Chapter 5: Meteor Monsoon

They came across it on the shadow side of Typhaon-V.

For the last week or so, they had heard rumour of an anomaly that sucked in ships of all makes and sizes as they passed it. Distinguishing it from similar anomalies was how it kept vanishing before galactic authorities of either superpower could quarantine it,leaving nothing behind but hundreds of shredded frozen corpses. Then a similar disaster zone would crop up elsewhere shortly after. And so on and so forth. The official line was that these were separate incidents. However, some claimed that not only were they all linked, but that it was the same aberration every time and it just moved whenever it felt like it.

Taking crafts loaded with alloys and throwing away everything else certainly sounded like the Shatterlite's MO and the renewed possibility of capturing the corrupted Gem energized Pearl's efforts to suss out its location. While Dandy and QT traversed the physical and hit up hearsayon the ground, she investigated the digital; cycling through reams of information, miles of reports, mountains of articles, and as many chatrooms as QT's phone could handle. If this really was the Shatterlite, then it was now big and mobile enough to attract notice. The trail was hot, people were on the lookout, and she had a very finite window of time before it did something truly heinous or the outernet found something else to talk about.

Its possession of a warp drive made this tricky, but not impossible. Pearl didn't believe in chaos or chance. Everything was part of a system and with enough information, you could recognize, anticipate, and exploit those systems. The simple mind of the Shatterlite was not exempt. Driven by instinct and primal wants, incapable of higher thought, its pattern would make itself known with time and effort. She jotted down her notes on QT's used rolls of ticker tape, discarded fast food wrappers, and any paper she could get her hands on. When she felt she had accrued enough data, she put all her records aside, and pulled a universe out of her Gem.

Well, more of a simplified projected model of the universe; just complex enough for her to visualize the problem in three-dimensional space. The highlights of course were the tiny reticules peppered around a set of galaxies. Each of these targets represented a cluster of incidents that the Shatterlite was most likely involved in. Their placement appeared to be chaotic, but maybe if she connected them from the earliest report she could find to the latest...

Again, the model thwarted her. The Shatterlite's path, if it had one, was erratic. One that zigzagged and ping-ponged as it warped from sector to sector. Sometimes it went so far as to come within a fraction of a parsec from where it had once prowled. These irregularities seemed to confirm what she had dreaded since she took Dandy up on his offer: that this hunt was hopeless.

She started to wring her hands in nervous thought, causing her fingers to brush against the circle of metal that was her communicator.

Circle.

Circles!

Pearl called off the line connecting the reticules and threw a new one through the first of them in a curved arc until it swung back and hit the second, whereupon it looped downwards and struck the third; which, she realized, was not as far from the second as the second had been from the first. The sequence was a spiral, sinking deeper into the layers of space. As the line tightened, the attacks increased in size and boldness. She coaxed the line to curl out of the final incursion point and stopped it where – if the shrinking time and spatial patterns were correct – the Shatterlite would strike next: The Echidian System.

To Dandy's discomfort, Pearl insisted that they warp there as they'd only have less than three days before it vanished again. Upon arriving, they zipped from planet to planet, from one end of the system to the other. When the Shatterlite failed to manifest, Pearl wondered if it had all ready left or worse, she had grossly miscalculated its progress. As they rounded the last lonely planetoid on the Echidian's outermost fringe, they saw something hang over the shadow side of Typhaon-V.

QT tweaked the ship's cameras for low light conditions so they could get a better visual of the object. When the adjustments were made, if became painfully obvious why it had chosen to roost there. Only the darkness afforded by such an isolated celestial body could hide its crooked blossom of a frame whose petals reached out into space like the jagged fingers of some obscene claw, mask the sparks that flickered across its surface, and conceal its titanic size. Further magnification revealed that held within this malformed, metal grip was a dense, mansion-sized heap of derelict scrap; suspended in the middle of the edifice by a series of vast steel pipes. The sallow, golden glow Pearl spied coming from beneath its chimeric surface was a fearfully familiar one.

"We found it." And they had. After half-a-year of semi-serious searching and a number of colourful, but distracting detours, here it was. They hadn't anticipated it looking quite like this. But what was several miles of Frankensteinian architecture when your goal was right there squatting in the middle of it?

"Whoah,"Dandy said, not quite as awed or terrified as he should've been. "It got fat."

Then, as if in retaliation for this insult to its aesthetics, the Shatterlite's surface opened fire with the weaponry of a thousand stolen ships.

The colour, calibre, and range of the blasts seemed to differ, a testament to the variety of spacecrafts it had cannibalized over the course of months. It would've been quite beautiful to behold if it wasn't so very lethal and headed in their direction. Dandy banked hard to the right, and the majority of the barrage passed them by with only a few outlier beams grazing the portside hull. That's when something smashed into the front of the ship. Once the video feed came back online, they saw that a long, crudely constructed tentacle stretching all the way back to the Shatterlite had imbedded itself in the Aloha-Oe's bow. The entire craft trembled as the macabre appendage started to drag them towards its master. In spite of its vulgar assemblage, pulling against the limb was having no effect and during the brief moment they had tried, it felt like their entire vessel was going to rip in two. Lacking any other options, they fired and detonated a missile half-a kilometre down its length; freeing themselves and making it possible to warp away before the next volley of mishmash laser cannon fire could skewer them.

All in all, it could've gone better.

Which brings us (and them) to Planet Yom-3, a grave world in both disposition and content.

"Blech!" Dandy retched. "Aw, damn it. Now there's spit and cookie chunks all over the inside of my visor!" his fingers gave the front of his helmet a futile stroke. "I can barely see out of it now."

"It's not like you're missing much." Pearl muttered as she sifted through the clutter around them with her spear.

"Hang on. Maybe that was just a rotten fluke. I'll try one more."

"I don't think you should, Dandy."

"Look, if I'm going to clean it out anyway, I might as well see if the other snacks I stuffed in this fancy bucket are worth keeping," he tilted his helmet to the side and through the food-splattered, green glass of its face shield, Pearl could see him try to scoop up another cookie with his tongue. She was morbidly impressed when he succeeded. "Blech!" And genuinely amused that the outcome was the same. "That does it. I'm getting rid of them." Dandy grabbed the collar of his space suit, but paused as he was about to activate the disengagement switch. "Um…aren't you going to try and stop me?"

Pearl's spear hung loose in her grip as she eyed him dispassionately. "Would it matter?"

Probably not, but Dandy thought that her approval would've been a nice bonus. And what she had said didn't sound like approval. "So it's fine if I take this off for a few seconds?"

"Fine?" Pearl let out a hollow chuckle. "May I remind you that you're wearing that helmet for a very good reason?"

He wracked his brain for it, but the effort turned up squat. "The…scanners said the air was breathable, right?"

"Barely. And it's laced with so many lethal preservative agents that if you breath too much of it, you might as well be guzzling embalming fluid." Which hadn't affected Pearl that much, but the smell was so caustic that she had needed to numb her olfactory and gustatory senses to make it tolerable.

"Good thing I have you to watch my back in case anything goes wrong."

"True," Pearl rigidly agreed. "I'll pick a nice spot in the neighbourhood to put you in if you expire."

"Atta girl." Dandy held his breath and took off his helmet. He shook out all the remaining cookies and wiped its insides clean with his glove. His eyes watered as they were exposed to the malodorous atmosphere, but he was able to slip it back on his head before exhaling. "Those had to be the worst thin mints I've ever tasted."

"No one forced you to eat a second one, Dandy," she said, pulling out a promising chevron from the ground and then casting it aside when she saw it was fragmented and thus too small for their purposes. "Or to buy a thousand of them."

"Fifty Boxes of Cosmic Girl Scout Cookies for Fifty Wulongs," he stated as he rejoined the search. "How could I not have taken that deal?"

"The scratched-out expiration dates made fora compelling counterargument." Phalange segments? Again? These would be no help at all. "On top of everything else, now our cupboards are full of rancid baked goods."

"Not for long. I'll find a way to put 'em to good use. You'll see."

"That's nice." Pearl numbly noted.

More of that passionless backtalk. "Something bugging you, Pearl?" Dandy didn't want to ask, but they still had a few more hours of disinterring ahead of them and the planet was spooky enough without the only other living thing on it going silent.

"Just…look at where we are Dandy." Pearl said, not bothering to gesture at the ubiquitous morbidity surrounding them. "It's all bones, dirt, and not much else."

"That's why we're here though. Yom-3 is a Levia-Gaunt burial world." Dandy cited as he turned over a piece of giant vertebrae. "These massive meatsacks come from all over the galaxy to die in places like this."

Which was why Pearl had been so unnerved at the prospect of coming to this location. Discounting that the material here was the best option available to them, a land of rot and death sounded absolutely ghastly. When they arrived, she was stunned that is wasn't as bad as she thought it would be; it was awful in an entirely different way. No nations of virulent flies or valleys of decaying flesh. Just an ossified, abandoned domain.

To think that anything would choose to perish in a place like this. The last thing they'd feel would be a jagged bed formed from those who had come before. If they looked up, the sky would not be there to console them. The foul, inhospitable air choking what was left of their lives from their bodies cast a blanket of opaque mist overhead; clear enough for the light of the Akashikan sun to create days of malnourished, chartreuse illumination that lacked any scale or perspective and appeared to stretch on forever. How terrible a final thought it would be, to think that there was nothing past these clouds of lime miasma and that all the spectacles and sensations experienced during their long spacefaring lives had been nothing more than a forlorn fancy, a desperate dream. Pearl didn't want to know what night on Yom-3 was like.

"You don't find it even a little bit ominous?"

"Ominous? Since when did you believe in omens? I thought you were all math. Aha!" Dandy exclaimed as he pulled out a large piece of circular cartilage from beneath a stack of blanched ulnas. "QT," he said into his communicator. "Get the claw out here. I think I found just the right cover for the maintenance hatch."

Pearl used the time it took for one of the Aloha-Oe's extensive arms to stretch behind Dandy and clamp onto the intervertebral disk to carefully consider what she would say next. "I'm not supporting the validity of misguided superstition or groundless theories, but this appalling place and how we're almost at the end and what's waiting for us back at Typhaon-V," she bit her lip. "I still can't believe it got so massive."

"Relax. We can take it."

"Dandy, didn't you see how huge it was? And those sparks we saw all over its body…I think it was in the process of making itself even larger with all the raw materials it got from-." Pearl stopped and wordlessly returned to investigating the fields of fossils.

The interior of Dandy's visor fogged as he huffed in frustration. Unless they talked this out now, this could be an issue later on. So they would. She'd be no good to him rattled. "Go on."

"I had tallied up the number of the Shatterlite's possible victims to a few dozen," she explained, not looking up from the ground. "But constructing a framework that large and dense would've required hundreds more." There was a hitch in the rhythmic sound of her spear moving through and over blankets of bone. "We should've looked harder."

"Given what little there was to work with, I think we did our best."

"Well it wasn't good enough."

Meh, Dandy thought. What was?

"As a Crystal Gem, it's my duty to prevent…creatures like the Shatterlite from wreaking havoc on the universe," Pearl said with strained pride. "And I let it run wild for weeks."

"Yeah, yeah, it's totally your fault that it went on this intergalactic feeding frenzy. Sticking your head out of the Aloha-Oe and yelling for it to stop from hundreds of lightyears away would've totally worked," she felt him tap her shoulder with the back of his glove. "Just go with the flow, Pearl. Chasing after a wave that's passed you by will just tire you out."

Pearl rubbed the part of her arm he had lightly struck. Normally, such an abrupt invasion of her personal space would've caused her great alarm, but the benign camaraderie behind it had been clear. "You might find your way back to shore though."

