#and I feel like Iif I don’t let it out then I’ll explode

[crybaby-bkg]

I fucking hate confrontation with a burning passion omg >:(

[kayyay1219]

The Supernatural Iife Ch.2.

Parings: Jensen x teen!reader Jared x teen!reader (Non romantic)

Chapter Warnings: Angst, fluff, new character, stress, panic attack, and creepy vibes from new character

The next morning Y/N and the boys got up to go to set and shoot another long day. The director had an announcement to make before they had to start the day. Cliff came and picked them up to go to the set. On the way to set Y/N was still not awake, she was cuddled up to Jensen. He had his arms wrapped around her, with his head on top of hers. Jared looked over at them and smiled, he took out his phone and took a picture. When they arrived, they immediately went into the director’s office. In the office Y/N noticed that there was a boy her age, standing in the back of the room. “Good morning, I know we have a lot to do today, so I’ll make this quick. This is Cody, he’ll be Y/N character love interest.” The director stated. Both Jensen and Jared were surprised at this decision, them both being father figures to Y/N, they didn’t like it one bit. Y/N on the other hand, was nervous. She never had a boyfriend before, let alone her first kiss. Ever since she joined the show, Jensen and Jared have always looked out for her, especially Jensen. When they go to conventions her and Jensen room together, or when she’s sick, he’s there with medicine. She was like a child to him. As the director was explaining what was going to be happening that day, Jensen was still not liking the idea of Y/N having a love interest on the show. “No, Y/N doesn’t need a love interest, her character is fine on her own and it wouldn’t work. Her character is a lonely girl who doesn’t have time for a relationship.” Jensen said with a fatherly tone. The director laughed like this was a joke, but it wasn’t a joke to Jensen. “Well, my mind is made up, Y/N character will have a love interest. Also, we’re all having a cast dinner tonight, so the two can get to know each other and that’s final.” Y/N went to her trailer and got ready to shoot her scenes with Cody. Apparently one of the scenes is when they’re meeting for the first time. Cody's character Jake was supposed to save Lizzy from Vampires and they have a victory dinner after.

Y/N was nervous to shoot this scene with Cody, when she met him, he kinda gave her a creepy vibe that she didn’t like. On the way to the set, Y/N saw Cody walk up to her with a smirk on his face. “Hey Y/N, are you ready to shoot this scene? He asked her. She put on a fake smile trying not to be rude. “Oh yeah, so ready.” She said with fake enthusiasm. She began to tug at her fingers, her anxiety was coming up like a volcano about to explode. Y/N pushed all of it down, not wanting to worry about Jensen or Jared. She just wanted to get this scene over with tonight's dinner.

Y/N walked alongside with Cody, him not really noticing how uncomfortable she is around him. He just gave this vibe that he wasn’t trusting and the way he stared at her just made her squirm.

When they got to the set, Y/N saw the vampire’s nest and the acting vampires getting ready. “Y/N, let me explain what’s going to happen in this scene.” The director said. The two teens listened carefully to the director’s instructions and as that was going on, Jensen and Jared were in the corner of the set going to watch the scene. Jensen was having a hard time with the new cast member on this show. He didn’t like how he stared at Y/N and he certainly didn’t like how close he was standing next to her. “Dude, you got to chill, nothing is going to happen to Y/N. Trust me, I don’t like this either.” Jared said. Jensen still had his dad look on his face, just wanting to go wipe that little smirk off that prick’s face. “Something is just off about him, I don’t like how he’s staring at her or standing close to her. I’m just scared he’s going to try and do something to her and I won't be able to stop it. Jensen said expressing his feelings towards Jared.

Y/N and Cody both got ready to shoot this scene after being told what to do. Y/N was tied up around her pole and Cody’s character, Jake was supposed to untie her and them both fighting the vampires.

*Scene Starting*

Lizzy was struggling to get the ropes off her wrists trying to escape the vampire nest. She thought she had it under control, but she didn’t. “You’re never getting out of here, you’re gonna be mine forever.” The head vampire said with an evil laugh. As she continued to find a way out, someone cut off the vampire’s head. She flinched at what she just saw. Behind the vampire was a boy, not much older than her with a machete in his hand. He quickly untied her and helped her up off the ground. Behind the boy, was another vampire, a woman this time, trying to kill him. “Look out!” Lizzy screamed. The boy turned around, cutting off her head. Then along came all the other vampires. They both quickly started killing vampires one by one. Once all the vampires were dead, the two teens had blood all over them. They were both panting from all the fighting. Lizzy looked at the boy and smiled at him. “Thank you.” Lizzy said gratefully. The boy smiled back at her. “Anytime, my name is Jake by the way.” Jake said, still having a smile on his face. Jake thought Lizzy was beautiful, even though she had blood all over her. “Name is Lizzy. Are you a hunter?” She asked. “ Yes, my parents trained me before they died. He explained. Lizzy looked at the boy in front of her giving a sincere glance. “Sorry about your loss, my parents died too. They were killed by a demon. She said, “Mine were also killed by demons. When I was eleven, I came home to my parents murdered on their bed.” Jake told his story. The two teens had something in common, that’s saying something. They were both venging for their parents. “ Why don't we both go get some food for this victory kill?’ Jake asked Lizzy. Lizzy ended up saying yes and they hung out for the rest of the night.

*Scene ending*

“Cut! That was perfect you guys. I can see the chemistry between you two. Let’s all go to lunch and then we’ll finish the day with Jensen and Jared with their scenes.” The director said. The whole cast went their separate ways to eat lunch. Y/N went to her trailer to eat her lunch by herself. She started to think about how she’s going to be working with Cody for the remainder of the season. She just couldn’t shake off his creepy behavior. Y/N started to pull at her fingers, and panting really hard. She then realized she’s having a panic attack. It was getting harder to breathe and her chest began to tighten up. Y/N didn’t notice that Jensen had walked in her trailer to check on her, good thing he did. Once he saw what was happening, he ran over to her to help her come out of it. Y/N was standing against the wall, started to cry and was still having trouble breathing. “Y/N, sweetheart, breathe. You’re okay, I’m here. I’m right here.” Jensen said calmly. He helped her slide down the wall to sit on the floor. “I can’t breathe, my chest hurts and I can’t calm down.” Y/N said crying really hard. Jensen started to tear up, not liking what she’s going through, but he had to put that aside and help Y/N.

“Yes, you can, I’m right here. Here, I’m gonna take your hand and put it over my heart, so you can feel my heartbeat.” Jensen explained. He took her hand and placed it over his heart letting her feel his heartbeat. “Breathe for me, baby. In and out, in and out.” Jensen said calmly, giving her instructions. Y/N slowly started to breathe and started to get her breathing under control. “There you go, sweetheart, that’s it.” He said and then kissed her forehead.

The two just sat on the floor for a few minutes. “Are you okay, baby?” Jensen asked all worried. When she got the courage to speak, her voice was hoarse. “Yeah, I think I was just stressed about today.”She told him. Y/N didn’t want to tell the real reason why, she didn’t want to worry him. Jensen didn’t buy it one bit , but he didn’t want to push her. “Do you think you’ll be okay if I go do my scenes and then I’ll come back so we can go home. I know today has been long for you. I can also ask Jared to come sit with you until I’m done. Jensen explained.

“Yes please, I really don’t want to be alone right now.” Y/N said, kinda scared. Jensen nodded his hand and smiled at her trying to calm her down. He went off to text Jared to come sit with Y/N in her trailer the remainder of the day, since he didn’t have any more scenes to shoot.

Jared came in her trailer right after he heard what happened. Jensen left to go shoot his scenes. Y/N layed on her couch, really tired from her panic attack. She began to fall asleep, Jared saw that she was put like a light and took a blanket off the chair that was by the couch and covered her up to keep her warm.

Later on, Jensen came back to her trailer to check on her, but when he got in, he saw the cutest thing. Jared had his head on the couch and his hand in Y/N hair, but he was asleep. Jensen took out his phone and took a picture. He woke up Jared and told him it was time to go home so they could get ready for the cast dinner later that night. He didn’t want to wake up Y/N, so he picked her up and carried her to the car.

When they got home, Y/N was already awake, she had woken up in the car, but still was in Jensen’s arms. She went to her room to change into something appropriate for tonight’s dinner. After she got changed, she went to the bathroom to do her hair and makeup. As she was getting ready, she didn’t notice Jesen standing behind her until he said something.

“You look really beautiful, sweetheart. Jensen told her with a smile on his face. Y/N looked down blushing, she doesn’t really get compliments like this. Jared came up behind Jensen and saw how beautiful Y/N looked. “Wow, Y/N, you look amazing.” He said. This made her blush even more.

Thank y’all, you boys don’t look bad yourselves. Y/N complimented back. The two men were dressed up in nice jeans and nice button up shirts. After everyone was ready, Cliff picked them up and they were off to the restaurant. When they arrived, the rest of the cast was already there sitting at the table.

The director got up from his seat and went up to the trio. “Y/N, you will be sitting by Cody. Go get to know him, you two will be spending more time together.” Y/N went to go sit by Cody, getting nervous by the minute. Once Cody saw that she was making her way over to him, he immediately put her smirk on his face. She saw the look he was giving her, and she did not like it one bit, but she knew she had to be nice.“Y/N, so nice to see you. How was the rest of your day?” Cody asked, trying to make conversation with her. “Oh, it was nice.” She answered back, not really want to talk with him. She really wanted to sit by Jared and Jensen. Y/N started to pull at her fingers. In her mind, she heard Jensen’s voice telling her to breathe. Y/N started to calm down and try to enjoy the rest of the night.

For the rest of the evening, Cody was mainly talking about himself, barely letting Y/N talk. When the dinner was over, which she was grateful for, her and the boys went home. They finally got home and the three went their separate ways to get ready for bed.

Y/N climbed into her bed wearing one of Jared’s ‘Always Keep Fighting’ hoodies to keep herself warm. About two to three hours later, Y/N found herself awake and couldn’t go back to sleep. She got out of bed and tiptoed down the hallway to Jensen’s room. She really didn’t want to bother him, but she knew that he would help her go back to sleep. She climbed into his bed carefully not to wake him up. Jensen stirred awake to find Y/N awake in his bed, beginning to worry why she was awake. “You okay, baby?” Jesen asked all worried. “Yeah, I just woke up, couldn’t go back to sleep. Y/N whispered. Jensen wrapped his arms around her and rubbed her back. After a few minutes she was back to sleep.

[minijenn]

Universe Falls Chapter 54

Uguguhghghg right off the bat I’m gonna say fuck this chapter, I had basically no fun writing it and it sucks. The end. Enjoy if ya can. 

Previous: http://minijenn.tumblr.com/post/174794145519/universe-falls-chapter-53

Chapter 54: Evergreen Inn

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Though the Crystal Temple had been permeated by an unshakable feeling of tension the past several days following Garnet and Pearl’s bitter falling out, Steven had, interestingly enough, found that tension somewhat more bearable when his friends were there to help alleviate some of it. Hence why, awash in thoughts of all of the anguish, heartache, and betrayal he had been witnessing from his guardians as of late, he inevitably ended up calling Dipper, Mabel, and Connie over to hang out in the hopes that they could take his mind off of the ongoing stress he had been experiencing ever since he found that memory tube in Lion’s mane.

And so the kids crowded up onto the loft, all of them engaged in different activities, from reading, to watching tv, to drawing. Since Mabel had already been hanging out with Candy and Grenda earlier that morning, she had brought them up to the temple along with her, something that Steven readily welcomed. After all, the more the merrier when it came to distracting himself from all of the burdening thoughts he truthfully wanted to avoid.

“I can’t believe this is the first time me and Candy have had a chance to hang out at your house, Steven!” Grenda exclaimed loudly as she looked up from the picture her, Candy, and Mabel were working on. “It’s so cool!”

“It is cozy, yet mystical all at once!” Candy noted, equally impressed as she leaned back against Lion. “Complete with magical, fluffy pink lions and all!”

“Heh, yeah, thanks, guys,” Steven said with a halfhearted smile, his gaze focused on the temple gate rather than on the TV in front of him. “It’s… pretty great…”

“Steven, are you ok?” Connie asked upon glancing up from her novel and easily taking note of the young Gem’s melancholy.

“Huh? O-oh, uh yeah, I’m fine,” Steven quickly assured, forcing a smile.

