A String of Pearls
Chapter Ten
Continuing my burst of sudden free-time-having creativity, I bring you another chapter of this fic, as well as another spamming of my now-available-on-Amazon novel that I finally got finished and uploaded. The better I can do with my original work the more free time I'll have to work on both original and fanworks, so please excuse me for spamming the link. Also for a limited time, you can get it for free, I only ask that if you do get it for free that you leave an honest review after reading:
dp/B07BGSPPBY
And now, back to our somewhat regularly scheduled pearl-related shenanigans.
…..
Champion
It started as a joke. It was never meant to go so far.
The matches had been getting dull; the initial thrill of running something illegal right under the noses of Homeworld's higher ups ran out after a few dozen matches, and there were only so many times you could watch a big burly gem beat the stuffing out of another big burly gem before the shine wore off.
They had never had any problems sourcing the fighters; most of the time they were retired Jaspers looking for some action, or Amethysts stuck working boring jobs who missed out on breaking up riots and storming black market compounds. Occasionally a rogue Topaz or a collection of fused Rubies would join in just for flavour, but nine times out of ten the match was Jasper vs Amethyst.
The betting pool still brought in decent cash, but even the regular betters were getting tired of the same old thing. The Hematite running the operation was not a gem that tended to get stressed out, but this was worrying her. The betters were starting to drift away.
"I don't know, throw something in," her companion Larimar had muttered after listening to her complain about it again and again. "Something they're not expecting. A pearl or something."
Hematite stopped dead in her tracks.
A pearl?
A pearl had no chance of winning even if they wrapped it in protective layers and put an electron charge on it, but it would be something to see. Hematite knew there were certain subsections of Gem society that paid good money to see pearls destroyed. On a personal level she thought those gems were creeps, but their money was as good as anyone's.
"Yes, a pearl," she mused out loud. "Why not? For the novelty..."
"Well, don't look at mine," Larimar retorted, pulling her own pearl onto her lap. "I just had it redesigned."
"Of course not," Hematite scoffed. "I'm not going to use a good one. We can get some worn-out scrap from the black market, doll it up to look like new. The patrons won't know the difference."
They found the 'worn-out scrap' two cycles later; it was a former barracks pearl, with its gem still miraculously intact. Hematite set Larimar up to make the pearl look as sweet and dainty as possible. She was given a redesign in shades of pink and aqua, her hair cut to a neat waifish bob and outfitted in a plain white frock with a single layer of ruffles on the edge. It looked harmless.
As expected, the first arena match of the night was sold out in parsecs, gems clamoured to see the pearl get smashed to pieces live and in person. Even the regular fighters begged to be the ones to do it; in the end Hematite chose a particularly large Jasper with deep battle scars to contrast the tiny pearl.
"Just...do your best," Hematite said when the pearl asked what her orders were.
The fight started, and it looked like it would be over in parsecs when the Jasper swung an enormous hammer down on the pearl.
Except the pearl dodged out of the way, nimbly ran up the handle of the hammer and the Jasper's arm and drove a loose screw she had found somewhere into the Jasper's eye. The Jasper howled, pulled away, and the pearl swung around her head to the back of her neck and drove the screw in there.
The audience were silent, too dumbstruck to comprehend what they were seeing.
Once the Jasper's spine had been immobilized and she collapsed to the ground, the pearl dropped neatly to the floor, managed to pick up the hammer and brought it down on the Jasper's head, hitting her gem dead one.
Boom. The match was over.
Hematite couldn't find a single word. The pearl stood in the middle of the arena, in the dust of her conquered foe, waiting for instructions. The audience mumbled and stared. They had paid good money to see the pearl destroyed, but this was so unexpected they just didn't know how to react.
"Well, it looks like we have a winner," Larimar said at last, striding with (fake) confidence and holding up the pearl's skinny little arm in victory.
For the next few cycles, as they wrestled with themselves over what to do, the pearl sat in a corner with Larimar's pearl, calmly waiting for more orders.
"It was a fluke," Larimar hissed for what seemed like the hundredth time. "They are not made for fighting, for Core's sake! I slapped mine the other day and she fell over! It was just a defective Jasper."
"That Jasper won fifteen matches," Hematite hissed back.
"Well, then, she must have taken damage," Larimar retorted. "That hammer wasn't as solid as it should have been, otherwise the pearl would never have been able to lift it. She was on the verge of crumbling anyway and just didn't have the decency to say it to you."
Reluctantly, they staged another match. This time, they chose an Amethyst who was relatively new to the arena, and proven to be strong.
Her strength didn't matter in the end; the pearl prised a long shred of metal from the fence and dug it in behind the Amethyst's gem, snapping it in two.
When they sent another Jasper in afterwards, the pearl managed to break both of its arms by dodging her throws at the last minute, then stepped neatly on her windpipe and kicked her gem until it was destroyed.
The audience were morbidly fascinated, and it kept them coming back every time. No matter who the pearl was set up against, she always managed to find a way to kill them.
Not beat. Kill.
Even in the roughest matches before the introduction of the pearl, a gem shattering was a rare occurrence. The loser usually yielded when they felt their lives were in danger, but going up against the pearl meant they had no time to yield.