"Sure, if you wanna be a frube with nothing to show for it." Dandy snorted. "Anyway, you shouldn't put whatever the Shatterlite did on your head. It's not like it's Gem-kind's fault that that floating mountain of garbage is trying to become a Death Star."

"R-right." Pearl hastily agreed, quickly going back to excavating the residuum of Yom-3. "Huh," the butt of her spear had hit something hard beneath the surface that refused to budge. She cleared away the top layer of rigid organs and saw a solid, curved bone prominently sticking out from the others. Dissolving her weapon, she bent down to get her hands around the sides of the object and pulled. And pulled. And pulled. And pulled. For while it wasn't too heavy for someone of her considerable strength to move and dislodging it from its fellows wasn't difficult, it took her a full minute to get the whole thing above ground.

"Ohohohoho!" Dandy clapped. "Look at the size of this thing! It's over a dozen yards long! And that shape!" he eyed the gradual crescent bend of space cetacean anatomy. "This Levia-Gaunt horn's going to go great on the pointy front part of the ship."

"The bow." Pearl corrected as she examined the massive bone. "And judging by how this cavity on the interior is characteristic of a palate, I'd say this is more of a rostrum than a horn."

"It can be a coccyx for all I care." Dandy said dismissively. "If it's tough enough, we can use it. So give it a little stress test so we can be sure."

Pearl nodded and stood up. She held her left hand above the girth of the beak to aim and drew back her other arm, curling its fingers into a fist. Then with a swing of her hip, she struck the mandible with a precise and deadly blow that could puncture steel and would splinter the bones of most. Not this rostrum though. It shook, and the force of the attack caused it to sink an inch into the littered soil, but it was unbroken and completely unmarred. The grim quirk of Planet Yom-3 had worked wonders on this all ready stern collagen specimen. The gaseous cocktail that permeated this sphere might rob the breath from your lungs, but that skeleton of yours would last forever beneath the pitiless lime, preserved and hardened even as the poison ate away everything else.

"Perfect."

At present, it was a perfect day to take a stroll in Beach City. The sun shone, the wind cooled, there were just enough clouds for decent shade, and the sea was calm. The gentleness of the tide and the smallness of the waves were ideal for those that wanted to talk a quaint, toe-tingling walk along the shoreline or a safe, leisurely swim on the ocean. Not so much if you were a surfer hoping for a decent macking with some off-the-hook honkers and heavies. Then these conditions were totally bogus.

"Well this sure is...stable." Dandy observed.

Steven played with the drawstring of his trunks, rolling the aglets between his fingers and cursing the afternoon's excellent weather. All systems had squarely been set to 'go' before they drifted into this unvarying impasse. The rocket board was everything Dandy had promised; a solid 9-foot, 3-inch thick Gun with a gorgeous, stylised crane decal printed on its surface that was spacious enough for him to sit comfortably on the nose while giving Dandy enough room to do his thing on the main deck. In place of a fin was a compact motor with three thrusters attached to the tail which looked heavy, but didn't stop the board from floating on the water as easily as one that was made of regular foam and resin. And there lay the problem, they were just floating.

Here they were, stripped down to their trunks – or in Dandy's case, briefs – out by the reefs where the waves were supposed to break, and the water wasn't the least bit choppy. The excitement he had felt when Dandy had gotten them there 'hands and feet free' with the board's triple-headed booster had long since fizzled out. In its place was a harsh sense of anticlimax and the mortifying understanding that the inclemency of the ocean was something he should've checked up on before they dove into the bay.

With a reluctant groan, Steven turned around to look Dandy in the eye. The man's legs were submerged from the knee-down as they hugged the rails of the board and his body was hunched forward as if weighed by neutered expectations. Indifferent as Dandy looked, Steven felt the same trepidation that all presenters suffer from when they must admit to themselves that the event they had been hosting was well and truly thwarted by forces inside and outside their control. There'd be no ducking backstage to avoid the produce and folding chairs for Steven though. Not unless he wanted to swim all the way back to the beach on his lonesome.

"Yeah…sorry about this, Dandy. I guess the waves just aren't biting today."

Dandy clasped his hands together and brought them to his lips, propping his thumbs underneath his chin. He turned his dark brown eyes to gaze at the watery terrain that refused to rise and cascade like he wanted. To Steven, it looked like Dandy was praying to the sea, to the sky, or to some unknowable yet undoubtedly handsome deity for better waves. He was sorely mistaken, because Dandy wasn't doing something as innocent and commendable as sweet-talking the was thinking; which was a fine alternative to prayer if he had thought long or hard enough to devise something of import. Suffice to say, his ruminations were brief and shallow, and produced a schematic for a ploy that was more scheme than solution. The difference between the two, you might ask? Solutions aren't usually preceded by wicked snickering.

"Well I guess we'll just have to make some of our own." Dandy smiled cryptically. "After all, when you want something to bite, poke it."

Steven knew this to be true, but he also knew that getting bit wasn't pleasant and provoking something to bite you wasn't smart. Therefore, any course of action that compared itself to such probably wasn't one he wanted to take. "I don't think we need waves to have a good time, Dandy. We could always just paddle around here and-."

"Don't give me any of that 'sour grapes' crud, kid. We came out here for bomboras, not ankle busters!"

"I don't know what either of those things are."

"Changing the subject won't change the fact that deep down, you want to shred the sea as badly as I do. It's written all over your face."

"Y-yeah," Steven blanched, "But can't we just…wait…for better waves?" Dandy flicked him on the forehead. "Ow! What was that for?!"

"Steven, I can't believe how selfish you're being right now!"

"Selfish?" Steven echoed as he rubbed his stricken brow.

"Yeah, selfish. Don't you know how big waves happen?"

"The sea gets mad?" Steven offered, remembering how he had asked that same question to someone he deeply trusted.

'That's what I thought at first too, but the truth is waaaaaaay different. The sweet waves that the average surfer covets and enjoys are the swells of distant, savage storms. While you're hanging ten and kicking out with hot babes, there might be people on the other side of the world being battered around by the devastating typhoon that's making your fun possible!"

"No!" Steven gasped. Had Amethyst lied to him? Again?!

"Oh yes! So is that what you are, Mr. Universe? Some beach leech snake who'd wish that on others?!"

"No way!" Steven fiercely denied, quickly (but carefully) standing himself up as he pumped his fists into the air. "I'M A KAHUNA!"

"Great." Dandy praised as he typed some commands into his bracelet. "Just so we're clear, if Pearl find out about this, you're taking part of the heat."

"Huh?"

"She got kind of mad the last time I did this with her around," he shrugged as he continued to fiddle with the device. "Something about the environment and reckless endangerment, but given how far out we are, I doubt that any shoreys are going to make it all the way to Beach City."

"Shoreys?" Instead of telling him what those were, Dandy pressed another button on his communicator, the last in the sequence. Steven saw something fire out of the distant Aloha-Oe, followed by a dozen more somethings. As they sailed overhead, Steven could see that they were white, metallic, cylindrical projectiles with red cones adorning their fronts. Despite being of a tender age and still having much to learn, the young Gem had played enough video games, read enough comics, and seen enough movies to know what they were before they hit the water some several hundred feet away. But still, on the off-chance he was mistaken, he had to ask, "Were those-?"

"Aheheheh. Forgot to mention, there's another way big waves are formed," his pinkie tapped the fibreglass ring wrapped around his high-tech bangle. "Underwater Explosions!" Steven heard a muffled BOOM from down below and saw that the water where the missiles had landed was beginning to rise into a large, translucent dome. The ocean beneath them began to dip, drawing them closer to this growing bubble of force and fluid.

"Oh my gooooosh!" Steven cried, his voice trembling with fear, shock, and excitement.

"Keep your hands and legs inside the board until the end of the ride." Dandy cautioned as he stood up with practiced ease. Nodding, Steven sat himself down and grabbed the rubber handles Dandy had glued onto the board. "And be sure to scream 'AKAW!' any time you'd like."

"Ak-?" The bubble burst, breaking outward in tall dense walls of water. "-AWWWWWWW!" Steven screamed as Dandy activated the board's thrusters and sent them speeding towards the surging sea.

Dandy's bombs did more than just kick up water in the most calamitous and ill-conceived manner possible. As it was with any explosive, their detonation released a series of shockwaves into the surrounding water. These supersonic pulses would degrade with distance, but were powerful enough to be felt by those many miles away from their hypocentre.

They hit Pearl the hardest. As she swam towards Beach City with all the speed her swordfish transformation could afford her, she felt a sharp increase in resistance that was dissonant from the usual viscosity of this part of the Atlantic. The Gem ignored it at first, chalking it up to some minor tectonic occurrence or tidal fluke, but then she was buffeted by a second disturbance and then a third. She felt an odd sense of déjà-vu tug at her mind when the fourth hit. When the fifth disruption made itself known, she remembered a pleasant lakeside stopover on Planet Farkadia from eight years ago; an idyllic afternoon whose utter ruiniation was preceded by a certain gel-brained oaf shouting, "Pearl! QT! Check this out!" By the time the seventh pulse might have rolled over her, she had all ready taken to the sky.

Amethyst barely noticed. Not much she could do if the sea got all snippy, she thought. Now what should she turn into next? Maybe a jellyfish. A jellyfish could be cool. She didn't have much occasion to transform into one when she was on land.

Garnet was much more keen in sensing the shockwaves. She tried tracing them to their source using her clairvoyance, but stopped when she saw the path to their point of origin led back to Beach City. Just thinking in that direction felt like having a needle shoved into her third eye, but like Pearl, she now had little doubt that the man responsible for this chronal tempest was the culprit. With the mystery solved, she backhanded an annoyingly persistent barracuda that couldn't take a hint, and resumed her patrol on the ocean floor.

Meow and QT were completely oblvious. Although, if you told them that their 'captain' had just used several rockets as improvised depth charges so he could get some surfing done, they'd probably plead the 5th, deny the existence of any 'captain', or try to knock you out so they could make their getaway.

Huddled over a deformed portion of this nonsensical spectrum of noticing was the Slammerhead. The unnatural vibrations caused its new flesh to hum and sing, rousing it from its nap. It thought this strange as its skin had never done that before. Stranger still was how different it felt as it drew itself up from where it had slept. It felt heavier, but its movement remained unimpaired. The added mass did not hinder. The sense of invigoration it had experienced after mending its wound was still there and stronger than ever before. And its face wasn't the only thing that felt fantastic. All those vexing pains and galling cramps that had bothered it for years were all gone. Scratching its head with its tail without inciting a massive backache was now a possibility again.

Rolling its shoulders to further exalt in this increase in flexibility and the absence of fatigue, its beady eyes noted that its wings were of a much thicker make than the last time it had checked. They were craggier too. It looked down and saw that its torso and feet were rendered in similar states of blockiness. It attempted to run a tongue over its mandable in thought, but ended up having more to think about when it brushed over what its brain could only describe as a second outer jaw; the 'teeth' of which were quite sharp. But the organ's inherent toughness stopped it from being shredded like hash against their serrated edges. Tasted like rocks; the clear shiny kind.

Since rocks – however shiny – weren't known for flying under their own power, the Slammerhead wondered if its wings would still work as they had before this crystal coating got all over them. It kicked off of the seabed and brought its arms down. To its relief, the action caused it to ascend as it always did. A Slammerhead with useless wings was of little worth.

It tucked its legs and wings to the side and undulated its body forward, using its tail to steer itself and generate more thrust. It sank a little easier than it had before, probably due to the weight increase, but swimming hadn't gotten any harder. Heck, its newfound vitality was making it so easy that the Slammerhead was starting to hate being underwater a little less. Not enough to stay down there though. The empowered alien unfurled its wings and was about to flap its way back to the surface when it saw the city.

