Day 1: Trapped

"I want to exit," Steven said. Nothing. "Are you listening or not, room? I said, I want to exit!" he said. And nothing spawned. He turned to me, confused. "Any ideas, Connie?"

"Um…" I said. I scratched my head. This wasn't like Rose's room. Last time, a door just spawned when we asked it to. So what was going on?

Steven and I had been hanging out in Rose's room. After everything else going on with the gem war and the Diamonds, he suggested we hang out in here to cool off, with no danger to our lives looming over us for once. Personally, I thought it was an awful idea, considering the last time we decided to hang here, but he somehow convinced me. Still, I had a bad feeling in my gut.

Until that moment, I thought I was wrong. Until that moment, everything was going fine. Heck, until that moment, it was going great! In that room, there were limitless possibilities! Anything we asked for, bam, there it was!

The problem, though, came when it was time to leave. Because Steven wanted to summon a door to get out, and it wasn't spawning.

"Maybe you aren't being specific enough?" I stammered." Maybe it's summoning an exit, but it's, like, 50 miles away."

"It's understood what I meant every other time I asked for something!" Still he looked to the sky. "Room, we don't want the gems to get worried when we don't return. I want you to summon a visible, unlocked door that leads to the real temple right in front of us."

And once again, nothing.

"Is the room working at all?" I said. "Room, I'd like a… pen or something."

Nothing. I was starting to get scared. Did the room stop working?

Steven facepalmed. "Connie, you can't summon anything, remember? I want a pen, and the exit, please!"

A pen summoned in Steven's hand, but not the exit. He put the pen in his pocket absentmindedly.

"What's going on?" the two of us said at the same time.

I turned to look at the trail of stuff we made as we goofed off in here, oblivious to the coming threat. I saw everything we had summoned, but the door we used to enter was conspicuously absent.

The two of us wandered the various bits and pieces of stuff we had let behind. A VR console, since Steven always wanted to try using an oculus rift. The next book to Unfamiliar Familiar, as I would've written it (In which I learned I wasn't a great writer). The first things we made, to make sure the room was working. A stuffed elephant, a stand-up mirror. But as I saw from the distance, the door wasn't there.

I was getting nervous. The room didn't do this last time. No, last time, it just spawned a door when we asked it to!

The two of us kept thinking of what else might help us get out. Well, Steven was. I couldn't stop thinking, what if we really were trapped here? "Oh!" Steven finally said. I jumped back, startled. "One time, I summoned a gateway to another part of the temple! Maybe that'll work!"

"Try it, then." I said eagerly. Even with what little information we had, I was already jumping to conclusions. What if the room had grown sentient and had a lust for blood? I knew I shouldn't have read so many 'machines taking over humanity' stories before the trip. My mind kept sending thoughts of us, trapped here because of the room's rouge AI. I shook my head multiple times. Maybe it was just a glitch, right? The temple's kind of electronic, maybe it was just malfunctioning. Nothing to get worked up about. It wasn't summoning a door to the outside world, but the rest of the temple was fine. We were fine.

"Room, I want a portal to Pearl's room. The real one."

And nothing happened. I froze in place. My breaths started growing more rapid.

"Connie, calm down."

"B-but I said I'd be back by 6:00! If we don't solve this soon, my parents are going to freak out. And what if it takes longer than that! What if-"

"Connie! It's okay." He gave me a cute smile, hoping to cheer me up.

I took a shaky breath. "Then you tell me, what's going on?"

"I don't know. This is the first time this has happened to me, too, you know. But the most important thing is not to panic."

I took another shaky breath. I knew we were in an endless field of pink clouds, but it felt like the walls were closing in on me.

"I told you this was a bad idea, Steven. Every time you come in here, it tries to kill one of us! What if it never lets us out!?"

"Connie, calm down."

"And there's no way to get food in here! We're going to die!"

"Connie!"

"What!?"

"Seriously! Calm down! We've only been at this for, like, 3 minutes. Can you wait to panic until we're sure we're trapped here and it's not some other reason?"

