#pine pine

"Next." Pine-Pine announced over Dandy's pompadour. Not exactly a difficult feat as even while sitting, her great height made her tower over the alien hunter. There was a sense of definitiveness in her tone. It all but said that she would broker no further argument and that her word on the matter was final. But Dandy had more than enough words for the both of them.

"C'mon baby. Run it through one more time. I'm sure it's just a glitch in the system." Dandy pleaded.

One of the ears atop Pine-Pine's head twitched, sending a small ripple of movement across her emerald tresses. Though largely silent, this motion would've spoken volumes to those closest to her. It meant that she was either keenly interested, in which case her friends would get out of her way so they wouldn't get between her and the object of her amorous fascination, or immensely annoyed, in which case her friends would also get out of her way, but with significantly more haste. So while anger hadn't taken over her senses just yet, she did wonder if the threat of being bored to death was suitable justification for violent self-defense. "We've been over this three times, Dandy. And I've all ready told you that there's nothing there."

"Are you serious?! Look, I know she's pretty scrawny, but there's definitely an alien in that canister. She's gotta be worth something!" Dandy claimed as he gestured toward the scanner.

"LET ME OUT OF HERE!" something demanded from the wildly bucking containment tube, the alleged alien having finally managed to get her gag off after half-an-hour of muffled hysterics. Pine-Pine thought that it had way too snooty and demanding a voice for someone who had been captured by one of the most inept alien hunters she had ever met.

Regaining her ability to yell seemed to embolden the captive creature, as her slamming against her transparent confines only intensified. This caused the canister to violently jerk from side to side, making it knock against the walls of the robust, but paradoxically fragile, metal archway it was placed in. "If it damages any ARC equipment, you're going to have to pay for the necessary repairs."

Normally that statement would cause Dandy to panic and fall in line. The Alien Registration Center was where he received cash, not where he gave it away. Such an occurrence would be an affront to nature on par with fountains draining water out of the thirsty that used them or athletes competing to see who could lose the most medals. Or at least, that's how Dandy saw it. On this occasion, the statement caused him to smile as if Pine-Pine had given him a helpful piece of advice instead of a veiled threat. "That's it! She's been moving around so much that you probably haven't been able to get a good fix on her, right?" Not waiting for her response, he dashed to his captive and used his arms to try and hold the tube in place.

This seemed to work as both the container and the alien stopped moving.

"YOU!" the alien spat. Then it continued to slam itself against the glass, this time in Dandy's direction.

"How about now?!" Dandy asked as he braced himself against the clumsy impacts.

Pine-Pine decided it would be best to show Dandy the results. Just telling them to him clearly wasn't working. She snapped an image of them with her tablet and then reached over the counter to give him a good view of the screen. "See?" she tapped on the image of the x-ray.

"I see bones!" Dandy said, narrowly pulling back just in time to avoid another hit.

"Those are yours."

"Damn it!" he cursed.

"Where did you even find this thing, Dandy?" Pine-Pine asked, figuring that he owed her that much for all the time he had wasted.

"Found a rock floating in space. When I brought it on board, this popped out."

"I AM NOT A THIS!" his would-be bounty yelled.

Technically she was, Pine-Pine mused. "You said it came out of a rock, and that's all I'm getting on my scanner: a rock."

"Then how is she kicking against the glass and swearing at me right now?!" Dandy asked, simultaneously acknowledging and ignoring the fact that the rock was now free of its leg bindings.

"My guess is that its body is just some kind of elaborate hard light construct coming from the rock." Pine-Pine inferred. "Kind of like a hologram."

"Really?" Dandy certainly hadn't been expecting that. "Think there's a switch to make her less shrill?"

There was the sound of breaking glass followed by Dandy's high-pitched squeal of surprise and the man himself being pulled inside the broken containment unit. Somewhere between Dandy's questioning and Pine-Pine's theorizing, the rock had managed to get its arms free. Now it was making good use of them as it tried to pummel Dandy within the cramped confines of the tube. However, everyone watching the cylinder jerk back and forth in the struggle silently and unknowingly agreed that the alien really should have exited the tube to get at Dandy instead of pulling him inside.

"OW! I thought you were made out of light! Why do your punches hurt so much?!"

"The answer is beyond your meager ability to understand, you scruffy, irreverent rube!"

"Rube?! I'll show you a rube-YOWCH! That was like kicking the inevitable object."

"It's the 'IMMOVABLE' object you-OW!"

"Haha! LOOKS like your eyes are as vulnerable as anyone else's!"

"I'll destroy you for that atrocious pun you-hey-LET GO OF MY ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-LET GO OF MY HAIR!"

A murmur of discontent was spreading among the hunters in Pine-Pine's queu. She sighed; this was starting to get humiliating for everyone. Worse, it was holding up the line and there were a lot of promising entrants in front of her patiently waiting their turn. No more than eight feet away was a Corvonian scavenger with what might've been a new subspecies of Yingot. Or perhaps it was just a Yangot infected with the clap. Either way, it looked to be a more interesting, not to mention more profitable, use of her time than watching Dandy tussle with his latest and lamest lemon.

"Well I'll give you two lovebirds some privacy." Over the screams and awkward blows, neither 'lovebird' could hear her slam the big blue button on her right. They only really sensed something was amiss when the bottom of the scanner opened up from under them, and not even that was enough to prevent Dandy from getting a few cheap blows in. "Have a nice day." Pine-Pine smiled as the pair fell through the trapdoor, blasted through a series of uncomfortable metallic tunnels, before ultimately being spat out of the Alien Registration Center and into the frigid arms of outer space.

"Next."

While you wouldn't be at fault for assuming such, Dandy wasn't a complete idiot. He did and said idiotic things on a distressingly frequent basis, but not all the time. And while alarmists from all corners of civilized space cried foul at dropping IQs and attention spans, there was an unspoken agreement among the intergalactic intelligentsia that morons, as in total morons, didn't actually exist and would probably never exist again if they had. Ignorance could be bliss, but stupid doesn't live very long.

Unbeknownst to Dandy, people assuming that he was a complete idiot had worked in his favor for many years. For if they took him as seriously as he wanted them to, it was doubtful that he'd ever nab any aliens at all. All they saw was an obnoxious, egotistical imbecile - which he was - and discounted him as a threat. The assumption, however valid, did nothing to prepare them for the shock and humiliation they experienced when he used mental faculties they believed he didn't possess to outmaneuver, or worse, outsmart them. Having brought a foot to his throat after flipping the Aloha-Oe over with her spear - thereby robbing him of his only means of escape - it was clear that Pearl wasn't taking any chances with Dandy.

Conversely, chances were all that he had at the moment. They had been locked in this position for a full minute after he had cautiously greeted her and despite being the one standing on one leg, she showed no signs of tiring. He feared that if he made any sudden movements, she'd decapitate him with a second roundhouse kick, bring out another spear to run him through, or simply crush his windpipe with the bottom of her foot as one would stomp on a slow, juicy bug. That last one worried Dandy the most; there were all kinds of horrible and humiliating ways you could die in the universe, but being stepped on was still really low on the list.

It was clear that Pearl had the advantage here, as he knew she would if this encounter ever happened. The silence threw him off though. He thought there'd be a lot of yelling or him getting punched over the horizon. Neither had happened, at least not yet, and Dandy would've been fine with that if it wasn't for the look on Pearl's face. Those who believed cold fury was a contradiction or an emotion exclusive to aggravated polar bears need only look at how her stern, frosty countenance could barely conceal a monumental rage that would explode if exposed to the naked air. Silence, he knew, wasn't going to diffuse or diminish that anger, so Dandy needed a way to break the tundra-sized ice between them without making Pearl break his neck in turn. To put it and all of the above simply, a lot of thought went into what he said next.

"So…new tights?" Dandy asked, managing to tear his eyes away from her cold, blue eyes to stare down her leg.

The response, like her gaze, was terribly frigid and quietly hateful. "Is that all you have to say to me?"

"New…socks?" Dandy offered, taking note of how her once lime-green leggings had been replaced by pink ones.

In his defense, it was really hard to concentrate when Meow wouldn't stop screaming.

"WHY HASN'T ANYONE GOTTEN THIS THING OFF OF ME YET?!"

Based on the flash of annoyance that briefly flickered over Pearl's steely expression, it appeared that she was beginning to find this distracting as well.

"So what's with the cat?" she asked in a manner that implied that she didn't really care about the answer, but still expected a valid response.

"I'm not a ca-." there came a curt, loud growl from above him. "-ha-HA-HAAAA-unless you want me to be! Solidarity, am I right? RIGHT?!"

Thankful to have her attention, if not her foot, focused elsewhere, Dandy saw no harm in telling her all there was to know about his soon-to-be lion chow companion. "Meow's a Betelgeusian and he's been travelling with me and QT for a few months. Thought he was a rare alien at first until I got a closer look at him." Wanting to stretch this depressingly short story a bit further, he added. "He's our…uh…I'm not really sure what he does. He's useful sometimes, so we let him stick around. I just wish we could do something about the smell, y'know?"

"Mistaking him for a rare alien?" Pearl laughed cruelly. "How unfortunate. But I'm sure you'll find some way to get rid of him eventually, Dandy."

