#ok i gotta continue collecting people that make it their mission to cause me Distress

[cerealmonster15]

my vision

[minijenn]

Universe Falls Chapter 46

Bleh so yeah a short kinda whatever chapter, but that’s fine at least its over with cause I’m excited about Society of the Blind Eye and I wanna just get there already but still, this chapter is decent enough I suppose. B plots pretty cool so that’s something. Enjoy!

Previous: http://minijenn.tumblr.com/post/168620833619/universe-falls-chapter-45

Chapter 46: Keeping It Together

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“We need to track down Peridot,” Garnet addressed the collection of Gems and kids sitting before her in the temple’s living room, her tone steady, firm, and authoritative. The Gem leader had figured that more than enough time had passed since the invasion for them to be getting back to business, namely by curtailing one of the few lose ends still left over from it. And as far as they were all concerned, it was their responsibility to tie that end up for the safety of the planet as a whole. “We found her pod. We know she’s out there somewhere. She came to Earth with a job to do, and odds are, she’s still going to try and do it. That’s why I’ve gathered you all here.”

“Whoa, so this is a super serious magical meeting, then?” Mabel asked, aptly enthused. “Man, if I had known that, then I would have baked cookies for everyone!”

“I thought we were here so everyone could help me fold all this laundry,” Steven noted, nodding down to the massive pile of unfolded tee shirts that they were all sitting around.

“That too,” Garnet said, picking up a shirt and folding it up. “The chore wheel idea you had fell apart fast.”

“Wasn’t me,” Amethyst vouched, reclining back as she nodded over at the aforementioned wheel hanging on the fridge. While various housekeeping responsibilities had been divided up evenly among Steven and the Gems, Pearl had taken the liberty of crossing their names out and commandeering every single one of them.

“I just really enjoy doing all of those things,” the white Gem said with a proud smile.

“It’s better if we do them together,” Garnet asserted, giving Amethyst in particular a critical glance that prompted her to begrudgingly sit up and help.

“So… why are me and Mabel here then?” Dipper asked, somewhat lost amidst all this talk of laundry.

“Oh, mostly for the Peridot thing,” the Gem leader reiterated. “Though more hands does make the folding go by faster.”

“Ugh, humans should just stop wearing clothes,” Amethyst groaned boredly. “Be a lot funnier.”

“Hey! I’m a civilified part human, thank you very much,” Steven remarked in playfully pointed protest. “Clothing is a must.”

“Ok, but seriously, Steven, do you really have to have so many versions of the exact same shirt?” Dipper asked, holding one of the young Gem’s many star shirts up to prove his point.

“Pfft, don’t listen to him, Steven,” Mabel scoffed, rolling her eyes at her brother’s usual cynicism. “This is coming from the guy who wears the same clothes almost every day because he hates doing laundry.”

“Laundry is a waste of time,” Dipper remarked defensively, crossing his arms. “I’m a busy guy.”

“Well, I happen to like all my star shirts,” Steven grinned as he happily folded one of them. “Its guess its sorta like my look, you know? Simple, yet iconic!”

“Suuuure, it is, Steven,” Amethyst said with a wry, joking grin as she tossed another shirt over to Steven. “Still, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Dipper might have a point about you having too many of these things. Folding them all up is so booooooooring…”

“Hm…” the young Gem mused, a growing smile spreading across his face as he happened to glance over at Garnet. “Well, its like you said, Garnet, this goes by a lot faster when we have more hands to help. So… maybe we could finish a lot sooner if Ruby and Sapphire were here!”

“Oh my gosh, yes!” Mabel readily agreed with an excited gasp. “It’d be so great to hang out with those two! It feels like its been ages since the last time we saw them!”

“Mabel, the ‘last’ time we saw Ruby and Sapphire was the first time we ever saw them,” Dipper pointed out dryly. “And that was only a few weeks ago.”

“Well it’d still be really cool to see them again!” Steven reiterated before looking to Garnet with a pleading smile. “So…? What do you say?”

“I’m sure they’d be glad to see you three,” the Gem leader remarked with a hint of an amused smirk. “But I am not unfusing for laundry.”

“Aw…” Steven and Mabel sighed in disappointed unison, their sudden hopes for seeing the Gem couple again quickly dashed.

All the same, Pearl spoke up amidst this, taking the opportunity to get the conversation back on the more pressing matter at hand. “Garnet, you don’t think Peridot would come looking for us, do you?”

“She better not, if she knows what’s good for her…” Dipper muttered disdainfully, more than ready to put his fresh sword skills to use if the green Gem came anywhere close. After all, he was still ever mindful of Peridot’s involvement in leading up to the horrible straits that Lapis was still very much in. And that was not something that he was about to forgive and forget so easily.

“We weren’t her priority,” Garnet said, as rationally as ever. “She was sent here to do something in the Kindergarten.”

“Do you think she’s still going to try to reactivate it?” Pearl asked, suddenly anxious.

“Mm… if she gets it back up and running, the injectors will turn back on…” Garnet said, her expression darkening as she said this.

“Injectors?” Steven spoke up, curious. “What are those?”

“You’re already seen them…” Pearl said with a remorseful sigh. “Well, you’ve seen them disabled.” To give a visual demonstration, she projected a hologram of her Gem, showing one of the many, massive, drill-like machines that dotted the Kindergarten. However, instead of downed and dusted, this one was erect and active as it began digging into the ground, planting something therein. “If Peridot reactivates them, they’ll pick right up where they left off, planting Gems in the crust of the Earth, where they’ll incubate and suck the life right out of the ground! We can’t let Peridot restart Gem production here. If we do, the entire planet will become…”

“Janked,” Garnet succinctly finished where Pearl had left off, eliciting surprised gasps from the kids and a rowdy laugh from Amethyst.

“Garnet! That mouth!” the purple Gem chuckled, not noticing Pearl’s still very apparent distress, which was aptly shared by all three of the kids.

“So, uh, we should probably stop her from turning those injector thingys back on then, huh?” Mabel asked, quite uneasy.

“That’s the plan,” Garnet affirmed, rising to stand. She paused though, noticing the worried looks on the faces of both the kids and her teammates as they all unanimously feared what could happen to the planet they all called home if Peridot was left to her own devices. “Don’t worry,” the Gem leader assured with a small, but confident smile. “We’ll stop her. Come on, everyone.”

“Coming!” Pearl chimed, hopping to her feet as she hurried after Garnet to the warp pad.

“As long as we don’t have to fold anything,” Amethyst remarked, gladly leaving the pile of laundry behind to the kids, who simply continued folding. After all, the Gems had made it clear that they had this situation covered, which was why they were all quite surprised when Garnet called for them.

“Steven, Dipper, Mabel,” the Gem leader beckoned with a small grin, one that Amethyst shared as she hopped onto the warp pad.

“C��mon! That means you guys too, right?” she asked, chuckling as the kids exchanged excited smiles at the open invitation, one that they knew, just a few weeks ago, the Gems would have never even extended to them.

“Woo! Gem mission time!” Mabel readily perked up, rushing over to the warp pad without delay as the boys quickly followed. “I can’t remember the last time we’ve been on one of these that didn’t involve all of us almost dying!”

“That’s because we’ve almost died on just about every one we’ve been on,” Dipper said, somewhat deadpan, though not as much as he could have been, given how disastrous the invasion itself had ended.

“Hm…” Pearl frowned upon hearing this, her worry palpable as she whispered to the Gem leader. “Garnet, are you sure we should bring the kids along with us? This could be dangerous.”

“Peridot’s got nothing we can’t handle,” Garnet promised, confident that this claim was true.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Amethyst asked eagerly. “Let’s go mess her up!”

“O-or maybe we could just ask her nicely to stop trying to hurt the Earth!” Steven reasoned, not wanting to see things resort to violence.

“No, actually, I agree with Amethyst,” Dipper staunchly remarked. “If we have a chance to stop Peridot, then we might as well take it. No matter what we have to do.”

The others too pause upon hearing such a dark, coldly-stated resolve, all of them looking to Dipper with apt concern over it. However, before any of them could question it, the front door happened to burst open, startling everyone as a very perturbed conman bared in.

“Kids!” Stan shouted, an obviously annoyed look on his face as he caught sight of the twins accompanying the Gems on the warp pad. “What do you two think you’re doing up here?! I thought you were only gonna be up here bugging the Gems for a few minutes, not all day! We gotta get back down to the shack and restock the gift shop before people start thinking we’re having some sort of ‘clearance sale’. Ugh, just saying those terrible words makes me wanna barf.”

“Uh, actually, Grunkle Stan…” Mabel began, exchanging a tentative glance with Dipper. “We’re kinda about to go on a super important Gem mission to save the entire Earth! So…”

“So restocking the gift shop can definitely wait until we’re done with that,” Dipper finished with a bit more certainty, though he couldn’t claim to be completely confident in light of Stan’s already disapproving glower over this information.

“Oh, it can?” Stan asked, raising an eyebrow as he glanced up from the twins to look towards the Gems.

