[Author's Note: The motions of Gems are all characterized as female in this story, even Anger and Fear.]

The control room of a Ruby's mind was a sparse, but well-organized space. Its five emotions—Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear—sat at the controls, helping guide their host with precision and efficiency. Anger sat in the center seat of this particular one—Facet 3R6M Cut 2ES—ensuring she would act in such a way to satisfy her sole Island of Personality: Homeworld Island.

At this moment, this Ruby, plus two others, were accompanying a Sapphire to the planet Earth, where a rebellion was in its infancy.

"Can't wait for those rebels to get here!" one of the other Ruby guards—Facet 4R6P Cut 2KN, whose gem was on her shoulder—was saying.

"Yeah!" the third Ruby said. "When I see those rebels, I'm gonna punch them right in their faces!"

"What are you saying? I'm gonna punch them all over their bodies, and then it'll be over." The two started fighting.

Inside the mind of Ruby 3R6M, Disgust rolled her eyes. "Do they really think they could beat them solo?"

"Right!" said Anger. "We'll punch them together when we fuse."

"That's why they sent three of us," Joy said smugly. Ruby repeated her emotions' words.

"Three this!" One of the other Rubies punched 3R6M, sending her backwards.

"Gah!" Ruby's anger said. "How dare—"

She was quickly shushed by Sadness. On screen, it was clear that she had accidentally bumped into the Sapphire, prompting a couple gasps from the rest of the court.

"This is bad!" Fear shouted. "What if we get punished for this? What if we're shattered?"

"We have to apologize," Sadness stammered. "We have to make she's alright…"

Ruby extended her hand, but the Sapphire raised her hands to stop her. "It's okay," she said. "It was bound to happen."

"Huh?" said Fear. "She's not… upset?"

"And what does she mean that it was 'bound to happen'?" asked Disgust. "Rubies aren't always this careless… are they?"

"Hey," said Joy, "At least we're not in trouble."

Ruby 3R6M, along with the others, nervously stood at attention.

"Now please wait here," said the Sapphire. "I must attend to my duties."

The five emotions of Sapphire's mind never bickered over which one of them should take charge at a given time; while Sadness was nominally in charge, they all cooperated so that their Gem would stay cool and collected. This was helped by their future vision, which played constantly on screen next to what was happening in the present, so that they had time to compose their reactions ahead of time instead of getting caught off guard in the present.

Sapphire stood before her monarch. Her Fear ensured that showed the proper deference to her, the Gem who stood as the basis for her solitary Island of Personality: Blue Diamond.

"Sapphire," said Blue Diamond. "Tell me what you see."

The emotions watched the future vision feed. "Looks like the rebels will be attacking the Cloud Arena," Sadness noted.

"Ugh," said Disgust. "What's so great about Earth that they want to stop us?"

"No idea," said Anger. "But look! They're destroying a bunch of Gems!"

"Only their physical forms," said Joy.

"And one of them is us," said Fear.

"Yeah! But they get defeated right afterwards!" said Joy.

"Settle down, everyone," said Sadness. "We have to rely this to Blue Diamond in an orderly fashion."

Sapphire did so, and Blue Diamond thanked her.

"This is a beautiful planet," Joy remarked. "It's a great place for a colony."

"Shame we can't stick around to see more of it," said Sadness.

Ruby 3R6M remained outside the chamber until Sapphire returned. "What a beautiful place to build a colony," she remarked. "I wish I could have seen more of this planet."

Ruby's emotions glanced at each other in confusion. "Uh… I don't think she has any pressing business off planet," said Fear.

"And Blue Diamond's right here," said Disgust. "If any Gem would have need of her services, it would be her."

"Yeah," said Joy. "There's still time."

"That is a nice thought," said Sapphire, "but no."

Before Ruby could process this, the gathering was interrupted by a loud shout.

"Blue Diamond, leave this planet! This colony will not be completed!" Two Gems, a Quartz soldier and a disconcertingly independent Pearl, emerged. "We are the Crystal Gems!" And they began their attack.

"Okay!" her Anger announced. "Time to fuse!" On screen, the three Rubies charged at the rebels, joining together as they ran: fusion.

Whenever Ruby fused, the inside of the control room… changed. It was subtle, but it was still there. The whole room seemed to get bigger, with a better view of the rest of the mind through the back window and a larger rack to hold memories. During these times, Homeworld Island seemed to get a bit more complex, and the rack of memories held some that weren't there before. Even the emotions themselves seemed to change; they got taller, but also slightly shifted in personality, though still defined by their namesake.

The Ruby fusion struck at the rebels—but was promptly split apart again. Two of her components were then slashed, forcing them to retreat into their gems, leaving 3R6M as the only one remaining. The Pearl then moved on to attack Sapphire.

"Thank you, Ruby," Sapphire said. "You did your best."

"What?" said Ruby's Fear. "How can she be so calm when she's in danger?"

"Wait… she has future vision, doesn't she?" said Sadness. "She… she knew this would happen! She accepted it!"

"Yeah, but we don't have to accept it!" shouted Anger.

