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Lilah Parallel Episode 1: Nexus Glow

Today's the day that Lilah is set to officially become a Crystal Gem, but there's one slight problem: she hasn't exhibited any of the important magical powers that every golem relies upon to protect themselves. Lilah decides to ask her guardians for help in making a magical weapon, but they've got problems of their own today: a corrupted diopside is heading towards Beach City, and they need to poof her before she arrives at her destination.

Rated 18+ for swearing & adult concepts, NOT AT ALL FOR KIDS!

JUNE 21, 2019.

3:05 PM EST.

BEACH CITY, LENNAVERE, APPALACHIAN CONFEDERATION.

Marcus “Mark” Parallel exhaled as he inspected the almost banquet hall he’d helped set up in the school gymnasium. “We did alright, Mark,” said Jerry the gym teacher as he pushed in the very last chair, gently so as to not upset the small flowerpots of orange-red poppies adorning the long, white cloth-clad table.

Mark nodded. “Yeah, we did. The post-graduation ceremony’s going to be okay.”

“Are you sure that you don’t want to come?”

“Jerry, I’ve been to fifteen of these things and they’ve all been the same, I won’t be missing much. Besides, today’s Lilah’s graduation too, and I promised her that I wouldn’t miss that.”

“It’s a shame that your kid never got to go here. She sounds like a good egg.”

“You and your obsession with eggs,” Mark scoffed playfully before growing serious. “I wanted her to at least have the option of a normal childhood. It sucks that things have to be what they are.”

“I know,” Jerry sighed. “Sometimes I wonder why these folks keep electing the same jerks to the board. Take care, buddy. Say hi to the kid for me.”

“I will.” And with that, Mark left.

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The light went red. Mark stopped at the intersection of Concord and Basset. He’d never liked this intersection, and the reason why hung on the right side of the light facing him.

The sign was an irregular hexagon, a flat bottom tapering up to a skinny top, a black ring separating the white interior from an outer ring of white. Four colorful humanoids – two medium-sized ones in light green and pink lemonade pink, a large one in dark blue, and a slightly smaller large one in electric blue – trampling a fifth, medium-sized black one. Underneath the image was the acronym “G.E.M.” painted in black.

Mark stared longingly at the electric blue pictogram. The light turned green, and he drove on.

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Two miles outside of Beach City’s western border was a small farm on a large, flat hill. The plantings were of edible species carefully chosen for low invasive potential; beyond them were odd trees here and there, assorted wild plants, and one patch that was completely covered in poison ivy for some reason. Finally, there was the barn-like house standing at the hill’s apex, a humble, dark red wooden building hiding a far less humble interior. Mark and his daughter lived in this place, as did their…foreign houseguests.

Mark drove his car onto a specific patch of flattened ground and pressed a green button on his car keys. The ground beneath him shuddered downwards, a force field extending over him as he descended and the shaft closed. Once the panel was flat on the floor, Mark got out of his car and entered a white-tiled hallway, barren save for paintings of various styles adorning its walls.

“Hey Mark,” said a voice as the living version of the light green pictogram approached from a room off to the side: Talc, a magical alien rock creature known as a golem, an extraterrestrial exile from far across the stars, with pale green calloused skin and curly green hair tied into a long ponytail, dressed in blue jeans and a green t-shirt like an everyday human man.

“Afternoon, Talc,” Mark replied. “How are things?”

“They’re fine,” Talc said simply. “Well, unless you count the corrupted golem alert goin’ off, I reckon that’s not quite as fine.”

“It is not,” agreed a woman standing in the doorway of the room, the living version of the dark blue pictogram: Hope, a former noble standing over nine-and-a-half feet tall, clad in an elegant dark blue sari with striking yellow trim that matched her nails and eyeliner.

“Hey, Hope. What kind of golem is it this time?”

“A chrome diopside,” she replied, handing him a photograph of a blurry green thing soaring over the treetops. “A geokinetic clinopyroxene sighted one mile outside of Beach City approximately forty minutes ago. We believe that she is Diopside. Our Diopside.”

“Emerald of the Mineral Team’s girlfriend, right?” Hope nodded. “Where’s Lilah?”

“Crow’s fittin’ her graduatin’ clothes. She’s mighty antsy considerin’ she’s gonna be an adult once the Sun goes down,” Talc replied. “And you know what we promised her would happen then.”

Mark nodded soberly. “Once the Sun goes down tonight, she’s a Crystal Gem, and she’ll fight for Earth with you three.” He sighed. “I just don’t want her to get hurt, y’know?”

“Neither do we, Mark,” Hope replied firmly. “She is our child too. Even if she wasn’t the last thing that we have of Tourmaline’s essence, we’d still do our best to protect her.” Mark nodded and headed down the hall to Crow’s room.

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“A little easy on the waist there, Crow! Oh, hey Dad.” A shirtless Lilah, a broad-shouldered girl just shy of Mark’s height with striking electric blue hair and eyes, made a pained smile to her father as the living version of the pink pictogram, wearing a lavender sweater, a pink skirt with a purple rhombus pattern, a nonbinary pride flag hairbow, and dark red boots tied a black skirt around her hips a little too hard.

The golem turned around, revealing hot pink eyes and black-painted lips. “Mark!” Crow...well, crowed, dropping the skirt string and flinging herself at him. “It’s been too long! It feels like the last time we saw you for more than five seconds was in April!”

“AP and final exams,” Mark apologized, returning the hug. “They happen every year.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re here, old pal. Someone needs to help us watch the kid while we go hunting.”

“The kid can hear you,” Lilah interjected. “And I’m not a kid anymore, I haven’t even legally been a kid since December!”

“That may be so, but you’re still not a Crystal Gem until sunset,” Crow replied, returning to her ward’s side to finish tying the skirt onto her. “And since today’s the solstice, that's not gonna be for a while yet.” Finished with the skirt, Crow stuck a hand into her wild, fluffy ponytail and started rummaging around, pulling out an empty tin of cookies, a live eastern gray squirrel, and a genuine 17th-century shamisen (“Wow, that was a fun party”) before retrieving a simple white button-down t-shirt with a left breast pocket that she quickly shoved over Lilah’s chest, nimble fingers with gray nails buttoning it up in a flash of pink. “There we go! Just what I needed to finish this up! You look cute, kid.”

“Hopefully cute enough to pick up a cutie someday,” the bluenette said approvingly, admiring herself in the mirror.

“Speaking of hopefully,” Crow said before sticking their head out the door and into the hallway. “Hope, do you want me to scout ahead on Diopside?” they called.

“That would be much appreciated, yes!” Hope called back.

“That’s my cue to leave. Go on, have a graduation or whatever. We’ll be back before you know it.” They gave the girl a brief noogie and left the room to the humans.

Mark sniffled. “My little girl’s growing up…your mother would be so proud of you.”

“You saw the sign again?” Lilah asked.

“Yeah.” He pulled his daughter close. “I wish you could’ve met her, Lilah. I wish she hadn’t been too sad to stay.”

Lilah swallowed. “I do too, Dad. I do too.”

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Talc was chopping some carrots when his right index finger fell off, causing the knife to slip out of his grip. “Darn.” He grabbed the waylaid digit and stuck it back on his hand, and it magically fused back on. Grabbing the knife, he resumed chopping.

“Talc?” Talc turned his head to see Lilah enter the kitchen.

“Oh, hello Lilah,” Talc replied cheerfully as he put down the knife. “You look mighty fancy today.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s simple, but…I like it. It makes me feel like a hot waitress. Speaking of waitresses, do you want me to help you with dinner?”

“Naw, I’m fine. Don’t wanna mess up your duds anyhow. But you can keep me company, I’d like that.” Lilah beamed and watched him get back to work.

A comfortable silence passed between them for some time while Talc made dinner until Lilah thought of something. “Talc?” she asked while something boiled in a steel pot.

“Yeah?”

“When I become a Crystal Gem, do you think I’ll finally get my powers? I’d love to be able to do cool stuff like you guys can. More than just magic passively making it so I never need a bath or get sick, I mean.”

“Aw, don’t worry, Lilah. Powers don’t make you a Crystal Gem. It’s what you’re willin’ to do even if ya don’t have no powers a’tall. An’ I’m not sure ya want my powers. Talcs may be hard to poof and able to regenerate from near anythin’, but our ability to fall apart at will is frankly kinda disturbin’.” As if on cue, his left hand fell off at the wrist. “See?” he asked as he picked it up and stuck it back on. “And I don’t think Hope’s psychics or Crow’s infinite-space hair are quite right fer ya.”

“Yeah, but…still, having tourmaline magic would be so COOL!” she shouted, pumping her fists while her eyes twinkled. “Mom could enhance things, right?”

“Yep, she sure could. Just like how you are enhancin’ my chores.” Lilah giggled, but her face fell once Talc’s back was turned to her. She pulled the chest of her shirt out and looked at the bare spot between her breasts, where a nexus would be if she was a golem and not a supposedly-magical human, and sighed in disappointment. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Crow, do you see her?” Hope asked through her headset.

“I do indeed! Magical flying dinosaur at ten o’clock!” Crow replied. Hope watched on the control room screen through Crow’s eyes as the green thing swooped through the dense forest. She resembled a Triceratops prorsus, only far spikier, with six cruel eyes and two massive, batlike wings emerging from her shoulders. “Should I attempt to ground her?”

“Roger. She’s getting concerningly close to the farm. Take her down before she gets to Beach City.”

“Alright, Di, once you’re uncorrupted I hope you’ll forgive me for what I’m about to do.” Crow placed a hand over a small, twelve-sided lump on their chest underneath their blouse, which glowed a brilliant pink before materializing a pink-and-white-striped crossbow. Nocking an energy arrow, the rhodochrosite aimed it at Diopside’s left wing before firing it. It tore a hole through the membrane, the wound spraying a fluid that was a streaky mixture of a rusty orange and an opaque white. “Alright! Got her in one! Doesn’t seem like she can regenerate that either. She’ll fall to the ground and–”

Diopside, roaring in pain, caused a boulder to come out of the ground. She manipulated it into a half-pipe and used it to slide onto the ground. “Aw, come on! She just HAD to be the one chrome diopside to keep her geokinesis!” Crow whined. The corrupted golem roared and ran off, using the dirt and rock beneath her feet like an unusual surfboard. “What now?”

“Trail her,” Hope instructed. “Try to use your arrows to drive her into the ocean, her geokinesis is less effective on wet sand and useless on water. Don’t let her see you or else she might attack. Keep her as far away from Beach City as you can. When the time is right, call me and I will send Talc to tag in and beat her down.”

“Roger!”

Hope turned off the screen, removed her headset, and buried her face in her great blue hands. “This is not how today was supposed to go,” she grumbled. She heard a knocking at the control room’s door. “Come in.”

Lilah entered. “Hey, Hope…how’s the mission?”

“Well, Diopside has been grounded, which would be less concerning if she hadn’t retained her ability to move said ground.”

“...oh. Well…I was wondering…how do you use your diamond powers? Like, making a weapon and stuff? I didn’t ask Talc ‘cuz he doesn’t seem to do that…”

“It simply isn’t Talc’s style to fight with essence-born weapons. He can do it, but he prefers to fight with his own raw strength. As for me…well, I can tell you that it takes time and concentration to do it effectively; why, it took me the equivalent of 212 Earth years just to make my first spear alone. You need to feel it inside of you…you need to envision everything about it…then you call upon the desire to fight deep within you…”

Placing a hand near the top of the vertical white belt beneath her sari that went from her neck to her waist, the blue diamond pulled a long spear with a curved, pale pink blade and a dark blue handle out of her roughly rectangular nexus. “And there you have it.”

Lilah stared at the spear in awe before Hope willed it away in a puff of blue light. “Wow…I hope I can figure out how to do that.” She thought for a moment before shyly looking up at Hope. “Hope? Can you…tell me about Mom? Maybe if I knew how she was as a leader, I could figure out how to summon her weapon.”

“I have told you many stories about your mother, but if it helps you understand your potential abilities I can certainly tell them again,” Hope replied, patting her lap. Lilah sat on her knee and looked up at the taller woman, who tapped her chin pensively. “Let me see…ah, the story of how we met Gray Diamond. That was a good example of your mother’s leadership skills.”

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Five thousand and seventy-eight years earlier…

“Tourmaline, you’re not going to like this,” said Grape, a slender purple golemette with red-violet hair in a short bob, as she meekly handed a report to the leader of the Crystal Gems.

Tourmaline, a lanky, long-legged, pale blue-skinned golemette with a mohawk-like braid of cyan hair that went down to her butt, raised an eyebrow at the report. “Kindergarten activity? But that’s impossible. We destroyed the five sanctioned Earth kindergartens centuries ago, and none of them were on the south polar continent.”

“Then it appears that this one is unsanctioned,” said Pyrope, a dark red golemette with an almost square-shaped red afro, a silver sunglasses-like visor covering her eyes, and a stoic, almost monotonous demeanor coloring the way she spoke.

Tourmaline nodded. “How old is this data? I’d imagine a few Earth years given the signatures involved.”

“That’s the thing. The report is from this morning,” Grape said nervously.

The indicolite’s cyan eyes bulged out. “Th-this morning?! That’s not good. Pyrope, get a ship. Grape, get some troops. I want Ruby, Ben, Spinerva, the Malachite Twins, Rubellite, Ametrine, and as many ices, sapphires, aquamarines, lazurites, and pectolites that we can spare. We need to take out this kindergarten before Homeworld can exploit it.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Grape saluted before turning on her heel.

