~Yep, I'm back. 'Bout time, I guess.
So many faves! So many follows! So many reviews! How did this happen?
You guys are the best. :D~
Dr. Drakken informs you that in a few days there will be a party at Global Justice – his Purpose-place.
You are still amazed by the fact that humans are allowed to select their own Purposes, without ceremony, without ordinance. Errors must be prolific. Certainly no Diamond would ever be foolish enough to Assign such as a man as Dr. Drakken to world domination.
And yet when you hear about Global Justice, you cannot help but feel that Drakken has chosen wisely this time. At Global Justice, he explains to you with aplomb, agents and scientists use machines, chemicals, and diplomacy to disable threats against the world's safety.
Your neck twitches a little under your ribbon. You have a history of not getting along with those who appoint themselves Earth's defenders.
You are aware, also, that you have a meanness that flares when faced with the unknown, and the thought of being mean to Drakken's crew limits the room around you until there is hardly room to move. You widen it with questions.
"Is it someone's birthday?" is your first. This is the only type of party you have heard of; you learned from Steven, who recently became fourteen, that humans like to mark the anniversary of their emergence with sweets and games. You could never have such a thing: you have long since stopped counting your years, Homeworld's lunar cycle won't translate to Earth's calendars, and even if you could pinpoint the date in question, you would share it with all other Lapis Lazulis of your class.
Human beings, on the other hand, will take any occasion to celebrate. It must make up for the amount of time they're required to spend asleep.
"No, no one's birthday," Dr. Drakken says. "It's not that kind of party. It's just more a – an – an office get-together. We'll eat appetizers and drink punch and talk about our jobs, all that sort of thing. And we're each allowed to bring one person with us." He props his hands on his straight torso and looks at you with a hopeful perk to his eyebrow. "And I pick you… if that's all right?"
You hesitate just long enough for your mind to skim the notion that you could refuse him if you wanted to. But, of course, you don't, and you give him your "yes" momentarily.
Drakken throws his fist into the air and pulls it back in toward his chest. "Oh, thank you, Lapis! Ooohh, I can't wait to show you my lab, and introduce you to Dr. Director, and…." The buoy-words flap on and on.
For the next few days, Drakken keeps a countdown with the diligence of a Peridot, accessorizing it with his insistence that everyone at "GJ" will love you. He seems so confident of it that you dare to almost believe him.
The Earth has made two full rotations and is in the evening of a third when Drakken leaps up from the couch where the two of you have been reading a story about a nomad crab who's outgrown his home. In a frenzy, he checks the miniature timepiece on his wrist. "Oh, fizzlebottom! Is that the time?" he says.
"Yes," you say. It is a strange question – does he believe his timepiece lies to him?
"Oh. Oh. Ohhhhhhhh – okay! Almost party time!"Drakken scrapes a hand back through his disheveled hair-spikes and sniffs the hand when it returns. "Yes – err – I need to go take a shower!"
"Take it where?" You have been known to walk away with the greater portion of a rainshower and leave it elsewhere, but that's not one of Dr. Drakken's abilities.
"In the bathroom," Drakken says. At your furrowed forehead, he adds, "You remember seeing that big dented wall at one end of the bathroom? With a little barrier over it, about so high?" He holds his hand at knee level.
You nod. "Oh. Do you get in there and wait for it to rain?" It seems rather ridiculous, until you remember from Drakken's enormous screen that humans have learned to predict the behavior of weather.
Drakken chuckles. "Oh. No, not quite. There's a faucet in there, and the water comes through the plumbing –"
"Like in the sinks?" you say.
"Exactly! Only this faucet is extremely high up so that when the water comes out, it's able to rinse your whole body. Then you lather up some soap and scrub the germs off, and that's what I need to go do! Right now!"
Drakken skitters back toward the bathroom. You follow him, but he halts you in the doorway and patters his fingers on it. "Um, Lapis," he says. "I'm going to take a shower now."
"Right. I understand."
Several pink circles of discomfort appear on Drakken's face. "No, errr, you don't. I mean – no offense – but when humans take showers, they're n – na – they aren't wearing any clothes."
"Okay."
"Which means showing our bodies." Drakken isn't speaking with buoyancy anymore. His words are flat and scratched.
"Is that…bad?" you venture.
"Can be. Most humans try to keep their bodies – well, a little bit private," Drakken squeaks at the ceiling. The pink in those circles deepens alarmingly.
You recognize that you have embarrassed him, and while you aren't sure why, it's something you've never wanted to do. You take two immediate steps backward and navigate your way around the bend in the hallway, eyes cast away. "Okay," you say. "If that's what you need. Good luck with your body."
A laugh bursts from Drakken's inflated cheeks. "I shan't be long!" he calls back to you.
You haven't heard even Pearl say shan't in the last few centuries.
Reclining on Drakken's fat sofa, you do your best to filter out the heavy, suckling sound of falling water. Your thoughts are still pushing and pulling, riptides, churning away any attempt to wade through them, and you finally realize that you must imitate Pearl yourself – you must rehearse. Not in front of a mirror, not with the memories vibrating like Gem destabilizers ready to destroy; yet it is a rehearsal all the same.
"Hello. I'm Lapis Lazuli. Nice to meet you." You say it in a voice too quiet to be heard over the rustle of leaves, repeat it in the firmest, brightest tone you can create, and then test it in every shade in between. It takes several blind dives before you hit upon the lightness that rises so naturally whenever you are with Steven or Drakken.
You practice smiling and find you can no longer do it on cue. You have much more success meeting and maintaining eye contact with Plastic Lazuli, which you find reassuring. If you can hold Plastic's unmoving seedlike gaze, you should have no trouble with blinking human eyes.
The fall of water stops with an artificial suddenness. In nature, water peters out and teases and drifts to spread its mischief somewhere else; it does not just end.
It is every bit as startling when Dr. Drakken emerges from the bathroom, redressed and scrubbed clean. His skin is moist, still dripping at the creases, several water droplets beading on his jutting ears. His hair has been tidied somehow so that it is fluffy rather than springy as it dries. The coat-of-lab he wears is the same mold as the one before, yet since you know humans can't shapeshift wrinkles and stains out of their clothing, you know he must have switched over to a new one.
The slight neatness of him almost makes him a stranger, and you are shy around strangers. But then he smiles, and it is the same smile from that first day on the beach, that smile that stumbles over itself even as it fills his whole being with magic.
"Are you ready?" Drakken asks.
You think about saying, Ready as I'll ever be – another phrase you have picked up in Amethyst's company – but it seems too negative in light of Drakken's grin. You nod instead.
"You're so lucky you don't have to shower or change clothes or anything," Drakken says. "You're just able to get up and go whenever, aren't you? Have I mentioned that they're just going to love you?"
"About fourteen times," you reply with a small grin of your own.
"Well, let's make it an even fifteen!" Drakken extends his arm, then stops and blinks. "Wait – no – fifteen is odd, but – hmmm. It's more of a round number, more of an estimate, while fourteen is more specific…"
Drakken's arm hangs limply in the space between you. You know what to do with that.
You loop your arm around his and pull them together so that your elbows hug. The smoothed fabric of his new coat takes the edge off his knobbiness, and you can only hope it planes the bristles from you, as well.
The two of you fly across town and stop at a small, drab building that flows purposefully into its surroundings. You take one look at it and sense that it holds secrets.
