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[The video comes on to someone noisily eating. They're taking ramen noodle packets and ripping open the flavor packs, and pouring the stuff into their mouth. Honestly who would do this.]

Man am I glad Pearl isn't here. I can just hear her right now. [Amethyst transforms into a thin, tall, pointy woman and her voice turns to that high, mocking voice. You know the one. Everyone does it.] "Don't eat mysterious food from strange Gem constructs, Amethyst! You can't know what it's made from! I know everything!" [She takes a huge, ungraceful bite from the dry block of ramen noodles before transforming back.]

Whaaaatever. The food's good. I don't care if some closet spit it out. Probably trying to make me stay forever or something. This is a pretty intense simulation this gem's got going. The room even looks like my old room. Sorta. I kinda have to fill it with stuff still. It looks all empty.

Anyway, since someone might give me a hard time if I take too long and this place is big, if anyone sees a gem that looks like it's powering this place, go ahead and tell me on one of these phones. I mean, I could just look through every room myself, but I really don't want to. And if a bunch of humans are all hanging out here doing nothing anyway, I figure it won't be much more dangerous if you guys help out.

Uh, if you run into a room and it's some kind of death maze or something, though, run away.

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What's a gem construct?

[Ew, explanations. Those are always complicated and she's bad at them.] Just what it sounds like: some kind of technology or protective... thing built by a Gem. Like a pyramid full of death traps or a tower or... a mansion, I guess.

On second thought I guess this place could've just been normal but a Gem became a part of it. Either way, I gotta find it and stop it from making this place all weird and like... sucking people up, or whatever it's doing.

Hey, maybe it's eating us! [Here she waggles her fingers for effect.]

It kind of is.

[He doesn't seem at all worried about that, though, and presses on.]

What's a Gem?

[He's assuming it's something other than what it would be where he's from.]

Haha, ew. Well, all the more reason to take it apart.

A Gem is, uh... Well it's like me. I am one. If our bodies get hurt enough, we retreat back into our gems [Here she pulls her shirt down a little to show the gem on her chest.] to heal. But sometimes if we feel like there's danger, or whatever other reason, our gems kind of... cocoon themselves like gross caterpillars in some kind of... building, or construct, or something. The construct becomes like our bodies and takes on our will to protect ourselves. Which sometimes means you end up with weird mansions that eat people, I guess.

That's why we gotta find the gem that's powering this place.

[He listens to her, thoughtful. This is all pretty interesting! It makes him feel a little bit bad to tell her she's wrong.]

I don't think it's a gem that's causing all this.

[Not that he can say for sure, since he'd never heard of this stuff until now, but...]

I've been here awhile and I've never seen any evidence of it, anyway.

Well it's not going to just let anyone get to it. It'll protect itself. Obviously. [Everyone's saying she's wrong, but she knows better than to take what humans say about gems at face value. Sorry, but this is her area of expertise.]

How long can it do that for?

[He's not trying to prove her wrong as much as this is a good excuse to hear more about whatever the heck she's talking about.

Not that he's stopped thinking she's wrong, but that's not really important. Most of them are likely to be wrong repeatedly about any given thing that happens in Wonderland, so it's not a new thing at all.]

Well, forever, basically. Unless someone knows to look for it. And humans usually don't. They think stuff happens because of ghosts or snake people or whatever. But it's always gems.

Why don't humans learn better?

Not a lot of them know much about us. It's been a long time since... [since they invaded.] since there were a lot of us Gems around. Now it's just three and a half of us. And we don't really... mingle. Well, Steven does, but he's another story.

That's too bad.

[...]

How can a person be half a Gem?

Ugh, that question is soooo complicateeeed. The easy answer is his mom was a Gem and his dad is human.

Are you just gonna keep quizzing me, or can I ask you questions too? Like why do humans get sick so easily? What's your name? Favorite food? What if you ate it backwards? Why do all your TEETH FALL OUT and you grow NEW ONES? I wish that happened to me, it sounds like the plot of a horror movie.

[That is a lot of questions all at once, but Souji doesn't really mind being asked them. He just hopes he can remember all of them when he answers.]

Our teeth grow in before we're fully grown. If we kept the same teeth our whole lives, as adults, they'd be really tiny in our mouths. [...] It would be more like a horror movie if they all fell out at once. It usually takes a couple years to lose them all, and the new ones grow in pretty fast, though, so it's not really scary or anything when it's happening.

[Okay, now what else did she ask...]

There are a lot of reasons why humans get sick, but I guess the main one is that our bodies have to do a lot to keep us going, so if anything gets thrown out of balance, it causes problems with the rest of it.

My name is Seta Souji. I don't have a favorite food, but I guess if I had to pick, it would be beef bowls. [Or steak croquettes, but whatev whatev food is food as long as it's good.

....]

I don't really know what you mean by eating it backwards, though. [That could mean a few things and at least one of them would be really gross.]

See, humans are really complicated and weird and gross. That's why you guys are so great.

And uh... eating a beef bowl backwards... I guess that would mean eating the rice first? What if you ate the rice uncooked and only the spices from the beef? That might be fun.

Oh yeah, and since I know yours now, I guess it's only fair if I told you my name's Amethyst.

Amethyst. [Fitting.] It's nice to meet you.

[...]

I want to try eating a beef bowl like that.

[Amethyst suddenly realizes this guy is really cool.] You coooouuuld. Magic closeeeeets.

I could make it, too. I figured out how to make them pretty well the regular way.

[Through the normal process of trial and error, because consulting a cookbook when he's not sure what to do is for people much less cool than him.]

Do you want to try it?

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