A Crystal Heart's Easy to Break, Baby

by The Qing

An unwelcome and Dandy face from Pearl's past returns in pursuit of a rare and terrible menace that could spell the end of Beach City. Unfortunately for her, Steven thinks that he's a pretty cool guy. A hilarious and heartbreaking Space Adventure in Space on Earth. Steven Universe/Space Dandy crossover.

4. Tall Tales Can Kiss the Sky, Baby

Chapter 4: Tall Tales Can Kiss the Sky, Baby

Moving through space at such fantastic speeds was an extraordinary experience, a sublime sensation only deepened when one realized just how fast and far they were going. In a second of sustained FTL interstellar flight, you could travel distances that would take millions of lifetimes to reach on foot. Yet, spectacular as that was, Pearl found drifting amidst the stars to be a far more gratifying state. Thrusters off and moving slow enough that they were almost parked in the vacuum; she could truly appreciate the grandeur that surrounded her.

Stargazing on the Aloha-Oe was very different from what it had been like on Earth. There, while not static, the view was set, rigidly structured. You'd get the odd shooting star and meteoric impact, but you could set your watch to everything else, including solar eclipses and blood moons. There was enough variety to keep the average human entertained for its meager lifetime, but for a being as long-lived as a Gem, the contents of Earth's skies became depressingly routine. Here on the ship, she was still, not stranded. They were in one place because that's where they wanted to be, not because they were trapped.

The outside looked unchanging, but that was easily remedied by starting the ship again and parking it somewhere else. New views greeted her at each stop. Worlds she'd never known brimming with people of all sizes and shapes. Mammoth space stations and flourishing colonies glimmered by the light of innumerable stars. And she could visit them all. Nothing felt out of reach.

Pearl smacked her temples in admonishment. Focus. If she was going to get anywhere, she needed to focus. That was the downside to having gorgeousness on all sides; it was all so distracting. She could spend hours just looking out the ship's many windows if there wasn't any work to be done or supplies to be fetched. One time, she was lying on the lounge's couch, much like how she was doing now, and just stared into the lustrous beyond. It wasn't until Dandy and QT had walked in from the cockpit yawning and wishing her good night that she realized that the entire day, such as it was in space, had passed her by. That had been unacceptable. She was on a mission, not on vacation, no matter how pleasant and relaxed she found herself feeling at times. Times like this.

She forced her eyes down to the smart phone in her hand that QT had been kind enough to lend to her and scrolled through a few more pages. With it, she had hoped to find news of the Shatterlite and its movements on the outernet, but nothing concrete had turned up yet. It was easy to see why though. Most journalists were focused on the dirge of skirmishes between two universal superpowers. She paid these articles little mind, neither of the parties were Gem-related after all and they only reminded her that in the august depths that lay outside the ship's walls there was probably at least one person out there who was hurting someone else. The rest were concerned with celebrity hijinks and the usual informative minutia of the moment. So it was understandable that something as small as a yacht-sized abomination would escape the notice of a galaxy whose attentions were focused on relatively bigger things.

Not that this meant that she could be lax in her search. There were big interstellar happenings that everyone was talking about, but most worlds were chiefly concerned with their own triumphs and hassles. So each website about a planet or star system's affairs was similar, but unique, giving her a lot of news sources to sift through. Tabloids and gossip columns weren't spared either. She had been generous to herself and her target for the first week, reasoning that it would take a while for the Shatterlite to make the news, but she was coming up to three months. Three months since she had gotten back up here. That there had been no news of a metal-eating monstrosity attacking ships or installations brought little comfort to her. The creature could easily be growing fat on the skin of the abandoned vessels and alloyed detritus that littered the universe. It certainly wasn't close by. It could be anywhere, bidding its time until its big debut when it would be too big to be ignored or stopped.

"Pearl?" Dandy's voice abruptly asked over the ship's intercom. "Could you please come up to the cockpit? We need to talk. It's important."

Before Pearl could ask what the matter was, the connection was cut off, plunging the lounge back into silence. She slipped the phone into her gem and made her way to the bridge. After that very long and shamefully revealing talk they had had a few weeks ago, she had made Dandy understand how important seeking the Shatterlite out was for her. He still expected her to come with him on jobs because 'Dandy don't give no free rides, baby,' but he had promised to take her efforts at finding the beast more seriously. So if he claimed what he had to say to her was urgent, it probably was. Probably.

When she came into the control room, she saw that her crewmates were positioned rather strangely. Dandy's hands, that were usually either on the steering or laced behind his head as he reclined, were nearly touching the ground. The rest of the alien hunter's body was also in a slump. His legs were carelessly splayed out, his neck was craned at an uncomfortable looking angle, and his shoulders hung so low that Pearl feared they would decide to call it quits and detach. QT's posture couldn't have been more different, but it was equally disquieting. While Dandy was all spread out, QT was totally withdrawn. He was standing near the door, arms drawn back into his body. His visor was completely dark, but like Dandy, his still and immobile form was looking in the direction of the window, at the stars. Neither stirred when she came in.

Her suspicions that the two had fallen asleep during the meager seconds it took for her to arrive were allayed when one of Dandy's arms, this one holding a comb, moved up towards his hair. Then it appeared to give up halfway through and dropped back down to his side. There was a soft din as the comb fell to the floor and chipped some of its teeth. "Pearl, I'm afraid this is it."

"This is what?" Pearl asked.

QT, his facial display still inactive, answered in a flat, stiff voice. "Over. Nothing left. Analysis: Null."

"We followed your advice and took a good hard look at this enormous, gorgeous universe we live in." Dandy said.

Pearl allowed herself a small smile. The atmosphere in this place felt too heavy and strained to warrant a full one. "Well, I'm glad that you two gave it a chance. I know that you might be a bit cynical from traveling in space for so long, but there really is so much beauty up here to appreciate."

"Yes…beauty." Dandy repeated blandly. "It's all around us, but no matter how far we fly, there's always more of it. No end to it. Incomprehensible in depth and distance. And we're all just so damn small. Tiny…Insignificant."

"Size=Incalculable." QT droned. "Infinity This Unit. Infinity All Units."

"From a certain point of view, I suppose it could be a little much to take in all at once." Pearl admitted. "But that's no reason to be sad." She tried injecting a little levity into those words, thinking that it might help lift Dandy and QT's spirits and the sense of dread that was gripping her chest.

Dandy's tone remained bleak and haunted. "Sad? Nah, I ain't sad. Granted, I'm not happy either. Peaceful, yeah. That's it. Content. So's QT."

"Affirmative." QT acknowledged. "How about you, Pearl?"

"I'm all right," Pearl lied. "A bit confused, but all right."

She saw the corner of Dandy's mouth twitch. "I can fix that," he claimed. "I can fix everything…Pearl?"

"Yes?"

"Pick a star."

"Why?"

"Just pick one," he softly implored. "There's a whole bunch for you to choose from."

Reluctantly, Pearl moved forward so that Dandy could see what she would select. Her steps were careful and her legs felt heavy. Wanting to get this, whatever this was, over with, she raised a finger and pointed to a random star.

"Thanks." Dandy murmured.

"Proximity Favorable." QT buzzed. "Choice Adequate."

Dandy put on a pair of tinted, white-framed safety goggles and handed Pearl a similar pair with orange lenses. "What are these for?" Pearl asked as she slid them on.

"Everyone deserves to see their own extinction coming." Dandy answered as he gripped the handlebars of the Aloha-Oe's helm and gave them a ruthless shove.

Pearl was startled by how fast the Aloe-Oe was going. Faster than it had ever gone before, faster than she had ever imagined it could, what with how ramshackle a vehicle it was. All around her, stars vanished from view as if left behind entirely in the cosmic dust by this mad dash towards somewhere. All save the one she selected, which remained right in front of them as the others fell away.

The pinprick of light steadily grew as they pressed forward. In time, it went from a quaint dot to the size of a penny, then a nickel, then a quarter, growing closer and more defined with each dwindling minute. The star was as big as a tennis ball when Pearl realized what was happening. "Dandy, what are you doing?!"

"The only thing that makes sense."

"No! You can't!" she tried to wrest the controls away from him so she could steer them away from this insane course of action, but was pulled back and completely constricted by QT's powerful telescopic arms. "Let me go, QT! He's going to get us all killed!"

The robot's body, usually brimming with warmth from the mechanisms and processors within, felt deathly cold against her back. "Existence Futile. Self Meaningless. Life Redundant. Accept Annihilation."

"Oh no." Pearl shuddered. By the stars, she had been afraid of this. That Dandy and QT's lesser minds would eventually cave in to the stresses of intergalactic travel and succumb to space madness. Only their indifference had shielded their psyches from being devoured by the daunting endlessness and her advice had stripped that away.

She struggled against her bonds, but they were holding her arms too close and tight to her body for her substantial strength to find purchase. She tried to concentrate on changing shape or bubbling QT so she could escape, but her anxiety, amplified by how that sun just kept getting closer and closer, left her unable to focus. Tears began to run down her face. "Please, Dandy! Let me go! Let me leave! I don't want this!"

"Time catches up with all of us, even you." Dandy condemned. "Might as well get a headstart," he let go of the steering. "And I think the Aloha-Oe knows which way to go."

Damn cruise control, Pearl thought. She tried again to free herself, but she wasn't strong enough. Garnet would've been strong enough.

Oh Garnet.

And Amethyst. How she wished she could say goodbye to them both.

And Rose…she hoped she'd be able to see her after it was over. Thinking of her old mentor eased her fears, only for a new dread to grip her heart. "Steven," she choked, composure tossed to the solar winds. It wouldn't help her now. "Steven, I'm so sorry…"

"I'm sure you'll see Steven again, Pearl." Dandy said, arms outstretched, spread out in the very image of brotherly adoration and acceptance, waiting to embrace the massive inferno like an old friend.

From behind her, Pearl thought she could hear QT humming an electronic version of what might have been "Amazing Grace."

The tennis ball sun widened into a coconut star, then it took the dimensions of a bush-sized blaze. Eventually, a fiery field of orange energy, endlessly burning in the coldness of the void was all she could see. And still they charged on. This was it; her body would go first, then her gem. All that she was would evaporate on the surface of this gargantuan furnace and no one would ever know. Hopefully everyone back home thought she was long dead. She couldn't bear the idea of them thinking she had abandoned them.

Pearl closed her eyes and fought down the sobs bubbling up her throat. She didn't see why she had to be the only one among them to die a blubbering mess. Her demise would reflect how she had tried to live her life: with as much dignity as she could manage.

She hadn't been prepared for this, but now she was ready for it. So when she felt the ship violently spasm, no screams escaped her lips. There was no fear. There was no pain. There wasn't much of anything at all.

Dying wasn't such a big deal, baby.

---

Despite his low opinion of them, Meow would've been surprised to find out that Slammerheads actually had something in common with Betelgeusians. That for all their differences in height, weight, organ work, temperament, and eating habits, they shared a common hatred of oceans. Meow's people were wary of them because of primal phobias towards illness, drowning, and bad fur days. The Slammerheads, who were hardy, hairless, and capable of surviving underwater indefinitely, hated them because of how much of a nuisance being underwater was.

Outer space was the harsher neighborhood by far, but Slammerheads were accustomed to outer space. They'd been born to glide through the frigid nothing between places. No air, no water, and tremendous radiation were just speed bumps in the roads of their lives. Little pains they willingly endured so long as there was a nice bountiful payoff to dig into at the end of each journey.

Water was something else entirely. A Slammerhead would violently disagree with the sentiment that being under the sea was an acceptable comparison to being in outer space. There were some similarities, but those just amplified the differences between the two environments. In space, there was nothing. You were weightless and free because of that. Travel carefully enough and you could skim past the orbits of planets and suns. Not as difficult as you might think, as the nothing all matter hung by also afforded clear views to those that journeyed on it. Underwater, you weren't weightless, you had the illusion that you were, but there was a very palpable heaviness surrounding you on all sides. It was fluid, yielding by itself, but that only masked how oppressive the substance was. You'd need only open your eyes and try to make sense of the unfocused and distorted world around you to see that you were bound and surrounded. It was a loose restraint, but was most definitely there and wouldn't let you forget it, as if you had been slipped into a cold, badly-cooked piece of gelatin on a shaking table.

Ah gelatin. Its stomach grumbled. How long, it wondered. Had it been since its last decent meal? That was another characteristic of oceans that Slammerheads took issue with. The food supply. Planetary systems were massive meal menus to its kind. In the mood for a moist morsel? Hit up a humid world. Want something a little tougher, more leathery in constitution? Arid planetoids were your best bet. After you had your fill, take a few souvenirs with you. Your food's too busy being dead or digested to stop you. Compare that level of choice and freedom to what the sea had to offer. If they weren't violent or polluted enough to deter the proliferation of life, then they'd be brimming with food. That ought've been great. Slammerheads loved food, even more than they loved loot. They would've adored oceans if everything in them wasn't so damn soggy. All of it was stringy and squishy with chewy bones, if they had any to begin with. Nothing tastefully juicy or seasoned, just waterlogged and saturated with salt. Barely anything worth taking either. It was in the nature of most sentients to drag the treasures of their world onto the surface after all.

It only got worse the deeper you went. Down there, the light of the planet's sun dwindled into nonexistence. The phantom pressures intensified their harassments. Any creatures living here were even more unappetizing than the ones higher up, more shell and spine than flesh. But the bottom was where it needed to be. It didn't dare search on land; it could barely balance with the aching fist-shaped crater on its face, let alone fight whatever had created it.

How that had happened, it couldn't say. It had dived towards a small beachside hamlet for a quick midnight snack and then it had blacked out, eventually waking up underwater the following morning. There were vague memories of a large, hairy, disinterested-looking brick heading towards it, but remembering how its injury had been incurred was a secondary concern to getting it fixed.

When it came to severe head injuries, Slammerhead medicine was elegantly straightforward. Find something to cover or fill-in the wound, and then jam it in. Then after a few meals and weeks of rest, the flesh would scab over it and you'd be good as new. The tricky part was finding tough material your size. Something too small would be useless as would something too large, because if you could break it down to a more fitting size, then it probably wasn't tough enough for slamming into cities from orbit. Right now though, it just wanted a placeholder to plug in the gap. All manner of squishy and spindly pests were trying to turn it into their nest. Crabs, eels, fish, and a few cephalopods had tried creeping into the hole in its skull as it swam and searched. It had shaken them out and devoured them all, but as mentioned before, unless it was well-cooked and suitably garnished, seafood was low on its list of likes. Adding to that, with how dark it was, it could hardly see half of the wildlife it was consuming.

The dark was what helped the Slammerhead find it. For in it, the creature saw the object glow. The orange glimmer was faint. In brighter waters the beast might have ignored it completely, but in the aqueous gloom, the orb shone like the hottest of coals. In the blurry low light, the Slammerhead couldn't see how it was set in the middle of a flowery arrangement of sculpted, golden metal. What it did see was that this object didn't look very strong and that it wasn't quite large enough, but it would suffice until the Slammerhead found something better.

