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Rebecca Sugar Is An Ignorant Liberal Doofus And American Culture Is The Culture Of An Imperialist Slave Society
by
Vivian

PART 1:
Steven Diamond is an Ignorant Liberal Doofus and Gem Culture Is The Culture Of An Imperialist Slave Society

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CHAPTER 1 - Pearl

When Pearl crested the hill, the yawning emptiness of dead grass stretched before her beneath the weary pink sunset. She looked behind her and regarded everything she hoped to leave behind forever.

The Obsidian Temple. Her home. Epicenter of her abject misery, of the lie she lived for six thousand years and change. The home of her former slaver. Of her forsaken comrades. Of her fallen struggle.

Her special tree, long since felled, now a dessicated stump. She used to think it was a sakura tree. She used to think a lot of things. She realized that it was another geographically improbable tree, a bristlecone pine, and that the falling pink petals were all in her mind. She studied the stump, read a couple of books, and found out that it had probably lived for about six thousand years before she killed it.

Beach City. Beachfront condos cut in sharp angles from faceless glass and merciless steel. Chain restaurant signs. Dead buildings and choked streets. A paltry few decades worth of paved-over memories.

She turned back toward the horizon, toward her destination in a way that she thought was resolute and final, but of course a familiar voice hollered up from the bottom of the hill at her.

"Yo, P! What gives?"

Of course. Amethyst. It had to be Amethyst. It couldn't be Garnet, who she now resented enough to say "no" to. It had be precious Amethyst whose heart she had to break. She clutched her right eye, and turned to Amethyst, with what she pretended to herself was a simpering grin but was really more of a desperate grimace.

"Oh! Why... if it isn't Amethyst! What brings you to this desolate hillside next to the cell phone tower?"
"You want to try and explain THIS to me?" Amethyst thrust her cellular telephone in Pearl's direction.
"Uhhh..." Pearl dithered. "I... I..."
"Oh! Haha. Right. Sorry." Amethyst did the anime head behind the hand thing. "You can't see it from 50 feet away. Hold on." Amethyst traipsed up the hill, which was pretty steep, and took a lot of silent moments to ascend, agonizing half-minutes in which the tiny telephone screen slowly grew in size within Pearl's field of vision.

Oh. That.

"Oh, that, that's..."
"The door to the temple. With YOUR signet pulled out of it. With YOUR room gone. So lemme reiterate: What gives?" Amethyst pocketed her phone, folded her arms, and cocked her head, giving Pearl a serious 'I really care about you and I cant stand to see you suffer in silence like this' look.
Pearl swallowed hard, looked away, looked behind her and then met Amethyst's eyes again. "I'm taking it with me. I... I made some personal decisions, based on my assessment of the current situation. And then I decided to go try and find Bismuth."
Amethyst slapped her cheeks and made a boggle-eyed expression. "BISMUTH!? Pearl, are you CRAZY!? Steven's gonna--"
"Don't. I'm well aware of what the consequences are. But I need Bismuth. She... I think she's the only one who can fix me." Pearl let her hand fall away finally from its perch over the top-right of her face. It revealed the cracking gem, and the eye and socket nearby, which was glitched-out, artifacted, staticky, twitching.
"Hwaaaaa--" Amethyst inhaled.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!" Amethyst exclaimed. "Pearl! You're... We've got to get Steven! C'mon! If we can just make him cry..."
"Stop." Pearl tried to make her face stolid, demanding. But Amethyst could see right through her. Pearl wasn't angry. She was just hurt. Hurt and afraid.
"No. I'm serious. Stop. Yes, I'm afraid. Yes, I know this is... is crazy, and is probably a completely irrational and self-destructive impulse that will accomplish nothing and leave my life in shambles. I know all of that!! But I can't... I can't... face Steven right now. I told Steven exactly what I thought. And, even if it means losing everything, even it if it means losing you, even if it means losing myself... I HAVE. To do this."
For a moment, Amethyst said nothing. She wanted to ask what Pearl was hiding. Wanted to know why she couldn't have told her that she was hurt, so she could maybe try and help, so maybe it wouldn't have come to this. Wanted to know why she couldn't talk to Steven all of a sudden. Instead she said this:
"I get it."
"Even if you say that, I sti--What?"
"I get it, Pearl. I mean, it's... it's you."
"May I repeat... what?"
"What I mean is, like... Since it's you, Pearl, I know you wouldn't make a dumb decision that you could never take back. When it really comes down to it, you're the best I know at keeping a situation under control. Even when all your emotions are bubbling to the surface, somehow you always know the path to the right outcome. So if you're out here on this hill, on a mission to see a gem who's probably already been caught and permabubble, I know that... That there must be a good reason for it!"
Pearl studied Amethyst's face. It was heartbreaking. For Pearl, not Amethyst. For a minute, rogue statements tried to escape her lips. "Amethyst, I'll stay! I'll stay for you!" "No, of course you're right, I just need a little of Steven's tears and I'll..." "It was all my fault...!!"

No.