“I’ll certainly say it can!” Pearl cut in, crossing her arms. “Like Mabel said, we have very important work to do, work that, if not tended to, could result in the death of this planet and everything on it! Which means, Stan, that we have no time to deal with you or your little… gift shop dilemma.”

While Stan usually would have countered the white Gem’s condescending behavior with some kind of sharp, witty retort, instead he simply seemed to shrug it off and respond in a way almost no one had been expecting. “Alright then,” he said, his tone as calm and collected as his expression. “If this ‘mission’ or whatever it is is so important, then I guess I’ll just have to go with you guys.”

“What?!” everyone, save for Garnet, exclaimed in stunned unison at this sudden twist, their surprise only growing as the conman started to nonchalantly head towards the warp pad himself.

“You heard me,” Stan shrugged, hardly even phased by their shocked expressions as he addressed the twins in particular. “Its about time I go on one of these nutso Gem adventures with you kids. And considering what happened with that whole hand ship thing, I think I have a right to come along and make sure you two don’t get beat up by any more of those ‘Homeworld’ jerks.”

“Aw, yeah!” Amethyst exclaimed excitedly before any of the others could even react. “I’ve always wanted you to come on a mission with us, Stan! It’ll be just like a Revenge Trip, only with like, higher stakes, I guess. Still, it’s gonna be awesome!”

“Yeah, it will be!” Steven grinned, equally as enthused. “Finally, all seven of us, going on a mission together! I’ve dreamed of this day for so long now! We’re like one big, huge, super team!”

“We should call ourselves the ‘Crystal Pines’!” Mabel chimed in brightly.

“Whoa! We should!” Steven gasped, stars in his eyes. “We can make matching team tee-shirts and everything!”

“Please, no more tee shirts,” Dipper deadpanned, nodding over to the still plentiful pile of unfolded shirts still lying on the floor on the other side of the house.

“Now, hold on just a minute!” Pearl interjected hotly as the kids started to get carried away in their excitement. “Stan, you are not coming with us!”

“Oh, really?” the conman asked dryly.

“Really!” the white Gem reiterated harshly. “We’re going to track down a Homeworld Gem with intel and resources far beyond our own. This could be incredibly dangerous, and the last thing we need is for our attention to be divided because we have to keep an eye on you.”

“Keep an eye on me?” Stan repeated with a caustic scoff. “Oh, that’s rich. Maybe you don’t remember how I was the one who saved you three from that horde of zombies?”

“W-well… yes, but-”

“Or that you apparently had to be saved from those ‘dangerous Homeworld Gems’ by three kids?”

“Alright, b-but that wasn’t-”

“Seems to me like you three could use all the help you could get,” Stan concluded with an almost smug grin. “And luckily for you, I’m nice enough to offer that help, so you might as well take it.”

“Ugh, like we even need your-”

“You can come,” Garnet interupted Pearl’s bitter refusal, her expression alone showing that she was growing impatient with this ongoing debate.

“But, Garnet!” the white Gem protested amidst Steven, Mabel, and Amethyst’s shared excitement and Stan’s clear satisfaction.

“Hey, P, no butts except Stan’s up here on this warp pad!” the purple Gem quipped with a rowdy laugh.

“Yeah, you heard her,” Stan remarked triumphantly as he finally stepped onto the rather crowded warp pad. “Move over and make some room, Pearl.”

“I can’t believe this…” Pearl growled to herself, clearly quite displeased with this turn of events. Even so, she figured there was no use in arguing with it, seeing as how they had wasted enough precious time as it was. “Still, if we have to have one more along for this mission, I suppose its best to take the necessary precautions…” With a relenting sigh, her gemstone began to glow as she pulled a medium-length, thin, elegant rapier with a symmetrical, ornamental guard and a blueish tint to its glistening edge. “Dipper, here,” she said with a small smile as she handed this sword to her already amazed pupil, who was even more awestruck as she entrusted it to him out of nowhere. “That is the Ancient Sea Blade. I stole it off a Homeworld Gem during a fierce underwater battle back during the war. But I don’t have much use for it nowadays, and seeing as how this is your first real mission since you’ve been training under my tutelage, it only makes sense that you go in properly armed.”

“Whoa…” Dipper said in apt muted wonder as he held the stunning blade up for Steven and Mabel to get a better look at. “This thing is so cool! Thanks, Pearl! I promise I’ll be super careful with it.”

“I trust that you will,” Pearl nodded with warm approval.

“Oh, wow,” Stan spoke up as he sent the white Gem an unimpressed glance. “So you’re just gonna hand some deadly weapon off to my nephew while I’m standing right here? Real classy.”

“Is there a problem with that?” Pearl asked, crossing her arms and returning his scowl.

“No, not really,” the conman shrugged apathetically. “But would it have killed you to give the kid a sword that isn’t so, ya know, girly?”

“Girly?” Dipper frowned as he looked to the Ancient Sea Blade’s sleek, graceful structure again.

“I’ll have you know that sword is a steadfast, sturdy weapon that requires a skillful hand to wield and demands respect from all those in its path,” Pearl asserted to Stan pointedly. “Which, of course, is something that you would know nothing about.”

“Oh, I’ll show you ‘respect’,” Stan growled, rolling his sleeves up in preparation for a brawl, though Garnet was quick to put a stop to it.

“That’s enough,” the Gem leader said stanchly, holding her arms up to keep the white Gem and the conman apart. “We’ve already wasted enough time here. Let’s get going.”

And so, without any further arguments or deliberations, that’s exactly what they did.

The darkened, hollowed out walls of Kindergarten were just as lifeless and solemn as ever as the collective group arrived, their voices and footsteps being the only natural sounds for miles around as they began to search for Peridot. A search that initially seemed to be rather fruitless as there were no apparent signs of the green Gem, or anyone else for that matter, in sight.

“So, Stan, does this place still give ya the ‘heebie-jeebies’ just like it did when I brought you here all those years ago?” Amethyst asked with a goading grin as she elbowed him in the knee.

“Pfft, are you kidding me?” Stan scoffed, though he was still rather uneasy as he glanced around the desolate area. “This place never freaked me out. A-after all, I’ve seen plenty of dead, barren wastelands in my day.”

“Suuuure, you have,” the purple Gem quipped, rolling her eyes as she moved on ahead. “But just be sure to keep an eye out. Your never know when something’s gonna… jump out at you!” At this, she suddenly turned around, having shape shifted her face into a grotesque, monstrous appearance, one that was more than enough to elicit a startled gasp from the conman.

“Hey!” Stan shouted angrily, already chasing after the purple Gem as she broke down into heavy laughter. “Amethyst!”

“Ha! Try and catch me, ‘old man’!” Amethyst teased, vaulting over a rock as she hurried through the Kindergarten.

“Could you two please be quiet and try and take this seriously?!” Pearl fussed after both of them. “If Peridot hears either of you, she’ll be able to tell we’re coming from a mile away!” Of course, neither Stan nor Amethyst heeded the white Gem as they continued to have their noisy fun, much to the white Gem’s severe aggravation. “Oh, this is already a disaster…”

“Calm down, Pearl,” Garnet advised as she walked past, briefly placing a hand on her teammate’s shoulder. “Everything will work out, you’ll see.”

“Ugh, I hope so…” Pearl groaned as she trudged on ahead, wishing that this bothersome mission was already over.

At the same time, the kids hung a bit behind the adults, though they still followed them, at first anxiously as they remembered just how ominous the Kindergarten was. However, Steven and Mabel were quick to loosen up as they noticed Dipper practicing with the sword Pearl had given him, swinging it around experimentally to get a sense of how it handled. Mabel stifled a laugh as she watched her brother’s broad, almost over dramatic movements before she started mimicking his maneuvers with an imaginary sword of her own, complete with exaggerated facial expressions and all. Dipper only caught on as he overheard Steven’s amused chuckle at this, and as he paused and glanced over his shoulder, Mabel abruptly stopped and put on a front of unknowing innocence, one that wasn’t very convincing, all things considered.

“Didn’t you guys hear what Pearl just said?” he asked, rather exasperated. “We’re supposed to be taking this mission seriously.”

“Oh, we are taking it seriously!” Mabel protested with a wide smile. “In fact, its so serious, that I even brought this along!” She pulled her grappling hook out of her sweater, brandishing it proudly. “You’re not the only one around here with a fancy-smanzy weapon, bro-bro. If Peridot tries to mess with us, I’ll bop her with this!” To prover her point, she launched the hook out, only for gravity to quickly enough pull it back down to the ground, where it landed with a dull, unimpressive thud.

“…I… think we should just stick with letting my sword do all the fighting, if its all the same to you, Mabel,” Dipper remarked dryly, turning to catch up with the Gems.

“Well, either way, I still think we’re being pretty serious about all this,” Steven vouched confidently as he hurried over to the Gems as well. “Don’t you think so, Garnet?”

“Sure,” the Gem leader smirked, taking a moment to ruffle the young Gem’s hair playfully.

