Three months. Three months he's been gone, and nobody knew where he was. The gems didn't know what to do except look, look everywhere they could. He wasn't anywhere though, and they were starting to panic.

They looked all over town, in any place that they could warp to, in the house, under the ocean, but he was nowhere. Greg wasn't taking this well at all, he was so upset and frustrated with everyone and everything that he didn't even leave his van. 

The gems asked the police to help. They've been looking around places the gems didn't check and have been trying their best to help. Of course there hasn't been much luck though, there never has been any. 

The police have assumed that the worse has happened to him, though they're not too sure. They haven't given up hope though and they wouldn't stop until they found him.

***

"Why does this forest even exist?" Amethyst asked in annoyance. She was tired of looking, she just wanted this search to stop and for Steven to be safe at home. "Why can't the police search for him here?"

"They're humans, Amethyst, you know that," Pearl declared, her voice tired and sad. "It's extremely late and we need to search places we haven't searched yet."

"We need to split up," Garnet said. "It'll be easier to search for him if we do that."

Pearl and Amethyst just stared at Garnet for a moment before nodding and quickly went off in seperate directions. Amethyst ran off in the left direction, and continued to move around until she didn't know where she was.

She smelled something. It smelled awful and really bad, and it was worse than any smell of any kind of rotten food she had ever eaten. The smell was so foul she wanted to gag, but at the same time, she wanted to see what it was.

"Whatever kind of rotten food that is, I so want to try it," she said, continuing to walk in the direction of the stench. The closer she got, the stronger the smell was. She started to feel a slight sense of dread wash over her as she got closer. She knew she should be looking for Steven, but she was trying to find the source of the foul odor instead.

She sighed. What was she doing? She looked down at the ground and took a deep breath, ignoring the stench that was so strong she wanted to throw up. "Steven?" Her voice echoed across the forest as she yelled his name. "You here?"

Nothing.

She gently peeked around a tree. "Steve -"

Her eyes went wide at what she saw. She couldn't hold it in, she let out a loud scream and proceeded to collapse on the ground and throw up. She couldn't even begin to process what she saw.

His body was leaning against a tree with a pool of dry blood covering the grass below. A rope was tied around the trunk of the tree that went around his neck and midsection which kept him tied to the tree in a seemingly uncomfortable way. 

His stomach was slit open, though the cut went around his gem. His insides were spilled out onto the ground and maggots and worms and all kinds of insects were crawling all over him and his body.

The flesh off one of his arms was cut off, revealing some of the bone below it. The other one had lots and lots of cuts on it and all the flesh was scraped off the hand. His left eye was completely cut out and the entire left side of his face was bone.

The middle of his head was split open and most of the insects and maggots were crawling in and out of of it. It was sick, it was so disgusting and it made Amethyst so uncomfortable. She's never seen so insects like that before, it make her feel even more sick than she already felt. 

His legs seemed to be untouched compared to the rest of his body, though they were still really bad. One of his feet was just bone and the leg appeared to be completely soaked in blood. The other one seemed to be the same, except it didn't seem as bloody as the other one.

The flesh around the parts where the rope was seemed to be a purple color and the skin seemed to be rubbed raw. Amethyst was certain that if she removed the rope it would make everything so much worse, she didn't want to even know how many bugs were below the rope or how much bone would be showing.

"Amethyst, are you okay?" Pearl asked, running toward her. "We heard you scream and -"

Pearl looked over to Steven and she completely shut down. The sight was so horrific to her, she didn't know what to do. She was so petrified, she didn't know what to do.

When Garnet came over, she immediately unfused. Nobody knew what to do, not even Garnet or Ruby or Sapphire.

Steven was gone. He suffered such a horrible death, and the fact the person who did this is still out there, getting away with what they did. It wasn't fair that Steven died like this.

It wasn't fair at all.