Normally it's not a great idea to pick up strange shoeboxes out of dorm Dumpsters, and college sophomore Max Albus can support that. 0 out of 10 does not recommend. There could be illegal drugs or bombs or magical alien children from outer space in the form of semiprecious stones or just meaningless college-kid junk that makes you feel like you wasted your time even looking at it.

It was a November Friday midnight and he was cold.

His red bike — he got it when he was thirteen and had named it Joe — was on its last legs, or should he say, last wheels. The gears wouldn't change and his brakes shrieked. He was crunched in the seat with his puffy winter coat drawn up around his neck and lower face; his blue beanie pulled tightly over his springy brown hair and ears. If you got close to him you would smell fryer grease. You might also hear the tinny ringtone and vibration of an ancient phone in his back jeans pocket, but as he was riding over the bumpiest sidewalks on campus and his mind in the clouds, it went unnoticed.

Just as Max crossed the third-to-last intersection until home, a snow-laced gust of wind ripped through the air and forced him deeper into his coat, struggling to conserve what little body heat was left in him. His chapped lip caught on the zipper.

Then, just around a corner into an alley about thirty feet away, his squinting eyes caught a flash of light so bright it almost made him fall off his bike.

No one else was around to see it, except for some drunk guy across the street who yelled out his window "CASHEWS ARE A HEALTHY SNACK" before falling backwards out of sight. He probably wouldn't be of any assistance. Being the brave inquisitive soul that he was, Max coasted and shrieked to a stop in front of said alley. The tenants of the dormitory buildings on either side hadn't seemed to notice anything unusual, so Max vaulted over the low gate.

It was just the normal twixt-dorm alley, really. A little cleaner because the trash was always collected on Mondays and today was Wednesday, but already bulbous black bags and miscellaneous Styrofoam things had begun to accumulate in and around the green containers. His sneaker accidentally kicked an empty soda can and it scattered, clattering against the asphalt and eventually rolling to a stop against a shoebox set in the absolute middle of the alley.

Well, this was a great waste of time, Max realized suddenly, shrugged his shoulders and turned around to ride home and go to sleep and do just the normal things that he'd prepared to do tonight.

Except that he didn't, because he realized another thing. Shoeboxes don't just put themselves in the direct center of anything and even if someone had put it there, it should have blown away in the wind if there wasn't something in it.

So he did the regrettable thing. He knelt and lifted the lid.

There was a lot of tissue paper, for one, but in the center at it all — five stones. Each about the size of a tennis ball. None of them diamonds or anything, just rocks that looked like they'd been plucked right from an overpriced overrated museum's gift shop. An opaque green one with light streaks through it; probably jade. A red one carved like a half circle sealed in a plastic bag with a triangular blue one; he couldn't really tell what they were. A circular yellow one faceted into a triangle — topaz? — and a rounded piece of reddish amber. All in pretty good condition besides being really cold.

Max shrugged and slipped the stones into his jacket pocket. They weighed heavily and clacked against each other dangerously, so he hastily moved the red, blue and green to the other pocket before scooping his phone up — it had started to ring frantically (again).

But he'd barely had time to lift it to his ear before his entire head was blasted back by a thundering voice.

"WHERE ARE YOU?!"

The wind ripped through the alley just then, encouraging Max to turn back to his bike and get moving again. Gingerly he held the phone with his left hand and took the handlebars with his right, a bit wobbly to begin with but eventually getting up to speed. Yes, it did take him that long to craft a response.

"I had work tonight, Chelle. I'm coming home now. What's going on?"

Rachel Jackson's voice was muffled and distant for a while, like she was yelling at other people. Probably was. Then she came back in the usual fire and thunder, causing Max to gently pull the phone away from his ear again. "OOOOOOOOO-KAAAAAAY. So WHAT can we learn from this experience, I'll have to ask? That police NEVER do their jobs right. Obviously. I give 'em your number; is it SOOOO much to ask that a call at least GETS to you?"

There was a sinking feeling in Max's chest just then, similar to the sinking you'd feel if you learned that the boat you're sitting in is actually sinking. "Did someone break into my place again?" he asked slowly, not really wanting to hear the answer.

The explosions of sarcastic "Wow I thought you'd NEVER guess"s and "It took you faster than the landlord to figure THAT out"s told him that yes, someone had indeed.

He wanted to slow down and be depressed by the side of the road, but he also wanted to start pedaling as hard as he could, maybe in a futile attempt to catch the perpetrator. Instead he just kept going at the same wishing-to-escape-the-wind-but-suffering-from-numbing-cold pace as before and asked the logical thing.

"What'd they steal?"

"The entire contents of the refrigerator except the milk, which the investigator said meant they might be lactose intolerant. 'Cept that's BS because it's expired anyway."

"What? Oh c'mon, I just bought that stuff two days ago — "

"They also took your junky TV and your phone charger, though what they're gonna do with that tip off a white crayon I got no idea."

This was when Max really groaned, despite Chelle's creative term to describe his less-than-quality charger. "Who cares what they're gonna do with it; what am I gonna do without it? These phones haven't been sold for years; you think I can find a charger?"

"Hmm." Someone in the background shouted something in a language that sounded like Arabic and Chelle yelled back in Chinese — linguistics majors were so weird. Then she was back in English. "Just…I dunno. Get over there."

He skidded to a stop just then in front of his apartment complex, a thin towering thing that seemed as if a regular building had been squished between the two on both sides of it. Sure enough a single cop car was parked outside, and the far left window of the third story was lit. "I am," Max told Chelle as he guided his bike through the front door and into the bleakly lit elevator that smelled like chalk dust. "Wait, are you even here?"

"Nah. I'm not done with my French paper, you know."

"Oh."

"Sorry. I really had to split. Not even sure if I'll finish this tonight, even with Imelda helping. The cop's prolly still there though."

The door was open when he came to it. "Yeah. I think she wants to talk to me. See you tomorrow, I guess."

"Yeah. See ya."

The investigator didn't stay long, or even do much. Since nothing of real value was stolen and Max wasn't real keen on wasting time or money over a twelve-year-old TV that he never really used anyway, the tired cop checked over with him once more if anything else was stolen (nothing else was; his laptop was still hidden under the cracked tile in the kitchen and there wasn't much else in the tiny apartment to steal) and reassured him that she would file a report with her superiors and keep an eye out for any eighteen-inch box TVs, containers of ramen and mac-n-cheese, or Cretaceous-era phone chargers. Then she left and Max stared at his desolate apartment before simply collapsing onto the foldout couch that he called a bed.

The stones in his pockets clacked together and idly, he pulled them out to look at. He was a chemistry major, not a geology major, but he did think he knew a guy. Raj, wasn't that his name. Yeah, he'd probably know if they were worth anything.

Hopefully, enough to get a new phone and a charger, Max murmured to himself ruefully, before setting his almost dead but chargerless phone on the table and slipping the rocks into the front pocket of his backpack.

Then, too tired to even change or shower, he rolled onto his stomach and closed his eyes. "Goodnight, rocks," he yawned just before falling asleep.

Naturally, he expected them not to respond.

...

What am I doing. Why. Why am I doing this.

Okay, since you're the Steven Universe fandom, you probably should be able to predict to some extent as to what's gonna happen. You probably have a better idea than I do; I have approximately 5% of this story planned out.