Centi had only been to Steven's home a handful of times, the day when he'd healed her being among them. One of the numerous issues with being corrupted was that she was unable to use warp pads; gem technology saw right through her, never caring how normal she appeared to be, only how twisted she was on the inside. So while she would have visited him much more frequently if she could have, she was instead forced to wait for the occasions when he came to her, and very rarely did he choose to bring her back here.
She stepped off the Warp Pad uncertainly, glancing around the wooden structure full of all sorts of foreign human things. A sensation of intrusion, of being in a totally unfitting environment, began to creep up on her…and the fact that there were other gems around didn't help things.
"Here we are!" Steven sang out, prancing into the living room. "We're back! And Centi's with us!"
Amethyst, Centi's second most common visitor next to Steven, hopped off the kitchen counter and lifted her hand by way of greeting. "Yo!"
"Hello," said Centi, offering her a feeble little wave.
Next to Amethyst was the tall pale gem called Pearl, whose hair and clothes were arranged with painful perfection, and whose eyes widened when she spotted Centi. "Oh! When Steven said that you were doing better, he wasn't kidding!"
Centi smiled and tried to force herself to make eye contact.
While she'd never seen any Crystal Gems besides Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl, she'd taken "everyone is having a meeting" to mean that other gems would be gathering from the corners of planet, their ranks greatly depleted from the war but still amounting to…she wasn't sure how many she'd expected, really. At least a couple dozen. But the only new additions to the team were two gems sitting on the couch where she had once used crayons to draw her life's story: a slender blue one, whose dress gave her an aristocratic look, and a small lime-green one who Centi didn't recognize at all.
Steven made a beeline for these two gems, gesturing extravagantly between them and Centi. "Looks like everybody's here! Guys, meet Centi! Centi, meet Lapis and Peridot!"
"Hi," said the blue one, Lapis.
Peridot, the green one, narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "What kind of gem is 'Centi'?" she demanded.
Centi lifted her eye. "I'm Nephrite, Facet Seven, Cut Two Seven One Six," she recited. The name that had once rolled off of her tongue with ease now gummed in her mouth like gibberish. "But everyone calls me Centi now."
Peridot's lips pushed together. "How do you get 'Centi' from 'Nephrite'? That doesn't sound the same at all!"
"It's short for 'Centipeedle," she admitted.
"What?"
"Guys, Centi is a corrupted gem," interrupted Steven. "She used to be a monster called a centipeedle. But she's healed now…mostly. And she's gonna help us a lot with our mission! Just, y'know, it's something to keep in mind."
"Woah!" Peridot leaned forward, her knees folded under her, her hands pressed flat against the coffee table. "You're one of those corrupted gems?! But you don't look corrupted!"
Centi huffed out a sigh. "Wait."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Everyone, please take your seats," announced Garnet, stepping forward to address everyone, as if this were an official meeting in a war room instead of a bunch of rebels sitting in somebody's front parlor. Amethyst and Pearl settled in on the vacant side of the L-shaped couch, leaving the only empty seat between Lapis and Peridot. Centi took it reluctantly, her thighs pressed together, her feet swinging silently beneath her. Steven remained standing near the coffee table.
Garnet placed her hands on her hips, surveying the gems gathered before her. "So," she began. "It's good to see us all together. All of the Crystal Gems in one place, at last."
Centi shifted. I'm not a Crystal Gem, though…
"Our main objective for many centuries has been capturing and bubbling the corrupted gem monsters that roam this planet," continued Garnet. "Once we bubble them, that is the end of their journey. We held out hope that we would discover a way to heal them, but after Rose Quartz tried and failed to do so, many times, we began to think it was impossible. Until very recently."
Steven was nodding vigorously, his eyes bright with rapture.
Garnet gestured to Centi. "This Nephrite was a monster like any other. Even Steven had managed no better than to tame her...until six months ago. He healed her. It didn't seem to work at first, and we thought that recovering from corruption was still a lost cause. Yet look at her now."