Dandy stiffened, realizing too late that he could've worded that anecdote a bit better. Ah well, he thought. He might as well try to roll with the punches. "Maybe. I mean, that lion you sicced on him sure helps."

"He was supposed to go after you."

"Ah." Dandy couldn't even bring himself to feign surprise at that.

"Yes, ah." Pearl said, the reiteration dripping with condescension. "Now what are you doing here?"

Given the chance to do things over, Dandy would've gladly traded places with Meow. Surviving a lion attack made for some stellar bragging rights and if you were killed by one, at least you'd get a pretty cool obituary out of the deal; and unlike his chatterbox of a mouser that it was looming over, that particular pink queen of the jungle seemed incapable of speech. Meaning Pearl's passive-aggressive barbs, of which he suspected there was much more to come, were probably beyond its ability to make.

"Hunting aliens." Dandy stated with forced cheer. "What else?"

"Well." She ruefully chuckled. "You can go hunt aliens somewhere else. Like another planet, or a sun, or a black hole. So take QT-."

"Hi Pearl." QT chimed in.

"Hello, QT." Pearl greeted back. "So take QT, your cat, and your ship, and leave. Now."

Dandy was all too prepared to take this offer to leave with his limbs and most of his dignity intact. Then he looked back at the Aloha-Oe. Then back at Pearl. Then back to the Aloha-Oe. And then back to Pearl again. "I can't." he said. "You totaled my ship."

Pearl's eyes, which had been narrowed into a subdued scowl, widened. Finally breaking eye contact with Dandy to spare a glance at his vessel, she appeared shocked. Almost as if she was just noticing how much damage her ambush had caused. "It's not nearly as bad as all that."

"You flipped it upside down."

"I only did that so you'd take me seriously." she said, failing miserably to reign in her flustered features into what they were when she had simply been angry.

"So you were trying to intimidate me into leaving?" Pearl nodded at Dandy's very informed guess. "By making it impossible for me to leave?"

"It's turned over, not scuttled!" she said, exasperated. "At worst, it's a mild inconvenience. All you need to do is flip it back to the way it was."

"Does that mean you're going to put the foot down and help me do that?"

"No, I am not going to help you!" she snapped. "That would defeat the entire purpose of what I just did!"

"All right, all right. Don't bite my head off." Dandy brought his hands up in a pacifying motion, an effect that was partially ruined by him still holding his ray gun with one of them. Realizing his faux-pas, due in no small part to Pearl's alarmed and then irate reaction to it, Dandy quickly holstered his weapon with a timid smile before shouting behind him. "Hey QT! Use those teen-juggling arms of yours to get the Aloha-Oe right-side up again, would ya?"

QT was less than thrilled at the prospect. "That's nuts! There's no way I can lift it by myself!"

Dandy pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand, silently reminding himself to never think he was having a good day until it was truly done. Honestly, did he have to do everything around here? "Universe?"

Prior to this, Steven's attentions had been torn between Dandy and Pearl's tense, but increasingly farcical exchange and Meow's endless screaming. So it took him a few seconds to register that Dandy was calling out to him over the Betelgeusian's begging. "Yes?"

"Would you mind getting your lion off of Meow so he can help QT?" Dandy asked.

"Sure. But I have to warn you, even though he's kind of mine, he doesn't really listen to me that often." Steven confessed. "Actually, he only really comes around the Temple whenever he's tired or hungry."

"Well he's definitely your cat then." Dandy confirmed, rolling his wrist in Steven's direction. "And you don't need to make him listen to you. Just give him something he likes and he'll buzz off to play with that instead." He paused, suddenly thoughtful. "What do lions enjoy anyway? Besides she-lions, I mean?"

Pearl groaned. "The proper term for them is lionesses."

Dandy either ignored her or was too caught up in this inane quandary to hear. "Yarn? Laser Pointers? Do they make any King of the Jungle-sized cat wands?"

"He likes food." Steven offered.

Meow screamed.

"No, no, not like that." Steven said, trying to calm Meow down. Lion's mouth had closed and his roaring had quieted down to a low growl that would suddenly get louder without warning. No one knew that the big cat carefully planned these moments as it found the smaller creature's panicked reactions to the bursts of volume rather amusing. "Well it's kind of like that. But not just in a predator-prey hunting way. He also likes cooked food too. Maybe you could give him that pizza."

Meow looked down at the box he had been tightly holding to his chest like a greasy, cardboard security blanket. "But I'm only halfway done with this one." He meekly protested, his voice surprisingly clear after several minutes of nonstop blubbering.

At his utterance of 'this one', another growl tinged the air; this one coming from Dandy. "Forget it. Just tell your lion to eat them both, Universe."

Pearl's admonishment of "Don't tell him what to do," was drowned out by Meow unleashing one final desperate scream as he shoved the pizza box at Lion's face. To his horror, he had underestimated his reach and had bonked the pink snout above him with the flat of the container. This elicited a surprised roar from the beast.

As the alien let out an emphatic whimper in turn, Lion took a sniff of the box's contents while wrinkling the feeling back into his nose. Finding the scent passable, it gently bit down on its source and lifted it out of Meow's trembling, but feeble grip. Lion sauntered off as cats of any size are wont to do, kicking some sand onto his former source of amusement as he walked towards Steven.

"Y-yeah." Meow coughed, getting himself back onto his hind legs. "Y-you better walk away," he said quietly.

"Hmph." Pearl was less than impressed. "Now that you've stopped cowering, you might as well go help QT."

Meow frowned, the removal of fanged and painful death from his proximity having restored some of his nerve. "Who died and put you in charge?"

It bears repeating that Pearl was still threatening his current 'boss' with a leg that could shatter granite "Really not the best question to be asking right now." Dandy said.

Amethyst, doing her best to keep a straight faced, nodded. "You really should do what she says. No telling when Lion'll get hungry again."

The Betelgeusian tensed and chanced a brief look at his former tormenter. Lion caught his eye and with his mouth still around the offered junk food, flashed Meow a huge, toothy smile. "Fine." Meow stomped off to meet up with his robotic crewmate at their half-buried vehicle, coveting the protection several inches of hybrid alloys and a few lightyears would hopefully provide against big, pie-stealing bullies.

Satisfied that the grumbling cat was on his way to somehow get the Aloha-Oe up and running, Pearl's attentions shifted to her young charge. "Steven, take Lion and go back to the Temple. The rest of us will catch up to you later."

"Steven?" Dandy echoed quietly. "Wait, so he's-?"

His question was swiftly halted by the sole of Pearl's foot pressing against his throat. He was reminded of a dagger touching, but not breaking skin. "-nothing you should be concerned about." Pearl finished for him.

"Hey," Steven tried to say. "You don't have to hurt him."

"Well I most certainly want to!" Pearl barked.

Steven winced. "But why?" he asked, genuinely confused at how a day filled with stickers, spaceships, and selfies could take such an angry and hateful turn.

Pearl's face softened as she saw how despondent Steven's looked. "I'll explain everything later, Steven." Seeing that he was still staring at where her foot was pressing against Dandy's neck, she bent her knee a tad so that her slipper was no longer touching his flesh. Both Steven and Dandy let out sighs of relief. "Right now, I'd feel a lot more relaxed if you were back home, safe, and far from here." She said, punctuating that last detail with a pointed glower at Dandy.

"Go ahead, Steven. We'll be fine." Dandy encouraged, immediately understanding that 'more relaxed' also meant 'less murderous'.

Reluctantly, Steven climbed onto Lion's back, careful not to jostle the pizza box out of his fuzzy friend's jaws. He decided to take one last look at the scene surrounding him. The Aloha-Oe overturned with its prow, which had once pointed upward to the stars it traversed, now buried in the sand and pelted with waves. Meow was doing some light stretches in between looking at his phone with interest and looking at the ocean with distrust. If his confrontation with Lion had been indicative of his strength, then the ship wasn't going to be moving anytime soon. QT was also doing stretches, more out of a desire to delay this embarrassing and impossible task as long as he could than to avoid having his nonexistent muscles cramp. Pearl and Dandy were taking a break from their mutually uncomfortable and uneven deadlock to watch him leave. Amethyst was clearly on the cusp of dumping all pretense of seriousness and just laughing as hard as she felt like at the situation. In contrast to her fixation on the conflict, Garnet was looking away from it, unable or unwilling to watch it unfold. The rest of the beach was empty, everyone having fled after the spears and insults started flying. "Bye guys." Steven said to the Gems. "Bye Dandy."

"Catch you later, Steven." Dandy replied, flashing the best smile he could under the circumstances. In spite of how dour things looked and were, Steven found himself smiling back. Then he gave Lion a soft pat on the side of his mane and soon the two of them were racing towards the temple. Dandy whistled. Lion riding was pretty hardcore after all.

"Catch you later?" Pearl repeated incredulously.

"Aw come on, baby. You know I meant nothing by it. Considering…" he tapped his forehead for emphasis.

"Right…right. That's right." Pearl said. She took a moment to clear her throat of nothing at all. "Now, the second that your crew-."

