She gained her consciousness slowly, almost as if she were currently in a dream. Many details about the dream felt wrong, but given the nature of dreams, she could not place them together at first. All she knew was that she was in some sort of memory of her earlier life, featuring Yellow Diamond being a no-fun gem matriarch as usual and not letting her play with cool gem tech.
"Don't touch that!" Yellow scolded her as she grabbed her arm and pulled herself towards her.
"Why not? You have so many worlds and I don't even have one!" At this point, she had become so distinctly furious about her position as an authority that is not respected as an authority, she even began stomping her foot. "It's not fair! I want one! I want my own army! I want my own planet! I deserve it! I'm just as important as you!" She was going to shove it in Yellow's face as hard as she could.
Unfortunately, Yellow was still playing hard to get as "Then why don't you act like it, Pink?!" Even someone as thick-skulled as herself had gotten that both she and Yellow shared the same sentiment of being fed up with each other.
She thus stepped away from Yellow Diamond, knowing that she won't get anything from her. Yet, this unbridled rage was still boiling inside her, and she felt like she was going to burst and unleash her fury at any moment.
She stepped up to the nearest glass wall and punched it, not particularly caring that while her reflection seemed correct, her hand looked distinctly alien.
Pink Diamond's awakening was, to say the least, shocking even by its circumstances.
The first sound she heard while awake was that which more closely resembled members of a fusion splitting, which was confusing to say the least, as there wasn't a gem like her to be fused with without breaking at least a couple intergalactic laws. Then, her first sensation was rolling in the air, while being greeted by a dark green scenery she couldn't make heads or tails of. Soon enough after her awakening, she found herself on the floor, rolling to the nearest wall and hitting it with a thud; she considered herself lucky that those of her kind couldn't get bruises.
Pink thus quickly stood up and began wondering about just about everything, in her typical loud manner. "Where am I? How long has it been? Where is Yellow Diamond? Where is everyone?" As she said those words, she also had thoughts that were racing in her mind far too quickly, and which therefore couldn't be voiced.
Even the situation itself, once she realized it was a dream, was peculiar. While gems could sleep and dream, it wasn't expected of them to do so, given the psychedelic nature of the dreams. She still had no idea why Yellow's face in the dream was distinctly brown, or why she, in her physical body (not its reflection), felt vastly different. At this point, she simply had too many questions, and someone even with her temper realized that not all of them could be answered.
However, lost in her thoughts and voice, she didn't quite hear another voice coming from the other end of the room, across the piece of cloth hung precariously, as if someone was trying to sleep. "Steven! Are you alright? What happened? Did we unfuse and wake up in the process? Hang on, gotta do something about those bruises."
Pink turned her attention to the source of the voice. In a way, it looked partly like her own form during the dream, but with the same distinctly brown shade of face. However, she was also significantly smaller and not in the right body shape to be any gem, which only made Pink freak out even more. "Agh! An alien lifeform!" she screamed as she had her arms on the wall, trying to back away from the lifeform but being unable to.
The lifeform, though, looked more curious than afraid, despite also being in pain a bit. "Who... are you?"
"Who am I?" This world puzzled her more and more, and the fact that even now, she didn't have the respect she wanted, did not help at all. "I am Pink Diamond! The latest and greatest member of the Great Diamond Authority! I will personally make Gemkind proud! I will have my own colonies! I will have my own fleets! I... will have people respecting me, personally! You're an insignificant alien lifeform I should be asking the designation of!"
"Wait, Pink Diamond? Steven told me she was shattered by Rose Quartz and... where is Steven?" While Pink, herself, stepped away from the wall in order to look for this "Steven" the alien mentioned, she also couldn't help but feel she was way out of touch with the current times. She didn't know she was shattered. And if she was shattered, what could possibly bring her back to consciousness and life?
She did feel like she vaguely remembered that name. Rose Quartz. Not just the facts about the gem species; she could recall that anytime too. If quartz soldiers were Gemkind's warriors, then Rose Quartz gems in particular were the battle medics, and therefore invaluable in colonizing. And that is why Pink had approached a Rose Quartz about...
...She didn't know, but it certainly wasn't "oh my god, I want to die, please just end my life". Despicable. She was going to capture this alien and put her somewhere where she would regret those words for as long as she lived.
"No, seriously, have you seen Steven?" The lifeform asked her again.
"Who cares about your Steven person? How about where is Yellow Diamond?" This lifeform was almost as infuriating to Pink as... basically every other gem. "Where is Homeworld? Where... are we?" Though, Pink also took this as an opportunity to approach the lifeform, and found out that she was roughly half Pink's height.
"Hey, Pink Diamond, calm down." The lifeform attempted some sort of pacifying procedure that Pink was completely unfamiliar with. Even then, she seemed to be fairly bad at it. "Like, I'm not good at talking things through like Steven, but I'm still sure we can work together and..."
"Work... together." It was almost as if Pink was so furious, it just looped back again to her looking calm. She took a few deep breaths, even though gems didn't really need to breathe and...
...something was wrong with her body.
