Chapter 2: Crazy, noisy Beach Town, Act 3
Tell me, do you believe in fate? Do you believe everything in this world happens for a reason, that there is something behind all that is? A higher power that orchestrates everything, from the movement of stars and galaxies to the humans and ants of Earth. Some call it god, some call it destiny, the influence of the stars. The arrow of fate.
Gems have an interesting relationship with the concept of fate. Each gem is made with a purpose programmed into her very core. Peridots are technicians and kindergartners, a lapis lazuli terraforms planets, quartzes are soldiers, moonstones tacticians, pearls servants.
Gems are made with a purpose, one that they know instinctively upon emerging from the ground. In a way, gems are born with their fates already laid out before them. All gems serve the Diamond Authority and they do what they are made for.
Strangely enough, many who believe in fate will also tell you that it's up to you to decide that fate. As contradictory as that is, it does apply to gems in a degree. If the rebellion of Rose Quartz taught us anything, it's that gems not necessarily conform to their intended purpose. They can take control of their own fate.
These pondering may seem more suited for a beginners course in popular philosophy, but there is a purpose behind them. These words have a reason for being written, a predetermined fate.
You see, it would seem as 'fate' was determined to take everything Pearl had built up and tear it down. Preferably, in the cruelest way possible.
She dedicates her life to Rose Quartz and to protect the Earth; Rose give up her life, just as Homeworld returns with a vengeance, and there is nothing they can do to stop them.
She tries to protect Steven; he gets constantly put in danger, often by very enemies she swore to protect him from. He got taken away to Homeworld for crying out loud! Where was Pearl then? Back on Earth, completely useless.
She tries to move on from the past, move on from… Rose, and what happens? The very reality she is in bends itself out of order to stop her dead in her tracks.
What other explanation could there be?
"What's the matter? You decided to stay?" said the stranger from behind Pearl. She had walked up on Pearl while she was talking on the phone and started bugging her. Pearl had tried to just walk away, but then… she couldn't.
It was not that her body had been paralyzed, or that she was restrained in some way. No, it was more like… she just couldn't move. She couldn't do anything. Not walk, talk or even turn her head to look at the woman behind her. But it was more than that.
She couldn't even consider doing anything
A hand snatched the phone still in her hand.
"Oh, looks brand new." The voice was right behind Pearl now. Uncomfortably close. She could feel the woman's breath in her neck. "Say, you wouldn't mind telling the passcode to this thing? It would really save me a lot of trouble."
"The code is one-one-one-one," Pearl said. She didn't hesitate for a second. Not a moment did she try to resist. She couldn't. She just couldn't… her mind, it was… not working properly.
"Thank you," the woman said, her voice dripping with false sweetness. "You don't happen to have anything else valuable on ya?"
"No." She tried to do something, anything, but the thought wouldn't form in her head. The moment she tried to decide to turn around, her thoughts would slow down and scatter into nothing. Her mind left empty, she had no choice but to comply with the woman's demands.
The woman made a disappointed sound. She had slowly wandered around Pearl and was now appearing in her peripheral vision.
"You're probably wondering what's going on, right? Well, don't worry sweetie, it's not permanent." She stood now in front of Pearl, hands on her hip, and a badly concealed sadistic smile on her lips. Pearl saw her own empty eyes staring back in the reflections of the stranger's sunglasses.
"I just removed your independence for a bit. Now, are you absolutely sure you don't have anything else valuable on ya?"
"Yes," Pearl said, her voice devoid of any emotions. Like a robot's. That was probably a good comparison. Whatever the human woman had done, she had turned Pearl into a robot. A robot forced to follow whatever orders her creator made.
Like a pearl was supposed to.
Memories Pearl had long since tried to bury under the landslide of history were coming back. Memories of her time as a servant on Homeworld. It had been exactly like this. She didn't have any thought of her own, no will of her own. She was an object that her master could do as she wished with.
Turns out she was still the same pearl as back then.
"You absolutely sure?" the woman insisted. "One hundred percent absolutely sure that you have nothing of monetary value on ya?"
"Yes."
And yet…
(you don't have to do anything you don't want to)
Even back then, there had been light. Rose had entered Pearl's life and turned it upside down. She had shown Pearl a world of possibilities, of freedom. She had made Pearl feel alive for the first time in her life. Together, the two had made the impossible.
(are you sure this is what you want?)
The small voice in the back of Pearl's head was back, whispering Rose's words in her ear. Yes! She couldn't give up! Hadn't the two of them faced despair and tragedy together so many time before? Surely, Pearl could do so herself.