Glittering ahead of it was a domed metropolis that hung in the water like an unbound sea mine. This day was just full of wonders, the Slammerhead mused. The sentients of this world built cities underwater. While it was still far away, the alien could see that it bore an uncanny resemblance to the town it had tried to attack the night before. Highly derivative, but a meal was a meal and it was itching to try out its new jaw. There was even a delectably ignorant little family playing nearby in a dome of their very own. Neither the city nor the little people stirred as the Slammerhead drew near and opened its mouth.

"Whoah! I got a bite!"

"Hey, me too!"

Steven had a unique history with water. This year alone, he had found himself trapped at the bottom of the sea with the girl who would one day be his best friend, explored (and destroyed) a booby-trapped ziggurat that kept the depths at bay with magic, floated up a pillar made from all the world's oceans and was narrowly rescued when it had completely imploded. Heck, he had even known a Gem who could outright control the stuff. All of these experiences should have prepared him for the tsunami Dandy had created. Alas, they did not.

Maybe the two of them rocketing towards the wave had something to do with it.

When they reached the base of the wave, its top was starting to curl. The alien hunter made the board swerve hard to the right in a bottom turn and all Steven could do was hold onto the covered nylon chords as hard as he could. He wished that he could look back and see what Dandy was doing. It might have given him fair warning of what would happen next.

They kept carving on the wave until it was completely hidden from view. But Steven could still HEAR the wave. Its thunderous churning was one it shared with every formidable torrent of water he had encountered, but he couldn't see it. They were facing back the way they came and everything in front of him was relaxed and serene while behind him lay a tremendous saltwater domino of great weight and force that was in the process of collapsing on top of him.

The disparity of the scene did not stop there. In fact, while he could see that they were moving forward, Steven sensed that they were being pulled backward and even more worryingly, upward. Only his own weight and presumably a shift in Dandy's stance prevented them from stalling and wiping out on this expansive, charging screen of H2O. As it drew them back, the wave started to lift them higher and higher along its face.

8 feet.

12 feet.

20 feet.

At 30 feet, the closing lip of the wave began to pelt Steven's back with fragmented bits of itself. The board's nose beneath him had been raised slightly. He saw that it was no longer touching the water; the water that was flowing backwards to feed into the unseen maxilla of moisture that loomed out of sight.

The tilted downpour grew stronger. The wave was breaking. They must have finally arrived at the reefs. Steven's experience with surfing was limited, but he didn't need to be a grey belly to understand that at this height, there was no way they'd have enough time to safely descend; they'd get locked in before they could. A shadow fell across his body and with a shiver, he knew that the wave was about to fall on him too. Just as it looked like they were about to crash, Dandy smacked the board's nose back into the water and activated the thrusters, rapidly propelling them down the face of the wave and away from its plummeting peak. When they were far enough, he switched off the jets and turned the board around so he and Steven could watch the whitewater. As the froth faded into transluscent calm, the Gem was astounded at how there were no traces of the terrible and exhilarating upheaval they had just ridden on, save for his memory of it.

"Wooo!" Dandy cheered. "How did you like that?!"

"It was-." Crazy. Insane. Dangerous. Mad. Terrifying. Did we seriously blow up the ocean? I hope the fish made it out okay. Maybe not the sharks. Nuts! That was simply nuts! Would that have killed us? Let's never do that again. Not that I'd mind too much if we did. "-wow."

"The word you're looking for is choka."

"Choka." Steven echoed. Yes, that would do, whatever that meant. He let go of the handles and laid back on the deck. Dandy, who appeared to be even more drenched than Steven, looked down at him with the same fondness a rascal showed to his accomplice after they had both made it out of a successful caper. He didn't seem to care that the spray had decimated his pompadour into an untidy – but ruggedly endearing – brunette mop. "That was way choka, Dandy."

"Did you expect anything less?" Dandy asked, spreading both his palms out at a flippant slant. "I might be a Benny, but Dandy sure ain't no Barney. You know what I'm saying, baby?"

"I really don't." Steven panted, getting the feeling back into his fingers. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I didn't think we were going to make it."

"It wouldn't be a gnarly ride without a little danger." Dandy chortled. "And you can't spell radical without risk."

"Yes you can."

"Come on, cut me some slack. I'm trying to lay some knowledge on you, Steven. 'Sides, you weren't in any real trouble. If things got too rough, you could have always just bailed and used your bubble. I swear, you Gems get all the luck. Plus, even if you couldn't, I wouldn't let you get hurt, dude. Pearl would kill me if I did." Dandy half-joked.

Steven gave this statement a bit of thought. Apart from him being there, surfing on that wave had been a situation completely devoid of magic. No Gems, no monsters, no artefacts, or spells. It had just been him, Dandy, the board, and the sea. Not that it was a completely normal excursion, the missiles had seen to that, but while he had taken risks before, the lack of the supernatural made this a different kind of risk. That was probably why he had been so afraid and excited: the newness, that quality of not knowing that inspired fear and amazement. He wondered if Dandy ever made Pearl feel like this while they had been travelling together. "She probably would, but thanks for looking out for me Dandy," he nodded. "It was kinda scary how I couldn't SEA the wave though."

"Oho, so that's how you wanted to surf, huh?" Dandy fingers started to inch towards his communicator. "Then maybe a trip through the tube is what you're after."

Steven's eyes widened. "N-no, Dandy! It was just a pun!"

"Too late." With a click, he closed the gap between his finger and the ring. Another missile exploded beneath the water and Dandy didn't waste a moment zooming them toward the cresting aftermath. Steven barely had time to get his fingers back on the handles.

Upon arriving, Dandy turned the board rightward again, but stopped it halfway so they were now surfing along the base of the wave. As they raced along its middle, Steven bore witness to a towering glassy thickness rising to his left. It was a clear and deceptively solid accretion, but his distorted mirror image betrayed how the wave was a very mobile thing and despite how ponderous its movements looked, they were barely staying ahead of it at this daring angle. A stormy racket sounded from behind as the barrel started to shut them in. The hollow of the wave they were riding on was shrinking and just ahead the edge of the wave was on the brink of rejoining the calmer sea. Seconds before this reunion could cut off their escape, the speed of the board sharply increased, sending them through the dwindling exit of this brief, but formidable oceanic tunnel.

As the boosters cooled, Dandy and Steven rested. They lazily drifted on the fading ripples of the vanishing swell. One would think that having surfed two monster waves like that in quick succession, the pair would call it a day and head back to shore.

"Again?"

"Sure!"

They stirred up and surfed on 11 more after that.

Because twice just wasn't enough.

"I knew it was families! I knew it!"

"Hey, it went for my bait too!" QT exclaimed. "So less gloating and more cranking!"

"Easy for you to say!" The Betelgeusian grunted as he tried to turn the handle of his reel. "The creep ain't budgi-whoah!" he cried as he was tugged towards the stern. "It's trying to send me overboard!"

"Brace your feet on the gunwhale!" QT ordered.

"The what?"

"The wall at the end of the sloop!"

"What the hell is a sloop?!"

"It's what we're standing on, puffball!"

"All right! All right! No need to get testy!" Meow yelled as he pressed his hindlegs against the sapphire-colored partition. "Okay, now what do we do?"

"What any self-respecting angler would do," QT slid next to him, making sure to lock his wheels to prevent himself from rolling off of the edge. "We reel the alien in!"

The two alien hunters struggled to rip their quarry from out of the water. Their taught lines jerked left and right, making sudden startling slashes on the ocean's surface. The sea gurgled and groaned at the clash, QT and Meow could see great pockets of air bubble up to the surface as their catch fought to make off with their bait. Both of them felt the strain in their own way and were silently thankful for it as everything else around them from the salty winds to the peaceful horizon was telling them to ease up and release it.

They wrestled alone against what they really hoped was the Slammerhead and not some other stubbornly strong nautical creature; they had, after all, only brought two snow globes. Meow grit his teeth with effort as he set every one of his modestly developed Betelgeusian muscles to the task and QT let loose with his usual repartee of pre-recorded grunts that he played over the sound of his creaking servos and joints to assure his crewmates that 'Yes, I am trying, thank you very much.' They yanked and they pulled and they tugged; the force of which was beginning to move the boat backwards. Until finally, something miraculous occurred.

"Q-QT! I actually got my reel to budge!" Meow said. His paws were aching and his feet were killing him, but he had managed to get his handle a full 90 degrees counter-clockwise, bringing with it a small length of line.

"Same here!" QT said. "I think we might be tiring it out!"

There was still plenty of resistance, but it appeared that the fight was starting to leave their bounty. They got their reels one cycle back and then another with each subsequent turn going smoother and quicker than the one that came before. Gradually, their spools grew fat on moist layers of retrieved line.

"The Gems aren't going to believe this. You could just see it in their eyes when they left us on the boat. They didn't think we'd snag the Slammerhead our way." Meow smirked. "Shows what they know."

"Ooo, this is going to be...so...cool?"

"Well yeah. Of course it's going to be...be...what the?"

Prideful as they were of their ostensible victory, the phrase 'too good to be true' was still playing on repeat in their heads at a semi-inaudible 20 hertz. The statement got quieter and quieter with each completed turn of their handles, but it never actually left. As the saying goes, when something's too good to be true, it usually is. What most won't tell you is that these words of caution are trying to warn you about two specific scenarios. The first is built around the premise that your good times are a fluke, a glitch in your endless daily struggles, and each passing moment increases the likelihood of this good fortune dropping dead and tripping you with its corpse.

"It shouldn't be this easy."

"Don't jinx it, man. This just gives us a chance to rest our bods."

"But look at our lines! They're slackening faster than we're reeling them in." QT fussed. "Maybe the Slammerhead gave up!"

Meow looked over the back of the ship and as far as he could into the sea. "Dang. I think you might be right. They're just swaying down there without a care in the...wait! They're moving!"

"Are you positive? I don't feel it getting any harder."

"That's um," Meow swallowed. "That's because they're moving...the other way"

The other set of circumstances this phrase applies to posits that whatever was 'too good to be true' was wholly fictitious; it was terrible all along and you were just too callow to realize it right away. And with their lines still rising up from the clear water at a steady incline despite them letting go of their reel handles entirely, that hushed phrase rose to a foreboding clangor and they knew exactly which of the two situations they were in.

"H-hey, QT."

"Y-yeah?"

"I don't think we're actually hauling it in." A frigid, late-afternoon breeze amplified the cold fear that was curdling in his long throat. "I think it's actually coming u-."

Almost impatiently, the surface of the ocean erupted into a wide, fleeting geyser of unnatural origin and might before Meow could finish. QT's body sizzled and spasmed as his systems tried to purge the water that rained down on him and the sloop like a hail of rust-mongering darts. When his vision returned, he was shocked to see that he had managed to keep a firm hold on his rod. Much less shocking and infinitely more alarming was the Slammerhead flapping its 20-meter wings above them and looking very different from its portrait in the bounty ledger.

Instead of dark, slick flesh, this Slammerhead's body was completely covered by bright orange crystal. Its finer features had been simplified into a rough outline as if this were the blocky beginnings of a Slammerhead statue that had come to life mid-carve and devoured its Pygmalion. The crystal made the creature's feet and talons appear as a congealed, edge-laden mass that terminated into broad, gruesome hooks whose tips glinted wickedly in the light of the late day. The end of its clubbed tail was now adorned by a crown of menacing spikes. A tremorous cracking rang out as its armored joints and muscles grinded against one another with each mighty wingbeat. From the way it looked to the way it moved, the creature had an aura of heaviness about it. The alien hunters wondered how it was managing to stay aloft when every movement it made seemed burdensome and weighty.

