Steven Universe :: Homeworld

Chapter 9: In sync

All that childish bickering is making me lose my focus. Watermelon-Tourmaline thought as she began shredding her perfectly elaborated training plan for the next whole week- or so she thought. She lay in her room, slouching with shoulders low and a dozen books lay there, sprawled across the strangely warm marble floor.

Watermelon began to breath heavily, as if to meditate. Which book? She thought. After a few minutes of scavenging for a book she either hasn't read yet or one she read before and enjoyed. Being a bibliophile such as herself didn't help despite having almost a hundred books to choose from only a select few was regarded as, 'to-be-read'. There! A book with a leather-bound dyed magenta lay there, glistening in the cluster of books.

Gems: Anatomy of the body-like illusion. Watermelon arced her eyebrows and began skimming. The book featured things such as 'How long should should a gem take in order to recuperate back to a body' and 'Do gems have the ability to fall in love?' Do they? Watermelon-tourmaline always wondered if she would have the same love story as the next gem.

"There must be something about learning to summon my weapon in here", Watermelon began to whisper as her agitation increased. More painstakingly annoying skimming began and a cluster of notes fell from in between the pages of the book.

To whom it may concern, the parchment envelope read. It had an obsidian black wax seal on the middle of the envelope. And of course, curious Watermelon began opening it. "There! Finally!", screams of joy echoed throughout the endless space.

"Not so endless, huh? The echoes told me that there is somewhere for sound to reverberate from.", Yellow diamond and Rose quartz stood at the doorway. "How did you get in? And I thought you were fighting?" Watermelon sank into a plushy chair, made of clouds. "Relax! Akai let us in. And we're not fighting anymore, Yellow diamond was right.", Rose quartz explained. "We have to think about the consequences." Should I tell them about the information on weapons?

Watermelon sighed and began explaining how she found the book and the envelope. "In fact, I was about to begin reading it then you two happened to come along, why don't we read it together?" Yellow diamond and Rose quartz slowly began to walk towards Watermelon. After a couple of steps, they sank next to her but just fell butt first on the floor. "Oh yeah, I forgot.", Watermelon clicked her fingers and two more plush chairs appeared next to her so that she was in between. "Thank you!"

"The weapon of a gem is an essential part of it's existence and summoning it is in fact not a piece of cake. Over the years, multiple ways of summoning a weapon has been tried but only a few actually work. This includes, excruciating training and even harder than the training- Meditation."

Watermelon-Tourmaline stopped reading and began to display an excited grin across her face. "This is it! All that worrying and all we had to do after all was meditate!" Yellow diamond burst in laughter and stood up to face Watermelon. "Just meditate?!" More laughter filled the room. "Didn't it say that it was harder than training? How will we be able to pull it off if we can't even train?" Rose quartz faced the two. "Don't be so pessimistic! We can do it if we just try hard enough. All we have to do is follow the instructions directed on the book and voila!"

"According to the book, once we are in a lotus position, we have to think about the worst times of our lives and we will revert into each of our respective gems- Rose quartz, Yellow Diamond and Watermelon tourmaline." Watermelon read. "Since this method is long forgotten, we really don't know what happens next so if we coul-"

"Are we going into something we don't even know what?" Yellow asked.

"Well, we'll just have to be optimistic won't we? Isn't it quite thrilling?" answered Rose, emphasizing on certain words better not be mentioned.

The gems sat in a triangle with their knees about two inches apart from one another. In the center, closer to Watermelon was the parchment paper with the directions. "Now we have to close our eyes and think about your fears, worst moments and breath comfortably.

Rose's Fear:

As usual, the orange and red light from the setting sun gave Rose a delicate feeling of joy and enlightenment. This was all ruined when she heard a loud howl coming from inside the house. Rose dashed straight for the entrance and what she saw inside ruined her. Everyone in her family was there, but not entirely. All their heads were dismembered.Their bodies were translucent and their colors pale, their gems were wrapped in something Rose was unable to discern- they must be trapped in their bodily state. Rose sank to her knees and her eyes rushed with some sort of liquid. She looked to her right and there they were. Lion and Akai had spears all over their bodies, acting like an adhesive, gluing them to the wall. They both shuddered before finally, they stopped breathing. Red liquid began to travel down from where the spears took contact with the body. Rose was then instantly sucked into a jet black vortex and darkness surrounded her. She screamed for her life.

Watermelon's fear:

Watermelon gripped the leather reins around the head of her friend, Akai. Below her, streams and rivers glistened with orange, reflecting the rays of the sun. Pine trees surrounded mountainous terrains, hills emerald green with specks of colors- flower fields of white and purple. She reached for a cloud and felt her arms getting damp, she removed her hand from the cloud and Akai slowly lowered her to a lake. Just above the water, she could see the cute little fishes swimming about everywhere and she reached her hand for the water. After a few minutes of swimming, Watermelon ran to Akai, smiling. Then suddenly, her hand mover to her pouch uncontrollably and grabbed out a fire starter. She tied Akai on a wooden pole and began to put dead leaves and twigs around him. Then, she lit him on fire. Akai screamed and thrashed for dear life as his beautiful feathers were getting burned. Watermelon awoke with consciousness as Akai began to shudder and the flames went down, at last, he stopped moving completely and darkness surrounded Watermelon. Sucking her into the abyss of nothingness.

Yellow Diamond's fear:

Yellow Diamond awoke inside a small capsule. She was claustrophobic. Her lungs sucked all the air out and she began to breath so heavily that her pores spit out sweat from every corner of her body. Her eyes felt heavy. I'm dying, she thought and nothingness surrounded her, sucking her entire being into a vortex. And she died.