“Hm… Well, nothing looks activated…” Pearl noted, her gemstone reflecting light upon one of the broken-down injectors. “In fact, it doesn’t look like anything’s budged since the last time we were here…”

“You’re right,” Garnet said, hands on her hips as she looked around. “But just because Peridot hasn’t been here yet, it doesn’t mean she won’t come.”

“Hm,” Steven nodded in terse agreement, making his expression resolved to show just how serious he really was.

“Let’s do a thorough check of the perimeter,” the Gem leader continued authoritatively.

“Hm.”

“That way, we can monitor any further entry.”

“Hm, sounds good to me!” Steven chimed with a thumbs up, already heading off to do just that as the others began to split up.

“Oh! If we’re teaming up to go look for Peridot, then you and me should totally be Search Buddies, Dipper!” Mabel exclaimed with a daring grin. “That way, when we find her, I can deflect my grappling hook off your sword and we can knock her out clean before she tries any of her sneaky shenanigans!”

Upon hearing such a bizarre plan, the most Dipper could initially do was look to his sister with apt confusion, looking between the rather thin blade of his sword and her quite bulky grappling hook. “Mabel, do you understand how physics work? Like, at all?”

“Yo, if we’re choosing Search Buddies, I call Stan as mine!” Amethyst proclaimed with a wide grin, shapeshifting her legs to be long so she could be tall enough to steal the conman’s fez off his head to put it on her own.

“Yeah, you would,” Stan sardonically remarked, though he was still grinning in amusement as he reclaimed his hat.

“You two teaming up is a catastrophe just waiting to happen,” Pearl muttered, rolling her eyes at their joking manner in light of the serious situation.

As the others continued discussing their investigative arrangements, Steven had already wandered off on his own to look around the corner. The young Gem didn’t expect to see too much, but he kept an eye out for suspicious activity, even if he had no idea what he’d really do if he happened upon any. He couldn’t deny that he was rather worried, especially as he passed by another injector, about what Peridot might do if she was allowed to succeed in her unknown ambitions. After all, she had already been stranded on Earth for quite some time now, completely left to her own devices, whatever they might be. Chances were that she had likely made some kind of progress on her mysterious, likely harmful goals, and that she would only continue to do so if she wasn’t found and stopped soon. Steven only hoped that Garnet’s hunch that the green Gem was somewhere around the Kindergarten was right, otherwise the search for her could go on endlessly, all the way until she completed what she came to Earth to do. And while that was a thought that alarmed the young Gem quite a bit, fortunately, he wouldn’t have to wait that long, for as he continued to independently investigate the area, he happened to overhear the unmistakably familiar voice none other than Peridot herself.

“Log date: 6 5 2,” the green Gem began as she rose up along with a platform that had emerged from underground. Steven froze up in his spot only a few feet away, clearly within Peridot’s frame of view, though she didn’t seem to notice him at first as she continued her report while fiddling around her with finger-formed touchscreen. “This is Peridot, updating status. Still stuck on this miserable planet… The fusion experiments are developing properly. A few have even emerged early-” The green Gem suddenly cut herself off with a sharp gasp the moment her eyes drifted away from her screen and towards the equally startled young Gem standing right in front of her.

For a moment, neither of them said anything, both of them completely unsure of how to react to such an unexpected, awkward encounter. Though based on how still both of them were, it was clear that they saw each other as equal threats, based on what little they knew about each other thus far. Even so, Peridot was the first to speak up, albeit in an anxious whisper as her screen dissolved and she looked around nervously. “Are the… other ones with you?” Steven initially shook his head, though he was quick to recant this lie with an honest nod and awkward shrug. Peridot let out a frustrated groan, her disjointed fingers covering her face as she lamented her incredibly bad luck. “Of course… Why not?”

“Peridot!” The green Gem gasped in sharp fear as she heard Garnet’s firm shout from across the Kindergarten, her cover completely blown as the Gems and the Pines spotted her all at the same time.

“There she is!” Pearl exclaimed, her spear already in her hands.

“Let’s get her!” Amethyst grinned daringly, rushing forward with her whip at the ready as everyone else quickly followed.

Needless to say that with such a crowd on her case, Peridot didn’t hesitate to flee, rushing down the Kindergarten corridor with her pursuers hot on her trail. Oddly enough, the green Gem seemed to be running right for one of the high, impassible walls of the canyon, confusing the others a bit, though even so, they continued to chase her in the hopes of finally ending this ongoing game of cat and mouse.

“Give it up, Peridot!” Dipper shouted, his sword already at the ready to go after the green Gem who was largely responsible for the disasters of the past several weeks. “You have nowhere to run!”

“Yeah! We’ve got you cornered!” Mabel added, trying to get a good aim with her grappling hook. “I’ve always wanted to say that!”

“That’s what you think!” Peridot retorted, glancing back with a snide grin before she did something none of them had been expecting. Without even skipping a step, the green Gem began to run vertically straight up the Kindergarten wall, snickering triumphantly as she put distance between herself and her foes. “Try and catch me now, you filthy rebels!”

“So that’s this ‘big, scary Homeworld Gem’ you guys are so afraid of?” Stan asked the Gems rather caustically as they all stopped at the base of the wall as Peridot continued running up it. “Pfft, she just seems like a loudmouthed nerd to me.”

“She mostly is,” Amethyst shrugged with a scowl. “Her being able to run up walls is new though.”

“Aw, I can’t do that!” Steven pouted, wishing that he could pursue her somehow.

“Neither can she!” Pearl exclaimed, tossing her spear straight up towards the green Gem.

Peridot ducked out of the weapon’s path as it sailed straight over her, her smug smile returning as she glanced back down at the group below. “Ha! Missed!”

Her assumption was quickly proven wrong, however, as Pearl’s spear did strike something: an injector stuck in the wall near the top of the cliff. And given its already loosening grip on the canyon wall, the impact was enough to get the injector to not only detach, but come collapsing down right towards the green Gem. Peridot gasped as she noticed the massive machine start hurtling down towards her, which was why she had no choice but to turn on her heel and start bolting down the wall the opposite of how she had come up it.

“Oh! I got her! I got her!” Pearl notified the others, her arms held open wide to catch their foe when she inevitably fell.

“Please,” Stan scoffed as he pushed the white Gem aside. “At the rate she’s bookin’ it down that wall, she’d knock you down flat the minute she runs into you. I got her.”

“Then what makes you think, you’ll have any better of a chance?” Pearl countered crossly, pushing the conman right back. “Why don’t you just step aside and let those of us with actual experience handle this?”

“A lot of good that ‘experience’ is gonna do when Greenie up there pummels you into the ground and gets away!” Stan argued back, shoving Pearl once more. However, before the white Gem could shoot back an angry retort of her own, their fight was abruptly interupted as Garnet ran for them both, pushing the pair out of the way just as the falling injector struck Peridot first, before brutally crashing into the ground below.

“Both of you, pay attention!” Garnet ordered to Stan and Pearl, her gauntlets summoned as she let them up.

“Hmph, he started it,” Pearl scowled as she crossed her arms.

“Right back at ya, stretch,” Stan deadpanned just as sourly.

“Do you think Peridot’s hurt?” Steven asked, somewhat concerned as he took a step towards the downed injector as the dust from the crash settled.

“Hopefully,” Dipper remarked, his grip tightening on his sword as he held it aloft in case the green Gem suddenly emerged. And that’s actually exactly what she did.

Surprisingly, Peridot was seemingly uninjured as she pulled herself out of the wreckage with little more than an exasperated groan. The moment she spotted her foes surrounding her, however, she was quick to pull herself up and attempt escape yet again.

“Nope, guess she’s ok!” Amethyst quipped, already lashing her whip out. “But she won’t be for long!”

Before Peridot could get too far, the purple Gem’s whip happened to catch her, coiling around her torso and pinning one of her arms down to her side. Before the green Gem could even think about wriggling free, Dipper and Mabel were both already running for her, their respective weapons poised to attack, albeit in different ways.

Dipper brought his sword down first, the Ancient Sea Blade clashing squarely with the lower half of Peridot’s arm, which, oddly enough, seemed to solid, sturdy metal. Though he was initially confused by this, he was quick to go in for another attack, trying to work past her surprisingly steadfast block. This process repeated itself several times over, with neither of them making any real progress until Dipper struck Peridot’s arm once again and decided to keep his blade there, in the hopes that applying pressure would wear her down, though really, the only thing it seemed to do was frustrate her even more.

“Augh! You irritating clods don’t know when to quit!” the green Gem seethed, beyond irritated with her current desperate straits.

“Apparently, neither do you!” Dipper countered just as harshly, suddenly pulling his sword back so Mabel could come in with a surprise firing of her grappling hook. Unfortunately though, Peridot saw it coming just in time and her disjointed fingers easily managed to catch the hook, though not before it knocked her against the side of her head first.

“Ow!” she growled, tossing the hook aside hard as one of her fingers began to spark with a self-generated electrical current. “I’ve had just about enough of this uncalled-for interference for one day!” With this, Peridot pressed her electrified finger down on Amethyst’s whip, its charge spreading throughout the entire weapon to the point that the purple Gem was forced to relinquish her hold on it.