"You're right. You're right about how I'm right. So... The question then, is... Are you coming with me?"
It was Amethyst's turn to dither. She broke eye contact, and slumped a little. "I... I'm not sure..."
"But I'm right. You know that something's wrong. That something needs to be done."
"Yeah, but..."
"And we need to see Bismuth. We need to talk to her. We need to figure out what is to be done."
"I know, I know. Besides... It's not like I ever see Steven anymore anyway. Not since he made that portal to Homeworld and stepped through it..." Amethyst grabbed her arm and rubbed it a little, her gaze cast at the ground.
Guilt crept into the periphery of Pearl's consciousness. How could she have done this? Even if for the sake of "safety", how could she have tried to leave without talking to Amethyst at all? After all, they'd been the only ones who had stayed behind when everyone else moved on...
"Amethyst, I'm sorry, it's been all this time and I've never asked... Why exactly didn't you go with Steven when he left?
"That's easy. Because Earth's the only home I've ever known. Homeworld is an alien planet. Right here is where all of my good memories are. I think the bigger question, is why didn't you leave? Steven really wanted you to..."
"To what? To abandon the only place I ever had good memories, even if most of them proved to be founded on lies? To follow him to the capital of a slave society and rub elbows with the tyrants? To spend the rest of my theoretically endless life picking up after the messes of Steven Diamond?"
Amethyst recoiled a little from Pearl's ire. Pearl sensed this and tried to calm herself. "Sorry, I... I pledged myself to fight for Earth long ago, Amethyst. Even if I came here as a... as a mere thrall in Pink Diamond's service, that pledge is something that belongs to me, and me alone. I thought that memories of Pink Diamond, and the painstaking caretaking of her every incarnation, were all I had, but when those memories began to lose their shine, when Pink Diamond's glamour over me began to grow brittle, and break... All I had left was that pledge. And you."

Amethyst finally remet Pearl's gaze, and she smiled, which made Pearl's heart leap a little bit. "Aww, you're just trying to butter me up. Well, it's WORKING!"
Pearl found herself suddenly able to return Amethyst's grin. "So does this mean you'll come with me? Despite all the risk? Despite everything?"
Amethyst smiled even bigger, and held out her hand palm up. At the center of her palm sat a little purple jewel. Her signet. Her whole room in the temple. "What do you think?"
"Oh, Amethyst! Why, you don't know how much it means to me that you'll come with me! You can't imagine how scared I was to go through this all by myself! Oh, it's just been so hard, what with all the changes, and Steven growing up, and this whole linking of worlds pact, and..." Pearl caught herself in the middle of her effusive gushing. This was one of Amethyst's favorite things about Pearl. When the time came for Pearl to finally show her heavily guarded emotions, there was something so beautiful, so immaculately pure about them.
"Whatever! Like I have anything else to do around here these days anyway. Besides, this will be fun! Road trip!" Amethyst exulted.
"Yes! Road trip!" Pearl replied, placing careful emphasis on the second syllable of "road trip". "Now, turn into a helicopter with a face or something and let's get going."
Amethyst did the anime hand behind the head thing AGAIN. "Haha, y'know, it's funny... I STILL can't. After all these years..."
"Still???"
"Mmmmmyep. Guess I'm just... not ready to get back into that whole thing yet. Maybe you could...?"
"Well, DON'T look at me. I haven't been able to do it for thousands of years."
"Guess we start walkin'!"
"Yes, let's. We have a lot of ground to cover, there are a lot of places Bismuth could be." Pearl projected a holographic globe with little illusory pins dotted here and there on it. "I've been studying reports of sightings and places which have statistical clusters of more frequent witness reports have been prioritized by..."
"Pearl, okay, that's great and all, but we're not going to find her in any of those places if we don't hit the road!!" Amethyst grabbed Pearl's hand decisively, and started walking a startled Pearl forward, over the hill, and toward the interstate road.

Pearl took a moment to reflect on how special Amethyst was to her. It was hard to find an antecedent in any of the human institutions she'd become acculturated to. More than just a friend. Not a lover... And "sister" didn't feel right because she felt no ties of obligation binding her to Amethyst. She was just Amethyst, and in the past few decades, Amethyst's companionship and presence had become as natural and necessary to her as water. She was so taken by the feeling this momentary musing gave her that she barely noticed herself beginning to fuse.

It was the onset of their journey. Opal, looking quite stylish in her teal kimono and lavender hakama, took those first strides, mighty strides away from the sorrows of the past and towards the ding-dong sunshine future. Pearl and Amethyst felt the warm air of the oncoming night blow softly upon the face of Opal, felt the exhilaration, felt the bliss of unity. On til twilight they strode, making a few miles of headway along the endless two-lane. When Opal got tired, she unfused, and Pearl and Amethyst took smaller strides amid the placid squall of the nightbug chorus.

Then the roar of a big engine came up behind them. A jeep came up on their left, which was braking to a halt. As it slowed, it veered off the road into the grass, which is maneuvered into a 270 degree three-quarter donut, exposing the open driver side to the two amply surprised wanderers. And there she was.

She was still gorgeous. Her hair was still cupcake pink and voluminous. She was in a royal blue tank top and high waisted black shorts, both of which she still filled out in a highly respectable fashion. She was smiling, and her eyes were twinkling, eager and flirtatious. She'd aged ten years, and gotten ten years more beautiful.

"Hey Pearl. Want a ride?"

Pearl stared agog at Mystery Girl. Amethyst stared agog at Pearl.

♪ What if I
told you that
the world was gonna end? ♪

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Interlude 1 - Connie