The Slammerhead didn't care about that. It could still fly. It felt a little more difficult, but it sensed that its newfound vigor would make this handicap a non-issue. That was all that mattered. With that settled, it could now move on. The winged beast broke right and would have fled quite handily if it hadn't carelessly forgotten to spit out the fishing lines from its maw or if Meow and QT hadn't been so relieved – to the point of distraction - that their frightening prey was leaving them alone.

The Slammerhead did not notice that it was now dragging the Gem Sloop behind it, only that its flight wasn't as high or swift as it wanted it to be. For the Betelgeusian and robot on the boat, however, it was difficult not to notice.

"Why didn't we just let go?!" Meow cried as he cursed whoever had designed their fishing equipment. Maybe the reels would have gotten ripped out or the poles themselves would have snapped at the handle if those manufacturers hadn't done such a damn good job.

"In my defense, I paid good money for these rods."

"But we can let go now, right? Right?" Meow wheezed through the pain of his harried hindlegs.

"We're all that's holding the Slammerhead back. If we let it loose, it'll destroy Beach City for sure." QT said. "And the people there were really nice."

"You're just saying that because a lot of them took selfies with-." Meow's tail, now bristling and sensitive with tension, felt the wooden floor it was pressed against pitch in a very unwelcome way. "Oh That settles it. We're totally hosed!"

"What's wrong?!"

"The boat!" Meow screamed. "The boat's starting to tilt!"

With his wheels locked and his gyroscopes automatically keeping him balanced even at this disastrous juncture, QT had been unaware that the boat was on a steady decline from where they sat. For each moment they clung to their rods, the draught between the Gem Sloop's aft and the sea diminished. The angle of the Slammerhead's flight and how they had propped themselves against the gunwhale was causing the back of the craft to sink into the ocean.

The lowered stern crashed through the larger waves that flowed across the surface, rupturing them, and causing large sheets of liquid to splash onto the alien hunters. QT ran hard reboot after hard reboot to keep himself online. He was taking in more water than he could flush out and his power cells were suffering for the attempt. Each time he woke, the boat had plunged a little bit deeper, Meow was a little more soaked, and there was a little less will in his frazzled processors.

Somewhere between blackouts, his hat and sunglasses had fallen over the side.

"QT." Meow shivered. "I don't think we're gonna win this one."

Through drenched, crackling wiring, QT crunched the data. The Slammerhead was witlessly running the boat like a clunky plow through the fields of the Atlantic. This prevented it from generating enough speed to escape into the atmosphere. But even if he and Meow weren't about to collapse from the effort, the boat would either flood or capsize, taking them out and freeing the creature. Or perhaps the Slammerhead would fly towards them, try to go up at a sharper angle, or have the good sense to open its mouth. It all just showed how precarious their situation was, how lucky they had been to have come this far, and how it was impossible for them to keep this up.

"M-ksssh Me too, Meow. Me tzzrk-too." QT sputtered.

The Betelgeusian forced his cramped neck to nod. "Okay, on the count of three, we both let go. Then we can ring up Dandy and tell him about the Slammerhead." The image of a check mark flashed across QT's visor. "Phew, all right. One…two…" As 'three' was about to slip through his teeth, the boat started to right itself. They were still moving, his arms still felt like they were going to get torn out of their sockets, but they were slower now and there was a small splash as the frontward hull of the sloop made contact with the ocean. The Betelgeusian shifted his head and saw that Garnet was now topside and sporting a pair of robust, crimson gauntlets.

"Sorry I'm late." She slipped off one of her gloves and dropped it near the bow with a thud, balancing the craft. The Gem then summoned the mast out from the deck, but did not make its sails unfold.

Those were some deceptively heavy knuckle dusters, Meow thought. "We're saved! Thank god, you're here, Garnet. Quick! Grab our rods! Neither of us can take much more of this!" Garnet stepped forward, but did not take either of their fishing poles. Instead, she spun on her heel and launched herself at the top of mast, causing the entirety of the shaft to bend under the weight and force of her landing. Just when it looked like it was going to break, she eased the pressure she was putting on it and kicked out from her perch. The pole then snapped back into place, catapaulting the Gem skyward. "That is not what I asked you to do at all!"

"No, Meow. This is a good thing!" QT exclaimed as he watched Garnet rocket towards the Slammerhead like a scarlet mortar.

"How is this good in ANY way?" he seethed, eyeing Garnet's ascent resentfully. "The freaking fishing pole is still in my paws!"

"Garnet took down the Slammerhead before, remember?"

"Right..." Meow's bobbed his head as he remembered what she had told him when they had first met. "She punched it! Maybe she can do it again."

It certainly looked like she was going to try. She was closing in on her target now, fist-first. QT didn't have all the facts, but if Pearl hadn't been exaggerating when she had told him and Dandy about Garnet's feats of strength, one blow from her could end the entire hunt. "Fingers crossed."

"I think I might've dislocated mine."

"Then use your imagination."

*CLONG*

"What kind of sound was that?"

"I…I didn't feel anything."

"Preaching to the choir, man. I am in so much pain right now that my arms are pretty much numb."

"That's not what I was talking about. I didn't feel anything through my rod when she punched the Slammerhead."

"So?"

"Meow, that probably means her attack did absolutely nothing."

"That's nuts. She must weight half-a-ton and she was going like a hundred miles an hour!"

*WHAM!*

Furthering the pair's bewilderment, the Slammerhead pulling its face back and smacking it into Garnet did make a morbidly satisfying sound.

"Incoming!"

*SNAP!*

As did her crashing into the mast, which wasn't able to bend far or fast enough to avoid breaking apart this time.

"That could've gone better," Garnet groaned as she got back up.

"You said it. Not me," said Meow. "Might I suggest a change in strategy? Maybe try pulling it down here? You could take these off of our hands and-."

"Hold the line," Garnet ordered, slinging the larger fragment of the broken mast over her shoulder like a club. "Help is on its way." She jumped over their heads and onto QT's fishing, then she leapt onto Meow's line, then back onto QT's, getting several feet higher with each alternation and bringing further taxation to the duo's arms with each bound.

"The twanging! The twanging!" Meow wailed. "Who does she think she is? Cirque du Soleil Mega Man?!"

"Help is on its way?!" QT repeated incredulously. "What help?! When? Where?! WHO?!"

"She was probably referring to me."

With a groan, QT and Meow twisted their bodies as carefully as they could towards whoever had said that.

"Amethyst?" Meow rasped.

"Sup?" she greeted as she squeezed some saltwater out of her matted mane.

"Please..." QT begged. "Take our rods! I'm running on fumes and the inside of my chassis feels like a septic tank!"

"Pfffft. Fishing rods?" Amethyst snorted. "I've got something way cooler than that, tin man." She brought a hand to her chest and tore a tangle of light from her Gem. She whisked the jumbled construct around her body and snapped it against the deck, dispelling the excess radiance and leaving behind a three-tailed, purple whip studded with crystal thorns.

"Hot."

"Seriously, Meow?!" QT whined.

"A bodacious, big-lipped, violet shortstack just pulled a whip out of her cleavage. How can I not find that kinky?"

Amethyst gagged. "Keep it in your vest, Puss in Crocs!" she warned as she pulled back her weapon. "And watch me work!"

With a twist of her body, she lashed her whip out towards Garnet and the Slammerhead. The pyramid-tipped rope darted through the air like a cobra, a miniature Quetzalcoatl with blades in place of feathers. It traveled parallel to QT and Meow's fishing lines, its velocity goaded on by the remainder of the whip's loop. A peal of artificial thunder punctured the howling of the winds that blew against them and the aquatic dirge of the sea they were being towed through as the end of the weapon broke the sound barrier. Very dramatic. Such a shame that it didn't quite reach the Slammerhead, stopping about halfway from where it needed to be before it fell between the - formerly impressed, now dumbfounded - alien hunters like a long, undercooked noodle.

"Give me the rods."

"I think my optics shorted out there for a second. Was that supposed to happen?"

"Give-me-the-rods."

"Hey, QT. You got enough power for an instant replay? I want to pinpoint the exact moment when that whip DIDN'T reach the Slammerhead."

"JUST GIVE ME YOUR RODS!"

Dandy waited until they were close enough to wade to shore before he turned off the thrusters. They walked the rest of the way through the shallow water, gingerly stepping on and over the shells, rocks, and coral fragments that littered the submerged ground. Back on land, Steven plopped himself down on the beach while Dandy stuck his board where the sand was simultaneously moist and densely packed together.

A low, pleased murmur passed through Steven's lips. Even seated, he could still feel the ocean's funky flow rolling over his body, like he was still out there amongst the billowing waves. His mind raced with the memory of tempestuous dwindling passageways, the audacious navigation of stampeding slopes, and the humbling beauty of maritime avalanches. Like so many of the stranger episodes of his life, it had been something he never thought he'd ever do. Perhaps he'd never get to do it again. But he was thankful that he had. Another story of his own that many might not believe or understand, but it was his all the same. The ending however, this sunset, that was for everybody.

Sunrise. Sundown. Pretty terms. Poetic terms. Completely inaccurate terms. Poor Galileo was probably rolling in his grave like a cyclotron at people's insistent use of such misleading idioms despite knowing the truth of how things turned. The Moon revolved around the Earth, the Earth around the Sun, the Sun around Sagittarius A, and Sagittarius A around whatever sat at the center of the Universe's abstract axis. The gaseous giant that gave this system life did not kowtow to Earth's orbit like a light bulb moon. Which was probably for the best. Dandy had encountered suns that actually did streak across the circumferences of worlds. If good old Sol was even momentarily replaced by one of those literal shooting stars, sunset would be a fleeting season of blinding amazement, scorched lands, and fiery desolation instead of a dependable chapter of the day when a tender orange glow painted the sky.

The confession came out candidly, unprompted but genuine. "To tell you the truth, this isn't the first time I've been to Earth."

"It isn't?" Steven asked. "Hold on, you weren't born here?"

"Nah, but I always wanted to visit. Heard great things about the place." Dandy said. "And ten years ago, when I had a ship, enough fuel, and cash to burn, that's just what I did."

"Where'd you go?"

"The usual tourist attractions and landmarks. Mostly the USA, bit of Europe, Australasia, Japan, and some of China. Bought a bunch of travel books I never ended up reading, ate at places I could barely afford, got some souvenirs, and took a few pics. That sort of thing."

"What was that like? Going to other countries, I mean? Outside of missions, I've never really left Beach City." Steven said. "Are they anything like what they show in the movies or on TV?"

"Kinda. Like I told you, I just went to for the flashy, out-of-towner hotspots. They're real and phony at the same time, like a lightshow basically."

"That's a little disappointing." Steven frowned, now less eager to explore those faraway continents. "Weren't you bummed out by that?

"It was all right. It's a con, but everyone's in on it. Anybody older than seven knows that all those Hollywood, hallmark card moments are just manufactured fluff," he rubbed the side of his trunks, forgetting that this particular pair didn't have any pockets he could hook his thumbs into. "I'd just...come out of a bad-ish break-up. I didn't understand why it happened at first, but when I did, well, things got a little too real. I needed something synthetic, something safe and transparent to keep myself grounded. Take a break from all that danger and ambiguity. You can't drown in shallow water, right?" Steven nodded, but Dandy wasn't so sure he got it. "Well it made sense at the time. Go to the brightest and loudest places on the map and forget why your ex left you. Shut your brain off. Which is why quaint, little places like this." He had one of his arms gesture towards the town while the other motioned to the sea. "Kind of went under my radar...you'd think the big lady statue would've made it on at least one of those 'wonders of the world' lists though."

"Hmmm." Steven rubbed his chin.

"Haha! Dude, you just gave yourself a little sand beard!"