Too many eyes, crawling all over Centi like a million miniature centipeedles. She kept her gaze fixed on her feet. It wasn't that Garnet hadn't spoken the truth – but did these other gems understand that Centi wasn't fully healed? That she was still corrupted, body and mind, just in a more insidious way?
"That's enough looking," said Garnet, a bit sharply, and the eyes all skittered away.
"Now. As I was saying, we have finally seen that corrupted gems can come back to themselves, remember who they were before. But it's a process that takes months, and there are so many corrupted gems in the bubble room. Ideally, what we need is a way to turn them all back at the same time, perhaps as swiftly as Homeworld corrupted them in the first place."
"I don't think I have enough spit in my mouth to heal every monster in the bubble room," agreed Steven.
Amethyst sat forward. "Hey, G. Like you said, we've been poofing monsters forever. Why are we just now starting to think about this again?"
Garnet adjusted her glasses. "Because we had become numb to what they really were. But Steven hadn't. Now Centi is a reminder of what lies at the heart of every corrupted gem. And, because for the first time since the mass corruption, Homeworld has started to take an interest in the Earth again."
"We've seen so many corrupted gems that they all just began to look like big, stupid monsters," admitted Pearl softly.
"They are just big, stupid monsters – " Peridot started, before cutting herself off, her cheeks darkening. "Oh. Uh, present company excluded, of course."
Centi had stiffened over the course of the conversation. Her shoulders were high with tension, her fingertips digging into her knees, but she had remained silent…until Peridot's little slip-up. Then her head snapped up, her mouth forming a small but grave scowl.
"Corrupted monsters aren't stupid!" she proclaimed fiercely. "I've been one, and…it's harder to think, but I was still thinking! It's like, the whole time, you're just struggling, and you realize that something is wrong, but you don't know what, but then sometimes you figure out who you're supposed to be and you try to be that gem again, but you can't! Because your own mind won't let you and it's all out of your control…!"
She broke off, certain that her impassioned outburst had sounded like nothing but nonsensical word vomit. Certainly everyone was staring at her like she was completely incomprehensible. But while she was still trying to decipher their expressions, Garnet extended one finger and pointed at her, slowly and deliberately.
"That is why we are trying to heal the other corrupted gems," she stated. "She said it better than I ever could."
Much to Centi's surprise, everyone began to bob their heads in agreement. Steven smiled encouragingly, like he was proud that she'd been brave enough to voice her feelings, and now Peridot was the one looking at the floor. When Centi caught Lapis's eye, the blue gem's expression didn't change, but she did flash a quick and stalwart thumbs up.
"Not to mention," Pearl piped up, "many of those corrupted monsters used to be Crystal Gems. If Homeworld does try anything big, like they've been leading up to, it would be nice to have more friends to stand by our side."
"I would love to meet them!" exclaimed Steven. "But…what about the Homeworld gems?"
Garnet nodded. "Homeworld gems. Like Centi. Centi, would you say that you still consider yourself loyal to Homeworld?"
"No," answered Centi immediately. It was an easy question. She'd spent the whole war, a fight she hadn't even been made for, as an unthinking little pawn in Homeworld's hands, only to be punished for her obedience and her commitment to her crew; corruption had stripped her of all devotion to the Diamond Authority.
"I suspect that many corrupted gems will feel the same way," said Garnet.
"Not all of them," murmured Steven, so uncharacteristically somber for a moment that Centi couldn't help wondering if he had someone specific in mind.
"Not all of them," agreed Garnet. "But many of them will. Homeworld may have lied to everyone else about what they did to the gems on Earth, but they can't lie to their own victims."
Centi blinked. Homeworld may have lied to everyone else…?
She wasn't going to say anything, but then Garnet stared straight at her and prompted, "Did you have a question?"
"Um. Yes." Centi gripped a few strands of her shock of white hair and began to fiddle with them. "What do you mean, Homeworld lied to everyone else…?"
Sensing her opportunity to redeem herself, Peridot sprang to her feet, so that she was standing on the couch cushion with her feet spread apart. "I'm a newer Homeworld gem, and all I ever heard about the war was that gems were wiped out on Earth. I didn't even know that corruption was something that could happen until a few months ago!"
