A/N: Due to popular request, I will be continuing this story! *cue cheer* I re-read all the earlier chapters to refresh myself on them and I believe I can start again from where I left off. I hope you enjoy this much-prolonged chapter and the ones to come!

"This is so exciting!" squealed Steven, looking around at all the baby furniture with stars in his eyes. He giggled as he touched each and every crib, playpen, and changing table within the first aisle of the store. Peridot and Lapis followed the energetic boy, apologizing to anyone who looked annoyed by him.

Steven poked the bedding in one of the cribs with a grin, then scurried off to check out some of the play areas for sale. A nearby salesman grumbled. When he noticed that Lapis and Peridot were trailing behind Steven, he hurried over to talk to them.

"Please, control your son!" he scolded, wiping his sweaty bald head with a handkerchief. Peridot and Lapis looked at each other in confusion.

"What do you mean?" asked Peridot, placing a protective hand on Lapis's slightly swollen belly. "He's not doing anything wrong! And how do you know it's a boy?" The salesman looked befuddled, then realized the mistake.

"You misunderstand. I mean your older son," he said, gesturing to where Steven was dashing excitedly around the diaper section. Peridot raised an eyebrow.

"We don't have an older son," she replied to the salesman, who dabbed furiously at his glistening head with the handkerchief.

"Him!" he roared, pointing at Steven.

"Oh, he's not our son. He's just here with us to help pick out some baby furniture," said Lapis calmly, causing the salesman's face to turn a brilliant shade of red.

"THEN PLEASE JUST CONTROL YOUR...um... SMALL COMPANION!" shouted the salesman at the top of his lungs, finally losing his temper. All the nearby shoppers turned their heads to look at him. One baby in a stroller began to wail. Embarrassed, the salesman started to sweat even more.

"Get out of this store!" he spat at Peridot and Lapis, taking slow, shaky, irritated breaths. "Get out of this store and don't you DARE come back!" With this, he thrust an enraged, pointing finger into Lapis's chest. Peridot gasped in surprise and anger. Acting on pure instinct, she threw her arms out in front of her and a metal shopping basket went flying.

The various customers stared, gasped, and pointed as the basket soared towards the salesman, as if in slow motion. The salesman himself shrieked as he realized the metal basket was heading right for him. Even though he desperately tried to shield his head, the basket hit its target perfectly, knocking him square onto the floor. By then, Steven, his attention caught by the ruckus, had returned to the pair of gems and was looking in shock at the downed salesman.

"Peridot, what did you do?" he said, examining the man. "You can't just throw metal baskets at people!"

"Um, Steven, we should probably go," said Peridot as she noticed several security guards running towards them from the distance.

"We can't just leave this guy here!" exclaimed Steven. "He might be hurt!"

"There's not much we can do!" yelped Lapis. The security guards drew closer.

"Uh, here!" Steven hastily licked his hand and slapped his wet palm on the man's forehead. Peridot quickly helped him off the ground and the group ran for it. The security guards were gaining on them, and the trio could hear their yells.

"Stop in the name of the Baby Mart law!" shouted one of them. The three renegades rushed to the exit door and ran until the security guards gave up the chase. Lapis spoke as they all slumped over, panting from the effort of running.

"I guess we're not buying the furniture from them."

oooOOOooo

Steven dug through a huge pile of junk, trying to uncover any furniture there was. He had been rummaging through Amethyst's terribly messy room for a couple of hours in an attempt to get furniture for the baby's room from there. Finally his efforts were rewarded when he unearthed a large wooden crib and a baby playpen gate.

"Found something!" he called as he dug up said items. The other three gems present in the room looked over at his discovery.

"See, I told you there was some stuff in here under all the junk!" said Amethyst, jumping down from a towering trash pile she had been sitting on. She examined the crib's frame. "Wow, this is in real good shape!"

"So do you think we could borrow it?" asked Lapis as Amethyst continued to carefully study the crib.

"Sure you can. Just needs some new bedding and you're all set," said Amethyst, patting the wooden frame of the piece of furniture. "I think we might have some stuff you can use for that."

oooOOOooo

"Oh, this was Steven's old crib padding!" said Pearl lovingly, pulling a soft blanket-like thing out of the box she had been digging through. She held it up in front of her with a smile. "This used to be in Steven's crib when he was a baby!"

"Was the crib Steven's, too?" inquired Peridot curiously. Pearl raised an eyebrow.

"What crib?" she asked. Peridot was confused now.

"Uh, the crib Amethyst gave us..." she answered. Pearl's puzzled expression turned to one of remembrance.

