WARNING! This chapter contains some violence, so be prepared.
Again, thank you all so much for the positive feedback! It's what encourages me to keep writing this story!
Although if you have any constructive criticism, please don't be afraid to share that as well!
Amethyst did not want to be back here. Obviously, she didn't have the experience Garnet did, her being a fusion and all, but the fact that all those deformed monsters were former Crystal Gems is just about the most horrifying thing she's ever seen or heard.
It's like the movies, but worse. Former friends becoming a weird disgusting monster.
Only unlike the movies, there's no way to cure it. Like, how would someone even fix dead Gems who've been fused together physically by their Gemstones?
She never knew any of them, since she wasn't found until after they were already...well, gone.
But that didn't mean it was any less freaky and fucked up.
Steven wasn't around, so she didn't care if she swore. Even if it was in her mind.
The Gem constantly wrapped her whip around her finger and un-wrapped it repeatedly.
She watched for any sign of Hematite. Any sign of his smug face so she could put it the ground.
She didn't care how risky it was, she was NOT going to take all of his crap lying down.
"Hello, Amethyst."
She stopped.
She looked around for him, her eyes darting around frantically to see him.
"Behind you." He said with a sigh of annoyance.
Her eyes were narrowed before she even faced him.
When she turned, there he was. His face shaded by the darkness of his hat and the room around them.
And in his hand, a slightly struggling pair of hands, with conjoined Gemstones imbedded in one of their palms.
A Cluster they must have left behind.
"Disgusting, isn't it?" He spoke, leaning against a wall, holding the hands up to eye level.
Amethyst ignored his words and got into a battle stance.
"Lower your weapon for a moment, runt. I just wish to speak peacefully, first."
"You threw peace out the fucking window when you beat the crap out of me, the nerd, and kidnapped Lapis, you colossal asshole." She cracked her whip onto the ground in front of her.
"Always fight first, ask questions later with you, isn't it?" He spoke. His way of talking was weird. He acts...smarter than her, but his tone was careless. The kind of tone she would have if she was paying only half attention to someone.
"Very well. But I still feel like talking first. Just a little discussion, that, I think you might agree with.
About Homeworld." He looked at her, eyes filled with determination, and seriousness.
The Crystal Gem narrowed her eyes further, but waited to humour him.
"They're disgusting. I hate you. I hate the Crystal Gems as a whole. I hate Earth, and everything on it."
Nothing she didn't know already.
It was what came next, that surprised her.
"But this...beyond death torture...is something I could never in my life condone."
"Huh, so there is some form of "not-assholeness" in you."
He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head to the side, seemingly agreeing with her, oddly enough.
"I'm a horrible person. But I'm nothing compared to Homeworld. You were lucky enough to have not been found and retrieved by them. Shattered immediately for your underwhelming height and strength,
or kept alive by some miracle and treated as an outcast for your entire life. You avoided that."
There he goes again with her height. Why is that a huge issue with him? She wondered to herself.
Hematite slowly lowered the Cluster creature and looked her right in the eye.
"I...wasn't that lucky. You were never on Homeworld, so you don't know what they're like."
"I know enough. Pearl and Garnet told me everything I need to know." She snapped.
"But it's not everything!" Mike snapped back, crushing the Cluster in his hand, a small puff of smoke enveloping his hand momentarily, before a fused Gemstone was revealed.
"You not being on there was probably the best thing that ever happened to you. To me? It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Mike says he was treated unfairly, like an outcast.
Imagine that, but add physical and mental abuse at the hands of your superiors, and you have me."
Hematite began pacing slowly, twirling the Gem between his fingers.
"They knew what I was. A defect. A Hematite born wrong. Did they do anything to accomodate that?
Did they do anything to make me feel better about myself? No. No, they didn't. You want to know what they did?"
"Not really."
"They treated me like a weapon. A tool, and nothing else. Not an equal. Not a slight lower down.
I didn't even get the treatment a Peridot would. I was treated like dirt. Like a doormat. A punching bag.
Do you..." He calmed down. "Do you...have any idea...what it's like to be abused by people you thought you could trust?"
