This chapter is gonna be a bit more dark than the previous few ones. And I must warn you that it will also contain some gruesome violence so this is your final warning. *I DO NOT OWN POKEMON OR STEVEN UNIVERSE*
The crying was what awoke him. His eyes slowly shot open and he rubbed his temples as Ash slowly got out of his bed and turned on the lights. As Pikachu leapt down from the bed and hopped up onto his nightstand to match his trainer's height, Ash himself approached the crib in his childhood bedroom of the home he shared with his mother in Pallet Town. Looking into the crib that once belonged to him in his infancy, he saw the baby inside bundled in pink pajamas kicking and crying loudly.
After he took a deep breath in, he sighed with relief once he knew the baby didn't require a diaper change. Picking up the still crying baby, he cradled it and began to gently rock it back and forth in his arms, slowly massaging the teardrop shaped stone on its back, just as he would to the child's mother in the past.
"Shhhhh, shhhhhh. It's okay" he whispered to it in a motherly tone. "It's okay, daddy's here. Daddy's here. Shhhh."
After he rocked it for a few minutes the baby calmed down and finally went back to sleep in his arms. He gently placed it back into the crib and he tucked the baby in with a bit of a broken smile on his face as he looked down at the child, a feeling of both heartbreak and attachment filled his soul. As he crawled back into bed and shut his eyes, he finally felt full control return to himself and he shot his eyes wide open.
"AHH!" he screamed in absolute agony when he woke up, causing him to forget what he was just thinking about seeing as the worst pain he had ever felt in his entire life filled his body. Regaining his recollection, he remembered how both he and May had been forcefully ejected from the crashing ship and he was now laying on a forest floor with his body completely twisted from the fall. Both his legs were twisted in opposite directions, but to his horror, the true pain he felt was from his upper body as he was unable to feel anything below his torso. He was now contorted into a ball position and was laying facedown on the soft dirt, only capable of moving his eyes back and forth without incredible pain. He knew he must've suffered a spinal injury in his freefall.
The lush greenery surrounding him began to part in his peripheral vision, and unable to even move, he felt completely exposed. "Who's there?" He screamed with pain in his voice.
The bushed to his left finally parted and Pikachu came running out from the green. "PIKAPI!" his pokemon exclaimed to somebody as he charged over towards his trainer. May quickly followed him out of the jungle.
"ASH!" she screamed as she joined Pikachu, limping over to his side with a horrified look on her face. "Oh my gosh! Hold on!" she continued trying to collect branches and leaves in an attempt to create a makeshift sheath for both his twisted legs and his absolutely obliterated arms.
"May," he stammered out in shock, "I can't feel my legs." he then whispered in pain.
She tried her best to ignore his panicked mumbling and was able to successfully adjust Ash's legs back into place. "Alright, this part is probably going to suck." she explained to him before she grabbed his right arm and pulled it back into place.
"ARGH!" he screamed through the audible crack that echoed around them.
"Almost done, here we go" she said adjusting his second arm. He rewarded her with another scream in agony. "I'm sorry."
He reached and vomited from the pain. "Wh-where's Stevonnie?"
"They were still in the ship when it crashed," May explained pointing towards a trail of black smoke above the horizon. "But that doesn't matter right now. Right now you need medical attention. Steven has healing spit right? Then we need to find them!"
Ash's belt of pokeballs now flung over May's shoulder suddenly began to glow, and Charizard appeared before them, grunting arrogantly and stomping over towards his trainer and friend. The enormous fire type extended his short arm out towards him as he looked him in the eye with complete trust and love.
"Charizard?" he asked.
"Seems Charizard wants to to be the one who carries you" May evaluated.
It made sense, after all Ash had been the one who carried Charizard in the rain the day he met him as a Charmander to safety after his original trainer abandoned him, effectively saving the pokemon's life. Now Charizard wanted to return the favor. The fire type gently lifted his injured trainer onto his back and began to follow behind May and Pikachu towards the site of the crashed ship, hoping to reunite with Stevonnie.
The trek took much longer than expected, and by the time they finally reached the crash site the planet's sun was beginning to set. May charged towards the ship and snatched the radio from the control panel.
"Mayday! Mayday! Lars can you hear me?! This is the Star Skipper reporting to the Sun Incinerator! We have crashed on an unknown planet. No fatalities but Ash is seriously injured and Stevonnie is missing. Repeat, we have crashed and need medical attention!" She received no answer. "Lars? Dawn? Can you hear me?! Lars?! DAWN!? ANSWER ME!" she screamed as tears finally began to fall from her face when she realized they were all alone with no way back.
