Sky Blue, Ocean Blue

by purplegirl761

When a reformed mad scientist befriends a stranger to Earth who's also haunted by the past, neither of them suspects that their blossoming relationship will carry them through everything from ice cream to intergalactic warfare. Welcome aboard a little ship I like to call Drakkis.

21. Poof

~I'm back, everyone! This was my first time writing for Jasper, as well as my first rewrite of an episode, and I enjoyed both immensely. :D

This chapter goes out to all the Lapis fans. Especially anyone else who's suffering from "Seriously? After five months, you go and pull and that?" syndrome. Sigh. . . I hope this helps.

There is only one nightmare in the flow of the next two weeks, and it only has the chance to form vague, threatening shapes before you are shaken awake by a pair of insistent green hands, and someone's nasally words brush your face: "It's okay. You're home."

You never bothered to correct her.

This barn on this planet is as close to home as you will likely ever get now. It still seems a lesser home to you, with a stratosphere that clouds and leaks; cold that browns and empties the fields each year; and lifespans that endure for only a blink. Yet the beautiful, shining Homeworld you loved is now nothing more than reflective glass in your mind. Perhaps it has always been.

And you have spent enough time dwelling in the circumference of reflections.

Earth rain is more willful and disorganized than its oceans and rivers, yet still trainable; the drops are every bit as adoring and eager to please you as any other type of water you have ever encountered. The fields that turn brown every year will fill with vibrancy again come the next year. Human life is that much more precious for being so short and breakable.

The barn is yours now, yours and Peridot's. You two have made it your own, stamped your marks on it without ruining it, a new thing for you. You picked up the flat of the truck where Steven once slept and jammed it through the barn's upper foldout windows. So far it's holding quite nicely, and Peridot has brought up her television to create a special viewing nook. A hole in the wall has been filled with a small pool of water and a school of gray fish from the ocean, along with Peridot's stuffed creature – not a teddy bear, but a green thing with a bulbous head and eyes to match. The smaller-than-average lake now has a metal railing bent over its side, courtesy of Peridot's newfound abilities, turning it into a swimming pool, which Steven told you is a contained patch of water that humans use for swimming when there is no ocean nearby. Steven was in awe when he first saw it earlier today.

Now Dr. Drakken stands before the barn, looking every bit as amazed. He's paused in the middle of a question, probably one about how you are faring, his eyes and mouth planetary circles. "Lapis?" he finally says.

You pause Camp Pining Hearts. The episode is diverting, but nothing compared to a visit from him. "Hi, Dr. Drakken!" you say, floating down to the ground beside him.

"You've…you've redecorated," Drakken says.

That is the human word for it, then. The only terms you could think of – colonize, convert – bring to mind efficiency and lifelessness, which don't fit this at all.

You turn and wave him forward. "Come on in and look around," you say.

Rounder and rounder Drakken's eyes grow as he takes in the projects scattered around the barn's interior: the rotating bars hung with a baseball bat, cap, and glove; the leaf whose significance you had to downplay in front of Amethyst held by dried mud; the bathroom-toilets you recognize from Global Justice. You raise and bend the water for a moment before letting it swish back into the porcelain bowls. The very tempo of it soothes you in a place only water can reach.

"You've done…art," Drakken says.

"That's what Steven called it today, too," you say. You tilt your head at him. "Up 'till then, I'd just been calling it 'meepmorp.'"

Drakken frowns. "Meepmorp?"

You shrug. "You make up words all the time."

"True," Drakken says with a cheery nod. "So…you've just been meepmorping the place up?"

Now it is a verb, apparently. You erase the boundary lines from your smile, the ones you locked into place when you saw Amethyst arrive along with Steven, the ones you relaxed only when you played the bell-disk. "Yeah. Do you like it?" you ask.

"Love it!" Drakken says. "It has a hint of an evil-lair vibe to it…well, without the evil. Just the quirkiness. I guess we could call it a mischief lair."

You almost groan inside at how silly it sounds. At least it is not as bad as "Gem cave," which Peridot has begun calling it after hearing something similar on her TV. Caves are dark, eerie places tantamount to the ocean floor, and your barn is not a cave.

It's not the enthusiastic response Drakken was hoping for, you realize, and you glance at him to see if you have hurt his feelings. Instead, he has honed in on the meepmorp on the far wall – the circular mirrors, one on either side of a cutting of Camp Pining Hearts, saying over and over, "I just feel so trapped."

That is not your favorite meepmorp, but it's the one of which you are proudest. When you hung those mirrors on the wall, the feeling that swept across your back threatened to rip the ground from under you, yet you met it without caving, without turning and running. And when you were done, when you had harnessed it, something whipped through you, something raw and victorious. You will stare at it every day, until the rawness recedes and only the victory remains.

"Let me guess what this represents to you," Drakken says.

"It represents Camp Pining Hearts," you say. "Because I really like that show. Don't read too much into it."

Drakken cocks half his eyebrow at you. It is not a subtle movement, and it strips your brashness down to bare the feeble words you didn't even realize resided at the core: "I'm fine."

You turn your gaze to the floor. "Well, Peridot says not every meepmorp has to represent something that makes you feel good." You look up enough to steer Drakken over toward Peridot's crushed tape recorder, a long shining string of recording-tape slithering in and out of its shards and wires like an eel through a shipwreck. "She kept this one to remind herself of how I smashed her tape recorder. You know, back when I hated her."

It is the farthest you will venture into the truth for now; its path leads down a cliff into a raging surf you haven't been Taught to tame.

Your choice of reflections always turn out better than your explanations anyway.

"So, we're alone today?" Drakken asks.

"Yeah. Peridot took Amethyst and Steven on a" – you hunt for the phrase Steven used – "field trip. To one of the Quartz Kindergartens. The one where the Jaspers grew."

Drakken squints at you, and you know he sees nothing to confirm his worries. The name itself has no power over you – you have had a passing acquaintance with several other, less malevolent, Jaspers, for whom fierceness was a weapon they could tuck back into their Gems once the battle was over.

"I didn't feel like joining them," you say quietly.

You glance at Dr. Drakken, hoping it will be enough. He, however, has already been distracted by something else, and for that you are grateful. When you arrive at his side, he has picked up a book with a cover as pink as Steven's shield. Looking up from it is a huge-eyed girl with Aquamarine-hued hair tied back in a fashion similar to Drakken's, although hers is pulled higher and not nearly as charmingly mussed.

"Pretty Hairstylist," Drakken reads. "Hmm, what's this?"

"It's called Pretty Hairstylist," you tease. "I've been reading these. They aren't like any of the books I've ever seen, though. They have pictures of everything, and the characters' words come out of their mouths in bubbles, which seems pretty ridiculous to me. I've never known anything that spoke in visible words. There's a beast on Kindergarten Base 12's moon that makes visible shapes and colors when it roars, but –"

"It's a manga," Drakken interrupts you. He speeds through the pages. If he were truly trying to read them, his eyes would be tracking and then tangling, so you know he is only giving it a quick check.

"What's that?" you say. "It sounds like a plant you could grow – but obviously it's not."

"It's a Japanese comic book," Drakken says.

You consider the book. "I wouldn't say it's especially comic."

"Oh, no. That's just what that type of book is called – the type where they draw everything that happens instead of just telling you, and where the characters talk in bubbles. A comic book." Drakken's eyes twinkle with authority. "And manga is a style of comic book from a country called Japan. I know that because my friend – whose name I never can –"

"Ron," you supply.

"Yes, thank you. He's been to Japan a bunch of times. Even his baby sister came from Japan." Drakken sinks, cross-legged, to the floor, and you lower yourself to sit across from him. "So I know a manga when I see it. What's it like?"

"Weird," you answer him. "It's about these four women who go to a hair salon every week – Adelaide, Betty, Carrie, and Dawn – and their friend Elaine. She's the one who runs the hair salon. She doesn't ever give them lollipops, but they seem to like her anyway. And they worry about the weirdest stuff.

"Adelaide is afraid her 'company' is going to 'go out of business,' and then she won't have a purpose – a Job – anymore. Then she won't be able to afford to highlight her hair, which I didn't even think was something humans spent money on. Besides, I've seen a highlighter at a store, and they only asked for three of your dollars for it. Now, Betty, she's worried her – husband? –"

"The man she's married to," Drakken says.

You nod and continue. "She doesn't think he's interested in her anymore, so she wants to get a makeover, but the others say it isn't worth it, because he has extra tires, which must be a bad thing.

"Carrie's worried that the government will take away the tanning beds because they cause a corruption called cancer, and then she'll be pale forever. And Dawn wants a new haircut to impress the new guy at her work, who's a 'hunk.' I don't know what he's a hunk of, but I'm guessing Quartz, because they keep mentioning he's really tall and strong." You transfer the book from Drakken's lap to yours and tilt your head at it. "And Elaine's afraid that people hate her because she's prettier than everyone, and I didn't know that was something that happened, either."

You turn your palms upward to Drakken.

"Juicy!" Drakken says, opening a grin as wide as the barn doors. "Oh, speaking of which" – he sticks his hand into the pocket of his coat-of-labs and roots around until he finds four small paper squares in various shades of red – "I brought Starbursts for you to try. I think they taste wonderful, but you get to decide for yourself." He drops one into your hand.

You stare at it, resting on your palm. You know Dr. Drakken wouldn't ask you to eat a square of paper, so you grasp the top overlap of the paper and tug it. It comes away with a tiny tearing noise, and you give it another, rougher pull and keep pulling, until a tiny, moist pink rectangle has been scraped free from the paper. This you place between the front rows of your teeth and bite timidly into.

"Attagirl!" Drakken crows.

