Walking up to the machine, Agate puts her hand out on it to see what happens. Squinting her eyes shut since she doesn't know what it will do and not sure if she wants to see it either.

(whoever wants to control what it does may and I'll just react later).

"I think.. it might be... hold on a minute, I almost --" Jade started out trying to identify what she thought the machine could be, when Agate stuck her hand out towards the machine. Before the other Gem's hand could make contact, the machine made a sudden loud, CA CHUNK! CA CHUNK! CA CHUCHUCHUCHUkathump.
Jade covered her head with one arm, ducking, thinking something was on the verge of exploding, but only silence followed.

"Huh. Well whatever it was doing, it seems to have finished," she remarked, moving forward. "Is that a door?" she added, reaching for a round porthole-shaped door with a metal handle. Taking hold of the handle, she pulled. The door resisted at first, but then swung open. Inside was what seemed like a large metal barrel set on its side, and clinging to all the walls of that barrel was wet cloth of various colors.

"Oh good! Laundry's done" shouted a voice from the far end of the room. A small boy with brown curls and a flash of red gem peeking out from under his tee shirt came bounding across to the machine they had been bewildered by.

"S... Steven?" Jade asked in clear puzzlement.

"Ha, ha, yeah, hi guys, Garnet said you would be moving in so I decided to make sure you had clean blankets and stuff! I mean, I know Gems don't need to sleep or anything, but, you know, it's kind of a tradition to do a housewarming! Oh, that reminds me, I'm baking you a cake too! Gotta get these into the dryer," Steven explained as he pulled the various things out of what apparently was a washing machine and loaded them into a similar machine beside it, probably the dryer, "and then back to the kitchen! I'm making a carrot cake!"

Steven closed the door on the dryer, twisted some dials and pushed a button marked, "Start". The things inside could be seen through the glass in the door. Jade saw that they were tumbling around inside another barrel with tiny holes like the one in the 'washing machine', but the noise was a bit different.

"Uh.. oh, okay, thank you," she called belatedly after the now dashing-away Steven Universe.

"Heh...it was just a washing machine. How silly of us."

Moonstone blushed a little, pale blue dotting her face a little.

"What's a washing machine?" Agate looked between the two of them confused. Not having had a need for a washing machine she had no idea what the machine was. "You mean this thing I just put my hand on is a machine that washes things? Can it was anything? Is it powered by magic? How do you make it wash?" She take a good look at the machine, trying to understand what each knob does.

"Well, let's see, these say, 'Hot', 'Warm', and 'Cold', so obviously that tells the machine what temperature you want it to use for washing," Jade reasoned, peering at the labels on the face where the knobs were placed. "And these say heavy, normal, and light... and delicate? Hmm, well, I've never been exactly delicate, so if I needed washing, I don't think that would be my setting."

Moonstone chuckled and bit and leaned against the machine slightly.

"A washing machine is a human contraption that washes cloth items. Like what we wear and the sheets we sleep on. There is another machine called a dryer that dries the clothed items once you wash them."

"Hee hee! I'm gonna get myself a whole lot of clothes to wear so I can use this machine! I mean, because we all should serve our proper purpose, even this machine, right?" Jade said excitedly. So excitedly, she was bouncing up and down just a bit.

"Ah, okay, that makes sense. Humans have created some interesting things while I've not been myself." She giggles a bit nervously with Jade's bouncing, "That's all well and good but how do we obtain clothes? I've seen plenty of stores in my travels, but I've never actually gone into one..."

"You buy them at the store with human currency called money. But we don't really need clothes since we form shift our own."

"Huh. I guess I gotta get a, whattaya call 'em, job," Jade realized. Then she shrugged and headed off in the direction Steven had gone, calling back to the other Gems, "First, I gotta find out what a carrot cake is!"

"But isn't our job to stop monsters and save other Crystals? If we're doing that will you have time for another job?" She followed behind Jade, trying to figure out how this would work because they could be gone for days at a time with what they normally do.

Taking a deep sniff, Jade tries to analyze whatever it is Steven's been cooking for them.
"Hm, well I'm not really sure what 'carrot' smells like, but there's definitely a sugary smell, and a spicy one, but not hot spice like peppers. It' a really nice smell though, makes the whole place smell... homey!"

Moonstone slowly followed them. Not really having much to say at this point.

"Agate is right, we don't have time for another job so long as we're actively fighting these monsters."

She looked on as Steven made this carrot cake.

