6. The Shuttle.

Immediately in front of them was a foyer, a very large one. It was decorated in that lavish gem aesthetic, which Lars was finding less and less alien the longer he spent on this planet. There were guards everywhere, crews milling around. The cacophony and the colors were hard to deal with, alongside the ball of lies they were obligated to maintain at this point. The group had come so far and now that they were finally here, things were beginning to look impossible again.

"How did we think we were going to bullshit our way onto a ship, again?" Lars tried hard to keep his voice calm and controlled.

The gems all exchanged glances, understanding the alien expletive only from context. Pearl laughed half-heartedly.

"This might be a point at which we need a new plan," mused Ruby, pouting a little. "Oh I wish Rhodonite was here!"

"Rhodonite can't be here for this, neither can Fluorite," Pearl muttered, rubbing her hands together nervously. "We have to figure this out for ourselves."

"Well, what if we just poofed every member of one of these crews and took their ship!" Ruby was suddenly very excited.

"We could rush in and commandeer one." "The fastest one here!" Suggested the Twins.

"We could register as a crew and see if we can luck into something," offered a relatively laid-back Fluorite component.

"We sneak in, get the ship, blast our way out. Easy," said one of her more hot-headed individuals.

Padparadscha frowned, holding her hands up defensively. "Everyone, I predict that every idea we have will be very stupid. We don't need to make a scene."

"She's right," said Pearl. "The stealing of a ship is absolutely unheard of on Homeworld. Or.. at least it was last time I was strolling around the surface. Thousands of years ago."

"So it's our go-to, again? Just looking the part?" Lars looked crestfallen. "The sneaky-blasty one sounded fun."

Ruby smiled, pointing at Lars. "You need to both look the part, and wear that look you gave that Topaz outside."

"Oh! Yes!" Exclaimed Pearl. "That might get us quite far here. Do that. It's the same sort of look the Emerald gave us."

"Uhh, Emerald?" Asked a passing gem who, having heard the very end of their conversation, also happened to be a pearl. She saluted immediately. "Excuse me, Captain.."

Lars hesitated. "Pezzottaite...?"

"Yes, of course! Captain Pezzottaite!" she struggled to look like she knew what was going on. "Forgive me, Captain, and My Clarity, I just overheard - you know the Emerald who docked here last cycle?"

Everyone stopped and stared, and Lars soon felt a magnitude of eyes on him, all awaiting his response.

"Y-" He took a breath. "Yes," he tried to sound confident. "My Emerald. She sent us to get her ship. Something important came up."

The new Pearl blinked. "Emerald sent all twelve of you?"

"Of course she did, is that a problem?" Lars attempted to give her an indignant look that he really tried to lean into. He knew it worked seconds later, when she sighed.

"Please, allow me to show you the way."

xXx

"Two fusions, a pair of Rutiles, a human and a Padparadscha Sapphire sat crammed up in the cockpit of an Emerald's personal shuttle." Lars smirked. "Sounds like the setup of the worst joke ever, but here we are."

The Rutiles, attempting to maneuver the ship to escape Homeworld's atmosphere, had a bit of trouble with the elbow room available but other than that, everyone seemed in good spirits. Nobody had the heart or even the thought to ask Fluorite to remain unfused any longer after all they'd been through.

"I'm as small as I can be," Fluorite said, apologetically. "Stow me if you want, Rhodonite."

Lars shook his head. "No, this is fine, we all deserve to be out here together."

Rhodonite laughed. "We deserve to be broken and ground into dust for what we just did!" She wiped away a tear. "I can't believe we're getting away with it. Oh, I'm a mixture of emotions right now. Sorry for elbowing you in the face just now, Fluorite."

"No harm done," came the pleasant reply.

"Exiting Homeworld's atmosphere soon." "It may be bumpy.. until it's not." said the Rutiles in warning.

Even if Lars' face wasn't already being smooshed against the glass, he would have probably been pressing it close anyway as the finer details of the region they'd spent the last however long in quickly blended into the surrounding megacity. After a fair bit of turbulence, he began to see the shattered planet in all it's terrible glory.