You have seen starbursts before, and this is not a starburst. This is what nectar smells like, pure unwatered-down nectar that drenches your tastebuds and brings a wave of saliva up to contend with it. Another bite, and the saliva rolls down over your bottom lip. You let the square roll out with it back into your palm.

If Drakken notices the drool hanging from your chin, it doesn't bother him. "Do you not like it?" he asks.

"Yeah, I like it." You swallow. "It's just…so much. I think I need to get used to it."

Drakken nods again. "Does it make you feel weird?"

"What? Eating Starbursts?" You look around for a place to set your half-eaten treat and its discarded paper.

"No. Reading that manga."

"No," you say. "Why would it?"

"Oh, I don't know." Drakken's shoulders rise. "Sometimes when I used to read stuff like that, it would make me feel bad about myself because I wasn't a – a hunk."

You aren't sure what a hunk is, but if it's something good, Drakken probably already is one.

"No. I feel like those characters are weird. I don't know why I keep reading it," you confess. You finally place the Starburst onto the book. Since you own the book for now, this will show Peridot that the candy, too, is yours.

"It's addicting," Drakken says.

You feel your eyes widen. "Addictions are bad. They did a special Camp Pining Hearts about that."

"Oh, not that kind of addiction!" Drakken is hasty to assure you. "They just call it that because once you start reading, it's hard to stop until you're done."

"Oh." You glance back down at the book's cover. "Yeah, I guess you could say that. Mostly I feel sorry for them. They're so lucky that these are the biggest problems they have, and they don't even know it. I keep hoping they're going to become better people."

"You know what? I love that," Drakken says.

As always, you're fascinated by the limpid emotions that zigzag across him. They are what you must focus on now if you are to be as honest as you have vowed to be. "I should probably go ahead and tell you that Jasper came back," you say.

Drakken nearly chokes, and his own Starburst comes flying from his mouth. "Jasper?! Where?"

"I haven't seen her yet, but Steven has – and Connie – and Amethyst." You speak to your knees even though you have nothing to be ashamed of. "Steven and Connie found her in the North Lands."

"The North Lands?" Drakken smiles smugly. "Dang, girl, you know how to water-punch!"

Pride curls shyly down your back. "She came back and fought all three of them on the beach. Steven said she was making fun of Amethyst for being too small. She poofed Amethyst – you know, did to her what Bismuth did to me." You swallow again; the taste of Starburst has fled. "And then tried to shatter her."

Drakken's brow puckers. "For being short? What's that about?"

"Amethyst stayed in the ground too long," you tell Drakken. "She's supposed to be as big as Jasper."

You have never much cared for Amethyst, yet right now she has your sympathies. Here on Earth, she has probably never received so much as a sneer for her size. Personally, you like it – you are able to look at her without seeing Quartz soldiers marching into battle, without remembering Jasper's soul caressing your powers.

"And now she's self-conscious," Drakken surmises. "Lovely."

"Uh-huh," you say and rush to change the subject. "So now I know what kissing on the mouth is. I saw it on Camp Pining Hearts."

The soft blue of Drakken's face flushes. "Oh, you did, huh?"

"Yeah." You can sense your own cheeks darkening, though not as deeply as they would in the company of anyone else. "It looks kind of uncomfortable. And Pearl says a lot of germs are spread that way."

You think back to the characters slamming their mouths together, as though they urgently need to fuse and this is the closest they can come. You touch a finger to your lips, trying to imagine that pressure there, and for now you can only see yourself panicking under it.

"So we don't need to do that yet," Drakken says, his voice unusually high.

You shake your bob from side to side. "No. We don't need to do that yet."

"So…Jasper made was on Earth, huh?" Drakken says.

You scoot your toes into the tilted shaft of light coming through the barn doors. "Yeah. She was."

Drakken clasps his hands behind his back as he always does right before he takes the floorboards at a thoughtful pace. "I can't understand why someone would try to destroy the planet where they were made." He crooks a smile sideways at you. "Conquer it, yes, but not destroy it."

You hadn't thought of it that way before, and the image of Jasper, locked and ready to cut down the planet that gave her life for the glory of a planet onto which she had yet to set foot, gapes open in your mind for an instant. "I guess, as far as Jasper was concerned, Earth had already fulfilled its Purpose when it made the Quartzes and after that it was time to move on," you say.

Reaching out, you snap up the triangular instrument that matches Peridot's head right before it would snare Drakken's heel. He looks down at the thing as if only now aware of its existence, and then his eyes draw to the long-necked horns, to the wooden sticks birdlike in their beaks and their song, and to your bell-disk. "You have…instruments," he says.

"Peridot was playing with them earlier. Well, she says she was using them for scientific purposes – you know, to test her metal powers. Steven said this barn used to belong to his family. They never threw anything away." You pick up the bell-disk and run your hand over its smooth, gliding surface, wondering how a texture so tight can be so near to liberation.

Dr. Drakken bounds to his feet, grinning as though he has seen in you something that fulfills a half-mad search. "How nice of them!" He lifts a stick off the floor and holds it to his mouth; he's smart enough to know that it can't amplify his voice, so he must be pretending. "Lapis –" he flicks a finger at you – "please give me a beat."

You begin to hit the bell-disk.

Drakken's sigh breezes toward you. "Wow. What a nice change of pace." He presses his arms to his hips and wiggles them as he calls, "Yo-yo-yo!"

Two "yo"s make the name of a toy, Steven has told you. Three must make the beginning of a song, although Drakken begins not to sing the words, but to let them patter out in rainfall that synchronizes with the rhythm of the bell-disk.

I used to be Drew

One day I turned blue

As a suede shoe or a berry

Was a little bit scary

And I ponytail my hair-y

Ponytail. That must be what his tied-up batch of hair is called. As you look at it now, in its gleeful spring that holds it above his neck, you can see its resemblance to a tail – one belonging to a small tame wolf, since you've never seen a pony.

Got me a nasty scar

And a funky-fresh flying car

Now Drew be Dr. Drakken

So quit that yakkin'

Think I'm out? Ha, I'm back in!

Say goodbye to doom rays

Today is a brand-new day!

No more Drakken-as-a-villain

Being a hero's just as thrilling

Come on, let me hear you say:

Today is a brand-new day!

Had dreams to rule the world

Then I met a nice blue-skinned girl

I can't quite say I've settled down

But I live agreeably in town

And I'll never burn another building to the ground…on purpose, anyway

I owe a lot to my Hydro-Pollinator –

"Lapis!"

Someone's frantic shout fires from the transistors Peridot recently installed in the barn's eaves.

Drakken drops the stick and lets it roll away. "Maybe it's for the best," he mutters. "I'd have my work cut out for me finding a rhyme for that."

The sound of him pales away at the tidal wave of terror now rolling from the transistor. It's Peridot calling your name, and her voice sounds even tinnier than usual, as though she is speaking into the hollow tubes of her limb enhancers. "Lapis, calling Lapis! Come in, Lapis!" she shrieks.

You fly into the eaves and perch there, parting your lips near the speaker. "What is it, Peridot?" you say.

"We need reinforcements!" Peridot says. "Quick!"

"Reinforcements for a field trip?" you say.

"Jasper's here!"

The scornful snort you were carrying dissolves in your nose. "What? Really? Jasper's there?"

"Yuh-huh, and she's got a whole army of Corruptions with her!"

Dr. Drakken vaults across the barn toward you, and you hear him stumble several times. Steven is there. Steven is there, in the remains of a Kindergarten, with Jasper and the remains of Gem soldiers. He has only Peridot and Amethyst to protect him, and while you know they both love Steven with all their power, you cannot imagine them winning a battle against Jasper, against this Gem who sees only the instigator of the rebellion when she looks at him.

You set your jaw. "Drakken and I will be right there."

"Oh, Drakken's here? Great! The more the better!" Peridot says, so perkily that your wings ache. "Wow thanks! I'm gonna call Garnet and Pearl! See you soon!"

The transistor crackles back to silence.

Dr. Drakken rotates you around to face him, the lump in his throat plunging as he swallows. "Lapis…you don't have to do this if you're not ready."

There is a sharp crack to his encouragement, a crack that would be happier if you stayed put and kept yourself safe. You stare beyond him, seeing neither your meepmorps nor Peridot's lake, only the Rose Quartz shield colliding with Jasper's chest.

"I'm ready," you say.

This might be a lie – you're not sure – but where Steven is concerned, it doesn't matter.

Drakken looks at you for a full Earth-minute before he finally nods. His dark eyes are liquid patches of mud. "All righty then," he says. "Let's get this party started." You can hear the buoys fighting to stay calm, to resist the wind. "I mean – we just pulled off the world's first rap with tambourine accompaniment, so we can do anything!"

His pitch bounces high on the last few words, and you blink at him.

"Wow. Sorry. That sounded so much like Kim Possible's catchphrase that I sort of – heh-heh – slipped into my Kim Possible voice," Drakken explains.

You let yourself laugh since you know it will be the last time for quite awhile.

Together you slip onto the chilly warp pad. You raise your arms and push them to the sides, and a great rush of universal energy blooms up from the ground below and raises both you and Dr. Drakken. Warp pads are largely unnecessary for Lapises, and you haven't used one in a long time. You had almost forgotten how the world is condensed to a narrow panel on each side of you, how your gem detects the movement before your artificial body can catch up, how its slice always points upward no matter the direction of your destination, how the pressure beats down on your arms, lighter than your ocean but also less cooperative.

The current tumbles Drakken, unfolding his legs above his head. You reach a hand up to him. Blue sky and grass become unsparing sun and desert sand before you have pulled Drakken back into orbit at your side. His mouth kicks open to howl, though you have already left sound far behind.

