The next morning, Steven's eyes shot open and he quickly sat up in bed. He couldn't help but shake the feeling that something...was terribly wrong. He looked over one the side of the room where Noa resided, to see his roommate still asleep, and then at his desk where his family pictures were.
The one of Greg and Rose was still sitting there, as always, but the one of him and the Crystal Gems was gone! "Ahhh!" he screamed, causing Noa to literally jump out of bed, asking frantically, "What?! What!?"
"The picture of me and the Crystal Gems is gone!" Steven exclaimed fearfully.
Noa quickly put his glasses back on and looked around the room, until he saw the picture frame lying facedown on the floor. "It's on the floor. It must've fallen off your desk somehow," the boy said, picking up the picture and looked at it.
When he did, his eyes got a little wide.
"What's wrong?" Steven asked, getting out of bed and walking over to his friend.
"I think when the picture fell, the frame struck the floor sort of hard and caused the glass to crack a bit," Noa stated, handing the possession to his friend.
Steven looked at the picture to see where the cracks were and became saddened. "Oh no!" he cried. "The cracks went right onto Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl's faces!"
"Is the actual picture okay?" Noa concerned.
Steven removed the image from the frame, looked over it, and smiled; it had not been damaged when the frame fell. "Yeah, it's still in good condition!" he stated happily.
"Oh good, then that makes the problem a little easier to handle; you can just call your aunts and ask them to send a new frame over to the school.," Noa suggested.
"Yeah, that's a good plan. Besides, I forgot to call them last night because of homework. I bet Pearl became worried when I didn't contact them," Steve agreed, setting the photo on his desk and threw out the busted frame.
The two boys got into their uniforms as quickly as possible and made their way to class. Along the way, Noa mentioned out of nowhere, "You know, I heard a superstition that when a framed photo of someone you love and care about falls off something and the glass cracks over their face, it usually means something bad happened to them."
"Really?!" Steven gasped, thinking about how the Gems were doing at the moment.
"Relax, it's just a myth. And it also creates and interesting plot device in stories, especially if it's a movie or graphic novel of some sort," Noa stated.
"Huh, that actually is pretty cool. Maybe I should tell Connie that and see if we can figure out where it comes from," Steven said. "Well, I better get to the office phone before someone else does. See you in class."
"Later, Steven," Noa said, carrying on his way to the classroom.
Steven went down the next hallway to the office, where a secretary was at her usual position while the Principal and a few other staff members watched the news on a TV in the room.
Steven went up to the secretary desk and asked, "Um, excuse me? Can I call my aunt Pearl? I forgot to call her last night and she gets really anxious if I don't call her."
"Okay," the lady said, motioning towards the phone.
Steven grabbed the phone and dialed his house. He waited a few moments as the dial tone buzzed, until there was the sound of somewhere answered, where he was about to speak when he heard "Hi, this is the house of Steven Universe and the Crystal Gems, Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl. We're probably on some big mission right now, so please leave a message and we'll get back to you soon. Thank you!"
Then, there was the usual voicemail beep, making Steven really confused. "Voicemail? Isn't Pearl supposed to be awake right now? They couldn't have gone on a mission this early in the morning, could they?" Steven thought, very confused.
Then, there was a big news bulletin on the TV. "This just in, all the residents of a small beach town had vanished at some point overnight," said the anchorman.
Upon hearing "small beach town", Steven turned around to look at the screen, curious to know what was going on.
"Earlier this morning, a few tourist stopped by in this town for a small vacation, but were surprised to see a lot of the buildings severely damaged and nobody to be found, even the mayor.
Weather forecasters stated that there were no alerts for storms in that area, so the chances of a hurricane doing this damage is very unlikely, but some have noted on the beach were these big holes in the sand that were at least 2 meters wide and one meter deep, leading to speculation of aliens being involved by local conspiracists.
Also on the site of mystery, officials found what appeared to be pieces of a shotgun lying on the sidewalk, appearing to have been taken apart by someone, and most of the damaged buildings showed signs of break-ins. The small town was known to the locals of a nearby suburb as Beach City," the newsman explained.
But Steven didn't have to hear the name of the town to know what it was. He recognized everything; the Funland theme park, the Arcade, the Fish Stew Pizza shop, the Fry Shack, where the front of the building seemed to have been torn down, and the Big Donut, where the iconic donut sign on top was lying on the ground. Then, the image showed his Greg's car wash, luckily undamaged, where Mr. Universe's van and the Maheswarans' car were sitting outside.
"What happened?" Steven asked out loud.
One of the teachers looked over at him and explained, "Well, like he said, nobody knows, but it's always very peculiar when something like this happens. It scares me. Why do you ask?"
"...that's where I live," Steven answered flatly before running out of the room. he dashed down the hall to his classroom, practically bursting through the door, screaming, "CONNIE!"
Everyone was in the middle of talking amongst themselves while they waited for their teacher to show up, so of course, everyone jumped in shock, but after a few moments, they proceeded with their conversations.
