Universal Assault

Prologue

Thousands of years ago, before the dawn of humanity, the Gems were once a proud race of celestial and magical beings, born with amazing abilities that give their race amazing powers and abilities, and all share the trait of having a magic crystal embedded somewhere on their bodies, the source of their powers that give them the ability to summon special weapons, along with channeling their strength to power whatever unique abilities each Gem is born with.

The galaxy is vast and expansive, several worlds belonged to the Gems and further increased their influence and power, with nothing in the galaxy able to defeat such a mighty alien race, the Gems prospered and had a golden age that lasted for eons, with seemingly no end to their prosperity.

But great power can easily corrupt those who wield it.

As time went on, the inner politics of the Gems slowly formed a massive rift, several Gems found out horrible secrets of their kind stripping entire resources and exterminating life on entire worlds for the sake of their empire, having no regard for any living thing while moving on to repeat the same process, causing civil disputes that only increased the separation of the Gem race.

Things only got worse when Gems seeking to protect life filled worlds decided to rebel against their kind and defend the same worlds to preserve, only to be met with the same fate of extinction while their government covered up the incidents and regarding them as mere accidents.

Then, out of seemingly nowhere since the Gems were too distracted by their own civil politics… THEY came.

THEY were an alien race just like the Gems, THEY were also an expansive empire with great power, their influence just expanding to Gem controlled worlds who made first contact with the new aliens, seeking to have peaceful relations with a fellow empire and establish a treaty of friendship.

THEY refused. THEY didn’t even respond before invading several Gem worlds, managing to wipe out all resistance and strip all resources off of Gem worlds, both organic and inorganic, eerily similar to how the Gems would strip worlds of all resources as well, but in a more brutal and efficient fashion, showing no mercy to those who begged and turned entire planets into bare wastelands in a manner of moments.

A great war began after that, THEY and the Gems fought for years, suffering great casualties in both sides of the war, but THEY pressed onward, no matter how many THEY seemed to lose, THEY still kept going, driven by their power and greed to exterminate the Gems, deeming them inferior beings that deserved nothing but death.

The Gems began to lose the war, underestimating their unexpected foe’s power and vast armies THEY had, THEY had more technological innovation than the Gems all those years ago, wielding powerful technology that the Gems either had no idea how to create or refused to create, THEY had much larger numbers than the Gems, armies and armadas that outnumbered the Gems ten to one, and along with the political strife that still continued to separate the Gems, even after THEY were gaining the upper hand.

The Gems were on the verge of true extinction at one point, most of their worlds were either wastelands or still under siege, cut off from all support as the majority of the Gems were trapped on their Home world, preparing their defenses for what could have possibly been their final battle. The Gems were not usually afraid of things, but for the first time in their history, they were truly scared of not just their extinction, but of THEM as well.

The siege of the Gem Home world was long and bloody, it started like any ordinary invasion that THEY would do. THEY would send in scouts and spies, scoping out the planet to know its strength of its defenses and any potential weakness it had. It made the Gems paranoid and worried, as they waited for days, weeks, even months for the siege to begin. But it felt like centuries for the Gems, anticipating a massive force to come crashing down yet it never came, inducing a form of psychological torture of expecting something big to happen but never does.

And when they least expected it, THEY came down with force.

A massive invasion took place on the Gem home world, THEY were throwing everything they had at the Gems, who were already weakened and split apart by several negative factors, giving THEY the chance to wipe the Gems off of the face of the universe. When all seemed lost for the Gems, a miracle happened, a miracle under the name of a special Gem

Rose Quartz

Rose, although being a Gem who opposed her kind from stripping all life from worlds, managed to briefly unite all Gems under her authority for a common goal, survival. The Gems, now united once more, fought back their invaders with everything they had as well, catching their numerous foes by surprise with their renewed faith and hope, pushing back the alien siege to the point of wiping out almost every single invader on the Gem home world, forcing THEY to retreat and dealt a massive blow to the invaders, severely weakening their military strength in the galaxy since a large majority of their forces invaded the Gem home world.

Victory came at a cost however, Rose Quartz had shed several tears after the battle ended, and struck by the loss of several brave Gems who died in battle or were killed in cold blood. Rose managed to push onwards however, leading the surviving Gems on the Home World to take the fight back to them, going to world after world to save other Gems still under siege and increase the Gem’s hope and strength, slowly bringing her race back from near extinction and push back their superior foe.

In one last battle against THEY, the Gems defeated whatever was left of the invaders, decimating their moral and power completely after striking a killing blow, eliminating their leader who commanded the entire force, a supreme commander who went by the name of Xeres the Eliminator.

Rose led a final assault on the invader’s mothership, bringing along her closest friends Pearl, Garnet, and a few others to infiltrate and destroy the remaining leadership that the invaders had. When Rose and her Gem companions finally confronted the commander, after countless battles against the crew of course, Rose tried to negotiate with Xeres, wanting this war to end peacefully and halt further bloodshed on both sides.

With all forms of negotiation failing to break Xeres, Rose asked the cruel commander with all her heart, why was he still continuing this war, even after all that has happened, after all the death and chaos that had ensued, after all of the loss in both sides, she wanted to know why Xeres still continued it.

Xeres just laughed at Rose’s question and gave an answer that the Gems would always remember.

“Because your kind is weak and insignificant. You Gems are nothing more than mere specks of the entire universe, desperately trying to cling onto your old beliefs while constantly contradicting yourselves in hypocrisy and lies. Gems are but pests to our glorious empire, deserving nothing more than death to us, a superior species with every right to exterminate weaklings such as your kind. And I swear to you that although we will lose this war and my life, we will come back and finish what we have started here, no matter how long it takes, we will exterminate your kind and purify this galaxy! We will return!”

Those were the last words of Xeres before he activated a self-destruct sequence on his ship, rather wanting to kill himself than to be taken in alive and face his actions that he felt justified doing. The Gems managed to escape alive before the mothership blew up, and the remaining invaders fled from the Gems, retreating back from wherever THEY came from and were never seen again.

Xeres’s words meant a lot to the Gems, for while there was much hate and wrong to them, there was also a bit of truth as well, which further shaped the Gem’s views on their way of life, some believing that Xeres had a point while others believed he was a liar. Either way, the Gems still took his words by heart, and those words would help shape the inevitable future to come.

After the defeat of the aliens, the Gems returned to their worlds to help rebuild their once vast empire, but quickly returned to their old ways once more, fighting amongst each other for the preservation or extermination of life in the galaxy, culminating into the events that created the eventual split of the Gems, the Home World Gems who sought out further expansion through force, and the Crystal Gems, guardians of their new found home on Earth and defenders of its inhabitants, humanity.

In these days, the Crystal Gems are but a very few amount, for only Pearl, Garnet, and Amethyst survived the war while the other Crystal Gems had perished, including Rose, while the Home world Gems had left Earth alone, seeking to conquer other worlds and ignore Earth for now, until recent events involving Home world Gems arriving to Earth to discover the Crystal Gems were still alive and well, and were still opposing their rule despite their few numbers.

It didn’t matter to the Crystal Gems however, for they would still be dedicated to being the guardians of their home and of humanity, and no matter what threat comes in their way, they would be there to protect their home.

But still, the lingering memories of THEY lingered in Pearl and Garnet’s minds, Amethyst was only told stories about THEY since she was not born during that ancient war, but it scared her to think about THEY just from the stories she was told, and Steven Universe who is the newest Crystal Gem and Rose’s son, was never told of THEY since he was not old enough to understand such creatures.

Garnet wouldn’t dwell too much on such creatures as THEY and Xeres for long, but Pearl was always someone who liked to remember the good things about the past. But good things would also remind Pearl of bad things as well, Xeres and THEY being part of it.

It always worried the Gem too, since every night while no one is looking, Pearl would sneak away from the other Gems to stare up in the stars in deep thought in worry and fright, still remembering the words Xeres said all those years ago.

“We will return!”

Those last three words ringed in her head all the time, because of the way Xeres said them, not with malice and venom, but with brutal sincerity. She knew that he meant every single word from his vengeful vow, and would always think about THEY ever since, and would stare up in those skies in fear of anticipation of their old foe, their name that the Gems only referred to as THEY or THEM, but they knew what their cursed name was, a name that THEY constantly reminded the Gems that Pearl only said in her mind.

“The Hierarchy.”

Chapter 1

It was just another ordinary day at Beach city for Steven and the Crystal Gems. The sun shined brightly on the coastal town, signaling another peaceful day for its inhabitants despite what happened with the Home world Gem incident. No monsters were attacking anything, no sign of Peridot ever since her pod was found, not a single thing was wrong today.

It made Steven bored out of his mind.

The young Gem wanted to do something epic and adventurous with his Gem friends, expecting something to happen today because of how quiet it was. He would have hanged out with Connie today, but she said that she had to visit her grandmother with her parents today. Everything else in Beach city was normal too, no one had any problems that needed to be taken care of, nor did the Gems have any issues themselves.

All Steven did was sit lazily around the couch, groaning for something to happen already.

“Ughhhh!” Groaned the child, laying down on the couch out of boredom and constantly switching positions.

“Hey Steven!”

Steven got up to hear the voice behind him, seeing that it was Amethyst holding a bag of chips, who could hear Steven’s loud groans from afar and walked up to the child.

“Trying to find a good spot to do nothing?” Asked the purple skinned Gem.

Steven just groaned in response.

“Well, if you can’t find the right spot-

Amethyst then leaped onto the couch, shapeshifting into a purple hippo and landing on the couch, making Steven roll off quickly before getting mushed under Amethyst’s sudden weight gain.

“Just take ALL the spots.”

Amethyst and Steven both laughed, getting a chuckle out of the purple Gem’s antics as the bag of chips she carried dropped on her head, spilling many of the salty snacks on the couch and floor.

“Amethyst!” Shouted a voice across the kitchen, that voice being an annoyed Pearl who saw Amethyst cause the chip mess, walking to the living right after she finished washing the dishes.

“I just cleaned the furniture an hour ago!” Exclaimed Pearl, frustrated that she had to clean all over again.

“Oh well. I guess you have to start over.” Replied Amethyst, waving off Pearl’s concerns as she shifted back into her regular form, dumping whatever was left of the chips in the bag in her mouth.

“How can you be so inconsiderate?” Asked Pearl, fuming over Amethyst’s usual behavior again.

“Well, excuse me Princess.” Mocked Amethyst, having nothing better to do than make Pearl mad.

Steven then stepped in between the arguing Gems, not wanting them to fight over something so dumb.

“Don’t fight, guys.” Interrupted Steven. “I know there’s nothing to do today, but you shouldn’t fight over something like this.”

Steven then grabbed a chip in each hand and faced them to the two Gems, Amethyst looked at the chip confusingly while Pearl shuddered at the fact food was in front of her.

“Have some chips to protect your friendship. Friendchips!”

Amethyst raised her eyebrow at the gesture. “Friendchips?”

Steven nodded happily. “Yup. Chips that show that you’re still friends.”

“Steven.” Said Pearl to the child in her more calm motherly voice. “I know you want to be nice, but food is just too revolting to even mean anything good.”

Pearl then turned to Amethyst to give her a mean glare, who just ignored the glare and snatched the two chips away from Steven.

“Oh well. More for me.” Shrugged Amethyst, eating the two “Friendchips”, making Pearl twitch her eye at the sight.

Suddenly, Garnet entered the room, looking as serious as she usually is.

“Gems. We have a mission to do.”

This news got everyone interested, especially Steven, who practically jumped for joy at the news.

“Yes! I don’t have to stay home all day!” Exclaimed Steven happily.

Garnet signaled the Gems to follow her, walking the group to the warp pad to prepare for the new mission.

“So Garnet. Where are we going now? An ancient temple? A cloud city? A Bubble world?” Asked Steven excitingly, eager to know where the Gems were going now.

Garnet stayed unusually silent to Steven’s questions before responding vaguely.

“Somewhere.”

This caught not just Steven, but even Amethyst and Pearl off guard to the vague answer.

“Somewhere? Where exactly?” Asked Pearl, expecting Garnet to respond to her.

Garnet still stayed silent, making Pearl uncomfortable and unsure as to why Garnet was acting like this. Sometimes Garnet would act like the strong silent type when necessary, but not to a simple question like this.

“Oh boy! It’s a mystery.” Said Steven, just happy to come along with the Gems on a mission that was mysterious.

The warp pad then activated, transporting the Gems to the coordinates to wherever they had to go, disappearing in a bright flash.

O-O-O

It didn’t take long for the Gems to arrive at their destination, arriving in a bright flash and emerging to see an interesting sight.

“Whoa.”

That word was all Steven could say at the sight before the Gems. Right in front of the Gems was a large temple, though it looked to be in ruins now. The stone forming the majestic building is now decayed, most of it now having large holes on the sides like new entrances, the statue that resided on the temple’s top was missing its upper half, which was crumbled behind the temple, whatever beauty the old temple had is now in ruins.

The land around them was unusual as well. It felt like a more alien world, indicating that wherever they transported to is not on Earth, yet it felt strangely familiar to home for Garnet and Pearl. The moon above suggested it was at least midnight here, yet the land was still noticeably barren, nothing but dry and dark rocky landscapes surrounded the Gems, with a cold chill in the air that made their spines shiver from the sudden cold.

“This place is giving me the creeps.” Commented Amethyst, rubbing her arms from the chill she felt.

Pearl turned to Garnet with a worried look.

“Garn-?”

“We’re here to find an artifact.” Interrupted Garnet, making Steven disappointed that the mystery was already spoiled.

“Aww man. I wanted to find that out myself.”

“Pearl and I will go ahead.” Said Garnet in her usual sternness. “Amethyst. You follow close behind with Steven.”

Amethyst gave Garnet a thumbs up, as Garnet ran ahead of the group with Pearl in tow, going up the large stone steps and getting out of earshot from Amethyst and Steven.

“Wanna race up to the top?” Asked Amethyst, with Steven happily agreeing.

O-O-O

“Garnet. Are you okay?” Asked Pearl, concerned about her comrade’s health. “You’re not usually like this.”

“No. I’m not fine.” Answered Garnet bluntly, catching Pearl even more off guard than ever.

“Are we really here for an artifact?”

“There may be one here, but that’s not why.”

Garnet and Pearl reached the top of the temple steps, seeing that the large doors that lead inside the temple were down on the ground, appearing to have large holes and cracks on them. Taking a closer look at the damage on the doors and the temple around them, Pearl noticed several black marks staining the stone, indicating that some kind of weapon was used here.

Pearl thought to herself about the temple, trying to remember what this place was before commenting out loud. “This place feels… familiar.”

“Don’t you remember?” Asked Garnet, still keeping her stern tone despite what as before them.

Pearl did have one thought, but she shook it away from her mind, hoping that it wasn’t what Garnet was suggesting.

“Why are we really here?”

“There was a distress signal I picked up here.”

This answer shocked Pearl, making her step back in surprise. “A distress signal? From a Home world Gem? Why?”

“I don’t know. But we should investigate it, just in case.”

“Just… in case… what?” Panted Steven from behind with Amethyst, the Gem clearly winning the race while just as curious as Steven.

“In case uh… we, if we-

“In case we need someone to watch the entrance for us.” Interrupted Garnet, making up a lie for Steven to stay put. “It would be very important to us if you and Amethyst stayed here to watch out for us.”

“But I want to see what’s inside.” Whined Steven, hoping that Garnet would buy into his act.

“Garnet is right, Steven. Who knows what could be out there?”

Steven looked out at the wasteland beyond, not really too convinced about this. The child looked at Amethyst who shrugged her shoulders at what was up with Garnet and Pearl, eventually agreeing to their demands as they went inside they temple, leaving the pair behind at the entrance to investigate.

“Did we have to leave them there?” Asked Pearl.

“Steven is too young to know about this. And Amethyst can’t keep a secret.” Replied Garnet.

Pearl just stayed silent. She knew that Garnet had a point, but there was no way that anything bad could be found here. She didn’t want to believe that the way Garnet was acting was because this was the work of… THEM.

She didn’t want to believe it.

“The signal came from upstairs. We should move quickly.” Ordered Garnet, spotting a stone staircase leading to all the different floors.

Running inside the temple reminded Pearl how spacious it was, having flashbacks of thousands of years ago when Gems would frequently come to these temples for peace and sanctuary. Now it was in ruins, the stone around was cracked and covered in several large black marks, the several statues inside were also either crumbled to the ground or missing parts of its structure. It was a sad sight to see such a holy place now in ruin.

Unknown to the two Gems however, Amethyst was watching them from afar and waiting until they were gone up, giving the two Gems a suspicious look before smiling gleefully.

“Okay, they’re gone now. Now let’s go have some real fun.” Said Amethyst, walking inside the temple with Steven following, not feeling good about ignoring Pearl and Garnet’s orders.

“Are you sure this is a good idea? Pearl and Garnet wouldn’t tell us to stay put without a good reason.” Said Steven, doubting that what they were doing was a good decision.

Amethyst just responded with a ‘Pfffft.’

“Come on, Steven. There’s no point to having fun if you can’t break any rules.” Said Amethyst casually, running inside the temple.

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

O-O-O

Just a few floors under the top of the temple, a 6 foot figure stood by some kind of high tech computer, pressing several buttons on screen in a stressed out manner, as if it were in a rush for something.

“Come one, come on. Please respond.” Pleaded the figure, hoping that someone would respond.

The figure appeared to be colored in a palate of red and looked female, very similar in design to Peridot but skinnier, having long red hair, and not as modified with technology, wearing some kind of synthetic lightweight armor that had her gem located on her chest, which was in an oval shape.

“Please respond already.” Pleaded the Gem again, not willing to stay here any longer. “I don’t want to-

Out of seemingly nowhere, a burst of green energy bolts hit the computer console, blowing it up in front of the Gem and knocking her back due to the blast.

The Gem got up just in time to see what had caused the damage, which was a shock for her to see.

The Gem saw a group of at least a dozen alien creatures in front of her, appearing to have massive heads, glowing red eyes, and hunched bodies with spindly limbs tipped with three fingers and toes, colored in light grey skin and looked very familiar to the stereotypical “Gray” alien. The only form of armor the aliens wore seemed to be a large collar around their necks with a set of cuffs on their wrists, colored blood red along with their weapons, which were some kind of advanced guns that shot out a very volatile bright green matter, plasma.

The alien creatures began to chitter in high pitch tones, some screeched at the Gem viscously to express their desire to kill while other laughed crazily at her, despite the fact that the creatures had no visible mouths.

“You want to kill me?!” Shouted the Gem at the alien creatures, ready to stand her ground against her seemingly psychotic foes.

“No.” Responded a venomous voice from behind, as the Gem turned around to see a tall and imposing figure standing behind her. “Nufai wants you alive.”

It looked completely different from the other alien creatures, not just its notable height of seven feet, but it’s very sinister appearance as well, it also had a hunched back body and colored with light grey skin, it’s head was much smaller however and had a long neck located below its shoulders, the head of the creature had six glowing yellow eyes along with some kind of tendrils below its oddly shaped head that acted as its mouth, the creatures limbs were also long and spindly, but it had three fingers equipped with some kind of synthetic claws on each digit, and wore a lightweight armor on its torso, both colored in blood red and had two clawed digits on its feet, using them to stand up and walk.

The imposing figure caught the Gem off guard and stared into her eyes, intimidating her and prevented her from summoning whatever weapon she wanted to use, doing so by slashing its claws upward, knocking down the Gem and disorientating her, and grabbed the Gem with his claws to put her down on her knees, making her face the hideous creature as it placed one of its clawed digits on her oval Gem.

“You will tell Nufai what he wants to know.” Addressed the creature in first person, an unusual habit that slightly confused the captured Gem but responded anyways.

“I won’t tell you anything.”

Nufai lowered his eyes, clearly not amused by the Gem’s defiance and knew what he had to do now, which pleased the alien with twisted glee.

“Then Nufai shall make you suffer.”

Chapter 2

“Wow! This place is huge!” Exclaimed Steven, exploring the huge and spacious hallway right by the front entrance, observing the ancient fallen statues and the Gem inscriptions below the stone stands they once stood on.

“Yeah, I guess.” Responded Amethyst, not really as impressed with the architecture as Steven was. “Could use some better decorating.”

“Maybe we could make another home here? It’ll be just like the temple back on Earth, only darker, and kind of cold.” Said Steven, rubbing his arms as he still felt the chill in the air.

“And messy… I love it!” Agreed Amethyst, as her and Steven walked up to some kind of ancient stone doors that seemed to lead into the middle of the temple.

The large doors had several Gem inscriptions that every door here had, but what stood out were the images of two Gems that covered the entire door, appearing to be kneeling down and holding some kind of orb that also had inscriptions on them.

“What’s in here?” Steven asked out loud.

“Probably some more broken Gem stuff.” Shrugged off Amethyst. “Just like everything else in here.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

Steven then tried to push the doors open, using all of his strength that the boy could muster.

“Come on… open… sesame.”

The child then gave up, seeing that the doors wouldn’t even budge and fell flat on the ground, exhausted and panting from the struggle to open the door.

“You really want to get inside there, don’t you?” Asked Amethyst, as Steven nodded in reply, making the purple Gem chuckle. “I got this.”

Amethyst, using her shapeshifting powers, turned into a bull and picked up Steven, riding on Amethyst’s back as she charged right into the stone doors, specifically into a crack on the door that was a possible weak spot.

“Amethyst!?”

“I got this, Steven!” Assured Amethyst, knowing exactly what she was doing.

The purple Gem managed to get through easily, charging right through the door and creating a new hole that she perfectly got out of, while Steven activated his shield out of the worry of getting hit in the face by a rock.

Amethyst then stopped dead in her place, making Steven fall off as she immediately shape shifted back into her original form, though Steven got up without any harm.

“That was so awesome!” Exclaimed Steven, amazed at Amethyst’s bull charge through a door.

Amethyst did not respond however, making Steven look at her to see an expression of pure shock on her face, noticing her eyes were wide open as if she was staring at something horrifying.

“Amethyst? What’s wrong?” Asked Steven, now getting worried about his purple Gem friend.

Amethyst responded back in an uncharacteristic manner. “We uh… Maybe we should go back now.”

“Why?”

Steven then looked in front of Amethyst and saw what she was staring at, making the young child shocked, confused, and horrified at what was in front of him.

What he saw in front of him was a large temple room, surrounded by ancient stone with a mostly destroyed Statue in the center, surrounded by a large fountain now dry of water, and behind that statue was a large gaping opening of what used to be a wall, now revealing the outside of the dark wastelands beyond. But decaying stone and fallen statues were not what shocked the two Crystal Gems, not even the black stains all around that indicated the usage of alien weaponry.

It was the bodies that shocked them.

Several skeletons of deceased alien creatures laid across the temple floor, all but dry bones and wore rusted blood red armor, their weapons broken and their fragments scattered, accompanying the smaller skeletons are even larger skeletons with more rusted blood red armor across the floor.

Perhaps the most shocking part of the remains of these aliens were the two large remains of some kind of four legged walkers, their round disc form of a saucer and their crippled legs were all that was left of these alien war machines, now nothing but ruins and part of this room.

An old battlefield.

“A-amethyst. What happened here?” Stuttered Steven, scared out of his mind about what he was seeing.

“Oh man… We should have told you.” Answered Amethyst, letting that slip out of her tongue.

“You know about this?” Asked Steven frightfully, close to the verge of tears about what he was seeing.

“No! Not this! Something like that, like THEM.” Pointed Amethyst to the alien skeletons.

Steven was still scared and confused. “Them? What are they?”

Amethyst regretted opening her mouth for once, not sure what to say about what she saw since she was just as shocked as Steven.

“Let’s just go find Pearl and Garnet. You need to know now.”

Amethyst lead Steven out of the room as quickly as they went in, feeling guilty about showing Steven such a horrible sight.

Amethyst never had the fate of meeting THEM, or really the Hierarchy as they were actually called, she was born after the whole Gem/Hierarchy war that was waged in the galaxy, but Pearl and Garnet told her stories of these aliens since they were there first hand, and she was horrified by those stories.

Hearing those stories from Garnet talking about how powerful and advanced the Hierarchy were sent shivers down her spine, and hearing Pearl talk about the more emotional side of the conflict, the Gems that died, the worlds that were destroyed, the suffering they caused, there was even a point when Pearl began crying about how many close friends she knew died, it made Amethyst feel so much sympathy for the Gem.

Now that Steven saw something like this, a bloodied old battlefield of death and destruction, she had to get Pearl and Garnet to tell him the truth, there was no other way at this point. She still had some kind of hope inside her though, the hope that these stories would just be forgotten and become fairytales, the hope that the Hierarchy would never return.

But hope does not always mean truth.

O-O-O

“There’s still one thing I don’t understand. How did we get off world if we destroyed the galaxy warp?” Asked Pearl, while she and Garnet ran up a spiral staircase.

“Not all warp pads leading off world were at the galaxy warp.” Answered Garnet. “The Home world must have made a few models and never told anyone.”

“We would have been on the pad though.”

“Then someone was tampering with it.”

That answer filled Pearl with more worry than relief, but she stopped asking questions for now, since Garnet was not in the mood right now, and they had a mission to do, a mission to do fast before things get complicated.

Garnet and Pearl were close to the top of the temple, nearby to where the distress signal came from as they ran up the spiral stone staircase, careful not to fall due to how fragile the stone was after years of damage and decay. The walls that used to surround the staircase were now decayed or gone, some had huge holes that revealed the outside world of the dead wastelands.

Pearl couldn’t help herself but stare out at them once in a while to see if anything was there, but to also lament about how sad this was. She understood that she had a mission to do, especially if it involved a Home world Gem on the loose, but she couldn’t help herself but think back to more flashbacks of her past life, the happier parts before seeing the truth of the Home world’s actions.

Glancing outside at the wasteland once more, she saw something peculiar in the distance and stopped, knowing that whatever was out there was not supposed to be here.

