foxchick1: Thank you!

Dragon Titan 1: Really lucky indeed. XD

Steven was gathering some supplies for the camping trip that he and the Gems would be going on with Greg for the weekend. They had been planning on it all week, and Steven had really been looking forward to it.

"Let's see..." Steven took a look at his checklist and made sure he had everything. "Sleeping bag?" He glanced at the green, caterpillar-shaped sleeping bag that lay on his bed. "Check. Fishing pole?" Steven took a look at the fishing pole that leaned against the wall. "Check. Ingredients for s'mores?" He looked at a bag of marshmallows, a box of graham crackers, and a pack of full-size chocolate bars that were all sitting on the floor of his loft. "Check-a-rooney."

"Whatcha doing up there, kid?"

Steven looked down to see Ruby and the other Gems looking up at him from the beach house floor.

"Hi, guys! I'm just checking to see if I've got everything ready for our camping trip."

"Camping trip?" Pearl repeated.

"Yeah! The one we're going on this weekend with my dad! You guys didn't forget, did you?"

"Well, no, but-"

"You should probably start packing." Steven stuffed his sleeping bag in the lettuce pocket in his cheeseburger backpack and zipped it up. "Dad's gonna be coming soon and we all wanna be ready for what the wilderness has in store for us." He put his backpack on and climbed down the stairs.

"I'm sorry, Steven, but I'm afraid we can't join you," Sapphire said.

"Why not?" Steven asked with a frown.

"We have to go fight another giant Rough Gem that's guarding an ancient temple on the other side of the world," Amethyst answered apologetically.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously," Ruby said.

Steven slumped his shoulders. "Aw man! It feels like you guys go on these kinda missions every week."

"Sorry, dude," Amethyst apologized as the Gems climbed on the Warp Pad. "There's always next weekend, and you know I'll be looking forward to s'mores!"

"We'll be sure to bring back a couple of souvenirs for you, okay?" Ruby told him with a smile.

"Okay."

"Okay, Steven, goodbye now!" Pearl waved goodbye as they warped away to their destination.

Steven sighed as he climbed up the stairs back to his bedroom loft. Normally, he wasn't too upset when the Gems left on a mission that involved fighting a Rough Gem of some kind. He understood that those kind of missions were especially dangerous for him. What he didn't get was why they had to go on this sort of mission today. He just wanted to spend some quality time with them and his dad, roughing it in the woods, going on a nature hike, fishing in a creek, roasting marshmallows and hotdogs over the campfire. Telling ghost stories and singing campfire songs. Well, if the Gems couldn't go, at least he'll get to go with his dad. He grabbed the rest of his camping supplies and made his way out of the beach house.


Greg was at It's A Wash, washing cars for his clients as usual. Steven ran over to him, wearing his cheeseburger backpack and holding his fishing pole and s'mores ingredients. "Hi, Dad!" he greeted.

"Hey, Schtu-Ball! I see you're all ready for our camping trip, huh?"

"Yep! The Gems couldn't come along 'cause they have to go fight a giant Rough Gem that's guarding an ancient Gem temple. But that's okay! We can take plenty of pictures and tell them all about it when we get back!"

Greg rubbed the back of his neck. "About that, Steven, It's A Wash is gonna be really busy today. I mean, just look at all these cars waiting to be washed." Steven looked and saw a line of about nine vehicles. "And then after that I gotta go pick up my laundry from the laundromat, and then I promised I'd go bowling with Vidalia and Yellowtail tonight, and I can't exactly cancel on those two. Sorry, kiddo, but my schedule's packed."

"Aww, but we had plans."

Greg put a hand on his son's shoulder. "I know, buddy. Don't fret, we can go next weekend." And he went to continue with his work.

"But I wanted to go this weekend," Steven sadly muttered to himself as he shuffled his feet back to his beach house.


Steven went inside, not bothering to close the door, took off his backpack, and slumped on the couch with a long sigh.

Lion, who had previously been napping, lifted up his head to look at him.

"Hey, Lion," Steven greeted flatly. "We were supposed to go camping this weekend, but the Gems are on a mission, and Dad had other plans, so I'm just staying here instead. I just wish they weren't so busy doing stuff like fighting Gem monsters and washing cars and going bowling, then maybe we could have the camping trip we were supposed to." Steven lay down and covered his eyes with his forearm. "Ugh, why can't anything go my way?" Suddenly, he felt his stomach grow warm in a familiar way that he couldn't quite place. He moved his forearm and sat up to take a look. He saw that his gemstone was glowing underneath his t-shirt. "My gem." He looked at the Temple Door and saw that the pink stone, the one on the top point of the gray, five-pointed star, was also glowing brightly. He jumped off the couch and ran over to take a closer look. The Door suddenly opened, revealing a vast expanse of pink. Steven looked over his shoulder at his pet. "Hold down the fort, Lion. I'm going in." And he took one step into the pink room, then another, and then a couple more before the Temple Door closed and disappeared behind him.

