A/N: Welcome back, everyone. I'm sorry for the lack of updates, but hiatus is over for now. Here's the long-awaited chapter 8! For those of you who are still awake, I mean...

Chapter 8: Industrial Strength

That morning, Gumball ran out a few moments ago from the ballroom with a grin on his face, without even finishing breakfast. His grin bared nearly all his teeth, and the rest of his face twisted upwards in a teasing gleam. His eyes showed a crescent shape, almost seconds away from twisting into a more naturally feline shape, but still showing a hint of happiness with small diamonds reflecting in his pupils. Darwin followed close behind to keep him in in check, slightly concerned, but feeling a hint of cheeriness. The other kids, along with Lion, watch as they bolt out the door, not intending to follow them or even attempt to participate on whatever it was they had in mind.

Earlier, Gumball had asked Steven about the Gems, not to the extent of serious personal information, but important to him nevertheless. Not knowing any better at the moment, Steven had told him everything Gumball needed to know, and each fact had provided more fuel for the machinery powering his growing smirk. "Are you sure you wanna give him that information?" Anais had asked in a somewhat deadpan manner, as Gumball thanked him and got up from his seat and urged Darwin to accompany him. "Gumball's got his ways…" But whatever trouble Anais figured might be brewing, it was already too late to stop it.

The Gems continue to work on the Rooms at a slow pace. With a nasal sigh, Amethyst taps the tip of her foot onto the steel beam from the 24th floor, producing a faint metallic percussion. Garnet installs the beams as much as the chasm's walls would allow her, edging at the 36th floor, where the isolated Portal Room lies away from the chasm, and therefore the rest of the Rooms. She occasionally stops to bask in on the unnatural sunlight, feeling an almost tangible energy and matter radiating through. Pearl stands on another beam in the 14th floor, silently pondering the structure in an attempt to make sense of the mathematical absurdity she had forced herself to conform to, fidgeting her hands as she tries to add up. The beams are close to completion, now only a matter of time before the Gems continue with the construction of the Rooms proper.

Amethyst disinterestedly stomps on the beam with more force, hearing it produce louder metallic beats. She continues to stomp a single foot, then gradually stomps on both feet with her toes and heels, finding some kind of rhythm. The metals echo across the chasm in an odd concept of music. Amethyst can see Pearl getting annoyed with her nonsensical symphony as she slowly turns her head to glare at her from below. Amethyst groans and sits quietly as she listens to the echoes of the last stomp. Had things been over and done with, she would've stopped a long time ago, and continued to hang out with those guys again. Too bad they were busy with fixing the lounge at the east side of the building.

Pearl looks back down, and quietly mumbles to herself how she can't afford any more interruptions and annoyances, when she hears the patter of rapid paws and shoes in the hall coming from the door of the floor she is in.

Gumball comes bursting through one of the doors. All the Gems react in alarm, with Amethyst and Pearl nearly reaching towards their gems by instinct. Upon seeing who it is, they immediately sigh in a mix of relief and exasperation. Gumball sports a wide-eyed, but otherwise unreadable expression, with his cheeks puffed out and his mouth in a straight line.

Pearl tries not to raise her voice. "I…I'm sorry, but I believe we made clear not to interfere this time…"

"Yeah, yeah I know," he says casually and blinks, holding his hands up. "But Steven told me you had to hurry. We're getting freaked out here, and we really wanna see how this is gonna look. You know. So we can actually have fun here." He spouts the last line with a hint of smug spite, and a slow-forming smirk.

Pearl starts to huff, displeased with this creature's tone, but tries to remain polite. "Well, young… child-cat, as you can see we are trying our best to construct this as fast as possible."

Gumball crosses his arms in a pout. "Well, it doesn't look like you're trying enough, right?" he puffs out.

Pearl, increasingly agitated, forces herself to hold back a frown, let alone lose her patience. But does this creature even know who― what he is dealing with?

"Now, listen here—" she starts to raise her voice in a scolding tone as she walks alongside the steel beam towards the door. Gumball dons a quick, smirking gleam and simply slams the door before she could even try to reach it. Pearl stops in her tracks, but before she has a chance to react, another door in the 27th floor flings open in front of Amethyst's position, and Gumball appears.