“Garnet!” Shouted Pearl out to the Gem leader, who stopped to see what Pearl was seeing.

Pearl pointed outside to the wasteland through one of the many huge holes in the wall, with Garnet having a shocked expression on her face, at least as shocked as Garnet could look.

In the distance of the wasteland was some kind of large saucer shaped object, colored blood red and had a large ring around and a smaller ring in the middle, created a spacious gap between the two ring like structures, the object’s top had three long structures that expanded on the top of the ship, all connected to the center of the object that had some kind of circular object at the bottom of its center that the Gems could not see, but the sight alone gave the two Gems much fear and paranoia.

They knew what kind of ship that was.

“It can’t be.” Said Pearl softly with shocking realization, now stuttering out her words from fear. “I-it can’t be t-t-them. No, no, no, no. T-there’s no way it c-could possibly be… THEM.”

“It is.” Responded Garnet in her usual stern voice, but even that had a sense of fear that could be felt. “That is one of their transport ships. Which means they could be in here right now.”

Pearl then started to hyperventilate, feeling light headed in the process and almost fell down until Garnet caught her, as Pearl began thinking back to the horrible memories of her ancient foes.

The massive armies that swarmed the Gems, their plasma weaponry that rained down from the skies and across the battlefield, the carnage of closing in their forces and being covered in their blood and guts, the Gems that were shattered, so many Gems shattered.

“Pearl! Snap out of it!”

The visually horrified Gem snapped out of her dark thoughts to hear Garnet speaking to her.

“Pearl. Look at me.” Ordered Garnet, making the scared Gem look at her leader. “Stay calm. I know you have bad memories about… THEM, but I need you focused. We go up to find the Home world Gem, take care of her, and go back home like this never happened. Okay?”

Pearl felt calmer now, standing herself up and shook away the bad memories about THEM, not even daring to think about their true name since THEY were here now, as Garnet patted her on the back to comfort her.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

Loud screams could be heard from above, screams of great pain and fear that echoed in the supposedly abandoned temple, causing even more concern with the two Gems.

“We need to get there, now!” Ordered Garnet, as she and Pearl ran up the stairs as fast as possible, getting closer and closer to the screams that continued to echo downward.

The Gems managed to get up to the right floor, where they heard another scream come from behind two large stone doors that had yet to be crushed, but were open far enough for the Gems to peek out of and squeeze through. The two Gems took out their special weapons just in case, Pearl readied her spear and Garnet took out her gauntlets, able to fight back against the possibility that their old foes have returned.

Instead of blindly charging into the fight, Garnet ordered her and Pearl to hide behind the doors to peek inside, not wanting to underestimate her old foes as she did years ago. Those were painful experiences she did not want to relive.

What the Gems saw was a sight that unfortunately confirmed their greatest fears, as they clearly saw a group of a dozen alien creatures wielding plasm weaponry, one of the few weapons that could severely damage a Gem, even in their physical forms, seeing firsthand the same creatures that caused so much death and chaos to their race all those years ago, all in some kind of room with a destroyed computer and a warp pad close behind them.

“Lost Ones.” Whispered Pearl, having horrible memories about these twisted creatures. “I remember how psychotic and twisted they are, horrible creatures.”

These “Lost Ones” as Pearl called them, were surrounding a much larger and sinister figure around them, who appeared to be grasping tightly onto a Home World Gem with one hand on her torso to prevent her from escaping, while the other free hand was used to place one of its clawed digits on her oval Gem, which looked to be cracked as the Gem grunted in pain from contact.

“What is that creature?” Whispered Pearl, confused at what the hideous beast was. “I’ve never seen something like that before. THEY wouldn’t make alliances with other races.”

Garnet stayed silent, wanting to listen in to what the creature was saying, shocking Pearl more that the creature was actually speaking their language.

“Once again, tell Nufai your name.” Demanded Nufai in his venomous voice.

“I-

Nufai then proceeded to force his clawed digit into the oval Gem, pushing it ever so slightly with enough force to actually make a Gem feel pain, making her scream out in agony that Nufai took great pleasure in hearing, while the spying Gems felt more disgust for Nufai and even had some pity for the Home world Gem being tortured, not even they deserved to suffer from THEM.

“Nufai is asking you simple questions, woman! Do you not care for your own life?”

The Gem barely spoke back from the pain. “I… I do.”

“Then you will tell Nufai what your name is, or suffer more pain and give me great pleasure.”

The Home world Gem did not have much time to think, seeing Nufai’s claw pressed against her oval Gem forced her to blurt out her name to the twisted creature.

“RED CORAL!” Shouted out the Home world Gem. “My name is Red Coral!”

Nufai chuckled lowly with sadistic glee.

“Better. Now what is your purpose here?”

The Gem began to answer Nufai’s questions, unable to take any more pain from the twisted creature.

“I’m a scout. I was sent by the Home world to investigate our dead worlds for anything valuable.”

“Home world? So there is more of you alive after all?”

“Yes.” Admitted Red Coral, knowing that she had nothing else left but to give up now. “I was supposed to find any artifacts to help my world, but I’ve found nothing but old wounds and horrible memories of war.”

Nufai eyed the Home world Gem closely, realizing that the Gem was telling nothing but the truth at this point, and Nufai had nothing else important to ask the Gem.

“Please. Let me-

Before the Gem could finish her sentence, Nufai used his entire claw to impale the Gem right through her, piercing her oval Gem that was her life force and finished off the weakened celestial being, shattering her Gem completely into shards and effectively killing her, making the twisted creature laugh in sadistic glee.

“Nufai thanks you for the information, foolish woman.” Said Nufai to the remains of the Gem.

While Pearl and Garnet did not have the most sympathy for the Home world Gems, they couldn’t help themselves but remember how many of their people were killed in cold blood in such actions like that, as they observed Nufai ordering around his Lost Ones, but could not understand the language that Nufai spoke to his troops, since it was in their own language of chitters, screeches, and other twisted sounds.

“Gather the shards for our scientists. They’ll like new Gem shards instead of the old ones we found at the bottom.” Ordered Nufai in his own language, as a Lost One gathered all the shards of Red Coral and placed them in a special metallic cylinder canister.

There was something off about this Nufai that the Gems sensed. They knew that THEY were not the nicest race aliens in the galaxy, but there was something about Nufai in particular that felt… off. He was obviously sick in the head for taking so much pleasure in Red Coral’s pain, but the Gems felt that there was something more to this twisted creature than his horrid appearance and actions, like there was some kind of dark and twisted mystery to what exactly Nufai was that stood out, even for THEM.

As the Lost Ones prepared to leave, Nufai turned his head to briefly see something barely poking out of the large doors across from him in the corner of his eyes. The Gems hiding behind the doors hid behind, hoping that Nufai did not spot them. Before the Gems realized that the deathly silence from across meant they were found, the sinister voice of Nufai echoed across to them.

“I know you are there, intruders.”

Chapter 3

The Gem’s cover was blown, seeing no point in hiding as Garnet punched through the doors, blowing away stone pieces towards Nufai, who used his claws to expertly slice and dice every fragment of stone coming towards him.

Garnet and Pearl leaped out of the entrance towards Nufai, prepared to fight while his Lost Ones armed their plasma weapons and aimed right at the Gems, eager to kill the Gems for their amusement as Nufai spoke to the Gems in their language.

“More Gems, but not with this Red Coral that once was.” Said Nufai, eyeing the Crystal Gems with brief curiosity. “Interesting.”

Pearl pointed her spear straight at Nufai. “Give up you horrible monster, or the Crystal Gems will end you.”

Nufai was somewhat interested at that response. “Crystal Gems? There’s a new sub species of your wretched kind? Very interesting.”

“We are the Guardians of all life in this galaxy, and we will not let you run free to take anymore!” Exclaimed Pearl to Nufai, noticing that a Lost One took aim and fired at the Gem too early.

The alien’s eagerness to kill would backfire on him however, since Pearl gracefully dodged the plasma fire and fired back a blast of her own from her spear, the blast hitting the lost One’s plasma gun inside from where it fired, causing a small explosion and fragmented the weapon, along with knocking back the alien away.

Nufai chittered to a Lost One to contact the transport ship to come towards the temple, knowing that both Gems fighting against his forces would win, but he had another idea in mind as he began to taunt the Gems.

“You two would make great torture things to play with.” Nufai then let out a disappointed sigh, which sent shivers down the Gem’s spines, the way the hideous creature spoke and the venomous voice he has just made the Gems uncomfortable.

“A shame Nufai has no time for you however. So you shall have quick deaths!”

The twisted creature chittered out to his Lost Ones, ordering them to open fire on the Gems and stood back to let his troops charge in, taking the shards from one of his Lost Ones and ran off, letting his troops take care of the Gems for him.

The Lost Ones fired bursts of plasma fire at Pearl and Garnet, laughing manically at the opportunity to slaughter more Gems, as the two Gems took cover behind a fallen statue close by them, while the Lost Ones inched closer and closer to their cover and slowly broke it apart from their plasma fire.

“Pearl! Go after Nufai! We can’t let any of them escape.” Ordered Garnet, as Pearl complied and ran after Nufai, gracefully dodging any incoming plasma fire with her ballet fighting style.

Garnet used the same tactic when she first introduced herself, punching the statues as hard as she could and sent the stone pieces flying towards the Lost Ones, knocking down at least three of them while the others continued firing at Garnet and managed to avoid the stones, surprisingly nimble for being only five feet tall and having frail bodies.

The Gem charged right at the Lost Ones, getting up close to an alien and grabbed his plasma weapon from its hands, using it to hit the alien right at its large head like a baseball bat and sent it flying into a stone wall.

The Lost Ones, realizing that their Gem foes was a lot stronger than they thought, decided to use a new tactic against such a powerful force and pressed a yellow circular button on their cuffs, activating some kind of device installed in them.

Garnet was about to punch yet another Lost One right at its cranium when her fist suddenly went right through it, like the alien became some kind of phantom. The Gem turned around to see that the remaining Lost Ones did the same, as she swatted away at their seemingly transparent bodies, only to go through them as they laughed at her feeble attempts to hit them.

While a few lost Ones used this tactic to distract Garnet and get in her way to try and make her attack them, two of the Lost Ones went behind the Gem and pressed the same circular button again to become normal again, and began to shoot her in the back with Plasma fire as point blank range.

Feeling great pain from the back, Garnet quickly switched targets to hit the Lost Ones blasting her, only for them to activate their devices on their cuffs to make themselves transparent again, as the Lost ones she was fighting in front of her repeated the same tactic and shot her in the back once more, disorientating and hurting the leader Gem.

“Phase modules on Lost Ones? That’s new.” Thought Garnet to herself, surprised that the Hierarchy managed to miniaturize such technology and give it to psychopaths like the Lost Ones.

As the Lost Ones laughed manically at Garnet’s attempts to beat them, a Lost One was about to blast her in the back again when suddenly a whip coiled around his gun, pulling him away and flinged him into a wall.

“Dirty fighting huh?” Quipped a voice behind, making the Lost Ones turn to see Amethyst cracking her whip while Steven stood close behind.

“I can play dirty too.”

The Lost Ones screeched in defiance, as the six left standing splinted up into group of three, one group to go up against Garnet while the others went up against Amethyst, making the purple Gem swing her whip to try and get all three knocked down, only for them to activate their phase modules and let the whip pass through them.

“Hey! That’s cheating!” Exclaimed Steven, unhappy that the Lost Ones were using the phase module to avoid Amethyst’s whip.

Deactivating their modules, they began to fire upon the Gems, making Steven panic and activate his bubble shield to protect him and Amethyst from the Plasma blasts, which were surprisingly strong and made Steven struggle to keep the shield active.

While that was going on, Garnet thought of a new strategy to take out the three Lost Ones harassing her with such back stabbing tactics. She slammed her fists into the ground as hard as she could, causing the stone floor to crumble and fall apart, breaking the floor around her small area and made the three Lost Ones surrounding her fall down while she jumped away from the large hole she made safely, as the Lost Ones fell down to the floor under, getting trapped under the rocks before they could activate their phase modules and were buried in the stone.

After Steven’s bubble broke, Amethyst cracked her whip once more at a Lost One firing plasma at her, avoiding the shots and coiled her whip around its frail body and swung him in a circle, knocking him into another Lost One and knocking them out.

The last Lost One charged right at Steven, scaring the living daylights out of the child who did not except such a hideous alien as it cackled in its chittering and took aim at the boy at point blank range, only for the child to activate his smaller round shield and reflect the shots back into the alien’s gun, causing it to explode and knock the alien away towards Garnet, who gave the twisted creature a swift punch to the face and knocked it away to a wall, finishing the fight against the sadistic aliens.

“Wow.” Commented Amethyst, staring at the unconscious Lost Ones all around her. “You used to fight these things?”

“Hush.” Demanded Garnet sternly. “Not in front of Steven.”

Steven just scratched the back of his head nervously while Amethyst let out a nervous chuckle.

“He um… he knows. Kind of.”

Garnet then looked at Amethyst with a glare, or at least it seemed like a glare due to the leader Gem’s shades, making Amethyst hold her hands up in protest.

“Hey, I didn’t say anything to him!” Argued the purple Gem. “He had to find out the hard way.”

“It’s not her fault.” Steven said as he walked up to the Gem. “We… found skeletons. Scary ones down the temple. I wanted to open this door and-

“No Steven.” Interrupted Garnet, going down on one knee and sighed. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this sooner. I thought we never had to worry about THEM again.”

“THEM?”

Steven was silent for a moment until he asked another question. “Does Pearl know too?”

“Yes. And we’ll tell you about all this when we get back home.” Answered Garnet. “Right now, we need to go to the top of the temple. Pearl must be there still.”

O-O-O

After chasing after the horrid creature, Pearl managed to reach to the spacious temple top, which overlooked the darkened wasteland that surrounded the ancient temple, and saw Nufai standing right across from her with his back turned.

“You!” Exclaimed Pearl to Nufai, pointing her spear at the hideous beast, who turned to face Pearl with an intimidating stare, making Pearl almost step back from his horrid appearance as he chuckled darkly at the sight of her.

“So you are the one who followed me? Good.” Said Nufai, slowly walking towards her while she took a blast at him, causing him to avoid the blast by side stepping in a swift manner.

“Don’t you dare take another step towards me, you monster!” Warned Pearl, as Nufai stood in place and continued to stare with his unblinking eyes.

“You are quite a risk taker. Trying to kill your killer.”

“I won’t be killed by the likes of you.” Spat back the Gem with venom. “I’ve already seen too many die from your kind.”

“Do you mean the Hierarchy or my race? Because my race was wiped out by the Hierarchy years ago.”

Pearl raised an eyebrow at the sudden answer, curious as to why Nufai was with THEM now. “They were? Why are you working for the Hierarchy then?”

“Because Nufai helped with their defeat.” Responded the twisted creature, making Pearl disturbed at the horrible answer. “

“You betrayed your own race to save your own skin? How could you do that?” Asked Pearl shocked.

“Opportunity. Much… opportunity.”

Pearl blushed at the horrid answers since she always was a Gem whose emotions were never truly in check, something that Nufai noticed and took opportunity of.

“Hmm, that is an interesting gesture.” Said Nufai, pointing out the blush on Pearl’s cheeks. “Are you that emotional about everything? Or did you betray your kind as well for the same reason?”

Pearl took another blast at Nufai, who managed to side step again as he walked closer while still speaking, realizing just by her silence that he got his answer.

“You did! Then tell Nufai this, how did it feel? Did pleasure course through your veins? Did your treachery hurt the ones you cared about? Did misery and guilt cloud your mind but gave you a powerful strength of ecstasy?”

Pearl didn’t know how to respond or deal with this Nufai properly now, ever since her creation, she always had to deal with foes that she had knowledge of or attacked first rather than speak, but not only did Pearl not know what this creature was, but it seemed like it would rather talk and attack her emotionally than actually swipe at her right now, and the way Nufai spoke to her about everything just felt… disturbing and strange.

“You can tell Nufai. I ‘ve always wanted to share tortures with someone.” Said Nufai in a slithering tone. “And Nufai can tell that you have many tortures inside, all of them delicious in their special chaotic manner.”

“I won’t tell you anything.” Responded Pearl, as Nufai chuckled darkly once more in reply. “A slimy thing like you would never know how I feel.”

“On the contrary, Nufai knows exactly how you feel.” Rebutted Nufai, using his psychological torture on Pearl. “It felt good, didn’t it? Abandoning your own kind and taking advantage of other opportunities at hand. Nufai feels that way as well.”

Pearl couldn’t help herself but argue now, convinced that this Nufai was not going to attack and lowered her spear. “It wasn’t like that.”

Nufai then stopped walking, just in claws reach in front of Pearl while responding to the Gem’s argument, offering his twisted philosophy to Pearl.

“It has always been like that, Crystal Gem.” Responded Nufai, empathizing the Crystal Gem part. “You are no different than Nufai. You saw an opportunity to take advantage of and you went for it, and now you are much better off than you were before. You are just like Nufai, a fellow opportunist.”

“I’m not like you. I am nothing like you!” Argued back Pearl. “I didn’t sacrifice my race to save myself, I left them to fight for a good cause, and that cause is to protect this galaxy from scum like you and what they are now!”

Nufai kept the part about the Home world Gems similar to scum in mind, gaining a hint of knowledge that they must have changed in a way, while moving one eye away to see that his transport ship was close.

“Maybe you’re right, you’re not an opportunist like Nufai. Do you know why?”

Suddenly, Nufai slashed his claws towards Pearl, who cursed herself for falling into the trappings of an argument and back flipped away at the last second, raising her spear towards Nufai who answered for Pearl.

“Because you are nothing but an emotional wreak! A frail, clinging, pathetic thing! You let your feelings of sympathy and empathy get in your way, and you push down your pain and misery and expect it to leave! Release it, and you will be just like me! Truly free of your emotional oppression and able to make all others suffer for your pleasure!”

“I’d rather die!” Exclaimed Pearl, now furious at Nufai’s vile words and no longer has a desire to argue, now replaced with a desire to finish off Nufai here and now.

Nufai then sharpened his claws, slashing them against each other and let out sparks of orange electricity to intimidate the Gem warrior, as Pearl went into her fighting stance to face Nufai in a duel.

“Then Nufai shall grant your wish!”

Nufai sprinted towards Pearl, his claws open and ready to slash apart the Gem warrior, as he swiped both claws in a scissor pattern, only for Pearl to leap forward and land behind Nufai and thrust her spear at the alien’s back, who managed to grab the spear behind him with his long arms without turning and spun around with Pearl still hanging onto her weapon.

While spinning, Pearl yanked the spear away from Nufai’s grip and leaped away from the alien, lsnding perfectly with a twirl as Nufai turned to see Pearl pointing her spear and firing energy blasts at him.

Nufai sprinted at her again, dodging each blast with his surprising swiftness and speed and slashed a claw at Pearl, who parried the attack with her spear’s blade and pushed away his claw, while Nufai slashed rapidly at her with great speed, each swipe parried perfectly by Pearl in a majestic ballet manner, twirling and flexing her arms and legs in a graceful manner, making the duel into a dance of blades.

“Nufai is impressed with your skills. Making death beautiful is something rare with only us.”

Pearl ignored the comment from Nufai, seeing a blind spot that the alien left unchecked and swiped away, making Nufai leap backwards while Pearl leaped forward, twirling in a circle and swinged her spear at Nufai’s side, making him duck his head and block another spear thrust down on his head as he ducked, engaged in a struggle to lift the spear away from the top of his head.

Using a dirty trick, Nufai used his long legs to kick Pearl in the gut, knocking the wind out of her from the sudden force and released her spear’s grip on his claws, giving Nufai the chance to strike back and leaped forward while Pearl was down on the ground, standing on top of her and prepared to bring down his claws to impale her on her Gem.

Pearl tactically rolled her head away from the implement, doing so two more times before using her spear to fire a close range blast at Nufai, hitting him on his chest protected by his skeletal like armor, slightly staggering him while Pearl used that to her advantage, flipping backwards in a fluid motion and kicked Nufai’s head while doing so, knocking him back but still standing, and landed gracefully with a twirl.

“I’m not that easy to beat.”

Pearl went on the offensive again, not wanting to slow down and rapidly thrusted her spear blade at Nufai, catching the alien off guard as he parried each thrust in equally fast speeds with his claws while countering back, as both duelists parried, swiped, and thrust their attacks at each other with quick succession, somehow equal and unable to land even a scratch on one another.

“Nufai has not had a fight like this before.” Said Nufai, conversing with Pearl as he swiped a claw at her torso, only for it to be countered with a parry.

“Impressed, are we?” Replied Pearl, as she swiped her spear at Nufai, making him duck and counter with an upwards claw strike, doing a backflip to avoid it.

Nufai slashed once more in a scissor pattern, getting into another struggle with Pearl while answering her question.

“Very. The blades of blood and gore have never been so beautiful.”

Pearl just scoffed at Nufai’s disturbing reply. “You’re insane.”

Nufai chuckled at Pearl’s supposed insult. “Telling Nufai what is already known is a poor insult.”

Nufai broke the struggle this time, flipping Pearl’s spear away from her hands and tossing it aside, as Pearl leaped to her side to avoid another wide slash from Nufai’s claws, just inches away from scratching her Gem and managed to grab her spear before it hit the ground, beginning yet another equal parry and counter fight with one another.

Nufai then began to laugh sadistically, enjoying every single moment of this fight despite not being able to land a single killing blow on Pearl, causing the Crystal Gem to be confused at Nufai’s disturbing laughter.

“What’s so funny?” Asked pearl as she countered another deadly slash.

“This fight is so alive!” Answered Nufai manically, as he began to twirl around and attack with his claws in a spinning motion while Pearl did the same, continuing his manic speech.

“The two of us! Dancing in a flurry of blades under the moonlight, like a ballet of blades, so close to the one killing blow! When that moment comes, Nufai shall emerge victorious against such a worthy foe! The anticipation of your death draws so near and gives great pleasure to Nufai!”

Brushing off the sadistic dream of Nufai, Pearl twirled her spear as a new form of counter, making Nufai’s claws space out and gave her an opening to thrust her spear’s blade into his chest.

But when Pearl seemed to have the upper hand, Nufai’s eyes began to glow and red rings spinned inside his pupils, stopping pearl from having her killing blow and screamed out of pain and agony, dropping her spear and grasped her head from the immense pain she felt, as flashbacks of horrible memories began to pop up in her mind and caused her to lose sense of reality.

“Nufai won’t let you win easy, frail one.” Whispered Nufai, his whispers echoing in her mind as she screamed in pain from every word he uttered.

“Get out of my head!” Screamed out Pearl, her eyes closed as she still held her head in pain and kneeled, failing to notice Nufai deliver a swift kick to her chest and knocked her down.

“Nufai senses the pain and misery inside you, bottled up and ready to be unleashed. Nufai hopes to see that side of you soon.”

Nufai stood over Pearl again, grasping her and holding her down in a knelt position, his eyes returning to normal while Pearl opened her eyes, blushing her cheeks blue while tears streaked down her face. Whatever Nufai did, it made her mind vulnerable to all of the negative emotions that she has bottled up inside her, overwhelming her senses and warping her sense of reality, along with leaving her at the mercy of Nufai.

Nufai then saw his transport was almost at the temple, while hearing voices coming from the entrance to the top of the temple, realizing that he will have to go soon, but not before giving Pearl some parting words in a deathly whisper instead of finishing her off, trailing his claws across her face ever so slightly with the sharp blades, poking her chin up to make her face him.

She was just too fun for him to kill so quickly.

“Nufai must leave now, frail one. But I promise you, we will meet again in our intimate manner of blood, gore, and chaos. Nufai promises you that my dreams with you will come true, the dream of slitting your throat and wrists, showering your blood upon the ground and bathing in it, while gutting you to caress your intestines, to feel the soft, squishy matter against my skin, as I slowly and tenderly flay you alive and wrap your skin across Nufai’s body. Joy! A chorus of angels!”

Pearl had no idea if she felt disturbed by his sadism, his insanity, his depravity, his perversion. Everything about him was a living nightmare come true, and this nightmare was right in front of her, only letting her live just because the moment was not right for him.

She could only utter one word before falling unconscious.

“Nightmare.”

Chapter 4

“Pearl!” Shouted the voice of Steven from across the temple top, shocked to see Pearl lying unconscious on the floor, while Garnet and Amethyst readied their weapons at Nufai, furious that their friend was injured.

“Ah, more Gems for Nufai to play with.” Commented the hideous creature in front of the Crystal Gems, taking notice of Amethyst and Steven. “A shame I don’t have time for you all.”

“What did you do to her, you bug eyed creep?!” Shouted Amethyst, cracking her whip towards Nufai and wrapped it around one of his claws.

Nufai quickly slashed the whip with his other free claw, looking above him to see that his saucer transport was right above him, spinning in a circular motion like a classic saucer would. The hideous beast stepped back, but not before running down one of his claws down Pearl’s face in a perverted manner.

“Your friend that you call Pearl is fine. She is just tired from our time together.” Answered Nufai, letting out a dark chuckle that scared Steven senseless. “Such a precious one indeed.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Asked Steven tearfully, running up to the unconscious Pearl with the other Crystal Gems.

Nufai just chuckled darkly at Steven’s question. “Many things are wrong with Nufai, young one. But my victory against your Pearl is not.”

Before Garnet and Amethyst could make a move on Nufai, he made his eyes have red rings around it once more and stared directly at them, making them stop and cry out in pain while Steven stayed down with Pearl, looking away from Nufai’s gaze.

“Some other time, Crystal Gems.” Whispered Nufai, his hushed voice echoing to the two Crystal Gems caught in his gaze. “But Nufai will finish you all off as well, especially the one you call Pearl.”

Nufai then broke his gaze, making the Gems snap out of the nightmarish trance as they barely managed to look back at Nufai, seeing that he was bowing lowly to them in some form of twisted courtesy.