"We've tried everything!"

"Really, Connie? We've tried, like three things. Maybe the room's just overloaded or something from all the other stuff we've spawned today. It would take a lot of energy to create an actual portal. Room, I want all of the stuff scattered here to disappear."

The piles of stuff disappeared. "There, not overloaded anymore. Now, room. Summon a door, please."

A door summoned.

I breathed a sigh of relief. We were fine, then. And I was freaking out. Man, my heart was racing, all for such a simple solution.

Then, Steven opened the door, and it lead to nowhere. Just more clouds.

While my heart filled with dread again, Steven's face scrunched up. "Not funny, room! I want way out! Make this door lead out!" And my heart sank further, because when he opened the door again, nothing. Even dissipating that door and summoning another one, nothing. Even Steven was getting a bit scared, now, no matter how he tried to deny it.

We exchanged a dark look. Nothing we tried was working. Why wasn't the room letting us leave?

I kept trying to stay calm, or at least act like I was calm, like Steven was. Even with the pit in my stomach, there still might've been something we hadn't thought of. But after another 10 minutes of trying so many ideas with absolutely no success we still hadn't found a way out.

Steven summoned a bench to sit on. He slumped down on it. "Maybe you're right. We shouldn't have come in here."

I scowled. "You think? Well, it's great that you had that giant epiphany. Now we're trapped in here!" I looked at the ground. "We're gonna die here." Maybe I should've have yelled at Steven, but I was scared. I guess that was how I was letting it out.

Steven looked at the ground. "Don't be like that, Connie. We've survived worse, haven't we?"

"I don't care. I don't want to die."

"What if the room's just… lonely? And it'll let us out before we die!"

"…The room. Your theory is that the room is lonely."

"Yeah! That makes sense, right?"

"No, no it doesn't. That was supposed to help?" I felt a tear forming in my eye, but I held it back.

"There has to be some explanation, doesn't there? The room's never gone completely insane for no reason. You know when your evil clone attacked me? That was because I said 'I want you out now.' You didn't say 'I wish we never had to leave' or something, did you?"

"I don't have any power here, you know. Did you wish for it?" If he did, then maybe…

Of course, Back to square one. "You know what, I don't care if there's an explination or not! I don't care why we're trapped here! I want to get out!"

It was nothing but an endless expanse of clouds as far as the eye could see. I wasn't hiding my fear anymore. If we never escaped… I didn't want to die here. We could only last 3 days without water, then the clouds would swallow my body. I'd fought gems to the likes of Jasper, I didn't want to be brought down like this.

"Connie…?"

"Steven. What if… what if we really are trapped here? What if we don't find a way out?"

"Connie... I'm sure it's going to be fine."

"But what if it isn't fine? What if none of your theories are true? What if we really are stuck here forever?"

"Then we'll figure something out! The room wouldn't let us starve. This is Rose's room, she wouldn't make it trap people for no reason."

"Look around us. The room isn't conscious, is it? If not, there's no reason for it to trap us. Yet here we are."

"Then what if it is conscious?"

"Then it's even worse! Then it's gone rouge and wants us dead! It's going to kill us through starvation!"

"Room, I want a hamburger," Steven interrupted me to say.

One appeared in his hand.

"…What do you plan on doing with that? You know the room can't make food."

"I know the room wouldn't let us starve." He raised the burger to his mouth and took a bite. And it was real. Through the food in his mouth, he said, "Shee? We'ew mot goin' t' daa."

"What?"

He swallowed his food down, and gave me an earnest smile. "We're not going to die."

My heart rose for a second. Even if the room was trapping us, we weren't doomed. Then sank even further. I had feared death. Now I feared something much bigger.

"But… why would it start giving us food the moment it traps us in here? It's like… it wants to keep us its prisoners. It's giving us food, but not letting us leave." It didn't make sense any other way. It wanted us trapped here, alive. That terrified me.

