Chapter Six

Who We Are

(Several Years Ago)

By the time that Steven was able to walk, he would always try to get away and explore. The books that the Gems had on raising children said that it was natural for children to want to explore and that they should encourage it, but not to let them explore too much.

Steven usually kept to the beach, occasionally wandering towards the town, only to have one of the Gems pick him up. They didn't want Steven to get lost on his own, but they didn't want to keep him away from the humans.

So, Rose thought of a plan. Every week or so she or one of the others would take Steven into town for the day. There were some places that he would go often, like The Big Donut or Funland, but sometimes he would go to other places depending on who was taking him.

Steven liked to go with Amethyst because she would take him to all the cool places, like Vidalia's house or to the abandoned warehouse where Amethyst would reenact stories of her latest match as The Purple Puma.

Garnet was always fun to be around too, since she took him to the arcade and would generally allow him more freedom to wander, with Garnet always being able to keep an eye on him.

Rose often kept him out much later, which Steven enjoyed simply because he like being under the starry sky. He didn't know why, but the sky always looked inviting, especially with his mother at his side.

Since Pearl was taking him today, Steven knew that he wouldn't stay out so late, he wouldn't be allowed to wander so far, and he wouldn't be going to a lot of cool places.

Today was different.

Pearl had reasoned that while they wouldn't take Steven to a human school, they would have to educate him themselves. Pearl had been teaching Steven to read and he quickly had been wanting to read as much as he could.

So, when Pearl had heard that the humans had created a place where Steven could read as many books as he wanted, Pearl had decided that they went to what the humans called "the library".

Steven was awestruck when they went inside. He didn't even care that he was told to be quiet so many times, there were more books than he could comprehend. While Pearl encouraged Steven to read books more appropriate to his age, Steven had kept trying to look for harder books.

It was pretty quick that the library became the one place that Steven had wanted to go to all the time.

The others didn't complain. While at the library, all they had to do was let Steven roam around to look for new books to read, not worrying that he was going to wander off to do something that he shouldn't

(Present Day)

Beach a Palooza had been a rousing success. For a few days after the show, Steven was given much praise from not only the audience, but from the other performers.

"Dude, I had no idea you could rock the piano," Sour Cream had said.

"The song you had with your mom made my mom burst out crying," Sadie told him.

While Onion normally didn't say anything, he did give Steven a thumbs up when he saw him.

However, the biggest praise came from the other Crystal Gems. Steven asked if Mr. Fryman could record the show and give him a copy. When that finally came in and he showed the Gems, they all reacted positively.

Garnet said that he did an amazing job, Amethyst said that he had played better than anyone she had ever seen, and Pearl could barely get a word out through the joyous sobbing.

Rose, of course, gave Steven the most amount of praise. After they talked about how Rose met his father, the two began to talk more and more about how things were when his dad was still around.

He had learned that Greg, his dad, was an up and coming musician who themed most of his music around space. Steven also learned that Greg left a possibly prolific music career to be with Rose.

Not only that, but when the subject of having kids was approached, Greg was enthusiastic to have a child, dreaming that they would all be one big happy family.

The more and more that Rose had talked about Greg, the more and more Steven felt like he had wished that he was able to meet him.

"I wish you could too Steven," Rose had said, "But one of us needed to give our physical form for you, and your father decided that he would be the one to…"

The subject of Steven's birth had always been a touchy subject with Rose, and Steven was surprised that she talked even this much about it.

In fact, Rose had been much more open about her past.

She had told Steven about how they came about to Beach City, how the living moss was formed, and even certain battles during the rebellion.

Steven had known that the Crystal Gems were a part of a war to protect Earth, and he had known that his mother was the leader of the Crystal Gems. What he didn't know was exactly how many Crystal Gems were around.

When Steven wanted to know what had happened to the other Crystal Gems, Rose had always managed to deflect the question. Steven figured that his mother didn't want to relive every aspect of the war, only the good things.

The day's training had been postponed, since there had been a major disturbance that required all of the Gems to be there, so Steven was alone in the house. He had been going through the books that were in the box that was sent some time ago and was on the last novel.

"…and so, James stood with his friends atop the hill, looking at the ferocious creature heading towards the village and said to his companions, "Who's ready for round two?"" Steven read the last line out loud.

Steven groaned. He had come to appreciate cliffhangers for sequels, but that didn't mean that he liked them. He knew that there was a sequel to the book, but the box didn't have it.

There was only one place that could have possibly had the book and that was the library. Steven loved to go to the library, but he would have rather gone with one of the Gems. He had been there by himself, but it just wasn't the same.