Something flashes – blue-white, brilliant – and you hear the jangle that instructs your arms to fall. They do, and you immediately scan the terrain for Steven while Drakken curls beside you, breathing as if he is suddenly bad at it.

You spy black curls ninety-six Earth centimeters above the ground, backed against a rock wall alongside a smaller shaggy Quartz head and a green triangle, and snarl your hands into fists. The emergence holes, warped by haste as paper is warped by water, have been barred over, turned into prisons. From within, you can hear the cries and growls and endless torment of the Corrupted.

Jasper snaps around toward the sound of the warp pad. She is the same as you remember her: shark teeth bared; shoulders wider than some of her cages thrown back, weapons themselves; eyes scouring for any weakness to exploit or strength to steal. You can see your image mirrored in the amber rings, stunningly pale around the dark centers, before she squints, squeezing your reflection until it is a defenseless blur. The fear that touches your Gem is a bird – it lands first with feathers, then with talons, the only feeling in a vast gray sea of nothing.

You do not fear Jasper's fire any longer. Everyone knows water quenches fire. You only fear what will be left behind afterward.

She belongs here, you can see, even more than she belonged on the seabed. She is as dry, toughened, and alone as everything else indigenous to the desert. The harsh orange of her skin is distinguished from the stones behind her only by the fury boiling beneath it.

Yet to belong somewhere and to be at home there are not the same thing, you realized some time ago. Jasper has no home; the cruelty that looks back at you has been so deprived it does not even sense its own loss. It is more her planet than yours, but you know it is nothing but a wasteland she sees.

The purple form across from her is a blur, the green one on the other side focused but flickering; only Steven, between them, achieves glass-clarity. You take to the sky, disturbing flecks of sand when you drop to the ground in front of Steven.

Jasper takes you in. She views you differently, her hatred now filtered through admiration. A look of pure loathing would have fortified your wings; now, however, they threaten to shrivel.

You fight your way through it and tilt your head up. "Get out of here, Jasper," you say. "It's over."

Jasper whips a laugh at you. "Over? Lapis, it hasn't even started. I have an army now!"

Even before you focus on the wall behind Jasper, you know you will regret it, and you're right. All of the lopsided or mis-sized holes are striped from top to bottom with metallic rods. One Corruption paces near the bars. As it – as she – turns, you glimpse a telltale mane, bushy and beige rather than the friendly pink of Steven's lion friend's, and you immediately look away. While denying it will not make it unreal, you would rather not ask and have it ratified.

The warp pad jangles again with the arrival of Pearl and Garnet. "So do we," you say, staring Jasper down, refusing to remember how her gem felt on Malachite's nose.

Jasper swivels, shifting her attention to something beyond you, and though you have never seen confusion visit her face before, you know that's what you are witnessing now. You follow it right to Dr. Drakken, who skitters across the sand and stone toward you, puffing as though to maximize his air.

"What is that thing?" Jasper says.

You can't even answer her.

"I mean, it can't be a Gem." Jasper's eyes are riveted on Drakken's approach, growing more slanted with every step he takes. "Has to be something lower. I mean, look at those twig arms! Even the runt could beat that."

Amethyst clamps her arms together as if fending off high tide. You have never seen her look fiercer or more fragile.

Once again, you can't speak. There is nothing you can say that will demonstrate to Jasper how those twig arms feel when they fold around you.

Jasper grunts. "Definitely defective, whatever it is."

Drakken is now in earshot yet doesn't appear to have been listening at all. His neck is pulled tight, sectioned into stringy, pulsing wells. Pink teems beneath his blue skin, a furious sunrise. He has shown longer anger before, wider and more rapid anger, but it has never been deeper than this.

"And. You. Must. Be. Jasper," Drakken sifts through his teeth, bared and jammed together. "I've heard. So much. About you!"

Jasper looks at him in the way she regards all of Earth's imperfections – a visage so steeped in judgment, she could be an Elite.

She could be a Lapis.

You jerk in front of Drakken and swipe your arms out, though you know he's bigger than you, that you cannot shield him. "He's just a human," you say.

Jasper's huff is a rockslide. "The last one you told me was 'just a human' turned out to be Rose Quartz!"

"Steven isn't Rose!" you cry with a roll of your eyes.

Jasper's massive forehead puckers for a moment. She is still unaccustomed to you talking backward, or whatever it was Drakken said about Shego that one night.

Drakken sticks his hand up as though in an attempt to hail a passing ship. "Wait, who's Rose Quartz?"

Pearl throws him a look that could have been forged in tandem with her spear.

You see it for only a moment before Jasper pivots in front of you, blocking all three reinforcements from view with her thick arrangement of muscle. In two vast steps, she has edged you against the opposite rock wall, into a space too narrow for your wings to even materialize.

"Ya know, Lapis, my offer still stands." Jasper lowers her voice. Only coherence and coercion distinguish it from the Corrupted's.

This time, you don't need to glance at Steven or Drakken. You say, "Nope. Never," and when Jasper's eyes don't let you go, you snap your hand back, thrust it forward –

And it dangles in midair, a limp, useless anemone.

Of course. You should have sensed it the minute you touched down in the desert, but your concern for Steven outweighed all else. Now your gem squirms under it – the grasping, futile lack, the burn of it. You wonder if this is how humans feel when they are deprived of oxygen, and you are earnestly sorry that you've ever done such a thing to any of them.

Jasper's leer strikes you harder than a blow. "Yeah? What are you gonna do now, huh? Not so powerful inland, are you?"

You have seen that expression before. Next comes the fingers latching around your wrist, the quarry hammer to the stomach –

"Run, Steven!" you yell, knowing even as you do that he won't, that he never will. You make a fist, draw it back with your entire arm, and bury it with the force of an Injector into Jasper's blockish jaw.

It bounces directly off, leaving not even a grimace of pain in its wake. Jasper's eyes do startle, though, and she instinctively creeps backwards. Not even a full pace, it's long enough nonetheless for Dr. Drakken to leap between you and stretch to hold you in his shadow.

"You do not touch her!" Drakken bellows. "You do not hurt her!"

You plunge your fingers into Drakken's rickety back, ready to sweep him aside should Jasper's punch descend on him.

It doesn't. Rather, Jasper rocks her gaze over Drakken's head and sends it straight into you.

"You've got them all fooled, don't you?" Jasper's words are so thick and rancid you're almost surprised they can even find their way out. Her lip peels back. "They think you're just as sweet and innocent as you look."

You blink, and you see Jasper pinned to the ocean floor, trounced by powers that exceeded her own, bewildered by those heaving shoulders, harsh hands, and vengeful touch. In the fusionscape, she wagged her body back and forth; she did not recognize them as yours, you could tell.

Neither of you did.

The shackles of your choice could not be any colder if they still truly encircled your ankles. You feel yourself wilt as though somehow waterlogged in this waterless place.

Dr. Drakken's body stiffens against the desert wind and the difficulty of looking Jasper straight in the face. His voice lumbers out and comes to a menacing halt in front of her. "I don't think you're in any position to be judging her innocence," he says, and then he lapses into a higher pitch. "So no trash talkin', dawg!"

Jasper's tangled-brow glare lands on Drakken and does not remit. "What language is it speaking?" she asks you.

There is no point in answering her; there is no point in speaking to her ever again. Instead, you come around beside Drakken and study him. His features are all the same, but shoved into a threat, they don't at all seem to belong to the sweet, gentle Drakken from the beach. His eyes aren't naïve anymore, and they still have faith in you. Despite the dryness surrounding you, your gem tingles.

Drakken's chin remains lofted, his gaze on a collision course with Jasper's. To your great surprise, Jasper steers her eyes away first, just the barest swerve to the left.

You take that opportunity to sweep under Jasper's arm and scoop Steven up into yours. As you ascend out of her reach, Jasper makes a grab for one of your wings. The try is rather stupid, in your opinion, because the water slips between her fingers – but no one has ever tried to grab a Lapis by her wings before, and the sense of violation you feel is so thorough that you freeze in place. Once again, only the feel of Steven's dimpling elbows in your hold prevents that current from carrying you away.

The Sapphire living in Garnet knows you are going to toss Steven to her before you do. She squats, knees punching the air as though she is getting ready to catch a baseball, and you are grateful to drop Steven into the awaiting stretch of her arms.

Steven giggles as he bounces in Garnet's arms. "That was kinda fun," he says. "We should do it again sometime when we're not in mortal danger."

Straightening, Garnet whisks Steven to the side just in time. The moment is a discordant note, an eternity over before it begins, as Jasper tucks her head between her legs, making herself a fiery ball that churns so violently you almost expect the sand to turn to glass beneath her. As if launched from a Diamond's mighty palm, she rolls forward and barrels into Pearl and Garnet, sending them flying in opposite directions.

Garnet catches herself with her hands, flashing their gauntlets into place and using them to walk the rest of her body back upright. Pearl spins, in a disorganized fashion which must meet her disapproval, before knocking into a jagged outcropping of rocks off to the side. Not giving you or anyone else a chance to flinch for her, she springs back to her feet, spear at the ready. Her eyebrows ask a question as she glances at Garnet, and Garnet answers it with a faint shake of her head.

In the most selfish facet of yourself, you are relieved. You would rather fill the barn with mirrors and look into them all day that have to witness another fusion.

"Don't let her get Amethyst!" Peridot shrieks from a niche in the rock wall. She stares intently at one of the metal bars closing the Corrupted in, her face strained almost to the point of collapse. You are submerged in her powerlessness as she tries in her small, newly discovered way to help.

Amethyst stands rounded and less than half Jasper's height, her whip held in one hand, the tiny purple crystals at the end twitching in the sand – the Quartz who has never seen a war.