"HNNNNNNNNNNNG!" came a catlike and synthesized heave from the Aloha-Oe.

Pearl tried again. "The second that your cre-."

"HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG!"

"The second that-!"

"HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG!"

That did it. Amethyst could take it no longer. This was just too much. No more holding back. "AHAHAHAHAHAHA!" she laughed, pointing at Meow and QT's futile attempt to move the ship. "It's funny because there's no way they can possibly do that!" she explained, bursting into another fit of laughter.

"AMETHYST!" Pearl yelled.

"Whuh?"

Pearl jerked her head in the direction of the struggling alien hunters. "Help those two get that ship back on its landing gear!"

"But it's your fault that it's like that in the first place!" Amethyst protested.

"Just do it!" Pearl ordered.

Normally, Amethyst wouldn't let Pearl get away with blatantly ordering her around without a snarky comment or a retaliatory act of severe insubordination. But for many reasons, she found herself compelled to obey, however grudgingly. The prank had run its course. There had been some mayhem, some drama, lots of laughter-mostly from her-at those two things, but the bedlam didn't seem like it would escalate further so she saw no point at letting it drag on. That was a surefire way to kill any joke. Plus, and this was a big plus, Pearl had this furious look in her eyes that basically said that if the object of her ire wasn't off of the planet in the next ten minutes, she'd probably kick Amethyst into the next county to blow off some steam.

"Should have known you'd find a way to ruin this, too." Amethyst grumbled as she passed Pearl.

"Garnet." Pearl called out in a gentler tone. "If you don't feel like you're up for it, you don't have to-."

"I can lift it." Garnet said. "I just have a bit of a headache. That's all." She followed Amethyst, giving Dandy a wide berth as she went by him.

At this juncture, any sane person in Dandy's situation would keep their mouths shut and try to bide their time until the vehicle of their escape was up and running. No need to engage and possibly provoke the sentient rock lady who might decide to change her mind and snap their neck after all. All they'd need to do was remain perfectly silent and inoffensive. Regrettably, that just wasn't the Dandy Way.

"Migraines aside, with Garnet on the job, I think the Aloha-Oe will be back on its feet or wheels or pads or whatever in no time." Dandy exclaimed.

"Yup." Pearl said noncommittally. There was the urge to tap her foot to whittle away the minutes, but doing that with her left could cause her to lose balance and doing that with her right would just make her toes lightly tap the side of Dandy's neck. She settled for crossing her arms over her chest, not wanting to embarrass herself any further.

"That said, wanna know what I'm hunting this time?" Dandy asked eagerly.

The question almost caused Pearl to stumble back in shock. Did he not understand that she was going to send him packing the moment his ship was operational? How had he maintained the impression that he was welcome here and that she was going to let him stay and turn her home inside out with his blundering? Was nearly taking his head off with her spear and sending Lion to eat him too subtle?!

"I don't think that would really matter at this point." She tried to say, but Dandy wasn't having it.

"It's a real doozy, possibly one of the most dangerous things I've ever gone after." Dandy boasted. "Even its name strikes fear and sizable apprehension in the hearts of all who hear it."

He didn't tell her the name right away, most likely fishing for her to ask what it was. She considered staying silent, but he always took that as an invitation to keep talking. She could tell him that she wasn't interested, but then he'd take that as a challenge to embellish what he had to say to make it so. There really was no way to shut Dandy up when he was on a roll. Except kill him. Yeah, she really should just kill him now.

"It's called a Slammerhead." He finished.

If doing so wasn't beneath her, Pearl would've snorted. "You made that up."

"Feh, you wish. This ain't no snipe hunt, baby. We're chasing down one of the most elusive and nastiest barracudas of the stars." Dandy scoffed, pointing a finger up the heavens. He then went into brisk and spotty detail about his quarry to the initially disinterested Pearl, who was becoming increasingly alarmed that the alien he was describing matched the one she and the other Gems had encountered the previous night.

As Dandy has a tendency to skip vital pieces of information and exaggerate others, it may be prudent to briefly explain the nature of Slammerheads to the extent that space zoologists understand them. Slammerheads are large, bipedal, winged creatures that fly through space alone or in small packs. Their most prominent features, as you might have guessed, are their immense, rectangular craniums used for smashing into prey, people, asteroids, spaceships, robots, restaurants, malls, pets, furniture, fine art, malls with restaurants, restaurants with malls, and foreplay. While you wouldn't want to encounter one in open space, a Slammerhead is at its most dangerous when it is entering a planet's atmosphere. Or to be precise, when it is falling through a planet's atmosphere. Animal sympathizers may be pleased to know that because of its incredibly dense and heat-resistant body, the Slammerhead will come out of this eventuality none the worse for wear. Whatever it crashes into, and everything in a three mile radius, will not.

Minerals found around these impact sites suggested that Slammerheads did this to create Lonsdaleite-a crystal they used for attracting mates-by lodging a large quantity of Graphite in their faces and then slamming into the surface of a planet headfirst. These findings caused many to regard Slammerheads as little more than wild, stupid animals; easily avoided with a good ship and easily exterminated with a high-quality laser cannon. But as the decades rolled on, those that still bothered to study these creatures began to notice that their actions weren't all that dumb in spite of how savage they seemed to be. Specifically, they had a tendency to aim for small habitations on any world they crashed on, those that didn't benefit from land-based anti-air weaponry or lay in a planetary defense system's blindspot. These towns didn't have many survivors, corpses, or objects of monetary value left by the time a Slammerhead flew back into space. It wasn't until a Slammerhead tried to get a table at Restaurant le Meteorice without a reservation, bit a waiter's head off, and then escaped with his wallet, that the galactic public realized that these acts of orbital bombardment-flavored violence weren't just brutal, but calculated. This caused a renewed interest in the species among the scientific community, who eventually passed the buck to the alien hunter set because getting up close and personal with something that was both vicious and intelligent isn't a very smart thing to do.

Slammerhead's aren't all that rare. However, due to their disturbingly high levels of aggression and sporadic moments of cunning, it is rather difficult to capture one alive for study. To sweeten the deal, some scientists may pay up to half-a-million wulongs in grant (and from the truly desperate, trust fund) money for a live specimen vis-à-vis the Alien Registration Center. Alien hunters became a lot more careful with Slammerheads from then on, though this delicacy was not reciprocated in the slightest. To capture one of these sinister, slippery monsters, it was clear that you'd need a man of formidable courage, might, and intelligence to get the job done. Ostensibly, this is where Dandy came in.

The moment he mentioned how much a live Slammerhead was worth, Pearl said with much satisfaction. "That was all very fascinating, Dandy. But I'm afraid you're out of luck. It's all ready been handled."

This brought Dandy's assortment of charades and animal noises to a merciful halt. "What? When?!"

"Last night." Pearl beamed. "Its attempt to, as you put it, 'face slam and mutilate big time' was thwarted by a group effort among the Crystal Gems as masterfully planned by yours truly." She explained, a flourish of her fingers accentuating the last of her words.

Instead of the howls of disappointment or panic she had expected of him, Dandy remained quiet as he processed her words. "Where's the body?"

"Probably at the bottom of the ocean somewhere." She said dismissively, making a show of checking her nails to stress how little she cared about him losing his prize.

She was shaken out of her display by a loud whoop from Dandy. "SCORE!" he cheered, pumping his fist into the air.

"How does that qualify as a score?!" Pear demanded. No doubt because he didn't have to do anything that required actual effort today sans departing.

"Weren't you listening, Pearl?" Dandy wagged a chastising finger at her in a way that made Pearl want to cut it off. "Slammerheads get really buoyant when they die. Something about gases and their twelve bladders turning them into cadaver balloons."

"You never mentioned that."

"Maybe, but I'm mentioning it now." Dandy said. "If its horrifying corpse hasn't washed up on shore, then it's probably underwater trying to heal up before it attacks Beach City again."

Leave it to Dandy to sabotage the beginnings of a good mood, Pearl thought. "Why would it try a second time? We all ready beat it once," Sure it turned out they had been lucky, but armed with what she nowknew about the Slammerhead, a second victory would be a certainty instead of a fluke.

"Didn't I tell y-."

"NO."

"Slammerheads are really persistent predators. If they've scoped out a settlement they want to munch on and don't succeed the first time, they'll just keep on trying until they get it right or get dead." He quickly explained.

"That's insanity."

"Or perseverance. Persistence is weird like that."

Arguably true. Pearl would have to discuss this paradox with someone more intelligent later. "Whatever the case." She began, looking behind Dandy to see how far along the others, specifically Garnet and Amethyst, were with putting the Aloha-Oe back in position. "It's no longer your concern." There was a muted, earthy splash as the Aloha-Oe's landing gear hit the sand, followed by the dusting of palms and quiet applause coming from QT and Meow. "Goodbye Dandy." She said with unmistakable finality, lowering her leg at last, but still poised to lash out with another kick if need be.

It was the out that Dandy had been praying for since he had been discovered. But the opportunity flew over his head. Or maybe he sidestepped it. Either way, he didn't move. "You know, I don't have to leave right this instant. We'd catch this thing a lot faster if we teamed up again. It'd be just like old times." he offered.

