Chapter Text
This was a great day, Steven thought to himself. A couple of weeks ago, he found out he had inhereted his mother's healing powers, albeit in a much more... unusual format than hers. The gems were quite excited to hear about that, at least.
As he sat under the shade of a nearby palm tree, he couldn't help but notice that in the past couple of days, Garnet had been getting more and more tense. Probably.
Garnet wasn't exactly easy to read.
His suspicions were not his own, though. Pearl often asked Garnet if anything was bothering her, to which a short reply and turning away was the usual reply. Amethyst initially believed it was some long-overdue worried about her near-death, but as time went on it seemed pretty clear that wasn't the case.
Steven's introspective musings were derailed when he saw Garnet was walking away from the temple for the upteenth time that day - this time, though, Pearl was following her, distressed about something.
"What are you doing with those bubbles, Garnet?"
Garnet stopped and turned slightly. "Moving them."
"Wha-?" Pearl slumped a little. "Where?"
"Somewhere safe." Garnet continued her transporting.
"B-but the temple is the safest place on Earth for those." Pearl followed behind.
"Not safe enough..."
"Yo!" Amethyst's face suddenly obscured Steven's visions, eliciting a yelp from him and laughter from her.
"Amethyst, how long have you been there?"
"Eh." She flipped herself over his chair. "What's up?"
"Oh, nothing really." Steven leaned back a little. "Garnet's been moving bubbled out of the temple for some reason."
Amethyst's relaxed expression stiffened a little. "Say what?"
"Yeah, she's been acting sort of weird lately." He glanced to his side as Garnet moved back to the temple - quickening her pace too, which was a little unsettling. "Wonder what's got her so worried..."
Amethyst didn't reply. Instead, she saw Garnet had walked out again, this time not carrying an armfull of bubbles, but the large painting of Rose Quartz that had usually hung above the door to Steven's room. "Uh... that's weird."
"Garnet!" Pearl was reaching from confusion and annoyance to outright panic. "What on Earth are you doing?"
Garnet's silence didn't help calm Pearl's nerves at all.
"Taking the bubbles out of the temple is one very major thing that I'm sure you have an explanation for, but why are you moving that out of Steven's room?"
Garnet paused, and then shoved the painting towards Pearl. "Here. Help me clear out the temple."
"W-wha...?" Pearl reluctantly grabbed the painting. "Why?"
A slow rumble resounded throughout the air. "No time to explain. We have thirty seconds to grab anything we can and place it near the cliffs - bubbles, weapons, food, clothes. Whatever you need."
"But why are we-?" Amethyst started.
"Go!" Garnet shouted, immediately dashing off within the temple. Pearl sped off immediately, while Amethyst simple stood there in confusion.
Steven, however, ran up the stairs as quickly as he could, and swiping up his Cheeseburger Backpack he shoveled in as many of his clothes he could. As he dashed off to the fridge he noticed Garnet has already raided the cupboards and torn the fridge out of the wall, leaving him some extra room to grab a few other items and his ukelele. He even found the Moon Goddess Statue, which went straight into the backpack.
Once loaded up he tore his way out of the house, down to the Gems. The temperature outside had suddenly gotten a lot warmer, and the area was bathed in a bright, vaguely pink light.
"Garnet!" He shouted as he reached them. "What's going on?!"
Garnet didn't have time to reply - as the heat spiked suddenly and light seemed to warp, a bright object pierced the cliffs above the temple. A split-second later the temple ruptured in a cataclysm of bright light and superheated stone and the most defeaning noise Steven had ever heard since the Red Eye was destroyed.
Steven noticed the shocked silence around him. He could still hear, at least if the ocean waves crashing in unnatural response to the blast were right.
Garnet was the first to move, looking up at the sky. Steven followed her gaze, and noticed a whole cluster of star-like objects crowding the sky. And they were only getting brighter and more numerous.
"T-that was a shooting star!" Pearl shouted. "I thought there was only one near Earth, and that was in the temple!"
"Stay sharp, there's more on the way." Garnet stated. "And they're not only aiming for the temple." She turned to Steven. "Steven, get as much of the town here as you can. Pearl, Amethyst, you help him."