"I didn't know you could mix vegetables with sweets..."

She eyes the bowl of 'carrot cake' wondering what the goop tasted like. "So we're going to eat this goop? I mean it does smell good, but won't it be a bit...messy to try and eat? Or are we getting smaller containers to hold out cake?" She's seen cakes in windows before, but she's never seen a cake like the one Steven is making, which is why she's perplexed as to how they are going to eat it.

"Ooh, those confetti things, those are pieces of carrot, huh? What're the black thingies?" Jade asked excitedly.
"Oh, those are raisins, they're like grapes but with all the juice squeezed out," Steven explained while scraping the sides of the mixing bowl with a rubber spatula to make sure all the batter went in the baking pan. "Gee, I didn't think you'd all be back here before I even cooked it," he added with a blush, rubbing the back of his head.
"Oh, okay, didn't mean to spoil the surprise or whatever," Jade apologized, To be honest, she'd kind of thought there would be whole carrots sticking out of a cake, but this was sure to be a much better treat, she decided.
Whirling around with a mischievous grin, she suddenly shouted, "Dibs! I call dibs!" and ran off to find a space to claim for her own in this massive den.

"I think goo is baked into the cake Agate. "

Moonstone watched the human gem hybrid curiously.

"I have lead the group successfully and most efficiently. And Agate and Jade work well with one another excellently. That is why we are early."

"Oh...Now I just feel silly for thinking we're eating some kind of goo." She blushes a bit as she admits this. Then watches Jade curiously before getting up and following her.

"I don't know why we need to call dibs on anything? There's plenty of room here for everyone to be able to find a place they like." Looking around Agate tries to find something to her liking and spots the rafters. "Is there something that humans have for resting that I can hang up there?"

Blithely oblivious to the question regarding the 'necessity' for calling dibs -- because that would take the fun right out of the whole thing -- Jade called back, "They make hammocks, they're kind of like a swing you sleep in!"
Finding a nice little nook that was fairly close to the center of the stronghold, Jade set about transmuting some of the rubble into comfy furniture and such things as draperies and curtains in festive reds and golds. After all, she wanted to be the greenest thing in the room, at least to start with. Actually, it was beginning to look quite a bit like a Bedouin bazaar stall, with multicolored wall hangings everywhere, lots of them illustrating Gem history as best she could remember it. Portal destinations around the universe, the various tri-Gem monuments like the one the prime Gems maintained. How much was pure history and how much Gem mythology, Jade couldn't say.

Moonstone looked around the place. It looked like it could use some cleaning up and rewiring.

"Okay gems, let's fix everything up here and get this place rewired. Maybe the rooms will reveal themselves afterwords"

"Now cleaning I can do." Creates a duster with magic then jumps up into the rafters to begin cleaning. She figures that if she let the dust fall to the floor they could just sweep it up and dump it like they did with the slime monster earlier. Jumping from one rafter to another she quickly gets them clean, then turns the duster into a cleaning cloth to get any dirt and grim still on the beams. Next she gets to work cleaning the walls with the cloth, hanging upside down from the rafters as she does so.

"Rewire, huh? So finding the original wiring would be the first thing to do there, then. Right!" Jade started with looking for an exposed bit of wiring, then while touching the plastic coating, sent a bit of transmutive energy along the inside of the walls to draw magical light tracing the path of wiring beneath them. Well, until there were breaks in the line, but that would prove useful too, showing where the damage was radiating out from the point where she began.
"Okay then, back to scrub-up duty!" she announced as she got busy sorting useful debris from too trashed to use debris.

Moonstone decided to move all the heavier contraptions that were broken to a smaller room in the back until they could repair them. After the wiring was fixed she managed to connect the machinery that controlled the rooms online with the wiring which opened up the rooms.

"Here we go, I got the rooms back up. Looks like there are six chambers for our personal use and then the other rooms are connected as well like the mediation hall, the training facility and the like."

Moonstone finished that up and went to fixing those machineries that were broken down in the small room. Once they were fixed she would know what they were.

Finishing up with the dusting, Agate gets down from the rafters and turns her duster into a broom. Sweeping the dust into a pile she makes a dust pan to sweep everything into and then dump it into the trash can in the corner. She made sure to get all the spots where the appliances had been too so that dust wouldn't be there.

"Alright! Time to get mopping!" Using her magic again she turns the broom into a mop and the dust pan into a bucket with soapy water. "Heads up! The floor is going to be wet!"

