~In which Lapis visits a human mall. Last chapter before we head back to Beach City!
On another note: when is this show coming back? I haven't seen a word about its return, and I'm not sure I've even caught so much as a rerun all summer. I know it's not the fault of the show's staff, but I'm starting to wonder what gives on Cartoon Network's end. . .
Ah, well. Enjoy.~
Everything is going well now.
Too well.
You have not been the subject of so extended a period of care and admiration since the time when you were among Blue Diamond's finest, long before the war; you don't trust such treatments anymore. There is pain in the recollection that you and your ilk were both venerated and envied by other classes of Gems, some common servants, others so poorly cut that their existences never overlapped yours. Some of the Elite were cruel, and while you like to think you were never among them, your perception of good and bad has been shifted enormously in this time on Earth.
But you were complacent, you know that. It was the life for which you pined while lying on your back, watching the stars' revisions from behind glass; the life you flew back home seeking, and it would be so easy to return to it.
This is why you tell Dr. Drakken you want to go back to Beach City soon.
You do not tell him that is why you want to go back to Beach City soon. "I'm starting to miss Steven," you say to him, and that's not a lie.
The blackness beneath Drakken's eyes pouches, crestfallen, and yet he nods with an understanding you watch him retrieve. "Can you – can I ask you to stay just one more day? I wanted to show you the mall before you left. It's the biggest deal in Middleton." His smile is a simple, sweet line. "At least, the biggest deal in Middleton that isn't run by someone with a daughter I used to try to destroy or inventions I used to steal."
It is strange being reminded that once Drakken once meant the Earth harm, stranger than the sudden weather swings on this planet. Paradoxically, it makes you feel safer with him, knowing that is what he has escaped. You agree to one more day in his town.
The mall looks the same upon your return as it did the day you flew over it on your way to Drakken's house: large, long, and purple, and far nicer than you would have expected from the building where Drakken once had a lip-fusion forced onto him. It is surrounded by a scattering of those odd Earth-machines Steven called cars, the ones that humans use for transport and occasionally for living quarters. There seem to be quite a few of them, sitting emptily between pairs of parallel white stripes, and you wonder uneasily just how crowded the mall will be.
Yet once you enter through a fancy set of doors that open themselves at your approach, the building is roomy enough for the humans to mill about as they please and not collide with one another as they do so. It is, in fact, multiple stories high, each level connected with two sets of those rippling stairs – "scoochers," the Rubies used to call them, which you always considered kind of cute. There are pots of green plants that match the ones next to you now, a certain charm to their irregular placement, though when you touch the one beside you, its leaves are waxy and it is clearly no more organic than you are.
"Fake plants don't die," Dr. Drakken explains when you lift confused eyes to him. "The neat thing is, I don't even have to touch them anymore to see if they're real or not. These guys –" he taps the side of his neck – "pick up it right away, and they report back to me. It's quite marvelous, really, although I'm still trying to get used to it..."
"I'm still trying to get used to everything," you reply, and you take another step forward. The glass dome above you reminds you of your trips to Pink Diamond's human zoo, and you are surprisingly relieved to watch the humans move freely. Several sections of the walls split open, forming pocket rooms housed with everything from baseball gloves and protective helmets for fragile human heads to precious Earth-stones on chains. The floor beneath you is a slightly duller hue than an Aquamarine, hard yet spongy, similar to the valleys on Kindergarten Base 50.
Another planet whose "conversion" you abetted.
The reminder of it sticks to your Gem like a wad of algae, and you turn to Drakken once more. "Where to first?" you ask.
Drakken's face floods with excitement. "Oooh, so hard to choose! There's – oohh, but that's also pretty amazing – but then there's –" He finally grips his own forehead between two fingers. "Mnng. You know what? We should stop by Hair Apparent first. I've been meaning to restock my shampoo."
"What?" you say.
"Hair soap."
You cross with Drakken over to a pocket room that must be under the same jurisdiction as the haircutting salon back in Beach City. Great expanses of the wall feature magnified portraits of humans with that hair that must surely be welded into place and fingernails, suspended just inside the edges of the picture, whose tapers could have been forged by a Bismuth.
Beside you, Drakken's right arm twinges. "Pretty creepy, huh?" he says in his loud whisper.
You shrug. "Not really. They're just photos. Definitely not as bad as those – what did you call those back this summer? Mani-kens?"
"Mannequins, yes." Drakken rubs his small hands up and down his sleeves. "Ohh, those things are the stuff of nightmares, I tell you! Why, did you know that some of them don't even have heads nowadays?"
"They don't have heads?" you repeat. "How come?"
"I had no idea, so I asked Shego. She said it was 'too much work' to construct heads when it was the bodies that modeled the clothes."
"That's weird," you say, perhaps too judgmentally. Within a hundred years' time, Homeworld will be working with such scant resources that Era III Peridots could be headless as well. At least you will not be around to see that.
Drakken pulls you down an aisle of shelves. The layout reminds you somewhat of a library, only its smell is zestier and the placement of the objects sterner than the carefree way the books fall on each other. The floor is as white as the heart of a dwarf star, and you are almost afraid to step on it. It turns out to be safe, if slick and alarmingly free of traction.
"You know, one time I invented a shampoo that brainwashed people," Drakken says. His expression drifts away for a moment, lower lip wistful as he stares at the ceiling and sees what you suspect is something else altogether. "If it had just sold, the planet would have been mine for sure!"
"Tough break," you say, patting his arm. You don't pretend to understand humans and their grooming rituals.
