"You summoned!" Blue gasped, her hand coming to rest over Yellow's so she could tilt the new sword in different directions to get a better look.

"All I needed was a mildly life-threatening situation," she said dryly, but she was equally transfixed by the gleam of the metal and its curious hooked shape where the point of the blade should have been.

"Congratulations!" It had to be very quiet congratulations since they were trying not to draw any attention to themselves, but Blue sounded exuberant and proud all the same. She traced her finger along the hilt of the sword. There was a crescent shaped blade that acted as a guard and Yellow could see a sparkle of amusement in Blue's eyes before she even said anything. "You didn't have to coordinate with me, you know," she teased.

"I didn't do it on purpose!"

"That's why it's nice."

Yellow was just about to come up with a good retort when Peridot, Pearl, Amethyst, Garnet, and Steven all came rushing in one after the other.

"What'd we miss?" Amethyst asked, wide-eyed.

"The Roaming Eye you were expecting showed up a little early, I smacked it into the ground to buy you some time, and Yellow summoned something," Lapis said, sounding almost bored as she walked back in as well.

"It what? You what?" Pearl hurried over to Yellow, looking like she didn't know whether she wanted to celebrate or summon her own weapon and hole up somewhere safe with Steven. "Oh, you did, that's wonderful!"

"Do you know what kind of sword it is?" Yellow asked sheepishly. "I haven't seen any like it in your collection."

"Oh, I'm sure I have a pair somewhere." Pearl examined the blade. "They're meant to be dual wielded, and they're called twin hooks or tiger hook swords here on Earth. You can link them together and swing them like…" She projected an image from her gem to illustrate.

Yellow didn't particularly feel up to summoning another one at the moment, but she was pleased to hear that news anyway. It seemed a little flashy, but it could definitely do some real damage, seeing as pretty much every edge besides the place where her hand gripped it was razor sharp.

"That's super cool!" Steven said in an excited whisper.

"And I look forward to beginning practice with them," Pearl added, "but I'm afraid it'll have to wait. How's it looking out there?"

"There's five of them like we expected," Garnet confirmed from the door, leaning back to stay out of sight as she watched the Rubies exit the ship.

"What should we do?" Blue asked, adjusting the clips in her hair so they held back her short bangs for maximum visibility.

"We stick with Steven's plan," she replied firmly. "Talk to them first, and try to get access to the ship for a minute. If that doesn't work, we can take them down pretty easy and then decide what to do from there, preferably without revealing too much about ourselves. We were always going to have to play most of this by ear anyway."

Yellow nodded, weighing her sword in her hand. "Got it. We're sticking with you, Steven, and Amethyst as the intermediaries?"

"Yes, we're least recognizable as long as we keep our gems hidden."

"On it," Amethyst said, rifling through one of the abandoned boxes in a corner of the barn. It was full of miscellaneous human things, having been pushed out of the way since it didn't contain any useful parts for the ship or any other project. She pulled out a small piece of cloth, folded it in half to be a triangle, and tied it around her neck. "Disguise is a go, though I originally had something evencooler planned! You want anything, G?"

"No, it's alright. Let's go." She picked up Steven and put him on her shoulders. "Pearl, help the others get into disguises. Ideally, the Rubies won't have to see them, but if they do, we should avoid having them recognized."

Pearl nodded, already picking through the box to find more garments to use.

"Lapis," Garnet added, "thank you for your help. We'll take it from here."

"Sure." She shrugged and wandered over to the other end of the barn, where Peridot was crouching behind the ship. "…What are you worried about?"

"What am I not worried about?" Peridot asked in a shrill whisper.

"They're not here for you, are they?" Lapis said.

"And Yellow Diamond probably considers you shattered already," Yellow added in an attempt to be helpful, "after ordering the communicator to be detonated."

"That's not reassuring!"

"Sure it is."

"Like you'd know!"

"I do know. She thinks I'm shattered too."

"Well—Well, it still isn't," Peridot said stubbornly. "Anyway, what have you got over there to protect us from the wrath of our former Diamond?"

"Currently you have the choice of a hat or a headband," Pearl said dryly, donning a baseball cap to cover her own gem. "And you should probably wear a shirt to cover up that Diamond insignia."