Empathy for Amethyst is instinctual. Diving in to protect her is not. It takes every parcel of courage you have to even stay where you are as Jasper catches the whip in one fist, uses the other to push Amethyst over on her back, and plants her boot on Amethyst's chest, just a pace below her gem.

"Look at this, runt," Jasper says. "Look at what a burden you are. Everyone here has to fight so hard for you, and you know why: because you can't do it for yourself."

You don't want to be here, watching as Amethyst's nostrils flare in a last attempt to keep the tears from spilling over. You don't want to bear witness to what will happen when Jasper shifts her foot and brings it down. Yet to turn away and flee from this is unthinkable.

It is Steven who finds his mettle first. Charging down the incline toward Jasper, he sticks his hand under the pink edge of his T-shirt and finds his shield as well. The curve of it hammers into the taut place where Jasper's back narrows under her uniform.

Jasper drops to the ground. Between grunts, she invokes the names of both the Heaven Beetle and the Moon Goddess. She pushes herself to a kneeling position, and you can see her anger absorb the pain until she is above nothing anymore.

That anger will not touch Steven.

You clip your wings at an angle, grab Steven, lift him out of Jasper's arm-span, and fly him over to the relative safety of Peridot's stony nook. Sand grains buck into the air with the knell of Jasper's footfalls.

"Really, Lapis?" Jasper says. "After all we've been through together?"

Heart, lungs, stomach – you shapeshift them all at once, so that the sound of her has no space to fill inside you. You wish desperately that she would call you "brat" again.

"You leave her alone!" someone cries.

You don't have to glance back to see that it is Dr. Drakken, and when you do, you're not at all startled to see sunray yellow petals erupt from his neck. A vine pokes its leaves hesitantly between them.

Jasper's next step never meets the ground. She gawks at Drakken, the white parts of her eyes bulging forward, the black parts narrow shafts that flicker over him. On anyone else, it would look like fear.

And then she changes direction.

Time thins to no more than a trickle, each droplet of a moment drifting forward one by one. Canyons are carved, mountain ranges are formed, land-masses separated and volcanoes buried in the time it takes Jasper to snatch Drakken up by the front of his coat-of-labs, split her smile open, and shapeshift her helmet. Your weakened powers grip inside you as the blunt, golden end appears over her forehead.

It aims directly at Drakken's face as Jasper draws her neck back.

That attack left Steven unconscious and bruised his eye the day your world shattered, and he is half Gem. You stood by and let it happen rather than turn on your own kind.

You don't have those reservations anymore.

"No!" you hear yourself squeal. You pin your wings almost flatly to your back and zip through the air, fingers spread, ready to intercept Drakken's.

In the instant before your fingerprints can meet, Jasper flays to the side and rips her helmet off, the bladelike side glinting in the oppressive sun as she cocks it toward you. Hate flares in her eyes, and you understand with resigned terror that this was her plan all along.

The edge of her helmet drives into your chest.

This pain is not the dullness you remember hitting you in the war; this is sharp, and it is white and piercing before your senses mercifully drop away. The last of your awareness plays a medley of voices – Steven's, Drakken's, Peridot's – calling, "Lapis!"

---

"Lapis!" The blistering desert wind yanks the word from Drakken and showers him with a blast of sand.

One minute Lapis was hurtling toward him; the next her face contorted unbearably, the expression Kim Possible used to wear in all of Drakken's supervillain dreams –

And then she was gone. Not in the poetic sense, thank goodness. In the literal sense – a puff of bluish smoke and then she vanished without a trace. Even such a tiny being, in Drakken's experience, cannot slip away unnoticed while you're looking right at her.

Drakken doesn't remember barreling toward the site of her disappearance, but here he is now. He chokes, crying shamelessly, as he digs through the blistering sands for any sign of the skinny ragamuffin he loves. His hands come up holding a smooth, teardrop-shaped stone.

A smaller, liquid replica splashes onto its navy-blue surface.

"Lapis?" Drakken asks, even though the stone has no ears. Well, actually, Lapis the person-who-is-also-a-stone, has no ears either, but somehow she hears everything he says and listens – oh, she listens, like so few others do –

Steven is there beside Drakken – all of a sudden – life on fast-forward – with a whimpery Peridot next to him. "She's okay, Drakken," Steven says. "She's okay; she just poofed. Her body got hurt, and now she has to go rebuild it."

The words register as only halfway real, like the melting clocks in that one painting. Drakken can almost hear their liquefied hands ticking away inside his eardrums.

Garnet slides the stone that holds Lapis's soul out of Drakken's bewildered, reluctant hands and cusps her own around it. A pink substance materializes, and Drakken doesn't even have the urge to collect a sample for later chemical studies – all he cares about is that it packages the Lapis-stone and holds it protectively. With a flick of her wrist, Garnet sends the bubble into the sky and beyond, far out of Drakken's reach.

The only thing that keeps him from falling apart right there on the sand is that it is also out of Jasper's reach.

A thick, smoker's-lung cackle rises from in front of Drakken, as if Jasper heard him thinking her name. "You love her, don't you?" She pronounces love as if what she truly meant to say was decomposition. "Oh, Diamonds, that's rich! I bet –"

Drakken shoots to his feet. This time, he doesn't have to say, "Flower, attack Jasper," doesn't even have to think it. His vines sense the bristling in his neck and burst from it, two at a time, which – wow, he's never done that before! They take turns pummeling Jasper's face. Her growls seem to be more from surprise than pain.

Not good enough. Not good enough.

"GGGRRK! Why would you do that?" Drakken's fists tremble at his sides as he speaks in between flower-punches. "Why. Would. You. Do. That. To. Her? All she ever wanted to do was go home and be with people who love her! Instead, she went home and all she found were people like you!"

Jasper finally manages to snatch one flower and crush it between her fingers. Drakken feels its wilting, silent cry from his toes upward. "I take it you're the one she's fusing with now," she says.

Drakken reels the injured flower back in, tucking it away inside to heal. "She doesn't want to fuse with anyone anymore!" he says, concerned by how easy it is to match her snarl for snarl. "Not after you!"

Jasper smirks. "I'm a tough act to follow."

Drakken is sure he's going to be sick.

Amethyst takes this opportunity to snap her whip at Jasper from behind. Jasper whirls and barricades herself behind an arm. The whip coils around it like a submissive boa – a boa that Jasper unwinds from her arm, shifts in her enormous hand until she finds the grip, and sends flailing back toward Amethyst so that the crystals on the end clack across Amethyst's cheek. Amethyst's entire face comes to a nub at her jaw, but she doesn't move, doesn't flinch.

"Hey! You can't do that!" A war-cry – well, more like a war-yip – rises from behind Drakken. Peridot comes barreling out of her little niche and charges for Jasper, driving her elfin foot into Jasper's sequoia of a leg, over and over again.

Forget about not flinching. Jasper doesn't even so much as glance down at her. Drakken wants to rip her hair out, one lank strand at a time as she shoves Amethyst back down – hard – into the sand.

Obviously, she's never heard of picking on someone her own size.

"When are you gonna get it, runt?" Jasper says. "You – can't – win. You're defective. You were meant to be like me, but look at you!"

She lurches her weight onto Amethyst's leg with the same predatory lean Drakken saw in her right before she – she – did what she did to Lapis. He can't let her do it to anyone else.

A vine flicks out and smacks Jasper on the back of the neck. "Hey, Miss Biceps!" Drakken yells – it's the most irreverent name he could think of on such short notice. "Why would anyone want to be like you? You are not a happy person!"

One thing Drakken was not banking on was the fact that Jasper is fast for being so big, as fast as Shego. Within seconds, she stands over Drakken, her shadow devouring him, her gaze like twin sickles, and all he can see is Warmonga, all he can smell is fried circuitry and ashy hopes.

Drakken is certain the cowardly beat in his head – I don't want to die, I don't want to die – is audible to Jasper as she swings toward him. No use pretending to be brave. He gurgles and rears back, and he keeps a vine between them at all times, wiggling it back and forth to thwart Jasper's attempts to karate-chop it. He hopes she's even half as frustrated as he was when Kim Possible would do backflips out of the path of his Doomsday devices.

Jasper's feet trounce the sand as she shifts for a better run at Drakken. In the frozen moment before the necessary response can be delivered to his adrenal glands, Drakken sees Pearl and Garnet off to one side of Jasper, gauntlets and spear both at the ready, and beyond them, Steven extending a hand to Amethyst to help her up.

There there's an atomic supernova.

All right, so it's not that destructive. Nevertheless, an almost-sonic boom rings out, a plank of light shoots to the sky, and aftershocks sneeze up a spray of sand and throw Jasper, the nearest, into the rock wall with a mighty satisfying thud. Garnet must have somehow known it was coming, because she grabs Pearl with one hand and Drakken with the other and crooks a leg around Peridot just in time, so all of them remain standing.

When the sand settles, half of it finds its way into Drakken's gaping mouth.

Rising from the ground is a person – as Drakken tentatively labels her – larger than Drakken is. "Healthy-looking gray skin" should be an oxymoron, yet hers shimmers solid like the dorsal fin on a lemon shark. Her hair tumbles down over one eye, and she wears a tee that stops short of her navel and slips down one arm, revealing cute little pink freckles on her shoulder.

For an instant, Drakken is sure he's seeing a mirage, out here in the desert with nothing to replace his tears. And then he sees the gem on her chest and the one on her belly, and he understands.

"What the – ? No!" Jasper knocks her head back in what looks closer to exasperation than anything else. "Who are you supposed to be?"

"I'm pretty sure," the fusion says, "that I'm Smokey Quartz." She reaches into her chest-gem and produces an industrial-sized yo-yo, which she twirls on one finger as she ascends backward onto a flat-faced stone whose horizontal peak runs parallel to the sand.

