Summary:
So much mental
Sta-ar laughed as she rolled down the hill. Today was another amazing day. The sun was bright, she ate tasty food, and now she had two more friends. "Come on, Small-er! Get tiny and roll with us!"
"Mom, this isn't the time for rolling down the hill!" Small-er yelled down at her.
"Of course it is." Jay Ten answered with a smile. "The tiny voice told us it was, didn't you hear it?"
"So you all just listen to some random little voice that announces itself randomly throughout the day?" Ste-van said with a raised eyebrow.
"Why wouldn't we?" Sta-ar asked. "The voice knows what we want and need, and wants us to be happy." She laughed. "After rolling down the hill, we bath and have fun splashing in the water."
"It's weird, but it becomes strangely relaxing after a few days." Gar-eg said as he rolled down the hill as well. "I haven't had such a relaxing good night's sleep since forever."
"Dad, don't get comfortable! The point is to get you and mom out of here!" Ste-van really needed to relax a little. He probably went too many days without rolling down a hill.
"I already checked the first night I was here when I couldn't sleep." Gar-eg shrugged. "The only spot I found was a hidden pink door that was sealed tight."
"What is a dooooor?" She asked, tilting her head in confusion at the new word.
"Why do I have to be the adult in this situation?" Small-er rubbed her eyes. "A door is a wall that opens up, so you can walk out of it and leave terrible places like this."
Wy-Six laughed. "Silly second Sta-ar. You tell the strangest jokes. Walls do not open." It was true, they weren't magic … What was magic?
"Wait, I actually remember a legend." Jay-Ten spoke up. "They say a long time ago a wall opened up, and a gem came running through, when someone was … hurt?"
"What is hurt?" She and Wy-Six asked together, only to get a shrug in response.
"You know, hurt, it's when you feel bad?" Ste-van responded, still leaving the rest of them confused. "Bad is the opposite of good."
"Feeling bad doesn't sound very good." Wy-six summed up, and Sta-ar couldn't help but feel the same way. Who'd ever want to stop feeling good when it felt so good?
"It's not usually a choice, most of the time it's not on purpose." Ga-reg explained. "When it happens, it's bad at first, but eventually the pain fades." He was super smart, it was awesome.
"So we just need to get hurt, right?" Smal-ler looked thoughtful. "Alright bro, punch me as hard as you can!"
"What!? I'm not gonna punch you." Ste-van complained.
"You already have enough head damage from everyone constantly swinging you around, let me take the blow, come on." Small-er closed her eyes and let her arm out.
"Okay, only if you're sure." Ste-van reeled his arm back…and lightly touched the girl with a small fist.
"Harder bro, I can take it!" Smal-er explained. "If I can take hits from Meteora and Mina, I can handle one punch of my own…"
The boy reeled his hand again, and the girl was suddenly thrashed through five trees, each one snapping in half upon impact. "Steven, what the heck!" Ga-reg shouted. "I thought it was just gonna be a bruise at most."
"I um … it might have been some pent up aggression … my bad." He looked ashamed.
"It's-it's-it's fine bro…I've felt worse, and done worse." Smal-er spoke, wobbling around as she came back. "Nobody's showing up … let's try it again."
"Steven, don't hit your si … sis …." What was she saying? Sta-ar knew she wanted to say something but the words weren't forming.
"Wait, Mom, are you actually remembering something?" Stev-van….Stevan….Steven said with a curious and hopeful look in his eyes.
"I … I …" She held her head. "Mom is …"
The ding came back, the tiny voice speaking up once more. "Alright everyone, it's time to bathe."
Sta-ar blinked. "Oh right, Bathing time!" She shouted. "Come on you guys, the water is warm."
"Dang it, can we at least solve one problem before the day ends?" Smaller Star rolled her eyes as she took her brother's hand…brother's hand….why did she know what that word meant?
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Amethyst took a deep breath when no one was looking, doing her best to keep herself stable. "Man, haven't seen a Sapphire in a while." The Amethyst that shall now be known as 'Hair' commented.