"I have shirts already," she said. "But they wouldn't cover the diamond…"

"We can get into the specifics of Earth clothing another time," Pearl said, passing out t-shirts to Peridot, Blue, and Yellow quickly. "Put these on. Blue, Yellow, if you can shapeshift different hairstyles, this might be a good time to do so."

"Oh, okay!" Blue yanked the shirt over her head, patting it lightly where it covered her gem. "Um…like this?" She made her hair longer, bound in a ponytail which left her face boldly unobscured. "Is this different enough?"

"I think that'll do nicely."

Yellow concentrated too, searching her mind quickly for something to model it off of and settling on the shoulder-length curls that Sadie at the donut shop had. That was a drastic enough change from her usual short hair, she hoped.

Blue took one look at her and had to visibly keep herself from laughing.

"What?" Yellow asked impatiently.

"The top part still tries to flip up," she pointed out, one finger reaching up to play with it. "It's cute."

"I'll be sure to remember that when I'm facing down what's certain to be a five-Ruby fusion in mere moments."

"Shh, you don't know that'll happen."

"That's the whole reason they send them out in groups!"

"Well, I'm sure the seven or eight of us are more than a match for them. Now come on, let's see what's happening."

"Welcome to Earth!" Steven said a little too loudly as the last of five Rubies jumped out of the ship. Immediately, all eyes were on him. "So, uh, are you guys aliens?" he asked, trying not to seem too nervous.

One of the Rubies standing closest to him, gem on her stomach, was the first to reply. "We're gems," she said, smiling. "What a lovely planet."

"Glad you like it," Amethyst said, slinging an arm around the Ruby's shoulders. "Why don'tcha let us show you around then?"

"That sounds—"

"We don't have time for that!" Another Ruby, whose gem was placed in the center of her chest, spoke up. "We have a mission to complete."

"Oh, right, of course," the other Ruby laughed easily. "Mission first."

"Right," she said. "First, let's find the gem that the scanners found. Rubies, spread out and start searching!"

"Wait," Garnet said before any of them could even start moving.

There was a chorus of everything from "Okay!" to "Why are we waiting?" to "Who are you anyway?" all spoken at once.

"We're humans," Garnet said, voice calm and completely neutral. "We want to help you search."

"Because you're our guests!" Steven added quickly with a nervous smile.

"Yeah, we'll show you the best places to look for…what was it?" Amethyst asked.

"We've been sent to retrieve the Jasper assigned to the failed Earth mission," the Ruby with the eye gem said, looking them over suspiciously.

"A Jasper, huh?" Amethyst repeated. "Is that another gem? Y'know, I don't think I've seen any other people who look like you."

"Oh, Jasper's nothing like us," the chest gem Ruby said. "She's much bigger."

"Oh yeah?" Steven made a show of thinking about it. "Do you have a picture you could show us?"

"There's a picture on the ship," the navel gem Ruby volunteered.

"Wait a minute," the eye gem Ruby said before Steven and the others could follow her on board. "You can't just let these humans tag along."

"Why not?"

"Yeah, it's not like we can't take on a few humans if we need to," the Ruby with the gem on her arm said.

"I don't see why we shouldn't," the chest gem Ruby agreed. "Yellow Diamond will be pleased if we end up finding Jasper and bringing her back sooner than expected. Come on, Rubies, to the ship!"

"Why are they going on board?" Lapis asked curiously.

"They're going to try and slip fake scan results into the ship's computer to replace the real results and keep the Diamonds thinking the Cluster is still active, just slightly delayed," Pearl said. "I'm glad Peridot and I finished that up early."

"That's only half the problem here," Peridot said. "We still have to make them leave without finding Jasper!"

"Quite true." Pearl glanced over at Yellow's still-summoned sword. "If this does come down to a fight, go easy. If you lose your concentration, you'll lose your shifts, and you're too easily recognizable as Diamonds' Pearls even with your gems covered. Don't risk giving them that information to take back to Homeworld unless you absolutely have to. It could be a very valuable asset to us later."

"Understood."

"Okay. I'll take point. Peridot, I want you to try and sneak up close enough to destabilize them while they're distracted."

"Got it," the three of them chorused.

"Good. Let's see how this goes."

