Okay, so before we get going this time, I'd like to make a little announcement. After almost four years, I'm planning to close the books on this story. I am so appreciative for every little bit of support I've gotten and this story has actually given me an opportunity to meet some truly great people. And once this story finally lives up to its title and ends, I'll still be thankful. And now, on with the show.
The following days for the Crystal Gems and diamonds were surprisingly sedate given the scope of the problem they were dealing with here. Agent Van kept calling in with intel that Rose's ship had yet to move so there wasn't any reason to mobilize an attack. That left the group with plenty of time to monitor the online reactions towards the conflicting stories.
As per usual, the internet was awash with conflicting opinions. Some were fully on board with Rose ending the diamonds, many of them citing how they lost loved ones to the invasion weeks ago or nearly died themselves. Others were more moved by the Crystal Gems' plight on how their leader had turned against them with many showing sympathy for Steven and Greg especially.
There was also the occasional moron/contrarian who spouted an entirely ridiculous third option ranging from the entire conflict being staged to how this was all a front for a third faction of aliens to take over but those were promptly mocked or ignored.
One pleasant surprise came in the form of Ronaldo's blog. Keep Beach City Weird had a vocal defender of the Crystal Gems with the blonde writing an extensive article about how many of the past phenomena he had written about was actually the gems' handiwork. Steven could hardly believe that the older Fryman was willing to discredit his own theories for his family's sake, but he and everyone else appreciated it nonetheless.
While everyone was getting along better, there was still an underlying dread that slowly built day by day. They were wondering if this was all part of Rose's plan to let them sweat before more videos were "conveniently" dropped to make the diamonds look like they were plotting to attack orphanages.
The hardest parts were for the human members of the team to try and sleep through this whole ordeal but they managed nonetheless. It did get to the point where Steven needed the occasional trip outside so that the calming sound of the waves could lull him back to sleep from his nagging worries. As per usual, he looked across the porch only to notice an incredibly familiar silhouette on the beach.
He waved it off as just his eyes playing tricks on him until the figure turned around to reveal his mother's face.
"M-Mom?" he stuttered, "What are you doing here?!"
Rose moved up to him slowly, actually floating just above the sand as she looked down at him. "Steven, I… I wanted to say I'm sorry. I never meant for this all to go so far."
"Then why don't you just stop!" he begged, suddenly awake, "You can put this whole business with the diamonds away and we can be a family!"
"I'd love to, I really would," she said, scooping her son up into her arms and caressing him like a child, "I know how badly you wanted a mother growing up. The gems did their best, but it wasn't enough."
The boy suddenly felt his throat lock up and his eyes start to water as he tried to deny the warmth of her grasp. He just leaned into her embrace and relished the feeling.
"Now you just hold on tight, son," Rose whispered, her voice as soft as could be, "And when you wake up, it'll all be over."
Steven's question was stopped by a sudden chop to the back of the neck that knocked him out cold. Rose then rocketed off across the ocean before anyone, namely the diamonds, could realize she was there.
To say the following morning was chaotic would be like saying that Lars kind of liked dessert. As soon as it was evident that Steven wasn't in the house or the temple, the Crystal Gems tore across town to find any sign of him around Beach City. After trying all of his favorite hangouts yielded nothing, they all but literally combed the place only to not catch a thing.
Connie and her mother were quick to get the police involved and Greg called up Agent Van to put the word out that Steven was missing. As much as they didn't want to make an event out of it, they needed all the help they could get in this case.
Days passed with no progress, the group growing more and more stressed. Any leads they got were dead ends and even having an inside connection to that part of the American government that was mostly unknown led to nothing. That all changed when Peridot almost jokingly suggested that he wasn't on Earth anymore while tinkering with something during a meeting to keep herself relaxed.
As soon as she said it, the gems went silent. None of them wanted to even consider it but they couldn't just put it aside. And since they guessed that Steven wouldn't just warp off to a distant planet for no reason, that meant there was only place he could be: Rose's fleet.