"Plus Jas – um, someone else who wasn't so new didn't know that the Diamonds had caused Earth gems to be corrupted, either," added Steven.
Centi's mouth dropped open. "You mean…the Diamonds did this to us, and…they didn't even have the courage to own up to it?!" she cried. "That's…disgusting!"
"It is. And I dare say that you aren't the only Homeworld gem who will think so," said Garnet.
Amethyst pumped her fist in the air. "Looks like the Crystal Gems might be getting some new recruits! Aw yeah!"
"Only if we succeed," Pearl reminded her. She stood up, delicate fingers adjusting her sash before she spoke again. "Let's refocus our attention, shall we?"
Centi forced her hands to unclench and went back to picking at her hair. She didn't have to sit back and deal with injustices anymore, she reminded herself, not with the Crystal Gems. They'd do…well, she didn't know exactly what, but something about it.
"Thanks to some excellent anecdotal evidence from our guest here" – Pearl nodded in Centi's direction – "we know the method that Homeworld used to corrupt the gems."
"A song," murmured Centi.
"A song," echoed Pearl. "But specifically, a specially configured array of sound waves with a lasting terminal effect on every gem exposed to it. We were already aware that certain sound combinations can have a short-term negative impact on gems – "
Steven suddenly gasped. "The gem destabilizer that Homeworld used!" he realized aloud. "It was a tuning fork!"
"Exactly!" shouted Peridot. "We used sound to temporarily destroy a gem's physical form. Simple, but effective!"
Pearl cleared her throat. "Ahem! We knew that small examples like the gem destabilizer were possible, but whatever Homeworld used was a billion times larger, and also a billion times more precise. It was able to cause permanent damage, to the point where only now, thousands of years later, we have an example of a gem who is recovering from it! No traditional method has been able to completely heal damage from the Diamonds. So Garnet and I put our heads together, thinking of another way to deal with this, and we thought: surely Homeworld must have at least a rudimentary idea of how to solve the problem! Even knowing exactly how they achieved the corruption would be a help! And then I realized that if Homeworld did have a way to reverse corruption, I can almost guarantee that I know what it is."
"What is it, then?" demanded Steven excitedly.
"A song!" responded Pearl. "A healing song, if you will!"
"One song to corrupt, one song to heal," added Garnet. "I think it makes sense."
Centi sat back, her fingers still twisted up in her hair. It did make sense. The best solutions, she had learned from her time as a pilot, were usually the simplest ones – and this one certainly had simplicity on its side. But one huge question still remained…
"How are we gonna find this song?" asked Steven. "I mean, it wouldn't be just a normal song, right?"
Pearl shook her head. "No, of course not. However, that's where all of us come in!"
"All of us will need to work together if we are to get such vital information out of Homeworld," Garnet said. "It will require strength – bravery – ingenuity – intelligence – and technical skill. You must decide now if you would like to join the mission or not. No one will be forced to join, but I will say that it will be much more difficult if any one of you refuses."
"Well, count me in!" declared Amethyst. "I'm not letting you guys go anywhere without me!"
"I have both intelligence and technical skill!" asserted Peridot. "And also some of those other things you mentioned, probably. I'll join up!"
Lapis looked between Peridot and Steven, then shrugged. "Yeah, I will too, I guess."
"You know I will!" proclaimed Steven, before his eyes flitted towards the couch expectantly. "What about you, Centi?"
Centi's feet were constantly fidgeting now, her hair entwined around her fingers. She didn't want to disappoint anybody…but…! "I…I'm not sure if you really want me to be a part of the mission," she stammered.
Steven frowned. "What are you talking about? Of course we do!"
"But I'm not particularly…brave or smart or ingenuous…I'm definitely not strong…I don't even have any abilities anymore! I'm just…"
She froze. Her hand, the one in her hair, had started to tingle in a telltale way. She wrenched it free, just in time for the tingling to rocket down the entire length of the arm, all the way up to her elbow…and moments later, it visibly spluttered and flickered, before finally reforming as an insect leg.