Pearl lets out a gasp bigger around than she is, worthy of an opera singer. Drakken bounces on the balls of his feet and feels his ponytail perking upward. Smokey Quartz has the biggest grin he's ever seen skipping across her face – is it her face or their face? Steven is part of the combo, after all. And every time they move, they're creating a new geometry exercise.

"Oh, yes!" Drakken bellows. "In your face, Jasper!"

Jasper rolls her eyes, her head, her whole body while Peridot continues to whale away at her ankle. "Seriously, where did you find this thing?" she mutters.

Before anyone can answer, Jasper turns on Pearl and brings a fist that easily surpasses Pearl's shoulder span up to introduce to her.

They never meet. Jasper's arm is looped to her side by the string of Smokey Quartz's yo-yo and cinched there by the Captain-America shields on either end.

"Uh-uh-uh, I don't think so," Smokey Quartz scolds. Her voice is a finger-snapping – of the sassy teenage variety, not the drill-sergeant one.

It takes more than a few moments for Jasper to untangle herself, and then she stands there at the center of a clock, shifting from Smokey Quartz at eleven o'clock to Pearl and Garnet at high noon to Drakken at a quarter past two. Drakken's flowers are tensing just beneath his skin, his scientific mind attempting to calculate who is the most probable target, when Jasper does the last thing the odds would have ever predicted. She turns tail and bolts.

It seems too good to be true, and it is.

Jasper scrapes to a stop in front of one of her cave-holes and rips the iron bars off the front as easily as if she is crumpling a napkin. The eyeless beast, hide crawling with horns, that emerges from within is every bit as unnatural as anything DNAmy has ever created and not nearly as cute. It makes a noise like an amped-up bat and tries to scamper off to the left.

Where it is stopped. By Jasper.

"So that's what you want to play, huh?" she rasps at Smokey Quartz. "Well, don't mind if I do!"

To Drakken's utter horror, Jasper grips the creature by the two largest and most hideous horns that sprout from a fuzzy mane scattered across its head. Her elbows flare like angry nostrils as she shoves the thrashing beast away from her and then rushes it forward again – body-slamming it into her amid a burst of light. It's more hesitant-looking than the one that marked Smokey Quartz's creation, and no explosion of love blasts the sand away. There's only a cold, expectorating, unreal laugh entwined with an ancient groan.

Drakken's stomach rears like an untrained horse. Is that – is that a fusion? How? How can it be a fusion? Is that affront to man and nature – that thing down on all fours – is it somehow a Gem, too?

"Oh snap," he squeaks as he stares up into a nightmarish face. Swampish in color, it now boasts eyes – two of them, besotted with rage. Small red horns poke through the filth of its hunched, rippling body. With its quasi-blond shag of hair tangled in fierce snares down its back, it paws at the ground and huffs air too cold to be natural.

Even as Drakken's heart begins to patter against his ribcage, he tells himself he shouldn't be surprised. Jasper was terrifying when she was combined with Lapis, for Pete's sake, so course her fusion with a monster would be a new level of freak, as the teens today say.

But it isn't the monster that makes this fusion so horrific. It wasn't the monster that bore down on Lapis with the intent to kill, and it isn't the monster that now spins that same look on Smokey Quartz. The monster is nothing more than a vessel, an empty vase that Jasper poured herself into.

A metaphor far too poetic for the beast standing before him.

Everything on Drakken has frozen except for his flowers, which rush into position just inside the flesh of his neck, volunteering for duty, more reliable than his henchmen on their best days.

Beside him, Pearl seems to have been paused with her spear in midair. "Did she just do what I think she just did?" she asks. Her head shakes. "Oh, that is not advisable."

"Ya think?" Garnet grunts.

Smokey Quartz rolls their yo-yo string nervously between their fingers. Before there's any need to send it out, though, a flash of reverse lightning – straight out of a great science fiction film – rockets toward the sky.

The gross fusion's outline can only be seen from the waist down. Above that, Jasper and the monster – the other monster – writhe like a pair of volatile chemicals in a reaction that's sure to burn down the whole lab. The monster bucks to get away, and Jasper hooks onto its horn, turning it to face her.

"Come on!" Jasper says. "We can beat them if we just stay together!"

She beats her chest against the monster's. The silhouettes merge for an instant and then fall to pieces as the monster breaks loose and hightails it out of there, claws scrabbling against rock. Drakken is inclined to pity it – he would pity anything forced to bond with Jasper.

Jasper is left in a heap on the ground, her arms clasped over her helmet. The same helmet that smashed into Lapis. Caught her right at the little open space dipping in her neckline, although it probably wouldn't have mattered if she'd been wearing a Kevlar vest. Not with Jasper's strength.

Drakken nears her furiously. She laughs – a laugh whose remorseless grit is more pronounced without the monster to hinder it, a laugh that stops Drakken dead in his tracks.

"Nobody I fuse with ever wants to stay," Jasper says.

A horrible taste floods Drakken's mouth. He manages to move it just enough to say, "Gee, I wonder why that –"

Drakken trails away before he can complete what is sure to be the finest sarcastic quip ever used (at least by him). Jasper stares down at her arm, and he and everyone else stares with her. A green fungus has seeped up Jasper's hand, and it grabs for her wrist. Horns pierce it like misplaced toenails.

Smokey Quartz blinks out of existence.

A hush falls over everyone as even the grains of sand seem to be holding their breath. (Not that sand grains possess respiratory systems, but that's certainly the impression Drakken gets.) Jasper continues to watch, motionless, and Drakken sees a milliliter of fear drip across her.

The only one to move is Steven. He licks his hand and walks to Jasper's side, his strides short and chunky and never once second-guessing their path. With his spit-dripping palm, he reaches for her infected arm.

Jasper shoots away as if Steven has rabies. "Don't touch me, Rose!" she says.

That "Rose" person again. Drakken allows himself his first whimper of the day. What is going on?

Steven blinks at her, his eyebrows crumpled together. "What?" he says, and that one word is so full of sorrow that Drakken feels as if he's been dropped into the emotional climax of a movie when he hasn't even read the DVD's back cover yet.

"Yeah, now you want me, Rose," Jasper continues. "Now that I'm damaged. It's what you do, isn't it? You take good Gems and you break us, and then you recruit us into your little army. Just like you did with her."

Jasper's gaze lands on Peridot for the first time, and Peridot pokes out her chin with painful bravery.

Drakken churns his feet across the sand until he stands only inches away. "Look, I have no idea what any of this means, but I'd be more than happy to take you down," he tells Jasper frankly.

Jasper winces her upper lip back into a sneer. "You and your dinky little flowers?"

And in that moment, Drakken is not afraid, because he has seen this expression before. "They've taken down bigger aliens than you!" he says.

Steven parks himself between them before Drakken can summon a squadron of petals. The kid is crying. "Please. Let me help you," he says.

Not to Drakken. To Jasper.

She shakes her head, the green traveling up her arm in veins.

"Steven, get away from her!" Pearl cries. She still sounds like a bird, only now it's a crow.

"Jasper…" Steven gasps.

It's probably the first time her name has ever been spoken in love, and she doesn't even appreciate it. She twists away from Steven as if she can't stand to look at him.

Drakken takes advantage of that opportunity to send out his vines. It takes three of them to restrain Jasper, to rope her legs together and pin her hands to her sides, but the adrenaline moves all the more sweetly through his glands from the effort.

"You wouldn't do anything to me," Jasper says. "You're allied with the Crystal Gems. You wouldn't do anything to me."

Although Drakken isn't sure if she's even still talking to him, he glares right back at her. "Ohhhh, I wasn't always good," he says. "You want to hear my rap sheet?"

No answer from Jasper, so Drakken begins: "Robbery! Grand theft weather machine! Destruction of government property! Disturbing the peace! Abduction! Intent to harm! Unlawful seizure of others' property! Illegal brain-swapping! Attempted murder!"

Jasper's eyes grow bigger and her arm grows greener. Make that her arms. It's spread, and now they both resemble a pair of tree stumps jutting out of a swamp. Her left elbow, the grossest one, chops at her restraints until the vine finally snaps and retreats.

The feel of its brokenness slipping back inside Drakken only strengthens his grip on the remaining two vines. As much as his back wants to straighten so it'll seem bigger, it's forced to hunch, needles driving into his pelvis, under the weight of Jasper's struggle. Her free forearm flails at the air, stiffly, like she's dislocated her hinge joint.

(Drakken hopes she has. Not only will it help them defeat her, but it's really uncomfortable!)

Amethyst cuts the whip toward Jasper again. This time, it loops in barber-pole stripes down Jasper's arm, and Amethyst still holds the ends, which she pulls tight.

Jasper's face is pinched now, but not in the collapsing, vanishing way Lapis's was. Drakken calls up another vine and cinches it around her neck, careful to avoid the thorns now sprouting from its greened surface.

Seriously – it doesn't seem like she should be doing that.

"You want to know what I am?" Drakken thunders. The vines hurtle Jasper forward and then push her back. "This face –look at it! Look at it and remember: this is how it looks when you think, even for a moment, that you've lost someone you love!"

It isn't Jasper's roar that sticks Drakken in place; it's that its layer of barbed wire is beginning to unravel. "You think I don't know that?" She glares at him, eyes thick with anguish. "After what she did –"

She points at Steven, which is nonsensical for a couple of reasons: (1) Steven is not a "she," and (2) what has Steven ever done to anyone?

" – to Pink Diamond?" Jasper finishes.

Who?

Her head curves under to meet her belly and her shoulders convulse at jackhammer-speed. Another sound comes out of her mouth – inhuman is the first word that comes to Drakken, which is a no-duh, but it's not a noise he's heard any other Gem ever make before, either.