Drakken shakes his head, the ends of his hair cracking off his cheeks. "Ah, well. I suppose it was all for the best. Now, let's see…where is that…?" His buoy-voice trails off, tangles in disgust. "Oh, of course it's on the top shelf!" When Drakken reaches out a hand, even stretching high onto the heads of his toes, his scrawny fingers fall several inches short. "Lapis…I don't suppose you could…?"
"Gotcha covered." You turn a thumb up to him, release your wings, and fly up to the top shelf, where a line of bottles stands in muted colors. "Which bottle?" you say.
"The brown one. Not the blue one, ironically enough," Drakken calls.
You pick up a container that feels surprisingly hefty, as though the soap inside is quite dense. Perhaps it has to be, to fully clean the thick thornbush of Drakken's hair.
"Thank you, Lapis," Drakken says when you deposit the hair soap into his waiting hands.
"You're welcome. All right, where do we go next?"
You have taken three steps toward the door when Drakken halts you with a hiss of, "No – Lapis! Hang on a second! I need to pay for this."
"Pay?" Its sound suggests retribution; you remember the villains on the silly mystery show – humans all – crying, "You'll pay for this!" as Earth's legal officers drag them away to the dungeon.
"Give them some money," Drakken says, the buoys licked by a patient current. "So I can buy this."
"Wait – that takes money?" It is as if a restrictive touch moves over the pocket room, tensing its open palm, expecting payment from Drakken for something surely anyone can see he deserves. "You can't just have it?"
Dr. Drakken blinks wide, ingenuous eyes at you. "Well, no. That's called stealing. People can get sent to prison" – his voice wavers – "for that."
"Really?" you say.
"Really! Oh, not right away, of course. . . I found that out just a few weeks into my reformation, when I was buying groceries – food and such things. I – eh-heh – inadvertently didn't add a head of cabbage to the tally, and when I walked out the door, the alarms went off, and I thought, That's it! It's all over for me!" Drakken flings his arms out, as though in supplication for mercy. "But the man behind the counter just said it sounded like I'd forgotten to pay for something, so I brought the head of cabbage back and paid for it, and I walked out of that store a free man! BUT if you absolutely refuse to pay for something, then you get in trouble."
The buoy-words string toward the horizon, no end in sight. You frown at them. "So – wait – cabbages have heads and mannequins don't?" you say.
Drakken's lower lip edges briefly downward, then rolls back into place with his chuckle. "Oh! My bad! Heads of cabbage just means those big old bunches of them all balled up so that it's sort of the same shape as a head. Not my head, but your average person's."
"But you saved the world," you say. "Aren't you allowed to have anything you want? I mean, within reason?"
For an instant, everything on Drakken inclines upward, and then he is shaken by a look like an underwater quake and begins a grim study of the ceiling. "Ooohh, those are dangerous words to say to a former supervillain," he says. "They make entirely too much sense to me!" His hands collide, the thumbs tumbling over each other again and again. "There are such things as discounts, where certain people get the same item for a reduced price… There's employee discounts, veteran discounts…"
"Veterans of what?" you ask.
"Of a war. Any war."
Drakken is so deep into the explanation that he does not notice how that single word razes the length of your back.
"So, wait, let me get this straight. Jasper could get a discount here, but you couldn't?" you protest, rather shrilly. This makes even less sense than cabbages with heads.
The thumbs cinch. "Well, errrgh, when you put it that way…"
You sniff without planning it. "On Homeworld, we didn't even use money."
"Well, that's all well and good, Lapis," Drakken says, "but it's a lot easier for a species to live like that when they don't need to buy food or clothes. Can you imagine what would happen if everyone just ran off with whatever they wanted? It would be global chaos!"
You suppose that it would play out that way, with no centralized authority figure like the Diamonds, and Earth certainly has no need of any more chaos. Yet there is still a part of you, the part that feels torn to pieces and scattered whenever you look at the Crystal Gems, that wants to forever hold the notion of your people and their inherent nobility.
His begging eyes receive a demure, halfhearted nod in return. "I guess," you say with a shrug. "But how do humans get the money?"
"Usually from our jobs. You know, our Purposes?" The corners of Drakken's mouth perk your way. "Humans get paid for those. And a lot of times, if there's a human who's having bad luck and hasn't found a Purpose yet, other humans that have money to spare will give them things that they'll need until they can 'stand on their own two feet,' as they say."
You recall your first wobbling steps without the stocky Gem's arm to lean on, and no explanation is required.
There is the species that Rose Quartz was willing to split her own in half in order to protect. Though your confusion does not wane, it firms up, supporting your body.
You follow Drakken to a long off-white counter similar to the one in Steven's kitchen, except that the metal box sitting atop it bears little resemblance to a microwave. It is more of a trapezoid shape, shorter on the top than the bottom, with a laser growing out of its side; the woman standing there zaps Drakken's shampoo bottle with it, punches something on keys that are upraised like the small brown decoration on Mama Lipsky's chin, and speaks a foreign amount. Drakken digs that number of green money-papers from his wallet and hands them to her. She smiles at the both of you and tells you to have a nice day.
The main area of the mall welcomes you back, just large enough and just small enough, just bright enough and just dark enough, to put you at ease. When Dr. Drakken pieces his hand to yours, it is one of those rare moments where your nose relaxes, forgetting the second gem that once flattened it.
The next shop in line is fronted by a sign as tall as Steven that proclaims, "EAR-PIERCING!" You survey the interior, squinting, but catch no glimpses of Wailing Stones or Homeworld's more modern sonic weapons.
You nudge Drakken in the bony spot above his belt and tip your head toward the sign. "What do they pierce your ears with?" you say.
"Jewelry," he replies.