Your intuition is correct. The pair of doors outside give way to what you recognize as an elevator, protected by a flat screen and, above it, a round indent in the wall. Rather than delegate this job to a Pearl, Drakken excitedly bounds forward, peels off one glove, and presses his sweat-glistened hand to the screen as though it is a marvelous undertaking. He stands motionless, as motionless as Drakken can stand, as the indent flashes a red light across his eyes, inflating his chest when the elevator doors slide open with a ding. They must have identified him as the loyal, avid worker he surely is.
Though the elevator itself is smaller than you would like, the ride is short. When the doors open again, you are ejected out into a cavernous area of richest wood and dimmest lights and widest hallways.
Several dark shapes lurking in the background speak of technology, and to your own amazement, you don't find it repellant – not after a glance at Dr. Drakken. Although excitement inelegantly vibrates his frame, there is a certain precision to his movement, a Bismuth at the forge. His smile burns more brightly than their new hot metal.
A woman approaches flanked by two men, all of their uniforms pledging the same fidelity. The men surprise you with the fact that Drakken is not the biggest human on Earth, not by quite a bit; but it is the woman who captures your attention. She must be very high-ranking, because she has only one eye like a Sapphire, although hers is darker and a bit off-center, the other side of her face covered by a cloth patch like the one on a worn-out pair of Steven's denims. Her hair is the glistening color of Drakken's furniture and even shorter than yours, reaching only cheek distance. The planes of those cheeks are hard and businesslike, and yet they lift easily when she sees Drakken.
Drakken immediately ducks his head toward her – whether out of bashfulness or deference, you cannot tell. Either way, he clearly holds this woman in high regard. You give him a questioning look.
"That's Dr. Director." Drakken's explanation is on the near side of a squeak. "She's the head of the entire organization."
"Head?" You squint at Dr. Director, and while she does have a rather prominent head, it's still attached to a body.
"The boss," Drakken says.
"Oh. Yeah, I thought so." It would explain the one eye, though you are polite enough not to say this.
Drakken rounds up his full, roaming attention and sticks most of it at his boss. "Dr. Drakken," he says in a voice more formal than any you have ever known him to use. "Plus one."
"Lapis Lazuli," you pipe up. "I'm his girlfriend." It is not the essence of you, but you are proud to have the title.
The pink spots on Drakken's face ignite a darker stripe of blue across your own nose.
Dr. Director retracts her lower lip as though encaging a laugh. "Please step into my office," she says.
In a boxy room, the smaller of the two big men holds out a metallic reed the size of his forearm, where a bead blinks red on the end and feeds to a seeking gray screen. Drakken whispers to you that these are sensors. Your people have some of those, only theirs were bulky and immobile – at least in your day.
Drakken touches his thumb and first finger in a circle and steps forward as instructed. The man waves the wand over the course of Drakken's body, down one side and up again on the other. You know the signs of Dr. Drakken's distress, the cracks in his braveness, and you aren't seeing any now: no throaty whimpers, no crawling eye-skin, no ramming the fingertips together as if they are in an arena battle.
You firm your shoulders up and step forward to the second man. You have no weapons, no corruptions, nothing to hide.
His scanner pans you. You cannot hear it or feel it, only see it as the light leaks over your toes and then climbs again up your other side.
"Dr. Director?" the man says. "I'm not picking up anything."
"Great," Dr. Director says. "Send her through."
"No, I mean I'm not picking up anything," the man says, and that is when you notice his frown. "She doesn't have a heartbeat."
You forgot to shapeshift a heart.
It will pour in quickly now, the realization that you are not a human. Humans' insides are always pounding and gurgling and flowing, and with all that happening within, it's no wonder Dr. Drakken is so easily distracted.
Drakken skims his fingers over his hair, tousling the tidiness. "Heh! Funny story about that," he says. His buoy-words are tousled, too, threatening to succumb to babble.
You step forward and interrupt. This is your responsibility, not his. "All right," you address Dr. Director. "I'm from another planet. I'm not from Lorwardia. My people don't like the Lorwardians. We – we thought they were dishonorable and wasteful."
It frightens you, to the core of the hollows you neglected to fill, that you can't readily think of anything else to say in your people's defense. "I – I can't speak for all my people," you say, "but I mean the citizens of Earth no harm."
Your gaze pleads to be dropped, but you refuse to release it. You are staring straight at the underside of Dr. Director's chin, waiting for the magnitude of what you say to sink in and send it falling.
It never does. Aside from the startle across her brow and a few wrinkles in the long breath she lets out, Dr. Director doesn't quail in the slightest.
"Ah. All right then. Thank you very much for your honesty, Lapis," she says. From this close, she is warm in a way Gems' bodies never are, and her praise has the same spare quality as Garnet's. "I do need to ask you a question, and this is just standard procedure: Are you armed in any way that could have escaped our scanners?"
You look over at the small fountain crouched in the corner of one wall, identical to the ones in some of Beach City's boardwalk shops, feeling every drop inside readying to obey you.
"I can control water." Your voice is low, oh so very tiny, and yet you know there is no danger of it disappearing. "I only do it in emergencies." You pause. "Or to show off."
There is no reproof in Dr. Director's single eye as her lip rolls in again. She repeats, "All right," as she crosses what little distance remains between you. "Would you prefer that information not leave this room?"
Since information can't seep out of the room on its own, Dr. Director must be offering to keep your secret. It is a thought that lowers the arches of your feet, rests them gently against the hardwood floor. "Yes, please, ma'am," you say.
"Then you two are free to go," Dr. Director says. She tugs the door open and wafts you through as if seeing off a ship of courageous explorers. "Enjoy the party."
You hurry from the room, down a long darkened hallway with dauntingly high ceilings. Dr. Drakken, still smiling, is right behind you.
The symbolic burn on your face spreads. "That was so embarrassing," you mutter.
"Are you kidding?" Drakken's fingers splay giddily, hands springing out to either side. "Global Justice has had their What To Do When Encountering a Non-Hostile Alien manual for generations. Dr. Director's probably jumping up and down in her office right now because she finally got to use it!"
His exuberance is out of your reach, but your spirits lift as if they, too, are powered by the wings which you will never again take for granted.
The two of you hustle down one of the wide hallways. Its scope and darkness would be ominous if not for Dr. Drakken's happy chatter by your side as he gestures to the indentations in the walls, pointing out which one is the lab where he works, which one is the storeroom, which one is the room where his intelligence test was administered. Your sight is then able to draw out the reddish undertones that match Drakken's furniture and banish all resemblance to black walls of water pinning you from all directions.
Drakken leads you into a large room, and you hope this isn't where the party will be held. Its sterile white floors are as startling as the light that burns accusingly down from uncovered bulbs. You know that you would be in no danger in this room, but you cannot imagine yourself being comfortable here either.
Fortunately, Drakken clasps your elbow and steps through a doorway that connects the large white room to a somewhat smaller one. This has none of the severity of its base: its corners are slightly rounded, like a dugout canoe, its walls are the light watery brown of Drakken's cocoa-milk, and you can feel its carpet slide serenely between your toes.
A happy sound is about to leave you, and then you look up.
The room is overflowing with humans, grouped together like clumps of kelp – all with ears and mandatory hearts and constant body temperatures.