"May" Ash weakly tried to reassure her from Charizard's grip, "May calm down. Lars and the others are going to be looking for us. Now we just have to find Stevonnie, get Steven to heal me, and just wait until they find us."
Hearing the motivation she had always admired from him, May finally calmed down.
"Alright, we have to find a place to make camp for the night. There's air and plants on this planet, which means there's probably animals too. And I don't think I want to meet those animals anytime soon."
The two continued their hike until they found a large tower like structure hidden amongst the plant life.
"Seems safe enough" May said prying open the doors. On the inside, it was nearly overrun by the nature and there was a dampness in the air. Looking up, the group was greeted to the sight of an enormous mural on the wall in the likeness of Yellow Diamond. "What the?"
"This planet belonged to Homeworld?" Ash whispered still in pain.
Having to do all the work on account of Ash's injuries, she established a small campfire by taking advantage of Charizard's flame tail in the least damaged section of the floor they were on. Having no food, they all had to go without dinner and left they only had each other to keep their minds off their hunger. Charizard claimed his own corner and gently placed Ash down by the fire, while May and Pikachu tended to Ash.
"You're burning up" she said feeling his forehead.
He laughed, "of course I do, I got thrown out of a freaking spaceship and basically broke every bone in my body. That'll stress you out I guess." he joked to her before he began to cough.
"No, I'm worried how you might be getting an infection from your injuries. You look awful, and quite frankly I'm worried for you."
"I don't blame you, but don't worry, when we find Stevonnie in the morning I'll be up on my feet good as new. You know as long as we're being honest with each other, what was up with that protest you gave to Dawn back on the ship? Seriously you set the world on fire to stop her from coming with us." May nervously avoided eye contact with him because of this question, and he took notice. "Come on May, I'm not as dull as I was four years ago, and if we go out like this it'll be better to get it off your chest."
She took a deep breath, "well, I don't have much memory of what happened to us before or during the time Homeworld took us. But what I do know is that me and Dawn were in it together, we had each other's backs through thin and through thick. We grew closer than sisters, and when I thought she'd probably get hurt, I couldn't bare the thought of her getting injured."
Ash at this point began to put two and two together. "Let me guess, you can't stop thinking about her even when she's nowhere near you or relevant to the topic?"
She nodded.
"All you care about is making sure she's happy and safe?"
She again nodded.
He took a deep breath, "I'm think I might know, I remember when I had these same thoughts about Lapis."
"What?"
"May, I think you might-"
Before he could finish, a rumbling came from the outside and the doors began to pry open. May drew her spear and Pikachu began to charge his cheeks to attack whatever was forcing itself into the tower. Instead of a monster, Stevonnie came running in.
"ASH? MAY?" they asked as a roaring came from behind them. May ran over to their aid to keep the creature chasing them outside, and finally got the doors shut. "Oh my gosh! Ash what happened?" they screamed once they saw Ash.
"Fell out of a spaceship, you shoulda been there." he joked "Who's your friend out there?"
"Almost was our dinner. Let me heal you up." Stevonnie insisted, using their healing spit on basically his entire body. After a few seconds went by, Ash was finally able to tear off his casts and limped to his feet.
After both May and Stevonnie hugged him with relief, they all huddled around the fire to discuss the possibility of rescue, as well as the probability of Homeworld returning to their seemingly forgotten base. Soon however the topic became much more lighthearted and they all just began talking just to kill time. After checking to see the birdlike creature was gone, Stevonnie left to get more firewood and some of the fruit they had been eating earlier, leaving Ash and May once again alone with their thoughts.
"So, I think I know what you were about to say earlier" she told him shyly.
He slowly got up and sat down next to her, "just a thought I guess, of course I don't know what goes on in your head so I can or can't understand how you feel for you. But from what I'm being told, I think I hit the nail right on the head. All I can say is, as someone who's been in your shoes, just be careful how you handle this. If she doesn't feel the same way, just take it on the chin and if she does care about you the way you say she does then it won't affect your relationship."
She rested her head on his shoulder for comfort, "thanks Ash." but her face changed from somber to worried, "before you unexpectedly dropped by yesterday, me and Dawn also discussed something that we both are on the same boat for."
"Which is?"
"About you and Lapis. When the two of us were still serving Homeworld Jasper told us basically everything about their history, when we were on the Gem's Earth Misty told us a lot about the two of you, and what little we got to see of her ourselves caused to think as wee. And after you told us what happened, we came to a decision."
"What decision?"
"Ash, me and Dawn are your friends, and we always want what's best for you. So Ash," she had to pause as if she were scared to tell him before putting on a brave face, "we want you to consider forgetting about her."
"WHAT!?" he exclaimed in both surprise and anger standing up.
