Amethyst, Pearl, Garnet, and of course she herself were silent with stony expressions as they went from warp to warp, checking everything. First was the Sky Spire, which was just very empty high above the planet's lowest clouds; then it was seeing the Geode, which was perfectly fine although it was producing more electrical arcs than usual.
Silence was the only thing basically keeping everything at peace for her right now—no Amethyst making a sarcastic comment or Pearl pointing out something important to her. Garnet was in equal silence, or more than she usually let on, but the expression on her mouth was a clear sign that she was not okay. So they continued; the next warps were those of the Island, which was just as it was during their last visit, followed by the Kindergartens which, despite the oppressive atmosphere and lack of all organic life, were fine. I wish I could say the same for Amethyst's expression when they had to pass through there.
What followed was an awkward silence in which Pearl tried to say something to Amethyst, but in the end, Pearl simply decided to say nothing and just put her hand on her shoulder. I did the same as her while I approached, and Garnet put her hands on top of her head and mine, but the moment was interrupted when we moved to the next location: The floating Sky Arena, a magnificent place to train, but there didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary. And things continued that way until we had covered almost all the warps for at least nearly four hours straight of going back and forth between locations.
"Haaa, we are getting nowhere with the thing I saw," I spoke before sighing and running my hand over my face as if to wipe away the heaviness I felt. I know I didn't imagine things, but by the love of the stars, I seemed to believe more and more that that was what happened.
"We've already been through almost all the warps and we found nothing out of the ordinary," Amethyst spoke while blowing out a bit resignedly before following up with a question that none had asked in all this time, but which every moment seemed to carry more weight in both my mind and theirs: "Nora, are you sure you saw something?"
"Of course I'm sure I saw something," I spoke for a moment while throwing myself on the floor regardless of Pearl's exclamation at my side. "It's just that I'm not sure what I saw or in which warp," I finished before grabbing my hair and quickly messing it up, simply venting a bit of the frustration I had over all this. "Agh, I don't know!"
"Well, Amethyst is right," Pearl said before exhaling a bit while holding out a hand to lift me up a hand I quickly took while listening to the next words coming out of Pearl's mouth. "We've already checked every possible warp, besides being the only ones on the entire planet who can even use them," she finished a bit of what she wanted to say as she finished standing up, only to follow with one last sentence ending in a question: "So, how about we forget about this and go back home?"
I looked at her for a moment while running a hand over my face and sighing with a bit of annoyance, but seeing that we were getting nowhere, I decided to be as mature as possible and simply give in on this.
"You know what? You're right," I said while hearing a "hell yeah" from Amethyst and seeing the more relaxed looks from Pearl and Garnet upon me, but I had not finished this conversation. "But before that, I want to see one last warp," I spoke, leaving no room for more discussion but making it clear that this would be the last trip of the day on this subject.
"Alright," Pearl said without thinking much about it.
...
The atmosphere of the Galaxy Warp was exactly the same as it was a week ago when they put up the "Error 404" or "Not Found" stickers. The light would remain the same in that "eternal night" between the reflection of the starry night sky reflecting off the broken or cracked crystals everything exactly as they had left it. The only difference was that this time Pearl was not submerged in nostalgia and she was not worried, but completely frustrated with herself for making them waste so much time and in the end finding nothing.
Nora could only sigh as she quickly returned to her usual self and spoke: "Well, that was it, we're going back to the temple." I moved one of my fingers upward in circles before turning back to the common warp to return.
The moment they were inside the warp transport flow was extremely awkward, with her in silence before stepping into her room and letting herself fall onto her bed as if she were more mentally tired than she appeared—or maybe it was the accumulation of stress that always hit her for one reason or another? Either of the two reasons, Nora could not care less.
An alarm reminding her to get up for a home dinner with her boyfriend was the only thing that prevented her from fusing with her sheets, ending up forming a chrysalis from which a nightmare-born insect Nora would emerge one in which she could no longer fend for herself, relegated to Pearl caring for her with increasing disgust removed from pity while Amethyst has to go out to work in a renegade manner and Garnet stops speaking to her by ignoring her like one more object in the room.
"Damn, I should stop reading what he recommends to me," she thought to her herself while finally standing up from her comfortable and tempting bed to get to work starting to take ingredients out of the fridge. All of this was a new dynamic that she and he had been trying out all week, where one of the two would go to the other's house for dinner; of course, they both helped each other prepare the dinners and usually stayed to sleep at each other's house—nothing more, but in the end, it was a nice dynamic between them.
A few minutes later, the sound of her door opening rang out, and a voice that was a reflux of concepts rather than a completely human voice greeted her as the being from which such a thing came approached her.
"Hey, what's the word, starlight girl?" Adrian spoke to her with that relaxed tone, somewhere between mocking and affectionate, that they used only between the two of them. She just examined him from head to toe; he was wearing the same clothes as always, while in his hands was what looked like a basket with multiple cheeses and the occasional wine. She smiled a bit but responded with that same tone he used with her, only she did use a nickname that made him squirm a bit in his position.
"Meh, I've had better days that don't involve hallucinating about something moving between the warps. And you, magic boy? Anything new to tell?" was the only thing she said while concentrating on making a clear high-pitched voice when pronouncing "magic boy" and, of course, sighing a bit over her whole day but with a smile forming on her face.
