10. The Warp.
The Off Colors, having warped into Upsilon IX's otherwise empty Galaxy Warp, quickly and silently crossed the floor and jumped onto the biggest, most elaborate warp pad available. After one failed start, they wasted no more time in warping off-planet.
Bathed in a narrow stream of light and wind once again, Lars was starting to get used to the odd sensation and closed his eyes, exhaling. Padparadscha sat impassively, still in his arms.
Rhodonite relieved his load by taking the destabilizer. She held it in her lower set of hands, as attempting to stow it could conceivably cause her to destabilize and poof her components.
"First I tried for Earth, because why not? Which... didn't work, surprise!" Rhodonite reported to the room after a couple of minutes of silence. "So I'm taking us a few systems over instead. If that turns out too dangerous, we'll just initiate another stream and try somewhere else." She fell silent for a moment, and then added; "To be clear - when we land, do not leave the warp pad unless we all agree it's safe."
Everyone else nodded in agreement.
She glanced over at Lars, and then at the Twins. "Is, is Lars sleeping? Is this what 'sleep' is?"
The Twins both frowned. "It looks kind of boring," "It looks really boring."
Fluorite smiled. "She looks peaceful. We should be careful not to disturb her."
"Not asleep - just resting my eyes."
"She must mean her visionspheres," said Padparadscha.
"Uh, by the way - how do I say this - I'm a he. Him, his," said Lars, finally able to seize his moment in this little sliver of downtime they had all earned.
"What?" asked Fluorite, genuinely surprised. "Are you, uh, like Steven?"
"Well, yeah," he opened his eyes a little. "It's a human thing, I guess. I'm a man. Men are hes, usually. Steven... well, he's still a little boy, I think he's eight or nine or something." He shrugged. "But boys are just, younger men." Suddenly he blinked, frowning, a little insecure. "Wait. How did you know Steven was a he and not me?"
"You always referred to Steven as he," Rhodonite pointed out. "But never yourself."
A fair reasoning, since he'd never been the type to talk about himself in the third person, and he nodded. "Oh. Right."
"Oh no, I've just had a premonition - we'll soon learn we've been making the Captain feel uncomfortable sometimes! I don't completely understand what it means yet, but we should try to respect his wishes."
"Thanks Padparadscha," Lars smiled down at her.
"You're welcome, Captain."
The Twins were confused. "So wait, are all humans-"
"No no," said Rhodonite, with all the enthusiasm of a know-it-all schoolkid. "The Sadie he mentioned is a she, like us. There must be both hes and shes.. Which seems confusing."
"Well, yeah, basically." He braced himself against the pang of homesickness he knew his following thought would bring him. "Sadie - she's a woman, like you guys are women."
"Women?" asked Padparadscha.
"But we're not 'women', Lars," said Rhodonite simply. "We're gems."
"Oh. I, huh," he frowned. "You're absolutely right. I never thought of that."
"No harm done, Captain." "We didn't know either," said the Twins.
Lars shrugged. "Well, we were busy trying to survive and with everything going on, it seemed stupid to make a big deal out of it."
"This is good," said Fluorite. "We understand each other better."
"While we're on the subject, how are you guys?" asked Lars. "I mean, given everything that's happened-" His voice lowered as he decided how to put his question. "How are you all getting through this?"
"Well, it's been rough," said Rhodonite with a sigh. "I'm trying to focus on not getting cracked, keeping everyone together, and putting one gravity connector in front of the other, like always. But... we can't lose each other again. Not again," she frowned as she looked up at Fluorite, and placed a hand on a Twin's shoulder.
"I keep thinking about what you've told us about Earth, and how wonderful it all sounds," said Fluorite. "I can't wait to see it."
"Things got pretty dark in the holding cell," said a Rutile. "Especially with the crash. We really felt like we'd failed."
A short pause occurred before the other Twin continued, "And without all of you around us for the first time in literally forever," "It was hard not to spin out of control." "I kept thinking about how much better it would have been if we hadn't survived, back when we first emerged." "So did I."
"Oh, Twins," said Fluorite.
"And, facing actually being poofed, in the grasp of Homeworld." "Or broken, just now," the Twins shuddered to think of it.
Lars raised a hand. "Hey, Twins? Do you remember what you told me? Not long after Steven left?"
"Was it when -she- accidentally insulted you?" "Or wait, were we... talking about warp pads?"
"I was talking about the warp pads," Rhodonite corrected them.
"I remember," intoned Fluorite, "You were telling him how we're all a crew now."
"Yeah. It's the whole reason I've been letting this weird 'captain' thing continue," he smirked. "I mean, if you guys need a captain, I'll do it. I got nothing else going on. But uh, I need you too. All of you."