"Just hear me out. I understand you love her, but your love for her is blinding you to the fact that she's clearly taking advantage of you, and doesn't seem to care about what you think at all. Think about it, Jasper said Lapis liked, almost loved, taking her emotions out on her when they were Malachite. So tell me, how many times has she lost her temper, or any emotion for that matter, against you? How many times has she basically been the one in charge of your entire relationship? She's just using you as a coping mechanism to either get over Malachite herself, and when it wasn't convenient anymore for her what does she do? She runs away not giving a damn about what you feel. It's not healthy for either of you."
He felt furry in his soul over her opinion, so much so that he actually swung his fist into the wall next to him, creating a loud crash. "You have the pokeballs to say that to my face? You know absolutely nothing about us May. Yes she ran, but she did it because she was scared that Jasper was going to put her back as Malachite, the worst thing she has ever had to put up with her entire life! She's scared, because me and Steven are basically the only people in the entire universe who haven't hurt her in some way! You know nothing about her! You know nothing about the pain she felt when she was betrayed by Homeworld! The pain she felt as Malachite! Or the pain you yourself put her through, after you stabbed her on that pier! You don't know her like I do May, so how DARE you try to say she doesn't care!?" he shot up and squeezed through the door outside.
"Ash wait!" he heard her call out to him. But he just ignored her and angrily marched through the forest alone.
"PIKAPI!" he heard Pikachu also call to him.
Bashing his fist in rage against a nearby tree, he stormed through the forest in wrath and denial before stopping in a clearing and pressing his back against a tree. "Unhealthy?" he repeated to himself in a mimicry of May's voice, "I thought she was my friend!" he screamed to himself. "What the hell May?" he tried his best to calm himself by resting against the tree.
Shortly after he closed his eyes, he opened them and found himself once again in his bedroom in his childhood home in Pallet Town. This time, he found himself in full control over his body as he looked around the room. Also different this time, was that there was no crib with any baby in it. Getting out of his bed, he could've sworn he heard a familiar voice from downstairs, and as he followed the voice down the stairs, he found each step getting larger and larger until he was microscopic compared to the giant version of his home.
"You were told to be prepared cycles ago" the familiar voice said from the kitchen. He followed the source of the voice and saw his mother Delia Ketchum standing nearly sixty feet tall with her back towards her son. "There will be no more excuses. Get it done. And don't expect me to look kindly upon this transgression. Embark at once." she commanded into her phone.
"Mom?" he asked himself not seeing anything out of the ordinary about his mother gaining height "what the heck is she talking about?"
"Yes I know there's organic life on the surface, it's an invasion!" she continued, but now wasn't sounding like his sweet and caring mother.
"Hey mom! What the heck are you talking about!?" he shouted up to her.
Delia ignored him altogether "you will stick to my orders and you will destroy them!"
Ash couldn't help but sigh, "why's she ignoring me?"
"No. No I will not repeat myself!"
"Mom!"
"That is simply unacceptable. Well you'll have to remember that won't you? The dullness of this exchange tires me. Just land the dropships and do your pathetic job for once! Or I'll shatter you and your crew myself!"
"Hey mom! What are you doing?"
His badgering finally caught his mother's attention, with an annoyed look on her face she picked him up by the back of his coat and moved him. "Honey please, give me a minute" she placed him down by her feet, and the entire house changed to the inside of a giant room similar to that of the moonbase. Delia now was wearing what appeared to be Yellow Diamond's outfit and sat in the enormous chair. Ash turned to see several Homeworld ships advancing on a nearby planet.
"Woah, cool! Yelooooow! Hey Yellow!" he childishly exclaimed jumping up to her seat.
Delia the Diamond finally gave him the attention he was craving. "Oh, you're still here"
"What are you doing?"
"I'm commanding the dropships to colonize this planet."
"I wanna command a dropship!" he excitedly proclaimed.
"Well, when you have your OWN colony, you can command whatever you want."
"I want a colony!"
Ms. Yellow Ketchum rolled her eyes and pressed buttons on a monitor in order.
"I want one now!" he heard himself command like a spoiled brat. But his greater continued to ignore him and displayed a ship on the monitor. "What's this?"
"I'm contacting the leader of the fleet" Ms. Yellow Ketchum explained.
"Let me do it!" Ash said throwing his hands onto the screen without a second thought, only to be stopped by Ms. Yellow Ketchum.
"Don't touch that!"
"Why not? You have so many worlds and I don't even have one! It's not fair! I want one!" he shouted stomping his foot down. "I want my own army! I want my own planet! I deserve it! I'm just as important as you!"
