It was a long, hard day of jumping, running, and strumming for fighting a giant bird, but we finally did it. The crystal gems and I were standing in a now giant empty nest with Garnet's hair full of feathers.
"Amethyst, that egg is too big, we can't take that back with us." Pearl had said to Amethyst as she approached the moon goddess statue.
"You doubt me too much P." Amethyst shot back as she held up a giant as big as her. We didn't really have time to catch our breath as we got back to the house by portal. when we did get back, Steven was in the house with a package in his arms.
"Hello Steven." Garnet greeted Steven with her usual cool tone of voice while I just waved and Pearl scolded Amethyst about not needing the egg and how it won't fit in the fridge.
"What? I got this," she pulls the one shelf that was carrying the milk and bagels and threw it on the ground. This gave her more space to work with, putting the egg in the fridge, although taking up all of it. "Look it fits." She said slamming the fridge door, though I may have heard a big cracking sound from inside of it while she was listing every giant egg based food item. This made Pearl look at her a certain way.
"We fought a giant bird," she turned back to Steven. "We're only here for a second, we've got to go back out." Steven only asked why in disappointment.
"We have to place this Moon Goddess statue on the top of the Lunar Sea Spire before midnight, without it, the whole place will fall apart," Pearl begins to reminisce about the prime of the sea spire with a holographic projection out of her gem. "Oh Steven, you should have seen it in it's heyday. It was an oasis for gems on Earth. It's abandoned now, but we can still save it with this statue." Steven gets stars in his eyes, saying how perfect it is, leading to a questioning Pearl.
"Because I can help carry it for you, in this." He goes to open the package that was in his arms with sound effects, revealing a...cheeseburger? backpack? both? You've got to love his showmanship.
"It's a novelty backpack, shaped like a cheeseburger. Aww I blew it. I was just gonna wear it one day, and you guys were gonna be like, 'Dang Steven that's so cool.' But this is obviously important Gem business." Steven had said and I couldn't help but snicker.
"Yes, so you should let us take care of it."
"What, I'm a Gem." Steven lifted up his shirt to reveal his Rose Quarts gem, shifting his eyes at it then back at us multiple times.
"But you've still got a lot to learn." Amethyst interjected with the fact that he should come with us. She waved her hands and said that it would be educational.
"She's right you know, how is he supposed to learn without any experience." I had interjected, helping Steven's case. Pearl had thought it over, but relented and told him that he can carry it in his hamburger. As Steven had set his backpack down to put the statue in, he realized that every thing, including the cheese is a pocket. that lead him to try and find everything he could around the house to put in it. Bagels, a sweater, a kite, inflatable raft and everything in-between. Meanwhile, everyone else and I had walked over to the warp pad. He seemed to be taking a little too long, which lead to Pearl yelling out his name.
"Steven, let's goo," she had said in a sort of rhythmic pattern. His bag was almost about to burst, leading Pearl to wonder if he had packed his whole room and Amethyst commented to "Back that thing up."
"Let's warp." Garnet said. The warp pad began to wrap a light blue energy around us, but Steven was cutting off the connection with his gut.
"Suck it in Steven." He followed Amethysts command and the connection was complete. As we were warping, Steven was floating around while Pearl asked him if he remembered how to do this. He only laughed as his head was poking out of the barrier of light. This lead Pearl to bring him back in, and lead me to laugh. When we got to the Sea spire, Steven fell back onto the floor and there was a giant wall of water surrounding the large area that we were in. And while Steven was in awe of what he saw, everyone else was looking with saddened faces.
Looking up, each level of the spire had windows that was formed into a ramping design going up along with the building. The Spire had giant pieces falling off of it, coming to more ruin by the minute. Pearl had said that it wasn't like this a hundred years ago. I never really saw it back then with them, but the way she described it made it sound pretty chill.
"I'm sensing structural instability." Garnet pointed out. Steven added that that was never good. Unknown to him, the ground that he was on that was near the edge was about to break loose. leading Pearl to tackle him out of the way as the chunk of ground fell towards the water. This only made Pearl hold onto Steven in a protective way, saying that we should take him back. With a hard squeeze, we heard something make noise in Steven's backpack. Steven hopped out of her grasp, reach into his bag, and pulled out his doll named Mister Queasy, shaking him up and down.
"Kid you're killing me." Thank you Mister Queasy for saying what I was thinking
"Steven, this place is your heritage. I want you to stay and help but you've really got to take this seriously. Can you do that Steven?" Steven replied with a goofy smile and a thumbs up.
"You got it dude."
"Y-yeeessss." Which sounded as unsure as she was showing... which was a lot.
"Enough. We have to move." Garnet had ordered. Thus the start of our trek up the tower had started. As we came up to the tower, Garnet had stopped us.
"What's the hold up, we could clear this easily." Amethyst sounded confident enough, but Garnet had to have stopped us for a reason.
"No, the magic that sustains the whirlpool creates a vortex that will pull us below." Just to prove her point, she picked up a rock and threw it over the whirlpool gap, but the rock instantly fell to the water below. Now the only question was how we were going to cross the gap. Steven apparently had an idea to our problem. Setting his bag down, he pulled out two sweaters. Amethyst questioned what they were for and he answered that they were originally for keeping warm, but now he tied them together and threw one around a loop over the entrance. Which feels like that shouldn't work, considering that Garnet had just gave an example with the rock.