You can almost feel your face clenching into the hard mold it takes on around those who are not Drakken or Steven. It didn't used to, but that was several freedoms ago.
You draw in air you don't need and cling to it until your sides nearly meet. Beside you, Drakken shifts his lanky weight. "Everything okay?" he asks.
"I don't know if I can do this," you say. "I don't know if I have the words."
"Oh, I tend to have wordial problems myself," Drakken says, making a point and proving it at the same time. "These people are supremely nice, and they don't mind a bit! Just be your kind self, and everything will be fine. And if you start to say something weird…I'll just bring you something to drink….or something."
Your kind self? You would hate to disappoint Drakken, but you aren't sure to what extent she still exists.
Nevertheless, you gaze at Dr. Drakken: at his hair, which the finger-marks have pulled back into their usual cheery spikes; at the smile that could be mistaken for magic from a distance; at his openness. Anything dishonest is flotsam floating on the surface, unmistakable. And you see none of it now.
"Okay," you say, giving the room a second, heartened look. You see a more thorough assortment of shapes, sizes, and colors than you were expecting – though they don't appear to be as diverse as Gems, their skin all different shades of brown, their heights all within a foot-and-a-half span, as their measurements go, there are many different varieties of humans.
You think Drakken and Steven are the most beautiful.
"Ooohh, yes!" Drakken squeals. "Let's go talk to this guy over here! Agent Kane – you know he's been an agent for over thirty years?"
"No. How would I have known that?"
Drakken directs you toward a long-bodied table, draped in green cloth and adorned with solids and liquids you guess to be human foods and drinks, over to a man whose skin is somewhere on the darker side of the spectrum. The man is aged by human standards, lines laced at the corners of his eyes and mouth, hair washed gray; and unlike you, he appears to have been gentled by the years. His nose bulges down in a curvy slope, like the handle at the barn that gives water when pumped. His uniform is the same as Dr. Director's – a blue like the sea on a night with no moon, even deeper than your eyes, which you never take from his.
As soon as he sees Drakken, the man smiles widely, launching the wrinkles into flight. "Dr. Drakken!" he says. "I see you've brought a new friend." He turns to you. "Agent Kane. Very nice to meet you."
How can he speak with such certainty so soon? "Very nice to meet you," you say. "I think. So far."
Although the lines of Drakken's neck cringe and his shoulders pin back, Agent Kane's chuckle crackles as warmly as a Ruby's fire. "Who is this charming young lady?" he says, addressing Drakken.
A reflection slithers its way through your vision. You remember Pink Diamond's long fingers threading through your hair, her voice murmuring, "Oh, Blue, she's thoroughly charming."
You aren't sure how to feel about that memory. It was a compliment, a sincere one, and yet it has the stiff, parched quality of a starfish left to dry on the shore.
"Well," you say, "I'm not young. I have been described as charming, though."
"This is Lapis Lazuli," Drakken says. "We just started dating."
You think back to Homeworld's great scientists and their methods for determining the age of a planet, and this is something you know you and Drakken have never done together. But then you see his cheeks turn Rosy-hued again, and you decide this strange phrase must have something to do with you being his girlfriend.
"Have you lived on Earth all your life?" you ask Agent Kane politely. "Because I just –"
"Here, Lapis, have a drink!" Drakken thrusts a plastic cup of something red and moist into your hands. You sniff it, and it surprises your nose with its sweetness. A sip of it glides down your throat.
"What's this?" you say.
"Fruit punch," Drakken says.
All you can picture is Jasper smashing watermelons.
Agent Kane is generous enough to answer you: "Yes, ma'am." He gives you the grin of a man who has been asked far worse questions.
"Sooooo…." Drakken says, his volume increasing as he nudges himself between you and Agent Kane. "Have we had any run-ins with that wily little Professor Dementor recently?" He turns to you. "Dementor is that other mad scientist I met back when I was a supervillain. And he's a…well, he's not a nice guy."
"Yes, and Dr. Drakken's been a big help in our fight against him," Agent Kane says. "He understands how that type of mind operates." He picks up an orange sliver of something that smells like the punched fruit and takes a bite. "Matter of fact, Agent Rosa saw Dementor at Smarty Mart the other day. Wasn't doing anything illegal, but there was something awful suspicious about it."
You watch the two of them from over the rim of your cup as you slowly drain it.
"Dementor wouldn't be caught dead at Smarty Mart," Drakken says, and this seems an odd thing to say, because no one will be caught shopping when they're dead. "He's so proud of the fact that he can afford to buy from all those expensive chain stores that…" The rest dissolves into bitter murmurs.
Agent Kane clicks his fingers off each other. "That could be it. Hey, Rosa! What was it Dementor was buying at Smarty Mart that day?"
A sturdy woman about your height hurries over, her otter-colored hair bouncing in a length similar to yours. You know now that it is called a bob, and you wonder if that is why Steven called you "Bob" after he healed your gem. "Light bulbs," she says with a shake of her head. "Of all the harmless things – light bulbs."
"Incandescents?" Drakken says.
Agent Rosa taps a short fingernail, coated with something glittering and pink, against her lips. "Mmm-hmm."
The inherent softness of Drakken's chin hardens. "Bah. I've visited Dementor's lairs. He's used nothing but fluorescents for the last five years!"
Agent Rosa shakes her head gravely. It is a graveness that yields when she glances your way. "Hi there," she says. "Well, aren't you just about half-cute?"
You glance down at your sleeveless top and your gauzy skirt and the narrow inlet not covered by either. "Which half?"
"It's an expression," Drakken hisses to you.
"Oh." Should you thank her for approving of your manipulation of light?
You aren't sure; you go with a different question. "What do you like best about living in the Crystal System?"
A frown forms. "The what?" Agent Rosa says.
You still owe too much of your vocabulary to Homeworld. You clutch your empty cup until it caves beneath your fingers and you correct yourself: "The Milky Way?" That is, you believe, the name Steven gave you in one of your conversations about home and space.
Drakken shoves a refilled cup of punch back into your hands.
You immediately switch topics. "Never mind," you say, flapping a hand in the air with something less than grace. "Tell me more about Professor Dementor."
They oblige. Between sips of punch and encouraging faces from Drakken, you hear all about a funny little man who wears a mask made of metal; who insulted Drakken at every chance he got; who, although he never managed to take over the world, got away with enough human money to afford fancy machinery and his own army of Quartzlike soldiers, where Drakken's helpers were more akin to the dull-witted Ruby brigade whom you once trounced at baseball.
When Agent Kane and Agent Rosa finally drift away, Drakken waves his entire arm at them. "See you later!" he calls.
"See you later!" you echo. As far as you are concerned, you sound downright pleasant.
This enables you to turn around and wave at the next person who passes by. He seems even younger than the other humans milling around. His face is the shape of a leaf – and not the beautiful, vibrant one Steven gave you. His is narrow, symmetrical, unfriendly.
A small gloved hand clasps your shoulder. "Do not go talk to Agent Du," Drakken says.
You blink at him. "Don't or do?"
"Nggghhhyyes, yes, that did sound confusing," Drakken says. "His name is Agent Du, D-U, and you shouldn't go talk to him. Probably. He's a bit of a snob." He rubs a hand down the back of his neck. "I don't think he's ever quite forgiven me for my…errr, past crimes."