"Then why don't you act like it Pink?!" she scolded her unruly child. Sensing his defeat, Ash walked away from his mother extremely angry. Balling his fist, he looked up at the glass window to his angry reflection. Looking back at him instead of himself, was a short girl wearing a magenta cropped shirt exposing her navel with a pink diamond embodied inside it. Just as Pink Diamond punched at her own reflection, he woke up startled.
"What?" he asked himself even more confused than his previous dream about himself with the baby. But before he could think about it anymore, a loud roar came from the direction the tower was. Charging back to the shelter, he saw the birdlike, alien creature that was chasing Stevonnie earlier crawling on top of the structure furiously attacking Charizard and May's Blaziken in the air.
Summoning Staraptor, he took to the sky and flew towards the attacking creature. Seeing May and Stevonnie on the inside of the top floor of the structure taking shelter. Sneaking in through a conveniently placed hole in the lower side of the glass roof, he put the negative conversation he just had with his friend aside, and he came to their side. "What's going on?"
"My friend came back." Stevonnie explained. "That monitor over there-" they then said pointing over towards a large throne with a computer screen in front of it, the same screen Ash had just seen in his dream.
"-Is our ticket out of here" both he and Stevonnie said at the same time, looking at each other a little confused as to how they both knew this information. But they put this question aside and ran over towards it while May joined the pokemon in keeping their attacker at bay.
The two jumped onto what Ash assumed was Yellow Diamond's throne and plugged in the correct combination of buttons, coincidentally and confusingly at the same time. Once the monitor finally became operational, they both began to swipe through it's database to find a communication screen. After going through a database of the planet's structure, a census of the troops that attacked, and oddly enough a selfie with Yellow Diamond by Yellow Pearl, they finally found the communications to the Sun Incinerator on the screen. Lars's face answered their call, but seemed distracted.
"Keep searching!" he ordered his off color crew, "We're not giving up on them, no matter what!"
"Lars! Hey Lars!" they both screamed trying to get his attention.
"There you are! We've been looking all over for you!" The Captain said with relief when he finally spotted them.
Dawn pushed past her commander and got close up to the screen with worry on her face. "Where's May?!" she demanded.
"Outside dealing with some creature, hurry!"
"Send the cords to their signal now!" he ordered the crew, then turning back to the others "We'll get there in about thirty seconds at hyperspeed!"
A breaking noise came from the glass roof as the creature began to smash through the glass. The monster roared in rage one it was struck by a light beam from the tip of May's spear, combined with a flamethrower by Charizard and an overheat from Blaziken. Before it could enter however, the creature was shot at from behind by the Sun Incinerator.
"What the heck is that?" Lars asked from the monitor.
"I don't know, but it's not here to play nice" Stevonnie answered for them.
"Pikachu, thunderbolt!" Ash ordered Pikachu.
"Blaziken overheat!"
The two pokemon and the ship fired simultaneously at the monster and although it did nothing to damage it, the creature finally took off.
"Ha! Looks like we just saved your butts!" Lars boasted, "let's get you three up here and back home through my head."
The ship landed nearby the base and as they waited, both Stevonnie and Ash looked concerned at the hole in the wall Ash had snuck through. He instantly recognized the hole's height and location as the exact area where Pink Diamond was in his vision. He noticed Stevonnie was looking at the hole with nearly the exact same same stare.
Boarding the ship, Dawn immediately embraced May with relief. But as she tried to hug Ash, he actively pushed away from her for what she had been saying about Lapis. "Stevonnie told May everything Steven knew. Ash I'm sorry," she began to say.
"Don't bother" he angrily interrupted her, "I get you guys are worried for me, but what you're thinking is wrong. You both should be ashamed for what you thought was alright. Lapis and I share a special bond together that no one else could understand. If you want you two can come back to Earth with us, and I'm sure we can find a place to put you guys. But don't bother trying to change my mind about Lapis."
"We understand your anger Ash. And we're sorry for what we said about you two." Dawn tried to apologize.
"And though we still don't think that what she did to you was wrong," May continued, "I guess that she does have to do what she has to do to ensure a life of happiness with the one she loves." to drive her point she looked over towards Dawn, "I guess people will do anything for somebody they love." Tragically Dawn hadn't noticed her stare.
"Thank you for the offer Ash," Dawn continued, "but Lars and these guys need our help now more than ever. Emerald has an even bigger Axew to grind and the off colors will need our protection. We'll see you when we finally get back to Earth Ash. Take care of yourself."
He finally felt a shred of forgiveness and finally hugged his friends, "same to you. Keep in mind what I told you May."
Stevonnie and Ash finally both stepped through Lars's head and exited Lion to the inside of the house. Only to be ambushed by Pearl who smothered the two and gave them both a scolding for being gone for so long without telling them.