#Lion3straighttovideo

[pearlplusau]

Pearlplusau Chapter 10 Part 1 - The Farewell

It’s been weeks after Rose’s big announcement. It took a while, but the gems were able to accept her decision despite how scared they all were for the future.

Greg was trying to come up with new songs for his unborn child. He didn’t want to go for the easy stuff like the star song or that sheep thing. He wanted to make his own nursery songs despite not knowing much about them. He figured simple and catchy would do the trick.

During the final month of the pregnancy, Rose had been conducting meetings on the future of the clan after she was gone. She talked about the other gem monsters roaming around corners of the planet. She talked about how they need to be contained and do what’s best for them. She talked about how the planet will need its guardians despite its peace for now. The gems didn’t want to upset their leader and listened well. They didn’t want their last moments together to be anything but good.

Normally, a pregnant couple would be having visits with a gynecologist or an obstetrician. But Greg figured it might not be a good idea to have Rose on the local news with the front pages screaming, “HYBRID ALIEN CHILD FOUND PREGNATED BY IMMORTAL ALIEN!” So, to minimize the risks of Rose or the baby getting whisked off to a lab for experiments, they figured to keep things on the down-low until the birth. This meant going to zero doctors for any of the pregnancy checks. Even getting an ultrasound might not be such a good idea with the local clinic.

It also meant not knowing what gender the baby was until he or she was born. Fortunately, neither Greg nor Rose cared too much about the sex of the baby. It also kept things exciting until the baby was finally born.

It was a week before the baby’s birth. Greg and Rose had been busy prepping for the arrival of the baby. They had been closely studying how Vidalia looked after the now toddler sour cream. She also gave her own pointers and experience of the newborn experience by feeding him, changing his diaper, and generally making sure he was out of harm’s way. The single mother was a great source of information, cuz now Greg knew where to get all those baby stuff without costing him his van. Vidalia also found a list of pre-birth activities for parents to try out. She had them listed out herself when she found out she was pregnant but didn’t get through the first few items on the list. One of them was a video recording for the unborn kid to see.

It was a day at the beach. Rose and Greg were doing their favorite thing at the waters: Getting sand between their toes. But today is a different beach day, today is a beach day with a video camera.

Rose had this idea to film their day at the beach for the unborn baby so they’ll get to know their mother, even if it’s a short five minute video of her rambling at the beach. She held up an old video camera they borrowed from Vidalia. After some briefing by Greg on the simple but also ancient form of audio-visual capturing technology, she got the hang of it rather quickly.

For most of the day, Greg wasn’t even aware that Rose was recording with the tiny audio-visual capturing device. Rose also didn’t want to alert him that could likely make the day weird and unnatural. She was able to secretly record a bunch of beautiful little moments like the beauty of the gem temple (in its original, non-beach house version), the peaceful waves, and Greg’s interactions with the seagulls (or the same one). She recorded a few more but ultimately was found out by Greg.

Greg peeked into the gallery and found various close up and far away shots of the beach, the waves, and the sea. “Wow, looks like you’ve been busy while I took a nap.”

“And speaking of napping…” Rose pressed a left arrow button and went through the gallery. She found that clip of Greg waking up from his nap. She giggled and teased him when he realised what it was. “Here’s a recording of you getting startled by that seagull.”

Squak

Agh! Wha! Who- *heavy panting* (Rose giggled uncontrollably while Greg looked at her, confused.)

(Hopefully, this goes without saying that these are screenshots of an episode and that I owe none of these.)

The reliving of the incredibly hectic moment made Greg furrow his eyebrows and face somehow.

Greg noticed his receding hairline and turned away in slight embarassment, “Hehe, yea, I remember that pretty well.” He said while patting his dangerously balding head.

She pointed the camera towards the beach again to proceed with her recording, but Greg had a little skit in his mind. While Rose was filming the glistering sea, Greg got into frame and crab-walked into the focus, making Rose giggle and lose focus on the scenery. “Hehe, what are you doing?”

“Making this fun than it already is.” He replied while crabwalking from the other side of the frame.

After that, they filmed a bunch of other schenanigans that involved more goofy scenes and some rare interactions with the local white sea birds (seagulls). The filming was a lot of fun until-

“Oh wait! I have an idea.” She turned the camera to focus on Greg, startled by the sudden attention. The camera zoomed in and focused on Greg. “Let’s record ourselves for the baby! We’ll do little introductions so they’ll get to know us better when they get to see it!”

She pressed record and prompted a very nervous-looking Greg. “Come on,” Her voice was very gentle as well as very encouraging.

“Sorry, getting a little stage fright here.”

