Work Text:
It was a lovely day at Beach City. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, the waves were rolling. On days like this, it seemed like nothing could go wro-
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Steven cried as he saw just how empty a freezer was. "This can't be happening! This has to be a dream! Lars! Lars!" Steven rushes to an orange-haired employee and hugs him. "Please tell me I'm dreaming!"
"Get off me man, I'm stocking here!" Lars said to Steven as he shrugged him off. Two girls watched Steven from the counter. One was behind it, was short, had blond hair and was wearing the store shirt. The other was medium-sized, had salmon-pink hair, and wore a blue vest and skirt, white dress shirt (with blue cuffs), high white socks, black dress shoes and a blue witch's hat that had white bunny ears poking out.
"I'm sorry, Steven. I guess they stopped making them." Sadie apologized to the boy as he lay on the floor.
"Stopped making them?!" Steven exclaimed, "Why in the world would they stop making Cookie Cats?! They're only the most scrumptious and delicious ice-cream sandwich ever made! Don't they have laws for this?!"
"Tough bits, man. Nobody buys them anymore." Lars said to Steven as he stocked the shelves. "I guess they couldn't compete with Lion Lickers."
Steven groaned. "Not Lion Lickers! Nobody likes them! They don't even look like lions! Kids these days — I'll tell ya what!"
"Well, if you miss your wimpy ice cream so much, why don't you make some with your 'magic belly button'?" Lars chuckled as he mocked Steven.
"That's not how it works, Lars! ...Right?"
"I could always make some for you Steven." Olive, the salmon-haired girl, offered.
"Yours always taste funny though," Steven replied.
"I think they taste fine…" Olive pouted.
"Oh, sweet Cookie Cats, with your crunchy cookie outside and your icy creamy insides... You were too good for this world." Steven lamented as he drew a Cookie cat on the freezer before kissing it.
"Uhh… Steven?" Sadie tried to get his attention. Steven didn't respond as he continued to hug the freezer. "Do you want to take the freezer with you?"
Steven nodded sadly.
"Well come on Stevie, we better get back home," Olive told him as she hopped off the counter. "Do you want me to carry it?"
"No thank you," Steven replied chipperly as he unplugged the freezer and wrapped the wire around himself like a backpack.
"Oh, Olive, here's your usual," Sadie said as she handed Olive a white paper bag.
"Thanks, Sadie," Olive handed a $5 bill in exchange. She then followed Steven out the front door, picking up a fancy, brightly coloured broomstick with a lantern tied to the front as she went. Steven and Olive walked along the beach, rounding a huge cliff that had an enormous statue carved from it. At the base of the statue was a small house, which Olive and Steven climbed up and entered.
"Hey guys, were ba…" Olive began but was cut off when a centipede-like creature appeared, acid dripping from its maw.
"AHHH!" both kids scream at the sudden appearance of the monster before a purple whip with crystal studs wrapped around it, holding it back. The whip lead to a short purple woman with long hair.
"Sup dudes." Amethyst greeted as she yanked the whip, sending the monster flying across the room. Another, very pale, woman was elegantly duelling the monsters with a spear on top of a warp pad, whilst a third, reddish, woman with an afro and reflective shades punched the monsters with a set of large gauntlets.
"Ah!" Pearl noticed Steven and Olive, "Olive! Would you mind lending a hand?"
"O-oh right!" Olive stammered as her hands glowed as she waved them, sending a barrage of bright orbs of light blasting through the monsters as she jumped into the fray.
"Awesome! What are these things?" Steven asked, putting the freezer down.
Pearl groaned as she picked up one of the monsters. "Ugh! Sorry, Steven. We'll get these Centipeetles out of your room. We think they were trying to get into the temple."
"Aw. You don't have to get rid of them. They're really cool."
Steven was soon corrected as the centipeetle in Pearl's hands upchucked a glop of acid that burnt through the floor.
"I got it," Olive said as she waved her wand and undid the damage that was caused as the wood regrew back.
Amethyst poofed another centipeetle and watched it poofed ass he picked her nose. "Um, you guys? These things don't have gems."
"That means there must be a mother somewhere nearby," Garnet stated as she approached Pearl, Steven and Olive, punching another centipeetle without looking.
"We should probably find it before anyone gets hurt." Pearl looked at the remaining centipeetles concerningly.
"Oh! Oh! Can I come?! Can I?! Can I?!" Steven asked excitedly.
"Steven," Pearl began "until you learn to control the powers in your gem, we'll take care of protecting humanity, okay?" Pearl finishes by snapping the neck of the Centipeetle she was holding.
"Aw, man! But Olive gets to go!"
"Steven, I'm older than you and have had longer to practise my magic." Olive reminded her little brother.