"I know, and one that allowed a Ruby to speak up like that, my kinda gal." The amethyst that shall now be known as 'Shoulder' agreed. "How'd you end up working with her?" Shoulder asked her.
Crap she didn't think she'd actually talk to any other Amethyst during this trip! "I-uh…came out of the ground as she was visiting my Kindergarten. She needed extra muscle, so it was being in the right place at the right time….heh."
"Lucky gal." Hair scoffed. "You know, when I was told I was working with the zoo, I thought it would be fun. Get to joke with a couple of meat bags and such, protect a place Blue wanted to keep secure, the good life. But Holly Blue is the worst."
"You know she can't even get our facet numbers right?" Shoulder complained. "A cut is one thing, but a facet number is just disrespectful, especially after six thousand years."
"Six thousand years and she can't get your names right, damn that's harsh…or her being stupid, I'm leaning towards the latter." Amethyst decided to joke for the sake of keeping things friendly between these two."
Shoulder snorted. "Definitely defected in the head, she thinks we're all inferior just because she's an Agate and we're from earth."
"Oh yeah …" Maybe a bit of truth. "Um … I'm from facet five." The other two turned to her with wide eyes, causing her to tense.
"Facet five, but that's from the Prime Kindergarten on earth….that can't be…unless." Hair looked at Shoulder with wide eyes. "You're the one that didn't emerge!" Crap, crap, crap, she said too much, she was going to..
"What took you so long!?" Shoulder…scooped her up in a hug…huh? "We waited by your hole for two hundred years, but nothing ever came out."
"I um … didn't have a sense of time." She joked. "Guess I missed the signal to stop lazing around … you think Holly Blue would have kicked my hole like she kicked your shins?"
"She would have screamed for days before getting a shovel to beat you up with." Shoulder laughed. "I'm 8XJ, I was the hole a few down from you!"
"Oh yeah, I passed by that hole a lot, it smelled the jankiest." She laughed along with them.
"Oh you hear that, even your hole remembered your bad scent." Hair laughed.
"Like you were any better, you formed upside down! It took fifty years for you to stop walking on your hands on instinct." Shoulder snorted.
"That ain't nothing on 9XJ. Remember when she made a bet on if she could shapeshift her mouth to hold a thousand rocks? She was barfing up tiny meteors for a week!"
Amethyst snorted. "My record is a thousand and ten pebbles." They looked at her with shock. "What?"
"You swallowed over a thousand pebbles! Just imagine them all wiggling inside!" Oh right, she forgot about Peridot's insult.
"And your Sapphire allows you to have fun and not get in trouble?!" Shoulder looked at her like she was some kind of idol with sparkly eyes. "Please trade positions with me."
"Meh, not as fun as you'd think. Pearls there to point us out when we do something stupid, acting like Holly without the violence."
"Ugh, there's nothing worse out there than a Pearl with a high and mighty attitude." Hair rolled her eye's with a groan. "Holding their beaks for noses up high and silently judging you when you have your back turned. We're just lucky Blue Diamond's Pearl doesn't give us any lip whenever she's around."
"Let me guess, the Pearl you deal with gets all squawky and paranoid whenever things get 'messy'." Shoulder guessed.
Amethyst grinned, shapeshifting into the gem in question. "Oh Amethyst, the red rocks go in the r pile. You shouldn't just jump in even when the plan works. And clean out your room." The two laughed, Amethyst joining as she shapeshifted back … into her small self … crap.
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"Alright little guy, did you get the stuff I needed?" Jana asked in the darkness of her own room as she turned to the Watermelon Steven, who was carrying a burlap sack over his shoulder.
"Waaah." He poured out a live goat, three bloodied candles, and a ghost in a bottle. The tips from Steven's new witch friend were very helpful.
"Perfect." She began setting it all about. "Time for a classic high level curse … demon style." She began setting it up, slowly setting the candles ablaze within the circle. "I call upon the elders to give me dark and demonic forces to test upon my foes." She aimed the knife at the goat … cutting off a strand of hair.