The winged alien carefully brought its head down to the item and tried to plug its wound with it. As expected, it wasn't a perfect fit, but its little light would help make the seafloor a less depressing place to trudge around and the Slammerhead was pleasantly surprised that the rock was rather warm. Then the Slammerhead felt the trinket do something peculiar; it felt it start to grow. It wasn't the erratic and flabby inflation of something living, but a swift and efficient expansion that quickly filled the hole on the creature's face.

The process had been painless and the Slammerhead felt good, more than good, it felt fixed. It felt ready. Now it was going to swim up to the surface, fly back to that quaint, costal town and give his newly mended face a proper testing.

Or perhaps it would have a little rest first. It had been scrounging for materials all day and a quick nap couldn't hurt. As it closed its beady eyes and settled down into the somber muck, it didn't notice that the medal had stopped glowing and that the orange surface that had scabbed over its wound was starting to expand and branch out across the rest of its face and body. It was content to lie there and slumber; indulge in a few hours of well-deserved dormancy and dream of clearer, drier places.

Then dinner.

---

Why did the Big Donut have to have a lunch rush? Or a dinner rush? Or even a breakfast rush? People should've been eating meals at those hours, real food, not snacks. It's what Lars would've done if his salary wasn't so infuriatingly tiny.

Sadie suggested that maybe their customers had done that and were just going to them for dessert. He thought that theory was hardly less nonsensical. If you could afford to eat at a REAL restaurant, then you might as well shell out a few more bucks and get a cake or pie while you were there. Sadie had rolled her eyes at that and chastised him for not believing in their products, citing that lack of faith as the reason why no one ever tipped him.

How naive could you get? He never got tipped because he was a cashier that sometimes took stuff off of shelves and handed them to people. No one ever tipped a guy for sliding processed crud across a counter. You got tips for serving food fast and with a phony smile on your face like you were happy to be there. Though he'd never be caught dead doing something as lame and hectic as waiting tables. If his job had to suck, he ought to have the freedom to phone it in as much as possible. Dead ends were meant to be leant on.

Case in point, what he was doing right now. Taking inventory at the back of the store, marking what they had left, what they needed to order more of, blah, blah, blah. Thank god for the break room chairs, he thought. Standing around and having to constantly look outside at a beautiful – eh, he'd take a rotten one over this place too – day you weren't allowed to enjoy could take a toll on a guy. He'd just rest his feet a bit and double check, triple check, and perhaps quadruple check the inventory. It paid to be thorough, metaphorically speaking. Sadie was tough enough to man the register by herself and work off some of the leftover adrenaline from the surge of noontime eaters. It wouldn't be too hard for her. The only ones that came in at this time were either some straggling off-season tourists or diehard donut addicts who could really stand to cut down on the sweets.

"Hi Sadie." a voice greeted from the other side of the door. "Two of your finest jelly-filled donuts, please!"

Speak of the devil, here was one of those diehards now.

"Afternoon, Steven. Here you go." Sadie said. "Hey, who's your new friend?"

New friend? Lars thought. What had Steven brought along with him this time? Another kid that wasn't allowed to actually buy anything from the store? Some kind of mutant gazelle that would make a mess of the place?

"Oh, this is Dan-hey!"

"The name's Dandy, but you can call me Space Dandy," a new voice interrupted. The stranger's words were oozing with theatrical machismo and forced confidence. Lars hated the guy all ready. And what kind of name was Dandy anyway? "It's a pleasure to meet you, Ms…"

She's wearing a nametag, you idiot.

"Sadie," she said cheerily. "Says so right here on my nametag." Didn't this guy know how to read?

"I can see that." Dandy admitted. "I just wanted to hear it coming from you, beautiful."

What.

Sadie giggled. Why was she doing that? "So how do you guys know each other?"

"He's an old…acquaintance of Pearl's." Steven explained. Those creepy violent moms of his had friends? Yeah right. "I'm showing him around town."

"That's really nice of you, Steven." Sadie said.

"Thanks Sadi-ow-what's the big de-?!"

"Yes that is certainly nice of the little guy. He's been a really big help." Dandy said amidst the sound of Steven struggling. "Unfortunately, at the end of the day? It just won't be enough. You know what I'm saying, baby?"

Baby?

"Oh, heh, wh-why is that?"

"Because when the sun sets and he's all tucked in, I'll have nobody to show me what the Beach City Night Life has to offer," he sniffed with flourish. "Unless you're not doing anything this evening. What time do you get off…work?"

"I-I'm a little busy today," Sadie stammered. "B-besides, there isn't much to do here after dark."

When Dandy didn't reply with another sleazy come-on, Lars thought that the guy had finally gotten the hint and would buzz off. Preferably with Steven. Thus, he was completely unprepared when he heard the words:

"Isn't there?"

"Oh…oh my."

Lars tried to get to his feet, but they were on the breakroom table when he did. By the time he had picked himself up from the floor and barged into the main shop with a threat to call the cops on his lips, there was no one there apart from a blushing - and secretly very flattered - Sadie.

---

"What the heck, Steven?" Dandy asked as he managed to get his arm free from the death grip Steven had put on it as he yanked him out of the shop. "I was this close to sealing the deal," he said, bringing his palms just a hairsbreadth apart from one another.

"That's why I had to get us out of there." Steven said. "Your animal magnetism was out of control!"

"You make that sound like a bad thing." Dandy chided. "Hold on, where was this prudishness when I was trying to put the moves on your red and purple aunts?"

"Garnet and Amethyst are single." Steven snapped. "Sadie's spoken for. So she's off limits!"

"What? She's got a boyfriend?"

"N…not exactly." Steven said, completely devoid of the fire his previous protests had possessed.

"Girlfriend?"

"No…"

"Oh...I get it now." Dandy wiggled his eyebrows at Steven. "Mister Universe has a got a little crush on a little laaaaaaadyyyyyy," he said, stretching the last word in his sentence for all it was worth.

"THAT'S NOT TRUE!"

"Steven's got a cru-ush! Steven's got a cru-ush! On an older la-dy! On an older la-dy!" Dandy jeered, skipping around the boy to the tune of his melodic taunt, made all the louder because of his boots.

"Stop that!" Steven ordered.

"I'm just kidding, dude. Relax." Dandy assured as he ceased his frolicking. "I'll make it up to you. Consider me your wingman. We'll march right back in there and-."

"That isn't it at all! My feelings for Sadie are strictly platonic," Steven clarified. "And before you start getting any weird ideas, she's practically in a relationship almost!"

"How does that work?"

"She and Lars are going to hook up one day. That's how."

"Lars?"

"Her coworker and friend. They've known each other since forever. And it's really close to happening, so don't mess it up." Steven insisted.

"Playing Cupid, then?" Dandy smirked. "That's even more adorable than you having a crush on her."

Steven mumbled something angry and unintelligible as he took a donut out of his takeout bag and handed it to Dandy. "Here."

"Is this a 'shut you up' donut? I love these things." Dandy took a bite out of it and the two started to walk down the street. "Real talk?" he said with his mouth full. "Don't get too bummed out if things don't work out between them. OTP or nOTP, even perfect storms pass."

The boy frowned at him as he started to eat his own donut. With all his attention on Dandy, Steven didn't notice that he had bit down on a particular rich vein of jelly, which filled his mouth and throat with suffocating strawberry goodness. He might have swallowed it all with little trouble, if he hadn't inhaled some of its powdered sugar in shock. Steven coughed, sending a small glob of partially chewed jelly donut sailing through the air and onto the sidewalk. "Oh no!" he cried, quickly running to where the glob had landed. Without a moment's hesitation, he grabbed the clump of pastry and shoved it into his mouth. "Euch," he gagged as his tongue informed him that some sand had come along for the ride.

Dandy winced. "Ewww, Steven, if you were really that hungry, I could have given you some of mine."

"No, it's just-." Steven paused to wipe his mouth with one of the complimentary napkins in the takeout bag. "I've got this healing spit power."

"So you can actually kiss boo-boos better? Cool."

"It is, but if I accidentally spat a bit of fruit on the ground, it might end up growing into a really big fruit…and then into a sentient plant person…possibly an army of them."

Dandy finished off his donut and licked the leftover powder and jelly from his hands before saying. "Sounds rough. You're actually the second space rock I've met that's had that problem."

"You've met another Gem out there with the same powers as me?" Steven asked excitedly.

"I'm not sure if it was a Gem, but I did encounter this rad-looking rock when I went to Planet Planta. And there was this one other job where I went to a Dark Nebula and…and…wait, I think I dreamt that one. But yeah, Planet Planta was where I saw it."

"Planet Planta?"

"A little on the nose, right? Appropriate though. The whole place was chock full of plant life everywhere you looked; Everything was enormous and most of the plants could move and talk."

"Talk? Whoah, none of the plants I grew ever did that."

"Maybe they did and you just didn't know. Try getting a translator like mine. It's a pretty good investment." Dandy said, tapping his bracelet. "So anyway, all these enormous flowers and trees were the result of the place getting hit by an asteroid thousands of years ago; a weird crystal that caused everything on Planta to evolve like crazy. The locals called it 'Code D' and this one scientist tree guy told me that it was real dangerous; it was causing things to mutate too fast. So he asked if I could handle the situation. I want you to keep in mind that I thought that Code D was an alien, not a rock…no offense."

"None taken."

"So I agreed, went hip-deep into hostile territory to stop it, and with the help of the scientist's adorable daughter, I managed to do just that with my bare hands!" he said, punching the air.

"You didn't even need your ray gun?" Steven asked, his eyes alight.

"Nope. Just got my fingers around that rock, ripped it out of its cradle, and took it down!"

"That's awesome!" Steven declared, causing Dandy to puff his chest out in pride. "What happened to Planet Planta?"

This took the wind out of Dandy's sails. "Right. About that. Without Code D pumping out microbes or whatever, everything calmed down real quick. All the plants shrank down and returned to normal."

"They couldn't speak or think or move anymore?"

"No."

"And the scientist and his cute daughter."

"They were the last to go."

He didn't say any more. Steven gave this some thought as he crumpled the paper bag and deposited it in a recycling bin. "Do…do any of your adventures end well?"

"Lots of them do. I've told you a whole bunch of those over the last couple of hours."

That part was true at least. Dandy had told him about several of his exploits since their disastrous ray gun lesson. Initially, Steven was just happy to hear about all these weird places and people the alien hunter had met throughout his long and strange voyages. Despite Pearl's claims that he was a liar, there was a casual earnestness in his speech that made each anecdote sound sincere. Yet, this honesty just made the pattern Steven was starting to see in his stories all the more disquieting. "It's just that all of them kind of end badly for at least somebody. Like that feud between the vest and underwear aliens."

"How was that a bad ending?" Dandy leapt atop a nearby picnic table. "Didn't you hear about how I saved Meow and rode the shockwave of an exploding moon on one of my rocket boards?" he asked, wiggling his hips and tilting his hands as if he was surfing.

"And if there's time later, I definitely want to try one of those out."

"You bet. I got the feeling you've got the makings of a kahuna in you, kid."

"Thanks. But like I was saying, the two of them ended up killing themselves with their own rocks."

"Would it have been a happier ending if they had killed one another instead with their big ol' planet buster bombs?"

"No, it wouldn't. A happy ending would've had them surviving and making peace with each other." Steven claimed. "Why couldn't they do that? Why couldn't they just talk it out?"

"You shouldn't read too much into it, man." Dandy warned, hopping off of the table. "Though they'd tell you differently, it wasn't that complicated. There was nothing to fight for, no larger agendas at play. Maybe they had better reasons when they started, but at the end, it all boiled down to two people hating how the other was dressed. If folks don't want to get along, they won't."

"What about the one with the fish guy?"

"Which one?"

"The one that you ate!"

"The carp dude? Mmm, now he was a treat. For a rare alien, he sure did taste great well done."

"It wasn't a treat for him. Nobody believed what he had to say about the world ending and he got so sad that he ran right at the sun. That was definitely not a happy ending. No matter how good he tasted."

"Hey, I didn't come out of those episodes unscathed either." Dandy contested. "I mean, I didn't get paid."

"And the one with the dog and the little guys!"

"I escaped a black hole! That was pretty spectacular."

Steven dragged a hand down his face in frustration. "So none of them end well."

"Don't blow up at me, Steven. Things are rarely as tidy and neat as all that." Dandy said. He tried to be firm and authoritative when he did, but seeing Steven's downcast expression made him falter. "All right. I'll dredge one up that's all aces for everybody. Give me a sec."

"One where nobody dies?"

"Tough, but not impossible."

"Where you get the money at the end?"

"That's nice of you to add, but that'll just make this harder."

"Oh, and can it be one from when you and Pearl were together?"

"Okay, now you're just being greedy…but, yeah, I think I've got one."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Dandy motioned to the picnic table. Taking the hint, Steven sat himself down. "I think it was about 6 weeks after we met. And it all started when Pearl threw the ship's old couch of the airlock while I was away." He began, joining Steven on the bench. "She'd always hated it and it wasn't hard to see why. It was stained in a lot of areas, smelled kind of funky, and was really, really uncomfortable."

"Those are all things Pearl would hate." Steven noted. "Maybe she thought you'd buy a new one if she got rid of it."

"And I might've. But it was also where I stored all of our money."

Steven's eyes widened and he recoiled as if the information had physically struck him. "WHAT?! Why didn't you put it in a bank?!"

Dandy shrugged. "I don't trust banks. I like my money where I can get to it. So I used the couch instead."

"But without the couch, what were you going to do if you needed fuel or food or cable?"

"I'm glad you asked that, because after crying for forty minutes, I asked myself the same question. Then it hit me. There was this open intergalactic fighting tournament coming up and it had a lightweight division. I said, 'Pearl, you might have the weight and build of a preteen girl, but you hit like a thousand preteen girls. We enter you in this thing, you knock 'em all down, and we get a whole lot of easy money really fast.' Then she tried to hit me."

"You did compare her to a preteen. That was pretty rude."

"You know what was also rude? Tossing out all our savings into the cold depths of space!" Dandy shot back. "After reminding her that she was the reason we were suddenly penniless, she agreed. Said she could work out some of her frustrations in the ring while she was there. And then…"

---

[484th FFAF Open Tournament Live Broadcast – Lightweight Division Finals, Sector Necro Maximo, Space September, Space Century 0006]

Gaoward: Good evening, morning, and afternoon wherever you are, sports fans and welcome back to the Free-For-All Federation's Lightweight Division Tournament, now entering its final phase. As always, this is Gaoward Nosell with special guest co-commentator, Three-Time Free-For-All Mondoweight Champion, Dapperwood Doq Dawson.

Doq: Haha! Great to be here, Gaoward! Let's get this final fight started!

Gaoward: All in good time, Doq. But may I be the first to say, that your spirits have taken a major upswing since this slugfest began just a few hours ago.

Doq: I'm not going to lie, Gaoward. When my agent called me up yesterday and said that I had to be your co-host for this tourney, I had a strong desire to shove my hand through my phone and strangle his scrawny, scaly neck in defiance of all known laws of physics.

Gaoward: Good thing he didn't tell you that in person.

Doq: I blame his survival on his Gogol Plus Phone Plan that allows him to make unlimited calls from anywhere in the galaxy for a low, low monthly fee.

Gaoward: And that's not even going into all the promos and contests you can be a part of just by making those payments, but back to your hatred of Lightweight fights.

