(Special thanks form Craftfury)

Luckily for our heroes, Lion slept in the living room when they got back. The warp pad went off, revealing Amethyst, Peridot, Pearl, Garnet, Lapis, Connie, Bismuth, and Arya. Arya made a beeline for Steven and tackled him in a hug while giving him a full-on kiss on the lips, which Steven returned. He was tackled in a hug by the rest of the gems, which Robert joined. Connie just walked past the whole thing with a disappointed, solemn look. They finally let go and Steven and Michael followed Connie outside, with Lion following suit.

"Hey, Connie, what's wrong?" Michael asked.

"You...just gave up? You didn't bother to fight?" Connie asked. "I thought you were a man!"

"I am! I just-"

"If you were, Aquamarine's gem would have been a necklace." Connie replied before turning to Steven "And don't think you're any better, We could have fused and beat her together! Instead, you just back down like two scared babies."

Steven seemed to take this a lot lighter than Michael did. "Connie, Why would you say that?" he asked. Lion and Arya came out and she held Steven's arm while Lion just watched.

"Oh, and little miss psychic could have-"

Arya slapped Connie right across the face. "I knew what you were going to say, and that's not how being a psychic works! I can't just make her crumble before my eyes. I can't throw anything at her she won't throw right back! And I can't hypnotize her if she doesn't even have a brain! And about your Stevonnie comment, if Alexandrite can't beat her, what in God's name makes you think a fusion which hasn't even been in this story can?!" Arya yelled.

Stunned silence from Connie. "Let's go, Lion" she muttered. Lion approached her and snagged the sword in her backpack. "Hey!" she cried out before Lion threw it up in the air and caught it in his mane. He then walked back to the temple nonchalantly. Connie glared at Arya. "I know what you did! You hypnotized Lion with your stupid hypno-thing!" She accused.

Arya gave a sly smirk "Connie, if I really 'hypnotized' Lion after what you just said, I'd have him do a lot worse than take a sword that wasn't even yours to begin with!" Arya said coyly before she and Steven went back inside the temple. Michael approached her. "Want me to take you home?" Michael asked sheepishly. Connie tried to glare, but for some reason, she couldn't.

"Sure, as long as you try to be a real man for me." She said as Michael wrapped his arms around her, and sprouted leaf-like wings to fly to Connie's house.

Meanwhile, Robert couldn't help but wonder what the gems thought of him after this stunt. After all, not only did he not help at all during the trial, but he believed he was the main reason they had the trial to begin with. On top of this, his friend died because of him. He sat in his room and contemplated what he should do.

Later, Michael came into the room after dropping Connie off. "Hey, Robert. I came to give you the sixth melody, so here," he said, giving him a piece of paper with really bad handwriting. It read:

Love is the beauty

And the joy of spring.

Robert heard the tune in his mind. Now, there was one more melody left. He knew or at least THOUGHT he knew, where the next melody was. He was about to ask Lapis for help in being able to breathe in Atlantis, where the final melody is.

He went to the barn for help. "Hey, Lapis. Could you help me out? I need to get to Atlantis to get the eighth and final melody." Robert said. Lapis looked uneasy and motioned for him to sit closer, as she felt uncomfortable saying it too loud.

"Robert, there are two things you need to know. For one, I risked my life getting the fourth melody going back to Atlantis." She said as she turned solemn. Robert put an arm around her. "And two: Atlantis is where I was trapped in the mirror..." she said.

"What? How?" He asked.

"Atlanteans apparently hated humans who lived on the surface and wanted me to clear a path so they can launch a weapon which will enshroud them in darkness. I refused, and they put me in that mirror, just as they crumbled..." She explained.

"Wait... weren't you made on Homeworld?" He asked.

"Yeah, and I was sold to the Atlantians in order to pay for the materials used to make injectors for Pink Diamond's colony." She said. This statement angered Robert because she was punished for doing the right thing. At the same time, he felt empathy for her, because he was punished by Lardna all the time for returning things she stole to the people she stole from. He didn't care about how many times he was whipped or strapped to a torture device, he knew he was a hero for doing so.

"By the way, Robert, you mention how Lardna put you and various other males through all sorts of torture devices, and most of them were killed, how did you manage to survive for ten years? I've read that's a really long time for humans." Lapis asked.

"I...don't know," Robert said.

Meanwhile...

Aloysius Jones, for the first time in months, was finally completely sober that afternoon. He was questioning his life choices and felt genuinely sorry for Robert and Michael. After all the hell he put them through, beating and berating them for every twitch of a muscle they made, treating Robert like a bastard child and kicking him out of the house, sending Michael to boot camp, which never went through. The worst part of it all is how each time the memory played in his mind, it didn't feel like his drunk self of his college days. It felt more like he watching through the eyes of a puppet, only doing what is commanded by the strings that bound his soul.

He figured he should go to the basement and try to make Robert's room more presentable in vain hopes he would come back so he could apologize.

When he went down there, he saw all the torture devices and was apalled. He never knew he had a torture chamber in his basement. He never realized how awfully Lardna treated the kids. What's worse is that she even had real corpses of male children, laid sporadically and left in the traps.

The worst is when he noticed that some of the blood and entrails were in an inverted pentagram with an anti-Christ symbol in the middle, with the word "Tenebris" in all corners, no doubt Lardna's handwriting. He was about to run upstairs, but Lardna stopped him.

"Where are you going, honey?" She asked in an eerily innocent tone. Her eyes were unnaturally wide, but somehow, he knew it was still Lardna.

"I just need to go get some beer," he said. "I need to drown out what I just saw."

Lardna frowned. "Nobody leaves the house of darkness!" Lardna growled, although it wasn't her voice, it seemed to be a monster's voice, and the stairs collapsed beneath his feet into an empty abyss of darkness.

Aloysius Jones was consumed by the Darkness.

"Now I no longer may no longer hide my facade." Lardna said, now in her normal voice. She approached her pentagram, and as if she knew it was going to happen, the centerpiece turned black as a familiar dark doppelganger emerged on all fours.

"Please...*cough*...Don't send me back, Mistress!...He's too strong! *cough* The sword...It is not meant for the hands of darkness." Robert Dark wheezed.

Lardna sneered. "You have failed me once again! First in finding the prophesied hero, next in killing him once found. Now with his own weapon against him, you still manage to be defeated by a boy trained in sword combat by a PEARL!"

"That's 'cause he's bound by your methods, Lardna" Another voice called out. This time, when he emerged, it was a dark grey-skinned Michael with grey hair and blood-red eyes.

"That is my Realm of Light name, you do not use it, dark servant!" Lardna snapped. The dark Michael snickered. "Oh? What is so amusing about this?" Lardna asked.

"You think one mind is all it takes to accomplish your goals. If you wish to defeat the heroes, might I suggest allowing me to do it my way?" the grey-skinned Michael asked.

Lardna rolled her cold, joyless eyes. "Fine, but should you fail, it's both of you who will be punished, understand?" She said.

"Alright, Mistress." he said as Lardna opened a portal to Delmarva. The dark Michael made a buster copying Light Michael and stepped through.

To be continued...