Steven took the opportunity to try and name all the Rubies as they were taken on board the ship, unused to the similarities between gems of the same type but finding them different enough upon further inspection. There were little variances in their faces, in their uniforms, and of course in their gem placement. Army, Navy, Leggy, Eyeball, and…Doc. There, that would help him keep track of everyone. Eyeball was the one to look out for, the Pearls on Homeworld had told them, so he tried to watch her the most closely as they entered the ship.

"Whoa, it's bigger on the inside!"

The Rubies didn't really respond to Steven's exclamation, one of them already going over to a control panel to pull up a picture of Jasper on the display. "Here. Have you seen her?"

"Hmmm," Steven said. "I don't know, can you zoom in?"

"Sure."

"Hmmm," he said again, louder.

All the Rubies were watching him with baited breath. Garnet reached behind her back casually and pressed the data chip Pearl had passed off to her against another of the screens so the computer could read it. No one noticed.

"And how tall is she?" Steven continued.

"Like…uh…" Leggy reached up as high as she could, stretching up onto her tiptoes.

"Bigger than that," Eyeball scoffed. "The height of three or four of us together would be closer. Maybe even all five of us."

"Ohh." Steven nodded. "Could you show me?"

"Sure! Rubies, assemble," Doc declared, directing them each to jump on top of each other one at a time and then clambering up to the top. "This tall!"

"Wow." Steven did his best not to giggle as the Ruby at the bottom accidentally made the tower wobble a little. "That is big." He glanced over to Garnet, who gave him a covert thumbs up as she palmed the chip again. "What do you think, Ame…Amy? Have you seen anybody that tall?"

"Nope, don't think so," she said lazily, having made herself comfortable in the pilot's chair, much to the irritation of Doc when she noticed from her vantage point. "Maybe you guys got the wrong planet."

"Wrong planet?" Doc leapt down. "Where else would she be?"

"I dunno, it's your mission. Maybe you should take this thing on a spin around the galaxy and see if you can find her, like, out by Neptune or something."

"Neptune?"

"Yeah, it's wayyyy more likely she'd be on Neptune," Steven said, jumping on board with the story. "It's, uh, a great tourist spot! And if she was stranded out here for a while like you said, I bet she went to go visit!"

"Hmm…"

"We never said anything about her being stranded."

"What?"

"We never said that." Eyeball fixed him with a menacing stare. "How did you know?"

"Uh…lucky guess?" he squeaked out.

"You must know something!" Doc declared, sliding down the stack. "Where is she? Are you keeping her prisoner?"

"What? No way, we're just humans," Amethyst joked nervously.

"They're lying!"

"Yeah, we should fuse and—"

"No fusing inside the ship! Don't you remember what happened last time we did that?"

"…The ship looks okay."

"That's because it's a new ship!"

"Yellow Diamond will be mad if we mess it up on a simple retrieval mission," Doc said. "Rubies, take the humans outside! We'll deal with them there!"

"Wait, wait, we'll go on our own," Steven protested as Army picked him up bodily and jogged toward the door.

"I've got this one!" Doc called, pulling Amethyst along. "Newbie, get the tall human."

Leggy obediently but apprehensively went over to Garnet. "Um…" She tugged at Garnet's arm.

She reached down to pat the Ruby on the head. "Aww, new to the squad?"

She nodded nervously.

"You'll be alright. Let's go then."

She looked more than a little relieved that it wasn't going to be a struggle, and she led Garnet off the ship after the others.

As soon as they were back outside though, she was called away with an abrupt "Rubies, assemble!" and had to run to join the slightly less precarious stack already being formed by the others.

In an instant, before the light of their bodies had even managed to coalesce into a fusion, Garnet summoned her gauntlets and Amethyst's whip was close behind. Garnet placed a hand on Steven's shirt to keep him from summoning his shield instinctively as well. "Get back to the barn, Steven."

And that was their cue then. Pearl was first out to the fray, spear pulled from her gem as she ran, with Blue and Yellow close behind. She protected Steven as he ran back towards the barn and then continued forward in a rush once she saw he was safely inside with Lapis.

Yellow gripped her newly summoned sword tight and willed it to be the perfectly suited weapon it was meant to be, even without a twin. Blue's spear was ready, glinting in the light, and they exchanged the briefest of glances before splitting up to divide the fused Ruby's attention even further.

