A/N: Sorry guys, it's a bit slow at this moment, but I swear it'll really pick up later. I just need to set the mood you know? Can't jump into things just yet. And thank you to everyone who read my fanfiction! Especially those who followed/favourited me. It made my day. I promise it will be a really fun read. 100% money back guaranteed (can't say the same about time though).
A few hours later, Steven stood in the middle of the newly transformed beach. Christmas lights were scattered liberally across the sand, reminiscent of Steven's style. Streamers were strung about in an elaborate and complex pattern that spoke of elegance and intricacy. Assorted snacks were piled on top of the plastic table that stood to the side. In the middle of the beach, a volleyball net had been set up.
Steven stood on the sand and appraised the set up critically. With a serious look in his eyes, he gave one approving nod. He turned around when he heard footsteps coming up behind him and smiled beatifically when he realised it was Connie.
'Hey, Connie! I'm glad you could make it to our beach party at such short notice. As you can see, we were thinking of playing volleyball first.' Steven waved to the volleyball net.
'Hey Steven, of course I would make it. But who would we play with? We, or at least I, am no match against the Crystal Gems.' Connie said, flicking her eyes to the three figures making their way across the sand.
'Oh no, silly, by ourselves we may stand to lose, but together, we totally have at least a one percent chance of winning!' Steven had started with a dramatic pose, staring into the distance but he turned to waggishly grin at her towards the end.
'Oh, you mean you want to fuse. Okay, sure. With that, I'm sure we won't lose as badly.' Connie bobbed her head amenably, with a slight competitive edge underlying her voice despite her words.
The gems finally made their way to Steven and Connie. 'Garnet and Pearl, you can be on one team, and Amethyst and Stevonnie, once we fuse, can be on the other.'
A few minutes and one fusion later, both teams were eyeballing each other through the holes in the volleyball net. Amethyst and Stevonnie looked to each other. 'We've got this in the bag,' said Amethyst with a wry and confident twist to her mouth.
Stevonnie simply nodded her head in determination. Then, in a louder voice, Stevonnie announced, 'Let the games… BEGIN!'
Garnet nodded and served the ball. It flew so hard and fast to the spot behind Stevonnie that she could barely see it and Amethyst, thanks to her greater experience, managed to dive and knock it upwards at a much slower pace. Stevonnie, quickly catching on, seized the moment to send a hard spike back to the opposition. Pearl looked up, and with determination glinting in her eyes and an incredibly elegant twist, she spun upwards and delivered a hard blow to ball straight back at Stevonnie, who was now considerably more prepared than before.
And so the game continued.
The scores were quite even, with Garnet and Pearl slightly ahead thanks to Garnet's future vision. However, Stevonnie and Amethyst's unpredictability was difficult to foresee and they used this to their fullest degree.
2 hours later, they were neck and neck in the last game. It was the tiebreaker. The sun had gone down quite a bit and could no longer be seen over the cliffs. Around the court, deep holes had been gouged into the sand with shards of glass protruding out thanks to the incredible amount of force that had been behind every single hit. Due to safety reasons, Stevonnie had taken to wearing rubber thongs that Pearl had created from her pearl. After all, she was still three-quarters human.
Eyes narrowed in concentration, sweat gleaming, Stevonnie struggled to catch her breath as she got ready to serve.
'You can do this, Stevonnie, I believe in you.' said Steven within their shared mind space.
Stevonnie took a deep breath and propelled the ball into the air. Then, somehow, instead of solidly hitting the ball with the side of her fist, it slipped off her skin, grazing it instead of being whacked by it. The force of her swing allowed the ball to fly into the air, but with none of the power that she had intended. This resulted in a fairly slow pass that was at just the right angle for Garnet to slam it straight back down just on the other side of the net, making it impossible for Amethyst or Stevonnie to hit it back, and an extra large glass crater to boot.
It was Garnet and Pearl's victory.
There was a pause and everyone was speechless. Stevonnie groaned and slumped her shoulders. This snapped everyone out of their strange silence and Amethyst burst out laughing.
'Man, did you see that serve? That was so funny!' she started rolling around on the sand, glass included, cackling to the sky.
'Stevonnie, that was an impressive game. Amethyst, please stop laughing so much,' but it was clear Pearl was struggling to stop her chuckles herself, if the way her shoulders shook was anything to go by.
Garnet seemed a little more composed, though her mouth was still turned up at the corners in what could have been amusement. 'Well done Stevonnie, both of you proved quite a challenge.'