Pearl's answer was hushed, but firm. "That's what I'm afraid of."

It was faint, but Dandy heard it all the same. His stature, which had grown tall and confident with each passing moment he wasn't brutally harmed, deflated instantly with his once sanguine expression collapsing into one of subdued discomfort. He raised a hand to her as if to speak, but she cut him off.

"This isn't the first time I've had to clean up one of your messes, but I promise you, it will be the last," she took in a deep breath. What she wouldn't give to just feel anger and anger alone without all these other emotions dulling the blade of her consternation. "So leave. I know that's one thing you're good at."

Now she wasn't even looking at him anymore. "All right." Dandy muttered, bringing a hand to his communicator. "I guess this was a huge mistake after all."

"At least that's something we can agree on." Pearl noted, staring in the direction of the temple. Steven had probably reached it by now and doubtless, he'd want her to explain this whole ghastly episode to him. "Shouldn't you be walking back to your ship?"

"Hang on, I'm just turning on the engines." Dandy explained as he pressed a few buttons on his bracelet. "Warming them up so I can leave quicker once we get on the ship." His spirits briefly rose as he remembered how he had used this remote control function to freak out those naysayers a few hours ago.

As if to verify this statement, the spherical backend of the Aloha-Oe sputtered to life. The graphene rings around its surface were starting to light up. There was a gentle hum filling the air as the craft's systems were roused from sleep. Sure, there was a thin trail of smoke coming out from it, but no one but Pearl was all that worried.

"Um…Dandy?"

"I'm going, I'm going," he assured, his back still turned to the Aloha-Oe. "Just need to make a couple more adjustments and it'll be online before you can say-."

*POshZZZZZZzzzzzzzBAM!*

'Explosion' is a very loaded word, full to bursting in fact. Ever since its creation, it has been a source of unending anxiety. When someone hears the word 'explosion', what immediately comes to mind are the understandable questions of "How close?" and "How large?" The second of these is actually the more important of the two as without it being solved the assumed answer is always 'ENORMOUS'. So if one were to read, "The engine of the Aloha-Oe exploded", the first thing to come to mind would be an enormous blast wave engulfing everyone around it and perhaps the rest of Beach City. Lots of heat, a little screaming, and total annihilation.

It is thus prudent to mention that while there was a very loud and sudden explosion that made Amethyst, Meow, and QT duck for cover, it wasn't all that big; a flash, a bang, and more smoke coming out of the new medium-sized hole on its spherical surface. If you wanted specifics from someone familiar with spaceship maintenance like Pearl or QT, they'd tell you that the lack of a completely destroyed spaceship was indicative of mild internal damage; the spacecraft equivalent of blowing a gasket or something equally, but not catastrophically, vital.

Dandy, who had brought his hands up to protect his face and hair after hearing the sound, lowered his arms to survey the damage and immediately understood. Thus proving that you didn't need to be a rocket scientist to know that the Aloha-Oe wasn't going anywhere.

"Erm…would you guys mind us staying at your place for a couple of days?"

After arriving home, Steven resisted the urge to look out the window to see what was going on. He had even decided against looking back as he rode Lion, who was now gobbling up the last of Meow's pizza in a corner, home. It wasn't because of a cessation of interest, but more out of respect - and just a little bit of fear - of Pearl. He suspected that whatever happened between her and Dandy was not something she wanted him to see. Had he not resisted that urge, he might've seen her coming.

"Why isn't this door locked?!" she demanded, slamming and locking it behind her as she entered.

Because we never really lock it, he wanted to say. But seeing that she was alone, what came out was, "What about Garnet and Amethyst?"

There was a knock at the door.

Blushing, Pearl turned the nob to let her fellow Crystal Gems in.

"Tsk. Tsk. 'Fraid that'll be coming out of your paycheck, Jeeves." Amethyst reprimanded.

"Now's not the time for that, Amethyst." Pearl said as she shut the door. "Now is the time to board up the windows and bolt in those dead-locks I've been meaning install."

For their own reasons, Amethyst and Steven didn't take this very well. Amethyst groaned because she didn't appreciate the extra tedium. Steven found it worrisome because something that could drive Pearl to such precautions and not make her instantly hysterical was probably a force to be reckoned with. "Are we being attacked by zombies?" he asked fearfully.

Despite her irritable frustration nary a moment before, the tone of Pearl's response was more firm than ferocious. "No Steven, not today," she said. "And I can assure you, this isn't a permanent arrangement. It's only until Dandy's ship gets…fixed."

"Did you break it?" Steven asked despite knowing what the answer would be.

Pearl might've gone into great detail about technicalities and the allocation of blame had Garnet not replied for her. "Yup."

"ANYWAY." Pearl said, casting an unusually harsh look in Garnet's direction. "We should grab the boat and head back to the beach. I can fix the engine with QT after we take care of the…Slammerhead. I can't believe that's actually what it's called. It's so unscientific. Then Dandy will be gone and we can put this whole thing behind me. Us. Behind us."

No one moved, at least, not in the way Pearl wanted them to. Garnet crossed her arms, Amethyst plopped herself into the sofa and did her best to sink into it as far as deeply as she could, and Steven was looking away and scratching his head, preparing himself for what he'd say next.

"Why?" Steven asked.

"Because he's a moron and a menace who is best forgotten." She answered curtly.

"Okay," Steven acquiesced, even though Dandy didn't seem to be all that bad. A little petty and full of himself, but not exactly a menace. "But why do you know him?"

"That's irrelevant." Pearl said.

Amethyst snorted. "If it's so 'irrelevant', then I guess it doesn't really matter if we get rid of him or not."

"That does matter!"

"How?" Garnet asked sternly. Pearl's fierce stance faltered under her gaze, but refused to wilt completely. "Pearl, please. Help us understand."

Pearl groaned. She really didn't want to do this. To explain was to recall and to recall demanded that in some small way, she'd have to relive the titanic farce she had been a part of. "Remember that…incident from eight years ago? When I was dragged into space during our battle with the Shatterlite?"

That got Amethyst's attention. "Oh yeah, that creepy metal grubbing monster gem. You know it only dragged you up there because you wouldn't let go like me and Garnet told you to." She fondly remembered constantly pelting Pearl with 'I told you so' for hours after she had returned.

'Garnet and I,' Pearl wanted to correct, but more than that, she desired to be done with this as quickly as possible. "It turned out there was an old star drive in the junkyard it was arming itself in. When we broke through the upper atmosphere, the Shatterlite warped us somewhere far away from Earth."

Steven was aghast. His mind raced as it tried to remember that far back. Pearl had always seemed to be there for him. Mostly. Had he taken that fact for granted? Was that the reason he hadn't noticed her vanishing from the town? From the planet? He did vaguely recall Amethyst and Garnet telling him that Pearl was on a "special mission" after he had asked where she was, but that was pretty much it.

Pearl continued. "My body couldn't hold out and I retreated into my Gem. Eventually, almost instantly, it was picked up by Dandy. No doubt so he could pawn, sell, or hoard it." She paused to give Steven a look of unbridled, bittersweet affection. "Imagine my relief at finding out that not a lot of time had passed while I was in stasis." Soon after, an unmistakable harshness replaced this serene melancholy. "After a brief…altercation, wherein he tried to get me registered."

"Like marriage registered?" Amethyst asked.

"NO! I mean, no…nothing like that." Pearl cleared her throat, which was free of any sort of obstruction. "After he FAILED to do that, we made a deal of sorts."

"Just like that?" Garnet stated, more than inquired.

"Yes."

If anyone could've peered through Garnet's thick visor, they might've seen the beginnings of skepticism playing at her brow. "He tried to get you…registered, failed to do that, and then you just made a deal with him."

"More or less, that is what happened." Pearl said. "The arrangement was simple. He'd help me find and capture the Shatterlite and I'd help him apprehend whatever rare aliens we encountered along the way."

Amethyst could never be bothered to remember all, or most, of the names the others assigned to the wretches they fought, but she could always recall when they came out of fights empty-handed. "But you never caught the Shatterlite. You said so yourself after you came back." She looked to Garnet, keeper of the room where they contained the dormant remains of their vanquished foes, who nodded.

"So you can probably guess how that arrangement turned out." She seemed much older and more tired in countenance than when she began. "We went our separate ways and I eventually got back to the temple. As I said, I was glad not a lot of time had passed. Just a month or so longer than half-a-year." she finished. Thankfully, this appeared to be enough for Garnet and Amethyst. Her explanation had been sensible and clear, if a little brief. They'd know that she had told them the truth. Well, most of the truth, essentially the entirety of what had transpired. That was enough. It should've been enough. Steven seemed to think otherwise.

"Why did he want to catch rare aliens?"

Pearl ran a hand down her face. She could deal with this. She could answer one or two more questions. "It's because he's an alien hunter, Steven. He travels to faraway worlds, encounters rare and exotic alien beings…and then captures them for money."

"Like a Hokey-Mon poacher!" Steven noted.

"I suppose?" Pearl said, unsure of how comfortable she was of having her weird and exhausting misadventures compared to the lighthearted digital exploits of truants that threw capture cubes at feral animals.

"That's pretty cool. How many did you guys catch?"

