His voice is heavy.

"Three hundred and seven known victims. She kept swimmers on the surface of the water and within athmosphere, and only flipped over two small boats, but she couldn't feel things outside of water and so streams of water occasionally crashed into things; and some people were just accelerated way too fast. It was courtesy for her, not mercy - she had no idea how fragile humans were compared to gems."

It... really, really, really could have been a lot worse. Multiple orders of magnitude worse.

"..."

Rose thinks humans must not mind dying as much as gems typically mind shattering; otherwise they'd stop having kids.

This is still 307 more irrecoverably destroyed individuals than her side of Gem War claimed.

AND THEN LAPIS TAKES OFF TO HOMEWORLD

oh no

"Well that happened.

So that's how the Homeworld finds out, huh."

"Oh, they don't, actually, find out much. Yet. But sort of. They do send Jasper and Peridot here to resume operations."

"You know, I thought that they never would. That you're just going to live among humans, and never get entangled into that whole mess.
There weren't - any signs of them still being interested in Earth, for thousands of years."

"Mom, I'll be honest - that just had to happen, sooner or later. I mean, at some point, humans would become a space empire too, if nothing else - and eventually meet the Homeworld. And the Crystal Gems are known historical figures."

"Oh, Steven... it happened so soon, too. You barely even knew how you worked at that point, right?

Well. Um. You knew how to heal Lapis up."

"Yeah... Very useful power. Though some would say me using it on Lapis, to give strength to an enemy, was stupid."

Rose looks at Steven with a serious expression, and says, in a somber tone:

"Steven, if there is one thing you should know about me, you should know that I would have done the same thing, and stood by it."

Hug.

hug_counter:=hug_counter+1

print(hug_counter)

4

"Well, as of today, Lapis volounteers for coast-guarding every Saturday. On every sea coast. I dropped her an idea to do aid via fishing, too, but the logistics are hard."

Rose blinks a few times.

"She lives on Earth now.

You made friends with her."

"You would have done the same thing, and stood by it."

She smiles.

"Yes. Yes I would."

The Crystal Gems notice the arrival of Peridot, a Homeworld scout!

Garnet smashes the warp-pad to Homeworld, which WAS OPERATIONAL AND TURNED ON THE WHOLE TIME, into bits.

"Uh. We didn't touch it because it might have alerted the Homeworld of our activities."

(They should have tampered with it to make it look like it's working while it wasn't. It's not like Homeworld ran regular inspections to Earth.)

"Yeah, despite how silly this looks in hindsight, maybe it was a good decision overall."

(They totally should have tampered with it to make it look like it's working while it isn't.)

And in the next memory...

Rose stares with a gaping mouth.

Steven waggles his eyebrows suggestively.

"This is completely impossible. This is also the greatest thing I have ever seen."

"Ahahahaha! Thanks, mom. And yeah, it is kinda very impossible.

Pearl said that maybe the tech we were building for retrieving you will help us investigate what is even going on there."

"Look at you two, Steven. You are SO ADORABLE.

This is nothing short of a miracle."

"Wait until you see Steg."