“Are you sure?” Dipper asked, sharing Connie’s newfound concern. “You seem a bit… distracted.”

“Distracted? Me?” the young Gem scoffed as he turned his attention back to whatever was on TV. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m completely-”

“Are you… worried about the Gems maybe?” Mabel ventured, taking note of how Steven had been looking to the gate earlier. Needless to say that her getting right to the heart of the matter however, managed to catch the young Gem quite off guard.

“N-no! I…. I mean, yes! I mean-” Steven cut himself off  tightly, realizing that now everyone was looking to him with both confusion and concern. “I…. I’m—I don’t-”

Fortunately, the young Gem didn’t have to explain himself any further as the warp pad suddenly lit up, startling all six of the kids as they quickly turned to see Pearl unexpectedly arrive. The white Gem’s expression was awash in dread and woe, her hands held close to her chest as she looked down to her feet. However, before she could even really take a step off of the warp pad, she was quick to discover that she wasn’t as alone as she had hoped she’d be upon her return.

“Pearl!” Steven exclaimed, hurriedly rushing down from the loft and up to the white Gem. Though the other kids were still somewhat worried for Steven, given how strange he had been acting just a moment ago, they all soon followed after him to meet up with Pearl as well. “Where have you been? I haven’t seen you since the other day.”

“Oh, w-well, I’ve just been looking for Peridot!” Pearl informed, wringing her hands anxiously. “For… a few days straight…”

“Did you have any luck in finding her?” Connie asked.

“Er… n-not really…” the white Gem sighed, shaking her head morosely as her tone turned sad, yet sincere. “Kids, I know I might have… disappointed all of you. I know Garnet is very upset with me, but I’m going to prove to her that she can trust me again, no matter what it might take!”

Of course, the kids harbored nothing against Pearl for the obvious mistake she had made in deceiving Garnet, especially since the white Gem truly did seem to be very remorseful about her wrongdoing. And yet, before any of them could really reassure her in her admirable mission to win back the Gem leader’s favor, said Gem leader herself happened to enter the temple through the front door. Garnet’s expression was stoic and unreadable as she walked inside, offering neither the kids nor Pearl any sort of greeting as she instead silently passed by them en route to the temple, clearly in no mood to converse.

“Oh! Garnet!” Pearl exclaimed with as much of an amicable smile as she could muster. “I was just out looking for Peridot! She’s bound to be somewhere, r-right? Any new ideas?” Much to the white Gem’s despair, Garnet said nothing as she simply continued on ahead, staunchly ignoring her teammate just as she had been doing for the past several days. Which left Pearl with only one idea to try and bridge the unbearable gap still between them. “I-I’m sorry,” she said, her tone genuine and rife with guilt as she looked down shamefully. Much to her surprise, Garnet did stop at this, though she didn’t turn around, leaving the white Gem with essentially no idea as to what her reaction to her sudden apology was. Even so, Pearl was prepared to continue and finally voice her earnest appeal for the Gem leader’s forgiveness. Or at least she would of if an unexpected intrusion hadn’t happened at the very worst of times.

“Who wants to go on a ROAD TRIP!?” Greg exclaimed excitedly as he burst into the house, brochure in hand. Stan burst in right behind him, packed suitcases in tow and his manner every bit as bombastic as Greg’s.

“You kids do, that’s who!” the conman proclaimed. “Whether you want to or not!”

“Aw, come on, Mr. Pines,” the former rock star chuckled, amused. “They gotta have some say in this-” Greg cut himself off upon glancing over to the group before him, taking note of how caught of guard the kids were as well as the palpable tension between Garnet and Pearl that just about anyone with eyes could clearly see. “Uh… is this a bad time?”

“No,” Garnet finally spoke up, turning to face Greg and Stan. “Please continue.”

“Well, like we were saying, Greg and I are headin’ upstate for a few days on some… business,” Stan began to explain.

“Business?” Dipper raised a suspicious eyebrow. “What kind of business? Are you on the run from the law again?”

“Pfft, no,” Stan rolled his eyes. “At least not this week I’m not. Besides, I’ll have you know this trip is a tradition. Every year, my tourist trap competitors prank the Mystery Shack, and every year, I set out to prank them right back. Last year, those hooligans duct taped Soos to the celling for 78 hours and then there was that year when they covered everything in the shack in plastic wrap!”

“And he means everything…” Greg remarked, shuddering at the memory from his days of employment at the shack.

“Which means I gotta hit them back fast and hard this year,” Stan said with stark determination. “We’re gonna visit every tourist trap along the Evergreen Highway and I’m gonna prank every single one!”

“And I’m going because I met a guy on an internet message board who’s selling car wash brushes for real cheap!” Greg said with a wide grin. “And the place where we arranged to meet is right along the same route Mr. Pines is taking, so we figured we’d make things easier by riding together.”

“I don’t like those brushes…” Steven said with a frown. “They feel weird on your fur.”

“Fur?” Connie, Candy, and Grenda all asked in confused unison.

“It’s a long story,” Mabel quickly whispered to them.

“Well, do like inns?” Greg asked his son.

“Probably!” Steven ventured, having never really stayed in one before.

“Think you’d like to stay at an inn with your favorite dad?”

“I don’t know if you’re my favorite…” the young Gem teased, his spirits raising as his father let out an amused laugh.

“Oh, you kidder! Come here!” the former rock star laughingly accepted his son into his arms, hoisting him up onto his shoulders.

“I can’t wait to get room service!” Steven exclaimed, stars in his eyes.

“You’re thinking of a hotel,” Greg corrected. “We’re going to an inn. It’ll have a pool, and free ice, and its right down the road from the best diner in the world!”

“Oh my gosh, this is so exciting!” Mabel chimed in, sharing Steven’s elation and passing it onto Candy and Grenda as well. “Maybe if we’re lucky, it’ll be one of those inns that has free cold bagels for breakfast every morning!”

“Why cold bagels, specifically?” Dipper asked, confused.

“Well, cause they probably can’t afford toasters to warm ‘em up, duh!”

“Whoa, there, eager beavers,” Stan shook his head. “First of all, an inn with continental breakfast is way too fancy for my blood. Second of all, we’re only staying there one night. For the rest of the trip, I’ve rented out an RV for a cut rate price, one that’s guaranteed to not explode or I’ll get half my money back!”

“Good luck getting that money back if it does explode…” Pearl remarked sardonically, crossing her arms.

“Can we go too, Mr. Pines?” Grenda asked with an eager smile.

“Eh sure, the more the merrier,” the conman shrugged, pulling out a stack of legal forms. “Just sign these non-disclosure agreements. None of your parents are lawyers, right?”

“Well… my dad is a cop, so… we should probably be careful…” Connie advised with a worried frown.

“Bow wow!” Grenda cheered after she finished signing the papers. “Time to let the road dogs bark!”

“That is us, we are the road dogs!” Candy quipped, cheerfully joining Grenda and Mabel in bouncing up and down in unshakable elation.

“I’m coming too,” Garnet said, instantly cutting through the ongoing excitement over the trip as everyone paused to look at her in apt confusion.

“W-what?” Pearl spoke up first, bewildered by the Gem leader deciding to leave at a time like this.

“Oh my gosh! That makes it even better!” Steven gasped, delighted to see that Garnet wanted to come for more reasons than one. After all, not only did it mean that he would get to have a fun trip with one of his beloved guardians, it was also a sure-fire sign that perhaps she wasn’t as upset over the Sardonyx incident as she seemed to have been the past several days. Or at least, he could only hope that she wasn’t.

“Hey, uh, Garnet?” Greg spoke up in a whisper. “I know me and Mr. Pines are talking this whole RV/inn thing up, but… it ain’t exactly the ritz…”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” the Gem leader remarked with a hint of a smirk.

“Eh, I guess you can come along, shades,” Stan crossed his arms. “Just be sure you don’t cramp my pranking style.”

“I didn’t ask for your permission, Stan,” Garnet deadpanned, though she was still grinning all the same. “But don’t worry, I won’t.”

“Well, in that case…. Road trip!” Greg exclaimed with renewed vigor.

“Road trip!” Steven, Mabel, Candy, and Grenda all cheered, eliciting amused chuckles from Dipper and Connie.

“Road trip,” Garnet nodded, much more calmly as her smile faded.

“Um… that’s… wonderful!” Pearl quipped, clasping her hands together anxiously. “I’ll make sure that Amethyst knows that-” The white Gem didn’t get a chance to finish as Garnet succinctly walked past her once more, not sparing her a single word as she instead headed outside, leading the way for the others to do the same. “Uh… f-fine,” Pearl said with a forced smile as she waved the others off before letting out a small, remorseful sigh. “Well… goodbye…”

“This is gonna be fun! Right, Dad?” Steven asked, still perched on Greg’s shoulders as they headed out.

“Uh… sure, Stu-ball!” the former rock star assured, even if he was a bit wary now that Garnet had volunteered to come along. Normally, he wouldn’t have minded her company at all, but given how unsteady things had apparently been amongst the Gems lately, he wasn’t so sure what brining one on a trip like this would end up entailing. But even so, Greg didn’t want to spoil Steven’s excitement, and so he said nothing else, hoping that the trip would turn out to be just as fun and peaceful as the young Gem was clearly looking forward to.

But of course, as usual, it would end up being anything but.

It wasn’t very surprising that the RV Stan had rented for the road trip had seen better days. Its exterior was ridden with dents and dings and was in desperate need of a good washing, while its interior was cramped and cluttered and barely enough to contain its nine passengers. Even so, they all managed to find space as they set out on the road, everyone taking shifts in sitting up front in the less crowded passenger seat as Greg and Stan took shifts in driving down the long yet lovely Evergreen Highway.

“Man, RVs are amazing!” Grenda exclaimed as her and the other girls sat at the table near the back. “I can’t believe we’re sitting at a table in a moving vehicle.”

“Ooo, and look! Informational travel pamphlets!” Candy quipped, pressing a pile of said pamphlets to her cheek. “I want to read them all and gain their travel knowledge.”

“Uh… I’m pretty sure all these pamphlets are from the 1970s…” Connie noted as she leafed through a few of the dusty handouts.

“Whoa… they’re vintage!” Mabel remarked with genuine fascination. “That means they’re probably super accurate!”

“Ah, this is the life, kid,” Stan said to Dipper, who was currently sitting up front alongside him. “The open road, the clear blue skies, the fumes comin’ from the RV’s engine… What more could anyone want? Its no wonder me ‘n Amethyst always call this yearly trek the ‘mother of all Revenge Trips’, huh?”

“Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask you, Grunkle Stan,” Dipper said with a curious frown. “Why didn’t you ask Amethyst to come with us? This whole thing with pranking all these tourist traps seems like it’d be right up her alley.”

The conman flinched, realizing he had let his nostalgia get the better of him, something that only made things awkward in the present. “Uh… usually she does tag along,” Stan began, not meeting his nephew’s gaze in favor of keeping his eyes on the road. “But this year, I just… uh… d-didn’t get the chance to ask her, that’s all.”

“More like you you haven’t had the chance to talk to her in general since what happened with the portal, right?” Dipper asked somewhat knowingly.

“I-I’ve talked to her since then!” Stan snapped defensively, his grip on the steering wheel tightening. Even so, Dipper hardly believed him.

“Which is why you asked all of us to come along on this trip,” he continued his line of rather accurate reasoning. “So you wouldn’t feel lonely going around and pulling off a bunch of pranks without Amethyst. Am I somewhere in the ballpark of being right about all that?”

“I-I’ll tell you what you are in the ballpark of: moving out of the front seat!” Stan growled, catching Dipper off guard with how suddenly angry he was. “Now, get back there and get your sister, its her turn to sit up here.”

“But I just got up here-”

“Well you should have thought about that before you started asking a bunch of annoying questions,” the conman huffed, sending his nephew a sharp, warning glare. “Now, scoot before I toss you out and leave ya for a pack of wild hitchhikers.”

Dipper begrudgingly did as his uncle said, getting up from the front seat with a frustrated sigh to go switch places with Mabel. Things seemed much more peaceful in the furthest back seat in the RV, where Garnet and Steven both sat; the young Gem had been keeping himself occupied by enjoying the scenery go by through the window and occasionally pointing out what he saw as well as his ongoing excitement about the trip in general, to the Gem leader. Who, much like the past several days, didn’t have much to say in response.

