"And that's exactly what happened," Steven said, looking off to the side toward his best friend, Connie.
"So, you had a dream where a gem was shattered, and you felt the pain as if someone were being murdered right in front of you?"
Steven went quiet, staring blankly into space. "I really... I really don't know," he murmured, resting his hands on his knees.
Several days had passed since that dream with Yellow Diamond, and something inside him had shifted. He didn't have the same energy as before, which didn't make things any easier. He wondered if he was suffering from the same psychological baggage as the original Steven. Maybe that was why that whole trip to the Cluster had messed him up so badly. That feeling of shattered gems was horrifying—it was as if he could feel their grief, their sins, their burdens, their joys; everything a gem had ever been. He felt it in his own skin, and the thought tormented him while Connie watched him with deep concern.
"Come on, Steven," she whispered, pulling him down to rest his head on her lap as she gently stroked his hair.
He stared up at the sky, lost in thought. Connie could only offer comfort this way. What else could she do? She wasn't a gem; she wasn't Steven in that sense, and she couldn't feel what he felt. She could try to share it through Stevonnie, but she didn't want to force him to relive those emotions.
After a few seconds of silence, Steven offered a slightly forced smile, though it wasn't as strained as the previous days. Connie noticed.
"Come on," he said, standing up and stretching. "We should train. Maybe that'll clear my head a bit, don't you think?"
Connie looked at him with a serious expression. "Alright," she simply replied. Both stood up and walked toward the house.
"I'm gonna make some food. Want some?" Steven asked as he headed into the kitchen.
"Sure," Connie replied. She loved Steven's cooking; it always had a special touch.
Steven threw on an apron and started cooking. The sizzle of oil filled the house with a warm, comforting aroma just as the front door swung open. The Crystal Gems walked in, each looking more exhausted than the last.
"Oh, come on!" Amethyst groaned. "That's the ninth time this week, and it's barely Tuesday!" She flopped face-first onto the couch, giving Connie a weak wave.
"Homeworld is absolutely determined to fix that primary warp pad," Pearl commented, sitting down next to Connie, who gave her a small greeting in return.
Garnet, who had just stepped into the kitchen, didn't say a word. She sat at the breakfast bar and, with a slight nod of her head, gestured toward Steven. He looked back, confused, but understood instantly. He poured her a glass of juice, and Garnet drank it down as if her life depended on it.
Steven asked how their day went, his tone carrying a maternal warmth, like a curious mother asking her kids about school.
"So-so," replied Amethyst, who had already sidled up next to Garnet, eyeing her share of the food. "Those green orb things are still being a pain in the butt, but anyway... food!" she suddenly yelled, lunging for the bacon strips Steven had prepared.
While she devoured the food mercilessly, Steven looked at Garnet, checking to see if she wanted some too. She just nodded in silence, so he placed her plate next to her juice. Then he approached Pearl, who seemed locked away in her own world, and gave her a pleading, puppy-dog look. Left with no escape from that face, Pearl finally gave in and ate, looking a bit less rigid than usual. Connie, meanwhile, was eating with the intense focus of someone who hadn't had a bite in hours.
Man, I make such a great single mom, Steven thought with a smile, though it quickly vanished as the panicked face of that Ruby flashed in his mind. He shook his head, trying to banish the memory, and a comfortable silence settled over the room.
"Interesting," he murmured, staring at his phone with a furrowed brow. On the screen was a list of math formulas—at least a hundred calculus integrals—and he was trying to decipher them with a brain that was still half-asleep.
A loud thud rattled the roof.
Everyone snapped to attention, instantly alert, as a sudden crash shook the entire wooden house.
THUD.
The floor vibrated, dishes rattled, and right before them appeared a massive green sphere that took up almost the entire living room.
"Another one?!" Amethyst snarled, completely frustrated.
"We smash it, and that's it," Garnet said in her usual calm demeanor, while Pearl nodded in agreement. The three of them lined up in front of the orb, ready to strike, though the machine showed no signs of movement.
"Wait," Steven said flatly.
The Gems stopped out of sheer reflex, looking at him with confusion.
"I am so incredibly sick of these things," he muttered, faking a look of annoyance as he walked over to it. The sphere was humongous, looking like it had been on steroids. Steven sat right on top of it with all the casual confidence in the world.
"Now let's see where this bad boy takes us. Since this one is bigger, I'm guessing—thanks to my magnificent intellect—that it serves a different purpose. So, as far as I'm concerned, don't break it," he said with mock seriousness.