All the while, Peridot was happily writing down her observations.
Stevonnie grumbled but brightened up when she remembered the next part of their party.
'Now, it's time for the dancing!' Stevonnie ran to the radio and pressed a few buttons. One of Steven's dad's songs started playing. Then, she pressed the on button for the Christmas lights and the whole beach lit up. It was stunning, and Stevonnie took a moment to admire the scene. It was then that Greg Universe drove into the beach, and parked his van near the heart of the party. Coincidentally, his song 'Let Me Drive My Van (Into Your Heart)' was playing on the radio.
A sound like a popping tire and air whooshing out filled the evening between a pause in the songs as Greg inevitably ran over a glass filled hole. Then, a yell and a muffled curse. Stevonnie remained happily oblivious of the latter as another song started playing.
The Crystal Gems grimaced and started clearing away the glass. Five minutes later, they were ready to dance.
Stevonnie had a quick mental conversation. They both unanimously agreed that it would be better if they unfused. Steven led a now separated Connie to the snacks table.
'I'm staaaarviiiiing…' said Steven as his stomach let out a big rumble, 'All that running around has made me so hungry.'
He inspected the food carefully before settling on a packet of chaaaaps. He then turned to Connie, offering her some.
'Sorry Steven, do you know how many carbohydrates are in that thing? Enough to give you type 2 diabetes, cholesterol and obesity to name a few. I think it's really unhealthy, so I'll pass. Not to mention, my mum would kill me if she saw what I was eating.'
Steven looked at Connie with betrayal shining in his eyes, 'But Connie…it's Chaaaaps!' He sighed and lowered his eyes to the chips packet in his hands, 'Not everyone can appreciate the taste and texture of this exquisite creation…I guess it requires a refined taste.' He continued eating.
Meanwhile, out on the dance floor, things were getting heated. It seemed the Crystal Gems were having some sort of dance off. It wasn't official of course, but the dance moves kept getting flashier and more ostentatious. It seemed like their movements defied physics. Take Pearl for example; her technique, form, elegance were all the pinnacle of perfection, as she pirouetted for 3 minutes without stopping or slowing and ended it with a high mid-air twirl that seemed to hover for far longer than was humanly possible. Which was entirely possible because she wasn't human anyway.
Garnet, with a content smile on her face, swayed her hips and punched her arms to the beat, then spun in random and erratic directions so fast she almost seemed to blur, with her heavy gauntlets providing momentum and force.
Amethyst ran her hands up her body and over her hair, flipping it, while her hips undulated to the beat. Her shoulders swung from side to side as her small form rippled and flowed smoothly.
The atmosphere got to such a high fervour, Steven immediately wanted to join in. He ran to the Crystal Gems, essentially leaving Connie behind and jumped into the rhythm. He started dancing wildly, stomping his feet and swinging his arms to the beat. Connie smiled at his uncontrolled movements and decided to take a break rather than join him. She was only human after all.
Connie rested her eyes, taking in a deep breath in the cool evening air. That was the only reason she missed it. All it had taken was one fumble, which had unsurprisingly been initiated by Steven.
The Crystal Gems were caught in the ardour, they had lost themselves to the music and hadn't seen the impending disaster, as they all slowly moved towards each other. It was like a magnet was in the middle, hypnotically bringing them closer and closer. Because of the gems' thousands of years of experience, this was no problem for them, as Garnet and Pearl solitarily danced and Amethyst weaved between them, close enough to touch but not actually touching, and like a string was drawing and tightening around them, they came ever so closer. It was almost like they were one figure, dancing heatedly together and moving and flowing around each other like mercury in a fragile but stable equilibrium.
Steven, not to be outdone, gritted his teeth and threw himself into the close trio. He nearly lost his balance, teetering on the edge of unbalancing the threesome, but it was no use. His flailing arms caught Amethyst's hair and yanked it, in an attempt to grab onto something stable. This, in turn, caused Amethyst to shriek loudly, snapping the other two out of their trance-like state.
They found themselves hurtling towards each other, and instead of a painful bump, a flash of light filled the air.
Greg, stuffing his face with the snacks on the table, had turned around just in time to see the tail end of the impressive showdown and the disastrous conclusion. He had no words to describe what he had seen. His mouth dropped open, and an infinite number of possibilities for album covers and music swam before his eyes. He had never seen anything like it.
Before him, stood an eighty-metre tall woman that bore a striking resemblance to the temple that lay just to the side. In fact, if it weren't for the colour, the seven, instead of eight, arms and the shorter, but still curly, hair, he would have thought it was an exact replica. The sheer enormity of the woman sent his mind spinning and the slice of pizza in his hand falling to the sand. He barely even noticed.