At the moment of Steven's lamenting over having to endure a lonely trip to the library, he heard a knock on his door. He looked outside the screen door and smiled when he saw a familiar face.

"Connie!" Steven exclaimed. He ran to the door as fast as he could, opening the door to let Connie in.

"Hey Steven!" Connie greeted, "Today is the first day of summer vacation!"

"What's summer vacation?" Steven asked.

Connie went into an explanation about how schools generally let their students have a whole two-month vacation.

Steven was quiet for a few moments and then exclaimed, "So you can come over whenever you want and not have to worry about school!"

Connie nodded, smiling.

"So, what do you want to do first?" Connie asked.

Steven looked at the book he just finished.

"Well I was going to go to the library, but that wouldn't be too fun if you just got out of school," Steven said, rubbing his arm nervously.

Connie replied, "I don't mind going to the library. I could use a couple of new books."

Steven beamed, "Give me a sec, I just gotta write a note to the Gems so they don't get worried."

Steven ran over to the notepad on the fridge, took the small marker on the counter and wrote, "At library with Connie, Love Steven."

Steven dashed back to Connie, grabbed her hand and led her outside. He had been so excited to go to the library, especially with Connie. With her out of school this meant that they didn't need to worry about getting Connie home for fear of her not doing her homework.

Steven looked back at Connie to say something, only to notice that her face was slowly reddening. He stopped and asked, "Hey Connie, is something wrong?"

Connie took the briefest of looks down and said, "N-n-no, nothing's wrong!"

Steven looked down to see what Connie saw and realized that he was still holding her hand. It was really the first time they had held hands without any sort of danger being involved. Steven looked back at Connie, seeing that she was now staring at the held hands as well.

When she noticed that Steven was looking back her, Connie's face turned even redder. Steven slowly let go of her hand and asked, "Is holding hands not a good thing?"

Connie paused for a moment. She did know that Steven didn't have much interaction with children his age, and a lot of the older people he had interacted with wouldn't have minded Steven leading them by the hand.

"It's not a bad thing, but it's probably better to ask before you do it," Connie said, "Some people would just like to know if you wanted to hold hands."

The awkwardness was settling in, Connie not sure if what she said made any sense. Steven then smiled, held out his hand and asked, "Can I hold your hand to the library?"

Connie was so red at this point that she wondered if her face could ever recover. She took a deep breath and nodded, grasping Steven's outstretched hand.

The two weren't running, but they were walking fast to the library. It wasn't long until they had reached their destination, Connie both relieved and saddened that they got to the library so quickly.

Steven let go of her hand and opened the door saying, "After you." Connie smiled as she walked inside the large building.

Beach City had a large library, despite being such a small town. Whether it was because the building was dedicated to one of the founders of Beach City or that there was some sort of tax break involved, the kids didn't really care. What they did care about was the that there were hundreds, if not thousands, of books that they could choose from.

Steven and Connie agreed that they would meet at one of the tables when they had picked out a bunch of books and sort through the ones that they wanted to start there or take home.

"Man, I wish that the library didn't have a three book rental policy," Steven said to himself as he searched for books.

It wasn't long until Steven had a large stack of books to go through when one of them fell to the ground. Sighing, Steven carefully put the stack of books down and went to pick up the fallen book when something caught his eye.

An ancient book, lying underneath the shelves and covered with years of dust. Steven looked around to see if anyone was near him, and when he surmised that the coast was clear he reached for the book.

He wiped the dust off the cover and saw that it had no title on the front or on the spine. He opened it to the first page and read, "Property of Buddy Buddwick."

Steven gasped. Buddy Buddwick? As in the founder of The Buddy Buddwick Library that Steven and Connie were in at that moment? The Buddy Buddwick that helped found Beach City?

Steven placed the book on top of the pile and lifted the hefty stack and nearly ran to an empty table and began to look through Buddwick's book. He had gone a few pages in when he heard another stack of books drop nearby.

Steven looked up and saw Connie, slightly panting, as she made sure her large stack of books was steady.

"Connie, come over here!" Steven whispered.

Connie walked over to Steven and looked over his shoulder to read.

"Whoa! Is that-? "Connie began.

"Buddy Buddwick's lost diary!" Steven exclaimed, earning a shush from the librarian, to which he quickly apologized.

"Wow, I only thought it was a myth!" Connie said, taking the book from Steven's hands and flipping through it.

"I know!" Steven exclaimed in a whisper, "I've been here so many times and I never would have thought that it was under one of the bookcases!"