You can tell your face is a contortion of horror; it couldn't possibly be anything else at the thought of spears being lowered into human ears and skewering them with jewelry. Are there classes of humans who subject themselves to pain in the hopes of becoming as hard and seasoned as a Quartz warrior? "That's awful," you say. "How do they hear after that?"
Drakken's long eyebrow rises in increments like scoocher steps. "Wha? Ohhhhhhh, oh, Lapis! They pierce the outside of the ear! Here!" He shakes the small tab of skin under his ear's entrance. "The useless part! It still stings a little – or so I've been told – but nothing vital gets damaged."
"Oh," you say softly. You give your shoulders a nonchalant wiggle and raise your voice a notch. "Well, that's a relief. Good to know."
Good to know humans aren't that absurd.
You pull the thought back under. Delighted laughter is spurting from Dr. Drakken even now. He has never treated you as though you are an irksome little alien, as though he thinks of you the way you once thought of his kind. You could never consider him an inferior being – yet centuries upon centuries of your engrained Teachings cannot be shed in the same manner as unwanted liquids.
Several paces north of the ear-piercing place lies a stand with approximately the same shape and mobility of a palanquin; only its wood, though solid looking, does not have titanium reinforcement and small trundling wheels on each of its four corners appear to be what makes it move. It is also topped with a curtain that, rather than a spectral veil flowing to the ground, is a sturdy cloth that cups the ceiling the way your bob cups your face. Its body surrounds the woman inside it, and you are relieved to see that one of the sides is on a hinge, allowing it to swing open so she can exit.
It is obviously a mercantile station like the sort you have seen in Beach City, yet you cannot fathom what it is she plans to give in exchange for money. Several small, near-transparent tubes point upright. Growing from them are smudged plateaus, mostly reddish. Next to it, an open tube is situated on a napkin, directly beside something thin-handled like an Aquamarine's wand, which is bristling with fibers that remind you of Dr. Drakken's hair, only stiffer-looking. A viscous black substance drips from the bristles on the tip of the wand. Farther down are squares and circles that would fit in the palm of your tiny hand, peeled back to display powders of blue and green, violet and coral, most in shades too pale to correspond to any Gem you know. The sign overhead says they are "beauty products," and while they are pretty, it doesn't help you understand their Purpose.
"What are those?" you ask, tugging Drakken's sleeve.
"That's make-up," Drakken says.
"Make-up?" you repeat. The word brings to mind construction, analysis of a planet's structure, and you fail to see where these would be needed.
Drakken nods and secures one arm behind his back, the first finger of the other hand pointed importantly upward. "The fancy term for it is cosmetics. They're little gels or powders that people –mostly women – use on their faces to…to…" The leveled shoulders shrug. "I'm not entirely sure. I guess they think it makes them prettier."
"By painting their faces different colors?" you say. It is not so much shocking, that humans can tire of their bland skin tones and unfortunate inability to shapeshift, as it is sad.
"Not their whole faces," Drakken says, "not usually at least." He gestures widely to the bristle-tipped tubes, the plateau tubes, the circles, and the squares each in turn. "That's mascara. People put in on their eyelashes. That's lipstick – for their lips, of course. That's blush – to make people's cheeks look pinker. And that…" His eyes lose their focus and wander toward each other. "That, I'm not sure. I think they might use it on their eyelids?"
You hike one shoulder at him; you cannot look away from the tubes of lip enhancers in every shade from sunrise to sunset, from Ruby to angry Ruby. Nestled at the far end of that row is an Obsidian option.
Now you know how pallid-green Shego can have lips so dark.
The woman behind the counter gives the two of you a wave, which Dr. Drakken returns. You, however, feel your arms pulling inward, along with your wings and the corners of your mouth. She is an uncharted terrain that you do not wish to renovate right now, and you put your head down and hustle away from her in Drakken's shadow.
Not far from that sits another wooden structure, this one unmanned and wrapped lengthwise by the types of tanks in which human swimmers will tote their oxygen, only smaller and clear, filled with things other than air: small fragments of solids that stack nearly to their lids. Drakken tells you, with his tongue swiping his lips, these are different varieties of snacks, which are the food humans eat if they get hungry between meals.
The ones round as Quartz's gems are labeled M&Ms. The ones beside them are almost identical, only with thicker coatings and more urgent coloring; they are called Skittles. The fiery ones with joint-like curves are Red Hots and, next to them, the long skinny ones that apparently only occur in green and red are known as Mike & Ike. You wander from one tank to the next, running your fingers across the glass down to the metal vent at the bottom that instructs you to insert something called cents – which must not be very big for twenty-five of them to fit in a slot that small – and turn the accompanying knob sharply to the right.
It's the fifth one, stocked with dull, point-edged slivers, where your fingers fumble and catch in the slot. Rather than a designation, this tank is overtaken by a name as familiar to you as your own voice and an insignia more familiar still.
Blue Diamond Almonds.
You briefly wonder if this is part of the Diamonds' new plan for Earth – and if so, why they are so boldly touting themselves – if Blue Diamond is attempting to smuggle more bioweapons into the Earth's crust – and if so, why someone besides you hasn't noticed how out of place it is among a display of snacks at a mall.
In a moment, Homeworld's rapport overcomes you. You can feel it clamped to your back, and you are bidden to smooth out your posture, chin tilted higher and ankles parallel. Yet all of that is washed back out by the reverence that settles over you, soothing every crevice of your gem, straight down to the crux where your deepest fears are hidden.
