Chapter 6 - "Crispy!"
Today had been like any other day for Steven, no school, no sunny weather, talking about video games, and some board games. "are they called board games because people play them when they're bored?" he always thought to himself, but never bothered to ask anyone.
for most of the day, he had also been thinking about Gems and Homeworld, and injectors too. how could there be people out there who want to destroy the earth? and what was that 'monster' they saw? maybe it was also a gem, maybe he could've made friends with it as he did with Zircon.
but it was probably safer to just leave them alone anyway, the monster wasn't trapped or anything.
watching "Static Shock" with his brothers helped him with his immense boredom until it ended, nothing else, no reason to study either.
"I'm bored!" the pink-eyed boy whined at his brothers, "don't we have anything else to do? like play 'ultra demolish brothers'?"
"I won't be playing as that plumber again this time." Zack responded, browsing cat videos in TubeTube, "I mean, I was gonna say talk to Zircon, but I don't think she's doing gem stuff."
"WELL, I WAS GONNA!" Zircon replied to Zack out of the blue, scaring all of the brothers and making Tim fall off the couch, how'd she get there?
"but then this white thing... snow? SNOW!" Zircon continued, "snow started to block the entrance, and it's irritating!"
Steven was pretty much used to Zircon ranting about... natural earth things, but he didn't know Zircon would be angry at the snow.
"and Greg told me to use a 'shovel', WHAT IS A 'SHOVEL'?"
she is alien, so he wasn't that surprised she didn't know what a shovel is, they probably use ultra-powerful shovels or something on their planet.
"um, it's like a spoon, but bigger." Steven tried to explain it simply to her, "and you use it to pick up snow and stuff."
"where would I get a 'shovel'?" Zircon rubbed the tip of her head, "is it in the 'garage'?"
he found it funny how she pronounced "Garage", she kept spelling it like "Gaar-age"
"Yeah! there should be two or more there, but you only need one."
"Okay! thanks," Zircon said, "giant spoon, hmm..."
Greg went into the living room to hang out with his kids, at times like this he'd usually be writing a song or something, but even he didn't know what to do, he couldn't even call any of his friends because they were busy with other stuff.
"Hey, Dad!" Joey greeted with not much enthusiasm, "you look um... not very happy,"
"yeah," Greg yawned, "you know, Lil man? sometimes I'm so bored I want to do something, anything... but I'm not even hungry for any sort of food,"
"Why don't we go out for pizza?" Tim suggested, "I'm not really hungry either, but I could go for some pizza,"
Steven nodded quickly in agreement, "and we should bring Zircon!"
"eh. I don't know about that, kiddo."
Greg never liked the idea of letting Zircon talk to any other humans, not that she'd harm them or anything, but he always thought she would ask them... weird "Gem stuff".
"awww, come on, Dad!" the little boy complained, "you should give her a chance! what's the worst that can happen?"
What is the worst thing that could happen?
a lot of bad things could happen, but Zircon liked food as well, unlike many other gems. "sure, why not?"
after Zircon finished getting the snow out of the 'Gem Cave' entrance, she got in the van with the rest. they drove off to the nearest pizza place, which wasn't very close.
on the drive there, Zircon was thinking about human transportation, she was surprised to find out that they don't ride animals much these... years and instead use these Cars and Planes.
they eventually arrived at "John Crispy's Pizzeria", it didn't look like it had many people in it, but Tim and Joey said that their pizza is pretty good.
"Okay, Zircon, act natural." Greg said, but he regretted saying it because he doesn't know what's "natural" for her.
"I'll try my best!" she promised with enthusiasm, "I'll act as human as possible."
"Okay, but don't act like a caveman."
the brothers laughed at that part, but they weren't sure if Greg was being serious.
when they stepped inside the place, Joey could smell nostalgia from an inch away, "there's John!" he cheered, he ran to the man with a chicken nugget hat.
"Hello!" the crispy haired man greeted, "welcome to 'John Crispy's Pizzeria', that's my name too!" he coughed a little,
"but my name isn't 'John Crispy's Pizzeria' it's just 'John Crispy', but you know what I mean!"
"yeah, I get it!"
Greg ordered 2 cheese pizzas since it was his kid's favorite type.
after that everything was pretty normal, Greg was surprised, but he overheard a conversation from Zircon.