It took no time at all for the diamonds to pull out one of their personal communicators and tap into Rose's frequency. One of the advantages of them being monitored was that the overzealous rebel left herself open. As soon as the Rose's impassive face popped up on the holo-screen, Garnet spoke up with the entirety of the Crystal Gems that could fit in the house behind her.
"We know you have him, Rose. Give Steven back."
"I will as soon as I've uncovered however the diamonds have altered him," the mother said simply, prompting many of the gems behind Garnet to facepalm and/or groan in annoyance.
"That's it, now you've really gone nuts," Bismuth sighed, "You do realize that you just kidnapped your own son, right? Kind of like how Blue snatched up your boyfriend?"
"This is a completely different-!"
"NO, IT'S NOT!" Topaz, of all gems, cut off with her staff already clutched in her fists, "Your brains are just scrambled because of all the energy you've absorbed! I hope you weren't such a massive hypocrite back in the day because I don't know how you ever functioned otherwise."
Rose then read the room and realized she had nobody on her side on this issue. She was about to ask Greg to back her up only to fall silent as he was already wearing his battle suit and a glare that made it clear there wasn't any love lost on his part. She then moved to the only other mother in the room only to find Dr. Mahesweran casually flipping a crystal shard in her hand with her entire body being made of glittering purple stone. Standing next to her was Connie, also fully crystallized, and casually polishing a sword with a kitchen rag.
"I see…" Rose sighed, "You're all too far gone…"
"Pot, meet kettle," Amethyst choked out before she turned and left the living room. Everyone else filed out with some despondent looks behind them. Rose cut them off soon after, letting the Crystal Gems pass on the grim news to Fluorite and the diamonds.
The news was even worse received in space. Rose only let her composure break once the connection was down, letting a few tears fall as she made her way down the medical bay of her flagship. There, suspended in an anti-gravity bubble, floated an unconscious Steven. The monitors around the room were constantly spitting out lines of text in the gem language, all of it saying how his vitals were stable and nothing abnormal was in his brain patterns.
"Guess I'll have to start digging myself…" she sighed, reaching an arm into the vacuum to touch her son's forehead.
Steven had no idea how long he was unconscious but the instant he woke up and realized he was in a featureless black void, he put his head in hands and groaned.
"Oh, she didn't… As if I didn't have mom issues when we all thought she was dead…"
Almost on cue, Rose Quartz herself appeared in front of him.
"Hello, Steven. I-"
"Whatever it is, I'm not interested. Let me go."
The pink-haired gem sighed. "I was afraid you'd say that. Steven, I don't know what the diamonds have done to force you to help them…"
"They haven't done anything! I keep trying to tell you that, but you don't listen! Holding me hostage isn't going to change that!"
"Oh dear, whatever they've put in you is deeply ingrained in your mind…"
Steven screamed in frustration before faceplanting on the floor. He could already feel a headache forming as Rose tried to walk forward and help him up only to get pushed back.
"No, no, you don't get to be all nice and sympathetic with me when you're turning the entire gem race into your cult!" he rebuked, his hands briefly curling into fists, "Now, I really don't want to fight you but I'm not gonna just stand here and get a lecture from someone who's become a massive hypocrite!"
Rose stood stock still for several beats, trying to process what her own son just said. Eventually she managed to peter out a single word. "Hy-Hypocrite?"
"Yes! You are!" Steven screamed, "Oh man, where do I even start with you?! For starters, you remember Bismuth? My friend, one of your best friends, has a bit of a complex when it comes to shattering? Do the words 'Breaking Point' mean anything to you?"
"But… This is different…"
"Oh yeah? How? Give me a reason why you shattering the diamonds is any less wrong than Bismuth planning to shatter Pink Diamond to end the gem war."
Rose opened her mouth only for Steven to break in. "And do not say 'Oh, it's because the other diamonds are evil!' That isn't an excuse! As far as Bismuth knew, Pink was just as bad as the rest of them!"
The mother was completely quiet for several seconds, unable to come up with anything, so Steven took the lead and kept tirading.