"Not to mention she's got no gem," Amethyst commented offhandedly.
Steven sulked for a moment before noticing a centipeetle rummaging around in the freezer.
"Hey! Get out of there! Go on! Shoo! Shoo!" Steven shooed away the green gem monster. "Aw! They got into everything! Not cool!"
Olive joins him by the fridge, putting the knocked-over milk back in place, before noticing something that wasn't previously in the freezer. "Hey Steven, are those…"
"Cookie Cats?!" Steven exclaimed, now seeing the pink-wrapped confections. He grabbed one and turned back to the gems. "Wha-where did you get these?! I thought they stopped making them!"
"Well, we heard that, too, and since they're your favourite..." Pearl began.
"We went out and stole a bunch!" Amethyst quickly interrupted.
Pearl sighed as she rolled her eyes. "I went back and paid for them."
"The whole thing was my idea." Garnet stepped forward as she retracted her gauntlets back to her gems.
"It was everyone's idea," Amethyst said.
"Not really."
Olive sighed, a smile resting on her face. "You guys know I could have just magicked up some for Steven."
All the gems looked to one-another with weary expressions.
"That's… a nice offer, Olive. But we may just have to hold off on that until you practice a bit more." Pearl told Olive.
"Yeah, those sandwiches with spider legs were creepy," Amethyst said bluntly as she picked her ear.
"We caught all of them, didn't we?" Olive folded her arms.
"Look," Pearl interjected before anything could escalate any further, "All that matters is that Steven is happy, right?"
"Right." The others nodded in agreement while Steven bopped up and down before breaking into song.
"Oohhhhh! / He's a frozen treat with an all-new taste! / 'cause he came to this planet from outer space! / A refugee of an interstellar war! / But now he's at your local grocery store! / Cookie Cat! He's a pet for your tummy! / Cookie Cat! He's super-duper yummy! / Cookie Cat! He left his family behind! / Cookie Caaaaat! / Now available at Gurgens off Route 109!"
The gems and Olive burst into laughter and applause for Steven's light-hearted little ditty.
"Bravo, bravo," Pearl cheered.
"I can't believe you did this. I'm gonna save these forever...!" Steven announced.
"Right after this one?" Olive asked with a chuckle and an eye roll.
"Right after this one," Steven confirmed, tearing the wrapping off. "Hello, old friend." He greeted the ice cream sandwich before biting into it. "So, so good! I like to eat the ears first."
Unknown to Steven his gem began to emit a small glow that began to become brighter and brighter as it hummed.
"Uh, Steven..." Amethyst spoke, drawing the boy's attention to the bright pink light emitting from his belly button.
"Wha-?" Steven lifted up his shirt to see the glowing rose quartz gem (AN: *COUGH* *COUGH*) that was embedded in his stomach. "My gem!"
"Quick, try and summon your weapon!" Amethyst urged him.
"I don't know how!" Steven exclaimed as the glow began to die down, causing Steven to panic. "Ah, it's fading! How do I make it come back?!"
"Calm down, Steven. Breathe, don't force it." Pearl reassured him.
"You can do it Stevs!" Olive encouraged her little brother.
"Yeah and try not to poop yourself either," Amethyst suggested, unhelpfully
"Please, don't." Garnet agreed.
The gem's glow faded away, causing a collectively sigh from everybody.
"Well, even if you didn't do it, there's still a silver lining to this." Olive patted Steven's shoulder.
"What's that?" Steven asked.
"I can finally start my magical siblings' adventures Tumblr." Olive smiled, waving her hand, conjuring a phone with a rabbit-themed protector appear in a fit of mystical rainbow energy. "People are going to love it," Olive assured Steven and the gems.
She then hurried away to the houses' cupboard, withdrawing a key from a pocket in her skirt and inserting it in the door's keyhole. She crouched as she hopped into the closet. A moment passed before Olive stuck her head out again. "Call me if you need me!" she called before shutting the closet door behind her. All the gems stared for another moment before Steven broke the silence.
Aw! but I was really close that time! Can one of you just explain how to summon a weapon?" He looked to the gems.
"Oh! I'll go first~!" Pearl said in a sing-song voice
Where Olive had gone was most certainly not a small closet. Instead, she had gone to her 'pocket' room she had conveniently bound the entry to a key. Salem, she loved magic.
Flopping onto her cushiony bed that was littered with rabbit plushies, Olive loved rabbits, and opened her phone to begin making her new account.
'What should I call it...?" Olive thought, tapping her chin. 'Guess I'll just call it Olive's Blog until I think of a better name.'
Filling out the other necessary information, Olive finally had the blog up and running.
'Now to get this steam train rolling.' She paused to reflect on her thoughts. 'Salem, I sound like an old man.'