"Whoa!" Amethyst exclaims and reels back, nearly losing her balance. She and Pearl find themselves catching their breath in their throats.

"Wha-ah— oh?" Pearl stammers.

"Hey! How'd you do that?!" Amethyst asks in excitement and confusion, her voice nearly close to squeaking.

Gumball chuckles to himself in pride. "Well, it's simple," he brings his hands to his face, and makes jazz hands. "I'm 'fayst'." He slams the door again, and almost immediately pops up at the door in the floor where Pearl is standing again, leaning against the frame in a smug look. "I learned a lot from Steven, I mean, aren't you supposed to be fast too?"

Pearl's pupils shrink, and metaphorically gulps in bewilderment with a small spark of anger within her Gem. Each and each time, Pearl finds herself losing more of her composure. Her nostrils start to flare up, and her brows show signs of wrinkling and twisting downwards. Notably, she forces herself to smile, while her eyes and brows are lopsided upwards in a mixture of anger and confusion. At the mention of Gumball knowing possible things and watching what he is doing, Amethyst takes a closer look at Pearl in subdued amusement, her head tilted.

"*Ahem*" Pearl imitates composure and forced friendliness, yet her teeth nearly grit as she talks. "To give you an, um, idea we ARE fast, yes," she inhales uselessly and struggles to raise a scolding finger up. "BUT— we can't possibly rush this process. We need to make sure this building's infrastructure is stable enough, so when you start bouncing and running around, or whatever it is that you do, you. DON'T collapse into the ground and die. Do you understand that, cat child?"

All the while, Gumball has his eyes rolled and he moves his fingers up and down in a 'blah, blah, blah' gesture. "Yeah, I get that you've gotta be Serious and Ultra Boring and slow about it. Maybe in YOUR world, that's how stuff's supposed to go —feel bad for you, by the way. But not here! Look at me! You can do ANYTHING here, and being slow and boring isn't doing anything. I'm not seein' a lot of progress here, dudes!" He leans against the doorframe again, and lifts up a finger condescendingly. "And we STILL have names, you know!"

Pearl absentmindedly finds herself huffing and stomping her foot in sheer aggravation (and losing her balance in a split-second; a deplorable act on her part) and grumbling under her breath. "Oh, please!" Her voice is is raised in annoyance, creating small echoes across the chasm. The sounds catch Garnet's attention, and she looks down, wearing no expression in her face other than a single brow lowered underneath her shades.

Amethyst smiles and shoots Gumball a wink. He chuckles mischievously as he disappears behind the door again. He proceeds to quickly pop up in as many doors as he can, creating mocking gestures as the door slams echo across the chasm. Amethyst is thoroughly amused.

"Ha, ha! Yeah, c'mon, Pearl!" Amethyst stifles a number of chuckles as the chaos subtly unfolds, and Pearl is nearly driven up the wall by the time she looks at her. "Just call 'im by his name and maybe he'll stop bothering ya! Pfft—"

Gumball starts to laugh as he stops at the 22nd floor to compose himself as he nearly collapses laughing. He pulls his hand back and gives Darwin a high-five behind his back as his laughter subsides slightly. He could do this all day, which is what he had precisely had in mind.

But as he throws his head back to laugh some more, he looks up to find Garnet looking down straight at him. In an almost literal manner, he feels that she stares straight through him. His throat dries at an exaggerated rate, no other sound managing to escape his mouth other than a squeaky, dry wheeze cutting off his laughter. He turns pale and his eyes nearly bug out of his head as nervousness overtakes him, and he feels himself losing air. He loses his balance, prompting Darwin to grab him by his sweater, and Gumball is left leaning forward at the edge in a half-daze, sweaty, and lost of the cool he acquired moments ago.

Pearl picks up on this. Her eyes squint slightly as she finally works out a retaliatory remark. "Hmmmm, you don't seem very confident now, do you, Gumball?" Her senses bring her a strange rush of nostalgia from her braggart, less-than-stellar "youth."