Your arms act on an instinct older than Earth's galaxy, almost as though not of their own volition. The wrists lift and intersect, and the hands dip in toward each other to create the Diamond salute. The rest of you is more hesitant. You know now that Blue Diamond is not the faultless, all-merciful ruler you once believed her to be, but before you met Steven and Drakken, everything you had you owed to her. Shouldn't that be worthy of your respect, if not your devotion?
"Ma'am," you say in your quietest voice, so quiet you can only prove it is there by the momentary warmth on your lips. You slant your head toward the ground, press your heels together, and spread your skirt into a curtsy. Your eyes slip shut in deference – it comes so easily, even now – while you deny yourself so much as a breath lest it be something your Diamond needs more than you do.
For an instant, the rubberized mall floor beneath your bare feet is as sacred as the stone of the Sea Spire.
Then Dr. Drakken is bent over beside you, hissing across your face, "Ummm…Lapis? What is this about?"
You open your eyes, glance this way and that. She is nowhere near here, but you cannot rule out the possibility that these almonds transmit your subservient figure and Drakken's bewildered one back to her palace.
With a finger that barely holds steady, you point to the Blue Diamond symbol on the tank. "Can't you…bow or something?" you whisper. "I don't want her to think my friends are impolite!"
There are several moments where Drakken stares with utter blankness at the symbol before he gurgles – a sound of understanding, you would wager. He props one ungainly arm in front of his waist and folds the upper half of his body over it, his balance thrown off-kilter as he struggles back up with your hands to help.
"Look," Drakken says once he is upright again, "I don't mean to burst your bubble or anything – because that was really sweet of you – and also slightly concerning – but Blue Diamond is just the name of a brand that sells nuts. They're based in Sacramento – which is in California – which is a state on the coast opposite Beach City –"
You interrupt, your back cold. "Blue Diamond has workers on the coast?" If she is setting up by the ocean, that must mean she is planning to assemble the remaining Lapises soon.
"It's run by humans, Lapis!" Drakken drags frantic fingers below his eyes. "Not aliens. Their CE – their boss is human. I know because Kim Possible once helped save their facility after an earthquake left it cracked in half. She constructed a makeshift bridge out of experimental formula her tech-kid had given her and a few things her boyfriend had in his backpack… and she's the kind of girl who notices alien tech…"
The buoy-words continue, but you absorb nothing further. You glance back at the almond tank. "So – it's not run by my – by Blue Diamond?" you say, and your wings cringe ever so slightly. If Drakken is wrong and she is listening, you may have just sentenced yourself. Still, where would she have hidden so that someone inside the plant wouldn't have seen her? Blue Diamond's graceful, cloaked figure is impossible to miss.
"ERrrm, no. Not unless things have substantially changed there in the last year," Drakken says. His grin is heavier than usual, not as effortless, and you think you see some pity in him.
You cross your arms, which bristle like the mascara brush, threatening to burst every water fountain in the building. "Then why the name? Why the symbol? Those are hers." You are almost surprised by your stabbing tone, but not quite.
"Because…" Drakken runs a hand down the back of his head. "I don't know. Probably because they thought it was pretty." The grin lightens somewhat. "Which it is, of course."
It is no longer pity woven into his voice, although it isn't reverence either. Tolerance, you think you would call it – as if just for this blink of time, Blue Diamond matters to him.
"Yeah. It really is." You stand straighter and swallow your powers, store them back inside you. "So – what are almonds, anyway?"
Drakken's expression brightens considerably, and he skitters along beside you, enraptured by his own explanation of how almonds are nuts, which are food, related to fruit, and have hard shells. You do your best to listen as you take several rapid, meaningful steps away from the almonds and the glittering reflection of Blue Diamond's court they brought. You don't know if it was privilege or burden you felt come over you then, only that it must be left behind.
Clumsily navigating among more scoochers and more plants cozying into corners, Drakken strides ahead and leads you to an area large enough for the crowd to dispel some. You neither see nor hear anything beyond that, as in a moment you are permeated by a relationship: something that, if possible, is even more innate than the Diamond salute.
Sure enough, when your vision clears, you see it. Docked in the center of the clearing is an oblong pool, large enough to have cleared any similar objects from its orbit. It appears to be self-contained, although profuse amounts of water sleek down into it from a second, smaller basin above, suspended in that illusive fashion that humans use to make their unspectacular architecture seem magical. At the top of the basin, spindly streams of water lift in curves like the necks of lake-birds before plunging back down to join their kind in the pool below.
Every droplet sends you a greeting, and not out of mere duty. Your powers prance nervously within you, still sore from your overexertion and from Jasper's mishandling of them, still self-conscious of their edges and their depths. Yet part of you, somewhere in your very essence, is drawn toward this instrument that gives with generosity and takes with brutality.
Dr. Drakken must feel your bowstring-tautness because his small, reliable hand stiffens in yours. "Lapis?" he says. "Are you all right? Is this – is the water okay? Is it too much like the O-C-E-A-N?"
There is something about to his quizzical expression, the entirety of his mouth bunched to the left, that causes you to laugh out loud. "I can connect letters, Drakken," you say. "And this is fine. Honest."
"Good then." Drakken blinks at you, with caution, and then speeds his eyes away; they land on something that brings a sparkle to them and saliva to his lips. "Oooh, Lapis, look!"
You follow his lively grin more than the pointing of his finger to another shop. This one is more like one of Beach City's open markets, no doors and no front wall to enter. There is only a stone countertop that broadens considerably at the bottom and is screened by a steeply slanted sheet of glass.
"Food court!" Drakken cries and bolts for it.
