Steven watched glumly as the familiar buildings of his town slowly faded away in favor of the long, empty road. Lengthy, untamed strands of yellow grass and fuzzy flowers lined the way. He waved goodbye to the 'Leaving Beach City' sign and settled back into the strange, leather seat with a heavy sigh.
"What's wrong, Steven? Is your tummy hurting too?" Peedee asked, wiping his damp forehead, his puce skin slowly fading to normal. Originally Peedee had been seated next to the window, but after a few minutes, they had switched. Watching everything whirl by so fast was too much for Peedee's tummy.
"Whuh-oh no. My tummy's fine Peedee." Steven shrugged with a half-hearted smile.
"Are you sure, Steven?" Peedee pressed on, despite his pale pallor, his eyes were still sharp. "You've been kinda quiet. I thought you were excited?"
"I am…" Steven sighed heavily, slipping further down into the seat. "It's just…well the gems promised they would come to see me ride the bus and Amethyst even said she was gonna sneak to come with me. But I guess like a super important mission came up or something…again."
"Oh yeah, they weren't there were they?" Peedee said. "Usually…Pearl is always following you around."
"Yeah - wait what do you mean?"
"Yeah, Pearl's the tall one who's really pale right? Well she's always following you around." Peedee mumbled. "When we play on the playground, or on the boardwalk, or at the arcade – she only comes out when she thinks you're not looking. Haven't you noticed?"
"No…" Steven muttered sullenly. "They do tons of stuff and don't tell me all the time."
Peedee noticed the sour frown lining his friend's usually happy face and placed a hand on his shoulder. "It's gonna be okay Steven. You said it was probably cause one of those missions thingies right? Sometimes my Dad breaks promises, but he never likes doing it. I'm sure that they're sad they missed you."
"Y-you think so…?" Steven whimpered, his eye shining as he looked up.
"Yeah, totally dude. I bet that they're racing back to Beach City right now and they're gonna want to hear about the zoo." Peedee said patting Steven's shoulder with a crooked smile.
…
Pearl was surprised that she didn't poof when the monster hurled her nearly three hundred feet and she slammed painfully into the ground, face first. She skidded another few dozen feet, a thick mud coating half of her being. An impact of her little body now depressed into the moist ground.
She sat up with a wheezy breath, her vision darkened with blotches of hazy blackness. Her hands went immediately to her gem and thankfully, it was still seamlessly smooth, no fault lines or cracks. Without a second thought she tried to stand, her limbs trembling hard as she forced them to work before her gem could realign them. Her gem blinked, summoning her spear with a muted flash to stand.
"PEARL!" Amethyst yelled, skidding to her side. "Oh crap. I thought you got poofed."
"I probably should have." Pearl mumbled, sitting up wobbly with Amethyst's help. "Where's Garnet?"
"Hitting the living snot out of that thing!" Amethyst growled fiercely. Pearl could hear it now, as the subtle ringing in her ears faded way, the slightly muffled sound of Garnet's gauntlets pounding into the giant monster. The muffled hits grew faster and faster, until Pearl swore she could hear the air whistling with Garnet's might.
As Pearl and Amethyst made their way back to the small clearing where Garnet and the corrupted gem were fighting, they were met with a humongous poof of light and air. Garnet snapped the falling gem from the air and quickly bubbled it with silent sigh.
"Ugh finally!" Amethyst groaned, falling onto her back with a tired whoop. "That took foreve-WAUUGH!"
"There's no time for resting, Amethyst." Pearl said, swinging Amethyst into her arms with a wince. "We need to get back to Beach City and as quickly as possible."
"Pearl's right, we need to figure out where that zoo is." Garnet grunted, picking Pearl up and tucking them both under her arm like a football. She began running, her long strides easily carrying them through the forest at a speed usually reserved for emergencies. The blur of the forest sped up in a myriad of shades of green, the wet slap of the branches barely stinging as they made their way back to the warp pad.
A/N: This is the first week since January that I've gotten more than 6 hours of sleep. I've become incredibly lazy. Gonna surf through my nearly 700 paged Steven Universe doc and see if I can upload anything else.
Thanks for the favorites, follows and your awesome reviews.
(for those of you PMing me about CGA, it's getting written, I promise it's not dead. End of the month hopefully)