"Did all of you almost die there, and the Earth with you? Just want to clarify this."

"Honestly, yeah. But there weren't many close calls that were THIS close. Jasper defeating eveyone was pretty bad, and then White Diamond's trial was kind of a terrifying hail mary, but.

Most of the time, we had our situation more or less under control."

"O-okay."

Steven frees Peridot to investigate.

Peridot awkwardly tries to escape and... ends up barricading herself in the bathroom.

Okay, now Rose is just laughing.

The Crystal Gems leave Steven as a warden for Peridot.

Steven immediately lets Peridot out for a walk, without looking at her.

"Did Garnet foresee this one ending well?"

"Didn't ask her, so, no idea."

Peridot begs to retrieve backups of her logs from Prime Kindergarten.

(Peridot doesn't know her gem stores all of the logs within it.)

Peridot, when pressured, agrees to Steven's demands about the trip.

(Steven's demands is that they should hold hands the whole time.)

Peridot finds out about Steven's nature.

(Peridot does not want to hear Steven's "Ballad of Rose and Greg".)

Peridot cannot access the control panel and immediately despairs of any further progress.

(Steven opens it on his first try.)

She laughs vigorously at the impromptu comedy duo.

He does too.

THE CLUSTER IS REVEALED

"..."

She doesn't say "Of all possible ways to destroy a planet, this must be the most convoluted, gratuitous and horrific one." It's way too obvious to say.

Instead, she cries, just a little.

He holds her hand.

"You know what was a really hard choice? Whether to tell the Earth about this."

This doesn't make sense to her. She wipes her tears, and asks:

"Why wouldn't you? Panic?"

"Oh, no, not back then. After the fact, long after, the whole situation got resolved, when the gems became common knowledge."

She visibly doesn't understand.

"We're peacefully coexisting with the Gem Empire right now. The Diamonds have scaled back on expansion, gems no longer treat everyone else like inferiors, there's interworld commerce and traffic..."

✨✨✨

"...gems can eat earthly food and watch earthly shows; humans can use gem technology and hire gem magic; there are joint research projects.

It's all going smoothly, it's all great.

Now imagine that it's common knowledge that a few years ago, Yellow Diamond tried to commit the worst war crime in history that would have killed all of those people and created a tortured amalgam out of their protectors. And she's still in charge. And cannot be easily removed because a third of gems are Yellow's and were mustered into loyalty; and because White would not stand for it."

Rose doesn't quite know how human politics work.

She can guess that this doesn't exactly contribute to peaceful integration.

"Yellow's changed, now. She's not that person anymore."

Yellow Diamond had been an amazingly terrible person.
She had so many ways to destroy the Earth and she picked the most horrible one possible.
To avenge one person, she would murder billions and eternally torture tens of thousands.
And one of the main reasons why that one person went away in the first place were her own bullying and negligence.
She's always been pushing for aggression, for war. Since Pink's "shattering", she was specifically out to destroy species and raze planets.

"She deserved a second chance, and she wouldn't get it, if people knew."

"That's why I haven't publically told all the details about the Cluster's origins and purpose to the people, yet.

It's known that it exists, and that Peridot and I saved the Earth on the Day of Earthquakes by preventing it from emerging."