The blazing sunlight, combined with the dry breeze, stirred the sand that clung to their skin as the portal's white glow quickly faded away.
Pearl and Amethyst appeared at my sides. Garnet stood at the front.
This time, we weren't lucky enough to hear the Robonoid crash into the ground. Instead, we saw it already standing on the sand, moving much faster than its simple shape suggested. This time, we weren't going to simply destroy it. First, we had to follow it and figure out how to stop more of these things from arriving.
A tense silence settled over us as we stood there, carefully watching the machine move toward its destination. That prompted a sarcastic remark from Amethyst, pointing out the obvious more out of habit than because she had anything useful to add.
"So you were right, as always, Pearl. That thing really was looking for a portal," she said quietly and dryly, though without any real malice, never taking her eyes off the Robonoid, which was now only a few dozen meters away.
Pearl raised an eyebrow but didn't respond. She merely held an unreadable expression that all of us recognized as a silent "I told you so." Her spear remained firmly in her hands, paying far more attention to the robot than to her usual dynamic with Amethyst.
Garnet, who had remained silent until then, spoke when the Robonoid finally reached the portal.
"Let's go."
The portal's blinding white light flared to life as the Gem machine activated it. The few seconds we spent floating through that brightness felt much longer than they actually were, though deep down I knew it was nothing more than my own anxiety distorting my perception.
When the light faded, the first thing Nora noticed was the shadow covering the area, the stone-gray color of everything around her, and the complete absence of anything natural in the air.
It had been replaced by something halfway between New Jersey's atmospheric pollution and the stale air of an abandoned subway tunnel.
There was no scent of soil, no trace of plant moisture, not even the distant hint of flowers.
Only dust, heated concrete, and a faint metallic taste that clung to the tongue.
The walls of a canyon stretched as far as the eye could see. The gray stone lacked any color that could be considered healthy. Nearly identical openings, roughly humanoid in size, covered the walls in every direction, forming a strange honeycomb pattern.
Between them rested enormous machines destroyed either during the Rebellion or simply by the passage of time. Their shape vaguely reminded her of a biological concept she had nearly forgotten but could still recall.
Viruses.
If I had to describe them, I'd say they looked like gigantic crystalline alloy structures shaped like viruses. It was only a visual comparison, but considering everything I knew about Gemkind, the observation wasn't all that far from reality.
"The Kindergarten," Amethyst said with obvious disdain.
Her expression quickly shifted into disgust. Her brows knitted together and her face twisted as the neutrality she had shown moments earlier vanished completely.
Pearl looked like she was about to say something but stopped herself. Instead of the reprimand Amethyst was probably expecting, she simply placed a hand on her shoulder.
No words. Just that quiet gesture of support.
I would have kept observing the place if we hadn't been in the middle of a mission.
Nora made a mental note of her teammates' behavior. Pearl had become more understanding. Amethyst, for her part, seemed more willing to tolerate other people's suggestions. Garnet was still Garnet. It wasn't like you could get much out of someone who could see the future.
I sighed inwardly as we continued following the Robonoid.
It didn't take more than a few minutes before the robot came to an abrupt stop. Garnet extended an arm to halt us as the machine began a sequence of transformations.
First, all of its moving parts were absorbed into the large crystalline sphere that made up its body, leaving it floating like a giant balloon.
Then, a pale green-white beam of light descended toward the ground for several seconds.
Those were tense seconds.
I didn't need to look at my teammates to know they were just as tense as I was. All of us held our weapons ready, prepared to react to any attack.
The ground split open where the beam struck, revealing an inverted pyramid-shaped cavity illuminated by an intense neon-green glow.
The sphere twisted.
A crystalline crack echoed through the air as its shape shifted into an inverted pyramid that fit perfectly inside the opening.
A white light tinged with green erupted from within.
When the glow faded, the resulting tile displayed a geometric engraving that I barely had time to notice before the entire structure began sinking into the ground.
"That's our cue, girls," I said, ignoring the protests that immediately followed as I threw myself into the not-so-proverbial and not-at-all-metaphorical rabbit hole that this entire situation had become.
I hoped it wouldn't lead to an even bigger problem.
But deep down, I already knew it would.
I just wanted to believe that hope was real.