Connie

**Connie Maheswaran** is Steven's best friend and a member of the Crystal Gems.

## Appearance

Connie is a young girl with dark skin and waist-length dark brown puffy hair, a prominent nose, thick eyebrows, and is slightly taller than Steven.

She wore a pair of magenta glasses with rose-colored lenses until "An Indirect Kiss", when Steven fixed her eyesight, after which she continued to wear the empty frames. After "Nightmare Hospital", she no longer wears the frames.

Connie is usually seen in a variety of different outfits and dresses. She usually wears light blue, green, and white clothing. In the first intro, she is shown wearing a white and mint green dress, peach colored boots, a sunhat, and no socks. In the second intro, she wears a white, button-down, collared tank top, gray button-up shorts, her pink glow bracelet, peach sneakers with white bottoms and laces, and white socks.

In "The New Crystal Gems", she temporarily wears Steven's outfit of a star shirt and blue jeans.

## Personality

Connie is introverted, curious, and intelligent. Due to her parents' lifestyle, specifically her father's job, Connie rarely stays in one place for long and has been unable to form lasting friendships, which left her frequently feeling lonely. Her parents are very strict and do not allow her to participate in common childhood activities (such as eating donuts or anything with trans fats, although she ate one in "Crack the Whip"). This has led her to flat-out lie about Steven's non-nuclear family, due to paranoia at how her parents may react. Despite her obedience to them, Connie is not above exploiting loopholes, such as not buying snacks at a theater and instead bringing them from Steven's home.

## Abilities

### Skillset

* **Swordsmanship**: As of "Sworn to the Sword", Connie has become skilled in the art of sword fighting with Pearl as her mentor. She was able to work in partnership with Steven and his shield. She can fight swiftly in light attacks or with power in heavy attacks. Due to being ambidextrous, she can fight with equal skill with either hand.
* **Tag-team combat**: Due to the close bond they share, Steven can coordinate his shield techniques perfectly with Connie's swordplay, such as fighting back-to-back with her to defend and attack simultaneously or catapulting Connie from his shield for a powerful lunge attack.
* **Wide Intellect**: Connie is shown to be very intelligent for her age, knowing a lot about boats, reading very hard books (she enjoys reading books such as *The Spirit Morph Saga* and also enjoys reading non-fiction for fact and to get smarter than she already is), having proficiency in tennis, violin-playing and swordfighting, having an extensive vocabulary, and even managing to find loopholes in her parents' many rules. In "Gem Hunt", she is shown to be very prepared and intelligent when it comes to surviving in the wilderness, thanks to reading a book.
	+ **Survival Skills**: Connie is shown to have very impressive survival skills, thanks to reading a book 20 times all about it. Thanks to her book, she has adopted these skills and was perfectly able to locate a spot to hide from the Gem Monsters, as well as make a very healthy, Vitamin C-rich tea out of pine needles.
* **Hand-to-Hand Combat**: In addition to her swordsmanship, in "Mindful Education", it is revealed that Connie possesses some hand-to-hand combat skills, presumably through her combat training under Pearl. Due to her training, she was able to grab a fellow student at her school by the arm and throw him to the ground, breaking his arm in the process, albeit unintentionally as he had accidentally bumped into her which caused her to attack and injure him instinctively.
* **Heightened Reflexes**: As shown in "Mindful Education", Connie's reflexes have been honed to such an extent that she reacts to a perceived threat before she knows what she is doing, as she attacked a fellow student who bumped into her without realizing it until after the fact.

### Weaponry

* **Rose's Sword**: In "Nightmare Hospital", the sword is given to Connie by Steven because she is learning how to sword-fight. After pleading with her mother to change her "No Swords" rule, and even taking Steven to follow her to work to secretly obtain the sword, she finally is able to display her swordswoman skills alongside Steven to protect her mother, herself, and Steven from the Cluster Gem patients. In "Gem Hunt", she is seen comfortably carrying the sword on her back and drawing it over her shoulder. Interestingly enough, despite the sword's size, Connie is able to wield it with little effort. It is unknown if this is due to the sword's magical properties, or if Pearl's training helped Connie achieve a level of strength fit to use it. She also uses Rose's scabbard. She has used the weapon in all subsequent appearances, pairing it with Steven and his shield in combat situations, and using it during her sparring matches with him.

## Fusions

* When fused with Steven, they form Stevonnie

* When fused with Phoebe, they form Phobonnie.
* When fused with Steven and Amethyst, they form Smokonnie Quartz
* When fused with Steven and Lapis, they form Lavendonnie Quartz