Well, her form had been way more stable than usual today. She should have seen that coming. The others, however, were a little less used to her routine regressions.
Peridot jumped up again, her hands clasped to either side of her face. "Oh my stars!" she gasped. Lapis shifted away from Centi slightly, regarding the corrupted gem with confusion and fear, and even Pearl and Amethyst looked concerned. Centi drew her reverted arm against her chest as Steven sprang forward and cried, "Everyone, don't freak out! It's fine! This is…normal."
"It doesn't look normal!" shrieked Peridot.
Centi groaned quietly. "I told you that I was corrupted, didn't I? It passes, in a few hours, usually."
"A few hours?!" echoed Peridot incredulously.
"Well, it used to be a few days or a few weeks, so I think this is an improvement!" snapped Centi, more angrily than she'd intended to.
"Guys, stop!" pleaded Steven, but Centi had heard enough. She stood up and strode towards the Warp Pad, where she plopped down, head bowed and arms curled awkwardly against her.
It was mere seconds before Steven joined her, sympathy oozing from his eyes like invisible tears.
"Steven, this is never going to work," sighed Centi, in a tone that was almost a whisper. "Your friends all think I'm a freak."
"They don't think you're a freak," insisted Steven. "And Peridot didn't mean any harm! She's just not used to being around a gem like you, and sometimes, she says things that sound bad without meaning to. It was just an accident!"
"But you saw the way she looked at me! And how everyone else looked at me! They know I'm just a…a useless, corrupted creature!"
Steven started to protest, but before he could get a sound out, the sound of footsteps behind him drew his attention. Centi didn't look up, assuming that Garnet had arrived to espouse more wisdom about believing in yourself, but it turned out not to be Garnet at all.
It was Amethyst.
"Yo," she said, settling down cross-legged beside Centi. "What's up, corrupted homegirl?"
Centi stared at her lap. "You saw what was up."
"Yeah, your arm got a little buggy. No big deal." Amethyst prodded her shoulder lightly. "Look, first of all, don't be so down on yourself. Second, I'll be straight with you here if no one else will: we really want you to be a part of this mission with us. We need you to, as a matter of fact."
"Why?" demanded Centi. "You would all be better off without me getting in the way! You saw what happened when I tried to draw my weapon! I'm just…" She fumbled for words, both her brain and her mouth failing her.
Amethyst shook her head firmly. "You're not just anything. You're you! You're a friggin' spaceship captain and you know more about corruption than just about anyone, because you've lived it! Don't you think that could kind of come in handy?"
Centi didn't reply.
"Besides," continued Amethyst. "If we do find this song…that would mean we get to heal you and your pals back at the spaceship. That'd be pretty cool, right?"
…silently, Centi lifted her head. Somehow, in all the talk of finding a secret song that the Diamonds had hidden, she'd missed the obvious implication: that she would be among the corrupted gems who were permanently healed. And not just her, but Neph and Phrita and other members of her crew who might have been stranded on Earth and so many other gems who'd been abandoned by Homeworld…
"…I guess…that would be nice," she admitted.
Amethyst grinned. "Does that mean you'll come along for the ride, then?"
Centi looked back and forth, between Steven and Amethyst, both of them regarding her hopefully. It was so hard to tell people's intentions now, with her unfortunate tendency towards sensory overload, but they looked genuine enough…
…and she really did hate disappointing people.
"Okay," she conceded. "I will…I will try."
"Yay!" cheered Steven. Amethyst's grinned widened, and slapped Centi a high five. Centi just smiled at both of them bashfully.
"So what happens now?" she asked, getting to her feet after a long pause.
"Not sure, but…I bet it's gonna be training!" said Steven. "And since you can't draw your weapon, you should come training with me! I can help you figure out something to do!"
"Um…" Not being able to draw her weapon wasn't her only shortcoming. "Actually, Steven…"
"Oh, and there's awesome prizes!" he continued cheerfully, grabbing her hand to drag her back towards the couch. "You're going to love them!"
"Prizes?" she echoed, baffled.
"Yeah! Prizes from Pearl! See, let me explain to you about Pearl Points…"