“Whoa! Hot whip! Hot whip!” she shouted, her hands flying away from her weapon as Peridot hurriedly released herself from it. The green Gem let out another small victorious snicker as she began to flee on foot, though she didn’t get far before running smack dab into Stan, who had wisely, and quickly put himself directly in her path.

“And where do you think you’re goin’, Greenie?” he asked caustically, glaring boredly at her as he crossed his arms.

“Oh great… another meddling human to deal with…” Peridot grumbled, backing up a bit as she calibrated one of her fingers into a laser. While somewhat caught off guard by this, Stan was prepared to deal with it; what he wasn’t prepared for, though, was the spear that was suddenly vaulting towards both him and the green Gem. The projectile missed Peridot completely, and fortunately, Stan was quick enough to duck out of its path, but at the expense of inadvertently letting the green Gem go free.

“Hey, Pearl!” Stan shouted crossly over at the white Gem as he quickly picked himself up off the ground. “What do think you’re doing, chucking spears at my head like it’s some kinda target?!”

“I was trying to hit Peridot!” Pearl protested, already running forward as Amethyst started to do the same. “And what do you think you’re doing just letting her get away!?”

“Uh, looks like we’re all kinda letting her get away now!” the purple Gem pointed out, nodding up to Peridot as she continued running on ahead.

“Go ahead, you Crystal Clods!” she shouted over her shoulder somewhat breathlessly. “Wreck this place! See if I care! I already got what I needed!”

“Get back here!” Pearl yelled after her, another spear summoned as she ran after the green Gem.

Peridot responded to this command by simply throwing her hand up, her fingers starting to spin rapidly until they had essentially become helicopter blades. As she began to lift up off the ground and out of the reach of her pursuers, her small smirk gradually turned into a maniacal laugh as she looked down upon her foes, who still seemed insistent on giving chase after her. “Ha! Face it! You simple lumps are no match for my superior technology and intellect! You’ll never catch up!”

“You wanna bet, you noisy, green, triangle-headed punk!” Stan shouted now thoroughly invested in this mission simply due to the rather large aggravation Peridot proved to be for all of them.

“I’m gonna bop her good!” Amethyst growled, leading the charge after her as the white Gem and the conman followed not too far behind.

“I’ll help!” Pearl fiercely agreed as they all rounded a corner in the Kindergarten to continue the chase. The kids were eager to follow after them, all wanting to put a stop to the green Gem’s ambitions as well, but before they could get too far, Garnet was quick to reel them back in.

“Wait,” she called calmly, still standing by the fallen injector.

“Wait? Wait for what?” Dipper asked impatiently. “Peridot’s getting away! We have to go after her!”

“Yeah, come on, Garnet!” Steven urged intently, starting to run ahead. “We gotta hurry!”

The Gem leader stopped her young ward once again, this time by holding him back by his shirt until he finally gave up and stopped trying to run. Seeing that Garnet was quite serious about this, the kids all decided to take pause to see exactly what was so important that chasing the green Gem down could wait for.

“If Peridot’s mission was to reactivate the Kindergarten, the injectors would be on. Look,” she nodded over to the closest injector, which was as still and silent as ever. “They’re not.”

“Oh?” Steven frowned, initially confused by this before he started to get the picture. “Oh!”

“So that means… she was trying to do something else?” Mabel guessed, even if she was still a little confused.

“Exactly,” Garnet nodded. “Let’s see what she was actually doing-” The Gem leader paused, easily lifting up the broken injector and tossing it aside to reveal the elevator shaft Peridot had initially emerged from. “Down here.”

“Ohhhhh…” all three kids mused in understanding unison, immediately realizing what a smart plan this was.

“But wait, what about Peridot?” Steven asked, glancing over his shoulder at the direction the others had taken off.

“Pearl, Amethyst, and Stan can handle her,” Garnet assured, adjusting her shades. “If they can manage to get along.”

“Well, then I think its safe to say they’re pretty much doomed then,” Dipper sarcastically remarked as they all began to follow Garnet into the dark depths below, none of them anywhere close to sure of what they might find down there.

At the same time, Stan, Pearl, and Amethyst, had hardly noticed that Garnet and the kids hadn’t joined them in chasing Peridot down as they were all adamantly intent on catching up to her. The green Gem simply continued laughing mockingly at their attempts from her high vantage point, easily dodging Pearl’s spears and Amethyst’s whip as she glided smoothly through the air. For the most part, they didn’t lose sight of her, that is, until she happened to fly behind one of the injectors resting on the cliff above, only for her to not appear on the other side of it seconds later like she should have.

“Aw, great!” Amethyst huffed in breathless disappointment as they all came to a stop. “She got away!”

“Oh, I’m sure she didn’t get too far,” Pearl assured with a wave of her hand. “After all, if her primary objective, whatever it is, is here in the Kindergarten, then chances are she’s not going to just leave it behind so soon. I’m sure that if we remain diligent, we’ll be able to find her, capture her, and put an end to her mission once and for all!”

“Well we would have caught her sooner if somebody had just let me nab her instead of just wildly hurling spears like a nutcase,” Stan remarked crossly, not even trying to hide his frustration with the white Gem as he glared her way.

“Well maybe we would have caught her even before that if somebody hadn’t tried to unnecessarily interfere with me catching her as she was running down the cliff!” Pearl countered just as bitterly.

“Oh, what, so you’re saying this is all my fault then?” Stan asked harshly, not noticing Amethyst’s look of growing concern as she looked between him and Pearl.

“Yes!” the white Gem exclaimed, appalled. “The only thing you’ve done since this mission began is make an absolute mess of things! In fact, why are you even here in the first place?! It’s not like you had to come along with us!”

“Hey, I already told you,” the conman reiterated with a persistent scowl. “I’m here to keep an eye on the kids, remember?”

“Oh, and what a wonderful job you’re doing of it too!” Pearl exclaimed with faux approval. “But do you happen to notice something? Oh, that’s right! They’re nowhere to be found!”

Stan was more than ready to shoot back a heated retort, but right before he could, Amethyst finally interjected, growing quite aggravated with their ongoing squabbling. “I’m sure the kids probably just hung back with Garnet,” she began, staunchly stepping in between the pair. “For now, we gotta get our heads back in the game! P-dot’s hiking it away from here, and all we’re doing is standing around here yelling at each other about it, which isn’t really gonna do anything to stop her, you know.”

“Well, Amethyst, how do you purpose we do to find her?” Pearl asked, hands on her hips.

“Uh, I dunno, actually come up with some kinda plan instead of biting each other’s heads off,” Amethyst said, passing a rather critical glance between the white Gem and the conman. She paused, however, upon noticing a rather large exit hole marring the nearby Kindergarten wall, as well as a plentiful pile of rocks resting on the cliff high above it. “And you know what? I think I might just have an idea…” She smirked wryly, though her confidence quickly turned to worry as soon as she remembered who she had to work with for this plan. “But uh, for this to work, you guys are gonna have to, um… get along? Just a little?”

“Get along? With her?” Stan scoffed haughtily at the idea. “C’mon, Amethyst, you know me better than that. I don’t work well with snooty airheads.”

“Well I don’t work well with miserly charlatans,” Pearl shot back, turning her nose up as she glared away.

“…You know what, I also don’t work well with people who use words that nobody knows the

“Well, could you guys at least try to work together?” Amethyst asked, nervously amidst the ongoing tension. “At least until we catch Peridot? Then you two can go right back to hating each other.”

Stan and Pearl were both still quite bitter as they exchanged distrustful, disdainful glances, neither of them too keen on having to cooperate for any period of time, however small. But as they both met Amethyst’s sincere, pleading pout, their shared resistance to her proposed teamwork-heavy plan fell apart almost instantly.

“Ugh, alright, fine,” Pearl begrudgingly agreed. “But only until we capture Peridot, and not a moment after that.”

“Yeah, and this doesn’t mean we gotta be all buddy-buddy about it either,” Stan remarked, arms still crossed as he sent the white Gem a cold scowl.

“Oh, believe me, I have no intentions of being anything of the sort.”

“Uh… well… that’s fine, I guess,” Amethyst frowned, still uncertain of whether or not her plan would go off without a hitch given these less than favorable circumstances. “But shouldn’t we at least all shake on it just to-”

“No!” Stan and Pearl were quick to reject this idea, both of them firmly believing that them agreeing to work together along was more than enough.

“Ugh,” the purple Gem groaned, running a hand through her messy hair as she tried to figure out how she was ever going to make this work out. “I can already tell this is gonna be a pain in my gem…”

With the elevator disabled, Garnet and the kids had no choice but to descend into the underground control room on foot. Its slanted walls and floors were just as dark and uninviting as they had been when they had first happened upon them weeks ago, and yet they still somehow carried a heavy air of mystery to them, even if the group now knew what rested at the end of the tunnel.