Tapping away at her phone's keyboard, she put up the first post for her account.
Welcome to my yet-to-be-named Q&A blog! I'm Olive Lepus Quartz, and I go on (or will about to be going on) magical adventures with my brother Steven and guardians, Garnet Amethyst and Pearl! You may not believe me, so as well as answering your burning questions about myself or magic I'll also share moments of our adventures when we have them!
Olive smiled. Not because of the post, but because of her brother. She was excited that his magical abilities had begun to appear, which meant he could come on magical missions that she was already taking on with the gems.
While she enjoyed those lots, it wasn't the same without Steven's upbeat and optimistic attitude that Olive loved. She smiled at the thought of Steven.
Olive's life hadn't gone off on a very nice start, and it was tough to go on before she met Rose. But when she did, those became some of the best moments of her life. Once she heard she was getting a little brother, it… it was a bittersweet moment for her.
But Olive was happy. Something she hoped she would keep. After playing on her phone and reading over some of her tomes, her phone rang.
"Hello?" She answered.
"Olive!" Steven's voice erupted from the phone, "I need you in the kitchen, ASAP." He then quickly hung up before she could ask what was happening or why she needed to get there quickly. Well, adding 'ASAP' was probably just Steven being unintentionally dramatic.
Magicking her phone away and tome back to its shelf, Olive rose off her bed and crossed her room to the only door. Focusing on the beach house, she opened the door and stepped through into the beach house, as if she was coming in normally through the front door.
Steven was in the kitchen with Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl.
In what appeared to be the exact same positions she left them in earlier.
Olive squinted her eyes to make sure she was seeing right. "Wha… What am I looking at here?" She asked.
"Olive!" Steven said happily, trotting over to her and dragging her to where she had been standing before heading into her room. "I couldn't figure out how to summon my weapon, so my best bet is to recreate what happened the last time my gem glowed," Steven explained.
"Oh, okay." Olive nodded. She loved Steven dearly, but she had almost no idea what he was doing half the time.
Steven then turned to the fridge and took out another cookie cat, partially unwrapping it. "Okay, so we're all here. Good. Next... I took a bite of this Cookie Cat. Oh, wait! I sang the song first. Uh, he's a frozen treat, all-new taste, interstellar war, now available at Ghurven's ..."
Olive and the gems waited for anything to happen to Steven or his gem, but after at least twenty seconds, nothing had happened.
"Awww, it was funnier last time." Steven sighed as he lifted up his shirt to see his gem. "Maybe I'm not a real Crystal Gem."
Pearl bent down next to Steven, putting a consoling hand on his shoulder. "Don't be silly, Steven. Of course, you are."
"Yeah!" Olive agreed. "I don't even have a gem, and I'm part of you guys!"
"And you're fun to have around, even if your gem is useless," Amethyst told Steven, earning an angry glare from Pearl. "I mean... you're one of us, Steven. We're not the Crystal Gems without you!"
Garnet simply nodded in agreement.
"Yeah," Steven agreed, feeling better, "even if I don't have powers, I've still got... Cookie Cat!" Steven takes a bite of the ice-cream sandwich. "Mmm, so good."
Upon eating the cold treat, Steven's gem once again glowed brightly, even brighter than before. And most surprising of all, a rose-pink buckler shield appeared over his stomach.
"Steven, it's a shield!" Pearl gasped.
"It's just like Mom's!" Olive grinned.
"... Whoa, what?!" Steven opened his eyes, realising what he had done. "I get a shield?! Oh... YEAH!" Steven threw his arms up in celebration, accidentally launching the shield away from himself.
The shield ping-ponged around the house at high speed, before Olive extended her arm at the shield and yelled, "Vilzriquath!"
On her command, the shield stopped dead in its tracks, vibrating slightly just in front of the TV. Amethyst burst out laughing and Pearl groaned, mumbling about how it was lucky nothing was too badly damaged.
"Huh? Cookie Cat! I summon my weapon by eating ice cream!"
Pearl picked up the wrapper from the floor "What's in these things? Did you do something to them, Olive?"
"What?! No!" Olive truthfully denied. Further discussion was stopped when the house began to rumble. Silhouettes of Centipeetles scurried over the window next to Steven's bed just as his shield also disappeared.
"What was that?" Steven asked. The gems and siblings rushed outside to the beach house patio to look up at the temple, which now had a significantly larger centipeetle on it, screeching and drooling acid.
"It's the Mother!' Garnet exclaimed as she leapt toward it, gauntlets at the ready.
Pearl turned to Steven and Olive. "Olive, take Steven inside, we'll take care of this!"
"Got it, Pearl." Olive nodded as she took Steven's hand and lead him back into the house just as Garnet assisted Amethyst on dragging the centipeetle down to the beach.