Ruby rushed towards Sapphire and… the control room changed. The window and memory rack became bigger, just like when she had fused with the other diamonds. But the emotions remained the same as before. Instead, there were now two of each.

"Gah!" shouted one of the Fears. "Who are you?"

"Who are you?" the other Fear returned.

"Uh, guys?" said one of the Disgusts. "Something's up."

She pointed at the screen. Somehow, despite being of two different types, Ruby and Sapphire had fused, resulting in a completely new Gem. The court stared aghast at the lanky, three-eyed, bicolored aberration that stood before them. The rebels took advantage of this distraction to take their leave.

"This isn't good," one of the Sadnesses said, "but we should remain calm. We just have to defuse..."

The other emotions, however, crowded around the control panel, desperately pressing buttons to try to get their components out of sync. Though disorderly, this at least worked, and Ruby and Sapphire, along with their emotions, soon found themselves back in their original bodies.

Blue Diamond was not happy. "The rebels have fled. Sapphire, this is not the scenario you described!"

"She's right!" Sapphire's Anger said. "That Pearl was supposed to destroy our physical form, but instead…"

"Instead we fused!" her Disgust said. "I didn't even know that was possible with another type!"

"Is all fusion like that?" Joy wondered. "Because, except for the initial shock, and the strangeness of encountering another one of yourself… which, I guess, the more common Gems do all the time… it didn't seem all that bad."

"That's not the point!" Fear shouted. "The point is, the events we saw in our vision didn't come true! It was wrong!"

"And so the rebels got away!" Sadness added. "We failed! We failed Blue Diamond!"

"No!" shouted the unharmed Ruby. "It was me!"

"Clearly," said Blue Diamond. "How dare you fuse with a member of my court?"

"Forgive me, I—" Ruby started, but she was quickly cut off.

"You will be broken for this!" Blue Diamond announced.

"What?" Sapphire's Disgust cried. "That's horrible!"

"She was just trying to protect us," said Sadness. "That's what she was told to do! And she's going to be broken for it?"

"We are not going to let that happen!" Anger said.

Sapphire grabbed Ruby's hand and ran with her to the edge of the arena and leapt off, despite her bodyguard's protests. Sapphire slowed their descent and they landed on the Earth, surrounded by large, rolling hills, untapped for their resources. It was unlikely that any of the other Gems would be able to find them too easily.

Ruby's emotions weren't happy about this. Not even Joy.

"What'd she go and do that for?" Disgust groused.

"We have to get her back up there!" Fear exclaimed.

"Right!" said Joy. "Once we get back, everything will be okay…"

"They were going to break you," said Sapphire.

"Well, mostly everything," said Joy.

"Who cares?" shouted Anger. "There's tons of us! Dozens of Rubies able do the things we do, to serve Homeworld—which, I remind you, is our sole Island of Personality?"

"And it's not like this place is that much better," Sadness noted, looking at Ruby's surroundings. There was no sign of civilization in sight, and water was falling from above.

"We're lost, and alone, and Blue Diamond's probably hunting for us… It's terrible!" said Fear.

Anger groaned in frustration. "What exactly are we supposed to do?"

Back in Sapphire's mind, her own emotions were discussing this very topic. "What are we going to do?" her Fear asked.

"Well, we certainly can't go back to our Diamond," said Disgust. "Not only would they break this Ruby, they would probably break Sapphire as well for what we did."

"We could check our future vision," said Joy.

"But our future vision's no good anymore," said Sadness. "If it was wrong about the outcome of the fight with the rebels, how can we know it won't be wrong about other things?"

"You're right!" said Fear. She rifled through the scenarios that appeared on screen, pressing buttons to send a wave of uncertainty for each one. "We can't trust any of this! No… no… no…"

As a result of her Fear's actions, Sapphire's ice powers activated. Unlike her future vision, this skill was rarely called upon, and she had always been in complete control over it. But now, no longer confident that her actions would go how she foresaw them, she was scared to take any action, and so these powers unconsciously took action for her. Shards of ice grew around her feet, solidifying her to the ground.

This did not escape Ruby's notice. "Ah!" Fear cried. "She's freezing over!"

"She must feel as bad as we do," said Sadness. "If not worse. She had so much status, but she threw it all away… because of us."

"We need to get her someplace dry," said Disgust. "Staying out in this sky-wetness isn't helping either of us."

Ruby lifted Sapphire up, breaking her free from the ice, and carried her to a cave. "Alright," Ruby said, "this should be good for now."

Sapphire parted her hair, revealing her single eye. "Thank you," she said.

"Wow," said Joy. "She's cute."

Ruby's feet caught on fire.

"Hey!" Anger shouted. "What did you do? I thought I controlled those powers!"

"I'm sorry!" said Joy, pulling her hands back from the console. "I don't know what I did! Maybe I inadvertently triggered some sort of new, intense feeling that resulted in this fire? I don't know."

"Come on, guys," Disgust said. "It's not that big a deal. We can just laugh it off; be a bit embarrassed and be done with it."

"And, of course, put the fire out so that Sapphire doesn't get hurt," added Fear. "And then we can focus on all the other things we have to worry about."