"So besides that, let's talk about the whole absorbing gems' light thing which you seem REALLY keen on dodging whenever anyone brings it up. You, the gem who wanted to make a Earth a place for gems to get away from being controlled, right? Okay, that sounds nice, except you wanna know the difference between back then and now?"
Now the mother didn't even try to interject, speechless at how the whole parental dynamic had completely reversed.
"It's that you aren't giving them a choice this time! You just zap them, take in their power to make ourself stronger, and then they're happy as a clam to do whatever you want!"
Rose once again tried to interject but Steven wouldn't be stopped. "And DON'T say how you're not directly controlling them. Maybe you aren't, but none of those gems can decide that they don't want anything to do with you and go back to the diamonds, can they?"
Another bout of prolonged silence hung in the air, Steven tapping his foot impatiently while Rose's eyes kept wandering everywhere except the only other thing in this black void. With nothing else to add, the young man let out the last thing on his mind.
"You keep saying the diamonds don't care about Pink. And yet they're willing to look at themselves and change for the better. What have you been doing for the past several days? Ignoring what your supposed friend wants, plotting to murder her family because you stubbornly refuse to accept the truth and now you're going to drag us, your family, down with them for the sake of a grudge."
"Steven… I…"
"The only way that this gets better is that you let me go and then agree to drop all of this. Go have your perfect gem planet if you want, but you won't have me or the Crystal Gems in it at this rate."
The mother tried to move closer, but Steven just stepped backwards with an unflinching glower.
"Steven, please just listen to me…"
"Unless it's an apology, I'm not interested."
"But…"
"Goodbye, Rose."
With her tear ducts threatening to betray her, Rose let herself out of Steven's mindscape. Once she was gone, Steven fell to the floor with a sob and tried to pull himself together and figure out what to do. He was at least grateful for the peace and quiet but he knew he needed to get out of this abyss. Figuring he was asleep, he tried to wake himself up only to waste several minutes pinching himself, yelling or even trying to make a bucket of cold water appear so he could get a wake-up splash.
"Darn it…" he grumbled only to think of one other option. He had ended up reaching people when he was asleep before and as far as he could tell, he was unconscious. He closed his eyes and tried to reach out with his mind, as absurd as it sounded, and soon find his mental self drifting out of the force field before disappearing into a field of stars before rapidly approaching a familiar looking figure.
"Dad!"
"Steven?!" the father gasped, suddenly looking around at the astral void around them, "Where the heck are we?!"
"In my mind, I think… That's not important! Where are you?"
"Well, we're actually on our way to save you."
"Wait, all of you?! Mo… Rose is still here!"
The father paused at that speech slip-up before putting on a reassuring smile. "Oh, trust me Schtu-ball, we know that. She sent us a message about her plans to de-brainwash you or whatever but we aren't gonna let her keep you. We've got a plan…"
As the Crystal Beacon and the Mega Diamond flew through the edge of the Milky Way and into another galaxy, everyone was doing their best to occupy their time in any way possible. Pearl was tuning a violin, Peridot was checking various technical components across the ship and Cinnabar was casually shooting tiny fireballs off a finger gun while Lapis put them out in midair with water pellets.
At the helm, as per usual, was Topaz. She was keeping a firm eye scanning the space in front of her as well as looking off to the side where the diamonds' ship was keeping pace with them. She was looking for any sudden flashes of pink.
As for the monarch's ship, the four occupants within the mech's head were trying and failing to find something to pass the time. Blue was attempting to keep her breath steady, Yellow looked over readings so often she could feel her eyes getting heavy and White looking to and fro every few seconds like a disaster was on the horizon. All three were subtly hoping that Pink would provide a diversion but she was the most morose of all.
She just sat in the backmost sector of the ship, eyes squarely on the floor as she sighed despondently every so often. All of the others wanted to say something to cheer her up but none of them could come up with much beyond how, if nothing else, they were finally spending quality time together. No one had the guts to actually say it.
The biting silence was broken as the scanner blared to life. Rose Quartz was officially on their trail. The Crystal Gems kept alongside the mech as a message was already coming through.