"Come on!" Amethyst grabbed Steven around the waist and leapt high into the air. From that height, he could see just how much damage the shooting star had done to the temple. The warp pad was completely destroyed and the door jarred open, to whose room he couldn't see.
Within a matter of seconds the two had landed in front of the car wash. As soon as Amethyst placed him down he dashed to the van parked just to the side and banged on the doors. "Dad!"
"Steven!" His father's voice resounded from within the car wash itself, and not the van like he was expecting. "What was that noise?"
"No time to explain, Greg!" Amethyst grabbed Greg and placed him in the van. "We gotta get to the beach!"
"A-alright..." With haste, the van started and swerved onto the road. "Steven, do you know what's going on?"
"I-I dunno." Steven stammered. "Garnet said that shooting stars are gonna be raining down on the town or something and we need to get everyone we can to the beach."
"Wow, that's..."
Another loud blast resounded, the light flashing near the docks.
"Aw, jeez!" Greg's eyes widened. "That must've taken out the entire dock or something."
"Gonna go help Pearl." Amethyst announced, shapeshifting into an owl, and perching herself on an open window. "You guys keep going, I'll meet you at the beach."
As she took off, Greg turned to Steven, noticing the worried expression on his face. "Hey, don't worry, kiddo. We'll be fine."
As if the universe was mocking him, a shooting star crashed into the road some distance behind him, lurching the van practically into low-Earth orbit.
Or not, if the fact that the van was now tipping down towards the beach from fifty feet up.
"Uh oh." Greg muttered.
As gravity lurched upwards, Steven conjured a bubble around the van in an attempt to soften whatever blow was going to happen, and the two of them braced for impact.
What surprised them was they didn't appear to bounce once they hit the ground. Opening their eyes, they could see that Garnet had just caught the bubble, buried to her knees in sand.
After a gentle set-down, Steven practically fell out of the door and onto the sand. "Ow, my everything..."
As he pulled himself up, Pearl landed gracefully right next to him. "Amethyst and I told as many people as we could. Those in vehicles should be here in a matter of seconds."
Another explosion cracked in the distance, only a hundred metres from the town.
Garnet pulled herself out of the ground. "Good job." She kept her eyes trained on the sky, watching the angles of the many stars in the sky.
Soon enough, the sounds of engines - and the drone of Mayor Dewey's speakers - hit their ears, even as more stars struck the town.
Amethyst clambered out of the Mayor's van. "Hey, guys."
Pearl sighed. "I thought the Mayor would've taken much longer to round up the town."
"Eh, a bit of shapeshifting got everyone racing to go."
"I don't want to know." Pearl replied with a deadpan look.
Mayor Dewey pulled himself out of the van and raced up to Garnet. "What is going on here?"
Garnet barely moved. "There's a storm of shooting stars raining on the town and we have no idea why."
"What do you mean you have no idea?" Dewey shouted.
"Exactly that."
"And we can't exactly do anything about them-" Pearl added, just as another one detonated uncomfortably close. "-as they are far too dangerous for even Garnet to handle and moving too quickly for us to catch."
Dewey slumped. "So that means...?"
"We wait until the storm is over. Which should be in about ten seconds." Garnet replied.
"Ya might wanna cover your ears." Amethyst added.
Pearl looked over the crowd of people that were gathering around. "Only half the town has made it so far..."
"We have to get the rest!" Steven started racing to the town, only to be grabbed by Garnet.
"No, Steven!" Garnet shouted, hauling him back.
"But-!"
Anything he was going to say was cut out by a sudden barrage of stars cascading around them and bathing the town in destructive white light. If the temple being destroyed was loud, then this storm made that sound like wind through leaves in comparison.
The crescendo to this piece of utter anihilation was when one last star, angled slightly off, crashed into the temple and detonated. It must've clipped somewhere specific within the temple itself, as another explosion that must've originated from the star already in their possession tore the temple apart from within. Something very magical must've buckled, as a horrifically beautiful explosion akin to the night sky laced with streaks of purples, pinks, whites, reds and blues engulfed anything left of the temple, flinging out charred remains of anything within the hidden realms of the temple into the sand around.
