AN: Sorry for the late posting. It's been my only day off and I've been busy with general household chores.
Good news! we're almost at the end of Steven Universe, just one more chapter after this one. I've already started writing the next jump and am exited with how it's going... even if it's a bit odd.

Chapter 11

All across Homeworld warp pads activated and teams Danann Soldiers appeared. Groups of six separated off from their comrades to take hold of important facilities. More soldiers started the process of cleaning up by bubbling any Gem they came across.

Already some Gems were reforming themselves but rather than being a direct threat they were simply a distraction. Teams held them in place with their tractor beam wands and poofed them again with their disruptor blades.
The Homeworld Gems simply could not reform and muster up a resistance fast enough for the simple reason that they did not know that they should. They didn't even know their own names or purpose. Each and every Gem touched by the Rejuvenation Wave had been reset to factory conditions.

The Trócaire. Compassion. A weapon of mass rejuvenation. Based off of the Rejuvenator Scythe wielded by Spinel in the Steven universe movie. It used the same technology as a base to create a wave of energy that essentially reformatted any gem it touched and reverting them to original settings. It wasn't perfect. It still suffered the same faults as the original Homeworld weapon in that the reset wasn't necessarily permanent and that a Gem's memories could be restored by exposure to similar life experiences. But as a tool to instil mass confusion and reduce resistance, it was pretty damn good.

Alex, currently in ghost form, flew through the burning portal he had created and into White Diamonds throne room. He didn't know if or for how long the overpowered rejuvenation weapon would affect a Diamond and he was hopeful that he would never have to find out. He's hopes however proved to be in vain as, with a blinding bright light, White Diamond reformed just before he could bubble her.
Alex sighed as the lights in the room shifted to an unnatural monochrome white and grey as the Diamond reformed herself into a towering shining figure of white in a grey and starlight sprinkled cape standing straight with her arms raised up as if basking in adoration.

"My, my, you have been busy. Haven't you, Grey?" The giant Diamond spoke in a calm voice.

Alex rolled his eyes at the arrogant posturing of the Diamond and took a fist sized black crystal ball from his P-comm. He dropped the orb and it rolled to a corner of the room. Alex started floating around White in circle. This would have been easier if the Trócaire had affected the giant bitch.

"Yeah, it's been a busy, busy, busy few months." He conversationally told the blinding white Gem.

"You took my Yellow and my Blue away." White said in the same tone of voice one would use when pandering to a child. "That was incredibly improper; I was using them. But I guess it is to be expected of a Flawed Diamond to make mistakes."

Alex simply shrugged and removed another black crystal ball from his P-comm and tossed it over a shoulder.

White's eyes glowed brightly and a beam of white light suddenly leapt from them to strike Alex in the chest.

"Worry not. You will now be perfected. You will shine with my pure light."

"Yeah… look, that's not going to happen." Alex said as he brushed down the front of his shirt.

"Where is your Gem?" White Diamond frowned.

Alex pulled out another black crystal and let it fall. "You see, that's the problem with you Gems as a species. Most of you can't actually think outside of your own experience or commands."

"You are the Grey Diamond. I know it." White said her voice becoming harsher.

"I am." Alex tossed another black crystal.

"Then you have a Diamond Gem."

"I do." Alex nodded.

"Then why did you not succumb to my control?"

"Because I don't have my Gem right now."

"That is not possible." Diamond frowned in frustrasion.

Alex sighed. "We're just going to talk around and around in circles because you literally can't understand that there are beings outside of Gems that have abilities or technology beyond what you know." He took another black crystal and threw it to an empty corner of the room.

"They would not matter. They are simple, lower lifeforms that cower before perfection."
By now Alex had almost made a complete circle around the Diamond. He removed another black crystal, the final and last one he had stored, and held it in his hand.

"Do you know how I beat the other diamonds? Do you know why I'm going to beat you?"

"Because you are a Diamond and were superior to Yellow and Blue. But you are not superior to me."

Alex shook his head. "No, it was because they didn't even fight me."

White actually tilted her head in confusion. "They did not fight you?"

