on to play a song that Greg wrote for Rose long ago.
I know I'm not that tall.
I know I'm not that smart.
But let me drive my van into your heart...
Greg silently cringed behind the wheel as the song filled the van, though his son seemed to enjoy it, judging how he danced in his seat and occasionally sang along to some of the verses. Before they knew it, they had arrived at a line of storage units, all identical with orange doors. "Well, here we are," Greg said as he and Steven got out of the van and walked over to the furthermost right unit.
"This is just where I keep stuff I can't fit in the van." Greg used a key on his key ring to open the door, revealing a massive amount of assorted knickknacks.
"Whoa..." Steven gasped in awe. "It's like a whole museum full of dad stuff! The song book's gotta be in here somewhere!" Steven grabbed a flashlight off the ground and tied an old garden hose around his waist. "Okay, so when I find it, I'll just tug on the hose and you pull me back out."
Greg gave an encouraging thumbs-up. "Got it. Good luck."
Steven gave an affirmative nod and went in. He could hardly see anything in the pitch darkness of the storage unit. He turned on the flashlight he had in his hand, hitting it against his palm to get the light to stop flickering. He walked cautiously around the unit, shining his light on various cardboard boxes and miscellaneous items. No song book in sight. Steven sighed to himself as he kept searching.
Suddenly, he spotted a rectangular object in the surrounding darkness. He shone his flashlight on it and went over to pick it up. The front cover read Recipes for Single Parents in red, cursive letters and had a picture of a pot roast underneath. Not what he was looking for. He put the book down and kept looking for his dad's song book.
He was so focused on finding it that he didn't notice the box full of fiction books on the ground. He tripped over it and grabbed the closest item in his reach to keep himself from falling over. However, that caused the junk on top of it to topple over. Steven gave a startled shout and ducked for cover as everything fell to the ground with a loud, resounding CRASH!
"Steven! Are you okay?!" Greg cried from outside the storage unit.
"Yeah!" Steven called back at him. "Some stuff just fell. If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn't have hotdogs, right?" He stood back up and dusted himself off. His flashlight shone on a small, brown, leatherbound book with one of those fancy button clasps to keep it shut. He picked it up and undid the clasp to open it. The inside cover read Mr. Universe's Song Book. "Dad, I found it!" Steven cried excitedly as he tugged on the hose.
"That's great, Schtu-ball!" Greg pulled on his end of the hose to pull his half-Gem son out of the storage unit. Steven made his way out with the song book in hand. They looked up at the sky to see that the ship was getting closer. The window could now be seen from the distance they were standing from it.
"Dad, we gotta hurry! They're almost here!" Steven scrambled into the passenger seat as his dad got into the driver's seat and put his foot down on the gas pedal. They drove to the beach as fast as they could.
Meanwhile, the Gems were still trying to get the Laser Light Cannon to activate. "Two wrongs don't make a right!" Pearl cried to it.
"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?!" Ruby groaned in growing frustration. "Come on!"
"How about 'one man's trash is another man's pleasure?'" Amethyst suggested.
"The phrase is 'one man's trash is another man's treasure,'" Pearl corrected. "And why on Earth would Rose make that the cannon's activation phrase?!" Amethyst simply shrugged in response as Greg's van pulled up to them.
"We're here!" Steven said as he and his dad hopped out of the van and ran over to them.
"Did you figure out the activation phrase?" Pearl asked.
"I've got Dad's song book right here!" Steven held out his hands to realize he didn't have the song book with him. "Huh?" Steven went back inside the van to search for it. It was nowhere to be found. "I must've dropped it when I was getting back in the van. Now what'll we do?"
"It's okay, Steven," Greg said, putting a comforting hand on his son's shoulder. "We'll figure it out one way or another. After all..."
Steven smiled up at him. "If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn't have hotdogs."
The cannon suddenly hummed to life, its nozzle "blooming" as large, petal-like pieces of it opened upwards and formed a perfect rose shape. The cannon fell over onto the sand and the six of them all worked together to lift it and aim it at the ship.
"This is it!" Ruby yelled over the hum.
"Brace yourselves," Sapphire said.
Suddenly, Steven felt himself being thrown into Pearl as a beam of bright pink light vaguely shaped like a woman shot out of the cannon and knocked the ship out of the Earth's atmosphere, sending it careening backwards as it flipped back into space. A small twinkle in the sky was the last they saw of it, for now at least.
A tear ran down Greg's cheek. "Rose, that was beautiful..."
Amethyst shook her head while making a sort of "brrr" sound with her lips. "That was kinda intense." She turned to Steven. "So, what did you say to get the cannon to turn on?"
"I said the thing Dad always says."
"The thing about pork products?" Pearl asked incredulously.
"Honestly, that's the last thing I'd expect the activation phrase to be," Ruby mused as she put her hands on her hips. Amethyst gave an amused chuckle in response.
-Meanwhile, on the Gem homeworld-
"Yellow, listen to me," an extraordinarily tall, blue-skinned women dressed in a darker blue robe with a blue, rhombus-shaped gemstone embedded in her chest pleaded with another woman who was sitting in a chair in front of a large monitor showing an image of the planet Earth from space. This woman was just as tall as her, but her dominant color was her namesake; yellow skin, yellow hair styled into a vague helmet shape, a yellow suit with broad shoulder pads, and a yellow, rhombus-shaped gemstone embedded in her chest. "We can't keep sending Gems to Earth."
"Pink needs to learn her lesson," Yellow snapped. "And if sending more Gems to Earth is the only way to get through to her, Blue, then so be it."
"We should at least ask what Mother thinks."
"What I think about what?" A voice asked. The two sisters turned to see that their mother was now on the screen. All that could be seen was her head and shoulders, but her skin and spikey hair shone a bright white that was almost blinding to look at. One could just barely make out the white, brilliant-cut gemstone embedded in her forehead. Her face held a stern expression as her light grey, white-pupiled eyes glared at them.
"Mother!" Blue cried. "We were just discussing-"
"We were discussing how to get Pink to realize she has a colony to run," Yellow interrupted. "She's clearly shirking her duties as a Diamond Matriarch, and I'm trying to get her into proper shape. What would you say to sending more Gems over to get her to comply?"
"I would say to not worry about it too much, Yellow," their mother replied, her black lips curling into a small smile. "Our Starlight will realize what she should be doing soon enough. You'll see..."
