"Whoa," Stevonnie murmured, taking an agile leap off the robot. The Crystal Gems followed suit, landing all around them. The massive machine remained completely still, without emitting so much as a single beep.
Amethyst eyed it with curiosity, placing a hand on her chin. "Did we break it?" she asked. Then, busting into a laugh, she teased, "It was probably because Pearl weighs too much."
Pearl flushed instantly, thoroughly indignant. "What is *that* supposed to mean?!" she demanded.
Laughing, Amethyst shapeshifted into an exact clone of Pearl and began strutting around as if she were on a high-fashion runway, exaggerating her movements. "Look at me, I look way better like this!" she mocked.
Garnet, maintaining her usual calm, told them to cut it out. She adjusted her visors with precision and took a few steps back as she noticed something strange happening. Stevonnie, acting on instinct, backed away too, not fully understanding why but trusting their gut.
The robot began to shudder slightly, as if suffering some kind of internal system collapse. Pearl and Amethyst watched intently as the vibrations intensified, looking like the prelude to an explosion. In response, everyone summoned their weapons; Stevonnie deployed their bubble shield, keeping it small to conserve energy, ready for whatever was about to happen.
After a few tense seconds, the shaking stopped. The green orb flashed blindingly and began to morph, taking on a new shape that caught everyone's eye. Before them, the structure reconfigured itself into a sharp, well-defined pyramid. The Gems exchanged confused, cautious glances, keeping their guard up.
The pyramid descended slowly until it locked into the ground with a precise, mechanical click—almost as if everything had been calculated down to the millimeter. Stevonnie observed the scene and noted, "Looks like a platform." Garnet nodded, inspecting the structure closely as it fused seamlessly with the floor.
Amethyst, perched right on Stevonnie's shoulders, asked if this platform might take them to an area with rare gems. Pearl replied that it was highly probable, though she admitted the technology felt alien and advanced, even by her standards. Stevonnie, not wanting to overthink it, simply suggested they get on.
With a firm step, the fusion was the first to step onto the platform. Seeing that nothing dangerous happened, the others followed. The moment all four were on top, the ground shook again, and the structure began a smooth descent.
Anticipating a sudden jerk, Stevonnie grabbed Amethyst by the arm to steady her, making her pout. The green light enveloping them grew more intense as they sank lower, and the air began to feel heavy—as if they were entering an ancient zone, hidden for millennia beneath the surface.
They descended slowly until they reached a bizarre chamber, a place that seemed suspended between solid and liquid. It was surrounded by tubes pulsing faintly with a greenish, translucent glow, firm yet fluid all at once, as if refusing to decide what state of matter they actually were. Stevonnie looked around in bewilderment; this place looked nothing like anything they had ever seen. The second they stepped off the platform, it began to move on its own, gliding with unsettling speed toward the center of the room.
Pearl furrowed her brow, unable to comprehend what she was seeing. It felt deeply unsettling to find a structure so completely intact after so many millennia, right under their noses. Though, considering there were only three Gems on the entire planet, it wasn't too surprising that something had slipped past them. Still, her signature dramatic flair didn't fail to show itself.
The green sphere stopped dead in its tracks and emitted a sharp hum. Suddenly, a small piece of its surface detached, forming a tiny glowing ball that floated a few inches off the ground. Stevonnie, barely holding back a smirk, whispered, "Looks like mitosis," and had to stifle a laugh when the others stared at them as if they had just said the most inappropriate thing possible given the situation.
The tiny sphere drifted over to a metallic structure shaped like a hand, remarkably similar to the one where Rose used to store her weapons. With a hop, the sphere settled onto the palm, and an intense radiance flooded the room. The air vibrated, energy built up, and suddenly, a massive view-screen began to materialize in the center of the hall. Stevonnie reacted instantly, grabbing Amethyst and Pearl by the arms and pulling them behind a column, while Garnet—who had already anticipated this—was already hidden away in the shadows.
For a few seconds, there was absolute silence. They could hear their own hearts pounding. Then, a voice echoed through the machinery.
"Finally," a weary female voice said. "This is Peridot, voice command 1-2-3-1-5-5. Logged into the Earth Kindergarten."
The image on the screen revealed a green gem with a thoroughly irritated expression, her tone dripping with frustration. She explained that after multiple robonoid failures and an unknown interference with the warp pad, she was forced to operate remotely from Homeworld. Her voice trembled slightly with anger, though she was trying her best to keep her composure.
Stevonnie watched in silence, recognizing the figure immediately. It was Peridot.