"This is… Homeworld?" he asked, frowning open mouthed at the dramatic spacescape unfolding slowly before him - broken chunks of planet suspended by a delicate arrangement of either gravity, technology or magic or a blend of all - he couldn't decide. Two distinct sets of rings arranged in a uniquely alien way around the two main chunks of planet, so different from anything he'd ever learned about his own solar system. Everything on the planet's surface was beautiful yet sterile and the stark contrast between that and the state of the planet itself disturbed him in a way he felt he couldn't explain to the gems around him. Organic life - which was everything he knew up until the point at which he left Earth - none of it could possibly thrive on a planet as damaged as Homeworld.

And yet, he had managed to thrive. He briefly wondered what that could mean.

"That's Homeworld all right," replied Rhodonite a bit more casually, smiling. "So long, Homeworld! You've been horrible to all of us."

"It's so broken. That's.. kinda sad, right?"

"Oh, that. It's normal. Don't worry about it. Earth used to be a colony so it must look similar, right?"

"No," breathed Lars. "Earth looks great compared to this. It's still a globe."

"Wow, really?" Rhodonite looked surprised as she turned with some difficulty away from the window. "Pink Diamond really did fail, huh. Well, lucky for us!"

"Homeworld has been this way for a long time," added Fluorite, unable to move much at all.

"Is this what the Emerald meant by Era Two? Was that when Homeworld broke?" Asked Lars.

"No, Era Two is something else entirely. Honestly, Era Two gems aren't bad at all if that's what you're worried about," rambled Rhodonite. "Some of my best friends were made during Era Two. Before they abandoned me, like everyone else."

"Era Two began the moment Pink Diamond was shattered on Earth," explained Fluorite at length. "The loss of Pink threw Blue Diamond and her court into profound disarray, while Yellow focused all her energy on expansion. The following chain reaction resulted in a resource crisis that affected the entire empire, even now. Era Two gems are usually smaller and less-powerful than their Era One counterparts. But it's not an insult at all."

"However, the Emerald definitely meant it as one," Rhodonite pointed out quite confidently. "That's undeniable."

Lars closed his eyes and nodded, inadvertently bumping Padparadscha in the face. "Sorry Padparadscha. But, yeah, okay, I'm with you now. That's what the Blue and Yellow Diamonds were upset with Steven about during the Trial."

"Bwah?" It was the Rutile Twins. "You were at a trial for Pink Diamond's shattering?" "-You- were in the presence of BLUE AND YELLOW DIAMOND?!"

"Owch," said Padparadscha.

"Two giant women? Like a hundred feet tall? Yeah. That's what me and Steven were doing before we escaped and ran into you guys." Again, all eyes were on him. He took a breath, which he found he really needed due to the squashed atmosphere of the cockpit.

"Okay, so I guess it all starts with Steven. See, Steven's gem used to belong to his mom, who isn't around anymore. The Diamonds think-" He closed an eye, trying to work it out in his mind before explaining it. "No, wait, they think she is Steven... And they think that Steven shattered her, even though they're not the same person. Steven is just Steven. Either way, I don't think it's true. I know that kid, and I sort of remember seeing his mom around when I was really young, before he was born. His mom seemed nice? I don't really remember. I guess it was really her power which brought me back to life, though. And Steven, well, he only wants help everyone. It's like, his whole thing. There's no way that what the Diamonds think is true," He frowned.

"Ugh. Poor Steven. He's up against so much." "I would hate to be accused of shattering a Diamond," said the Rutiles. "But, what's a mom?"

"Oh, a mom? It's like, your parent. But I guess if gems come out of the ground, you guys wouldn't have parents."

"Do you have a mom?"

"Yeah. And a dad. You uh, kinda need both before you're.. created."

"So.. Are you a mom or a dad?"

Lars' face flushed a deep pink. "N-no of course not! I'm too young. I'm a kid."

"What's a kid?" asked Fluorite, mystified. Lars opened his mouth to try to explain, but Rhodonite jumped in.

"So it's like fusion!" she said. "Like how Pearl and Ruby create me, and I'm the 'kid'."

"Ahh, sort.. of. Except my parents are still individual humans, existing separate from me back on Earth."

"Hah, what? That's so strange."