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Two hours later…

A green spaceship touched down in the would-be Larsemann Hills. Disembarking came Tourmaline; Pyrope; Grape; two teal golemettes with similar proportions to Crow and Grape; a limber pink golemette in a coral trench coat and hat with crimson hair in two large pigtails; a tall, pale blue-gray golemette with slender digits and an indigo golemor with similar proportions; a diminutive crimson golemor with a sour expression; four equally-small golemettes in indigo, dull green, papaya pink, and pale, ashy blue, the pale blue one wearing a star-shaped eyepatch over her right eye; five wide-eyed, ultramarine blue golemettes; a golemor resembling a masculine, red-toned version of Tourmaline; a short, stocky golemette with piebald purple-brown & yellow skin; a pale blue golemette with pointy cheeks; and eleven blue-skinned golemettes with spindly limbs & small noses, some of which had white hair instead of their race’s standard azure.

“Brrrr!” Ametrine, so nicknamed for her colorful complexion, shivered as the group approached a large hill riddled with numerous humanoid-shaped holes at its base, a large patch of unmarred rock dividing the holes into two separate groups. “It’s so cold! Why the vulkzara would Homeworld put a kindergarten here?”

“No humans,” Green Sapphire replied loftily. “There’s a circular oceanic current that keeps human boats from getting this far south. Given that most carved-ones turn against the Empire the moment they learn we’re not the only sapient species out there, it’s in the Authority’s best interests to keep them in the dark.”

“So they park the next kindergarten where no sane human would ever go,” Ruby finished with a scowl. “Anyone see anything?”

“There’s something over there,” one of the ices, Snow as shown by the pale blue snowflake embroidered on her white coat, said as she squinted at something in the distance. “It looks like a…recreational shore ball, of all things.” She walked over and brought it back to the others. It was an icosahedral black device floating in the middle of a shimmering clear bubble made of a strange sort of rubber.

“The heck is it?” Rubellite asked.

Tourmaline picked it up and turned it over, grimacing when she saw a retracted blade on the black thing’s underside. “It’s an injector,” she said grimly. “It’s got a protective force field that masks its magical signature, no wonder we didn’t detect them until now.”

“That’s an injector?” one of the lazurites, JJ-19 or “JJ” to her friends, said in disbelief. “But it’s so tiny. I could kick it.”

“Ah, but don’t let your eyes deceive you! That right there is the most modern piece of injector technology out there!” All eyes turned to see a ruby golemor, similar to Ruby save his maroon complexion and wider shoulders, appear from behind the hill, grinning smugly at them and with another such injector in his stubby hands.

“Maroon Ruby,” Tourmaline growled as the corundum arrogantly trotted over. “Yellow Diamond couldn’t be bothered to come here herself, so she sent her best stooge out instead?”

“Ah, you wound me, my dear enemy!” he said as he came to a stop in front of her and immediately started posturing. “I am on Special Assignment™ to test one of my little experiments. If it works, I get paid handsomely and your little rebellion ends.” He smiled wickedly at her. “Allow me to demonstrate the properties of my new Stealth Injectors.

“Magical barrier to prevent detection during transport.” He tapped the pole opposite the blade in a specific pattern, the spots where his fingers touched it lighting up orange and pink as he went. The barrier fell and the injector core fell roughly into his hands.

“Coded activation to prevent meddling from outsiders.” He pressed some buttons on the top of the little injector, which glowed yellow-green as he activated it.

“Enchanted boron carbide blade on collapsible proboscis to ensure rapid strikes with deep intrusion.” The blade shot out of the injector on an extendable tube, puncturing a hole into the rock behind him.

“Easy deposit of seed crystal.” The blade struck again, this time opening while inside the hole and dropping a little white thing no bigger than a marble inside of it. The blade retracted into the injector, which fell silent.

“And my own patented mixture of elbaite sweat and rose quartz tears to speed up growth!” The inside of the hole glowed before causing a shower of rock to explode out of the cliff. Tourmaline reflexively made a cyan bubble around herself to protect her from the blast. When the dust settled, another hole had been blown into the mountain, and stepping out of it was a human-sized golem resembling a skinnier Hope, only a dull dark gray in color and wearing the default gray-and-white uniform that all newmade golems wore.

The Crystal Gems gaped in horror as Maroon Ruby finished his spiel. “With Stealth Injectors I can make an entire army in a centirot. I’ve been covertly incubating a blue diamond worthy of Earth for the last five of its years, and since she’s due to emerge today I’ve decided to start on her court so we can really fight you off. And that measly graphite was just a demonstration. Her court will also need…”

“Ice!” Twenty ice golems appeared from the valley behind the hill, soon followed by...

“Xenotime!” Two amber brown golemettes with unusually large hands;

“Hematite!” Three black golemettes resembling taller corundums;

“Chromite!” A dark gray, freckled golemor resembling a larger, masculine Spinerva;

“Albite!” A white golemette with broad, pointy shoulders;

“Pyrite!” A strong-jawed golemor with metallic dark yellow skin;

“Rutile!” A very thin brownish-maroon golemette with deep wrinkles on her cheeks;

“White quartz!” A towering, stocky golemette with snow white skin & shaggy white hair;

“Brown zircon!” Four pumpkin spice brown golemettes with almond-shaped faces and more relaxed expressions compared to the other new emergees;

“Schorl!” Two black golems, one male and one female, with Tourmaline’s rough proportions if not having slightly shorter legs;

“Brown dravite!” Another tourmaline golemette, this one honey-brown and wearing a golden skirt, black-and-white high-heeled sandals, and a magenta cat’s-eye visor with matching nail polish;

“Grandidierite!” A slender seafoam green golemette;

“Almandine!” Three golemettes resembling dark purple Pyropes;

“And white corundum!” A golemette resembling a white sapphire rounded out the list.

Most of the new arrivals (sans the zircons, who, being born diplomats, were naturally quite mellow) glared at the horrified Crystal Gems, not noticing the somewhat crumbly texture of the rock from which they’d emerged. Suddenly, there was a loud Crack! from the hill behind them, and everyone turned to see a large gash emerge in the rock face between the previous exit holes. “And now for the grand finale!” Maroon Ruby declared. “I give you EARTH’S VERY OWN BLUE DIAMOND!”

KABOOM! went the rock, flowing out in a wave as a massive hole appeared in the side of the hill. Loose stone pelted the golems below, the Crystal Gems having the sense to pull up personal bubbles for protection. The new ones didn’t know to do this, so they ended up getting bruised in various places when the rocks hit them, but Maroon Ruby oddly seemed to get the worst of it somehow. When the commotion finally settled, everyone was left staring at a thirty-five-foot-one-inch-tall hole in the dead center of the hill…and listening to the footsteps within getting closer.

Walking out of the hole came a figure similar to Hope, only much skinnier, with a thinner, more pointed face and the proper height of a diamond. Then she stepped out of the hole and into the light, revealing that rather than the expected kind of sky blue that Maroon Ruby had said she’d be, she was instead a sort of grayish-blue like sealskin. Everyone stared at the newcomer, who blinked at them with large gray eyes. “Is there something wrong?” she asked, her voice surprisingly feathery and light given her stature.

“Yes, there IS,” Maroon Ruby glowered furiously. “How the Light-damned vulkzara did you end up off-color?!” He turned and pointed at the new tourmalines. “You there, tourmalines! You’re Kindergarten inspectors by caste, inspect it!”

“You deposited a blue diamond seed crystal here because this region is high in the boron needed to give a diamond a blue color, with the necessary carbon being sourced from local mineral deposits, carbon dioxide trapped in ice as bubbles, and assorted organic microorganisms living in the soil,” spoke the dravite in a nasally, nerdy voice as she adjusted her visor with a long-nailed index finger. “It would appear, however, that her nexus also incorporated significant amounts of hydrogen impurities as well, most likely sourced from the same ice used to source some of her carbon.”

“I meant the WHY she’s off-color, not the HOW!”

“From what little education I have received in my two decirots of life, I have learned that the likelihood of a diamond carved-one forming off-color is two thousand times higher than the mean likelihood of all other mineral races combined. Combined with the high speed of formation pushed by Stealth Injectors and the long time a diamond carved-one’s nexus typically takes to form, it is likely that the nexus was pushed through its formation faster than it could naturally self-correct.”

“In plain Saxsilla, please?” Maroon Ruby demanded.

“You made her too damn fast,” the male schorl said bluntly.

“Is that bad?” the new diamond asked, touching her bangs with her right hand nervously…a hand now revealed to only have three fingers, the ring finger and pinky being missing entirely and the rest of the hand being quite narrow as a result.

“Oh my luster! Your hand! It’s…HIDEOUS!” Maroon Ruby screamed. The new diamond hid her right hand with her left and looked ready to cry. “Fine. You know what? Maybe Stealth Injectors for a diamond aren’t such a good idea. Shatter this one and we’ll try again with a standard injector. Hopefully we’ll get some good ones before Yellow Diamond asks where I’ve been for the last five reevs…”

“Wait…shatter her?” the pyrite spoke up, horrified. “You want to…KILL her for being off-color?!” He turned to face the Crystal Gems. “Is this allowed?” he asked frantically.

“It’s Homeworld’s way,” Pyrope said bluntly. “Off-colors are seen by the Empire as aberrations to White Diamond’s quest to bring the Brilliant Light to the entire universe.”

“But…she’s our Diamond!” protested the chromite as he pointed to the worried-looking new diamond. “We’re meant to serve the Diamond of Earth, and that’s her!”

“You misunderstand,” Maroon Ruby growled. “You are not supposed to serve the first diamond that comes out of the dirt! You’re supposed to make a bunch of diamonds, then all the on-color diamonds of the same color fight each other in Diamond Duels, the one that wins them all gets to stay, and if the remaining ones of different colors want to duel, then they can do that. Either way, the last one standing is the one that you’re meant to serve. Normally it’s only then that you make a court, but we’re kind of in the middle of a civil war so I had to rush that too because, in case you’ve overlooked that part of the reports, WE’RE A LITTLE SHORT ON PERSONNEL!” he shouted.

“...what happens to those who lose Diamond Duels?” the albite asked nervously.

“They get shattered,” Grape said with a wince, causing the new diamond and her court to gasp in horror. “A diamond who can’t win a Duel is seen as a liability to the Empire’s strength. And the less you know about what they do with the remains…”

“Then we want no part in this empire,” the grandidierite said firmly. “Gray Diamond is our diamond, and we will defend her to our last breath.” The other new golems agreed loudly, and Gray Diamond looked much happier at this declaration of loyalty.

“You will do no such thing!” Maroon Ruby growled. “Yellow Diamond will have my nexus if I don’t give her good results!”

“And you won’t give her any results,” Tourmaline said, having snuck up behind him while he was distracted with his ranting. Her hexagonal nexus glowed cyan, and in a flash she pulled out a brown polearm with a curved cyan blade and sliced Maroon Ruby neatly down the middle with it. In a puff of smoke, he was reduced to a round-cut enchanted ruby that she quickly bubbled and teleported away. Looking up at Gray Diamond, she smiled as she dissipated her polearm. “There’s a lot you need to know about the Empire,” she said. “But I can tell you’ll do good things.”

“Yeah,” said Aquamarine, the gears audibly turning in her round-cheeked head. “Like the legal restrictions that you as Diamond of Earth can put on Homeworld…”

Tourmaline laughed nervously when the diamond’s hand caught her eye. “Oh…you know, we have a technician who can give you a prosthesis to make up for your missing fingers.”

“B-because it’s bad to be different?” Gray Diamond squeaked nervously.

“No, because having more fingers will improve your grip strength, and you’ll need a good grip on your weapon if you’re going to fight. You do wish to fight, do you not?”

Gray Diamond shifted her size downwards to match Tourmaline’s height. Grinning, she took the (much) older woman’s hand and shook it vigorously with her deformed one. “Of course! Although…” she added shyly, “will your group accept me like mine have?”

“‘A course we wills,” Spinerva said reassuringly in her anachronistic Empire City accent, waving her hands as she spoke. “Mah own diamond’s off-collah, an’ she’s wunna da ones who stahted dis whole shebang in da foist place. Don’t be a joik and beat up Hoimwoild and you’ll be a damn fine Crystal Gem, jus’ da same as alla ya coit.”

“Yeah, same here, same court, except I actually am an offie,” Ametrine added, showing herself to the new golems. “And if they can accept me, and all the other ones we’ve got, then they can accept you just as well.”

Gray Diamond looked to her court, who nodded, then turned back to face Tourmaline. “Then as my first action as Diamond of Earth, I pledge this planet in the name of the Crystal Gems!” Everyone around her applauded, but no one applauded louder than a very proud-looking Tourmaline.

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Present day

“As for Maroon Ruby, we did let him out eventually…in Egypt while a mastaba was being built,” Hope finished. “The minute he saw mankind he turned on Homeworld and gave us all of his technology free of charge, just as Green Sapphire said he would. Changed his ways too, he never wanted an off-color shattered again.” She sighed wistfully. “Gray was…a good friend. She was very kind and sweet, and she gave up using the caste system in her court without any fuss whatsoever the minute we asked her to do so. Her being the first corrupted golem we found…hurt, to say the least.”

Lilah nodded. “I wish I could’ve met her, Hope. Thanks for the story.” She left the room, sighing as she wandered back upstairs. She was no closer to figuring out how to summon her mother’s weapon. To figuring out what it really meant to be a Crystal Gem.

“Hey, Lilah?” Talc asked. “I got a call from Crow, they’re taggin’ out. Dinner’s done, just gotta let it cool first.”

“Hopefully you’re back before it cools all the way,” Lilah said. Talc nodded and left.