"Steven! What's wrong?" Connie asked, immediately concerned.
"Everyone in Beach City is gone!" Steven cried, tears dripping from his eyes.
"What are you talking about? How do you know this?" Connie asked, more worried than ever.
"Well, I was trying to call Pearl, but she didn't pick up, which was a little weird, and then, the news came on and it said that parts of the town was destroyed and everyone was missing. Even your parents are gone! There car was in front of my dad's car wash!" Steven panicked.
"You gotta be kidding me…" Connie replied flatly, her eyes wide in horror.
"He's telling the truth," Noa confirmed, walking over to his friends and staring at his tablet. They even have a list of missing people."
"Read the names!" Steven pleaded, worried about who was possibly abducted.
"Let's see, Greg Universe, Connie's parents, the Pizza family who ran Fish Stew Pizza, the Fryman family that ran the Beach Citywalk Fries, Mr. Smiley who ran the Funland Arcade and theme park, two people that worked for the postal service, one of them being the mother of a person that worked at the Big Donut shop, who is also missing, along with her coworker, Mayor Dewey and his son, and a fisherman and his family of four. It doesn't mention the Crystal Gems though, but that's probably because they're not really citizens of Earth," Noa read aloud.
"Oh man, this is really bad," Steven said. "Everyone I ever knew and cared about has been abducted!"
"We have to go back! There has to be someone who hadn't been taken and is probably just hiding from the invaders," Connie stated.
"That's impossible! The place is probably crawling with FBI and CIA agents right now; they'll never let you in to investigate. And besides, isn't that town three hours from here?" Noa asked.
"There has to be some way to get there quickly," Steven said, tapping on his chin. Then, there was a loud roar coming from outside. The trio ran to the window and looked outside to see a familiar pink big cat sitting outside on the blacktop.
"Lion!" Steven gasped, surprised to see his feline friend sitting outside.
"How'd he know where the school was? And secondly, how'd he get here so soon?" Noa asked, confused about how the big cat got there.
"Lion can create portals. He probably got back through one," Connie explained to the boy, whose eyes widened in amazement.
"Well, at least we know not everyone in town was taken. He must've escaped somehow," Steven said, smiling happily.
"We have our getaway transport, but when can we sneak out of the school? If we leave now, the teachers and staff will definitely notice," Connie cautioned.
Noa then informed, "During lunch hour, we can go freely about the school, even onto the blacktop! We can get out of here then."
"Sounds like a plan, but we're going to have to stop by our rooms and get our casual stuff on before we leave. If we're going to go on some sort of dangerous mission, I don't want to ruin my uniform. My parents will get really mad if anything happens to it," Connie stated.
"Good point, so we better take detours to our rooms and ditch the school uniforms, but that'll make it harder to go around. If a teacher sees one of us out of uniform, we're going to be in big trouble," Noa added.
"We're going to have to be really sneaky," Steven suggested. "So the plan is to sneak out of the lunchroom, go to our rooms and change, then head out to the blacktop without being caught. Any questions?"
Connie and Noa shook their heads.
"Good, synchronize your watches!" Steven ordered.
"What watches?" Noa asked, confused.
"Someone said that in a spy movie once," Steven explained.
Noa just slapped a hand over his eyes and groaned.
Later that afternoon, Steven, Connie and Noa isolated themselves from the really loud students so the teachers' attention would be away from them. Then, after Connie looked around one more time to make sure they were completely ignored, she nodded to her friends. The three then dumped their trays and crept out of the noisy room into the quiet hallway.
They walked as quietly as possible to their dorms, silently hoping nobody would catch them. Once in their rooms, they quickly switch out of their uniforms and threw on their casual clothes. Then, they each slipped back into the hall, once again trying to be quiet and sneak outside to the blacktop.
There were moments when there was the creak of a door of slight footsteps that made the trio jump and hide under a nearby table or inside an unoccupied classroom. After what seemed like forever, they finally made it to the back door, which they practically threw open and ran outside.
Steven looked around to be sure nobody else was on the blacktop, which there wasn't, before proceeding to look around. "Lion! We're here! Where are you?" he hollered.
Within seconds, he felt a small weight placed on his head, and the half-gem looked up to see it was Lion's paw. The big cat growled a greeting and sat up, ready to follow any command.
"Okay, we're good to go," Steven said, climbing onto Lion's back, with Connie and a hesitant Noa following suit.
"How does he work? How does he know we have to go to Beach City?" Noa asked.
"We just tell him where we want to go," Steven simply answered. "Lion, we need to go to Beach City!"
The animal roared in response and started running towards the tall wire fence.
"He's going towards that fence!" Noa shrieked, ready to jump off, but Connie grabbed his shirt, preventing him from doing so. "No he's not," the girl assured him.
Lion roared a second time, this time causing a small hole of white light to form on the fencing, surprising Noa.