“I bid you all farewell. And I offer a parting gift in return.”

This parting gift would come in the form of a bright orange flash, emitting from the bottom of the transport ship as it let out a large yellowish beam on the ground, teleporting two large figures in front of the Gems.

The figures were much larger than Nufai, reaching to be at least nine feet tall, similar to the Lost Ones in the sense that the alien creatures had glowing eyes, stooped postures, grey skin, and three digits on each limb. But the creatures appeared to be heavily mutated from what they once were, having a much larger muscle mass, an extended jaw lined with razor sharp teeth and had no form of armor on, instead it had a thick hide for protection and no weapons except their bare fists and brute strength.

The creatures began to growl at their puny foes, and beat their large fists on their chests to intimidate the Gems and roared loudly, all while Nufai began to disappear in the same yellowish beam, as if he was going up the transport ship.

“Sweet nightmares to you all, Crystal Gems.”

Nufai fully disappeared in the flash, the transport ship now levitating away from the temple and quickly ascending high in the sky, too high and fast for the Gems to follow, though the large alien beasts down with them made things more complicated.

“What the heck are those things?!” Exclaimed Amethyst, as the hulking beasts roared furiously at the dwarfed Gems, making the Gems ready their weapons to fight back.

“I don’t know. They’re new.” Answered Garnet, unsure of what these new beasts were. “We just need to get out of-

Before Garnet could finish her sentence, one of the beasts swiped its large hand and grabbed ahold of her, clutching tightly to prevent escape and threw her down on the ground, forming a small crater just below it.

“Garnet!” Called out Steven, as one of the other beasts slammed their hands in front of the child, while Garnet struggled to get up.

“Amethyst! Take Pearl with you and get out of here! Now!” Ordered Garnet, as she used her gauntlets to grab onto the incoming fist of the alien beast trying to slam her into the ground.

“But-

“Just go!”

The beast towering Garnet slammed both of its fists down, knocking her down again while Amethyst picked up the unconscious Pearl, and began to run back into the temple with Steven to escape, as the second beast started chasing after them, letting out a loud roar as it chased the fleeing Gems.

Garnet tried running after the alien beast chasing her friends, but the other creature behind her grabbed her and held her up in the air, squeezing the Gem as tightly as possible to prevent escape and tried chomping down on her with its large jaw filled with razor sharp teeth. Garnet used her gauntlets to stop its mouth from closing on her, holding the alien beast’s jaws open and pulled on its large tongue, causing the beast immense pain and made it let go of her, dropping her on the ground while she took the chance to jump up and uppercut the beast on its lower jaw, knocking it down on the ground.

While Garnet was still occupied with the alien beast, the creature’s partner was still chasing after the other Gems, taking a swing at them with its muscular hands, just missing since the Gems ducked their heads and ran inside the small open entrance to go back down, an entrance too small for the beast to fit through as it tried to fit its large hands through the small entrance, just out of reach from the Gems

“Ha! What are you going to do now, fatty?” Taunted Amethyst, running down the spiral staircase with Pearl still unconscious in her arms while Steven panted from behind, frightened when hearing the angry roars of the alien beast behind them.

Seeing that there was no way for the creature to fit, it decided to make its own entrance by slamming repeatedly on the stone ground of the temple as hard as it could, crumbling the floor beneath as it fell through the floor and the stone stairs, causing the fleeing Gems to fall down in midair with the beast.

The beast fell the furthest down with the Gems just above it midair, crushing through a few stone floors until landing in the same room with the first encounter of the Lost Ones, landing on its back while Amethyst grabbed Steven with one arm and Pearl on the other, landing a few feet away from the beast on her feet and dropped Steven and Pearl, though Pearl’s drop was accidental.

Amethyst face palmed herself for the mistake, even if it was a little funny despite the situation they were in.

“Oops. Forgot she’s still out of it.”

Steven then shook Pearl gently, pleading Pearl to wake up. “Come on, Pearl. Please.”

The panicked Steven noticed the alien beast chasing them was getting up, dazed as it shook the stone off of it body and stared right at the Gems furiously and roared, making Amethyst get out two whips.

The Beast raised its hands up, wanting to slam on the ground like a gorilla to crush the Gems like paste, but Amethyst quickly lashed her whips and wrapped them around its hands, whipping them together to send a current of purple energy course through the whips and explode in front of the beast, creating a huge blast of expelled energy and smoke and sent the beast back, making it walk backwards from the pain while Amethyst moved forward, continually going forwards and sending more blasts at the beast’s whip curled hands.

It started to get used to the pain quickly however, somehow each blast made the beast feel less pain and more rage, as it swung its arms around with Amethyst holding on, swinging her up and slamming her down on the ground, while taking advantage of his whip bound hands and pulled the purple Gem towards it, giving the incoming Gem a massive head butt from its immense skull, making go so far from the force that she crashed into a partially destroyed statue, destroying whatever remnant was left of it.

“Amythyst!” Shouted Steven, now more terrified than before as he saw the beast charge at him, holding its arm by its body while doing so to ensure maximum charging damage while Steven shook Pear more rapidly now, now begging Pearl to get up.

“Please Pearl! You got to wake up! The big scary alien thing is coming towards us!”

A small and faint gasp could be heard from Pearl, not audible enough for Steven as he activated his shield in panic, making it large enough to stop the alien beast’s momentum and stop in place, making it roar as it started to throw massive punches at the shield, each hit stronger than the last as Steven struggled to keep it up.

Pearl slowly opened her eyes, seeing nothing but blurs and twisted dark imagery, the blurs appearing to be shadows of several other gem figures, gem figures that appeared to be in pain as if they were being shot, stabbed, and crushed, making Pearl hyperventilate faintly from the horrid sights, until eventually seeing the shadowed illusion of Nufai suddenly pop up in front of her, making her gasp as loud as she could out of fear and panic from the living nightmare.

A familiar could be heard faintly after that, Pearl gained her vision back slowly and could see a small and chubby figure right above her, appearing to be scared and even tearful, while hearing the faint sounds of a loud force pounding close by her.

“Pearl!”

The voice calling out to her was now Steven’s voice, making her snap back into reality and regained her vision, seeing clearly that she was lying on the ground and looked at the panicked Steven, who was close to getting his shield broken by the alien beast pounding on it.

“Steven?” Said Pearl confusingly, wondering what was going on.

She turned her head to see a large alien creature breaking through Steven’s shield, exhausting the poor child and made him nearly faint from using up most of his power.

“Steven!” Exclaimed Pearl, now fearing for Steven’s life as she saw the alien beast ready to deliver the crushing blow with a slam, making Pearl flip up and grab Steven in her arms, barely managing to dodge the creature’s slam that sent the two Gems flying back from the force.

Pearl rolled along the ground with Steven in her arms still, struggling to get up since she was still disorientated from the rude wakeup call and saw Amethyst next to her, also relived that Pearl was fine.

“Took you long enough.” Quipped Amethyst, grateful to have her friend and teammate back up to help out and helped her and Steven up.

“Pearl!” Exclaimed Steven, giving the Gem a quick hug of relief despite being exhausted, but it did take its toll on the boy. “Ugh, so… tired.”

Pearl wanted to give Steven a hug back, but she noticed the large beast in front picking up some crumbled stone, throwing it at the Gems as Pearl took out her spear and slashed the stone apart, while Amethyst used her whip to grab some of the pieces and threw it back at the alien beast, who just punched the stones away in response.

Pearl had no idea what was going on, but she didn’t bother to ask questions now, all that mattered was keeping Steven safe and defeating whatever monster was in front of her, telling Steven to step back for safety as she and Amethyst charged at the beast first to catch it by surprise.

“We could use Garnet here.” Said Pearl, twirling around the large alien beast as it tried to punch her, gracefully dodging the punches to distract it while Amethyst jumped on its hunched back, coiling her whip around the beast’s mouth like a muzzle.

“She’s kind of busy right now. As in, fighting another one of these big guys.” Replied the purple Gem, pulling the beast’s head up while it tried to shake her off, swinging around and holding on like it was a rodeo show, as the beast constantly slammed around the ground in a fit of rage.

“Another one? By herself?” Exclaimed Pearl worryingly, as she jumped up and grabbed Amethyst, getting her off the beast before she was flung off and put her down on the ground, while the beast grabbed the whip around its large mouth and tore it off, letting out a huge roar and beat its chest angrily.

“She can handle it… I think.”

O-O-O

Garnet was struggling in her one on one fight with the alien beast on top.

She had faced many physically powerful beasts before, but this one was much stronger than other, it reminded her of the fight she once had with Jasper, if Jasper was a mutated and hideous beast with an even bigger temper.

Every time she landed a successful blow on the alien, it seemed to only get angrier and resist pain even more. An example of that occurred just now as Garnet dodged a punch from the beast, leaving itself open for an attack and punched the large alien in the gut, knocking the wind out of it in the process but not delivering as much pain she thought she would.

The beast returned back with a swift blow of his own, making Garnet block by crossing her gauntlets together, knocking her away while her feet stayed on the ground, sliding through the stone until she was just at the edge of the large whole the other alien beast had created.

The beast then leaped towards Garnet, jumping up in the air and ready to smash her from above, as Garnet jumped up as well, avoiding the slam coming towards her as the beast landed, causing some more stone in front to crumble and fall down, making an even bigger hole in the ground while Garnet took the opportunity to punch the beast right at its back, punching so hard that she swore she could hear a few bones break.

But broken bones weren’t enough to stop the beast, it quickly recuperated and grabbed Garnet once more with its hands, this time leaping back from where it leaped from before, slamming its hands down so Garnet could feel the impact first as she was slammed down on the stone ground, unable to get out of its grasp this time while she felt her body practically break and even her shades cracked as well.

The beast then turned around with Garnet still in its hands, slamming her down over and over in a fit of rage like a ragdoll, until the beast tried once more to chomp down on a more weakened Garnet. The Gem leader acted quickly this time to not engage with another struggle, taking the opportunity to punch the alien beast at its eye, a cheap shot, but a shot that saved her life since the beast felt a sharp pain in such a sensitive area, dropping her on the ground while she tried to get up.

Not wanting to get hit in the eye again, the beast clapped its hands together in front of Garnet, sending her flying backwards from the force of the clap while rubbing its punched eye. Garnet then got up, panting and weary from all of the punishment she was taking and dealing to such a large beast, still not willing to give up and lose to some mindless alien creature that only wanted to destroy, especially if it was the Hierarchy’s.

“You’re strong. But not as strong as me.” Said Garnet to the alien beast in front, who roared in response and began to charge at her again, fists at the ready.

Garnet also charged with the same method, albeit faster due to her size, as both she and the beast threw a powerful punch, both fists colliding with one another with neither backing down, while the powerful force of the collision practically made the ground rumble beneath them, making Garnet concerned about the stability of the stone temple’s top, unsure if it could handle this fight any longer.

She was also concerned about the other Gems, hoping that the other alien beast did not kill them and wanted to end this fight so she could get to her teammates and friends in time.

The beast decided to swing more punches first, as Garnet matched it blow for blow, each opponent continually pounding into one another with their brute strength and unwilling to back down until this fight was over, with only one opponent coming back alive.

Garnet’s swift speed had the advantage however, taking advantage of it and swung much faster punches to the alien, each punch hitting a new spot on its body so it could back down. Despite constant blocking from the creature, it knew that it wouldn’t last any longer, as each punch from Garnet pushed it back and made it ever so closer to getting knocked out or worse.

Every hit did some kind of damage to it, bones were cracking and even breaking, its hide getting more bruised, its jaw getting uppercutted and several teeth were seen flying out of its mouth, all of the blows were even causing internal bleeding since its organs began feeling the blows too, despite the mass adrenaline it felt, resisting pain and being unable to feel it didn’t mean you were invincible.

The creature let its guard down now, struggling to keep its balance as it tried to stand up, but failed since it was now on its knees, its large hands were supporting it while Garnet began trading blows at its head, losing even more teeth than ever, even green blood started to squirt out from its gums from losing its teeth in such a forceful way, while Garnet was relentless in her attack, even switching from its head to its gut like a professional boxer.

One more swift punch to the gut made the beast suddenly vomit green bile and blood from its mouth, making Garnet step back so she wouldn’t be drenched in the waste, while the beast threw up a few more times, as more blood and bile came out, even some partially digested bones of some kind of alien creature it didn’t finish digesting.

Disgusted and feeling certain that the creature was done, seeing that it was not even bothering to move from its position, Garnet turned around to go to the rest of the Gems for help after hearing the slams and rumbles from beneath.

But the creature, pumped with the last of its adrenaline left, charged at Garnet from behind and grabbed her despite his weakened state, deciding that if it would die, it would finish off its opponent with it. The creature then took a suicidal approach, and threw itself off the top with Garnet, beginning to plummet down to the wasteland ground outside with the Gem in its tight grasp, wanting to crush the Gem with its body and impact of the fall.

Garnet used her gauntlets to pull the alien beast’s hands off of her, now easier to do with its weakened state and was falling midair close to the creature, who tried to swipe at her to grasp her again, but failed to do so as she floated above the creature, who turned its body to face her.

That would prove to be a fatal mistake for the creature.

“If I’m going down, you’re landing first!” Said Garnet to the alien beast, refusing to die to the suicidal tendencies of the beast as she extended her gauntlets out and her body in a straight form, increasing the size of her gauntlets to make herself fall faster from the force of gravity and make her fists have contact with the beast.

The beast let out a strained but angry roar, unable to do anything else except feebly swat at Garnet with the little strength that was left, falling even faster to the ground with Garnet’s increased weight until final landing onto the wasteland ground, sending a large burst of force around the area and formed a massive crater as well, finally ending the fight between the strong opponents.

Garnet was now lying on top of her defeated opponents, making her gauntlets shrink back to normal and put them away, managing to get up and stood on top of her fallen foe, now dead from the impact with its body and organs crushed, not breathing in the slightest as green blood leaked out of its agape jaws and spilled onto the ground.

Garnet simply shook her head at the sight and thought about Nufai’s previous words, as she made one last comment before running back to the temple to try to get to her friends and comrades.

“Some gift.”

Chapter 5

“Oh man.” Quivered Steven, observing the fight between Pearl and Amethyst against the alien beast in front.

Steven thought this was going to be one of the more fun missions with the Gems, the perfect way to relive boredom in his day, go to some ancient temple, find an old Gem artifact, and maybe get to fight some scary monsters to complete the day. But he wasn’t expecting to find a room of dead aliens that he had never seen before, and the very same aliens come back to the temple to try to kill him and the Gems for no reason, but he knew the Gems had an idea why.

As he watched the battle unfold in front, Steven noticed that the Lost Ones who were knocked out were suddenly regaining consciousness, shaking off the rough housing they had received and chittered to one another to call out for each other.

“Oh no.” Steven mumbled softly to himself, as he began to shout out to Amethyst and Pearl to warn them. “Guys!”

Pearl was the first to hear Steven, her hearing for the child’s voice practically doubled because of the danger they were in, turning her head after avoiding another slam from the alien beast to see Steven calling out for help and noticed the Lost Ones picking up their plasma guns.

“Steven! Get away from there!” Exclaimed Pearl worryingly, practically losing it as she ran towards Steven to protect him while Amethyst was left to fend off the beast by herself.

“Seriously Pearl? Is this payback for the chips?” Quipped Amethyst, while she took out two whips and coiled them around the alien beast’s arms from behind, pulling backwards to bring it down on the ground to stop it from chasing after Pearl.

Pearl didn’t want to argue with Amethyst now, what mattered was saving Steven from those twisted creatures she so desperately wanted to get rid of, as she ran over to Steven and picked him up and leaped away, avoiding the plasma blasts in the process.

The Lost Ones screeched at the Gem, weakened from the previous fight and chittered to one another, deciding that there was only one option left since they knew they wouldn’t be going back home.

The aliens pressed a yellow circular button on the front of their collars, causing it to glow red and beep rapidly, while they screeched as loudly as possible, shouting out some kind of fanatical scream in their chittering language at Pearl and Steven and charged at them, running as fast as they could to the Gems.

“What are they doing?” Asked Steven, unsure what the Lost Ones were trying to do.

“Steven, just activate your bubble and don’t look.” Said Pearl softly, knowing exactly what was going on.

Steven complied and activated the bubble, as the two Gems were surrounded by the Lost Ones who were punching at the bubble, unable to break through while Pearl held Steven close to her in her motherly embrace, covering the child’s eyes and ears to muffle the screeches.

“Pearl?”

“It’s okay, Steven. Just don’t look.” Said Pearl softly, closing her eyes as well until she heard the dreadful sounds of exploding plasma.

She barely peeked to see that the Lost Ones had explosive collars on them, only used in last effort situations such as this to take themselves out with their enemy, a suicidal and fanatical tactic that Pearl had seen so many times before. The aliens exploded in bursts of green plasma energy, disintegrating their bodies until nothing but the fragments of their blood red cuffs, collars, and guns were left, scattered around the room with no trace of bodies at all.

When Steven released the bubble, he saw only the fragments as well, looking up at Pearl in fearful curiosity to know what happened. Pearl just shook her head, not wanting to tell the boy what horrible actions had just occurred and Steven silently nodded in agreement.

“Can I get some help here?!” Shouted Amethyst to Pearl and Steven, who was just grabbed by the alien beast and thrown at them.

Pearl was hit by the flying Amethyst, just too late to leap away while Steven ran to the two Gems, helping them up while the alien beast roared loudly at them, ready to charge once more to finish them off.

Suddenly, three Lost Ones flew out the door, possibly the three that were trapped a few floors under from earlier, along with Garnet who ran back into the room to see the alien beast turn its attention to Garnet, which was exactly what she wanted to happen.

“Your friend wasn’t so tough.” Said Garnet to the beast, who roared angrily at Garnet and charged at her instead.

Garnet then took two Lost Ones in each of her hands, who activated their suicide collars in response to try to take Garnet with them in an explosion of plasma. The Gem leader knew they would do this however, and she took advantage of this by throwing them at the charging alien, blowing both of them up in a plasma explosion and slowed the beast down for a while, but was angered by the tactic and charged faster.

When the third and last Lost One activated his suicide collar, Garnet quickly grabbed him before it could have a chance to do anything else, and carefully aimed at the charging alien’s head, who began to roar loudly when it was just mere inches away from Garnet. In the perfect moment, the leader Gem threw the Lost One right into the alien beast’s gaping mouth as it roared, making it skid on its feet to stop while jumping out of the way and to the rest of the Gems.

The alien beast began to choke on the Lost One, trying to regurgitate it before it could suffocate, but it was too late for the beast.

Before it could choke out a breath, the collar exploded inside the alien beast’s large mouth, blasting apart the beast’s head in a plasma explosion that killed off the angry creature for good, its headless body fell down on the ground, no bleeding from the headless part of the body due to the intense burns of plasma on the fatal wound, though the body did twitch for a second before falling limp.

The Crystal Gems stood silent at the sight, until Amethyst spoke up.

“I gotta admit, that was kind of cool.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Replied Garnet, adjusting her shades while shaking her head. “I wish it didn’t have to come to that.”

“It’s not your fault, Garnet. They wouldn’t have surrendered anyways.” Said Pearl.

“Why not?”

The three Gems turned around to see Steven, having not a fearful but a sad expression on his face, a face that looked so much like Rose’s.

“They didn’t have to die.”

The Gems wanted to tell him a straight answer, but they just couldn’t do that to his face, it was too much like Rose’s. Even thousands of years ago, Pearl and Garnet recognized that face from Rose every time she felt sad about the old war with the Hierarchy, while Amethyst just felt bad for Steven having to see such a brutal thing like that happen.

They would have to tell him about the Hierarchy as soon as they got home.

Garnet put a hand on Steven’s shoulder to comfort him. “We’ll tell you all about it when we get back home.”

“And we’re going home now.” Inquired Pearl, wanting Steven and everyone else out of this temple. “They might send in more to make sure we’re dead.”

“Then let’s take them!” Exclaimed Amethyst confidently. “They’re not as bad as you said they were.”

“No. we’re leaving and that’s that.” Replied Garnet sternly. “We can’t underestimate them like before.”

Amethyst wanted to argue a point, but she knew that arguing with Garnet was a lost cause, so she kept quiet instead.

The Crystal Gems just walked over to the warp pad in the room, trying to ignore the dead body of the new alien creature that laid dead and headless, while passing over the fragments of the plasma guns and armor that were around, with unfortunately nothing intact enough to be useful to the Gems. Even the Home world Gem computer would have helped in some way, but that was destroyed by the Hierarchy, which was more of a loss to the Gems than the Hierarchy.

The Hierarchy didn’t need the information on the computer anyways.

When the Gems got on the warp pad, they hoped that it would teleport them to the temple since the pad appeared to be quite old and damaged, which somewhat explained why the pad teleported the Crystal Gems outside instead of this room. In a way, it made them wish Peridot was here with her robots to fix it.

The Crystal Gems then teleported away, hoping that where they would end up would be the right destination for them.

Unknown to the Gems however, there was a small object connected on the edge of the warp pad that appeared to be a tiny blood red colored device, shaped like a sphere and had small dishes on the top, which began to rotate rapidly when the warp pad activated.

O-O-O

In the transport ship that Nufai was on, the sadistic alien could be seen standing by some kind of high tech computer in front, the room he was in is some kind of bridge area of the transport ship, the area around was colored in the same blood red color except the floor, which was more of a lighter color of the blood red and appered to have hexagon shaped tiles as well, the bridge area located right in the top middle of the saucer transport ship that was flying through space.

The bridge itself had a large computer terminal in the center that Nufai was at, along with two alien crew members by his side, and several other crew either at smaller computer terminals or walked around performing other duties.

The alien greys here appeared similar to the Lost Ones, though their heads were larger and their backs were straight, having even longer arms and legs and black eyes instead of red.

Nufai was now looking at the red holographic screen of the main computer with the two alien grey crew members, who were Nufai’s advisors that assisted him with anything he needed.

“Is the tracking device I planted working?” Asked Nufai to one of his advisors on his right, who was tracking the coordinates of the warp pad that was connected to the other warp pad on the temple.

“Yes sir. The device is working successfully as you planned.” Responded the right advisor, pressing several red holographic buttons labeled in their strange alien language to track the coordinates.

“Ant signs of life from the Lost Ones or the Brutes?” Asked Nufai to the other advisor on his left, who multitasked to scan for any life signs of Nufai’s troops at the ancient temple, coming up with negative results.

“Negative sir. They’re all dead.” Responded the left advisor, which made Nufai chuckle with amusement.

“Good. Nufai shall meet them soon then.”

“Sir, if I may?” Inquired the left advisor. “There was no point in wasting your forces against foes that can defeat them. More would have been sufficient to-

“I like to play games with my foes, advisor.” Interrupted Nufai. “Nufai is very talented in these games and they are not without purpose. This was merely a test of their abilities that they have passed.”

“Of course, sir. I apologize for my ignorance.”

Nufai just scoffed at the advisor. “If you were like Nufai, you would understand.”

“Sir. We’ve successfully tacked down the coordinates between the two Gem warp pads.” Said the right advisor.

“Show me.” Ordered Nufai, who saw a red holographic picture image of the planet Earth.

“This is the world where the connecting warp pad originated from.”

“Earth? The backwater planet in the Sol system?” Said Nufai, surprised at the destination. “Where exactly on Earth?”

The right advisor put two of his three digits on the hologram, specifically on the region of North America and slid both digits apart, zooming in on the region to show a holographic image of some kind of large peninsula on the east coast of the United States, which also had a blipping yellow dot that indicated where the warp pad’s coordinates are at.

“Interesting, and so close to us as well.” Said Nufai, looking at the holographic image of the Delmarva Peninsula.

“Should we contact Kamal Re’x, sir? This planet is only a few star systems away from our position.” Asked the right advisor.

“Yes. Contact him now.”

The right advisor complied and pressed a few buttons, sending a signal to contact this Kamal Re’x that Nufai requested to talk to. What appeared on the screen was the image of their supposed leader, who appeared to be in proper coloring instead of holographic red.

“Avert your eyes from your lord.” Demanded Kamal in a slightly echoing but intimidating voice, making Nufai and the two advisors bow their heads down in respect.

“Now you may rise.”

The aliens raised their heads up to get the clear image of their leader.

Kamal Re’x’s most notable appearance differed from most of the alien “greys”, mostly because he seemed to be incased in some kind of machine apparatus, the design of the apparatus covered most of his light grey body except his limbs and part of his face, which revealed his glowing yellow eyes and a part of his face, the rest of it had small black tubes attached to the top part of his forehead, and his mouth was covered with some kind of rebreather.

The apparatus Kamal wore was colored mostly blood red, with the softer and flexible parts colored grey on the sides to allow his arms and legs to move, with large black tubes on each side of his body, all connected to some kind of large glowing green generator of sorts on the back of his apparatus, which was mostly covered in black machine material of blood red and black coloring, as if it was keeping him alive.

The apparatus’s front top also looked like it had some kind of crown like object attached, wich had two small wing like parts on the side of the apparatus and blood red spikes on top of it, along with two horn like pieces on the top “forehead” of the apparatus, with some kind of thin glowing orange ring device in the “forehead’s” center.

Kamal Rex’s face and only part of his mostly cybernetic implanted apparatus appeared on the computer screen, as Kamal began to speak in his slightly echoing and demanding voice, speaking in a way that sounded like he was not talking through his rebreather, but telepathically instead.

“What news do you bring me, Nufai?” Asked Kamal in a demanding and harsh tone. “Is it about the Gem vermin?”

“Yes, my lord. I had captured and interrogated one of the Home world Gems for information. All I could get was that their technology had improved significantly and that they’re trying to reclaim their old worlds once more.”