Steven took the other end of the sweater chain and gathered his courage. We all knew what he was going to do, so we all tried to stop him but it was too late. He jumped off of the edge of the ground and was getting pulled into the vortex. I don't know how he did it, but he ran up the side of the wall with his sweater chain. Best not to think about it I guess.
"Steeveen, way to go!" Amethyst had yelled over to him. She took Steven's lead and hooked her whip on the same spot that Steven wrapped his sweaters on and grabbed all three of us and swung to Steven's side. I guess today is the day for improbabilities to happen. Pearl slightly raised her voice towards Steven to never do that again. Garnet, Amethyst, and I pass him by; Giving him a tousle of his hair, a friendly bump, and a thumbs up respectively. Meanwhile, Pearl came up behind Steven and I heard a faint congratulations of how great the plan was.
Walking through the bottom level of the spiral and to the stair case, I saw how everything was in shambles with mounds of rocks, moss, and cracks everywhere. Everything that Pearl had seen while walking through, she gave a mumbling of disapproval, saying how one thing or another shouldn't be where it is now as we went up the stairs. This didn't mean much to me, considering how this is my first time here and seeing all the intricate carvings that were still here was good enough for me.
"Oh this didn't use to be so...and the water damage, this pillar," She went on until she had found a statue. "Oh and this had a head. Oh Steven, once the statue is in place, it will return all of this to it's former glor..a ah aaah a AAHHAAHH!" I look back and saw that Pearl had sliced the statue in half, saying that there were Crystal Shrimp.
"You guys, we've got a problem." Amethyst had called back to the both of them. I look back to what she was talking about.
"What sort of...woah." Pearl and Steven came up and saw what she was talking about.
"It's an infestation, and we have to pass through there to get to the top." Steven was about to touch one of them but Pearl stopped him saying that their shards are deadly. She began to make a plan where Amethyst and I would go to separate corners of the room and disturb them with a spinning whip attack and a sweeping axe attack from me, Garnet to go to the ceiling and hit a certain spot. That would allow her to go forward and...
"BAGEL SANDWHICH." Steven interrupted her and threw two Bagel sandwiches at two different points in the room. This lured all of the Crystal Shrimp to away, breaking open a path for us to cross. Pearl was in shock of how well that worked and asked how Steven knew it would.
"Well if I were a shrimp, that's what I would do." Amethyst replies that he is a shrimp. With that said, we all head off with Pearl saying that her plan would have also worked. We got to the next level and Garnet stopped us and a wave of water came crashing through the wall, causing a strong current of water flowing out of the wall
"What are we gonna do." This prompted everyone to look at Steven to see what he would pull out of his bag. Steven look asking why we were looking at him.
"Come on Steven, open up that magic sack and take out what'll do the trick." I had told him. Amethyst starts chanting 'cheeseburger backpack.' and everyone goes to join in on the chant with Steven check around in his bag. He finally found the thing he needed to get around this situation; an inflatable raft that sound's gre...wait.
"Steven, that's so sensible." does Pearl not see what's in front of us when she says that.
"Uh, actually guys, I don't think that..." it was too late though as Steven threw the now inflated raft into the current and we all stand there as it floats down the waterfall. All seemed lost as we saw that the raft was now gone. Garnet however found a better way to get across. She had kicked the bottom part of a pillar that was near the stream off and elbowed the top part so that it could make a makeshift bridge over the water.
"Good Idea anyway Steven." Garnet had said to raise his spirits and Amethyst told him that they couldn't all be winners. It took a couple more levels, but we finally reached the top. The view was magnificent, we could see over the giant hole that the Spire was in and see that we were in the ocean with the water falling in like it were trying to fill the void as the moon and stars were out to greet us.
Finally, there it was. The pedestal that we were looking to place the Statue in.
"The moon is almost overhead, it's not too late to save this piece of history." Pearl had exclaimed while Garnet had told Steven to get the statue out. Steven searched his bag, then paused. He went back to searching, but more frantically. This lead Amethyst to ask what the hold up was.
"...I don't have it." A collective gasp was heard from all of us, Steven left the Statue on the bed. The moon was close to it's position, we had no time to go back to get it. Steven had gotten another idea. Mr. Queasy. Amethyst had wondered out loud if it could work, leading Garnet to give a shrug. Steven approached the pedestal with his sickly looking toy and placed it on said pedestal, leading to a beam of light to shoot up to the moon that was now directly in place. The toy began to float in the air. This lead us to believe that it was working. But the toy was shaking violently and exploded. The Spire began to shake like an earthquake with the sea now closing in on the Spire. The Spire began to crumble with everyone tumbling over.
In an instant, the last chunk of land that we were on was swallowed up, and us with it. A few moments later and we all began to surface from the water. I also saw that Steven was beginning to blame himself.
"This is all my fault, I broke it."
"No Steven, the Spire was falling apart when we got here. You handled everything well under pressure. You did great." Pearl had said raising his spirits. Amethyst chimed in with how fifty percent of his ideas worked. This got him out of his slump and an area of the sea began to bubble up and soon revealed the raft... I never thought that I would see that thing ever again. Steven cheered, we all got on, we started chanting cheeseburger backpack, and Garnet said that it was a three hour paddle home. Now there's silence.
"Anyone want a wet bagel?" Steven had the right idea, I pulled out a violin from my gem.
"How about a sea shanty?"
Well that's done looking back on the older episodes, they really took a more whimsical approach with the art. Hope you all are having a good day.