*It's her,* they thought, taken aback. Pearl swallowed hard, nervously muttering that she couldn't understand why she kept insisting on these highly dangerous missions. Amethyst, barely peeking around the column, commented that she looked like she was on the verge of a total breakdown, though she found the green gem's irritable tone pretty amusing. Garnet, on the other hand, remained completely stone-faced, her gaze locked onto the screen, calculating potential outcomes.
Then, a dim light clicked on right behind them.
"Huh?" Peridot muttered, spinning around quickly. Her ancient but highly efficient sensors had detected movement. Her expression instantly shifted to high alert.
"Is someone there?" she demanded threateningly.
The four of them froze. Pearl slapped her hands over her face, silently hysterical. Amethyst copied her, whispering that they couldn't let themselves get caught. Garnet closed her eyes, searching for a future where this ended well, but she couldn't find a single one.
And in the middle of that deadly tension, a voice shattered the silence.
"Hiya!" Stevonnie yelled, leaping out from their hiding spot and landing right in the center of the room.
Everyone froze solid.
Peridot's eyes went wide with pure confusion. "An organic creature...?" she murmured, zooming the camera closer to Stevonnie's tall, glowing figure.
Stevonnie smiled nervously, giving a casual wave. "What's up, babe? How's it going? Are you the boss of this place?"
Peridot tilted her head, trying to analyze them.
Taking advantage of her confusion, Stevonnie's mind raced at a million miles an hour. *Come on, think, something fast!*
They gave a quick thumbs-up, proud of the idea they just scrambled together. "You know, I actually look after this place," they said with a confident grin, pointing a thumb at their chest proudly.
"You... look after this facility?" Peridot repeated, visibly bewildered as mechanical hands emerged from the walls and began operating the console again.
"Of course!" Stevonnie replied with an even wider grin. "Or did you think this place stayed this clean and tidy all on its own?"
Peridot stared at them in silence, blinking slowly. Something about their tone was so incredibly convincing yet utterly absurd that, for a split second, she didn't know whether to believe them or not.
Stevonnie didn't miss a beat and doubled down on the act. "Oh, come on, girls, do you think this floor mops itself?" they said with just the right amount of smugness, pointing to one of the tubes that had caught their attention earlier. "When I first got here, this place was a total disaster. One of these tubes was completely ruptured, but since I'm a certified genius, I patched it up for whoever came next." They put their hands on their hips and lifted their chin with theatrical pride.
Peridot furrowed her brow, totally thrown off. "Filthy? A ruptured power conduit?" The questions were piling up faster than the answers.
"Identify yourself, organic creature," Peridot ordered, tilting her head with repressed hostility.
Stevonnie swallowed hard, a whirlwind of ideas clashing in their head for the right alias. *I can't use my real name. I need something simple, memorable.*
"I'm Pepe," they replied with absolute, deadpan seriousness, saluting their forehead like someone announcing their legal name.
The room fell into an incredibly awkward silence for a brief moment, until Amethyst completely lost it. Her laughter exploded, loud and totally uncontrolled. "Ha ha ha ha!" it echoed through the chamber, and for a second, Stevonnie, Pearl, and Garnet glared at her as if she had just ruined absolutely everything.
Peridot shifted the camera toward the source of the noise, utterly perplexed. "Gems?" she asked, blinking. "Impossible... unless you're—" She checked the files on her screen. "—the rebels." Her expression shifted instantly; hostile mode was fully activated.
"You're the ones who ruined my plans! Because of you, my Diamond almost shattered me!" Peridot accused, her voice cracking with a terrifying level of stress.
Stevonnie tensed up. They saw Peridot shifting her form and for a split second, they thought the gem was summoning a Ruby, but she shook her head as if discarding the idea.
"I will crush you!" Peridot snarled furiously.
The Gems summoned their weapons out of pure reflex. In a fit of rage, Peridot commanded the room's mechanical hands to attack. "Die, die, die!" she screamed, launching the mechanized gloves. Even though they weren't designed as weapons of war, they were incredibly difficult to dodge. "Because of you, I lost my chance at major prizes! Now all I get are... rebel prizes!"
Amethyst lunged forward with a battle cry, dodging a strike from a hammer-fist glove and cursing under her breath. *Pearl is gonna kill me if these hands don't do it first,* she thought, panicking over her own slip-up. Pearl took a sharp, furious breath, enraged because Amethyst always managed to ruin things at the worst possible moments. Stevonnie, meanwhile, tried to keep their cool. *We shouldn't have laughed,* they scolded themselves mentally, but the laughter had already happened, and now they had to get out of this with their dignity intact.
