NOVEL NEXT Chapter 31: Chapter 30: Fighting Against the Tide
Summary: Lets save the ocean, with action and conversation!
Pearl was silent as she walked, ignoring the awkward tension as best as she could. "So …" Star started. "It may have gotten … a little out of hand."
"You released a homeworld gem that took the earth's ocean." She deadpanned.
"You were about to kill her!" Ste-Quartz argued instantly.
"We weren't going to kill her." Sapphire spoke calmly. "Just bubble her, like the Gem Monsters."
"...Could you have said that EARLIER!?" Kelly screamed. "You said dispose, which means destroy, and that means death!"
"... Ah." Pearl nodded. "I do see a bit of error in our wording there." This entire conflict could have been avoided if they worded it right.
"I would have set her free anyway." Quartz said. "She just wants to go home, and she wasn't like those monsters, she could still think and feel, and putting her in a bubble would just be horrible, because she'd be all alone."
"And now she's heading to the planet of evil Gems that think this planet is dead, and having that as the only reason they don't come back." Ruby pointed out.
"Planet…so…you guys are aliens?" Marco asked.
"I could have sworn we went over this, but maybe you weren't there." Pearl started. "We have a homeworld, where Gems originate from, and after we used up all the resources there they started to colonize other planets, draining their life essence to make more gems."
"And also those monsters we fight were gems too." Amethyst spoke up. "Just had their mind messed up and stuff."
"Some of them were close friends …" Sapphire looked up. "We fought alongside them and had merry times …"
"Look, I get it, a lot of horrible things happened today, jumping to conclusions, wrong decisions being made, but the point is that we all fought each other, and that led to the ocean disappearing." Tad, for once, actually helped a conversation go in a more desirable direction.
"Yes." Pearl noted. "However, I don't see why. She wanted to head to homeworld, she's a Lapis, she could have just flown there."
"Her gem was still cracked when I freed her." Quartz recalled. "Her eyes were really glassy looking too. I don't think she's at full power like this."
"So she's doing it manually." Sapphire spoke. "I see a tower of water leaving the planet … she's going to use the Earth's ocean as a makeshift spaceship." Well that was a dangerous problem. "Even on the off chance she can make it work, by the time it does, she'll drain every bit of water from this planet and it'll dry out and decay in a matter of weeks.
"So … what's the plan?" Marco asked hesitantly.
"The same plan we always have." Pearl spoke. "We fight and bubble her to stop this."
"No, we're not going to bubble her." Quartz stood in front of them with a fierce look.
"... Quartz." She spoke sternly. "If she heads to homeworld they'll come back with an army. One deadset on destroying all organic life and fully willing to shatter Gems that rebel against them. Is one free life worth that to you?" She laid down the facts, before walking past him. "Rose sacrificed her life for this world, and you, I'm not letting it go to waste."
"Well I'm not Rose, and if I can stop one person from suffering like Lapis has, I'm going to take it." Quartz turned away and hopped on Lion. "I'll be back later. I need a minute to think."
"...Awkward." Amethyst whistled. "Go team." Pearl found herself agreeing with the sarcasm for once.
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Star walked up to Lion, jumping on him. "Well your mirror is gone." The group had started to walk forward on the vast empty ocean floor, but for the past two hours or so, Quartz had been quiet, not ever bringing along his ukulele to play a travel song to pass the time.
"Yep." The boy muttered.
"So … wanna vent to me?" She leaned on her brother's back. "Come on, I can be the new mirror. Just say whatever you want to say out loud."
"What's so wrong with just not wanting to see someone trapped in a prison? I mean, do they even know Lapis, do they know the kind of person she is? Why do they assume that just because she's from homeworld, that makes her evil?"
"…. Well to me, she seems like a fun person, scared of being trapped, and willing to murder everything other than you if it ment getting what she wanted." Star spoke bluntly.
"Exactly, she became my friend! The gems are from homeworld, right? If they can be good people who protect this planet, why can't Lapis just be a good person that wants to be free."
"… I thought the Mewmans were good people too." Star admitted. "And monsters were bad people." She continued. "Now I just kinda think … people are good and leaders are jerks."
"Mom's not a jerk…she's really stern and maybe a little control hungry, but I wouldn't call her a jerk." That was putting it lightly. "I don't even know how to feel about Rose Quartz by this point. I keep getting different pictures everytime I ask somebody."
"… Well everyone does good and bad things." Star stated. "She probably just lived long enough to do a lot of both." The older sister sighed. "Do you ever regret it? Do you ever think about what life would be like if you didn't learn the truth?"
"I mean, we would have learned it eventually, right?" He asked. "The Gems lived in Beach Creak …" He paused. "Hang on, the Beach and Creak are gone."
"You're right…all the water is gone…the name is completely pointless with it…" The two butterfly siblibling looked at each other and laughed out loud. "I kept telling people how stupid that name was, but they didn't listen to me, did they? What are they going to call the town now? Desert City? Townsville?"
"I mean it's still less redundant." Quartz laughed. "Oh … thanks Star."