Connie continued to look through the early entries of the book, which explained how Buddy helped William Dewey settle Beach City after many trials and tribulations and then stopped to look at Steven with a serious expression.

"Steven, it talks about the Crystal Gems in here," Connie said, holding the book out.

"What?" Steven said, taking the book to look at the passage that she was talking about. Sure enough, Buddy had many encounters with the Crystal Gems all over the world. From the Strawberry Battlefield to some canyon with a bunch of holes, to the Desert Temple where it said that Rose had-

"Mom had a pack of lions?" Steven asked to no one in particular.

"I think the correct term would be a pride of lions," Connie corrected.

"Why didn't any of them tell me this?" Steven asked to Connie.

After a pause Connie said, "Maybe they wanted to tell you when you were older."

"Maybe," Steven replied as he continued to flip through the book. The way the places were described were vividly accurate, at least when it was talking about some place that Steven had been to.

What was interesting was Steven reading about the places that he had not been to, especially the place Buddy labeled as, "The Many Hole'd Place".

"This place was an odd sort. It seemed like all life had been stripped away from the canyon, with large contraptions littering the spot. These contraptions seem to have been the cause of the holes that litter the cliff side. What was here before? More importantly, who was here before?"

"Do you think that the Gems know this place?" Steven asked Connie.

"I think so, I mean Buddy mentions seeing Amethyst," Connie said, pointing to the passage that said so.

"I think we should ask them, "Steven said, closing the book as he stood up.

After getting the book checked out, a much longer process since it technically wasn't in the system anymore, the two began heading back to the house.

Dozens of questions were floating through Steven's head.

As the two walked to the house they noticed something strange. The Crystal Gems were all looking at the sky, weapons in hand.

Steven could vaguely hear his mother say, "This is the second one we've come across, this cannot be a coincidence."

"What do we do?" Pearl asked.

"Keep an eye on everything," Rose replied, looking towards the kids coming their way.

"Hey Mom, what's going on?" Steven asked looking around. There was a thick light blue liquid was covering a large rock, to which Amethyst tried to hide by sitting on it.

"It was just another monster. This one sprayed some sort of liquid to immobilize you," Rose said casually.

Steven looked at the other Gems, all of whom were nodding.

"So, this was a second one?" Steven asked, looking at his mother.

A brief sense of panic washed over the Crystal Gems, but Rose replied, "It was. We think that there may be others, so we have to be on the lookout."

Steven looked closely at his mother. She seemed so…normal answering the question. She would often try to impress Steven with more details about the monsters they all fought, but this was different.

Before he could ask another question, Rose said, "Why hello Connie! Nice to see you!"

Connie replied, "It's nice to see you again Miss Universe."

Rose chuckled, "No need to be so formal Connie! Please call me Rose."

Connie nodded as Pearl said, "Well since Connie is here, I will make some lemonade."

The Gems began walking to the house, with Steven and Connie behind them. Steven looked back at the liquid on the rock and began to think.

"So how was the library?" Rose asked once they were all inside.

Steven snapped back to reality and said, "It was pretty fun. We found this book about- "

Before Steven could finish his sentence, Steven felt a loud shake. Steven looked around and saw that the Gems were panicking.

"Guys?" Steven asked, "What's going on?"

"It's on Mask Island!" Garnet said before she and the others rushed to the Warp Pad. Steven tried to get their attention, but they were gone before he could say anything.

"What's going on?" Connie asked.

"It's probably some monster or something," Steven said dejectedly.

"No, I mean," Connie began, "Something shook the ground, and if it was a monster, wouldn't it be closer?"

"I guess," Steven said, "They did say it was on Mask Island, and that's really far away."

"And why didn't they take you? Weren't they taking you on more and more missions?" Connie continued.

"You're right!" Steven said, following Connie's logic, "Something's not right…and I bet that goo on the rock has something to do with it!"

Connie nodded and the two went to investigate the blue goo on the rock. By the time that they reached the rock, most of the goo had dried up, but there were still a few wet patches.

Steven grabbed a nearby stick and poked the liquid, while Connie grabbed for a dried piece.

"It looks like…old toothpaste," Connie said, smelling it, "And it smells like it too."

Steven nodded, discerned that the goo wouldn't dissolve his hand, and went to grab some.

The goo was thick, and when Steven lifted his hand, he noticed that it was very sticky. He wiped his hand in the sand when he felt something sharp poke his hand.

"OW!" Steven exclaimed, pulling his hand out of the sand. Connie looked at him and asked, "What happened?"