"They were so sure of their own superiority that they came at me alone and without any knowledge or preparation." Alex revealed. "Any human who was going to a fight would prepare themselves. They would take a weapon. They would try and catch me when my guard was down. They would attack from beyond reach. Each and every Gem fight I have seen both against myself and others have been stupidly direct."

And it was true. Every attack against himself had been a Gem coming in person and trying to fight him directly. Every Gem battle seen in the cartoon followed much the same lines. Jasper and Peridot came to earth in a giant ship bristling with weapons and they got out to face the Crystal Gems in person. When the Crystal Gems escaped confinement on the ship, instead of utilising any form of ship-wide suppression Jasper had instead attacked them directly. Even on earth again Jasper kept coming at them head on. Her grand plan in later episodes was to create more troops to attack with. The closest they ever seemed to come to strategy was when Aquamarine came to capture more humans for their human zoo and even then, her plan was to float around town asking people if they were the ones on her list to capture.

Alex had read through Homeworld's historical records. They had fought and wiped out seven sentient races among the thirty-eight planets they had colonised. But none of those civilisations had been any more technologically advanced than the earth's thirteen-hundreds. Every battle was a direct engagement on an open battlefield. Rarely did the Gems use their superior ships to hit fortified positions from orbit, Gems preferred direct confrontations of strength.

Hell, the Gem idea of recognisance was to launch a giant glowing eyeball into the sky to look down on the planet. They had absolutely no concept of strategy. Only Rose and her rebellion ever came close to thinking strategically and that was something they likely picked up from the humans that fought alongside them. Gems were simply not encouraged to think outside the box.

And it made sense. A direct confrontation of strength against White Diamond would always fail. She was literally the strongest and most resilient Gem and her ability to take control of other Gems rendered any numerical advantage against her useless. Yet, while White was incredibly strong; she was also rigid and inflexible. It was a trait that she had carefully cultured into her Gem population to the point that Homeworld Gems were preconditioned to be as rigid and inflexible as herself. White did not want flexible thinking in her Gems. Flexible thinking would lead to them questioning their own inherent weaknesses. Flexible thinking would have them wonder if there was a way around White's ability to control other Gems. Flexible thinking would have them repurpose something like a gravity engine into a devastating weapon using a microwave and a 7.2 surround sound system.

Alex looked up and met the eyes of what was likely one of the strongest beings in this universe.

"After your never-fail 'eye beams of control' subsequently failed to take me over, you have literally just stood there and watched me prepare the battlefield. How arrogant are you?"

"There is nothing you can do against me. I am perfection."

"You don't get it, do you? I've already won." Alex touched a small panel on the black crystal ball he held and dropped it to the floor.

Around the room five matching black crystal spheres pulsed to life and rolled around until they were at six equal points around the Diamond. They unfolded until an open emitter was directed at the Diamond in the centre or their formation.

"No Gem weapon can harm me." White said with a serene confidence. "I am all light and all light is me."

She was likely right too. A light-cannon's beam would either be deflected or absorbed. The rejuvenator hadn't worked and a disruptor would likely fail. Alex wasn't even sure bubbling would even contain her, though had been fairly certain portrait storage would have worked.

"It's not a weapon." Alex said as he concentrated on ignoring gravity and becoming intangible. "It's a black hole generator."

Each black crystal hummed as it generated a quantum containment field and an artificial black hole appeared right where White Diamond was standing. Alex only had a second to see the look of surprise on White's face as she, along with all other light and matter within the field was instantly compressed to a point of space smaller than an atom. Only the quantum containment field around the singularity prevented the throne room and the atmosphere from being affected.

Alex watched the car sized sphere of pure black that floated in the middle of the room for the preprogramed minimum activation period of twenty-two seconds until the sphere gradually shrunk into nothing.
Even Alex was incredibly surprised when the gravity well finally collapsed and he heard the musical clinking of large diamond shards clatter to the floor. White Diamond had been shattered but even then, her Diamond had not been utterly destroyed by a freaking singularity! Which honestly was supposed to be scientifically impossible. Alex bubbled the shards and just thought how thankful he was that White Diamond was an arrogant idiot.

