I asked myself out loud what was happening to Steven as I watched the perspective slowly creep closer to his head. I could tell he was breaking into a sweat, which only made the unease grow. And then I understood that, as readers of this story, we were about to witness the most schizophrenic thing I have ever written—and I mean that with dead seriousness.
Suddenly, I found myself inside a void within my own mind—nothing out of the ordinary at first. Everything was black, completely silent, until it stopped being black. White? Why white?
Without any warning, I was yanked toward some unknown place. The only thing that escaped my mouth was a desperate scream as I was dragged out of control. What the fuck is happening now, holy shit, I thought, feeling my body get hauled in every direction without any logical sense. I just wanted to rest. I told myself this in a chibi form—tired and resigned—as I kept getting pulled through a tunnel I had clearly never seen before.
Incredible. Now I'm getting firmware updates on how to get dragged into someone's dream or what? Not long ago, I was thrown into Sadie's dream, and honestly, I never want to see a naked Lars ever again. Just remembering it made me shudder with disgust.
Dammit, I should find a way to control this thing. The original Steven could do it, if I remember correctly. Those were the kind of thoughts crossing my mind while the dream current kept dragging me ruthlessly into the unknown.
Out of nowhere, I noticed I was flying through space. I let out a wacky "wooooah" in my totally unhinged voice as I crossed the void at extreme speeds toward an undefined point. Or so I thought, because honestly, I'm not that great at navigating space, you know?
As I watched everything around me stretch out Star Wars style, a ship materialized next to me. I froze for a few seconds, with literal ellipses floating over my head. I turned my gaze toward the inside of the ship and noticed a green Gem accompanied by an entire squad that, based on their gear and attitude, was clearly doing standard Gem work.
I only watched them for a split second before getting yanked again, even faster than before. New Gem, I thought, immediately committing her shape to memory.
I looked back up—or forward, or wherever, I really had no clue about my orientation. Planets and stars zoomed past me in a breathtaking visual chaos.
"First time this has ever happened to me," I muttered to myself. It felt like I had inhaled pure crack through this thing. Though, to be fair, after the sheer force I used against Jasper, I wouldn't be surprised if I was dealing with side effects.
And without prior warning, I appeared in a completely white room.
"Huh?" I uttered, sporting a completely bewildered chibi face. I stood there, staring around without understanding a thing. "Where the fuck am I now?" I murmured, looking up only to see absolutely nothing. Just white. All white. A white so white it was actually creepy.
I let out some mental ellipses while continuing to spin my head around. What, am I in heaven or why is it so damn white?
"You are not in heaven," a voice said right behind me, completely out of nowhere, causing me to tense up instantly.
"What manner of creature are you?!" I cried, my soul on the verge of leaving my body. I turned slowly toward the direction of the voice and was left with a completely blank expression, accompanied by not three, but six drops of sweat running down the back of my neck. Because right there, behind me, was a colossal woman—a titanic figure of absolute whiteness.
The woman directed her gaze toward where she felt my presence. "What are you, inferior creature?" she said with so much arrogance that three black lines of anger instantly popped onto my face.
"What do you mean inferior, lady? What's your problem?!" I snapped, irritated.
The figure, maintaining a hands-on-hips T-pose that was as ridiculous as it was unsettling, observed me... or at least directed her attention my way. "Oh, please, insignificant presence." She made a dramatic pause, as if she were announcing the weather forecast or something. "You are an organic being, are you not?"
"And why would I answer you?" I said, raising an eyebrow that she clearly didn't see because she had no visible eyes. Or I don't know, her head was way too white to distinguish any features.
She brought her hand to her mouth with exaggerated elegance. "Hahaha..." She laughed as if she had just heard a piece of peak high comedy.
"You look pretty damn weird like that," I said with total honesty.
White Diamond froze. It was obvious that no one had ever spoken to her like that. "Wei... weird?" she repeated, as if the word were some forbidden arcane insult banned for millennia.
Realizing a second too late that I had just accidentally insulted a being who could probably crush me with a single thought, I felt three extra drops of sweat race down my neck, but I kept talking anyway. Whatever, I was in a dream, what was the worst that could happen?
White locked her attention directly onto me and fired a white beam without warning.
"Holy shit!" I yelled, throwing myself to the side to dodge it.
"Hey, what's wrong with you?!" I shouted at her, three black lines marking themselves across my forehead.
"I am perfection," White declared with a solemn voice. "I am the perfect color palette. I will not allow a filthy organic to come stain my millennia-old legacy."
I stayed quiet, dodging beam after beam as if I were stuck in a hellish minigame. I didn't want to use my powers. What if I used them and this woman figured out who I really was? No fucking way was I taking that risk.