"Oh, of course," the Twins smiled back. "We're right there with you." "Logically, we know we did everything we could to land as safely as possible, but there's still a nagging voice there." "Hey, don't call me that!" The Twins chuckled quietly at the lame joke, electing a short chuckle from the others too.
"Also, you didn't insult me. It's true. Humans really don't know anything when we, er, 'come out'."
Rhodonite remembered something and jumped excitedly in place. "Oh yeah! Did you guys know that Lars is only eighteen? One-eight-point-zero?! He isn't even in his early hundreds yet! Not even close! Right, Lars?"
"No way!" "So new!" "He has learned so much in less than a mere two decades!" The Twins and Fluorite gasped in awe and disbelief as Lars blushed deeply.
"Rhodoniiiiite...! That was between me, Pearl and Padparadscha."
"I'm sorry, I had to!"
"I would have told them eventually anyway," shrugged Padparadscha from down in his arms. "I'm a terrible gossip."
Lars glanced down at her, eyebrow raised in surprise, just as the warp stream terminated.
Suddenly they were standing on a Galaxy Warp under a bright white star and pale sky. Lars had been unprepared for it, however, and landed on his butt despite Padparadscha somehow landing softly upright next to him. Nearby, a couple of green gems were sitting together on one of the smaller pads, backs to them, talking privately between themselves. The others balked as Rhodonite defensively and quickly initiated a new warpstream. The Off Colors disappeared back into it as the two strangers started to turn to see what was going on.
Rhodonite caught her breath, once again in the safety of the warp stream. "Whew, that wasn't safe at all. Fluorite - we really need to be unfused next time we land, too."
"I think I do like warping," said Lars, shutting his eyes again and allowing himself to indulge in feeling weightless. "These longer trips are almost relaxing. But how are you supposed to know when it's about to stop? That landing hurt my butt."
Rhodonite blinked, surprised. "You can't tell when it's going to stop?"
"Uh, no? Mustn't be a native feature for humans, not even with the upgrade," he shrugged.
"I'll give you warning, then."
"What do you think you'll do when we get to Earth, Lars?" asked a Twin. "What would you recommend we do?" asked the other.
"I, uh, haven't really thought about it. Oh!" He opened his eyes again. "We could go get pizza or donuts, or something. I'm pretty sure you guys could eat if you wanted. Amethyst, the one on Earth, shakes us down for donuts all the time."
The gems all listened closely and quietly despite all the things they couldn't yet make sense of.
"We just add it to Steven's tab," he continued. "Hnn, we could also go see some wrestling. It's where people dress up in costumes and fight each other for fun on Saturday nights."
"What are 'Saturday nights'?" asked Fluorite, curious.
Lars blinked. "So, on Earth, we split our cycles into columns of seven, and we name each column - they're called the days of the week. Saturday is my favorite one I guess, but only after I'm done with work."
"Do you think it will be 'Saturday' when we get to Earth?" asked a Rutile, and the other responded. "I hope so, Lars just said it was his favorite day, so it sounds wonderful!" "And to think, this 'Saturday' makes up a seventh of all time!" "What else do you do on Saturday?"
Lars smiled goofily at all the gems who were hanging onto his every word. "Ah, you.. you guys have -got- to be joking, right? My life can't be that interesting to magical aliens."
"You want us to tell you what we did in a cave system for thousands of years instead?" smirked Rhodonite.
Lars nodded. "Fair. Fair point. So, the wrestling, well, the Jubilee reminded me a lot of it.. Although it hasn't been as good lately since Tiger Millionaire and Purple Puma-"
He stopped short, expecting a bit of homesickness, but instead he found himself having an epiphany as a couple of previously unrelated neurons in his brain fired up at the same time, creating a connection that had never happened before. Or, perhaps it was simply an odd moment of clarity after having been trying not to think too much about home for so long, but..
"-ARE Steven and Amethyst!?" He screwed his face up as he completed his thought.
"Captain," started a Twin, concerned, and the other jumped in too. "Are you okay?"
"Nooo, I'm really not," groaned Lars as yet another aspect of his life fell apart.
"You're going to tell us more about this Sadie somecycle, aren't you?" Rhodonite was dying to hear more about this mysterious human that he'd namedropped a couple of times before. She'd seemed to mean too much for him to say. She was twisted up inside about it.
He blinked. "Sadie?! Uhhh, what do you want to know?"
"Everything! Have you two fused?!" Rhodonite was frantic, itching to know the sordid details.
"Are you in love?" "What's she like?" asked the Twins.
"What do you like to do together?" smiled Fluorite.
"What colors does she have?" asked Padparadscha.