“Bah! Only desperate weaklings like them would want such a pointless effort to be seen through.” Commented Kamal, actually disgusted that the Gems were still alive. “They have no idea that their destined extinction is near once more, and this time, I will finish what we started eons ago for the glory of the Hierarchy and grant the Gem scum the apocalypse that they deserve, along with everything else living in this worthless excuse for a galaxy.”

“And the Overseers shall reward you greatly as before for your many accomplishments, my lord.” Added Nufai, fueling Kamal’s already large ego. “They are always pleased with your victories.”

“That is because I do what is best for this universe, thinning and culling the herds of all weaklings so only the strong will survive. Only the weak call my accomplishments genocide, and those very same weaklings take those words to their dug graves, always by my hand.” Further commented Kamal, enforcing his beliefs to Nufai to ensure loyalty. “You understand this just as much as me when you sacrificed your race.”

“Of course, my lord. Why else would I have done what I did?”

“Because you have the right mindset in our universe, the purging of the weak and the survival of the strongest. Something only the Hierarchy understands.” Answered Kamal, having no regard or care about Nufai’s now extinct race.

Kamal then changed the subject, for as much as he wanted to gloat about how great and perfect he is and how much he deserved to rise from Underseer of the Hierarchy’s remote mining operations to Overseer, he wanted to know anything else important from Nufai.

“Is that all you have to share with me?”

“That is not all, my lord.” Said Nufai, wanting to share more information. “I have recently encounter more Gems than expected on the dead Gem world. But they are not part of the same Gems we know of, they are calling themselves the Crystal Gems instead.”

Kamal was slightly interested in that matter, but thought that these Crystal Gems were not much. “Really now? That should make my prolonged life easier. The more divided these worms are, the better they face their dooms.”

“We have also located where these Crystal Gems are hiding, on a planet called Earth.”

Kamal’s interests now perked up, mostly because he recognized that planet’s name. “Earth? That was one of the many planets selected for our mining operations. Why there on a planet filled with hairless apes out of all planets?”

Nufai’s answer was just as confused as Kamal’s question. “I am unsure of that matter, but I have a request for permission to scout ahead of the fleet to Earth to evaluate the situation.”

“Granted. I shall send you a command ship to your coordinates now.” Replied Kamal, waving his hand slightly. “I want you to determine how pathetic the defenses of that planet are along with how much there is to harvest, and wipe out these “Crystal Gems” before the fleet arrives for our mining operations, I want to purify the planet of weakness as soon as possible before we reach the Gem Home world.”

Nufai bowed respectfully to his leader. “Of course, my lord. Your request shall be granted.”

“As it should be, otherwise you will have to face me personally.” Warned Kamal, empathizing the warning. “There is a reason why my full name is Kamal Re’x the Abductor.”

“That is why as your most loyal servant, I never fail you.” Replied Nufai.

Soon, the command ship Nufai had been granted arrived from warp space, it appeared to be a ten times larger version of the transport saucer, but the gaped parts of the saucer had some kind of yellowish energy field covering it that acted as shields and covered the large hangers for more transport ships inside, along with having much more thicker armor and plasma weapons on the bottom, specifically on the bottom areas of the ship in the bottom center and the three long structures on the sides of the ship’s bottom that also had circular yellowish rings, which were actually heavy plasma weapons that fired orbital artillery or were used tin space combat, the transport ships such as Nufai’s had the same weapons but were obviously not as powerful.

“The command ship has arrived, sir.” Said the right advisor to Nufai. “We’re docking now.”

“Prove yourself once more Nufai, and you shall be greatly rewarded with a new position once more… or else.” Said Kamal, which made Nufai bow once more to end the transmission.

“As you wish, my lord.”

Chapter 6

The Crystal Gems arrived at the temple, warping right on the pad and luckily not somewhere else in Earth despite the tampered warp pad at the off world temple. A huge wave a relief came for the Gems before being replaced with guilt and worry once more, mostly because they had to tell Steven about the Hierarchy, especially now since they have actually returned.

“So… what’s the Hierarchy?” Asked Steven, making the Crystal Gems feel cold and scared about hearing that cursed name.

Garnet sighed heavily. “Take a seat at the couch.”

Steven complied and went over to the couch, sitting down at a comfortable position while accidentally stepping on the spilled chips.

“Sorry Pearl.” Said Steven, feeling guilty about making a bigger mess.

Pearl didn’t even get annoyed however, not even a twitch in her eye about something like this.

“Its fine, Steven. I’ll just clean it up now.” Replied Pearl softly, going to the kitchen to get the broom and clean up the mess.

Pearl came back as quickly as possible, and swept up the mess on the floor, her thoughts still on the Hierarchy instead of feeling irritated about the chips on the floor, though Amethyst decided to eat the remaining chips off the floor in her usual rude manner.

Pearl just gave the purple Gem a mean glare, to which Amethyst responded with a shrug and finished the chips there.

There was an awkward silence through the whole thing, as the rest of the Gems took their seats as well, with Pearl sitting the closest to Steven for his comfort, while Amethyst sat across the couch and lied down with her hands behind her back, and Garnet just stood across from the couch, her arms crossed as she pinched her fingers between her nose, unsure where to begin with what to say about the Hierarchy.

“Steven.” Began Garnet. “A long time ago before we came to earth, before your mother met us, the Gems were at war.”

“Wait, war?” Asked Steven, already shocked at such a thing. “With those aliens back at the temple?”

“Yes, Steven.” Pitched in Pearl. “The universe is much larger than you can imagine. Gems weren’t the only alien civilizations out there. In fact, there are practically billions, even trillions of alien lifeforms out there.”

“And the Hierarchy was one of them.” Said Garnet, now making Pearl more quiet when hearing their name.

“The Hierarchy? What are they?” Asked Steven.

That was not an easy question to answer, since the hierarchy were something… special to the Gems, and the Gems didn’t have that much extensive knowledge of the Hierarchy, but they told as much information as they could to Steven, even if they didn’t know what exactly the Hierarchy were as creatures.

“Well… where to begin?” Said Pearl, thinking where to start with the Hierarchy. “For starters, they’re not from around here, as in, they’re not from our galaxy.”

“You mean they’re from, outer outer space?” Asked Steven, making Pearl raise an eyebrow at the strange question, but went along with it anyways.

“Yes. And they have advanced technology that managed to help them reach our galaxy, and we don’t know where they came from, despite how long we’ve lived, we can’t answer every question about them.” Said Pearl, including whatever little knowledge general knowledge she knew.

“Maybe they came here to make a new home?” Asked Steven, making Pearl cringe in response to the question, trying to find a kinder way to break it down to Steven that the Hierarchy were invaders.

“They’re more like visitors that-

“That want to vaporize everything.” Commented Amethyst, having a say in the matter. “I wasn’t actually around when they first came, but from what Garnet and Pearl told me, they’re not very nice.”

“One step at a time.” Warned Pearl, while Amethyst rolled her eyes.

“But, why war?” Asked Steven, going back to his first question. “No one should be fighting each other.”

Pearl put a hand on the child’s shoulder. “Remember when I said that not all Gems are good?”

Steven nodded in understanding while Pearl continued.

“The same thing applies to other aliens too.”

Steven couldn’t believe that, there was no way he wanted to believe that there were other aliens out there that could be as hostile as the Home world Gems.

“Didn’t you try to be friends? Offer space gifts?” Asked Steven.

“We tried, but the Hierarchy wanted war instead.” Answered Garnet, remembering the first contact with the Hierarchy that started that old war.

“We didn’t know why they wanted to fight at first, but the longer we fought, the more we learned about the horrible truth.” Said Pearl, peeking Steven’s curiosity.

“What?” Asked Steven.

That was a question that would be difficult to answer, since the Hierarchy were similar to a certain Gem faction in their goals, and Pearl wanted to find a way to answer it without painting a bad image of all Gems to Steven.

“They wanted to mine the galaxy for everything.” Said Amethyst out loud, finally speaking her word that shocked Steven with fear.

Pearl flustered blue to the blunt answer. “Amethyst!”

Amethyst just looked at Pearl with a non-chalet look. “What? It’s what they wanted to do.”

“But... that’s a lot like the Home world Gems.” Said Steven, shocked at the sudden revelation.

“They’re much worse than them.” Said Garnet, adjusting her shades to straighten them as a nervous tick.

“Why?”

Pearl took a deep breath, knowing that Garnet would explain the more serious parts as she now put her arm around Steven in a comforting manner, hoping to calm the child and brace him for the more harsh points of the Hierarchy.

“The Hierarchy saw everything as below them, everything they saw that wasn’t them was weak in their eyes. They wanted to kill our race and wipe out all life in this galaxy because of that.” Said Garnet, while Pearl held Steven closer and Amethyst just looked down.

Steven just kept quiet, wanting Garnet to continue what she was saying.

“The Hierarchy hate weakness, and they saw everything around them as weak because they had less advanced technology, not as many people, not as powerful as them, or if they were just in the way. The Gems were one of those many victims.”

Steven still stayed silent, his young mind was trying to process what these Hierarchy sounded like, and their reasoning behind their actions just seemed to confuse Steven so much. It was to be expected since these were very complex issues that adults would understand much better than a child, but even then, he saw all of those reasons as horrible.

“That’s not fair. They shouldn’t try to kill everyone because they don’t like you.” Said Steven, making Pearl hug Steven tightly.

“Oh, Steven.” Said Peal sympathetically. “I wish we didn’t have to tell you this now. We wanted to wait until you were older, then you would understand.”

“Understand? What can I understand about that?” Asked Steven. “They shouldn’t do stuff like that. Do they really think that’s right?”

Garnet shook her head out of unknowingness. “I don’t know. They just… do bad things because they do.”

“They sound really scary.”

Amethyst then interrupted once more. “I still can’t believe you guys almost died.”

At this point, Pearl was about to scream at the purple Gem until Garnet held her hand up, knowing that Steven would have asked more about the Gem/Hierarchy war.

Pearl then decided to speak again for Garnet.

“It wasn’t easy to beat them, but we did. We won against the Hierarchy but, a lot of Gems were lost. Along with several worlds being consumed by the Hierarchy.”

“Is it like that temple we found before?” Asked Steven.

“Yes. The temple we teleported to was on a gem controlled world, but it was one of many that fell to the Hierarchy.” Said Garnet, remembering the black wasteland landscape that surrounded the old temple. “It used to be filled with all kinds of life, until the Hierarchy came to strip it all away, and did the same to many planets until they reached the Home world.”

“They reached the home world?” Asked Steven softly, who never would have thought that the Hierarchy were so powerful that they could reach the Gem Home world.

“Pretty much.” Said Amethyst casually, while Pearl tried to hold in her anger from the purple gems attitude. “They tore through everything and cornered everyone on one planet, just like that.”

Steven was now scared out of his mind. An alien race not from his galaxy just suddenly invaded everything and almost killed all life? It sounded like a sci fi nightmare more than it did a cool sci fi movie.

“It was a horrible siege.” Said Pearl softly, trying to keep her composure. “Garnet and I were one of the few survivors to reach Home world, and all we could do was wait, wait and hope that we would make it out alive.”

“How did you guys win?” Asked Steven, since he knew that somehow the Gems beat the Hierarchy, otherwise the galaxy wouldn’t even be around.

Pearl’s attitude then perked up when she looked at the picture of Rose Quartz hanging above the front door.

“We met your mother.”

Steven then perked up as well, wanting to hear about the heroics of his mother as Pearl continued.

“When everyone was giving up hope, your mother was there to help us all out. She had this aura to her that stood out from all the other Gems, and it inspired all Gems to actually untie under one banner and take the fight back to the Hierarchy.”

Pearl put up a small smile, knowing that if it wasn’t for Rose, they would have been dead.

“We actually managed to beat back the Hierarchy with her guidance, and decimated most of their military before they decided to retreat when their leader died.” Pearl said proudly. “It was the most glorious thing I had ever seen.”

Garnet agreed with Pearl on that matter. “Rose saved our lives, Steven. Your mother saved us all.”

Pearl’s smile then faded, as she thought back to the recent encounter of the Hierarchy, remembering the words of Xeres swearing that the Hierarchy would return, and then thinking back to Nufai and his forces.

“But now she’s gone. And they’re actually back after all these years.” Mumbled Pearl, frowning at the realization that the Hierarchy have returned.

Steven then looked up at pearl, giving her a smile that was filled with hope.

“And we’re still here too. Come ‘on guys, we’re the Crystal Gems! We fight bad guys all the time and always save the day!” Said Steven, trying to encourage the Crystal Gems with hope. “There’s nothing we can’t handle!”

“He’s got a point, ya know.” Agreed Amethyst, standing up from the couch. “We thought that we would get our butts handed to us when Peridot and Jasper came here, but we won! We can take on those freaks!”

Garnet smirked at Steven’s enthusiasm while Pearl put up another smile for Steven, hugging him ever so tightly since his happiness is quite contagious.

“You’re so much like your mother, Steven.” Said Pearl softly, which touched Steven as he returned the hug.

The Gems released each other from their embrace, now finished with their little history lesson, as least the important parts for Steven to know. Then Steven’s stomach began to rumble, making the child a bit embarrassed that it happened so suddenly.

“Now I’m hungry.”

Pearl couldn’t help but giggle to the child’s actions, getting up from the couch in a better mood with Steven around.

“I’ll make you something to eat, anything you like.” Said Pearl, which made the child joyful at the sound of that as he began to chant, with Amethyst quickly joining in.

“Spaghetti and meatballs! Spaghetti and meatballs!”

Pearl eagerly went to the kitchen to cook up Steven’s meal, while not really much of a fan of eating food, she enjoyed the process of creating it, while Garnet followed suit to chat with Pearl once more out of earshot from Steven.

“I’m glad we didn’t have to tell him everything.” Said Pearl, getting the cooking supplies needed for Steven’s dinner.

“We only had to tell him what he needed to know.” Responded Garnet. “I know you don’t like sharing you war stories.”

Pearl turned to Garnet worryingly. “What if he asks them? I can’t just tell him about the pain and suffering I- we went through.”

Garnet just crossed her arms. “The boy is curious, but that’s how it’ll be with him. You’ll tell him when the time comes.”

“And how much time do we have left?” Asked Pearl. “How long will it be until the Hierarchy arrive to earth to “purify” it?”

Garnet was actually unsure about that question, not able to come up with a sure answer.

“It could be days, weeks, months, years. They could be here anytime.”

Pearl nearly fainted from the answer, covering her face with her hand out of worry.

“It’s been so long. Who knows how much they’ve advanced their technology. We just fought their newest weapons at the old temple too, those things that almost killed us. And that Nufai... I’ve never seen such an evil creature before, and it’s with the Hierarchy out of everyone.”

“The Hierarchy are a special kind of evil. But we-

“But nothing.” Interrupted Pearl, talking lowly so Steven wouldn’t her them talking. “It’s bad enough that the Home world decided to follow in their footsteps, but now they’re back again to finish what they started.

“They won’t finish anything.” Argued Garnet, but Pearl quickly rebutted back, while keeping her voice down.

“Yes they will! We barely have any weapons left to take down one of those huge walkers they like to use, and the humans, as surprisingly resistant as they are, don’t have the means to defend themselves for long, even with our help.”

Pearl just went on rambling, as Garnet approached her closer to calm her down.

“I can’t deal with them again, Garnet. I just-

Pearl then felt lightheaded once more, closing her eyes while trying to keep her balance, as she thought back once more about the old war and the painful memories.

Garnet then approached the woozy Gem, putting a hand on her shoulder and made her look up.

“We’ll find a way, Pearl. We always find a way.”

Pearl wiped away a tear from her face, trying to calm herself down.

“I’m just- I’ll make dinner now.” Said Pearl, going back to cooking Steven’s dinner. “We’ll talk about battle plans later, okay?”

Garnet nodded and walked away, leaving Pearl alone in the kitchen while Amethyst step aside for Garnet, walking into the kitchen to raid the fridge for anything to eat.

“Just helping myself to a dinner snack.” Said Amethyst, going to the fridge to eat whatever she wanted there.

Pearl just sighed and ignored Amethyst, which made the purple Gem stop what she was doing at look up at Pearl, surprised that she was ignoring her rude tendencies.

“That’s it? A sigh?” Asked Amethyst, expecting more than a sigh from Pearl. “I was expecting a lecture from your royal highness.”

“I’m not in the mood.”

Amethyst knew that something was really wrong now, closing the fridge and looked at Pearl intently.

“You can tell me what’s up if you want, I won’t bite you this time.”

Pearl just sighed as she put the spaghetti in the hot boiling pot of water.

“It’s about everything that happened today. Steven knowing about the Hierarchy, said Hierarchy’s return, and that awful creature Nufai.”

Pearl just expected Amethyst to laugh or mock her in some manner by now, maybe make a joke that Nufai is her boyfriend or something cruel like that.

“You had a rough day, P. I know how that feels.” Said Amethyst in the kindest tone possible, something Pearl hadn’t heard ever since Rose passed on.

“I almost died from a monster that has a crush on me.” Said Pearl, referring to Nufai and remembered his sadistic way of flirting. “It can’t get any rougher than that.”

“I don’t know, he seems kind of cuuuuuute.” Joked Amethyst, who received a slight shove on her shoulder that felt more like a light tap, who frowned back in response.

“I was just trying to cheer you up with a joke.”

“Amethyst! I-

Pearl calmed herself down, not wanting to get mad and cause another ruckus with the purple gem, blushed blue and spoke back softly.

“I’m sorry… I just have a lot to think about.” Admitted Pearl, understanding that Amethyst was not trying to intentionally make her mad this time. “You know how I feel about your jokes.”

Amethyst brushed off Pearl’s little moment, nodding understandably.

“It’s fine.”

The two Gems had a moment of silence, with Pearl focusing back on making Steven’s dinner while Amethyst just stood at the fridge, leaning against the fridge door while looking down, staying there until Pearl was almost done with the food, as if they shared the silence together, not a single word uttered to each other.

“I miss Rose.”

Pearl just frowned once more, saddened to her such a truth while almost dropping the plate of food for Steven.

“Me too” Pearl responded softly, feeling the same way.

Pearl decided to change the subject, thinking back to Steven about how hopeful the child is, just like Rose.

“Do you want some too? I’ve made more for you.”

Amethyst smirked a bit, appreciating the fact that Pearl actually made her some food too, even if she didn’t need to eat.

“Steven!” Exclaimed Amethyst across the kitchen. “We’re eating tonight!”

The two Gems at the kitchen could hear a joyful ‘Whoo!’ coming from the child Gem.

“Thanks Pearl.”

Pearl looked at Amethyst confusingly. “For what?”

“For putting up with me.”

Pearl smirked back at Amethyst, as the whole Gem family got together to have their peaceful moment with each other, even despite the revelation of the return of the Hierarchy.

It always helped to have these little moments.

O-O-O

Meanwhile, Nufai’s command ship could be seen in deep space, traveling at a steady pace towards earth for his mission. By the time he had passed the majority of the planets of the Sol system, seeing Earth after the short while was quite a relief, since multiple scans of each planet aside from Earth showed no results for anything valuable, meaning the Hierarchy’s forces could make a beeline towards Earth without any worries.

Except for the Crystal Gems.

“Sir. Earth is just within our scanners reach.” Said Nufai’s right advisor. “Initiating scanning process now.”

It didn’t take long for the command ship to scan the planet’s surrounding atmosphere, since multiple beeps could be detected on the scanners of the main computer the advisor was at.

“We’ve detected multiple objects surrounding the planet. They seem to be some kind of satellite devices.”

“Jam them. I don’t want us to be detected until the fleet arrives.” Ordered Nufai, wanting to keep stealth as a priority. “Send in a transport ship with Glyph Carvers towards this region, Nufai also wants an escort of Lost Ones, Grunts, and Brutes for protection on the first transport.”

Nufai pointed close by the yellow blip that showed the Delmarva Peninsula region, wanting to set up a base close by the location of Beach City that was isolated.

“Nufai shall go with the transport as well, the first Arrival Site shall act as the main outpost on the planet with Nufai in command.”

“Shall we send in a few Reaper Drones and a Detection Drone on the transport? It would make outpost expansion quicker.” Asked the left advisor.

Nufai considered the suggestion and answered immediately. “Granted. Scan the planet and inform Nufai on the results, then I will tell you where to send more transports for further expansion across the planet.”

“An early invasion, sir?” Asked the right advisor. “Only Commander Orlock would call for such tactics if we were detected early.”

Nufai chuckled darkly at the mention of Orlock, remembering all about the great commander and his commandments, from his honorable nature of combat, to his sympathy of the Hierarchy’s foes, to his great care of his soldiers in battle, always managing to inspire his armies to victory through similar aggressive tactics and for showing that he actually cares for the wellbeing of his soldiers more than the Hierarchy itself.

Nufai thought it was pathetic.

“Nufai’s tactics are Nufai’s alone, not to some glorified commander who likes to speak doubts of the Hierarchy and live freely.” Nufai leaned closely to the right advisor, giving him an intense stare. “Loyalists and admirers of Orlock are no advisors of mine.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you, sir. It was merely a-

Nufai then raised his claws at the advisor’s face, nearly slicing his head off in the process. “Do you know what these are, advisor?”

“Phase claws, sir.” Answered the advisor fearfully. “Weapons that can-

“Can cut through any material with ease.” Interrupted Nufai, holding the claws ever so closely at the advisor. “Not even molecular armor, the quintessential choice of protection for our forces, can resist the only weapons made by Nufai’s people that can slice through anything as if it were wet paper.”

Nufai then chuckled darkly once more, amused by the advisor’s fearful expression.

“Do you know what Nufai loves to use these claws on the most?”

Before the advisor could answer the question in hopes his life would be spared, his hope was taken away when Nufai jabbed the claws straight through the large head of the advisor, impaling him through his skull as green blood leaked out from the wounds while Nufai held him up, dangling the twitching advisor that stayed stuck on the claws before letting out a whispered word.

“Flesh.”

Nufai then swung his claw to the side, making the Advisor’s head slide out of the claw and was dragged down with his body to the ground, spilling the green blood across the floor while Nufai walked over to the corpse, the other advisor keeping his fearful thoughts to himself.

“A shame you weren’t my precious Pearl.” Commented Nufai, placing the blood stained claw on his tendrils to taste the enjoyable flavor of blood. “Her blood must taste much sweeter than yours.”

Nufai then turned to the other advisor, who looked scared out of his wits despite a bad effort to keep cool, as he silently prayed in his mind that Orlock were here instead of the psychopath in front.

“Send a cleaner drone to the bridge to wipe the blood away. Nufai shall take care of the body.” Said Nufai sternly, picking up the advisor’s dead body by his head with his clawed hand. “Nufai needs a new chew toy for the Brutes anyways.”

The advisor simply complied and called in a cleaner drone as Nufai exited the bridge.

“Of course, sir."

Chapter 7

Nighttime had arrived to the Delmarva Peninsula, the air was cool and breezy but still warm, and the stars were out shining as bright as day, while the moon replaced the sun and drenched its shadowed light across the tiny region, showing that it was a peaceful night for the Peninsula’s residents.

This peace would be unknowingly shattered soon.

Far up in the night skies, right in the middle of a seemingly deserted plains area of the region, a place where no sign of human civilization could be found, a large circular object could be seen coming down rapidly but smoothly, rotating itself in a circle as it moved, getting ever so closer to landing. That was the Hierarchy transport ship that had entered through Earth’s atmosphere undetected earlier, successful in its stealthy approach into Earth’s atmosphere due to the command ship jamming Earth’s satellites, beginning the first phase of Earth’s destruction.

It didn’t take long to pick a perfect landing area for the ship, seeing that a suitable location to drop off the Hierarchy forces was at a wide flat plain, and descended down and arrived at the flat area, hovering right above it without worry.

The transport then unloaded the Hierarchy passengers, beaming them down in yellowish lights around a circular formation to give them space and the freedom of movement without having to bump into one another.

In the front of this circle was Nufai, the acting commander of the Hierarchy forces on Earth currently until Orlock arrives, so Nufai would have to savor every moment he has before his little title is taken from him.

“Spread out. We have work to do.” Ordered Nufai to the rest of his small force, who complied as they moved around the plains area to make sure it was secure while a few stayed behind, wanting to set up an outpost.

The ones who stayed behind were a pair of Glyph Carvers Nufai had ordered, seven foot tall robotic builders, a sort of blood red colored small hexapod unit with six legs, having some kind of backwards arrowhead shaped “head” of sorts, it’s “face” had only a bright yellow circular eye, having no weapons of any sort equipped onto it.

Nufai had also ordered two Reaper drones, which were much larger in comparison to the Glyph Carvers. Reaper drones are tall walker units that easily tower even the brutes with their height with Detection Drones, having three legs instead of six, its “body” was shaped like some kind of top, the bottom half having a cone shape while the upper half had tall and thin needle like structures on the sides of the top, along with having some kind of glowing bright green circle hole in the middle of the top of the drone, and even had a ring like structure around the bottom part of the drone, which had some kind of beam like device that could rotate in a 360 degree angle in a circle attached to the ring structure, possibly its weapon.

Along with Reaper Drones, there was also a Detection drone, another walker like unit with three legs, but its “body’ was much smaller and fragile, the legs being more wide and flat unlike the thin and spindly legs the Reaper drone had, along with having some kind of flat circular structure on the bottom that supported the most important part of the drone on the top, which were large and thin triple radar structures, appearing to have quad needle structures on the radar’s sides, giving the Detection drone a much wider range to scan anything around its general area while providing tactical visibility for the Hierarchy forces.

There were also more militarized forces as well, Nufai had also brought more Lost Ones with him, about thirty instead of twelve, and even a trio of the same alien beasts he used against the Crystal Gems on the off world temple from before, fittingly called Brutes due to their sheer strength and brutality.

However, the last of Nufai’s forces he brought were neither Brutes nor Lost Ones, they were called Grunts, standing about twenty strong with Nufai and are considered the basic and mainstay infantry of Hierarchy invasion forces.