“Lilah?” Mark called from the dining room. “Can you help me set the table?”

“I’ll be right there!” Lilah called back.

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Crow returned home exhausted and sweaty. “Hoo boy,” they wheezed as they collapsed on the dark red armchair in the living room.

“Crow, would you mind wiping yourself off before you get manganese in the furniture again?” Mark asked sternly while Lilah helped him put the silverware and napkins on the dining room table.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m wiping,” Crow said dismissively with a wave of their hand. They retrieved a white towel from their hair and wiped their face on it, staining it pink in the process, before shoving it back into their hair. “Phew! What an evening, am I right?”

“Yeah…” Lilah trailed off. “Say, Crow?”

“Hmm?”

“You’ve got a ton of weapons in there, right? So you’d know how to summon them better than anyone.”

“We are NOT summoning weapons at the dinner table,” Mark interjected with a frown.

“Trust me, Mark, I’m not making that mistake a second time,” Crow said casually. “Kiddo, what’s gotten into you today? Even yesterday you weren’t this antsy. What gives?”

“Well…I still haven’t gotten my powers yet,” Lilah replied sullenly. “If my hair wasn’t blue you wouldn’t even be able to tell I have Mom’s essence within me. And yet…no tourmaline powers.”

“Oh, kid, don’t worry about it! It’s probably just an age thing. Natural-born golems don’t start developing their special abilities until they’re almost sexually mature; your hair didn’t start turning blue until you hit puberty, after all. You’re about the physical and mental equivalent of an injection-produced golem right now, so I’d say you should be getting your tourmaline powers in the next coming weeks.”

“I keep telling myself that,” Lilah grumbled, staring at her chest in annoyance. “Do you think my transition fucked up my development?”

“Kid, listen. I was a seamstress before the rebellion. The idea of me summoning a weapon was considered ludicrous on Homeworld. And yet, because I honed my willpower and creativity…” They pulled out a pink-and-white-striped broom out of their nexus. “...I can summon whatever I please. Just let it happen naturally and you’ll be fine,” they went on while dissipating the broom.

“And as for your gender stuff…maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. I don’t know. You’re literally only the second human made by magic, there’s a lot we don’t know about folks in your position. But I do know that transitioning made you happy in your own body, so trust me: a little delay in summoning weapons is worth your three extra years of gender euphoria.”

“And even if you never figure it out, you’ll still be as much of a Crystal Gem as the others,” Mark said reassuringly. “Because being a Crystal Gem isn’t about having powers, it’s about doing the right thing for other people.”

Lilah nodded. “Thanks, guys. I feel a little better now.” There was a knock at the door. “I’ll get it. Maybe it’s Talc.”

“If it is, then why didn’t he teleport in?” Mark muttered as she left.

“Who knows?” Crow shrugged. “I’ve lived with him for almost five millennia and I’m still finding new things about him.”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lilah slipped on a pair of black flip-flops and opened the door to see two girls her age, a chubby long-haired blonde with green eyes and a skinny Japanese girl with patchy red highlights in her hair, both of them wearing the reddish-orange cap and gown of Beach City High, on her doorstep. “O-oh! Molly, Saki! I wasn’t expecting you to be here!” Lilah stammered, flushing immediately.

“I told you we should’ve texted her,” the Japanese girl, Saki, hissed.

The blonde, Molly, lightly elbowed Saki in the gut. “The surprise was better. Anyway, hi Lilah! We noticed you weren’t at graduation.”

“W-well, yeah, I’m kinda not allowed to go to public school anymore,” Lilah murmured.

“We know. So we brought you a little something! Saki, you have the pot, right?”

“Pot?” Lilah’s brow furrowed. “You guys know how strict our drug policy is, right?”

“FLOWERpot, Blue,” Saki corrected, lifting her hands to reveal a small red flowerpot with orange poppies in it. “We snuck it here from school so you could have a graduation present. It’s not much, but…”

“We thought it was wrong that the school board kicked you out of the district after fifth grade,” Molly finished. “Seriously, what kind of justification is ‘your mother is an alien and therefore you’re not technically an Appalachian citizen’?”

Lilah took the flowerpot and smiled. “Thanks, guys. It’s lovely. I don’t want to keep you from the ceremony.”

“The ceremony ended two hours ago, Lilah,” Saki said.

“Wait, really?”

“Uh…yeah? Our graduating class was literally twenty people?”

“Oh, right. I keep forgetting how tiny our town is.”

Suddenly, they heard a deep rumbling noise from below. “Uh…what’s that?” Molly asked with a gulp. Bursting out of the dirt a few feet from the barn came Diopside. She was covered in nicks and scratches, and both wings were visibly mangled. She roared, slit pupils narrowing.

“Get inside,” Lilah ordered.

“Don’t have to tell ME twice!” Saki yelped as the other girls ran into her house.

Lilah set the flowerpot on the dining room table (“What?” Mark asked in surprise when he saw the flowerpot) and ran to Crow. “Crow, Diopside’s here!”

“WHAT?!” Crow tumbled off the chair and to their feet. “How?!”

“I’m sorry!” That was Talc rushing upstairs from the back room. “She went underground and I lost her signal!”

“And our systems decided that NOW was a good time to update,” Hope glowered as she stormed up the steps behind him. “Turrets and arms are offline. I’ll set up a barrier to keep the humans safe. Talc, Crow, draw Diopside away and give her all you’ve got!”

“Can do!” Talc said as he and Crow ran outside.

“What about me?” Lilah asked.

“You can inspect the barrier for cracks in case Diopside has the sense to attack it.”

Lilah frowned, but only for a moment. It wasn’t the glamorous job of fighting the corrupted golem, but it was just as important for her father’s and friends’ safeties. “Okay. I can do that.”

Hope nodded and started singing in the native golem language, causing a dark blue translucent shell to grow around the house. Molly and Saki exchanged a confused look. “I swear I’ve heard that before,” Molly said as she tried to place the tune. “Wait…is your diamond mom singing the Camp Pining Hearts theme song in alien language?!” she asked incredulously.

“She’s a fangirl,” Lilah shrugged. “And it works. The show’s all about emotional barriers, right?”

“I mean, yeah, but…” Molly shook her head. “Oh, it doesn’t matter.”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Outside, Crow summoned a double-bladed axe with long, narrow blades, equally as pink as their other weapons. Talc, meanwhile, summoned a pair of gauntlets the same shade of dark red as his shoes. Crow raised an eyebrow at this. “You’re armoring up?”

“I failed to get Diopside poofed before she came stompin’ around here,” Talc replied firmly. “I’m not takin’ a chance a’ her escapin’ again.”

“Fair enough. HEY, DIOPSIDE! OVER HERE! YOUR FIGHT’S WITH US, NOT THE BARN!”

Diopside, who at that moment had been poised to ram into the front wall, turned around. Her sextet of slit pupils narrowed and she roared at them. “That’s right! Over here!” Talc yelled, slamming his fists together. “Come and get some!”

Diopside pawed at the ground and raced at him, intending to ram him. Talc jumped out of the way. She rotated the ground beneath her feet with her powers and rammed into him without losing momentum. Talc caught her horns with his hands and dug his feet into the dirt, wincing as the strain on his joints increased. Diopside eventually ran out of steam, allowing Talc to twist at her head hard enough to snap off her right brow horn. Rustwhite blood leaked from the wound until Diopside’s nexus glowed light green followed by the wound, the lost adornment regenerating in a flash of light within seconds.

“Go for the horns!” Talc ordered as he tossed the broken horn away. “She’ll tire herself out remakin’ ‘em!”

“Works for me! TIME TO POLL OUR CLIENT!” Crow hollered, jumping high into the air and cleaving off the remade horn with their axe.

“Crow, fewer puns and more focus!” Hope called from inside the barn.

“Hey, I don’t see YOU out here– OOF!” Diopside had swung her tail at them, knocking them over. “Oh, you’ve got my skirt dirty! YOU ARE POOFED, YA HEAR ME?! POOFED!”

“Their magic will clean it up in minutes,” Lilah muttered.

“I find that in situations like this Crow just shouts for the sake of shouting,” Hope replied as Crow, Talc, and Diopside tussled. Suddenly, thunder boomed, lightning flashed, and it started to rain heavily. “Shit.”

“At least the water will make it harder for Diopside to bend the dirt…right?” Mark asked.

“Well, with that many injuries she’ll at least have a hard time focusing,” Lilah muttered.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Indeed, Diopside shrieked and writhed in pain as the water pelted her open wounds. Eventually, her common sense returned for a bit and she used her geokinesis to erect a protective roof of dirt over herself. Or tried to, at least; the wet dirt was slack under her telekinetic grip. Eventually, with a far bigger tug than intended, Diopside lifted a large chunk of earth out of the ground…exposing a Stealth Injector embedded in the dirt. “How the hell did that get in there?” Crow asked.

“Musta landed here durin’ the war and got swallowed by the swamp that used to be here,” Talc replied. “Don’t think we should worry about it none, batteries’ll be dead by now.”

“Right,” Crow nodded. “Stealth Injectors trade capacity & capacitance for speed. A full-sized clunker can last for 350 years, but these things die after ten.”

It was at that exact moment that the injector was hit by a random bolt of lightning (which also passed through Diopside, causing her to drop the dirt and shriek in pain). It lit up, reenergized, and fell out of the dirt, landing button-first on numerous stray rocks kicked up during the fight in sequence and rolling down to the poison ivy field. It lit up, the blade shot out, and something was buried into the soil. The poison ivy began to wither and crumble, and the soil below started turning ashy and gray before frosting over.

“...okay, nevermind, maybe we should worry about it,” Talc said, his jaw slack with disbelief.

“Of ALL the shitty coincidences that could’ve happened today!” Crow seethed. “WHY?!” they raged at the rainclouds above them.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“What…what’s happening over there?” Molly asked.

“Diopside unearthed an injector, and that freak bolt of lightning recharged it,” Lilah replied uneasily. “Can they do that?”

“Well, yes, it is possible to recharge an injector’s batteries through large electric shocks, but lightning has too high a wattage for that to be practical!” Hope replied frantically. “I don’t understand it, that injector should’ve melted from a current that size!”

“Injectors?” Molly asked. “Is that what that virus-looking thing was?”

“Injectors are how golems are cloned, they’re full of seed crystals made of…I think it’s something with silicon in it?” Mark guessed.

“Silicone infused with magic, yes,” Hope nodded.

“Yeah, and they get soaked in the blood of the golem you want to make, then they’re zapped with electricity & magic and shoved into the dirt. Over several years the seed crystals grab the elements needed to make the target mineral and build gemstone shells around themselves.”

“The resulting constructs are magical gemstones called ‘nexuses’, and once a nexus is complete it forms a golem with the nexus inside the chest,” Hope continued, tapping the bump between her sizeable breasts where a human’s heart would’ve been. “It’s what gives us our fantastic powers, it’s what stores the essence that makes us who we are…and it’s what remains of us if we are too badly hurt until we repair ourselves from within the safety of its extrauniversal interior.”

“I’ve told you all this shit before, guys,” Lilah remarked.

“It’s been a while!” Saki protested. “So the ground’s crumbling because the magic rock that virus-looking doodad stuck in it is…eating it?”

“To some extent. We do not know who the donor was for the blood in that injector,” Hope replied, watching uneasily as Talc and Crow engaged Diopside again. “But we do know that injection consumes a considerable amount of energy to create the phylacters – magic atoms – in our bodies, energy that the nexus takes from the chemical bonds of the surrounding material, rendering it cold and inert.”

“Including anything that’s alive,” Molly gasped in horrified realization. “Is that why you started that war you were in? To stop your empire from doing what happened to that tangle…to the entire Earth?!”

“Partly. The other reason involved finding out that our entire oppressive society was built on the lies of a single madwoman.” Hope looked outside and saw Talc snatch the injector from the ground. “Talc! Shut that thing off before it injects again!” she called. “We don’t want to lose the entire farm!”

Talc pried the back of the injector open with his bare hands while pushing Diopside’s face away with his foot. “We’re in luck!” he called back. “The injector only had the one crystal, and the lightnin’ fried the battery! It only had enough juice for one go!”

“Good!” Crow said, pausing momentarily to wring out their hair. “Now the humans will only have to worry about some inverse radiation!”

“...radiation?!” Molly squawked.

“Cloning with injectors takes a lot of energy,” Lilah explained. “So much that even after the golem’s emerged, the spot they came from keeps sucking energy in until everything’s balanced. Especially true of Stealth Injectors since they need so much energy to make golems come out in minutes instead of decades.” With a scowl she added “And that’s why it’s such an evil way to reproduce. It doesn’t just kill the things living in the soil on top of the nexus, it kills everything within range unless it’s magical. Which amounts to only golems.”

“Uh…guys?” Saki asked. “That giant green space ceratopsid…is it doing something?” Everyone turned to see Diopside curiously testing the dirt with her powers. Thanks to the injection the energy once keeping the rainwater liquid was now being drained into the new golem, and the muddy dirt was subsequently freezing into thick, black ice even fifty feet away from the injection site where Talc, Crow, and Diopside currently stood.

Diopside seemed to smirk. As it was solid and had a repetitive molecular structure, ice was therefore a mineral. And with that many dirt inclusions, lifting it would be no trouble at all. She turned her head, formed the snirt into a rectangular pillar, and slammed it into Talc’s chest. His head came off, bouncing on the dirt for a bit before stopping. “Ow,” Talc groaned, still very much alive. His headless body fumbled and flailed for his head. “Over here, goshdarnit!” he barked at it.