"I cut myself on…what?" Steven stopped as he saw an unnaturally green shard. He carefully moved the sand with the hand that he didn't cut and saw that it was larger than he thought.

"Is that metal?" Connie asked, carefully grabbing the shard.

"None that I've ever seen," Steven said.

Connie inspected it. The shard had a slight curvature on it, with the outside having an unnatural bright green color and the inside having a dark green color.

"It looks like it came from some sort of sphere, based on how it's curved," Connie said.

"But that doesn't make sense," Steven replied, maintaining pressure on his cut hand, "All the monsters I've seen look like…monsters, not spheres."

Connie looked around, "Maybe there are some more pieces lying around."

Steven nodded and then said, "Let me fix this cut up and we'll go digging."

Connie returned the nod as the two went to the house to look for the first aid kit. Pearl had been very concerned for Steven's wellbeing for years, and almost as a ritual had replenished the first aid kit at the start of every month, partially due to the occasional injury that Steven had obtained and partially due to Amethyst eating what was inside.

Steven opened the kit and after cleaning his hand and applying a bandage, Steven looked at the contents of the first aid kit.

"That's weird," Steven said going back to the kit.

"What's weird?" Connie asked.

"Well Pearl usually gets a new first aid kit on the first, and I think the first was three days ago," Steven said trying to remember.

"Yeah, it was. I remember because we had our last test on the first," Connie replied, trying to follow Steven's train of thought.

"Well Amethyst ate most of the burn cream on toast last week because we ran out of cream cheese, and this kit doesn't have any burn cream in it," Steven said, pointing out the contents of the first aid kit.

Connie looked and said, "Yeah, and it looks like there are less bandages then there are supposed to be."

Steven nodded, "I've been getting a few more cuts during my training, so I've been using more than usual."

Steven was thinking what this all meant when the Warp Pad shone brightly. Pearl walked off the pad, looking around and headed towards the two.

"Steven! Connie! I almost forgot about that lemonade! Let me make you some!" Pearl had said, in an overly polite tone.

Steven and Connie looked at each other and Steven asked, "What about the thing on Mask Island?"

Pearl had begun to open the refrigerator at this point and Steven could see Pearl visibly freeze. Without turning to look at the kids, Pearl said, "Oh, the others have the situation handled, so Rose asked me to watch over you two!"

As Pearl began to prepare the lemonade, Connie motioned for Steven to follow her and the two walked out of Pearl's earshot.

Connie whispered, "Is Pearl normally like this?"

Steven shook his head.

Pearl was acting strangely, this was apparent, but what was strange was why Pearl was acting this way. As Steven was thinking about this, the front door burst open and Amethyst emerged, soaking wet and covered in sand.

"Amethyst! Is everything ok?" Steven asked.

Amethyst nodded, and Steven noticed that her mouth seemed to be full.

"Were you eating something?" Steven asked.

Amethyst quickly shook her head and swallowed, almost wincing, and replied, "Nah, dude just had some water in my mouth from swimming."

"Why were you swimming when you could have used the Warp Pad?" Connie pressed.

Amethyst, almost nonchalantly, said, "Turns out the thing on Mask Island was no big deal and I wanted to stretch my arms and legs going for a swim."

Just as she finished, the Warp Pad activated again with Rose and Garnet stepping out. Rose immediately looked at Steven and Connie and said, "Sorry about leaving so soon! There was an issue on Mask Island and Garnet thought that it was much more serious than it actually was."

Garnet remained silent as she walked towards the Temple Door, entering inside.

There was something wrong. Garnet would have responded with something, a clever quip or a simple greeting, but it wasn't often that she responded with absolute silence.

Rose called Amethyst over, and while the two were talking, Steven said, "Oh yeah! I forgot the books outside, Connie can you help me get them?"

Steven was not one for subtlety, but the others seemed distracted by other matter, the two left the house and began heading towards the rock.

As the two approached the rock, they realized something. The spot that had been covered in a blue liquid previously was spotless.

"What the?" Steven said as he began searching for any trace of the blue liquid. Connie began to explore the area where Steven has found the piece of metal.

"Connie, be car- "Steven began, but Connie replied, "There's nothing here."

(Several Years Ago)

It was Pearl's day to watch Steven.

The two were at the library, Steven reading more often than the Gems had expected. Even at five years old, Steven would often ask to go to the library at least once a week.

This wasn't a problem of course, and Pearl even saw this as an opportunity to teach Steven. It was decided long ago that he would not go to the human establishment known as "school" as the Gems figured that it would be much easier to teach Steven at home.

With access to a bevy of books containing a wide variety of topics, Pearl thought that this would be an ideal place to facilitate Steven's education.

