HELLO EVERYONE! And welcome to a NEW Steven Universe Fanfiction! This wonderful little piece was made by yours truly and co-written by the wonderful Milo. F. Waters. I sincerely hope you enjoy this story. OH! And If you have any questions or comments pertaining to this story, please feel free to tell the two of us via Review! Well, here we go!

Chapter 1: Getting to Know You

Once upon a time, long after the Gem rebellion ended, Rose Quartz was walking down the beach when she heard a strange noise. It was a type of music she had never known and stepped closer. She found a concert with no one in the audience and a long-haired human calling himself Mr. Universe on stage, playing his heart out for an empty crowd.

As Rose stared, amused by this curious man, his song ended and the two formally met. Rose immediately came to like this human, named Greg, and met him several more times. While Rose had come to befriend several humans in the past, Greg was the first who captured her heart. He abandoned his dreams to stay with her and she came to see him as the most wonderful man on planet Earth.

After several months of meetings and lovings, Rose learned of something called motherhood. This, in short, was how humans were made and was captivated about how she could make a human of her very own.

However, there was a problem with this process... Rose quickly learned that if she had this human, called a child, it would mean giving up her physical form. After weeks of deciding, she eventually could not resist and together she and Greg had a child named Steven. Before the actual birth however she made preparations to make sure the child would be well-cared for...

She left three gems, the last of the Crystal Gems, to look after this child as well as any remaining threats on Earth. These Gems were Garnet, Amethyst, and her own personal friend and companion, Pearl.

"And that child… is me," said Steven to the assembly of dozens of gems sitting on the beach in front of the temple. He lifted his shirt to show the pink gem that was his navel. A wave of gasps emerged from the crowd, instantly recognizing their leader's stone.

"So... Rose is gone?" asked a brown Gem in confusion.
"Well," Steven said, "Yeah, and no. My mom left me a message saying that she would still live on as a part of me."

"So Rose will come back?!" asked a green Gem. Her excitement spread through the crowd like wildfire.

"No, we're sure she's gone for good," said Steven with some remorse. The crowd was silenced in a millisecond.

"They're taking it better than I expected," commented Pearl. She was standing behind him along with what could be considered the main bulk of the Crystal Gems: Garnet, Amethyst, Bismuth, Lapis, Peridot along with Greg and Connie who wanted to see more of their extended family.

"Remember that not all of them were as attached to Rose as you," reminded Garnet, making the slender Gem turn blue in the cheeks.

"Man, there's so many of them!" wondered Connie, "How did you find them all?"

"The same way she found us, giving us something different to live for," Bismuth answered.

"Really? The way I see it, my life has become profoundly more chaotic since I've arrived on this planet!" snarked Peridot, adjusting her comically large glasses.

"So you wouldn't mind giving me all your Camp Pining Hearts DVDs?" asked Lapis.

The green techie literally hissed at this. "Lay one touch stub on them and I will never forgive you!"

"Heh heh, nerds…" chuckled Amethyst to herself. Back at the crowd, Steven was now taking any questions from the Gems in front of him. Most of them were one variant or another of "How are you like Rose?" It took him several minutes of explaining that he was part-Rose and part human. With their curiosity sated for the moment, the group dispersed and went about their separate ways.

"So, does that clear everything up for you, Jasper?" asked Pearl in the most polite tone she could manage. The hulking orange Gem stood at the very back of the crowd, not moving an inch with her arms crossed; she looked as upset as ever.

"Um, Jasper? Are you alright?"

"NO, I'M NOT!" shouted the monumental gem, "I'm stuck on this planet with nowhere to go and nothing to do! And on top of that, you're telling me the Gem responsible used to be Pink Diamond!?"

"Jasper, we told you that weeks ago," groaned Lapis, "Get over it already."

"Watch your mouth around me, you little…" she moved forward but was immediately met with Bismuth and Garnet pushing her back.

"Don't try to start anything," ordered Garnet, "I'm in charge here and you will not start a fight while I'm around."

"Unless you want us to call the Diamonds and tell them you hit one of Pink's closest friends?" taunted Bismuth.

Jasper just rolled her eyes and stomped off, more than likely to the nearest rock so she could take her anger out on it.

