Garnet walked up from behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder.
"C'mon, we should let Steven train. And maybe have a talk."
Whoa whoa whoa! What?! What the hell was that?! I know I've made some slight changes, but regardless I'm pretty sure that wasn't supposed to happen. Have I fucked up the timeline that badly already that people are acting out of character?
Tears slowly filled Pearl's eyes and her legs began to shake. She fell to her knees.
"I'm so sorry Steven. I don't know what I was thin-" before she could finish, Steven places a hand on her cheek and smiles sadly. It doesn't even surprise him when she almost seems to melt at his touch. Welp….time to fuck up everything. I never planned to stay too close to canon anyway. Still though, I didn't think it was going to happen this quickly.
"I've never told anyone, but sometimes I have these dreams. It's never anything much, and they're always just flashes of things I don't understand. But sometimes, sometimes they're clear, and more often than not you're in them. I don't know...they're weird. It's like I'm me but not me. And it's us, laughing, being together. And when I wake up, I always love you a bit more Pearl. I'm not fully her, but I'm half of her, and her love for you exists in me. I know you miss her, but she's not gone. I'm here Pearl. We're here. No matter what form I'm taking. So don't cry okay? You're most beautiful when you're smiling, like in my dreams." Steven says, wiping away her tears. He could see what seemed to be a blue blush across her cheeks as she stared at him. Silent. A smile slowly forms across her face but the tears don't stop.
"Of course. Thank you Ro-...Steven. I was being foolish." she gets up and wipes her face. "I'm sorry for that unsightly display. It won't happen again." Steven chuckles and waves it off.
"It's no problem. Now I still need to train. Like I said, I'll be your shield and protect you. All of you. But to do that I need to get stronger. Do you want to come too? Make sure no accidents happen?" Steven asks with a smile. Pearl nodded and followed him and Amethyst out. Garnet decided to come too.
Finally out on the beach, the two shortest Gems faced off against each other. A couple of feet away, Steven had his shield out and Amethyst had out her whip. The purple menace seemed to be confident in her victory.
"You sure about this? Don't get butthurt if this ends too quickly." she says with a smirk but Steven just smiles. 5 feet, I need to get within 5 feet of her if I'm going to stand any chance. She has the range advantage. Let's do this! Shield!
The rose thorns travel down his arm and form the shield. Immediately, Steven begins to run towards her with a yell before suddenly finding the need to block a whip strike. Because the attack isn't particularly heavy, he could bash it to the side without stopping. Instead of letting her attack once more, Steven whips his arm back and throws his shield. It flies a little off course but before it leaves his distance limit, he compels it back on track, making it hit her right in the stomach before bouncing back to him.
"Oof!"
"You're in my Realm!" Steven yells at finally hitting the 5 feet mark before inwardly cringing at his weeb. Regardless, he felt much better about his chances now that he was closer, sending his shield back at her again but this time she jumped over it, doing a little spin in the air before landing right behind him. Shit! Disperse! Shield!
Steven turns around just in time to block the kick, but he's still pushed back several feet, leaving two tracks in the sand as he digs his heels in to stop himself. With his bearings restored, another throw of his shield is dodged again but before it can get too far away, he controls it in the air to double back, whacking Amethyst in the back of the head.
"Ow! You little-!" she used the moment that his shield wasn't close by to attack with her whip again. Steven tried to disperse his shield but he couldn't summon it back in time to stop the whip from wrapping around him. Amethyst pulls hard and without the use of his arms to balance himself, he falls face first into the sand.
"Oww~" Steven groans looking up to see Amethyst above him with that same infuriating smirk. He sighs in regret. Crap. I lost. I didn't really expect to win, but I didn't want to lose that quickly either. For some reason I couldn't summon my bubble shield and I also couldn't summon another shireld. Why though? I know the other Gems can have more than one weapon.
"I told you dude." she brags. Steven laughs and rolls his eyes.