It was frightening, too, how the pearl always managed to find something to turn into a weapon. Even when they removed as much debris from the arena as possible she found something; a piece of the flooring, a chunk of concrete, a shoe thrown by an audience member, even her own severed arm. Her preferred technique, it seemed, was the opponent gem's own manifested weapon.
She had no shortage of opponents. Hematite had worried that the pearl's vicious track record would stop other gems from wanting to fight her, but it had actually become a matter of pride for the fighting gems to be the one to finish her off. They died in their tens, and then twenties, and after a time in their hundreds.
Rumours were spread that the pearl was infected with a zoatox, and it still didn't stop gems wanting to fight or audiences wanting to watch. Hematite desperately wanted to end the matches and have the pearl liquidated but the proceeds made up so much of her income now that she couldn't afford it.
At the end of every match, she had to bring the pearl back to her home, perch it in the corner with Larimar's pearl, and hope that the pearl had decided not to target her.
Sister, you are doing well. Are you happy?
I am quite happy. Many are gone. I shall destroy many more.
Why did you do this? You said you wanted your gem destroyed. You gave me your memories.
She told me to do my best. And so I did.
…..
Distracted
It was a bad idea to bring a pearl with them. That's what they had been told, even though they all spluttered and insisted that they didn't have a pearl, it was against the rules.
(They did, of course. She was under the floorboards.)
The cycle before they were due to leave, five of them individually had the idea to take her out of hiding and stow her in the pipes of the ship. They happened to bump into each other on the way to get her, and swore each other to secrecy. The pearl, for her part, amiably crouched in the pipe for the entire journey with no more damage than a face full of soot upon landing.
The planet was meant to be mostly unoccupied. A handful of zoatoxes, that was what they had been told. When they were rushed, Jasper 72-BF panicked, grabbed the pearl and ran for her life. Somehow, they managed to get away.
Jasper co-ordinated with some of the others that had gotten away, but they were deep in zoatox territory now with no hope of getting out. The ship was overrun and they were a long way from the nearest warp pad.
"We go in shield formation," the defacto leader told them grimly. "Everyone takes a turn on the outside, no exceptions."
"What about the pearl?" Jasper 72-BF asked.
"Doesn't count," the leader spat.
So they proceeded in shield formation, the main body of the group surrounded by the shield Jaspers looking every way possible for danger, and the pearl skipping nonchalantly three paces behind them. When they did trigger a nest awakening, the pearl moved out of the way to let them fight, as ordered.
Three cycles in, they were down to just seven individuals, worn out and wounded. The warp pad was still a good distance away.
"I don't think I can do this any more," Jasper 72-BF mumbled, more to herself than anyone listening. "Just shatter my gem now. It's better than being taken by those things."
The other gems groaned in agreement. Their leader had been taken during the last attack and their morale had been taken with her.
"Excuse me?"
The pearl's melodious trill was incongruous to their surroundings and their situation, so at first they thought they had imagined it. Some of them had even forgotten the pearl was still there, unharmed.
"Um...I think I can help? If you need it," she insisted.
The Jaspers gaped at her. The pearl rarely spoke unless spoken to, and even then not much beyond stroking someone's ego or agreeing with something.
"Okay, whatever," Jasper 72-BF muttered, sinking to the ground. "Let's hear it."
"Zoatoxes are not interested in pearls, and I can communicate with them. I can lead them away from you if you like."
The Jaspers looked at each other in stunned silence. This was an option?
"Why didn't you say anything before?" one of them finally asked.
"Jasper 46-BF ordered me to stay silent. She is gone now, and the order is nullified."
That made an awful sort of sense. To think, they'd had a way out of this mess the whole time but one of them had screwed it up by throwing her weight around. Typical.
"Okay, sounds good to me," Jasper 72-BF admitted. "I'm willing to try anything. But what happens if you lead them away and we get to the warp pad without you?"
"You leave me here," the pearl shrugged. "I will be fine."
They didn't like it, but it was better than nothing.
They continued in shield formation, but this time the pearl walked ahead of them, gesturing back for them to stop when she had located a hive. They watched from a safe distance as she made some odd movements with her limbs, and to their astonishment the zoatox got up and left.
"How did you do that?" Jasper 72-BF whispered when she got a chance.
"Pearl gesture-speak and zoatox language are very similar," the pearl replied.
Pearls have their own language?
They located the warp pad, and as expected it was crawling with zoatox. The pearl readied herself to go to them, but before she did she gave Jasper 72-BF a small object made of cloth.
"Please give this to the next pearl you own," she said, and then she was gone.
They warped out as soon as the last zoatox clattered away, landing to answer hundreds of questions about the planet, the infestation and how they had managed to survive. They explained about the pearl but it was laughed off as impossible, and they were all determined to be suffering from 'zoa-pox', the madness that usually hit after encountering the zoatox.
A new pearl was illicitly purchased for the remainder of the squadron, and on Jasper 72-BF's first night with her she gave her the little object.
"What is it?" she asked curiously, still thinking of the pearl wandering around alone on that planet surrounded by zoatox and shuddering.
"It is for pearls to know," the new pearl answered, and no more was said.