Connie had opened her eyes when she felt the flash searing her eyelids, and had promptly fallen to the ground when she saw the giant woman kneeling before her eyes, where there had once stood a group of dancing gems. After a few seconds, she could only come to one conclusion, Steven had thrown them off beat with his wild dancing (read: flailing) and had propelled them into bumping into each other, and as a result, fusing. She was spot on.
The giant woman had short, curly, dark rainbow hair with pale, pastel highlights. A dark pinkish purple face mask covered her forehead and the top of her head, holding back her unruly hair. A giant white pearl sat atop her mask, where the forehead would be, an amethyst lay on the middle of her chest, a rose quartz rested on her navel and a sapphire and a ruby were attached to the palms of one the arms on either side of her body. Her skin was a soft, pinkish purple, with a sleeveless smock that flowed to her waist before splitting off into a skirt that covered one leg. It was the colour of red wine and faded to a lighter shade towards the bottom. Underneath her dress, she wore dark leggings that neatly hugged the shape of her legs like a second skin.
She towered over the two humans and one peridot, nearly twice the size of the temple that lined that cliff. Due to the now night sky, she was only visible through the moonlight and the vast expanse of blocked stars that covered the sky like glitter. However, other than the confusion that painted her face, she did not move, and if it weren't for her hair moving slightly from to the wind, she could have been mistaken for a statue, a fairly large statue at that.
Despite her outward appearance, her inner thoughts were a different matter. Emotions raged through her like a hurricane, a mixture of disbelief, panic, and amazement that was distinctly Steven's. Voices shouted in the shared mind space as they tried to make sense of what happened, Pearl panicking, Amethyst cackling, Ruby yelling and Steven squealing. Finally, a completely out of character sharp roar from Sapphire silenced them, partly from the cold zap that underlaid her command, but mostly because she had commanded them.
'It seems that we have accidentally fused…' Sapphire said calmly, as if the last few minutes hadn't just happened. Her statement seemed to snap them out of their shock and stupor.
'Well, what do we do now? We can't stay like this! Let's separate right now, and forget this ever happened.' said Pearl placatingly, almost as if to reassure herself. And she had nearly succeeded. Except Amethyst chose then to speak.
'What! Split now? No way! We should totally test out this new body! Come on, we've got to show Steven how we were in the war. Even I don't know how it was in the war, I didn't exist then! Steven, you want to know how this body is, right?'
'Yeah! This is so cool, I can't believe I'm fused with all of you right now. Peaaaaarl, can we pleeease stay like this?' Steven said in a pleading tone and had he been visible, giant stars would have enveloped his eyes. Pearl imagined this and just couldn't say no to that face.
'Ugh, fine.' Pearl conceded, and Steven squealed in delight and excitement.
At the same time, in a galaxy far, far away, the diamonds were planning their next move. After lecturing Blue Diamond yet again about visiting the menagerie, Yellow Diamond assembled her team of battle advisors and was now in the middle of a military conference. So far, however, they had gotten nowhere. One reason was the gems' persistence and stubborn refusal to call the Diamonds by anything except their honorary titles, which had quickly gotten tiresome. Yellow Diamond was very close to losing it and shattering all the gems. Even Blue Diamond seemed more annoyed than depressed.
'My Diamond, my brilliant, lustrous, coruscating, dazzling—' started a zircon for the hundredth time in the same hour, before getting interrupted by an obviously furious Diamond, and shrank down as Yellow Diamond's wrath concentrated on her.
'That's. Enough.' Yellow Diamond gritted out with barely restrained anger. 'I have come to a decision, and there will be no more argument! All of this ends NOW. Blue Diamond and I will deal with this ourselves. We will go to earth and finish Rose Quartz. That way, NOTHING will be able to mess this up. We won't fail.'
Shocked silence permeated the room, and even Blue Diamond seemed somewhat surprised. However, she did not argue. A murmur swept through the meeting, but no one spoke up in fear of invoking Yellow Diamond's rage even more.
'Dismissed.' Yellow Diamond waved her hand with a satisfied smirk and waited for everyone to leave the room before turning to Blue Diamond with a serious expression, 'First, we will observe, then act. We will be prepared. Also, let's notify White Diamond, she may want a part in this.'
Blue Diamond's eyes widened, 'Are you sure?' A pause, then: 'Alright, I trust your judgement.'