"No, that's normal where I'm from," he explained patiently. "Most of the things on my planet work that way."

"Oh, we have a lot to learn then," said Fluorite.

Rhodonite agreed, nodding. "Yeah, you'll have to explain more of it to us while we're on our way."

"You haven't really told us much this far," said a Rutile, "But we've all been too busy to ask much, either," admitted the other.

Lars' forehead furrowed. "I know. I mean, I want to tell you guys everything I know, and I am looking forward to getting home and everything - It's all I've been trying to do."

Rhodonite smiled softly. "We know, we saw."

"But. It's.."

"Huh?"

He shuddered. "I-it's... painful."

Rhodonite gasped. "Lars?"

"To think about." He leaned into the window even more, somehow placing a hand upon his un-squashed cheek. "I left on such bad terms with everyone. My... friends, they all must hate me. I really screwed up big and I never had a chance to fix it." He sunk. "But, no. Actually, I wouldn't have even tried to fix it if I'd never been abducted." Here, he paused a moment. "And everything's weird because I died and now I'm pink and stuck out here in friggin' space and I feel stupider than ever for every single thing I was ever scared of or worried about because now I see that it was all just..." he sunk further into himself. "Insignificant nonsense."

Padparadscha raised her arms enough to hug them around Lars' head. "Captain Lars is about to let out some emotions she's been pushing down since we first decided to escape Homeworld. She'll need our support and understanding."

He sighed, at this point content to let all the 'shes' and 'hers' slide for now. "Thanks, Padparadscha."

"Captain, it's okay." "We're on our way now," The Twins said encouragingly.

"You'll be able to fix everything soon," offered Fluorite.

"It might be too late," he replied, staring out into space not only because it was hard to comfortably turn his head away from the window, but also because he was brooding. "Rhodonite, you were called out for just holding hands in public. You were exiled ages ago because of it. That would never have happened in a million years back on Earth, but I always acted like it would have. I have no idea how I'll face Sadie... if I even see her again."

"Sadie?" "Who is Sadie? Another human?" asked the Rutiles, while running diagnostics.

Lars blushed again. "She's my friend. We, uh, we work together at the Big Donut. We sell donuts. A donut is like, a wheel of sugar that you eat. They're not actually good for you but they taste good."

"No, no donuts, talk about this Sadie. Who is she? What's she like?" probed Rhodonite.

"She... She's..." It was too painful. All he could picture was the poor girl reaching for him from the grasp of the Topaz, asking for his help. It simultaneously felt like it was both moments and years ago. He blinked back tears. "Uhhh. Can we talk about this later? I'm sure we have more important stuff to-"

"We sure do have more pressing issues," interjected a Rutile. "Such as, this ship won't make it all the way to Earth." "We will need to make another stop."

"What?!" squealed Rhodonite, glancing over.

Lars cleared his throat and also tried his best to look at the screen the Rutiles were crowding. He couldn't really understand it at first sight. "What am I looking at?"

"Here is the amount of power we have stored, which isn't the problem at all," one of the Rutiles explained calmly. "And here is a cross-section of the ship showing very obviously that a crucial component is completely missing!" said the other. "They never should have released this ship to us!" "It was clearly in the middle of repairs."

"I guess the threat of an angry Emerald carries a fair bit of clout. It's good to know we stole something from a high-ranking gem who is implied to be unreasonable," said Rhodonite with obvious nervous sarcasm, while chewing on a touchstump. "What does it mean?"

"It means, we'll only be able to make it to the next sector over," determined a Rutile, looking anxiously at the holographic screen her face was pushed slightly too close to. The other Rutile nodded in agreement. "We'll be fine, but we need to find another way."

"What's this?" asked Lars, reaching over with difficulty in the cramped space and pointing at a little speck on the screen. It popped up larger accompanied by notes that he couldn't make sense of.

"That is Upsilon IX," a Rutile reported. "The closest colony, smack in the center of Sector Two." "If we plot a course straight for it-" "We'll be okay."

A moment of silence occurred, during which Lars felt that they all expected something from him.

"Well, do it?" suggested Lars. It was obviously the only solution, but he was still very confused by their trust in him.