And so, eventually, they did. So Ruby paced back and forth, fretting and saying, "It's my fault you're stranded here. How am I gonna save you?"

"You already did."

"What?"

"You already saved me."

"Yeah," said Ruby's Sadness. "I guess we did. But then she had to save us. And that's what got us here."

Ruby slumped onto the ground.

Inside Sapphire's mind, her emotions noticed a conversational lull was forming. "Should we talk about something?" Fear asked.

"You mean, like, how we fused?" Sadness asked. "Is that what it's always like?" The few memories from that period were upon the rack, the scenes within as clear as any other, but

"Is that a good idea?" Disgust wondered. "I mean, it was sort of… weird."

"But not bad," said Joy. "Not necessarily good, but not bad. The fusion itself, at least. And besides, do you have anything else we could talk about?"

Disgust shook her head.

"I've seen gems fuse before," Sapphire said, "but I had no idea that's what it felt like. I always thought... I never realized that fusion... that'd you'd disappear like that.

"It's never like that!" Ruby exclaimed. "Whenever I've fused, it's always just been me, but bigger. I... I've never had a third eye before."

"I've never had more than one! It was nice."

Ruby blushed. "Yeah…"

The rain stopped the next day, and the two Gems took the opportunity to explore the planet, taking in its vistas and discovering the strange creatures that inhabited it. Along the way, they continued to talk about their accidental fusion with one another, and as the day went on, an unspoken desire to experience that again became clear. So in the evening, they danced with each other, and—

She was back. The fusion that had existed so very briefly the day before was back. One body, one mind, ten emotions around one console.

"This is… still a bit weird," one of the Disgusts said.

"But also kind of fun," said one the Joys.

"How will we be able to tell which emotion is from which Gem?" a Sadness asked.

"Does it really matter?" the other Joy said. "I mean, I assume we're going to be sharing the console…"

"But it'll get really confusing otherwise," said one of the Angers. "Plus, considering our original Gems' differing personalities, I'm sure that some of us would be able to respond in certain situations better than our counterpart…"

"Fair enough," the Joy said. "Okay; all of Ruby's emotions, sit to the left of Sapphire's emotions. That should work."

The emotions repositioned themselves, leaving the two Joys sitting in the center, ready to head the venture into this strange, wonderful experience.

But some of the other emotions still had reservations. "Are we really going to just abandon everything?" asked the Fear from Ruby's mind, whom the other emotions soon learned to refer to as 'Fear R'. "I mean, we still have Ruby's Homeworld Island—but nothing to replace it."

"Right," said Sadness S. "Without being able to serve Homeworld or Blue Diamond, our Islands of Personality will get a bit… shabby."

They were right; even now, the emotions could see out the window the two Islands, dulling in color, never to bit lit up when used again.

"Er, don't worry," said Joy R. "We're bound to get a new Island sooner or later."

"A new Island? Like what?" Anger R demanded.

"Like that!" Fear S said. A memory, glowing bright, appeared and rolled not to the shelf with the others, but to the center of the room. It was a core memory, the first new one either set of emotions had seen since their Gems had first emerged. With it, a new Island of Personality emerged. On it were three statues; at the base were Ruby and Sapphire, holding hands, and rising above them, their new fusion.

Garnet Island.

"Wait, Garnet Island?" Anger S asked. "Is that our name now?"

"I guess so," said Disgust R. "But… who exactly is Garnet? Is she simply a mashup of Ruby and Sapphire, or…"

"We have plenty of time to figure that out," said Joy R.

The new fusion started adjusting to her body, evening out her balance, and experiencing this somewhat familiar but ultimately new sensation.

"I think we're getting the hang of this," Joy S said.

Then they fell.

Garnet tumbled down a hill, and when she opened her eyes, found herself at the end of a sword.

Fear R hit a button.

"Don't hurt her!" Garnet yelled.

Fear S adjusted some levers.

"Don't hurt… me?" she continued, somewhat uncertainly.

The swordbearer turned out to be the Pearl from the rebellion. "It's you!" she said in surprise. "The fusion…"

"She must find us offensive, just the Gems back at the court," Sadness S said.

"Maybe we should unfuse," said Fear R. "She might go easy on us if we do."

"No, no, please," said another voice. Rose Quartz approached.

"So…" said Disgust S. "We don't upset her?"

"Who cares about how I feel?" Rose said. "How you feel is bound to be much more interesting."

The emotions all looked at each other. "Well, lost," said Sadness R.

"And scared," Fear S added.

"And happy," said Joy R.

"But also incredibly confused," said Joy S. "I mean, why does this feel so right? Why does this seem so important, to the point of getting a new core memory, compared to what we were originally intended for?"

Rose Quartz laughed. "Welcome to Earth."

"That's not an answer!" Anger R shouted. "And there's tons more questions besides!"

"Like how was Ruby able to alter fate?" Disgust S said.

"Or why was Sapphire willing to give up everything?" said Fear R.

Rose silenced Garnet. "No more questions. Don't ever question this. You alreadyare the answer."

And after a few days, the emotions in Garnet's mind were able to realize what this answer was: Love.