Even now, Agent Du turns a slitting glare on Drakken and walks away in steps far higher than he needs, as though he is wading through a marsh, and you instantly dislike him for it. He reminds you one of the Gems who gave all the Elite a bad name.
"He's not worth it." The phrase is exhaled and then re-inhaled almost immediately, as if Drakken needs it too. "But – ooh – you know who is? Look at these two! They work in Lab 591 with me!"
You tip the last drop of punched fruit from your glass and follow his wild springs over to a man and a woman, both clear-eyed and sharp. The man has a tuft of additional hair on his chin, and the woman wears lenses on a chain that swings around her chest – rather uselessly, if those are meant to help her see more accurately.
"Do my eyes deceive me, or has Dr. Drakken brought a date?" the man asks.
Drakken giggles. "This is Professor Ricardo," he says, indicating the man. "And Dr. Tarrow;" he nods to the woman.
"Are you two dating too?" you ask.
Both scientists burst into laughter. "Oh, GOSH no!" says Dr. Tarrow. "We're just colleagues."
"Oh. I'm Lapis Lazuli."
Professor Ricardo strokes the hairs on his chin. "Ah," he says. "Like the gemstone."
Your wings stir with hope. "Yeah. Exactly like the gemstone," you say. "So – do you guys like sleeping, or do you think it takes up too much time?"
This seems a fair question, but Drakken is suddenly beside you, urging you to drink more punch. He then hooks an arm around each of his colleagues and says, "Sooooooo….how about that Immobilizer 2000, eh? Is it off the heezy or what?"
How can he possibly say he is bad at this? you puzzle as you watch him. If he makes any mistakes – you've never heard of a "heezy" – they are smothered by the everlasting stream of words and by his general likability.
You swallow several more sips of punch while Drakken regales you with a story of a machine he helped invent. It's designed to disable an enemy's movement while not causing any serious harm to their body, which for humans you know is essential and not a mere nicety. Its progress was almost complete when "the nefarious Professor Dementor," as Drakken describes him, broke in and was inches away from stealing the Immobilizer 2000. Drakken, in a fit of desperation, smashed the machine rather than let it fall under Dementor's control. He took several punches himself in the process.
He is brave, no matter what Shego says.
You listen to this story until a bell rings out and fills the room. Your legs pin beneath you, and Drakken steadies you with a smile that wiggles as though embarrassed.
"Everything's fine, Lapis," he says. "That just means it's time to sit down and eat the main course."
You, along with Dr. Drakken and the rest of the humans, are ushered toward a broad table that encompasses the entire back wall. The cloth covering it is simple and white and topped with a few dishes, the biggest of which you figure is the main course. Different from the raw, fleshy color of the ham, this course is beige and does not have the salted smell of the ham, either.
"Drakken?" you whisper. "What type of meat is that?"
"Turkey," he says.
Everyone lines up beside the table – you flutter yourself in between Dr. Drakken and a man whose bare scalp gleams as though about to summon a weapon – and Dr. Director hands out moonlike plates. One at a time, Drakken explains, they will move down the table and select food for their plates.
He also leans down to you and clarifies that you are to do this with the utensils – small metal tools that resemble pairs of scissors, only with grabber-arms at the end instead of blades. Their handles function like the scissors: if pulled apart, the arms will go lax, and if cinched tightly, the arms will tighten and hold until the food can be transferred to the plate. This is done to prevent the spreading of germs, Drakken says, though he is quick to add that he's fairly sure you don't have any.
When it is his turn, Drakken loosens the utensils before the shaving of turkey has reached its intended destination. Noises firing from him, he stabs the utensils forward and snags the meat by the slimmest corner. You hear the great release of his lungs as he steps aside to let you go next.
You pick up the utensils – they are heavier than scissors, and the arms bang rather artlessly together. You maneuver them, handles pulled apart, to one piece of meat, clasp the handles around it and, learning from Dr. Drakken's mistakes, keep them there until there's a ribbon of turkey on your plate. It looks scant, alone on the pale emptiness of your plate, and you grab a second one, pondering how humans know what amounts of food will satisfy them. Do their hungers come in different intensities?
Vegetables are next. You fill a spoon large and long-necked enough to be several spoons fused together with peas since these, at least, you recognize.
The domed breads that follow also seem familiar. You look questioningly at Drakken; at his nod, you drop one on your plate as well.
Once you reach the end of the line, you are curved around and seated in several amply-cushioned chairs. The carpet kisses your feet like fresh early patches of grass.
The turkey turns out not to be as juicy as the ham. It tastes more of heat than flavor and strings dryly, almost all moisture leeched from it, leaving behind just a hint to tease you. It is neither bad enough to spit into your napkin nor good enough to eat your second piece.
Drakken's colleagues fall into effortless chatter, speaking of baseball games and weather and telling what must be jokes, judging by the expectant final notes and the laughter that rises immediately afterward. You trail one toe along the carpet. These people are Dr. Drakken's other friends. You do not feel obligated to treat them with kindness, yet you want to treat them with kindness. But that has sunken so far down inside you, submerged beneath myriad impurities.
You turn to Dr. Drakken, the one person here who understands you fully. "So how are the repairs coming on the…Immobilizer 2000?" you ask, fighting to lift the words from your instinctive hush.
Drakken beams across every part of his face, up to his hairline and right down to the rest of his body, and you know you remembered the name correctly. "Oh, just swimmingly!" he says. "We've rebuilt much of the framework already, and we should be ready to move onto the more intricate work by Dece – in three months," he corrects himself.
You slip your hand beneath the tablecloth and squeeze his in appreciation. Even underwater, you could measure the passing of time by the temper of the tides, but the humans' names for their months are still an enigma to you.
"And we'll be taking security measures to avoid another Dementor incident," Professor Ricardo adds. "The machine will become nonresponsive if handled by an unknown individual." Just for a moment, his glance rests on his fingerprints, and it is the first bit of shared information that has actually engaged you. "We're still debating whether to have it whitelisted or blacklisted."
You have no idea what monochrome has to do with this, until Drakken interjects, "A blacklist means that there would be a list of people who are absolutely not allowed to handle it, and if you're on the list, it won't work. A whitelist means there would be a list of people who are allowed to handle it, and if you're not on that list, it won't work." He nods wisely. "They both have their pros and cons."
Though you can't summon much interest for this high-tech security system, you are able to find another question: "But what if he's wearing gloves?"
The skin underneath Drakken's eyes buckles. "Ah, yes. We've considered that. No perfect solution has been proposed yet."
Professor Ricardo rests his cup of punched fruit on a small brown disc at the head of his plate. "There are many infrared scanners that can identify a person just from one quick look at their eyes. But they'd be awfully cumbersome to place into our little portable ray." He puts a hand to his mouth and performs the one-body symphony – quietly, as though he has little faith in his talents.
He did not do it as well as Drakken did, but you should still be polite, now that you finally have an opportunity to be. You rise from your chair and applaud him. "Bravo!" you say.
One of Drakken's hands clamps on your wrist, and the other shoves your own punch cup at you. "Lapis, sit down."
"But don't you hear what he did?" you say.
"No, Lapis, seriously, sit down." Drakken's tone has a faint sway, as though tears are pressing on it. He is pink again, and not a favorable pink this time; his frame pulls inward as though he is trying to reduce his presence.
There is a black silence. Not even a whisper stirs the surface. There is only the near-inaudible hum of the overhead lights, shivering in their sockets.