Doq: It's not so much hatred as it is contempt, Gaoward. It's a known fact that the heavier the fighter, the heavier the hits. I could commentate on Gigaweight brawls all night and if I didn't love money so much, I'd probably do that for free. But forcing me to watch a bunch of skinny dudes and dames slapfight each other for a whole day? Waking Nightmare, Gaoward. That's what I thought it was going to be; just a whole lot of flitting around the ring, trying to put the other chump in a submission hold, and occasionally throwing a limpwristed punch. No hope of any Super Massive Back Hands or Perelandra Piledrivers. Fat chance at seeing some proper pain and turmoil unfold. I was all set to sleepwalk through several hours of softcore slaughter.

Gaoward: And now you're wide awake. We all are. And it's all thanks to tonight's wolf in sheep's clothing underdog, a civilian that was signed up just before the competition began who defied all our expectations and now has the chance to win 400,000 wulongs in cash prize money. She's gone from dark horse to pale rider in very short order. I am of course speaking of the soon to be infamous Pearl!

Doq: Since we have a little time before the title match, why don't we bring those just joining us up to speed on how one of our finalists went from Pearl the Puke to Pearl the Punk to Pearl the Punisher?

Gaoward: Splendid idea, Doq. It all started in the opening rounds of the competition. Federation regular and self-proclaimed Mistress of Marrow, Femurella was expected to slash and gore her way to the semifinals. Her first victim? Some pasty, pointy-nosed nobody with a rockabilly throwback for a coach.

Doq: The moment I saw her in that Fru Fru tutu jazzercise get-up, I just had to lean out of this hover box and shout, "Hey carrot top! The 80s are dead! Just like you're gonna be once Femurella gets through with you!" Then instead of ignoring me or crying (like I expected) she actually challenged me to tell that to her face down in the ring (after I had put a shirt on). I should've realized right then and there that this chick was the real deal.

Gaoward: I know Femurella wished she had. Perhaps that knowledge might have stopped Pearl the Punisher from breaking every single bone in her body with one decisive kick.

Doq: It was so loud they heard it in the cheap seats!

Gaoward: And what did Pearl do when she saw how much damage she had dealt to her opponent? Perform first aid? Call for help? No. She just put both of her hands on her mouth to undoubtedly stifle the laughter she wanted to unleash on the pathetic, writhing heap that lay before her. However, this half-hearted attempt at sportsmanship was to no avail. We had seen her true colors.

Doq: Which were pretty much the same as her regular colors, except stained with the blood of her enemies.

Gaoward: Since that spine-shattering debut, Pearl's blazed a swift and agonizing trail through the ranks of her opposition, many of them celebrated and seasoned combatants: Doctor Ocelot, Prince Fist, the Cornucopian Kid, the Night Stewardess, and Grey Succubus to name a few. All vanquished by blows that were as quick as they were devastating. I don't even think she's really trying anymore. She just lightly shoved a guy into a turnbuckle during her last match and that was that.

Doq: Can't really blame her, man. No one's been able to give her a decent fight so far and I think she's starting to get really annoyed with that. Our cameras have managed to pick up some very choice pieces of dialogue between Pearl and her trainer. Including words and phrases like "Disgusting", "I can't believe I'm doing this", "He wouldn't stop twitching", "That was horrible", and "I want to stop this." Hmph. And I thought I'd be the most bored guy here tonight. Poor little psychopath. Just look at that troubled, haunted expression on her face. That's the thousand-yard stare of someone who's about to snap from a lack of meaningful stimulation. Tragic.

Gaoward: I think it's a little fitting though. Tonight we have seen dreams crushed, careers ended, and lives ruined at the hands, feet, and surprisingly hardy posterior of this bloodthirsty rookie. Can anything, even Godot Otter Mincemouth, halt this one-woman ballerina blitzkrieg?

Doq: I hope not, Gaoward. I'm having too much fun watching her break people's pelvises.

Gaoward: As am I, Doq. As am I.

*DING!*

Gaoward: And here we go! This should be an interesting title bout. On one side we've got Pearl, the very physical contender of this event, and on the other, Gotter Otter Mincemouth, who has made a similar, if a lot less painful, meteoric rise to the top by subduing all her foes with her formidable telepathic abilities.

Doq: BO-RING! That psychosomatical nonsense should be illegal!

Gaoward: You know the rules, Doq. No foreign objects or outside assistance of any kind. You fight with what's in you. Everything else is free game. And what a game this is. Brawn vs. Brains. Physical Power vs. Immaterial Strength. One Name vs. Three Names. Gingers vs. Blon-.

*THUD!*

Doq: And Godot is down! I guess her little voodoo head games had no effect on the Punisher!

Gaoward: Just walked right up to Godot and karate chopped her in the face.

Doq: She ain't moving, Gaoward. I think she's done.

Gaoward: Well let's wait for the referee to make the call first. Then we can hand Pearl her reward for providing us with such quality entertainment and tell our viewers all about Jaicro Gelato; 5,252 Flavors in thousands of outlets sector-wide.

Doq: He's starting the count! 1! 2! 3! 4! 5! 6! 7! Eigh-!

Raaaawraaaaugh!

AIEEEEEEEEEEE!

Gaoward: Huh. It seems that Godot has devoured the referee. That hasn't happened in a while.

Doq: Wooo, looks like it's going straight to her thighs.

Gaoward: Usually that takes at least a couple of-what-oh my goodness. It's not just her thighs, Doq! Her entire body is changing: legs spilling out in long coils of shimmering slickness, torso stretching in profane angles, arms wrapped around herself forming the lips of a drooling maw filled with jagged teeth, neck reaching upwards along a crooked path! And her face! Turned upside-down! The mouth open and stretching back over her skull as if someone had taken a zipper to her flesh! Oh-oh my word-she's sprouted tongues and eyes all over herself! They're all uneven, dull, and seemingly idiotic in appearance, but they keep looking at me. Why are they looking at me?!

Doq: That's strange. Pressure plates beneath the ring say that she's still the same weight. I don't know what's going on, but it ain't against the rules.

Gaoward: Doq! I think Godot was secretly an Arikan Thought Hulk this whole time! To even look at the true form of one is enough to obliterate one's psyche! Soul death has come for us all! I can all ready see the audience begin to feel the effects of her presence! Tearing out their cheeks! Shoving popcorn under their eyelids! They're all turning on one another! I'm starting to feel it to. How about you, Doq? Can you feel your worthless, moronic brain being dragged down into the astral abyss by the sight of her wretched majesty?!

Doq: Nah. Not really.

Gaoward: Wh-Why not?!

Doq: Pyrotechnics accident. Eyes took a real pounding when I had them set off a miniature supernova during one of my stage entrances. I still won that match, but now everything looks all fuzzy and blob-ish. So whatever's going on down there isn't doing anything for me and my busted headlights.

Gaoward: Bl-Bleugh-But you own a whole landing platform filled with Hover Cars! How do you fly them with such poor vision?!

Doq: I kinda play it by ear.

Gaoward: Brkrmntklfmgf!

Doq: Rude! You kiss your mother with that mouth, Gaoward?! Hey, what're you four doing here?

?: Ylrgrkmdrbloodsacrificezrtnmk!

Doq: Say what? You want some? You want a little Doqamania?! Then you're gonna get Doqamania! Eat this!

*BAM!*

Doq: And a little of that!

*BIFF!*

Doq: And the eight of you can have a couple of these!

*POW!*

Doq: Got you! Crowd surf in hell, loser!

?: HAAAAAURGH!

*THRNK!*

Doq: Throwing it down old school. What the-whoah-is she-holy moley, she is! This is amazing! Go! Go for it, you hopping ginger blur! Oh the tongues have got ya! They're pulling you in! They're pulling you-WOW-I did not see that coming! Yes! Give it to her! GIVE IT TO HER HARD! Almost there! ALMOST THERE! Yes. Yes! YES! YES!

*BLAM!*

*BLAM!*

*BLAM!*

*BLAM!*

URAAUghhhhh…

*CRASH!*

Doq: THAT – WAS - STUPENDOUS!

Gaoward: Ohhhhh, what happened?

Doq: Welcome back to sanity, Gaoward.

Gaoward: Why are you covered in blood?

Doq: Don't worry. It's not mine…or yours.

Gaoward: Okay. But…Godot…she's down…how?

Doq: As for what happened while you and most of our audience were gibbering, genocidal lunatics, let's take a look at the footage from just three minutes ago.

Gaoward: Guh, even looking at it is giving me a migraine.

Doq: Suck it up, man. Because this right here is Free-For-All Federation History in the making. So we start with the Punisher looking all disgusted, but it's clear that all her marbles are still in the playground chalk circle. Godot takes some swings at her and she dodges left, dodges right, tries to kick one of the tongues away, but it grabs her by the ankle and starts pulling her in. More tongues get on her and they try to shove her right into that chest mouth. Just when I thought I was about to see a Space Nipponese "art film" live, she pulls out a freaking spear from that big boil on her head.

Gaoward: More like a lance. Get it? Boil. Lance. Wait, was she disqualified for tha-thurgrkh?

Doq: Sensors say that the shiv on a stick was a part of her body. Still legal. So she uses it to cut off those tongues and then leaps onto Godot, sticking that spear right into one of her eyes. Now we got her climbing and stabbing her way up Mincemouth's neck as she tries to throw her off or get her tongues around her; And they do, but guess what? Tongues can't do crap against spears! That's what that green liquid all over Pearl is, Gaoward. Eye and tongue fluid. Must've gotten splashed with gallons of the stuff.

Gaoward: I think I can smell it from here.

Doq: Finally, she gets to the top of this tower of trembling, tumorous terror. She pries Godot's original jaw open with her feet and then brings her spear up. I know what you're thinking; she's gonna shank her in the tonsils or slice her head off. But no! Instead she shoves it down Godot's throat and battle shrieks. Its tip starts to glow and then BLAM! It glows again and then BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

Gaoward: She fired energy projectiles out of her spear?

Doq: You should've seen it, dude. Smoke pouring out, hot guts flying everywhere, last of the shots went right through and struck the stage. Ooo-oh-oh, this part's just showing off. Before Godot's blown-out carcass topples over, Pearl just backflips off of it and lands back on her feet.

Gaoward: Breaking the cyanide-dipped stranglehold on our minds in the process. Though the scars will undoubtedly remain for years to come. I'm not sure if I'm ever going to get a good night's sleep again.

Doq: You might need some major therapy after this, Gaoward. (sniff) And some new trousers.

Gaoward: But I am sure of this. Pearl the Punisher, who this announcer and millions of F.F.F fans owe their hearts and lucidity to, is the undisputed champion of the Free-For-All Federation's Lightweight Division Tourney! And the winner of 400,000 WULONGS!

---

"And the members of the audience not in need of serious medical attention clapped and cheered! Confetti reigned down from the sky! Music poured from the speakers!" Dandy let out a few whoops and hollers in imitation of the crowd. "Contest conquered, cash won, and nobody went insane. If that doesn't qualify as a happy ending, there's just no pleasing you."

"What about Godot?

"Are you kidding me?" Steven shook his head. "The big pile of teeth, tongues, and eyes that nearly drove everyone bonkers and tried to eat Pearl?" Steven nodded. "Fine. She was okay too. Gave everyone a thumbs up as they carted her off. Or it might have been a different finger. Either way, her fans went nuts over it. 'Godot Lives! Save Godot! Protect Godot!' Bunch of lunatics."

"And the referee?"

"I think they managed to pull him out of her eventually. Satisfied?"

"Totally, it was a pretty cool story, Dandy." The alien hunter grinned. "I just can't believe that Pearl let you get away with it."

"Away with what?" Dandy asked a little more defensively than he intended.

"It's just that you entered her in the tournament telling her it would be a piece of cake."

"Which it was…mostly."

"Then she started hating how she had to hurt so many people. She doesn't like that, you know. She got real mad at Amethyst for doing something similar." Steven continued. "And that last fight where she got drenched by all that goop. None of that would have happened if you hadn't made her join," he licked some leftover jelly from his fingers. "I'm glad that you guys won and everything turned out well, but I'm just surprised that she wasn't mad at you for getting her involved."

"Errr…" Dandy scratched his cheek apprehensively. "About that…"

---

Gaoward: Well would you look at that. Pearl's coach has joined her on stage.

Doq: Why's he blowing kisses to the crowd? He didn't do anything.

Gaoward: Oh let him have this, Doq.

Doq: I'm serious. The guy didn't even look that affected by Godot's nutso aura. He was just cowering the whole time.

Gaoward: Maybe your blurry vision was playing tricks on you. And keep in mind, outside assistance would've been against the rules. How embarrassing would it have been if Pearl delivered that almost-fatality just to lose the match because her trainer tried to be a hero?

Doq: You're right. That'd be pretty damn embarrassing.

Gaoward: Say, I think they're about to share a post-victory embrace. Look, she's turned him around and now she's hugging…his throat.

Doq: And shaking him.

Gaoward: Eugh, he just took some of Godot's fluids off of Pearl's top and smeared it over her eyes. She's let him go to wipe it off; he's trying to make a break for it! OH! But she's caught him; got her arms around his waist. She's arching back, he's in the air, flailing's doing him no good. My goodness. Could it be?!

*CRASH!*

Doq: SUN CUP SUPLEX! RIGHT THROUGH THE FLOOR!

---

"Now that sounds more like it." Steven chuckled.

"Dang, that's the second time you've gotten enjoyment from something bad happening to me today." Dandy grumbled. "You're a lot more mischievous than I was expecting."

"What were you expecting?" the young Gem asked, wondering what presumptions Dandy could possess when they had only just met that day.

"From the way Pearl gushed about you? I thought you were going to be a damn cherub. Playing your harp and farting out lilac-scented rainbows all day long."

"I play the ukulele."

"Interesting, but not the same thing. To summarize, the perfect little angel she described would never laugh at a man getting slapped by a rose-colored jungle cat and he definitely wouldn't have hung out with such a charmingly roguish character like myself."

Steven felt a bit guilty, reminded of how he had broken his promise to Pearl - in spirit, if not the letter. He had exited the house through a window, not the door – but what was it that Dandy had said? The way she had 'gushed' about him. "Pearl talked about me while she was with you?"

"Not right away, no." Dandy answered. "It took around two months for you to come up in conversation. Before that, she didn't really talk about her past. But once she did, woo," he shook his head. "She wouldn't stop yammering about you. Twelve straight hours of baby Steven stories, baby Steven pictures, baby Steven this, baby Steven that, how bright you were, how special you were, how great you'd be once you grew up; It drove me nuts."

Steven blushed. "S-sorry."

"What are you apologizing for? Sure it got so bad that QT faked being low on power just to bail out on it, but at the same time, it was really sweet," he smoothed the side of his hair before continuing. "Usually she was always anxious, angry, or just plain morose; either all business or staring out into space. Talking about you made her happy. I had seen her smile at my expense or at a joke before, but never that big. Like…she was really, really happy. Jubilant almost. It was a nice change of pace and I think it helped her loosen up a little."

"In that case, I'm glad I could help." Steven said with just dash of smugness.

"I'm sure you are." Dandy said, allowing himself a wistful smile.