⦖⋄⦕

"So, what would you have done if White had actually tried to fight you?" Lyn asked as they all watched a movie together back in the warehouse housing.

"I would have tried hitting her just to see if I could do any damage and when that didn't work, I would have opened a portal into deep space and tried to goad her into following and then simply left her there." Alex said. "Even if she could do something ridiculous like travel at the speed of light it still would have taken her decades to get anywhere and by that point we would be long gone."

Lapis frowned. "You didn't think you could win?"

Alex shrugged. "Not in a direct confrontation. I thought the rejuvenator wave from the Trócaire would have taken her out for at least a little longer and I could have avoided any fight at all by bubbling her and trapping that in a painting. But I still prepared the black hole generators in case they were needed."

Alex smiled and leant over to kiss the top of Lyn's head. "It was your idea that gave me the inspiration to use them."

Lyn cocked an eyebrow. "The whole smooth jazz making the ships go faster thing?"

"Smooth Jazz worked on resonance within the engine but Viking Death Metal worked best in syncing together multiple units to produce a more powerful containment shield."
Everyone just started at him.

"Viking Death Metal?" Lyn asked.

"Something about the heavy bass and drums just worked."

"Huh. Well, I'm just glad the whole Diamond thing is over." Lyn said.

Morrigan growled. "Speak for yourself. I'm going to have to sort through reports for the remaining six months we have left here."

The Danann Gems had taken control of Homeworld and were currently processing Gems as fast as they could. Most captured Gems didn't have any sense of self beyond their basic functions and they were happy to be given a purpose in the new order that was being created. Some Gems had recovered surprisingly quickly from the rejuvenator wave but even they didn't seem to overly mind the new system. Without the threat of the Diamonds the court Gems were happy to simply do their own thing. It was expected that over the coming months most rejuvenated Gems would recover but it was hoped that by then they would have adapted to their new lives.

Of course, it was expected there would be radical holdouts but those Gems would be quietly disposed of and their shattered Gems repurposed for the next generation. Alex had already handed over the White Diamond shards and the bubbles of Yellow and Blue and had sat in as the Danann Gems held a tribunal and tried the Diamonds in absentia and declared them war-criminals to be Shattered. He had watched as they carried out those decrees and had shattered the still bubbled Yellow and Blue diamonds.

Alex had taken one shard from each Diamond and allowed the rest to be reserved for later reproduction. He knew that the current plan was to attempt to reproduce one Blue Diamond with a volunteer couple to see how the resulting Diamond child adapted to their society before they attempted more. Alex on the other hand didn't have any plans for his shards yet, but was sure he could find a use for them somewhere.

"Has there been any sightings of Spinel?" Lapis enquired about the last remaining drawback that was after Alex.

Alex sighed and massaged the bridge of his nose. "None yet."

He was slightly worried about the missing pink Gem. The Diamond he had been watching for months now but the fact that they had never found Spinel made it difficult to plan for her eventual appearance.

"We'll find her." Lyn assured him.

Alex just smiled and brought his attention back to the surprisingly good movie: 'Lonely Blade III – The Bleeding Heart.'

⦖⋄⦕

Steven watched the sunrise on the morning after his birthday. They air was brisk, the ground wet with morning dew and the sky a brilliant mixture of pinks and peach. It was beautiful. So why did it hurt something in his heart?

He was at the barn and had been for the past week. For one, it was the best place to keep the ship that Alex had given them and for the another it was the only place where Steven could find the peace and quiet enough to meditate under Garnet's instruction. The meditation practice was going well… well sort of. The whole emotional rollercoaster that was the 'Pink Reveal' was not making focusing on finding his inner peace any easier.

Ever since Connie and he had spent the night with Alex and his fiends a few months ago steven had felt different. It wasn't the fact that that was also the night he had first fused with Connie, it wasn't accidently seeing Alyn and Lapis doing adult things. It was the talks about how the Homeworld Gem's had invaded earth, about the beliefs of the Diamonds and their focus on killing Alex and it was the revelation that Rose Quartz, the leader of the Crystal Gems, the head of the rebellion against a tyrannic oppressive regime — his mother — had in fact been Pink Diamond: the youngest of the Diamond Authority and head of the earth colonisation project.