“Tell us about yourself.”

“My name is…Greg. Nono wait this is all wrong!”

Rose paused the recording and set the camera down, “What is it Greg?”

“I thought of an idea, wait here a sec.” He ran off and came back with a guitar and a pair of sunglasses. “Alright, I wanna look cool for the baby, so I’ll pose on that rock with the guitar like im on stage or something. We can even do some kind of transition thing, here, let me show you which buttons to press.���

Rose resumed filming at the sand until Greg shouted his cue, “Okay… now!”

Rose panned the frame up to Greg with a guitar in hand. “They call me…*strumstrum* Mr Universe! Get ready baby! You’re gonna have the coolest dad in this side of the cosmos!” Dododododdododdo (Air guitar). “Press the button Rose!”

“Oh!” She pressed a button but it was a wave of light shining across the screen. “Is it this one?”

Greg, being pretty far away from the camera, wasn’t sure. “Uhh, maybe?”

“What about this one?” Upon pressing, a star shaped outro frame transitioned from the outer frame into the middle of the frame, which ceased the recording. “I think I did it!”

“Alright! Let’s see the video!” Greg prodded over with the guitar strapped to his body and investigated the recording. “Hmm, hows about we do another take?”

Take 2

“They call me…*strumstrum* Mr Universe! Get ready baby! You’re gonna have the coolest dad in this side of the cosmos!” Dododododdododdo (Air guitar)

“I press it now right?” Rose asked.

“Do it!” Just as Greg said it, his foot slipped off the rock and had him fell on his butt. For an even more entertaining scene, a seagull landed on the tip of his guitar like it was all an orchstrated act.

Greg, embarrassed from the fall, faced Rose and asked, “Can we cut that part out?”

Rose, trying really hard to hold in her giggles, said, “Nono, its perfect.”

-

The video camera was depleted most of its battery, but the couple didn’t really take note of it.

The camera started recording again and the screen showed Greg sitting on the beach with a seagull nearby. Rose giggled as she recalled how the seagull had been an intrusion at the last recording. “Heh, maybe it’ll help you with your intro this time.”

While Rose recorded what she wanted to say to Steven and Nora, the video was aimed at Greg and the seagulls he befriended. She didn’t mean to be filming them while she was talking to the baby, but it felt right if she was talking about the beauty of the planet and its living beings.

 “Norah, we can’t both exist. I am going to become half of you. And when you love yourself, that’s me, loving you and loving being you. You’re going to be extraordinary. You’re going to be a human being.”

Greg, from a distance, seemed to have something in his hand that he was going to share. Seeing how excited he was, her eyes lit up with the same level of ecstacy before ending the recording.

“Take good care of them Nora.” Rose ended the recording with the star outro, making the zoom sound as Nora’s recording came to an end.  

“Rose,” Greg came over to her with what seemed to be a rock on his hand, “Check out this cool rock I found in the sand.”

On the palm of his hand was a simple white rock that had been in the erosion process for a while. Rose noticed the smooth texture of the rock while also spotting tiny holes that were not visible to the human eye. There was something familiar about the rock tho, something Rose didn’t notice at the first glance.

“If you turn it around, you’ll notice it looks awfully familiar…” Greg teased while Rose was still trying to decipher the rock puzzle.

It took her a while, but the rock was beginning to look like a deformed shape of the number 2. “Is it… because it looks like a bird?”

“Not just any bird!” He handed her the artifact. “It looks exactly like the seagull that scared the living daylight out of me!”

Upon closer inspection, Rose noticed the resemblance between the rock and the aforementioned seagull friend. Her starry eyes and ecstatic gleam showed how, once again, everything on this beautiful planet can surprise her even after residing longer than any living being on Earth.

*Beep beep, beep beep*

As the pink lady was further admiring the incredible parallel between the rock and its live counterpart, who was squeaking and picking at the sand, there was a quick but brief beeping sound coming from the video camera right next to her. However, she was too entranced with the rock in hand to take note.

Greg picked up the device to see what the fuss was about. There was a pulsing red battery symbol and a box of text was shown on the screen.

Warning: Battery lower than 10%, please plug in.

“Huh, that’s not good.” Greg turned to Rose with the low-battery display. “Hey uh, Rose? The battery is almost gone. I think its time we head back to Vidalia’s for that charger.”

Rose, now broken from the seagull-rock trance, was not following. “It’s almost gone? Oh dear, is it dying? I can heal it with my tears!”

“Nono, no.” Greg put a stop to it before Rose could think of anything upsetting. “It just needs power from the charger port at Vidalia’s house. We can come back another time.”

