Summary: Running away is always the solution.
Marco felt like throwing up. "Why would you put so much sugar in a burrito? It feels like I'm eating meat flavored candy." He felt offended on the behalf of all fast food Mexican restaurants everywhere.
"That's exactly why I'm putting it there! It's like fusion! Mixing different things together and making something completely new, different, and amazing!" Star said as she dipped two bags of sugar on it, before taking a giant bite out of the abomination of cavities.
"Not sure how I feel about that as someone who has fused, but I like hotdogs with doughnuts for the buns, so what do I know?" Kelly shrugged, taking a bite out of a taco. "Where's Qu-Steven? I thought he'd join us for lunch."
"He's trying to pester the gems about the Kindergarten after his power nap." Star shrugged, taking another bite of the horror of all fast food. "They're not saying much, and Pearl acts like it's a big deal they should avoid and Amethyst gets all uppity about it."
"It certainly sounds like a big deal if we're talking about an alien invasion." Marco tried to quell his stomach by sipping his ochata. "For some reason, I thought we wouldn't be able to top dimension crossing and magic, but we found a way."
"I know right, this should be us getting excited by riding meteors like unicorns, or swimming through the stars, but nope! We gotta deal with space jerks trying to kill us with green marbles." Star rolled her eyes, swallowing her sacrilege of his proud culture.
"And thieves. They stole my phone! My royalty check won't come in for another week." Marco grumbled.
"Royalty Check?" Kelly and Tad asked at the same time.
"Princess Turdina became an icon, I get six hundred and fifty dollars a month." Everyone looked at him funny. "What, I was forced to wear a dress, I wanted to be compensated for all the embarrassment at least."
"Wear it proud, Wayward sister! The future is anarchy, just like my food!" Star took the entire canister of sugar she was using and just dumped it all in her mouth. "Absolute freedom!" Her skin started glowing…pink? "Wow, those sugar burritos really get the blood pumping, I feel like exploding!" She shot her hands in the air, and familiar looking bubble shot out of them.
"Star." Kelly started. "Did you just make Steven's bubble out of your hands?" She asked, staring at the pink ball floating in the street.
"I did…? I mean, I did!" Star looked at her hands and the bubbles. "Finally, this magic bond thing is doing something right for a change."
"So wait, can you use all of his powers?" Marco asked.
"Who knows!?" She shouted. "Maybe I have a shield, maybe I can blast hexagons with super strength, maybe I can shapeshift and fuse …"
KABOOM!
The bubble that was rolling down the street rolled under a nearby police car, where it went off and smashed the Britta Tacos logo, crashing right into the parking lot. "And now that happened." Marco sighed. "Come on, let's go tell the officer what you did."
"No way, I've seen how earth prison is on tv, I know what happens!" Star freaked out. "You have to share your cell with the creepiest person there, forced to make license plates no one ever uses, and you have to wear orange all day! I can't pull off wearing all orange Marco! I'm not built like that!"
"Star, no." He waved off, finding irony in the first time they had tv knowledge it was for the wrong thing. "At most you can tell them it was an accident and we do community service."
"Or maybe we can bribe them with crowns like my parents used to do when I ran unicorns into village houses?" The princess suggested.
"No, bribery is even worse. Kelly, Tad, back me up here." He told the toxic couple.
"You should run." Tad spoke up. "Anytime the law's breathing down my back, I hide where no one can find me. The benefits of having your girlfriend also being your home." Damn you, you green colored dust bunny!
"Alright, it's settled! Marco, tell my brother I love him, I'll write to you within a week!" The girl got on her magic pink cloud and flew off.
He turned to Kelly with a sigh. "Stay with her please, before she does something everyone is gonna regret?"
"You mean more than she has already?" Kelly laughed. "Might as well. It's the most interesting thing that's happened all morning." He probably should've stayed at the temple, even with the risk of Jana hanging around there.