“So… what exactly do you think Peridot was even doing down here?” Dipper asked Garnet, hoping that the Gem leader’s future vision could at the very least give them a hint about what they were up against.

“It’s hard to say,” Garnet said, her manner as levelheaded as ever. “But no matter what she’s up to, if Homeworld sent her here to do it, then we need to put a stop to it.”

“Oh, that’s such a good point, Garnet!” Steven said with a bright grin. “You’re brains and brawn. The whole package!”

“Thank you,” Garnet smirked, accepting her young ward’s high five.

“It’s gotta be cause you’re a fusion, right?” Mabel asked with eager curiosity. “Cause fusions can do like, anything. Believe me, I know from experience!”

“So do I!” Steven chimed in proudly.

“Me too, I guess,” Dipper added with a small, bemused chuckle.

“Fusions can do a lot,” Garnet confirmed, still grinning. “But I have to keep some of my secrets.”

“Aw, please?” Steven pleaded. “We wanna know! Is the strong part of you Ruby and the wise part of you Sapphire?”

Garnet paused for a moment, pondering this question before delivering an expectantly enlightened answer. “It’s all of both. When two Gems combine, it creates something greater than the sum of their parts. For instance,” she glanced over at Steven and Mabel. “When you two fused into Maven, what do you think each of you brought to the fusion?”

“Oh! I know!” Mabel quipped first, raising her hand. “I brought my impeccable fashion sense, great social skills, and my award winning smile! Oh, and I also brought glitter, lots of glitter! We were basically covered with it the entire time we were fused, it was great.”

“Hm… Well… I guess I brought my positive attitude and all-around friendliness to Maven,” Steven said, blushing in embarrassment as he tried not to sound too immodest.

“True, but those things weren’t all that Maven was,” Garnet said, still pushing on ahead. “They were everything that you two were, and more. They were a symbol of your friendship, your bond, the perfect image of your relationship and what it means to each of you.”

“Relationship…” Mabel muttered to herself, her cheeks suddenly red as she stole a quick glance over at the impressed young Gem. “Wow…”

“Another good example would be Stepper,” Garnet continued, looking between Steven and Dipper this time. “What parts of you two went into making him who he was?”

“Oh, well, uh… Hm…” Steven paused thoughtfully for a moment. “I don’t… really know.”

“Yeah, me neither,” Dipper shook his head. “I guess its because Stepper was… pretty awkward his first time around.”

“But not after you found harmony between each other,” Garnet countered smoothly. “So after that…”

“Oh, wait a second!” Steven filled in as the Gem leader trailed off. “The way we tricked Peridot when we were fighting her robots! Dipper, that was definitely your brains at work there!”

“Huh, I guess you’re right,” Dipper noted with a small, growing smile. “And I gotta say, Steven, even if I wasn’t super ok with it at first, you were pretty determined to keep us together, which was something that totally carried over to when we fused that second time.”

“Oh yeah!” Steven exclaimed, excited by this revelation.

“Stepper did have both of those traits,” Garnet acknowledged. “And many more, including ones that neither of you were even aware of. His existence told the story of you two growing closer, and the moment you found the harmony between each other was the moment you finally came together.” The Gem leader paused, her smile growing a bit as she adjusted her shades. “In the same way, that’s what I am. The symbol of our—of Ruby and Sapphire’s relationship, their devotion to each other. I’m both of them, and so much more than them, all at the same time. That’s why I’m so great.”

“Wow…” all three of the kids mused in genuine amazement at everything the Gem leader had said as they finally reached the control room.

“So what’s it like to stay fused all the ti-” Steven cut his question off as he took in the ruinous sight before them. The control room was still just as damaged as it had been the first time they had all been there, with its central crystal busted in and all power cut off to it completely, leaving the place dark and still. The key difference, however, were the numerous pillars standing erect throughout the entire room, most of them about Garnet’s height and all composed of tightly compacted dirt. All of this combined to create an atmosphere that was deeply unsettling, in ways that none of the kids could really describe as they tentatively followed Garnet into it. “I don’t know how… but this place is even creepier than the last time we were here…” Steven mused, flinching as he heard his own voice echo back at him amidst the otherwise dense silence of the room.

“Yeah…” Mabel agreed with a fretful frown as she approached one of the pillars. “What’s the deal with all these tuby things?”

“Mabel, don’t touch those things! We don’t know what they’re for!” Dipper cautioned, his hand already resting on the hilt of the Ancient Sea Blade, just in case. “Y-you know, I’m suddenly really glad Pearl gave me this sword…”

“There’s clearly something different here this time,” Garnet spoke up, glancing around meticulously. “I don’t like it.”

“The power’s not on…” Steven noted as he looked back to the broken crystal. “What was Peridot doing down here?”

“W-what if she was just collecting dirt for some reason?” Mabel suggested anxiously, hoping that this was nothing too serious. “Not sure why anyone would do something like that, but maybe she just has a weird hobby?”

“It looks like she pulled these out of the Kindergarten walls,” Garnet mused, glancing up to notice that there were even pillars of dirt hanging from the ceiling above. “Something strange is-” The Gem leader cut herself off as she caught onto the soft sound of sudden rumbling coming from one of the pillars on the far side of the room. Stoic as ever, Garnet made her approach, summoning her gauntlets as a precaution in case anything dangerous were to emerge.

“Garnet?” Steven called over to her, curious, as Dipper and Mabel also glanced over in her direction. The kids exchanged a somewhat worried look after not receiving a response from the Gem leader, but even so, they all hurried over to her, making sure to keep their guard up all the while. Garnet still said nothing as she reached out to touch the dirt pillar, only for it to start shaking violently the moment she made contact with it. The kids shared a startled gasp at this, Steven and Mabel tucking behind Garnet’s legs for protection while Dipper quickly drew his sword, aiming it at the pillar with a tight, albeit somewhat shaky grip.

“Y-you don’t think something’s in there… do you, Garnet?” Mabel asked nervously as they all steadily backed away. The Gem leader still provided no answers, her manner suddenly tense as she kept her gauntleted hands in tight fists. The pillar’s shaking only seemed to be growing more rapid and aggressive by the second, and yet nothing seemed to emerge from it. Instead, something unknown happened to fall from the ceiling above, landing right behind the group and frightening them all more than enough to prompt them to spin around and see exactly what it was.

And what it was seemed to be a hand and a foot, both of different colors, awkwardly fused together as they wriggled around aimlessly. The kids were all completely awestruck and aptly disturbed as Garnet picked the small, bizarre creature up, but they only had a moment to examine it before several more, similar creatures began dropping down from the pillars on the ceiling. Hands mixed with feet, arms connected to legs, two arms connected by their joints, legs linked at the knee and still several other twisted combinations of disjointed, mutli-colored body parts began slinking across the floor in whatever limited way they could, all of them slowly but surely pulling themselves towards the alarmed group near the front of the room.

“O-ok! So I guess Peridot wasn’t just collecting dirt down here!” Mabel exclaimed fearfully, quickly pulling her grappling hook out of her sweater.

“What the heck are these things?!” Dipper asked, his eyes wide as he held his sword out in front of him defensively.

“And why are they—Ah!” Steven’s wondering was cut off as the creature Garnet was holding leapt out of her hand and onto his face. The young Gem gasped in terror as its hand grabbed at him, but fortunately, the Gem leader was quick to defeat it with a swift, decisive strike. The malformed creature dissipated much like a downed Gem monster would, and all that was left in its place were its jagged, crystalline remains.

“It looks like… two Gem shards… stuck together…” Steven noted with an anxious frown as Garnet held it up for them all to see. And sure enough, its appearance was quite telling of this: a pink and blue broken pieces of two different gemstones, somehow mashed together in an uneven, unnatural shape. Upon realizing exactly what this was, Garnet let out a disgusted gasp as she quickly tossed the clustered gem shards away from her, back towards the other writhing disembodied limbs still dragging their way towards the group.

“Gem shards? As in… broken Gems?” Mabel asked with growing horror towards the situation as a whole. “So these things are basically like Gem zombies… if they were stuck together…”

“Are you kidding?! These things aren’t anything like the zombies we’ve been up against before!” Dipper exclaimed hotly, not hesitating to bring his sword down on one of the creatures that managed to get a bit too close for comfort.

“Stop!” Garnet suddenly ordered, her voice oddly tight and tense as her expression conveyed just how unnerved she was. “D-don’t hurt them!”

“W-why not?” Steven asked waveringly, especially as he noticed that the usually unshakably courageous Gem leader was trembling in nothing less than absolute terror. “G-Garnet?”

Garnet didn’t get a chance to explain, but even if she had, she wouldn’t have been able to amidst her steadily rising panic. But all the same, the onslaught of smaller shard creatures was quickly forgotten as one of the larger dirt pillars let out a sickening crack, one that tore itself clean across as it began to grow wider and wider with each passing second.

“W-what was that?!” Steven exclaimed, him, Dipper, and Mabel all hanging close by Garnet, even if the Gem leader could hardly be considered a form of defense amidst her own deeply distraught state.