Grunts tower over Lost Ones easily, having to be just as tall as the Glyph Carvers at seven feet, having three toes and fingers with gray skin just like all other Hierarchy infantry, but they are also genetically modified soldiers made to adapt in any environment, and are equipped with near full body armor on them integrated with sensors, rebreathers, and life support systems built into it, colored blood red and covering their entire torso, shoulders, and head, the only kind of eye they had would have to be the yellow cycloptic ring on the “head” of the armor.

The Grunts also have large gauntlets on their arms, providing further protection while also having their weapon of choice equipped on their right arms, a large plasma shotgun capable of firing five plasma pellets in a wide firing arc, while also having plasma grenades they keep behind them in a special contain hatch for them, used to take down heavier targets that their shotguns may not be enough for.

These forces had spread out in a wide range, giving the Glyph Carvers the time and space to live up to their namesake, as one of them began to release a cutting laser of sorts onto the flat ground, etching the Glyphs that they were famously known for, the Glyph being carved appeared to be glowing in red, orange and yellow, in an elaborate and intricate pattern on the ground that even appeared somewhat artistic, eerily similar to those of crop circles, which when completed would be scanned by orbital supply ships from the command ship in Earth’s atmosphere, determining what the ground forces needed going by whatever type of Glyph was carved.

While the first outpost was being set up, Nufai decided to order around his forces, eager to start his little quest to destroy the Crystal Gems while also proving himself to the Hierarchy once more.

“Nufai requires supplies for the outpost and the invasion. Our Detection Drone has scanned our surrounding area and has found a human town close by. I want six Lost Ones and four Grunts to go with them for early mining operations. You will receive your coordinates now along with extra Reaper Drones, Detection Drones, and escorts to your position, Nufai will give you the order to move in when you are ready.”

The chosen soldiers complied, heading out with their Reaper Drones to their given coordinates.

“Nufai also wants a team of three Lost Ones and two Grunts to go up north with the Detection Drone. There is another town that has our designated targets and Nufai wants to get a good reading on its position. Go now.”

The detection team also complied and went their separate ways, heading out to their scouting mission.

“The rest of you will await further orders when the outpost is built. The Glyph Carvers shall call down more Reaper Drones for harvesting. Once we have enough resources and information, Nufai will then call down a walker escort to assist our mission.”

The rest of his soldiers complied, taking positions around the large Glyph being carved into the ground as he watched the night sky above, contemplating his next moves against the Crystal Gems.

Nufai had dug up much knowledge on the Gems in the Hierarchy’s data archives, learning that long ago, the same empire he served now fought against these alien beings and lost. Nufai thought it was hilarious how many died on both sides, gaining absolutely nothing but loss and chaos, spilling blood and guts and devastating entire worlds with no gain, no cause, no purpose, and no reason since the Gem/Hierarchy war had lasted so long, neither side even remembered why they were fighting.

Nufai wished he was there to experience it.

Things are different now, even after all these years that had passed, the Gems still couldn’t regain the same strength they had before due to their civil wars and dead worlds, and now there are these Crystal Gems who have rebelled against their own kind, choosing to stay on earth as its supposed guardians.

It amused Nufai how serious they were about their heroic status that he considered pathetic.

But it also made him think back to Pearl. That Gem in particular fascinated him in many ways, the way she moved gracefully, the fighting style that made battle so elegant, the emotional disparity that hid inside her, he reminded himself to not kill Pearl so easily when the time came, hoping to savor every moment of misery that he enjoyed to get out of the Gem.

“Do not worry, frail one. We will meet again soon.” Said Nufai to himself, observing his Glyph Carvers create the proper glyphs to use. “And then, you will be mine.”

Unknown to the Hierarchy invaders, a distant figure was observing their activities the whole time, taking off in a hurry as soon as possible after staying long enough to figure out what was wrong.

O-O-O

Ocean town was once a great city to behold despite the ironic name, but disaster after disaster made the city less and less hospitable, until a new election brought the city back from its unstable grave.

Now in the process of rebuilding, Ocean town may just get their spot on the map back once more, and hopefully be rid of their reputation for being just as habitable as New Jersey with police as nice as Detroit’s.

But there was one resident in the city that wasn’t so keen of Ocean town.

A figure could be seen walking through some suburbs, covering herself with a green hoodie over her upper body and some jeans on her lower half, her head down and walking through the night streets like a homeless person until reaching an abandoned house in the suburban neighborhood, one of many after the many disasters that plagued the city.

She went in as quickly as possible, making sure that she wasn’t followed before entering the broken down house, having nothing inside but dirt, decay and an old couch in the living room on the left of the first floor. Settling herself down on the couch, the figure removed her clothes to reveal her already covered and robotic like body.

It was Peridot.

The Home world Gem who’s main purpose was to go to the Kindergarten and fix it, now stuck in some old rotting house, going from her mediocre job of technician to lost on earth and with a failed purpose. Peridot wasn’t the best at her job, she knew her stuff well and did everything by the book, go to a planet with a deactivated Kindergarten, activate said Kindergarten, and report back for further assignments.

But as much as she hated her job, it was all she had in her ageless life, and she messed it up big time, and now she was stuck on earth all by herself, surrounded by humans and being searched for by the Crystal Gems whenever they had spare time. Peridot decided to make another log to herself, mostly because she really needed something to keep herself sane while figuring a way off this world.

“Log date, 322. Still stuck on this backwater planet. Every attempt to contact Jasper failed yet again, probably dead by now.”

Peridot sighed sadly, sadness being an emotion she never thought she would experience due to her hopelessness she felt until breaking it with a disgusted scoff.

“I never liked Jasper, getting in my way to ruin my work, nothing but some arrogant clod too full of herself, but she could have been my way off this world. I did call her for help, but I didn’t think these Crystal Gems would be this bad, not to mention… The Steven.”

Peridot continued speaking, now using more emotion in her voice when she spoke.

“That little clod ruined everything, and his friends keep breaking all my things. When I get my hands on him, I’ll… I’ll… probably just get killed by the Crystal Gems.”

Peridot’s voice flattened, her attempt of having some kind of threatening revenge was replaced by her logical thinking that she used to think ahead, realizing that getting revenge was a stupid idea.

“I can’t fight back unless I have a Gem destabilizer. But the Steven isn’t affected by it somehow, and even then, I don’t have any combat experience. I’m just a technician! Not some meat head like Jasper! I just fix things, not break them.”

Peridot just shook her head, trying to calm herself down.

“Whatever.” Shrugged off the Home world Gem. “I’ll find a way off this filthy planet. I may be surrounded by meat bags and rebels, but I’ll leave this place somehow. And then… well, I won’t go back to Home world. I know what happened last time I failed a mission.”

Peridot then stared at her robotic arms and legs, frowning with genuine sadness before going back to her log.

“At least I’m not completely alone.” Peridot then took out a robonoid from her hoodie pocket, activating it as it stood on her shoulder, providing her with some comfort.

“When the ship blew up, I found one robonoid intact. Don’t know what to do with just one, but it keeps me company. It almost makes me feel happy.”

Peridot looked at the robonoid, poking it slightly out of boredom and continued her log, thinking about other things on her mind she wanted to get out of her system.

“Now I know what hopelessness can feel like, Lapis taught me that early when I saw her crying on the ship, begging me to help her somehow. I felt pity for her, mostly because she was in a bad position, just like me and my job. I offered some advice to her, and she gladly accepted it and actually thanked me.”

Peridot sighed again, taking another pause before speaking again.

“Maybe I can find her somewhere. This Ocean town is not far away from the Beach City I was told about, I could find my ship and maybe even Lapis. If Jasper’s there, I hope we can control her to convince her to find a way off this planet instead of killing us, but I prefer Lapis’s company more… she’s nice.”

Peridot stared up at the ceiling, leaning back on the couch while she wondered what she could do in her situation, scoffing at herself for what she just said.

“I can’t believe myself, actually wanting a friend and having these kind of emotions. I know my Gem is supposed to represent compassion, but am I really this pathetic? No wonder I’m so mediocre at my job.”

Sudden screaming could be heard from outside, getting Peridot’s attention as to what the commotion was going on, rushing to a window to peek at what was going on as the robonoid held onto her shoulder.

“I’m ending this log early. Peridot out.”

Explosions could then be heard, causing even more paranoia and fear to rise from Peridot as she put her clothes back on and ran outside, wanting to get away from the explosions that sounded awfully close. Peridot looked around her to see a horrifying sight, something that she only read about in data archives.

“It can’t be.” Said Peridot in shock, staring in shock at what she was witnessing now.

The chaos she was witnessing was being caused by a Hierarchy strike force, seeing mass explosions of fire and smoke, housing in the suburban area being annihilated by green plasma fire, the air filled with the panicked screams of civilians either running in fear or dying from plasma.

The more urbanized areas in the center of Ocean town were filled with even more plasma fire, along with several Reaper Drones, firing some kind of green beams at buildings, seemingly breaking down the materials apart from them and sucking them towards the beam, until the pieces disappeared in green flashes, while smaller objects such as fire hydrants, lamp poles, and even humans, were being sucked into the beams as well, disappearing in quicker green flashes.

Peridot didn’t touch too much on Hierarchy history, what data recorded on them was terrifying but impressive however, using Reaper Drones armed with the specially dubbed, “abduction beams” to beam up any resources to orbital supply ships in a planet’s atmosphere.

That’s when the Home world Gem quickly realized something even more horrifying in just a few moments later.

The Hierarchy had returned, and they came here to harvest the planet that she was trapped on.

“I can’t believe they’re back.” Peridot said to herself, staring at the Reaper Drones in shock. “This isn’t logical. They shouldn’t be back, and not here out of all places.”

Peridot could then hear explosions and the sound of mechanical movement in her vicinity, turning her head to notice a pair of Reaper Drones, one in front and the other behind, casually walking along the far left of the suburban neighborhood, and chasing down a dozen human civilians running away from the invaders, and seeing more Reaper Drones further behind that smashed through houses and beamed up any humans hiding, along with any debris that they made.

The Reaper Drone in the back was busy beaming up random small objects around its vicinity, while the one in front went after the fleeing humans, beaming each one individually in a rapid manner as they screamed in horror, until they were silenced when the beams hit them.

Peridot ran as fast as she could, deactivating her robonoid companion and putting it in her hoodie pocket, running back to her house inside to hide, knowing that the Reaper Drones could hit her faster than she could run as she looked through the living room window.

While the Reaper Drones passed through without acknowledging her, busier trying to beam up resources ahead of her, it would have to be the escort close behind that Peridot worried about, which consisted to be about six grunts, all armed with plasma shotguns and ready to kill, along with about nine Lost Ones armed with light plasma rifles.

Peridot could see a few humans consisting of a father, mother and two children across the street, climbing out their window to try to sneak away from the Grunts. But the Grunts noticed the fleeing humans, and laughed when they saw them trying to escape.

A Grunt made a few deep chittering noises, pulling out a plasma grenade and chucking it at the family, vaporizing them with the one grenade that also took a part of the house they were at away, laughing again as the humans died in a plasma explosion.

‘Meat bags were never too bright.’ Thought Peridot to herself, as she ducked down from the window to avoid being spotted by the Grunts.

The Grunts stopped, as one of them made deep chittering noises to the Lost Ones to search the area and find any survivors, dead or alive, while the Grunts continued onward, but not before tossing a few plasma grenades around them, mostly out of their own amusement and to make the Lost One’s search easier.

One of those plasma grenades hit Peridot’s house, decimating the front of the house and formed a big hole right next to Peridot, blown away by the blast and flew across the wooden floor. Peridot quickly got up, jumping out of a window and bracing herself, not wanting to be caught or killed by the Lost Ones who ran into the house.

Seeing that Peridot was running away from the house across the backyard, jumping over the fences connected to other backyards on the right, the Lost Ones gave pursuit to the Home world Gem, as she leaped over the smaller fences while avoiding plasma fire from behind.

This felt just as terrifying as when she crashed into earth, really it was even worse, since at least she wasn’t being chased by psychotic aliens that want to kill her or worse, turn her into a resource to fuel the Hierarchy’s power. In many ways, she wished Jasper were here, she wished Lapis was here, she even wished the Steve and the Crystal Gems were here, but there was no one here to save her from the chaos.

Explosions constantly went off, plasma blasts burst through the air along with the screams of the panicked, abduction beams were casted upon buildings and people, making them disappear in green flashes to orbiting supply ships, and the sick sounds of manic chittering and laughter rang in Peridot’s head, these horrifying sounds alone were enough to scare the Gem senseless.

This was the first time she felt true fear.

Peridot looked back to see the Lost Ones were catching up on her, using their phase modules to phase through the fences she had to leap over. One of them deactivated their module to get a good hit on her, who nailed her right on her back, making her cry out from the pain of the plasma shot, burning a huge hole through her hoodie and made her fall on the ground, much to the Lost One’s amusement and glee.

As the psychopaths surrounded the defenseless Gem, she cowered in fear while trying to resist the burning sensation on her back, shielding her face to look away from the imminent death she was about to receive.

A loud roaring sound deafened Peridot, as she looked up to see the Lost Ones had been blown away and hit the back of a house, while turning her head to see her odd savior before falling unconscious from the burning pain.

The last thing she saw was a pink blur.

Chapter 8

• YAWN*

The loud yawn came from the young Gem hybrid Steven, who had just woken up after a good night’s rest, stretching his arms up and got out of bed, ready for another day in his adventures life.

However, today he hoped that he or the other Gems didn’t have to go on another mission, since his mind was still occupied about what happened yesterday.

Ever since the Crystal Gems told him about the Hierarchy along with the encounter with them earlier before, he couldn’t help himself but wonder about having more questions to ask. He wanted to know more about the Hierarchy, and hopefully be able to find a way to talk to them about not destroying life on worlds anymore. It may be the stuff of dreams to anyone else, but Steven was never one to give up so easily on dreams, no matter how impossible it seemed.

But he would ask those questions for a while, since he knew that the other Crystal Gems were still shaken up after their encounter with the Hierarchy, especially after what had happened with Nufai and Pearl.

“Maybe I should hang out with Pearl today.” Thought the child as he went downstairs to get dressed in his usual attire, knowing that Pearl seemed to suffer the most from the encounter.

Pearl wasn’t around the house today, which was strange since she’s usually around when Steven wakes up to make breakfast for him, and the last time he saw her yesterday before going to bed was when she kissed him goodnight, and managed to hear her mumble about needing fresh air before leaving the temple.

A flash of bright light from the warp pad signaled the arrival of Garnet and Amethyst, as Garnet held a bubbled Gem in her hand before sending it away, while Amethyst groaned and bent her back. Though Steven was glad the Gems were back, he was confused that Pearl wasn’t with them.

“That thing gave us a good beating.” Quipped Amethyst, as Garnet still kept her stoic expression. “Why couldn’t we just wait for Pearl?”

“She didn’t go with you guys?”

The returning Gems saw Steven walking towards them, yawning after asking his question about pearl.

“Pearl said she needed some fresh air last night. I told her we had to go to a mission but she insisted we left without her.” Answered Garnet, making Steven frown at the answer.

“P isn’t in the house?” Asked Amethyst, surprised to see that Pearl was not inside.

“I don’t know where she is. Maybe she-

Before Steven could finish, a door could be heard opening from the front, revealing it to be Pearl.

“Pearl!”

Steven ran to Pearl, giving the lithe Gem a warm embrace, wrapping his arms around her waist while failing to notice the tear stained face and puffy eyes, indicating she had been crying for quite some time.

Steven then let go of Pearl, looking up to see the sad facial expression glued on her that made the child ask wit concern in his voice.

“Pearl? Are you okay?”

Pearl looked down to see the worried child, only to pat him on the head, forming a weak smile to try to ease his concern as she softly spoke.

“I-I’m fine, Steven. I just needed to take a walk.”

“A walk all night?”

Pearl blinked at the question. “It’s relaxing.”

“Does it involve crying?” Interrupted Amethyst, blatantly pointing out the tear stained face on Pearl.

“I uh… tripped and fell along the shore before walking here.”

Amethyst raised an eyebrow while Steve gasped at the obvious lie, being the child that he is and believing Pearl.

“That’s awful. Must be that nasty crab around the beach, I knew he acted suspicious after last time.”

Pearl just giggled lightly at Steven’s childish manner, bringing some apparent joy to Pearl.

“How about I make you some of those pancakes you’ve been telling me about?” Suggested Pearl, making Steven’s eye widen in joy.

“Can I help? We can be breakfast fun buddies since you’ve never made them before.”

Pearl simply nodded at Steven’s request, making the child happily go to the fridge to get the proper ingredients to make the pancakes, but not before sharing a quick glance at Amethyst and Garnet.

“We’ll meet up here to talk about plans about the Hierarchy. I need to take care of some things first.” Said Garnet, with Pearl nodding as she wiped away some stray tears.

Garnet then waked away to the warp pad, off to do her version of errands solo, leaving Amethyst alone with Pearl and stood awkwardly in place.

Amethyst was never great with more emotional issues, always having a tendency to shut her true emotions away from others and keep things to herself. She would have just made a joke about Pearl acting like a bird by now, but seeing the look on Pearl’s face just made her stare awkwardly at the lithe Gem, since she recognized that look all too well on herself as well.

“Hey.” Began Amethyst, getting Pearl’s attention as she took one of her hands and held it with Pearl’s. “I’m not really too good at this emotional junk, so I don’t really know what to say except… we’ll be fine. And uh, don’t let that creep get to you either. He’s just a butt face.”

Pearl simply looked down at her held hand, smiling at the sight of Amethyst being caring in this small instance, something the two hadn’t experienced in a long time.

“I won’t.” Pearl simply replied, squeezing Amethyst’s hand before letting go.

O-O-O

It was a relaxing morning, or at least as relaxing as a morning can get with Steven and Amethyst, despite Pearl’s saddened state, which didn’t stay sad very long when she was with Steven.

The young child was so much like his mother, always able to cheer anyone up no matter how sad they were, and spending the morning with Pearl with some Gem family bonding was just one of the many charms he has.

Breakfast wasn’t made as easily as Steven thought, from accidently spilling the batter, to Amethyst stealing the syrup to gulp down, only for her to dump it all over Pearl to make a bigger mess to clean, it ended up being a bigger hassle to even get pancakes in the first place. Despite the troubles, the pancakes were eventually completed and Steven couldn’t be any happier with them, practically gobbling them whole, while Pearl cleaned around the kitchen and herself from all the syrup and batter.

“Yes! Breakfast fun buddies for life!” Exclaimed the boy, gleaming at the delicious pancakes covered in syrup with a slice of butter and a strawberry on top.

“Yo Steven! Save some for me.” Called out Amethyst, laying on the couch across the kitchen. “I want some of those too.”

“Why don’t you just come here instead?” Asked Pearl, giving Amethyst the usual annoyed glare.

Amethyst pondered for a split second until she shrugged.

“I would… but I don’t feel like it.”

Pearl just rolled her eyes, knowing that there was no point in arguing with the purple gem.

While Steven chowed down on his pancakes, loud scratching noises could be heard from the front door along with a low growl.

“I think we have a visitor.” Quipped Amethyst, knowing exactly what was at the door while Steven jumped from his seat to answer the door.

Pearl merely sighed at the sounds.

“I just fixed that door too.”

Steven opened the door to find himself staring at a large pink lion, who he gave a large hug to.

“Lion! It’s so good to see you again! It’s been too long.”

Pearl raised an eyebrow at Steven’s reaction.

“He’s only been gone yesterday.”

Steven simply motioned his head to Lion.

“But how long is that in lion years?”

“I uh…. I don’t actually know.” Replied Pearl, blushing embarrassingly at having little knowledge about Steven’s Lion. “He’s not an ordinary lion.”

Lion was certainly a very mysterious creature. None of the Crystal Gems knew why exactly Lion decided to stick with them, since he usually goes off on his own in pretty much everywhere, but whenever they’re in serious trouble, he shows up to help. They were glad he’s on their side.

Lion let out a low roar to Steven, walking down to the steps as he poked his head up, staring at Steven as if he wanted to show him something, making the boy curious as pearl walked right by the doorsill.

“What’s wrong, Lion? Is there something you want to show me?”

“Well, can it wait a while? You still have-

The sound of a cracked whip could be heard, making Pearl turn around to see Amethyst grab the rest of Steven’s pancakes with her whip and flung them into her wide mouth, stuffing them all into her cheeks.

“Amethyst!”

The purple Gem tried speaking something through her stuffed mouth, leaving Pearl confused and angry, then swallowed the breakfast in order for Pearl to understand.

“I said, I got it.”

Pearl then engaged with her usual bickering with Amethyst, complaining how the food was for Steven and how inconsiderate and rude it was to take it all, the usual arguments that didn’t really amount to anything too serious.

Lion growled at Steven once again for his attention, who walked all the way down to the steps, making Steven follow behind.

“Wait up, Lion! I just had the best breakfast since-

Steven stopped dead in his tracks at what he saw at the bottom, as Lion was standing right next to an unconscious green figure, a very familiar figure he didn’t think he would ever see here.

“Peridot.”

He couldn’t believe it, Peridot out of everyone was here. The Homeworld Gem on the loose in Earth, the enemy that wanted to activate Kindergarten to do who knows what to Earth was unconscious at his knees.

He couldn’t help but feel bad and wonder what happened to her.

“Steven?”

The voice calling out to the boy was Garnet, who had just returned from whatever solo mission she was doing.

“Coming!”

Steven went up the steps, but stopped for a moment and turned to Lion to tell him something.

“Lion. Don’t bring Peridot to the Gems. They’re gonna freak out if they see her so uh… don’t do that, okay?”

Lion simply stared at the boy, ignoring his request and grabbed Peridot by her hoodie she still wore, walking up the steps past him with Peridot in his jaws.

“Oh no.”

Steven quickly ran up after Lion, who just dropped Peridot in front of the door, getting all three of the Gem’s attention and shocking them at what they saw.

“Peridot!”

The Crystal Gems brought out their weapons, ready to wipe Peridot off the face of the Earth until…

“Wait guys! Don’t hurt her!”

Steven stepped forward, holding his arms out in defense of Peridot.

“Steven! Get away from her!” Warned Garnet, with concern in her voice for Steven.

Peridot started to wake up, as the muffled noises she heard began to sound clearer, realizing that they were familiar, familiar voices that made Peridot have the feeling of fear once more, as if the Hierarchy’s presence on Earth wasn’t enough.

Groaning, she rubbed her head to slowly get up, making everyone silent until Peridot realized all eyes were on her, making her fears come true as she quivered cowardly.

“Uuuuuuuuuuuuuh…”

It was all Peridot could say, staring in shock that she was now at the home of her enemies, unaware of what was going on.

“The Crystal Gems? The Steven? The pink feline?” Peridot feebly addressed the group around her, raising her hand up in a peaceful gesture. “I don’t want to-

“Shut it, Dorito head!” Exclaimed Amethyst, silencing the Homeworld Gem instantly.

Steven took a good look at Peridot’s face, which was filed with fear and shock, seeing that Peridot means no harm to anyone.

“She’s not going to hurt anyone!”

“Get away from here, Steven!” Pearl exclaimed, approaching Steven to walk him to her side.

Lion then stepped in, growling at the Gem to keep away as he took a defensive stance in front, putting Steven and Peridot out of harm’s way. Garnet simply hummed at the action, slightly lowering her gauntlets while Amethyst and Pearl kept their guard, making sure no sudden movements were made in the intense standoff.

“I know how you feel about Peridot, but don’t hurt her” Defended Steven, making the Gems look at Peridot’s scared expression. “She’s just scared and hurt, and lonely.”

Amethyst cracked her whip out of intimidation. “I can help with that.”

“Just let us handle Peridot, Steven. It’s for everyone’s own good.”

“But you’ll hurt her!”

Pearl stayed silent, not willing to answer as the argument continued.

Peridot just stared at what was going on. The Steven who she had despised so much was now defending her from her own demise against his own teammates, arguing back and forth that she should be given a chance, while the others spoke otherwise, preferring to bubble her and keep her imprisoned instead of death, not exactly a choice she would want either.

“Will you clods just stay silent?!”

Peridot’s voice made the Gems quiet, creating a sense of awkwardness that filled the temple.

“Sorry.” Peridot said uncharacteristically, clearing her throat in order to speak lowly once again.

“Just listen to me, I have something important we should all know.”

“Like what? That you and your Homeworld buddies want to destroy our home? Fat chance.” Interrupted Amethyst.

“Why should we listen to you? After everything the Homeworld has done, you expect us to listen to our enemies?” Said Pearl, backing up the purple Gem.

“I’m afraid we have more to worry about than Homeworld.”

The Crystal Gems looked at Peridot with wide eyes.

“What are you talking about?” Inquired Pearl.

Amethyst merely scoffed.

“Who cares? Let’s just bubble her already.”

Garnet took a good look at Peridot, seeing that there was no deception to her words and phased out her gauntlets, putting a hand on Pearl and Amethyst’s shoulders.

“Lower you weapons.”

Pearl turned to Garnet shockingly.

“What? But-

“Lower. Your weapons.”

Garnet’s stern orders made the Gems listen, as usual, and they phased out their weapons, putting an uneasy trust with Garnet’s decision while relieving Steven and making Lion go into a calmer stance.

“I trust Steven’s judgement on this one.”

“Thank you.” Said Steven, thankful that Garnet actually trusts him, though Amethyst and Pearl still aren’t quite sure about all this.

The awkward silence filled the temple once, as Peridot felt unsure if she should speak anymore lest she anger the Gems once more.

“Peridot.”

The Homeworld Gem gulped as she looked at Garnet, who crossed her arms while keeping her stoic expression.

“What did you mean we have more to worry about?”

Peridot stood silently for a moment, clearing her throat once more embarrassingly as she spoke her side of the story.

“W-we, I mean, I think we have more problems because we have… unwanted visitors.”

“Who?”

Peridot really couldn’t believe what she was going to say next, and to her enemies out of all people.