Lars was absolutely blindsided by all the sudden questions. His face turned a deep pink in embarrassment.
"Aha, wh- humans can't- well, that's.. personal," he looked away and rubbed his neck, but decided to go for it.
"Sadie? Well, hm. She's blond, and she's kind. Like, super kind. Even to me. She's really into horror films, and we like a lot of the same movies, except for some of her dumb fluffy ones, I guess." He smiled, "She's a good singer, too - she sings sometimes in the back room at work, or when she's restocking, when she doesn't think I'm listening," he frowned slightly, touching a hand to his cheek as a realization struck him. "Huh. I guess she thinks I'll make fun of her or something."
He stared blankly at nothing in particular for a moment. "And, she's pretty." He frowned harder. "But I never even told her I thought that, did I?"
Taking a deep breath, he at last continued. "Actually, I've- we've been in a rut for a while. I thought it was getting better but, uh, maybe not."
And then, he had ditched her. Once at the potluck, and again while she was asking for help, and then he had died. In space. He blinked hard and wiped an eye, real subtle-like.
"I just, I hope she's doing okay."
He folded his arms, an uncomfortable look on his face for a moment. Rhodonite clasped all her hands together and stared at him, empathy written all over her face. She'd become particularly fond of this young, pink human and was about to change the subject but, awkwardly, Lars had the same idea. He piped back up again, a little less enthusiastically this time. "Or, or there's Funland, down the boardwalk. We could go hang there. There's a gaming arcade I haven't been to in a while."
"Ugh, more Earth 'games'...?" Rhodonite looked completely unsold.
"Rhodonite, how many times do I have to apologize?! These other games are actually fun, I promise."
"No, it's too late. I'm very skeptical about your taste in 'games'."
"Before I even told you the rules, I said that I Spy was a stupid game! There are lots of better ones, but they need extra stuff. It was just convenient because all you need is at least one visionsphere - which some of us have in spades. Wait till you play Army of War."
Rhodonite shut her eyes and shook her head in mock ignorance. "You're going to have to prove yourself when we're on Earth. Also, look out. We're moments away from stopping."
The two fusions unfused, but the second landing was bleak. It was a dark, abandoned colony on a used up, unstable planet. They could tell it was unstable because the planetquake they experienced while there lasted the duration of their albeit short stay. The pitch black sky was littered with bright, twinkling, unfamiliar stars and Lars, who had managed to land on his feet this time, hugged his folded arms closer into his torso and shivered.
"Woo! Kinda cold here, guys."
"That's a no from me, as well." Padparadscha agreed.
"Next!" called the Twins, and the warp stream was immediately re-initiated. The fusions re-fused.
"I know you don't like seeing broken worlds," Rhodonite said to Lars, their prior squabble forgotten.
"Not all colonies turn out well," Fluorite shrugged casually.
"Huh? Oh, that's fine.."
A quiet moment passed until Lars spoke up - there was clearly something on his mind.
"Okay, here's the thing. Humans, we don't have powers. At all. We're born, we learn as much as we wanna, we live for like eighty years - if we're lucky - then we die. I, I mean - of course it's because I'm pink now - I know that's why I was able to do it. But I don't understand how it happened... How I did that thing that saved us."
He hesitated before admitting, "Guys, it was another fluke."
The gems around him all knew exactly to what he was referring.
He lowered his voice and his eyes, arms still folded in front of him. "We should all be dead right now."
"Stars, that was..." Rhodonite shuddered, motioning at both him and Padparadscha. "Seeing that? How you two were almost-" She fell silent, unable to put it into words. Her two sets of arms held each other in a sweet but confusing manner.
"It would be redundant to say that we are very lucky to have you with us on this journey, because we wouldn't have ever left the kindergartens otherwise." said Fluorite.
Lars shrugged, "Sure, but that's all any of this has ever been - this whole ordeal. Stupid luck, and how we react to it."
Padparadscha pushed her bangs out of the way of her visionsphere. "All of us knew that leaving the cavern would be incredibly risky, but we'd been stuck there for so, so long. We were stagnant, in a stasis. Our own 'rut', I suppose. When you showed up, that was 'Saturday' for us. We made the decision that trying for something better was more preferable than not trying at all. That whatever the outcome, bad or good, we should always be trying for better - for ourselves. For those around us."
She let that sink in for a second before smiling. "No matter how bad things get.. Even if I could go back - even if it was safe, I wouldn't. This is the most fun I have ever had."
Rhodonite looked around anxiously at all her friends. "W-we'll be stopping again soon. Let's hope it's a good one this time!"
The fusions un-fused once more, and they touched down on an empty Galaxy Warp facet that appeared to be floating in midair.