In an instant, Pearl hand's were around Steven's shoulders. She no longer looked fatigued, but alarmed, even a little afraid. "Steven, it is most certainly not cool," she said urgently. "It's why I had such a strong…reaction to seeing you so close to him at the beach."

There was a nearby chuckle. "Oh so now it's Steven's fault that your ex can't leave like you wanted him to?"

Steven hoped that this wasn't the case. "So he's an alien hunter, what's that got to do with me? He didn't manage to register you." He pointed out.

"That's because I'm a Gem, Steven. For whatever reason, the Alien Registration Center doesn't accept beings that are primarily mineral or vegetable," she explained, tapping the large, oval pearl on her forehead.

"Then why should I worry? I'm a Gem too."

"Steven, you're HALF-gem and HALF-human. You're a hybrid." At this, the grip she had on Steven's shoulders tightened. "And the only one in existence. That's ambrosia to any alien hunter's pocketbook. Especially one as greedy and unscrupulous as Dandy,"

Steven hadn't thought of that. He hoped that Dandy hadn't either. There were some very telling differences between him and the other Gems if you knew what to look for. There was also a second hope, a little smaller, but one that ached to be expressed. Who knew? It might even calm Pearl down. "Maybe he's changed over the last eight years."

The edge in her voice returned. "I doubt it." she looked at the door with nervous suspicion. "That's why we need you to stay behind, here, at the temple. You have to promise me that you won't set one foot out that door until we get back, okay?" Pearl pleaded.

"Pearl, I really don't think-."

"Steven…please. Please promise me."

Her gaze was on him again. It was sorrowful, frustrated, and impossible to resist. "All right, Pearl. I promise."

Pearl's face brightened. "Good," she sighed with relief as she stood up and took her hands off of his shoulders. "Just stay where Lion can reach you and you can do anything you want. You can make yourself some snacks, read books, watch TV, play games, and if something does manage to break in, you can always use the warp pad to flee," she tried to skirt past the last of those options. "It shouldn't come to that though. We'll take Dandy, QT, and that cat thing with us on our search and I won't let any of them out of my sight."

"Yeah, that might be a problem."

Had that come from anyone other than Garnet, Pearl might've waved it off or ignored it completely. But Garnet had said those words, and that brought a charley horse to the popliteal fossa of her rising spirits.

"It might be a tight fit, but I think we could all fit on the boat. Amethyst and I can shrink down if need be." She assured, hoping that was what Garnet was referring to.

Garnet shook her head, dashing those hopes. "That's not the problem. I can't see when he's around."

"I know he's a bit of an eyesore, but I don't think he's obnoxious to the point of blinding. He comes close though." She laughed nervously. Garnet did not join in. Instead she pointed to the upper centermost portion of her shades, the part of the accessory that shielded her third eye. "You can't be serious." Pearl sputtered. Regretfully, Garnet nodded. "No, no, no, no. How? Why?!"

It was always painful for Garnet to see her friend in such a frantic and confused state. It was almost as painful as not being able to provide an answer or solution that would snap her out of it. "When I arrived at the beach, I kept trying to use my powers to see what the future had in store for this…Dandy," she said, leaving out the little detail that she wanted to see all the myriad of ways things could go wrong for him once Pearl finally arrived.

"He negated your clairvoyance?" Pearl asked, horrified. Steven and Amethyst were similarly shocked.

"No, it was more like using it around him created this weird sort of sensory feedback. Looking directly at him was like…there was a…Dandy-shaped distortion where he was supposed to be," she explained. 4D white noise was never pleasant. It was very much like all your senses had been taken out of your body and then dragged across a desert made of sandpaper. Even trying to explain it was giving her a headache. And this wasn't even going into all the other weird inconsistencies she had seen like the oceans filled with hair and the burning tetrahedron clouds. "The closer he got, the worse it became."

"How near does he need to be for this to happen?!"

"Not much." Garnet stated bluntly. "Even now, I'm still getting a bit of interference."

"Well isn't that just TYPICAL!" Pearl growled, throwing her arms up in the air. "He manages to ruin everything by just being there!"

"How do you think that's possible?" Steven asked. Garnet's powers of perception weren't perfect, but as far as he knew, they had never outright failed before.

"Oh what does it matter?!" Pearl yelled. "I guarantee that the explanation is something embarrassing and inane. He probably stuck his foot in a tachyon toilet or burned himself with a hadron hairdryer!"

Amethyst was pretty sure that neither or those things actually existed and the other pieces of reality-altering furniture Pearl started to list seemed equally implausible. "So you've got a plan to get around that, right?" Amethyst asked. "Because I'm not too wild about going in blind against something that survived a rocket Garnet knuckle sandwich."

This brought an end to Pearl's histrionics. "A plan?"

"Duh. You've always got one and it is kind of your fault that Garnet's powers are glitching out since you did wreck Dandy's ship."

"I know that!" Pearl screeched. "I just-I-I-I-!" she was breathing heavily now, her hands gripping the sides of her hair in worry. "I need time to think." she said, trying to mask the pleading in her voice; pleading for time, answers, and the return of chances and certainties now lost to her. "I need time to think!" she almost screamed as she ran for the door that lay beyond the warp pad. Before anyone could stop her, the portal had slammed shut.

For the next few minutes, Pearl didn't do much actual thinking. There was a powerful urge to howl at the room's ceiling and kick its wet floors, but that's not how she did things. That wasn't what she wanted to be. Instead, she settled for performing a series of quick and furious katas. They didn't give her the amount of visceral satisfaction that yelling and violence did, but she felt that she had humiliated herself enough for one day. As she gradually allowed herself to reflect on these moments of weakness, the speed and force of her actions intensified.

Reckless.

Ronde de jambe.

Impulsive.

Slash.

Shortsighted.

Plié.

What had she been thinking?

Fouetté.

Not a whole lot, that much was clear.

Kick.

And look where that had gotten her.

Retiré.

Garnet blinded.

Rond de jambe á terre.

Dandy stuck here.

Elbow.

A monster in the ocean ready to strike.

Revoltade.

Why had she done that?

Stab.

That craven reprobate looked like he would've fled if she had just looked at him harshly.

Brisé.

It was all her fault.

Sissone.

Nothing seemed to go right.

Tendu.

When she had completed the improvised dance, she was satisfied to see that the spear in her hands was completely in focus now. It had been a blurry, flickering mess when she had began and its restoration indicated that for the moment, her concentration had been restored. Still, she had to work fast. Her repertoire had helped flush out much of her self-loathing and despair, but she could feel a rising cloud of anger trying to take their place.

She took a deep breath to calm herself. Anger, however righteous it had been, was what had gotten her into this mess to begin with. She listened to the multitude of fountains elegantly arranged around her room. Letting the rhythmic melody of surging water quiet the accusations and curses stewing inside her head. Those cascading curtains of moisture couldn't give her an answer, but they gave her a structure to work towards; amorphous, chaotic components turned into something whole and polished with the right amount of force and intelligent design.

With a waver of her hand, a bubble the size of a coconut rose from the depths of the watery bloom she was standing on. She hadn't looked at its contents since she had chucked it down there eight years ago. Hidden, beyond the sight of herself and her fellow Gems, she had hoped for it and everything associated with the bauble to fade completely from memory. She knew that wasn't likely, it had been built to withstand much colder and harsher environments than this. If she had been serious about wanting it gone, she'd have destroyed it outright. Provided that she had wanted to forget everything it symbolized instead of just a significant amount of the beginning and end, she might've just done that.

She wrapped the problem around its flawed curvature and had the object gently spin in front of her. An uneven glint cast by its rotation could spark new insights and eureka might spring forth from the growing-shrinking-vanishing-growing hole at its center

Dandy couldn't come with them. That much was certain. They were almost half-a-mile from him and Garnet still couldn't use her abilities to give them even an inkling of where the…Slammerhead might be. She thought about putting him on a smaller boat and towing it behind theirs, but she still didn't know how far he needed to be for the interference to stop happening. They could always leave him on the beach and take Steven with them, but Steven couldn't fight underwater like they could and fighting the creature while trying to protect him made this option unfeasible. Knocking Dandy out, tying him up, and then burying him up to his neck in the sand until they got back was starting to look like their best option, but that might've just been the anger talking again. Besides, Dandy could be incredibly resourceful - or absurdly lucky - when he was cornered. At the same time, she couldn't just let him have the run of the place, not when Steven was still there.

Yes, Dandy was lazy and unmotivated, but trying to stop him from doing something was a surefire way to make him try it. Provided of course, it wasn't too much trouble. So they couldn't possibly bring him along on the hunt, but letting him go free was a terrible idea. She needed him contained, but he had to be tricked into wanting to be contained. Actually, that wasn't entirely true. Things would probably go a lot smoother if she could get him contained without him knowing he was being contained. No, that'd be impossible. She didn't think much of his intelligence, but even she knew that Dandy wasn't so mentally inept as to not notice he was being confined. "But what if…" she wondered out loud. "What if he was trapped somewhere he wouldn't mind being stuck in? Like a pit bursting with money, or a penitentiary with an all-you-can-eat buffet, or a labyrinth full of supermodels, or his-."