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Jana watched as Amethyst and Steven started punching things in anger. "Why doesn't anyone tell me anything!?" The latter screamed aloud.
"Why do they keep acting like nothing's bothering them!" Amethyst pounded her head against a rock that cracked instantly. "Just say it, instead of dancing around it, just say they hate it, better than them acting like everything's fine!"
"Everything's not fine though! Even when I'm proven right, they still don't trust me to tell me important stuff! What do I need to do to get them to treat me seriously!"
"Something decisive and loud?" Jana added her two cents. "Make em notice you and acknowledge that you're important?"
"You're right!" Steven shouted. "We should go and investigate the place ourselves … but we don't know how to warp there." He pouted.
"I can take you there personally. I know where it is." Amethyst raised her hand up. "But if we really want to stick it to them, then we shouldn't just warp there." Jana's oldest friend gave her that mischievous grin she's grown so accustomed to over the years. "You still got that runaway plan we made?"
"I've kept it in a folder just in case."
"Runaway plan?" Steven asked.
"Yeah, it's a plan on what to do when we feel like running away." She never actually had a reason to use it before, since her parents were okay with her hobbies, but it never hurt to have it as a backup. "It'll be a blast, piss them off badly."
"I don't know, I mean, I'm frustrated with them, but I'm not sure if I want to make them feel bad.." Aw, how precious. The kid actually had a conscience.
"Don't sweat it, Ste-man, it'll be great!" Amethyst shouted. "Just think of it as a short road trip where by the end of everything, you'll get your answers solved and feel better about life in general.
"Oh, I've never been on a road trip before." The boy got happy like an excited puppy. "Do we get to hitchhike and get rides from random cars, and jump onto trains like stoways?" Steven's eyes glowed. "And sing songs about life on the run as we sleep on bushels of hay like they do in the books?"
"You know it." Jana smirked as the three of them high fived in unison. "Let's get this runaway train moving!"
"Yeah, no past, no future, just the open road in the present, ready to travel on!" Amethyst shot her fist into the air. "Let's do this!"
"It's time to get moving,
time for us to have some fun."
They all packed their bags, Amethyst's being almost as big as her, Jana moderate, and Steven just packed one bag of chips and a soda can. They probably all had different ideas about how long they were actually going to be gone for. The one thing Steven insisted on bringing was his ukulele, and given that he had a pretty nice voice, she wasn't one to complain.
"There's no time to hang around
Our adventure's just begun!"
They all panicked about trying to catch the train on time, before Amethyst used her whip to swing them all into an open spot. Steven landed on his head as she landed on his back. It was one of the softest landings she's ever had.
The only problem they had was the raccoon that jumped aboard with them, and that made them spend about fifteen minutes or so running around to stop themselves from getting rabies, seeing that Steven didn't have those healing powers he talked about before. Steven actually briefly considered making this one of the pets he's grown a habit of collecting, until it stole his bag of chips.
"We'll be thinking 'bout our friends as we chase the setting sun
but we're leaving them behind,
we're on the run!"
Steven came back from another car. "Where've you been?" Jana asked.
"Just telling mom where we're planning on staying the night."
"... You don't quite understand the concept of running away, do you?"
"Whenever Star did it, she always just spent the day in a tree before coming back home for dinner."
"I was planning for a century or two." Amethyst shrugged.
"Eh, I went missing for a whole summer once and my parents didn't mind. That's how I made my connections to the black market."
"How am I friends with you crazy people!?"
"You're saying that you aren't crazy too." She smirked. "Don't worry, it's a great look on you." Especially when he was covered in pink.
"(We're on the run)
I don't care about what all the others say"
(we're on the run)
Things settled down just a little when they all just stared out at the setting sun, letting their legs brush against the wind as Amethyst got in on the singing. She'd never seen the girl get like this before in all the time they've known each other. For once, she got to see what life for Amethyst was like when she went off on her own.