Amethyst didn't say anything. She didn't want to talk. She wanted to fight.
But Hematite's booming voice convinced her otherwise.
"ANSWER ME!"
"No!" Amethyst replied, surprised by his tone. "No, I don't know what that's like! Is that where you're going with this?! You were abused growing up and now you're all bitter?!"
"It's more complicated than that, Gem." He spat. "You have literally NO idea. Yes, Mike was truthful when he spoke of a kind caretaker and mentor in Tourmaline. But she never so much as spoke to me.
Not. One. Time. Because to Homeworld, Mike was the brains, and I was the brawn. He took care of the technicalities, the repairing, the fight strageties, and me? All I was used for was a weapon to mow down anything in my path."
"I didn't have someone like Tourmaline to guide me. They didn't think of me as a Gem, you see.
No, Mike was the only one considered a Gem. All they ever saw me as was an extension of him, for when battles were too difficult. But you wanna know what the sad part is?"
He didn't want a response. He continued before Amethyst even decided if she wanted to say something.
"I wasn't always like this. Me and Mike, we despise each other. We both want the other to die, but neither of us can truly be the one to pull that trigger. But believe it or not, we were friends once."
"Like he'd ever want to be friends with a pyscho like you." Amethyst began walking forward.
She stopped dead in her tracks, however, when Mike produced Lapis' bubbled Gemstone.
"That's just it, though. I wasn't a "psycho" back then. The worst thing about me back then was anger issues.
I'd get angry easy, and maybe I'd hit someone. Maybe. But for the first couple hundred years, Mike kept me concealed. Thought I'd be the straw that broke the camel's back when it came to his defectiveness.
Then Homeworld found out about me. And with me, an opportunity."
Hematite came to a stop, and looked down at the two fused Gemstones in his hand.
"They thought, that with two personalities, one could be smart, but should the need arise, the second personality should be ruthless, emotionless, and not care who it kills. A sleeper agent, if you will. So they waited until it was my turn to take control- oh, that's another thing. We used to have turns. He'd get a week, I'd get a week, and so on. Like two brothers sharing a toy. They waited until I was in control, and every week I was,
it was nothing but ruthless training, dangerous experiments, every second of every minute of every hour of every day. Not ONCE did I ever get a moment of rest. There were times when I'd be cowering in a corner in tears, just waiting for them to prep the next device they'd hook me up to, or serum they'd inject physically into my Gemstone..."
Amethyst wasn't sure, but she thought she almost heard a quiver in the elder Gem's voice.
"Years. Hundreds. Of. Years. Of nothing but pain, misery, abuse, while Mike was none the wiser,
having no idea of what they did when I was in control. He'd see the bruises, the cuts, the blood stains on his clothing, and I'd just tell him it happened during a mission. At first, I didn't want him to worry about me.
Eventually, that evolved into fear. Fear that I'd be beaten senseless for conversing with someone.
I wasn't supposed to. The only thing I was supposed to do was kill. Brutaliaze. Eviscerate.
I wasn't allowed to build relationships with anyone, because I was only supposed to be a weapon, not my own person."
He scowled and pulled a spiked, black broadsword from his gem.
"One day...I broke."
"What do you mean, broke?"
"I mean the pressure got to me. I was so sick of the pain, so tired of the poking and prodding, of the training where there was no holding back from my opponent. Sick of the beatings, of the being knocked down.
For the next few weeks after that, all I would ever do is sit in a corner in my assigned room.
I'd sit there, balled up against the wall, with a thousand year stare, without a word."
"Mike would ask me what's wrong, but I'd never answer. I couldn't. I felt dead inside. Every part of me felt dead. I had the mental capacity of a lifeless earth gemstone.
And those damned Gems, they just observed. The Howlites, the Rhodolites..."
He clenched his teeth and squeezed his sword handle.
"The Peridots..." He said in a form of anger that Amethyst never heard from him before.
"And then...after weeks of just watching me, one Peridot, with a small green Gem on her chest, came up to me.
She looked into my unresponsive eyes. Looked me over. Turned to the others, and said...
"Oh well. Put it down in the records as a failed project."