" Wah?"
"Of course I'm not going to kill it. I'm a dabbler in the dark arts, not a monster." She justified to the Watermelon Steven. "Plus Steven would get weepy about a dead goat, so I might as well save myself the trouble."
"Wah."
"Now that's just barbaric, everyone has to have a limit somewhere. Like equal opportunity evil." If you were going to blow up a building, be politically correct about it.
"Do I really need to be in a bottle for this? I had lunch plans, you know." The ghost said from their confinement. "My sister just died, and I was going to meet up with her today."
"Actually the spell does require a soul to sacrifice so …" She began to chant in latin.
"I thought this would happen to me eventually. I never could find what my unfinished business was, and it wasn't like pearly gates were waiting for me anyways." The ghost sighed as its essence was drained to fuel a pillar of fire that launched into existence.
The fires died down in an instant, showing a familiar face. "And then I was hit with this wave of tranquil disappointment. I don't know if it was the lack of souls or what, but I think I took it much better than-wait, you're not my therapist." Tom looked around. "And this isn't my room."
"Wait, I was summoning you?" She asked, looking the book over. "Shoot, I could have just called or something."
"What the-Jana?!" The demon called out, before groaning. "Damn it, I thought mortals were done with summonings since the eighteen hundreds."
"They are for the most part, but it's a hobby a select few still have." She patted her book, aptly titled 'Demon Summoning for Morons'. A little insulting, but it worked well enough. "So whatcha been up to since fighting a soul sucking monster?"
"After breaking up with Star, I realized I needed to do some soul searching."
"So you went the Kelly route and started hopping to random dimensions?"
"No, literally. Meteora sucked out a good eight hundred of them and now they're more chaotic than ever. I can't even find my own within the mess of my own body." Tom mumbled. "I finally got a good check on my anger, and now this happens. Why does the universe suck so much?" He looked for the nearest seat and sat done, noticing her fruity minion. "Is that a Watermelon shaped like Steven?"
"Yeah, his kind left to become their own island with corn shaped like Star, but I kept this little guy." She patted his head. "It's like a surrogate son or little bro, just teaching him the fine art of master criminal activity and necromancy." Was this what it felt like with Marco and Peridot?
" Wahhh!" The little guy held up a knife that was emanating a ghastly green mist from it.
"You know, I really feel like people under-appreciate the value of using the dead for resources." Tom nodded. "They just don't seem to get all it takes to tame a zombie into being your slave for eternity is to offer it a finger or two every once in a while. And then they start complaining about the smell."
"Who doesn't like the fresh scent of a cemetery during a funeral?" Jana asked.
"Well, I much prefer funerals with a hint of sulfur. The rotten egg smell adds to the unique darkness lying within- I WILL FEAST ON THE SOULS OF- " He coughed. "Sorry, like I said, chaotic inside."
"No prob, the house can use a little screaming damnation from hell. It's quieter than a library any other time." Jana shrugged. " My folks don't mind anything I do, just as long as I have friends, so I'm free to do just about anything I want, no matter how illegal." Their complete non-freaking out when she told them she had mafia ties was the only time she'd truly called something too freaky.
"Well that's…oddly accepting." He sighed. "My mom's fine with anything as long as I have someone who loves me back and my dad is just really uptight with anger issues, which is ironic because he's not a demon."
"You know, we should really form a hybrid club." She noted. "Steven's half gem, you're half demon, and I'm sure someone else can fill the role somewhere down the line."
"Meteroa's half monster, so we got that chart filled out already. We'd probably need a cyborg in the group if we're being serious about filling out our bases."
"I'd totally be down for shooting lasers out of my arms, unfortunately Marco already told Peridot experimenting on human biology is 'unethical', so I can't rely on her for that."
"Aww, and here I thought he was finally lightening up." They chuckled.
"Marco lightening up, yeah right. And pigs fly, Steven doesn't cry for snakes, and Star doesn't fill every burrito she eats with a bag of sugar."