Having Steven along in the mix made it all the more better. His optimism during the whole thing was endearing, even for someone that enjoyed pessimistic and dark humor as much as her. The time that they spent as Quana was super liberating. It was a time where she could be openly accepting about everything about herself, even the parts that were too 'girly' for her liking.
"Well I guess there are some things that will just never go away, I
(we're on the run)
wish that I could see that there's no better place than home…"
Jana got in on the music during the end as they halved a sandwich between herself and Steven, resting her head on his soft shoulder as she faked going to sleep, not even needing to notice the blush on his face to know it was there.
But home's a place that I have never known
That's why we're on the run
They all stared at a confusing map of colored lines. "So we might have gotten onto the wrong train." Amethyst giggled a little sheepishly.
Jana sighed. "I'll grab the GPS." Still an exciting day despite all that.
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Kelly ran with Star as they jumped over a fence, running into an alley as they heard sirens. Sure, helping a sister run away from the law, wouldn't be the first time it happened. Except she never expected the girl to be so frantic about it. "Shelter, water, and food, we need substitutes. That is how you survive in a lawless world."
"Or you could just, I don't know, use dimensional scissors to avoid the one law enforcement agency without magic." Tad deadpanned.
"No, If I know Marco, he's going to tell Qua-Steven about this, and that's going to make him tell mom about this, which means I have to be in the one place they'll never expect me to stay!"
"Alright, and how are you planning on making headway?" Kelly asked. "I usually just snatch before ditching, I never stay in one place for long." Except Earth, and Mewnie, where her friends had money.
"Duh, magic. I got everything I need right here!" The girl showed off her wand, which glowed green and glitchy, shot off a stray bolt of lighting on one of the walls. "...Well, I can make due with everything around me for a month or two."
"Star, come on, be realistic." Kelly said.
"No!" Star shouted, picking up her scissors. "If I'm realistic I'm toast! I need fantasy, company, a room where I'm safe no matter what!" Her face marks glew pink along with the pair of scissors, as a pink portal was cut.
"Star, wait, don't jump!" She grabbed the girl, but it was too late as Star pulled her along, making them fall into…what looked like a pure white void surrounded by fluffy pink clouds. "What dimension is this?"
"I don't know." Star shrugged. "I just wanted a safe place, with food-" A sugar burrito popped into her hand. "… A tiny pink whale that high fives." A pink whale with a human hand floated into existence. "Steven told me about this place! It's Rose's Room!"
"What? This is where his mom lived?" Kelly poked the whale, which vanished on being touched. "Doesn't seem like it has much."
"Yeah, everything's made from clouds from what I remember. It's still better than living in a garbage heap." Star looked at her burrito. "If only you were real." She bit into the cloud, with her facemarks still glowing…and actually began chewing it like it wasn't made out of clouds. "IT'S REAL! I actually made it real!"
"How did you even do that?" Tad asked.
"I don't know and I don't care. What I know is I've got an entire dimension to my control, and don't have to get arrested. No worries or cares." Star poofed up two palm trees with a hammock right between it, which she laid down upon instantly. "And now all I'm missing is music!" She snapped her fingers, and a floating guitar with a silly face began playing itself.
"On a tropical Island
On a tropical Island
On a tropical Island
On a tropical Island…" The figure repeated over and over.
"Star, do you really think you can actually stay here forever? You're right in the Crystal Gem temple, they'll want to kick you out the moment they see you're here."
"In a room only Quartz can access." She smirked. "And he won't turn in his own sister…. Also, defense squad!" An army of knights poofed into existence.
"What about being the Queen and all that junk?" Tad asked her. "Isn't that like, your whole deal for when you grow up?"
"Being Queen is overrated, I see how stressed out Mom gets over it." Star closed her eyes as a Penguin threw grapes into her mouth. "If it's that important, then I'll come back when everyone's forgotten about this little mistake."
Kelly just rolled her eyes. "You can hide here for a while, maybe even years, and you can make it look as pretty as you want, but there's two things this place will never have no matter how much you dream of it."