"Do we dare wonder how she's doing this?" Yellow sighed into the communicator.
"We'll solve that mystery later," Garnet said on the other side, "For now, we're going to patch Rose through and hopes she's still drunk on power."
Topaz took that as the cue to flip the switch and a let very irate Rose appear on holo-screen on both of the ships' decks.
"So, I take it this isn't just a casual stroll?" she asked, her voice coming through despite her very obviously flying in the vacuum of space, "You're all quite the ways from Earth."
"And what if we are?" Peridot questioned, "What, we need clearance from you to travel outside of our precinct?"
"For three of you, yes, it's very much warranted. I'd rather not have one of my sanctuaries leveled because the gems on it aren't hollowing the place out."
"Gosh, you really are messed up," Cinnabar said with a headshake, "Anyway, how's Steven been doing since you kidnapped him?"
"He's… Fine."
"At least she isn't denying the obvious?" Zoisite tried to console but the mood remained tense as the two sides stared off through the screens until a pink laser several feet wide cut in front of the shapes. The message went off as Rose moved to glaring at them all directly.
"Now then, I'd like an answer," she said, somehow speaking through space, "What are you all doing here?"
"Why does it matter?" White countered, "You'll twist any answer we give you into an excuse to attack us. If anything, we should be the ones grilling you for information. What, do you still have more gems to sway to satisfy your lust for power?"
A pink aura slowly appeared around her as she tried to bite back an insult. "There aren't any planets of yours left. I have fully converted the population."
"Yeah, that doesn't sound ominous at all…" Lapis whispered, Adamite just keeping a strong arm around her girlfriend's shoulder to keep her grounded. Pink Diamond decided to get between her family and her ex-friend.
"Rose, what exactly are you trying to accomplish here? Holding us up like this isn't helping anybody."
The sight of her old friend visibly calmed Rose down but her tone was still harsh. "What I'm doing is potentially stopping an incursion by…"
The others watched as the lead rebel visibly lost her train of thought. While curious about the cause, they appreciated the distraction and simply watched as Rose tried to remember what she was saying.
Meanwhile, back over on Earth, a much smaller scout ship was now resting in the hangar of Rose's flagship after lying its way aboard. A pair of her gems requested to inspect the craft only to be quickly poofed upon the shuttle's door opening.
"Man, you're both good shots…" Connie awed, watching how Greg's energy blasted faded out of sight and her mother's crystal arm returned to normal from the spiky appendage that fired seconds ago. Both parents bid her thanks before heading out into enemy territory with the daughter heading out with a crystal sword already in hand.
They proceeded into the hangar, kicking the dormant gemstones aside as they ran with them immediately opening the door to find a jasper and a sapphire having a chat with the smaller gem piggybacking on the larger one as they talked.
"Hey, who are you three?" the psychic asked before the jasper was tackled to the ground by Connie before getting a sword to the chest. The blue soothsayer, now flat on her back, shrieked in panic only for Greg to clamp a hand over her mouth and level his phaser at her face.
"Rose Quartz kidnapped my son," he said almost emotionlessly, "And I am not leaving until I know he's safe. Now, where is he?"
While visibly trying not to panic, the sapphire did say he was being held in the engine room down below only to get shot into submission a few seconds later.
"Wow, I've never seen him so intense," Connie noted as the father ran ahead, her and her mother following a few steps behind.
"That's what happens when you mess with a good parent," Priyanka admired, "They won't stop until their kid's back home."
And so the brigade tore through the ship, inspecting the many rooms they passed and poofing any gem that happened to be in sight. Some might have argued that it was overkill, but stealth was of the utmost importance. If someone got a message out that the ship was under attack, they had a dozen other vessels' worth of soldiers to worry about and the possibility that Rose would hightail it back here away from the diversion.
As confident as the human trio had gotten with their tech or powers, they had been lacking an opportunity to use them for some time. They all appreciated that they would have the element of surprise since that meant they'd be less likely to get into a direct fight.