"Yeah, yeah, fine, you're perfect..." I said, with a sarcasm so massive it could have filled the space we were standing in. I dodged another beam while saying it, sweating like crazy.
White struck an even loftier pose. Next to her, an equally white Pearl appeared, both in a T-pose as if they had rehearsed the scene.
"See? That wasn't so hard," they said at the same time, their pride inflated to the absolute max.
"And here I thought you didn't care what organics thought..." I thought, with three black lines of anger as I mentally braced myself for whatever was next.
Noticing how she was simply ignoring me, I dedicated myself to examining the whole place more calmly. There was only white. Absolute whiteness. Even the columns were white, permeating the space in an absurd way, as if someone had cranked the brightness setting to the maximum. I walked around the place at ease, though I always kept my eyes on White, who sometimes followed me as if she could see me, even though I knew she only perceived my presence.
"So, what do you do anyway?" I finally asked, because honestly, I was starting to think she couldn't hurt me. Or at least not much.
She looked down at me from her perfect, ridiculous T-pose.
"Ruling," she said with solemnity. "The perfect empire must be perfect, and for it to be perfect, it must be managed by someone perfect."
I let out a few seconds of mental silence. Uh-huh. Right. As if I haven't heard that line a thousand times from random villains.
"Oh, I see," I murmured while looking at her Pearl. My own gem glowed a bit, though she wouldn't notice since that was happening in the physical world.
"Is this you?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.
White looked taken aback for a few seconds, though she quickly recovered her lofty stance.
"Why do you say that?" she asked with curiosity.
"I don't know, it's pretty obvious," I replied. "For example, you're both white."
"Many Gems are white," White said quickly, almost annoyed.
"But not like this one," I commented as I walked around her, noticing how the Pearl was tracking my gaze exactly. "Besides," I said with a smirk I couldn't help, "normally only one Gem can see me. And since she's following my gaze at the exact same time you are..."
White was left stunned by my hypothesis, though I clearly had no intention of telling her that I had known that fact for a long time. But it didn't matter worth a shit anyway.
"You are interesting," White finally said with a dangerous calmness.
"Hey, since we're acting like best friends here gossiping..." I murmured while taking the Pearl's hand. For a split second, she shifted to a pink hue, though I was the only one who noticed it and White didn't.
I stayed silent for a moment, surprised by that detail, but I recovered right away.
"Since we're gossiping like old friends," I said, seeing White raise a white eyebrow that wasn't even visible but could still be felt.
"Don't your hands hurt holding them up like that meme?" I said with a stifled chuckle.
"Meme?" White repeated, completely confused, but before she could ask anything else, an alert seemed to reach her. Her attitude flipped instantly.
She dismissed her Pearl quickly, though the Pearl took a few seconds longer to let go of my spiritual hand. I quickly made a mental note of that.
And then, without prior warning, White blasted several more beams at me. One hit me.
"Ughh!" I screamed, clutching my leg, which was now smoking. Literal smoke.
I stared at White, who had perfectly heard my sound of pain and now wore the most eat-shit grin I had seen in years.
"What are you laughing at, lady?!" I said in anger. Clearly, it wasn't the smartest thing I could have blurted out.
Several minutes passed in which I was brutally pummeled by White's beams. It was basically a premium electrocution session with no anesthesia and zero warning.
A heavy silence pervaded the entire white room.
"Are you dead yet?" White asked from her T-pose. If you looked closely, you could catch an expression of disgust hidden in her perfect, eat-shit eyes.
"You wish, you white pine tree," I shot back, smoke rising from my body. I had no visible wounds, but I felt my energy draining in a way I didn't like at all.
She fired another nine beams at me, just in case.
"Goddammit, stop shooting your laser beams!" I yelled, completely pissed off.
"Leave. You are not perfect enough to stand in my presence."
"If I haven't died, it's because I'm strong, isn't it?" I replied after a few seconds. She didn't say anything, but she glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, still frozen in that damn stick-figure pose.
"Hey, seriously though, doesn't it hurt staying in that pose?" I asked.
That earned me another eight beams straight to the soul.
"Motherfucker..." I groaned from the floor, thoroughly wrecked.
"You are resilient," she finally commented.
"Thanks for the compliment," I said with sarcasm as I stood up. Sweat was pouring off me like a river, as if I were on the verge of evaporating.
"I hope this doesn't hurt tomorrow," I muttered to myself.
"What is your name, inferior organic creature?" White asked.
I let out a heavy sigh.