"What could I possibly be missing.."
"Marco and Quar-Steven."
Star took a second to absorb those words, before squeezing her eyes hard, where two poofs created super smiley, almost cartoony, looking versions of their friends.
"We forgive you for everything you do, Star."
"Let's get some cake and party."
"Seriously, Star?! Does that look or sound like them at all?" Kelly groaned, close to losing it. "Look me in the eye, and tell me for one second that either of them would be completely okay with everything you've done and plan to do?"
The girl paused, looking at everything she made, and then at Kelly, before sighing. "Let us out." She spoke in a defeated tone. "This is why I hate responsibility."
"But you don't hate being with your brother and best friend, right?" She sent a grin to the princess.
"Yeah … don't forget you're a friend too Kelly." She smiled back.
"And me." Tad said.
"Right…you're here too." Kelly couldn't blame Star for that, she completely forgot Tad was here also.
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"Behold!" Amethyst shouted. After avoiding the Raccoons again and sleeping inside a hollow log, the three of them finally made it to the one place in all the earth Amethyst could navigate with her eyes closed walking backwards. "Welcome to The Kindergarten! Or as I like to call it.." She walked around while spinning in circles, the bleak gray skies making her feel very nostalgic. "Home sweet home!
"Wow, and people say I have a dreary taste." Jana looked around them, walking on the dead dirt the entire canyon rested on. "Wait, you're from here? I thought you guys were aliens from space."
"The other three are, but I was made here on earth. I've never even been into space before, heh." Apparently she wasn't missing much. "Oh my glob, my climbing rock!" Amethyst laughed, running to it. "Oh I missed this guy, we had so much fun." The gem looked around. "Oh, and there's the sitting rock, and that one rock I kicked into two rocks!"
"Nice to meet you guys …" Ste-man chuckled awkwardly, looking around. "Oh, what about that?" He pointed to the giant metal stilt with a drill on the end.
"It's the Injector." Amethyst shrugged. "It puts in some goo, and eventually it becomes a gem like them-" She pointed to the thousands of holes before notic- "Guys, guys, my hole!!"
"You're hole?!" Jana looked around, perplexed and slightly freaked out.
"Yeah, check it out." Amethyst leaned inside. "It's me sized … it has the same hole smell too."
"So you were made here, as well as a bunch of other gems." Steven looked around, noticing the hundreds, probably even thousands that surrounded them. "And that…doing that made this place..look like this?"
"Complete dead zone." Amethyst spoke calmly, looking at the barren ground. "It doesn't matter how much effort you put into it, or how long it takes, nothing can live here … ever." Amethyst scoffed. "Cept me of course, spent a good five hundred years or so by myself before Rose found me."
"Five hundred years!?" Jana was really getting worked up about this.
"Yeah, basically a nap right, just me and my holes, and rocks. Just a parasite, leaching off what's already dead."
"Amethyst." Steven looked at her. "You're not a parasite."
"Of course I am … just a thing that took life like the rest of the Homeworld … why else would Pearl want to forget about this place!?" She laughed. "If it wasn't for you showing up she might have just forgotten I existed to begin with!"
"Amethyst.." Jana started.
"I didn't ask to be made, I didn't ask to be apart of this stupid war I had no part in, and now that stupid gem planet is coming to wreck this place again, and I have to live with being a product of whatever bad things they do!" Amethyst sank into her hole, where she felt like she belonged.
"Amethyst…I have to live with the fact I'm the reason Rose isn't here anymore." Steven sat next to the hole. "I didn't ask to be her son, I didn't ask to be this…missing piece to a puzzle I didn't know existed…but I am, and I hate thinking about it almost everyday." She could hear the sniffing from her spot.
"Besides, you two aren't evil." Jana sat on the other side of the hole. "You two are these fun loving crazy people, it wasn't your fault you were born … that's nobody's fault." She spoke. "Everyone lives their lives separately from past and origins, you should embrace that freedom."