“Whoa, check it out, Garnet!” Steven exclaimed as he pulled a coin out from under his seat. “Another penny! I guess someone must have spilled a whole bunch back here too. And probably some grape juice at some point based on this big stain right here. Still, between the pennies and the RV and the inn we’re gonna get to stay at, I’d say this trip is already turning out to be pretty great, wouldn’t you?”

“Mmm…” Garnet responded, her lips pressed into a thin line and her hands laying heavily upon her knees. Though there was plenty of room in the small back quarters of the RV for Steven, the Gem leader was admittedly a bit cramped, though that was hardly what was bothering her at the moment. In fact, what was agitating her lay far beyond this trip at all, but she was hardly about to let Steven, or anyone else for that matter, in on her internal conflict. As far as she was concerned, this was something she could just as easily sort out solely by herself.

“Look alive, everyone!” Stan announced roughly an hour later as he pulled off the highway. “We’re coming up on an attraction run by the most black-hearted proprietor in all of Oregon: Granny Sweetkins’ Yarnball.”

“Uh, Mr. Pines, are you sure about this?” Greg asked, rather concerned as they arrived at the unassuming, rather welcoming attraction, its main feature being a massive ball of soft, colorful yarn.

“Don’t let the face fool you,” Stan glared up at the nearby sign depicting Granny Sweetkins herself. “This woman lit my car on fire on two non-consecutive occasions.”

As soon as the conman parked the RV, everyone filed out, taking a moment to be amazed by the yarnball’s quite impressive size before leaping right into action. “Girls, I’m going in,” Mabel said with determination, brazenly leading the way before Candy and Grenda eagerly followed after her directly into the ball of yarn.

“Wait for me, you guys!” Steven laughed, jumping in after the trio as Dipper and Connie watched on in bewilderment.

“Why do I have this terrible feeling that we’re gonna get caught vandalizing this thing?” Connie asked, anxiously glancing around for any signs of incoming security.

“Eh, I wouldn’t worry,” Dipper shrugged. “Whenever we do something mildly illegal like this, Stan usually makes sure we end up making a clean enough getaway. Usually.”

“Yeah, Mr. Pines does have a knack for pulling off daring escapes,” Greg added with a chuckle as he watched Stan supervise the other kids in taking the yarnball apart from the inside out. “Right, Garnet?”

The Gem leader offered no answer as she simply stood alongside the group in silence, apparently paying little attention to what was going on before her. Greg, Connie, and Dipper all looked over to her in slight concern over her lack of any sort of response, but even so, Garnet still said nothing, almost as if she was lost in her own thoughts entirely. However, before any of them could try to properly garnish her attention, Stan suddenly rushed past them, Mabel, Candy, Grenda, and Steven following hot on his heels as they all carried sizable clumps of yarn from the gradually shrinking yarnball.

“Everyone, book it! Now!” the conman ordered, prompting the rest of the group to flee back into the RV. No sooner had the door shut behind them than Stan floored it, the camper taking off at a surprising speed despite its age. As the group made their hasty retreat, Granny Sweetkins herself rushed after it, outraged as her world-famous yarnball unraveled right before her eyes.

“Why, you gall darn, no good, son of a-!” the elderly woman cut herself off, taking the knitting needle that had once held the yarnball together out of the ground and tossing it after the speeding RV with a vicious vengeance. “I’ll get you, Stan Pines!”

This incensed sentiment was shared across all of the owners of all of the tourist traps that Stan pranked across the next several days, his route meticulous and his methods always quite destructive towards whatever attraction was involved. The gang’s visit to Upside-Down Town resulted in all of them working together to flip the overturned house rightside up, essentially taking away the main thing that set it apart and turning it into a normal home. At Log Land, they untied the spectacular stack of wood the attraction was known for, resulting in a potentially deadly logslide that fortunately no one was injured in (save for the tourist trap’s revenue and reputation). The Corn Maze was easy enough to ruin simply by taking away the plentiful scarecrows positioned throughout it and waiting for the mass of crows to fly in and eat just about everything in sight. And in a similar fashion, the rest of the tourist traps they stopped in at fell, Stan raking in the sheer delight of taking his competitors down several pegs, the kids getting to join in on the exciting, rather morally ambiguous mischief, and Greg cautiously supervising to make sure none of them got hurt. The only one amongst the group who seemed completely adverse to participating altogether was Garnet, who usually barely moved away from the RV when they stopped, if she left it at all. And yet, with as much fun as they were having, no one really seemed to notice the Gem leader’s lack of engagement, even as she grew more and more closed off as the days rolled by. For the most part, they all just assumed that it was her usual stoic manner; but in reality, what it really was, was something much more concerning.

The group had been on the road for roughly three days when they finally arrived to their stopping point for the final night of their trip: the supposedly legendary Evergreen Inn. Still, despite Greg’s fanciful description of the motel, it was admittedly anything but impressive. Tucked just off of the Evergreen highway, the inn was a small, two story establishment with apparently plenty of vacancies as the clearly bored front desk receptionist implied. Still, the inn did have a decently-sized, mostly clean swimming pool claiming most of its tiny parking lot, which presented Stan with something of a challenge in finding a place to park the RV when the group arrived. They had ended up checking into two rooms right next to each other, one for Garnet and the girls to stay in and one for the Stan, Greg, and the boys. But since they had made it to the inn rather early in the evening, the kids all decided to congregate in the boys’ room first in order to enjoy what few amenities the inn had to offer.

“Another great thing about inns,” Greg said to the kids as he unlocked the door to the room. “You can drive right up to your door!”

“Or at least we could if that ol’ rust bucket out there didn’t take up three parking spots,” Stan remarked sardonically, though the kids were hardly paying much attention as they got their first glimpse of the room. By all accounts it was nothing special, a simple two bed setup with a standard bathroom, TV, desk, and décor. But even despite its almost dull normality, most of the kids were instantly taken with excitement over it.

“Its so beautiful!” Grenda proclaimed dramatically.

“Yes! Two beds!” Mabel cheered, readily hopping up onto one of them before jumping across to the other. “You guys gotta try this! It’s just like a trampoline, only with a huge, potentially dangerous gap in the middle!”

Candy and Grenda both rushed to join Mabel in her bed-hopping campaign, the three of them clearly enjoying themselves despite how simplistic their form of entertainment was. “Well, they’re easily impressed…” Connie remarked to Dipper and Steven with something of a bemused grin.

“Can you blame them? This place is amazing!” Steven exclaimed, stars in his eyes as he rushed forward into the room to better explore it. “I’m gonna swim in the pool, order a movie, get free ice, it’ll be great!”

“N-not before we check for bed bugs, it isn’t!” Greg cautioned, hurrying to do just that as Stan also properly entered the room. Garnet came in behind them, easily toting everyone’s bags, though no one really heard the somewhat burdened groan come from the Gem leader as they each took a look around the room for themselves.

“Good news! We’re bugless,” Greg let out a sigh of relief upon lifting one of the mattresses up before Steven, Mabel, Candy, and Grenda all landed squarely on top of it.

“Then that puts this place above 90% of the motels I stayed in back during my drifting days,” Stan remarked with a wry grin before briefly checking his watch. “Oh, Greg, looks like its about time for us to get those… what were they again?”

“Oh that’s right! The brushes!” the former rock star exclaimed as he quickly stood. “Hey, Garnet, do you mind holding down the fort until Mr. Pines and I get back?” Garnet responded to this simply in the form of a rather shaky thumbs up as she sat on the opposite bed, her other hand twitching rather erratically and her expression tight and terse. Even so, this was good enough for Stan and Greg. “Great!” the former rock star grinned as him and the conman headed out the door. “We’re going to see a man about a tunnel brush. An internet man… If we’re not back in an hour, call the police.”

“Pfft, please, Greg, we’re not gonna need any pansy police,” Stan rolled his eyes. “If we run into any trouble with this guy, all it’ll take to shake him off our backs is one good slug in the jaw with these babies.” The conman smirked as he pulled his infamous brass knuckles out of his suit pocket before quickly slipping them back into hiding.

“Mr. Pines, we can’t just beat the guy up.”

“Ha! Try tellin’ that my old parole officer.”

“Bye!” Steven called after the pair as they left, leaving the kids behind with Garnet, not that she was really paying any of them much mind to begin with.

“Oh my gosh, you guys, wait!” Mabel gasped, halting the ongoing barrage of jumping between beds. “What if this inn has vending machines?!”

“Inns can have vending machines too?!” Steven asked in amazed surprise. “Seriously, how could this place get any better?”

“We should go see if they have one, and if they do, we should get a bunch of candy!” Mabel exclaimed, hopping up and down in place on the bed.

“Call me crazy, but for some reason I feel like candy is the last thing any of you guys need right now,” Dipper pointed out with an exasperated frown.

“He is right,” Candy conceded with a small, steadily growing, wry smirk. “After all, I’m already here!”

“Oooo! I see what you did there!” Grenda laughed, Steven and Mabel readily joining in as even Dipper and Connie managed to get a bit of a chuckle out of this joke.

“Garnet!” Steven called over to the Gem leader with another small laugh. “Did you hear what Candy just-”

The young Gem cut himself off upon hearing a rather tense, rather loud groan that came from Garnet herself. The levity in the room was all but shattered as all the kids looked to her with apt alarm, though she largely ignored them in favor of carrying on what seemed to be a quite intense argument with herself. “Calm down…” she advised, her voice shaking as it quickly hitched with anger. “I don’t feel like forgiving Pearl! Y-you don’t understand, we must. Augh! If you’re not going to listen, then you can just GO!”

On this harsh, sudden proclamation, a sudden, bright light overtook the Gem leader, though it only lasted for a brief second before, without hardly any warning at all, she quite literally fell apart. Ruby and Sapphire both let out startled cries as they fell onto the floor, though their surprise was quickly replaced with the still strong sentiments left over from their internal struggle, even as all six of the kids stared at the couple in shocked, silent awe.

“We must move past this, Ruby,” Sapphire began, her voice stoic and steady as she sat elegantly on the floor, facing away from the red Gem.

“No! She lied to us to form Sardonyx!” Ruby snapped harshly, practically shaking with rage. “She tricked us! Don’t you feel used?!”

“Oh my gosh!” Mabel squealed amidst the couple’s ongoing squabble as she looked to Candy and Grenda, who were clearly still in shock over what they had just seen. “See? Garnet really is a fusion, just like I was telling you guys!”

“Ruby! Sapphire!” Steven greeted the pair brightly. “We-”

“You’re just choosing to take it personally,” Sapphire said to Ruby, neither of them paying any attention to the kids amidst their own conflict.

“It’s fusion, Sapphire!” Ruby hopped to her feet hotly. “What’s more personally to us than fusion?!”

“I know you’re still upset-”

“Oh, so its just me then, huh?”

“Of course not,” Sapphire turned to face her partner, her expression completely dour and emotionless. “Can’t you see I’m engulfed with rage?”

“Well, it doesn’t feel like it,” Ruby growled, impatiently tapping her foot. All the while, the kids continued watching on, none of them quite sure what to say to interrupt this rather intense argument, if it was even a wise idea to do so at all.

“The sooner we forgive Pearl, the better it will be for all of us,” Sapphire assured, finally lifting herself up off the floor to, oddly enough, levitate just above it. Ruby only glared at the blue Gem as she gracefully lifted herself up onto the bed to take a placid seat upon it.

“You’re not as above this as you think you are!” the red Gem shouted fiercely, her rage coming out in the form of visible steam that rose up from her.

“Yes,” Sapphire hummed, gently placing her hands in her lap. “I am.”

“Grr… Why doesn’t this bother you!?” Ruby groaned, slamming her fist onto the lower end of the bed.

“I never said it didn’t,” the blue Gem countered evenly. “I’m just choosing to be reasonable about it. Something you should do too, Ruby.”

“I don’t have to be reasonable about anything!” the red Gem barked, though she quickly paused upon realizing what she had just said. “W-wait! That’s not what I meant! I just… I… AUGH!”

“Its like I said,” Sapphire continued calmly. “You can’t stay angry with Pearl forever.”

“Wanna bet?” Ruby scowled, clearly not retracting her firm, angry position.

“Ruby, the carpet,” the blue Gem nodded down to the floor, which her partner just so happened to be burning a hole into simply by standing upon it.