"That's funny, cause…" the woman reached out and lightly tapped Pearl's gem. "that looks pretty expensive to me. What even is it?"
"My gemstone," Pearl was once again forced to answer. Indeed, she was still a prisoner in her own body. Still, she was a slave to this woman's whims. But no longer did hopelessness cloud her mind. She was a Crystal Gem! Guardian of the Earth, the last defense against the most powerful empire in the known universe. She could not give up.
"Gemstone? Oh, like diamonds and stuff! So you were lying when you said you had nothing of value on ya. Shame on you, don't you know? Lying is bad." The woman laughed at, what Pear assumed was a joke. "So what, you're like into some freaky body modification stuff?"
"I don't know what that is," Pearl said. Her voice did not reveal it, but her mind was in full gear. The woman said she removed her independence… She could clearly still think, but not make decisions. Yes, that seemed to be what was happening. The question was, were there any loopholes?
(i believe in you)
No. There weren't any loopholes or workarounds. This power was absolute.
"Really?" The woman frowned. "Then what the he-?"
"Hey Pearl!" The woman nearly jumped in the air at Steven's sudden shout. "You're not gonna believe this…"
The woman said a very bad word.
"Every time," she muttered. "Now I've got to deal with some kid too." She glanced behind Pearl where Steven's voice had come from. She shouldn't have done that. Because the moment she was no longer focused on Pearl, the Crystal Gems fist connected with her face.
Unprepared at the sudden burst of violence, the woman was sent staggering backward, where she hit the back of her head on a signpost. She then proceeded to, in a very undignified way, fall flat on her butt.
"Wha… imposhibell," the woman sputtered, a small trail of blood coming from her mouth. Yes, it did seem so, didn't it? Her power was absolute. It would, without failure, render anyone unable to make their own decisions. Not in a thousand years should Pearl have been able to defy it on her own.
(protect steven for me… my pearl)
She hadn't defied it on her own. She had simply remembered what someone else told her to do. And that person was far more important than the words of some random woman who thought she could do whatever she wanted to. Just because some power she had…
Pearl blinked as the realization hit her.
This human had powers. Or at least, some form of ability. An ability no human should have. Pearl may not be very knowledgeable about human customs and social behavior, but she was certain that there were no humans that possessed abilities like this.
This woman was no gem either. She didn't recognize Pearl or even know what a gemstone was. And there were no gems with a power such as the one she had demonstrated.
Pearl didn't have a spine, yet a chilling sensation traveled down it nonetheless.
She had once met something that looked human but wasn't. It had deceived her, Garnet, and Amethyst. Even Rose had been tricked by its appearance. But hen it revealed its true colors as a monster. They, who had sworn to protect the Earth and all its life had been disgusted by it. Even Rose agreed with that the only thing that monster deserved was death.
She shook her head as if trying to shake the thoughts out of it. That was a long time ago. The monster was gone for good. She took one more good look at the woman, who was still on the ground, rubbing the back of her head. Her sunglasses sat askew, light blue eyes showing behind them.
No, this woman wasn't a monster.
"Pearl!"
Pearl suddenly snapped back to reality as she heard Steven shout her name, from only a few meters away. He must have been worried when she didn't answer him before… and maybe when she punched the woman if he saw that. She turned around to meet… an odd sight.
Steven was running towards her carrying while carrying another human hoisted above his head. Connie ran by his side, sword drawn and her eyes slightly narrowed, as if she expected an attack at any moment.
"Pearl!" Steven said slightly less loud as he came to a stop in front of , he was carrying a human in his arms. A fairly young one as far as Pearl could tell.
"Ma'am, is something wrong? You didn't answer before, and…" Connie stopped as her attention was guided towards something behind Pearl.
It all happened very fast. The human in Steven's arms, who had remained completely still up until this point, suddenly jolted back to life. He lifted his head and starred intensively at the thing behind Pearl.
The Crystal Gem spun around, ready to deal with the woman again. True enough, she stood back up, her sunglasses adjusted. One-third of a second, Pearl looked into her own reflection again, before everything went black around her.
Steven yelped at the sudden motion of the teenager in his arms trying to wrestle free, while something pushed Pearl out of the way. She could feel the woman brushing past her. She heard the sound of Steven summoning his shield and Connie's cry as she leaped into action. But the they stopped, just like she herself had done less than five minutes ago.
The two human strangers said some very bad words, and then all Pearl heard were running feet. Instinctively, she summoned her spear and prepared to throw it at one of the two sources of sound… but then she stopped. Bizarre powers or not, they were humans. she couldn't hurt them.
She let her spear fade from existence. Fumbling through the darkness, she found the two children lying completely still and silent on the pavement.