That's when she saw it. Not in the brass. Not in the hole. It was in the gash. The miniature ravine that was simultaneously shallow and impossibly deep. The plan, no, the scheme she sought lay there in the rip where everything had fallen apart. The solution it housed was simple, utilitarian, and just a little bit stupid.

"How appropriate," she thought bitterly. But first, she'd need to gather a few things.

"-so you understand? It's extremely important that you do." Pearl asked as they neared the disabled spacecraft.

"For the last time, yes, I get it." Amethyst used one of her hands to lightly chop at the side of her neck as proof. "Why aren't you bugging Garnet about this a trillion times?"

"That's because I know that Garnet was listening to me." Pearl explained, turning to her taller comrade for confirmation.

Garnet shrugged, causing the sailboat she was carrying on her shoulder to bob up and down. "I got the broad strokes."

Pearl hoped that was just Garnet using her usual stoicism to act cheeky. "Well that will have to do," she said as they rounded the front of the Aloha-Oe to see Dandy and his crew standing by the shoreline. Garnet and Amethyst were less surprised than Pearl when they saw what QT was wearing. "QT…why are you wearing a fishing vest?"

"Oh, this?" QT tugged at the side of his dark green garment. "That's because I've taken up fishing as a hobby. It's actually really fun," he explained, raising the fishing rod in his other hand.

Pearl blinked. That was news to her. He hadn't been interested in much of anything besides cleaning things and making snide remarks when she had seen him last. "What about the sunglasses and baseball cap?"

"Those are just to complete the look." QT answered, tipping the brim of his hat.

In contrast to QT getting dressed for the occasion, Dandy's appearance was largely unchanged. Save for a big goofy grin on his face.

"What are you so happy about?" Pearl tried to sound more curious than harsh. On reflection, it was a question worth asking. He really didn't have a benign reason to be glad. His ship was grounded, she had refused him lodging at the temple, and as far as he knew, he was going to have to chase after something angry and dangerous. A smile like that could only mean that something worse was about to happen or was happening to someone else. Come to think of it, Meow wasn't anywhere to be found.

Instead of answering, Dandy let out a rough giggle as he reached behind him. There was a yelp of protest as he yanked Meow to the forefront for all of them to see. And there was so much of Meow to see. At least, everyone thought so. The only indications that this big, fluffy mass of untidy curls and shocks of fur was Meow at all were the clothes all of the fuzz was sticking out of and its angry yellow eyes. None of the Gems knew what to make of it. Then one of his ears twitched, causing a swift and very visible pulse of hairy movement to cascade from it.

"Heh." Garnet snicked.

This was more than enough to set Amethyst off. "HAHAHAHAHAHA!" she laughed, doubling over, but making sure she never lost sight of Meow.

Dandy and QT were next, oblivious or uncaring of their crewmate's growing annoyance at the situation. Pearl's cheeks were puffed with air as they tried to stop her from expressing an impolite storm of vocal schadenfreude.

"It's not funny!" Meow protested as the laughter persisted. "It's not my fault! It's the damn humidity!"

Seeing the angry pink triangle flash into being amidst the bulb of fluff where Meow's head used to be was too much and Pearl finally joined the others in mocking him. This was fantastic, she thought as the guffaws shrank into chuckles. This was just the cover she needed for her temperament to do a complete 180 with Dandy being none the wiser. It helped that seeing Meow ring like a giant wooly bell was genuinely funny to her. "How did this even happen?" she asked, the words tinged with the ghost of a giggle.

Dandy wiped a mirthful tear from his eye. "We hosed him down after you left to get rid of the slobber. And once he got dry-," he motioned to the very visible results and let out another guffaw.

"Why didn't you just lick the spit off?" Amethyst asked. It's what she would have done in cat form.

Meow gagged. Or maybe he spat. It was hard to tell with how puffy his face area was. "Lick it off? Gross! That'd be like I was frenching the damn lion!"

"She's got a point, Meow." QT chided. "How many people can honestly say that they made out with the KING of the Jungle?"

That got another chuckle from the Gems.

"Oh, so you think that's funny, do ya?!" Meow demanded as he furiously rubbed his paws together. "Well lets see how you three like it!" he threatened. The two furry nubs parted, both extremities now crackling with a modest electric charge.

Garnet tilted the boat on her shoulder so that the gunwale was pointing directly at the irked Betelgeusian. "Don't make me use this."

Meow could just picture Garnet's magnificent square afro exploding into a Bride of Frankenstein beehive at his touch. It was so easy to imagine Amethyst's wild locks being frozen into a hideous purple cloud attached to her scalp. Pearl wouldn't be that affected by it, but she seemed to be the type to have a Dandy-tier conniption over a few frayed ends. Alas, his anger wasn't great enough to shove aside his fear of being impaled by a sailboat. He grumbled, and then tapped Dandy and QT's shoulders with his paws, sending an unwelcome jolt into his unsuspecting cohorts.

"That wasn't nice!" QT complained, readjusting his glasses.

"Yeah, don't take it out on us." Dandy chastised as he rubbed his arm. Of course, Meow all ready had and his subsequent laughter at his petty retribution caused all the frazzled hairs on his body to tremble in pleasure.

Dandy was pretty annoyed when the Gems followed suit, though he was grateful that their merriment wasn't as loud or as long as it had been when he had shown them the new and expanded Meow. In addition, now that he and QT weren't laughing along with everyone else, he could actually hear Pearl's laughter among those of the four. It was a light and melodious sound that was just a little bit haughty; not haughty in a snobbish way, mind you. It was a laugh that said, "I really shouldn't, but I absolutely must and I feel deliciously objectionable because of it." A little irritating if it was directed at you, but Dandy thought it was a nice change of pace from her angry and dismal shrieks from a few hours ago. That had to be a good sign, right?

"Well now that we've got that all out of our systems." Dandy said after the laughter had died down. "Let's get that fancy, magic tub of yours into the sea and hunt us a Slammerhead."

"Um…Dandy?" Pearl said. "Don't you think that you should fix your hair first?"

Dandy raised a hand to check. Meow's little static prank had caused several shocks of hair to spring out of the less heavily gelled areas of his scalp. "Yeah, that's a bit annoying, but I don't see the point in fixing it. I mean, present company excluded," he winked at Pearl and the other Gems. "Who'd there be to impress out there in open water?"

"Mermaids." Pearl stated.

"Mermaids?"

Pearl nodded. "Beach City has had a long history of mermaid sightings since it was founded. I've never seen one myself, but from what I've heard, they're quite fetching."

He suddenly felt very self-conscious about his untidy hairdo. "QT, is that true?"Dandy asked the bespectacled robot.

"Let me check." QT said as he scanned the outernet with his processors to verify or debunk Pearl's claim. "There certainly are a lot of stories about mermaids being spotted around this area."

Meow scoffed, launching a burst of dander from his new pink triangle mouth. "You can't seriously believe any of that. This is a coastal town; of course it's going to have tall tales about sea monsters and ocean babes."

"Stranger things have happened to us, Meow. And we've seen plenty of actual mermaids out there in space." Dandy reminded as he tried to bring his errant streaks of hair down with no success. "None of them single though."

"Even if there were any on this planet, they wouldn't have…y'know." Meow paws came to his hips and proceeded to do some downward fanning motions.

"Some guys get their kicks above the waistline, feline." Dandy said, pressing a button on his communicator. A moment later, a large metal platform lowered itself from the Aloha-Oe's keel. "I'll just be a second."

"Just to be on the safe side, make sure you bring along lots of extra hair gel." Pearl offered as Dandy stepped onto the loading pad. "The saltwater air can play havoc on your locks."

Part of the alien hunter knew that he should've been at least a little bit suspicious of how nice and helpful Pearl had suddenly become. However, that part of him was rarely any fun. The way Dandy saw it, people complained about bad crap happening to them all of the time. Then when things started to look up, those same people had the temerity to question their good fortune. Best to enjoy the joyride while there was gas in the tank, regardless of how inexplicable or unearned the trip was. "Thanks, Pearl," he grinned in appreciation as he was lifted up. Pearl smiled back and kept smiling until the platform was completely raised back into the ship. Then she snapped her fingers.

Meow and QT didn't really understand what happened afterwards. It occurred with such speed that they could barely claim to have experienced it. For the next few seconds, there was a continuous ripping sound as Pearl, Garnet, and Amethyst leapt, weaved, and ran across the entirety of the Aloha-Oe. When the Gems were done, the two bounty hunters were startled to see that there was a frighteningly enormous amount of duct tape tied around the circumference of their ship and some of its other sections on the side.

"I can't believe he fell for your forced acting." Amethyst smirked as she surveyed their handiwork.

"I can't believe there were people feverish enough to mistake you for a mermaid." Pearl shot back.

"You're the one that called her fetching." Garnet pointed out as she lifted the sailboat she had dropped at the start of the maneuver back onto her shoulder.

QT reviewed the footage of what he had just seen, getting an idea of what they did, but not why. "Um, what was that all about?" he asked.