The Gems went quiet. Garnet adjusted her visors, and barely three seconds later, a massive grin spread from ear to ear across her face.
"Let's listen to Steven," she said cheerfully.
Pearl and Amethyst exchanged a baffled look, entirely unsure where this sudden enthusiasm was coming from. Garnet didn't explain. Instead, she scooped up Connie—who was still trying to finish her food—and without giving her a second to react, hoisted her up like a sack of potatoes.
"Huh?" Connie managed to blurt out, totally bewildered, though she didn't seem mad about it. Hey, less walking for me, she thought to herself with a triumphant smile. Garnet sat down next to Steven, plop-ping Connie right in the middle of them, ready for whatever came next.
With a smile that radiated absolute confidence, Garnet asked what they were waiting for, gesturing for the others to climb aboard. Amethyst and Pearl both shook their heads in exasperation, but they ultimately gave in, climbing onto the massive green sphere that was now humming with energy.
As if an invisible switch had been flipped, the bizarre round robot began to lift off the ground. No one could tell for sure how many legs it had; sometimes it looked like four, sometimes six, and from certain angles, even eight. The design was so alien it was almost hypnotic.
The machine stabilized with a metallic screech and, without warning, surged smoothly but powerfully toward the warp pad. The sudden acceleration left everyone dizzy; the air distorted around them, and colors blurred into a brilliant warp stream. Connie, barely able to keep her balance, clung tightly to Steven. It wasn't because she was scared of the warp stream, of course. She just... coincidentally wanted to be closer to him.
Definitely just a coincidence, she thought with a nervous smile.
A heavy hum droned in the distance, and in the blink of an eye, the group was thrown into a completely different location. The air smelled of old metal and dust, and the dim light barely illuminated the ruins of what had once been a bustling facility.
"Whoa," Steven murmured, looking around in genuine awe.
"Incredible," Connie said, her voice laced with wonder, though as she took in her surroundings, she realized how gray and empty everything was. Shadows danced between the crumbling structures, and the echo of their footsteps was the only thing breaking the silence.
The mechanical contraption pressed forward without pause, carrying them through collapsed corridors and rusted platforms. The entire place felt... dead.
"What do you call this place?" Steven asked with an arched eyebrow, trying to sound professional while masking his childlike curiosity.
"Ahem," Pearl cleared her throat, prepping herself for an explanation.
"Here we go," Amethyst muttered, leaning lazily against Pearl's back, entirely accustomed to her long-winded lectures.
"This place," Pearl began, a nostalgic gleam in her eyes, "is the Kindergarten. This is where gems are born, where the planet's nutrients are extracted to incubate them."
Steven followed her gaze toward the canyon walls, where massive ancient machines extended like metallic roots, hooked up to broken crystals and petrified energy conduits.
"I can feel it," he said softly, awed by the sheer scale of the place.
"Me too," Connie murmured, gently resting her head against his shoulder without taking her eyes off the remnants of Gem technology.
"Well," Pearl continued, adjusting a pair of glasses that no one remembered her wearing—though Steven could swear he wasn't hallucinating them. "These injectors you see along the walls," she went on with the air of a seasoned expert, "aren't just placed anywhere. No, no, no. They are chosen with absolute mathematical precision."
She shook her head as she spoke, as if the mere thought of installing them incorrectly were an absolute heresy.
Garnet observed it all in silence. She knew this place; she had seen it millennia ago when it was still alive and teeming with incubating gems. Though the nostalgia stung, it was a pain she could handle.
Pearl crossed her arms, resuming her lecture with the patience of a teacher who knows her students drift off easily. "As I was saying, those injectors you see there are essential in the creation of gems. If you look closely, some of them have small hollow chambers."
Steven and Connie nodded with feigned attention, though Connie seemed far more interested in trying to touch one of the injectors than listening to the speech.
"Now," Pearl continued, pointing toward one of the rock faces. "Do you see the tip of the drill?" Both nodded again. "That drill absorbs and expels the liquid you see inside."
"They look like organs," Steven commented, a drop of sweat rolling down his cheek.
"Yes," Pearl replied, three red lines of anime-style frustration popping up on her forehead. "They aren't exactly organs, but they function in a similar manner. That liquid acts as a sort of base code, a language of creation... kind of like a programming language. Isn't that what you boys call it, Steven?"
"You betcha, Captain," he replied, nodding with total seriousness while holding onto Connie, who had leaned out to touch an injector and almost fallen off.