"Look, you're honestly kind of weird. If any being in the universe heard you talk, they'd label you as a weirdo. Your way of expressing yourself isn't perfect; it's borderline subnormal. You're not perfect. Perfection doesn't exist. Just because you were born white doesn't mean you're perfection itself. I've seen beings way more perfect than what you call perfection. You're nobody—just a color born by sheer luck. And if luck equals perfection, then that's all you are: lucky. Just another drop in the infinity of the universe. Surely out there somewhere, someone is better than you at everything, and here you are thinking you're superior just because you're white. And looking at it closely... that's kind of racist, isn't it?"
White stayed completely silent after my outburst. It was only fair for me to vent after taking so many beams that nearly fried my soul.
She shook her head.
"You would not understand perfection," she replied.
"Oh, come on, don't bullshit me then," I said as I walked away. "Where's the exit out of here? I don't want to be locked up with someone with an IQ under forty."
The word "IQ" clearly irritated her because she had no idea what it meant, and that bugged her even more. She shot another beam at me, but this time I dodged it without a second thought.
"Crazy lady, stop messing around with your beams!" I said, with three imaginary black lines over my head.
Suddenly, I felt a tug on my very core, as if someone had yanked me from the outside.
"Finally!" I shouted as I noticed my consciousness starting to return.
"You can shove your perfection right up your fore—" I didn't finish the sentence because White managed to hurl one last beam right before I vanished.
And just like that, my presence faded from the white room.
Silence invaded everything once more.
"Pathetic." She said it, but a shred of doubt wedged itself into her chest. She had never spoken to anyone for that long—not even her sisters, not even Pink. She shook her head as she prepared to receive Blue, who had been wanting an audience with her for a while now, and honestly, she did want to talk to her sisters a bit more.
"How stressful," she murmured, right as White Pearl appeared as if she had never left.
She asked her what she thought, and she merely smiled like a puppet. White brought a hand to her mouth and let out a small laugh as she commented that she kept forgetting how perfect she was now, though the seed of doubt was already more than planted.
Meanwhile, Steven was flying back home when he felt a phantom pain course through his entire body. His gem flared, sensing the pain, and expelled a pink flash that shot through him. His body dropped like a meteor straight to Earth, right toward where his physical form was resting.
"White Diamond, you piece of shit!" I screamed in pain as smoke billowed from my body.
The four Gems who had been arguing froze, and all of them stared at me mechanically while I looked around, completely bewildered.
"I'm back in this astral plane," I said, totally confused.
I looked over to where Lion was, and the lazy bastard was lying down as if he hadn't driven me into a war zone just minutes ago.
I turned toward the Gems. Pearl was a total tearful, snotty mess, staring at me like she had just recovered a lost pet. Garnet seemed calmer seeing me move around. Amethyst, well, she was Amethyst; she gave me a thumbs-up, though you could see the stress on her face. And Lapis... she was playing Minecraft. She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, smiled, and kept building her house.
"Totally normal," I sighed. "What did I miss?"
Suddenly, I was tackled by a wild Pearl, sending me crashing back down onto my bed.
"Ahg!" I groaned as Pearl smothered me in her embrace.
"My baby!" she exclaimed.
She asked if I wanted food, if I wanted my favorite dish, if I felt okay, if I wanted to fuse with her.
Three black lines appeared in my mind.
"Yes, yes, yes, and no," I answered, pushing her away. I rubbed spit over the parts that hurt the most and felt myself healing.
"How relaxing," I said as I stood up and stretched. "Lapis, how much time passed?"
"Ten hours," she answered.
"Ten hours," I repeated, unable to believe it.
"Yeah."
"Well, Pearl, are you going to make me food or should I make it?"
"I've got it, sit down," she said quickly as she sprinted toward the kitchen.
"Pearl, make some for me too!" Amethyst yelled, running right behind her.
"Have you been behaving?" Pearl asked.
"Awebis," Amethyst replied.
"Then yes," Pearl answered amid laughter as both vanished into the kitchen.
"Hey, Garnet," I said as I walked down to the living room and sat next to her.
I asked her how their mission went.
"Nothing new," Garnet commented with total normalcy. "We entered an ancient Gem temple, there were two mutants, but we poofed them. Took a bit of effort, they were warrior Gems."
I hummed as I searched through my living room closet.
"New clothes," I said happily upon finding some.
I put them on while two Gems stared intently at me.
"What are you guys looking at?" I said, three black lines on my head.
"Nothing, nothing," Garnet and Lapis answered at the same time.
I let out a heavy snort.
We settled into a comfortable silence. You could hear the frying pans in the background along with Pearl and Amethyst's giggling in the kitchen.
Garnet and Lapis were commenting on how a Minecraft villager had given them a dirty look.
I just smiled.
I hoped this would last forever. I felt the energy of my gem coursing through me and knew I needed to control my new power. Three black lines of exhaustion crossed my mind as I also thought about something else.
"And I also need," I murmured while looking over toward Pearl, "to talk... with her."
End of Chapter 50.