Paying him no mind, Diopside turned her attention to Crow, whom she began to pelt with a flechette of dirty icicles. Crow dodged momentarily, but slipped on a patch of muddy ice and fell, landing hard on their right knee with a sickening CRACK! and an agonized cry. Then Diopside turned to the barn and summoned a great bevy of pillars toward the barrier, cracking it and forcing Hope to sing again to undo the damage.

As she pointed out where Hope needed to sing to repair the barrier, Lilah swallowed. Crow was out of the fight until their knee healed, and Talc was out until he could reattach his head – not an easy task when the ground was that slick. Hope couldn’t fight Diopside; she had to keep the barrier up to protect the humans inside, and Lilah knew her aunt enough to know that Hope had trouble multitasking. And her dad, strong though he could be, was no match for a geokinetic alien dinosaur capable of flight, especially when the Gempire’s Smallest Kindergarten™ was so close by.

She knew what she had to do. “I’m going after her,” she said, marching towards the open doorway.

“WHAT?!” Mark cried, reaching out to grab her but failing.

“Blue, this is nuts! You can’t do this!” Saki protested.

“I have to! We’re out of other options! And technically, I’m already a Crystal Gem. We all agreed I’d be one when the Sun went down…well, the Sun’s covered by clouds, so it’s technically ‘down’ in the sense that it’s not usable right now.” She held her head high and tried to ignore the frightened look in Hope’s face…and the twisting feeling in her intestines. “I have to do this. I may not have powers, but I need to do something.”

And it was at that very moment that two somethings happened. First, glowing cyan lines traced over a spot on Lilah’s chest, forming the outline of an intricate hexagonally-cut gemstone before bursting into light, a polearm identical to the one Tourmaline once wielded clattering onto the porch.

Next, the dirt of the poison ivy patch, now completely bare and gray and icy, suddenly burst upwards in a messy SPLURT!, kicking up a tall plume of frigid grayish-brown dust. When the plume settled, a pale orange right hand shot out of the hole left behind, extending on a long, ribbonlike arm before slamming hard onto the remaining part of the ground. The other hand on an equally-rubbery left arm shot out and landed, then two bare feet on equally-elastic legs emerged as well.

Pulling herself out of the hole on all fours, then skittering headfirst up to the front door before flipping herself upright, was a pale orange-skinned golem wearing the default uniform of the Mohs-8 caste. She had a chin-length bob of safety orange hair and blinked at the world with large, equally-orangine eyes, taking in the shocked Lilah, the shocked golems, the unattended polearm, and Diopside slamming another wave of dirty ice into the barrier while Hope was distracted. And then she said her very first words:

“Did I miss something?”

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“Uh…” Lilah wracked her brain. Fighting a corrupted golem was one thing, she expected that by now. But meeting a new golem that wasn’t one of her guardians? “Well…” she started as she looked around before noticing the sturdy metal poles supporting the roof of the porch. Her eyes wandered over to the newcomer. Elastic limbs, thin neck, and large eyes; a true spinel like Spinerva, only orange instead of pink. Then she saw the polearm on the ground. Her mother’s. “Actually…you can help me with something.”

“Sure thing, what needs doing?” the spinel asked.

“Well, you see that giant monster over there?” Lilah asked, pointing at Diopside, who was now chasing after Talc’s headless body. “We need to poof her before she causes any trouble, but we’re kind of stuck at the moment.”

“Well, then it’s time that you got unstuck. How can I help?”

“I need to get this polearm into her so she’ll poof, but I’m not strong enough to engage her directly. Luckily, if this works I won’t need to get up close and personal. Can you tie your legs around these poles so you’re facing away from me?”

“Sure thing!” The spinel stretched a leg over to one post and wrapped it around, then did the same for the other so that her slender back faced Lilah. “Now what?”

“Pick up that polearm on the ground.”

“If that’s a polearm, is there a poleleg too?” the spinel pondered as she picked up the weapon with elastic hands.

“Uh…we’ll check on that later.”

“Lilah, do you need me to make some noise?” Crow asked.

“Yeah! Noise will work! I’m gonna need a straight shot at Diopside!” Lilah agreed, grabbing the spinel by the waist and walking backwards into the house.

“Kid, this is incredibly crazy and we’ll have to have a long talk about this afterwards, but right now I am completely within the moment! HEY, DIOPSIDE! OVER HERE! I FUCKED YOUR MOM! OR I WOULDA, IF YOU WEREN’T BORN FROM AN INJECTOR! NO, YOU KNOW WHAT? I FUCKED YOUR BLOOD DONOR! SO THERE!”

Diopside’s attention left Talc and fell on Crow once more. She roared and tried to send more ice towards Crow, but failed to move her projectiles more than a foot. Even with the spinel’s emergence draining heat from the soil, the early summer heat had started to warm it back up again, enough so that the ice had somewhat softened – making it difficult for Diopside to wield once more. “Not so tough without your cheats, are ya?” Crow taunted further before grabbing their knee and groaning in pain. “Ow, ow, don’t like that, don’t like that at all.”

Diopside charged and tossed Crow into the air with her horns. “When I let go, wait until I say ‘now’ to release the polearm!” Lilah told the spinel. She pulled further back and exhaled, then let go.

The spinel shot forward like the living slingshot she was. When the spinel’s hips moved in front of her knees, Lilah barked “NOW!” and the spinel let go of the polearm. It went sailing through the air like a ballista bolt and plunged into Diopside’s neck, emerging from the other side in a burst of rustwhite blood. With a choke and a splutter, Diopside exploded into a puff of white smoke, disappearing completely save for her nexus: grass green, circular step-cut with one row of facets on the crown beneath the heptagonal table, and about the size of a four-ounce tub of Vaseline.

Talc’s body caught Crow before they could hit the ground. “Nice catch!” Crow complimented. Talc’s body set them down and they grabbed Diopside’s nexus, summoning a small pink bubble around it. “Hot diggety damn, Tourmaline’s polearm! I haven’t seen that since…well. Nice shot, kid! You too, newbie!”

“Is that my name?” the spinel asked Lilah as the latter let go of her.

“Nope, we’re giving you something better than that,” Lilah replied while the spinel removed her legs from the posts. Spotting the flowerpot on the dining room table, she smiled. “And I think I know just the name.”

“Can someone help me get my head back on?” Talc asked from somewhere unseen.

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“To Lilah and Poppy, the newest Crystal Gems!” Glasses of water clinked together ironically. Talc was back in one piece, Diopside’s nexus was safely stored in the vault below the barn, and Saki and Molly had decided to stay the night while the storm passed…and until the “inverse radiation” in Poppy’s exit hole sucking the life from its surroundings could be dealt with.

“Today’s been so full of orange!” Molly giggled after dinner was finished. “Our caps and gowns were orange, our school is orange, the flowers were orange, the new magical rock alien is orange; heck, even your nails are orange!”

“That was deliberate!” Lilah laughed as she inspected her fingernails, which were painted the same slightly-reddish-orange of the flowers and Poppy’s hair. “I figured if I couldn’t go to graduation the least I could do was to wear the school’s color.”

“You kidding?” Saki chuckled. “If I knew what today was going to be like I woulda skipped graduation entirely.”

“But then you wouldn’t’ve gotten me flowers. Admit it, Saki; you’re a sap.”

“I-I am not!” Saki blushed. “A-and anyway! Where’s the newbie anyway?”

“Here she is!” Crow declared, emerging from the basement stairway with a flourish. “Presenting Poppy in her own ‘do!”

Poppy bounced into the room, her uniform gone. In its place was a solid vermillion yinzi eingyi blouse, a longyi skirt with a checked pale orange-and-white pattern, the white diamonds each having a little dot in their middles like an eye, and simple dark brown flip-flops the same shade as the nail polish on her fingers and toes, copper rings gracing the second & fourth digit of each hand and foot just as similar steel rings did on Lilah’s and Hope’s. “How do I look?” she asked cheerfully.

“You look adorable! Like a proper little businesswoman who could also kill you,” Lilah giggled. “Excellent work as always, Crow!”

“If it’s not excellent, I didn’t make it!” Crow laughed. “Now let’s get you introduced to everyone. This is Mark, you took care of his poison ivy problem…”

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Sometime later that night, Hope knelt in front of a great stone coffin bearing a carved visage of Tourmaline on its top. “She’s a Crystal Gem now, just like you,” Hope said. “I wish…” She sniffled. “I just w-wish y-you could’ve s-seen her f-first v-victory…”

“Hope?” Talc suddenly appeared and knelt next to her. “You okay?”

“Just…sharing the news,” Hope replied as she wiped her eyes. “Talc, I’m so worried.”

“Yeah, the inverse radiation bugs me too. We got a way to fix that?”

“Yes, the Sun-Sucker’s finished now, but…oh, confound it! Talc, I’m worried that Lilah’s going to get hurt. I’m worried that she’s going to end up walking her mother’s path and blame herself for not being able to save everyone. A-and then…”

Talc put a hand on her right shoulder. “She won’t,” he said firmly. “We’ll make sure she won’t. She ain’t goin’ down that path now that we know what steps led her mom there.”

Hope exhaled as he removed his hand. “I-I know, but…and that’s just what we can do, Talc. I’m worried about something else. Something that we can’t do anything about.”

“What worries you?”

“Diopside. She was the 31,500th corrupted golem we’ve found.”

“That number a bad omen on your planet?”

“No, but it might as well be a bad omen on this one. The number of golems stranded on Earth before White Diamond sang the Corruption Song wasn’t that much more. And at the accelerated rate they’ve been emerging after Tourmaline…” she stared at the coffin before continuing, “we might find the last one within the year.”

“And we don’t have a cure for that still,” Talc finished with a sigh. “Bugs me too.”

“That wasn’t my only concern, Talc. Think about it: White Diamond couldn’t send personnel directly to Earth during the war, not when we were so good at convincing her people to turn on her. So she turned most of us into monsters so that we could not give up the sheep about her lies.”

“Goat.”

“Whatever. The point is, now that most of us are devoid of sapience almost none of us could expose her. And we remaining few have spent the last five millennia rounding all the others up, every Crystal Gem and Homeworld troop that she marooned on Earth prior to the Corruption. All into one place. Do you see what my concern is now?”

Talc’s brows furrowed. “I’m havin’ some trouble…d’you think that someone will try to destroy us all once we’re all together?”

“Yes. I’m afraid that Homeworld will return once we’ve done White Diamond’s dirty work of rounding up the remaining Crystal Gems, and potential Homeworld deserters, for her, a-and then…” She trembled. Talc didn’t need to be told what would happen next.

“Easy now, Hope,” Talc replied in a soothing voice as he watched her cry silently. “White Diamond left us alone after the Corruption, we’ve been lookin’ around for years and we never saw no sign a’ her drones or spaceships. And if she does come back, well, then we’ll finish her off right then and there. Just like we promised we would.”

Hope exhaled shakily. “I would be happier if she was able to see that.” Talc didn’t ask who “she” was and simply sat with her, letting the much larger alien lean her big blue head on his much tinier shoulders. “I would be much happier if she could see what kind of woman her daughter was becoming.”

Neither one noticed Lilah peeking her head into her mother’s shrine while their backs were turned, having heard the tail end of their conversation. Frowning again at the spot on her chest, she left the mourners in silence.

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andrewmoocow · 1 year

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Little Homeworld Life chapter 26: Hostile Takeover (originally posted on June 19, 2023)

AN: It has all come to this. The end begins here. The final episode of Little Homeworld Life is here at last, and after that will be Steven Universe: Snake Eyes. It has been an honor delivering such consistent quality writing to this fandom, and I'll be damned if I don't enjoy doing it again one last time before I finally decide to move onto other stories I've left to dry for too long.

Synopsis: Connie returns home from college just as Black Rutile takes over Little Homeworld and holds the Crystal Gems captive. With their alien friends in danger, the people of Beach City decide to repay the Crystal Gems by joining together to save them from Black Rutile.

