At Harbour (Amedot AU)

Amethyst - 0011

When the thing came, it wasn't hard to spot, even for someone who'd fallen asleep.

In hindsight, Amethyst was kind of embarrassed about it, but in her defense, she had only received four and a half hours of sleep and she kinda hated Red Bull. Made her have to pee like crazy. She couldn't remember how or when she'd nodded off, so it wasn't like there was anything she could have done to prevent it; one second she'd been scrolling Snapchat, the next she was curled on her sleeping bag and a very loud strip of light was searing her eyes.

The light was from above and mostly blocked by the barn roof, save a few dazzling stripes through the gaps. The noise was like static, feedback, and a jet engine all in one. Her first thought was hey, maybe it is just a jet or something, nothing to worry about, absolutely no alien invaders above this barn but then the light source moved just enough in front of the open barn door that she could make out a glowing yellow diamond on its flat underside.

Her breath hitching in her throat, Amethyst scrambled to her feet, snatched up her backpack, and ducked behind the barn wall. This was it. This, the same ship that had taken her brother, bright and real and hovering not forty feet from her, a spotlight sweeping across the field. With trembling hands she adjusted her snapback hat, made sure her sneakers were ready to run —

And stopped in her tracks because she had no idea what to do.

It seemed like the sort of thing she should know, having had all this time to prepare, but really she'd never thought she'd come this far. Guess I'll just cross the bridges as I get to them, she shrugged and pulled her hood over her hat. On the ship, a hole appeared in the spotlight, through which a shining green sphere popped out into the air.

And I've immediately gotten to them, thought Amethyst, and reached into her backpack for her weapons.

A coil of rope in one hand, the baseball bat sticking from her backpack, and her Swiss army knife in her pocket, she abandoned the cover of the barn and plunged into the field. She knew it was exactly twenty-two steps through the abandoned stalks to reach the west corner of the crop diamond and stopped there, crouching low as the ship's green patrol marble floated down to earth. More specifically in the octagonal center, around which were four points of untouched field to cage it in.

"Gotcha," Amethyst grinned.

She stepped gingerly out into the aisle of crushed stalks, her feet dancing around the crunchier ones as she took her rope in two hands and began to fasten its end into a loop. Three years ago, she reflected, Pearl and Garnet had sent her to a "special" two-month summer camp in Texas to "burn off her energy", or more accurately, to eat powdered food and kiss girls behind  trees and go on ten-mile hikes and establish daily fights with other campers. She'd come back with muscles, a new ear piercing, an altered sexuality, and some hella lasso-throwing skills.

If she'd only known that some of those would actually come in handy, then maybe she wouldn't have complained so much about it.

At first she couldn't decide whether she should draw the marble towards her by making a lot of noise or sneaking up on it and risking having it leave before she got to it. Past the noises of the night, she could clearly make out an uncanny, artificial shifting and crunching as it moved around the center, and as she drew closer through the stalks of wheat and her heart began to pound faster, she decided on the second option. Safer that way.

She could see the thing now, big enough that she could probably fit inside, translucent and liquid beyond its surface, and hovering on seven conical feet. It didn't appear to have a front or back, so sneaking up on it would be difficult. It took a ceaseless, whirring path around the edge of the clearing, away from Amethyst, and a perfect ten feet from her nudged at the stalks as if checking that they would give way.

Oh, no you don't, Amethyst thought and grasped her rope. Just as she'd done a thousand times, she adjusted the loop to account for the size of the marble thing, lifted the lasso and spun it until she felt the knot just barely slipping. Perfect.

Honestly, she hadn't expected to really catch the robot, maybe just get its attention. She hadn't practiced for a while because lassoing was kind of a useless skill on the East Coast. But she'd always been a natural and she had luck on her side, as her counselors had said (not that she listened to them anyway) and now, she watched her rope whip around the circumference of the marble. Almost whooping in the thrill, she pulled the noose tight and the robot jerked back.

From the hovering ship above, a brighter light cracked to life and caused Amethyst to wince from the intensity, but so long as she kept her head down, her hat and hood protected her. The lasso on the thrashing robot was quickly slipping, so she abandoned her hiding place,  pulled her baseball bat from her backpack, and charged into the open — and, okay, maybe she also yelled a little. It helped.

"What — did you do — to my BROTHER?!" she cried, flying at the robot with the bat.

With all her strength, she brought the aluminum weapon down on the marble. And she got no results; the bat bounced back just as fast as she'd swung it, very closely missing her head and sporting a scary dent. Amethyst stumbled back and lost hold of the rope, and the robot pushed past her to the focused spotlight of the ship.

Its conical feet lifted up and disappeared into its sides, and it locked into the beam of light. Breathless, Amethyst threw herself at it one last time, one hand gripping at the noose still tight around the robot's body, the other and her feet hugging as much of its circumference as she could get.

I'm coming for you, Steven.

They rose together, into the dazzling light, away from Earth and the field and everything that Amethyst knew.