Food's court is much less regimented than Blue Diamond's, you decide once you are inside. Young people around Kim and Ron's age flit back and forth, each one wearing their Purposed clothing. One girl has rubies even smaller than their sentient counterparts jabbed through the soft lower part of her ear, as Drakken said. A metal rack spreads warmth as it rotates. Hooked from its prongs are fleshy rolls, shaped almost to be round until you reach the top, where they separate into arms that reach for opposite sides, intersecting at the midpoint, a misshapen salute. They are sprinkled with some sort of brown dust.
It's what is beyond the glass screen that Drakken is taken with, however. "BEHOLD!" he says, sweeping his arms widely toward it.
You peer inside to see many small tubs filled with slightly different colors of something moist, smooth, and sweet-swelling.
"Ice cream?" you say, glancing back up at Drakken.
"Indeed it is." Drakken thrusts his chest forward, and you are reminded of a primitive human announcing that he has located a fertile place for his tribe to hunt and gather. "And you may pick any flavor you like!" His elbow gives yours a nudge and then accidentally slips behind it so that he barely avoids a fall.
There are no less than three rows with at least six tubs in each row; some have only a few dents in them, while other are nearly hollowed in, with only stray chunks clinging to the sides – but your gaze runs right to the one you want. "Can I just have white?" you ask either Drakken or the ruby-eared girl behind the counter.
They both nod. Drakken's shoulders stammer with laughter as he reaches into his wallet for some papered money. "Two small cones," he tells the counter girl. "One triple-chocolate, one vanilla."
After wiping the cavernous spoon on the white stretch of fabric over her torso, the girl submerges it first into the deep-dark brown and then into the white. She hands both cones over along with the gentle smile it is so easy to give Dr. Drakken. "Enjoy," she says.
You surprise even yourself by ducking your head.
"Are you ever going to try any other flavors?" Drakken asks as you stroll back toward the clearing in the floor.
You run your tongue over the cold that tastes of welcome memories. "Yeah. Someday. Right now, I just needed…vanilla. But the pink topaz looks good, too."
"Strawberry," Drakken says, his lips nearly losing their morsel of ice cream.
"Whatever." You shrug.
The next shop you pass has doors, along with a limestone-board like the one Peridot stores in the barn. "FREE WIFI!" it reads.
"What's a free wiffie?" you say, tilting your head toward the sign. "Do I want one?"
A "wha?" comes from Drakken, before his eyes trace the sign and light with a conclusion. "Oh! That says 'free Wi-Fi.' Which is another name for 'wireless Internet.'"
"A net?" You frown, attempting to picture how anyone could wirelessly construct a net. "Like a fishing net?"
"Urrgh! The English language!" Drakken dramatically claps a fist over his forehead. "The Internet isn't really a net at all. It's a way of passing along information electronically, rather than physically handing it to someone. I think the 'net' bit comes from 'network,' but don't quote me on that. I was rather busy trying to dominate the planet during its advent, so I missed a few things…"
"Oh. Yeah, we have that." You pause. "It took you this long to get yours wireless?"
"Hush, you," Drakken says, nestling his chin, sticky with ice cream, onto the top of your head.
He then has trouble removing it, and has to give his neck a violent jerk. Four strands of your hair snap off, and your gem immediately manifests four more to fill the stinging holes left behind.
For too brief a time, you forget your people's electronic communications, how what started as a simple convenience evolved into an omnipresence during your time away.
"Would you be up for going and sitting by the fountain?" Drakken says.
"By the F-O-U-N-T-A-I-N?" you say, giggling. "I'm all right with that."
The two of you find a bench, one that has legs and doesn't swing, several meters away from the fountain. You sit down, Dr. Drakken's feet dangling above the floor's sponginess, your own toes just barely grazing it. Soft music drifts from a spot on the ceiling directly above the fountain.
Drakken's legs twiddle back and forth, and his gaze travels somewhere beyond him. "Boy, what Global Justice wouldn't give for some of your Gem tech! Ooh – sorry – should I not have brought that up?"
His head is tilted in an apologetic manner; your unease is exiled to a bubble, unable to reform. In its place, you find a hint of slyness. "Actually," you say, "I was wondering if Global Justice would like some of our tech."
"What are you saying here?" Drakken asks, squinting at you.
"I'm saying that I do know how some of our tech works. The older stuff, but it's still way beyond anything they have on Earth right now. I could tell you how it works, and then you could bring the ideas to Global Justice and look like the smartest man on the planet."
The blackest parts of Drakken's eyes are stars peeking from behind a hazy atmosphere. "That's tempting. Verrrry tempting. Very, very tempting!" His belly caves inward, and the air he inhales seems to swirl like hurricane winds. "Entirely too tempting – to pass off someone else's work as my own!"
There is a struggle in his swaying legs now, and you rush to appease it. "Oh, I wouldn't mind if you took the credit," you say, voice light and informal like Kim's.
Dr. Drakken's smile finally returns, dripping with brown ice cream, one corner higher and more rueful than the other. "Well, thank you, and I'm quite sure you wouldn't. But I'm talking about for me. If I start lying again, who knows what will become of me?!"
His words are blunt and creaking, and yet he is not using them for clubs, not wielding them so much as they wield him. You hadn't even thought of it as lying. Your honesty has become quite a bit more flexible in the dark times since the War. But seeing Drakken cringe away from deception as though it will surely corrupt him, it feels that your gem hangs crooked in its setting.
"I guess, that even if you said they came from your alien girlfriend, you'd still be the first human that anyone ever trusted with those ideas, and you'd be the first to figure out how to apply them. They should still admire you for that," you say with a shrug.
Drakken taps one finger to his temple. "Lapis, I like the way you think."