Steven huffed quietly as he remembered when he yelled out the truth as he was warped into his home. All the Crystal Gems had been in the lounge discussing the search plans to find him and Connie when the two just warped in with Steven yelling his head off that Rose was Pink Diamond.

It… had been a mess. Pearl had been released from her final order to not speak of Pink since Steven now knew the truth and she had confirmed everything. She had shown her memory of what had really happened the day 'Pink was shattered.' Sapphire had not taken it well; she had felt so betrayed by Rose that it had taken a heart to heart with Steven and Pearl to show her how Pink had changed and devoted herself not just the to the life already on earth but the freedom of Gems to bring her around.

Ruby had run away and become a cowboy, cowgirl? It was a thing. She had gone off on her own to find herself as herself. It was weird and had ended up in a wedding between Ruby and Sapphire. Gems were strange but he loved them and their weird innocence. They had invited all their friends; he had even gone and gotten Bismuth from the Pink world in Lion. That had been great… until the whole Rose was Pink thing got brought up again but she had at least stayed for the wedding before going off in search of Alex and his people.

If there was something good that came from all the commotion it had been his relationship with Amethyst. She was hurt over Rose's deception but she cared more about his emotional reaction to the revelation than her own issues. She was, according to her, his 'ding-dong-sunshine-future-friend forever.' Or, as Steven was starting to think of her in the privacy of his own mind; the best big sister ever. Was it weird that the greatest form of support he had was that someone didn't want to burden him with their own emotional trauma? Honestly, he had his own issues to sort out.

His mother was a Diamond, HE was a Diamond. How was he supposed to feel about that? He struggled enough knowing that his mother was an alien, that his mother was a rebel leader and that he was somehow responsible for her legacy. Maybe? Well… it felt that way. But now he knew she was also Gem royalty. She was one of the most powerful Gems in existence and had been part on an elite few that systematically destroyed planets for their own species' growth. What was he expected to be? What was he?

He had been brooding on those questions for months now and the isolation at the barn of for their eventual approach on the cluster hadn't helped. Especially when he had celebrated his birthday yesterday and it had only shown him how different he was to his human friend.

Steven sighed. That might have been the crux of the matter at the moment. Staring out at the rising sun, Steven felt so disconnected to his own humanity. He wasn't human. He wasn't a Gem. He was both and yet neither. He didn't know how he was going to grow or develop. Would he stay the same forever? He had pushed and stretched himself to be different – to grow up! — to not be left behind by Connie's humanity. It had backfired and trapped him in the form of an infant for the night. Connie had said that she didn't care how he grew while he was stuck as a baby but… he didn't know what he felt.

"Everyone! Steven is-!" His brooding was interrupted by Connie rushing out of the tent.

"Hey Connie. Look the shirt fits now." Steven turned and showed off his salmon-coloured birthday shirt.

Connie wiped the tears from her eyes. "You're back to normal!" She hugged him fiercely.

"Well, well, well." A voice stretched out from a nearby tree. "What dooo we have here?"

Steven and Connie turned to find a strange Pink Gem. She had tangled messy hair in two pig-tails, black tear-streaked mascara-like lines on her face and a manic glint in her eyes. On her chest was a large pink Gem shaped like an upside-down heart.

"If it isn't the Birthday Boy and his little friend." She drawled.

"Who are you?" Steven put himself in front of Connie in case he needed to activate his Rose shield.

"Me? Well, my name is Spinel, I doubt you've heard of me." The pink Gem exageratedly shrugged her shoulders. "I'm just a lost toy looking for a dirty Diamond and I heard you know where she is."

"Look," Steven said cautiously, "whatever you've heard about Pink Diamond it may not be what you think."

"What I think about PINK DIAMOND!?" Spinel cried and twisted around herself, contorting in painfully stretched ways, her head enlarging for her to shout louder.

"I don't care what you have to say about Pink!" She started menacingly moving closer. "I'm going to shatter that foul Diamond and you're going to help."

"Help?" Steven asked confused by the twisted Gem.

Spinel lunged at him like an uncoiling spring, slamming hard into his hastily created bubble shield.