“You… c-cant even… augh!” Ruby cut herself off with another frustrated shout before she ended up storming out of the room altogether, brutally slamming the door behind her. A beat of rather awkward silence passed as the kids, who had all been largely spectating the argument between the two Gems, slowly all looked towards Sapphire, who was still sitting on the bed, her gaze fixated solely in front of her and her expression as unmoving and seemingly unfeeling as ever.

“Nice to… see you again?” Steven was the first to break the silence, offering the blue Gem something of a small smile that she didn’t return.

“Nice to see you too,” Sapphire replied, her tone and manner quite stately.

“So…” Mabel began innocently enough before rather bluntly getting to the heart of what they had just seen. “Does that fight you and Ruby just had mean you guys are getting a divorce?”

“O-okay!” Dipper quickly interjected almost as soon as his sister had voiced this awkward question, not even giving the rather confused Sapphire a chance to answer it as he abruptly pushed Mabel towards the door. “I think its about time that the six of us get some fresh air! Like… right now.”

“Aw…” Steven frowned in disappointment as Connie helped pull him, Candy, and Grenda after the twins. “But we just-”

“Now,” Dipper insisted as he finished shooing everyone out of the room before exiting himself.

“You know, I gotta admit,” Connie began as soon as they were all congregated outside of the room. “Based on what you guys have told me about Ruby and Sapphire and their relationship, what happened in there was… pretty unexpected.”

“Well, the first time we saw them together, they actually got along really well,” Steven shrugged.

“Yeah, they did!” Mabel chimed in brightly. “They hugged and kissed and danced until they fused back into Garnet, augh! You guys should have seen it!” she quipped to Candy and Grenda, who were clearly taken by this romantic recounting. “They were so adorable!”

“Aw, man! I wish we could see them being adorable together!” Grenda pouted, crossing her arms in disappointment.

“Yes, but at the moment, it seems as though they are having… relationship issues,” Candy noted just as solemnly.

“Seriously, you think they’d at least be willing to talk to each other about this whole thing instead of arguing about it,” Dipper said.

“Wait a second…” Steven mused, a sudden idea coming to him. “That’s it! If Ruby and Sapphire won’t talk things out on their own, then maybe we can help them instead!”

“Oh my gosh, that’s a great idea, Steven!” Mabel readily agreed. “And it makes perfect sense too! Garnet’s always helping us without our relationship problems, so its about time we return the favor and help Ruby and Sapphire work theirs out!”

“You know what this means?” Candy asked with a growing grin. “It is our turn to be-”

“Romance experts!” Mabel and Grenda chimed in alongside Candy, all three of the girls more than excited to be taking up this rather daunting undertaking.

“Uh, I don’t know, you guys,” Dipper interjected much more rationally. “Maybe getting in the middle of Ruby and Sapphire’s, uh… disagreement isn’t really the best idea. We should probably just let them patch things up on their own.”

“But who knows how long that could take!” Mabel said with an impatient huff. “We all saw that lil’ spat they just had; those two need some serious relationship help STAT! So here’s how its gonna go down: it’ll be easier if we all split up to talk to them first so we can convince them to talk to each other.”

“Huh, that… actually makes sense,” Connie remarked, realizing that this idea wasn’t as bad as it had originally sounded.

“Of course it does! Now, me, Steven, and Grenda will go try to cool Ruby down,” Mabel continued explaining. “Meanwhile, Dipper, Connie, Candy, you three go see if you can do anything to get Sapphire to warm up. Ya see what I did there? Cool? Warm? It’s a-”

“Yeah, we get it, it’s a pun,” Dipper interupted, rolling his eyes. “By the way, I still don’t think this plan is gonna work, but… I guess anything’s better than listening to those two argue all night so, its probably worth a try.”

“Don’t worry,” Steven assured before the respective groups split up to carry out their missions. “All we gotta do is convince Ruby and Sapphire to hear each other out and then I’m sure everything else will work itself out. Or at least… I really hope it will…”

Despite her abruptly storming out of the room earlier, Ruby wasn’t all too difficult to find thanks to the trail of ashy footprints she had left behind, one that Steven, Mabel, and Grenda found led towards the pool. And so, for the sake of being discreet in their goal as well as to have a little fun at the same time, the trio quickly changed into their bathing suits and hurried out to the pool, hoping to get the incensed red Gem to simmer down somehow.

Upon slipping through the pool’s open gate, the trio found that, sure enough, there Ruby was, pacing angrily around the parameter. A plume of steady steam rose up from her all the while as her hands remained in tight fists at her sides and her expression set in a bitter downward glare. For a moment, the kids simply watched her, all of them noting that she apparently hadn’t noticed their arrival at all, at least until Steven spoke up to greet her.

“Uh… hey, Ruby,” the young Gem began with a tentative smile and wave as he put his towel down. “You wanna swim in the pool with us?”

“And, I dunno, maybe we can all talk about our feelings?” Mabel suggested innocently enough. “They say pools are the best place to work your pent up anger out, after all.”

“Whoa, really?” Grenda asked, apparently amazed by this fact. “Wow… and all these years, I was doing that by hitting things!”

“Uh… yeah…” Steven said as both him and Mabel looked to Grenda with confused frowns before he turned back to Ruby, who was still pacing intently. “Anyway, we-”

“It’s fusion, Steven!” Ruby suddenly snapped, her manner every bit as hostile as it had been back in the room. “It’s like Sapphire doesn’t even care! And we’re supposed to be ‘the bigger Gem’ about this. We’re always the bigger Gem! Well, not this time! Not about this!”

“Uh… well… y-you could always try talking to Sapphire about it,” Mabel mused somewhat awkwardly, knowing that it probably wasn’t wise to push the red Gem too far. “You know… calmly?”

“I did that already!” Ruby retorted hotly. “You three were there, you saw how she just refuses to admit that she could ever be wrong about anything just ‘cause she can see the future. But I can see plenty of things myself, and I can see that she’s wrong this time, I know it!”

“Um, r-right…” Steven said somewhat nervously before throwing on a reassuring smile. “Well, why don’t you come cool down in the pool with us?” At this, the young Gem promptly cannonballed into the pool, Mabel following right after him. Grenda was last and the earlier pair was rather caught off guard by the large splash her jump created, one that ended up splaying Ruby with water that quickly turned to steam as it evaporated off of her very warm form.

“I don’t need to cool down,” the red Gem grumbled, crossing her arms as she glared away from the pool.

“Aw, come on, Ruby!” Mabel urged brightly. “The water’s niiice!”

“And there’s only like 4 or 5 bugs floating around in here, which makes it cleaner than most hotel pools I’ve been to at least!” Grenda added just as exuberantly.

Ruby paused, taking another sour glance over at the pool before finally relenting and stepping down into it, continuing her ongoing rant all the while. “Why does she always act like I’m being ridiculous!?” she huffed, walking straight to the bottom of the pool and staying grounded there as she resumed pacing. “Just because she wants to pretend like she doesn’t have feelings?! Oh yeah, I don’t have any feelings, well I…” Ruby continued her frustrated ramblings, though much of it was muffled by the several gallons of water she was under, though apparently not hindered by whatsoever.

“Wow, Ruby’s a really good swimmer,” Grenda noted, duly amazed as they all watched the red Gem pace about.

“Is she… ok down there?” Mabel asked with a slightly worried frown.

“Yeah, I think so,” Steven mused, even as Ruby continued to pay none of them any mind amidst her ongoing venting. “Uh… Ruby? Oh!” the young Gem gasped as the water around them began to bubble with sudden warmth. “Heh, you made a warm spot!”

“Hey, yeah! It almost feels like a hot tub in here now!” Mabel chuckled along with Steven and Grenda before the water’s temperature unexpectedly spiked from comfortably warm to unbearably hot. “Ah! O-OK, now it’s a really hot tub!”

“M-more than hot! Boiling!” Steven cried as him, Mabel, and Grenda all frantically scrambled to get out of the piping hot water. The pool was still largely bubbling over even as they hurriedly climbed out of it, sitting on the dry edge as they all panted in a desperate attempt to cool down from the near-burns they had almost received. A beat of awkward silence passed as they tried and failed to spot Ruby amidst the rapid bubbles she was unwittingly creating from her quite literally burning rage. Even so, in the end it was rather clear that as stubborn as someone like Ruby was, it would take more than just a few apprehensive words of convincing to get her to hold anything close to a civil conversation with Sapphire at this point.

Or at least this fact was clear to Steven and Mabel, since Grenda turned to the pair with a rather satisfied grin just a moment later. “Ya know, I think that went pretty well!”

Upon splitting up from the others and reentering the inn room, Dipper, Connie, and Candy all immediately noticed that the room itself seemed a bit chillier than it had been when they had stepped outside mere minutes ago. Even so, the trio didn’t really put too much thought into this apparently coincidental change as they greeted Sapphire casually enough.

“Uh… hey, Sapphire,” Dipper began with a tentative wave as him, Connie, and Candy moved to take a seat on the other bed.

“Hello, Dipper, Connie, Candy,” Sapphire nodded in return, her tone flat as she maintained her spot on the bed, her hands folded neatly in her lap.

“Are… you doing ok in here?” Connie asked, not really sure where to start in convincing the blue Gem to talk things out with her significant other.

“I’m… fine…” Sapphire said somewhat tightly, a bit of frost creeping up on the wall behind her. As it did, the kids happened to notice the room’s temperature fall from refreshingly cool to blatantly cold in almost an instant, most likely as a result of the blue Gem’s tranquil dissatisfaction. Even so, none of them decided to address that fact to Sapphire herself, lest doing so result in the room growing somehow even colder than it already was, which was quite an unsavory thought given how frigid it was already becoming.

“H-how about we watch some TV?” Candy suggested with a shiver, unceremoniously pulling the bed’s blanket up and wrapping part of it around herself before offering the rest to Dipper and Connie.

“Sure,” Sapphire remarked, as unexpressive as always.

“Oh, uh, l-look at that, the TV channels are different here than they are in Gravity Falls,” Dipper said upon turning the television on before addressing Sapphire. “M-maybe you could use your future vision to point us to a good one?”

“Hm… 43,” the blue Gem replied after only a brief moment of thought. “But there’s not much on.”

Even despite this, Dipper switched to the aforementioned channel and all three of the kids burrowed themselves deeper into the blanket, which admittedly offered them little warmth amidst the still ever-dropping temperatures of the room. For a moment or two, the doldrum sounds of the TV filled in what would have otherwise been awkward silence as frost continued climbing up the walls, particularly behind Sapphire, who didn’t really seem to have much to say regarding her and Ruby’s falling out at all. Which meant that perhaps all she needed was a bit of good prompting towards the subject.

“H-hey, Sapphire-” Connie ventured to begin, but the blue Gem succinctly cut her off before she could continue.

“Even if I do, Ruby won’t listen.”

“H-huh?”

“You’re going to say that I should talk to Ruby,” Sapphire correctly predicted. “But it won’t help. At least not right now.”

“A-are you sure?” Dipper asked, shuddering from the bitter chill that seemed to have no relief in sight. “Cause she seemed pretty upset earlier.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Sapphire concluded firmly. “She’s simply overreacting. It’s a longtime habit of hers, one that usually doesn’t cause too many problems. But in the off chance that it does, she always comes around eventually. She can’t stay mad at Pearl forever and she can’t stay mad at me forever, and then she’ll come back and see that I’m right.”

“B-but don’t you think talking to her might smooths things over between you two… I-I don’t know, sooner?” Connie attempted, her eyes widening as she realized she could see her breath in the apparent icebox they were now in.

“There’s no need to rush this,” the blue Gem shook her head. “I can see the path of fate as it stretches on the horizon. The rift between us isn’t destined to last. Ruby can’t avoid the inevitable. She’s just letting her emotions get out of hand.”

“N-not you though, right?” Dipper asked, rolling his eyes rather knowingly as he realized they weren’t really getting anywhere with the practically immovable blue Gem.

“No,” Sapphire said, even as the bed she was sitting on completely froze over, not that she paid it any real mind at all.

By this point, while Dipper and Connie were trying to come up with a last ditch attempt to convince Sapphire to speak to Ruby, Candy had apparently decided that the frigid conditions had become too much for her to bear. “I-I must use the bathroom!” she cried, hopping off the bed and rushing for the smaller room that she hoped would be just a bit warmer.

“Also inevitable,” Sapphire noted dryly.

“O eoseo!” Candy shouted in frustrated Korean before poking her head outside the bathroom door. “T-the toilet is frozen!”