"Freedom…like the freedom to hop on a train without paying." Amethyst giggled.
"Or the freedom to put sugar on your burritos, or to put popcorn on waffles." Steven added.
"Or the freedom to paint the fences a different color whenever Pearl isn't looking to screw with her." Jana laughed.
"That was you!?" Amethyst laughed. "I thought that was just a random grifter!"
"Nope, it was pure Jana!" The chaotic girl laughed. "See, I can laugh like this around you guys. You're people I want to stay around, regardless of where you come from."
"Yeah, and you're the funnest Crystal Gem, that means you're the best thing that came out of here." Steven said, offering his hand to her. "Come on, let's get out of here."
"Don't know, the hole is comfy." She said with a smile as she took the hand. "I say as far as road-trips go, that was about an eight out of ten."
"First road-trip was a success!" Steven shouted with a grin. He turned to her, and back to the hole with confusion."So why is your hole so … short?" Steven asked.
"Eh, I don't know, don't care." Amethyst shrugged. "Short and powerful is good for me-" … As they turned the corner they came face to face with Pearl. "... How long?"
"After you talked about the 'same hole smell'." Well this was awkward. "... I don't associate you with the Kindergarten because I can't imagine something as good as you coming from a place like this … you're better than a lot of Homeworld Gems ever were."
Those words hit Amethyst deep. She got her emotional high already with Jana and Steven's talk, but this overflowed her brain with emotional sap, as proven with her eyes beginning to leak. "Thanks Pearl, that means a lot." The gem merely patted her back awkwardly. That alone felt like a lot of closure.
"So why were you here anyway?" Jana asked. "Snooping for us?"
"Actually I followed Qua-Steven's lead and investigated … alone … because the air here is toxic to organics." Pearl explained in a disappointed tone.
"Really, I feel totally fine though-" Steven was cut off with a coughing fit. "I-hack-I see your point. We should probably return to the fresh beach air now."
"No matter-hack hack-how salty." Jana added in, also looking like she was starting to feel the effects.
"Come on, let's get you little meat bags back home." Amethyst laughed, guiding them to the warp pad. Everything wasn't perfect, but that's what made it fun half the time.
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Star took a bite of her breakfast burrito, with less sugar, as she picked up trash. "So, I used your bubbles, blew up a police car, went with Kelly and Tad into Rose's room, got stuck in a fantasy for a bit, now I'm here, picking up trash for community service."
"I told you it wouldn't be jail time." Marco got off on their 'I was right' tone, also eating a burrito. "And you only made it go longer by running instead of turning yourself in right away."
"I'm still baffled by the fact you used my bubbles." Her brother took a bite of his burrito, which was actually a pancake folded up with bacon, eggs, and hash browns on the inside.
"That's the power of sugar and sibling bond." Star smirked. "So what about you guys on your road trip?"
"Rode a train, saw the Kindergarten … not what we were expecting." Jana said. "Pearl couldn't find anything there, all the machines were offline."
"So either what Peridot wants isn't there or she hasn't done anything yet." Qu-Steven rolled his eyes. "Still though, if you can use my powers, could I actually be able to use your spells without the wand?"
"Well yeah, but you'd have to dip down like I did." She shrugged. "And that takes a lot more effort than you'd think … oh, get super emotional and mad, see if we can get anything!"
"That's easy! That's been me for about the last week." Quartz turned to a nearby rock, and closed his eyes. "RAINBOW FIST PUNCH!"' A pink and green fist encased his hand before it shot out, not only splintering the rock, but making its debri rain down on everyone like they were meteors.
A police officer walked over, taking a bite out of her donut and looked at the place. "You should really hurry up, it looks like you barely got started." They deadpanned before walking away again.
"Quartz, you're supposed to be the cautious one! Stop making me act more responsible!" It was not her day in the slightest.