"Sounds like you had a stressful day," he spoke, setting aside the basket and approaching her side as she set aside the pots full of half-cooked vegetables. "My day has been relatively fine, but in this precise moment? Totally perfect," was what he said before she felt his arms press against her body in a hug.
The next two hours of their day were simply a romantic moment between the two where she and he finished preparing dinner while making double-entendre comments every damn time they used the oven, and each time they laughed as if it were the first time that joke was dropped. The main course was a collection of roasted vegetables accompanied by a half-melted salt-heavy cheese with a large piece of beef cooked in the juices of the wine and the meat's own blood.
During dinner, aside from the usual jokes they made, each told their day, with him being the part that mostly listened to her complain about the things of her day while he nodded. Like every time he looked at her, she felt how everything calmed down; how he made her not just see the good moments but feel them as something new. How he told her of his boring day doing calculations on a chalkboard like a madman; how she could laugh at his silly jokes; how she made him see a positive side to things beyond an extensive philosophical reflection on every little thing; how she was infected for a moment by his intellectuality; how he finally accepted certain simple but beautiful ideas of life—like two colors that took a bit from each other, changing a bit between themselves but still turning out so distinct.
In the end, it wasn't a bad day, was what Nora could think, feeling the other body full of heat beside her between the sheets. And that would have been the final conclusion of the day if it weren't for the sound of wood creaking and impacting something hard so suddenly that it woke them both up.
Now she could only say one thing while focusing her sight in the darkness toward the source of the sound, and presumably Adrian did the same: "Shit."
The two practically threw themselves out of the bed on the second floor of their house, semi-naked and somewhat groggy if it weren't for the large amount of adrenaline running through their veins. They both saw the thing: A glassy green sphere with what looked like floating legs was crashed in their living room, getting up quickly and trying to go to the nearest warp. Unfortunately for this little thing, neither of the two present was slow, and in less time than it took the thing to recognize where the nearest warp was, it was intercepted by her.
"Ha, I was right; there was something in the warps," she said to herself while showing the object to Adrian as the robot? moved violently trying to escape her grip. "So, what do you think it is?" she said to him, since he always came up with some clever answer or some kind of clue in the riddles of his words.
"No idea," he said, shrugging his shoulders as if it weren't important while looking at the thing before continuing. "But it is real, and you said you saw it traveling through the warps, so it must have a purpose," he said, and she quickly followed his train of thought.
"And since it's still trying to go to the time warp, then this place isn't its destination," she concluded before sighing and approaching the warp with the thing before releasing it—not without being followed by Adrian, who snapped his fingers, and now they were completely dressed.
"Well, thanks for that," was the only thing she said before releasing the ball robot? It needed a better name for that. Anyway, the two entered the warp activated by the small robot, and from there, everything was chaos.
First, more robots arrived that tried to group on top of them to keep them from moving, which didn't work for them, so they tried to knock them off the warps which was VERY dangerous. Neither she nor Adrian had any desire to end up in some random place in the Earth's stratosphere. Then the rest of the Crystal Gems arrived, and yes, they arrived so quickly because, well, it was obvious she would have them on speed dial for, well, any kind of emergency.
All that happened in less than one or two minutes, but while they were in the warp toward, well, the damn purpose of these robotic beings, that time felt eternal while the other gems, especially Amethyst, cursed with the same or worse sailor expressions and without Pearl saying anything to her because she was looking at the ball robot with an extremely bitter face.
When we reached the destination of these things, which was the Galaxy Warp omething that should have been obvious? Or not? several dozen of these beings were gathering, spilling a glowing glassy white liquid while the clearly inactive warp stopped being so.
"Time to hide," Adrian said without a hint of the humorous cynicism he generally handled, while Garnet pulled him and me behind one of the rocky constructions with Amethyst and Pearl at our sides, equally hidden.
Only a moment passed and a white light along with an audible "Pop" sounded throughout the place, showing how the warp reactivated after several thousand years. Damn, at least it was a good day.
...
From one moment to another, a gem appeared: green skin, triangular hair of a pale yellowish-green, a look of contempt or exhaustion as if she really didn't want to be here. My mind for a moment went blank, only being able to think of two words: Homeworld and War.
"Mmm" was the only thing the green gem said while she gave several stomps to the warp before one of her limbs came out of her showing a screen. Pearl, Garnet, and Amethyst were strangely more rigid than at any other moment she had ever witnessed; she had NEVER seen them like that. Damn, she herself was getting a bad feeling from all this, but she didn't collapse so quickly for several reasons—one of the most important being that another person was holding her hand.
"Code number 3-1-2," the green Gem said while touching some things on the screen. "Peridot here, verifying the operation of the Earth Warp," was what she said before continuing with the same technical talk that unfortunately felt so heavy in the atmosphere it could be cut with a knife. I was already hallucinating.
After that, they could hardly place what the one now known as Peridot was saying, because from one moment to the next she grabbed something from the warp—something that looked a lot like the stickers she herself had put up the previous week. "This place seems to be compromised," was what Peridot said as she looked at the thing. She simply started looking in all directions and just disappeared again into the warp, but not before placing a device that eliminated the functionality of the Robonoids.
"They are going to come back," was the only thing any of the 5 present could say, not without a clear mix of conflicting feelings involved.
"No, they won't." And that was the end of the conversation, with Garnet destroying the Galaxy Warp.