“Such is fate,” the blue Gem said, completely apathetic to the trio of practically frozen kids, none of whom could really stand the subzero conditions any longer.

“S-so I guess its our fate to pee outside in the grass too, then?” Dipper huffed in annoyance as him and Connie began to follow Candy out of the room, all three of them more than frustrated by how little progress they had made with the supposedly sensible blue Gem.

But all the same, Sapphire kept up her “calm” composure, barely even effected at all as the kids left her behind in the effective tundra of a room she had created. “…Yes.”

Coincidentally enough, just as Steven, Mabel, and Grenda were trudging back from the pool, fanning themselves off all the while from the heat Ruby had unwittingly subjected them to, Dipper, Connie, and Candy emerged from the frozen room, all three of them more than glad to be out in the balmy summer night’s air after their frigid stint with Sapphire.

“H-hey, you guys,” Steven panted as the two groups converged, all of them taking a seat on the curb near the room. “How’d it go with Sapphire?”

“N-not so great,” Connie admitted, still largely chilled to the bone. “She’s pretty dead set on thinking that Ruby the wrong one here and that she’ll eventually realize that which means they don’t need to talk things out.”

“And then she froze the entire room over!” Candy added fretfully. “Including the toilet…”

“That’s… basically what Ruby said about Sapphire…” Mabel frowned worriedly.

“Before she accidentally boiled the three of us in the pool!” Grenda huffed hotly.

“Well, that’s… not really that surprising,” Dipper remarked dryly. “You know, despite basically being opposites with the whole fire and ice thing, those two really are pretty similar, especially when it comes to how stubborn they are. No wonder they usually get along so well.”

“Well, I wish they were getting along now…” Steven sighed sadly as he flopped onto his back. “What are we gonna do, you guys? We can’t just… let them stay mad at each other like this! Its great seeing Ruby and Sapphire again, yeah, but I already miss Garnet so much! What if… what if they never make up a-and they never form Garnet again!?”

“Aw, Steven…” Connie said, placing a sympathetic hand on the young Gem’s shoulder. “I’m sure they’ll make up sooner or later.”

“Yeah, and until they do, we’ll just have to step our ‘romance expert’ game up so we can really help them get back together!” Mabel proclaimed with a daring grin.

“Or… maybe we should just leave well enough alone,” Dipper countered, rubbings his arms in a continuous attempt to warm them up. “After all, the last thing I wanna do right now is step back into ‘Antarctica’ in there.”

Despite their somewhat lowered spirits, this did manage to get something of a small laugh out of the kids, one that was all too short lived as they quickly returned to their former dejection over their failed missions. While they all figured that the squabble between Ruby and Sapphire would end eventually, the underlying fear still existed, however small it was, that this conflict between them would last, that they’d stay fixed in their positions and refuse to find some sort of compromise. That, worst of all, they’d never see Garnet again as a result.

Fortunately though, none of them had too much of a chance to stew in such unsavory thoughts as the bright, telltale headlights from an oncoming RV encompassed all of them. As soon as their eyes adjusted to the light, they were able to see that the camper had indeed returned, now with a set of brand new car wash brushes tied to the roof.

“Hey, kids!” Greg greeted warmly as he popped out of the RV, two pizza boxes in hand. “We brought dinner!”

“Hey, Dad,” Steven replied with a halfhearted smile. “How’d it go?”

“Well, he wasn’t an axe-murderer,” the former rock star said, joining the kids on the curb.

“And I didn’t have to use these babies,” Stan added as he got out of the camper, letting out a disappointed sigh as he held up his brass knuckles. “At least not this time…”

“…Which was probably a good thing,” Greg remarked, scratching the back of his neck. “Anyway, what are you kids doing outside anyway? And why are you three in your bathing suits?” he asked Steven, Mabel, and Grenda in particular before turning to Connie, Dipper, and Candy. “And why do you three look so cold? And where’s Garnet?”

“You… don’t wanna know,” Dipper deadpanned in clear exasperation.

“Uh, yeah, we kinda do,” Stan remarked, his hands on his hips. Prompted by curiosity, both Greg and Stan took a tentative peek inside the boys’ room, only to find it largely frozen over, ice and frost coating the walls, the floor, and just about everything else. And of course, Sapphire still remained sitting on the bed, still completely unmoving, though she did briefly turn to the pair, her expression completely unmoved as she offered them a bizarre, almost ominous prediction. “They’re not gonna like that its square…”

At this, the conman and the former rock star quickly closed the door, leaving the blue Gem to her privacy as they both turned to the kids, slightly baffled. “Oh great…” Stan grumbled, rolling his eyes knowingly. “Those two again…”

“Uh… where’s the other one?” Greg asked worriedly, glancing around for any sign of Ruby.

“She’s pacing around in what used to be the pool,” Grenda informed, pointing over to the now completely dried up pool, where the red Gem was still marching around and muttering angrily to herself.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Mabel interjected, her eyes wide with newfound curiosity as she looked between Greg and Stan. “You guys have both met Ruby and Sapphire before?!”

“A… few times,” the former rock star admitted. “Its not like they’re really around that much seeing as how Garnet’s usually pretty steady.”

“Then how come you never bothered to tell us that she was a fusion all that time?” Dipper asked, giving Stan in particular a critical glance.

“Cause it never came up,” the conman shrugged with a bit of a scoff. “What were you two runts expecting me to tell you when you got off the bus at the beginning of the summer? ‘Hey, kids! Welcome to the Mystery Shack! Keep your fingers away from the goat! The tall, square-haired lady who lives up the hill is actually just two small fries in a trench coat!’”

“Eh, yeah I guess that would probably have ruined the surprise,” Mabel noted in agreement.

“Something pretty serious must be going on if it made Garnet split up,” Greg said, getting the conversation back on track. He was quick to change gears, however, upon noticing his son’s rather forlorn expression over this fact. “B-but hey! All of us can still have a good time!” The former rock star smile as he finally opened up one of his pizza boxes, revealing something that made just about all of the kids groan in exasperation.

“Square pizza!” Steven cried fretfully. “What’s wrong with this crazy place!?”

“Son, there will come a time in your life when you learn to accept all pizza,” Greg said with a hint of sagely wisdom in his tone.

“Besides, it could be worse,” Stan remarked dryly as he grabbed a slice. “Could be street pizza from an overworked delivery guy who ya snubbed a tip to.”

Despite the conman’s attempt at bringing some levity, it didn’t really work as most of the kids still looked just as downtrodden as they had been before, especially Steven as he decided to earnestly voice his ongoing concern. “Why can’t Ruby and Sapphire just… make up?”

“Aw, Steven…” Greg frowned sympathetically, putting a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Sometimes people that love each other can hurt each other’s feelings without meaning to. We should probably just give them some space.”

“Aw, but who knows if they’ll ever talk to each other again if they don’t have help from a bunch of romance experts like us?!” Mabel asked, deeply worried.

“A bunch of what?” Stan asked, raising a confused eyebrow.

“I’m sure everything will be better in the morning,” Greg reassured warmly.

“You bet it will be,” the conman remarked with a daring smirk. “Tomorrow’s our last stop on this route of revenge against all these lesser tourist traps. Everything up until now has been a walk in the park compared to our next attraction.”

“Is it a walk in the world’s biggest park?” Candy asked curiously.

“Eh, sort of, actually,” Stan shrugged. “But I’m not saying any more about it until we wreck the place tomorrow.”

“B-but before that,” Greg interjected, holding a brochure he had picked up earlier. “We’ll all go to the best diner in the world, which just so happens to be right inside this place! And there, all of us, including Ruby and Sapphire, will have the best brunch in the world, which is bound to smooth things over between them!”

“You really think that’ll help?” Steven asked, hopeful.

“Nothin’ like a little breakfast to bring people together,” the former rock star nodded firmly, finally garnishing much needed smiles out of all of the kids, including his son.

“You really are my favorite dad,” Steven sighed happily, finally partaking of the square pizza as he leaned against his father.

“Heh,” Greg chuckled, sincerely hoping that he was right about his assumptions concerning the bickering Gem couple, if for no one else’s sake than Steven’s. “I knew this pizza would put me over the top.”

The next morning saw the entire group rising early to get a head start on their nearby final stop of the trip. Since Sapphire had frozen one of the rooms over entirely, Stan, Greg, and the boys had resorted to sleeping in the RV, which was fortunately much more temperate, though perhaps a bit balmy thanks to the incredibly warm aura put off by the nearby pool, or rather, the red Gem who had spent the entire night hotly pacing around in it. While the staff of Evergreen Inn were far from happy about the messes the couple had unknowingly made, Greg and Stan managed to smooth things over enough that they were able to check out without too many complications. And soon enough, they were on the road again, though fortunately it didn’t take too long for their penultimate destination to peak over the forested horizon.

“There she is, kids,” Stan scowled, gripping the steering wheel tight as a tall, mist-covered mountain loomed in the distance. “Mystery Mountain. Five times the size of the Mystery Shack, and what’s worse: she actually has real attractions.”

“Oh! I have read about this place,” Candy remarked, unfolding the brochure about the attraction she had picked up at the inn earlier. “It has a sky tram. And a mummy museum. And sightings of half human, half spider people.”

“Ooo, and a gift shop!” Steven chimed in as he took a peek at the brochure for himself.

“And that diner I was telling you kids about last night,” Greg added with a smile as he glanced over his shoulder to the rest of the passengers. “Who’s hungry for some brunch?!”

At this, all of the kids excitedly raised their hands, leaving only Ruby and Sapphire out as they sat beside each other on the couch wordlessly, both of them averting each other’s gaze as they instead devoted their attention elsewhere and maintained a noticeable distance away from each other. Still, no one made any real note of that as Stan continued showing his quite apparent envy of everything Mystery Mountain had to offer.

“Enjoy that brunch while ya can,” the conman said with a growing, vengeful smirk. “Because today, that mountain falls!”

After Stan recklessly pulled into the attraction’s parking lot and everyone filed out of the RV, they were all able to see that the conman hadn’t been exaggerating when it came to the scope of Mystery Mountain. The tourist trap was grand in scale and presentation, the mountain towering high above and carrying an all around aura of mystery and intrigue to it that actually almost felt genuine. A slow-moving sky tram carried guests up and down the massive hill, giving them a scenic view of the area, though many other tourists favored hiking the mountain’s fascinating trails as well. The place wasn’t lacking for any business at all either; satisfied tourists were abundant, all of them apparently enthralled by the secrets and surprises Mystery Mountain had in store, something that irritated Stan in particular as they all took a cursory look around.

“Ugh, stupid place thinks its so great just because they have a bunch of fog and mummies and free public restrooms,” the conman scoffed haughtily. “Well it won’t be after we’re through with it! Kids! I got five bucks for whoever can tip that big blue ox over there! Go! Go! Go!”

On this prompting, the kids all gladly hurried over to the large ceramic ox nearby to do just that, Greg rushing after them to make sure no one would hurt themselves as they all clamored up onto it. Satisfied with this, Stan prepared to join them, though he paused upon glancing back towards the RV only to notice Ruby and Sapphire both standing near it, their backs practically turned to each other and their expressions every bit as harsh/unfeeling as they had been the night before.

“You two aren’t just gonna stand there and look angry at each other, are ya?” Stan asked, giving the couple a critical glance as he turned to face them fully. “Cause I didn’t agree to bring you, or, uh… Garnet, or… or whoever along on this trip just for you to argue and do a whole bunch of nothing.”

Ruby was the first to let out a sour scoff at this, sending a fierce warning glare up at the conman before flames suddenly burst around her hand. “How’s this for nothin’, Stan?” she asked crossly, preparing to ram her flaming fist into the RV itself before Sapphire fortunately stopped her.

“No, Ruby,” the blue Gem chastised calmly, her hands folded neatly over her skirt.

“Oh, don’t tell me you’ve actually decided to care about something for a change like this dumb old RV!” Ruby growled, her hand still smoking even if the flames did diminish about.

“Well, it is our only ride home,” Sapphire pointed out rationally.

“What, you think I don’t know that?!”

“I know you know that.”

“Well, you always act like I don’t know anything!”

“I never once said that. Ever.”

“Well, ya might as well have!”

“Don’t misconstrue things, Ruby.”

“I’m not misconstruing anything! You’re the one who’s-”

“Alright, alright, enough already!” Stan suddenly interjected, severely annoyed by the couple’s ongoing bickering by this point. “Yeesh, and I thought you two were supposed to head over heels for each other. But if you’re gonna go at it like two rabid chipmunks, then clearly your relationship needs some serious work.”