"HELP!" Steven repeated but this time as a request not a question.

Connie braced Stevens back trying to lend him strength and kicking herself for not having her sword on her even though she was just in her nightclothes given that she had just woken up.

Spinel rained blow after blow down on Steven's pink bubble with enlarged fists causing cracks to appear in the force wall.

"Connie, you have to run and get the Gems while I hold her off." Steven gasped as he struggled to hold the bubble.

"I can't leave you! We can fuse, we can fight!" Connie tried.

"NO! We're unarmed. You need to get the Gems to help, then we can fight together!"

Any further planning was interrupted by the bubble shield shattering, sending them both flying backward to roll in the dirt.

Spinel leapt forward and wrapped herself around Steven then bounced away as Connie jumped to her feet and lunged at the stretchy Gem.

"Nah ah ah," Spinel taunted, "You'll get the Crystal-Brat back when I get Grey Diamond!"

"Grey? Aren't you after Pink Diamond?" Steven wheezed.

"YOU DON'T GET TO SAY HER NAME!" Spinel cried and tightened her hold on the boy until he coughed up blood and passed out.

"STEVEN!" Connie cried.

"Bring Grey Diamond to the Alpha Kindergarten at sunrise tomorrow if you ever want to see this 'Steven' again!" Pink told the tween before coiling her legs into a spring and launching herself up and away, quickly disappearing beyond sight.

Connie didn't know what to do, it had all happened so fast. One moment she was just happy that Steven hadn't de-aged himself out of existence and the next he had been kidnapped by a psycho pink bitch?

"Fuck!" she yelled, not caring about her profanity.

She ran to the barn wondering why the Gems had not heard the commotion and intervened. She had only just entered the barn when she fell heavily as she rolled her ankle on a round stone on the floor.

"Oww!" She looked down at what had tripped her and paled at what she saw: it was a large Pearl.

"Pearl?" Connie scooped up the white Gem and looked around. She found an Amethyst, a Ruby and a Sapphire nearby. "Guys?" she scrambled to pick up the other Gems. Thankfully none of them seemed to be damaged beyond being poofed.

"Errgh."

Connie heard a groan from behind the stored Phase-Ship and prepared to run or fight only to sigh in relief as Greg stumbled around the ship while nursing a painful looking lump on his forehead.

"Mr Universe?"

"Connie? Are you ok?" Greg rushed over and looked her over for injuries, thankful that she only appeared to be slightly scuffed. "Where's Steven?"

"Some crazy pink Gem kidnapped him. What happened here?"

"She took Steven?" Greg swallowed down the bile that had leapt to the back of his throat. "A stretchy pink Gem got the drop on the Crystal Gems. She hit them all with a weird scythe weapon and they proofed. She knocked me out with the handle when the blade didn't do anything." Well, didn't do anything other than make him pee himself a little but he wasn't going to tell Steven's little girlfriend that.

"She said something about taking Steven to the Kindergarten and that she'll give him back if we give her Alex."

"Do you know how to get in contact with Alex?" Greg asked as he tried not to think about Steven being held hostage. He was human and couldn't take on a Gem. It made him feel weak but they needed help.

"He didn't tell us how to…" Connie started.

Her words were cut short as Pearl's Gem started glowing in her hands.

"Oh, thank God, the Gem's will know what to do." Connie sighed in relief.

Pearl's Gem floated into the air in front of her but instead of reforming into Pearl it projected a hologram of a clamshell around itself.

"Please identify yourself." It spoke in a calm woman's voice.

"Pearl? It's Connie." Connie said in confusion.

"Greetings Connie. Please state preferred customisations options."

Connie frowned in frustration. "Pearl? What are you talking about?"

"Default settings selected. Please stand by."

The clamshell floated to a clear space on the ground and opened with a musical chiming and Pearl stepped out looking strangely younger than she did before. She stepped forward and bowed to the confused Connie.

"How do you, My Precious Connie? Thank you for bringing me into the world." She sung to the stunned girl. "I am at your eternal service. Welcome to your new Pearl."

Connie wasn't sure what happened but it likely wasn't good. "…What?"

⦖⋄⦕