Chapter 4: Ghosts
I stare at the nonfunctioning machine for several minutes. My mind keeps blanking on what to do. Can I fix it? The damage doesn't seem so great that it's impossible it could be fixed, but by me? Me?
No. No, I really can't fix this. I'm entirely out of my depth.
I give out a long, wordless scream, pulling at my hair as I rise to my feet. I can't look at it anymore- can't think of how clumped I am- and I pace in front, furiously upset with myself.
"Are you kidding me?! All this, all that effort, and I'm stuck here?! Where even is here?!" I yell, out loud, if only to fill the silence. "OH and what kind of idiot am I to even get myself stuck here in the first place?! I could've set any destination, but nooooo, I just set it to launch square in the middle of Diamonds-damned nowhere! Aaaugh..!" I start to pace, the anxiety of the chase earlier coming back to me.
"Ooooh they're gonna find me out here and they're gonna shatter me and my itty bitty shards will float around this desolate asteroid belt forever and ever and it'll have served no purpose and that'll be my story, that'll be it, be me, all I've done and it amounts to this: shattered in the middle of nowhere, and nobody cares. Oh my dear- well, not the Diamonds anymore but, but- oh my stars what does it even matter, I'm done for and that's it, I should just lay down, and surrender, and accept my horrible, horrible fate." I moan, my pacing and hair tugging coming to a slow stop. I gnaw at my bottom lip, thinking. The asteroid is quiet. Maybe too quiet, but… I'd always hear someone coming, wouldn't I?
"Well… here's not so bad. I mean, it's not.. the greatest. But there's nobody here, right? Maybe, with the ship broken down, they won't be able to track me here. And if they can, I could.. I could hide, I guess. Maybe- Wha-!" My thought is stopped as something collides with my face.
But it's not some random debris, no- it's too purposeful. Whatever it is, it's more likely to be a someone, and the stranger drives me backwards into the ground with a violent force. I'm startled by the impact, and the thing just rams my head back into the ground, though with a noticeably diminishing strength. I recover better from that one, though still feeling the ache, and I claw at the menacing something, which feels very much like a hand, albeit a long and thin one. I attempt to wriggle out from under it, to pull it away, but its grip on my face is horrible.
As it rams my head backwards into the ground again I realize their plan. They want to dismantle me. Why? What did I do? Who are they?
I'm quite discombobulated- everything is spinning- but their force isn't enough to undo my form. Why not draw a weapon? Well, if they won't, I will. Their hand is over part of my gem, but with a wild swing of my arm, I force them to back off just enough that the pressure on my face releases, and my gem is uncovered as they move.
I take the chance and force my weapon, blade first, out of my gem. You're probably not supposed to do that, but it has the desired effect: I hear a hiss of shock as my attacker reels away. Hastily, and quite luckily, I catch my sword by the handle and scurry to my feet. There's only a flash of glinting light as they tackle me again, the rest of their form a blur.
I drop my sword in the scuffle, but I refuse to go down easily. They wrestle to keep me still, but I'm too strong for them, somehow. They're bigger than me, but scrawny, boxy. As much as they have or had the element of surprise and something of a home field advantage, I'm naturally more physically inclined than them, and I am just as ferocious in my defense as they are in their attack.
The scuffle ends when they go for my face again. Not caring for decorum or propriety, I bare my pointed teeth and make to bite the reaching hand. If I could pierce their form, even on their hand, I'd win. Fearful, they shove me away, my teeth snapping shut on nothing. I fall backwards, and my enemy staggers backwards as well, landing awkwardly on their rear.
"What in the blazes is wrong with you!?" My attacker yells, the first sound they've made the entire time. They flex their fingers, disgusted at the prospect of losing them to me. They- but it must be a 'she', as it's a gem… I think? "Who taught you to bite people?!"
"Me? What's wrong with you! Attacking me out of nowhere- I didn't do anything!" My initial line of questions disappear at that indignation. I shift to my knees, mirroring them, feeling so angry at the gall they have to judge me. Their expression turns from disgust to fury again, and they hunch over, hands fisted.
"Oh but you were about to! Thinking you can just stay here-! This place is mine! You and all your filthy race ought stay away-! I'll shatter you before you take me back!" They snarl, and the sight is actually quite intimidating. Face to face like, this, it's hard to deny this person is a gem, though not one I recognize. My mind whirls, trying to identify the type, but while I have a tiny, nagging feeling that I know, I do, I know it, I can't recall the name or the family or even the sounds of it.
They're so foreign but so familiar that it's frightening. Nevermind that their face is all scrunched up in rage, their right-eye-placement gem glowing hotly, their left and only eye pinned on me, or that they don't even have a nose. There's a neat pattern of square-shaped freckles around the gem, a lime green against otherwise lilac skin, glinting an irradiated purple. I start to lose my nerve, but I falter only for a moment, before I get angry again.
"What's that supposed to mean?" I glare, or do my best to. I've never been this angry before, not that I can remember, but I feel that this is the face someone who's angry would be making.
"As if you don't know!" They snarl, leaning forward as if to attack again, but I just lean forward too, baring my teeth in a grimace of a threat. They hesitate.
"No, I don't. Who are you? What's your problem with me?" I ask, holding firm. They seem startled and unsure at the question, leaning away again, shoulders tense with indecision. I make no move. I don't want to startle them any further, and I don't want to start another round of sloppy fisticuffs. I feel good about my odds of winning, but honestly I'd rather not fight anymore. There's something that's so exhausting about it.
"You're a gem. What other reason do I need?" They sneer, as if the answer was obvious. I just gawk, confused.
"Y-you're a gem? Aren't you?" I ask, stating the obvious.