“Stan,” Sapphire began evenly enough. “You really should stay out of-”

“What did you just say?” Ruby growled, her hands curled into tight fists as she scowled up at Stan.

“You heard me, shorty,” the conman shrugged, surprisingly nonchalant. “Seems to me like your ‘fling’ or whatever you two call it is heading downhill fast. Maybe you should go see one of those crackpot marriage counselors or something to help you work all this junk out. And maybe bring a firefighter along with you just in case you end up setting the whole place on fire.”

Upon hearing this, the red Gem let out an outraged shout, steam steadily rising from her all the while as Sapphire had to essentially hold her back from physically going after the still rather unphased conman. “What would you know about our relationship!?” she shouted hotly. “We’ve been together for thousands of years!”

“Oh really?” Stan asked, raising an unimpressed eyebrow. “Then I guess the spark between you guys really is gone after all that time. Maybe what you need is to see a good example of what real romance looks like.”

“A real romance?!” Ruby scoffed incredulously, practically shaking with rage by this point. “Why I oughta-”

“Before you say or do anything else, Stan, I should warn you that what you’re thinking is a very bad idea,” Sapphire spoke up, her manner quite firm, especially as she noticed the conman happen to glance over at the blonde, relatively older woman running the ticket booth a few feet away.

“Yeah, yeah, bad idea, schmad idea,” Stan remarked with an uncaring wave of his hand as he put on a wry, charming grin. “Watch and learn how a true master does it.”

“Again, Stan, you really shouldn’t talk to that woman,” Sapphire attempted to warn as the conman started heading over to the ticket booth. “She’s actually a-”

“Hey, there,” Stan greeted the woman casually enough as he leaned against the counter and searched his pockets briefly. “Oh, I seem to have lost my number! Can I borrow yours?”

Upon hearing this corny pickup line, Ruby let out a disgusted groan and Sapphire shook her head disapprovingly. The woman, however, was seemingly taken by the conman’s flirting as she let out a loud, apparently amused chuckle. “Oh, you are a riot!” she exclaimed laughingly. “What brings you here? We don’t normally get men so handsome around these parts!”

“Heh, well-” Stan cut himself off briefly to steal a glance at the woman’s nametag. “Darlene, between you and me, what I’m doing here is a little secret.”

“Oh, you seem like a man with secrets,” Darlene coed, leaning forward in intrigue. “You know, I’m going on a break. You wanna take the sky tram up to Widow’s Peak?”

“Only if I go with a looker like you,” Stan remarked coyly as Darlene got out of the ticket booth.

“Ohh, fancy!” the woman grinned wryly, taking the arm the conman as offering to her. As the pair headed off on their so-called ‘date’, Stan stole a glance back at Ruby and Sapphire, offering them a smug, triumphant grin before he left them alone for a beat of awkward silence.

“Uh… what did we just watch?” Ruby asked, still quite put off by the previous display of tawdry flirting.

“A mistake,” Sapphire deadpanned in response, her future vision making the outcome of this situation quite clear. “Trust me.”

“Well, we managed to tip that ox over without breaking any bones or getting caught,” Greg said with a relieved smile as he returned to the couple a moment later. “Uh… hey, where’s Mr. Pines?”

“He’s busy showing us what a ‘real’ relationship looks like,” Ruby grumbled, her arms crossed as she glared in the direction the conman had just left in.

“Um… ok?” Greg frowned in confusion. “I guess he’s gonna miss brunch then… Kids, come on! That diner’s right over here!”

Upon mention of a much-needed meal, the kids all readily hurried over from the remains of the now fallen ox, more than eager to follow the former rock star to the so-called ‘best diner in the world’. Of course, the place was really just a modest, run of the mill all-day breakfast joint, tucked away at the base of Mystery Mountain for its guests to have a decent meal before exploring the attraction. All the same, the group got a sizable booth, one that was fortunately large enough to accommodate everyone as they waited for their food to come in a mostly comfortable silence. That is, save for the still largely ongoing tension between Ruby and Sapphire as they sat next to each other, refusing to really even spare each other so much as a second glance. Fortunately though, the diner was quick with its service, and before anyone really had a chance to bring this tension to light, everyone’s breakfasts arrived, including the meals that the former rock star had decided to order for the Gem couple, who had failed to do so for themselves.

“Aw, an eggs and bacon smiley face!” Mabel cheered upon receiving her meal. “It’s deliciously cheerful!”

“It is almost too adorable to eat!” Candy chimed in just as brightly, even as Grenda began hungrily scarfing her own food down beside her.

“What’s the matter?” Greg asked curiously upon noticing that Ruby was simply staring blankly at the food in front of her. “Not hungry?”

“Gems don’t need to eat, Dad,” Steven reminded as he took a bite of his bacon.

“Eh… well, Garnet likes to eat sometimes,” the former rock star pointed out with a shrug.

“AUGH!” Ruby suddenly snapped, throwing herself back against the back of the booth bitterly. “Well, Garnet’s not here right now!”

“Man, and I thought last night was awkward…” Dipper remarked to Connie in a very aside whisper.

“Tell me about it…” Connie replied with a frown, one that all of the kids gradually shared as a quite uncomfortable silence settled in at the table. With the Gem couple as at ends as they were, no one quite knew what to say or do as they simply ate their breakfasts quietly, hoping that this awkward brunch would pass by soon enough. Even so, Greg couldn’t help but steal a glance over at Steven, who had pressed himself close to the table, a fretful expression on his face as he absently cut into his eggs, though he hardly seemed interested in eating as he devoted his worried attention to pair of quarreling Gems across the table from him. Clearly, the young Gem was quite dejected over Garnet’s split and Ruby and Sapphire’s still-ongoing bickering, or at least that’s what Greg assumed as he tried to lighten the otherwise heavy mood a bit.

“Mm! Oh boy, this really is the best diner in the world!” Greg exclaimed with a bit of a forced grin. “Mr. Pines doesn’t know what he’s missing! I wonder where he is anyway…”

Given Stan’s self-perceived talent when it came to wooing women, he had found it rather easy to keep up the flirtatious dynamic he had built up with Darlene earlier going as they ventured into the so-called “Giant Spider Forest”. Given that the trail was seeped in deep fog, dense forestation, and creeping spider webs, it carried a bit of an ominous vibe to it, though the conman attempted to play this off as romantic as he led his date to sit down on a nearby bunch to relax for a bit.

“Oh, are you sure you wanna go this deep into the forest?” Darlene asked with exaggerated concern. “It’s soooo scary.”

“Heh, don’t worry, toots,” Stan smirked, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “That spider people stuff is just an urban legend. I can’t believe people fall for it.”

“Ooo, you’re so brave…” Darlene cooed almost knowingly.

“What can I say?” the conman shrugged obliviously. “I’m a real catch.”

“Yeah, you sure are…” the woman’s grin turned rather sinister. With a simple blink of her eyes, they turned black completely, irises completely gone as her voice distorted and dark as an alarming transformation began to take place. “The catch of the day…”

“Uh… did your contacts fall out or-” the conman’s confusion was quickly replaced with apt fear as Darlene changed completely before him, her size and number of legs tripling as her unassuming appearance turned into something truly monstrous. Something that was more than eager to trap Stan in the tightened web he had unknowingly gotten himself entangled in.

Despite Greg’s best efforts of starting up a conversation, the brunch table was still largely seeped in awkward silence. That is, until Ruby absently began bumping the bottom of the table with her impatiently tapping foot.

“You’re shaking the table,” Sapphire broke her longstanding silence to point out, her manner calm as she glanced over at the red Gem.

“OH?!” Ruby suddenly slammed her fist down on the table, growing increasingly frustrated by the second. “I’m kinda surprised you felt anything at all, to be honest!”

“I didn’t need to feel,” Sapphire countered evenly. “I saw.”

“Oh, everything’s just so CRYSTAL CLEAR TO YOU, ISN’T IT?!” Ruby shouted, now actively shaking the table out of her sheer, unabridged fury. Everyone else was quick to lift their plates off the rapidly quaking table to avoid making a mess, all of them watching the Gem couple with wide eyes out of slight fear of what might transpire next.

“This will pass,” Sapphire reassured them over Ruby’s noisy raging. “She’ll eventually just burn herself out and-”

“That’s what you think!” the red Gem snapped, summoning her single gauntlet and holding her fists high above the table. “I AM AN ENTERNAL FLAME, BABY!” And with that outraged exclamation, Ruby brought her hands down, smashing the table cleanly in half and sending what food was left on it flying everywhere as the couple’s hostile argument continued.

“You don’t know me!” Ruby shouted at the blue Gem, standing up on her seat. “You always act like you know everything-”

“How could I possibly not know you?” Sapphire retorted even as Ruby continued over her. “We always fuse. Why are you being so-”

“-But you don’t even know yourself! You just wanna pretend that-”

“-Difficult, look at yourself. Look at what you’re going on about, you’re being ridiculous about-”

As this seemingly ceaseless bickering between the two Gems continued, the kids largely just watched in stunned dread, all of them knowing better than to try and intervene in such a heated conflict. Steven, however, was by far the most upset by this unexpected explosion, one that demonstrated to him that things between Ruby and Sapphire were showing no signs of getting better any time soon. If anything, it only looked like they were going to get worse.

“H-hey, it’s ok, pal!” Greg quickly attempted to reassure his son, especially as he noticed tears starting to well up in his eyes. “We can still save this! Why don’t we just bag all this up to go and-”

The former rock star was abruptly interupted by Steven suddenly tossing his plate onto the floor, where it shattered instantly. At this, Ruby and Sapphire’s fighting came to a stark halt as everyone turned to look to the young Gem in alarm, only to find his fledgling tears finally falling as he promptly stood and rushed out of the diner without saying a single word.

“Aw geez…” Greg sighed sympathetically, scratching the back of his neck as he watched his upset son retreat.

“Should we go after him?” Connie asked, unanimously worried about Steven along with the rest of the kids.

“Eh, I think maybe we should just give him a little time by-” Once again, Greg was cut off, only this time by Ruby and Sapphire as they both darted up out of their seats, their expressions rife with concern and guilt as they hurried off after the young Gem themselves. “O-on second thought…” the former rock star frowned as he looked between the door and the messy remains of what used to be the table before them. A mess that he wasn’t entirely sure how he was going to deal with, if he was perfectly honest. “Maybe we should go too…”

As Steven ran out towards the nearest cluster of trees closest to the restaurant, he let out one of the several sobs he had been holding in ever since Garnet had first split up. And yet, in reality, it was likely a sob that he had been holding in much longer than that, since Pearl’s deception against Garnet was uncovered, since the Gems had recovered their lost memories. Since he had ruined the tight-knit bond between his guardians by uncovering those apparently bitter memories in the first place.

It was hardly a new thought for the young Gem, the realization that all of the tension and grief that had been transpiring between the Gems as of late was entirely his fault, but as he faced that thought now, it was perhaps the most painful it had ever been. Because Steven knew that if he had never found that memory tube, if he had never reunited the Gems with echoes of the past that were clearly better left forgotten, then certainly none of this would have happened. Certainly, Pearl wouldn’t have felt the need to heal her own pain by tricking Garnet into forming Sardonyx. Certainly, Ruby and Sapphire wouldn’t have split apart and their usually strong relationship wouldn’t have crumbled apart as a result of this schism. Certainly, the Crystal Gems would still be the strong, healthy, inseparable group Steven had always known them to be if it wasn’t for him, for his meddling, for his reckless need to fix his mother’s massive mistakes. True, he had given them back their lost memories. But what he had taken from them in doing so was something arguably even more important than those memories altogether: their unity.

And the worst part of it all was, that unlike their memories, that precious, missing unity was something he hadn’t the faintest idea about how to restore to them whatsoever.

“Steven!” the young Gem’s mournful musings were interrupted by a simultaneous cry, one that came from Ruby and Sapphire as they hurried out of the diner to find him. Greg and the others weren’t too far behind, but unlike the Gem couple, they lingered back, knowing that this wasn’t really their place to intervene considering how poorly their previous attempts had turned out.