Yellow went right, Blue went left, and Ruby fusion grabbed for both of them. Yellow dived to the ground and then rolled back to her feet, jumping up to grab onto the Ruby's arm. She nearly got thrown off but clawed onto the back of the fusion's uniform instead, hooking her sword on for extra support. She hauled herself up and grabbed on more securely, unable to keep from grinning as Blue ran around in front, taunting the fusion by running in and out of reach and using her spear to slash at the Ruby's hands when they tried to knock her off her feet. Yellow deftly avoided the attempts to get her off the fusion's back as well, slashing the sword into her with every spare second. She wasn't going to win a fight this way, but that wasn't the point—she just needed to be an annoyance.

Amethyst used her whip to hook the fusion's arm before it could reach to her face—presumably to pull out some weapon of her own—and Garnet took hold of it a second later to send a large shock of electricity to the end of the tightly coiled weapon. Blue went for the other arm, landing several hits with her spear and punctuating the final one with a dagger straight through the wrist as she came away.

"We need to end this fast," Garnet said, leaning down to speak to Blue in a low voice. "The longer it goes on, the more likely Homeworld learns about us and the more likely Earth becomes a target."

"Understood," Blue said with a quick smile. "Yellow!" she shouted up to the other Pearl. "You ready?"

"Ready!"

"We'll bring her down. Tell Peridot to have the destabilizer ready, please."

"You got it," Amethyst said. "G, cover me."

Garnet nodded, and the three of them took off in different directions. Blue didn't go far, weaving in and out before planting herself just in front of the Ruby.

"Now!"

When they'd practiced this, Yellow had had two swords for maximum impact, but she'd have to make do with one. She vaulted up over the Ruby's shoulder, coming down right in front of Blue and pinpointing her landing to fall directly onto the middle of Blue's spear, which was held up and braced with both hands in the split second before Yellow made contact. She pushed back off as soon as she felt Blue's additional shove helping turn her momentum around and was launched up at the fusion. In an instant, her hand flashed up to her gem, all instinct and no forethought, to pull out a second weapon to match her first. Her swords slashed heavy across the Ruby's chest, between the two gems on her front, and made her reel back. Blue took the opportunity to unbalance her further by going for one of her legs as well, and the fusion slammed to the ground just as they'd hoped.

Without any pause, Peridot and Amethyst were there, the technician rushing forward to stab the destabilizer into the fusion's neck as hard as she could. Electricity sparked and the fusion split apart, white lines of light appearing before the five Rubies came tumbling apart. Not poofed but definitely dazed, which was good. They'd found the optimal setting for the destabilizer after a rather long discussion as to what would be strong enough to bring a fusion down without dissipating everyone in it. Poofing and bubbling might be an option, but it wasn't their first—more missing gems would only get Earth more attention.

"Run," Yellow hissed when Peridot didn't make an immediate move to leave, seeming rather stunned by what she'd just managed to pull off.

"Oh, right!" She took off once again towards the barn, and Yellow hoped the Rubies would simply believe that they'd lost the focus required for the fusion when they fell. Or even that it was just a strange Earth phenomenon. Any excuse would do, as long as they didn't start thinking the "humans" they were fighting were actually gems.

The Rubies didn't seem to be thinking about it much once they were back on their feet, thankfully. With the five of them separate again, Yellow and Blue did their best to split up the group and keep them away from each other. Garnet had taken on the chest gem Ruby, since she seemed the leader, Blue was keeping the arm gem one at a distance with her sword's reach, and Yellow had somehow ended up with the suddenly rather intense eye gem Ruby who had pulled a chisel on her nearly as soon as she'd recovered from the fusion breaking apart. Nasty weapon, though Yellow didn't let herself dwell on it. The Ruby couldn't even see her gem, so there was no real danger beyond a lucky hit and, well, she wouldn't let that happen.

Her new sword was light and quick and everything she could have hoped for from her summoned weapon. She was almost certain she wasn't using it to its fullest extent, which was frustrating but also oddly thrilling. She was already good with the sword, and soon she'd be even better.