Gumball huffs dryly, before being abruptly and violently pulled backwards back inside the hall. Darwin quickly slams the door, and starts to breathe heavily in frustration. Gumball sits up and swallows to moisten his throat. Darwin marches over him, and slaps him across the cheek.

"What. Was THAT?" He yells in a desperate and annoyed tone. "We agreed she was off-limits! You just wrecked it, dude! You wrecked it!"

"Gaugh— Well I didn't mean to look up!" Gumball yells back. "I didn't even know she was there! And it was so freaky!"

"You still wrecked it, dude! We had it! We almost got 'em to do their stuff if we promised to leave them alone! Until you messed that one up!"

"Well, FINE, I messed it up! But it was still an accident, and it's not my fault she's so freaky!"

"You know what?! I have an idea!"

"What is it?"

"We stick with MY plan. We simply tell them what we want and stop messing with their freaky alien heads instead of trying to do reverse psychology!"

"Yeah! We should probably stop taking advantage of their simple little spacey minds like that!"

"You think they can hear us from outside!? 'Cause I don't think they'll appreciate us insulting them!"

"I—!" Gumball bends down to catch his breath, swallows, and shakes his head. "Alright, let's do it. Okay." Gumball walks over the door and opens it unsuspectingly.

Just waiting outside the door is Garnet, squinted down perched at the beam, unmoving at his eye level, inches within his face.

"Haaaauugh!" Gumball barely screams; a noise resembling a loud, mildly shocked exhale escapes from his mouth as he closes the door swiftly, turns around, and faces the ceiling. He facepalms to the point where he nearly sinks his his hands onto his face and groans loudly. Darwin gives Gumball a pat on his shoulder, wearing a numb expression, but his lips twitch in an attempt not to smile. Gumball brings his hands to his mouth and frowns in defeat.

"…She look offended?" Gumball asks in muffles. Darwin shakes his head in pity and uncertainty. Gumball takes a deep exasperated breath. He walks over and opens the door once more with a scowl.

In a distance in front of him, Amethyst is snickering out of breath, appearing somewhat exhausted as if she had just finished a particularly intense laughing fit. Pearl has her back turned and her arms crossed, quickly peeking over her shoulder, suppressing a small chuckle. Gumball grimaces at them in annoyance, which only seems to amuse Amethyst more. He slowly looks to his right, his face twists into offended rage as he finds Garnet with her back leaning against the wall next to the door, expression stoic. "Sorry," she says bluntly with a tiny snort. "I thought it would be funny."

"Arghhhh!" Gumball groans and turns his back on the amused Gems, only to suddenly arch his back and rapidly turns back around. "Oh!— S-see? SEEE?! YOU just did it!" he points to Garnet in a shout. "You just did as I did, alright?! You did that appearing thing like I did, BECAUSE YOU THOUGHT IT WAS FUNNY! Ha, ha, FUNNY! Funny…!"

He lets out a loud, dramatic gasp that seems to flatten his organs. His furious tone and aggressive smile does not express the actual joy of his epiphany, and the Gems reel back in bafflement. Ignoring this, Gumball continues his seemingly rage-filled rant.

"Yeah, that's what I did! That's where we were going, you hear that, DARWIN?! Funny is weird, funny's unusual! Funny bends the rules! Funny has NO rules! Got that? Defying gravity, messing with magic and physics and speed and stuff… you can do ALL that stuff, if YOU think it'll be funny! You can do anything, as long as it's FUNNY! C'mon, let's walk on walls and build stuff fast and I'll be laughing 'cause it's weird! Get it?! 'Cause it's FUNNY! RIGHT?!" he takes a long angry breath, and pauses dramatically. "HILAAARIOUS!"

Gumball starts to pant. Slowly, as the Gems stare blankly and silent, Gumball begins to recall what he had just said. He coughs. "But wait― that's ridiculous, isn't it…?" Gumball smacks his face as if it were a fly and groans, though more quietly. "Oh, where the HECK did I come up with THAT one?! Ridiculous! How could that EVER work with ANYONE, jeez! You'd have to be REALLY crazy, which is obviously not the case with me! Humph!"

After a few moments of sighing in dismissal, Gumball turns towards the Crystal Gems, still blank, but almost as if they are questioning his sanity. Stick to plan B, he can almost hear Darwin saying behind him. He clears his throat and decides to calm down.