With another harsh sob, Steven turned to the couple as they approached, not even trying to hide his disappointment and dejection as he instead finally let it all out. “I was so happy when Garnet said she was gonna come on this trip with us!” he began sharply yet still sadly. “Home’s been awful. Here’s been awful! I thought you wanted to have a fun time but… everyone’s been acting awful too! I-it just came with us! I don’t understand!” He let out a deep breath, one that really didn’t do anything to calm him down as he instead looked to the ground in tearful guilt. “Is… is it me? Is it because I found your memories? B-because… I thought that would make things better, that you guys getting your memories back meant that you wouldn’t be so lost and confused anymore. But I was wrong. It only made things worse. I only made things worse…”

“No!” Ruby readily exclaimed, catching the morose young Gem off guard. “Steven, you didn’t make anything worse! It was all us!”

“Steven, you returned something very important to all of us when you found our memories,” Sapphire assured, her tone shaken, yet serious. “Something that we’ve been missing for years. True, what we saw was… unexpected, but what’s been happening isn’t your fault. It’s…” The blue Gem trailed off, pausing for a moment as she looked down with dawning shame and realization before looking to Ruby with a soft gasp. “It was us…”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Both Steven and the Gem couple were caught off guard upon hearing Greg, who was suddenly quite alarmed as he stood alongside the other kids, taking on the phone to someone. “Slow down, Mr. Pines. You’re where?!”

Before Stan could explain, Greg put his phone on speaker so that everyone could hear his concerning, but oddly enough not very urgent message. “I’m sorta… tied up at the moment… literally,” Stan said, keeping his phone pressed to his shoulder as his hands were pinned in the web cocoon he was entangled in courtesy of Darlene. “Turns out the lady tried romancing to show Thing 1 and Thing 2 up is actually one of those spider people. But beyond that, the date’s been ok.”

“Wait, what?” Dipper asked with apt surprise upon hearing this.

“Oh no! Grunkle Stan!” Mabel cried with fretful concern.

“To be fair, I tried to warn him,” Sapphire remarked, having anticipated this turn of events all along.

“Yeah, it was weird,” Stan remarked, still largely not too apparently worried about his current plight. “One minute we’re having the perfect date, and the next minute, she’s growing extra legs and encasing me in webbing. Women, right?”

“You couldn’t tell she was a spider?” Connie asked rather incredulously.

“Hey, I was blinded by flattery!” Stan exclaimed defensively as he repositioned his phone. “Also, the acid she spit in my face. Anyway, I’m up at the mountain at Widow’s Peak.”

“Uh, o-ok, we’re on our way, Mr. Pines!” Greg assured, though he was rather anxious about the idea of facing off against a spider person. “Stay put!”

“…I don’t really have much of a choice, Greg,” the conman deadpanned, glancing down at his web-encased body that was essentially stuck to the floor of Darlene’s spider cave.

“Alright, kids, looks like we better go save Mr. Pines before he gets eaten by that evil spider lady,” Greg said to the kids before pausing for a brief beat. “Huh. Well there’s something I never thought I’d say.”

Not wasting time on any further deliberation, Greg and the kids hurried off to the nearest trail, hoping to rescue Stan before it was too late. Ruby was the first to follow after them, knowing that she was obligated to help since the conman had indirectly gotten himself into this mess because he had been trying to prove a point to her and Sapphire. However, before she could really go anywhere, Sapphire suddenly stopped her by unexpectedly grabbing her hand.

“R-Ruby, wait,” the blue Gem sighed, glancing down with clear remorse. “I-I-”

“Hey, i-it… it’s ok,” Ruby assured, her tone calmer than it had been since they had split up as she placed a tentative hand over her partner’s. “We’ll, uh… we’ll figure all this out when we get back, alright?”

Sapphire hesitated, rather caught off guard by how Ruby wanted to talk things out instead of projecting her anger as she had been all this time. Still, she knew that now wasn’t the time for such discussion; now was the time for action. “R-right…” she nodded, her voice quiet as she hurried after the red Gem. Both of them still could feel the unsteadiness between them, an unsteadiness that was unfamiliar and unwelcome given how open and close they usually were. But at the very least, this newfound armistice between them was something, even if it was really nothing more than just a start.

No sooner had Stan gotten off the phone with Greg than the phone itself was snatched out of his hand by a sudden burst of sticky webbing from Darlene. The spider woman caught the phone squarely, her upper half still in her prior human guise though her lower half was completely spider-like, complete with eight legs, a thorax, and all. Even so, she seemed to be quite satisfied with her latest “catch” as she skittered forward, sending Stan a triumphant grin all the while.

“Tryin’ to escape, huh?” she asked, raising a knowing eyebrow before she ultimately tossed the phone to the ground, breaking it.

“You tricked me!” Stan shot back harshly. “I’m 80% certain you don’t really love me at all!”

“Ha!” Darlene laughed coldly. “Men will fall for anything. ‘Oh, you’re so funny, great story, I love a man with shoulder hair!”

“Y-you didn’t mean it about my shoulder hair?” the conman asked, genuinely offended.

“Tell me, Stan,” Darlene ignored him as she stepped a bit closer. “Before I transformed, who’d you think was in charge here? You, with your cheesy pickup lines and your ‘knack’ for ‘romance’? Please. I’m the master pickup artist here, so sorry, toots! This time you’re getting used for your body! Which, to my weird species, is food. Allow me to slip into something more horrifying.” At this, Darlene used her frontmost legs to pull the remains of her human skin down, unveiling her frighteningly grotesque, full spider form, much to Stan’s apt alarm.

“A-aw, geez, all I wanted to do was show two annoying, tiny lovebirds up!” the conman exclaimed fearfully, cringing as he watched Darlene maneuver her mandibles hungrily.

“Well ya should have thought twice before you decided to get tangled up with me,” Darlene goaded smugly before fortunately turning away. “Now, I wonder what beverage pairs well with a vintage 70-something old man? Be right back!” she called, heading deeper into the cave and leaving Stan on his own, as completely trapped and vulnerable as ever.

“Please,” the conman began, glancing up pleadingly. “I don’t know if you’re really up there or not, but if you are… please save me, Paul Bunyan!”

“Mr. Pines!”

“Whoa, did that actually work?” Stan jolted as this unexpected voice called out for him, only to spot Greg, the kids, Ruby, and Sapphire all rush into the cave to rescue him. With a steady battle cry, Grenda rammed into the conman, freeing him from the stalk of webbing holding him in place.

“I realize now might not be the best time to say I told you so,” Sapphire remarked to Stan as stoically as ever. “But-”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Stan rolled his eyes in exasperation. “The last thing I need right now is you grilling me. Or, uh, I guess… icing me? Ugh, forget it.”

“Uh, t-that spider woman isn’t anywhere around here, is she?” Greg asked nervously as the kids worked on freeing Stan from the rest of the webbing.

“No, but she will be if we don’t hurry and hightail it outta here already!” the conman exclaimed, haphazardly picking himself up off the ground and leading the way out of the cave. And the group made it out just in time too as they slipped out right as Darlene happened to notice that her hostage had been freed.

“No!” the spider woman shouted, skittering out of the cave on all eight of her thin legs. “Get back here!”

Knowing that Darlene would be hot on their tails, the group rushed for what they unanimously assumed would be the quickest way down the mountain: the sky tram.

“Quick! Everyone get on!” Candy shouted, making it to the tram first as everyone crowded into one of its cars.

“Haha! Yes!” Mabel cheered once they were all safely onboard.

“Ride like the wind, sky tram!” Stan exclaimed, glancing out the window in the hopes that Darlene wasn’t chasing them. However, instead of the tram zooming down the line to the bottom of the mountain as they had hoped, it instead began to crawl down it at speeds that were almost painfully slow.

“Welcome to Trambiance,” the tram’s built in recorded greeting announced in a calm voice, completely contrasting to the current situation. “The world’s slowest tram ride. Enjoy the sights at 0.1 miles per hour.”

“Ugh! Move! Move! Move!” Grenda shouted, slamming her foot down on the floor of the tram in an attempt to make it move.

“Seriously? Can’t this thing go any faster?” Dipper asked anxiously.

“No, it can’t,” the recording answered almost knowingly. “This is Trambiance.”

“Uh, i-it looks like she’s coming!” Connie exclaimed fearfully as she pointed out the window to Darlene, who had already hopped onto the tram line and was jumping from tram to tram, searching for the one containing her missing prey.

“Enjoying the view?” the recording asked innocently as the tram line rocked violently. “Take a picture!”

“We’re doomed!” Stan shouted, his eyes wide as he spotted Darlene drawing dangerously close to their tram.

“No we’re not!” Ruby growled, her hands in tight fists as she looked around the tram. “Cause I got a plan. But uh…” The red Gem trailed off, her confidence dissipating as she glanced over at her partner almost anxiously before she continued. “Sapphire, I-I… I know you think I don’t know a lot compared to you, but… I-I need you to trust me on this one and help me. Y-you know… if you want to…”

“Oh, Ruby…” Sapphire sighed, her manner rather sad and remorseful as she briefly glanced down. For a moment, it looked as though the blue Gem wanted to say quite a bit to her partner, but of course, given the dire straits they were currently all in, such sentiments would have to wait. “O-of course, I trust you. And I know your plan is going to work. So, what do you need me to do?”

Ruby offered Sapphire a warm, thankful smile at this, glad for the confidence and support that she hadn’t really felt from her in quite some time. But of course, despite how happy she was with it, the red Gem was quick to focus her attention back on the matter at hand. “I need you to freeze the box connecting the tram to the rail until it breaks off,” she began, her tone firm and steady. “I’ll keep 8-legs out there busy while you do. Everyone else, hold on! Things are about to heat up.”

With a smirk, Ruby summoned her gauntlet, punching through the nearest window just as Darlene launched herself towards the tram. She didn’t get far though, as before she could land, the red Gem lashed out, a bust of intensely hot flames flying out of her first and towards the spider woman with great speed. Though Darlene maundered out of its path and landed on another tram instead, she failed to notice the thick layer of frost that had begun coating the connector box on the tram. Sapphire maintained her focus well, even as everyone else was panicking around her as the tram shook from Ruby sending out wave after wave of fire at Darlene in the hopes of keeping her repelled. Few of her flames hit their mark, but that wasn’t exactly the intention anyway. At most, they were a simple distraction while Sapphire worked away at freezing the connector, and, sure enough, it began to crumble under the intensity of the cold being pressed upon it. With a simple nod from the blue Gem, Ruby let up, allowing Darlene to finally make her approach and land squarely on top of the tram car, only for it’s frozen connector to finally give way with her added weight pressed upon it.

Everyone inside the tram did their best to maintain a hold on anything they could as the car itself began rolling down the side of the mountain roughly, Darlene following not too far behind. As it neared the bottom, Ruby and Sapphire both reacted accordingly, with the red Gem using a burst of strong flame to launch the car one last time while the blue Gem created a sizable snow drift for it to land in. Fortunately, the car hit its mark, the soft snow cushioning its otherwise abrupt landing as it barreled into the Paul Bunyan statue near the parking lot. In one last ditch attempt to recapture her pray, Darlene shot a string of web at the now still tram car, only for the large statue to end up falling squarely on top of her right as she zoomed by it. The spider woman let out a surprised cry as the statue’s foot pinned her down, and despite her best efforts to wriggle free from its firm hold, she found that she was ultimately unable to do anything to escape from under it.

“Augh! My only weakness! A giant boot!” Darlene grumbled in defeat. “A giant newspaper or a giant cup would’ve also been pretty bad.”

After making sure no one was injured from the fall, everyone climbed out of the fallen tram car, tumbling through the snow drift and back onto solid ground as the recording offered one final farewell. “Thank you for riding Trambience sky tram. Tell your friends it was a boring, boring ride!”

“You guys, that was amazing!” Steven exclaimed to Ruby and Sapphire, stars in his eyes. “The way you two worked together back there, I gotta admit, it… it was really nice to see that again.”

“Yeah, who knew you guys could kick just as much butt apart as you can when you’re fused?” Mabel asked with a wide smile.

“Eh, it wasn’t that great,” Stan deadpanned, hands on his hips until Greg gave him a bit of a prompting elbowing. “Ow! Uh, I mean… I guess I was wrong about the whole ‘relationship’ thing I was going on about earlier. Not that you two would know much more than I do though, what with all that all that yelling and magic you’ve been tossin’ at each other all day.”

“Uh, Grunkle Stan, I’m pretty sure its safe to say that Ruby and Sapphire know more about relationships than most people do,” Dipper remarked somewhat sardonically, to which Stan only let out a disbelieving scoff to.

