elexuscal:

zombee:

run-on-lightning:

spatialheather:

steveniuniverse:

Someone figure out a way for us to get more Ruby and Sapphire without putting Garnet through a traumatic ordeal.

FLASHBACKS

Steven’s Birthday

they have to go undercover at a children’s school

Connie wasn’t really paying attention when her teacher, Mr. Henderson, said they were having a couple new students join in that day. She was laying her stuff out for class absently, while her mind was busily churning over the day’s schedule. After since her parents had become aware of her sword training, they’d let her drop a couple of the extra-curriculars she wasn’t interested, but it was still difficult juggling everything on top of school work, and she wanted to make sure she still had time for the new math assignment they’d been given that day.

Neither did she really notice when the two kids finally walked in. And sure, in the back of her head, she recognized that one had had blue skin, and the other had red skin- like, actually red, not just ‘reddish’- which was definitely kind of odd, but she didn’t pay it much attention. That would be pretty rude. 

It’s only when the teacher finally says, “So, Ruby, Sapphire, why don’t you tell us all something about yourselves?” that her head snaps up.

The pair. Well. They’re short, and well… they do look like kids, but you’d be hard pressed to give a specific age. One is entirely red- not just their skin, but their shirt, their pants, their headband, even their hair has a distinctly red tinge to it. And the girl next to her is all blue, including the poofy almost-white hair and the dress which is waaaaay to elaborate for any kind of school. They’re standing very close together, almost pressing into each other. 

The two look out at the class, then look at each other. 

“Um,” the one Connie can only assume to be Ruby says. “My name is Ruby. And I like sports! Yeah! And…” she looks around wildly, as though trying to remember the name of a single sport. “Like volleyball! And wrestling!”

“I’m Sapphire,” the other says. Something like a smile twitches on her face. “I like skating.”

The teacher waits to see if they’re going to add anything else. They don’t. “Okay, then,” Mr. Henderson says, and points them to a couple open seats near the back of the classroom. “Why don’t you just sit down, and we’ll start with the lesson…?”

Connie has always done her best to focus and pay diligent attention in class, but she could not, for the life of her, say a single thing that happened in that lesson. She spent the entire time looking over her shoulders at the new new ‘students’. Ruby and Sapphire, in turn, didn’t seem to be paying attention to the teacher either. Ruby’s was spending her entire time looking around the classroom with wide-eyes, leg twitching anxiously beneath the desk. Sapphire’s face was almost entirely hidden beneath her bangs, but she seemed to stare forward, blankly.

But then, suddenly, she turned to look directly at Connie. She nudged Ruby, who looked her way. Connie felt a weird emotion- guilt? awkwardness?- surge through her stomach until the two broken into smiles. Ruby even winked.

After that, Connie turned back at the front, and tried her best to take notes.

Once the bell finally rung, Connie hurriedly stuffed everything in her bag, not even bothering to try and be neat. As everyone- including the teacher- surged out of the room for lunch, she just turned to find Ruby and Sapphire. It wasn’t hard. They hadn’t moved from their desks. (They had a backpack, Connie finally noticed. It was shaped like a hamburger.)

Of the million’s of questions that had spun through Connie’s mind for the past forty minutes, the first one that came out of her mouth was, “Garnet?”

Sapphire smirked, and Ruby laughed. “Kind of,” Ruby said. “But you know. Not really.”

“Nice to officially meet you, Connie,” Sapphire said. She held out a hand; Connie took in. Beneath the silky smooth glove, it felt ice-cold.

“Same,” Connie managed, nodding over at Ruby. “But- um- why. Why. What. What are you doing at-”

“There’s a Gem here,” Sapphire said, and Connie remembered what Steven had told her about Future Vision. “We do not know where exactly, so we are retrieving it.”

“Okay,” Connie said. “But why-”

“We’re going under-cover,” said Ruby. Maybe it wasn’t a Future Vision thing- maybe her questions were just obvious. “We didn’t want to ‘cause a scene’, so we’re posing as students. How are we doing?”

Ruby’s expression was so earnest, so bright, that Connie felt compelled to say, “Um. Pretty good. But why-” Then she realized. “This was Steven’s idea, wasn’t it?”

A pair of nods.

“He doesn’t want us accidentally destroying your school,” said Sapphire, dead-pan.

Connie sighed, and massaged the bridge of her nose. She was thankful, she really was, but- “Why didn’t you just send Steven here, instead?”

Steven, she knew, wasn’t exactly an expert in Gem-retrival just yet, at least compared to the rest of the Crystal Gems. But he’d gotten pretty good, and Connie knew that the two of them made a pretty good team. They were jam buds, the sword and the shield. She honestly felt kind of annoyed about not getting told.

It turned out, however, that Steven was sick. “With a fever of 103 degrees.” Ruby scoffed. “Which is apparently high? Pearl won’t even let him out of the bed, and this is an emergency.”

“Steven did send you a message,” began Sapphire-

“But I didn’t get it,” Connie finished in unison with her. “I have to keep my phone off at school.”

Not that the two Gems understood that, of course. Gems didn’t get things like that. Especially not the two Gems who made up Garnet. They might have been child sized, but how on Earth Steven could expect them to realistically pretend to be actual children was beyond her. 

She was trying to work this out, when suddenly the two gems were making a beeline for the door, hand-and-hand. “Where’re you going?”

They looked at her.

“To find the gem,” they said, in perfect unison. It should have been creepy, but somehow, it wasn’t.

And then, before Connie could say anything, Ruby said, “Aren’t you coming?”

Connie’s hand tightened around her bag strap. “What?”

“You will come,” Sapphire said, and there was no question in your voice. “We will need your help.”

Well, how was she supposed to argue with that? All Connie wished was that she had packed Rose’s sword.