The two of them looked out at the ocean before them, letting its gentle liquid rhythm fill their wordless air. Well-fed and just the right level of tired that would warrant some well-earned relaxation, Steven could just imagine them both sitting here quietly for the rest of the afternoon. Evening would come, but before that, the sun would sink beyond their vision, splattering the water with light and color as it made its exit. Even the fidgety Dandy seemed content, placated by what they had done and what he had said. They might've sat there for hours and languished in this simple tranquility for as long as they could. That would have been nice. "So why did you break up?"

Dandy sighed and leaned back against the table, craning his head upwards to the picturesque blue sky. "Leaping right into that, huh?"

"I…I think I've been more than patient." Steven swallowed. "And you did promise that you'd 'talk the talk'; tell me the stuff Pearl wouldn't if I showed you around."

"That is what I said." Dandy admitted, still not looking at Steven. "Why? Do you really need to know? Is that worth spoiling this perfect summer day?"

"Maybe I don't need to." The afternoon did seem too pleasant to burden with such information, especially if it was as heavy as Dandy implied. Then again, he couldn't see how talking about it on a rainier day would make it any better. "But I want to."

Dandy brought a hand up and tapped its knuckles on his forehead. "All that nitpicking for a peachy conclusion and now you want to hear about something that definitely didn't end well," he berated. "Make up your mind. If there's something you want to do, do it. If you don't want to do something, don't. It's that simple."

Steven felt a nervous pressure building under the back of his head and chest, but managed to ask. "Is that the way it is with you?"

"Yup. I pretty much do what I like, where I like, when I like. It's a blast," he exhaled and hunched over. "Not everyone gets to live forever like you guys. Why waste the time we've got doing things that'll make us miserable?" he asked. "And why's she so hung up about it anyway? It happened eight years ago. Isn't that like a blink of an eye for you Gem types?"

"N-no, we pay attention to how time passes." Steven claimed. Unlike him, the Gems never slept. They were probably getting a lot out of those extra hours while he was resting. "And if we didn't, then whatever went down between the two of you would seem like…like yesterday to Pearl. So it'd still be fresh in her mind."

Dandy flinched. "Hrrm…How about that? I lose either way," he pondered out loud, letting out a rueful chuckle.

"Was it really that bad?" he received no response. "I know you guys didn't catch the Shatterlite, but-."

"Oh we caught it all right." Dandy corrected, wringing his hands.

"That's not what Pearl told me."

"Sounds like she doesn't tell you a lot of things." Dandy retorted. "So why should I?"

"Because you promised." Steven said firmly.

Dandy glared at him, thinking that if he scowled hard enough, the kid would drop it. Steven was undaunted, responding with a pointed look of his own that let the alien hunter know that he wasn't backing down. "I did, didn't I?" Dandy hung his head, defeated. "Could we maybe have one last stop on the tour before I do? Those donuts were so-so, but I'd rather they not be the last highlight of the day before it all goes serious."

Steven's form relaxed and he grinned, not seeing the harm in allowing them both one last romp. "No problem, Dandy. What did you have in mind?"

"A second shot at Sadie, of course." If Dandy hadn't smiled so slyly as he said this, Steven might have fallen for it. "No? Nothing? Heh, you catch on fast," he sat up straight and started stroking his chin. "One last hurrah in the sun. Gotta make this count. But it'd be a little lonely if I was the only one enjoying myself. How to do this? Hmmm…" he snapped his fingers. "Steven, you still want to give my rocket boards a try?" the boy nodded eagerly. "Wanna try them right now?"

"That'd be great!"

The young lad's returning enthusiasm was infectious. "It's settled then. That'll be our big finish!" Dandy yelled, jumping to his feet. "Let's get to the Aloha-Oe and get our surf on!"

Steven's face fell. "Th-the ship?"

"That's where my boards are so that's where we're going." Dandy said as he did a few lunges.

"Why don't we just-uh-teleport in there and grab them?" he nervously suggested. "And then teleport out…far, far away from the Aloha-Oe?"

"I've been eating French Fries and Donuts all day." Dandy said, straightening himself out of a squat thrust. "And now I've got calories to spare."

This isn't good, Steven thought. If they went to the ship, then Dandy would find out about the duct tape and what the Gems had done and then – and then – actually, he didn't really know what would happen. It couldn't be good though. "I-I've changed my mind. Let's-."

"Race you!" Dandy ran off.

"Hey! Dandy! Wait up!" Steven cried as he chased after him.

Unbeknownst to Steven, there was another reason that Dandy decided not to use the teleporter. He wanted this to last; stretch it out for as many minutes and miles as he was able. Delay having to tell Pearl's darling tot the truth, because no one's ever in a hurry to lose the trust and admiration of a child once they've earned it. But as Dandy had said when the two had first met, being good with kids was still something he was "working on". So he couldn't have known that if there was anything in all of existence that could forgive him as easily as he desired, it was a child.

---

Meow sunk his teeth into the flesh behind the fish's eyes, piercing its brain and ending its thrashing. "Not so tough now, are ya?" he asked his kill, smacking his lips.

QT ran an audio file of subdued disgust. "Can't you use your claws for that? Or something from the tackle box for once?"

"Hey, these things tried to bite me first. Not my fault these big-nosed fish are so rabid." He tilted his head and closed his mouth around the fish, keeping a hold on its tail. When he slipped it from between his lips, all that came out was a frowning skeleton, whose bare features made it look only slightly irked that all of its meaty parts had been stripped away by the Betelgeusian's barbed tongue. "Not bad," he belched and threw the remains of his meal into the sea. "Kinda wish the Slammerhead had hit somewhere with better grub though.

"Like where?" QT felt something tug at his second fishing rod and instinctively pulled his line out of the water with a rhythmic flex of his metallic hands. There, jerking on the thread, was another big-nosed magenta guppy. Finding it as dull and dinky as the others he had caught, QT plucked it from the hook and threw it to Meow.

"Places like Florence, Osaka, and Sydney." Meow said, catching the spastic creature between his paws. "Places a little more interesting than the Beachside Backwater we ended up in."

"You certainly found something to do when you should've been warning us about the Gems." QT said, casting out another lure.

"Barely, I really had to put the effort in to keep myself occupied." He jerked his head back as the fish tried to snap at him. The black markings on its face made it look like it had done so with a smile. Creep. Meow unsheathed one of his claws and stuck it under one of the fish's gills until it stopped moving. "Before I know it, our ship goes belly up and I almost become Lion Chow. One minute I'm bored, and the next I'm in mortal terror," he complained as he made quick work of QT's handout. "Not my idea of a good time." Meow tossed the leftover bones off of the side of the sloop and went back to handling his fishing rod and checking his pohone for chwitter updates.

QT understood, but didn't share his disdain. The sea was calm. The sky was blue. The clouds were sparse. And Dandy was miles away. Pole in hand and a gentle saltwater breeze across his face, he almost forgot that the reason they were here was barbarous, fanged, and deadly.

"Pssst."

"Yes, Meow?"

"Pssst."

"Meow, what is it?" QT asked with a slightly sterner tone.

"Pssst!"

QT groaned. This was just petulant of him. "MEOW!"

"Whuh?" Meow removes his earphones out from under his hat. "You say something?"

"Why were you psssting at me? You know I hate getting psst at!"

"I wasn't psssting on you, I was listening to N-nya's Memory of Fleas."

"Well someone was and I don't see anyone else on board."

"Maybe it came from outside the boat."

"What's out there besides saltwater and fish?"

"Pssst."

Now that he was paying attention, QT looked to his left and saw Amethyst peaking out at him from the water. "Amethyst? What are you doing up here? Did you find out where the Slammerhead's hiding?"

"Nah, search isn't going too well." Amethyst said, not sounding very concerned that a malicious and deadly alien was on the loose. "I just can't concentrate, you know?" she slung an arm over the edge of the boat and leaned into it, making the craft tilt slightly. "I have all these questions in my head like…" she blinked, her eyes getting a good look at QT and Meow and how things looked a bit different since she had left them a couple of hours ago. "What's with the second fishing rod?"

"It's just an extra one I brought along so I can catch regular fish while I wait for the Slammerhead to bite."

And you'll be waiting a very long time if that snowglobe's the best you've got, Amethyst wanted to say. "Right. That makes…sense."

"Is that all?"

"That?" Amethyst blew a raspberry at the robotic angler. "Not even close. We want the dirt on Pearl."

"The dirt?"

"We?" Meow asked. Amethyst answered by pointing at something behind him. He turned and was shocked to see Garnet at his right.

"Yo." Garnet greeted, waist deep in water, but not wading in it like Amethyst was. Arms crossed, goggles still wet; her legs didn't seem to be kicking or moving at all. She was just there. "I'm here for your juicy gossip."

QT scratched the side of his hat, perplexed. "Why come to me? She's told you a whole lot of stuff all ready."

"That was just her complaining." Amethyst retorted. " We want to hear about some of the embarrassing situations Pearl got into while she was out there. She was gone for six months! Something even slightly humiliating must've happened to her then!" she propped herself over the edge of the sloop and fluttered her eyelashes at QT. "Please? Before she gets back and stops you from telling us all of her shameful space secrets?"

QT wheeled himself away from Amethyst, casting Garnet as furtive a glance as his black dot eyes could manage. "Are…are you two sure you're her friends?" he asked, taken aback by how the two people Pearl had talked so highly of would want such slanderous material.

Garnet nodded. "She's just fun to tease sometimes."

A flustered Pearl could be pretty funny, QT reflected. And if Amethyst pulled on the side of the sloop any further in her attempts to beg – was she trying to seduce him? He hoped she wasn't - the answers out of him, the ship would probably capsize. Best to give them what they wanted. "Cruel, but fair." Streams of ghostly blue binary fell across QT's visor. His eyes lay behind the descending columns of information, looking left, right, upwards, downwards, and diagonal as it searched for the right folder. "Bingo!" he declared, the streams vanishing from his face. The robot rolled towards the front of the boat, near the bow, so that the others could see what he was about to show them. "Prepare for a tale of monumental mystery and vengeance," his voice trembled dramatically as he wiggled his fingers at them. "One that shall take you to the daunting heights of drama and-."

"Just get on with it all ready!" Amethyst demanded.

"The purple lady's right." Meow said. "Get on with it!"

"Get on with it."

"…okay." QT's features rolled back as he brought up archived footage from an adventure long past.

"A circus." If Pearl's tone could get any more deadpan, it would need to be disinterred for her to say anything more. "This is how we're going to find the Shatterlite?"

"Circuses have fortune tellers, right?" Dandy asked as he adjusted the ship's coordinates for Planet Albee. "Get your palm read or play a little tarot Texas Hold 'Em and you're bound to get a clue."

QT studied the leaflet Dandy had handed to him. "I'm guessing that's not the only reason we're going there."

"Guilty as charged. They've also got a freakshow. I figure that at least one of the oddities on display is a rare alien hiding in plain sight," he cracked his knuckles. "Not for long though. Mark my words, we're coming out of this with a whole grab bag of carnies to take to market."

Pearl put down her flier and scowled at the side of Dandy's head. "Coming from anybody else, that would be unbelievably-."

"Weak."

The video paused. "I'm sorry, what?"

"QT, Pearl could be back at any minute." Amethyst eyed the water around the sloop with suspicion. "So if you could hurry things along, that'd be swell."

"Skip to the next chapter, dude." Meow ordered.

"If you don't mind." Garnet added.

"…all right." The scene on his screen changed once, twice, thrice, and then resumed.

"So you're the tin-skinned baby cannonball, the hair gel-chugging vagabond, and the birdcage-hearted ballerina." The masked ringmaster noted to the three disguised alien hunters. "I usually keep my distance from our newest additions. Have them prove themselves worthy of my trust and the trust of the others, but the three of you have been making waves with the audience and with your fellow performers. I admire that in a showman." He brought a hand to his face and the scarlet mask none of them had ever seen him without. "Permit me the pleasure of properly introducing myself. I…am Doctor Deux Bras." he said, taking off the accessory.

"Dandy…" QT whispered through his glued on pacifier. "His face."

Dandy bobbed his head in acknowledgment.

Doctor Deux Bras looked exactly like an Albeean, but true to his name, he only had-.

"Pick up the pace." Amethyst commanded.

At this, the footage became choppy and twisted; its audio a blizzard of white noise and piercing dins.

"Please." a much huskier and more melodic voice implored.

The distortions and shrieking ceased. Now it appeared that QT was struggling against the bonds of some thick, undulating green rope.

"Don't worry, Dandy. We're here to bust you out!" the man in white assured as he and the rest of the Aloha-Oe crew's former fellow freaks entered the room.

"Gumm?" Dandy grunted as the Moebius Snake continued to shrink around him. "How'd you know we were here?"

"Curr told us everything." The attraction known as the Singular Twin explained. As he said this, his clothes turned long and black and his face became more delicate and fair.

"I'm so glad we found you all in time," she looked behind her and said. "Mercurio, if you would be so kind? I think your Sally is being a little too familiar with these three."

A young boy wrapped in bandages and feathers stepped forward and fearlessly approached the anomalous anaconda. The lad gestured the creature forward. A forked tongue ribbon slid out of the tightening bundle of reptilian recursion and came towards him in answer. When it was resting in his grasp, Mercurio kissed the surface of the strip, causing the living restraints to quiver and fall away as they rushed to rejoin the piece of 'Sally' in his hand.

"You saved us." Pearl panted, not quite believing they were alive and free.

"duh," said Mercurio as he stroked what passed for Sally's head. "We're …not…murderers."

QT made a show of checking his hands for damage, not wanting to look their rescuers in the eye. "But we lied to you about being frea-about being different."

"Which was ridiculously awful of you three." Stovehead rebuked. "But you guys did help us out. Even if it was in service of a really rotten cause."

"And you did come back to warn us about Deux Bras." Kalvin the Snowcone said from within his dome. "Sorry we didn't believe you right away."

"Apologies can wait." Dandy said as he helped Pearl to her feet. "But now that we're all on the same page, it's time we make like an exorcist and get the hell out of here!" He started to walk forward, expecting the carnies to make way or exit ahead of him. None of them budged.

"And just where do you think you lot are going?" Jaqo's right hand growled.

"Out?" QT offered. "As far away from here as possible?"

"You can't just leave!" Curr cried.

"Yes we can." Dandy stated.

Curr's anguish twisted into Gomm's confusion. "But how will we stop Deux Bras?" he asked.

"Stop him? Who said anything about stopping him?"

Stovehead shook his fist at Dandy. "It's what we're all here for isn't it? It's why you guys came back."

Pearl moved Dandy aside to address the stalwart carnival workers. "We came back because we didn't want any of you to become associated with whatever Deux Bras is going to do to that village," she explained. "Unpalatable as you might be to others, none of you deserve to be fugitives."

"Awww, you guys do care." Jaqo's left hand gushed.

"Doesn't change the fact that the Doc's got to be stopped," said Stovehead.

"We don't even know what his plan is!" Pearl screeched. "Let alone how to stop it!"

"Surely we can try…" Gomm lamented, morphing into his sister. "Promise us you'll at least try." Curr begged.