“Actually… no…” Sapphire interjected, holding her hands close as she frowned morosely. “He’s right. We… we really don’t know much about keeping a healthy relationship. Or… at least I don’t…”

“S-Sapphire?” Ruby asked, suddenly concerned as she took a step closer to her partner.

“I can’t believe how blind I was this whole time…” the blue Gem said, her voice almost a whisper as she shook her head in shame. “I couldn’t even see what was right in front of me. W-we made Steven feel like… like this was all his fault…” Steven frowned as he heard this, though he didn’t interrupt, instead opting to listen with apt concern as Sapphire continued, her voice starting to choke up with clearly oncoming tears, especially as she finally looked over to Ruby. “I keep looking into the future, when all of this has already been solved… a-as if it doesn’t matter how you feel in the present.” By this point, a few of the blue Gem’s tears had already started to fall, streaking right down the center of her face as she let out a guilty sob that she was unable to suppress any longer. “No wonder you think I don’t care!”

For a moment, Ruby was starkly silent, her eyes wide as she took in her lover’s distress with growing panic that quickly rose to the surface the moment Sapphire started crying. “No no no no no!” she exclaimed, shaking her head frantically. “This is all my fault! I-I didn’t want to look for a solution! I just wanted to be mad! Y-you’re right, you’re always right! I was just being stupid-”

“I don’t think you’re stupid!” Sapphire quickly countered, deeply upset by even voicing such a ludicrous thought at all.

A beat of unsteady silence followed after this, but when Ruby finally broke it, her voice was small, soft, perhaps even a bit sad as she finally reached out to touch her distraught lover gently. “I… I’m sorry…” she whispered, brushing the bangs out of Sapphire’s face to reveal the source of her mournful tears: a large, singular, light blue eye in place of where two would normally be. And while the kids were somewhat surprised to see this, to Ruby, this sight was perhaps one of the most beautiful she had ever had the privilege of seeing as many times as she had before.

“You honestly think I’m not upset about what happened?” Sapphire asked just as gently, her tears still streaming down from her lone eye until Ruby slowly wiped it away. “I was just… trying to do the right thing…”

“I know…” Ruby admitted as Sapphire pressed her hand against her own, letting out a small, but comforted sigh as she did. Silence lingered between the pair for a bit, one that was filled with regrets that were finally starting to lift as they at long last started to reach an understanding. It was true that the pain of the past few days had left them both in quite a painful spot, but now more than ever, they both knew that the only way they could move past such profound pain was by doing what they always did: standing together. And perhaps, through their support, through their solace, through they love, they could go on. After all, even though they were as different as fire and ice, they belonged together. They always had, and they always would, and no amount of restored memories or deceptive betrayals could ever change that fact. “You know what’s nice about being split up?” Ruby asked a moment later, a small, almost coy smirk slowly appearing on her face.

“W-what?” Sapphire asked, somewhat concerned, though by this point her tears were mostly gone.

“I get to look at you,” Ruby grinned fully, not even bothering to hide her flirtatious manner whatsoever.

“Pfft, be serious!” Sapphire laughed, pushing her lover away from her playfully, though Ruby was quick to pull her right back into a fond embrace.

“There’s my Laughy Sapphy!” the red Gem exclaimed happily, joining her partner in a warm, welcome gale of laughter.

“Shh! You’re embarrassing me in front of the kids!” Sapphire blushed deep blue, stealing a glance over at said kids, who were all still watching this exchange with apt intrigue. While Steven, Dipper, and Connie looked away upon this mention in slight flusterment, Mabel, Candy, and Grenda were all more than eager to watch the admittedly adorable interactions between the Gem couple, especially as Ruby took things in an even more romantic direction.

Without warning, the red Gem hoisted her lover up into her strong arms, eliciting a surprised, but delighted gasp from Sapphire, who laughingly accepted every single gentle kiss Ruby peppered across her cheek and neck. This bout of playful affection continued between the pair even as everyone else decided to give the couple their privacy, though not without complaint in some instances.

“Ugh, geez, get a room already,” Stan remarked dryly, though his comments were largely unheard by the still-cuddling couple.

“Well, what do you know?” Connie remarked to the other kids with a small smile. “It looks like they really did work things out after all.”

“And its all thanks to us being a bunch of awesome love experts!” Mabel concluded with ample satisfaction.

“Love experts! Love experts!” Grenda cheered in boisterous support.

“Uh, I’m pretty sure what just happened here had basically nothing to do with us,” Dipper remarked, crossing his arms. “But if you wanna keep thinking that, then I guess nothing’s stopping you.”

“Well, I don’t care how it happened, I’m just glad to see those two finally getting along again…” Steven said with a tired, but relieved smile. “And who knows? Maybe this means things really will start to get better back home after all…”

The other kids all offered the young Gem a round of reassuring smiles at this, though they were soon interupted as Greg joined them, having just emerged from the diner. “Well, I paid for brunch,” he reported. “…And the damage to the booth… As for that tram car, well…”

“Who said anything about paying for that?” Stan interjected with a scoff. “We’re here to prank this place, remember? Not pay for damages and tell them to ‘have a nice day’ like a bunch of armatures would.”

“…A-anywho…” Greg continued after a beat of awkward silence. “I think I’m all vacationed out. Anyone else ready to call it a day and head home?”

The kids prepared to answer this, but before they could, they were suddenly distracted by a bright, familiar burst of light nearby, one that signaled the return of a fusion that they had all sorely been missing. “Not before we get our free ice,” Garnet grinned as she stood tall and confident once more, no signs of Ruby and Sapphire’s unsteadiness or disagreement remaining as the usual harmony between them had returned in full force.

“Garnet!” the kids all exclaimed in excited unison, running up to embrace the Gem leader, who accepted them with a warm, amused hug. The levity of the moment was short lived however, as Darlene interupted from her spot still pinned underneath Paul Bunyan’s large wooden boot.

“Staaaaaany!” she called to the conman, pulling her human guise back over her upper half as she offered him a flirtatious wave. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me! You’ll let me out, right?”

“What? After all that?” Stan asked harshly. “Seriously, do I look like an amnesiac?”

“Ha! You’re so funny!” Darlene falsely complimented, pulling her pickup tricks on the conman once again. “Have you ever considered becoming a comedian?”

“You know, actually I have!” Stan grinned proudly, falling for the bait. “Comedy is too subtle these days. My style involves more over-sized props. Here, let me get you out from there and-”

Fortunately, the kids managed to pull the conman away from the spider woman just before he could foolishly release her, even as she reverted back into her full spider form and reached out to take a bite out of him. “Oh yeah, right,” Stan said stiffly, remembering just how dangerous Darlene was, even despite her fake womanly wiles.

“You win this round, Stan!” the spider woman growled in angry disappointment. “But mark my words: as long as there’s men like you out there, with their dumb one-liners and pickup moves, I’ll never run out of prey!”

“Mm, actually, I think you will,” Garnet interjected, crossing her arms knowingly. “After all, Stan only fell for your tricks because he’s really gullible.”

“Hey!” Stan exclaimed hotly, sending the Gem leader an offended glare. “You know, I kinda liked it better when you split up. At least then you two were too busy ragging on each other to get on my case.”

“Well sorry to disappoint you, Stan,” Garnet remarked with a hint of a wry smirk, one that grew into a genuine smile as she glanced down to Steven, who was still happily hugging her leg in lieu of her long-awaited return. “But I don’t plan on going anywhere for a long time.”

Though the ride was rather lengthy, the group ended up making it back to Gravity Falls before the sun even sank over the distant hills. After dropping Connie, Candy, and Grenda off at their respective homes, Stan did the same for Steven, Greg, and Garnet as he let them off at the base of the temple hill. After waving goodbye to the Pines, the trio headed up to the house, Garnet toting the bag of ice they had gotten from Mystery Mountain as Steven happily hung in between her and his father, genuinely glad to home now that he carried the belief that things would, in time, start to fix themselves. And really, that was all the young Gem could really hope for.

“We’re home!” Steven proclaimed as they burst into the house. Pearl and Amethyst both happened to be in the living room, carrying on a rather low-tone, serious conversation that came to an abrupt end as soon as the door opened.

“O-oh! You’re back!” Pearl exclaimed, somewhat startled as Amethyst removed her hand from her knee to wave at Steven and Greg. “Uh… y-you look like you all had fun!”

“Yeah!” Steven said with a smile of clear relief. “Everything worked out!”

Pearl prepared to say something more, though she stopped short upon noticing Garnet step inside behind Steven and Greg, her expression largely neutral as she began to make her way over to the temple gate. “Um… G-Garnet, how are you?” the white Gem asked, her tone anxious and tentative.

However, unlike before, the Gem leader didn’t simply ignore her. Rather, she put a calm hand up, pausing briefly as she spoke authoritatively, but fortunately, not angrily either. “Not now,” was all she said before she disappeared into the temple, leaving Pearl rather shocked by this exchange, however short it was.

“S-she… she’s speaking to me again…” the white Gem mused in both surprise and relief. “Well, kind of…”

“You know, that really was a great trip,” Greg grinned as he placed a hand on his son’s shoulder.

“Can we go back?” Steven asked eagerly, excited stars in his eyes.

“Uh, maybe one day… but not to that diner!” Greg paused for an awkward beat, knowing that they had all been effectively banned from that diner thanks to the destruction Ruby had caused. Not that he had any intentions of telling Steven that. “Oh boy…”

“This trip was so much fun!” Mabel exclaimed as the RV neared the Mystery Shack. “We gotta do it again sometime, complete with the pranks, the inn, Ruby and Sapphire, and heck, even the evil spider people!”

“Eh, leave the spider people outta it and I’m down,” Stan remarked with a shrug.

“You know, I still feel a little bad about wrecking all those tourist traps,” Dipper said somewhat apprehensively.

“Ah, come on,” Stan said with an unconcerned wave of his hand. “Everyone loves my pranks! And the best part is, I never have to face any consequen—SWEET LORD!”

The RV came to a screeching halt as they arrived back at the shack, only to find that it was in the midst of being completely ransacked by the proprietors of the tourist traps they had just pranked. Toilet paper was streamed all across the building, and several rather rude tags had been left on just about ever surface with spray paint. In their round of destruction, they had even ended up shattering several windows and defacing the shack’s signage by removing several of its letters entirely so that it read ‘Mr. Hack’, no doubt a direct dig intended for Stan himself.

“Oh come on!” the conman shouted fretfully as he jumped out of the RV, the twins following not too far behind. “I just got this place fixed up from the last time it got destroyed!”

Upon realizing that they had been caught in the act, the other tourist trap owners quickly began to flee, their work already completed as they all laughed triumphantly at Stan’s misfortune. Still, to add insult to injury, one of the owners used their baseball bat to quickly smash the headlights of the nearby RV out, much to Stan’s continued surprise.

“That’s what you get!” the owner shouted fiercely before following the others off into the woods. “That’s what you get!”

“I don’t understand!” Stan exclaimed to the kids, looking over the absolutely ruinous state the Mystery Shack was now in. “I completely don’t deserve this!”

Of course, matters were only made worse when Ford happened to emerge from the shack, apparently unaware of the damage done to his home as he instead greeted his family casually enough. “Oh, you’re all finally back,” he said, offering the twins a brief smile though he didn’t really bother to do the same for Stan. “Strange, for a moment I thought you had returned earlier since I heard some sort of odd banging noise a while ago, but I just figured it was-” The author sharply cut himself off upon stealing a glance at the shack behind him, one that was more than enough to shock and enrage him all at once. “Stanley!” he shouted, correctly placing the blame for this disaster.

“Kids, get back in the RV,” Stan said starkly, already pushing the twins in that direction so he could avoid Ford’s very obvious fury.

“Grunkle Stan, wha-” Mabel attempted to ask before the conman quickly interupted.

“RV, now!” he ordered again, rushing into the camper before the author could catch him.

“Stanley, no!” Ford yelled hotly, even as Stan put the RV into reverse and began peeling backwards into the woods in what was, by all accounts, yet another daring escape. “Get back here and explain the meaning of this mess immediately! Stanley!”

“Aw, geez…” Stan muttered to himself, glancing out the side view mirror to see that Ford was angrily running after him, intent on making him answer for the destruction done to his home. “I wonder if its too late to go back to Mystery Mountain and have Darlene eat me. It’d be better than having to deal with this, that’s for sure…”

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