"Ugh, Sugar Burritos, my stomach felt more like hell than the underworld for an entire week when she made that for me." He clutched his stomach with a wince. "I never felt the same again- SUFFERING ALL ALL LIVING-" He cut himself off with a flaming cough.
"... Wanna get weird?" She asked him..
"If you think that's bad, you should've tasted her brownies. They're more of an abomination that the darkest eldritch horrors of the Netherworld." She shivered upon remembering the bitter taste those rainbow sprinkled squares of death left on her mouth. "You know what isn't though? Pizza. We can get some if you're in the mood."
"I'm down for that. No pineapple though."
"Dude, in a satanist, not a sociopath."
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Greg watched as Steven and Star gazed at the simulated night sky. "We can't leave her." He heard the young girl mutter. "But we can't just drag her around, she'll blow our cover."
"She's basically acting like a little kid, right? Maybe we can tell her we're playing the quiet game." Steven suggested.
"Maybe … but that still won't get the doors open. You broke my ribs and they still did nothing."
"Gem's hit themselves with harder stuff almost on a daily basis, so they probably can't recognize fatal injuries if it was waving in front of their faces." His son sighed.
"Don't think about it too hard kids, a good night's sleep will probably make everything clear in the morning." He went to close his eyes, only for his step daughter to shake him awake.
"Mr. Universe, we don't have until morning! Blue Diamond's going to be here soon, and that's going to make sneaking out of here twice as impossible as it already is!"
"We'll there's not much we can do from in here." He shrugged. "I mean, we should probably wait for-" The earrings beeped again. Strange, they never did it so soon.
"It is time for, the choosening." Everyone stood up, cheering. "Please enter the choosening circle."
The kids looked at him. "This is new to me too." He responded.
"Come on Ga-reg, we must go to the choosening circle!" Wy dragged him up as they moved through the forest. He was hoping this wasn't one of those cultist utopia situations where they needed to serve up a human sacrifice every year or so. It was hard to ignore that vibe already with everyone unnaturally happy for the most part.
They arrived at a glowing circle, an empty center present. "Ste-van, Smaller Star, you two wait out here. It is not your time." Wy-Twelve told the two children.
"Wait, since we're new … What is the choosening?" Steven asked with trepidation. "It's not bad is it?"
"No, the choosening is a good thing, where the voice tells two humans that they are bonded for life." Jay-Ten smiled at them. "Then they get to do the things like lip touching, rest holding, and baby making." Greg swore Steven and Star's screams could be heard for lightyears. "Yes, very exciting, isn't it?"
"Wait, this is a match making program!?" Greg shouted aghast. He should have know that there was such a twist to this paradise.
"I know, isn't it exciting!" Moon smiled. "Who do you think I will be choosened with?"
"Mom, you don't need to be choosened, you're already choosened with Dad!" Star tried to explain."
"But the little voice hasn't mentioned a Da-ad. Do we even have a human with that name?" Everyone shrugged, a ding heard.
"U-Twelve." The black woman smiled, running forward. "F-Three." The man blushed, walking to the center of the circle. "You have been chosened." They proceeded to hug and kiss, everyone cheering.
"Guys, forget careful, help me." He whispered desperately to the kids.
"What do you want us to do? Punch them while we hide in a tree!?" Steven said sarcastically. "Punching is pointless in this situation!"
"Besides, you're the new guy, you'll probably get skipped over until you grow more gray in your hair." Star shrugged.
"Ga-reg." The voice called out.
"How did it know my name?" He whimpered out. He thought it was all letters and numbers.
"Wow, lucky Ga-reg. Go on, don't be shy." Wy-Twelve pushed him forward. Alright, he needed to be calm, rational, and in no way panic-
"Sta-ar." The earings on Moon glowed. "You have been choosened."
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Steven shouted as he went into the trees to scream. "The images are in my head, make this nightmare end!"
"We have been chosened!" Moon laughed, running up with puckered lips. "What a wonderful occasion!"
