It was a beautiful day out when Steven got out of bed and started to get ready for another day of work. It was tiring at times but very rewarding work that left him feeling like he was where he was supposed to be. There'll always be a place for him on Pink Diamond's throne if he ever decided he wanted to become ruler of the galaxy, he'd also been a traveling musician for a few years like his dad. But at the end of the day he had to find his own path instead of just mimicking his parents and trying to fill their shoes.
He got dressed in his usual outfit of jeans, his back star shirt, and a blazer to help him look at least a little professional. There was a time where he put more effort into looking fancy but he just wasn't a fancy person. Steven made his way down the hall and suddenly saw something flying at him from the corner of his vision.
With his gem enhanced reflexes he snatched it out of the air, only then noticing that it was an umbrella that had been thrown at him like a spear. "It's going to rain at 2:37 and it'll mess up your hair before your meeting."
He sighed. "Thank you Joseph, that's very kind of you, but we've talked about this. Even though you could see I would catch it, you still need to be polite and hand it to me."
Joseph was the oldest of the kids he took care of and was a fourteen year old sapphire hybrid, no relation to the crystal gem sapphire. He was tall and lanky with his gem on his forehead, with hair parted so it would be framed and on full display.
"Ughh, but talking is such a waste of time. I have to explain my thought process every time, like I am right now. Why can't people just accept that I'm right and not question me on things."
"Because you are a child and no future vision is absolute."
"Yeah yeah I know, Garnet's only mentioned it a bajillion times." He gave a fairly decent Garnet impression "'The less you know, the less you see. Open eyes are useless without an open mind.' And before you comment on my impression, Suzy from the fifth grade class is about to figure out how to spindash."
He immediately started heading towards that part of the school at a brisk pace. "Oh dear, thanks for the heads up."
It was too early for classes so she'd be in the dorms still. Technically students could live off campus, but because just about every hybrid was an orphan by their very nature, Bridge was essentially a boarding school. Well, it was a bit more than just a boarding school since they accepted hybrids from when they were born until they were eighteen. He always liked the name, he was awful at naming things so Connie had actually come up with it, but it fit well since everyone enrolled was a gem/human hybrid.
He walked/jogged his way towards the student housing but could tell he was too late when he heard children sobbing. As soon as he stepped out into the outdoor area where they had a very sturdy playground and a wide open field he found that Joseph's prediction was true.
A panicked woman in her twenties came over to him. "Principal Universe! Thank goodness you're here, I didn't see exactly what happened but Suzy and Lucas got hurt while playing tag."
"Thanks Silvia, I'll handle it from here." Silvia was one of their newer employees. They got a lot of applicants because people think working with kids that have superpowers sounds cool, but they have a pretty high turnover rate because they then find out that it is much less cool than they hoped. Silvia had only been there a month or so but he had high hopes that she'd be able to find her place in their odd little school.
He walked over to the two crying kids and sat down with them. They both instinctively offered him their hands so he could kiss away the ouchies. He tried not to heal the kids every time they got hurt, since that wouldn't be good for them in the long run, but from the looks of Lucas had a broken arm and Suzy probably had a minor concussion so he wasn't going to make the kids heal that naturally. "Hey kiddos, are you two ok? What happened?"
Suzy was an Onyx, which was a quartz gem designed for fighting like Amethyst and Jasper, on top of that they were one of the strongest types of quartz. Her gem was on her shoulder, frequently covered by her wild red hair and surrounded by her numerous freckles. Other than her gem, the only variation from looking like a typical ten year old were her jet black eyes that looked like one massive pupil. She was a sweet girl but wanted to wrestle anyone and everyone as a way to show that she liked them.
This could be a problem particularly with her best friend Lucas, who had a pearl in his chest that was a stark white against his dark skin. They'd never discriminate against the kids for their gem types, but they wouldn't ignore their inherent differences either. Their pearl hybrids were simply more likely to get badly injured when tackled by an enthusiastic Suzy compared to a fellow quartz.
Lucas was far more timid and was always happy to let his friend do the talking. They were both ten and were entering the age when hybrids started discovering their abilities. Just a few days ago Lucas had accidentally stored his favorite book in his gem and that had been a mess trying to get him to calm down enough to get it back out.
Lucas just nodded and gave him a quiet, "I'm fine."
Suzy looked up at him with tears running down her face. "I- we- um."
He gave her a gentle smile. "You're not in trouble. I just need to know what happened."
"Um, we were playin' tag but then everything got all spinny and fast, and when it stopped being spinny Lucas was crying and his arm was all hurt-" That was as far as she could make it before she started crying again.