Pearl sighed, long since used to these kinds of interruptions. "As I was saying, this liquid allows for the configuration of a gem's core components. Upon injection, it leaves a pocket in the terrain where nutrients are drained from the planet. That's where the information is inserted—the source code that defines what the gem will be. Understood?"
Connie pouted, annoyed that Steven hadn't let her touch anything. But before she could say a word, he gently took her by the head, turning her toward Pearl with a playful, teasing grin.
"Yep, we both get it," Steven said, bobbing Connie's head up and down so she would nod along with him.
"Good heavens..." Pearl muttered with a long sigh, wondering why she always had to deal with this.
Steven, scanning the environment, noticed the heavy, oppressive silence of the canyon. "So that's why these zones are so dead... They can't be restored, can they?"
"I suppose not," Pearl replied.
Out of pure reflex, Steven spat onto the ground, as if his healing spit could somehow reverse the damage, but all he heard was the dry echo of a droplet hitting stone.
Then, in the midst of it all, something shifted. Steven furrowed his brow. He felt a vibration in the air—an imperceptible tremor. He slowly turned his head to the right.
"Uh..." he murmured, his voice cracking.
A red figure appeared at the far end of the canyon, blurry and staggering. A Ruby.
His breath hitched. The air turned suffocatingly thick, all sound vanished, and in a single blink, everything went pitch black.
Steven couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. He was suspended in an absolute void. No sound, no light. Only the violent, heavy thudding of his own heart.
He lifted his head with an effort that felt superhuman... and he saw her.
The Ruby.
But not like before. Not alive. Not whole.
Why?
The voice echoed. Weak at first, but repeating over and over, growing louder, more frantic, more desperate.
Tell me... why?
The words multiplied, slamming into him, reverberating through his mind.
Why? Why? WHY? WHY?!
Every scream was a whip crack. Every echo, an open wound. Steven tried to cover his ears, but he couldn't. His hands wouldn't respond.
His heart was hammering so fast it physically hurt. He knew what he was looking at. He knew what he was remembering. He knew what he felt.
The guilt.
That corrosive, eating sensation consuming him from the inside out. The image of the Ruby being crushed, the stifled screams, Yellow Diamond's indifferent gaze, and Blue Diamond's distant silence. Neither of them had done a single thing.
He saw it over and over again. Every fragment, every spark escaping from her shattered gemstone.
Steven was shaking. He was crying. He couldn't tell if it was fear, rage, or pure despair. The Ruby's voices kept screaming inside his head, tearing him apart from within. They were everywhere. In front of him. Behind him. Inside him.
Until nothing else remained.
Guilt. Pain. And the endless, unceasing echo of a scream that would never stop.
Suddenly, Steven heard a voice that felt like it was pulling him from a distant corner of hell—a warm voice ripping him away from the darkness. He felt a sudden, violent yank, as if a cosmic force had snapped him back into reality. He looked around, panting heavily, completely disoriented by what had just occurred. Connie was staring at him with deep worry, softly calling his name.
He blinked in confusion, trying to ground himself, and let out a shaky, trembling breath when he saw her. Connie placed a hand on his forehead, checking for a fever. Steven gently brushed her hand away with a small, reassuring smile, trying to act like everything was fine. Fortunately, the other Gems hadn't noticed his brief mental collapse.
Connie eyed him with suspicion, knowing damn well that something was off. Steven simply sighed and tried to deflect. He told her it was just a long, weird thought, nothing more. Connie furrowed her brow, completely unconvinced.
Tired of spiraling over his own thoughts, the boy took a deep breath and looked at her with absolute resolve. He told her he didn't want her getting hurt, that she wasn't ready for what might be coming, and suggested they fuse. Connie understood, though she let out a soft huff before agreeing. They took each other's hands, and a blinding light enveloped the area, drawing the attention of the Gems.
Garnet smiled with satisfaction, as if she had been waiting for this exact moment for hours. Amethyst crossed her arms indifferently, while Pearl remained lost in thought, so deep in her own world that she didn't even notice the flash.
Stevonnie slowly opened their eyes. Their expression was serious and calm, though a hint of amusement flickered when they looked at Garnet.
"What are you staring at?" Stevonnie asked in a firm, steady voice.
Garnet went quiet, momentarily caught off guard by the reaction.
Before she could answer, the robot braked violently, sending everyone reeling. Amethyst was the first to break the sudden silence, announcing in a carefree voice:
"We're here!"
End of Chapter 28.