Chapter Text
Mark fell through the sky, twisting and changing direction before hitting the ground, he knew how much that would hurt. It was easy. Too easy, to fly through the city and catch criminals, he knew because the fog remained. The fog that’d been there since his fight with his dad. Since he failed to save all those lives. He needed to do more. He needed a distraction to help. After about two hours(he thinks) he glided over to his window. He’d go back out in a second, he just wanted to grab a snack and say hi to mom first. He turned to go downstairs before a flash of light in front of him caught his attention.
Cecil
”Hey kid, normally I wouldn’t ask this of you, especially after what happened last month…”
he trailed off, the other half of the sentence was something they both knew well.
“I’m ready to get back in the game, what is it?”
Cecil grabbed him by the shoulder, teleporting both of them. When the light cleared Mark recognized guardian HQ. Rudy stood by the main screen, which showed what looked to be a sci-fi space ship, with one of his drones flanking him. He was concentrated, typing away at multiple screens at a time, before breaking his attention and flicking it over to Mark and Cecil when he noticed them. He gestured for them to come closer.
“New space threat.” Cecil said, clearly not happy about this “a small spaceship is headed for earth, and from the trajectory we’ve calculated it’s following the rotation of our planet, it’s not a mistake.”
“Remember those pink legs we discovered buried under the Amazons a few months back?” Rudy asked, “the ones that are theorized to be a ship, but we couldn’t tell because it was engineered for only one person to be able to use it?” Mark responded with a nod. “Well, from what we can tell this ship was made by the same people, albeit this one is much smaller and newer.” He added the last part in a mix of mumbling and whispers, and yet still loud enough for the two next to him to hear.
Cecil turned to Invincible “we need you to…welcome our new guest, make sure they aren’t a threat.”
He nodded, understanding the under tone make sure they aren’t like dad. He shook away the thought as Cecil turned to Rudy
“when are they supposed to get here?”
He paused, checking a screen “fifteen minutes. They’re likely going to land in an uninhabited savanna in Africa”
Cecil seemed less annoyed at that “less chance of dead civilians..” he muttered before turning to Mark “get going, once we know their drop location for sure we’ll tell you.”
They had the trajectory done in minutes, as long as the ship didn’t change in direction, which Mark could see wouldn’t be the case as he watched it enter the atmosphere. The pink ship also didn’t seem to be slowing down, which was a tad concerning, something that turned into extremely concerning as Mark had to dart as fast as he can to dodge getting crushed under the ship’s crash landing.
As the dust cleared he cautiously approached the wreckage. He wasn’t sure which he was more scared of finding, something dead, or something alive. He flinched back as something under the fragments of what was left of the ship shifted. He was about to find something alive, apparently.
“wow!” Exclaimed a large man as he burst out from under the wreckage. He was banged up a bit, sure, but he was nowhere near as injured as someone who just survived crashing into a planet at the speed he was going. He was tall, could probably tower over Mark, and pretty chubby, he looked human, and he looked young, in his early 20s if Mark had to guess. His hair was long, thick, curly, and seemed to be well maintained, it was dark brown, and had pink highlights near the roots and pink fading in from the ends of his curls that seemed to have been dyed in(?). Speaking of pink, so were his clothes, he wore a large shawl that got longer in the back, acting as a sort of cape, and puffy pink pants, a yellow star was stitched into them and he wore a gold locket. A single button held the front of the shawl together at his chest, letting it fall to his sides and show the large pink gemstone where his bellybutton should be. The gemstone seemed familiar, like he’d seen something like it somewhere, but where, he didn’t remember yet. He looked androgynous, but was stupid pretty. “What a landing! I sure crashed this party huh?”
He smiled cheekily at Mark, and only then did he realize the joke was directed at him. But before he could respond his attention had already been directed elsewhere, scanning the remains of the ship for something.
“hm, guess I wasn’t there to protect them” he frowned, clearly worried for the safety of whoever he was talking about.
The man stood, not bothered by the chunks of pink ship falling off his head and shoulders. He started lifting up large pieces of scraps, looking for something, or someone? Probably whoever he was talking about earlier, but Mark doubted they could’ve survived the crash, and yet the man searched anyway, and Mark followed him, his curiosity wouldn’t let him sit it out.
Eventually he seemed to have found what he was looking for, because a relieved look crossed his face when he lifted up what appeared to be an extremely large and heavy part of the ship (although the man picked it up with one arm without issue) and found four gemstones. Mark noted that they were similar to the one in the man’s stomach, except his was larger, and seemed to be of higher quality. Most of them were circular, with different cuts, although one was elongated into an oval shape. One was purple, one red, one blue and the oval one was…shiny, kinda reminded him of a pearl.
the man gently plucked them off of the ground and stepped back, letting the fragment of the ship that had been covering them fall again.
he held up the gems, before they glowed pink, and seemed to go into his gem, before the man flicked his attention back over to Mark.
“Well, looks like I’m gonna be bored for awhile waiting for them to come back. You seem interesting, besides the cringey superhero getup” he snicked and Mark snapped back to attention
Mark dropped into a fighting stance “Who are you and why did you come-crash land-on my planet!?”
the man looked slightly surprised at Mark’s aggression before dipping into a slight bow, putting his hand on his chest as he introduced himself “Steven Universe, human son of a diamond, pleased to meet you.” He said standing to full height, and yeah, he towered over Mark, easily 8 feet tall. “And we crashed because I trusted amethyst to land us, obviously that wasn’t a good idea” he said, chuckling and looking around them.
then something clicked for Mark, amethysts were purple, one of the gemstones he’d picked up were purple. Who has a gemstone fused into their body, and is named after it? “You’re like the crystal gems!” He blurted without thinking. Although it was apparently the right thing to say because Steven’s eyes immediately lit up.
“You know Bismuth Lapis and Peridot! There’s actually a lot more crystal gems, but they’ve left to explore other planets.” Steven slapped the star stitched into his pants and Mark remembered that all of the crystal gems had had a star somewhere on them. “How are they nowadays?”
Mark sucked in, holding his breath. He really didn’t want this. He didn’t want to see another person hurt because of what his dad had done. But he couldn’t just not tell him. Luckily a flash of light interrupted them
”Hey, kids,” Cecil interrupted, approaching Steven, who joyfully responded
”oh my gosh! Fancy old man!” He turned to Cecil, a bright smile on his face, although Cecil didn’t exactly mirror it.
“hey, yeah, theoretically what would you do if a gem you knew were shattered?”
Steven immediately dropped his happy-go-lucky attitude, his eyes narrowing as he sized Cecil up “…why.”
Cecil and Mark shared a glance “no reason, why are you here again?”
he didn’t respond for a moment, looking completely serious for the first time since he’d gotten there “…do I need a reason to visit home?” He looked between the two of them before asking his own question “where are Bismuth, Lapis and Peridot, I haven’t seen them in awhile, and I miss them.”
the two looked between each other once more before Cecil sighed and responded “I’ll…show you.”
There, in the GDA, stood Steven, Mark, and Cecil. Steven was shaking, looking down at the rainbow, blue, and green shards in front of him, his fist clenched with barely controlled fury.
“who did this.” He demanded, his voice wasn’t quiet, wasn’t loud, but he was perfectly capable of being intimidating without yelling
Cecil and Mark hesitated for a second, the guardians of the globe weren’t the only ones protecting the earth.
Steven didn’t wait more than a moment for them to answer “fine, don’t tell me. But whoever it is, they’re dead meat.”