"Not according to your kind! You elitist wretches denied me everything!" They get in my face again, a spark of madness flashing through their eye. "You and your damned Diamond!" And that catches my attention.
"Plural." I say, after a moment.
"What?"
"There's four Diamonds." I state, holding the number up on one hand. "Plural. Four Diamonds." The shock and despair that sets in on their face makes me wish I hadn't said that. They sink back, sitting on their heels, like all the light in the sky was taken away from them. "I'm sorry." I don't know why- they attacked me after all- but it wasn't my intention to emotionally wound them, though I don't know why the existence of more than one Diamond would be so… disturbing. Not like this, anyway.
"What?" They say again, my apology stunning them back to the present.
"I said 'I'm sorry'. I.. I don't know." I shrug, and sit back as well, taking in the sight of the strangest gem I've ever met. I'd been forced to focus on their furious face just a moment ago, but now that there's more than a hand's width between my eyes and theirs, I can really understand how different this gem is from me. They're tall and thin, as I'd observed before, but thin in an unintentional, unorthodox way. No one would design a gem to look like this, not on purpose. They're boxy at the chest, hands, and feet, but lanky everywhere else. Their form looks like it might collapse on itself at any moment, and I'm actually very surprised it didn't during our fight.
Paired with the unsettled pose of relaxed despair, they seem undeniably fragile. And the way they stare at me, like there's feet of foggy glass between us, I suddenly feel as though I don't understand anything.
"Who are you?" I mumble, the question gnawing at my mind. It feels like this one question is keeping me from understanding everything else, and if I could only know this, I'd know all I needed to know.
"I'm- Fluorite- Phantom Fluorite." They struggle to say, each word produced only haltingly. "And you?"
"I'm-" Wait. No. Wait, no, who- what am I, again? I was just- we were all- but what are we called? I start to panic. The name- the word- the sound- it's all gone. Quickly, I have to remember, the Fluorite is getting suspicious- what do we look like? I try to recall the others' faces, but only one floats through my mind, the one with the dapples on her face- "I'm a Sardonyx." I manage to say the instant it comes back to me.
"And what are you doing here, Sardonyx?" The scathing look is starting to return to their face, my brief lapse in memory bringing an end to the strange limbo of a moment we were just having. I have to think hard about that question, though. What am I doing here?
"I'm.. running away. I- I can't stay loyal to Homeworld anymore." That sounds right, but it also sounds pretty vague. I'm sure there are more details to it than that, but no matter how much I ransack my mind, I can't seem to find what lead me here. I know that I was somewhere else before this, I know because-
Because the ship. I landed that ship here. So I came from somewhere else. And it was not a happy time leaving, but the other me's- the other Sardonyxes- they were there. The dappled one that I like the most, and several others, but I don't recall any details about them, just that they were fellow cuts of my gem.
But Phantom Fluorite is looking at me, pressing me for details, I can tell. What do I say? What can I say?
"I'm defective." I admit, though it must have seemed obvious to them. "I can't remember things. So I.. I think I left to.. to go somewhere else. Somewhere there's other gems like me, I think, but I.." What brought me here? Think. It's in here somewhere, I'm sure.
"You crashed." Phantom Fluorite supplies with a dead eyed drone of disapproval.
"Yes. And.. I realize this is your home, I guess, but I didn't know. I mean- I didn't mean to land here, or to intrude. And I'd leave if I could." I apologize, but their demeanor shifts from coldly accepting and judging my words to outright rejection at the last part.
"Oh, no. You will leave. You cannot stay here."
"You see that ship, right? I physically can't leave. I can't fix it- I wouldn't even know where to start!" I look over my shoulder quickly, wondering very briefly if it's where I think it is in relation to me, but Phantom Fluorite takes the opportunity to advance on me again. With a shove, I'm once more on my back, though the Fluorite's hands are at my shoulder this time, and just out of biting range. I scratch and scrape at their hands, but they're gripped just tightly enough on my shoulders that I can't find any purchase, can't remove them.
"I don't care how, but you will leave my system, you rust-colored clod! Or I'll-!"
"Or you'll what? Shatter me!? That didn't work so well the first time, did it? I think I could take you on again if I had to!" I make an attempt to sound confident and scary, going so far as to interrupt them. To be honest, I'm terrified of losing, but my words must register as true, or at least possible, because they loosen their grip almost immediately, though faintly, their snarl fading slightly. Similarly, I let my grip on their wrists relax just a touch. "I don't want to fight. And I don't want to stay here, not if- Well, I'm pretty sure I had somewhere else I was trying to get to. But if it comes to the two of us in a fight right now, I wouldn't dislike my chances at winning." Their eye narrows at me, trying to read something. I stare back, ready for anything.
"I don't think you'd do it. You wouldn't shatter me, would you? I don't think you could." They seem to pull the thought out of me, presenting it to me as a fact. I realize that, no, I couldn't. Not because I'm not physically capable, but because I just couldn't kill another gem. Not on purpose.
"Maybe so. But I don't want to die, either." I don't know why, but I won't go easily. I'm going to hang on and fight to the last scrap of energy in my gem. "So we can either fight like fresh-cut kindergarteners scrapping in the dirt, or we can figure another way out of this." I try very hard to unclench my eyebrows and relax my face, to appear pleasant and amiable and trustworthy, or at least to seem nonthreatening.
Phantom Fluorite seems perplexed, and once more thrown for a loop. What to do? I'm afraid to be caught in my mild bluff, but what would we do if we were to try to work.. together? What could come of it? I don't know, and neither do they, and I think the not knowing is just as frightening for them as it is for me.