"No prob, Bro, it's what I'm here for."
"No, really, thank you." Quartz went on. "Even when we haven't agreed on things, you've still tried to help me in your own way, even doing what you can about the whole monster hate thing. I'm really happy that out of everyone in the universe, you're my sister."
"I couldn't live without you either bro." She smirked. "Side note, how do you punch water?"
"… I don't think you can hit water at all." Her brother put on a thoughtful look. "Hmm, maybe if I had a bucket of a few water balloons I can slowly take away her ammo."
"There's no punching the tower down." Sapphire, riding on Amethyst formed into a giant wolf along with Ruby, spoke. "Even our biggest fusion wouldn't be able to physically knock the water back into place."
"The only way to stop this is to stop Lapis." Ruby spoke. "So let's give it our all, people!"
Star was glad the whole distrust thing was at least tossed to the side for the moment, but she couldn't help but wonder exactly what the heck her brother was going to do when all four of the gems were dead set on bubbling her. "Guys, I think we're here." Kelly spoke from the side, pointed up at a large tower of water that reached far and wide above the clouds, maybe even into space by this point. She wondered if she could grab a Star for ammo.
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"Come on people." Kelly watched as the gems walked up to the spire of water. "We need to move fast, let's start … climbing, swimming … moving up." She was confused by the terminology.
"You shouldn't be here! None of you should be here! " A booming voice echoed through the area.
"Well there goes the element of surprise." Ruby groaned. "Lapis Lazuli! We know what you're trying to do! Return Earth's ocean to us, or we'll be coming after you!"
"Come after me…come AFTER ME?! You couldn't even touch me before, none of you can!" A giant face formed in the water, showing a water veistage of Lapis herself. "Get out of here, Quartz. I don't want to hurt you, but I'm not letting anyone get in my way anymore."
"I don't want to hurt you either!" Quartz shouted with worry. "I'm trying to talk them out of this, so if we could all just have a conversation-"
"They want to trap me again, i'm not letting that happen." Out of the waterfall came … water them. Perfect replicas. She could see hers match her clothes and sword flawlessly.
"Wow, they even got Marco's mole." Star pointed out. "Kinda wishing those melon and Corn people stuck around…probably would've made dealing with this a whole lot easier."
"We don't need it easy, we just need to win!" Ruby shouted, rushing in and punching her clone, which punched back. It soon became a rush of punches between the two, matching in speed and power. "Love the moxy, but I have firepower!" Ruby burst her first into flames, before sinking it into the water clone. The head turned into mist…that reformed and covered her entire arm. "I didn't think this through!"
"Ruby!" Sapphire charged in, before being cut off by the Water Sapphire. "I have ice. If you're really me, then you can see how this ends for you." The copy nonetheless charged it with an icy blade on its arm.
"I'm really starting to miss my wand right now!" Star was doing everything humanly possible to avoid her duplicate from hitting her from afar, with its own watery wand for added measure. "Really, you're just rubbing it in by this point!" The princess was launched off by a water Narwhal blast.
"I based these off of what Quartz showed me and from what I remember from back then. Gives them a bit of personality.."
"I'm sorry guys!" Quartz shouted, his double doing nothing but watching him.
Kelly groweld, rushing her double and going toe to toe with it, sword hitting sword. Inside of the mirror's head a water Tad exploded out, jumping into her hair. "Alright you bastard, this is for the electronics!" … Why could she smell smoke?
"This isn't working!" Amethyst shouted from somewhere. "We aren't getting any closer and we're gonna lose steam at this rate!"
"There has to be some kind of limit to how much she can control!" Marco spent the entire time trading karate chops with his own clone. "You guys have limits, it can't just be endless for…" Marco was cut off by his double surrounding his head with water.
"Marco!" Star charged forward, only for her double to do the same.
"GUYS!" Quartz sent a hexagon towards Star as Kelly flung her sword at Marco, cutting off the water's grip, allowing them to breathe. "Lapis, you're going too far! I don't want any more fighting!"
"This wouldn't be happening if you all just left me alone!" Lapis used the Kelly Double to send a spiked piece of water right towards her head, and she didn't have enough time to react.
"I said…no MORE…FIGHTING!" A bright bing glow was shown from Quartz's belly button area as he charged right in front of her, with his arm sticking out. With another flash of pink light, a huge echo of what sounded like a gong going off went into the air. The reverb of it seemed to destabilize the forms of the water clones.
"Quartz, what was.." She was about to ask her friend, but received her answer upon looking up at him. A bright circular piece of light surrounded Quartz's arm that had a thorny vine design spiraling all around it, with the center being a rose insignia. "A shield…" A beautiful looking one at that.
"Rose's Shield." She heard Pearl mutter. "That was her weapon."
The boy looked at his shield, then at Lapis. "I wanna talk, me and you, alone." Quartz spoke to them.
"… Alright." She made a small hole in the water Spire. "No one else enters, or I retaliate."
"Ste-Quartz, hold up for a second." Amethyst tried to argue.