For a moment, you wonder why the cup you're holding trembles so violently.
The last thing you want is to look at the rest of the humans, but to keep your gaze from sweeping over them is beyond the scope of even your powers. Each contorted, nerve-wracked face is a wave knocking against you, assaulting you with sprays of foam. The only facet that stands out is Agent Du, his nostrils pinched slits.
You sink like a felled tree into your seat again, your physical form a void, made real only by the vital bump between your shoulder blades. One more spray of foam breaks over you:
I've been tricked. You offered what little trust you have left and received a bomb in return.
Peridot would have labeled you a "clod," and she probably would have been right.
Drakken arises now, his hands stroking the air as if he can soothe the dissonance standing in it. "So sorry, everyone," he says with a cough. "She's…from another culture."
"You mean a culture where it's a compliment to burp at the table?" says the man with the gleaming scalp.
"No," Drakken says, "actually a culture where they don't eat at all."
The room falls soundless once more. You hear nothing but Drakken's restricted breathing. You would not have heard the uniformed woman otherwise when she turns to her date and asks, "Is she anorexic?"
You stand. It is a difficult feat beneath the weight of a thousand human eyes, staring at you as if you're the Cluster itself, quaking the planet beneath them. You call back the last few droplets of courtly haughtiness you still possess and lift your chin. "All right," you say. "I'll just go ahead and tell you. I'm from another planet.
"I'm not from Lorwardia," you say for the second time tonight. You face the whispering woman. "And I'm not from Anorexia, either."
You press against the back wall and feel yourself turn to glass: you are hard; you are vulnerable; you can cut anyone to pieces if they break you.
Kindness is impossible now. The only thing to do is run, straight out the door into the room with the overly sanitized floors that would meet Pearl's approval but dizzy you and drive you to a corner where you churn your teeth together.
Softened footsteps stumble behind you. The clumsy gait is distinguishable even before someone calls your name, at the same time cradling it the way only Drakken and Steven ever have.
Drakken's warmth pauses before you. "Oh, Lapis, I'm so sorry," he blubbers. "I'm so sorry – I didn't mean to embarrass you. I tried to –"
You shove your hands upward to cut him off. "You didn't embarrass me," you say. Your voice hardens, descends, and you prop it in front of you as a shield. "Shego did."
"Shego?" Drakken says. "She's not even here. How could she –"
"She told me when humans make – that noise – it's a one-person symphony," you mutter. "So I stood up and clapped for that guy to be nice, because I was dumb enough to believe her, but obviously it's really one of those noises like the one that makes Steven laugh, and now all your human friends know that I'm nothing like them."
The blackest parts of Drakken's eyes collide before he blinks them into understanding. An instant later, they cloud over with rancor. It is a look he wears seldom but with much experience.
And you do not believe it's directed at you.
Sure enough, Drakken's brow forms a bottomless frown, which he drags down over the rest of his face with his open palm. Nonsense noises springs from him, punctuated with cries of, "Ohhhh, Shego!" He pulls the black-shelled phone from his pocket, flips it open, and delivers a series of aggressive hits to the keys.
This room, with its unsheathed bulbs blaring off the cloud-white floor and its vague hum in the background, begins to transform into a large-scale version of the Interrogation Chamber back on Homeworld, but this time you will not cower in a corner under Jasper's threats. This time, you fix your gaze and harden it. You could stand up to an Agate herself right now.
Drakken stomps several feet away from you, the soft soles of his boots pelting the floor like heavy rainfall. Even so, you can hear angry snippets of his conversation: "…what were you thinking?" and "…owe her an apology," and "…over here RIGHT NOW – please," along with five or six more exclamations of "Ngggh!"
How much time passes between his request and Shego's obedience, you can't say. You lock yourself in a chair and grip your elbows with your fingernails, while Drakken spends the time pacing the ground and occasionally rolling looks your way that are apologies in and of themselves. You turn away from them; the last thing you want now is pity.
At last, Shego enters the room in one fluid motion that would have you believe that she, too, can fly, that she can match you in every regard. Bitterness wallows below your midriff. Her lies were jetsam, sunken and buried and strewn with coral until indistinguishable from the landscape.
Surprisingly, she stands in the doorway for a moment, the muscles in her arms tweaking as though they aren't accustomed to doing whatever it is she is about to do. Dr. Drakken greets her with a scowl, pushed out into a pout by the outcrop of his lower lip. His skin boasts pink splotches down to where his collar hugs his neck, and it leavens you that it is on your behalf.
Drakken jabs a finger toward the table where you sit, and Shego flounces into the adjacent chair.
A surfeit of retorts has already cropped up in your mind – You think you're so special, don't you, with your superpowers? Well, guess what, you're not. You're just another oxygen breather. Your lifespan is nothing. And you see that box with the water spout over there? I could rip that out of the wall and drown you in three minutes if I wanted to.
But the last time words such as those issued from your mouth, it was green and Jasper was manipulating it.
Rather, you bow your legs on the underneath side of the chair and lapse into a Diamond-hard silence. Shego glances your way, and the fine-hewn Emerald eyes actually fall at the corners. It is suspect; everything about her is suspect, and you did not know it until it was too late.
Only because showing her your back means placing your gem at risk do you remain facing her.
"I believe you two have something to discuss!" Drakken's fresh voice is taut, the strings of his buoy-words about to snap. He curls his hands somewhere on the railing of his torso. "And I'm staying here to make sure one of you doesn't melt the other, and one of you doesn't drown the other – and I don't think I need to specify which is which!"
You eye the water-box on the wall for a long minute.
Shego whisks some hair from her forehead. "Okay, so I'm a jerk," she says.
You look at her. "Does that mean you're mean?"
"Yeah."
"Then yes," you say, "you are."
Shego's throat writhes against a laugh. Her amusement makes you even smaller, makes you even more of a danger.
"Look." Shego arranges her fingers into a perfect Peridot screen without detaching a single one. "I tease the people I like. Not everybody believes that, because I also tease the people I hate."
You cannot hold back the deluge any longer. "I tease the people I like, too, but not like that!" Your voice isn't a shield anymore; it's a sword, and you stab it into her. "Not in a way that embarrasses them in front of hundreds of people! Not in a way that ruins their only chance to make a good first impression!"
"Hey, hey, whoa!" Shego waves her hands, in mismatched gloves that are too similar to Jasper's. "Hear me out, 'kay?"
You fall silent again, flaring the slits in your nose out to either side.
"I do stuff like this to Dr. D all the time," Shego says. "And he'll buy it for about two minutes before he realizes I'm playin' him. And since you seemed a lot more sensible than he does –"
"I heard that," Drakken huffs from nearby.
"I know," Shego responds, then resumes speaking to you as if no interruption has occurred. "–I thought it wouldn't even take you that long to catch on." She sighs. "Didn't even occur to me – doy – you're an alien. You got no way to figure it out."
You say nothing.
"Ah, geez, Lapis…I'm sorry," Shego says.
This startles your gaze back to her, and she doesn't look magisterial anymore. Regret lies submissively across features that don't look as though they'd submit to anymore.
You look at her, green and angled, and you see Peridot, shamelessly begging for your absolution. And when you glance at Dr. Drakken and his hopeful smile, you see Steven, scarcely able to breathe at the thought that two of his friends might despise each other. Something moves inside you.