Well, she still had the appearance modifiers that were attached to her as seen in the reflection, not her actual form. Yet, her skin was a bit more orange than pink, and she felt the distinct fatigue that came with lifeforms other than gems needing "sleep" and "air". Even worse, when touching her face, she felt strands of some sort of organic compound growing on her, like a tiny little patch of trees.
It was nothing she couldn't fix, though. With a swift concentration of thought, Pink's face glowed, and when it stopped glowing, not only did the strands disappear, but another area of her body was affected, almost unexpectedly; it was between her legs, and it felt as if something fairly large and obnoxious disappeared from there. "Why didn't anyone tell me any of this?!" she shouted, partly into the void, partly so that the other lifeform could hear her and know that she was still furious as she was throughout the dream and after it.
She couldn't care less about the peculiarity of her new form, though. What she needed to know was how to know the working order of Gemkind today, and how to assert herself again, considering that a sizable amount of time must have passed in order for her to become... what was the word for it? Oh, right, suicidal.
"Oh, wow. Pink Diamond. I guess I might actually hear another side of the tale!" For some reason, the lifeform was getting excited. "So? Are you a horrible tyrant like everyone told us you are?"
"Does it look like I know?" Pink was getting more and more infuriated by no one in her vicinity - and by that she meant not the alien lifeform - being helpful and letting her figure out what was going on.
But maybe, just maybe, Pink needed to gain the lifeform's trust. "So, looks like I'm somewhere between a nobody and a tyrant. Well, that's fine, I just need to remedy my reputation, and that means approaching you politely. How do you call yourself?"
"What is my name, you mean?" The lifeform asked, chuckling, before answering: "Connie. Connie Maheswaran."
"Very well, Connie. Is it alright if I only refer you by the first part?" Pink asked.
"You... you don't know anything about human culture, do you?" Connie asked in return, realizing that Pink was confused.
And boy, was Pink confused. The mention of the words "human" and "culture" literally just made her remember what humans were in the first place; they were those strange aliens on a distant planet that was observed by Gemkind, but for which only plans for a colony existed. Though, last she heard from reports, humans were fairly primitive, and their clothing did not look nearly as lavish as Connie's did.
"...No." Soon enough, Pink had realized that anger was getting her nowhere, and summarized her inner turmoil with a single word, before continuing: "How did colonization of your planet go? How come you exist alongside gems?"
"Colonization... you mean the Gem War, right? The one where you got shattered and..."
"I'm sorry." At this point, Pink's fury was straight up laughable, and the humor did not escape her either, so she chuckled. "How much of history have I missed again?"
"Five thousand years? I think. Earth units; you might use something else. I guess... roughly half of a period between ice ages?"
"That much." Pink went from joking to shocked once again. This entire experience since her gaining consciousness again, including the conversation with the Connie alien, was nothing but a huge mood whiplash. "Well, that would explain why I can't recognize this... this is a standard issue diamond base, but because it's overgrown after so long, I can't recognize anything." Suddenly, without warning, Pink located some stairs and stormed upwards; Connie was trying to catch up at first, but after a few seconds, began panting; while Pink felt like she would disagree, she certainly felt something after such a long upstairs trek.
But luckily for her, the technology used by herself and Yellow five thousand years (plus something) ago was still intact and functional. The upper level itself brought her countless memories, including the one she dreamt about; she even recognized the glass wall she had broken, which no one ever had bothered to fix after all this time. The memories after that one were blurry, though.
That didn't matter to her now. What mattered to her was that she knew the passcode to unlock this system, and with one swift swipe of her not-as-pink-as-she-would-like-but-still-pink-enough-to-count hand, she would contact Yellow, would get intel on everything she missed out on and forgot and would be back in business in no time.
At least, that was the plan, which had to be put on hold as a corrupted gem attacked the location of Pink and Connie. Pink, though, knew better than to be outsmarted by an animalistic creature, and surely enough, she spawned her curved decapitator - her trademark weapon embedded within her gemstone - and soon enough, the creature lost mobility and poofed, leaving behind a gem which, when it regenerated, would not find Pink nor Connie, because Pink would be back home (whatever she had that would pass for a home, be it on Homeworld or in a spaceship in deep space) and Connie would be exterminated at the other Diamonds' (and maybe even Pink's) direction.
Pink's plan, as it was originally conceived, at first mostly worked out, as she entered the password on the system and accessed it. Unfortunately, the system was updated since her last memory, and she misclicked and instead of the distinct hairdo of Yellow, another alien lifeform appeared. Though, much to Pink's disbelief, this one appeared to be more pink than herself, almost as if...
...almost as if she was brought upon by Pink's own powers.
The lifeform thus talked frantically. "Who are you? Where are Steven and Connie... or their fusion?"
"I'm here, Lars!" Connie shouted in the vague direction of the screen, still panting. "Can't find Steven, though. All that there is is this weird gem, with the same gemstone and placement as Steven's, but claiming she is Pink Diamond, whoever that is."
"Steven?" Lars, as she was identified, asked Pink. "Is this another one of your dumb tricks?" She got mad, but then calmed down. "I'm getting you back home and then you're never going on a space mission again. You are nothing but trouble. Just you wait, I'll bring you back to Earth." As Lars's projection disappeared, Pink spotted a spaceship, of a shape completely unfamiliar to her, approach and crash through the glass cage doming the top floor of the base. Then, Lars, as clear as she was on the screen, stepped out, and Connie pulled Pink towards her.