Pearl turned to face him. "I'm going to be quick, so listen up. Garnet has heightened powers of perception that can help us find the Slammerhead faster. For reasons I'm too livid to contemplate right now, Dandy's very presence causes those powers to short out. We can't bring him along, but I don't want him stirring up trouble, so we've locked him in there."

"There's no way that'll hold him once he finds out you what you did." QT meekly protested.

"Why do you think we didn't cover up any of the windows?" Pearl asked. QT looked behind her. Indeed, all of the ship's windows were free of tape. Which was just as well, since none of them could afford you a decent view of the ship itself. It was almost as if they were positioned in such a way as to prevent the Aloha-Oe's crew from seeing how cruddy the ship they were flying in was while they were inside of it. "Let's face it, if Dandy had an excuse not to come along so he could kick back and relax while we did his work for him, he'd take it." Neither Meow nor QT could refute that point. "If he thinks he can't come along, he won't because he never wants to. So these are your choices: Immortal Psychic Veteran Warrior who has vanquished countless foes over several millennia," she gestured toward Garnet. "Or Dandy." at this, she just wagged her palm at them.

A choice such as this would've been a no-brainer if the situation was as simple as it implied. The former, please, please, please, give me the former. I actually want a decent chance of success this time around, they'd say. And yet, while they didn't doubt that Garnet was every bit as mighty as Pearl said she was, none of the Gems would have to deal with a very peeved Dandy if he ever found out about the deception.

As they mulled over their options, there was a groan from the bottom of the Aloha-Oe as the platform tried to lower itself to no avail. It tried again a second time, then a third.

Meow's communicator started to beep. "Y-yeah?" he answered.

"Meow? I can't seem to get the landing pad down. Is something out there blocking it?" Dandy's voice asked from the bangle.

"N-nothing I can see." Meow replied. It was true in a way. Being tied up wasn't the same as being obstructed, right?

"I'm gonna try the-." There was a mechanized retching from another heavily duct taped part of the ship. "No, the air lock's stuck too." Then came a banging from one side of the ship, followed by a lesser banging from the one not facing the group. "Starboard and portside doors ain't budging either. Huh."

"It's probably because the ship got damaged when Pearl flipped it over." QT said, trying to allay Dandy's burgeoning suspicions.

"I guess that makes sense." Dandy said. "At least the backup generator still works." From Meow's communicator, the murmur of sports statistics, followed by a lover's quarrel, and the declaration of a Hrogbeast Parfait's completion indicated that the television was also functioning properly

"You want us try and uh-," the Betelgeusian looked to Pearl for guidance. She nodded. He didn't get what that meant, so he decided to wing it. "-try and get you out of there? QT says it could take a while."

The cooking show audio was replaced by the sound of gunfire and the skidding of tires. Hardly the tense, pensive pause Pearl thought would crop up once she maneuvered Dandy to this juncture. "Nah, just get me out of here once you guys are done. I think I've had enough excitement for one day," he said. "Besides, you've got Pearl to watch your backs. You'll be fine."

Since he was really just trying to slack off, Pearl tried not to feel complimented by what Dandy had said. She leaned forward to speak into Meow's communicator, trying to sound flattered, because she most definitely wasn't. "Don't worry, Dandy. We'll catch that Slammerhead of yours in no time," she assured, ending the transmission before Dandy or Meow had a chance to say anything more.

"Wait a second. Catch? I thought we were gonna make sure he left the planet empty ha-rahaughk!" Amethyst's puzzled inquiry was interrupted by Pearl wrapping her arm around her neck in an act of faux-camaraderie.

"Ohohoho, that's Amethyst for you!" Pearl tightened her chummy hold. "Always such a kidder!" she laughed nervously, ignoring struggles of the aforementioned 'kidder'.

The two individuals she was trying to fool couldn't find it in themselves to be alarmed by this blatant deception. Meow simply wanted this day to be over. For him to board the Aloha-Oe, away from prying and judgmental eyes as he worked to get his fur back under control. QT was just itching to get some actual fishing done. It had been months since he had caught his last wall-hanger and Dandy staying behind would make their vessel less of a cattle boat. Best case scenario, even if you took inflation into account, half-a-million wulongs was still a hell of a lot more than thirty pieces of silver. And if worse came to worst, they'd have front row seats to the Gems flashily beating one of the most unpleasant creatures in the universe to death.

There were no objections when Garnet lowered the boat into the water and urged those assembled to get inside of it. Once everyone had boarded, she pushed it past the shallows before effortlessly vaulting onto it herself. Pearl was immeasurably pleased that things were finally going smoothly. As a sore and still grumbling Amethyst unfurled the sails, Pearl couldn't help but think that the day might not wind up a total disaster after all.

Steven raised his fingers to play with a dot of light that had managed to squeeze through the boards the Gems had nailed to all of the windows. He derived some amusement from thinking that the rays were running across his palm as he turned it. The house was rather dark after its heavy and hasty fortification. He thought about turning on the lights, but it just seemed like a waste when there was a bright sunny day just outside the door. Plus, it wasn't dark enough that it was impossible to see.

"Alley-oop," he cried as he got off of the couch. He then started to walk around the room, whistling all the way in an effort to fill the place with some kind of sound. Perhaps he could trick himself into thinking he was doing something fun or productive. He might even manage to wake Lion, who was deeply occupied with one of his post-pizza naps.

He opened and closed the fridge, whose contents hadn't changed since he had made himself lunch. A few minutes were spent leafing through books and old comics; he even tried opening some of the big dusty ones that Pearl or Garnet would sometimes look at. It didn't last, he felt too distracted and restless to read. TV. TV might work, he thought as he climbed up the steps to his part of the house.

Nothing. Nothing he hadn't seen before or cared to see anyway. Just replays, reruns, and news bulletins. A second showing of the Under the Knife second season finale made him think of giving Connie a call, but he knew he'd be no fun if she picked up. So he wasn't hungry, he couldn't concentrate on reading, and there was nothing to watch on television. That left video games as the sole remaining option in Pearl's list of things he could do while he waited for the Gems to come back.

He groaned. Great, now he was thinking about how troubled and exhausted she had looked. Even when she had exited her room and calmly told them her plan, he could still sense the anger and stress rumbling beneath her cool façade. But that was nothing compared to the colossal melancholy that hung from her every word and action since she had confronted Dandy. Steven couldn't believe that not being able to catch that Shatter-thing would be enough to fill Pearl with so much sadness, even if she had a habit of taking things too seriously sometimes. To carry such pain for all this time without telling him or her closest friends, clearly there was something she wasn't telling them. Maybe she'd never tell them.

As Steven loaded the Dogcopter 3 tie-in game into his console, he tried to tell himself that further contemplation wouldn't help. Yes, it was a shame that he'd probably never find out what had happened between Dandy and Pearl. There was nothing he could do though. Given how reluctant she was to glance over even a smidgen of their history, it was unlikely that Pearl was going to tell him more. And the only other person that could shed some light on this shady matter was unwittingly trapped in his own ship.

As he picked up the controller, Steven noticed that the house's meager illumination was gradually turning pink. He turned his attentions to the common room, certain that Lion was the source only to see a pinprick of rose colored light suspended in the air. The radiant dot before him began to unfold, creating a tall fan of pure luminescence that expanded and contracted along unknowable contours until it hit the ground. Steven soon realized that this sheet of energy was shaped like a person. The moment he recognized this, the light had dissipated, leaving behind a familiar and unexpected presence.

"Say," Dandy said, pointing to the game that Steven was no longer paying any attention to. "That multiplayer?!"

Pearl grimaced as she stared out of the cockpit window. According to the ship's badly organized logs, this was where she had been picked up. This was where the Shatterlite had passed through. Now there was nothing at all. No traces to follow, no clues she could pick up. Nothing.

She brought her hands to her face in frustration. It couldn't end this way. She hadn't clung to the abomination so fiercely just to let it run rampant throughout the cosmos. The cosmos…oh she couldn't bear to look at it. It was too distracting. She needed to focus; she needed to think.

Once she had gotten back on the ship, her first course of action was to continue her pursuit of the corrupted Gem, but the trail had gone cold if it had ever been warm at all. Carelessly, she wondered how long she had spent drifting out there in open space, surrounded by a galaxy she treasured, but couldn't see. She immediately regretted it. Untold years might've passed while she was in stasis. The computer was a hassle to sort through, but if she tried, she could find out the year, provided they still had years whenever she was. She should've done that first. The Earth might not even exist anymore. Amethyst, Garnet, and…Steven might've left for a different world. Or maybe they hadn't, she suppressed a sob. Or maybe they hadn't managed to-.

The opening and closing of sliding doors interrupted her thoughts.

"Sup?" a bothersome voice frivolously asked.

Pearl's hands fell away and she looked back to address the nuisance. It was the scoundrel that had tried to capture her! She tensed in anticipation of another attack.

"Whoah, whoah, whoah." He made a tapping gesture with his left hand, the one with the bracelet, as if he was trying to shoo away a bothersome dog instead of a potential attacker. "Easy. I didn't come here for a fight, baby."

Baby?

Not missing a beat, he went to the minifridge next to the pilot seat and pulled out a can of beer. "Regular fridge is empty," he explained. There was a hiss as he pulled the tab down to open it.