"Well – um – I – I appreciate it. Thanks," you say, and you rise to your feet. Something moves inside you, and it keeps moving. This is not the normal feeling of food. All of the sand has trickled to the absolute bottom of the hourglass and liquefied, brimming and ready to overflow.
You gasp and slam your legs together.
"Whoa," Shego says. "You okay there, squirt?"
The last word throws you prostrate across the table, and all you can see, all you can feel, is water, so much water, everywhere, all around you. Your world recedes in fear, and not of Shego with her fiery hands and her jetsam lies – fear of this thing you rattle inside that has never gripped your body before.
"Dr. Drakken?" you say. "I – I think I'm sick." You have never been sick in your life, and while it cannot compare to the lacerating agony of a cracked gem, it stirs with the thought of you having contracted a human disease until you have to fist your fingers in your skirt to keep from crying out.
"Oh no oh no oh gosh oh sweet baby gherkins! What's wrong?" Drakken says. His voice is a panic barely contained.
You scrape yourself from the tabletop and straighten the best you can; you don't want to worry him on top of everything else. "I – I feel like I'm clogged up with water," you say. "It hurts to move. It feels like it's going to burst." You fold your legs tighter. "And I didn't even know there was an organ down there!"
The terror recedes into the blackness of Drakken's eyes, then returns in a new form. "Ohhhhhhh. No, it's okay, Lapis, you're not sick. You – um – errrr – you…need to go to the bathroom."
You stare at him. "How?"
Drakken's flinch is deep. "Ohhhh, my entire life just flashed before my eyes," he says.
It seems that, even outside the mirror, you have a knack for doing this.
Dr. Drakken inhales, a wheezing attempt at composure, and arcs his arm around your back so he can guide without touching, same as he did so many months ago. "Well – uhh – first stop is to find a bathroom," he hedges. "I think there are some down this hall…"
You are almost afraid to move, and yet you have no choice. You mince down the hall after him, while he grumbles beneath his breath, scolding himself for all those cups of punch he had you drink. With those mutters, this horrid thing begins to make sense, which is very little consolation.
After what seems far too long, especially for Earth, Drakken halts before two parallel signs hanging from a wall as gray as slate. The sign to which he gestures reads Women; its corresponding blocky figure has hair that swoops down to the chin, like yours, and a skirt that flares out below the knees, like yours.
Dr. Drakken nudges you gingerly with his knuckles, as though he is afraid of what his touch could provoke. Rather than a hanging door, this entrance is composed of a series of diagonal walls, which you navigate to find yourself facing an elongated room, a duller white than the one you just left, the tiles beneath cooler. One entire wall is occupied by small, rectangular capsules, each strung with a door about half the usual width and stamped with a silver bolt.
"All right. Okay." Drakken breathes shallowly. "You see all those stalls?"
The unfamiliar word drags across the room before it coalesces with the things you cannot identify. "You mean those little rooms?" you ask.
"Yes, exactly! Those! You need to go into one of them."
Drakken's speech is as tentative as his touch, punctured by doubt. But that doubt is wrong: you have survived in far more claustrophobic quarters than these, and your stride toward the nearest half-door is purposeful.
"Okay," you say. "I'm in."
"You need to shut it and lock it behind you!"
You do as he advises. One step backward and your leg thumps against something solid, something reinforced as though with stone. You execute a fractional spin in the narrow space and see a white vent rising from the floor, its jawbone jutting as though patterned off Drakken's, its rim forked around a basin of water that ripples up at you in sympathy. A shrill noise collects in your throat, and you force it back down.
"All right. Now what?" you say.
"Now you just stand – no, no, nooooooo, wait! Sit! You need to sit!" Drakken's voice sounds farther away and is rapidly dissolving.
"Sit on that?" It looks so unwelcoming compared to anything on which you've ever been invited to sit, even on this planet, cold and impersonal under the fuzzy lights.
"Yes," Drakken says. "You need to touch it with – nnmog – just your skin, so you'll need to, err, hike up your skirt…or something…"
"Oh, I can just shapeshift it away," you offer.
"NGGGGGH BLCKK!"
Drakken's buoy-words devolve into the static of a Wailing Stone transmission, and you have no port that connects, no means of translating it.
Fear is in you and has started to curl you when a second voice, one whose owner you did not even hear approach, speaks: "All right, calm down, Dr. D. Lemme take it from here."
A set of boots, one green and one black, moves into view beneath the door, and you hear Shego slap her palms together. The waves plaguing your lower half won't allow you to protest.
"All right, girlfriend. Let's get this done," Shego says. Her strangely bright voice is a beacon through the waves, and you have no choice but to sail toward it. "Do like the man said – skirt off and hop right on up."
The rim is not as hardy as it looks and shifts hazardously under your legs, even when you clamp a viselike hand on either side. "What if I can't do it?" There is audible frailty in your question, and you wish you could knock it away, prevent it from reaching Shego.
"Look," Shego says, "I don't understand how your alien biology works –"
Actually, at this point, you're not convinced you're any more knowledgeable than she is.
" – but the fact that you need to go means your body's taking care of this naturally," Shego finishes. If she holds any contempt for you, it has drifted to the bottom with everything else she would prefer you not know. "So here's what let's do…"
Her instructions are clear and precise. Soon everything is better.
Under Shego's direction, you stand up and give the squiggling silver pole that juts from the vent a firm tug downward. Like an inverted geyser, the basin sets up a whoosh; the water spirals out of it, and something new and beautiful rotates back in. A smile comes to roost on your face, no coaxing required.
"Now do whatever you need to do," Shego says, and you imagine her sharp-nailed hands chopping the air, "to get your skirt back on. 'Cuz it'd kinda be a bad thing if you walked out of here without it."
You put two fingerprints to your hip and it is immediately swathed again in fabric, all the way down to where it hovers teasingly at your ankles. "Yeah, because I'm stupid," you say with a laugh.
The silence is a weapon suspended in midair.
"Look, the sarcasm is adorable," Shego says at last. "And I'd be the last one to tell you not to use it. But it's a little raw." For a moment, her words strip from their hard casings, like the Earth-insects Steven told you are called cicadas. "You still feel things. That's not easy to get back once you've let it go."
You press on the diamond below your neckline, surprised at the tautness you feel underneath. The hollows of you are once again hollow, and somehow they hardened without you ever noticing.
Slowly, you unbolt the door and hop aside as it swings inward to permit your exit.
Shego is waiting for you. She does not say a word, but even though her age measures decades, not eons, she suddenly seems as old as you and far wiser. She catches your elbow before you can run for the door and spurs you to a sink where, she explains, your hands are to be washed because "public bathrooms are high on the nasty factor."
You turn the knobs on the side of the sink, and water trickles dependably out. It submits to your fingertips as it always has, a fluency that once comforted.
And as you pump a box on the wall for soap, you see what you have done, what you must rescind before it causes any further damage.
Energy seems to hum under Shego's skin, and yet she effects a casual slouch that rivals Amethyst's beside you. "That's probably long enough," she says after a minute. "You don't actually need to scrub down to the bone."
Not until she straightens to steer you toward another box do you realize that she had propped herself against the mirror.
This second box dispenses disposal scraps of paper, sliced thin, that you dry your hands on. They roll from the box, one at a time, with the turn of a gear on the box's side. When you pry one free, it seems to puff with relief and gently folds over your hands.