Pearl would have refused. In fact, she wanted to refuse. This wasn't their fight and it didn't have to be the fight of these carnies. The awfulness of what Deux Bras wanted to do to that town was only rivaled with how crummy the people there had treated them all. No matter how daring or impressive their performances, she and the others had been jeered at, ridiculed, and mocked regardless. She now understood why the mad ringmaster wanted to wipe it off the face of the planet. Why couldn't they? How could these outcasts before her have any sympathy for those that had mistreated them so? What was wrong with them?

…what was wrong with her?

"If you insist." Pearl conceded.

"WHAT?!" Dandy and QT yelled.

"Wonderful!" Kalvin cheered. "With you guys helping us, stopping the Doctor should be a cinch!"

The crack of a laser bolt shattered the air.

"Your EMPLOYER begs to differ!"

"Who the hell are these weirdos?" Meow loudly inquired.

"Characters you could've gotten to know if we had started from the beginning." QT nagged.

"The snake thing was cool." Amethyst admitted. "But the rest was still really tame. Get to the good stuff! Get to the scandal!"

"We're almost at the end." QT said. "But have it your way." The furious mastermind on his screen was replaced with a much more vibrant video of rolling color.

---

Dandy fired over and over again at the polyurethane flesh beneath him, only for each of his beams to curl into bouncing, helium-filled orbs of latex just before they struck. As the blue balloons floated past him in the wind, he tried jamming the pointed end of his ray gun into the surface, but it too was transfigured into an inflatable caricature of itself, popping between Dandy's hand and what it had hoped to pierce. His yelp of pain and surprise was brief and it wasn't long before he had thrown himself onto the buoyant ground and started to bite and claw at it. "This curse is the pits. QT! You having any more luck?"

"Not much." QT whined, trying to keep his worn wheels from sinking into and slipping off of the pliant, curved frame they were trying to wreck. "My fingers are too blunt and my punches just bounce off of it."

"Pearl, what about you?"

"Making…some…progress," she answered between slashes.

The aura that was protecting the bulbous behemoth had turned her spears into long turquoise balloons the moment she tried to use them, but they were still far from harmless. Years of practice and discipline made it so that even something as floppy and fragile as a balloon a deadly weapon in her hands. She could still cut with it, much to the astonishment of the others, but the airy automaton's hide was thick and these improvised polearms didn't last very long. "Ack!" Pearl yelped as her former spear popped in her grip. "This is an exceptionally stupid way to take vengeance on somebody," she moaned, pulling another spear out of her Gem to continue her assault.

Dandy couldn't argue with that. Sending a blimp-sized, fire-breathing, balloon giant wouldn't be his go-to method of getting payback. Then again, he wasn't an unhinged circus ringmaster-cum-warlock who was run out of his hometown for having two arms instead of three. So who was he to judge? The clown make-up was a little much though. There was adding insult to injury and then there was pouring acid onto a guy's spilled out intestines. "Yeah, but it's working. And getting killed by a clown this big is a pretty stupid way to die too. I guess everyone's coming out of this looking like an idiot."

"Even the chumps trying to stop it?" QT asked.

"We'll only be chumps if we don't succeed." Dandy explained as he tried to dig one of his sharper fingernails into the parade balloon pierrot. "We can't give up when the stakes are this stupid! We'd never live it down!"

"Well…huh…said, Dandy." Pearl huffed as her latest balloon spear burst. "We're so close…" she tried to summon another spear into being. This would be her 23rd for the day. Or maybe it was the 24th? 25th? It was getting hard to keep track. "Just a little…more." Her gem flashed and sputtered. A blob of light spilled out of it and instantly fizzled out. Her body started to sway, as if dazed at her failure, and then went limp.

"Pearl!" Dandy yelled as he half-crawled, half-ran to her collapsed form as she started to slide down the balloon monster's back. He leapt and slid across the fabric, getting close enough to grab her wrists. When he got his hands on them, he felt one of QT's arms wrap around his ankles and pull them back to semi-safety. "Don't freak us out like that!" Dandy yelled, pulling her up against him. "You might be crazy tough, but we're dozens of feet above the ground!"

"I-I'm fine." Pearl said weakly. "Bring me back…to where I fell…please."

She looked weak; more exhausted than he had ever seen her. Her thin body and feathery weight against his hands added to this sense of frailty. She could scarcely keep her eyes open, but there was still a fierceness in them that compelled Dandy to obey. He cautiously dragged her along, bracing himself against the headwinds of the giant jester's flight. QT slowly teetered after them. Upon reaching the spot she had been slashing, Dandy saw that there was a foot long horizontal gash on this part of the lurid titan. It was about an inch deep, discolored and faded, and filled with worn and cut fibers. His dried lips let out an impressed whistle. "You weren't kidding about making progress." Certainly more than he and QT had managed.

The tips of her hair tickled his nose as she nodded. "Concentrated all my attacks on a single area…more efficient and…effective that way." Pearl brought a hand to her forehead. "One more ought to do it." A stream of light began to flow from her Gem, but it flickered into nothingness when she tried to grab it. She tried again. This beam didn't even wait for her touch to dissipate it and promptly vanished. "No…" she cried softly.

Dandy carefully braced an arm behind Pearl as he brought the other to the tear to scratch through it. No good. He could feel how thin it was, but despite its suppleness, it was still too taught to break. "Damn!" he cursed. "QT!"

The robot complied and reached over Dandy and plunged his hands into the vulnerability. Over the billowing winds and the barotraumas in his ear, he heard the surface rudely squeak at QT's hands trying to push past, before it suddenly repelled them. "Come on, come on, you stupid-." QT demanded, but his second attempt was similarly rebuffed.

Dandy heard a labored grunt coming from in front of him and sighed. "Would you cut that out? You can't even stand right now."

Pearl's words came out in a hopeless whisper. "But we're so close. We can't fail…we shouldn't fail."

"What can I tell you, Pearl? Near-success stings just as badly as total failure." Dandy said as he got them both seated. "Maybe even more so." And what a near success this was; A lot of people – granted, it was a lot of unfriendly people - were going to die, QT was useless, the mad doctor was getting away, and the only thing that looked worse than Pearl right now was his hair. Victory might taste sweet, but it sure was bitter when it was unripe.

"At least we'll have a nice view of Deux Bras' hometown getting burned to ashes." QT said, deciding not to mention that as the only one among them that needed to breathe, the fumes would probably end up suffocating Dandy to death.

Nevertheless, this failed to console the man on any level. "I wish we could get to the ship somehow. Maybe try ramming this giant jolly jackass."

"I kept telling you to get the teleporter fixed…" Pearl softly scolded.

"I could still let you fall overboard, you know." Dandy threatened, though his hold around her waist didn't slacken in the slightest.

"That probably wouldn't help anyway." QT lamented. "The Aloha-Oe would just turn into a giant balloon like everything else we've thrown at this cruddy colossus."

"Hey, cruising around the stars in our bouncy castle space shuttle could be fun." Dandy smiled at the thought. "The only downside I can think of is that it'd probably end up popping the moment Pearl tripped and landed…on…her…her…"

"On my…what?" Pearl asked. "Dandy, you spaced out there for a second. On my what?" she craned her neck as best as she could, but wasn't able to catch his eye. She did manage to get her head far enough to see QT staring in Dandy's direction. For a few seconds, the automaton remained motionless. Then his pupils dilated and shrank, darted in her direction, and then went back to looking at Dandy.

Wordlessly, QT wheeled around the pair so that he was now across the gash and in front of his exhausted, helpless crewmate. "Pearl, it's going to be okay." QT put his hands on her shoulders. "…I think."

"Think? About whaahahaugh!" she shrieked as QT pulled and Dandy lifted, flipping her upwards. As her feet left the ground, Pearl feared that Dandy was making good on his empty threat and was tossing her off of the balloon. But as suddenly as it had started, her airborne journey came to an abrupt end. Once the panic has passed, she saw that the gash she had created was now above her. Or if the feeling of Dandy and QT's arms around her body was of any indication, she was being held above it, vertical and face first. The two of them grunted in exertion as they moved a little forward, then a little back, until she was looking down at a particularly thin and vulnerable looking section of the injury. "I…what…what was that for?" she asked, the panic and confusion giving her voice some much missed power and urgency. "What is this?"

"If we want this bozo blimp to go the way of the Hindenburg, we need something sharp with a lot of force behind it that the spell won't touch." Dandy said. "And there's only one thing on hand that fits the bill."

When Pearl didn't reply right away, Dandy took that as a sign that she understood and was totally cool with what the three of them were about to accomplish. The more perceptive and less self-absorbed QT on the other hand, recognized this silence for the befuddlement that it was. "It's on your face," he meekly stated.

"My face? Are you referring to my Gem? It's not sharp or pointed at all. There's nothing on my face that's…that's…no…no, no, no, No, NO, NO! You are not-! With my-! NO! We are not doing this!"

"Hey you're the one that said we shouldn't fail when we're so very, very, very close to fulfilling your promise." Dandy reminded.

"Dandy, this aerial abomination has turned everything that's tried to hurt it into party favors!" Pearl yelled. "I do not want to be turned into a balloon because of one of your idiotic gambits!"

"That won't happen." Dandy claimed. "When we tried using weapons, those got all transfigured. But when I tried going at it with my fingers, fists, and teeth, nothing happened. So I'm thinking that someone's body parts fall into some kind of magic loophole that Deux Bras overlooked."

"That's not reassuring at all!"

"Pearl, there comes a time when a man…and a robot…and a talking rock have to use everything they've got to get the job done." Dandy clumsily proclaimed. "And you're all we've got."

"And what if it's not enough?"

"We fail." QT answered bluntly. "At the rate it's flying, this clown is going to get to the village in less than a minute."

"Whoah. Good enough for me. Get ready, QT! We got us a town full of jerks to save!" Dandy ordered.

"She's totally going to kill us after this is all over," the robot moaned.

"You bet I will!" Pearl shouted.

"Sounds like a problem for future Dandy and QT." Dandy said. "But for Dandy and QT right now, it's time to blow this sucker. Ready?"

"R-ready!" QT acknowledged.

"NOT READY!"

Heedless of this, Dandy said. "Then on the count of three." Pearl felt herself being lifted and steadied. "One," she tried to squirm her away out of their grasp, but none of the anger was going into her limbs. "Two," She could just turn away; look down, look sideways. That'd quash their dimwitted scheme. They'd fail and people would fry, but what kind of victory could be won in such an asinine way? "Three!"

"WAAAAAAAGH!" QT screeched.

"UNLEASH THE BEAK!"

Pearl didn't even have time to yell at Dandy for saying something so stupid when he and QT swung their arms down, thrusting her and her nose into the gash. Through the numbness of the ensuing collision, she could feel threads starting to tear as her face sank deeper into the yielding fabric. When the comical travesty beneath tried to push back, it just caused more of it to be torn by the tip of her prominent snout. This couldn't be happening. It was working. Why was this working? Why this? Why her?

"I hate you…" her words came out in a nasally whine. "I hate you both so mu-!"

*POP!*

---

"Whooooooooosh! Whoooooooooosh! - You kind of have to imagine it because my camera got damaged while we were holding on for dear life – Whoooooooosh!" QT sounded out as he made his arms duck and weave through the air, having them shorten and lengthen as needed. "All that air rushing out of the hole was making us fly all over the place. The sound was so loud that I couldn't even hear us screaming. I didn't think it would ever end." His hands serpentined upwards, reaching a twisted crescendo of sorts, before tumbling down to the deck of the boat in a clunky heap. "It did of course. We ran out of air and fell to the ground, but the clown made for a really great cushion and drag chute; it practically saved our lives." He held back a giggle as he drew his arms back. "You'll never guess where we landed."

"Was it on Deux Bras?" Garnet asked.

A big green check mark flashed across QT's facial display. "Correct! We flopped right on top of his caravan while he was making his getaway to the starport. Some luck, huh?" the robot beamed. "I couldn't see any of it happening, but from what my audio sensors picked up, Dandy and Pearl freed the freaks and turned Deux Bras in. The rest of the carnies decided to keep the circus going without him. Last I heard, they were doing pretty well for themselves in Las Nirvana." QT finished. Overall, he was largely satisfied with how it turned out. Being coerced into zipping through most of the video's events had been irksome and even rude. He had lived through the entirety of that – which was a lot harder than it sounded – and his viewers just wanted him to step over it all to get at what interested them. Nevertheless, he thought the highlights they'd seen had gotten the essential core and basic gist of the episode across, if not the nuances. Amethyst and Garnet appeared to be satisfied, but it was Meow's reaction that QT anticipated the most. He had been the crew's…Meow…for many moons, but never asked about what life was like before he joined up. Perhaps he'd take this opportunity to do so.

Meow snorted. "Unleash the Beak," he giggled.

Or he could just fixate on that.

"Unleash the Beak!" Amethyst parroted loudly, slapping the water around her. "I always knew that nose had to be good for something!"

Once again, Meow caused a wave of laughter to roll over the people around him. Only this time, he wasn't the primary subject of the ridicule.

Due to the fact that most of them didn't need to breath to laugh, it took a while for them to finish and for Garnet to ask. "How'd Pearl get back at you and Dandy for that?"

"Strangely enough, she never did." QT said. "She just avoided us for a couple of days and it was a while before she talked to us again." He chuckled. "Personally, I think she was waiting for her nose to heal. Otherwise she would've sounded like this." QT adjusted his speakers so that 'sounded like this' came out in a clogged warble.

"Or maybe I was just really mad at you two."

"Or maybe she was just really mad at u-." QT looked behind him. Pearl was hanging from the ship's bow, condemnation radiating from her hard, pointed features.

QT cried out in fear and hastily backed away, ramming into Meow's stomach and painfully knocking the breath out of him. "GAK!" Meow choked.

Pearl watched this unfold with a level of impassiveness that bordered on the eerie. Certainly more than anyone could normally muster at seeing a vacuum cleaner robot collide with a big space cat. Her voice was just as stiff and neutral. "Now that we're all done slacking off, maybe we can get back to work."

"Have it your way. I got what I wanted." Amethyst pushed herself away from the boat and turned herself into an orca. "Catch you later, beaky!" she jeered, before diving back into the ocean.

The mockery failed to provoke any noticeable reaction from Pearl. "Garnet?"

Garnet flashed her a thumbs-up and slowly sank down; her gesture was the last thing to go under.

Taking the hint, QT got off of Meow and went back to holding his fishing rods. The Betelgeusian followed suit. QT waited for the sound of Pearl joining her fellow Gems beneath the waves to seek the Slammerhead out, but it didn't come. Though lacking nerves or flesh, he could still feel her staring holes into his back with those piercing blue eyes of hers.

Contrary to his apprehensions, Pearl hadn't meant to linger. After chancing upon QT telling the others all about that harrowing misadventure with the circus, she decided to let him finish before making her presence known; Allow them to have their fun at her considerable expense and then give them a little scare. She had intended to go back underwater herself once she was sure her teammates had, but now, Meow aside, it was just her and QT. No Garnet. No Amethyst. No Dandy. No Steven. She might never get another chance. "QT."

The robot shuddered. "Y-yes?"

"I've always wanted to ask…did you know?"

"Kn-know what?

"QT…" she said, her voice wavering. "Did you KNOW?"