A panorama flashes before Drakken: Pearl, white and still as an icicle, her arms outstretched to Steven. Garnet grabbing Steven by the back of his shirt, yanking him out of Jasper's path. Peridot running back and forth, churning up sand. Most clearly, though, he sees how Lapis looked when Jasper's helmet found her chest. He clenches his fists and thinks of Lapis, the vines squeezing tighter – and tighter –

And then they are squeezing nothing but air. A puff scatters in the air, and a pebble-sized object drops into the sand, barely making a dent.

Drakken jumps backward, the ground beneath him as unsteady as a water bed. "Oh my gosh!" he blurts. "Did I – did I –?"

He wants her ended. He wants her ruined. What he doesn't want is the fiendish clench to his arms and legs, the old Drakken's limbs, the old Drakken's brain contaminating him as it dreams up punishments and metes them out.

"Nah, dude. She's right here." Amethyst plunges an expert hand into the sand. It comes back holding the pebble that Drakken can now identify as jasper. Amethyst stares at it for a moment with liquefied eyes and then scrolls the air around it so that the pink bubble slips into place.

It is gone with a flick of her wrist.

Drakken hits the sand with relief.

Amethyst plops down next to him. "So what's a rap sheet, anyway?" she asks. "It sounds awesome!"

Drakken lets himself grin, shaky-lipped. "Well, you don't actually rap it…" He stops and smacks his palm off his forehead. "Oh, man, I should done that! It would've been so cool!"

The follow-up laughter is missing one very important water-lapping giggle, and it all comes rushing back to Drakken. "Lapis!" he cries before he can even breathe again, and he bolts off in the first direction that appears to go somewhere.

"We're gonna take the warp pad, Nut Bar," Amethyst calls to him.

"It's Drakken!" he calls back.

And he barely hears Garnet murmur, "They were made for each other."

---

The Crystal Gems first take him back to the beach-cliff house where Steven lives. He waits – not very patiently – on the couch with Steven, Amethyst, and Peridot, as Pearl and Garnet flash their gems like ID badges at a techno door to open it. Several everlasting minutes later, they reappear with a bubbled stone the exact shade of the sea.

Garnet gives a bubble a gentle tap. It melts away, and Garnet slides the stone into Drakken's trembling hands. He gapes down at it, aware and yet stupefied to know that he is somehow holding Lapis's smile and her snort and her faithful friendship.

It might as well be the nuclear codes.

Back at the barn, Steven helps Drakken tuck the stone into a safe nest of hay, Peridot adding a few feathers she collected earlier in the summer. Drakken inches the whole bundle onto a mat on the floor, shields the top of the stone with a paperback copy of the book Lapis was reading, and waits.

And waits. And waits. And waits and waits and waits.

"How long does this take, usually?" Drakken asks.

"With Amethyst, a few minutes," Steven says. "With Pearl, a few days."

"That's of no real help," Drakken says.

Steven sighs. "I know."

Oh, well. Some things are worth waiting for.

And luckily Drakken thought to bring his old GameBoy with him.

He takes up a vigil beside the mat, twiddling his thumbs at imaginary enemy spaceships, pretending it's Jasper he's blasting to smithereens. Every three or four minutes, he checks the precious stone for any sign of Lapis and hollers over his shoulder, "Okay, she's still in there!"

Steven and Peridot thank him for the updates. Garnet and Amethyst and Pearl give nothing more than tolerant smiles. But Drakken has long passed caring whether or not he annoys them.

---

You float in the whiteness, weightless with the task of reassembling yourself.

All around you, the landscape is thick and downy, so different from the murky green of your first fusionscape. The song of the universe holds you, cradles you, no longer lost beneath Jasper's roars.

The panic you would instinctively feel is nothing but a thin vapor in the farthest corners. Last time you journeyed to this place, you were interrupted in your repairs, pinned into a mirror and left here; this time, however, there is a long, smooth stillness, a safety, as you concentrate on popping unreal joints into imaginary sockets and knitting your skin back together over them.

Nearby, the Pretty Hairstylist characters stand with countless suggestions, as if you have the luxury to deliberate over your body parts, which should curve out or poke in; or the wispy visor formed by your bangs. The highlighters they use in their hair and their lips painted the superfluous shade of a Ruby's anger flicker in you and then are quickly gone. You have no idea if you are beautiful – nor do you much care – but you are fortunate enough to have a boyfriend like Dr. Drakken, who always seems pleased with the sight of you.

You take a moment to survey the wide sweep of options. They are limited by the cut and curve of your gem – a drastic change in size is unsustainable, a shift in color or gem location impossible. Yet there are still many possible modifications: more steeply angled features, a severely-swept hairstyle to emphasize them, a top with sleeves instead of a ribbon, a skirt not so long or delicate. You consider coming back with a metal clip in your nose, like the bone-tough woman you saw in one of Peridot's magazines, or perhaps long, luxuriant hair that will toss nonchalantly over your shoulders and pair well with a blanked expression.

But it's Jasper's words that step into your construction and fill it:

They think you're just as sweet and innocent as you look.

And another image reflects, transcendent, in your memory: the little Lapis who Steven saw when she first tumbled from the mirror, with her lanky arms hugged to her body, her mussed bob, and her small whisper of a face. Jasper is right – she looked innocent. She was not innocent, not as innocent as she looked, but she was more innocent than where you are now, and for a fleeting, crucial moment, you gravitate toward that innocence in the hopes of making it the truth.

Every facet of the nothingness supporting you gives a brief shudder and then relaxes, lulled with the knowledge that it only has to restore the default. This task slides easily through it, your intentness no longer required, and settles the details one by one. You reach under you, find the thin sediment separating your soul from your body, and pull yourself through.

On your way out, you are rushed past a sun that floods your diminishing surroundings with light. Even as your physical form begins to expand and reawaken, you know that it is not Homeworld's sun, too proud to let clouds pass over it. This is a weaker, dimmer, kinder sun.

Earth's sun.

Your eyes open to the friendliest blue face that has ever been there waiting. Its smile blooms in harmony with the yellow petals around the neck. "Lapis!" Drakken cries.

"Dr. Drakken!" You sit up and frown. "Are we both alive or both dead?"

"Alive," Drakken says without hesitation. He gazes brightly around what you now recognize as the barn, dotted with meepmorps. "Much as I love what you've done with the place, I don't think this is what heaven looks like."

You are honored that he assumes you would go there with him.

A glossy sheaf of paper falls from your head and lands in your lap, leaving you staring at Pretty Hairstylist Elaine. You brush it and a scratching layer of straw aside. "We're back at the barn. We're safe. So where's –" you begin.

"Jasper?" Drakken says, as if the pressure of saying her name would send you back inside your gem. "You don't need to worry about her. She's gone."

"Shattered?" you ask. Your voice is as blank as the rest of you. You cannot afford to feel bad about this, but you don't want to feel good.

"Oh, no, no." Drakken gives his head a prompt shake. "No, she's just poofed. Like you were.

"I poofed her." Blatant pride crinkles the skin around his eyes. "With some help from Amethyst – which it turns out is a good thing, because I guess lately she's been feeling like she isn't strong enough because she's supposed to be as big as Jasper or close or something."

Your knees retreat to your chest, and you permit yourself to hold them there for a moment before pushing them away. "So in the end, I was the one who wasn't strong enough," you say.

Drakken's mouth plunges downward like a comet. "I – I don't know what to say to that. Why don't I know what to say to that? Oh, I know why. . . because it's baloney!"

"Baloney?" you say, frowning again. Pierre's father sent him off to Camp Pining Hearts with a two-month supply of baloney sandwiches, but you doubt this is what Drakken means.

"Balderdash. Hogwash." Drakken's wrist limps to one side as though in dismissal. "Nonsense."

That last one you understand, and the corners of your lips turn up.

"Lapis, really. You took a blow for me that – that probably would have killed me." Drakken's buoy-words are unsteady but sure. "You are as strong as anyone I know. And have you met Shego and Kim Possible?"

"Yeah," you say softly. "I have." You would estimate they are easily stronger fighters than you, even though Kim has no powers at all.

Yet Drakken's eyes are sincere and as wide as moons – moons still teeming with life, untouched by the Diamonds. You decide to believe them.

Drakken's grin beams brighter than ever and then slips away. "You know, something really weird happened to Jasper right before –" his tone lifts in triumph – "I poofed her."

"Weirder than how Jasper already is?" you snort.

Drakken nods with no trace of merriment. "Steven and Amethyst ended up fusing on accident to take Jasper down – you'll have to get them to show you sometime, because that was pretty amazing – and Jasper I guess couldn't stand being taken down by a fusion again, so she got an idea. A bad idea."

"I don't think Jasper has good ideas." You speak with your nose wrinkled; it distracts you from the last time Jasper got an idea – and you surpassed it with your own.

"She tried to fuse with one of those big monster things – that I didn't know were Gems too – so I guess you do learn something new every day," Drakken says.

You freeze with your fingers in the straw. Drakken's statement floats far beyond reach. She fused with a Corruption? Your dread is formless, undefined, for that is without precedent.

"No. No way. Not even Jasper would –"

"She did, though!" Drakken barges in. "But the monster wasn't okay with that, and so it ran away from her – which, I mean, when the monsters are running away from you, it's time to re-evaluate your life as far as I'm concerned!

"Anyway, the monster ran away, and Jasper had to know her number was up, you know what I mean? But then – she started getting moldy? Or something?"

"Moldy?" you repeat. You have heard of mold, a close cousin to moss, but it has never been something that affects Gems.

