The two of them tensed up instantly. It wasn't that Sugalite harbored some deeply personal, burning hatred specifically toward Steven, but her madness felt incredibly precise—as if this fusion had completely lost her mind but was simultaneously dead-set on proving a point to someone. That brand of insanity had a method and a sharp edge. Right before Pearl could get flattened into a pancake by the oncoming purple mass, I hurled my shield directly at Sugalite's central eye. Noticing the incoming projectile, she dropped her massive arm to cover her face, buying Pearl the exact split-second window she needed to dodge out of the way.
"Right, left," I muttered under my breath, an instinctual reaction that instantly morphed into a tactical command. The two of us bolted. I caught the shield on the rebound before Sugalite could actively snap it in two, raising my voice with a calibrated mix of defiance and absolute exhaustion: "Hey, girls! Looks like you're really loving the whole fused lifestyle, huh? How about we try talking separately for a change?"
Sugalite let out a deep, rumbling laugh that vibrated through the beach sand. "Separately?!" she barked with a wicked smile. "We are unstoppable together, so why the hell would we ever want to be separate? We are infinitely stronger than both of you. Now, little guy, I am going to stomp you into absolute ground beef!"
The fusion's unadulterated fury tore toward my head like a literal hurricane. I internally cursed myself for opening my mouth in the first place and, by pure reflex, ducked under a monstrous swing that left a car-sized crater in the shoreline. The earth vibrated violently beneath my boots, and the sharp scent of kicked-up dust and burnt metal flooded the air.
Without overthinking it, I executed a hard slide straight toward Sugalite's arms. Thoroughly bewildered by my sudden burst of speed, she left a glaring opening right in the middle of her defenses. I lunged at her torso with an open palm, driving a blunt, heavy strike directly toward the eye she had left completely unprotected. The sheer surprise of the hit absolutely threw her off her game.
"Ah!" Sugalite roared, her voice a volatile cocktail of raw pain and total shock, mostly because I had successfully connected a hit exactly where she thought she was completely untouchable. The colossal fusion stumbled backward, violently shaking as if an invisible weight had aggressively slammed into her from the inside out. Sand and sharp rock fragments rained down all around us.
Pearl wasted zero time capitalizing on the opening my strike had created, landing a follow-up thrust directly into Sugalite's lateral eye. The fusion clamped all four hands over her face, looking like she wanted to literally rip the rage right off her own features, and that erratic gesture brought Garnet's gauntlets right into play. Reacting purely on survival instinct, I snapped a bubble into existence to cover myself, but Pearl wasn't quite as lucky. Four titanic, chain-linked fists smashed directly into our coordinates. My bubble came incredibly close to shattering; it didn't give out due to lack of durability, but rather because blood aggressively began to pour from my nose—the heavy toll my body paid to absorb the sheer kinetic impact of that hit. *Holy shit,* I thought as I went airborne; Pearl was sent flying backwards, skipping straight into the ocean.
I wiped the blood from my face with the back of my hand and healed myself the usual way, utilizing saliva and muscle memory, feeling the familiar, weird tingling sensation of my tissue rapidly knitting back together. Sugalite loomed over me, her entire essence vibrating with concentrated hatred. "You honestly think you can take me down all by yourself?!"
"I'm not by myself," I shot back, a confident smirk breaking through the exhaustion. "I've got Pearl!" I shouted, but the second I glanced over at the splash zone, my heart dropped. Pearl was just floating there completely unconscious, looking thoroughly pale and lifeless on the water's surface like a discarded porcelain doll. *Son of a—* I didn't even have time to finish the thought before conjuring another desperate bubble. This time, the oncoming avalanche of fists rattled the sphere so violently it sent me stumbling.
*Son of a bitch, damn it, shit, hell,* my mind chanted in a fierce, chaotic loop while I bled and healed myself in continuous, agonizing waves, every single impact dragging me closer to my absolute physical limit. In the absolute heat of that grueling beatdown, even my most frantic schizophrenic thoughts completely short-circuited; all that remained was a primitive, crystal-clear directive: protect the person next to you. Above me, Sugalite's fists kept raining down like industrial pile-drivers, setting a rhythmic, terrifying tempo for a demolition project that threatened to swallow the entire beach whole.
Meanwhile, Pearl, drifting on her back across the water, stared blankly up at the sky as if trying to decipher some glitch in the clouds. "I'm just weak," she whispered into the empty void. "Rose... I failed you completely. I couldn't protect your son. I couldn't protect your legacy. My Diam—" She didn't even finish the word; she clamped both hands over her mouth and let out a desperate, heavy sob that was instantly drowned out by the thunderous shockwaves detonating back on the shore. Her tears felt significantly heavier than the ocean water swallowing them up.
Suddenly, a blood-curdling scream echoed across the beach. It was Steven, throwing every ounce of his soul into a desperate stance that absolutely nobody could have anticipated; his training had never been geared toward this kind of raw survival. That agonizing sound instantly snapped Pearl right out of her spiral, restoring her consciousness in a flash.
Pearl screamed Steven's name and sprinted back toward the shore at breakneck speed. He was thoroughly covered in blood, but against all mathematical odds, his bubble was still holding the line. Sugalite glared down at him with immense condescension, declaring that he clearly wasn't in her league, that she was the great Sugalite, and that she was going to flatten him until his gemstone poofed out of existence. Steven was breaking out into a cold sweat; he didn't actually know if his baseline consciousness was housed entirely inside the gem, but if it wasn't, this was a permanent game over. His brain rapidly formulated a tactical pivot, noticing Pearl charging back in with a clear look of reluctance—she was about to attempt something she absolutely hated, but they had zero cards left to play. They locked eyes; with a thoroughly exhausted smile, Steven dropped the bubble and sprinted straight toward her. Spotting the play, Pearl aggressively accelerated her pace.