"Come on, Pink! I'll show you the Earth! You gotta see the Earth and how humans have developed." Connie said excitedly, as she was ready to step up and jump into Lars's... hair?
"No, Connie. You fix Steven this instant and only then you can come back home. He's just being space sick or something he made up." Of all the words to be unfamiliar to Pink, she didn't expect it to be a pronoun, and yet, there it was: "he" was one of those newfangled words made up since her last memory.
This, along with the insistence that Pink was Steven of all people, infuriated her to no end, and she blew up again. "For the last time, I am Pink Diamond and I will not be brought down by someone like you!" She decked Lars right in the face, knocking her out, and then cautiously stepped into his hair, copying what Connie was attempting to do.
"Yup, definitely one of my powers." Pink said as her foot disappeared in the hair of the more pink lifeform, and soon enough, she jumped in in her entirety. The realm within Lars and, as it appeared, another lifeform was converted in a similar way, and as she presumed, the two created a portal between her former location and wherever "Earth" was. She thus swiftly walked over to the other pink island and jumped out, landing on a completely different kind of architecture, appearing to be some sort of balcony out to an alien planet completely different from the one she was on, but also having a primitive door to the interior of the building she was right next to.
Soon enough, Connie followed up on Pink's feat, but seemingly was maddened herself. "What was that, Pink? You can't just deck people you don't like! Lars is my friend! Lars is Steven's friend!"
"Why is Steven so important to you?!" Pink looked back at Connie with all her fury, before storming off to the door, which was clearly too small for her. Luckily, Pink was nothing if not an adept gem with a superior experience in all gem-related activities, and therefore, she could simply shapeshift a smaller form to get through the door, open it, step in, return to her original form and slam the door right in Connie's face. Then, though, Pink noticed a primitive lock system attached to the door, which worked rather mechanically, and slammed that, locking the door and making Connie bang on it.
Connie didn't matter to her. What mattered to her was what sort of situation she was thrust into, as well as the portrait of... whoever this was.
Another thing Pink remembered about Rose Quartz gems was that, if oriented rightly, they looked just like her gem, if oriented wrongly. This depiction of a Rose Quartz specimen reminded her of that, and in addition, made her inspect her own naval gemstone and...
"Oh dear. Oh no. No, no, no, no, no! This can't be happening!" Pink exclaimed as she realized what was going on: her own gemstone now was oriented wrongly and she could easily be mistaken for a Rose Quartz.
What Pink didn't realize, though, was that Connie was still banging on the now locked primitive door. "Steven - Pink Diamond - whichever you are now, this isn't funny! You need to apologize!" She was so not having this conversation, and stepped through the house, noticing a warp pad and hoping that she could warp while running and get somewhere safe.
However, the emotional turmoil inside her worked against her. She failed to warp, and out of full inertia, slammed into another door, this time more sophisticated and gem-like. Then, out of pure shock from everything, not in the least the physical brunt, she passed out.
Seeing pink clouds immediately made Pink feel at home, in her own safe space away from everything else. Now, this was what she expected from dreams; being able to think stuff through and act calmly, even if the conditions made her look mad all the time and be considered a brat by others. In addition, her own form, with the pointy thing pointing upward rather than inward, brought her even more inner peace.
It was in this realm where Pink could overthink everything. How she was going to deal with Connie, and perhaps even Lars. How she was going to get her reconaissance on everything. How she was going to assert herself as a member of the Great Diamond Authority again. And most importantly, how she was going to figure out everything about Steven and whatever "he" word that lifeform used.
"Hey!" a distinctly annoying voice rang through Pink's realm as she was thinking that, even though she was sure that no other person could be here. Not only that, but when Pink looked at... whatever the object form of "he" was, he also had the same Rose-Quartz-but-not-quite gem, but pointing inward, and he was about as tall as Connie. "Are you... Pink Diamond? What are you doing here?" he - Pink was pretty sure that this was the Steven that Connie and Lars were referring to - asked her.
"Oh, you know, just minding my own business in my own mind and trying not to be interrupted by invaders from within. What is this? Why am I... Is there seriously another being occupying my gemstone? How is that possible? Did I... become you somehow? I... I'm completely at a loss here." Pink asked, trying to get something out of the person.
"Wait, does that mean... you're my mom? Not Rose Quartz?" Steven asked.
"Rose Quartz. I will curse that name for as long as I live." Pink said ominously, as she was ignoring Steven and concocting yet another plan to put this entire debacle to rest. She still didn't know what the big deal with a particular Rose Quartz specimen was, but she was surely going to figure out in the process.
Author's idiotisms: So, there you have it. My new fic based on The Brand New Rose Quartz Is Pink Diamond Theory. The old one, which I'll call Blooming Rose 2015 from now on, pretty much had its core theory debunked over and over again, but the theorists have still come up with something to restore the old "Rose is Pink" glory, and honestly, I couldn't be more glad, even if this is going to be debunked eventually.