Steven hummed as he took a look around. The room seemed to go on forever, as if it were an entirely different dimension. "Did this used to be my mom's room?" he wondered out loud. "I gotta say it's not half bad. Though it could use some furniture. Like, maybe... a big comfy bed to lay on!"

Suddenly, a queen-size bed with a periwinkle comforter appeared in a puff of light pink smoke, eliciting an awed gasp from the half-Gem boy. He climbed onto the bed and promptly started jumping, laughing with glee as he bounced. "It's so springy!" He sighed happily as he lay down.

"This is nice, but it would be a lot cooler if it were a racecar bed that's an actual racecar!" With a poof of smoke, the bed turned into a racecar bed with a candy-apple red frame. Steven put his hands on the steering wheel, put his foot on the gas pedal, and drove a few laps around the room. "Whoohoohoohoo! This is awesome!"

The racecar bed stopped a bit too suddenly, flinging Steven into the air screaming before he landed on a pile of soft pink clouds. He then got to his feet and dusted himself off. Steven pondered for a moment. "Now I want... a tiny elephant the size of a mouse!"

In a tiny puff of smoke, a mouse-sized pink elephant appeared, trumpeting with its teeny-tiny trunk.

"Hey there, little guy!" Steven picked up the elephant in both his hands and gave it a kiss on the top of its head. The elephant responded by touching the tip of his nose with its trunk. "This is great! I can have whatever I want here! Which means... I can have the camping trip that the Gems, Dad, and I were supposed to have! Up top!" Steven held up one hand for a high five, which the tiny elephant reciprocated by using its trunk to slap his palm.

"Okay! I wanna see a whole forest full of trees, plants, and all sorts of nature stuff!"

At Steven's command, an entire temperate forest appeared to manifest in the room, complete with birdsong and the sound of babbling brook.

"Now I want Ruby, Sapphire, Amethyst, Pearl, and my dad here too."

Identical copies of each of them appeared in individual puffs of smoke in the order he mentioned them.

"And don't forget the camping supplies!"

Two tents, a bug zapper, six fishing poles, and six identical camper backpacks appeared.

"Okay! Now, what should we do first?" Steven asked everyone as the elephant climbed onto the top of his head to take shelter in his hair.

"I'm up for whatever you want, Steven," the room's copy of Greg said, then proceeded to play the air guitar.

"I suggest we do something mentally stimulating, like reading books!" the room's copy of Pearl spoke up.

"I wanna eat," the room's copy of Amethyst said.

"I say we punch some stuff!" the room's copy of Ruby exclaimed, lunging her fist forward.

The room's copy of Sapphire simply hummed.

"How about we go on a nature hike?" Steven suggested. "That sounds fun."

"Okay, Steven!" everyone said in unison.

"I'm gonna need a hiking stick!" A hiking stick appeared in Steven's hand in a puff of pink smoke, and he led the way for their hike.


They'd been hiking for about thirty minutes now. Steven inhaled through his nose to get a whiff of that sweet, woodsy air. It even smelled like a real forest. Although, he did kind of feel like he was walking in circles after a little while; he could have sworn that he'd passed that same bush and that same rock and all those same trees multiple times already. "Isn't this nice?"

"It sure is!" Greg said before playing the air guitar again.

"It is quite pleasurable," Pearl said. "I can identify at least seven species of plant in this forest!"

"Man, I'm hungry!" Amethyst complained. "When can we stop for lunch?"

"Will you quit complaining, Amethyst?!" Ruby growled. "Grah! I just wanna kick a grizzly bear's teeth in so slagging bad!" She kicked a rock in their path to punctuate that statement.

Sapphire simply hummed.

"Don't worry, Amethyst, we can stop for lunch soon." Steven's own stomach growled. "I'm actually kinda hungry myself. Let's stop and set up a picnic over here." Steven led everyone to a brightly-lit clearing. "Can we have a picnic please?"

At Steven's request, a picnic basket appeared, sitting on a red blanket with yellow stars on it. Everyone sat down and took out some triangle-cut sandwiches to eat.

Amethyst swallowed hers whole, then took out another and swallowed that one.

"Amethyst, don't eat so much at a time," Pearl reprimanded. "You'll end up with an upset stomach, which is not very good for anyone at all."

"Don't worry about it, Pearl." Greg took a bite of his sandwich. "Sometimes you just gotta go with the flow, like the rivers and streams in this forest." He then played the air guitar once again.

"Whatever you say, Dad." Steven tried to take a bite of his sandwich, only for it to disappear in a puff of pink smoke, much to his confusion. "Okay, can I have a real sandwich please?" Another sandwich appeared in his hand, but that one also disappeared when he tried to take a bite of it. Steven just groaned in frustration. "Whatever, lunch is overrated anyway. Who wants to go fishing?"


Steven cast his line into the stream, the room's copies of his dad and the Gems fishing alongside him. Most of of them anyway; Ruby and Amethyst just jumped in the water to fight and eat the fish respectively.