But even so, the young Gem’s question quickly got an answer as the pillar suddenly exploded, bright light pouring out of it. And at the center of this light was another cluster of Gem shards, their forms gradually starting to emerge as it rose higher and higher into the air before the stunned group. Soon enough, the light silhouettes of four distinct Gems appeared, merged together by their torsos in a mess of trapped limbs and shapes. They let out a unified, distraught, desperate scream as they tried to escape from their entangled form, only for them to glitch out, their different appearances being lost completely as they fused against their will. From there, the silhouette’s shape started to change, taking on the form of what first looked like a massive hand, before the “fingers” of that hand shifted into various arms and legs. As the light faded, it became clear that these multi-colored limbs were conjoined together, its long, hulking body wrapped in a ragged grey cloth as it landed on the ground with a powerful crash, rattling the entire room in the process.

And, without wasting even a second, this nightmarish amalgamation began crawling its way towards Garnet and the kids, who were all aptly horrified by this monstrous being. Though none of them were more petrified and transfixed than the Gem leader herself, who knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, exactly what, or rather who this clustered creature used to be.

“Ok, so here’s how its gonna go down,” Amethyst began with a sly grin as she outlined her plan to Stan and Pearl. “I’m going to track Peridot down and chase her back here. That’s when you guys make sure she runs into this hole,” she nodded over at the large hole in the wall behind them. “And then you pull those rocks up there down using this whip.” She held up the two handled, very long whip she had summoned and lassoed around the pile of rock on the cliff above. “And we’ll trap her inside. Pretty easy, huh? Are we all good on what we’re supposed to be doing?”

“Of course, we are, Amethyst,” Pearl confirmed with an exasperated huff.

“Yeah, we’re not stupid,” Stan remarked, pausing briefly before continuing with a smug smirk meant for Pearl. “Or at least I’m not.”

“Hey!”

“Ok, s-so we’re all ready, then!” Amethyst quickly interjected before another argument could break out between the pair. “I’ll be back in a few; you guys be ready to bring those rocks down on Peridot’s stupid triangle-shaped head. Oh, and try not to kill each other until I get back, k?”

“No promises…” Pearl muttered, exchanging a cross scowl with Stan as the purple Gem headed off to put their plan into action. For the first several minutes after Amethyst had left, the pair remained in a state of stilted silence, each of them holding onto their own respective ends on the whip and stubbornly refusing to make eye contact. However, this silence soon dissipated as Stan began to whistle in an attempt to alleviate his boredom with their uneventful station, something that was very quick to set the white Gem off.

“Could you please stop that infernal whistling?” Pearl asked with a very thin layer of politeness.

“Oh what, is it getting on your nerves?” Stan paused for a moment, glancing over at her with a knowing smirk.

“Yes,” the white Gem replied with a disapproving glower.

“Great!” the conman’s grin grew wider before he started whistling again, only much louder this time, much to the white Gem’s growing aggravation.

“You do realize that our plan is never going to work if Peridot hears you, right?” she asked pointedly. “If you wanted to be obnoxious and cause a ruckus, then you should have gone with Amethyst.”

“Yeah, I should have,” Stan remarked coldly. “At least then I wouldn’t have to hang out with a boring, stuck-up killjoy like you.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Pearl relinquished her hold on her end of the whip as she placed her hands on her hips.

“It means you’re annoying,” Stan began, also letting go of the whip as he took a challenging step towards the white Gem. “And pushy and bossy, and controlling, and a nag, and a prude!”

“Well, you, Stan,” Pearl countered just as fiercely as they essentially stood only apace away from each other. “Are careless, callous, irrational, dishonest, inconsiderate, and selfish!”

Stan flinched at this, his eyes widening at such this all-too familiar accusation before his former fierce demeanor quickly returned. “Take that back,” he demanded with tranquil fury.

“No, I won’t,” the white Gem staunchly refused. “Because it’s true.”

“No, its not!” the conman shot back, hands clenched into tight fists at his sides.

“Yes, it is.”

“No, its not!”

“Yes, it is!”

“No, it’s-”

Stan instantly cut himself off upon hearing the sudden loud rumbling coming from above them, something that Pearl took notice of too as they both glanced up to see a sight that shocked them both. Somehow, the pile of boulders they were supposed to pull down to trap Peridot had budged, almost as if it had been pushed from above seeing as how the rocks were already starting to rain down towards them. A few of them already fell right before the startled pair, keeping them from effectively fleeing, but they shared a frightened gasp upon realizing that one of the larger rocks was plummeting down directly towards them.

“Look out!” Stan shouted, acting on instinct alone as he pushed Pearl and himself out of the way of the rock and into the exit hole. The pair barely had a moment to pick themselves up off the ground before the rest of the rocks finally fell, essentially trapping them both inside. And they had virtually no time at all to question how this cave in had even happened before a familiar, irritating snicker sounded out from the other side of the rock wall.

“Ha! You two must have thought that your little ‘plan’ to apprehend me was so smart and so foolproof,” Peridot began, leaning against the rocks with a smug smirk. “But I just so happened to overhear all of your futile deliberations, as well as your incessant arguing, which, of course, ended up being your complete and utter downfall! And once again, I’ve proved myself to be vastly more intelligent than you dull clumps by turning the tables on you and imprisoning you in the very same trap you had intended for me! It’s simply genius!”

“Yeah, yeah, you know what would be more genius, Greenie?” Stan asked, his tone deadpan as he tried to peek through one of the sparse gaps between the rocks. “Letting us outta here.”

“Please! Like I’d ever do that,” Peridot scoffed, rolling her eyes. “No, instead I think you’ll both stay right in there… trapped forever with no way out while I make my daring escape! Enjoy your new home, you clods!” The green Gem let out another triumphant laugh as she ran off, leaving the pair behind and stuck in the hole that, as she had said, they had no real way out of.

“Oh, this is just perfect!” Pearl growled as she tried prying the rocks aside with her spear, to no avail. “I have to admit that Amethyst’s plan to capture Peridot was actually quite promising, until you had to go and ruin it completely, Stan!”

“Oh yeah, go ahead and blame me,” Stan shot back, crossing his arms. “You know, the guy who literally just saved you from being crushed by a bunch of rocks. Heck, maybe the plan would have worked if I had actually thought twice about that.”

Pearl took pause at this, a spark of something akin to guilt striking her as she remembered that Stan had indeed saved her, as much as she was loathed to admit it. But she was quick to shake if off in favor of her former disgruntled anger. “Well, regardless of who’s fault it is, we’re still trapped in here all the same. Any ideas as to how we’re supposed to escape? Or should I just assume that the limits of your imagination only extend as far as creating new tawdry falsities to put on display at the Mystery Shack?”

“I dunno, why don’t we just have you yell at the rocks until they fall down?” Stan remarked sarcastically as he leaned against the cave wall. “You’re full of enough hot air that it would probably work pretty quickly.”

The white Gem couldn’t hold back a frustrated scowl upon hearing this, her cheeks lighting up blue in a flustered blush before her anger finally exploded. “See, Stan, that’s exactly your problem! You never take anything seriously! You think everything is just one big joke!”

“A joke, huh?” Stan retorted with a harsh scowl. “Shows how much you know, stretch. You’d be surprised at how many things I take very seriously.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

“Like-” the conman quickly cut himself off before he could even make mention of the one thing he had been heavy focused on for the past 30 years. So instead, he went in a different, far less incriminating direction. “Like taking care of Dipper and Mabel.”

“Oh, yes, of course!” Pearl exclaimed sardonically. “Taking care of the twins! Something you do so well that you just carelessly them run around as they please and get themselves into life-threatening situations on almost a daily basis! Clearly, their safety is your number one priority, right?”

“Hey, a little freedom never hurt anyone,” Stan said, still not retracting his stance. “Besides, it helps them learn lessons about life or whatever. Lessons that you refuse to learn, Pearl, seeing as how you’re about as stubborn as, well, a rock!”

“I am not a rock!” Pearl protested, appalled. “I am a Gem, thank you very much.”

“Yeesh, and so literal too,” Stan rolled his eyes, letting out an annoyed sigh as he paused for a moment, glancing down. “You know, Pearl, ever since I met you Gems, you’ve always been the one constantly on my case, even from the start. Heck, even Rose tried lightening up a bit near the end of her run. But you just keep fussing and nagging at me, even though I’ve never done anything to you. So what’s your excuse for hating me so much, huh?”

“Oh, please, Stan, don’t be ridiculous,” the white Gem crossed her arms. “I don’t hate you. I just—I… I’m not… w-well… well you’re just so… so frustrating! Like I said before, its like nothing is of any real importance to you, and the things that do matter to you, you just seem to brush aside to let them be on their own! Would it kill you to show just a little more concern and consideration every now and then?”

“Would it kill you to just loosen up and relax for a change?” Stan countered evenly. “Seriously, Pearl, you’re like, one of the biggest control freaks I’ve ever met, and believe me, I’ve known plenty. But you wanna know something crazy? You can’t control every little thing life throws at you. Sometimes you just gotta take things as they come, without throwing a massive tantrum every time something doesn’t go your way.”