“The Hierarchy have returned.”

Now the temple was silent out of fear, a nightmare had just came true for the Gems, the very last thing they wanted to hear out of the mouth of a Homeworld Gem was that even deadlier enemies have returned.

And they came to their home.

“Liar!” Shouted Amethyst, not wanting to believe such a thing. “There’s no way they’re here!”

Garnet once again looked at Peridot, and unfortunately, she didn’t like to admit it as she spoke lowly.

“She’s telling the truth.”

Pearl then began to laugh nervously, her hands now shaking at those words.

“T-that can’t be. There’s n-no way t-they could have possibly gotten here so q-quickly.”

Peridot then exclaimed once more, flabbergasted at how the Crystal Gems were taking this news.

“I’m not lying! I swear it on my life and to all of Homeworld they’re here! They came back and as we speak, they’re decimating a human city! I was there when it happened!”

The Crystal Gems were truly terrified now, not only Peridot claimed the Hierarchy had somehow managed to get to Earth in a matter of a day after their first encounter, but they were also destroying a human city, with Peridot also claiming to witness it.

“Where?” Sternly demanded Garnet.

“It’s called Ocean Town. I was hiding out there until the Hierarchy arrived.”

Steven then panicked at Peridot’s answer.

“We have to go save them!”

Garnet clenched her fists, while Pearl and Amethyst looked at each other in somberness, unsure how to break the news to Steven.

“Steven.”

Garnet went to Steven, kneeling down on his level to talk to him face to face.

“Call Connie. Tell her that she and her parents need to come to Beach City, they’ll be safer here.”

Steven looked up at Garnet worryingly still.

“But what if they get there first?”

“Go to Connie with Pearl just in case. Amethyst, Peridot and I will ask Greg to drive us to Ocean Town for the others.”

“What? That place is a deathtrap!” Exclaimed Peridot, shocked at Garnet’s decision. “Do you WANT to die?!”

Amethyst then forcefully shoved Peridot to shut her up.

“She’s the boss, not you.” Said Amethyst, gritting her teeth.

“We can’t waste any more time, let’s move.”

The group left outside the house, with Steven riding on Lion while Amethyst dragged out Peridot by her arm, Pearl stopped Garnet and gave her a concerned look.

“You can’t save the humans there. You know why.”

Garnet sighed somberly and pushed past Pearl.

“There are some things about them that even I can’t tell Steven.”

Garnet walked out, leaving Pearl inside to look down on the floor, shaking her head that all of this was happening and followed quickly, not wanting to waste time or else let Steven’s best friend get killed, something that she could never forgive herself for if that happened.

Garnet, Amethyst, and Peridot headed out to Greg’s carwash, running as fast as they could while Lion waited for Pearl down the steps, with Steven taking the time to call Connie to tell her that he was coming.

His cellphone rang for a few times until the voice of Connie picked up, still sounding groggy despite it being late morning.

“Hey Connie.” Greeted Steven.

“Hey Steven.” A yawn could be heard from the phone. “I didn’t know you called this early.”

“Listen uh, I’m going to come over today to your place so uh, don’t freak out if you see me outside your window already.”

“What? Steven, is something wrong?” Asked Connie, now concerned for her best friend. “What happened?”

Steven wasn’t sure how to explain it properly, since there was a lot to process today, so he decided to be as blunt as he could.

“Aliens are invading the planet.” Said Steven quickly.

There was a short silence over the phone.

“What?”

Suddenly, other voices could be heard from the phone, sounding a lot like Connie’s parents.

“Hold on, Steven.” Connie called out to her parents, asking them what was wrong while Pearl got onto Lion, as Steven started to worry greatly for the commotion going on the phone.

“Connie?”

Static interference made the phone conversation much harder to maintain, constantly going in and out for some strange reason, making Steven close to panicking.

“Steven, I… Somethings... the news…huge robots… the whole world…. What’s…Steven?”

“Connie! Can you hear me?”

His voice was unable to get through, as the static interference was all that could be heard from the phone, with Pearl looking at Steven worryingly with good reason, now truly believing Peridot’s word as Lion prepared to roar and opened a portal, hopefully leading to Connie’s home as Steven made one last attempt at getting a response from his best friend.

“Connie!?”

Chapter 9

“Connie’s in big trouble! We gotta go now!”

Steven didn’t want to waste any more time, he had a gut feeling that Connie was being attacked by the Hierarchy, and urged Lion to run into the portal as soon as possible, jumping right into the inter dimensional portal and traversed through the space time continuum.

Pearl held onto Steven tightly. Reason one is because she didn’t want to fall off, feeling dizzy since she couldn’t really get used to the portal experience, and reason two was because she wanted to assure Steven that it’ll be okay.

Even if she didn’t believe it.

Pearl knew what it was like to lose friends to the Hierarchy, and it motivated her to sticking with Steven throughout the whole way, she didn’t want him to experience the same trauma she had to go through.

“Steven!” Exclaimed Pearl, wrapping herself around the child. “We’ll get Connie as soon as possible, okay?”

Steven nodded in response, smiling in appreciation for Pearl’s concern.

A bright white light could be seen ahead, as Lion jumped through it and made it to his destination, popping into the familiar streets of Connie’s neighborhood.

O-O-O

Lion skidded upon the concrete road, halting with ease as Pearl and Steven got off the majestic feline, taking in what they saw around them.

The last time Steven came to Connie’s place was last week, remembering a quiet and peaceful neighborhood, trees neatly placed around the sidewalk with adjacent houses filling clean street blocks, each similar in design and quaint to live in, a remarkable place that the very well off could live in.

Now all Steven could see is the exact opposite.

The once peaceful sounds of birds and casual cars driving by had been replaced with the crackles of fire from buildings and explosions, normal or alien by origin, and there could even be gunshots heard as well, indicating that military forces had finally been deployed to respond. The neighborhood’s houses were desolate and bleak, some were burning or had parts of their foundation blown away, no one aside from the two Gems and Lion were around to see it, to see the littered streets of burnt trash and cracked concrete, crashed or destroyed cars burning with its occupants inside, emitting a stench of burnt flesh.

Pearl was tempted to break down once more, since the chaos the Peridot had described reminded her of the war from before, but she stayed strong for Steven. The last thing she wanted to do was scare the child more than he already was.

Steven covered his nose from the unrecognizable putrid stench. “Pearl… it smells funny here.”

Pearl simply stared at the chaos beyond, seeing that in the city further down was much worse, observing Reaper Drones in the distance breaking down everything, and the very skies of the city not only had smoke rising, but also saucer aircraft flying around, but they were much smaller than the transports, most likely fighter craft.

The craft were disc shaped saucers that could move much faster than most planes, colored in the signature blood red, with three notches along their sides that had a round glowing circle within, possibly holding whatever weapons equipped, the center top appeared to be a round glowing core of sorts that may be the cockpits, the underside of the crafts had a bulge that likely contained the craft’s guidance systems as well as a beam like device, possibly a smaller variant of plasma weaponry that the transports had.

“Saucers already? I forget how fast they work.” Thought Pearl to herself.

Pearl and Steven ran over to Connie’s house, Lion staying close by the streets to watch for anything coming their way as the two Gems went up the porch.

“Did they leave already?” Asked Steven, looking up to Pearl.

“Let’s find out.” Pearl answered, taking out her spear and kicking the door open.

Pearl pointed her spear forward at the ready, keeping Steven close behind to check if anyone was inside. No one seemed to answer the knocked down door, with no one coming out to the front hallway that felt abandoned.

“Connie! Are you there?”

Pearl shushed Steven immediately, putting a finger over his mouth.

“Steven.” Pearl whispered, giving the young Gem a look to silence him.

The lithe Gem didn’t want to take a chance of warning any possible inhabitants not of human origin inside, if there were any, and proceeded to pace her way forward.

Pearl then tapped her spear on the ground loudly, listening carefully to any sound in the house while blocking out the more destructive noises from outside, checking if there was any slight movements that were off.

“Go outside with your lion, Steven. I‘ll search in here quickly.” Advised Pearl, assuming that no one threatening was inside.

Pearl turned to the young Gem with a stern look before he could argue, talking in a stern tone.

“I mean it. I’ll be back outside soon.”

Steven complied, seeing that there was no arguing and walked outside, seeing that Lion was on guard, looking at every direction in case Hierarchy forces passed by.

He couldn’t stand the noises he heard, the sounds of explosion and gunfire were only things he heard from action movies, and they seemed much cooler in movies too. But this was no movie, it was real destruction he was witnessing, real sounds of war filling the air, real apocalyptic scenarios playing out in front of him, and he couldn’t stand such a thing.

It made him more worried for Connie. He has a strong friendship with the young girl, the girl who was also they only friend he could make due to her awkwardness and book nerd personality, making hard for Connie to even have friends in the first place.

Well… normal friends at least.

The point here was that Steven needed to find her and find her now, he couldn’t even think of anything bad happening to her, only thinking when to find her and her parents, and bring them to safety to Beach City. All that they needed to do was find them and Lion could take care of the escape, and hopefully save anyone else left in the city.

The young Gem always did look on the bright side of things.

Steven then turned his head to the garage, just noticing the open door and walked down to investigate.

“Where are you, Connie?” Thought the child, seeing that the garage had no car, yet he saw tire marks on the ground, and followed the trail leading to the road.

Pearl then walked out of the house, her spear lowered but still on guard, having no result that anyone was inside.

“I couldn’t find Connie or the Maheswarans inside, but a lot of their belongings were gone. They might have-

The lithe Gem stopped talking to see Steven following a tire trail along the left side of the road, with Lion following close by to watch out, though that didn’t stop concern rising from Pearl.

“Steven! Wait!”

She ran quickly to Steven, who had just stopped in front of a car from across the block, appearing to be the same car belonging to the Maheswarans, crashed into a tree but with no occupants inside.

Pearl stopped to see the car, looking into the car to see if anyone was there.

“No one is inside.” Said Pearl, checking twice of anyone was hiding.

“I thought they were in there.” Replied Steven nervously, who saw Pearl giving him a stern but concerned look.

“Don’t wander off without me, Steven. It’s dangerous out here.”

Steven rubbed his head in embarrassment.

“But I want to find Connie.”

Pearl sighed as she lowered herself down, putting her hands on the child’s face, making him look up to her and gave him a comforting look.

“Steven. I know you’re concerned about your friend, but you need to be more careful around here.” Asserted Pearl in a calm tone. “I promise you, we will find Connie and her parents, and we will get them out of here. Okay?”

Steven parted Pearl’s hands away, lowering them down and nodded.

“Okay. I trust you.”

The two were about to climb onto lion when they could hear the skidding of tires from across the right road, seeing that there was a U.S. Humvee driving fast, the gunner pointing his mounted weapon back as if something were behind it.

Just off the corner of the block, a steady green beam pierced right through the side of a house, going through the side and creating a new opening, reaching its intended target and blasted the Humvee, blowing it up and engulfing it in flame and smoke, while about a dozen U.S. Army soldiers armed with mostly assault rifles, two with rocket launchers, ran from around the block from whatever was chasing them.

Steven was clearly shocked at what he saw, while Pearl dreaded the thought of what had just came from around the corner, recognizing the frightening weapon of war that was chasing down the human soldiers.

A pair of blood red colored walkers emerged from the corner, appearing to be extremely spindly tripods consisting of a thin cylinder-like body and a much larger crescent shaped “head” attached to them, reaching to be as tall as the houses around the neighborhood. At the base of the tripod’s heads is some sort of glowing orb from which the beam was projected from, and attached to the crescent is a horseshoe-shaped structure ending in silver nozzles.

“Whoa.” Said Steven, shocked at the more menacing mechanized forces of the Hierarchy. “Those things look a lot like the aliens in a book Connie told me about.”

Pearl replied in fear, saying only one word to call the tripods that she mumbled under her breath.

“Defilers.”

The signature light walkers of the Hierarchy, Defilers were not to be trifled with since they have a reputation of being expert anti-infantry, able to decimate entire squads with a single blast of their beams, which were not plasma. Instead, Defilers are armed with weaponized radiation, concentrated into a beam weapon strong enough to easily decimate infantry and even penetrate vehicles and buildings to some extent due to the sheer amount of sheer concentrated radiation.

Just seeing these tripods made Pearl’s skin crawl.

The pair of Defilers spotted their fleeing targets, who were trying to flee into the houses into cover, until one of the Defilers released its radiation beam, turning its head to the left to sweep across the ground, instantly irradiating almost all the soldiers in one blast, who all screamed out in pain before collapsing on the ground as nothing more but burnt corpses.

There were only four troops left, one with a rocket launcher who ran with the survivors into a house for cover, hoping that they would survive the encounter

The Defilers began to make slurping, gurgling sounds to each other, as they split to cover the left and right side of the road, while a group of six Grunts came up from behind, throwing a few plasma grenades into the house where the soldiers were at, blowing away the sides of the house that the human troops hid in and killed them instantly.

It really didn’t help that Grunts had to arrive too.

“P-pearl. They just killed them.” Said Steven softly, pointing his finger at the Hierarchy forces.

While Pearl felt sorrow pity for the human troops, she noticed that the Defilers spotted them, with the Grunts made deep chittering to each other, pointing out the Gems and Lion and chuckled at the sight, and aimed their plasma shotguns to open fire.

“Now’s the time to run, Lion!”

Lion agreed with Pearl and bolted off into the opposite direction, dodging the plasma blasts as the Grunts gave chase, the Defilers were faster than their Grunt escorts, walking fast with their thin legs to catch up with their new targets.

“We need to lose them now!” Exclaimed Pearl, using her spear to shoot back at their pursuers, barely slowing them down. “Grunts are one thing, but I can’t take on Defilers by myself!”

After running a few blocks down, Steven noticed that there was something ahead, that something being U.S. military forces, about two dozen marine soldiers armed with assault rifles and about six had rocket launchers, along with two Humvees providing support, setting up a road block on the left and right side of the road, only leaving an opening if you go straight, while even straight down the road came an Abrahams tank, ready to blast away the Hierarchy.

“I don’t think you’re alone.”

Steven’s comment made Pearl look ahead, noticing the humans blocking their way as one of them waved to the Gems, directing them get out of the way.

“Move! Get out of the firing line!”

Lion sidestepped away, running to the military vehicles on the side for protection, going to the left side behind the Humvee while the soldiers set up defensive positions on the road.

The pair od Defilers came up to the position, ready to take aim until the order to fire came to the tank, launching a shell and hitting the tripod at its cylinder body, stumbling it back from the force but not doing too much damage.

The Defiler gurgled and slurped loudly in response, sounding more like angry chirping with a more mechanical and sloshy tone, and unleashed a radiation beam at the Humvee at the right, blowing it away and killing a few soldiers around it from the blast radius.

The other forces then let out a hail of gunfire, soldier firing their rifles and Humvees firing their mounted guns, armed with armor piercing bullets that hopefully did some damage. While the gunfire only slowed the Defilers, it gave the chance for the rockets to take aim and hopefully shoot before the Defilers could wipe them out.

“Aim for the legs!” Shouted a soldier, pointing out the spindly and thin legs.

The soldiers did as ordered and fired at the legs, making both Defilers stumble from the force that hit their legs until they knocked into each other, collapsing on top of their bodies onto the ground. The tank took advantage of this, along with the rest of the soldiers who all fired at the downed tripods, overwhelming them with sheer firepower and blasted them, exploding into green flames that quickly went out, while some kind of greed foggy liquid oozed out of the downed tripods.

“Stay back! Whatever that green shit is, don’t touch it!”

Pearl couldn’t help but be impressed with the humans. Sure, they used a lot of ammunition against only a few Defilers, but they had a lot of spirit in them despite all odds, willing to stand their ground and defend their home, her home.

The Grunt escort then caught up with the Defilers, chittering loudly at the downed tripods and saw the humans, letting out deep roars that resembled war cries, charging into the human position with their armed plasma.

“Keep firing!”

The Grunts managed to throw a few plasma grenades, hurling them to the tank and made it explode, as smoke and flame covered it and took four soldiers in the blast, while the Grunts charged at the position, breaking the line and engaged in close quarters combat, bashing away soldiers and send them flying across the air from their brute strength, something Grunts took great pleasure in.

Pearl then knew she had to interfere, telling Steven to stay behind while she and Lion jumped into combat.

The combat was brutal, the towering Grunts either tossed soldiers into the air or crushed.

These brutal examples were shown when a soldier tried shooting at the Grunt, only for the bullets to deflect and get himself tossed into the air with just one hand, landing into the burning wreak and catching on fire, while the Grunt chuckled gleefully at the sight.

More deaths followed when one Grunt picked up a human with a hand and tossed him on the ground, and stomped on him with full force with his leg, shattering every bone in the human’s torso, feeling the crushed bones stabbed through his insides if the force and broken bones wasn’t enough to die from.

The Grunts had no desire to finish the humans quickly.

Some Grunts even bashed their shotguns against the human soldiers, making several humans get knocked away as Pearl dodged one such attack, unable to stand the brutality and wanted to save these humans, and ducked when the two humans slammed into the Humvee behind her, instantly dead with their spines shattering from the force.

Lion was the first to charge, as a Grunt swung horizontally to hit the feline, only for him to leap up and pounce on the alien menace, sinking his surprisingly strong teeth into the Grunt’s armor and toss him into another one of the aliens, while two more Grunts took advantage and held onto Lion tightly, hoping to squeezed the air out of him.

Another Grunt then shoved a human soldier into the ground, ready to slam his large shotgun on top to smash his head, until Pearl leaped in and blacked the downward swing with her spear, just barely able to stop the crushing blow.

The Grunt chittered out, obviously angry from being denied his kill, and swung his gun at Pearl, dodging gracefully in a ballet form, using the tip of her spear to stab the Grunt in its exposed gray flesh between the shoulder and gauntlet, leaking greed blood that the Grunt didn’t take much pain in.

Pearl took a few more stabs at the arm until the Grunt felt a sharp pain, grasping onto something warm and wet, realizing that his arm was nothing more than a bloody stump and looked down to see his arm on the ground, finally seeing that his arm was sliced off by Pearl, who then used her spear to stab the Grunt at its cycloptic eye, managing to crack the armor protecting it.

Pearl looked back to see that Steven was still behind the Humvee, grateful that Steven didn’t see what she had to do. She didn’t want Steven to see that she had hurt something or even to kill it, his personality was very much like Rose’s, unable to stand to see others in pain, ally and enemy alike.

The crippled Grunt walked backwards, his other arm pointing his shotgun at Pearl until a soldier charged into him, the same one Pearl had saved, knocking the alien to the ground and proceeded to unload an entire clip into the Grunt’s cycloptic eye at point blank range, the softer cracked part of the armor that was eventually penetrated and killed the Grunt, green blood leaking out of the hole as proof.

The soldier then saluted Pearl quickly, thanking her before going to help his comrades, now wining with Lion’s help.

The pink feline had managed to get the two Grunts off of him, and their bodies laid on the ground, their armor with deep claw marks that also leaked green blood.

The last Grunt had about three humans piled onto his back, struggling to shake them off as the soldiers took out their combat knifes, stabbing the Grunt repeatedly in his exposed arms and sprayed the green blood all around.

Pearl just threw her spear at the Grunt, impaling it through its eye and killing it instantly, making fall down forward and made the soldiers get off, exhausted from the struggle while Pearl walked up to the Grunt, flipping it over on its back and took out her spear, as other soldiers just stared at the lithe Gem.

Steven came out of hiding, taking notice of the bloodbath around him, dead marines with crushed bodies and dead Grunts covered with their own blood and of others. Lion walked up to the boy to block the sight, making the boy hug the Lion tightly, while Pearl walked up right behind them.

A soldier then came to meet the Gems, possibly the leader of his group, taking notice of the strange sight before him.

“My God, the Crystal Gems.” Said the soldier, surprised to see the Gems here. “Thank god you’re here, we would have all died if not for your help.”

“Wait, you know who we are?” Asked Steven letting go of Lion, who was confused that the soldier knew who he and Pearl were.

“We’ve been living with you guys for thousands of years, you think we wouldn’t notice?”

Pearl simply blushed embarrassingly at the thought, rubbing the back of her head.

“We’re allied with humanity, Steven. There are governments out there that acknowledge our existence even after all these years. And they’re very accepting to know that they have guardians willing to help out whenever they can.”

“Just not for the public to hear, of course. People would flip if they realized aliens were living in our backyard.” Replied the soldier, taking a good look at the chaos around. “I don’t think that matters anymore though.”

“I… guess someone would notice all of the crazy adventures we go on, huh?” Said Steven, looking up at Pearl as he laughed nervously.

“We’re not as clueless as you think, kid.” Commented the soldier as he saluted to the Gems, making Pearl snap out of her thoughts. “And we know well enough that the Crystal Gems are on our side, we need all the help we can get.”

“Yeah, of course we are!” Replied Steven happily, glad to know his and Pearl’s presence helped.

Pearl cleared her throat to speak.

“Then I assume that you don’t need to keep a secret as to what you’re here for?”

“No ma’am. I’ll tell you what I’ve been told.” Replied the soldier. “We’ve received info that several small towns and cities are being attacked by an unknown force. That force being alien invaders, or Greys as we call them.”

“All over the world?” Inquired Pearl, wanting to know how massive the invasion is.

“Yes ma’am. All over the world in various locations, every continent, every region, the same aliens are invading. It started with some strange satellite malfunctions, but that was just to mask the invasion happening now.”

Pearl’s fears came true, the Hierarchy had just launched an invasion. However, this was strange even for Pearl, since the Hierarchy would be a little more patient than this, an invasion on this scale is really quick and not as great as a tactic, despite the human’s military strength against such an attack. They had to have come here for more than just an invasion.

“How bad is it?” Asked Pearl.

“The rest of the world can hold out with a joint coalition between nations, but I’m not so sure about here, even with a coalition. Delmarva is in the biggest trouble.”

Pearl was a bit shocked at that revelation.

“A lot of the invaders are attacking the entire Delmarva region, and they’re closing in on us really quickly. I don’t know why there’s so many, but the heaviest amount of alien presence is here, and it doesn’t help that this region is so close to D.C.”

“That doesn’t sound right. Why didn’t they just attack your capital? They can easily do so whenever they want for a tactical victory.” Pondered Pearl, unsure about the Hierarchy’s odd move here. “What are they playing at?”

“Excuse me? Mister Soldier?”

The soldier turned to Steven, who looked at him with concern while Pearl thought to herself as to why the Hierarchy was here.

“My friend Connie and her parents are here. Do you know where they are?”

Pearl quickly snapped out of her thoughts once more, almost forgetting the real reason they were here.

“Y-yes. We’re looking for someone important here, and I’m wondering where you humans would keep civilians.”

“We tried to evacuate civilians, but we’re not sure where they are now. A few convoys were supposed to lead them out of the city, but something is jamming all communications, so we lost contact.”

“Do you know where the convoys were supposed to evacuate the civilians at?”

The soldier pointed forward at northwest.

“There was a rendezvous at the residential areas further uptown, but that place is swarming with alien scum.”

The soldier then looked at Pearl, clearing his throat and looking down when he realized Gems aren’t exactly earthly either.

“J-just them, not you. You’re friendly with us, ma’am… I hope.”

It may have been a slim chance, but it was better than no chance. Pearl had to find these convoys and get Steven’s friend out of here, if she was still alive.

This place is a lost cause.

Pearl then gave the soldier a stern look. “Do you know where your commanding officer is?”

“We have a command post outside the city.”

“Does he have outside communication?”

“Yes ma’am. He’s far enough from whatever is jamming our coms here.”

“Go around and try to get as many of your troops out of here as possible and tell him to retreat. You’ve lost this city.”

The soldier complied with Pearl’s orders, trusting the Crystal Gem’s word since it was the closest thing he had to a superior now, and who would know better about this kind of situation than a Crystal Gem.

“Marines! You heard what the lady said, Move out!”

The soldiers complied, mobilizing themselves to move out while pearl climbed onto Lion, pulling up Steven to ride behind her.

“I hope the others are alright. This is really scary.” Said Steven, still in shock at what was going on.

“Don’t worry, Steven. We’ll find-

Pearl then looked up at the sky, seeing that something large was coming down, like some kind of meteor but much, much larger than that. Her eyes widened in shock as the object landed with a thunderous boom, right across the distance to where Connie’s neighborhood was, while smoke covered the area. The shockwave made the mobilizing troops get knocked down, as they got up and stared with the gems at what was in front.

As the smoke cleared up, deep mechanical whirring could be heard, as if some kind of large machine was moving, hearing booming noises as if it was some kind of large machine trying to get some footing.

When the smoke was cleared up, everyone stared in shock at what was in front, making Pearl go numb with fear while Steven had his mouth agape at the massive, moving object he saw, something that was far bigger than any defiler or even the transport ships, something that could reach stories high, high enough that it could easily crush the houses here.

The silent fear spoke for everyone before everyone received an answer in plasma.

Chapter 10

The plasma just misses the Gems and marines, instead it hit a nearby house in the area, blowing the majority of the building away into pieces, as debris scatters throughout the air and onto the ground.

“What the heck is that thing?” Exclaimed Steven, who still can’t believe the gargantuan object in front. “Pearl?”

Pearl knew exactly what that thing was, but she didn’t want to admit it, she hoped that she would never see it so soon. And yet here it was, standing right in front of her in its terrifying glory, the very first thing she remembers when she has flashbacks, the very thing that has caused the deaths of thousands, millions even.

The thing in front was a gigantic walker, the largest walker seen on this planet, colored in the signature crimson, the color of blood, just like everything else in the Hierarchy. It has four long, but bulky legs on the bottom, giving the walker a wide walking reach, the legs big enough to crush houses in a single step.

The upper body is even stranger, somewhat shaped like a lopsided hexagon, and has four crown hard point sockets, two on the hexagonal sides and two more on the hexagonal back of the upper body, covered by some kind of chrome white pods as attachments.