"Okay, now you're just being ridiculous, Connie. We never ruled out that the 's just glitching out, still. Besides, why would mom have a room that keeps its occupants prisoners all of a sudden? Further, why hasn't it done it in the last 5,000 years? I think the gems would've stopped me from going in if it was that bad."

I had trouble seeing it. Even though Steven's reasoning was sound, something felt off to me, still. We'd tried so many ways to get out. Maybe it was just my gut instinct talking, but I didn't feel like the room was glitching out. It was like it was actively keeping us in.

"Come on. I'm sure this'll clear up. Want to try another few rounds of Super Fighting Fighters while we wait?"

I hesitantly nodded. There was always the chance Steven was right. But there was a pit in my stomach that wouldn't go away.

We played for another hour. Steven was really trying his hardest to stay calm, to listen to his own logical reasoning, but I could tell he was paying just as much attention to the game as I was. As in, almost none.

Finally, after an hour of doing nothing but playing video games and ignoring our problems, I slammed my fist on the table in front of us. "We can't pretend like nothing is wrong! You know it, I know it. We're trapped here. We're this room's prisoner." I kicked the TV down in anger, which cracked against the room's hard floor.

Steven pointed and poofed the TV away. "Room, I want a door that leads out of here," he said, but it didn't have any energy behind it. Neither of us expected anything, and nothing came. He sighed. "We really are trapped here, aren't we?"

When Steven said that aloud, admitted to me he couldn't see any way out of this anymore, I let myself cry. I might never see my parents again. I might never see anyone again, except Steven. All of my teachers, my classmates, they would never know how I was trapped here in this wasteland of pink clouds. And so I cried. Steven provided me a shoulder to cry on. A few tears went down his cheek as well.

After all that, I got serious. We needed to find a way out, whether it was even possible to get out or not. First step: What did we have to work with?

We took inventory of everything we had that was real, not made of clouds. We had our clothes, of course. I also insisted we brought Rose's sword just in case something went wrong. I had left it leaning against a now-disappered couch, so I picked it up. Steven summoned a sheath for it. It was the only thing besides us that was real. Other than that, we didn't bring a thing.

Our goal? Find a way to escape. We didn't have a plan, but that was our goal.

"We'd better get some stuff for defense. If the room's trapped us in here, we can't be sure it won't try to attack us. I have this sword, but I might want a nonviolent weapon… Room, I want a shrink ray!" …Nothing. I sighed in frustration. "Steven, shrink ray, please?"

He was about to summon one, but he froze. "Idea…" he said. "Room, I'd like a notebook where anything you draw pops out of it!" A notebook summoned in his hand. "Just like in book 2 of the spirit saga, with the book of appearance! Try it out!"

He tossed me it. I opened a page to draw something, but there was a problem.

"I need a pencil."

"Oh, right." He pulled the pen he had spawned earlier out of his pocket. "Will that do?"

I nodded and grabbed the pen from his hands. I drew a shrink ray the best I could. I wasn't a great artist. All that popped out was a normal old gun, which I quickly dropped in fear. I was way too young to be using something like that. I wrote the words "Shrink ray" above my next picture, and it appeared in front of me, a lot more cartoonish.

"I want an apple." Steven said. I gave him a confused look, but he just smiled and set it on the floor. "Try it!" he said. I fired a shot at it. It shrunk the apple into what was basically a cherry.

That was cool, all things considered. And now, if something came up, I could do something to affect the room! I was no longer helpless. Oh, how nice it felt to have some sort of control again.

Out of curiosity, I drew a door labelled 'exit door.' Yeah, nothing appeared. I kind of figured.

The rest of the day was spent simple doing more planning. Getting more cloudy supplies, bouncing ideas as to why we were here in this pink void. Were we prisoners? Did the room want something from us? With so little information, we could only speculate as we sat in an endless ocean of pink clouds.

There was no sense of time, here. We talked and prepared for hours, but the sky neither dimmed or brightened. It was just a bright pink sky. I even tried to summon a watch to keep time, but its hands didn't move.