"Wh-what took you so long to get here?" Pearl asked, puzzled.

"It was too early for a nightcap," he said nonchalantly.

"That's not what I'm talking about. I-I-," Pearl dragged a palm across her face as she tried to find the words that could bring this deranged moment under the heel of sanity. "I commandeered your ship."

"Comman-whu?"

"That means I took it from you," she explained.

"So you're saying you stole it?" Pearl had the good grace to look a bit bashful as she nodded in response. "I hadn't noticed," he shrugged.

"You didn't notice it flying around without you or your little robot friend at the controls?" Pearl warily asked. She suspected that he was being facetious, but given how truly foolish he had acted back when they were at that 'Alien Registration Center', she couldn't be sure.

"I wouldn't call QT my friend, but that's about right."

"Okay, but now that you have noticed and now that you do know, what are you going to do about it?"

The man scratched his prominent chin and . "I dunno. What do you think I should do?"

This nearly caused Pearl to fall out of her purloined seat. "Um, uh," she grappled with how best to respond to such a question. The others wouldn't have had such a hard time with this. Amethyst would have just brashly kicedk this guy out of the airlock and Garnet would have fixed him one of those cold, sublime stares of hers until he got the message. "I wouldn't recommend fighting me for it. Especially when you're well within striking distance," she offered politely. As bizarre as this conversation was turning out to be, she was confident that at this range, his little fishing rod gadget would be near useless, while her own precise blows would be devastating.

"Good point," the man conceded. "You did manage to punch your way through that super tough diamond glass. Not a lot of aliens can pull that off. Why, I remember this one time I caught a Wuzraition. After I finally got it in that canister, it got super peeved and tried to get out by firing a huge force beam out of its one eye. The tube came out of it perfectly fine, but its insides were slathered with Wuzraition chunks."

"Hang on, that wasn't the same canister that you put me in, was it?"

"So what if it was?"

"But you cleaned it thoroughly afterwards, right?" she asked with a hint of desperation.

There was a pause. "Define thoroughly."

"Ah," Pearl gulped, remembering how she had slammed her shoulders, legs, and…and face into the glass. Repeatedly. "Ah…AH!"

"Tragedy at its starkest. Didn't get a single wulong out of that," he said wistfully.

Pearl shivered in horror. "I-I think I'm going to be sick."

"That's impossible. You don't have organs."

"It's a mental disgust!" she shot back.

"While we're on the subject of mental disorders, do you actually have any idea where you're going?" the man asked, putting his open beer on top of the minifridge to free up both his hands.

"That depends," Pearl rubbed her left bicep uncertainly, steeling herself for the terrible revelation she might receive. "How is the Earth doing?"

"How would I know?"

She definitely wasn't prepared for that. "You're a human being! How wouldn't you know? Isn't that where you're from?!"

"Ehhhh, a bit, but not really," he brought his right thumb and index close together without letting them touch to illustrate. "I'm more of an aficionado of Earth culture than a bonafide citizen."

"I could tell," she stated, remembering the palm tree and all the Hawaiian and Japanese memorabilia she had passed on her way to the cockpit. "Doesn't that mean you should know whether or not it's still around though?"

"All right, fine, keep your tights on," he walked towards the cockpit's doors, causing them to slide apart. "HEY QT!" he shouted through the opening.

"YEAH?!" a high-pitched synthesized voice from the other side answered.

"WHAT'S THE STATUS OF PLANET EARTH?!"

"ONE SEC! Uh-huh, hm, ah, IT'S FINE!"

"THANKS!" the man yelled, before closing the door.

"That's a relief." Pearl sighed, though there was still one more question she needed answered for that to be completely true. "What year is it?"

This, the man didn't hesitate to answer. "Space Century 0006."

"Thank goodness." Pearl felt like laughing. She hadn't been gone that long after all!

"Geez, if you wanted to get back to Earth so bad, why'd you fly us here? This place is even further from it than the Alien Registration Center was."

"That's because-," she hesitated. "One moment, before I go any further, how are you even here?"

"QT picked me up with Aloha-Oe's big old claw arms, same as you," he reminded her. "I would've preferred that he zap us back, but the teleporter's been broken since forever, so what're you gonna do?"

Pearl was going to suggest he fix it, but if the thought hadn't occurred to him by now, chances were he'd never care enough to bother. "That's…but the no oxygen and the freezing and the-whatever," she gave up. "If you must know, I came here looking for the Shatterlite."

"What's a Shatterlite?"

"Not a Shatterlite, THE Shatterlite," she stressed. "It's this…um…dangerous alien my friends and I were trying to capture. I thought I could pick up its trail if I came back to where you found me, but no such luck," she slumped into the chair.

A heavy, metal-soled boot slammed into the ship's helm, smashing her stupor wide open. "Well why didn't you say so from the beginning?!" the man asked, leaning into his propped up leg to look down at her. "If it's a chase you're on, I'll have you know that you're in the presence of an honest-to-goodness alien hunter!"

Pearl tried to gingerly back away from his gaze, but the seat she was in wasn't designed for that. "Far be it from me to question your qualifications, but how would you go about finding it? Fly around without a clue and hope you stumble across its hiding place?"

"Almost crashed into it before," he boasted. "And I wasn't even looking for it back then."

Pearl considered this for a moment."Look, Luck or no luck, even if I did want to enlist your services, I don't think I'd be able to pay for them."

The alien hunter squinted at her with a level of scrutiny that bordered on the exaggerated. "Yeah, you don't seem to have any pockets in that getup of yours," he cupped his chin in the heel of his palm. "What to do, what to do," he pondered as he loudly and repeatedly tapped the foot still on the dash. As Pearl was starting to worry that he was damaging the controls, he snapped his fingers. "I've got it, we'll trade favors."

"Favors?"

"Yeah, quid pro quou, that sort of trade," he splayed a hand against the window. "Out there, between us and your Shatterthingie is a whole galaxy filled with rare and exotic aliens just ripe for the taking," he looked back at her with a smile. "So here's my pitch. I help you find it and in exchange, you help me catch any rare aliens we come across along the away with your freaky super strength. Sound good?"

Calling her strength freaky didn't sound good, nor did randomly zooming around space. She hadn't been up here in centuries and even if the alien hunter's continued survival indicated that he wasn't completely incompetent at navigating the stars, they still might never find it. The offer was really impractical, a foolish proposition to do a foolish thing. Pearl might have refused right then and there if the alien hunter hadn't said. "I saw how you were looking at the stars," his eyes took on a startling gentleness. "Been a while since you've seen them like that?"

"Thousands of years…" she let slip.

"Oooooo, Cougar Rock, eh?" he chortled as her face went from forlorn to indignant. "That just makes this deal even more perfect doesn't it? I get some hired muscle, and you get to explore dozens if not hundreds of worlds and star systems before coming home a hero!"

Pearl's displeasure turned to intrigue. It had been a long while since she had explored the great beyond. Hunting aliens couldn't have been all that different from what she usually did on Earth. She could travel for a few weeks with this clown and just go home if she didn't find the Shatterlite. Maybe this impromptu quest could even remove some of the built-up contempt she had for the little blue world she was stationed on.

Seeing her seriously consider his deal encouraged the alien hunter to press on. "C'mon baby, it'll be fun. I can be the Intergalactic Ishmael to your All-Star Ahab."

That was a half-decent literary reference. Maybe the man wasn't as dumb as she thought he was. "What about QT?"

"He can be Queequeg. Since that also starts with a Q." he said. "Stick with us and we'll nab that Great White Dick of yours in no time."

Pearl blushed at the double entendre. Or perhaps it had been an accidental innuendo. It was really hard to tell with this guy. "I suppose a little adventure couldn't hurt."

"That's the spirit! It'll an awesome space adventure in space." Pearl didn't know whether to laugh or groan at the redundancy of that statement. "Since we'll be partners for the foreseeable future, I think introductions are in order." He put an elbow on his raised knee and then tilted his arm so that an open hand was pointed in her direction. "The name's Dandy, but you can call me Space Dandy."

"Pearl," she said, taking his hand in her own. As her fingers closed around Dandy's, she noticed that the tear she had seen on the right sleeve of his jacket earlier was gone.

Normally, when one's ship is stolen from them, one (provided they had survived the theft) would immediately try or think of a way to take it back by force or an act of sabotage. Defying protocol, Dandy had responded to Pearl shoving him to the ground and taking the Aloha-Oe's controls for herself by having a snack. The instant ramen was a poor substitute for the buffet he had originally planned to dig into that day, but it warmed him up and sated his hunger. Then he had a lonely finger of tequila, no lemon unfortunately, before taking a nice, long shower. This was followed by him brushing his teeth, fixing his hair, applying a tasteful dab of cologne, and putting on a fresh set of clothes. He even made time to have QT polish his boots until they shone.

Pearl had no way of knowing this. Amidst a whirlwind of unexpected absurdity and bombastic negotiations, the only thing she noticed about Dandy's personage was that he looked a lot more presentable and didn't smell quite as bad. As she wondered why that was, she realized that in the process of reaching out to shake his awkwardly positioned hand, she had stood up and was no longer sitting in Dandy's chair.