With the advantage on their side, the spearhead shot through the ship in no time at all. As they worked down the different decks, poofing any gems they came across to keep Rose in the dark, until they eventually came by a door where the slight hum of the engines reverberated through the walls.
Greg gave a nod. Connie that used her blade to pry open one end of the door while Priyanka shot crystal shards into the other side until the sealed entrance was wrenched through. With the passage clear, they could easily see Steven floating in the translucent pink bubble.
"Okay, anyone got any ideas for this?" Doctor Maheswaran asked, "Because I'm pretty sure I don't want to shoot that and risk Steven needing stitches at best."
Nobody else had an answer for that and thus defaulted back to the tried-and-true solution of search around the room to see if anything sticks out. A good chunk of the room was a massive console that controlled the engine and none of them wanted to fiddle with that, but that left only sleek metallic walls without so much as a crack to investigate.
Greg eventually turned his attention to the bubble itself and started feeling the surface for any flaws. An instant later, the bubble exploded sending all three across the room and leaving Steven unharmed but very confused.
"Why are my ears ringing?!"
"Beats us!" Connie shrugged, giving him a quick hug before taking him back to their shuttle only for alarms to start blaring across the ship.
"Great, it was rigged," Priyanka sighed before darting outside, ready to fire at anything that crossed their paths. Greg followed suit with Connie leading Steven towards the hangar. They quickly came across a congregation of gems in one of the corridors only for the aliens to look just as confused.
"Who are you supposed to be?"
"Where are we?!"
"I want my diamond!" one jasper admitted only to get ugly looks from the rest of the bunch.
The four looked at each in total confusion before Steven piped up. "Can you remember anything that happened to you recently?"
"Last I remember, that Rose Quartz was visiting the planet we were halfway through colonizing and blasted us all with this pink light," the same jasper explained, "After that, nothing."
"Hey, aren't you Steven Universe?" another wondered. The boy nodded and was shocked when the group let him through.
"Y-You're letting us all go?" Greg pried, "I thought you all served Rose?"
"We wanted to stick it to the diamonds, not become mind-controlled!" a ruby yelled, "Seriously, at least we could complain about Yellow being a clod as long as nobody heard us!"
And with that insight into gem culture, the human rescuers and the hybrid found making their way back exceptionally easy since no gems tried to stop them. All of them were still in shock at having a days-long or even weeks-long gap in their memories and were either trying to figure out what happened, plotting to escape themselves or simply fighting with each other since there were still a few diamond loyalists among the rest who did sign up for Pink and Rose's regime and only hated having no free will.
Steven could scarcely believe this was all happening but he wasn't complaining as Greg simply switched on the communicator and told Peridot that they had recovered their charge only to discover something unsettling.
"What do you mean Rose took off?!" he panicked, "The whole point was that you were gonna distract her!"
"We did, but out of nowhere she suddenly bolted!" the technopath shrieked back, "She must be onto us, you need to get back to Earth ASAP!"
"No need to tell us twice!" Greg pulled the spaceship version of flooring the gas, firing up the engines and busting out of the hangar door. Nobody paid any mind to the damage as they worried more about getting back home only for a pink streak to come roaring in fast enough to cut them off.
"Moooooom, what are we gonna do now?!" Connie shivered, the good doctor not doing much better herself. It was everything she had to not crack under the overwhelmingly bright pink that engulfed their vision and the ship was rocked by dozens of energy attacks whittling away the shields in seconds. Then a screen flared up saying that all of their propulsors were shot and soon the ship was left floating dead in the space just above Earth.
And with their ship crippled, there was nothing they could do but look outside and see Rose Quartz, an ominous cloud of energy hanging off of her. Its bubblegum color wasn't the least bit amusing considering the smoldering look that put the phrase glaring daggers to shame.
"Dad?"
"Yes, Steven?"
"Remember all those times I said I wanted to meet my mom?"
"Uh-huh…"
"I'm sorry I ever said that…"
Thank you all so much for reading! Whether you've been here since day one or just started, it's been amazing to see people enjoy this. Please feel free to leave any comments or questions below.