"Alright… let's get to the point here and stop messing around… Steven told me a few things about you. How quick and, uh, magical you guys are with your… superhero missions I think, how you built this giant temple with… the craziest layout you can imagine in your world —'causemyhousemakesnosenseeither, but ANYWAY! Point is, funny or, serious, weird dramatic or whatever… I think you can go faster. And even WITH being precise or whatever you're crazy fast and powerful… but you're all just distracted aren't you?"

At those words, Garnet takes a moment, and looks at the others. Pearl and Amethyst look at her wearily in response. With a subtle mouth curl on Garnet's behalf, she had already stated nothing more and nothing less than one thing: he's right. Since the start, the Gems found themselves in something they had never seen before in the countless millennia of their existence. Such a thing they thought had only existed in human literature and arts, and they can't help but simply drop their tools, and gaze at the strange sky, moon, and sun through the skylight, and let the 'time' pass by. But if this speculation had only stalled them from the task at hand, then the cat is right. Curiosity and awe allowed them to stop and stare. They'd stopped for too long now.

As the Gems silently think to themselves, Gumball starts to frown, almost defeated, gaining no response from the Gems. He snorts dismissively and somewhat bitterly, not feeling like acting patient any longer, nor having the energy. "Well," he sighs, almost passive-aggressively, "when you feel like getting those sticks out of your butts anytime soon, we'd really appreciate it. NOW GOOD DAY, MA'AMS!"

Not even Pearl feels like scolding him for his rage as he closes the door one final time, leaving them to think in silence. They could hear his feet dragging across the floor as he and Darwin walk down the hall with nothing else to do except wait more. Frustrated grunts can be heard as Pearl's eyebrows curl upwards into a look of pity.

Amethyst sighs loudly, smacks her lips and rolls her eyes, "So…" she says, looking disappointed. "…now what?"

Pearl shrugs her shoulders almost exaggeratingly, still with her expression of pity. "Well— we…" Pearl looks around in uncertainty, and turns towards Garnet. "Um, Garnet? What do you propose we do?"

Garnet hums and adjusts her shades. She once again looks up towards the skylight, before deciding on what to say. "…With the way this 'planet' works, we should probably keep going without thinking too much. We can't afford any more distractions. It'll be over quicker, and there aren't gonna be any bad consequences doing that."

Pearl puts her finger to her chin. "But how would that work? How do we… progress 'subconsciously,' to say the least?" She asks in sincerity, with no doubt in her tone.

Garnet stops for a moment, and thinks. She shrugs her shoulders and hums 'I dunno.'

"Maybe we should go with what feels right for us, you know?" Amethyst suggests, reaching her finger at one of the beams to tap on it. "And, what the Gummy cat said, we're super fast and powerful, like how we go on missions and built the temple? Yeah, some good stuff in there that WE built with our powers and stuff 'cause we wanted to whatever we wanted with it, and it felt right for us. And, yeah, combined with the weird stuff we see here, who knows what we can do?"

"Hm." Garnet ponders "We do have our unlimited Gem powers on our side…" Garnet turns her head to the dust particles reflecting the sunshine. "… And then some."

"So…" Pearl brings her hands together, index fingers pointed at her lips pensively. "You're both suggesting that the, um, logic, of this world and all its physical 'liberties' from our own, combined with our own Gem powers, we could end up making the work not only faster, but more… interesting? And… feeling 'right'?"

Pearl's index fingers point towards Garnet as she finishes her statement. Ever so subtly, Garnet cracks a little smirk. Garnet turns towards Amethyst to do the same, and she produces a wider smirk in return. Pearl finds herself smiling cautiously, balling her fists close to her chest. She slowly, gently reaches out to her tool belt, holding a drill as if she were holding a fine instrument. Garnet then swiftly reaches into a nearby toolbox and holds it under her arm, jumping in the beams and climbing some stories up.

"Alright, Gems. It's time to put more backbone into this! No more breaks! We won't stop until we complete it this time."

"Yes, Garnet!" Pearl chirps. "No prob!" Amethyst makes a casual thumbs up.