He opened up his arms and let the two of them into a nice group hug. "How about this, while you're at club with Amethyst and the other quartz kids today after classes they can help you learn about how to spin on purpose."
Her eyes went wide. "I get to play with Amethyst?! She's the best at wrestling!"
He ruffled her hair. "Alright kids, breakfast starts soon so you should go join the rest of your class so you don't miss it."
At the mere idea of missing out on breakfast they took off running back towards their actual teacher who gave him a quick thanks for handling that. He smiled as watched them run off and pulled out his phone to text Amethyst the update. She had been a huge help and while she still taught at Little Homeschool she ran a wrestling club at Bridge. It was a huge help in teaching the young combat gems how to control their powers and also a great way to have them burn off their near limitless energy.
With that handled he made his way down to the next building over where they housed their youngest gem hybrids. While he would love to have all of the children be given to wonderful adopted families there were too many people and organizations that wanted to get their hands on the kids for nefarious reasons. So if someone wanted to adopt a hybrid kid then that was fantastic and readily accepted, but they needed to live in one of the houses that were within Bridge property.
Bridge school was in a rural area just outside of Beach City, maybe a twenty or thirty minute drive from the center of town or Little Homeschool. Even though it had started as a very small town, Beach City was starting to actually become a city with many calling it the gem capital of the world. Part of him wished that Bridge wasn't growing so fast. Each class was far larger than the year before it.
They only had twelve kids over the age of ten, but they had over a hundred that were ages five to ten and a thousand that were under the age of five. It was a bit heartbreaking to think about how every single child here came from a gem that didn't want to live anymore. Their numbers would probably be even higher but there was now a waiting list for gems that wanted to stop existing.
The medical workers that handled that end of things could only handle so many at a time so they were currently only doing 200 gems a year. Not only did it take the nine months of carrying the child but it also took time to teach the gem how to create the necessary organs to do so. But with nearly a trillion gems spread across thousands of planets there would always be more and more showing up for that reason. It wouldn't be long until Bridge started being the size of a town in its own right.
He reached the spot he was aiming for after a couple minutes of walking. He found a mix of gems and humans working together to clear an area so it would be ready for building another apartment complex. He waved down Bismuth who was the leader of the gems who were there through the Little Homeschool program that taught them about human jobs.
The large builder gem waved him over. "Well if it ain't the big man himself, haven't seen you in a while."
"The school has been keeping me busy. It's busy and exhausting at times, but it's good work and I really enjoy it."
"Sounds like bismuth as usual."
He chuckled and smiled at her. "So, what do you need from me today?"
"It turns out that having twenty different gems added to the project makes everything go way faster. So much faster that we're running out of material. Human money still doesn't really make sense to me so I called you."
"Alright, I'll make some calls and have more stuff warped in."
"Oh, that reminds me. The reason I needed you in person was for you to sign up a friend of mine with the warp pad. My pal, I think you called her Short Bismuth, got her forge started on Mars and might be able to get us plenty of the metal we need once she's all set up."
He gave her a big genuine smile. "I remember her, she worked under you at your forge for a bit while she was learning about being herself. Glad to hear she's doing well. I'll make sure to get that set up."
Their warp pad was set to only let registered gems/whistles teleport in after an incident five years ago when someone tried to kidnap one of the kids after warping in. That had been a terrible day and the reason that Ava, who was now thirteen, didn't talk much.
Ava was one of the only cases they had where she hadn't been created for suicidal reasons. There had been a near-permafusion of three rubies that had been able to hide their relationship by being on a squad together. They always found excuses to be fused and no one else really cared since they were the same gem type.
But when they found out that it was possible to have a child on Earth they were one of the first ones to show up. They remained as a permafusion the entire nine months and now Ava existed as the proof of their love for each other as the only hybrid with three gems.
That awful night as masked men tried to steal her away she discovered her very significant fire abilities that came from having the power of three rubies running through her. The attackers were turned to charcoal and although she'd gotten better over time she was never quite the same bubbly girl she was before it happened.
After that they'd updated their security and strengthened their stance of making sure all hybrids lived with them. They didn't trust the rest of the world to not turn the young hybrids into child super soldiers. And even beyond that, there wasn't anywhere else in the world that had more experience with connecting human and gem life than Steven.
This story came into existence because I thought about gems and their relationship with death for too long and now there's a school of tiny hybrids. I'm not really sure where I'm going to go with this story yet, but if you want to see more of it please let me know.