When the two of us were getting tired, Steven made the room darker, to simulate nighttime. He summoned a bed for himself, while I drew one in my notebook. I put a ton of detail into it! A bed summoned in front of me. Unfortunately, it just made a bed from a dollhouse. So Steven had to make me a real bed, too. I guess my notebook had its limits.

We got to bed. I might have stopped crying, but inside, I was still scared. Scared we would never escape this place. A place where we could do anything but leave. It was almost poetic.

I set the notebook on the cloudy floor. My only way to influence this world.

Despite my fear, though, I tried to stay hopeful. Even if it was a prison where we could do anything but leave, I mean, we could still do literally anything! That had to count for something, right?

But more importantly… I wasn't alone. Steven was always here to support me. If I was trapped here with no friends no family, how long would it be until I went insane?

Stop it, brain. Steven was here.

Whatever times the room might bring, for now, it was time to get to bed. To be fair, it was the softest bed I'd ever slept in. But with all the thoughts in my head, I wasn't asleep 2 hours later.

"Connie?" Steven whispered, out of nowhere. "Are you awake?"

I turned over to look at his bed. His eyes were wide open. "Couldn't sleep either, huh?"

"I… I'm scared," he said. "I might never see the gems again. Sadie, Lars, everybody in beach city, they'll be wondering where I am next week. What if you're right? What if we never escape? I can't stop thinking about that, that we're trapped here forever. It might've seemed like I was mr. perfect back there, but I'm just as scared as you. I don't know why I wasn't crying right there with you. I shouldn't have kept pretending things were okay when they weren't okay. We wasted an hour playing Fighting Fighters because of me when we could've been searching for a way out!"

I shook my head. "I'm not mad at you for that, Steven. You stayed calm while I… I shut down. I'm sorry for exploding at you. It's not your fault that we're here. You could've been right, it could've been a glitch, and I just gave up. Heck, it could still be a glitch. We hadn't tried everything yet. I could've stayed calm, but I just freaked out. Instead of trying to help, I panicked."

Steven then shook his head. "Don't apologize, Connie. You were right anyways, weren't you? I should've listened sooner."

I smiled. We were both trying to pull the blame onto ourselves, weren't we? It was almost comical. "You know what, we're in this together. It's just the two of us left in this place. We both made mistakes, this isn't our fault, let's forgive each other, and ourselves, and move on."

Steven looked me in the eye. "Maybe you're right..." But I saw a bit of doubt in his eyes. That we were trapped forever.

I made a promise, that day. "Steven, we'll escape this place. Maybe tomorrow, maybe 10 years from now, but we will escape. This room won't keep us here forever. I promise you that."

Steven didn't answer. I thought he fell asleep, but he was just looking at the pink, shapeless, cloudy sky.

I turned to look at it as well. It was beautiful. It was a beautiful prison.

I don't know when it happened, but eventually, I fell asleep.

A/N: Just an idea I had for a story a while back. What if Steven and Connie got trapped in Rose's room? It's probably been done before, but I haven't seen it. So it's original in my book, okay?

The story's also kind of inspired by the music video Shelter, trapped in a world where you can do anything and all, but it's mostly its own thing. I mean, literally nothing's original, I'm just using a similar basic concept. The notebook might be a bit on the nose, though… Meh.

I'll be continuing this for a few chapters, at least. Maybe more if people end up liking it as much as some of my other stories. If you do like it, fave, and follow so you won't miss them, and to let me know you want this to continue. For the record, I do have a bigger storyline planned. Come on, it would be boring if it was just Steven and Connie messing around in the room, even with some intense emotions in there, too. There is a reason they're trapped in Rose's room, for example, and that notebook is more than it seems. So, stay tuned for some story to go with the characters.

Oh, and review if you want. How're you liking the first chapter?

Finally, if you like my style, check out The Infinity Link: Bonded by Fate. It's 110K words long and growing, and also features Steven and Connie with a fairly unique premise. So if you want more MLfan64, you can have some before my next chapter releases!

Is that the end of my shameless self-promotions? Yes? Cool.

Next time, day two. Where the characters develop further, and the meat of the story begins. See you guys then.