"It's okay," she assured them. "You can talk." She tried to scoop them up into a comforting hug. Though she was fairly sure she got the wrong end of Connie somehow. Probably Steven too, but with him, it was harder to tell. "Just tell me what happened."
While she remained calm and tried to keep the two kids calm, truth to be told, Pearl was probably closer to a panic attack than she had been in thousands of years.
xxXXxx
Alan Walker was having the worst day of his life. It's one thing to be outsmarted and beaten up. Another to get outsmarted and beaten up by two kids. Now, it's another f-ing thing to get outsmarted and beaten up by two kids, humiliated in front of his sister and then forced to run away like a rat from pest-control.
The only light in the situation was that she too had gotten a beating. She was still spitting red an hour later. That and curses. Lots of curses.
"What the hell was that?" she hissed. The first thing she said to him since they got in the car.
"They saw through my illusions," Alan muttered. "What's your excuse?" This got him a killing glare.
"Shut up!" she spat, alongside some more blood-red spit.
"That's what you get for asking," Alan said under his breath, just low enough so that she wouldn't hear.
For another ten minutes, the only sound heard was the car engine and faint chatter from the radio.
Finally, Marina spoke up.
"Seriously though, what was that?" It's not just me, is it? You saw it too, right? Those people were… off."
…
"Yeah," Alan said after a while.
"That round kid carried you in his arms like it was nothing."
"The pale one broke your ability."
"Was that a sword the girl was carrying? Did you see how big it was?"
Now, the two of them were muggers. Muggers with supernatural powers. They traveled the country (in stolen cars), looking for people to rob. Preferably somewhere with mirrors for Alan. Let's just say this wasn't his first time spending the day in a mirror house.
Only once had they encountered another person with a power like theirs. He was probably the one who had given them the most thorough beating to boot. But even through all the pain from a hundred cut marks, they both remembered what he had told them.
"Stand users attract each other. That and trouble."
"Let's stay away from here from now on, okay?" Alan said. For once, his sister agreed.
xxXXxx
[Alan Walker]
A traveling mugger with a stand power. Doesn't care too much about his appearance even though he hangs around mirrors all day.
Stand: Faded
Appearance: N/A, bound type stand.
Notable Powers and Abilities
•Illusion-Faded lives inside the user's eye. The user can bind it to any reflective surface he looks directly at. Faded can the enter the eyes of up to three people. Once in their eyes, the user can create illusions that only they can perceive. Requires some concentration to rake appropriate effect. A black void is the easiest illusion to make and requires almost no concentration. Hearing, smell, touch, etc are unaffected.
Stats
Destructive Power: N/A
Speed: A
Range: B (as long as the user can see)
Durability: A (bound type, not affected by damage)
Precision: A
Development Potential: B
Status: Retired
[Marina D. Walker]
The older of the Walker siblings. Enjoys the superiority her stand gives her over others.
Stand: Not a Robot
Appearance: A bright red humanoid covered in diamonds and other precious stones.
Notable Powers and Abilities
•Independence Removal-NaR can with a touch remove someone's independence, their ability to make decisions on their own. The victim becomes a puppet or slave to whoever tells them what to do. This power can be bypassed if someone with more authority over the victim than the user has left an order contradicting the one the victim receives from the user.
Stats
Destructive Power: C
Speed: C
Range: D (once activated, ability range is 100 meters)
Durability: D
Precision: B
Development Potential: A
Status: Retired
xxXXxx
Author's Note
Thusly, Act 3 finishes chapter 2. Hopefully, it wasn't complete S-H-I-T.
he, he, stand jokes
Pretty obvious, but Alan Walker is inspired by the Norwegian music producer Alan Walker, and his stand Walker's hit song Faded. Marina D. Walker and her stand are named after the singer Marina and the Diamonds, and her song I am Not a Robot.
Fun Fact: I actually the latter song via a Seven Universe animatic by Sullen Highstar on youtube. It's also what inspired me to pit it against Pearl specifically. Be sure to check it;
I Am Not A Robot [STEVEN UNIVERSE ANIMATIC]
The next chapter is looking to be a lot shorter than the previous ones, with only one act to it. As for the release date... Monday maybe? Again, depends on how well writing is going for the next chapter following it. I've been done pretty well with keeping up so far. THen again, sitting up until 23:00 every night writing fanfiction is not a sustainable way of life in the long run. Man, I gotta fix my biological clock somehow.
But that's my problem to worry about, not yours! Just be sure to keep tuned for the next chapter of JoJo and the Crystal Gems (and Steven!)
Until then, take care of the planet Earth and remember that anything can happen in space.