“Oh uhm, about that.” Rose explained how she planned to guide the gems in the next few days until the expected birth date. “There’s still a lot of things for us to cover. There might not be another time for another beach day.”

Greg didn’t want to interrupt her time with important gem stuff, so he decided on a better idea. “Why don’t we just stay a bit longer? We don’t have to get it charged right away. The recordings will still be there when we get it charged.”

“Really? Oh that’s wonderful Greg! Don’t worry, I just have one more thing to record. I just finished my message to Nora. I’ll need a bit of time to document what I want to say to Steven. After that, we can head back to revive this little fella if it ever dies out.”

The soon to be father checked the battery on the video recorder. “Alrighty, looks like there’s still enough juice for one more video.” He gave a thumbs up before he handed back the camera and continued, “So you’re really committed to this whole Steven or Nora thing huh?”

“Well of course.” Rose responded, “Those are the two names we’ve narrowed down, weren’t they? We’ll know which name we’ll use when the baby’s born.”

“Will do. Guess I’ll leave you to your messages.” Greg, being a considerate boyfriend, gave Rose her space, plopped onto the sand a few feet further away, and stared into the waters with his new seagull companions.

After Rose ended her recording to Steven, she went up to Greg for a little kiss on the beach. But when she returned with Greg, she couldn’t turn the device back on.

“Guess it finally ran out of juice.” Greg commented. “Come on, let’s head back and charge this bad boy!”

As the pregnant couple walked back to the van, Rose asked Greg if he could edit the film and create two separate tapes for Steven and Nora. The order of the video should go by sceneries, shenanigans, and then the message.

Greg was hauling almost all the beach equipment on his left shoulder. He was doing his best to adjust everything, so nothing falls off. He contemplated and asked, “Even the embarassing ones?”

“They’re not embarrassing! They’re perfect just as they are!”

“Okay sure, we can watch the final product after tonight together. But, here's a head-scratcher,” He reached for her left hand with his free right hand and turned her towards him, “How will you know which tape to keep for the baby?”

“Oh that’s easy!” Rose grinned at the question. “I’ll ask her when the time is right.”

That… doesn’t really clear things up much. For a moment, Greg was very confused.

“Ask who?” He took a moment to register and remembered, “Oh right, Garnet. Sees the future and all.”

Rose giggled and nodded. It was too early for anything to be solidified, so Rose wouldn’t be consulting the fusion anytime soon. She just needed enough time for her to put everything in their place.

End of part 1

(A/N: It's me, hi. Tbh my drafts for this chapter started last year but as I've mentioned in the previous post, life stuff happened. I went for my master degree in the capital city, while also working part-time at a nearby cafe.

It took some time to research on what Rose said to both Steven and Nora in the tapes. But I also couldn't just repeat everything she said into one single fic, that would be too much to read. So I briefly touched on what Rose wanted to say and focused more on the in-betweens as well as the before and after recordings.

I have also been studying on literature that introduces the different stylistic tools for emphasizing certain points or scenes in a piece of writing or a movie. I won't be listing out every single one of them here, but one brief analysis I can offer is the scene where Rose points the camera at Greg and the seagulls while talking to Steven and Nora. It's the perfect use of Imagery, which conveys the tone of the speech in a calming, peaceful manner. You can't think its a random scene to be paired with Rose's speech about the beauty of human life. Think about it, why else would she be talking about the beauty of Earth while also capturing the visuals of the different inhabitants of the planet. The purpose of this scene is to illustrate and emphasize the uniqueness and distinctive experiences of the different living beings. (With the examples and descriptions provided by Rose.)

But anyways, I've been studying on the importance and relevance of certain writings and now I can't read much without overthinking "Why did they have to write it this way? What possible implications or meanings they are trying to emphasize?" It's basically what I've been dealing with most in this chapter writing process.

Hope I didn't bore you guys with my brief analysis. Anyone here with an interest in language or literature might be able to power through what I've written but this kind of thing isn't for everyone to enjoy.

I hope you guys enjoyed reading this and be on the look out for part 2 coming up in the next few days! See ya!)

[fangirlmusiclover3]

SHE IS SO BEAUTIFUL! ! AND HER VOICE THE SAME. IM FANGIRLING SO HARD OVER THIS EPISODE LIKE I CANT EVEN XD. I DID NOT EXPECT THIS IN THIS EPISODE I DIDNT !!

[mayxwolf]

So many feels omg once again Rebecca Sugar made us cry AGAIN this was just beautiful her voice was just so sweet and gentle and her dorky laugh xD #RoseQuartz #Stevenuniverse #lion3straighttovideo