This was taking too long though, and she didn't think the Rubies were going to be persuaded at this point to give up on their mission entirely, even with a defeat. They needed a way out without exposing the Crystal Gems or the Pearl rebellion, and she didn't know how to make one.

She managed to disarm the Ruby and went in for another blow, only to have her attention drawn by a sudden shout of "Wait!"

Yellow and the Ruby both turned their heads in surprise to see…

Amethyst shapeshifted into Jasper? What?

There was no way that would ever work. Why would she even think to attempt it? Amethyst wasn't orange, she now had two visible gems, and even if she somehow managed to pass visual inspection, she acted nothing like Jasper.

"Hey, I'm right here!" she said loudly.

There was a moment of dead silence, in which Pearl looked like she wanted to bang her head against a wall and Blue and Yellow tried to prepare for the inevitable return to fighting, but it didn't happen. Instead, there were just multiple cries of "Look, it's Jasper!"

They believed this?

The Ruby that Yellow had been fighting was suddenly in front of Amethyst babbling about how proud she was to be in Jasper's presence and how great she'd been in the war for Earth and oh stars, how was this working?

"They really can't tell the difference?" Yellow muttered to Blue when the other Pearl came to stand beside her, spear still out but relaxed at her side.

"This might be easier than we thought," Blue replied, trying not to laugh.

There was one awful moment when one of the Rubies spoke up to mention Amethyst's coloring, but it was waved off easily.

"You must mean my tan. You know, from the sun."

Alright, Yellow would freely admit that she didn't think Rubies the most intelligent of gems, but this just seemed impossibly easy.

"Yellow Diamond is awaiting your return," one said eagerly, looking up at the large Quartz. "We'll take you back to Homeworld."

Then again, maybe this just landed them with new problems.

Stall them, Pearl mouthed covertly to a suddenly panicking Amethyst.

"Oh, yeah, of course," she said. "It's just that I have to, uh, locate our informant. She took off when the ship crashed and I haven't been able to find her."

"The Lapis Lazuli? Yellow Diamond said she was of no importance now."

"Ah." Amethyst quickly searched for another excuse. "Well, I also have to find that Peridot I came here with."

"The Peridot's still here? The file said she'd been destroyed."

"Oh, yeah, nearly, but she escaped! Yep! Totally escaped, and I need to find her to avenge Yellow Diamond's honor!"

"Her honor?"

"Didn't you hear what she said?" Amethyst asked, leaning down a little and clearly beginning to enjoy her role. "What she called our Diamond?"

"No," the Rubies answered in hushed voices.

"Well, sit down and I'll tell you the whole story…"

"She's good," Blue giggled quietly, letting her spear dissolve into light.

"She is," Pearl agreed, "but we need to figure out how to get her away from them now. There's no holding that form forever, and either way we can't have them taking her back to Homeworld. Come on." She beckoned for the two of them to follow her back over to the barn discreetly.

Once inside, Pearl began pacing nervously.

"We didn't plan for this."

"For what?" Peridot asked, Steven close behind her.

"That," Yellow said, pointing back over her shoulder.

"Oh my stars, what is she doing? They're going to kidnap her now!"

"Actually, they'll probably treat her like an esteemed superior until she has to let go of the shapeshifting," Yellow said calmly. "It's the after that we need to be concerned about."

"If she'd been to Homeworld before, I'd consider letting her go with them and meet up with us later," Pearl fretted. "But she hasn't and it's far too dangerous..."

"How long can she keep shapeshifting?" Steven asked worriedly.

"I'm not sure, but with such a sizeable change…perhaps an hour or so? The intricacies of shapeshifting anything beyond clothes tend to elude me," Pearl admitted.

"It does?" Yellow was mildly surprised by this fact, but now that she thought about it, Pearl hadn't ever shapeshifted around them.

"I'm capable of it, it just doesn't come easily," she explained.

"We could create a distraction of some kind?" Peridot suggested, looking around the barn. "I'm sure we can rig something up."

"But now that they've seen her, we won't be able to convince them to leave without her," Yellow pointed out. "They're not going to go back to Yellow Diamond with a 'we almost retrieved her' report, that's suicide."

"Maybe they wouldn't have to," Blue said slowly.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," she said, slow smile spreading across her lips, "we have the real Jasper. Why not just give her back?"