"Wh-? Oh. One sec." Steven took some water from a nearby wave and splashed the sand from his neck and face.

It looked like the kid had something on his mind. Dandy didn't see the harm in asking, "What were you thinking so hard about?"

"Not much. Just that, if you had visited Beach City, you might've gotten to meet Pearl a little earlier."

"Hey, that's...that's..."

"Then if you met her out in space a couple years later, you'd both be like, 'You again?!' And that'd be a thing and...well, you get it, right? It would've been kind of cool if that had happened."

"That sure might've been something." Dandy ran a nail along his right temple as he considered this. "I guess she would've been here back then, huh?"

"And so was I." Steven smiled.

"Yeah." Dandy smiled back. "The two of you certainly were."

They went back to looking at the sunset. Steven was delighted at how the sun was occasionally blocked by clouds, only to peek out from under them as it sank. It made it appear that the star itself was blinking; slipping in and out of consciousness, before inevitably going to bed and having the moon take over the night shift. Dandy's thoughts on what lay before them weren't nearly as fanciful. In fact, their sights were set squarely on the other direction; at Beach City. Weird town. Right next door to a trio of magical ladies, but entirely unassuming about it. He kept trying to find a distinctive gimmick to define this place, some greater theme you could emblazon on a promotional flyer. Nothing came to mind. It just seemed to casually be there, comfortable in its own existence.

Somewhere between the theme parks and wastelands of the Earth were places like this. Little havens free from pomp and peril. Lands whose little eccentricities couldn't overpower the smaller, simpler marvels that were often draped with the desperate urgency to 'own' such moments elsewhere. None of that underlying paranoia that it might all be a superficial imitation of a genuine experience. It was unreal how sincere it all was. Like something out of a childhood memory he never had, but solid under foot. Simultaneously dreamlike and concrete. Dandy reached a kind of epiphany then. There was never a going to be a good time to tell Steven what he had promised him. From now until doomsday, there would never be a moment that couldn't be made worse by what he had to say. But he knew that if he was ever going to come clean, he couldn't have asked for a better place to do so.

"Woof. Getting kind of chilly out here, isn't it?" he asked, rubbing his arms as loudly as he could. "Let's head back to the ship and towel off."

"But we'll miss the sunset."

"We can look at it along the way. And if I know my stars – and I do – we've got about an hour before dusk comes a knockin," he pulled his board from out of the sand and tucked it under his arm. "We'll take a quick shower, I'll warm up some cocoa, and...I'll tell you what you want to know."

"For real this time?"

"Totally." Dandy nodded as he began to walk towards the Aloha-Oe by way of the softer and less damp sands. "I promised, didn't I?"

That was good enough for Steven. And the promise of cocoa didn't hurt Dandy's proposal either. He brushed the sand off the back of his shorts and followed Dandy, making sure to keep a modest distance from him. The rocket board was cool, but he didn't want to get hit in the face by it if Dandy suddenly decided to turn around.

That's when they heard it; a faint rustling that the ears of those unaccustomed to misadventure and conflict would miss. The distinct sound of rushing air as something fell from the sky.

It landed several yards away from Steven, bringing forth a shower of sand from where it had impacted.

Too small to be the Slammerhead, thought Dandy. But his relief was short-lived as a familiar, pointed silhouette made itself known through the earthen rain.

"Pearl?"

Before she had even known its name, Garnet felt a tinge of resentment towards the Slammerhead. Nothing personal, she'd insist. She just didn't appreciate attempts on her life or those of her friends. Learning more about the creature from QT had sharpened that tinge into a more defined contempt. After all, it wasn't some wild animal, but a malevolent plunderer by its own volition. As another one of her punches failed to faze it, the contempt had mutated into full-on dislike.

Balancing on the dual fishing line tightropes wasn't a problem. Getting to the aerial monstrosity hadn't taken too much effort. No, the bane of this battle lay in the beast's forehead. Right where she had struck it the previous night, hidden behind the Slammerhead's new crystalline carapace, was an orange geode wreathed in a nest of golden metal.

A Mend Stone.

Why did it have to be a Mend Stone?

Out of all the artifacts they had yet to retrieve, why did this slathering savage have to stumble onto that one?

The sole saving grace of this disastrous scenario was that Pearl's plan hadn't technically changed. This close to the alien, Garnet's Future Vision could see that victory would be a most assured outcome if she could just hit the target. It would've been simple if she could get a good grip on the Slammerhead's skin or if she could sling an extended arm wrapped around its body, but its new armour was too slick to be grabbed onto and its thrashing made her position too unstable for her to accurately lasso it in. Trying to tie it up with the rigging and sails of the mast had also failed. And her go-to tactic of punching the living daylights out of it had resulted in a whole lot of nothing much.

No doubt recalling how their encounter from the previous day had gone, the Slammerhead initially panicked when she had come up to it and had even tried to fly away after successfully repelling her the first time; an effort thwarted by its inability to let go of the fishing lines that moored it to the Gem Sloop. But with each failed attempt to hurt it, the creature became less and less perturbed with her presence. This growing complacency on its part infuriated Garnet, but it also gave her more leeway to experiment with different attacks. This time, she'd jump off of the rope, enlarge her gauntlets, and go for the ankles; take it off balance and drag it down into the sea where her movements wouldn't be so limited.

Without warning, the Slammerhead lurched to the right, throwing her off of the lines before she could try out this new strategy. Barely a second later, it charged back the way it came, clipping her midsection with the rope as it passed her by.

"Drat."

"Garnet's down!" QT screamed as he saw her hit the water.

"She'll live." Meow grumbled. "We've got bigger problems to deal with. Like how that greased-up goon is SCREENING MY CALLS! I can't even get a text through!" he cursed as another 'Failure to Deliver' alert cropped up.

"Did you try Dai-Messaging him?"

"Yes."

"How about the phone on the ship?"

"Yes, I tried that. Nothing's working! OUCH! Watch where you're going, Amethyst! You just stepped on my tail!"

Apologies weren't Amethyst's forte and even if they were, she wouldn't spare one on Meow for leaving his tail lying around. "Hey, it's not my fault that YOUR alien decided to fly the-woo!" The lines pulled her starboard. "What the heck is it doing?!" she asked as she was yanked towards the aft.

"It seems to be circling the ship."QT observed.

"Yow!" Meow ducked his head before the chords could slice it off. "Well, duh. But why?"

"I should really be resting my circuits, but..." his screen briefly buzzed with static. "...if I had to guess, it probably realized that pulling in one direction wasn't working. So it's pulling on all of them in hopes of-."

"AHHHHH!" Amethyst screamed as her feet left the deck.

"-that!" QT finished.

"I got ya!" Meow tucked his phone into his vest pocket and pounced, grabbing Amethyst's boots and hooking the vamps of his crocs on the edge of the sloop in a show of totally-not-cat-like agility. But rubber foam shoes aren't the best kind of footwear for this sort of thing, especially when they're wet. So it wasn't long before they slipped off of the gunwhale. "Whoah! But who's got me?!"

"Meow!" QT's arms shot out from his sides and looped around Meow's waist. The little robot disengaged his breaks and diverted all the energy he could spare into his wheels, turning and reversing them in tune with the Slammerhead's rotation.

After making it through the third of such twists, there was a soft bang as the motor attached to his primary axle exploded.

"Gah!" With nothing but his paltry rear drive to fall back on, QT was lifted into the air, leaving behind a trail of smoke as he went. "Bzzzrkt-kah-huh?" his rising terror, bawling, and altitude came to a standstill as he felt himself being held in place. The robot didn't have eyes on the back of his cranium nor did he need any to see who was responsible for this last-second save. "Has anyone ever told you that you're very, very good at sneaking up on people?"

"It's come up in conversation." Garnet answered.

"Garnet!" Amethyst called out from above. "What do we do?!"

"If it wants to fly around in circles so badly, I think we should help it out."

"Talk straight with us, lady. QT and I get enough of that doublespeak from Dandy."

"Killjoy." Garnet muttered before raising her voice to explain. "We use the Slammerhead's own momentum against it; pull the rods in the direction that the Slammerhead is going, hard and fast until it can't keep up and loses control. We make it crash in the water and then we finish it off while it's dazed."

"Slamming down the Slammerhead." Amethyst summarized. "I like it! What do you need us to do?"

"Just hold on."

"Well," Meow could all ready feel the nausea setting in and was thankful that he had all ready undergone a similar ordeal with Dandy on Planet Pushy Boyfriend. Then he realized that getting whirled around and tossed at a distant world from atop an enormous, rickety water spout was a pretty stupid thing to be thankful for. "At least we won't have to do anything complicated."

"True." QT murmured.

Hearing no objections, Garnet whipped her companions to the left with a powerful swing. She felt the sharp tug of the Slammerhead trailing behind, but did not waver at this resistance. They kept going, taking care to stay ahead of its flight so they could maintain the initiative. Several revolutions later, every ensuing spin was easier and went faster than the last.

As detailed before, the mind of a Slammerhead is a rank porridge of preferences, vice, hunger, and misunderstood mathematics. But if it could form complete thoughts, their development would follow as thus: Initially, it would think, "Gee, flying isn't as hard as it was a second ago. I must be doing something right." As it started to feel led on by Garnet's efforts, it would remark, "Fabulous! It's gotten even easier. I'm moving so fast that I barely have to flap my wings." Then it would get the sense that something was amiss and wonder, "Hang on, I'm going a little too fast. Shouldn't I have loosened myself from whatever was holding me back by now?" Upon getting an inkling that it was being had, it would say, "Hey! What gives? My wings aren't doing anything! I can't stop! The speed's too much!" That's when it would realize how screwed it was and react with, "MRRRRRRRRRAUGHRK!" which was what it still would've done outside of this hypothetical boost in intelligence.

Garnet heard an enraged gurgling come from high up. That was good. If it was enraged, that meant it was no longer in control. The Slammerhead was now being swept along in a twister of its own making, a ring of force that rendered its protections and muscles ineffectual. Not that it was much easier on Garnet, she needed to make sure that her footing was just right or she might get them all caught up in the kinetic tempest as well.

Each link of this living chain handled the gyrations differently. Amethyst happily hollered. Meow tried not to throw up. And QT was rather quiet. This must not have been bothering him too much, him being a robot and all.

One more, the odds told her, one more for maximum effectiveness and she'd dash it into the sea. Her strength would not falter, her aim was true. There was no future where she would let go. She could not, would not fail. And she didn't. Because somebody else did.

Her predictions had told her that if anyone was going to choke and ruin everything, it would be Meow. A valid possibility, she had thought. Physically, he was the weakest one on the boat and from what she had observed, he was – to put it bluntly – something of a weenie. But when the Slammerhead was sent hurtling towards the sunless horizon, the unexpected detachment forcing Garnet to her knees, the Betelgeusian was nowhere to be seen. Of the three she had anchored, only QT, with his arms littering the deck in a flaccid sprawl, remained.

"QT, what happened?! Why did you let go?!" she turned him over and then felt absolutely rotten for asking. "Oh QT…"

"L-low b-battery," he managed to say as his visor convulsed in a chaotic array of discordant imagery. Between the flashing colours and distorted video footage, his eyes would briefly blink back into existence; looking pained and lost. "C-Critical System f-Failure. I'm sorry. Please tell Pearl th-that-I-I didn't-we shouldn't have-I'm-I'm sorr-."

With his power completely drained and his internals still flooded with the water he had failed to purge, QT's apology was rendered orphaned and unfinished, leaving Garnet alone on what was left of the sloop.