Cast:

Grace Rolek as Connie

Noël Wells as Black Rutile

Kimberly Brooks as Jasper, Skinny Jasper, Carnelian, Superfan Rose, Hippie Rose, Shy Rose, Cherry Quartz, Biggs Jasper

Lauren Ash as White Topaz

Amy Sedaris as Teal Zircon

Martha Higerada as Topaz

Della Saba as Aquamarine

Charlyne Yi as Eyeball, Doc, Navy, Leggy, Army

Christine Pedi as Holly Blue Agate

Casey Lee Williams as Cat's Eye

Hayley Kiyoko as Morganite

Jinkx Monsoon as Emerald, Chest Emerald

Melissa Fahn as Demantoid, Eyeball Demantoid

Kari Wahlgren as Pyrope

Jon Wurster as Marty

Shanelle Grey as Sally Grove

Larissa Gallagher as Bluebird Azurite

May Calamawy as Chrome Chalcedony

Susanne Blakeslee as Pietersite

Estelle as Garnet

Michaela Dietz as Amethyst, Famethyst, Tiger's Eye

Deedee Magno-Hall as Pearl, Yellow Pearl, Blue Pearl, Volleyball, Black Pearl Brigade

Shelby Rabara as Peridot, Squaridot

Jennifer Paz as Lapis, Laz, Zuli, Phoenix Lapis

Uzo Aduba as Bismuth

Dee Bradley Baker as Lion, Concretes

Tom Scharpling as Greg

Matthew Moy as Lars, Dante

Kate Micucci as Sadie

Indya Moore as Shep

Enuka Okuma as Rhodonite

Kathleen Fisher as Fluorite

Ashly Burch as Rutile Twins

Erica Luttrell as Padparadscha Sapphire

Mary Elizabeth McGlynn as Priyanka

Crispin Freeman as Doug

Andrew Kishino as Kevin

Reagan Gomez Preston as Jenny, Kiki

Godfrey as Kofi

Zach Steel as Ronaldo

Brian Posehn as Sour Cream

Lamar Abrams as Buck Dewey

Colton Dunn as Mr. Smiley

Toks Olagundoye as Mayor Nanafua

Joel Hodgson as Bill Dewey

Eugene Cordero as Jamie

Atticus Shaffer as Peedee

Billy Merritt as Mr. Fryman

Kristin Chenoweth as Sheena Synstylae

Nancy Linari as Martha

Brian George as Mr. Frowney

Jackie Buscarino as Vidalia

Aparna Nancherla as Nephrite, Lemon Jade

Ian Jones Quartey as Snowflake Obsidian, Bixbite

Michelle Maryk as Larimar

Auli'i Cravalho as Orange Spodumene

Kimiko Glenn as Blue Chalcedony

Tara Platt as Heaven Cubic Zirconia, Earth Cubic Zirconia

Tara Strong as Grossular Diopside

Phillipa Soo as Chrysocolla

Anika Noni Rose as Watermelon Tourmaline (fusion), Watermelon Tourmaline

Aimee Carrero as Moonstone

Gal Gadot as Desert Glass

Willa Holland as Albite

Maddie Ziegler as Serpentine

Courtenay Taylor as Beryl

Sarah Jessica Parker as Dumortierite

Cavetown as Diaspore

Emily King as Kunzite

Alex Newell as Monazite

Alyson Hannigan as Lavenderine

Avi Roque as Cinnabar

Gina Torres as Andesine

Awkwafina as Kyanite

Allison Janney as Pyrite

Zehra Fazal as Zoisite

Lena Hall as Bloodstone

Jodie Whittaker as Xenotime

Idina Menzel as Amazonite

Halsey as Tanzanite

Mia Barron as Apatite

Sarah Stiles as Spinel

Christine Baranski as Hessonite

Olivia Olson as Citrine, Citrine Twins

Lin-Manuel Miranda as President Eduardo Suarez

Wendie Malick as Vice President Theresa Maxwell

GZA as Major General Wade Grant

Tim Curry as General Lloyd Waller

John Kassir as Reginald Johnson

Stephanie Beatriz as Arleen Suarez

Xolo Mariduena as Huey Suarez

Leslie Grace as Riley Suarez

Pierce Brosnan as Bane Jones

Hugh Jackman as Beckham Jordan

James Monroe Iglehart as Coach Matt Monroe

Karen Fukuhara as Makoto Fuji

Matthew Rhys as Dr. James Brenner

T-Pain as Sam Galley

Christoph Waltz as Francis von Bowling

Rob Paulsen as Mr. Shreds

David Kaye as Collar

Roger Craig Smith as Tank

Alex Hirsch as Lawrence Abrams

Zach Callison as Steven, Onion, Cactus Stevens, Topiary Stevens

Featuring Christopher McDonald as Carl Grove

And Betsy Sodaro as Maureen Grove

"It just feels so good to be bad." Black Rutile gloated to the Crystal Gems as she held them prisoner in a makeshift prison. Today had quite possibly been the best day she has ever had on Earth. Black Rutile had now converted multiple Gems to her coalition of rebels, whether by force or through coercion, her enemies were now hers to torment, and their precious Little Homeworld into her newest evil lair. "I haven't felt this utterly delighted to be victorious since the siege of Tweenis 12, I feel like singing! Maestro?"

Amazonite turned on a music player at her master's command, causing Black Rutile to sing a reprise of a familiar song. "Wither the rose! Growing shadows! Sow a world of chaos! Wither the rose! Only highs, no lows! In a world of chaos!"

"Is this really the time to be singing?" Pearl muttered as she tried to break free from her chains.

"Ha!" Black Rutile laughed in response before looking out at her various enforcers. "Come on minions, hurry along! Soon, Beach City will be gone! I could squeeze myself with glee, first the Diamonds and then this galaxy! I really stopped at nothing, gaslighting, terrorism, and lying!" she declared. "Whatever it takes to get revenge, you really can't blame me for trying."

Little Homeworld soon began hovering over Beach City, casting a dark shadow over a large portion of the town while the townies had no idea what was going on. Suddenly, the water holding the Gem village in the air began firing at the humans, making them scurry in fear as Black Rutile finished her song. "Wither the rose! Growing shadows! Sow a world of chaos! Wither the rose! Don't you doze!"

"This planet is basically ours!" Aquamarine sang along.

"We have control over its superpowers!" Eyeball added triumphantly.

"You are helpless to resist!" Holly Blue proclaimed.

"There's no way for you to persist!" Cat's Eye declared.

"Saying sorry just won't cut it!" Cinnabar boomed.

"This universe will be ours, bit by bit!" Andesine stated.

"You thought you could contain us," Black Rutile sang out in victory. "but you can no longer discuss!"

"Genocide, slaughtering, jingoism, in enemy blood, we shall wade!" the seven Gems joined together in harmony. "Rutile Rebels come celebrate, as we make these foolish Crystal Gems fade!" By the time the song ended, Black Rutile looked out at the destruction below her and began making a speech. "People of Beach City, do not look away!" she bellowed to the humans below. "You witness a Rutile's revival, and the birth of her new empire!"

"What do you want now, Black Rutile?!" Lars yelled from below.

"What I want is recognition!" Black Rutile responded. "As you can see, I have officially conquered Little Homeworld and taken the Crystal Gems as my prisoners. The means as to how it can fly can all be blamed on their dear friend, Lapis Lazuli." She looked over at Lapis, who was sitting on the Warp Pad with a blank look on her face. "Despite what the Crystal Gems believed, Little Homeworld was the aspiration of idiots and dreamers! A mere tool to indoctrinate poor, unfortunate Gems who were living lives free of their tyranny. But unfortunately for them, I am far smarter than the average Gem, so I continued planning my revenge for months on end, which leads me today." She then sent out her drones, ready to attack at any moment. "Either surrender to me at once or else your pathetic little town will go bye-bye! Bye-bye."

Down below, Jasper and White Topaz were watching the carnage the entire time, lying in wait for an opportunity to strike back at Black Rutile and save their friends. "So, any idea on how to stop her?" Jasper asked her girlfriend. "I mean, it's just a bunch of us Gems that she could convert at any moment with those Blasters."

"Well, one thing's for certain, Black Rutile has gone too far this time." White Topaz declared. "We kept giving her second chance after second chance, but she always used them to try and destroy us! I've had enough of this! Once we defeat her, she's going straight to Revanche 666 where she belongs!"

"Someone's got leftover issues they need resolving." Teal Zircon added as she popped up behind the two big Gems. "Okay, Topaz and I have spent the last few minutes coming up with a plan."

"If it involves doing something astronomically stupid, then I don't want in." Jasper stopped Teal before she could finish. "What makes you think you could come up with an intelligent plan?"

"Because outside of being the obnoxious but lovable comic relief, I am actually far more observant than you think I am." TZ declared. "Which is why I am 10,000,000,000% certain that my plan will work."

"I'd like to see you try." Jasper scoffed before White Topaz placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Come on honey, just hear her out." White Topaz suggested. Jasper knew she couldn't disappoint her lover, so she relented with a sigh.

"Okay, proceed." Jasper groaned and let Teal explain.

"I say instead of just saving the day ourselves, we team up with the humans to save the world from Black Rutile!" Teal declared proudly. "The people of Beach City have been around us long enough to know what to do in situations like this, and we've gained a few allies over the years to back us up."

"I get what you're saying now." Jasper nodded proudly. "Like him for example!" As if on cue, Dr. James Brenner walked up to the three Gems. "I found him falling to his doom when Black Rutile threw him out. He's her psychologist, ergo, he should know exactly what she's thinking!"

"You are indeed correct, Jasper." Brenner declared. "I have been forced to watch as Black Rutile's schemes took shape, hoping that maybe my advice would get through to her, but alas, my words fell on deaf ears. Perhaps joining forces with all of you can help me redeem myself for being so powerless to help her."

"Great, we have our first recruit!" Teal Zircon cheered while giving the psychologist a hearty slap on the back. "Okay guys, I'll go gather the troops! You two on the other hand will have to find a very special someone."

"Are you pondering what I'm pondering?" Jasper then asked White Topaz.

"I think so Jasp, but Pete Rose?" White Topaz replied oddly, making Jasper raise an eyebrow at such a non-sequitur. "I mean, can we trust him?"

"No, I think Teal means we should fetch Connie!" Jasper yelled. "You and I both know she's been throwing a wrench in Black Rutile's plans multiple times! Her first invasion of Earth, the Steven monster crisis, and the alternate universe business, all of them had Connie involved and she played some role in stopping them all! You see what I'm getting at here?"

"Yeah, I get it now!" White Topaz exclaimed. "To Connie's house!" Just as the two raced off, a small black spy drone was watching the pair and quickly began following them.

"Breaking news all the way from Beach City!" Lawrence Abrams announced on the news. "The alien terrorist Black Rutile is once again laying waste to Beach City, and at the same time, our beloved president has been subject to a violent uprising against legions of angry Arnold Clump supporters led by the alt-right Internet personality Reginald Johnson. Are these two events connected? We'll be back after the break with more updates."

"Sweet Manila in the claws of light." Doug Maheswaran gasped in shock as he and Connie watched Black Rutile's invasion on the news. "This is probably something Steven should take care of, right?"

"Hopefully he at least knows what's going on," Connie added as she prepared to reach for her phone, only to hear a knock on the door. "Can someone get that?"

"Don't worry Connie, I'll get it," Priyanka said to her daughter as she opened the door to find Jasper and White Topaz waiting for her outside. "Oh, you must be that Jasper and Topaz who tore apart Beach City."

"You are never going to let go of that." Jasper declared. "Anyways, we need to see your daughter. The world is in danger and we need everyone we can get to save it."

"Right here!" Connie exclaimed while she raced up to the front door with her sword at the ready. "Come on guys, the Crystal Gems need us!"

"Yeah, about that." White Topaz stated nervously. "They kind of broke up because Black Rutile exposed Bismuth for poofing Lapis and is now holding them all hostage at Little Homeworld. Plus, Lapis officially betrayed them to Black Rutile and is helping make Little Homeworld fly. You know what, I think I know of a way to explain this better."

White Topaz then turned her fingers into puppet versions of the Crystal Gems to further go in depth about their situation. "Hey, what's this I hear about Bismuth poofing me and setting me on this path of torment and betrayal?!" her imitation of Lapis complained. "Oh no, the jig is up!" an imitation of Bismuth exclaimed. "Okay, I did poof you, Lapis, but I didn't mean to!"

"Saying you didn't mean it won't save you from me!" the shadow puppet of Lapis yelled before lunging at Bismuth, only for Garnet and Pearl to stop her.

"Top thirty reasons why Bismuth is sorry." The puppet version of Pearl stated. "Number 5 will surprise you."

"Top thirty anime deaths," puppet Lapis continued. "number one: YOUR BUTT RIGHT NOW!"

"I'm just here to be supportive!" a shadow puppet of Amethyst said as she took Lapis and Peridot's side in the tussle, ending with White Topaz making "whoop whoop whoop" sounds as she started twiddling her fingers into a big clump. "And scene!"

"Okay, I'm going to need a refresher here." Priyanka said, shocked at the bizarreness of White Topaz's show. "What does this all mean?"

"Look, the point is that Teal Zircon and all the Gems Black Rutile didn't convert are gathering everyone in Beach City to fight back against Black Rutile, and we believe Connie is the best possible candidate to lead them all." Jasper explained in brief. "If anyone else wishes to join, you're free to come along."

"But what about Steven?" Connie asked. "Surely he'd know what to do in this situation." Suddenly, the tracking drone from earlier emerged from Jasper's hair, making her and White Topaz wonder if it was following them the whole time, and dropped into Connie's hands to deliver a message from Black Rutile.

"Ah, Connie Meka-Leka-Hi-Meka-Hiney-Ho-Swanson, we meet again." The hologram of Black Rutile smirked at her message's intended recipient. "If you are seeing this message, then you're already well aware of my latest revenge scheme and how frequently you've been playing a part in my constant failures. I would kill you and your parents right here and now, but I believe that would be too easy." The very thought of being killed by such a madman unnerved the Maheswarans. "Which is I offer you this challenge! Meet me at the flying Little Homeworld in ninety minutes to face me for the fate of your wretched world, and bring company too. And for an extra challenge, Steven must not get involved in the slightest. Lose, I will kill each and every single one of you. Win?" She let out an evil chuckle. "The only winner will be me, no matter what. Allons-y!"

The drone then shut down and crumbled to pieces of metal in Connie's hand. Despite the threat to her life, it only made her more determined. "Take us to Beach City."

Later at Beach City, Teal Zircon was true to her word and had assembled the entirety of its citizens and then some to discuss their plans to stop Black Rutile. Along with all the Gems that escaped Black Rutile's earlier assault, there was the Barriga family and the Off-Colors, Sadie & Shep, the former Cool Kids, the Pizza and Fryman families, Mr. Smiley and Mr. Frowney, Jamie, Kevin, Onion and his friends, Vidalia, Yellowtail, and Sheena Synstylae. In addition, Teal had also managed to get into contact with Bane Jones, Beckham Jordan, Matt Monroe, Makoto Fuji, and Sam Galley. Now, all that was left was Connie and her parents to make their makeshift army complete.