"I don't know!" Drakken flings his elbows toward the sky, his long arms nearly folding to touch his own shoulders. "She slowly turned green, and not a nice green like Shego, either. Very nasty shade. And she grew horn-thingies all over her, too. It seemed like something infectious to me, but of course Gems don't get sick –"

Whatever else he says blurs past you. A stab of cold down your back marks the extent of your awareness.

"She got corrupted," you breathe.

"Corrupt – wha? What's 'corrupted'?" Drakken says. The blinking face in front of you notes something meaningful inside your words but can't sift through to find it.

It is your turn now to give him information, and its crushing weight can't be doubled by sharing it. "It's what turns Gems from being like this" – you gesture to yourself –"into those monsters."

Drakken's eyes start forward. "You mean – that monster's not just some weird variety of Gem? It used to be – a regular one?" His buoy-voice threatens to fall apart.

Gaze on your toes, you nod. The wind loosens a leaf from a nearby tree and delivers it safely to the ground.

You won't weep for Jasper being poofed and perhaps wouldn't mourn her shattering either. Being corrupted, though, is something else altogether. Losing your body is brief, shattering is quicker still, but corruption can take many agonized minutes. You watched it happen from your captivity in the mirror, and it was far worse to see that than the collapse of a proud star.

Once a Gem is corrupted, their existence is as drained, as lifeless and bleak and hollowed-out, as anything in the vicinity of the Kindergarten. The terrible difference is that a Corruption remains conscious, somehow, through it all. Alive but mindless, the only trace of their former identity is their gemstone, and even it occasionally migrates to a new location.

And it is permanent. Once it has clawed its way inside a Gem and elbowed out everything else she used to possess, there can be no reversal. Not even by Rose Quartz. You watched her try, the great curing tears flowing all the more freely because they could not cure.

Jasper's determination is empty and rootless now, a ship flown without a pilot or a target, firing at random intervals as it skims through the galaxies. She will never be again.

She will also never get the chance to be forgiven – a thought that surprises you. You remember the forgiving touch, and some small margin of you regrets that Jasper will never feel that. Perhaps you never could have offered it to her, but Steven could have.

The reality of that is a shard of glass tugged across your gem, and you squirm from it. Finally you speak: "I wouldn't wish that even on Jasper."

You glance upward, preparing an explanation on the totality and permanence of corruption, on how it smears your Purpose away into indecipherable agony, only to be met by Drakken saying, "I know you wouldn't." He accepts it in the same way he accepts the drifting leaves.

He sags somewhat, however, his eyes fretful as they flit about the barn. Even the petals seem in need of soothing, and kindness surfaces from the depths of you where it often goes missing.

"What is it? Does it bother you that Jasper called you defective?" You hear yourself scoff, as he did when he said baloney. "Because she says that about literally everyone."

Everyone except you, you realize. And how you wish you did not meet Jasper's approval.

The look Drakken gives you is not so much a smile as it is the reflection of a frown. "Heh. Well, it's sort of an old wound for me," he says, and you know he is not talking about the kind that cracks open on a human's body, for he would be bowed over and clutching it if it were. "I've accepted that I'm kind of put together…wrong."

You look at Dr. Drakken and you see nothing wrong with him, just as he saw nothing wrong with your newly refurbished barn. You learned what Steven was in Jasper's tarnished mirror when you were inside her; you have no desire to know how it distorted Drakken, too. Jasper's opinion is no longer a part of you. All you know is what he is to you.

"You're a meepmorp," you say.

Drakken's smile is genuine this time. Its bright glow doesn't signify a weapon waiting to be retrieved behind it, and you love it for that, even when it fades away in a moment as it does now. His head wags from side to side, the bramble of hair rolling from one shoulder to the other.

"But it isn't really that," he says. "It's something Jasper said. The last thing she said, actually, before – before she –"

He sputters; the tide carries his voice away. You reach over, slip your hand over his, and hold fast. The pain of today belongs to both of you.

Drakken interprets your touch as permission not to finish that sentence. "She – uh – she was really mad about something that had happened to – to – to – I guess it must have been another Gem. Someone named Pink Diamond?"

You close your eyes.

"Whoever she is," Drakken says, the buoy-words dipping with the current, trying to remain casual. "Was she just lying, maybe? Because she does that, as you're aware. I know you have Blue Diamond, and you've mentioned Yellow Diamond before, but I never heard of a Pink Diamond!"

Drakken is studying you, and he seems so new, almost as new as Steven, unready to hear this.

"That's because she doesn't exist anymore," you say. You clamp your hands in fists on the planked floor and rifle through the memories that wrap you like seaweed. The truth is fresh water in a river of mud: still present, but nearly impossible for even a Lapis to extract. And it is not something in front of which you can throw yourself to protect him. "She was shattered. In the war."

You open your eyes, watch what you have said clutch Dr. Drakken's face and nearly split it. The natural overhang of his lower lip takes shelter beneath the upper, which is poking out far enough for a fishing lure to snag. His eyebrow careens upward and bristles, no longer a smooth smudge of wet bark.

"Oh dang," he says. His tongue is a nervous fish, poking in and out of its hole. "You mean she actually –?"

You nod, fingers pinching the air the way you have seen Shego's do when she wants to end Drakken's statements immediately. "They say Rose Quartz did it." Your words have never been quieter, little more than fleeting vibrations in your throat. You shrug. "But I wasn't there."

It is as diplomatic as you can be, and only for Steven's sake.

"Do not tell Steven," you add in a hiss, refusing to move your gaze away from Dr. Drakken's.

Drakken blinks back at you. "Why would I tell – I mean, not tell – ohhhhh." His eyes swell with understanding, slowly at first and then progressing to a gush that leaves them wet and unsteady.

He crouches toward you and lowers his voice. "She was his mother, wasn't she?"

You nod, your focus lingering on Drakken's sweet funny nose, the one his mother was able to share with him. The seashell curve hitches to admit a trembling breath.

You knew he would understand.

"Pink Diamond was Jasper's Diamond," you say. "The way Blue Diamond was mine and Yellow Diamond was Peridot's."

"Oh! That's big stuff, then!" Drakken stares down at his gloves, and you wonder if he is recalling your display in the mall, when you paused to pay respect to a familiar symbol that turned out to represent nothing more than the fruits of some Earth plant. "Jasper – she must have loved Pink Diamond. Must have loved her immensely."

His fingers leap apart for emphasis. You can't say anything in reply. A dull ache registers at the crevices of your adopted senses, but it seems to come from lightyears away, as though it is linked to you but not actually yours to feel.

You picture the Corruptions, held captive in their own emergence holes, their consciousness too dulled to recognize them. Jasper is on the edges of that picture, her jeer grown so wide she has no room to remember them as they were. Yes, Pink Diamond had Jasper's love – and she took it with her when she broke.

There is no more time to dwell on that, though, because Steven comes bouncing into the barn, his curls darker than his mother's and his soul infinitely brighter. "Lapis! Lapis, you're okay!"he cries, throwing himself into your lap and his arms around your neck.

From this position, no shadows are visible.

"Sure am," you say, pushing lightly on Steven's forearms so that you can look him in the face. "And I heard you were awesome. You and Amethyst." You grab his hand and give it a wag. "Tell me all about it."

Steven begins to speak and then halts, extends a wary glance your way. "You wanna hear about how we fused?" He reveres the word that can still wither your wings inside you, turning it into something lovely.

The sunlight drags another short silhouette across the barn floor. Amethyst is propped against the doorway in the slouch of one who has run through her energy almost faster than the universe can resupply it; you know it well. She wears a firefly of a smile that could flicker away at any moment, especially once her eyes come to rest on you.

You and Amethyst are not friends, not by any measure, and yet you hazily recall her small, strong hand catching your wrist as gashes opened in the ground and tipped Jasper into their open jaws. Anyone who loves Steven enough to save you for his sake deserves to fuse with him. You lift an accepting thumb in her direction, and Amethyst's smile steadies.

Turning back to Steven, you shrug. "Well, it's nice to know it can be good for someone. So spill!" you say, using a phrase introduced to you by Kim.

Steven does. The details are rushed and some are out of order, leading Steven to insert qualifiers such as, "Oh, yeah, I almost forgot – Drakken had already started punching her with flowers" fairly regularly, but no one can deny that each one is a prize to him. Drakken stands behind him, interjecting comments or grunts or sometimes just his wide, haphazard grin.

At one point, Peridot comes barreling into the barn. Her eager scramble carries her directly past you, and she has to turn on one clumsy heel and tackle you from the back, her arms wrapped around your waist, all the while crying your name in that nasally fashion which you have come to accept.

By the time Steven finishes, Garnet and Pearl have joined the group in the barn, as well. They offer satisfied nods rather than hugs, for which you are grateful.

That is when Drakken sticks his arm into the air and flaps it. "Pearl? I still don't entirely understand this whole 'corruption' deal. Can you enlighten me?"

Underneath your hands, you feel Steven's backbone clench. He rises stiffly and exits the barn, his steps tight and cautious as if he believes the ground to be littered with sinkholes.

You push from the ground to follow him, but Amethyst squeezes your knee. Her husky whisper fans aside your hair: "I got this."

Pearl turns her focus on Drakken, finding you along the way. Homeworld mores dictate that she should lower her head in the presence of a Lapis, and it is so strangely beautiful that she doesn't. She instead pulls herself straight, clicking all of her own manufactured bones into place, and begins, "Corruption is a condition where a Gem's body is damaged and her mind is – for lack of a better term – demolished. Are you familiar with the Earth strain of the virus hydrophobia, or rabies?"

Drakken nods. You do not. You have never heard of rabies; nor have you heard the word hydrophobia, although it is easy enough to interpret – a combination of water and fear, two concepts that go together as naturally as Steven and Amethyst's fusion.