"Guys, she's still trying to adjust to all of this," Amethyst said to the others, "Cut her some slack!"

"She's been growling at everyone and starting fights from day one," sneered Lapis, "I say we just let her go if she hates it here so much…"

"Uh guys," spoke up Greg, "I'm kinda with Lapis here. I mean, if she really doesn't want to stay, then maybe we can just let her go. I mean, it's got to be better than her staying in the house. With Steven!"

"Greg, I understand your worries," assured Pearl, "But I believe that keeping Jasper close is important since she needs constant supervision. As much as it may not look like it, she went through a terrible revelation and the healing could take quite some time."

"Plus, I may have a loose grasp on Earth currency, but I know that letting a Gem who possesses superhuman strength and severe anger issues loose on an unsuspecting populace is a terrible idea. Even your substantial wealth would be depleted in a week, at best," added Peridot.

Greg suddenly went wide eyes at the possibility of paying all of that potential property damage.

He quickly realized he was dealing with the lesser of two evils. It was hard for him to believe that in only a month ago he only had about six Gems to contend with. Now he had no hope of even counting them all.

Meanwhile, light years away at the Gem Homeworld, White Diamond was currently in her personal chambers.

Despite her promise to Steven to spend more time outside her personal domain, she found herself with a hard truth to face.

Running an intergalactic empire was so hard!

She swore to do more of her fair share, to not let Blue and Yellow handle everything, but there was so much to keep track of! Shifting planetary conditions, the ever-dwindling resources, managing so many new technological creations, or maybe the fact that their planet was literally cracking at the seams. Even she all but hit herself over how she could miss that little detail!

She was desperately trying to take more of the workload off the other Diamonds, but after millennia of being the man behind the man, she would often retreat there whenever she felt overwhelmed. She held her arms out in the same pose she had held for so long, contemplating all the changes that were being made and wondering if it was too late to go back to the way things were.

It was then that her new Pearl, a white-colored one with her grey-hair done in a large bun on the back of her head, warped in with a message.

"My Diamond," she stated with a monotonous voice ruined by a worried tone, "We have news from one of our drone scouts near a planet deemed acceptable for colonization."

"Let me guess," White Diamond droned, "Another rebellion?"

"Actually, y-yes, that's exactly it!"

White could already feel her eye start twitching. "What?"

"We've received several messages from our ships and bases that they are being hijacked by unknown forces. There have been no survivors of any encounter with these forces."

"Have you received any useful intelligence about these invaders?"

The worried expression on the Pearl was more prominent upon being asked this question, "Well actually yes, they seemed to inscribe this odd sigil over the ruins of the sites in question. When I cross-referenced this to the information in the history archives there was a match, but… I couldn't access and further information. It was restricted you see…" The Pearl then showed an image of the sigil in question via projection from her gem, "This is the sigil…"

White was in shock at what she just saw. It was similar to the insignia used by the Diamond Authority itself but was made of six diamonds instead of four. Also, each of the Diamonds was arranged differently. There were five diamonds, yellow, blue, black, red, and pink arranged into a pentagon shape. In the middle was a larger white diamond. The pentagon itself was drawn in a thick, magenta and purple outline. However, White knew something was off as this old sigil was supposed to have a more elegant rainbow colored outline. Unless...

White Diamond immediately contacted Yellow and Blue Diamond. She ordered them both to drop whatever they were doing and set their ships on a course for Earth. When asked why she only told them that they needed to see Pink Diamond as soon as possible.

The next day in Beach City was as bright and sunny as its populace came to expect from the sleepy town. Steven was enjoying his cereal on the porch, basking in the morning sun and the calming waves. As he ate his breakfast, he was happily watching the construction crews at work on the beach.

With the corrupted Gems finally cured after so long, they quickly realized that there were simply too many of them to stay in the temple. Thankfully, Mayor Dewey was so grateful that the last alien invasion caused such minimal damage, he okayed the gems building some housing along the rocks and road at the beach that lead back to the temple. As Steven saw, there were a little over a dozen homes being built, each as unique as the last.

"Hey Steven!" greeted the Nephrite formerly known as the centipeedle.