"My my Teal Zircon, you assembled quite an assortment of characters here." Brenner nodded at all the humans and Gems gathered together to stop Black Rutile. "But do you think this will be enough to stop her?"

"Oh, I know so!" Teal yelled excitedly. "You know those kinds of movies and TV shows where there's a team of people who cannot function together, but they pull through regardless? That's what I'm going for here. On our own, we're just a bunch of misfits. But when we're together, now that's something special." Just then, Connie, her parents, Jasper, and White Topaz appeared behind her from a portal created by Lion. "And there's our girl of the hour! Let's give her a hand!"

Everyone began applauding as Connie walked up to Teal Zircon. "Uh, hello everybody, thank you for inviting me to your little get-together. I'm afraid I'm going to need some catching up to do on what's been going on. I don't think a funny little puppet show is enough."

"Then allow me," Brenner said before he spoke to the audience. "As some of you may not know, our 'dear friend' Black Rutile", He put "dear friend" in air-quotes. "has enacted quite possibly her greatest revenge plot yet, and I bore witness to the fruits of her labor overtime as I was assigned to be her criminal psychologist. She has assembled criminal masterminds, bigoted online personalities, more old enemies of the Gems, and forlorn Gems looking for a place to belong. I have tried multiple times to convince her that she wasn't doing the right thing, but she kept ignoring me at every turn."

"Online personalities like who?" Ronaldo raised his hand, making the rest of the crowd turn to him. "You mean Sally Grove? I've had tons of arguments with her about the Gems before."

"Precisely that," James explained. "I have no idea why she is so cruel, but she seemed perfect as one of Black Rutile's top lieutenants, using her social media influence to gather more human followers through the Internet. There is also Francis von Bowling and his cohorts from P.H.A.N.T.O.M, no doubt brought in for their vendetta against the Gems too."

"Well, I'll be." Bane Jones muttered in bemusement while preparing a technologically advanced shotgun.

"In addition, Black Rutile is now joined by this Marty fellow, who claims to have his own grudge because Steven took his son away from him." James continued, giving him strained looks from Greg and Vidalia. "Together, these scoundrels have converted multiple Gems through these strange blasters built to brainwash anyone hit by them!"

"It's because of those blasters Black Rutile took away my crew!" Nephrite sobbed into Biggs Jasper's arms.

"She took out almost the entire Famethyst!" Carnelian added.

"And like, tons of other quartz Gems too." Chest Rose stated. "Me, my sibs, Biggs, Tiger's Eye, and Cherry are the only ones left."

"Hopefully what the Black Pearls said about finding a way to restore them is true." Cherry Quartz nervously said, looking over at the Black Pearl Brigade.

"So, what can we all do?" Beckham Jordan asked. "We're all just a bunch of humans and Gems who have no idea how unprepared we are for this! Heck, I'm just a star basketball player who knows more about how to score a point than fighting battles! What would happen if one of us were to die today? Besides, Steven won't be here to help us!"

"I promise you all, I won't let that happen." Connie declared before unsheathing her sword and holding it to the sky. "The Crystal Temps will defend this planet to the end!"

"Wait, is that what we're calling ourselves?!" Kevin yelled from afar. "Why not something cooler like the Substitute Crystal Gems, or something?!"

"It's very sentimental!" Connie hurriedly replied. "Now who's with me?!"

"I am!" Orange Spodumene yelled while raising her hand.

"I am!" Kofi Pizza and Mr. Fryman shouted in unison.

"And me too!" Sam Galley added excitedly. "Also, just want to get this outta the way, but I have a bit of a crush on Amethyst."

"Me three!" Lavenderine shouted, followed by a wave of excitement from the gathered New Crystal Temps.

"Aw, what the heck, I haven't got that long a lifespan anyways." Kevin resigned himself to the cause. While Connie proudly looked over at the crowd united for a singular purpose, she felt a familiar hand touching her shoulder.

"I'm in too." Priyanka proclaimed, much to her daughter's surprise. "After that hospital incident, I feel like it's time for me to get involved in your Crystal Gem business and be on the frontlines."

"Well, someone's a little eager." Brenner smiled at Priyanka before looking over at Doug. "And what shall you do for this, sir?"

"I think I'll go look into the Sally Grove situation." Doug answered. "Her parents deserve to know that their daughter is basically selling out the human race to Black Rutile. But be sure to call me so I can still join in."

"Black Rutile told me that I have to meet her in ninety minutes," Connie announced while looking at her watch. "Well, this announcement went by quicker than expected. Anyways, let's save the world!" The New Crystal Temps then began cheering for their grand leader.

Meanwhile, in the dark void of space, Revanche 666 was now completely abandoned following Cinnabar and Andesine's escape from the prison. Black Pearl guards, Bismuths, and Peridots were locked in cells formerly occupied by members of the Rutile Rebels, surviving on a false hope that someone would come to save them. However, two particular prisoners weren't meant to be there. They just wanted to get in, stop a prison riot, and get out. But fate had other plans.

"How long has it been since we were trapped here by Cinnabar's plotting and my own recklessness?" Hessonite muttered to Citrine as the two languished in their prison cells. "Feels like we've been stranded here for eons."

"It's only been a few weeks, Hessonite." Citrine stated. "But yeah, it really has felt like forever. I mean, it would take a miracle for someone to notice that we're stuck here!" Suddenly, the two heard something crash through the walls. "Well, what do you know?"

"Hey, anybody here?!" Spinel yelled as she and Lemon Jade emerged from a spaceship they just crashed into the prison. "The Diamonds were getting worried that something bad happened!"

"Over here Spinel, over here!" Hessonite yelled to Spinel. "Hello, it's me, Hessonite, and yes, I am exactly who you're looking for."

"Yeah, we haven't seen you guys since you went to stop that prison breakout," Spinel answered while turning her hand into a ventriloquist dummy resembling Yellow Diamond. "Old Yeller was like 'I fear something might've gone horribly wrong on Revanche 666. I need someone to volunteer to investigate.' Luckily, I was there to oblige."

"And I simply got dragged along." Lemon Jade added. "So what did happen?"

"We thought Andesine and her entourage had surrendered, but it was all a ruse she and Cinnabar set up to escape," Citrine explained to the visitors. "Now we're all stuck behind bars with no way to leave, no way of contacting anyone outside this prison, and no way to deactivate our cells. Do either of you have any bright ideas?"

"I got one! I saw this on a TV show once." Spinel replied before she leaned on the wall between Hessonite and Citrine's cells and gave it a hard knock, which somehow forced the destabilizing fields guarding the two to deactivate. "Ey!" she added with two thumbs up. "You can thank me later."

"Finally!" Hessonite sighed with relief while shaking Spinel's hand as she emerged from her cell. "But what about everyone else?"

"Don't worry, I got this," Citrine said as she walked out of her cell and straight to the control room.

"So, where are Cinnabar and Andesine now?" Lemon Jade asked Hessonite.

"The two of them are currently on Earth aiding Black Rutile in whatever harebrained scheme she has now planned," Hessonite stated while the prison staff was released from their cells. "We need to act quickly if we want to stop all of them in their tracks."

"Roger roger, live long and prosper and all that!" Spinel exclaimed. "Come on Jade, let's chew bubblegum and kick some butt! And I'm all out of bubblegum."

"I'm not sure if I'm equipped for a fight, but whatever you say, I'll follow," Lemon said as she, Spinel, Hessonite, and Citrine boarded the ship Spinel crashed earlier and took off for Earth to bring Cinnabar & Andesine to justice.

"Ocean Town." Doug muttered to himself as he pulled into Beach City's sister town, easily identified by a sign declaring "STILL NOT ON FIRE." His journey ended at a shabby but homely-looking one-story house where he pulled into the driveway before getting out and knocking on the front door. An overweight, middle-aged fellow with a receding hairline, a barely shaved mustache, and clothes that looked like they haven't been washed in days soon answered. "Hello, is this the Grove residence?"

"What's it to ya?" the fat man said while pulling a half-eaten hot dog out of his pocket to shove in his mouth.

"Doug Maheswaran from Beach City." Doug introduced himself to the man while pulling out his ID. "I'm here to speak about your daughter, Sally."

"Oh good, I thought you were here about the body we found on the train tracks." The man sighed in relief before turning his head to call for someone. "Maureen!"

"What?!" what Doug assumed to be the man's wife hollered back.

"We got a cop here to talk about Sally!" the man replied before letting Doug inside and sitting him down and offering him a drink. "Here, have a shot on me."

"No thanks, I'm good." Doug rejected the offer before a skinny woman hiding her bleached blonde hair in a bandana walked into the living room. "Hello there miss, I'm here to talk to you about your daughter's recent activities."

"Ah yeah, Sally." The woman said as she and her husband sat down on the couch. "I always kept hearing her talk with that alien woman on her whatchacallit….computer. Anyways, my name's Maureen Grove and this is my husband Carl."

"Well, that alien woman is a known bigoted criminal who is plotting to destroy the world." Doug revealed, making Carl and Maureen blankly stare at each other in silence. "Something the matter, you two?"

"Shoulda known our girl would do something like this." Maureen Grove shook her head in shame. "If you think Sally's views were a product of an abusive upbringing or some kind of trauma, I'm afraid you're mistaken, officer. She was diagnosed with kajigger disorder or something."

"Antisocial personality disorder." Carl Grove corrected his wife. "What we're saying is that Sally is just not a pleasant person to be around, especially in this current era of that danged Internet. She thrives on being so smug & self-righteous and making people hate her, yet at the same time she wonders why everyone hates her. And we've tried our best to help her, but she always kept picking on us for stupid reasons! It's absurd, I tells ya!"

"So, she brought this upon herself," Doug said while writing down in his notepad. "Would you care to further elaborate on her behavior?"

"She also had this TubeTube channel that barely had any subscribers because people would rather watch cat videos, let's plays, and those creepy kids' videos," Maureen answered. "But then came that weird monster attack last year, where everything changed forever."

"Sally honey, time for dinner!" Carl called for his daughter while knocking on the door. "Mama's making chili cheese dogs tonight!"

"I can buy and sell you, old man!" Sally insulted her father from behind her bedroom door.

"Fair enough, just starve then because I'm a man." Carl casually replied as he walked away. "I swear, we have got to get her a therapist soon." He muttered to himself. "Dropping out of college I can understand, but she desperately needs to do something with her life."

"CARL, GET DOWN HERE!" Maureen shrieked for her husband. "SOMEONE'S INTERRUPTED AMERICAN IDOL!"

"They WHAT?!" Carl bellowed as he charged down the stairs to see what was going on. To his alarm, their TV show was cut off by the sudden appearance of Black Rutile on their television screen as she made a speech.

"Greetings to the civilians of this backwater planet. I am Black Rutile, soon to be supreme ruler of the Gem race." Black Rutile introduced herself to audiences around the world. "I come to you today because you are faced with a crisis that has been right under your noses for thousands of years now, and it can all be blamed on the Crystal Gems."

"Nothing that changing the channel won't fix." Carl declared as he picked up the remote and tried switching to another channel. Unfortunately, Black Rutile was interrupting the programming there, and on every other channel too. "What the Sam Hill is going on here?! Who would believe such malarkey?!"

"They have been living among your people since the dawn of man, and have brought numerous world-ending threats along with." Black Rutile's speech continued on Sally's computer, much to her curiosity. "From loads of monsters that were formerly members of their kind, to insane terraformers that stole the ocean for selfish purposes followed by nearly drowning thousands once they returned the water to Earth, a superweapon made from the remains of their own kind that remains buried under the Earth as we speak, repeated counts of abductions and the near-genocide of all organic life." Despite Black Rutile clearly spreading lies about the Crystal Gems, the desperate TubeTube user felt a special sort of parasocial connection to her. "But now we are faced with a new problem, and it's all thanks to one Gem: Pink Diamond. It's because of her that this monstrosity plaguing the Earth at this moment is running amok and the Crystal Gems have done nothing to stop it, or her for that matter. Should you believe this planet is worth saving, something must be done about the Crystal Gems, or you will suffer the consequences. That will be all."

With the end of Black Rutile's warning, Sally's life was changed forever. Her TubeTube channel was then completely overhauled to benefit from her newfound hatred of the Crystal Gems. They caused so much chaos and destruction, yet they're celebrated as heroes. Sally simply gives her opinion, and she's constantly villainized for it. To her, that simply wasn't fair. But what no one realized about Sally was terrified of growing past her bigoted, misanthropic mindset and becoming a better person because she believed kindness and compassion were signs of weakness. And she despised being weak.

"Ever since then, that Black Rutile yutz has been a bad influence on our girl." Carl finished his story. "Sally's been completely off her rocker because of her. Every time we tried setting her up with various lovers, she just kept abusing them. Especially this one feller named Fred who she kept saying had a small di-"

"Anything else I should know before I leave?" Doug asked, cutting off Carl before he could finish. "What other crimes has she committed?"

"What hasn't she committed?" Maureen replied. "Thankfully, she hasn't done anything super serious, but she's also formed lynch mobs online against random people she hates, and cyberbullied her so-called friends away. And let's not forget that she wrote some really disturbing fanfiction!" She cringed in disgust at the thought.

"Right, thank you for your time, Mr. and Mrs. Grove, I promise I'll have your daughter returned home so she can get the help she deserves," Doug said as he got up and prepared to leave, only for Carl to stop him.

"Hey, before you go, officer," Carl said before presenting Doug with a chili cheese dog. "care for a chili cheese dog? Can't save the world on an empty stomach."

"You know what? I'll take it." Doug accepted the dog before pulling out his phone. "Connie, I'll be coming back soon. Is everything ready?"