They were a mere matter of inches away from making physical contact when Sugalite, sensing that something highly catastrophic was about to go down, swung her combined weapon and launched it directly at them. Right before the projectile could impact, Steven generated one final bubble. The second his half-human hand locked with her full-gem hand, a brilliant, blinding supernova of light detonated across the shore, temporarily blinding Sugalite.
The titanic fusion couldn't clear her watering eyes in time, leaving her wide open to receive a punch so devastatingly powerful her eyes nearly popped out of her skull in shock.
Sugalite screamed as she was sent flying backward into the ocean, spit flying from her mouth. The second her vision finally cleared, her eyes locked onto a single figure standing on the sand. The newly formed fusion looked entirely surprised herself. *Wait, another woman?* she thought, a massive drop of sweat forming on her temple. *Okay, this is completely new.* But she rapidly redirected her hyper-focus right back onto Sugalite.
The woman, visibly furious, demanded to know exactly who she thought she was dealing with, her raw anger carrying enough weight to crack the literal mountain standing behind them. The other part of her mind, resting a finger thoughtfully against her chin, casually questioned what her own name even was. A thoroughly bewildered Sugalite barked that it was high time she picked a name, demanding to know what kind of ridiculous joke this was supposed to be. Before the tension could escalate a single inch further, the newly formed fusion effortlessly combined Steven's shield and Pearl's spear into a brand-new weapon system: an elegant umbrella, though with a highly noticeable upgrade from the original lore—this one was covered in sharp defensive spikes and carried a distinctly aggressive, heavy-duty edge.
"You know what? I think I'll stick with my classic title: you can call me Quartz. Rainbow Quartz," she declared smoothly. Sugalite stared at her in total confusion, but instantly charged forward in a blind, absolute rage, screaming that she was going to murder her. The newly materialized fusion, Rainbow Quartz, simply smirked, hopped gracefully atop her umbrella, and began to effortlessly glide through the air.
Sugalite couldn't comprehend the physics of what she was seeing. Rainbow Quartz, sporting a thoroughly mocking smile, pointed out that she didn't exactly seem all that tough, casually calling her a literal piece of shit. Sugalite roared back that she was the strongest entity alive and lunged into the air after her; Rainbow effortlessly slipped past her incoming strikes with a series of highly stylized, deeply mocking acrobatic poses, teasing her that she could definitely do better than that, calling her "sweetheart," "sugar-cube," and "little baby."
Driven completely insane by the taunts, Sugalite began launching wild, completely uncoordinated swings into empty space. Rainbow Quartz was internally cracking up, completely fueled by Steven's underlying thoughts; she playfully covered her mouth to prevent Steven from discovering a piece of information he absolutely wasn't cleared to know yet. Rainbow, narrowing her eyes slightly, shot Sugalite a wicked grin and casually dubbed her a "little fat girl."
Sugalite, now a living avatar of pure rage, swung her weapon as it unfurled into that bizarre flail-whip, tearing directly toward Rainbow Quartz. The latter charged straight ahead with a borderline deranged smile, and right when the massive gauntlet was about to clock her in the face, she executed an entirely dramatic, thoroughly necessary backflip; with a sharp, calculated yank of her umbrella, she redirected the kinetic energy, sending the gauntlet rocketing back toward Sugalite with twice the velocity.
Sugalite started to bark out a curse word, but she didn't even get to finish it before a massive *POOF* echoed across the entire beach. The titanic gemstone entity violently destabilized and shattered apart under the force of the impact.
Amethyst and Garnet hit the sand instantly, looking completely drained as if the battle had actively sapped every single drop of their energy reserves. Rainbow Quartz floated down with absolute, serene tranquility—acting like she hadn't just completely dismantled a high-tier fusion of three separate Gems—and offered the girls a casual, smiling wave.
Amethyst, still aggressively panting for air, muttered something entirely incomprehensible as she tried to recover; Amethyst, letting a massive drop of cold sweat roll down her temple, was in complete agreement with herself. Garnet, her face planted flat in the sand, responded with a muffled "no comment." Rainbow simply smiled and said, "Right then."
Amethyst pushed herself up slightly, looking thoroughly confused. "Wait, why are we still fused?" she asked. Rainbow Quartz went completely quiet, a cold drop of sweat rolling down her temple: Steven was in incredibly rough shape inside the fusion, and the second they unfused, his physical body was going to pass out cold. Operating on pure logic, she decided it was best to carry him straight up to his room first.
"What about us?" Amethyst asked, a sudden wave of fear hitting her as she realized the tide was actively starting to lap at her boots.
"If you have the energy to completely wreck Steven, you have the energy to walk," Rainbow shot back over her shoulder.
And that was how the day wrapped up: an out-of-control fusion that came within an inch of killing them, Steven thoroughly resigned to the reality of his looming de-fusion crash, Garnet looking visibly rattled by Steven's heavy-hitting commentary, and Amethyst... well, she was just being Amethyst.
**End of Chapter 20.**
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*Author's Note: Wow, things got incredibly intense! Thanks for sticking around for this ride, guys! <3 Drop some stars below if you want to keep the momentum going. If we hit 18 stars, I'll start working on Chapter 21 immediately!*