"Awesome!" Jade shouted, strapping wet soapy sponges to her feet so she could 'skate' the wet floors. She zipped by Agate at least a dozen times this way, making sounds of glee with each pass.
"Woohoo!"
"Ha ha!"
"Yeah!
"WOOOO!"

Moonstone began pushing the machinery around once they were fixed and placed them in their proper area. The final thing that was repaired and replaced was something the humans called a television. Moonstone turned the television on and a show was immediately play. It was a children's show so there were silly animals in a whacky looking home. In this home they played around and caused some harmless shenanigans which allows them to solves their problems while teaching children basic skills.

"How interesting..."

With everything all nice and clean now, Agate plops down on the floor next to Moonstone. Watching the television a bit she has a puzzled look on her face, "I have no idea what the point of this is? It all seems kind of silly to me...is it for young humans maybe?" While traveling she had seen things on the television but most of the time she never understood it.

"Eeek!"
This was the sound of Jade skidding into a wall. Followed quickly by cackling laughter. The sponges vanished from her boots. Sniffing the air, she decided the carrot cake was still baking and not quite baked yet. Looking over her shoulder, she caught sight of her two compatriots gazing at a television, looking interested (Moonstone) and bemused (Agate). Dashing over to see what the deal was, she spied --
"Cartoons! Cool! Let me see if I know this one... okat no little blue dog and a human boy, so not Blue's Clues, but that's a good one too. Huh."

"Ah yes cartoons...I think these are the ones in the morning that are supposed to teach human children before they go to the teaching facility."

Moonstone lingered once more and then left the television and went over to the control panel and her gem glowed and was registered to it, opening an area on the left side of the room.

"I'm going to work on my room now, I suggest you register to gems now and do that as well."

What Jade and Moonstone both said makes some sense to her, though she still found it kind of odd how humans used such a device to teach their children. Its not like the children were experiencing these things first hand or anything, but if it worked for humans then it didn't really matter what her thoughts were.

"Alright, guess its time to get a room then." Walking over to the control panel her gem glows and the wall to the wall opposite her in the right corner opens up to her room. Looking around her room looks like a grove of oak trees with huge trunks and a massive crown of branches as thick as she was wide.

Having already gotten a lot of her own room arranged to her liking, with the whole Sultan's tent theme, Jade decided to watch the cartoons a little longer. Soon enough, Steven came to join her, a platter of sliced carrot cake in his hands.
"Oh, hey, it's the kittens! Did I ever tell you about the time I turned all my fingers into cats?" Steven asked with cheerful pride. Jade blinked at him in vague confusion.
"Um, you just did right now?" she answered in what she hoped was a tone of polite interest and not a total freak out.
"Oh, yeah. It was really neat for a little while, but, you know, pets are a big responsibility, and besides, fingers are a lot more useful for getting things done -- things like this!" he shared, grabbing a slice of the carrot cake and shoving it into his mouth. Wow, that's a lot of cake in one bite, she thought but didn't say out loud, instead grinning at Steven and his big enthusiasms.
"Like this?" she answered gently, taking a slice herself and nibbling a piece of it. "Mm, this is very tasty, thank you Steven, The other Gems are working on their rooms, why don't you go share this lovely carrot cake with them too?" she suggested with a grin and proceeded to change the channel to find a local news program.
"Good idea! Be back soon!" Steven promised and then took off running for the room of the nearest Gem.

Agate, having finished setting up a hammock in the trees for herself was about ready to leave her room when she sees Steven standing in the doorway, holding up some kind of...lumpy brown thing covered in something white-ish in color.

"Um...Hi Steven. Can I help you with something?"

"I finished making the carrot cake and came to share with you and Moonstone. Jade already had a piece and seemed to really like it. I also told her about the time I turned my fingers into cats, it was really cool and fun but having a pet is a lot of responsibility. Not to mention its much more fun being able to use my hands for things instead of not being able to because of my fingers being cats." Munching on a piece that she had broken off while Steven was talking, she nearly choked on the piece whiling listening to him.

"Um, glad nothing permanent happened. And I'm glad things worked out in the end for you. Also, this carrot cake is pretty good, not sure how I feel about the sensation of eating yet though. But I like the taste. Why don't you see if Moonstone wants any?"

"Thanks! And you're right, I can't forget about Moonstone!" He waves bye as the door to her room closes.

"He's a nice kid and all, but I have a feeling he's created some interesting situations for Pearl, Amethyst and Garnet."