Shego watches as you drift the paper across each finger in turn. You aren't ready to speak to her yet, but you can feel the beginnings of forgiveness in your smile, and you hope they're visible too.
The two of you exit the bathroom to find Dr. Drakken pacing in a lopsided circle between the two signs, his breathing jagged and his hair in nervous spines. Flower petals ring his head again, and he doesn't appear to have noticed yet. When he sees you, he glows to match their vivid color and his sigh nearly topples him.
"So….everything went okay?" Drakken asks. His voice peaks at the end, as if the buoys are being slammed into rocks again and again, and the glow on his face slides into its brightest pink yet.
You take stock of yourself – no cracks to your gem – and shrug.
Shego's eyes sparkle. "Add that to the list of things that weren't in my job description – toilet-trained your girlfriend."
"Oh, come on." You give her a marginal shove. "It wasn't that bad, was it?"
Shego's shoulder blades twitch; they do not cup her life between them and are able to jerk freely with her amusement. "Well, she caught on quicker than the puppy, I'll say that much."
You laugh because Shego is laughing too, around the edges of lips as dark and plump as her hair, the strangest lips you have yet seen on a human. She seems almost as grateful for the disappearance of enmity as you are.
"Oh, thank goodness!" Dr. Drakken says. He drags one wrist across his upper lip, relieving it of a sheen of sweat. His petals wobble.
You turn to him. "You've got a little something – right there," you say, dabbing at your own neck.
"Wha?" Drakken gropes above his collar until he hits the petal and groans. His eyes cross, then roll, and finally squint shut as he plucks his petals.
It is a humorous sight, particularly accompanied as it is by Drakken's wind-chopped noises. The tension ebbs back to the borders of your gem, and it doesn't return until Drakken, now clear of plants, says, "Okay – so – Lapis – what say you? Should we go back to the party? Yay or nay?"
The question is a gentle one, not the type with the stone hammer at one end meant to tip you toward one answer over the other, the type that he is prone to asking. He looks at you, so open and ingenuous and ungainly, and you cannot bring yourself to ruin his evening; you have ruined far too many things already, for others and for yourself.
You look up at Drakken. You don't have to force a smile, not when you can see the perkiness of his ears, the forward-surge of his neck, and the energy he can only contain with great effort. "Yay," you say. Nay, you remember, is an outdated way of saying no, so you presume yay is yes, though it sounds more like something Steven yells in excitement. "I want to try."
"Great! Oh, that's simply –" Drakken catches his grin before it can overwhelm the accommodating folds of his face. "I mean – are you sure? Because if you're not up to it, I can just say goodbye, and we can leave."
The softness threatens to coddle you, and you step away from it and its dirtied memories. "No," you say. "I think this is something I need to do."
"Good, then." Drakken appears somewhat confused, but one of his small hands finds yours and hugs it. "I'll be right here – well, there – I'll be in the room with you…"
You take a playful swat at the bramble of hair. "I know what you mean."
"Well, I guess I'm gonna split then," Shego says. "Ciao."
"Goodbye?" you wager, hoping that's what she means. She is not a fusion, so of course she can't really split.
Shego winks and nods. And then she is gone, as cleanly as though she has warped herself away.
The pressure of Dr. Drakken's fingers, spindly though they may be, is strengthening as the two of you walk across the room of wideswept white where no one will be interrogating you. While the ground still feels unstable under you, you are able to place trust in your wings again.
Drakken's glances at you are so frequent, his thick eyebrow crouched so low over his eyes, that he doesn't navigate very well, and his elbow meets the doorway before you can warn him. He yelps in a voice wrung by pain, and you forget all hopes of a quiet entrance. Human heads swivel your way, and it doesn't matter until you ask Drakken if he's okay and receive a shaken "yes" in return.
You glance upward then and view the humans seemingly from a grand distance, as though observing them through the gauze draped around Blue Diamond's palanquin. That was never your favorite view. They are no longer seated at the table, instead scraping plates into large sacks of throwaways and refilling punch glasses and milling around in small groups.
All it takes is one look at them: you immediately try to fashion an aloof line with your mouth, but you lack Shego's expertise and you feel it falter between your cheeks. Your gaze, however, has solidified; your blinks feel stiff.
There is a wariness in the air, and yet no open hostility. Certainly not wanting to instigate any, you jerk your attention toward one of the water-boxes on the wall and then quickly abate when you sense its contents begin to ice over in their pipes.
Agent Kane, already near the door, comes closer. His uniform is still smooth enough to earn a Pearl's approval, despite all the opportunities for spills dinner presented, but there's nothing regimented about his walk. He stops within a few meters of you and smiles at you as though you deserve it.
"Young lady," Agent Kane says, "you ran out of here before I had a chance to say that any friend of Dr. Drakken's is a friend of mine." He tilts his gray head. "If you want to be, that is."
A little boy giggles in your memory. Its register is louder than Jasper's rasping persuasion.
"Yes," you say softly. "I want to be. I'm just not very good at it yet."
Drakken also giggles, only it sounds on the cusp of tears.
When Agent Kane looks at you, it is not a desire to send in probes that you see. It is the same bright curiosity that never leaves Drakken, the urge that Steven has to know everything so that he can befriend it. "Do you miss your home planet?" he asks.
A sky that never darkens with thunderclouds. A view that spans seven different galaxies if caught at the right moment. A people with which you were proud to belong.
Prongs of pain stab inside you. Each one aches to cry out in biting words that will take it away – No, of COURSE not! Why would I miss the only home I've ever had?
But a great invisible fist closes around the words and steals them away. You can almost feel the sharpness of its fingernails inside its gloves.
You don't know if you'd be able to do it without Drakken and his clumsy smile, but you glance at him and are able to shed the tight crush of – what Shego did call it – sarcasm. "Yes," you say, rubbing your fingerprints together. "Yeah. I miss it a lot."
It is the second unexpected release of the night, and for an instant it is as though you have poured ocean water in it, compounding the hurt.
Agent Kane nods. Sympathy breaks and mends the lines on his forehead. "How could you not?" he says, maybe more to himself and less to you.
The drapery begins to tear away, pained rips, and yet you think you glimpse something very close to freedom on the other side.
The next day, you set out to rectify your mistake.
When you tell Dr. Drakken what it is you want to do, he mists over with something you believe is close to pride and within instants has prepared the hovercraft to accompany your flight.
Ron Stoppable answers the door himself. His shoulders pull forward like pieces of wire when he sees that it's you, and you force through the degradation.
"Hi, Ron," you say in the most civil tone you can tow in. "Can we come in?"
The brown in Ron's eyes stretches wide, but he scoots the door open just enough for you and Drakken to slip in.
Without hesitation, Dr. Drakken plants himself on the couch; part of you covets his ability to feel at home so quickly in such a variety of places. As you motion Ron into the kitchen, your own legs seem to belatedly grapple with Earth's gravity, and you are grateful for the chair which Ron offers you.
Ron sinks into the chair opposite yours, his long legs splayed across the floor, the toes of his gray shoes pointed outward. Next to a nearly empty glass of water, a creature covered by only fibers of hair and a plump tuck of pink skin sits on the table before him. It is the third pink animal you've seen, and by far the smallest, not any longer than a pencil.
You begin with a question: "Are you still afraid of me?"