Garnet didn't rely on improvisation. She knew how to keep her composure; she understood there were reasons and variables for everything happening right now.
Stevonnie ran along the walls, agile and lightning-fast. "I am speed. I am fast. I am Lightning McQueen," they said out loud as a mechanical hand chased them like a three-year-old debt they needed to pay. "Catch me if you can, bitch!" they joked nervously, executing a flawless, necessary backflip and landing squarely on top of the mechanical hand.
They summoned their shield and began bashing the hand's surface. "Not so hard," they muttered out loud as a joke, immediately making a serious face when they realized how wildly inappropriate that sounded. Refocusing, they took a calculated leap, dodging another incoming strike.
Amethyst yelled Stevonnie's name to get their attention, shouting out her own plan: "Indian-style attack!" she cried before diving into a reckless tactic. As she dropped toward the floor, Stevonnie planted the shield in the exact position needed; a loud, metallic clank echoed through the room. Amethyst charged straight toward the room's control panel, determined to shut down the machinery.
Peridot, boiling with rage, could only sputter out in pure frustration, "I'm telling the Diamonds!"
And then, a sound like a detonation ripped through the entire area. The echo vibrated through the tubes and the view-screen flickered. No one even had time to breathe. The mechanical alarm blared in a single, terrifying instant.
A heavy silence dropped over the room like a stone slab. All four stood completely mute, anchored to their own thoughts.
"The Diamonds..." Pearl whispered, her voice laced with deep, suppressed terror.
Amethyst, stepping away from the power core section of the room, also looked deeply worried. She had never met them in person, but from the horror stories she'd been told, she knew they weren't exactly friendly. "What do we do?" she asked, her voice shaking.
"I don't know," Garnet replied after several long seconds. "My future vision... no, it's not showing me anything. Not a single favorable outcome."
Stevonnie stood frozen in front of the screen. Slowly, they turned back toward the girls, who were starting to spiral into a completely justifiable panic. *At least they didn't see our true forms,* Stevonnie thought with a shiver. Pulling close to the others, the fusion began to emit a soft, bright glow, defusing back into Steven and Connie.
The sudden flash caught the three Gems' attention; for a moment, they didn't even know how to react.
Steven looked at them calmly, standing firmly behind Connie, who tensed up under the weight of so many eyes. Steven placed a hand on his own shoulder, feeling the crushing weight of responsibility, and said in a reassuring tone, "Girls, how many of us are in this room?"
A long silence stretched out until Pearl, thoroughly confused, answered, "There are... five of us?"
"Exactly," Steven said, offering a smile meant to project total confidence. "We have to stick together. Now that you know this, and now that you have this 'information,' we have to prepare. If Homeworld comes, we'll give 'em hell." His confident, serene voice cut right through the bleak atmosphere, settling the group's frayed nerves.
"Let's move," Steven said, scooping Connie over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. "I don't really dig the aesthetics of this place anyway," he added with a straight face.
The Gems just stared at him in silence, watching him walk away with Connie still in his arms, who simply accepted her fate without a word of protest.
"He's just like Rose," Pearl murmured, looking at the others.
"Definitely," Garnet replied with a slight smile.
Amethyst didn't say a word. Her expression said it all. She felt sick, guilty—horribly, completely guilty. After all, it was her laughter that had gotten them busted. She walked away without a word, heading in the direction Steven had gone.
"Do you think she's okay?" Pearl asked worriedly, watching Amethyst walk off. She didn't even realize how much Pearl actually cared about her.
"I don't know," Garnet replied. "Let's hope she sorts through her issues before Homeworld gets here." With that, she began to follow Amethyst. Pearl sighed, looked around the empty room, and ultimately walked out behind them.
---
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"Bye, Connie," Steven said with a smile.
"Goodbye, Miss Maheswaran," he called out as the car slowly drove away. Steven watched the vehicle vanish into the distance, and once he was absolutely sure no one was looking, he started walking toward his house. The waves crashed gently against the rocks, but he didn't pay them any mind. His gaze remained locked straight ahead, vacant, walking on pure autopilot.
When he arrived, he peeked through the window. The house was empty. The Gems, though in a slightly better mood, weren't exactly up for hanging out with him. Especially not now, with the looming threat of Homeworld hanging over their heads like a death sentence. He locked the front door, walked over to the warp pad, and without a second thought, warped away.
