"Feel any different, Lars?"

Lars and the Off Colors were huddled together in a small cavern, deep at the bottom of the Kindergarten of Homeworld. Lars didn't bother acknowledging any questions directed at him, for he was too busy staring at his bright pink hands. He was pondering whether he could rub the pinkness away, but promptly decided against it, believing he'd only succeed at bruising his wrist a little. The Off Colors were looking at the human in curiosity, wondering what he was pondering about.

"Ahem," Rhodonite said.

"Hmm?" Lars replied. "What's up?"

"How do you feel?"

"I…don't know. There's something about what he's done that's got me…spooked? Angry? Happy? I really have no idea what to think about this."

The Off Colors exchanged bewildered glances.

"Perhaps it's temporary," Fluorite said.

"No," Lars said, "I don't think this is going away anytime soon."

"What about your hair?" Rhodonite asked. "We can pull all sorts of things out of our gems, like weapons when we need to defend ourselves. Maybe you can do the same?"

"Your friend said it acts as some sort of pocket dimension now—so you could store all sorts of weaponry in there!" the Twins of Rutile said.

Lars rubbed his chin, pondering about what his newfound friends just said, took a look at his pink hand and flexed his fingers, then closed his eyes and thrusted his arm into his hair. His limb disappeared into the big pink tuft of follicles on the top of his head, and tried his best to feel around for a sword or any sort of weapon that might've been in there. But the odd position his arm was in was beginning to strain his muscles, and he quickly pulled it out of his hair. He didn't find anything, and Lars rubbed his temples and groaned in frustration.

"There's probably tons of things he's already put in there," Lars said, "but without him to help me, there's no way I can reach any of it."

The Off Colors exchanged bewildered glances once more; Rhodonite gave out a heavy sigh and held her head in all four of her hands.

"How unlucky can we be?" she asked. "An entire pocket dimension probably full of all sorts of things that could help us, and we can't even do anything with it! Ugh, why us!?"

"Everybody!"

Lars and the Off Colors glanced at Padparadscha, who was in the corner the entire time, starting at the featureless wall for what was probably hours.

"It seems Lars is quite confused about what his friend's done to him," she said.

"Yes, we know, Padparadscha," Rhodonite said, rolling her eyes. "He told us that already."

Fluorite and the Rutile twins giggled under their breath.

"Give it time, Lars," Fluorite said. "With each day you'll understand more."

"And sooner or later you'll be the one defending us—but it looks like we'll be the ones defending you for the time being," the twins said.

Rhodonite went up to Padparadscha and offered the little Gem one of her four hands. Of course, it took a while for her to realize what Rhodonite was doing, but Padparadscha took hold of her hand, and Rhodonite held the little Gem close.

"We've got to move for now," she said. "What you did back there was impressive, Lars, but sooner or later they'll notice none of their Robonoids have returned."

Lars sighed and rubbed his temples.

"Even when I'm trying to be good, I still end up doing something bad," Lars said. "So what do you think they'll do?"

"We don't think," Fluorite said, "we know."

"And what we know is they'll send actual soldiers down to find us in the Robonoids' stead," Rhodonite said, holding Padparadscha ever closer. "Normally we'd just have Quartzes like Jaspers and Amethysts to deal with, but since you and your friend apparently did something that angered the Diamonds…they're probably going to take their anger out on us by sending elite soldiers down instead."

"Unfortunately for us, Gem soldiers aren't mindless machines like the Robonoids—they won't be satisfied with simply shattering us and being done with it," the twins said.

"W-What do you mean?" Lars asked. "There're worse things than this 'shattering' stuff? Like… L-Like what?"

The Off Colors once again exchanged glances with each other, but this time they weren't of bewilderment. This time, they were of worry… This time, they were of fear, and regret, and horror. Fluorite closed her eyes and gave out a heavy sigh; the Rutile twins hugged each other as they both started to tremble; Rhodonite held Padparadscha even closer to her body, whereas the little Gem didn't even move—not because she was fearful, but because she hasn't predicted Lars asking such a harrowing question yet. And as for Lars, he looked at the Off Colors and how uncomfortable they were, and decided to refrain from asking such personal questions.

"S-Sorry," he said.

"I-It… I-It's all right," Rhodonite said. "We've got to keep moving before they catch up to us."

"I'll take the above path," Fluorite said, crawling out of the small space and up into a massive hole in the ceiling of the cavern. "Everybody else use the tunnel below."

The others watched as the giant, off-color fusion crawled into the huge hole, and soon Fluroite disappeared into the ceiling completely.

"Come on, Padparadscha," Rhodonite said.

"Guys, I think we should tell Lars they're going to send Gem soldiers after us instead of Robonoids now," Padparadscha uttered.

Rhodonite patted the little Gem on the top of her head.

"We already did, Padparadscha," she said. "We already did…"

And the two walked towards a small opening that was off to the side of the cavern and soon they also disappeared out of sight, leaving the pink-skinned Lars and the Twins of Rutile alone in the cramped space.

"Are you ready, Lars?—Lars, are you ready?" the twins asked.

Lars looked down at the dirty, lifeless ground, rubbing his pink arm and trembling with uncertainty. This trance of his didn't last for long, though, for the Gem twins quickly walked up him, went right into his face, and asked the boy in unison…

"Are you ready or what?"

"Oh! U-Um," Lars quivered. "Y-Yeah. I guess so."

"You can't back out now—you've already come this far. We've been doing this for millennia, and we're still alive and kicking—if we can hold out for that long, we're sure you can, too."

"Well, yeah…but you two and your friends are these weird alien things with magic and multiple arms and such… Sure, I'm pink now, but I'm… I'm still just a human."

"Well, we may have supernatural power and extra limbs—but we're still off-colors…"

Lars looked long and hard at the two twins with a rather serious face…but couldn't hold the façade for long, and wound up breaking into a small bit of laughter. The twins looked at each other curiously, but they eventually started to giggle, too. And the strangest thing was neither of the three knew why they were laughing, despite the seriousness of the situation they're in. Perhaps it was to ease the tension? Or maybe they manage to at least find a sort of bright side to the problem they were stuck in? The answer might never be clear, but they trio eventually broke out of their peal of chuckles and giggles, and looked at the side of the cavern, where the entrance to the tunnel was located.

"Then it looks like we've got a reason to stick together, after all," Lars said.

Both twins of Rutile smiled at the pink-skinned human, and they both offered their hand to him.

"It's a labyrinth in there—you'll get lost without our help," they said. "Ready?—Prepared?"

Lars took in a deep breath.

"Yeah," he said confidently. "Let's go."