"Oh, yes, that one. Yes, that was Steven's. I forgot Amethyst took it into her room for...I don't remember why." She folded up the crib padding and handed it to Lapis. Continuing to rummage through the overstuffed box, Pearl found one of Steven's old baby toys. Interestingly enough, it was a small pink lion, similar in looks to the real lion Steven had now.

"How adorable!" cooed Pearl, examining the lion toy. "Steven used to play with this all the time!" She put the lion on top of the folded crib padding Lapis was holding. The pale white gem looked through the masses of items in the box, picking through the things delicately. The pile of old toys and baby stuff in Lapis's arms got bigger and bigger.

"I think this is enough," Lapis finally spoke up, putting the massive pile of items in her hands down on the table. "Thanks, but I'm not sure we need a lot." Agreeing with her partner, Peridot nodded.

"Oh, of course. It's all right if you don't use everything," said Pearl with a nod. Peridot grabbed the pile off the table again and waved to Steven as her and Peridot left.

Peridot couldn't help but let a grin spread across her face as they walked down the steps away from the house. Lapis glanced over at her.

"What?" asked the taller of the pair with an amused look.

"Nothing." Peridot looked away. "It's just... this is all coming together, you know? Things just got real." Lapis nodded in understanding with a small smile on her face. Smiles could be extremely contagious, as she often found. Peridot shifted the huge pile of miscellaneous baby items in her hands and continued to walk.

Peridot's sore feet throbbed. She wasn't used to walking from place to place, as she usually stayed at the barn. The times she did travel in her life, she had had a spaceship or Lapis to help her fly. Now that Lapis was in such a fragile condition, they both agreed on only walking to get to whichever destination they were visiting.

They reached the barn after the treacherous journey through the city on foot. Lapis looked around at all the buildings and shops, noting the names of each one. Peridot, however, sweated under the debilitating rays of the sun and the heavy load of items for the new child. Both trudged through the streets and finally reached the familiar red barn they called home.

Pumpkin yapped excitedly as they entered the barn. Peridot dropped the heavy load of materials with a relieved sigh. Her breathing was labored and her face sweaty.

Pumpkin threw himself about the gems' feet in happiness at their arrival. Lapis smiled and knelt down to stroke his bright orange head. The sound of Pumpkin's ecstatic barking filled the barn.

"So let's get this room done, shall we?" asked Peridot, looking over at Lapis..The gem in question was busy staring off into space, one hand placed absentmindedly on her midsection. She quickly snapped back to focus when she realized Peridot was talking to her.

"What? Oh, yes, the room. Yeah, we should probably do that now." Her hand slowly caressed her stomach, where the baby was causing a very slight bulge. Peridot, with a huff of annoyance, grabbed the huge stack of things again and followed Lapis towards the ladder.

"Um... how are we doing this?"

Lapis looked back, remembered that someone with an armfull of baby things couldn't climb a ladder, and went into a state of deep thought.

"Hmm... well, we could have one of us up the ladder and one down and the one at the bottom hands things up to the top," she suggested. Peridot thought this through, and, seeing as it was the only logical option either of them could think of, agreed upon it.

It was only when she was lifting a massive heap of disassembled pieces of crib over her head that she realized the downside of the plan.

"I don't think... I can hold this... much longer," she struggled to say, the weight of the wooden crib pieces making it almost impossible to breathe.

"I know, I just can't get a good hold on them from up here!" called Lapis. She wrapped her arms around the pile and began to lift, only to discover that her grasp on them was slipping. She quickly placed them back onto Peridot's outstretched arms.

"Sorry!" Lapis leaned down again in an attempt to grab the pieces when she felt herself slipping off the ledge. A gasp escaped her throat as she gripped the ledge with her fingers.

"Peridot!" she said hastily. The addressed gem threw down the pile of wood she had been holding and held out her arms quickly. Lapis, despite her efforts, tumbled down and fell directly into Peridot's waiting arms.

"We should be more careful," said Lapis matter-of-factly as she hurriedly stood up and brushed off her skirt. Peridot nodded, still looking shocked over what had just happened.

"Yeah." She looked over at Lapis with wide eyes. "Are you OK?"

"Yes. I'm... I'm fine." Lapis gestured to the pile of wood that was the disassembled crib. "We'd better get this up here."

Within several hours, they had successfully transferred all the items from down to upstairs and had begun arranging the furniture in the room. Smiles tugged at the two's lips as they decorated, feeling everything start to become a reality.

A/N: Extremely late and not the best I've written, but I like it. I hope you all enjoyed this chapter finally being out. I will try to write as fast as humanly possible for the next chapters in order to make up for the lack of updating recently. Don't worry, more bits of plot will be revealed soon. Until next time, bye for now.