Chapter 17: I Need to Get Them Back!
Steven's eyes slowly open. His gut feels like it's about to burst and his back feels as though there are a million needles stabbing his back. He looks up, covering his eyes with his arm to see what's violently blowing the sand everywhere. Amazonite stands in the shallow water of the ocean, the gems on the back of her hands are glowing. She absorbs the Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl's gems into her gems, imprisoning them within herself. In front of her is the bridge leading up to the enormous, crystalline ship, colored magenta that glitters a rainbow hue in the now rising sun.
"No…NOOOOO!" Steven scrambles to his feet and runs. He runs towards Amazonite and the ship. The Gems, he has to save them! She can't take them! She can't leave this planet! "Amazonite!" He screams.
The Gem slightly turns her head. She gives Steven a small smile, then walks onto the ship. The doorway closes behind her. Steven gets to the edge of the ocean but he's blasted away while the ship rises into the sky. Unlike the shows Steven has seen in sci-fi films, they don't go into hyperspace when they reach a certain height. It's like the ship is resisting Earth's gravitational pull.
Steven hurries over to Lion. He can't catch up to the ship by himself. He can't even shape-shift correctly yet—he hasn't even tried since that incident with the cat figures.
Steven slides onto his knees. He puts his hands on Lion's pink body and shakes him. Lion's eyes open. He stands to his feet and looks around, growling with his claws out. "Lion! Lion! It's okay!" Steven yells, holding his hands up. He hugs Lion's head to try to calm him down. "Lion, we need to get to that ship! The Gems are in there!" Lion, having calmed down, stares at Steven and squints. He lowers his head, allowing to Steven to get on, and they're off.
Lion races across the ocean, catching up with the slow ship in no time. It's already a couple thousand feet off the ground already, and it's still steadily rising. The rockets' flames start to grow, propelling the ship faster. Lion increases his speed and jumps as high as he can before opening a portal. They enter and come out right above the ship, landing on the hull.
The hull of the ship is made of metal and diamonds. Lion scratches at the surface with his claws. The hull is too hard to break through. Steven looks around the top of the ship. There's nothing where they can break inside. There's isn't any type of ventilation shaft, opening, door, nada. Steven wonders if he can even save the Gems at this point. Amazonite is inside, with the Gems inside her gems.
Just then, a large hole opens up in the hull. Several green droids that look like the ones that fixed the Homeworld warp levitate from the hole. Light emits from under them, allowing them to hover above a bodily surface. They move to the stop where Lion scratched the hull and surround it. A hatch opens up and a type of nozzle gun extends to spray some sort of goop, just like the droids from the warp pad, onto the spot Lion scratched. Even though there's no sign of damage, they must see or sense something there. They don't notice Steven, however. They don't notice him tip-toeing to the still open hole in the ship. They don't even notice him jump through with Lion following after. They're just focused on the non-existent scratch.
Steven and Lion fall into a very dim-lit pit and lands on a mountain of very hard and heavy objects. They seem to be the orbs just like the ones on top of the ship, but broken and discarded. There hundreds of them in this room. They come in different colors, probably programmed for different reasons. The ones that are working are contained in giant, different colored cylindrical tubes. The containers radiate a soft light, of course each a different color matching the color of the tube. Steven walks around the room, staring at the containers full of droids. Each step he takes echoes throughout the room.
"What are these?" Steven says out loud, voice echoing. He hears a sound coming from the hole he fell through. The green droids are coming back, flying through the air, back to their green tube. After the last one enters, a door opens up from the far end of the room. It leads outside to a very bright white hallway, but someone stands in the entryway. She is a Gem with a green coloration. Her tetrahedron shaped hair is large and light green. She adorns a yellow-green gem embedded in her forehead. It's Peridot.
Steven starts to panic. He has to hide from her, like the Gems did at the Galaxy Warp. Steven, as quietly as he can, rolls over to a container, far away from where she is. Peridot walks over to the green tube that contains the green droid that fixed the ship. Her fingers leave her hands. They open up a hexagonal holographic screen that she signs on to. "Peridot here," she says, "signing on to control maintenance. All ship robonoid flask drones appear to be account for. The scratch on the ship has been fixed. Signing out." Peridot's fingers return to the base of her palm and she turns to leave. She looks back at the green container and then studies the room as if looking for something. "Hmmm…" He grumbles. She turns to leave again and shuts the door behind her.
Steven comes out from behind a tube containing red flask robonoids, sweating from anticipation. "That was close, Lion," Steven says. He goes to the door where Peridot exited. There's no knob, or a type of pad that Steven can access so he can get out. "It's looks like we're going to have to stay here for a while…Garnet…Amethyst…Pearl…I guess I can't save you right now."