"Luck hates us, it's the only thing that makes sense!!" Star shouted hysterically.
"Wait!" He raised his hands, stopping her. "You may let the voice tell you what's chosen, but that's not how we do it on Earth."
"Huh, but Gar-eg, why wouldn't you want to be choosened?" Jay-ten asked him, confused along with the others.
"On Earth love is natural. You don't get told who to love, you choose yourself." He explained to them. "Love isn't something you can control, it's something you want from the bottom of your heart."
"From the bottom … of my …" Moon looked lost, staring into her hands.
"We choose?" Wy-twelve looked into their own hands. "In that case … I choose you, Ga-reg!" Wait, that wasn't…!
"Yeah, I chose Ga-reg too!" Jay-ten took his hands into their own hands.
"Ga-reg! Ga-reg!" All the zoo-men were calling out his name, all surrounding him in general.
"I think we underestimated how much of a ladies man your dad is." Star muttered to his son.
"Is this the power of the Universe charm….it's more frightening than I could ever imagine." Steven shook in fear as he hid behind his sister, trying to cover his ears and eyes to not stare at the potential orgy that was probably about to start.
"Listen!" Greg shouted out, silencing them all. "You all have the right to choose but … I also have the right to say no."
"… No?" Jay-Ten asked.
"Yes..you're all great people…but I don't want to choose any of you…I kind of want to choose… other people…" He sheepishly admitted.
"I … I … feel bad!" Wy-Twelve shouted, tears in his eyes.
"My eyes are watery!" F-Three cried out, hitting the ground.
"Is this … hurt?" Jay-Ten asked, holding her body tightly. "Why would Ga-reg hurt us!?"
"Take this hurt away! Stop hurting!" Another Zooman cried out, reaching to him.
He's seen enough angry mobs and broken hearts to know where this was going. "RUN!"
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Steven ran as the sound of crying people chased behind him. "Please tell me this is your worst breakup, my mind doesn't want to process how this escalates!"
"It ranks up somewhere in the top five, I'll admit. There was that one case where the girl tried to break a guitar over my head!" His dad explained as, for expediency sake, Steven carried him overhead due to how slow of a runner he was.
"On the plus side, this is definitely going to get that door open." Star called out as she dragged their mom by the hand. "A crying mob of people on choosening day? They need to show up."
"Bottom of my heart…bottom of my…" Mom kept repeating as she stared at her free hand. "Aim it at his heart….why are my hands not black anymore?"
They stopped running, pulling her into a bush. "Mom, do you remember us?" Star asked, holding the woman's face.
"I … Star?" She asked. "Star what's … what are you wearing?" The woman asked in bafflement.
"You're back, you're back, you're finally back!" Steven looked at his mom and squeezed her as tightly as he could. "Wait, you are back, right? You don't have the desire to roll down hills and marry my earth dad, right?"
"Marry …" Mom looked at his dad … before holding her mouth, moving over and barfing into a nearby bush. He never felt more happy for someone to be disgusted by his dad before now.
"Okay, kind of a blow to my ego, but understandable." His dad muttered with a grunt.
"Alright, let me … try to get my bearings." She muttered. "We're in a forest … wearing terrible clothing … hiding because we're being chased by …"
"Why have you hurt us, Ga-reg!? Now I shall never know the beauty of Chosen!"
"Rejected lovers." Star finished. "And we'll fill you in later, because any second a door should open, and we need to run through it."
Sure enough, the door was opened, a group of Amethysts running through, chasing Zoomans and talking with them. "Come back here!" "We can talk about this!" "Don't worry, you'll love again."
"Huh, they're actually really good at emotional support." Steven observed. "Maybe that's why Amethyst is more stable than the other gems emotionally." Maybe he should've talked to her when Kelly broke up with him…both times.
"Worry about it later, let's go." Star began to run, only to get grabbed by an Amethyst with their gem on her nose. "Aww nuts."
"You're coming with me." She turned as Steven felt himself get picked up. "All of you."