And just like that, the barrage ended, leaving dead silence in its wake.
Nobody moved for the longest time. Only Amethyst seemed to have anything more than petrification, as her breathing was getting faster and deeper. With a panicked shriek, she ran up to the remains of the temple, desperately clawing at the ashes for anything, anything at all, that survived.
Garnet moved up to her, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Amethyst, there's nothing left. I'm sorry."
"No! That's not true!" She dug even deeper, desperation clawing desperately at her mind. "T-there has to be something!"
"Amethyst." Garnet's hand gripped a little tighter. "Enough."
"Hang on, there has to be something...!" She paused for a second. And then laughed, pulling something out of the wreckage. "I knew it!"
"That's... Just a burnt bedsheet." Garnet replied.
"And it survived, and I'm gonna wear it!" Amethyst wrapped the make-shift cloak around her neck. "Heh, I think this looks pretty good on me, don't you think?"
Garnet didn't reply, instead standing up and walking back to the others. Amethyst followed after a second, the last few charred pieces of her cloak flinging off in the wind.
"It's... It's gone, isn't it...?" Pearl mumbled as Garnet returned.
Garnet grunted a reply. "Both the warp pad and the temple itself." She sighed, and then turned to the mayor. "Do a headcount, find out who's missing."
Greg walked up to the Crystal Gems. "Boy, this can't be good..." He turned to Garnet. "How far do you think this is spreading?"
"Worldwide."
"Oh."
"Worldwi...?" Steven muttered, and then shrieked. "Connie! Did she get hit?"
"Hmm..." Garnet mused for a second. "...It's a possibility." She removed her shades, looking at Steven with a sincere expression. "But she's almost certainly safe."
"I'll give her a call." He pulled his phone out and, to his horror, the screen was flickering like mad. "What...?"
"Electromagnetic interference from the shooting stars." Pearl stated. "All communications are down, and will be for the next... I don't know how long."
The mayor returned. "Okay, I've got the numbers. So far, only half of the town has made it out. I'll round up everyone to search the town for other survivors."
"The area should be safe enough to traverse, but be careful." Garnet replied, replacing her shades. "Much of the town may still be superheated."
As the mayor sped off and rallied the town, Steven slumped against the van side. Pearl crouched next to him, placing a hand gently on his.
"So..." Amethyst started. "I hate to sound like a bit of a party pooper, but what are we gonna do now? I mean, the only thing that survived the blast was this cloak-"
"And even then it's a bit damaged..." Pearl retorted.
"-so there's probably nothing left for us here."
"We'll figure something out." Garnet replied. "We always do."
"What about we travel around?" Steven piped up. "Like the No Home Boys."
"Wha...?" Pearl raised an eyebrow.
After a quick explanation on the No Home Boys series, he continued. "But, instead of running around and sleeping on hay bales, we actually drive around, like in the van here."
"Vehicular nomadic transportation..." Pearl mused. "It could work, but we'd need something far more... reliable... than gasoline-powered internal compustion engines. Perhaps electric, that way Garnet can charge it up while on the move."
A sparkle appeared in Steven's eyes.
"But, I assume we can't just leave the town here. I mean, what sort of 'protectors of Earth' would we be if we just up and left?" She chuckled. "No, we're going to need something else."
"Maybe make a bunch of super-big trucks that the town can ride around in?" Amethyst suggested. "Like, really big. Of course, one of them would have to be our own, cuz I don't think we can all fit in Greg's van."
"Hmm..." Pearl smirked. "This could actually work. A convoy of large transports, roaming the continent in search of... Well, something. A cause for the storm, an active warp pad, somewhere for the town to settle down in... Garnet, your thoughts?"
Garnet stood still for a second. "Let's do it."
"Alright!" Pearl cheered. "Beach city, we're building a convoy!"
"Uh, Pearl?"
"Yes, Amethyst?"
"There's no-one else here."
"Oh." Pearl blushed.