The walker’s “face” has a glowing circle in the center, around the upper part of the circle are about six glowing half ovals, appearing to be “eyes” for the walker and formed in some kind of parted circle that act as a sensor array, the face of the walker itself has some kind of double row of long spikes that act as antennas, on the sides of the hexagonal body are a pair of chrome white coolant vents sticking out that appear like horns, and from an topside view of the walker, you would be able to see some kind of glowing circular object inside the walker, possibly the primary core of the walker.

The weapons of the walker are quite numerous as well, normally equipped with six plasma cannons arranged in a triangular patter on each front side of the head, and in the center of each part of the lower bulky leg, usually revealing some kind of hard point socket on the leg as well, but is instead covered with a plasma turret on each leg, adding extra firepower and defense capabilities against foes.

Truly, it was a titan of war.

“What on God’s green earth is that?” Exclaimed a marine, just as shocked as everyone around him about the war machine.

“Habitat Walker.” Said Pearl bluntly. “The Hierarchy’s true military might is now right in front of us.”

“How the hell are we supposed to take that thing down?”

Pearl then raised her voice at the soldier.

“GO! NOW!”

The marines all around complied, with the Humvee driving away with as many marines as it could hold, while the ones on foot simply ran as fast as their legs could carry them, not daring to look back at the war machine stomping around.

Said war machine rotated its upper body around, locking onto the Gems ahead, as it began to fire plasma from its cannons on its face, launching the bright green plasma at an alarming rate.

“Lion!”

Lion quickly ran to the right side of the road, leaping forward for more momentum to dodge the incoming plasma fire, hitting the crossroads they were once on, instantly decimating whatever bodies and wreckage that was once on there, blasting it away in plasma fire.

The pink feline sprinted away, as pearl and Steven looked back to see the Habitat walker stomping around at a slow and steady pace, focusing its attention at eliminating anything around it and launched plasma from its leg turrets and face, blowing away buildings and turning them into ruin along with stomping on anything too close to its legs.

“What do we do now?” Asked Steven, hoping that he could still try to find Connie.

“Um…”

Pearl really wished Garnet were here now, she would know what to do in sticky situations like this.

But this was still very conflicting. On one hand, the whole point of coming here was to get Connie and her parents out of this mess, but with the arrival of a Habitat Walker, this complicated things.

Habitat Walkers were not just destructive engines of war with firepower, but they also required even more firepower to take down. During the Gem/Hierarchy war, several of these walkers were used in setting the stage for planetary invasions. Whenever one came down, more followed, each one requiring the power of several Gems at once to take down, fused and non-fused alike.

At least with an army of Gems, there was a fighting chance to take down the walkers, but the human’s military and the Crystal Gem’s aid would struggle just to take one down, especially now after thousands of years, given the fact that the Habitat walkers had newer technology to work with.

Steven gave Pearl a sad look, making the Gem feel guilt rush into her body.

“We’ll find your friend, I promise.”

Pearl had to give in, there was no way she could resist Steven’s sadness, and it affected her just as much when Rose would get sad.

Steven wiped away a few tears from his face, looking at where Lion was going.

“That soldier said something about convoys meeting uptown, so we should probably head towards-

Lion made the decision before Pearl, turning right once more to run further uptown.

“…here.”

“Go Lion!”

Hearing Steven cheer after brushing off death made Pearl feel a little better, but she still stared of to the side, observing the Habitat walker causing havoc and destruction, blasting away anything in front with its plasma, while Reaper drones on the side beamed up any debris to convert into resources, and had a large Grunt escort surrounding the walker.

She hoped to leave soon.

O-O-O

So far, the Gems hadn’t gotten into anything too hairy. The occasional Lost One patrol with a Grunt or two could be easily dealt with Pearl and Lion, pushing in deeper into the more urbanized parts of the city, closer to where the convoys are supposed to meet.

The city had grown more silent of gunfire and other human weaponry, replaced mainly by plasma fire and the booming footsteps of the Habitat Walker from behind, indicating the human military presence was either dead or gone at this point, abandoning the city to its conquerors.

The area around the Gems is more urbanized than others, having a much higher density of residential and commercial buildings, crammed into one another and much taller and larger than the houses from before.

Once thriving with people, it was now empty. No one was around aside for the Hierarchy military, everything here abandoned, with empty street and cars, just sitting there among the sounds of plasma and chaos.

The Gems stood silent, taking in the desolate scenery as they moved forward, Lion slowing his movement more to avoid Hierarchy patrols rather than take them on.

Familiar slurping and gurgling noises could then be heard, and Lion took quickly to hiding, running behind a car to hide with Pearl and Steven just peeking above the car to see the problem.

A pack of six Defilers were passing through the road to the left, observing their surroundings to check for any survivors while making their disturbing noises to each other, with a pair of them breaking off from their pack to walk along the road, while the others continued onward to their path.

Pearl then ducked her head, along with ducking Steven’s head with a free hand.

“Stay low.” Pearl whispered, while Lion ducked as well, slowly crawling around the car to its side so the passing Defilers wouldn’t spot them.

They merely made more of the slurping and gurgling noises, with the occasional mechanical chirping, walking along the road with their spindly legs as they observed the street, finding nothing of interest.

The Defilers then stopped in the middle of the road suddenly, and as soon as they stopped, gunshots and explosions could be heard nearby, just a few blocks to the left.

Steven gasped suddenly, making Pearl shush the boy immediately.

“Keep your voice down, they’ll hear us.” Pearl whispered silently.

“But that’s where Connie is.” Steven whispered back.

The lithe Gem eyed the direction from where the sounds are coming from, seeing that Steven was indeed right. It was the same direction where the convoys were supposed to meet up.

Then the screams could be heard.

The Defilers made rapid beeping sounds, their orb’s glowing light blinked a few times, standing in place for a while longer before moving forward at a faster pace, reaching the end of the road to turn left to join their pack, possibly to flack whatever survivors were there.

“Let’s go.”

Pearl and Steven climbed up to Lion, who proceeded to run across the street, but towards a tall building instead.

“Lion? The road’s this waaaaaah!”

Steven and Pearl gripped onto Lion for dear life, trying to stay mounted when he jumped up the building, and began to run up against the structure, somehow not cracking any of the glass windows he stepped on as the two riders clinged harder.

Lion made one more leap, landing perfectly on top of the flat roof of the building, giving the riders some relief as Steven held in the need to vomit.

“How many things can this lion do?” Asked Pearl, slightly dazed from the sudden move.

Steven gulped loudly in response.

“I don’t know. He’s always doing something new.”

Lion sprinted forward, leaping across the cluttered rooftops across to the other buildings. Seeing that they were one block away from the sounds of conflict, and observed the large gap between the building he was on and the one across, Lion was about to take another leap of faith, just lifting off when Pearl exclaimed to the feline.

“Look out!”

Lion lost his balance while leaping, mostly due to the shockwave of a Defiler’s radiation beam from the left, hitting the edge of the building where Lion leaped from and blew him down.

Pearl picked up Steven and got off Lion in midair, landing on her feet in the middle of the road with Lion landing the same way on a car by the sidewalk, slamming through the car roof but was okay.

The dismounted Gems saw the two Defilers who had previously ignored on the left, one of them now walking towards them despite being just around the corner of the chaos, while the other went on its way.

“Just one? Okay.” Thought Pearl while taking out her spear, as she quickly ran up to the Defiler, looking to draw its attention away from Steven and Lion by running close by it for a diversion.

The Defiler fell into the trick, as it targeted Pearl and unleashed its radiation beam, missing the direct hit with Pearl as it began to sweep the beam to the left, hoping to hit her other than the concrete and cars in the way.

Pearl saw out of the corner of her eye that Lion had moved on the other side of the Defiler’s flank, taking cue from Pearl’s diversion to help out while the Defiler targeted Pearl, cooling down its weapon for a few seconds to use it again.

When the two were close enough, lion let out one of his sonic roars at the Defiler’s thin legs, hoping to catch it off balance and make it fall from the shockwave of the roar. The tripod tried to stand upright, straining itself to keep its center of balance while lion continued to roar, making the Defiler push itself forward to where it was facing Pearl, by the sidewalk on its right.

The plan eventually worked, and the Defiler lost its footing, falling straight into one of the residential apartment buildings and crashed through it, head first into the apartment, giving Pearl an opportunity to take advantage of.

The lithe Gem ran up across the thin unmovable legs of the tripod, keeping her balance as she leaped on top of its body, landing on the back of the Defiler and looked to see a chrome white colored heat exhaust sticking out, making Pearl chuckle at the weak point.

“They still haven’t fixed that.” She thought to herself, as she rammed her spear through the exhaust port, and released a few energy blasts inside it.

Pearl then leaped away with grace, as the Defiler began to explode from the internal damaged, its body went up in quick green flames to show it was destroyed, its body mostly gone from the internal damage, and leaked green foggy liquid in the apartment it crashed into and on the sidewalk behind it.

“Pearl!”

The lithe Gem turned to see Steven running towards her, arms waving.

“That was awesome!” Exclaimed Steven, who saw the whole double team from afar. “You should do that when we get to Connie!”

Pearl simply frowned at the boy.

“That was not awesome. We could have gotten killed by that thing.” Replied Pearl, and looked down at Steven sternly but concerned as well. “Why didn’t you hide behind something?”

“Because you could take on that, deflator or whatever it is.” Answered Steven. “I could have helped too.”

Pearl lowered her eyebrows at Steven, not in the mood for his childish antics.

“Steven, you don’t know how powerful the Hierarchy really is. You should have hid behind something. It’s dangerous out here!”

Steven frowned at the response.

“But we go on dangerous missions all the time. What’s-

“Steven!” Shouted Pearl, not in an angry demeanor but more out of concern, wanting the child to listen to her.

“The Hierarchy are not just ordinary aliens. They are worse than the monsters we fight, worse than Home world, worse than anything this entire galaxy has ever seen!”

“But I’m a Crystal Gem! I can help out too, you know.” Argued Steven, something he wouldn’t do unless caught up in the heat of the moment. “I have my bubble, my shield, my healing powers… sometimes.”

Pearl pinched her fingers between her eyes, not in the mood to argue.

“I don’t appreciate your tone, and it’s rude to interrupt me when I’m talking.”

“But-

“No buts. Let’s go find your friend and get out of here, you shouldn’t even have to see all this.”

Pearl and Steven climbed on Lion’s back and rode off to climb the building he was supposed to jump to, still making the other Gems feel a little uncomfortable at this new ability to get used to.

The chaos in front was something to behold when they got up.

There as promised was a lost convoy, taking up the entire street block with mostly army trucks in the center that would have been used as transports, but most were either destroyed or abandoned, and were scattered along the road, there were also a few Humvees scattered around but with no occupants aside from the machine gunners, two of each on both sides of the road, covering it in a makeshift blockade close to the center. The end of the roads had two tanks on the right and four Humvees in front, while the other left end had only one tank and two Humvees, each side with about a dozen marines taking cover behind the vehicles.

Aside from military vehicles, there were also many cars that seemed to be pushed into place around the road to be used as cover, their sides facing the front of the road and even the sidewalk with a few soldiers on each of the cars, totaling with about six car covers in total, four at left and two at right, also close to the center. Small groups of three were behind the car covers, two with assault rifles and one with rocket launchers.

No civilians could be seen, but upon closer inspection, a residential building in the middle of the left side of the road had several people inside, many in a panic while six marines guarded the entrance inside, telling them to keep calm despite the situation.

The havoc being caused was mostly on the right side of the road, where marines, Humvees, and tanks fired upon at least a dozen grunts, and they had just received backup in the form of the four defilers that were passing through, surely more than enough to take out the marines.

The Defiler from the left had then started to flank from behind, who was followed up with some extra support by a large Lost One squad, fifteen to be exact as they opened fire upon the less defended flank.

“We have to save them!”

Pearl knew the humans would take casualties on either side, so she had to decide who to help first as lion leaped down, shocking the marines stationed there which made some taking cover point at the Gems to fire.

“Hold your fire!” Shouted a marine sergeant. “They’re Crystal Gems!”

Seeing that the intruders were allies, the marines quickly focused their fire back to Hierarchy, not willing to lose this position.

“Steven. Go and find your friend, now!” Exclaimed Pearl, leaping off to help the marines hold off the Hierarchy on the right.

Lion quickly leaped to the front of the residential building where the civilians were kept at, making the marines jump out of shock when Lion came out of nowhere, as if hearing the constant sounds of gunfire and plasma fire wasn’t enough hell, then a pink Lion carrying a ten year old boy must be their lucky day.

Oddly enough for them, it was.

Lion dropped Steven off before running to the left side, sprinting away to help the weakened flank against the Lost Ones and single Defiler.

“Crystal Gem?” Asked one of the marines, unsure if a child was really one of them.

“Yup. I even have my own Gem.” Answered Steven, showing the gem where his bellybutton would be.

The marines looked at each other and shrugged.

“Well then, it’s good to have you around, sir.” Said a marine, as they all saluted to Steven.

Steven thanked the marines, and took a peek inside the building to see several civilians huddled up together.

“Are those all the people?” He asked curiously.

“Yes sir. We’ve gotten as many survivors as we could.”

“I thought there would be more.”

The marine frowned at Steven’s question.

“They’re all that’s left.”

Steven then frowned back, and entered the building to see the shocked and scared faces of everyone around.

They were all scared out of their wits from everything going on. Men, women, and children alike were one day having an ordinary day, and now they were in a deadly situation, surrounded by alien invaders who want to exterminate them all.

Steven then spotted a familiar face among the crowd, who had also recognized the boy staring at her.

“Steven?”

“Connie?”

The girl was indeed Connie, who had ran up to the boy to give him a warm embrace.

Tears rolled down their faces, overjoyed to see that the two survived the attack. Connie never thought she was going to see Steven ever again, ever since this whole attack began, she had lost so much hope, her home being destroyed by aliens, her only friend not here anymore, so close to death.

But now Steven was here, and she knew that everything was going to be okay.

“Thank goodness you’re here!” Connie said, glad to see that Steve was still alive and surprised to see him here. “I thought you got attacked?”

“No way! I came here to rescue you and your parents.”

“Connie! Get back here where it’s safe!” Called out her mother, alongside her husband who nodded his head

“It’s dangerous out there and you could get hurt, or worse!” Agreed her father.

Those same words echoed in Steven’s head in Pearl’s voice, which only motivated him to prove himself even more.

“Don’t worry, Connie’s dad. I’m here to help.” Said Steven confidently.

“Where are the rest of the Gems?” Asked Connie, not seeing anyone here besides Steven, making her nervous.

Steven pointed outside with his thumb.

“Pearl and Lion are outside fighting the aliens.”

“Pearl and Lion? What about Garnet and Amethyst?”

Steven scratched the back of his head nervously.

“They’re on another mission with Peridot.”

Connie blinked for a few seconds when she heard that name.

“Wait, what?”

“I’ll tell you later.” Assured Steven, as he began to look at the civilians in front. “But we need… to get…”

His thoughts trailed off when he saw the civilians. They looked so sad to the boy, seeing them cower in fear and even a few crying broke Steven’s heart, as if they had given up all hope. He looked back outside to see the marines nervously guard the building, having a look in their eyes that showed they had no hope left.

He couldn’t leave them behind.

“We all need to get out of here.”

“All?” Inquired Connie, seeing that everyone’s attention was spurred by the boy’s response. “How are you going to get us all out?”

Steven then stopped to think, and smiled when he knew what to do.

“I’ve got an idea.”

Steven ran outside, making Connie shocked to see Steven run off suddenly.

“Steven!”

Chapter 11

While Steven ran out, he was expecting to see Lion standing by, already done with the Hierarchy being the creature he is, but he was still occupied, throwing Lost Ones across the air, knocking them down to give soldiers the chance to gun them down before they could try anything, which worked for the most part.

While they tried to use their phase modules to make a quick getaway or to go past enemy fire to shoot from behind to flank, Lion’s sonic roars were so powerful, they could even affect the phased Lost Ones and blew them away, short circuiting the devices and knocking the Lost Ones into various objects, just before being gunned down marines.

The Defiler was next. Lion raced towards the tripod, which had just fired its beam in a sweeping arc, decimating the vehicles along with anyone behind it. Lion leaped through the explosion, sticking out his claws and latched onto the face of the machine, making it stumble around blindly until letting go, landing under its legs and unleashed a sonic roar, making the Defiler lose its balance and fell backwards, landing hard on the ground.

Lion leaped onto the fallen tripod for the finishing blow, clawing at the Defiler’s orb until getting the chance to loosen it enough to rip it out with his jaws, and then roared inside the open gap, destroying the inside of the tripod and leaped away before it exploded.

Steven was about to run to Lion to congratulate him and ask him a favor, until he heard familiar roars not too far away, followed by the sounds of something leaping onto a building next to Lion.

Lion faced the intruders to see it was a pair of rage filled Brutes, who spotted Lion and roared loudly at the feline, before leaping down and slammed their muscular arms on the ground, causing small rumbles that made the soldiers around the area to feel the landing.

“Not those things again.” Said Steven, not too thrilled that Brutes were here.

One Brute decided to go after Lion, ramming the Feline across the road into the other side of the street in a car, the marines hiding behind the car escaped unscathed.

The marines around the area focused their attack on the Brutes, but it had little effect to the Brutes, even brushing off the rockets as one charged towards lion’s position, knocking away the marines next to Lion with one swing of its arm and slammed on Lion.

The other Brute simply walked towards the other three marines next to him, who kept firing until running out of ammo, and even when machine gun fire from two Humvees on the left side of the makeshift blockade, the Brute still brushed off the damage.

Just when the marines were about to get crushed, Steven got in the way and activated his shield, enlarging it and stopped the Brute from crushing its foes, clearly enraging it.

“Get out of here!”

The marines complied with Steven, running off to the center to get away, while Steven’s shield held out against the constant attacks, not giving the Brute any chance to retaliate properly.

While help from Pearl would be nice, she was preoccupied with aiding the marines at the right, barely able to hold off the Hierarchy forces attacking.

The right side was taking quite a beating, despite the constant firepower being displayed by the marines and their armored support, they had only managed to take one of the Defilers and three Grunts before the other tripods unleashed their radiation beams, one destroying two Humvees in a sweep, the other two being single blasts against one tank.

The explosions and the blowback were enough to kill about half the soldiers, while the other half struggled to keep alive, constantly stuck in their cover due to the suppressing fire of the Grunts, blasting plasma constantly at their positions.

“Humans! Fall back now! We can’t fight here any longer!” Ordered Pearl, making the Marines fall back to the center, while the marines behind the car cover continued suppressing fire from the longer range.

“Aim for the legs! Remember that!” Advised Pearl to the fleeing marines, who did the same for the others around the area.

Pearl let out a few more blasts at the Grunts, taking out two more of them until deciding to move in, the Defilers ignoring the Gem warrior and more focused on going after the last humans, finishing off the other human vehicles with a few more radiation beams while they walked.

Pearl engaged in a bloody melee with the Grunts.

One of them tried to blast Pearl away at close range, but failed when Pearl leaped backwards, hitting a fellow Grunt instead and blasted through his armor.

The Grunt tried to follow up on the attack, until Pearl threw her spear at the shotgun and into the firing chamber, causing the gun to explode and blow the Grunt back, dying from the plasma explosion and lost the spear as well.

Pearl was about to summon another spear when a Grunt took the opportunity to punch Pearl right in the gut, knocking the wind out of her and picked her up with one arm, holding her by the head and threw towards another Grunt that kicked the flung Gem, hitting her in the back and made her cry out in pain.

She struggled to get up, but was then stomped on her back by the Grunt that had kicked her, chuckling while he did so and said chittered something to the other Grunts, most likely an insult.

The Grunt rolled Pearl on her back and aimed his shotgun at her when she quickly summoned her weapon, the spear going out quickly through her forehead and pierced the Grunt’s cycloptic eye, the armor unable to stand the sudden force and speed of the spear and leaked green blood on Pearl, staining her face with the liquid and fell to the ground.

Pearl quickly flipped up when she saw a plasma grenade hurled towards her, avoiding the blast and landed across from the Grunt impaled with her spear. She merely summoned an extra from her Gem and pointed at the Grunts in a form of intimidation.

“Come at me, savages!” Screamed Pearl, filled with rage from all of the death and chaos the Hierarchy had caused. “I’ll make you regret invading my home!”

The remaining Grunts engaged Pearl, firing their shotguns to only miss when the lithe Gem leaped up, landing on top of a Grunt and rammed her spear through the top of the armor, her rage giving her a boost in her already superhuman strength.

The other Grunts fired at Pearl once more, only for her to leap off of the collapsing Grunt and land next to another of the dead aliens impaled with her spear, pulling out the weapon to use and sprinted towards her foes with great speed.

Pearl slid on her knees, dodging the blasts by making her thing body bend downward, and sliced her spear at a Grunt’s leg, detaching part of the lower leg from the alien’s body as it screamed in pain, falling down without any proper support.

The two other Grunts were not impressed by the technique, and charged at the Gem when she got up, knocking away her spear and gave her a solid punch to her face.

Before another punch was landed, Pearl blocked it with her hand, clutching her finger’s on the alien’s fist and kicked him in his knee, displacing it before doing a judo flip and making him land hard on its back.

The other Grunt was about to punch as well until Pearl sidestepped to the right, grabbing the arm of the Grunt and twisting it around his back, putting the alien soldier in a tight position.

Pearl would have let go by now, but she wasn’t the ordinary Pearl right now, she was the vengeful Pearl, the Pearl that wanted to make her enemies suffer for all of the pain and misery they had caused, and she wanted nothing more than to make these Grunts pay the price for invading her home.

In a cruel and sadistic manner, Pearl twisted the arm further, making the Grunt cry out in pain as the snapping of bones could be heard, the Grunt’s muscles being strained despite genetic mutation making him strong.

“You think you can get away with invading my home?!” Pearl exclaimed, rage filling her words as she twisted even further, with more screams of pain coming out of the Grunt. “You think you can still kill innocents like the trillions your kind had killed before?! You think I just forgot all of the life you have destroyed?!”

To finally end the struggle, Pearl used all of her rage filled strength to tear off the Grunt’s arm, making him scream louder than ever, as green blood poured out of the bloody stump of an arm, the Grunt clasping on the leaking stump as Pearl took the arm, ripping off the shotgun still attached, and drove the gun right through the Grunt’s back, impaling him with his own gun and made him collapse forward, the gun landing first and stood the Grunt somewhat balanced as green blood and guts spilled on the ground.

Pearl simply walked past the corpses of other Grunts, walking up to the one that had a spear through his head and removed it, and saw that there were still a few left alive.

“No mercy” That’s the thought that went through her head, the same thought that motivated her to pick up the other spear on the floor, duel wielding her weapons with the intent of killing.

The Grunt with the lost leg tried to crawl away, leaving a small trial of blood on the ground that made Pearl chuckle darkly at the attempt to flee, and casually walked up to the crippled alien, only to impale the alien on its back with both spears, killing it instantly before it could move any further.

Pearl saw the last Grunt on the ground behind her, grasping its broken knee and put away her spears, walking towards the Grunt with a dark look on her face frowning at the pathetic attempt to resist the pain.

The Lithe Gem kicked the displaced knee, fracturing it further to only make the Grunt cry out in pain, as he held a hand up in surrender, making stuttering chittering noises as if he were afraid, a Grunt of the Hierarchy actually afraid.

The sight just made Pearl clench her fists, getting down on her knees on top of the Grunt and proceeded to punch the alien soldier in the eye, over and over in a fit of rage and screamed out as loud as possible.

“YOU WILL NEVER WIN!”

She constantly screamed never, punching faster and harder and broke through the armor covering the face, and beat down the fleshy interior of the Grunt, each punch harder and more vengeful than the last.

Pearl lost track of time and thought, ignoring all the sounds behind her, all caught up in her hidden rage and vengeance, for all of the years that had passed, she had bottled it up from everyone she knew, and now she had the chance to release it, a chance that her weak emotions had taken, letting out all of the pain that she had hidden in this instant, along with the dark thoughts of suffering she wanted to cause to the Hierarchy.

She never let up once, not caring about the green blood covering her hands, as her fists started to go through the flesh of the Grunt, still alive to feel the Gem’s blunt force going through him with every hit, screaming for it to stop in his language while Pearl ignored, screaming out of rage and even began to cry.

The Grunt felt weak, stopping his struggle as Pearl went deeper and deeper, splattering green blood all over her clothes, not even caring how fitly she was at this moment, with the only movements from the Grunt being the sudden twitching with each hit in its now open head wound, whatever eye that was there now gone, whatever skull inside was now shattered, whatever brain that kept the alien alive was nothing but bruised mush.

Pearl let out one last scream before landing a final blow, now done with her beat down and panted heavily, shedding tears upon the corpse of the Grunt.

After what seemed like years for the Gem, Pearl had lifted her fist out of the Grunt’s wound, all covered in green blood that dripped from her pale skin, standing up and stared at her bloodied fist, opening her palm to stare at it, then looked down at the Grunt to realize what she had just done, for she had done something that she thought she would never do, something that a familiar face had predicted earlier, and that prediction was to act out in her vengeful and rage filled ways.

She gave in.

“No.” She whispered, staring at her bloody hand in fear and realization, looking around her blood stained skin and clothing, observing every little blood splatter on her, and closed her eyes in shame at the sight.

It was there she snapped back into reality, able to hear the noises of gunfire and the sounds of Defilers firing radiation beams.

“Steven!”

She sprinted back in a hurry, leaping over the wreckage of military vehicles and to the humans, back in her more calm and guardian state after letting out her inner self.

O-O-O

Steven wasn’t sure how much of this punishment he could take.

Lion tried his best to help, but he kept getting punched away by the Brute fighting him, while the fire power from what was left of the marines didn’t even scratch the Brute, though they were preoccupied anyways when the Defilers came through.