That reassures you. "Besides, I kind of like the way Earth is now," you say. "Reminds me of how Homeworld used to be, back before the – back when things were good.
"Good for me," you clarify. You feel the strip of skin beneath your eyes glowing a darker blue.
This is, you remind yourself, the planet that granted you asylum, even after you had walked off with its ocean and left three-fourths of its surface a labyrinth of exposed chasms and volcanoes that separated the continents. Surely that should curb your natural instinct to terraform it.
You glance back over one shoulder and switch topics. "So – what do you think would happen if I went into that jewelry store and asked them to pierce my ears?"
Drakken wheezes, and his mouthful of ice cream rockets onto the cuff of his sleeve. "Well," he says, after a period of gruff hacks, "they would probably spend a long time lifting your hair and feeling around. And then they'd get very confused." He looks at you with mischief that you know mimics your own, only larger and louder.
You laugh along with him. You can picture on the humans what you have seen on Sapphires who have leaned too heavily on one future only to have it not be the one that ended up coming true: faces wadded in bewilderment, groping for something suitably diplomatic to say, their sweat beading into ice crystals when it becomes obvious that there is nothing.
"Sorry that I…uh…rained on your parade back there," Drakken says. "With the almonds and everything."
You know that a parade is a hero's celebration. You also know that there is rain on this planet, although Dr. Drakken has no command of it. It isn't incredibly hard to guess what happens to a parade if a rainstorm begins while it is in progress.
"That's okay." You glance downward, concealing each blush-point with a piece of hair. "I think that parade – needed to be rained on."
You are still on Earth, after all. There are no quasars, no visible supernovas, and certainly no remnant of Homeworld's hierarchy. Your compatriots now include an illicit fusion, a stunted Quartz warrior, and a strangely assertive Pearl – all three of whom display a level of courage you have yet to attain.
Drakken uses the sleeve that is already messy to wipe his mouth, and then a splotch of vanilla-white from your bare arm. "How so?" he says.
You stare hard at your knees. "I mean – I really appreciate everything you've done. But I don't need you to keep pampering me. I got enough of that on Homeworld."
There are no increments to Dr. Drakken's eyebrow this time. As is more typical of it, it makes an abrupt leap to the peak of his forehead at the exact moment of his startling. "Pampering?" he repeats, as if it is a Gem term that has no meaning to his culture.
"Yeah. Looking out for me, trying so hard not to upset me by saying things like 'mirror' or…or 'war' or even 'tech.' Giving me gifts, buying me food that I don't even need just because I like it. I'm an Elite, okay?" you spit. "Or I was. If you keep taking such good care of me, I'll go back to being the spoiled little prissy Gem I was before the War – back when things were good – and I won't be any good to anyone."
You pause for a moment and you breathe, unnecessarily, just for the sensation of gathering. You were, you hope, never despotic in your standing back on Homeworld, yet how many times did you pass Blue Diamond's Pearl without ever once attempting to make conversation? How many times did you sit in silent compliance while the other Lapises sneered over some Peridot or Bismuth?
Drakken's upper lip pokes out like a plank of driftwood. "Jeepers," he says at last. "That…that was not where I was expecting that to go. Lapis – what do you mean by 'elite'? I mean, I know the dictionary definition – don't ask me to recite it, though, because I don't do well under pressure – but what does it mean in, shall we say, Homeworld terms?"
The bones of his cheeks are perked forward, the left one especially intense under its mended crack. If you saw even a trace of judgment, you would fold your wings around you and cocoon yourself in shame.
"I was a member of Blue Diamond's court," you say, in a voice so distant it could be someone else's altogether. "The Elite aren't soldiers. We're considered too valuable to fight. We have Purposes that are essential for Homeworld's survival, but we don't do petty labor – we get sent on missions of great honor. All the other Gems envy us, because we get treated like we're better than the rest of them. And we're told we're better than the rest of them. Our whole lives are one big privilege. And I can't go back to that, not while Steven's still fighting for Earth. Not while Jasper's still out there somewhere."
Drakken cocks his head even as he shakes it. "Really? I can't ever picture you as spoiled and prissy." His buoy-words want to wash into you, you can tell, and yet all your currents are rushing, guarded, with no place thin enough for him to enter.
"Well, I can't ever see you as mean and power-hungry, so I guess we're even," you say.
Though Dr. Drakken's cheeks become pleased pillows, his fragile body remains tensed. "Well, thank you. But Lapis, I –"
You slice off his voice with your own. "No more pampering. I mean it. I need to be strong now," you say, lifting your chin.
"Gghhhk – I know that. Oh, how I know that! That's exactly why I'm doing this."
His confusion borders on frustration, and you feel an odd sense of kinship with him. Eddies of anger are whirling inside your gem. "What do you mean?" you shoot back, careful so as not to shout.
"Well, what I mean is…what I mean is…" Drakken begins to pluck at the air as though he can manipulate it. "What I means is that almost every being, in addition to food or universe juice or whatever – we all run on kindness, too. Kind of like how phones…I'm sorry, is it okay to use technology as an example?"
You raise one eyebrow at him and flatten the rest of your face.
"Erk. Yes. Of course it is. So phones rely on electricity, which of course you know – I mean, Steven has a phone, right?"
"Yeah." Steven owns a flat, unassuming piece, almost primeval by Gem standards, called a cell phone; you don't know why, for it is no more composed of cells than you are.
"Right. So – phone. Electricity. Kindness." Drakken blinks and his gaze drifts elsewhere. "I was going somewhere with that…"
You drape your arms across the back of the bench and wait. Drakken is fidgeting in his seat, but something about his tone tells you that he isn't actually going somewhere except in his thoughts.