"Afraid?" Ron begins an incredulous laugh and does not finish it. "A-afraid? Gee, I – I – I – when was I – I – I – well, gee!" He taps his forehead. "You tell me, lady!"
His use of the word lady has Amethyst's flippant edge, and you have to regulate a breathing pattern before you can answer. "See, that's what I needed to talk to you about," you say, quickly before you can see the fear. "I can't read your mind."
"You can't?" Ron repeats. And then again, in a sturdier pitch: "You can't? Then – but all those things you – how did you know?"
Now what is boiling from him is impossible to miss unless you shut your eyes, so you do. "Lucky guesses," you say. "Or I read your face. It's very expressive. Like Dr. Drakken's."
There is a thick silence.
Although you have not swallowed anything since daybreak, it feels as if an anchor is lodged in your voids. "I tricked you….and I'm sorry," you say. "I know I shouldn't have done that, because someone else tricked me, and it could have gotten me into a real mess. I just – I guess it just hurt so much that you'd decided right away you couldn't trust me, just because I was from another planet."
You peek between your eyelids. Ron has blanched, all the way out to the tips of his ears. For the first time, you notice how large and comical they are, also similar to Drakken's.
"Ohhhhhhh man," he says. "Aw, that musta seriously tanked for you, huh?"
The word has no meaning to you, not as a verb at least, and yet you want to believe the slope in his voice means well. "I didn't like it, if that's what you mean," you say carefully.
Ron nods. "And, dude, that's not even your fault. Not really. It's those Lowardian jerks…"
"Them again?"A well-engineered hatred surfaces at their mention, and you push it back down. "Look, I know they invaded your planet and wrecked your town – my people don't like them either, if that makes you feel any better. And Drakken told me they destroyed your favorite restaurant, but they're rebuilding really fast, so –"
"You think I'm this upset about Bueno Nacho?" Ron says. The sun-speckles burn like solar flares.
The pink creature chirps something from the tabletop. Ron's tongue whips against the back of his teeth with a chah. "All right, I'll admit it, maybe in my younger days," he says. "But this is so not about that anymore! It's about Kim!"
His words are comets, screeching, steaming, soaring. The last one is the hottest, and you grab it. "Kim? They did something to your girlfriend?"
Ron slumps in his seat and begins to kick the table until the water in the glass bucks in tandem with the heaving of his chest. "They kidnapped her 'n' Drakken – took them up into a spaceship. But me and Shego went and got 'em back, no major drama there. It was AFTER –" his eyes drift so far away that you almost expect them to turn blank and silver – "after they knew they couldn't win."
You already hear your people's stories, heralding the return of cracked Commanders, the ones who were lucky enough to come back – for a Lowardian never admits defeat without claiming a trophy. "What did they do?" you say.
"They knocked her out," Ron says, his foot descending to scuff the floor. "All I remember is the Big Dude In Charge sayin', 'You can have this one for a trophy. She will look lovely stuffed and mounted next to your Thembrian spine.' Holdin' her upside-down by the leg." His throat wrenches. "Best friends for twelve years, and I never saw her look tiny like that."
So they took Thembria after all.
You look at Ron. His fists are wadded in front of him on the table, the nails livid in color. No doubt he sees his girlfriend, his best friend, still and silently compliant with a Lorwardian commander's remorseless grip. The memory of one that nearly matches it simmers on your own ankle.
Ron's fear and yours mingle together until your arms ache for Plastic Lazuli. You do not speak for a minute, and when you do it is as tiny as a seed. "Drakken didn't tell me about that."
"Drakken didn't see that!" Ron says. "He was off savin' the world. . . it's weird how that's actually starting to sound right…"
"It always sounded right to me," you say. You smile faintly at him, and he returns it with a compressed, grim one.
You let that rest for a moment and then ask, "So…what happened then?"
"Well," Ron scrubs at the back of his neck as though suddenly embarrassed, "turns out my Mystical Monkey Power kicked in –"
"Your Mystical what Power?"
"Long story," Ron says.
Not wanting to exhaust any more of his already-abridged lifespan, you nod him on.
" – and basically I got superstrength and could kick any butt I wanted kicked, and I – I got rid of the Lowardians."
Got rid of how? is too personal a question to ask of someone who is not yet your friend. You see the downturn of his mouth and feel the echo of pain.
"So…aliens are one of your triggers," you say. You hope you sound even half as understanding as Dr. Drakken did that day at the barn.
The pain on Ron's face dims from the ears inward, and the kindness you thought you sensed earlier rolls in to take its place. "Yeah," he says after a second. "Yeah, somethin' like that."
"I'm so sorry, then," you say. "I never would've pranked you if I'd known."
The remembered hold around your ankle releases. It leaves behind an emptiness you cannot fathom.
"My people had a war, too," you offer him. The word's serration grazes the curve of your gem like a weapon. "So I know how awful it is. They fought over humanity."
Ron pushes the glass across the table with a shuffling sound that reminds you of the wind through trees; you picture the new warm hues gradating the leaves, and it fortifies you. "Heh. Uh….which side were you on?" he asks. He regards you with a stranger's blankness, but at least his eyes no longer charge you with crimes.
"Neither one," you tell him. "I just got in the way." Shivers line your throat as an unbidden reflection floats up: Never-ending hordes of Quartz soldiers, striding forward in martial lines; the Crystal Gems with their haphazard, motley army; the definitive swish of sword against projected flesh, preceding the clink of a stone tumbling in isolation to the ground.
Ron's nod is slow and timid, scrunching into his neck and then back out. It stalls the reflection, brings it to a hitch before it can progress to the multicolored ropes of hair slithering toward you.
No trickery survives in you now. "I never liked humans," you admit. "But I never hated them either.
"And now that I've met Dr. Drakken and spent time here on Earth, I. . . I realize your species deserves a chance. So I'm going to try to give you one."
You do not add, Can you do the same for me? You are already a bare wire, needing to avoid further exposure. It is challenge enough to stare at him over the table's metallic glint and show him what you look like when you are candid.
Ron stares back at you. For the first time ever, his gaze claps to yours. There is the tiniest commencement of a truce in it.
The little pink-skinned creature bobs his head, paws held up beseechingly.
All of the light that makes your body relaxes, and you fall back against the chair. You are weightless again, relieved of spite.
Ron tips back in his chair as well. Tide pools have formed in the inner arms of his bagging shirt. "So…you don't really have any weird alien powers?" he says.
You grin, and it has the feel of rusted hinges finally being put to use again. "Well, I don't know if I'd say that."
Curling your fingers in toward each other like the corners of an ancient scroll, you elevate the water from Ron's glass. Without ever approaching you, it flows through you and melds with you until you are part of it. The bond is instinctual and cooling, and the water conjures a hand almost before you can visualize one.
Your hand flattens out, palm up, fingerprints straight, nails pointed to the ceiling, and the water-hand mimics you without hesitance. You drift it over to Ron and suspend it in the air next to his own arm. "High-five?" you say.
The centers of Ron's eyes thin out before the lids slap shut over them. His chair tips over backward and spills him across the floor tiles, where his head lolls heavily to one side.
The tiny pink animal spouts a frantic squeal of gibberish.
You drop the water-hand with a splash on the table as you lean over. "Dr. Drakken?" you call into the living room. "He fell asleep really fast. Is that normal?"