"No. She's willing to talk. We're doing this my way." He left it at that, crawling through the hole as it closed up behind him.
"Don't worry." Star smirked. "He'll be fine."
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Lapis sat in wait, looking at the stars, looking at Homeworld. She missed it, beauty, the company, how much did she miss in those six thousand years, she wondered.
She looked at the hole made for Quartz, who walked up through it, panting. "So … many… stairs." It was amusing to see him slightly struggle with it. "Lapis…please…taking all the planet's water….it's ridiculous."
"I want to go home." She stated. "I already checked all over. Your galaxy warp is destroyed and you don't have any surviving ships." It was the only way she had left.
"I get it…home is important for people. But there's a lot of homes that people will lose if you use the water." Quartz sighed, sitting next to her. "Do you really hate the gems so much that you'd destroy an entire planet?"
"They kept me inside of a mirror for a thousand years without even the memory of what I was, just knowing I was messed up and wrong." She spoke. "But you're right … I have more important things to do than taking out my anger in them." She looked up into the vast endless sky. "I don't care who was right or wrong in that war, I just want to go home, and using earth's water is the best choice I have."
"But…you care about humans though, right?" Quartz asked her. "If you don't care about the war…"
"Nope, you're the only living thing I care about and you have Mewni. I'm perfectly willing to let earth die for all it's worth." She responded bluntly.
"... Not a great start to negotiations."
"Whether anything lives or dies here isn't on me. Everything would be so much easier if I just had my wings..but my gem's too cracked."
"… The Gems don't want you to leave … they want to bubble you because they say Homeworld wants earth destroyed, and if you came back then they would know it was still around."
"It figures, those no good and-" She wasn't able to talk, hearing Quartz lick himself and STARS! Gross, she had liquid all over her Gem, feeling strange and slimy and-Responce Time Corrected. Vision Restored. Orbital Flight Capable. System Fully Operational. She felt … better.
"But my mom made a lot of tough choices and mistakes …both of them did." Quartz sighed. "I don't know what'll happen, I just know that you're my friend, and I don't want to see you.."
"THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!" Flapping her wings for the first time in centuries, she scooped him into a hug. It was something she saw him do many times in the mirror, so it had to be something special. "You have no idea how much this means to me, Quartz."
"No problem Lapis." The boy responded, sounding strained. "Just happy you can be free."
"Free…finally free." She started her flight forward. "I won't tell them about Mewni. It's one of the questions I got interrogated about when I was first trapped, I'll keep quiet about it."
"I appreciate that …" He blinked.
"Oh, the water." Right right. "It'll come back down when I leave. Know you were the one good thing between two universes, Quartz Butterfly!" She shouted, flying to the heavens, to home.
"It was nice talking to you, Lapis Lazuli! … Wait, when you said back down-"
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So … he was falling from the heavens. When they said he was found floating downstream, Quartz did not think it would ever get this literal.
"So Lapis is free and happy, she finally gets to live how she wants…even if she's apathetic to all life that isn't me." Quartz pondered as he fell right beside a 'block' of water. "Star makes a big decision and then I make a big decision in the same month … is destiny choosing now to make us miserable?"
Was it a result of that magic bond they had? If so, was Star's destiny affecting him, was he affecting Star's, or was this just one big shared destiny between the two of them. Would this have happened even if they weren't family? "… Meh, I still don't regret it." He had a protective and fun sister, caring parents, and he set a trapped soul free. It was all wins so far, even with the minor bits of messed up.
"I wonder if I can use my healing spit on myself. I don't think this landing is going to be soft." Maybe he could use his shield to land, it was protective right? … Man he's been falling for a while, is he even halfway there?
"Quartz!" He heard his sister's voice right above him. Turning upward, he saw Star on Lion, who was standing on one of the blocks of water. How was that…right, Lion could walk on water. "Might wanna grab on before we reach the bottom. Not in the mood to bring you back to Mewni flatter than a pancake."
"On it!" He shouted, reaching out and grabbing her hand. "I … set her free!" He told her over the winds.
"It's fine! It was your call to make!" Star smiled. "If you're happy, I am!" She held him close as Lion readied a portal down. "If anyone has a problem with that, then they have to deal with the both of us!"
He felt a certain warmness at those words as they leapt through the portal, and in a matter of seconds, they found themselves back in Beach Creek, where the others were waiting for them to arrive, likely getting there on Lion beforehand. "The water returned…and Lapis is gone." Sapphire greeted them bluntly.
"She is…and I don't regret helping her." Quartz firmly started, hopping down on the beach.
"... Meh." Apparently Amethyst was apathetic to the whole situation. "If she leaves, big deal."
"Yeah, exactly. We'll kick whatever evil space butt comes knocking." Kelly smiled.
"Oh my Corn, I just realized this means you're actually half alien!" Star giggled excitedly. "My brother is a half alien space rock from another dimension! Best, family, ever!"
"..." Pearl turned to Marco. "Is there a human tradition for drowning out existential dread and despair?"
"There is, but it requires consuming large amounts of certain liquids that dims brain cells the more you do it."