"A-ha! Yes! Now I remember!" Drakken cries. "Phones run on electricity, of course, which they need to be plugged into an outlet to absorb. Once it's charged, the phone stores its electricity in its battery and can be used on the go. Most phones have a pretty long battery life, which is good because you don't often encounter places in the middle of a busy day where you can stop and recharge them."
The weariness in your back begins to wane. In your mind, you approach his theory in timid steps that dare not be hopeful. "So – are you saying that applies to me, too?" you ask.
"Yes! Exactly!" Drakken leans forward, nearly losing the top scoop of his ice cream as he shimmies on his knees. His eyes lock on yours and hold there as if they are robo-drones intent solely on their destination. "Lapis – I'm not trying to pamper you. I'm trying to recharge you – so that when you do have to be unplugged, you'll be able to keep going for a long, long time."
You sit for a moment and you don't even breathe against the feel of your wings, full and healthy and claiming every hollow of your body. If this is the energy of the universe, you have never received so much at once before.
"Thank you," you say at last.
Drakken's feet jounce beneath the bench. "You're welcome," he says shakily.
"But…does it really work?" you ask. You take another lick at your cone.
"Yes. I believe so, yes." Drakken presses the tapering tips of his main fingers to each other with the ice cream behind them. His expression over-labors to be droll, and you are surprised by the giggle you have to suppress. "You know Kim Possible and Shego, of course."
You nod.
"Well, they used to fight. All the time, and I don't mean with their words." Dr. Drakken cringes, either from the memory or from the droplet of ice cream that lands in his lap, which he in his human simplicity cannot flick away. "Shego won a few individual fights, but in the end Kim Possible always emerged triumphant. Oooh, it made me so mad!
"Especially because I couldn't find any reason for it. Shego was older and bigger with much more raw natural talent than Kim Possible, and she had both super-powers and a ruthless nature, neither of which Kim Possible possessed! I nearly went mad trying to discover the answer." The bump in Dr. Drakken's throat sways up and down as though scouring it from the inside. "Actually, I think I did go mad…heh…a time or two."
You reflect on the idea of a single, commonplace Quartz warrior shattering a Diamond a hundred times her size and strength, of a ragtag band of rebels chasing away those Purposed all their lives to do battle, of the only Jasper to leave her Kindergarten without any defect subdued by one of Blue Diamond's small, soft-spoken elite; and you shrug. "Sometimes there just aren't answers to that stuff."
Some of the verve leaves Dr. Drakken's shoulders, and the ice cream you love sits in a cold lump in your manifested innards. "Fair point, I suppose." He re-brightens quickly; his grin doesn't fade even as three lopsided petals spring from his neck and he cheerily yanks them out. "As a scientist, however, I appreciate having answers, and I think I may have finally found one! Want to know what it is?"
This time, you nod without hesitance. If he believes he has some answers, you will not be the one to dissuade him.
"Kim Possible had support," Drakken says. "All kinds of it. Her family always had her back – always were there to help if she needed it, that is. So did that…that boyfriend, who was her best friend long before they started dating. She had another group of close friends at school, and there were a whole bunch-load – as the teens today say – of other humans whom she'd saved from something or another and were always happy to assist her.
"Shego, on the other hand…she didn't have any of that. She walked away from her family a long time ago. She had friends within the villain community, of course, but they were casual friendships, not the kind where you tell your whole life story and get comforted." The throat-bump seems to swell. "She was afraid to let anyone get too close to her."
There is something hauntingly familiar in his description. Only one detail keeps it from achieving reality.
"But she had you," you say.
The skin underneath Drakken's eyes wedges up to the dark circles beneath them. "Yes, well, she didn't trust me either. She knew it was a cutthroat business she was in, and she didn't expect loyalty from her cohorts. For the longest time, she refused to believe that I would've done anything for her if she'd let me." He abandons slurping and takes a large, wild bite of his ice cream. "In her defense, I was so wrapped up in myself that when she made it difficult, I forgot to keep trying."
"Does she trust you now?" you ask.
"Barely," Drakken grumbles. "Apparently it takes quite awhile to overcome a lifetime of pushing other people away. My point being: Shego thought it made her stronger, but it actually weakened her." Drakken flaps his hand through the air. "But if Shego asks, you didn't hear it from me!"
You look at him, and you know your forehead is creased. "If Shego asks, I still did hear it from you. . . but I don't tell her that."
Drakken's fingers click imprecisely off each other. "Exactomundo! Really, it's the only advantage I can find that Kim Possible could've had over her." Drakken releases a hefty sigh. "I don't want to see you get to that point, Lapis. Never, ever, ever."
It takes several moments and several more licks of ice cream before the concept crystallizes inside you. If such a short lifetime without trust can damage Shego, the prospect of its harm on an ageless being is staggering. You also see Steven's reflection, Shego's exact opposite, soft and stumbling. He is not merely content with saving his planet – he saves everyone he knows, even those who act against it.
He is the strongest one of them all, human or Gem.
"I know you have to be strong, and I'm not trying to keep you from that." The respect in Dr. Drakken's voice is every bit as gentle and without obligation as it was before learning you were an Elite. "But the more you're taken care of, the more strength you'll have in reverse – errr, make that reserve – when you need it."
Drakken's forehead rumples like a soft sheet of metal. "The better you're taken care of?" he poses. "The more you're taken care of better? Gaagh, I know there's a more eloquent way to say that!"
He is right. And yet there is a misshapen beauty in his words, and something inside your gem rustles to accept it.