"Centi!" Steven said cheerfully as a good friend of his, "What's up?"

"Well," she replied, "I never got the chance to formally thank you for everything you've done for me, especially considering I wasn't exactly myself at the time."

"Hey, it's hard to thank someone when you can't form words, it's okay."

"Yeah…" she pulled out a bag of her favorite chips from her gem, "I'm just sad that we could have been enemies back in the day."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I was still fighting for Homeworld when that light came, remember? If I met you back then, I would have had to fight you…"

Steven stood and took her hand. "Don't think like that, Centi. We're friends now and plus now the Diamonds are our friends too! That means we have nothing to worry about!"

The nephrite smiled as the two started down the beach, an impromptu road being formed between the shells of small houses being made for the throng of new Crystal Gems. "It's nice to see that things are getting better…" she told Steven.

"Yeah," The boy stated, "It took some ups and downs, but things finally worked out in the end."
As the took in the construction around them, the best word to summarize the experience would be chaos. The newer Crystal Gems had missed millennia of progress, so the adjustment from a time of hunter-gatherers to the modern day would be an immense change for them. Just yesterday they had a group of gems confusing a bulldozer with a mechanical weapon that they had to destroy. Pearl took it upon herself to educate her old comrades about all the facets of modern living from cellular technology to indoor plumbing to the proper way to get rid of dust bunnies.

"Well, mostly," Steven added in hindsight. Amethyst, Peridot and Lapis, not being a part of the original Crystal Gems, treated the entire endeavor as one giant meet-and-greet with them all getting to know as many of the new faces as possible. Even with so many to meet, all three of them took it in stride and found themselves enjoying either hearing stories about the old days or telling anecdotes about their time with Steven.

Bismuth, on the other hand, was too busy with work to pay much attention to all her old friends. As the member of the group with the most building expertise, Bismuth aided the human construction workers brought on by Greg to assist with all the work they would have to do. The only one she took time out of her schedule for was Biggs, the brown-colored jasper who seemed glued to the larger purple gem's side. While Bismuth was loud and boisterous, Biggs was more than content to just listen and only occasionally talk back. It suited her friend just fine as she had dozens of projects on her mind all at once.

Greg was also contributing in any way he could, namely keeping the human workers on track and bankrolling the whole thing. He was more grateful now that Marty, sleazebag as he was, sold more of his old songs as commercial jingles over the years so he had a steady income for the project thanks to royalties. He also made an effort to introduce himself to many of the newer gems, though it was a slow process. He seemed especially fond of the two pebbles formerly known as the heaven and earth beetles, if nothing else for the fact that they were the least threatening since they could fit in the palms of his hands. "Heheh," he said, holding them in his hands at that very moment, "I guess you guys are kinda cute..."

That left Garnet to herself for the most part with her main job: babysitting Jasper. Everywhere the orange bruiser stormed off, Garnet kept an eye on her to ensure she would not cause too much collateral damage.

At the moment Jasper was sitting by herself, grumbling. The other Gems in the area instinctively avoided her, too intimidated by her aggressive presence to do more than stare. Who could blame them, with her tendency to sneer and growl at any of the Gems present? She also did NOT appreciate being called a "Crystal Gem" in any description as the one unfortunate sap to make that mistake was almost clobbered. It took Garnet, Bismuth AND Lapis to get her under control after that.

Garnet looked at her, both with worry, and with concern. Even after a month to cool off, she was still an angry wreck who showed no signs of changing her ways. Granted, she was the only one of the new arrivals who learned the truth about Rose's actual identity. The permafusion expected the Gem to take it hard, but it seemed to only worsen the resentment she harbored for them all. If Steven so much as got close to her, she looked ready to commit bloody murder.

And that was NOT a chance his three mother figures, as it were, were willing to take.

Upon noticing that Garnet was observing her, she yelled, "WHAT!? Whaddaya want!?"

Any nearby Gems either took a step back or rushed away upon that outburst.

Back at the temple house balcony, Steven and Nephrite saw this. Nephrite then said, "That… is the most aggressive Quartz I've ever seen."

"Yeeaahhh," Steven said, "She's going to need some work…"