Most robots had very good poker faces, especially rudimentary appliance models like QT. However, to compensate for his lack of proper facial features, QT used his body and voice to express his emotions. Scratching his head conveyed confusion. A quick halt in his speech denoted hesitation and uncertainty. He'd even make his body tremble whenever he was scared and bounced on his wheels when he laughed. None of it was necessary, he was animated by choice. As a result, talking with him was as much a pantomime performance as it was a conversation.

That said, stillness and silence could still speak volumes.

Pearl waited for him to look her way to say something, to fidget and stutter nonsense as he tried to explain. But none of that came to pass. He just sat there with his back towards her; quiet as a tomb. A stark and distant response to be sure, but he had answered all the same.

"I thought so."

Pearl let go of the boat and swam back down into the depths.

---

Of course he had. Lacking lips didn't mean that QT couldn't be a kiss-up. For all she knew, he might've been all for it. Those gentle manners masked a desire for wealth that could dwarf Dandy's depending on the day; a vacuum cleaner with the soul of a slot machine.

Such were her thoughts as she traveled deeper and deeper into the water. If the Slammerhead was anywhere, it'd be down. Garnet had sensed as much. She could trust Garnet. Unlike QT.

Trusting a robot. What a lark. Yes, they had shared a love of cleanliness and a mutual scorn for Dandy's asinine behavior. Sometimes, he was the only person…thing…she could talk to and his not needing to eat, drink, or breath often made him the most Gem-like creature in parsecs; a fellow voice of reason in a galaxy that seemed to be just as bizarre and eccentric as their – for lack of a better word – captain. Perhaps that made their friendship understandable, though it turned out to be just as artificial as QT was.

The sea was darker here, blackness for miles around. A part of her Gem, some primal and craven fragment, urged her to turn back and leave. Head towards the light, for what lurks in shrouded corners are best left alone. She pushed it aside and morphed back into her humanoid form. Light started to pour out from her forehead, dozens of little orbs of glowing blue drifted forth into the shadows, forcing them back. Pearl had foregone doing this at first, fearing that the illumination would alert the Slammerhead to her presence, but feeling as lousy as she did, a good fight would be a welcome distraction.

After a moment of concentration, she amplified the glow from her Gem into a thick beam of light, much more powerful than the orbs she had produced. Then she started to swim through the brightened bleakness, shining the beam to seek out whatever was beyond the range of her miniature constructs. Some said that being underwater was comparable to being in space. They were full of it, of course. Water was a bootleg version of the zero-g enormousness beyond Earth's atmosphere. But she'd be damned if what she had made didn't remind of stars. And here she was, travelling past DIY constellations and towards inconceivable danger for a quick buck. Not unlike that blasted ship of his.

The Aloha-Oe. Another of the defective pieces of equipment in Dandy's possession. If it hadn't broken down, Dandy and his cronies would've been long gone by now. It boggled her mind that it had managed to survive the alien hunter's peril-wrought lifestyle for so long when flipping it over had been enough to make it inoperable. She didn't even hit it that hard! How she had ever allowed herself to ever feel at ease in that tacky clunker, she might never know. It was even colored like a lemon. Now that she thought about it, there was that one time…

That's when her searchlight did something strange. Well, not really strange as Pearl understood why it did what it did, but it was still rather unexpected. As it was directly linked to her thoughts and desires, the end of the beam had changed shape and its position became fixed. Pearl remained oblivious to the alteration and by the time she became aware of it, she was all ready face-to-face with the projection.

It looked like a door, a closed, concave sliding door. She remembered this door, though when she had first encountered it, it had been a dull, metallic gray. It stood sentinel at the end of a hallway that everyone passed by and no one entered, herself included. Until one day…

---

"Before you go in, you might want to put this on." QT said, holding up a thin piece of cloth to Pearl.

"That's a blindfold." Pearl pointed out.

QT gulped. As to why a robot would even need to gulp, Pearl had no idea. "Y-yeah it is. You know, because it'll be so bright inside."

One of her eyebrows lifted in puzzlement. "Can't I just put on a pair of our solar flare goggles?"

"It's really, really, really bright inside." QT claimed, splaying out his free hand at each 'really' for emphasis. "But if the blindfold's too weird, you can always shut your eyes. Just-uh-use echolocation to find your way around."

"I don't know how to use echolocation," said Pearl. "Why would I know how to do that?"

QT shrugged and tapped his visor. "I dunno, you seem to pull new powers out of your butt every other adventure."

"I pull nothing of the kind!" Pearl cried, aghast at the way QT had phrased that sentence. "Just open these doors so we can fix the problem and get this over with."

"Okay." QT typed a combination into a nearby control panel, whose buttons seemed oddly pristine for such an important room. "If that's what you want." He said as the doors slid open.

Up until this point, Pearl had thought that the Aloha-Oe was a perfectly fine spacefaring vessel. It was functional, spacious, and above all, fast. Sure it was obnoxiously yellow, looked like an enormous metal canoe with nostrils, and was owned and piloted by one of the biggest clods she had ever met in her entire life. But it carried her through the strange and gorgeous vistas of space whose beauty she had almost forgotten. And besides, what were aesthetics but a passing fancy? It's what was inside the ship that counted, or so she told herself. However, like the man who bummed around inside of it, the Aloha-Oe was full of surprises. Most of which weren't very pleasant.

"I did try to warn you." QT said.

Pearl dropped her toolbox.

Seated at the cockpit, Dandy thought he heard a familiar and furious scream from the other side of the Aloha-Oe. He decided he must've been imagining things and returned to his magazine until his communicator violently flared to life in light and volume.

"DAAAAAAAAAAAAANDY!" Pearl's voice shrieked from the device.

"OW!" Dandy cried, getting his bracelet as far away from his ears as he could without removing it. "Pearl! Indoor voice! And why are you calling me on the communicator? The two of us are still on the Aloha-Oe!"

Pearl was unrepentant, in fact, she sounded angrier than she had ever been before, if that was possible. "Because I'm afraid that if I take my eyes off of your "engines", then whatever miracle keeping them together will disappear and we'll all be dead!"

Dandy sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. "So I'm guessing that you didn't take the blindfold."

"I should have! I can't believe this travesty has been getting us through space this whole-!" she paused. There was a wet, sticky squishing noise coming from her end of the transmission. "Wh-what did I step on? Is this gum? Oh my word, there's gum everywhere!"

"This is why I don't like coming here." QT chimed in.

Dandy groaned. Couldn't those two neat freaks do something as simple as this? "Look, just do your job and don't mess with the engine too much."

"This isn't an engine!" Pearl spat. "This is a house of cards set up by a very lucky 4-year old. This thing could give out at any moment and leave us stranded with no life support. Or maybe it'll just explode and take us with it. And you sent us here to FIX THE AIR CONDITIONING?!"

"Well I know it doesn't really matter to you and QT, but things are getting kinda toasty." Dandy said, having all ready draped his trademark jacket over his chair to cool himself down.

"How could a ship like this fall into the hands of someone who was completely ignorant of how to properly maintain it?!" Pearl's tone framed the question as a rhetorical one, but it nonetheless caused her crewmates to awkwardly cough into their hands and turn away. Those shared, phony affectations told her everything she wanted to know and confirmed several long held suspicions, but she still felt compelled to ask. " You stole it, didn't you?"

"For your information, I escaped with it!" Dandy proudly declared. "During an awesome adventure full of explosions and heartbreak…that you're probably too mad to appreciate right now."

"This is completely unaccepta-!" her transmission, if not her insult, was halted when Dandy decided he had had enough short-distance chastisement for one day and switched his communicator off.

"Thank god for volume control," he muttered as went back to staring at centerfolds.

Unfortunately, Dandy didn't think to lock the door, which probably would've stopped Pearl from stomping in and dragging him out by the pompadour. Incidentally, the lock system was also broken

"Ow-ow-ow! Not so rough, baby!" Dandy pleaded.

Pearl's response was to pull at his hair that much harder. "I'm going to teach you everything I know about space travel and if you learn enough, then maybe I'll think about fixing the AC!"

And so, Dandy got a crash course on how to keep the Aloha-Oe from actually crashing in more ways than one. He didn't come out a scholar, but his know-how would do in a pinch. And the AC did get fixed, so it all worked out in the end.

---

The door melted back into a flat plate of light as the beam stretched away from Pearl just as originally intended. Stupid ship, she thought as she continued her search. Stupid QT. And all that gum. Her body shook at the memory of having to scrape all of it off so she could properly mend the engine's fractures.

Well now, to borrow a human colloquialism, the worm had turned. Now it was Dandy's turn to be betrayed by his oversized jerry-rigged dinghy and his two-faced, no-faced robot stooge. It had been hours since they had left the shore. Was he starting to feel trapped? Was he starting to feel alone? Abandoned? Served him right. That's what you got for being so trusting of ships and robots and…her.

Though it probably wasn't so bad as to be completely unbearable. He had food, water, entertainment. Dandy might feel a little desperate and closed-in, but there was a very low likelihood of him coming out of this with severe mental trauma. He'd be fine. And if he wanted to talk to someone, he could always give Meow or QT a call.

A call.

She shut off the searchlight and stopped swimming. Pearl looked around to see if the others were nearby. When she didn't see either Garnet or Amethyst skulking about, she pulled the item out of her Gem and dimmed the light of her constructs. You could never be too careful.

There was still enough light for her to gaze at what she had brought with her; a slim golden bracelet with a blue fiberglass ring wrapped around its center. When in use, the ring would light up, that is, if it wasn't broken. And as the large diagonal tear that cut clear and deep through its layers would attest; it was very broken.

Trapped air from within the device bubbled out of the crevice like the last pitiful gasp of a drowning man. Water flooded its insides, destroying whatever hope anyone would have of salvaging the item's electronics. She looked down at the golden ring as she often had in the weeks that followed her return to Earth until she could put it aside, her hold tender and tinged with regret. Then with nary an ounce of anger or malice, she let it fall from her hands.

As Pearl watched the communicator tumble into the deep, an old regret bloomed in her chest and mixed with the new. All this resentment towards QT and the Aloha-Oe for colluding with Dandy, for aiding in his misdeeds, when it could be argued that the innocuous device she had let slip from her fingers was the machine to blame. For if it hadn't been made inoperable during that last job of theirs; if she had gotten it fixed or replaced right away, then maybe, just maybe Dandy wouldn't have had such an easy time stabbing her in the back.

---

"You just turned the ship around and left it there?" Steven asked, backing away as slowly as possible.

"The thing crash landed on a no man's dead zone planetoid blitzed with nuclear fallout and crawling with vicious mutants. You bet we turned around." Dandy said, relaxing his pace so he wouldn't end up kicking or stepping on Steven by accident.

Steven had tried chasing after the star on the back of Dandy's jacket for a few hundred yards and failed to close the gap. How did a man with such heavy boots move so fast? To catch up, he had needed to – partially – feign hyperventilation twice to make Dandy slow down and come back for him. However, he wasn't able to dissuade Dandy from continuing his trek towards the Aloha-Oe. I don't feel well; There's a first aid kit on the ship. I'm thirsty; I've got some sodas in the fridge. I read that there's a storm coming; Awesome, the waves will be even better. And so on.

So Steven had settled for trying to hinder their progress as much and as subtly as possible, hoping that all this passive-aggressive obstruction would cause Dandy to give up and decide to go somewhere else. He needed to get this done fast. They were almost there.

"But you were so close to catching it." Steven protested, trying to keep Dandy's attentions squarely on him lest he lift his head and notice something amiss with the still distant Aloha-Oe.

"Steven, as weird as this is going to sound, rare aliens are more common than you think." Dandy said, turning his nose up at this poor, ignorant child. "So I'm not going to waste my time or risk my life chasing one if it isn't...worth…the…trouble?" he stopped in his tracks, just as Steven had wanted. But he wasn't looking at the young Gem. He was looking over him. "What the hell?" he started to run towards the Aloha-Oe.

"Wait! Dandy! I think I'm feeling a cramp come o-whoah!" Steven tried to lie, only for Dandy to pick him up and sling him across his shoulders piggyback style.

"We'll rub it out later, kid! Something's wrong with the Aloha-Oe!" Dandy barked as he dashed forward, carrying Steven all the way.

Steven would have attempted to complain of nausea or make up some other excuse to get him to stop, but he was too preoccupied with dodging the pointy, gelled-up, back portion of Dandy's hair to try. When he managed to find a safe haven from the stylish spikes, the alien hunter had stopped running and let him down.

Reluctantly, Steven walked out from behind Dandy to look at the Aloha-Oe. The Gems had certainly done a bang-up job. There was duct tape everywhere, all of it tightly wound and thickly layered. It was impressive, albeit ultimately unsuccessful as demonstrated by Dandy's being outside of the ship. Right next to him. Oh boy.

"I can explain. You see-."

"VANDALS!"

"Vandals?"

"I leave the ship alone for a couple of hours and some punks truss it up like a Space Nipponese por-uh-'art film' star!" he yelled, sending a splash of sand sideward with a kick. "I bet it was that Onion kid. The one that ambushed me and stole all our gulls!"

"He kicked you in the shin."

"And you didn't chase after him!"

"What were we going to do with a box full of burnt seagull carcasses?!"

"Not give them away, that's for sure." Dandy snapped. "And if it wasn't him, who else could it be?"

Who else could it be? Steven's eyes widened. He could use this! The boy bit the inside of his cheek and silently apologized to his quiet – and oftentimes creepy – friend for what he had to do. "Hmmm, I guess this is something Onion would do." Steven said, not quite fibbing. This kind of prank wasn't beyond Onion's abilities or against his – potentially nonexistent - scruples. "He's done stuff like truancy, a little shoplifting, some grand theft auto, and a bit of (probably accidental) arson in the past." Wow, now even he was starting to believe that Onion had done it. "So he could've done it."

"The kid's a truant? Jeez. And to think I complimented him on how he wore his sweater." Dandy laced his fingers above his head and stretched. "Ah well, we'll get some payback later. Right now, we gotta get all this crap off of the Aloha-Oe post-haste." He bent forward to touch his toes. "She isn't into this kind of stuff, if you know what I mean."

Steven didn't. "We're still going through with it then?"

"It's our last shot at fun before sunset. So hell yeah we're going through with it." Dandy flashed him a toothy grin and flexed his arms. "When it comes to stuff like this, Dandy ain't no quitter, baby!"

The heartfelt energy and glamour in Dandy's boast caused Steven to smile in turn. How had they ever thought that something as simple as duct tape could contain someone like this? "Yeah, let's do this!" he cried, not seeing a reason not to. The secret was safe, the two of them were pumped, and the truth was only a rocket board ride away.

The duct tape wouldn't stand a chance.

---

"Oh, h-hi Pearl." QT stuttered.

Pearl wasn't that surprised when she emerged from the water to see Amethyst and Garnet hanging around the boat's bulwarks with QT not fishing and probably in the middle of telling them another embarrassing tale involving humiliation getting the better of her. A little disappointed, but not very surprised.

"We were just taking a break." Garnet said.

"It's fine." Pearl assured as she flipped herself into the sloop with the bowsprit and sat herself down. "I could use a break myself."

"Pffft."

Pearl looked starboard at the source of the muffled snicker and said to Amethyst. "Go ahead."