"Aww! Olive!" Steven complained as the pair watched the fight from the window, "I wanna help too!"
Olive smiled warmly. "Sorry Lil' bro, but it's too dangerous out there for you and, if I'm being completely honest, me as well."
"But I've got my shield now! I'll I need is Cookie Cat!" Steven protested.
"Steven..." Olive began, but before she could get any more words out Steven had gone to the freezer, removed a handful of Cookie Cats, attached the Cookie Cat freezer he got to some extension cords and dashed out the front door. Olive blinked before smacking her forehead.
"I really got to pay more attention." She said to herself as she followed Steven.
Back on the beach, the gems were still fighting the gem monster. The centipeetle sprayed a stream of acid towards the gems, which they all dodged out of the way, taking refuge behind a broken hand statue of the temple on the beach. The Centipeetle Mother continued to spray acid, dealing considerable damage to the hand statue as it began to melt
"We could really use Steven's shield right about now!" Amethyst said to her two teammates, "Or maybe one of Olive's spells!"
As if her words willed it to happen, a torrent of icy sleet blasted the monster's side, drawing its attention away from the gems and on to Olive and Steven, Olive having cast the chilly spell.
"Hey! Leave them alone!" Steven yelled at the centipeetle. The monster shook off the frost and screeched at the two siblings.
"Olive, Steven, no!" The gems called in distraught.
"C'mon Steven, if you've got a plan, do it now!" Olive said, worried at their situation.
"Cookie Cat Crystal combo powers, ACTIVATE!" Steven cried as he ate a Cookie Cat and lifted his shirt, exposing his gem. The centipeetle stared at him and Olive. maniacally as nothing happens.
The gems and Olive sweatdropped as a single collective thought passed through their minds. 'That was your plan...?'
Steven realised he had put himself and his sister in quite a predicament and retreated a distance away with Olive as he carried the cookie cat freezer.
"We need to save THEM!" Pearl cried as she Barely ducked under an attack from the centipeetle's tail pincers. Whilst the gems made to intervene, the centipeetle unleashed another stream of acid towards Olive and Steven.
Without any time to get out of the way, Olive conjured a blue-tinged dome around herself and steven, stopping the acid from hitting either of them, but not from hitting the freezer. Once the cetipeetle was done, Olive dropped the spell and fell to her knees, panting and sweating.
"I'm... I'm gonna take a nap now..." Olive panted as she flopped on the sand, exhausted.
"Oh no! Olive!" Steven exclaimed as he moved to his sister's prone form. The centipeetle had turned its attention away from the two teens in favour of once again attacking the gems, Garnet now holding its pincers from clamping down on her. Steven turned to the centipeetle, picking up the now destroyed freezer and running towards the monster.
"Cookie Cat! He's a pet for your tummy! Cookie Cat, he's super duper YUMMY!" Steven aggressively swung the freezer around with the extension cord. "Cookie Cat, he left his family behind! COOKIE CAAAT!" Steven let go of the freezer as it was flung into the centipeetle's back, electrocuting it as it screeched in pain. "Now available... nowhere..."
"Yes!" Amethyst cheered at the now incapacitated monster.
"Gems, weapons," Garnet ordered, summoning her gauntlets and charging, Pearl and Amethyst brandishing their whip and spear not far behind. All of them dove on to the weakened centipeetle, destroying it in one fell swoop. But instead of just ding, the monster convulsed and poofed into green clouds, dropping a spherical green gem on the floor. Garnet walked over to the gem, creating a bubble around it before sending it away in a burst of sparkles.
At the same time, Olive had recovered enough to walk over to steven, who was burying a cookie cat wrapper.
"Farewell, sweet Cookie Cats. I'll always remember the time we spent together." Steven patted the mound of dirt. "Shh, hush now."
"Well, Stev, ice cream does not activate your powers." Olive apologized to Steven.
"Of course they don't." Pearl frowned as if stating the most obvious thing in the world. "But don't worry Steven, I'm sure someday you'll figure out how to activate your gem."
"Yes, in your own Steven-y way," Garnet added.
"Too bad Olive couldn't help," Amethyst said.
"Well, she does use a different kind of magic to us all," Pearl explained with an eye roll.
"That's it!" Olive exclaimed.
"What it?" Pearl asked, confused.
"That's what I'll name my blog! A Different Kind of Magic!" Olive said as she summoned her phone from the patio railing, having left it there to record the fight. She quickly opened the Tumblr app and edited her account, so now its name was the one Pearl had unknowingly suggested and had the video of their fight with the centipeetle.
Olive Put the phone away and smiled at her, admittedly impromptu, family. She had a feeling it was only going to get better from here.