Lion had to deal with this Brute one way or another, and he had a plan when he saw the body of a marine next to him. He picked up a belt of grenades on the marine, using his claw to release the pin of one of the grenades, and charged at the Brute with the grenade belt in his jaws.

The Brute swinged its muscular arm at Lion, only to miss and roar out of anger. That was the moment when Lion let out a sonic roar, making the grenade belt fly into the Brute’s agape mouth and swallow the explosives.

The alien monster felt like choking until a series of explosives went off inside the beast, as its chest burst open from the grenades imploding and left an open hole, the Brute’s last moments used to grasp the hole and just touch the revealed broken ribcage until it fell downward.

The other Brute was close to breaking Steven’s shield when a thin figure leaped at the alien monster, impaling it through its eye with a spear, and emitted several blasts inside it, until the other side of its face was blown away in bloody chunks of green, making the Brute collapse on the side.

“Pearl!” Steven exclaimed happily, seeing Pearl land next to him, but in a sloppier manner than usual.

Then he noticed the blood covering her.

“P-pearl?”

Pearl just ignored the boy, taking a quick glance to make sure he was alright until looking back to see the Defilers coming towards their position, blasting away the Humvee gunners at the makeshift barricade.

“We need to go, now!” Demanded Pearl, not very mannerly this time around.

“What about the others?”

“Steven-

“No! I’m not leaving them!” Exclaimed Steven, running off towards the Defilers.

“No! Steven!” Screamed Pearl, chasing after the young child.

“Steven ran past the defending marines, cluttered together to make a final stand at the residential building with the civilians, with Connie only able to watch her best friend charge at the Defilers.

“Steven! What are you doing!?” Connie exclaimed.

The Defilers noticed Steven running towards them, all focusing on targeting Steven to eliminate the closest threat as they released their radiation beams.

Steven’s gem began to glow brightly.

“LEAVE THEM ALONE!”

Steve’s shield then activated at the last second, but when it was summoned, it appeared to be much larger than last time, covering most of the road and was perfect cover for everyone behind it.

The more unexpected result was that not only the beams were blocked, but they were also deflected, with each beam deflected towards another Defiler, each blast hitting the other next to it and systematically blowing each one up, their bodies exploding and went up in quick green flames and sprayed green foggy liquid all around, covering the shield until being disintegrated by the shield’s energy.

The collapsed legs were all that was left of the tripods.

Steven then put the large shield away, exhausted from spending so much energy on the large shield, but he had also saved the lives of everyone here, earning him cheers from Connie, the other civilians, and even the marines.

Pearl was the only one silent.

Not because she was amazed by Steven’s ability to create such a large shield, but because she could see in the distance of a rooftop, a familiar figure watching over her, that figure being Nufai.

He had been there the whole time, observing the battle and enjoyed every bit of it. But his favorite part had to be had Pearl had done to the last Grunts. Only he and Pearl knew of this, and Pearl knew he couldn’t be much happier.

Steven noticed the silence from Pearl and looked at the Gem in a concerned manner.

“Pearl? Are you-

“I’m fine, Steven.” Pearl quickly answered, looking around to see if any Hierarchy forces were coming their way, or if Nufai decided to come down here personally, since as soon as she turned to look at him again, he was gone.

Connie then ran up to Steven, her parents in tow as all the other civilians were escorted out by the surviving marines, all glad to have made it out, yet silently mourned their fallen comrades.

“That was amazing!” Connie exclaimed, who had never seen Steven use his shield like that before. “It’s so much cooler to see you use your shield than tell me about it.”

Steven blushed a little at the compliment.

“Heh, well… it just comes naturally.” Steven answered truthfully.

The crowd just cheered again, even Connie’s parents joined in for the celebration.

“I’ll admit, that WAS impressive.” Said Connie’s father, with the mother agreeing as well.

Lion then walked up to Steven, which reminded him of his plan.

“How are we supposed to get out of here without the aliens finding all of us?”

Steven smiled confidently at Connie’s answer.

“Easy. Who else know better about quick escapes than-

Steven pointed to Lion enthusiastically.

“LION!”

As if on cue, Lion knew what Steven wanted from him, and let out a huge sonic roar, creating a portal twice as big as the ordinary ones he can make.

Everyone except Pearl gasped in amazement at what had happened.

“Everybody go in!”

Seeing as they had nowhere else to go, and the fact that Steven saved their lives, the civilians and marines went through the portal, putting their faith and hopes in Steven to get them out of here.

“So Steven, what exactly happened here?” Asked Connie, as she and her parents walked to the portal.

“I’ll explain everything I know, and hopefully Garnet and the others are back.” Promised Steven, who followed Connie through the portal. “Come on, Pearl.”

As soon as everyone still alive went through, Pearl was about to enter until a sinister voice was heard behind her.

“Nufai knows what you did.”

She turned to see Nufai, who was very pleased with the outcome of this situation.

“Nufai enjoyed every single bit of it. Not even once, I considered to interfere and end it.” The alien replied, shuddering as if he were aroused by the carnage. “The memories will stay with me forever.”

Pearl began to shed tears, as she screamed at the alien in fury and sadness.

“YOU FUCKING MONSTER!”

Nufai laughed openly at Pearl, amused by her feeble attempts at scaring him.

“Language, frail one. You have a child to take care of.”

Pearl just clenched her fists in anger at Nufai’s horrible joke.

“LEAVE ME ALONE!”

“Why would Nufai want to do that? Your tears nourish me, your screams sing to me, your suffering is the greatest that I have seen! I will never leave you alone.”

Pearl stayed silent, letting the sadist speak his word.

“Nufai won’t follow you right now, your location is known to me anyways, and I chose to have humans play my little games at the moment.”

“But Nufai will warn you this, the Hierarchy will destroy you and your home, and they will win, one way or another. You can try all you want to defend this backwater garbage, but if there’s one thing that you won’t have taken besides everything you care about, your suffering will be never ending. That, Nufai can promise you.”

Pearl still stood silent, letting Nufai continue on with his twisted words.

“Nufai can kill you right now, but it is too early, not a good opportunity for us to spend time together. Nufai wants it to be more special than this, more meaningful, more erotic.”

Nufai walked up to Pearl, putting his large hands on Pearl’s shoulders.

“If it pleases you, the child can join in. Fresh blood is always-

Pearl swung her held spear at Nufai in anger, just missing a few inches from chopping his head clean off.

“Feisty, are you? Nufai hopes you’re always like that.”

The sounds of incoming orbital objects could be heard, as two of them had just landed around the vicinity of where Pearl and Nufai were, both Habitat Walkers ready to destroy as they began destroying everything around them.

“Just a little too late for your doom here, perfect.” Nufai commented, seeing that the walkers were heading to the portal.

“You should go now. Nufai does not want you hurt, by them.”

Pearl only had one reply before stepping into the closing portal.

“Burn in hell.”

As Pearl disappeared, the Habitat walkers broke away from their gone target, now focusing on destroying the environment around them, while Nufai chuckled at the venomous reply he had received, as if he were glad to hear it.

“Only with you, my Pearl.”

Chapter 12

In deep space, further away from earth was an armada beyond proportions.

This armada was the Hierarchy mining fleet, the pinnacle of invading forces trained to strip mine entire worlds of their resources, filled with hundreds and maybe even thousands of transport saucer ships, acting not only as transports but also as supply and military ships, able to provide plenty of firepower and carry the fleets resources, while there were several command ships close by, having a tightknit formation in the armada.

But by far the largest and most powerful of the fleet, the Hierarchy mothership, dwarfing every other ship in the armada and was THE capital ship, right in the center of the cluster of saucers.

The mothership had the saucer design just like every Hierarchy ship, but could easily be as big as a city, capable of holding not just transport ships, but also command ships and entire armies. The ship also had a similar design to the saucers, colored blood red and had a large circular structure on the center of the bottom, but it was more of a smooth disc shape and did not have as many gaps as the smaller variants, the top part of the ship extended higher with a large dome shape, indicating that it was the main bridge area that housed the most important figures on the ship.

Those figures aboard were the real leaders of the fleet.

On the large bridge of the mothership, right at the center of the dome, stood one of these figures, one that was quite large, watching over the activity on the bridge. Crew members going around and operating computers or passing by to other areas of the ship, while small glowing orbs with tiny legs crawled around the top and walls, spraying some kind of neon green fluid all over the surfaces, with the fluid disappearing as soon as it was released.

The figure stood at the center of the bridge area, which was also the highest point in the bridge, on a large disc shaped platform with wide stairways around to make walking around easier. The figure itself truly stood out among the Hierarchy, not just because the individual’s size was almost twice the size of the mutated Brutes, and not just because the colors the figure bore on its armor are black instead of red, not even because of the strange armor the figure had, but he stood out because of who he was.

Commander Orlock.

Commander Orlock the Eternal being his full title, Orlock was not like the ordinary Hierarchy general just by his appearance alone. The strange armor he wore is more than that, but is an armored battle platform, a powerful battle suit that gave Orlock not only a powerful offense and defense in combat, but also saved his life on numerous occasions.

The battle suit appeared to be not of ordinary Hierarchy design, appearing to have most of his body covered in the latest version of molecular armor colored in black, but there are a few gaps that reveal the chrome white robotic limbs underneath, specifically at the middle of the suit’s legs, a few smaller gaps at the middle of the arms between some more armor, along with a few extra gaps on the left arm, and the majority of the chest area as well, which also revealed some kind of circular glowing red sphere, possibly the core of the suit. It did not make the suit that vulnerable, while sacrificing armor, the gaps provided more free movement to the limbs to allow more fluid actions.

The suit’s built appearance had a similar look to some Hierarchy biological traits. It had three mechanical digits on the legs, the legs themselves also had the forward bent appearance, somewhat like a bird’s, the torso for the most part was large and bulky, yet had enough fluidity and free movement to move properly, the arms were each different with a custom appearance by Orlock himself.

Both arms had cylinder like “hands” with glowing circular patterns at the ends, a small circle on the center inside a larger circle, with three mechanical digits on the left hand and twice as many on the right, both hands had the digits extended outward like the hands, the left arm’s main difference from the right was the upper part, which had a few gaps on the shoulder’s armor like a pauldron of sorts, and had a large plasma cannon attached on the top of the shoulder, while the right arm had its digits twice as long and the hand is more larger, with a small red glowing mechanical tube attached on the base of the black armor at the end to the chrome armor in the gap, possibly giving the right arm more power than the left.

The torso had its red power core in the chrome white armor at the front, the back is covered with the black molecular armor and appears to be in a hunched position like a typical Hierarchy alien, but the armor was still in a straight up position despite the appearance, and between the shoulders of the suit were circular chrome white nodes, their use may be for venting heat or attaching other parts if Orlock wishes to do so.

The head of the suit had an extended neck stretching downward to a forward facing direction just above the black molecular armor of the torso, a pair of red glowing mechanical tubes were attached to the bottom of the extended neck close to the head, connecting to the front sides of the chrome white torso, the face of Orlock had no actual face, but was instead a small glowing circle with three lines in a triangle pattern, one line pointing up and slightly longer than the two smaller lines on the left and right that pointed downward to the bottom left and right, acting like some sort of visor.

Orlock was an intimidating figure to behold, yet his reputation was not as frightening as his appearance.

“Commander. We are close to the planet Earth.” Informed one of the crew members to the towering figure. “We should arrive in about two weeks.”

“Thank you, advisor.” Replied Orlock, with a deep and somewhat booming voice, with genuine emotion to Orlock’s speech. “Anything from Nufai?”

“Yes, sir. He has sent the fleet an assessment of the planet’s defenses, the report indicates that the sentient species inhabiting the planet have archaic technology, the humans as they are called, still use gunpowder weapons and have only applied nuclear energy for power sources and military in minimal usage. Nufai’s forces are more than capable with dealing with the humans.”

Orlock was not impressed by the technology, no matter how primitive or advanced it may be, he preferred a foe with strong will like himself, but it was interesting that humans had such primitive technology and were willing to fight regardless.

“How close is the resistance to breaking?” Asked Orlock, as the advisor quickly skimmed through the important details.

“Oddly enough, the humans have been retaliating quite well despite the technological gap and are at a mild disadvantage. The report indicates that the humans have united together against Nufai’s forces.”

Orlock pondered briefly on that sentence, wanting to see for himself how the humans managed to put the Hierarchy forces there in such a state, which he hadn’t seen for a long time. Maybe these humans were tougher than they sounded.

“And what about these Crystal Gems I’ve heard about? Are they aiding the humans?”

“The rebel Gems are aiding the humans despite their minimal numbers.”

Orlock was curious about the Crystal Gems, wanting to know more about them since while there were only four of them left according to a previous report about Nufai’s first encounter, they could actually put up a fight against forces far superior then them.

It would be an interesting experience for Orlock to fight such mighty warriors in combat. He has heard of Gems and even read up on what history of them was recorded in databanks, a race of celestial beings with strange powers, and one of the few races to defeat the Hierarchy in a war, something that Orlock had always admired and respected about the Gems.

He had even looked up history of the Gem who led them to victory, Rose Quartz, a leader that Orlock secretly admired and respected, and even hoped to meet one day, since she was a main inspiration for him as a commander.

Orlock continued to ask questions to his advisor.

“What is known about these Crystal Gems?”

“From what Nufai has gathered, they are rebels from their home world.”

“And what about the Gem prisoners we captured from one of their colony planets earlier? Anything new?”

“Yes. We learned that the Home world had taken after our empire’s resource gathering, changing their ways and becoming more technologically advanced as we have seen earlier. The planets they had colonized were once filled with life until they used the life for resources.”

Orlock was disappointed and even saddened by the change the Gems went through, wanting to fight the Gems he read in the databanks, the noble and honorable warriors, not wannabe Hierarchy tyrants.

“Is that why these Crystal Gems revolted?”

“The prisoners said these Crystal Gems revolted because of the changes they made, and engaged in a bloody civil war on Earth thousands of years ago, with Rose Quartz as the leader of the rebellion. They wanted to preserve life instead of destroy it.”

Now that caught Orlock off-guard. Rose had betrayed her own kind for preserving life, which was very bold and risky. It made Orlock even more fascinated of the Gem.

“I assume they won?”

“The war ended with major casualties on both sides, but yes. Nothing else is worth noting, but there is still more records of the information I haven’t shared if you want to read it.”

Orlock graciously said yes.

“Of course! These Crystal Gems sound like great warriors.”

The advisor cocked his head at the statement, which Orlock noticed.

“They may have betrayed their kind, but they had noble intentions. Making a stand for just beliefs is what brings true honor, more honor than these home world Gems. They stood their ground and emerged triumphant against their foes and had Rose Quartz, a great leader worth serving under. These Crystal Gems are what we should follow.”

Orlock knew what he was saying would land him in trouble with the Hierarchy, but the crew at the bridge were more loyal to the general rather than the Overseers, so they saw Orlock’s point.

The general then focused back to more important questions, trying not to get caught up in his words.

“Nufai’s mission was to scout ahead and begin an early mining operation to eliminate these Crystal Gems. Is there any progress on that?”

“Nufai said in the report that he will kill them eventually.”

“Eventually, he says.” Said Orlock with doubt. “If he even believes his own words.”

Orlock had nothing personal against Nufai. Sure, he knew Nufai hated his guts for what he stood for, and the fact that Nufai is not exactly the most stable individual around, but nothing against him as long as he stayed out of his way. It wasn’t easy to not run into him however. Apparently, Nufai has a knack for Hierarchy engineering and is always around the engineering bay where Orlock goes for repairs or upgrades for his suit, and Nufai is always seen there either preparing, repairing, or operating some kind of device with the engineers when not on missions.

A grease monkey was the last thing the general would have associated Nufai as, and he was glad Nufai wasn’t the one putting his claws on his suit.

“You have doubts about Nufai?” Asked the advisor, before quickly apologizing for asking such a question. “Forgive me, commander. I did not mean to-

“You know you can always ask me questions, Zylos. I am not offended by them.” Assured Orlock, as he answered Zylos’s question. “As for Nufai, he could make a great commander if not for his whole attitude towards his opponents.”

“Nufai? As a commander? But he is a little… disturbing, to say the least.”

“Unfortunately, that is what holds him back from his potential. That, and he toys with his foes too much and considers war as a big game rather than a serious matter.”

Orlock already got the message that Nufai was shady and not to be trusted. He is disturbed and disgusted by the psychotic behavior and conversations, but not scared like everyone else. One day, Nufai could have a normal conversation with the general about any new device for the Hierarchy or repairing a walker or even operating any new devices and gloat about it, while the next day Nufai would be talking about blood raining from the skies and his pleasures from gutting someone alive and eating their intestines.

It wasn’t a surprise why everyone tries to avoid Nufai.

Orlock was the only one that actually attempts to talk to Nufai in a normal conversation, but he makes sure to watch what he says since Nufai is Kamal’s personal spy and advisor, a second pair of eyes and ears, one wrong thing and Orlock’s words could be twisted and used against him in case Kamal needed to.

The colossal commander preferred to talk to the soldiers anyways, he liked to socialize with his troops to understand them not only to know how to lead them, but to also keep himself sane from all of the wars he has fought in his long life, and even make some actual friends too, like his advisor Zylos who still referred to Orlock as commander out of respect. Orlock was the only general in all of the Hierarchy’s history that even bothered, let alone cared about the armies under his command.

But perhaps the greatest feat of Orlock is his strong sense of honor. The general had always valued honor above all else ever since he was in the military, and despised the deceptive and cruel tactics of ordinary Hierarchy leaders. Orlock wanted to be better than that, and he did so without interference by the Overseers, who were too impressed by the general’s supreme tactics and skill, while other generals grew jealous and hated the commander, accusing him of stealing the glory instead of earning it the “proper way”. Orlock didn’t really find it “proper” to send soldiers into slaughter without consideration or empathy, valuing his soldiers as much as honor and had his own way of leading and earning his way to his position.

Its things like Orlock’s compassion towards his soldiers and his strong sense of honor that have created his legendary reputation in the Hierarchy.

Orlock’s presence made things on the bridge much more comfortable for the crew here, hell it made the entire ship comfortable, much more than Nufai along with the actual leader of the mining fleet aboard now, Kamal Re’x, whose presence inspires fear and intimidation into the crew, while Orlock does the exact opposite.

Orlock knew of this very well ever since he first met Kamal.

Before he was assigned to the mining fleet, Orlock was a general of his own fleet himself, leading his armies to victory in another galaxy, now consumed by the Hierarchy’s hunger for resources and power. He is honored and praised throughout the entire empire, granted numerous titles such as general of the galactic fleet, annihilator of a thousand worlds, and most famously of all, the Eternal.

Orlock was reassigned to Kamal’s fleet by order of the Overseers since Kamal needed a chief of security for his forces. While Kamal graciously accepted Orlock and sucked up to his superiors in an act to ensure a position as an overseer, both he and Orlock knew why the Overseers did this in the first place.

That was a thought Orlock shook out of his head, rather wanting to focus at the task at hand than to remember the past.

“But I can’t forget the past.” Thought the metal colossus to himself, thankful that Kamal was not around.

The first time Orlock met the underseer had to be one of the worst experiences of his entire life.

He had heard about the reputation of Kamal Re’x the abductor, an egotistical and greedy underseer who mysteriously made his political opponents disappear, which fitted his title very well. Kamal was always sucking up to the Overseers in the hopes of becoming one of them, doing everything in his power to prove that he had the potential to become one of them, going into extreme lengths to prove that point.

On the very first day he met Kamal, he was demanded to bow to him as if he was some sort of king, but he merely greeted him the same way he greets other underseers.

Kamal demanded Orlock to bow, but the commander responded by saying he would only bow to an Overseer, and Kamal was not one of them. Kamal, infuriated with the commander’s wise crack but correct fact, was about to accuse the commander of defiance until the Overseers stepped in, not wanting to create a political incident about a meaningless argument, and told Kamal to show the general more respect or else.

But Orlock hated Kamal for more than his large ego and big talk, he hated Kamal for the way he treated his soldiers, constantly throwing them and Orlock in harm’s way. Many of the planets in this galaxy that had been mined came at the cost of many soldiers, always being sent into suicide missions to fulfill Kamal’s ambitions as quick as possible just to gain more power and influence with the Overseers, and Orlock remembered the response from Kamal that cemented his hate for the underseer after one such suicide mission.

“Why would you care for your soldiers so much? They are but tools created to serve and die for the Hierarchy. Their lives mean nothing and their existence is pointless if they do not achieve the goals they are tasked to do, whether they die or not. If you want to act this pathetic and cry about their deaths, just keep in mind they died this easily because they were weak to begin with. Now stop being so pathetic and act like a general.”

“Commander! Incoming transmission from Kamal Re’x!”

Speak of the devil, a large holographic screen appeared in front of Orlock, showing the image of Kamal Re’x.

“Kamal.” Greeted Orlock complacently, much to Kamal’s disappointment that the general did not bow.

“Commander.” Replied the underseer with a seething tone. “You still refuse to bow to your rightful master?”

“As always.”

Kamal was tempted to go to Orlock personally and crush him for his snarky comment, but he had other matters to attend today.

“If I had time, you wouldn’t need legs to bow to me.”

Orlock just brushed off the empty threat, knowing that as much as Kamal wanted to kill him, he couldn’t since he needed him alive.

“Have we arrived to the garbage planet called earth? I’ve been preoccupied all day on my little… project, and have lost track of time.”

Orlock had to hold back the urge to make a sarcastic comment before responding in his usual polite and obedient tone.

“We are only two weeks away from our destination.”

“And Nufai still hasn’t completed his mission I assume?”

“No. He sent a report that the Crystal Gems are resisting his forces and have allied with the humans.”

“Only the weak band together against hopelessness.” Commented Kamal. “When we arrive, be sure to destroy every last bit of resistance. The purification of this galaxy and the extermination of the Gems is a spectacle I wish to see fully.”

“Of course, sir.”

“And if these Crystal Gems are still alive when we get to Earth, you can have the “honor” of slaying them. Then bring their remains with the others.”

“Honor?” Inquired Orlock, picking up on Kamal’s sarcasm when he said the word. “There is no honor for you to give me.”

Kamal lurched forward at the screen in anger, not in the mood to have a long argument, but Orlock stood his ground against the ambitious tyrant.

“Have you forgotten that I am in charge of this operation, commander!?”

“No, sir.”

“Have you forgotten why questioning me gets you nowhere!?”

“No, sir.”

“Have you forgotten why you are even here!?”

Orlock responded back with hidden venom rather than the usual complacent tone.

“No... Sir.”

Kamal went back from the screen, as the entire crew stayed silent in the awkward and heated argument between their commander and the underseer, as Kamal calmed himself down but still spoke in his seething tone.

“I think you did forget, and I have many thoughts as to why. So I will remind you.”

Orlock wanted to punch the screen at this moment, but he knew better than that, so he had to endure Kamal’s consistent arguing and let him speak his word, even if it meant making his already large ego larger.

“The reason you’re here, is because of your so called progression ever since your little “incident” all those years ago.” Said Kamal, implying heavily on the word incident. “The Overseers can put up with your compassion and empathy, but your slowed military activity and your little comments about our ways goes too far, even for them. They brought you here because you need to learn the basics of being a real Hierarchy general once more.”

“I know how to be a leader, Kamal.”

“No. no you don’t.” Disagreed the underseer. “We all know that you’ve gone soft. You claim to have opened your eyes, but you have actually blinded yourself further than ever. You have forgotten what the Hierarchy means and because of that, you’ve become weak like our foes. Your reputation being your only saving grace from the Overseers.”

Orlock stayed silent, not wanting to anger Kamal further at this point.

“If I had my way, I would break you and put you back together again, just so I can break you again. I’ll even sic Nufai on you just for good measure.” Threatened the underseer, finishing his statement with Orlock in silence. “The Overseers and yourself most of all once believed you had honor, even if I didn’t believe in it, you had something in you once. And yet here you are, lamenting about your victories and calling them sins. But I will make you learn again, commander, and you will thank me when I remind you what your honor was.”

Orlock stood silent still, not bothering to respond as he was now in deep thought, while the awkward silence made the crew nervous and fearful of what could happen next.

Kamal broke the silence once more.

“Now tell me, commander. What is your purpose?”

“I live to serve.” Responded Orlock with an obedient tone, which masked the true malice he felt.

“Good. Now you can go lament in silence to get it out of your system, just not in front of me. Just thinking about weakness makes me want to regurgitate.”

“We will keep course and will arrive to earth in two weeks, sir.” Replied the commander.

Kamal simply waved his hands nonchalantly, his ego satisfied.

“Then I will let you carry on, as shall I with my own “honorable” purposes.” Mocked Kamal.

Before Kamal closed the transmission, he wanted to make one last statement.

“When you reach earth, the destruction of the weak will make you remember what honor is.”

Orlock kept his words in his thoughts instead of saying them out loud.

“No… It won’t.”

The transmission finally ended, Orlock was now in deep thought after the conversation, while the crew carried on with their business, as the colossal general had to be in his thoughts once more to try to suppress his inner demons, the crew unable to read Orlock for obvious reasons.

Orlock wanted to have honor again, he wanted the same kind of honor that Rose Quartz and the Crystal Gems had, he wanted to act like the glorious commander of the Hierarchy again, he wanted to lead real victories against enemies of the Hierarchy and have glory once more, and he wanted to believe in the Hierarchy again.

But he had doubts.

He couldn’t act like a commander again because he never felt like a commander, but more of a monster instead, he couldn’t lead real victories again because his victories felt like defeats, ending with the mass slaughter of his soldiers and the genocide of life, he couldn’t believe in the Hierarchy because the Hierarchy he thought he believed in was never there, but it was all a lie that they told him and a lie he told himself. He couldn’t have any honor at all in all of this, because he was still searching for it, because he realized a vital question that haunts him like the bloodshed and chaos he caused.

Did he ever have honor to begin with?