And Amethyst did, letting out a raucous roar of laughter. Her hysterics were so debilitating, that she couldn't be bothered to keep herself buoyant. She dropped down between the waves, creating a ceaseless geyser of bubbles as she descended.

"It wasn't that funny." Meow criticized. "A 6/10 at the most."

Insulting as that rating and the situation surrounding it was, Pearl didn't feel like getting angry. All that searching and thinking had been heavy, bitter work. She just wanted to lie back and rest for a few minutes.

"Are you okay?" QT delicately asked.

Clearly, a little peace and quiet was too much to ask for. "Yes…no…I don't know," she said, her eyes to the sky.

"Want to talk about it?" Garnet asked.

"I just feel like…like trapping Dandy in the ship could've gone better."

"You guys tied it up just fine." Meow assured as he adjusted his reel. "And Dandy was none the wiser."

"No, I think we performed that maneuver flawlessly." Pearl said with a smidgen of pride. "It's not about how well we did it, but…how we did it. If that makes sense."

"Are you thinking that what you did was wrong?" QT offered.

"Definitely not. It was the best option available," she retorted. "We did the right thing, but I wish I could have talked to him; explain why it needed to be done instead of leaving him in there without a clue."

"Probably wouldn't have worked." Garnet stated.

"I know." Pearl exhaled, covering her eyes with the back of her arm. "But stranding him there like that for hours….oh what have I done?"

"Chin up, Pearl." Meow said encouragingly. "If Dandy ever gets bored he can always just teleport out of there."

Pearl bolted upright. "What?" she choked, her face somehow becoming even paler than it normally was. "He fixed it?"

"Technically, I fixed it." QT pointed to himself. "It took a while, but it works just fine now."

"But the engine is busted." Pearl bargained, trying to hold herself together.

"The backup generators should be enough to power it." QT revealed. "Why? Is that a problem?"

"Y-I-wh-ah-Dandy-free-Steven-danger-I-you-me-I-rrrAUGH!" Pearl rambled and roared. She grabbed QT by the sides of his head and pulled him towards her until her nose was pressed against his visor. No uncertainty in her eyes now, just pure unmistakable outrage.

"Please don't hurt me."

"Why didn't you tell me he could teleport out of the ship?!" she demanded, viciously shaking the robot all the while.

"Y-your 'him or Garnet' pitch was so confident and well-worded that I thought you had taken the teleporter into consideration! I thought you knew!"

"You pinhead!" Pearl screamed as she tossed QT at Meow, eliciting a pained 'Not again!' from the Betelgeusian. "YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME THAT TO BEGIN WITH!"

Garnet really should have tried to stop Pearl from diving off of the sloop; perhaps by saying some words of determent like 'hold on' or 'wait'. Sadly, the gears in her sizable head were obstructed by a perfectly valid and ill-timed question: Was she? And Pearl's desperate charge through the vast saltwater expanse replied, Yes. Yes she was.

Not long after, Amethyst rose to the surface. "Ohhhhh, I needed that," She moaned blissfully. "So what did I miss?"

"Trap failed. Dandy's loose. Pearl's swimming back to Beach City." Garnet summarized, gesturing Pearl's way with her thumb.

They thought they could hear her scream, "I'm coming Steven!" But that might've just been the wind.

"Huh." Amethyst hooked her arms around the side of the boat to get a better view of her retreating companion.

"Think I should've offered to bubble her back to the Temple?" Garnet asked. "Would've been a lot faster than…that."

"Nah, let her take the scenic route. It'll help her work out all that frustration so when she gets back home, she won't be so angry."

"Or." Meow groaned as he pushed QT off of him. "The trip could just make her even madder."

"Yeah." Amethyst nodded. "That's way more likely."

---

Getting rid of the duct tape proved to be a tougher task than Steven or Dandy had anticipated. Fitting really. Dandy had often espoused the virtues of "going with the flow" and the core strength of duct tape lay in how its viscoelastic properties just didn't allow that. He and Steven had tried to pull, rip, and tear through the strips of blended polymer to little success.

They had even sought out sharp objects to try and cut it away: fragmented seashells, Dandy's belt buckle, plastic utensils Steven had found in the garbage, and the occasional sluggish crab. It wasn't until Lion had passed by and dropped a switchblade at their feet that they started to make some actual progress. Personally, Dandy would've preferred that the lion help them directly instead of leaving behind a knife and walking off, but it never paid to look a gift cat in the mouth. Particularly when that mouth could tear your head off with a single bite.

The switchblade was rather sharp and though there was still a lot of tough, shiny tape to cut through, at least they could cut through it now. Armed with the right tool, Dandy set about freeing not only the landing platform, but the comparatively restrained cockpit, emergency exits, and a few hatches whose purpose Steven could only guess at. The man claimed it would all be worth it in the end and the boy was happy to help when he could.

Conversation was initially scant. They were too busy grunting and heaving to talk. Now that things were going much smoother, there was time to chatter. The current topic? One of Steven's most cherished comic books, whose title Dandy had recognized back when they were at the Temple. It wasn't a discussion about the writing or the art. Nor was it a dialogue addressing the deeper themes and cultural impact of the franchise. Their debate was concerned with the most controversial and important question in the entire series; an argument that haunts and inflames the hearts of fanboys to this day.

"I can't believe Usagi's your favorite, man." Dandy said as he labored to slice through an exceptionally stubborn strip of tape. "I thought Jupiter or Mars would be more your speed."

"What's wrong with liking the title character of the show?" Steven tried to sound neutral, but there was an undercurrent of hurt in his question. "I bet lots of people love Usagi."

"Nobody likes Usagi."

Steven gasped. Surely he was joking. How could people not like Usagi? She was always so happy and nice and funny. He'd be the first to admit that she wasn't perfect; she could be a bit of a lazy ditz in some episodes. But that was part of her charm and if it hadn't been for her, the other Scouts would've remained grumpy, sad, and alone. People were entitled to their own opinions, but Dandy's was just plain wrong. "Oh yeah? Well who's your favorite?" Steven countered, wracking his brain for the likeliest candidate. "Let me guess, It's Minako, isn't it?"

"ENNNK! WRONG!" Dandy blared. "Haruka's where it's at, Steven."

"Sailor Uranus?" Steven was shocked. Didn't Dandy remember how she and Michiru had acted during the Heart Stealer arc? Perhaps he hadn't read or watched that far yet. "But…but…she's-."

"Yeah, Venus is an all right Scout." Dandy admitted. "I really dug her lone wolf, sixth ranger phase and she has her charms. But there's simply no beating Haruka. Punt your biases aside and look at her objectively: Bursting with confidence and poise. That impeccable taste in clothes, cars and women," he inhaled deeply and let out an indulgent sigh. "And a hot girlfriend that lets her do all the flirting she wants."

"I don't think Neptune actually liked it when Haruka flirted with other girls."

"Meh. Whatever. What you should be taking away from all this is that Sailor Uranus is the perfect model for young men and women alike. And you can take that to the bank."

Shoot, those were a lot of good points. Steven briefly believed that he would have to admit defeat and throw the moon princess to the wolves, but he was quick to register that Dandy had omitted some very crucial narrative pratfalls involving his favorite Scout. "She did kind of get in the way sometimes though," he noted with pronounced casualness. "Made a lot of mistakes."

"Tssch." Dandy's tape-cutting intensified. "Just because the writer makes a character do something stupid, doesn't make the character any less awesome."

Gotcha! "So I guess that could say that for all the Scouts then." Steven said, grinning in cocksure triumph. "Even Usagi."

"…tushy." Dandy mumbled.

"Touché."

"All right, wise guy." Dandy began as he sliced through the last layered column of duct tape. "You win. Now help me tear this crud off of the ship so we can get to doing something we'll both enjoy." He grabbed the cut ends of several tape strips and brought them down to Steven's level.

Steven took the loosened strips in hand; they were at least four rolls thick. Together, he and Dandy pulled the layers of stubborn ribbon from beneath the hull of the Aloha-Oe from portside to starboard. Even with the added leverage, something to hold onto, and their combined strength, the feat was still an arduous one. No thanks to the sand making it difficult to gain any traction.

The job done, the two of them groaned and fell back onto the soft, cushiony beach that had vexed them barely a minute before. It was funny how things worked out sometimes. "I need a freaking drink." Dandy complained.

"What about the sodas in your fridge?" Steven panted.

"Naw, kid. Like a nice, cool, lovingly handcrafted beverage." The alien hunter raised his hands and started to squeeze at the air. "I could really go form some BooBies right about now."

"Boobies?" Steven grimaced.

"It's not what you think." Dandy's hands fell back to Earth, splashing sand on either side him. "I mean it sorta is, but not exactly."

Another mystery. Fantastic. "Oh, okay." Not wanting the pile of enigmas to stack even further, Steven sat up and asked. "What are…BooBies?"

"That's a very good question, Steven." Dandy said, suddenly energized. He jumped to his feet and looked down at the young Universe. "And the answer to that is so big and juicy that I can't really put it into words." He clapped the sides of his palms together excitedly. "Though I think you of all people would have the easiest time understanding it."

"I would?"

"Sure." Dandy brought his hands up and then waved them down as if he were outlining a large and well-proportioned hourglass. "You see, Boobies is like living inside the soft, comforting interior of a giant woman's-."

"Like the Crystal Temple!" Steven eagerly noted.

"Exactly!" Dandy acknowledged, snapping his fingers. "Except there's a closing time and no beds. Plus you have to shell out extra dough for a private room."

"Sounds a bit expensive."

Dandy wagged his finger at Steven's wanton frugality. "Well there are some things that money can't buy. So you should spend it on what it can. Or get a booty-legged version," he said, straightening his jacket. "Anyway, it's an interstellar oasis brimming with color and sound where you can kick back and have some de-lectable drinks and eats while being surrounded by some of the most gorgeous women the galaxy has to offer. The two of us should pop on over there after the Aloha-Oe gets fixed."

"Cool!" Steven beamed. If it was like the Temple, but in space, it couldn't possibly be described any other way. "Did you ever bring Pearl to BooBies?"

"Huh? Oh…uh."

---

Paradise. He closed his eyes and let the beats, laughter, and howls wash over him. Even without the colors, lights, and tail, there was no other word for it. Dandy was in paradise. If he died and went to Heaven, it'd probably look a lot like BooBies. Hell, maybe he all ready had and this was it. It would explain all the angels walking around. Then again, if there was such a thing as living, then this was what it was all about. Music you could dance to. Views you could eat to. And beauties you could drink to. Nothing could ruin this immaculate good mood of his. Not his weary body, not his aching feet, not his growling stomach, and certainly not his singed hair. He had earned this – well, done his part – and there was no force in the universe that was going to blemish his high spirits.

"Why do we keep coming here?"

Oh right, his hanger-ons. "What?" Dandy opened his eyes and was greeted with the sight of a very peeved-looking Pearl drumming her long, slender fingers on their table. So that's what that pesky tapping sound had been. "You've never been here before."

"I mean to these br-." her hand clenched as she cursed whoever had come up with the term. "-b-breastaraunts? This is the ninth we've been to in two weeks."

"And that my friend, is nine too little." Dandy snickered at his show of wit and Pearl's obvious displeasure. "Besides, what do you care? You don't even eat."

"Neither does QT, but you keep dragging us to…BooBies…to watch you stuff your face and oogle the waitresses."

"You could've at least gotten us a table near an electrical outlet." QT grumbled next to Pearl.

"Early bug gets the plug, QT. You should've hustled." Dandy scolded. "And don't go hating on the staff Pearl. They work hard."

"I am not 'hating on' anything."

"Then oogle with me!" Dandy demanded, thrusting his arms out at the larger portion of the restaurant that lay beyond their window seat.

"I most certainly will not!" Pearl gasped, clearly horrified at the ultimatum. "It-it's rude!"

"You know what's rude?" Dandy slammed his fist on the table. "These hardworking honeys put a lot of time and energy into looking good for you and you won't even give them so much as a glance," he rebuked. "And if appreciating that is poor etiquette, then baby, I don't ever want to be polite."

"You're never polite."

"She's got you there," said QT.

An abrupt increase in the sound system's volume spared her and QT from another of Dandy's two to three worded counterarguments. Pearl couldn't wait for him to fill his gob so they could get out of here. Every time they went to one of these establishments, she found something new to hate about them. Conversation conflated with otherwise decent music, mashing them into a relentless clangor. Patrons checked their manners at the door and dug into plates of oily, overpriced meals with gleeful recalcitrance for proper etiquette. Then there were all these scantily clad waitresses everywhere.

She suppressed a blush.

Outer space was the ultimate phantom vista for development and exploration. It should have been reserved for the best and brightest, not the glitz and the skimpiest. "All I'm saying is that our time would be better spent hunting the Shatterlite."

"And what I'm trying to say is that you should learn to relax. You're immortal, right? All that time on your hands makes for the ultimate excuse to unwind whenever you can. Learn to stop and smell the flowers. Speaking of which…" he brought up a hand and beckoned someone over. "Hey Rose!"

"Rose?"

That's when she came in. She was tall, slender, and self-assured, sporting the same pink-and-white bikini & cuffs combo as her fellow employees. Pearl couldn't take her eyes off of the waitress, though she knew it would do no good. Her skin was about the right color as was her pink hair styled up in a diagonal spire with bangs combed over her right eye. Amber eyes, not black. And pointed ears framing a face that, while stunning in its own way, was unambiguously crisp. Unbidden, the back of Pearl's skull started to ache and her mouth became dry.

"Hey yourself, Dandy." Rose cheerfully greeted. "Ready with your order?"

The ensuing "Ah," might've been lost in the roaring rhapsodies perpetually playing over the air, but the hostess was able to pick up on it thanks to a long career of working in such loud environments.

Rose turned to where the "Ah," had originated and sitting there was a pale young woman with peach-colored hair that she had never seen before. "Oh hello. How about you? Anything you'd like in particular." The stranger just stared at her. Normally, Rose wouldn't mind that so much, it happened all the time - it was part of the job - but never like this. The woman didn't look eager or bashful. In fact, she almost looked disappointed. "Is she all right?" she asked the customer she was more familiar with. "She's not your latest squeeze, is she, Dandy?"

"She does seem miserable enough for that to be the case." QT interjected.

Dandy bopped the robot on the head and answered, "Crewmate. She's a new crewmate. Strictly platonic despite HER best efforts. And don't worry. She's just jealous of your uniform and how cute you look in it."

"Is that so?"

That did the trick. Pearl snapped out of her stupor, blinked, and then hastily shook her head. "It is not so! I'm not jealous of either."

Rose pushed her silvery lips outward in a practiced pout. "Hmph. So you don't like my outfit?" she asked playfully. "You don't think I look nice in it?"

"Th-there's very little of it to not like, I mean, I suppose what's there is a flattering ensemble to your-um-all of you, and it looks like it'd be easy to move around in. The shoes are surprisingly sensible…"

"Oh, so you do like it." Rose teased.

"What do you say, Rose?" Dandy asked. "Think Pearl might have a future here at BooBies?"

Rose cast a critical eye – her left one – over Pearl, whose cheeks turned a deep aqua at the scrutiny. Blue blush. Cute. "A little modest in the tops department, but a lot of guys and gals are into that sort of thing. Very nice legs though, very toned."