Moonstone had just finished setting up her room, it was like a european throne room dipped in chrome. There were puddles here and there that lead to the other's rooms and other places within the temple. She was layout a map of beach city and tagging the area where they caught the snail monster. She heard Steven jumping through the puddle in Agate's room into hers. Moonstone set the pen down and turned to the smaller half gem.

"Ah Steven, finished your baking I presume?"

Steven nodded and grinned.

"Yup! I gave the others some cake and didn't want to leave you out! Here have some! It sounded like you never had cake before."

"Yes, as you know we gems do not require eating and sleeping, however we are free to partake in it."

"Haha yeah Amethyst certainly does. Here have a taste I'm sure you'll love it."

The blue silver gem and nodded, she wasn't too fond of eating because of the long and troublesome process it took to digest the food. But how could she say no to that face? Simple, you don't. She smiles uneasily and takes a piece. She takes in a small sample and to her surprise it was very good. She finishes off her piece and nods with approval.

"Not bad Steven. Can't say I've had many sweet but this by far is the best I've sampled."

Steven grinned.

"Thanks! Say, do you wanna play a game?"

Moonstone raised a brow at the young boy.

"A game huh? Well I should be marking down sites where monsters have been...but I suppose there is enough free time to do so. What kind of game are we playing?"

Steven's grinned went from a cheerful one to a sly sneaky one as he poked Moonstone on the shoulder and ran to the closest puddle.

"It's called....STEVEN TAG! Tag! You're it, now you gotta change into me and tag me or someone else!"

Moonstone was confused but once the rules were explained to her, it was game on. She shifted into a form that resembled Steven and yet he was a silvery blue with a serious look on his face. Moonstone ran off to the puddle and jumping in after him. And of she saw someone else, she would dart towards them and tag them too.

SPLASH! SPLASH!

"Huh?"
Jade looked over her shoulder, wondering what the wet noises were all about. A rare frown creased her face for but a moment. Shaking her head, she turned back to the television, looking for anything on the news that might need their attention. So far there was talk of an imminent county fair later in the month, which was neither immediate nor dangerous as far as she could tell.

Hearing splashing Agate looks around trying to find the source. She knew that Moonstone had some pools that connected to their rooms for quick travel, but she had yet to locate it. Having been making hammocks for sleeping in the trees, she jumps down to have a look around. Through the trees she spots Steven and...Steven? Looking again she sees that its Actually Moonstone looking like Steven, why she has no clue.

"I wonder what they are doing..."

As Moonstone and Steven entered Agate's room, Moonstone noticed Agate and maneuvered her way over to Agate and tagged her.

"Tag, you are it."

Befor running off to tag Steven who yelled,

"OOH! You got Tagged Agate, now you have to change into me! We're playing steven tag. Catch me if you can! "

Steven and Moonstone began running from Agate and into the puddle that lead to Jade's room.

Yelling? Was something dangerous in the lair after all? Jade turned off the television entirely to try to get a better idea of what was going on in their hideaway.
"Hm, maybe a better vantage point," she muttered before springing up into the rafters above. Definitely the acoustics were better up there, she noted as she caught the sound of more splashing.

Not understanding why Moonstone was in Steven's form she just stands there watching her confused as to what this was all about. Though when Steven explains she tilts her head then shrugs her shoulders. Using her magic she transforms into Steven.

"If you guys think this is fun guess I'll be joining you." She follows them to a puddle and hops in.

Steven And Moonstone jumped out of the puddle and ran around for a bit. Steven was trying to locate Jade but couldn't see her right away.

"Huh? Where's Jade?"

He quickly continued to run as Moonstone and Agate were hot on his trail.

...

Three?

Three Stevens, running loose in her bedroom.

Lightly, Jade sprang from the rafters and floated to the ground, then transformed into a bloodhound to get a scentual perspective on what was going on.

Whoa. They might all look like Steven, but those were definitely three different odors crisscrossing the floor. Whuffling with curiosity, bloodhound Jade followed Steven's scent out of the room.

Agate looks around for Jade, looking under furniture, looking in cabinets and looking in closets. Not seeing her there she then looks up to look into the rafter and stuff since she knows she likes to hang out up in them when she's able to. She just misses seeing Jade follow Steven's scent as she turns and jumps up into the rafters. Looking around she doesn't see anything, not even disturbed dust, probably because of all the cleaning they had been doing before.

Looking down to Moonstone she let's her know by shaking her head that she doesn't see Jade up there then hops back down.