Chapter 1: Breakdown, Breakout, Act 1

Darkness is often used in storytelling as a metaphor for things like death and the unknown. Which makes sense. Weak human eyes are greatly impaired by a lack of light and a complete absence renders their vision spheres useless. And since humans rely heavily on their eyesight, removing it can cause many problems.

In nature, with predators and dangers behind every tree, a blind human is as good as dead.

This might be the reason that whenever the power goes out and the lights all go dark, every human can't help but flinch. A bright room going dark in an instant will unsettle almost anyone. It's only natural. One could be in a perfectly safe environment, and still get spooked by the mere thought of there being something dangerous hiding in the dark, just outside of your perception.

In cases like these, humanity's greatest strength becomes their greatest weakness. In the darkness, imagination runs rampant. The lack of visual stimuli makes the brain run wild, making up countless fictional dangers. Thus, the human herself manufactures her own greatest enemy: fear.

Now, imagine if there was an actual danger in the room when it went dark. Imagine a vicious predator is present in the room as it goes dark. Imagine being trapped inside a confined space with the most dangerous predator you can imagine, the perfect killer. The only thing keeping it at bay is the light from the bulb in the roof.

And then it's gone. Your last line of defense disappears and you're alone with an inhuman creature that not only wants to kill you but can and will.

The very second the power went out at the Speedwagon Foundation Headquarters in New York was a moment like that for everyone present in a very special room.

Three stories beneath the ground, absent from any floor plans, was a high-security vault. This vault was only accessible by a chosen few, no more than forty-three people in the entire world. It was as secure and often more so than the best bank vaults in the world. Inside were only five objects.

Laying inside a showcase made from bulletproof glass were three ornate arrows. Inside a similar case was a mask made of stone. The third case was not made from glass, but metal. A hermetically sealed metal coffin. You couldn't see it from the outside, but inside were UV lights, constantly bombarding the object inside with their radiation. They had done so without stop for decades. And then suddenly they stopped.

The beast inside the coffin had been sleeping for thousands of years. It had awoken for a brief period in 1958 before being forced into sleep again. Now it was awake again.

Of course, the vault was made to withstand a possible escape from the coffin. The doors were made from twenty centimeters thick steel and the walls reinforced concrete. The backup generators would need a minute or so to start up; about eighty seconds for the UV lights installed in the vault to come on, turning it back into stone.

However, fate had thrown a wrench into the Foundations careful planning. For that very moment the power went out, the door was open. Two researchers had just entered the vault to retrieve one of the arrows for testing.

Luck. Stupid, blind luck. That's the only reason the monster managed to escape. It had luck. Any other day, any other moment, its attempt to escape would be fruitless. It wouldn't get past the door. It wasn't like researchers were constantly running in and out of the vault. On average, it was open for two minutes every three months. The odds of something like this were ridiculously low.

But it happened. And this one moment was all the monster needed to make its escape.

Once the special task force got down there, it was far too late. The coffin was torn open, the glass cases smashed to bits, mask, and arrows gone, alongside the two researchers.

The last pillar man, Santana, roamed the world freely once again.

This Begins JoJo and the Crystal Gems part one: Phantom Corruption

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This fic takes place 'now' in the summer of 2018. Pretty much everything in JoJo up till the end of DiU is cannon, but pushed twenty or so years into the future (that's why it says why Santana was last awake in 1958).

At the time of writing, the last episode is Jungle Moon (though revelations in later episodes have/will be incorporated), so this story picks up sometime after that. The biggest immediate change is that Lapis decided to stay on Earth in 'Raising the Barn.'

With that out of the way... I am The Lampman, and I welcome you to JoJo and the Crystal Gems... and Steven! Please enjoy.