Rose starts laughing.

She doesn't stop laughing for a while.

Steven just stands there, smiling.

"Steg can levitate things with music."

"But of course he can!"

More laughter, a bit calmer this time.

"Steven, creating you required quite a bit of fiddly magical work, but in no way have I built in or anticipated your capacity to do this.
I do not know where this miracle came from. And I have only one guess, that it must somehow be an innate property of our gem. But I am not even sure about that.
This is not how fusions generally work. They are based on two-way communication between the gems, their projecting and processing protocols understanding and adapting to each other. It should flatly not work with no other gem to take information to and from - but we can see this to be false."

"Yeah, as I've said, no clue, for now. But we'll figure it out. We have contacts in academias of two worlds.

It's fun, being a fusion. Stevonnie really is an experience.

It's useful, too. Fusion components don't age while in the fusion, can communicate instantly, get new abilities, and such.

Humans who don't have that don't know it, but they're really, really missing out."

Humans are so different and fascinating...

Greg and Steven help the Crystal Gems decipher Lapis's message of warning, which was, thank all the gods above, in analog format.

"GREG!!!"

"Honestly, I'm surprised Pearl needed help."

"She's the kind of person to miss an obious solution, sometimes. Well, really, all of us are."

(She'd never thought Greg could be useful in Crystal Gem affairs. This... might have been a part of what made him so attractive initially.)

And then the promised doom arrives.

Rose's vintage AA battery has no efect on a modern Gem warship.

Jasper, a single Homeworld soldier, beats the entire Crystal Gem team.

Steven beams.

"And that's when I first met Ruby and Sapphire! Not that I knew who they were or anything."

She doesn't get surprised or startled.

The whole thing kinda settled into a pattern, where most of Steven's most memorable and most dangerous experiences are something that follows directly from past mistakes she made.

"I am learning a lot today. About you, but mostly about the astonishing lack of foresight in the decisions I made as a leader and a mother. It is very informative."

"Hey, we're the Crystal Gems!

We aren't in business of making complex long term plans, we're winging everything on the spot and making friends with everyone in the blast radius!"

(Those times her sisters refused to take her seriously? They were right, weren't they.)

"..."

"Mom?

If this is making you sad, you don't have to watch it, you know? Maybe you shouldn't."

"Thank you, Steven. But I do need to watch it.

And I can. I have defied and fought the Homeworld for my principles. I have seen thousands of gems reduced to mindless animals. I have lied to my friends for millenia.
I am strong.
And more than that, Steven, your story is my story. I have to know it. As your mother. As, apparently, a part of you."

Steven can't argue with that logic. He nods.

Anyway, the Homeworld incursion is resolved because of Homeworld's incomprehension of Steven's nature and because of Garnet being awesome.

✨✨✨

Peridot escapes and is now loose on the Earth.

Lapis, an ex-mirror-prisoner and an ex-homeworld-prisoner, volontuarily becomes a prisoner inside a toxic fusion to keep Jasper down.

"Oh dear... it appears that this Lapis Lazuli is as unlucky as we are lucky."

"It gets better for her. For everyone, really, but for her it gets the most better. Well, at least in comparison."