"Almost, Dad," Connie responded. "Bane Jones helped us get everybody weapons for the big fight. We just need to wait on you now."

Elsewhere in Washington D.C., President Eduardo Suarez, his vice president Theresa Maxwell, Wade Grant, Lloyd Waller, and his presidential cabinet remained in hiding from the forces of Reginald Anderson. Having just witnessed his family being held hostage, the White House being overtaken, and one of the secret service agents under his employment brutally beaten to near death, the president was naturally anxious about what to do next. What's more, there's no way he can contact the Crystal Gems at the moment. He was at an utter loss at what to do.

"Never seen Eddy this worked up in ages," Theresa muttered in wonder at her president's nervous pacing. "Last time I've seen him like this was when Clump seemed to have beat him in the polls."

"I wouldn't blame him," Lloyd replied. "Country's in crisis again, plus his family is in grave danger. Poor thing looks like he'll have a panic attack at any moment."

"I'll go have a talk with him," Wade said as he walked over to his chief and put a hand on his shoulder. "Mr. President, are you feeling alright? Do you need anything before we make our decision?"

"No, I'm perfectly fine!" Eduardo exclaimed bravely, a far cry from the nervous front he was just putting up. "I'm willing to give everything for this country, as a good president should!" However, his courageous smile was quickly replaced with an insecure frown. "But what can I do when my family's lives are at stake here? One wrong move and I could lose everything."

"You're right, he's giving us a very tough choice here." Wade nodded when he suddenly got an idea. "Wait, I know!" Whatever he whispered into the president's ear, Eduardo was liking what he was hearing. "You got that?"

"I like what you're saying." Eduardo nodded. "Let's do it." Just then, three men opened the doors to One Observatory Drive and walked in. The first man wore a nice suit and was balding, while his two associates were dressed in a tank top and a collared shirt respectively. "Hello there."

"Greetings Mr. President, my name is Mr. Shreds." Mr. Shreds introduced himself to the president. "These are my two associates, Tank and Collar, and we are here to deliver you to Reginald Johnson so you can relinquish your presidency."

"Just move along now and don't keep us waiting!" Collar said as he and Tank took Eduardo by the arms and guided him to their limo. "Any last words, sir?"

"Yes, I'd like to make a personal request to Reginald." Eduardo nodded. "I'd like to have a public debate with him, face to face."

"As absurd as your request is, I shall grant it," Tank replied begrudgingly, not knowing what he was in for as the limousine drove away.

"So what did you tell him?" Theresa asked Wade as the two worriedly watched Eduardo be taken away.

"You'll see." Wade gave the vice president a knowing smirk.

"Making yourselves comfortable, Crystal Gems?" Black Rutile asked her prisoners while paying them one last visit to their cell. "Doesn't matter to me, because I got special plans for you."

"What is it now?" Peridot muttered disdainfully. "Is it about how you're so much better than us because you're not us?"

"Whatever it is, just get it over with already," Bismuth added sadly. "I deserve it for what I put Lapis through."

"Yes, yes you did." Lapis harshly agreed. "You poofed me and then forced me to be the dumb little plaything that you'll always throw away when you don't need me."

"You're still depressed about that?!" Black Rutile groaned in irritation as the brainwashed Emerald pulled up a throne for Black Rutile to sit on. "I'm saying that this could all be avoided if you joined me! Over time, I began to realize that the Rutile Rebels aren't as different from the Crystal Gems as I thought. We all started out as nobodies, did something extraordinary that made us different from the rest of our kin, rose to the top, and earned the respect of the Diamonds, only to have all torn down by a person who didn't even care about them." She declared. "I'll admit, when I first heard about Little Homeworld, I wanted to destroy it so bad, especially when you locked me up here. But after spending some time trapped here, I, ever the opportunist, decided that I could make it into something better!"

"Like turning it into our new secret lair for example!" Aquamarine added.

"And we have your stupid bickering to thank for it!" Eyeball said as all the other Rutile Rebels threw their heads back and laughed.

"What I'm trying to say is that there are special people like us who should run the world, and then there are the disgusting humans who deliver our food and fight our wars." Black Rutile continued. "Which is why I'm offering you this one-time opportunity. Let us work together for once so we can truly bring Gems and humans together in peace and harmony!" To emphasize her point, she turned on a news report documenting the attack on the White House. "Refuse, and I shall make you pay with your lives! Bring out the Disintegrator!"

"Wait, the Disintegrator?!" Bismuth shrieked in terror as Sally walked in with a small, glowing boxlike device in her hands that she set on the table. "I thought that was outlawed eons ago! How did you get one?!"

"You'd be surprised what I can accomplish through mixing Gem technology with human garbage." Black Rutile stated while presenting the device. "For those uninformed, most likely you Amethyst, this was an ancient torture device built to execute criminal Gems by grinding them up into dust and dispersing them in the air in a beautiful yet morbid fashion."

"Curious, most curious." Francis von Bowling nodded with intrigue. "And how does it work exactly?"

"Allow me to demonstrate." Black Rutile responded before presenting a small rock she placed in the Disintegrator. She then turned it on, and the rock was instantly ground up into dust in a terrifying show of the machine's power, leaving the Gems horrified yet not surprised she would use something like that. "That oughta show you for brainwashing us all!"

"You're kidding me?" Pearl scoffed. "You claim we're brainwashing Gems against their and forcing them to join our side when that's literally what you are doing with those devices! Those aren't rejuvenating blasters, they're inculcating blasters! All these new Gems of yours say: "All hail Black Rutile! All hail Black Rutile!", but the Gems we teach would never say anything like that. We didn't force them to come here, they made that choice willingly."

"Kind of like how Lapis willingly joined me after I convinced her of how alone we were in the universe?" Black Rutile retorted, pointing to a sullen Lapis in the darkness. "Or how I convinced Sally Grove here to be a kindred spirit?"

"Yeah, that reminds me," Amethyst asked. "How could you team up with someone that obviously evil? Surely, you must have some tragic reason for doing so, right?"

"No, no tragic reason at all," Sally admitted without a single ounce of empathy in her voice. "I just like being hated. It makes me feel powerful."

"Hatred makes all of us powerful." Holly Blue agreed with Sally, with Cat's Eye by her side with her cat Blake in her arms.

"Very powerful." Cat's Eye agreed.

"Okay, we've had enough taunting, let's get to executing!" Black Rutile declared eagerly as she began choosing which Crystal Gem to disintegrate. However, her choice was pretty easy. "Bismuth, do you volunteer as tribute?"

"Wait, what?!" Bismuth muttered as the brainwashed Demantoid and Pyrope freed her from her shackles to be executed. "You won't get away with this, Black Rutile!"

"As a matter of fact, I've gotten away with it months ago." Black Rutile cruelly sneered while shoving the Disintegrator towards Bismuth. "Now, you might feel a little tingle."

"Lapis, please, I'm sorry!" Bismuth cried out for possibly the last time to Lapis, but she didn't seem to listen. All Lapis could do was turn away in shame. As Bismuth was about to be thrown into the machine and the other Crystal Gems cried for Black Rutile not to do it, the Disintegrator was suddenly stabbed with an epee, causing it to shut down. "What?"

"You!" Black Rutile yelled at Tanzanite for destroying her machine. "I have put hours upon hours into building that, and you made it all for nothing!"

"That's because you've gone too far this time, and I can't do this anymore!" Tanzanite yelled angrily while proceeding to free Bismuth, Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, and Peridot from their restraints. "Brainwashing is one thing, but executing too?"

"Are you seriously trying to talk back to your master?" Black Rutile growled angrily. "You know how Rose lied to you, you know how she left you to die and become part of a planet-destroying abomination against your will! I was there for you, and this is how you repay me?!"

"Yes, the Crystal Gems aren't honest, but their intentions are definitely real." Tanzanite declared firmly, bringing a tear to Pearl's eye before her former student was threatened with Black Rutile's bowie knife.

"Take that back and fight for me, or pay the price." Black Rutile ordered Tanzanite to stand down, and the punk purple Gem meekly did as she was told while Navy raced up to her master's side. "Yes, Ruby?"

"We got humans and enemy Gems at 12:00!" Navy yelled hurriedly.

"Did you tell them I hate them?" Black Rutile asked while turning her bowie knife into her sword. "No matter." With a superhuman leap, Black Rutile bounded out of her lair and landed in front of the New Crystal Temps before striking a pose as she drew her sword. "Well, don't stop on my account."

"Black Rutile, we've come to finally bring you to justice!" Connie declared while raising her sword in the air. "In the name of the Crystal Gems, the planet Earth, and the entire universe, we'll punish you for your crimes. And this time, we'll make it permanent. Do you yield?"

Black Rutile just sneered at Connie's bold declaration and responded with simply "I do not." With a snap of her fingers, the other Rutile Rebels, including a reluctant Tanzanite and Lapis, soon gathered behind her to counter Connie's forces. Just then, however, the Crystal Gems leaped out from behind the Rutile Rebels to join Connie and the others, followed by Spinel, Hessonite, Citrine, and Lemon Jade crashing into Little Homeworld on their ship.

"CRYSTAL GEMS!" Garnet roared while summoning her gauntlets. "Assemble." With that, everyone behind Connie roared as they charged into battle against Black Rutile and her enforcers, along with legions of brainwashed Gems, Concrete warriors, and Cactus & Topiary Stevens once again forced to serve Black Rutile. This was a day unlike any other when humans and Gems alike found themselves united against a common foe for the first time in thousands of years. On that day, everyone in Beach City became a Crystal Gem.

"Of course, you would find a way to ruin my plans!" Black Rutile said as she got into an intense swordfight with Connie. The battle for Earth had already gotten off to a rousing start. Bane Jones and Beckham Jordan fought side by side against von Bowling and his men, Kevin and Vidalia were up against Marty in a mechanical war suit, and Lars had a rematch with Emerald, among many other battles. "For too long now, you've always been interfering and you didn't even know it!"

"It's called loyalty Black Rutile, something you would probably never know!" Connie retorted before going in for a stab, only to be blocked by Sally Grove fighting back with a laser sword. "And as for you!"

"Don't even try to preach to me, little girl." Sally taunted in her usual high and mighty fashion. "We all know you would've found a way to call your white savior because you have no other personality outside of being his protector! You're a disgrace to your ethnicity, brat!"

"That's what you think, bullying my daughter like that!" Priyanka retorted with a sword of her own to fight Sally and Black Rutile with. "Apologize to her at once or I will reveal everything your parents told my husband!"

"What do you mean I have to apologize?! She attacked me!" Sally said before she realized what the doctor meant. "Wait, really? Oh no, no no no no!"

"Yeah, they told me some pretty messed up stuff about you," Doug said while putting out his notepad and reading what he had written earlier, making Sally writhe in agony while Black Rutile looked disdainfully at her human charge. "Let's see, abusing everyone around you, including your own parents, refusing to grow beyond your toxic personality while also blaming it on everyone around you, that disturbing fanfiction-"

"It's only disturbing from a certain point of view, having sexual relationships with your family members is perfectly normal in some parts of the world!" Sally only kept digging herself deeper into insanity in her attempts to preserve her image, unaware that Ronaldo had been live-streaming her this entire time, and her reputation was falling apart by the second. "Hey, turn that camera off!"

"No way, this is going to make a killing on Keep Beach City Weird!" Ronaldo laughed mischievously. "Wow, these negative comments expressing how betrayed your viewers must be for how much of a hypocrite you're being are coming in by the dozens."

"It's the same story I've seen so many times." Doug shook his head in disgust as Sally had an utter breakdown in front of the Maheswarans and Black Rutile, who was just as disgusted at how pathetic her partner was. "A fine, upstanding bigot. Your nose is so close to the grindstone, you can't see anything else. Meanwhile, the world changes and grows, and you're blind to it! Ignorant and proud of it too."

"Am I glad that's not me!" Black Rutile scoffed hypocritically as Sally was handcuffed and taken somewhere safe until the battle was over. "Now where were we? Oh yes!" She immediately got right back to her clash with Connie.

"So, calming down Lapis." Peridot muttered as she, Jasper, and White Topaz stood in front of Lapis and Phoenix Lapis fighting Laz and Zuli. "Got any ideas?"

"You're her life partner, you should know!" Jasper exclaimed while Laz and Zuli fought for their lives. "Paz, got any bright ideas?"

"I think I might have a good idea of what to do." White Topaz declared. "Bismuth, we need your help!"

"I'm in the middle of something here!" Bismuth replied while she was fighting Andesine and Cinnabar. "Oh, you want me to make up with Lapis, right?"

"Hopefully having her back on our side will turn the tide of battle!" White Topaz suggested, causing Bismuth to knock her two opponents out and walk up to her. "Just say what you need to say and hopefully she'll listen."

"This had better work." Bismuth took a deep breath and yelled "HEY LAPIS, OVER HERE!" The four Lapises then turned to see Bismuth below. "No, not you, the one who hates me!" she corrected herself.

"What do you want now?" Lapis angrily asked as she hovered on the ground.

"Listen Lapis, I know you won't ever forgive me and the other Crystal Gems for what we did to you," Bismuth said. "but I swear, if you listen and understand we didn't know what we did, maybe we can finally start making amends."

"Wait, you mean it?" Lapis's face softened in surprise.

"Yeah, we're still your friends!" White Topaz declared happily.

"And besides, I'm the only one who gets to be all sullen and betrayed here!" Jasper added before reaching her hand out. "Just take my hand."

Lapis started smiling again, bringing smiles to Peridot and White Topaz's faces as well, and began to reach out to Jasper. However, she was quickly interrupted by Cinnabar and Andesine's groups pointing their Rejuvenation Blasters at the Crystal Gems.