Landing in such a loud and rough manner hadn't been Pearl's intent. Her aim had been to spot Dandy from above, swoop in, and transform back into her humanoid state; a much more elegant entrance than this. But when she saw him and Steven right next to each other on the coast, she just had to get down there as fast as she could. Mess or no mess. And she was quite a mess. Her hair was all stringy from the flight and some sand had gotten into her slippers. Then there was the matter of what she was going to do now. For the last hour, getting here had been the only thing on her mind. And now that she was, she had nothing to take its place.

"Pearl?" Steven asked again.

Focus, Pearl told herself. Focus. Prioritize, Assess, and then figure the rest out from there. "St-Steven. Good-," she tried to remember what time it was. "-Evening. Oh, and, uh, good evening to you too, Dandy. I see you managed to get out of your ship."

"Yeah, I just kinda teleported out of it," he said nonchalantly. Her polite greeting had been enough to quell the distress provoked by her arrival.

"Teleported?" she gasped."You mean you and QT finally got around to fixing that old thing?"

Dandy nodded, putting his board back in the sand. Something told him this might take a while. Another something tried to say that her gasp had sounded a little insincere, but Dandy kicked it into one of the dustier corners of his mind and shut the door. "Sure did. Runs like a dream now. Not a very good dream, but it gets us where we need to be."

"Like the Temple."

"Oh…no…that was an…accident," he mumbled. "Complete misfire. Anyway, that's where I ran into Steven. We got to talking and decided to hang out. He's been showing me around for the last few hours, giving me a guided tour of Beach City."

"Did he?" she flashed Steven a grin that didn't reach her eyes. "How AWFULLY nice of him."

Steven tried to chuckle. It sounded like jovial choking. "You know me! Always willing to help a guy out. Good 'ol Steven," he said, wracking his brain for something that would make her less angry at him or at least make her smile a little nicer. What he found, he didn't like. But it was all he had in stock. "Wasn't all fun and ray guns though."

"Ray guns?"

"Games! Fun and games!" he corrected. "You see, when we passed by the Aloha-Oe, we saw that it had been completely covered in duct tape. It was a real big shock for the two of us. A gang of pesky vandals must've trussed up the ship while I was treating Dandy out for donuts and doing other totally safe stuff." Steven winked.

"Can you believe that?" Dandy said more than asked. "Pack of hoodlums in a nice little town like this."

"D…definitely. Most definitely. Such a shame," she shook her head. "First they're wasting fresh and perfectly clean rolls of toilet paper on petty vandalism and the next thing you know, they're playing hooky and busting out the duct tape. I hope that they – that is, the hoodlum vandals – didn't inconvenience you too much with their little prank."

"It was really annoying and I'm definitely going to get some payback later on, but it didn't stop us from having fun. Took Steven surfing after we got rid of the tape. Slow day for it though. Waves weren't that big."

Liar. She seethed. Another one of his stinking…Keep it together, Pearl. Keep your cool. Don't do or say anything that'll give yourself away. You still need to get Steven out of here. And then give him a stern talking to once you take him to safety. "Well at least neither of you wiped out and drowned."

"You've got a point there," he said. "But if you don't mind me asking, - I mean, this is your hometown so you can do what you want - but what are you doing back here by yourself? Did you guys manage to snag the Slammerhead?" Genial as she was right now, he'd rather have the others around to act as buffers and potential witnesses just in case it didn't last.

"The others are doing just fine. I'm sure they have the matter well in hand," she said. "I just came back here because I remembered that I needed to help Steven...finish his homework."

"He doesn't go to school."

Pearl beat down a grimace that tried to twist her features. Her eye had twitched a bit, but she could blame that on the sand if he asked. There was only one way Dandy could have known that; what else had Steven told him? "Did-did I say homework? Slip of the tongue. What I meant to say was that I came back here because it's getting late and I wanted to make sure Steven was home by...curfew."

"Curfew?" Dandy's face crinkled as if he had just eaten something sour. "Guess he's still at that age. Whelp," he said, putting his board back under his arm. "Can't argue with that. C'mon Steven."

Steven's shoulders hitched. "W-why?"

"Your clothes and flip-flops are still at the Aloha-Oe. We'll swing by the ship, pick them up, and then you can head home."

"That won't be necessary." Pearl said quickly. She was almost there. There was a pocket of apprehension gathered in the back of her throat. A growing emptiness was running through her arms and legs. Though they were visible, she didn't feel like her hands and feet were attached to her body. Her head was numb; hollowed out save for a piercing stressful chord of white noise and a severe, tightly-bound mass of emotion that was trying to eat through its restraints. Through this internal blend of sensory anarchy and desolation, she could feel that she was almost there. Another smile or worthless platitude would put this nightmare to rest. "It'll be dark soon. I need to get Steven home this instant."

"Really? The sun hasn't even come down yet."

"It's down enough. And you know what they say, Dandy. Early to Bed, Early to Rise," she tittered lyrically. "Not that he needs to sleep mind you."

"I wouldn't go that far. The kid's only half-Gem after all. Probably needs his rest."

Pearl's face fell. So did Steven's. "How...whatever gave you that idea?"

The something from earlier scratched at the door Dandy had locked it behind.

"Greg," he replied.

"Greg."

The something was pounding at the door now, but Dandy forged ahead, heedless of the mental percussion. "Yup. Greg. Steven's dad. That's what he said he was anyway. We found a local carwash where we could hose the lion spit off of Meow and I noticed that the guy who ran it had the same last name as Steven here. So I asked him if he knew..."

From where he stood, Dandy couldn't quite see all of Pearl's face. She was a little ways off, the sun was setting, and there was also his tendency to get distracted by his own stories to take into account. Steven, who was several feet closer to his ivory-skinned mentor, had a better view. He was not thankful for it though.

He saw how her cerulean pupils dilated as Dandy spoke, how her lips rose and fell to bare her teeth, how her body shook as if fraught by some personal, phantom quake. But he did not see how the emotions she had tried so strenuously to suppress broke free from her mind and flowed downward into her mouth, chest, and limbs, saturating them with feeling. He could not see how this torrent of unchecked anguish built up and crowded against her forehead. If he had known about that, perhaps he might've been able to alert Dandy before Pearl gave in to the indescribable, mental pressure that seemed to exist within and around her Gem and pulled out her spear.

"STAY AWAY FROM STEVEN!" she screamed, aiming her weapon at Dandy.

The tip of the spear started to glow and hum.

Though she wasn't pointing it at him directly, the way the spear trembled in Pearl's hands was making Steven nervous, so much so that he almost forgot to be afraid for the one it was actually being levelled at. He looked behind him to see that the order had brought Dandy out of his anecdote. Amazingly, Dandy didn't panic, though his eyes betrayed how confused and afraid he was, his words came out measured and even. "Pearl...put that down." He did however – in defiance to usual direction people go when faced with danger – take a step forward.

*BLAM!*

The energy bolt sailed past Steven's head. Thinking quickly, Dandy brought up his rocket board in an attempt to shield himself from the attack. Its nose and upper deck were blown apart as the shot tore through the device, the force of which sent Dandy falling back into the sand.

"Pearl!" Steven cried. "Why did you do that?!"

Pearl desperately wanted to tell Steven that it had only been a warning shot, that it wouldn't have hit Dandy even if he hadn't decided to cower behind his board. But if she did, then Dandy would know, and she needed him to take her threats seriously. Irritation bristled beneath her skin as she thought this over. This all could've been avoided if the two of them had taken her seriously. People listened to you when they took you seriously. "I warned you!" she yelled. "I won't miss next time!"

"All right." Dandy groaned as he shoved away the remains of his rocket board and picked himself up. "All right," he brought up both his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I'll stay where I am. Just...just calm down."

"Calm?" Pearl shrieked, her grip on the spear tightening. "How can I be calm when you're trying to kidnap Steven?!"

"Pearl, he wasn't going to...um...I don't think he was-."

"It was all an act, wasn't it?!" Pearl accused. "The Aloha-Oe can still fly. You must have planted some kind of tiny explosive on the outside so I'd have to let you stay! Another one of your dirty tricks!"

"I wouldn't blow up my own ship." Dandy objected.

"Considering the fact that you'd bomb the harbor to make a wave big enough for your ego to ride on, I don't think it's much of a stretch, do you?!" she gave him a moment to plead his innocence, to tell her that he didn't bring a child out into open water with missiles and ocean swells. He said nothing, so she continued from where she had left off. "Then when you learned what Steven was, you figured, why settle for just the Slammerhead? Why not-?" there was a sharp intake of breath as she prepared to voice what she feared would happen the moment she learned he was in town. "-Why not take two aliens to the registration center?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Dandy could see Steven stare at him with intense apprehension. The something at the door was quiet now, save for a smug 'I told you so' that he couldn't censor. "I wasn't going to take him there."

"How can I believe that?" she asked softly, unaware that her lip was trembling. "How can I believe anything you say?"

"I'm telling the truth." he insisted. "Spending time with Steven wasn't about tricking him or snatching him up."

"Then what is it about, Dandy?!" she yelled. "Is it about the rules you break?! The responsibilities you shirk?! The...the people you step on...Is that what this is about? Is it?!" Dandy didn't reply. He wasn't even looking her in the eye anymore. "And you!"

"Y-yes?" Steven stuttered.

"Steven, I told you to stay in the Temple until we got back. You promised me you would. You promised."

"T-technically I promised not to go out the door. And me and Dandy left the house by climbing out the window so...so..." he attempted to say, but seeing Pearl's eyes wrinkled and watery with betrayal and fright reminded him of how feeble the excuse was. "I just wanted to know what happened. You love space so much, I figured that getting to travel in it for half a year would've made you happy. Even if Dandy and you didn't get along all the time. I wanted to understand why it hurt you so much."

"And you thought he was going to tell you?" Pearl motioned towards Dandy, who seemed to have taken a glum interest in his decimated rocket board.

"He was just about to."

"No, I don't think he was." Pearl let out an unkind, humourless laugh. "He wasn't going to tell you anything. Nothing true anyway...Do you still want to know?"

The boy, who found he could not bring himself to say 'yes', nodded mechanically.

"Okay," she took in a deep breath to calm herself, but what was inside her, what was trying to goad her into drastic action, could not be satiated by a little superfluous air. "After six months of searching, if you can call it that, we finally found the Shatterlite. It was horrific. Enormous. It almost ate the ship and killed us the first time we came across it."

"Dandy said you guys caught it though."

"Yes," Pearl took another useless breath. "I don't want to tell you how, in case it gives you some very foolish ideas, but our next attempt to capture it," she felt something hot and wet slide down her cheek. "Succeeded. We actually succeeded. Target neutralized. Machinations thwarted. Mission accomplished."

Steven thought that would've been a nice way to end the story, but if it had ended that well, the three of them wouldn't be standing here right now."So why didn't you bring it back to the Temple? "

Another bead of moisture fell from her eyes. "Guess."

Steven conjured up all of the little hints and clues that he had gathered in his mind. Pearl's animosity. The bargain they had struck eight years ago. How the Shatterlite never made it into the Temple vault. The revelation that they had succeeded in subduing it. But Pearl had still come home empty-handed. How could that be? Greedy and Unscrupulous, he remembered. Her words. Encounters rare and exotic alien beings...Another one of your dirty tricks.

Steven trembled. He no longer had to guess. He had the answer. "No," he looked to Dandy, who appeared vague and undefined despite his close proximity. "You didn't."

"He did." Pearl said. "And after he took it..."she paused as one would before diving off a steep cliff. "...he left me. Out there. By myself. Alone. Stranded."

"I didn't strand you out there!" Dandy protested. "I made sure that-."

