"Huh? Where am I?"
That was all I kept saying to myself, over and over, since I was somewhere I couldn't see or feel. Even so, I remembered quite well that dreams weren't like this. They didn't feel like this. This didn't have the lightness or the strange logic of an ordinary dream.
I looked around, or at least I pretended to look from side to side, completely confused. That's when I realized something unsettling: I felt nothing. Nothing at all. It was strange, too strange, as if my body wasn't really there.
But then I felt something. A tug? I wouldn't know how to explain it. It was a difficult sensation to describe, like when you try to see behind your own back. You know something's there, you sense it somehow, but you can't see it or touch it, and yet the absence feels heavy, unsettling.
"Shit!" I said just before falling face-first to the ground.
...
...
I couldn't get up. My body felt strange, alien, as if it didn't belong to me. The sensation was so uncomfortable that it took me a few seconds to fully process it. Then I realized something that sent me into a panic: I didn't feel like I was breathing. I tried to inhale desperately, again and again, without success, convinced that I was suffocating.
A few minutes passed before my mind managed to process the truth. I wasn't lacking oxygen. I didn't feel the need to breathe. In fact, I didn't feel anything that used to be a part of me. There were no bone aches, nor that constant headache that used to accompany my mornings. Nor the heaviness in my eyes, worn out by fatigue; on the contrary, now they seemed to have a tremendous, almost unnatural clarity.
And that, rather than calming me, only made everything feel even more unreal.
"What happened?"
I said it while looking from side to side, noticing with growing unease that I wasn't in my house, or even close to it. The place was completely inhospitable, a vast expanse of black earth that seemed to contain no trace of life, as if the world itself had been emptied of everything that had ever existed there.
I opened my eyes in panic and clumsily backed away until I bumped into the rock behind me. The impact made me react even faster. I looked up in fear, and then I saw it. Something that forced me to open my eyes even wider than they already were. Hundreds... no, thousands of holes spread across the entire wall! Irregular perforations covered the surface as if something had pierced it again and again without control. I had no idea what had happened there, or what kind of place this was.
Until it happened.
"Ow!"
I clutched my head in despair. The pain hit me suddenly, brutal, accompanied by something worse. I felt thousands of fragments of information, facts I'd never known, crowding into my mind like a furious swarm of bees. I couldn't stop it, I couldn't understand it, I could only feel it all piling up in a chaotic mess.
I ended up on the floor, crying. Tears streamed down my face as I tried to process what was happening to me, reacting with pure shock to everything that now seemed to be a part of me.
"This... this isn't a dream, is it?"
I said it in a panic, looking around again with even greater anguish. And then I understood with terrifying clarity. This wasn't a dream. You don't feel pain in dreams. There's no such real, heavy feeling in dreams. I already knew I wasn't in my house, not even in my own world.
"Where the hell am I? What the hell did I do to end up here?"
The words tumbled out as I clutched my head tightly, unable to find a coherent response.
I wept for what might have been hours. I don't know for sure. I only remember leaning against the same wall I'd fallen from, too weak and unwilling to move. I felt no urge to run or escape; I simply didn't want to. I lay there, processing everything between sobs, tears streaming down my face, one after another, without stopping.
I looked up, my eyes still red, and glanced back again, noticing the hole I'd fallen from. I stood up, something I hadn't done since collapsing, and felt my feet felt thinner, which shouldn't have been the case based on the information that had suddenly flooded my mind. I walked slowly, tears still streaming down my face, as I stared at what looked like a drill. I recognized it in two ways: one came from the information I had just received, the lingering pain in my head, and the other from strange memories that seemed like my own... but were they really? At this rate, I felt like what I had experienced before wasn't real.
I carefully touched each rock around the hole I now knew I had emerged from, with that feeling of someone who doesn't know they've just been born.
"Am I... in Steven Universe...?" I said, not addressing anyone in particular.
I continued to stare at the hole I had come from for several seconds, as if trying to grasp the concept, the key to everything that had happened to me. I still didn't understand what was happening in that place.
I slowly looked at the reflection of what I now recognized as an injector. I observed my own reflection and noticed something that paralyzed me for a moment: I no longer had that tan skin that had been with me for 23 years. No. Now my skin was somewhere between light blue and dark blue. I was no longer a man, or well, I didn't have genitals, but my appearance certainly wasn't the most masculine I could imagine.
My gaze traveled over my white hair, almost shoulder-length, a far cry from the intense black it had once been. My eyes were the most striking feature of my appearance, aside from the clothes I was wearing. Pink? Purple? Perhaps a combination of both. A mix I honestly didn't quite understand yet.
I stared at my reflection for several more seconds, noticing fresh tears rolling down my cheeks.
"What happened to me?" I whispered, barely audible, as I tried to process the strange, overwhelming feeling of being someone I didn't fully recognize.
I looked down, examining my outfit. Based on the information that had suddenly dawned on me... well, I wasn't sure if I actually had that information. Even so, I examined every part of the outfit, and it didn't seem to match any gem I'd ever seen.
"That... this isn't right," I said, looking at myself, at this female body I didn't recognize. First, I cried for a few minutes, realizing that my third leg was gone, a change that made me sob even harder. I didn't understand why I was here, or what had happened to make all this happen.
I collapsed to the ground, exhausted, tears still streaming down my face, and yet, I continued to examine every detail of my body.
My suit was strange. There were patches of skin showing, but based on the information I'd received in my mind, this didn't resemble the suit I should have at all. Purple lines ran all over my body, like cobwebs. Suit? I wasn't sure I could even call it that, since it now seemed to be a part of me, more than something I wore. Tight, fitted to my body... but it shouldn't be like that. It should be loose, elegant, an ancient, ceremonial suit. This was nothing like it.
I looked down at my chest, wondering if what I saw was my heart, my brain... well, maybe all of those things together, mixed with something else. My eyes were fixed on the embedded stone there, glowing intensely. I stared at it for several seconds, realizing how bad my situation was.
"I'm impure, aren't I?" I whispered, not addressing anyone in particular.
I glanced to the right and then to the left, letting the remaining tears fall freely. And then I let my thoughts flow, trying to make sense of it all.
First... now I knew I was in a different world. The information that had fallen into my gem... well, let's leave that aside. Let's just say I was in Steven Universe.
Good news? There wasn't any.
Bad news? I was in Steven Universe. And nothing more, as a gem I didn't even know if I'd appeared in the show, though I did remember her name.
"Silica."
A gem primarily a worker, but also a construction squad leader. A sort of upgraded Peridot, practically speaking: high status, though slightly lower than a Sapphire. The Silicas commanded Bismuths, Pearls, Rubies, Peridots, and other gems of lower castes. They could even oversee Lapis Lazuli, though, judging by my current state, it was probably best I didn't have one by my side.
I shook my head, realizing I now had things to worry about. The first, and perhaps most urgent, was wondering what had happened to this planet. Why had they left a gem like me in this area, without restrictions or supervision?
I looked around, observing every detail more clearly. My memory seemed sharper than before, though I still shook my head, unable to process everything at once.
I was still in shock, so I decided not to overthink it and simply, using the information I'd been given, started walking toward a place that, according to my calculations, might hold answers.
I had hoped this base would have more information about this planet... or at least something to help me understand where I was and what was expected of me.
End of Chapter 1.