Steven stared at the water, waiting patiently for a fish to bite his line, only to see a fish teleport from one side of the stream to another. Steven rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn't just seeing things. "You guys saw that, right?" he asked everyone else.

"I don't know what you mean," Pearl told him. "Everything here is perfectly normal."

"I thought I saw that fish teleport."

"Teleport, schmeleport!" Ruby snapped at him as she punched a large fish that jumped out of the water. "I'm gonna defeat all the fish in this stream so I can become the Fish Champion!"

"Relax, Steven," Greg told him as he put a hand on his shoulder. "Fishing is a lot like life. You can't rush through it hoping to snag a big catch; patience is the only true key to unlocking great rewards." And he played the air guitar once more.

"I mean..." Steven turned to Sapphire. "Sapphire, you saw it, right?"

Sapphire simply hummed a third time.

"So you did see it?"

Sapphire simply hummed a fourth time, then a fifth time, then a sixth, and then she hummed again and again until a long, drawn-out drone sounded from her closed mouth.

"Uh, okay, that's pretty weird."

Steven looked down and saw that the stream was running backwards. "That is really weird!" Steven turned his head to look at the others. "The rest of you are seeing this, right? Right?!"

"I-I-I-I d-don't kn-know what you m-mean," Pearl stuttered out, some static-like noises erupting from her mouth. "Everything here is p-p-perfectly noooormaaaaaalllllllaaaaamroooon yltcefrep si ereh gnihtyrevE."

"What the-? What's going on here?!"

"You know what the say, Steven!" Greg said. "A doctor a day keeps the apple away!" And he played the air guitar for the fifth time.

"That doesn't make any sense!"

Then everything froze. Even the fish that leapt out of the stream were suspended in midair. Then everything became photo-negative for a split second. It appeared as if the room was glitching out. But that wasn't possible. Magic Gem rooms didn't just glitch out, right?

Suddenly, the "sky" of the room turned pitch black, though everything still appeared how it usually appeared in daylight. Then, all the trees vanished one-by-one, this time without turning into a puff of smoke.

"What's going on? What's wrong? Did I do something I shouldn't have?"

Pieces of the ground started to disappear as well, leaving the Gems and Greg suspended in the air, still frozen in whatever position they were in before. Steven ran away as the ground around him vanished before he could fall into the black void that lay beneath. He ran and ran, frantically looking left and right for the Door so he could leave this place.

"I'm sorry! I just wanted to have a nice camping trip with my family! I didn't think it could end up like this!"

"What do you want now, Steven?" he heard a soft, gentle voice ask him. The voice sounded like it came from the top of his head.

"I just wanna be out of here!"

The Temple Door suddenly appeared, and Steven didn't waste any time running through it. He tripped over on the Warp Pad, and looked around to see that he was back in his beach house. Lion walked over and sniffed at him. He got to his feet and pet the pink feline's mane. "Hey there, Lion. Did you miss me?"

In response, Lion licked Steven on the cheek, prompting a ticklish giggle from him. "I missed you too. But right now, I'm pretty hungry."

Steven walked over to the fridge to fix himself some food. He sat down at the kitchen island and took a bite from the turkey sandwich he made for himself, which, to his delight, didn't turn into clouds upon biting it.

Steven turned his head to the direction of the Warp Pad as he saw the Gems warping in.

"Steven, we're back!" Pearl called.

"And check out all this cool stuff we grabbed!" Amethyst added as she lifted a small statue over her head.

"Guys!" Steven ran over to give Amethyst, Pearl, and Sapphire a big hug. "I'm so happy you're back!"

"Hey! Don't leave me out of the group hug now, kiddo!" Ruby put down the relic that she was holding to join in on the hug.

"I take it you missed us?" Pearl asked him with a smirk.

Steven nodded frantically. "I did! I was so disappointed that we couldn't go camping this weekend that my gem opened this other room in the Temple! It made me a whole forest, and copies of you guys and Dad!"

"You accessed Rose's room?!" Pearl prodded.

"How big was the forest it made?" Amethyst asked.

"Pretty big," Steven said as he released his grip. "There were a lot of different types of trees and plants, and even a stream with fish swimming in it. I think I heard birds there too. It was pretty cool until everything started glitching out!"

"Rose's room isn't meant to create illusions that big and complex," Sapphire said.

"Thank goodness you're alright!" Pearl cried, hugging him close to her again. "You must have been terrified!"

"I was," Steven agreed. "I've learned my lesson. I can't always have things go the way I want them to."

Pearl pondered for a moment. "Well, we can still have that campout you've been looking forward to."

"Really? How?"


Steven and the Gems were all sitting in a tent that had been set up on the front porch of the beach house.

"And then, just when the campers all thought they were safe," Steven told ominously while holding a flashlight to his face. "the ghost appeared right behind them!"

"Oh my!" Pearl gasped.

"Man, Steven, you always tell the best ghost stories," Amethyst chuckled.

"I know." Steven turned off his flashlight. "I love camping."