"Pearl, get up here," Garnet orders. "We'll need more materials."

Pearl quickly jumps up in maneuvers at Garnet's direction, jumping up stories in the beams without breaking a sweat. She reaches in the box and fetches more tools and pieces from it. The box seems larger on the inside; she begins to pull out cables, bags of concrete mix, and hundreds of nuts and bolts, as well as several more heavy duty tools to patch them together. Most of the harder materials are handed over to Garnet as she also holds the remaining beams over her other shoulder. Garnet tosses a pair of wrenches and a few nuts down to Amethyst several stories up, and Amethyst catches them all without trouble.

She twirls the wrenches in her hands like drumsticks with the nuts tucked between her head and her shoulders. "Ha, ha! This is gonna be cool! Can't wait to see what we're gonna do! I bet it'll look awesome!"

Pearl laughs a bit mirthlessly while prepping her drill. "Well, let's just hope this will all make sense!"

The Gems' work starts back up.* The metal is scratching across the beams as the Gems resume work further on the structure of the Rooms. Amethyst screws in and drums the hard metal pieces in with her hands, in drumstick maneuvers. There are varying strengths in the beat, as she makes a steady, consistent rhythm. Right. Left. Right, left, right. Left. Right, left, right. Left.

Some industrial buzzing and echoes are heard as more pieces of the Rooms are put together with their tools. Some almost sound like vocals. Garnet is organizing the cables in heavy corner of the soon-to-be walls to provide electric current to the Rooms.

The rhythm. Is changing. The tempo. Is the same. Their feet are tapping beams, Their hands are tapping beams. The metal is sounding, the metal is scratching. The rhythm. Is faster. Their work. Is faster.

Beats and percussion overtake the enviroment around them. The chasm is filled with noises, and soon the area becomes difficult to process visually to an outsider. Garnet gives electric currents to the cables, and the noises start to fade. Amethyst keeps "drumming," even as the buzzing fades.

The rhythm stops to calibrate the electricity. The garbled electronic vocals traverse through the chasm as the beams are completed.

The rhythm grows stronger as the Gems place concrete. The walls, and the ceilings, and floors of each of the Rooms are being created, and the doors are being set up. More electronic sounds emerge, beeps and buzzes in the still-consistent rhythm. The Gems continue, and continue putting details in the quickly rising structure. The droning rhythm continues on, and more buzzing and scratching is heard along the chasm.

A loud buzz rings out, as their machinery runs the inner structure of the Rooms.

More buzzes and more intensity resonate as the structure of the Rooms is being finished. Rapid electronic taps change the rhythm for seconds and loud hammering runs through the quickly hardened concrete, getting louder and louder. The electronic tapping speeds to three to five taps per second, in the two and a half seconds left to complete the base.

Static. More wiring. The Gems press on as they finish the Rooms.

The rhythm returns louder. The industrial buzzes grow more intense. Miscellaneous bangs and several sounds spread through the chasm. The Gems are adding the crucial details of the rooms in rapid, near impossible speed. This part there, this part here. Lights. Furnitures. Straight from the storage room retrieved at lighting speed. Metallic screams ring out across the closing spaces of the chasm as the hard equipment is brought to the rooms. The sounds grow more and more intense. Rapid blinking. The Gems begin to lose track of what is happening as a final metallic screech is heard—

The Gems stand on one completed Room in floor 36. Static still rings out, yet slowly fades. Dumbfounded, silent, and somewhat nauseous, the Gems look up and notice something else beyond the bounds. The 36th floor doesn't end at the skylight. The ceiling is much higher than they thought, and the tower is still much taller. Something else, a different part of the tower, can be glimpsed.

But it doesn't matter right now. As they stare at their own feet at a Room's completed ceiling, they know there is a far more important announcement to make.

*Seven Gulps of Air by Jon Hopkins

A/N: Well... that last part was a doozy, wasn't it? It was a bit of a challenge to write because the song itself is... difficult, to say the least. Look it up, and you'll get an "audio" on what was happening back there.

Alright, if the URLs appear here, you can direct your questions over on .com for a few background info or shoot me a PM.