The signature sound materialized him into the night air. It was a place teeming with flowers and brambles—a place Steven knew all too well. He walked slowly, step after step. One quiet step, two quiet steps, three, six, eight, fifteen, forty. His pace quickened with every single breath. If anyone had seen him at that moment, they would have noticed the tears streaming down his face.
"I can't."
"I can't, I don't want to, I can't."
"I can't, I don't want to, I can't."
"Please, I don't want to."
He repeated those words like a mantra over and over, sprinting through what had once been a brutal battlefield, now covered in vibrant life and color. But in his heart, everything was still completely gray. Why did this have to happen? This wasn't supposed to repeat itself. He knew he shouldn't blame Amethyst, he knew it, but the intrusive thought kept hunting him down.
Everything was supposed to be different this time. But nothing had changed. Everything—absolutely everything—was exactly the same.
Steven dropped to his knees, his hands slamming into the dirt, weeping bitterly into the flower-covered ground. *Why?* he thought through his sobs. *I was supposed to fix this. I could have avoided it. But no, I got cocky.*
"I'm completely useless," he choked out, his voice cracking into pieces. "I can't protect my friends. I'm not strong enough."
He clutched his gemstone, squeezing it with all his might, using the physical pain to try and drown out the emotional agony tearing him apart. "Tell me, Mom... what am I supposed to do? Tell me something, damn it!"
His words blurred into his weeping, cut short by heavy gasps, tears, and pure desperation. What he was saying was barely audible, but at his core, he was begging for just one thing: an answer, a sign, anything to tell him what to do.
Finally, he let his face fall against the earth and just lay there, crying in a broken, suffocating silence.
Steven didn't notice how a faint, rosy glow rippled down his arm, illuminating him softly for a few brief seconds before vanishing without a trace. That fleeting presence passed completely unnoticed, as if it had never existed at all.
"What can I even do?" he whispered to the open air, expecting no response. His gaze drifted up into the night sky, lost among the thousands of stars twinkling above him. One star in particular caught his eye—a star that, for some reason, reminded him of the Ruby that had been shattered right in front of him.
"Oh god," he whispered, his voice cracking as the tears began to fall all over again. *Why am I so damn sensitive?* he thought with a crushing sense of helplessness, watching that light in the firmament. It felt like it was staring back at him, judging him, blaming him for not saving her.
"What did you want me to do?!" he screamed with repressed rage. "How was I supposed to save you?! I'm light-years away! It was just my soul, my conscience... I don't even know what part of me was actually there! It was just me, a useless nobody! Did you really think I could save you?! From a freaking Diamond?! Do you honestly believe that?!"
His voice echoed into the empty expanse, but the star remained completely still, bright and entirely indifferent.
"I couldn't do it," he finally said, barely above a whisper. "But... I would have tried. Even if it was just on pure impulse, even if I didn't stand a ghost of a chance, I would have tried. Because that's what I do, right? I try to save everyone with a smile. I would have done it because it's the right thing to do, I would have done it so you wouldn't have to suffer anymore. Though now... well... I guess you finally found your rest."
The wind blew softly through the flowers.
*"Thank you,"* a distant, gentle voice suddenly echoed, sounding like a whisper in the back of his mind. *"You tried, and that's what matters. You thought of me, and that matters too. Rest, Steven."*
Steven froze, staring upward. The star he had been looking at was gone. Only the usual, familiar constellations remained, decorating the night sky.
"Ha... ha... haha... jajaja... HAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHA!" he started laughing through his tears. That was it... the guilt. This entire time he had been carrying this massive, goddamn weight of guilt. "Thank you, Ruby. Thank you for reminding me of the obvious. Thank you for... thank you, thank you, thank you," he sobbed, letting the tears pour out completely free. "I don't deserve that mercy, but I'll take it. I'll make it mine. I'll use it as my strength."
"From now on, I'm training harder. If I want to protect them, I have to. I won't let a goddamn Jasper or whatever gem they send destroy us. I'll face her, and if I have to... I'll take her down."
He went quiet for a moment, letting out a heavy sigh. "Well, maybe not *that* extreme," he muttered quietly, catching himself after realizing what he had just yelled out.
He looked toward the hillside and lay back onto the grass. "I'll just stay here for a bit... just a little bit longer," he murmured, his eyes slowly growing heavy.
Before falling asleep, he thought he saw a constellation among the stars that looked like an old man giving him a thumbs-up "OK" sign.
"I need to sleep," he said, barely audible, completely giving in to exhaustion as he drifted into a deep, heavy slumber.
He slept for hours—so many hours that, back home, the Gems were starting to get seriously worried about him.
End of Chapter 29.