“I-I know that!” Pearl protested defensively. “I just… w-well sometimes, I… Huh,” she paused, her expression softening in slight realization. “Y-you know… that’s… some surprisingly good advice, especially coming from you. Perhaps… perhaps I do sometimes get a little out of sorts when things go awry…”

“Oh, ya think?” the conman deadpanned, though he also began to drop his sour attitude upon recalling what the white Gem had said before. “But uh… maybe you do kinda have a point about me being sort of careless sometimes… I guess I could try to keep a better eye on the kids, and, well, everything else for that matter…”

“Wait a second…” Pearl said with a small, tentative smile. “Stan, did you just… admit that I was right?”

“Huh, yeah, I guess so,” Stan shrugged though he quickly tried to play it off. “But don’t take it too seriously, stretch. It’s probably just because of the lack of oxygen in here o-or something. But hey, looks like this is a two way street seeing as how you technically said I was right too, Pearl.”

“Oh! W-well… Well I, uh…” the white Gem stammered, trying to suppress an embarrassed blush. “Well, I suppose everyone has their moments every once in a great while, including you, Stan.”

The conman couldn’t help but let out a genuine laugh at this, one that Pearl gradually joined in on as the ongoing tension between the two of them slowly started to lift. True, the two of them had never really been on good terms in the past, but they were steadily starting to realize that perhaps there was no real reason for them to hold such longstanding disdain towards each other in the first place. Even if they didn’t necessarily agree with each other on every point, there was still grounds for compromise between them, grounds that they had finally started to reach in, ironically enough, one of their worst squabbles yet.

“Um… so… Stan?” Pearl began, still flustered as she averted the conman’s gaze, though spoke sincerely nonetheless. “I just… Well, I’m… I’m sorry. It wasn’t really your fault that we got trapped in here. And you did end up pushing me out of the way of those rocks so… thank you for that.”

“Yeah, well… I-I guess I’m sorry too,” Stan acknowledged somewhat awkwardly. “You know, I don’t like admitting it, but you’re not always an overbearing stick in the mud.”

“And you’re not always a swindling con artist,” Pearl said with an amicable smile that turned to a worried frown as she looked to the rocks behind them. “Now, how are we ever going to get out of here?”

“I guess we’ll just have to follow Amethyst’s advice and work together,” the conman remarked with a knowing smirk as he positioned himself against the rocks. “On the count of three, we’ll both push on these rocks as hard as we can.”

“Right,” Pearl nodded, already putting some of her weight against the stones in preparation. “Three.”

“Two,” Stan continued, making sure he had a steady footing.

“One!” they both exclaimed in unison, giving the rocks a hearty shove. Neither of them had expected the stones to go down on the first push, but somehow they did, resulting in both Stan and Pearl falling down along with them, started, but free all the same.  

“W-we did it!” the white Gem exclaimed with a laugh, exchanging a relieved smile with the conman.

“Uh, actually, I’m pretty sure I did it,” Amethyst pointed out as she stepped up to the pair, whip in hand and an amused grin on her face.

“Amethyst?” Stan frowned in confusion as him and Pearl picked themselves up to stand. “Wha—h-how did you—What’s going on?”

“Oh, not much,” the purple Gem shrugged, still grinning slyly. “Just savin’ you two dorks. I heard those rocks fall and I thought you guys had caught Peridot on your own, but then I overheard you guys yelling at each other in there, so that’s when I realized things kinda fell apart.”

“Wait… Amethyst, if you knew we were trapped in there, then why didn’t you try to save us sooner?” Pearl asked, her tone disapproving.

“Cause I figured a little… quality time would be just the thing to get you guys to finally get along, and it looks like I was right!” the purple Gem exclaimed with a pleased smile. “Guess all it took for you two to make nice with each other was to trap you in a cave for a while and force you guys to talk it out. Who would have thought?!”

“Are you kidding me?! Amethyst, we could have died in there!” Stan exclaimed harshly.

“Exactly!” Pearl huffed. “That was completely inadvisable! Not to mention the fact that Peridot got away again because of all this!”

“Yeah, maybe,” Amethyst shrugged, still far too elated over how the pair were finally on good terms to be brought down from it. In fact, she was so excited that she ended up catching them both off guard with a surprise group hug. “But we’ll get her next time for sure. Right, you guys?”

Neither Stan nor Pearl answered this at first as they exchanged an initially stilted glance, uncertain of whether or not they wanted to carry their newfound affability onward past the cave it had been found it. But as they glanced down at the clearly delighted purple Gem, they both found that her happiness was contagious enough for them to reciprocate her hug, deciding that they really didn’t have much of a reason to go back to the way things used to be. “Right,” they confirmed in determined unison, knowing that from here on out, things were going to start moving forward instead of remaining in bitter stagnation.

Despite the warm resolution going on above ground, down below in the control room, things were still in a state of absolute chaos. The massive amalgamation monster continued sulking towards the frightened group, its mess of entangled arms and legs continually inching its way towards them with unknown intent.

“G-Garnet?” Steven shakily tried to get the Gem leader’s attention, which was still completely fixed on the lumbering mutant. “Garnet, what do we do?!” Almost as soon as he had raised this question, the young Gem let out a startled cry as one of the smaller limb clusters jumped onto him from behind. Mabel rushed to pull it off of him, but as soon as she let it hit the ground, Dipper plunged his sword into it, poofing it easily.

“What are you doing?!” Mabel exclaimed, looking to her brother in disbelief. “Garnet told us not to hurt them!”

“Well if we don’t, then they’ll end up hurting us!” Dipper argued, his sword at the ready to take down another smaller limb creature slinking towards them.

“Garnet, w-we need your help!” Steven pleaded with the Gem leader in the midst of all this, only to turn around and realize the huge mutant had grabbed her. Its array of arms gripped her tightly by the arm, hip, and head, and as shocked as she was, she was unable to release herself from its tight hold, especially as it began pulling her towards it. “P-please! You gotta talk to us!” the young Gem cried, only for Garnet to remain in terrified silence, her entire form trembling in speechless horror as her breaths came out in short, panicked gasps.

“W-watch out!” Mabel warned as another creature pounced for Steven. The young Gem reacted quickly, his shield forming over his arm to block its advance, though its disfigured hand continued pressing hard against it.

“I don’t understand!” Dipper exclaimed, slashing through yet another mutant as it clamored for the young Gem. “Steven, why do these things only seem to be going after you and Garnet?”

“I-I don’t know!” Steven shook his head, distraught as he glanced back at the Gem leader again. Garnet was still trapped in the larger monster’s hold as another one of its hands rushed for her face, roughly shoving her shades off and revealing all three of her huge, terror-filled eyes. As caught up in her frozen fear as she was, the Gem leader hardly noticed the kids trying their best to beat the still numerous smaller mutants away only for more of them to keep coming without any seeming end in sight. But even amidst this, Garnet suddenly spoke up, her usually strong, stoic voice completely shaken, almost broken even, as she finally explained exactly what these creatures were.

“T-these… these were Crystal Gems…” she choked, tears starting to stream down her cheeks as the mutant pressed its hand against her face. “S-shattered into pieces during the war… They were buried together… T-they were forced together… They were forced to fuse!”

Needless to say that upon learning the truth about these monsters, the kids were all aptly shocked, though they all immediately understood why Garnet was so petrified by them. As horrific and unimaginable as it was, these grotesque, twisted monsters were composed of the broken remains of her former comrades, Gems she had known, fought with, likely even befriended back during the war. They had been merged, against their will, together into these nightmarish fusions, if they could even be called that, with no way of breaking free and barely any sentience left to speak of as they acted on pure, mindless instinct alone. In all honesty, it was almost enough to send the kids into the tears that Garnet herself was already completely lost in.

“T-this… this is wrong…” Garnet’s voice was little more than a heartbroken whisper as she stared at the mess of conjoined gemstones positioned at the fusion monster’s core. Her voice wavered even more as she began speaking to the creature itself, her tears still falling hard and heavy as she offered them a weak apology that would never be enough to suffice for the amount of suffering they were likely going through. “I… I-I didn’t… None of us knew you were… t-that they would… None of y-you deserved… I… I’m sorry!”

The Gem leader let out a loud, agonized shout as her immense emotions finally started to overwhelm her, to the point that they quickly began to compromise her completely. With both of her halves in absolute despair and disarray, the white light of unfusion began to consume her, her form still shaking as the fusion monster continued to cling onto her tightly.

“Garnet!” all three of the kids gasped in shocked unison, especially as a large gaping hole began to spread through the Gem leader’s midsection, another sign of her all to quickly falling apart.

“No!” Steven cried, his shield still holding up as he shoved another mutant back, shuddering as the gap in the Gem leader’s form began to widen. “Garnet, you’re coming undone! T-this isn’t like you!”