Pearl also understood that sometimes humans wrote books containing themes that were deemed to mature for young children, so Pearl would often look at the books that Steven had picked out and began to preemptively check them for mature themes.

While most of the books that he would choose would be fine, although there was a book involving a human and alien romance that Pearl found "indecent" and returned to its proper place.

Much like any other day at the library, Steven took his small stack of four books and presented them to Pearl.

Pearl had noticed that Steven had taken a book about space, which she saw as amusing considering what she knew about space compared to what humans knew about space. Two other books were fiction books, one about a group of children living on a train cart and another about a young girl with a falcon.

These three books were fine for Steven, but the fourth one was different. She looked at the author, Buddy Buddwick, a name which she was familiar with, and looked through the book.

It contained descriptions of the many adventures of Buddwick, but that wasn't of much concern to Pearl. What was, was the images and descriptions of the Kindergarten.

Rose had sworn that Steven would never learn about the place, and Pearl felt similar. She looked at Steven and said, "Sorry, but this book is too grown-up for you Steven."

She saw Steven pout for a moment but sighed as he complied. He picked up the books about space and began to read it.

Pearl went to the shelves furthest in the back, glancing over her shoulder making sure that Steven was preoccupied with the book.

Once she was sure that Steven was distracted, she began to place the book on one of the back shelves when a thought occurred.

She knew that Steven would ravenously tear through books, and any book on the shelf would eventually be read by Steven, meaning that eventually Steven would find this book on the shelf again.

Pearl looked around and saw that there was no one else where she was.

Pearl knelt to the floor and slid the book deep beneath the wooden shelf.

Worst case scenario, the librarian would find the book when they were cleaning, but at the very least Pearl hoped that librarian would keep the book in some sort of archive if it was found. It was valuable after all, being a journal from one of the founders of Beach City.

In any case, Pearl reassured herself that Steven would not find the book.

"It's for his own good," Pearl had thought to herself.

The two stood in silence.

Steven noticed that the books were still there, including Buddwick's journal. He slowly walked to the books, Connie saying, "Steven, what are you thinking."

Steven didn't know how to answer. He had read plenty of mystery books and was starting to piece things together.

"Connie, do you think you could convince your parents to stay over for the night?" Steven asked as he opened Buddwick's journal.

Connie asked again, "Steven, what are you thinking?"

Steven turned to the page of the journal talking about "The Many Hole'd Place" and showed it to Connie.

"I think the Gems are trying to hide something."

…

Five years.

It's been five years since I have updated this story.

I have gone through, no joke, five or six drafts of this chapter. I would say writer's block, but that would imply that I knew where I wanted the story to go. To be honest, I was following the show and cribbing the plot points and adapting them to fit the story as I saw fit.

As you could probably tell, this chapter was going off the episode "Buddy's Book" which was one of the more recent episodes at the time of this draft of the chapter.

Then life happened. I had changed majors in college, I worked in a job that I barely tolerated, I was in a relationship and then out of the relationship, got a new job that I like better, graduated college, planned on going to Japan only for world events involving a disease to change those plans.

In those years, I would go back to this chapter of the story and work on it bit by bit. I would get emails about people reviewing this story, favoriting and following the story, and favoriting and following me.

Every time I got one of those emails, I would smile and think about going back to writing, occasionally doing one shots and planning for things much more grandiose than I could feasibly manage.

Then Steven Universe Future, the epilogue to the series, had ended. Watching that ending reminded me of all the good things that the franchise has done for me.

It inspired me to write again, helped me in times of emotional crisis, and was always there as a reminder that there was media in the world that could affect people.

The series may have ended, but this story hasn't.

I couldn't leave it like that.

As I was finishing this chapter of the story, I logged into my account to see if I still could and see what I had missed with my stories.

32 reviews, 133 favorites, 142 alerts, and 25,759 views for this story.

I owe it to all those patient people who have wanted me to continue this story, to the people who have reviewed this story wanting me to continue, and most of all to 93MANIAC, who without them I wouldn't have embarked on this story to begin with.

So, to everyone who has waited for this story to finish, it will be finished. I do have a stopping point where I want to end the story, and it isn't with this chapter.

Keep an eye out for things to come.

As a small aside, while I do like the way this chapter turned out, I am overly proud of the "pack of lions/pride of lions" line, and I don't know why. Also, it was a bit difficult having to write the characters in their Season One mentalities, considering how much they had changed over the series.

Thank you for reading this chapter and my long postscript, I hope to get the next chapter out sooner than five years.

Peace.