The big cat then jumped through the hole, and before the trio knew it, they were within the limits of Beach City, approaching a small group of black cars.
"Lion! Stop!" Noa shouted, knowing who the owners of the vehicles were.
The feline screeched to a halt and stared at the cars.
"What is it?" Steven asked his friend.
"I think they're government vehicles," the other boy stated flatly, his skin turning lighter and started to sweat nervously.
Steven nodded and the three preteens got off Lion's back, where they proceeded to enter the city, avoiding any agents they saw. Steven stared at the buildings of the town, full of worry and fear. Most of them were marked with police tape, but the damage was still visible. To think that just last night, everything he had been so familiar with for 10 years had been destroyed and everyone he knew and called a friend was gone.
He ran to the beach, where he ran up the slope that led to his house, which was fortunately still intact...save for the big hole he noticed in the ceiling and the hole in the screen door, which made him worried. He went inside and looked around to see everything else seemed okay...until he saw the door that was supposed to lead to the other parts of the temples.
He noticed it was set on Garnet's room, and when he looked inside, all the bubbled Gems were missing! "Oh no, the monster Gems!" he gasped, before running out of the room. He went back outside, and stated in a panicked manner, "They're all gone!"
"What are?" Noa asked.
"The bubbled Gems! They were these monsters me and the Crystal Gems fought and defeated. They're all gone now! I think someone took them," Steven explained, sweating bullets.
"Calm down, Steven. Let's just try to figure out what exactly happened here," Connie said.
"Hey, what's this?" Noa asked, pulling something out of the ground. It turned out to be a dagger with a light red blade, red crossguards, dark red handle, and a red crystal in the middle of the handle. "Judging by how the crystal looks, I think it might be a Bixbite," Noa stated, examining the weapon, until is suddenly vanished from his hands.
"I've never met a Gem named Bixbite. It must be a Homeworld Gem's weapon," Steven assumed.
Then, something caught his eyes. He noticed a female agent was on her knees and talking with a small child, probably a survivor of the invasion, either trying to calm him, or ask him what happened, but the child's face stayed neutral and almost emotionless. Then, Steven realized who the kid was.
"Onion!" Steven hollered, running down to his friend.
Onion turned around, his eyes widening upon seeing Steven, and ran towards the older kid.
"Onion! I can't believe you're still here! What happened to everyone? Where are the Gems? Where's your parents and brother?" Steven asked right off the bat.
Onion seemed to think about the answers to the questions for a few moments until the agent approached them.
"What is going on? Do you know this boy?" she asked.
"Yeah, his name's Onion. He's one of my friends. I'm from here," Steven explained. "What happened here?"
"That's what we're trying to figure out," the agent explained. "But he hasn't said anything at all. He won't even eat. We think he may be in shock."
"Oh, Onion's always like that. Let me talk to him. He might tell me what happened here...if he talks," Steven said.
Then, Onion began to run off in the direction of the slope that led up to the lighthouse. "Onion! Where are you going?" Steven asked his friend.
Onion stopped in his tracks, looked back towards Steven and pointed at the lighthouse.
"I think he wants us to follow him," Connie said.
"Okay. We'll talk to you later, miss. We have to figure out what Onion is trying to show us," Steven said before he, Connie, and Noa started to follow the small boy.
They went up the hill, where Onion was opening the front door, and the four entered the old beacon. They went up the stairs to hear someone typing away on their keyboard.
"Is that-?" Steven started wondering out loud as he opened the door to the lightroom.
The typing person turned out to be none other than Renaldo blogging on his laptop, looking really excited about something, saying stuff like "everyone in the world is going to flip when they see this!" and "this is going to be so good!"
"Renaldo!" Steven greeted his friend.
The teenager turned around in his chair and nearly jumped when he saw the half-gem, but he looked happy to see his friend. "Steven! You showed up just in time! I was just putting the finishing touches on my blog. Something big happened last night, and I want to post it on the internet before the FBI find me and confiscate my footage," the blogger stated.
"You know what happened last night?" Steven asked, happy to hear this fact.
"Well yeah! Like I said, I got video on the entire thing," Renaldo stated, holding up a digital video camera.
"You got footage of the incident! We have to see it!" Connie said, amazed to hear this.
"Let me attach it to my laptop first. The screen will be bigger and you might get a better look at it than on the camera screen," the teenager stated.
Renaldo hooked up his camera to his computer, pulled up the media player, clicked the file where the video was located, and then, after it loaded on the screen for a few moments, he pressed play.
Well, the Crystal Gems are gone, the bubbled monster gems are missing, and the citizens of Beach City, minus Renaldo, Onion and Lion, are all missing.
What occurred last night that caused everyone to disappear and so much damage to the town?
How did Onion, Renaldo, and Lion get away?
Who were the Homeworld Gems that showed up? (if you remember the prologue, you know that Phantom Quartz was one of the Gems)
Find out in the next chapter of Rescue from Homeworld!
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