“Y-yeah! You gotta keep it together!” Mabel pleaded just as anxiously as she took out a smaller creature with her grappling hook before Dipper covered her by stabbing through another one. “This is all really messed up, yeah, but remember what you told us! You’re way more than any of this! You’re Garnet!”

Upon hearing this, the Gem leader’s tightly shut eyes flew open, this distraught, yet truthful reminder filling both of her struggling halves with the motivation she so desperately needed. All at once, her manner suddenly shifted, her grief and fear turning to righteous fury, not towards the forceful amalgamation of her fallen allies, but of the ones who had done such a horrible thing to them in the first place. With a courageous shout, Garnet pressed her hands against the limbs restraining her, the gap in her form starting to close as she fought back with sheer, outraged ferocity. Though she was still engulfed by obscuring light, she pushed the mutant away from her with a powerful blow before rushing towards it, this time completely on the offense. As she pushed heavily against the creature, its four abnormal, oversized eyes appeared around its clustered gem, all of them staring at her almost pleadingly, as if they were silently begging for her to release them. And that’s exactly what she did. The unfusing glow disappeared from her, her halves still united as she literally ripped the forced fusion apart, its monstrous form poofing away in a momentous explosion of smoke. Garnet quickly bubbled its remaining gemstone mere seconds after it hit the floor, her manner still tense and rigid and silent, even as the kids breathed a shared sigh of relief behind her.

“So… is it bad that all of this somehow wasn’t the most disturbing thing we’ve seen this summer?” Dipper asked rather stiffly, his sword still drawn just in case any more mutants showed up. “Because even if its not, its… pretty up there on the list…”

“But we did it!” Steven exclaimed with a newfound allayed smile. “We beat them back!”

“And its all thanks to you, Garnet!” Mabel chimed in, brightly at first, though all of the kids’ smiles faded as they looked to the silent Gem leader with concern, especially as she kept her back turned to them. “Garnet?”

“So this is what Homeworld thinks of fusion…” Garnet suddenly growled to herself, an edge of ferocity that could only belong to Ruby in her tone as she glared down at the bubbled gem resting over her palm. “W-we couldn’t have known they would do this…” she seemed to reply to herself, her voice softer, sadder, much more like Sapphire’s, before she exploded into anger again. “This is where they’ve been. All the ones we couldn’t find. They’ve been here the whole time! And Homeworld’s been doing… this to them! Rose couldn’t have known… We couldn’t have known… This is punishment for the rebellion! We could have stopped this! We could have saved them! It’s not our fault!”

“Garnet!” Steven fearfully exclaimed upon hearing the Gem leader let out a distraught sob. All three of the kids were still quite unsettled to see Garnet in such a rarely vulnerable, shaken form, but she was quick to start regaining her composure as she sent the bubbled clustered gem away, turning to the trio behind her with a soft, strained expression.

“K-kids…” she began, all three of her eyes looking down to them with unspoken apologies for her moment of weakness. It was clear that there was much she wanted to say to them, but she didn’t get the chance as the tense moment was abruptly interupted, though fortunately, not by fusion mutants this time.

“Yo!” Amethyst called as her, Pearl, and Stan slid down into the control room. “We’re back!”

“Garnet, we lost Peridot,” Pearl reported regretfully. “We had a plan to catch her but it…”

“It fell through,” Stan finished, smirking in slight amusement as he crossed his arms. “Literally!”

“Whoa!” the purple Gem gasped upon noticing one of the lingering fusion mutants crawling up onto her. “Check out those freaky things!”

“W-what are they?” Pearl asked, unnerved as she picked the pair of conjoined hands up.

“I’ll tell ya what they could be,” Stan remarked, grabbing another stray mutant with an intrigued grin. “The Mystery Shack’s newest headlining attraction! People would eat these creepy little suckers right up!”

“Put them down!” Garnet suddenly ordered, her tone incredibly harsh as her shades returned. Stan and Pearl were quick to do so, alarmed by her fierce manner just as much as the kids were, even if they understood where it came from. “We need to poof and bubble all of them,” the Gem leader commanded coldly, raising her fist over the mutant Pearl had dropped before bringing it down in a heavy, brutal swing. “We can’t let any escape.”

Though the horrific disaster in the Kindergarten was over, it was safe to say that the kids were still somewhat shaken by everything they had seen in that control room. It was for that reason that they had unanimously decided to regroup the next day, for both the sake of helping Steven with his last bit of laundry, as well as to discuss and debrief from it all.

“So… what do you think Peridot wanted to do with all those fusion monsters from yesterday?” Mabel asked the boys with a fretful frown as they headed for the warp pad.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Dipper retorted with resurgent disdain for the green Gem. “She probably wants to use them as weapons or something and sick them on all of us. Seeing as how she’s already tried to kill us with robots and a spaceship, it really wouldn’t be that surprising if she was trying to do it with reanimated Gem mutants.”

“I don’t know… those Gems… they didn’t really seem to know what they were doing…” Steven noted solemnly as they congregated onto the warp pad to go up to one of the temple statue’s hands. “If anything, they all seemed to be really… scared. And… like Garnet said, they used to be Crystal Gems! So I don’t think they’d want to attack us on purpose…”

“Uh, speaking of Garnet, how’s she doing?” Mabel asked with concern as they warped up to the hand, where the washer and dryer awaited.

“Oh, well, she’s-” Steven cut himself off as they arrived, only to find the Gem leader herself casually leaning against the statue’s thumb. “Right here, apparently.”

“Oh, hi, Garnet,” Mabel greeted with a small smile. “How’s it going?”

“Still damp,” Garnet replied, nodding over to the washing machine.

“Oh, right, the clothes,” Steven said, heading over to take care of his laundry. “I guess that makes sense. There are towels in there.”

“Wait a second, how does the washer and dryer work all the way up here?” Dipper asked, rather confused. “Is there like, some kind of special plumbing system or does something else make them run?”

“It’s magic,” Garnet said with a flashy wave of her hand and a small, joking smile. The kids shared a warm laugh over this, but it quickly died out as the Gem leader looked away, her arms crossed and her expression unreadable.

“Um… a-are you… alright?” Steven asked worriedly, remembering just how distraught and panicked his guardian had been the previous day, traits that she was certainly not known for.

“…I wish you three hadn’t seen that…” Garnet answered, her tone steady, but still layered with hints of remorse.

“Oh, its ok,” the young Gem assured gently.

“Yeah, I mean, we were all kind of freaking out down there,” Dipper said with a small shrug. “And given what we were up against, I think we had every reason to be.”

“It’s not ok,” the Gem leader countered, shaking her head.

“…W-why not?” Mabel asked, rather tentatively.

“What Homeworld did,” Garnet began, her expression darkening as she looked down. “Taking the shards and parts of fallen Gems and combining them. Those Gems weren’t asked permission to be fused together like that. Fusion is a choice; those Gems weren’t given a choice. It isn’t right. It isn’t fusion!”

The kids all went silent upon hearing the Gem leader’s resurgent anger over the matter, all of them realizing exactly why she had every reason to be angry. After all, she was a fusion herself; the concept was deeply important to her, it was everything she was. And to see it be tarnished and distorted in such a twisted way no doubt filled her with a kind of fury she couldn’t fully begin to describe.

But even so, as the dryer beeped, Steven glanced up to his guardian again, still rather worried for her in light of everything that had happened. “W-what’s it like?” he asked, both curious and anxious. “Being a fusion?”

Garnet glanced over to the kids at this, her expression once again stoic as she offered a terse response. “You all have fused.”

“I mean, like, all the time,” the young Gem clarified. “Do you forget who you used to be when you’re together?”

The Gem leader finally smiled at this, glancing down at the gemstones on her palms. “You forget you were ever alone. You all know, that when you fuse, you don’t feel like two people. You feel like one being. And your old names might as well be names for your right arm, and your left.”

“So… when you split up, is it like you disappear?” Mabel asked, remembering fearing the exact same thing happening with Maven not too long ago.

“I embody my—I mean, Ruby and Sapphire’s love,” Garnet assured. “I’ll always exist in them, even if they split apart. But the strength of that love keeps me together, so I can stay Garnet for a very long time.”

“That’s why you’re so great,” Steven finished with a bright, warm smile.

The Gem leader let out a small chuckle at this, one that the kids all joined in on. Regardless of the horrors they had witnessed in the Kindergarten the previous day, one thing was still clear: Garnet was still there, still keeping it together, still existing as the ultimate proclamation of Ruby and Sapphire’s love for one another. And try as they might to pervert the image of fusion through mutant monsters and forced amalgamations, that was something that Homeworld would never be able to destroy.

This warm moment continued until a gust of wind passed by, blowing a blue and white sock out Steven’s laundry basket. The young Gem gasped as the sock was carried by the abrupt breeze, nearly off of the statue’s hand entirely until Garnet managed to catch it at the very last second. “Don’t wanna break up a pair,” she smiled, handing the sock back to her young ward.

“Yeah,” Steven grinned, folding the blue sock back together with its matching pink counterpart, together, just as they were supposed to be. “They belong together.”

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