You have no choice but to be silent whenever there is a clash in your being, and you are happy to listen when Dr. Drakken adds, "And it's not just that I'm taking care of you, either. You help take care of me – like you did when I was sick." He hooks a chunk of cone with his bottom teeth and slides it in, the lesser blacks of his eyes as loose and sloppy as what remains of his ice cream, ready to run over. "We take care of each other. That's what you do in a relationship. It's like – it's kind of like –"
"A fusion." The word upon which your nightmares hang slips softly and unflinchingly from your lips. "A good one, I mean."
Surprise flashes across Drakken's face, only to be quickly overrun by the grin so much like Steven's, the one that attracts the light and then shares it so freely. "Yes! That's it, exactly! A fusion!" His palms clap together with the stump of his cone, gnawed into ragged peaks, between them. "Why didn't I think of that?"
"Because you can't do it," you reply. It's only natural that it would not be the first example to rise in his mind. You release the anchors on your own smile and let it surface. "But you're cool anyway."
Dr. Drakken beams with pride, and you watch his chest ride in and out with his eager breaths. This does feel surprisingly close to what you have seen exchanged between Ruby and Sapphire: a harmony and scope larger than the two of you, and both of you belonging together, rather than one to the other. Drakken's sigh is only a measure behind yours.
Your legs feel as though you have unraveled them and found them to be much longer than you anticipated them to be. A disturbance rings through your physical form, conditioned by eons spent in cruel curls. You have to fight to keep your knees from pulling up and retreating into the bareness of your middle.
Dr. Drakken is a much faster eater than you are – having already consumed his cone, he now pats his stomach in satisfaction. While the ice cream was only vaguely solid, the cone itself is much more firmly affixed in its state of matter; it takes your inexperienced teeth, so much smaller than Drakken's, time to adjust to it. Drakken doesn't utter anything, be it a word or a hacked portion of one, but when you lean against him, you can feel the energy in him waving back and forth like kelp fronds.
When you glance toward the fountain, your powers draw in on themselves, as if they can somehow hide from their own existence. Tendrils of water sprinkle the effortless flow, creating only sparse ripples which are instantly whisked away by the forever motion of it. So delicate, so harmless.
Though your back arches more than you would like, you manage to lift your chin, assert it.
"Ahhh. Could this be any more beautiful?" Even speaking at a hush, Dr. Drakken easily traipses over the stillness. You don't mind.
"Yes," you say. On an impulse, with the fear left lagging behind, you swirl to face the fountain and you absorb the water's willingness. Your hands drop slowly to your sides, the water suspended inside you for a living, coursing instant, before they ascend and you begin to stir them, your fingertips folding in the manner of old scrolls. You push your longest finger down and lift your thumb, and the froth at the top of the fountain takes on definition, becomes two distinct figures: a human cradling the hand of a Gem and easing her into a dip uncolored by shame.
A birdlike sound comes from Dr. Drakken's throat, followed by a rather embarrassed chuckle. "Oh! Ah! Oh, I keep forgetting you can do that."
For some reason, this sounds like a compliment.
You watch Water Lapis and Water Drakken frolic for a bit longer as beside you, the true Drakken hums the bars of some Earth song through his closed mouth. A feeling of division flits across you, deeper and more genuine than your body itself. It is as though you have one foot planted on Earth , the other on Homeworld; one shoulder blade is strong and the other weak; one arm rushes forward to meet Drakken's zeal, while the other remains in Jasper's derisive grasp.
It's the feel of your gem not cracked…yet bruised, and you wish you could spit it out the way you did with the greasy pizza.
You do the next best thing – you stand up, your skirt filming in the mall's captive air, and rotate in the direction of the store that plunges jewelry into ears. "I think I'm ready to do something. But I need your help," you tell Drakken. "Will you come with me?"
He is already jogging beside you to keep up with your longer legs. "Lapis, you aren't going to go in and ask them…?"
"No, I'm not gonna ask them to pierce my ears," you say. Your wings are oddly lax inside you, warm with a sense of urgency. "There's something else I need to do."
Strange looks are exchanged when you and Dr. Drakken enter the jewelry shop. No one says anything, though, the atmosphere soundless and reverent as a temple as you creep toward the counter.
Atop it sits an object almost eclipsed by its own glare.
It is round, but not as round as Drakken's eyes grow. He shapes the words, Are you sure? with his lips.
You nod; your vocal cords have melted away.
The mirror is edged in silver, you can see as you approach, smooth like a Pearl's gem, with no ridges or facets to get in the way. Its upward tilt is almost friendly as it brings the prisms of light it reflects up to you.
Centimeter by centimeter, you encroach on its territory, the ground nothing more than magma beneath you.
At last you are within its sight. You are not breathing; you haven't been breathing for some time now.
You are also not devoured.
With one hand cupped around the opposite, jerking elbow, you take a seat and catch the sight of your own face. Your cheeks are pinched, the tip of your nose almost white, and yet there is something about this Gem that contradicts those. If you didn't know it was you, you would say she looks brave.
You raise your left eyebrow, and your reflection raises its right. You take in a pointy chin and wide, firm blue eyes. You even open your mouth to examine the long dark tunnel of your throat, which feels thick and scrambled, as though it is actually a thing of substance rather than just for show.
This mirror is powerless, unworthy of the menace beating in your memory. It is nothing.
One last glimpse at yourself reveals a tic of a smile before you turn back to Dr. Drakken and widen your eyes. "You're right, dear," you say, planting a note of uppity concern in your voice. "In this light, I do look blue."
The counter humans gape at each other, and you laugh so hard you fall off the stool.