"Yea yea, you win. I'll win next time. Now let me go please." he asks and the whips disappear. Standing up, he wipes all of the sand off of his clothes. God I hate sand, it must be the most annoying material in the entire universe. It just gets everywhere!
"Are you alright? Are you hurt? Is anything broken?" she worries while running over and checking Steven for any wounds or bruises. He chuckles and removes her hands from frisking him. Despite it being annoying, Steven could tell that she genuinely cared for him and not just the thing inside of his belly button;.
"I'm fine Pearl. See? I didn't win, but I'll get better. I'll get stronger and protect you. Just like before."
"Aww Steven~. I-" she begins before the ground begins to rumble. From what seems like nowhere, a bunch of small centipedals ran onto the beach in swarms. However they didn't seem to be going for the Gems, but instead climbed the walls of their house. Looking up, they finally saw it, The Mother. She was sprawled around the statue above the house. "Steven! Go inside while we take care of The Mother!" Pearl yells as Garnet immediately begins to climb the statue in jumps to reach the monster.
"No! This is what we talked about! I made a promise to all of you that I would protect you, that with this shield danger will never break through, and I'm not going anywhere." Steven responds while Garnet begins attacking the monster and leading it onto the beach. Now directly in front of them was The Mother of the centipedals. As the dust flew everywhere and began settling thanks to The Mother's crash onto the beach, Steven looked up to the monster.
She is composed of roughly thirteen dark-green segments (excluding the head and the rear) that each bear one pair of similarly colored legs. The final segment bears no legs, but what appears to be a pair of claw-like cerci. Each of these segments is covered on the top side with a solid crystal covering. Her head is composed primarily of a large pair of jaws/mandibles with a gem in the back of the "mouth". This gem is circular in shape and colored light green with dark green contour lines surrounding the circumference of the gem, connecting to a circular shape. Her gem seems to act as her iris, being in the middle of what would rationally be a sclera. It also features a green crystal protuberance on the base of the head that forms a broken horn-like structure and a flowing, light-cream colored mane immediately behind her head.
It's...it's huge. Oh my god it's HUGE! Shit! What have I gotten myself into?! I should have went back into the fucking house like Pearl said, but now I'm gonna die from acid because I wanted to play Captain America. Wait...the acid! Shield! He realises before the corrupted Gem shoots a compressed stream of acid from what seems to be her eye, but before it could connect- Enlarge!
Steven's shield tripled in size. Just enough to cover all of the Crystal Gems from getting hit as they huddled behind the boy. Fuck! No time to feel sorry for myself. I'm in this shit and there's no way out of it now. Fight or Flight Mode baby and I never was a runner. With new determination, he clenched his fists to gather his courage, and sent out a punch, sending the shield flying into the air and interrupting the acid stream and knocking The Mother back a bit.
"Gems! NOW!" Steven orders with a shout. He doesn't know when, but while he was distracted they summoned their weapons. Now prepared and with a window of opportunity opened, they rushed the monster and crushed it. Almost immediately, it hardly took any time at all.
That was much quicker than in the show. I guess since I can actually use my powers effectively, at such an easy level, things will be ending quickly. On one hand, I'm extremely grateful for this discovery. On the other hand, however, it's kind of disappointing.
With the main body destroyed, the gem fell to the ground, where Garnet bubbled it and sent it away.
"Whoohooo! That was awesome!" Amethyst exclaims, walking back to Steven and patting his back. Hard.
"Yes. Good job Steven." Garnet nods in approval.
"We're proud of you." says Pearl. He grins at the high praise.
"This was my first battle. My first of many probably and it was sort of scary, but I did it. We did it. I'm a Crystal Gem now, you're Shield. So.." he says with a pause before looking straight at Pearl. "Don't send me away. How will I protect you if I'm not on the battlefield. Believe in me."
"...I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't believe in you. I'm sorry I tried to send you away. From now on you have my full faith." Pearl says while more tears begin to stream down her adorable face. She gets on one knee and looks Steven in the eyes. "Will you protect me? Us? Like before? Like always?" she asks.
"Of course!" Steven exclaims. "Like always."
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