Zircon was talking to a young lady, and it didn't look like it was going too well.
"and that's how I and others saved your planet, you're welcome."
the young lady looked horrified, "u-u-um, t-thank you, I guess..."
"the human said 'thank you'!" Zircon thought to herself, "this means I'm doing it right!"
Greg realized what she was saying to the lady and rushed to both of them.
"HEeey!" Greg was panting heavily, "sorry for my friend here, she can uh... bye!"
Greg grabs Zircon's hand and walks over to his kids, "what were you thinking?"
"she said 'thank you'! give me some credit!"
"Alright," Greg sighed, "you tried..."
It was her first time actually socializing with a random human, so she did alright, despite the horror she gave the lady.
Greg & Zircon took seats next to the brothers, "Okay, you left some pizza for us?"
"Yep," Steven said with a mouth still full of pizza, "we were just looking at Zircon and that lady talk."
"she looked so freaked out!" Joey giggled heavily, "what did you say to her?"
"stuff about war," Greg answered instantly before Zircon could open her mouth, he didn't want his kids to hear about the "Gem War", at least not at this time.
Greg tried to change the subject as soon he said that "so yeah, this pizza is pretty great, John really makes all of it himself?"
Zircon took a pizza slice and examined it closely, "he made this 'pizza'? it looks... interesting,"
Zircon takes the tiniest bite out of the pizza, "hm, tastes pretty good,"
Greg wasn't very pleased with how much she ate, but it's a lot better than some other gems.
they had a big discussion about that time Joey and Steven saw two other gems, they were mostly talking about "Jet black", but that Peridot was also fascinating for them to think about, talking about what superpowers they might have, and Zircon correcting them about the powers being "super", it's not super if every Gem could have it.
that did imply that Gems have powers, the brothers got even more excited.
"so wait," Steven was thrilled, "does that mean you have powers? what kind?"
Zircon wanted to tell them about her powers before but never did because... her powers weren't that impressive anyway compared to other gems.
"Well, see this monocle?" she started off, "it allows me to display multiple information displays."
they didn't quite get what that means, but it sounded really cool, "Woah, can you show us?"
Greg really didn't like the idea of using Gem powers inside a pizza place full of people who were already kind of freaked out by her, but it was too late.
a holographic-like display appeared in front of Zircon, it had UI and writing and such, but it didn't look like it's in English.
"Woah!" all the brothers gasped in amusement, while Greg looked worried, as he should be, the rest of the store glared at them for a second, then looked away.
"I can record or write logs," she said as an example.
she clicked on a button on the display, and it showed some sort of... log, it wasn't in English or any other language they know, the numbers were the only thing they understood.
"oh wait, you don't know 'Gem Glyph'," Zircon sighed as the display faded away, "it's fine, there aren't any important or new logs at the moment,"
"It's still cool anyway!" Steven replied, which made Zircon feel a bit better.
"I have some other powers too."
"that's cool and all, but we need to get going," Greg sighed lightly, he didn't want them to get kicked out of a pizzeria.
"oh, okay," Zircon agreed, she wanted to show her other power(s), but she didn't know if they were "cool" enough anyway.
they walked back to the van and drove their way back home, it felt like it took them longer to get home then to get to the pizza place, probably because they were talking about her powers and such.
soon they arrived back at the house, they had fun today, the pizza was good and the people were really nice, Zircon didn't like it as much, but the food was nice for her.
the brothers spent the rest of the day playing video games, and Greg was gonna write a new song, he sat down on his chair with his pen & paper, Zircon stood beside him to ask a simple question.
"Greg, do you know what this 'thing' is?" she held what looks like a Micro SD Card, "I found it in one of those 'cameras' near a rock in some abandoned area,"
"that's an SD Card, how long has it been there?" Greg responded, "for a while by the looks of it,"
"If it was in a camera it probably has a video file or something, I'll check it later and return it,"
"How would you 'check it'?" Zircon asked, she didn't know how any of this stuff works, they probably have super alien memory cards.
"using an sd card reader on my laptop, I'll do it tomorrow,"
Zircon gave Greg the sd card and walked back to the living room to sleep on the couch, seems like Joey was winning in of those video games they were playing.
GAME!
"I win, y'all suck!" Joey cheered to himself, "I'll get you next time, this plumber character has weird moves!" Steven mumbled the last part to himself, but everyone else heard it.