"You made sure that I'd have no choice but to come back here so I wouldn't chase after you!" she spat. "You didn't even have the decency to do it to my face. You just took the Shatterlite and ran! So don't stand there acting all innocent; telling me to calm down." She sobbed. "I'm ashamed to say that I actually waited." One of her hands left her spear and raised a reluctant finger to the sky. "Out there." The arm fell to her side. "Down here. I thought it had been a mistake. That you'd park that clownish craft of yours in front of the Temple one day and come out of it with some embarrassing, unbelievable excuse that would somehow be completely true. It's not like there was anything stopping you."

"I...There was probably a good reason for that."

"You had a ship! You knew where I'd be! Eight years, Dandy." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She hated that she was wasting even a single tear on this two-faced idiot. If she had had enough concentration to close these ducts with her powers, she would have. "You could've come down any time you wanted. But that's just it, isn't it? You didn't want to. It took me a while to understand that."

"You do what you want to when you want to!"

Not now, Dandy thought. I've got enough on my plate all ready.

And that wasn't true anymore. That is, it was still true, just not as true.

He needed to put that into words, but that silver tongue of his wouldn't budge. His body felt frigid, his senses sour, his mind impossibly distant but still acutely aware of what was going on.

"You going back on our deal was bad enough, butthe more I thought about it, the more I realized how much of a phony you were. Every kindness. Every half-decent thing you ever did. It was all so you'd have me around for when you needed me. And then when you got what you wanted, you abandoned me."

"DITCHER!"

"I thought I had you all wrong; that underneath all that hedonistic narcissism, you actually cared. I thought we were…" the tip of her spear hit the sand as her grasp on the weapon weakened. "But it was all a lie. An act." The side of her lip twitched. "I have a hard time finding anything of worth in those six months-." We spent together. "-you took from me. But I took comfort in the fact that, in the end, you got what you deserved. Nothing. And that's all you're going to get this time too."

"Pearl."

"Just go, Dandy. Please…just go."

There exists an algorithm that, if used correctly, can accurately measure a person's desires. This is made possible by how It streamlines the framework in which these desires are birthed. Dreams, Fears, Emotions, Thoughts, Urges, Physiological Traits, and a sort of 'x-Factor' are broken down and simplified into a gnomic percentage unit, the stuff of you up to three decimal points. Using these equations, you would see that a majority of Dandy's being – specifically, 90% - was in favour of granting Pearl's request immediately. He had pushed his luck and now luck had cornered him and was punching back. Bail now and avoid bloodshed; what could be simpler? Plus, she had said 'please'.

A word of caution to the marketing firms or political parties that might find this algorithm: it is not perfect. While it might tell you the things a person wants and how much they want them, it cannot be certain which desire they will ultimately pursue. Only 3% of Dandy approved of what he had chosen. Sidestepping the warnings of further woe and the usually welcome spectre of self-preservation, Dandy lowered his head and looked Steven in the eye.

"Dandy, is it true?"

"Every word." Dandy replied. "What? Did you think she was just overreacting when she took a shot at me?"

"A little."

"Usually, I'd agree with you, kid. She can get pretty uptight at times. Now though, not so much." Dandy confessed. "I warned you, didn't I? That it didn't end well?"

"You did."

"Good. So get sad, get mad, but don't act surprised or disappointed." Dandy playfully scolded, but Steven's confusion and dismay were still apparent. "Or that it's your fault somehow. I knew this could've gone only one way, but I still went for it. Heh. Least we got a few laughs, right?" he reached out a hand to tousle Steven's hair one last time, but thought better of it, and brushed back his own hair instead. "Goodbye, Steven."

"Bye Dandy." The farewell brought a tired grin to Dandy's face. Satisfied, the alien hunter turned away and began to walk toward his ship.

"Steven?" he heard Pearl say, her voice tired and pleading. "Let's go home."

"Sure." Steven said, tearing his eyes from Dandy's retreating form. And there was Pearl, one hand still on her spear, but the other open and extended for him to take. In spite of all he had seen and heard, Steven was still glad to see the relief on Pearl's tearstained face that seemed to grow the closer he got to her. The spite and indignation were gone, having vindicated themselves on the true object of her ire. A small smile was now on her lips, a real one at last for she had much to be happy for: He was safe. She had said her piece. And it was unlikely that either of them would ever see Dandy again. He need only take her hand and they would return to the Temple to wait for the others; free Steven from the weight of all the awful truths and answers he had foolishly desired, put this all behind them, and forget. Which is why it was so hard for him to stop, turn around, and ask, "Why are you here?"

The question stopped Dandy in his tracks, but he did not look back. "What?"

"Why are you here?" he asked again.

"Steven..." Pearl said. "Come over here. Now. There's no need for this."

"Listen to her, kid. Let it go."

"Why are you here?!"

"I just told you what happened eight years ago!" Pearl said, her words taking on a frantic edge.

"Yes, I heard you. What he did was awful and mean. You have every right to be mad at him for it and I know you want him gone. But Pearl," he glanced back at her. "Why is he here?"

"Wh...I..."

"The Slammerhead was good money." Dandy interrupted.

"I don't believe that for a second!" Steven declared, refusing to swallow the lie. "You could have gone after some other rare alien, but you didn't. You knew Pearl would be in Beach City, but you still came here. You were afraid she'd find you, but you parked your giant, yellow spaceship right in the middle of the beach for everyone to see."

"Steven, that's enough." Pearl pleaded. "You're giving him too much credit."

"Maybe, but you said it yourself...and so did he: a Dandy does what he wants and if there's something he doesn't want to do, he doesn't do it." That simple creed was really complicating things, Steven thought. "He knew what would happen if he ever ran into you again, but it's like he wasn't even trying to hide. He had every reason to stay away from Earth, but he still came. I don't get it. None of it makes any sense. Unless-," the boy paused. There was only one way all these conflicting goals and happenings could be tied together. It was easy to dismiss, it felt preposterous to consider, but it was the only real possibility. He looked to Dandy, his posture as unreadable as the face he hid from view, and asked. "Dandy...did you want Pearl to catch you?"

"Steven, that's absurd."

"You don't know what you're talking about, kid."

"You're right. I don't know what I'm talking about. But do either of you?!" he demanded as loud as he could bring himself to be so that the two of them might listen to him. Neither replied. He closed his eyes, hating how his own words, the ones he had uttered and the ones still trapped in his head, were making him feel small and ignorant, but they still needed to be said. "I-I never cut a moon in half with my space car or became Lightweight Champion of the Universe. There are a lot of things that I haven't done, a lot of things I don't know. But something that I do know is that sometimes people hurt other people. Sometimes they mean to, sometimes they don't, and other times they'll do something that they know will hurt the other person, but do it anyway because they think they can get away with it."

"I've seen a lot of that happen. And from what I've gathered, talking can help. It sounds simple. I always thought it was. I do it all the time, right?" he tried to joke. "Just say what's on your mind, get it over with, and move on. I used to think that everybody that chose to be miserable instead of doing something as easy as talking was being silly and stubborn. But I was wrong. Because everything's harder when you're afraid." His thoughts turned to Lars, Sadie, Ronaldo, PeeDee, Connie, his father, and the Gems. "Afraid that nothing will get better even if you do talk, that they might get worse, that you might look dumb or weak, or that the person you want to talk to won't want to listen. So they keep it in and they hope that it'll all fix itself or they'll forget about it, but they never do." he cracked open his eyes. He turned to look at Pearl. On the surface, she merely looked concerned; an improvement over the terror and rage from earlier. What was happening below that, Steven could only guess. "I'm sorry that I left the house even though you told me not to. I've been lying and stretching the truth all day and I feel awful that I did. But...I'm happy that you said all those things. That must've been bugging you for a while."

"Really? But a lot of it was...oh." And the way she had said it; with the crying and the ranting and the near absolute loss of control. "This wasn't supposed to happen."

"But it felt good, right? Being honest. Letting him know all that stuff. Though maybe you could let him talk back a little? So the conversation isn't so one sided?"

"What could he possibly have to say that would be worth the trouble?" Pearl asked in a tone that was so sharp that it almost stung.

"Um, well, not to name names, but for some of the people I mentioned, distance wasn't really the big issue. Whether it was just them working a few blocks away from each other or living in the same place, talking about was bugging them was only a short walk away. They had a lot of chances. And while I really wish you had a lot of chances too, I think this might be the only one you've got. You can get Dandy's side of the story, maybe find out if he really did just come to Earth for the cash. I can't guarantee that you'll like the answers or if you'll get any, but at least you'll know that you asked."

"Steven...he had eight years."

"I know." Steven shook his head. "But he's here now."

Pearl pried her eyes away from Steven to see that Dandy was indeed there. His back was still to them, but he hadn't walked away. How apt. She had asked him to leave and he had stuck around.

"I'll...I...I can walk myself back to the Temple." Steven said. "You guys can chat or fight or whatever." Head hung low, Steven trudged his way towards town.

Now, nothing but a stretch of sand was keeping the former companions apart. Pearl was uncomfortable with how minimalistic this setting was without Steven in it. No Garnet or Amethyst. No one to hold on to or fuss over. It had suited her purpose earlier. She could yell and curse without anything getting in the way and Dandy just had to take it. He should've fled then, scampered off the moment she raised her voice, but he had stayed. Why, she couldn't fathom. Fear was the likeliest motivation, but it didn't feel quite right. Another mystery then. More secrets she'd never decipher. It wasn't like she could just up and ask him. Not after she had ordered him to depart. She'd look ridiculous if she took it back. Almost as ridiculous as Dandy did right now. Standing there, fully exposed without his beat-up spaceship, his impractical boots, his luckless sidekicks, or his kitschy wardrobe. Even his precious pompadour had abandoned him. Stripped of all the conceits that formed his identity, he was completely vulnerable.

Still he remained. Another insult might drive him off for good, but the righteous indignation that had filled her being was no longer there, having been replaced by an ambiguous tightness in her chest that no amount of internal shapeshifting could untangle. Where had all this uncertainty come from? She knew exactly what had happened, she had been there for almost all of it. 'But Pearl, why is he here?' she could still hear Steven ask. It was obviously for the money. It had to be the money. It had to be. Besides, if she asked him, he might just lie to her again. She'd be a fool to try.

"But aren't the true fools the ones who don't seize an opportunity, despite all the inherent risks?"

Oh no, her own words. Now she was arguing with herself. Stupendous. Simply Stupendous.

Sick of where staring at Dandy's back was taking her, her gaze drifted out towards the sea. She rather liked sunsets. Orderly. Colourful. Grand. And the way the glaring rays of the sun struck the clouds, defining the contours and dimensions of their vaporous coverings. Spears of light, similar to her signature means of self-defence, that pierced and revealed the hidden depths of the ephemeral. Illumination, Gems good or bad were made of the stuff. "Like stars we are," the words sparkled through the fogs of ages. Who had said that? Rose? Some ill-fated poet? Herself again? "Yet not as bright and duly blessed or cursed to think, feel, and sing."

Sighing, she shifted her eyes to check if Dandy was still there. She was a little surprised, but none too shocked to see that he was looking out at sunset as well. She couldn't blame him. It was a rather splendid display.

"Dandy, there's-."

"Pearl, I-."

They both tensed and carefully turned to face one another. Unbeknownst to either, Steven had slowed his pace and perked up his ears to listen.

"If you'd like to start, that'd be..."

"No, um, unless you really need to-."

*SPLASH!*

The sound was distant, but booming, and brought both of their attentions back to the ocean. A large, misshapen object had struck the water and was now skipping across the rippling carpet of light the sun cast towards the shore. It covered several leagues with every inelegant impact, the increments between each unpolished bounce growing smaller and smaller. At some point, it struck the ocean floor, sending it skidding towards the shallows and ploughing an impromptu trench into the sand that lay between Dandy and Pearl.