"Well, a Corruption is rather like a rabid animal. Some of them attack at random; others wait to be provoked. When a Gem is corrupted, she seems to lose most, if not all, of her memories. Of course, since she also loses her ability to speak, we can only guess at what she experience," Pearl continues. Her voice is a wire screen, sifting through her explanation so that nothing larger or more frightening than a fact gets through, and you wonder for the first time what she saw from under the safety of Rose Quartz's shield.

You think of Jasper's voice, which always seemed to have been crushed into splintered chunks of gravel and then stirred rapidly with a spoon. Her last words were Pink Diamond, and you never even heard them.

Drakken casts a glance at you, the red streams in his eyes churning with fear. Pearl notices. "Not to worry, Dr. Drakken," she says. "We've been here for five thousand years, and we haven't found anything native to Earth that triggers corruption. Even touching a Corruption won't do it. It's only transmittable through fusion – which we didn't even know before today, because no one has ever tried to fuse with a Corruption before."

"Yeesh," Drakken mutters. "Talk about a corruptive influence."

Pearl's giggle is too bright, with the same corona that surrounds forced, intense white lights on Homeworld. She taps her gem and waves through information. "This is what a corrupted Jasper looks like." An image bobs into place, rotating to allow examination from all sides.

Air sizzles in Dr. Drakken's throat. He turns his head away, unable to look at the image.

You are unable to look away.

The creature trapped in a loop in front of you is densely muscled like a Jasper and has the proud mane of a Jasper, but she has none of a Jasper's savage beauty. She is down on four legs like a common beast, vulgar horns puncturing her hide, marooned in the spot where her eyes should be.

You take a step backward into the thin, blue-clothed chest behind you, needing its organic warmth. You are glad Amethyst is not here to mutter that Jasper was already a monster or already corrupted, because it would not be true. The Jasper you knew teemed with life; you felt it when your spirits were attached, overwhelming and viscous. She was too much; she was everything, and this creature here, who cannot even look back at you, is nothing at all.

Drakken's eyes grow to the size of baseballs, and the shadows smeared beneath them lengthen. "You mean – that thing she fused with – was the same type of Gem as Jasper was?"

Pearl pauses before saying, "Yes."

A shudder weaves through Drakken's body. "It used to be like her? Oh, that is just – that is just – nauseating!"

This is another word you have never heard before, and you don't need to ask what it means. The bitter twist of his mouth to one side, exactly as it did before it sent back his food, is enough.

You leave Drakken to his questions and pad across the barn floor, the weathered wood stroking your feet in respect to your greater age. Things wear out so quickly on Earth.

Perhaps that's to keep them from being taken for granted.

Outside the barn, you find Steven slouched against the wall, Amethyst hanging an arm around his neck. She cocks her head at Steven upon your approach; he nods, and to your surprise, Amethyst stands up and backs away, giving the two of you room to talk.

An absence imprints between your shoulder blades as fiercely as any presence ever has. You take a couple of quick, thrashing looks around you before it occurs to you who you are trying to find.

Jasper.

"So…you heard that Jasper got corrupted," Steven says.

You nod. "Drakken told me."

Steven holds his knees. "I tried to help her."

Flames lap at the corners of your eyes, and you squint them for a moment. "I know. I mean, I knew you would have."

Steven's lips quiver upward.

"And then Drakken and Amethyst poofed her," you say. "All I don't know is…where is she now? Her gem, I mean?"

"Amethyst bubbled it," Steven says. "She sent it back to the boiler room at the temple…with all the other Corruptions."

The words cover your gem and press too closely. "So – it's really over, then?" you ask.

"Yeah," Steven says thickly.

"I was wondering if…" You lift your gaze to the tree limbs that shake in the wind. "…if I could go and see it. Her gem. Just so I can believe it really is over."

Steven's face, already softer than talc, softens further. "What's the magic word?" he says.

You frown. "That's not how it works with Gems, Steven. We don't cast spells."

"Please." You glance back down to see his hands splayed in clarification. "The magic word is 'please.'"

"I didn't know 'please' was magic," you say. "I thought it was just polite."

"They just call it that because it's so polite it works like magic," Steven says.

"Oh." You let your eyes roll. "Du-uh."

Steven reaches for a stern expression he would have to shapeshift to achieve. "Now, 'duh' isn't polite."

"I know," you say with a grin.

You dart your fingers to the wells beneath his arms and tickle him until he hollers with laughter. It has the same low pitch and the same bounce as it did earlier this morning, and you are happy that today's harshness has been driven from his thoughts for now.

Through the barn's walls you can hear Pearl, her voice struggling to balance, answering Drakken that no, there isn't any known cure for corruption once it has taken hold, not at this moment. She pauses herself when you and Steven enter the barn and Steven announces your intentions.

The knob sinks deeply into Dr. Drakken's throat as though it is all he can do to keep from protesting, but after several moments, he lets it float back again and gives a misty assent.

It is not his permission you need, anyway; it is Garnet's. You cannot see her eyes scoot to you behind their triangular slats of mirror-glass, yet you sense her focus aim your way.

For several more moments, Garnet doesn't speak, and you imagine the conversation between her halves. You have heard from Steven that the bubbled Gems are kept deep within the heart of the Crystal Temple and in some strange, half-awake fashion, you can understand why Garnet would not want to admit entrance to a Gem who never vowed her loyalty to Rose Quartz, a Gem who saw her and her band of dissenters as traitors to their Homeworld. When Garnet finally says, "That's all right with me," your surroundings blur as if you are already on the warp pad.

"Yesss!" Steven throws his fists into the air. "Thank you, Garnet!"

"Yeah, thanks," you murmur as the barn firms up again.

Sapphire's gem stares frankly up at you from the upturned palm Garnet offers you. You curl your hand around hers. Her fingers offer neither subjugation nor surrender.

Garnet leads you out of the barn and around to the warp pad in her wordless way. The silence is rough, but with no urgency on Garnet's part to smooth it over, it gradually begins to fit around the two of you more comfortably, a baseball glove folding to secure its catch. She is younger than you – not in her parts, but in her whole – and yet she does not seem like it: There is straightness and wisdom to her that is somehow more than just a combination of her ingredients, and she lifts her arms and activates the warp pad with a clean, sure motion.

The world around you loses definition. The light that forms your body rises, flips, and drops onto the warp pad in Steven's home.

You have never been here before, not in your physical form at least. The wooden front door, which sounds rickety and inadequate as the ocean breeze smacks it back and forth, is still entirely too familiar. You remember Steven in its outline, his sweating grip on your handle, as Garnet's hand reached out for the first time, in unmitigated threat, assuming you too were a Corruption.

It darkens your gem like an eclipse. You are saved by the sight of the windows, dappled with Steven's fingerprints, and by the glimpse of the upper room that is his. Above the stacked steps, his bed supports a teddy bear in the same spot where mussed bed-cloths peel back from the corner, layered in a stratum from thickest to thinnest.

Garnet turns toward the door behind you, where a star is inscribed with a different gem at each of its five points. Unlike the little flap of wood at the front of the house, this door is sturdy and sealed, protected by identity, just as it would be on Homeworld. Garnet lifts her palms, lighting the star's red and blue points, and the door's sides grow apart.

You step inside with her after one last glance back at Steven's room. Steven is alive and conscious on this planet, and so are you.

And Jasper, through her own foolishness, is not.

So, Jasper, about that whole revenge plot. How's that working out for you?

What did you think was going to happen?

Well, thanks for making it so I don't win Stupidest Fusion of All Time.

A thousand pieces of sarcasm sparkle inside you, ready to burst. Maybe then the last tendrils of Malachite will finally release you.

Garnet leads you first through a purplish room that is more overcrowded and disorderly than the barn has ever been and then an off-white room filled with serene fountains. Her footsteps stop in a third room – red-orange and thick with the kind of heat you have heard from Dr. Drakken squeezes humans' lungs. To you, the heat is familiar, even soothing. Nestled in a deep grotto of your mind, so far back it is almost irretrievable, you were once tucked inside that heat, listening to the core of your first home thrum as your edges were formed.

The memory flies away when you follow the lift of Garnet's chin. A hundred bubbled Gems are suspended just below the ceiling, a cluster of decay and collapsed stars. Each is consumed by the bioluminescence of corruption, save for one: a distinctive, inward-pulling ziggurat.

This time, you do manage to turn your head. If there are any blue droplets in this collection, you don't want to see them.

You saw more than one amber-colored Gem in that brief time, but Garnet has a keener and more specific sight than any other Gem you've ever known, and she is able to wave through the rest of the bubbles as though they are distractions until she finds what she is looking for. "She's right there," she says, pointing at a bubble that bobs at about your face level.

With Garnet's hand still in yours, steps as faint as a newly Emerged's carry you across the floor until you are staring straight at Jasper's jagged gemstone.

It is so small, smaller than your own, brittle-pointed and phosphorescent with corruption. You try to reattach it to a nose that wrinkled up with a smile sharp enough to cut, below eyes that drew lines of ownership down you.

You can't, and your sass dries up.

The orange gemstone hangs in its bubble, wasted and tragic, completely alone. You don't know how you would feel about Jasper should she reform in her natural state, but it is hard to hate something this pathetic.

The sass drains from you, exiting your bare toes down into the hard pockets of earth. Your hollows are emptied of anger, and you wonder if somehow Jasper also feels your fibrous connection sever.

"'Bye, Jasper," you whisper after a lengthy pause.

You turn and walk away. You do not look back.

~Drakken's rap originally written by Bob Schooley, Mark McCorkle, and Adam Berry. Remixed by moi.~