"Make another move, and we'll have to reset all of you." Cinnabar declared coldly.

"Now then, any last words?" Andesine smirked.

"I got one," Bismuth stated before raising her fist at Lapis's gem. "Please don't hate me for this again!" With a single punch, Lapis was poofed yet again, this time to save her from being shot with the Rejuvenation Blaster as the Rutile Rebels began opening fire, prompting Bismuth, Jasper, White Topaz, and Peridot to scatter.

"I'll be taking this to reverse-engineer, thank you very much!" Peridot snickered as she robbed Howlite of her Blaster to experiment on and ran away with a maniacal "NYEH-HAHAHAHAHA!"

"After her!" Howlite commanded and raced after Peridot with Dalmatian Jasper, Zoisite, Amber, and Xenotime behind her.

"Check it out, I got a Rejuvenation Blaster!" Peridot said to Squaridot and IQ while presenting the stolen blaster to them. "Maybe we can work together to find a way to use it to get everyone back to normal!"

"That's some good thinking, Peridot." Squaridot complimented the other Peridot's idea before the three geniuses snuck off to get to work.

"So it's come to this, Tanzanite, the student versus the master," Pearl said as she took a battle stance, and Tanzanite did the same. "Tell me Tanzanite, why did you join Black Rutile instead of accepting everything as it was? I understand if you felt betrayed by Rose, but this is not a healthy way of coping."

"It's because I just wanted to save everyone from what I suffered," Tanzanite revealed sadly as she clashed with her former mentor. "My friends! My family! Everything I did was for the galaxy, for the Crystal Gems! But it was all for nothing, Pink Diamond used all of us to avoid the consequences of her actions." Despite how much Pearl tried to speak up, Tanzanite kept ranting. "I had to use my skills on friends; on family; Gems that I knew. She controlled us through lies." She then let out a strained and tearful laugh. "Homeworld, no better than the rebels Rose created. I helped terrorize my people! I wanted you to stop it, I had to stop it. I spoke out. I spoke out to Black Rutile, to save everyone from you! But when I did, I only stood with a monster. You chose Pink Diamond." Now, Tanzanite was on the verge of tears as she sobbed into Pearl's chest. "You left me, gave me no choice! The Diamonds wanted to destroy worlds, and they did. Pink destroyed mine."

"Oh, poor dear," Pearl muttered sorrowfully while holding her old student close. "But do you still believe Black Rutile is good for you?"

"I'm not sure if anyone is good for me." Tanzanite sobbed. "I don't know if Black Rutile really cares for me or if she just saw me as a tool."

"Black Rutile never cared for anyone to begin with." Pearl declared before she held Tanzanite's head in her hands. "I'm truly sorry that I made you choose this path, and I promise that there will be no more secrets between us from now on. Is that good?"

"Yeah, but I'm not sure if I can forgive myself for this." Tanzanite agreed just as she felt the business end of a Rejuvenation Blaster pressing the back of her head.

"Another last-minute betrayal, I see." Andesine grinned while preparing to pull the trigger, only for Tanzanite to smack it out of Andesine's hands with her epee before stabbing her in the chest.

"Now look what you made ME do," Tanzanite smirked as she threw what Andesine said when she shattered her back in the red Gem's face before she poofed.

"Okay Mr. S, here we are." Mr. Shreds said as he pulled the limo up to the White House and let Eduardo out. "Just make it quick, I'm on a tight schedule here," Eduardo said nothing as he saw his family surrounded by terrorists and Reginald smugly standing by a video camera and a podium.

"Go on Mr. Prez, don't be shy." Reginald mockingly urged Eduardo. "Just say what you need to say."

"That's exactly what I was going to say to you." Eduardo declared before trapping Reginald in a headlock. "NOW!" The SWAT team immediately overwhelmed Reginald's enforcers while Reginald tried his best to fight back, only to be met with a krav maga kick from Theresa, coming straight out of nowhere.

"Did you plan all this?!" Reginald shouted.

"Well, not necessarily," Eduardo replied as Wade and Lloyd came to handcuff Reginald. "It's just that I'm far more quick on my feet than you'll ever be."

"Dad!" Huey and Riley Suarez cried as Theresa freed them from their restraints and hugged their father.

"Oh, mi preciosos, I was so worried," Eduardo said as he hugged them back before seeing Arlene walk towards them as well. "And I surely didn't forget you, my love."

"And you never will," Arleen replied before kissing her husband. And so, the White House was saved, thanks to the president and his quick thinking. Now all he had to do was hope that the Crystal Gems were doing alright.

"Must I remind you of my superiority, pretty boy?" Marty taunted Kevin while showing off the capabilities of his war suit. "Face it, hiding behind all these beautiful women won't get you anywhere in life!"

"Yeah, I'm absolutely unequipped for this, but that won't stop me from trying!" Kevin exclaimed before beginning to fight back.

"How could you, Marty?" Vidalia asked her ex-husband. "I knew you were a dirtbag, but selling out the entire human race for what? Just because you're mad we disowned you!"

"Oh yeah, I'm absolutely livid," Marty agreed. "but I'm mostly just here to get even with you guys. I don't give a damn about Black Rutile's whole rebellion business!"

Meanwhile, Bane Jones, Beckham, Makoto, and Matt were all standing back-to-back against Francis von Bowling's men. "So, when this is all over, could I perhaps get an autograph?" Bane asked Beckham. "I'm a huge fan, and I consider it an honor to be fighting for Earth with you."

"I'd be more than happy to." Beckham smiled at the offer.

"Hey boys, can we pick up the pace a bit?!" Makoto said while delivering an upside-down spinning kick to Konstantin, Pavel, and Leo at once.

Above the chaos going on in Little Homeworld, Black Rutile stood atop the whirlybird tower and was not happy with how her forces were losing. "STOOOOOP THEM!" she shrieked angrily while pulling at her hair just as she turned to see Connie, Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, Peridot, Bismuth, Jasper, White Topaz, Spinel, Hessonite, and now Tanzanite standing behind her. "You! You ruined everything again! I could've made everything perfect!"

"You didn't want to make things perfect." Tanzanite declared to Black Rutile. "You just hated things the way they are."

"This is your final warning, Black Rutile." Garnet declared. "And this time, we won't be giving you a second chance. You and your minions are headed straight for Revanche 666 after this!"

"Fine, if I can never win, then neither should you!" Black Rutile completely snapped. "Aquamarine, Eyeball, Chrome Chalcedony, to me!"

"Ready as always, Black Rutile!" Aquamarine said as she and Eyeball fused into Bluebird Azurite, while Holly Blue and Cat's Eye arrived to make Chrome Chalcedony.

"And now, for a little surprise!" Bluebird proclaimed.

"I have a little joke for you all." Black Rutile smiled dementedly while grabbing Bluebird's hand. "What do you get when you cross a depressed loner with a society that abandons her and treats her like trash?!"

"That's not a very good joke!" Amethyst replied.

"I'll tell you what you get, you get what you deserve!" Black Rutile shrieked before she and Bluebird merged to form Pietersite, now sporting Black Rutile's new pink cape and red visor in addition to her outfit now looking different to fit Aquamarine's regeneration.

"PIETERSITE LIVES!" Pietersite bellowed loudly for all to hear and cringe in fear. "AND NOW CRYSTAL GEMS, IT IS TIME FOR THE FINAL CURTAIN CALL!"

"I don't think so!" Peridot said as she fired a Rejuvenation Blaster at the two fusions, which they dodged only for the blast to hit one of Nephrite's crew and revert her to normal. "I stole one of those blasters from Howlite and reverse-engineered them to change everyone hit by them back to normal."

"I'm free, I've been freed!" the Nephrite cheered at finally being brought back to her old self.

"What?" Pietersite muttered in horror as the Crystal Gems immediately understood what was going to happen and raced down to solid ground so they can do the same for all the other Gems Black Rutile converted. "No! No no no! Don't do that, I worked so hard!"

"Stop them!" Chrome Chalcedony added as she and Pietersite tried fighting back against the enemy, but as the Crystal Gems' forces grew with every Gem turned back to normal, they were quickly outnumbered.

"Well, we're boned," Apatite muttered as she and Amazonite prepared to leave. "Let's skedaddle!"

"I don't think that'll be necessary," Amazonite replied as she and Apatite found themselves confronted by the entirety of Beach City's population, and they weren't happy.

"Goin' somewhere?" Sheena Synstylae cracked her neck and her knuckles.

"Don't worry, you're not the only ones we'll be punishing," Lars added.

"We'll finally gain an advantage over Black Rutile!" Padparadscha Sapphire exclaimed happily.

Pietersite could barely comprehend what happened, and it was so anticlimactic too. Her forces were subdued, her weapons seized and modified to fix what she had done, and now all that was left of the Rutile Rebels was her, Aquamarine, and Eyeball once again. "Please no, just give me a second chance!"

"Not likely," Lapis said as she summoned a sawblade made of water that sliced Pietersite in half, barely giving her a chance to fight because the Crystal Gems now considered Black Rutile to be that pathetic to not even consider a grander defeat. To seal the deal, Little Homeworld was returned to its rightful place outside of Beach City with help from the Lapis Lazulis.

Black Rutile, Aquamarine, and Eyeball all fell to the ground in defeat, while the rest of the Rutile Rebels were brought together in chains. "I hate happy endings."

"Well, that should about wrap everything up!" Pearl sighed in relief once the dust settled. "Now then, it's off to Revanche 666 you all go!"

"And me too," Tanzanite added, much to Pearl's shock. "Even if I changed my ways, I still need to forgive myself for siding with Black Rutile too."

"Indeed, young Tanzanite." James began one final monologue. "At the end of the day, we are all but individuals crying for fairness in our lives. You won't get everything, but you'll get something. The Crystal Gems finally restore peace, while Black Rutile hopefully realizes how futile her schemes were. In the end, we just need to decide what is fair and what isn't."

"Oh, be quiet!" Black Rutile said as Hessonite and Spinel carted her away to the ship Andesine and Cinnabar hijacked in their prison break, while everyone was left to rejoice.

"So, that's all that happened?" Steven asked Connie a few days later over video chat. "Wow, sounds like you had quite the adventure."

"Yeah, and that's not even getting into what happened next," Connie stated. "First, Marty's now on the run from the law and lost everything. Then, Kevin got a key to the city."

"That's a phrase I never expected to hear." Steven laughed. "What else happened?"

"The Crystal Gems have all made up with each other and the Diamonds, and they're getting the therapy they need from Dr. Sucrose, Mr. Ikari, and Dr. Brenner." Connie continued. "Speaking of which, Brenner put Sally Grove under house arrest and is writing a book about the psychology of influencers, Neil Michaels is stuck doing ChikFlix movies to recoup his losses, Francis von Bowling is stuck in prison with Reginald Johnson, the president is still alive, and finally, the Rutile Rebels are all safely behind bars for what they've done. But I kinda doubt they'll stay there for long because evil geniuses are harder to squash than cockroaches."

"Hey, Connie!" Lapis cried while knocking on Connie's window, now back in her Crystal Gem uniform. When Connie peeked her head outside, she could see the other Crystal Gems outside her house. "You got a minute?"

"I'll call you back Steven!" Connie said before hanging up on Steven and racing outside to meet with her alien friends, no doubt to go on another adventure together. In the distance, the Officer was recording everything he saw and sending it to his masters.

Meanwhile, on Revanche 666, the prison was restored to order as the Rutile Rebels were locked behind the destabilizing fields in their cells.

"Hey, don't be so bummed out everyone!" Kyanite exclaimed. "We can make prison life fun!"

"Oh be quiet!" Zoisite yelled angrily.

"I did pretend to get sent to prison only to get sent to prison for real!" Amber added. "I'm getting anxious!"

"Hey, is no one going to check up on Black Rutile?" Dalmatian Jasper asked while pointing at Black Rutile sitting calmly in her cell.

"She's looking even mopier than me," Xenotime added worriedly. "I hope she's alright."

Hiding from the endless chatter of Zoisite's team, a restored Emerald, Morganite, Demantoid & Pyrope who were behind bars to repent, Black Rutile gazed emotionlessly at her hand as she wondered how it all came to this. So many months of planning have now gone to waste, once again because of the Gems' human friends. This made her finally ask herself one thing. "Is this still worth it?"

This went way longer than I expected, and with way too many characters I put on the cast list that didn't get a line! I've recently found it to be a bad habit of mine, and I hope to remedy that in future stories. I also think I kind of rushed this to be as big as possible while still meeting my deadline. But in the meantime, I hope you all enjoyed these past thirteen weeks and I get to enjoy a break at last and maybe pursuing either a story I haven't written yet or one I still need to finish. But for now, let's see what to come in the finale.

"Your Highness, we received another update from Aescul!" a snakelike alien told his master, another snake alien who was far larger and resembled a king cobra, as he received the news from their deep cover agent. "He says now might finally be the time."

"Excellent work, sir." The king cobra alien said to his subordinate while slithering away. "You are dismissed." The cobra then retreated into a mysterious chamber where he met with a shadowy figure towering above him. "It's time for the Gems to enter our contest, great Lapidarist." He declared to the shadow. "Soon, we shall return your children to you."

The shadowy figure began glowing a brilliant white light as it woke up, followed by shimmering with every possible color in existence while laying eyes upon its servant.

Featuring Voltaire as King Cobralan Jormagundr

TO BE CONCLUDED IN STEVEN UNIVERSE: SNAKE EYES

A FINALE THREE YEARS IN THE MAKING

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