The Slammerhead lifted its face from out of the loose, wet earth. It kept its bulky form as close to the ground as it could, jerking its neck from side to side, wary of what new curveball this dubious madcap day would throw at it next. When it saw the town, a pleased guttural purr rumbled across its many bladders as it drew itself up to its full height. It threw caution to the ether and shook the sand from its body. This was familiar territory. It was back in its element. It spat out the remains of its last meal in a spew of glass and plastic. Terribly unfulfilling stuff, but on the bright side, that meant it had room for seconds.

And that chubby kid in front of it would make for a superb in-flight snack.

"How was it?" QT's voice crackled over her built-in headset.

"Fine. It was fine, QT." Pearl huffed. "Just give me a moment to catch my breath."

"But you don't need to breathe."

"Then give me a moment to get my bearings; that was immensely disorienting."

"I'll bet. We did just shoot you straight into empty, open space."

"I knew what would happen, but it was still odd. I felt like I was moving, but it didn't look like I was getting anywhere."

"Good thing you can't get motion sickness. And considering what's on your back, I'd be more worried if I didn't feel anything. That would mean that it wasn't working or that it exploded and incinerated me instantly."

"I'm still wearing it, QT." Pearl sternly reminded.

"Sorry. Couldn't resist. But you don't have to worry about distance or speed. From where Dandy and I were sitting, you were gone in a second and going stupendously fast."

"But was I going fast enough?"

"Let me see." Faint clicks and whirs filtered in over Pearl's speakers. "That was a good run, Pearl. However, there are still too many unknown variables for me to be certain. It's likely that we won't know until it's time."

And they had precious little of that left, Pearl fumed. "Terrific."

"Don't be like that. Remember, you just need to get to it in one piece. Me and Dandy would appreciate that happening as soon as possible, but we can take care of ourselves." QT assured.

Given how much trouble the two of them got into on their own, Pearl had a hard time believing that. Despite how they had proven themselves to be surprisingly capable in the months prior, Pearl often wondered how they had lived this long without her. Very carefully, she imagined. "Where is Dandy anyway? The bridge sounds rather quiet on your end, so he can't possibly be there."

"Not sure. He left the cockpit after you got too far to see with the naked eye. Said he had to go fetch something and told me not to wait up. You can look for him when you get back. Do you have a visual on the Aloha-Oe?"

Pearl pressed a button on the cheek of her helmet. There was a worrisome mechanical jerking sound as its cameras struggled to function. She rapped her free knuckles on the side of the helmet. Buggy, Analogue Piece of-ah, there it was: the ship, a penny-sized ivory smudge even at max magnification. "Affirmative," she answered as she straightened her body so it was pointing in the Aloha-Oe's direction. "Lining myself up now."

"Scanners say you're all clear. This should be a lot less weird, right? Now you've got a point of reference to help keep track of your distance and speed. Just try not to crash into it."

"QT..."

"Kidding again. But seriously, don't hit the ship. The collision will probably kill us all. See you soon," he said before turning off the comm-link.

The robot had been straight with her on one thing; it was nice to have the Aloha-Oe as a reference point. It gave her something to work towards, a goal. And when you had a goal, you could plan. Once she had her angle and posture just so, she gripper her spear tightly and used her right wrist to gently tap her hip, striking her communicator and activating the jetpack.

The junk dealer - who looked like a colorful, belligerent fusion between a honey badger and a pirahna - they had bought it from told them that it was more a 'metaphor' or 'artistic statement' on the nature of jetpacks. Then he laughed when Pearl tried to examine it seriously along those lines. Actually, he amended, it was one of the last of a very short-lived consumer model long since taken off the shelves. To compete with the more established brands, its creators sought to make its production costs as infintesimal as possible. It had a single speed. No safety measures. Handling was…difficult. Its fuel efficiency was garbage. Slap on a slick chrome finish and it was - as the junker joked - the primordial jetpack distilled into its base elements: Rocket Fuel, a Match, and the Truth.

"But it's cheap."

"Fella," the dealer said through jagged-toothed jowels. "Not to sound specist, but it would rip your frail, humie body in half the moment you switched it on."

"Ah," Dandy smirked. "But it's not going to go on my frail, humie body."

Pearl had rolled her eyes.

They found a helmet her size - "Completely sincere here," the junker snicked. "Pawned this off of one of those hummingbird people. Should fit you though." - and paid extra to wire the jetpack to her communicator and link up the helmet to the ship. This set them back a few hundred wulongs, but if they hadn't paid that sum, then Pearl wouldn't be blasting off towards the Aloha-Oe at a velocity that would turn the insides of less hardy creatures into jelly.

Though the visor shielding her face shuddered under the stress of the flight, the visual of miles melting with the seconds was consistent. It was important that she keep her arms at this position. A deviant inch in the wrong place could torpedo her trajectory or send her into a shambolic roll that would render her unable to turn the infernal contraption off. The spear made this problematic, but it was a necessary encumberance and its light weight and slight design were easy to compensate for. When she felt the Aloha-Oe was close enough, she switched off the thrusters. Pearl then tucked herself into a brief somersault, using the momentum to get her spear in front of her at the end of the flip. She fired several shots from the weapon to slow herself down as she approached the ship until she was able to delicately lay a foot on top of the Aloha-Oe, bringing her to a dignfied halt.

"You did it! Great job, Pearl!" QT chimed. "At least we know the jetpack works. Head over to the entry port and I'll open the airlock. I think you've earned a little rest."

Pearl got into a seated position, prepping herself to climb down the side of the ship and into the airlock, but found that she didn't want to move from this spot. "QT?"

"Yeah?"

"I think I'm going to stay out here for a few more minutes. I'll radio you when I'm ready to come back in."

"Hmph. All right. Just don't come crying to me if a meteoroid hits you in the Gem."

"Noted." Pearl said. She put a thumb and index finger beneath her armoured chin and squeezed a pair of concealed switches, unlocking the helmet and separating it from the rest of her space suit. She relished the frigid void as it removed all traces of the claustrophobic mugginess her Gem had had to endure in that helmet. Her hair unfastened itself from its usual windswept style, framing her face in messy, fibrous locks. She'd morph that out later.

Setting the helmet on her lap, she looped her hands under the straps binding her to the jetpack and lifted the twin toggles affixed to their sides. She grabbed the device by its now cool exhaust ports before it could drift very far. A little invention of her own devising; a failsafe she could use to easily remove the jetpack in case it became deadweight or impossible to steer.

She stuck it in the hull, which was, like the rest of the Aloha-Oe, covered in bone. It had taken hours, but they had managed to cover the entirety of the ship's outsides with nigh-unbreakable Levia-Gaunt remains. It was mildly resistant to laser fire, but its true worth lay in how it would protect the vessel from being assimilated by the Shatterlite's pervasive tentacles. Her jetpack was similarly armoured with much smaller bones.

She laced her fingers over the top of her helmet and rested her chin on it. As much as she resented how these purloined corpse pieces made the ship look like the logo of a mutant rhino jolly roger, she had to admit that it was horribly proper that it had come to this. The Shatterlite had erected a structure made of dead ships so they had followed suit albeit with a lot less murder. She looked out into the endless shimmering black and to her chagrin, she could find no solace in it. In convincing herself that the monster's past misdeeds were not her fault, she was more-or-less successful, but now she couldn't help but think of what it would do if they weren't able to vanquish it.

Empowered to such an extent, would it stray from the pattern she had charted out? What then? Would it float about the galaxy as a counterfeit space station, consuming any ship unfortunate enough to dock with it? Would it be so arrogant as to attack colonies? Channel that hitherto unheard of aptitude for construction into actively mining planets and moons for ore? Would the completion of that fortress body be the end of it or was it just the beginning; the nucleus to some endlessly expanding massive mechanical lifeform?

The supra-glue holding our protections together will only last for another day at most, Pearl thought.

Just as she was about to grab the jetpack and make for the ship's entrance, she felt a light impact on the side of her head, followed by granules of an unknown substance flying past her vision. They weren't meteoroid fragments, of that much she was sure.

She looked to her right and there sat Dandy in his chalk-white spacesuit; perched, much like she was, on one of Levia-Gaunt ribs that wrapped around the breadth of the ship. In the low light emanating from the stars and the ship, she couldn't see his face past the tinted visor.

He was holding up his left hand and pinched between its thumb and index finger was a shortbread cookie with a trefoil print. With a roll of his wrist, he tacitly lobbed it at Pearl. She leaned back, dodging the sluggish projectile. Dandy shook his head. He brought up his right hand, this one clutching a wrinkled, blue cardboard box. He took another cookie out of it, but instead of tossing it at Pearl, he flung it over the side of the ship.

Pearl watched the confection tumble weightlessly through the boundless vacuum until it became a far-off, shadowy shape. Then two more circles of expired foodstuff flew after it. She followed their trail back to Dandy, who threw another cookie Pearl's way.

This time she caught it. She rolled it so that it was clenched between the tips of her index and middle fingers and then flicked it into the sun-spangled beyond like a tiny, edible discus.

They developed a kind of rhythm. He'd get a throw, and then she'd get a throw. This would've ended after they were through with the box's contents, if Dandy hadn't reached behind him and pulled out a burlap sack filled with the rest of his worthless Cosmic Girl Scout Cookies. And it would've gotten repetitive if they had just thrown them. But they found ways to keep it interesting.

Dandy would grind a handful of cookies in his palm, let loose a clumsy jab and then open his fist; casting forth a spray of crumbs.

Pearl had him pitch Yell Louds at her and she'd bat them and their pithy slogans away with empty containers or the flat of her spear.

They'd 'race' different kinds of cookies towards some undefined finish line. Thin Mints vs. Singalongs. Peanut Butter vs. Tangerades. You're Very Welcomes vs. Upolus.

They were games with few rules, just a step above littering. Nothing worthwhile had been accomplished. They were still circling a whirpool of dwindling hours. And what she'd do if they managed to triumph remained an unknown.

It was a diversion, a fatuous exerice meant to kill time, dump Dandy's snack surplus, and distract them from how they would soon be risking their lives against a foe they barely understood; create a sense of calm and control through a battery of uncomplicated accomplishments.

And it worked.

If he could have heard her out there, she might have said,

"Thank you."

To be continued…

Author Note: So how about that Steven Bomb, huh? Phew! That was intense. Hopefully this story can still entertain you in light of that bodacious media barrage. Sorry that it took a while to make (again), the penultimate scene got a bit heavy and I wanted to do it well since it is a pretty important story turn. Surfing bit was also tricky. Chapter 6, the BIG FIGHT, should arrive in a couple of weeks, so look forward to that. And this conversation about what happened eight years ago is far from over.

R&R if you've got the time!

Surfing Slang/Terms Glossary:

Akaw-Something surfers shout when they spot a huge perfect wave, or when they are shocked or surprised.

Ankle Busters-Small waves

Barney-An inexperienced surfer, or someone who's no good at surfing.

Beach Leech-Mooching Surfer

Benny-A non local.

Bomboras-An aboriginal term for a wave that breaks over a shallow reef, located beyond the normal lineup and often some distance from the shore.

Choka-Awesome, Great etc.

Heavies- Big, Gnarly Waves.

Honkers-A really big wave

Kicking Out-To push down on the tail of a surfboard to lift and turn the nose over the top of the wave.

Pearl: A wipeout caused when the nose or front of the surfboard digs into the water, generally causing the surfer to tip-off forward. Usually occurs when dropping into a steep part of a wave.

Shoreys-An in-shore wave

Snake-Used to describe someone who deliberately "drops in" in front of a surfer who has the right-of-way. Also, someone who quickly sneaks behind another surfer with the right-of-way, putting his/her self in position to take more waves.