"Hear that Pearl? If this Crystal Gem thing doesn't work out, maybe you could moonlight here for a century or two."

Apparently, Pearl had not. "-and your hair is very, very…ah…it looks good like that. Up, I mean. You shouldn't let it down or…" her voice trailed off. The Gem pried her eyes away from Rose and turned them towards the window, out at the stars.

The abrupt way she tried to duck out of the conversation drew attention to herself rather than deterred it, though QT was the only one concerned enough to ask, "Pearl?"

Dandy coughed, thinking it would be best if he switched lanes before this exchange went completely off the rails. "Anyway…what's this I hear about you getting hitched? Who's the lucky guy?"

He was a tad miffed that she didn't get embarrassed or defensive. The sides of her mouth curled upward and her eyes turned to the ceiling as she sighed dreamily. "Guy."

"Yeah. Who's the lucky-?"

"She probably means that his name is Guy, Dandy." Pearl proposed without looking away from the window.

"That's…right." Rose said, coming out of her reverie.

"Can you order now?"

Her hushed question caused Dandy's palm to make swift contact with his forehead. "Oh for the love of-," the hand left his face as he brought a brought a finger to bear in Pearl's direction. "This is just what I was talking about, Pearl. You gotta pay more attention to your surroundings. Learn to read people so you can get to know them. Not all of us are going to be around forever. This might even be the last time you ever get to see Rose."

Pearl didn't have anything to say to that; neither protests nor acknowledgment seemed forthcoming. This annoyed Dandy, but he had bigger concerns than the stubbornness of some stuck-up, insensitive rock. Rose was starting to look agitated and that just wouldn't do. This was still BooBies after all. Time for a little damage control. "Because I must say, this all seems a little sudden," he said, addressing the waitress directly. "This a shotgun matrimony by any chance?"

Rose's anxiety was instantly waylaid by what Dandy had so brazenly asked, leaving her to titter in the aftermath. "Excuse me?"

"You gonna take a break from being beautiful at Boobies to bring Rose Junior into the world?"

Of all the nerve! Rose had half a mind to storm off at this impertinent implication, but the other half smuggled an impish lilt into her reply. "That's for me to know and for my vacation days to find out." Sensing a coltish follow-up in the works, she added, "And sorry, Dandy. But the only slip of paper you're getting today is a receipt. The wedding's just going to be a small ceremony with some close friends and family."

"Ow, that hurts. Invite me to the bachelorette party at least. Dandy might look good in a tux, but he looks even better getting out of one."

Fresh! Rose gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder and laughed. "You cheeky bastard."

"That's the idea, baby." Dandy grinned rakishly.

He made his order - some Baduun Bourbon and Mork Loin Curry with a Baked Alamak for dessert - then watched her leave; always a pleasant experience. "Lucky guy, that Guy." He had to admit, he was a little jealous of the groom-to-be. Rose could be as thorny as her namesake and hairdo, but she was hardworking and supportive; the kind of woman who'd have your back through thick and thin. Unlike a lot of his old flames who were all radiator handcuffs and closed doors.

"Dandy, I think there's something wrong with Pearl." QT said with considerable alarm.

"Yeah, what else is new?"

sniff…

Amidst one of his favorite songs being played and the chatter of nearby diners, Dandy heard the faintest of sobs.

He looked away from Rose's retreating posterior to see where the whimper had come from. Pearl was moving now, shaking to be exact. "Wh-? Hey Pearl. What's-?" Dandy reached out to touch her arm, but she slapped his hand away.

"Home."

"Home?"

"Th-the ship. Please, I want to go back to the ship. I can't stay here," her voice cracked as she tried to conceal her face from view. "We need to find the Shatterlite so I can go home. I've been gone too long to come back with nothing. It's all ready been two months," the hand she hid behind fell to cover her mouth. There were tears in her eyes. "That's forever for a child. Steven might wonder where I…I can't miss it all. I've missed so much of it all ready."

In a more intimate time and place, this might have drained all the energy and vigor from the room, so that Pearl's muted weeping would be all one could hear. But BooBies was a jaunty juggernaut; a perpetual party engine that grinded down all other thought and feeling until only decadent merriment remained. 'Get Happy or Get Out' was the unwavering, unspoken (for if someone had thought to say it out loud, it would've been printed on a t-shirt by now) commandment of the establishment, because if BooBies couldn't make you glad, then chances are nothing could. Thus, Pearl's cries were casually ignored by everyone else apart from the crewmates she so often had contempt for. How did the saying go again? Dandy thought. Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Weep, and you weep alone?

He could just leave her be, enjoy his meal and pay no heed to her sulking like everyone else; QT was doing it. Not knowing what to do, the little vacuum settled for staring straight ahead and lacing his fingers together. That would be wise. Sit tight and ride it out. Pearl would get over it by the time he got to dessert and they'd never speak of this again. Whoever this 'Steven' was and why Pearl cared about him so much would remain an unknown, but he'd live. He was an old hand at dealing with secrets and unspoken words. If Pearl didn't want to talk about it, why bother asking?

"But she did talk about it." Suddenly it's two years ago and he's back in that hotel room with neon lights out the window that made it impossible to sleep and rent that was by-the-hour. It's her voice, because that's the last thing he remembers from that final night, but it's saying something different now, chiding him. Catherine did that a lot. "It's up to you if you want to ask; if you want to listen." His mind is back when it belongs before he can think up an excuse. Damn it. Two years later and she's still getting the last word in.

Thirteen hours from now, Dandy mournfully asks QT to take his ray gun and put him out of his misery after enduring half-a-day of Pearl ceaselessly talking about her friends, her Rose, and her oh so precious Steven in a cathartic verbal onslaught. At present, Dandy doesn't say anything. He grabs her hand. It's covered in tears and what might be mucus - she never ate or drank, so where did all this come from? - but he doesn't care. She doesn't fight back or resist this time. He leads her out, QT follows close behind. They could put the bill on his tab. They knew he was good for it. Though it would be about four months until he stepped foot in another BooBies again.

---

"A couple of times." Dandy answered. "It wasn't really her scene. Actually, maybe it isn't yours either. At least, not until you get older, ya hear?"

"Awww, you made BooBies sound so cool." Steven mourned.

"Don't look so down, Mr. Universe." Dandy encouraged as he pressed a button on his communicator, causing the landing platform to lower. "There's still a whole lot of rocket board surfing in your very near future."

"I'm not too young for that, am I?" Steven asked, fearing that Dandy would change his mind about that as well.

Dandy pretended to seriously consider the matter, then grinned. "No one's too young for those."

"Yahoo!" Steven exclaimed, practically jumping onto the platform once it touched the ground.

Dandy joined him on the mechanical dais and pressed another button to raise it. As it started to ascend, he caught a glimpse of the Crystal Temple in all its derelict, resolute glory. The place the woman who hated his guts called home. "Hey Steven?"

"Yes, Dandy?"

"When all this is over, go easy on her, would you? She works hard."

"Her? You mean Pearl?"

"Yup," he rubbed his nose. "I know she can be a little shrill and bossy, but she's just trying to make up for lost time. So go easy on her."

Steven thought this over, recalling what Pearl had told him. The request still seemed a little out of left field. Very sudden. "Six months is a while, but it isn't that long, is it?"

"What can I say?" Dandy shrugged as the Temple disappeared from sight. "Half a year's forever for a mom."

---

And yet...she ought to be incinerated by now, shouldn't she? She was no expert in being disintegrated, but she was sure that still being able to think wasn't part of the process. With her mind and senses still functioning, other peculiarities soon came to light.

Instead of searing pain, all she felt was the loosening of QT's arms, allowing her to slide down to the cold floor.

Instead of the smell of burning metal, there was only the sanitary pungency of artificial air.

Instead of the terrible rending of the ship, all she heard was laughter.

Pearl then opened her eyes and saw that she was the only one among them that didn't find their current situation absolutely hilarious.

"I can't believe you fell for it!" Dandy cackled, clutching his sides.

"Hahahaha!" QT's arms did a few halted chopping motions as he said in that dismal mechanical tone she had heard him speak in earlier, "Beep-boop-beep-the darkness is everywhere. Execute Program: Execute Self." Pearl noticed that his visor was back online and prominently featuring a pair of convulsing carets. "When have you ever heard me talk like that?!"

"Wh-what?"

There was no trace of self-destructive nihilism in either of her crewmates. QT was slapping his wheels with glee and Dandy had reclined his chair way back so he could look Pearl in her bespectacled eyse and show her how amused he felt.

She looked above his smug upside-down face to see that his feet were hooked behind the Aloha-Oe's handlebar controls. He must have pulled up at the last second with those tackily impractical boots of his.

Calling her up here, slumping over his chair like a corpse, having QT shut off his facial display, making her 'pick a star', and having her restrained while he drove towards it. It was all a gag. Her mind raced as she reviewed all the duplicitous ploys, twisted ruses, and heinous betrayals she had experienced over millennia. She even dared to reexamine the hellish three days she spent as Amethyst's roommate and the relentless blitz of pranks therein. None of them came close. This was the greatest act of fiendish, calculated mendacity she had ever bore witness to.

And they were still laughing at her.

She grabbed the front of Dandy's pompadour and pulled. "Not the hair! Not the hair!" Much to her delight, this brought an immediate cessation to his laughter.

"Ahahahahaha!" QT was still at it though.

"Do you have ANY IDEA what you just PUT ME THROUGH?" she snarled. "I thought we were all going to DIE!"

"That was kind of the point, Pearl." Dandy said, his words lacking any of the fear or apology Pearl sought.

"Why would you do this?!"

He reached back to show her his right index finger. "One, it's the end of Space October, so we thought we'd give you a little scare to celebrate All Celestial Saint's Day."

"I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU!" and she never would. The terror! The debasement! The indignity! He had made her cry and beg for her life and for that she would show no quarter. She wrenched a spear out of her Gem in a ferocious, blinding burst and prepared to cut Dandy's scalp off or skewer the remorseless prat from mouth to rump. Maybe she'd do both!

"H-hey, I know that even at this angle my handsome face is hard to tear your eyes away from, but if you look out the window then you'll see reason number two!"

She did.

"It's just space."

"Now who's the cynical one?"

Skewer it was. "RAAAAAAAAUGH!"

"Down! Down! Look Down!"

Pearl would have preferred to maim him first, but decided to grant Dandy's request. After all, it would be the last ludicrous order of his that she'd ever follow. The Gem tilted her head downward and saw…the sun.

It couldn't have been more than 30 feet away from where they were.

They were practically on the surface of the sun.

She let go of Dandy's hair, whose owner wasted no time getting right side-up again.

Pearl tried to speak, but couldn't think of anything to say. She had no words, dumbfounded as she was at the fiery landscape that seemed to have neglected to eradicate them. A solitary phrase came to mind. "How is this possible?"

"You like it?" Dandy preened. "You kept blabbing on and on about how we should take a closer look at the stars. So now you can't say we never listen to you," he motioned to his proof. "Besides, telescopes are for wimps."

"This can't be right. There are so many factors that are just wrong about…about all of this!" in spite of her objections, the mouth that had made them was beginning to smile.

"Ah, I got it." Dandy nodded. "It's kind of weird having the sun below you, huh? Welp, I can fix that," he grabbed the controls and gave them a sharp tug.

Pearl was less surprised at the maneuver and more satisfied that the sudden movement caused QT to fall out of his chair, ending his laughing fit.

Dandy dusted off his hands, more for the sound than the function. "There we go. Now look up."

And now the entire ceiling beyond was a vibrant mass of tightly bound fusion; a caged storm of dazzling clouds churning in and out of one another; a magnificent tempest that provided heat and light for this entire system.

And she could more or less reach up and touch it.

"But the heat…the radiation…the gravity!"

It just couldn't be real. This had to be one of those dying dreams she had read about in depressing and convoluted human literature.

QT wheeled himself next to her and said, "Don't worry about it. I thought the same thing when he pulled this stunt on me. Apparently, we'll be fine so long as we don't hit the star itself. So just enjoy the view," At her glance, he folded his arms behind him and tilted himself sideways. "Sorry if we scared you too much."

"I'm not. Trick or Treat, Baby."

Pearl couldn't help but smirk along with him.

All three took time to appreciate the blazing sky above, but as the hour went on, Dandy returned to reading his magazines while QT occupied himself with tidying up.

Before the hour was up, Dandy loudly sighed and asked. "Think we could move along? This is getting kinda dull."

Pearl went from enraptured to incredulous. "What could possibly be more magnificent than this?"

"There's a set of twin blue suns a few parsecs from here" QT recommended.

Pearl blinked. Then she giggled.

Of course there was.

"Sure. Why not?"

They rode a solar flare out of there for an added speed boost.

Pearl didn't ask how.

To be continued…

Author Note: Months ago, during the opening minutes of Space Dandy's 17th episode, the Aloha-Oe flew towards and proceeded to fly over the surface of a sun. Like really damn close. It was a disorienting, insane, and fabulous way to start things off. It kind of just happened; I had to watch it again to make sure that I hadn't imagined the whole scene. Dandy's ship might get a lot of grief from…everyone, but if being able to skim the surface of a star makes it a lemon, then I want one of my very own. Then I got to thinking, what a great prank to play on people who don't know it can do that! Pretend the ship's malfunctioned or that you've been possessed by a space demon, fly yourself to the nearest star, pull up at the last second, have a laugh, then defuse the murderous, adrenaline-fueled hatred of your passenger with a room with a solar view. When I began outlining this crossover, that joke came to mind and eventually became the flashback that begins and ends the chapter you see before you today. God bless soft, hard, and uneven textured sci-fi!

By the by. I'm super-duper-duper sorry that this chapter took a little more than a month to complete. Another broken promise, but this story is full of those, so it's thematically fitting, if not excusable. You might have noticed that it's substantially longer than the previous three. There are a few reasons for that. As the center-most chapter of the story, it had the unenviable task of more or less functioning as the entirety of the story's second act and all that entails. That said, it went through a lot of revisions, omissions, and additions. The whole "flying circus" fast forward section? Wholly unplanned at the start. It was originally just going to be QT telling the others (sans Pearl, Dandy, and Steven of course) how he and Pearl ate Dandy's food at a fried chicken joint to spite him; funny in my head, not very good on the page (might type it out as a bonus scene in the end's "Special Features" section though). In a chapter about people telling stories to others and sometimes keeping them to themselves, it was upsettingly puny and far too much like the BooBies scene. I knew I needed one last hurrah for the madcap, adventurous, swashbuckling past misadventures of Dandy, Pearl, and QT before things got (mostly) serious in the present. Considered splitting it into two as well, but it just didn't feel right for some reason. Lastly, I took a little more time for some sections than others. Wanted to get things juuuuuuust so for this important chapter.

Now we're approaching the end. Less nostalgia and more confrontation. It's got fewer moving parts, but the ones that are there will be spinning dangerously fast like the turntables of an Olympian Storm DJ. Shorter, snappier installments that should come in 2-3 weeks instead of in a month or more. It might be a complete disaster. I might not survive. But it's going to happen. Ideally before the first season finale of Steven Universe airs and flips the table on everything I've written so far. Ah fanfiction. A tempestuous hobby indeed. Right now though, I think I need a nap.