Right then and there, I snapped.
I lunged onto that snot nosed brat and tore her eyes out. I punched her until her face was nothing but blood and bruises. And when she poofed, I destroyed her Gem like I never have before or since.
Stomped it, punched it, broke it into a thousand tiny pieces strewn around the room.
The rest of them were terrified. One moment I was practically comatose, and the next I'm murdering one of their colleagues in cold blood. Then, I killed them all. Scientists. Weak Gems that could barely put up a fight.
Every one of them, ripped apart, their blood and gem shards covered the walls and floor.
By the time I was done, I was breathing heavily, exhausted, covered head to toe in the blood of them, and some of their shard dust stuck to my clothing. They were all dead. By my hands.
They got what they wanted. They got their ruthless killing machine. Only thing it cost them was their lives.
What made me snap, you ask? That Peridot's phrasing. She was so careless. None of them even cared.
Years of psychological and physical torture, and they just said "Oh well, better luck next time?"
"What are you saying?" Amethyst raised an eyebrow.
"What am I saying?" Hematite chuckled. He dropped the fused gemstones onto the ground.
"I'll tell you what I'm saying..." Amethyst heard in the most unenthusiastic voice she'd ever heard, before Hematite swung his massive sword into the ground, shattering the conjoined gem completely.
"I'M SAYING THEY RUINED MY LIFE FOR NOTHING!"
His scream actually startled Amethyst, making her get ready for battle once more.
"Years and years and YEARS of absolute TORTURE! Years of painfully injecting me of chemicals that made me feel like I was DYING! Years of beating every inch of LIFE out of me! Breaking me and turning me insane! ALL SO THEY COULD JUST GIVE UP!? They were just going to walk away after taking every little bit of happiness and will to live in me and BEATING IT TO DEATH?! And it was all just for an experiment they were gonna give up on just like that!? They were the straw that broke the camel's back, and I was the Gem that BROKE THEIRS!"
Amethyst didn't know if she could watch this anymore. A Gem was having a mental breakdown right in front of her, out of nowhere. She wished she could just walk out of there right now, but she knew more than anything that wasn't what she was gonna do.
After several moments of stressed, teeth clenched nose breathing, Hematite eventually calmed down and returned to his low register.
"My life crumbled around me. Mike abandoned me because of my new violent personality, and every Gem that knew about me only saw me as one thing: A monster. Even though they did it to me.
Mike didn't even ask about my new attitude. He just assumed I became that way.
He was my friend. We were like brothers. We were part of each other. I thought he'd realize something was wrong and ask me. But he never did. I was dead to him, so from there on out, he was dead to me."
"Why tell me all this?" Amethyst asked, stepping forward.
"Hm?" Hematite needed to hear that again.
"Why tell me this?" She repeated. "Why not tell Mike, or even Garnet? Why tell me, of all people I don't understand any of this."
Hematite swung his sword up and held it in both hands.
"...I don't know." His tone, again, surprised the Crystal Gem. Not because he was loud or eerily quiet..
but because he talked so normally. He sounded exactly like Mike. He was just using his normal voice,
for the first time she'd ever heard.
"...I just...I don't know. I think...it's because I envy you, Amethyst. You and me, we're two of a kind.
Like I said, we found ourselves in the same situation. Not looking the way we were supposed to, abandoned in the Kindergarten after the war...only you got to live a happy life away from Homeworld.
I was the complete opposite. My life was brutal and full of misery. I was surrounded by a dark, evil enviornment.
Most people aren't aware they're insane. Heh...guess that makes me unique in a way."
"So then why the heck are you trying to kill all of us?! If what you're saying is true, then you're just a victim of the Gem Homeworld! What did WE do?!"
Hematite's eye twitched.
"Amethyst, I'm not a stable Gem. I'm not even sure I know why. Maybe I despise you for having a better life than me despite us both being born in the same situation. Maybe I hate the rest of the Gems because if they had just found me, I wouldn't have had to go through everything I did."
With that, Hematite himself got into a battle stance.
"So...are you ready?"
Amethyst cracked her whip. "You bet your ass I am."
Amethyst made the first move, but Hematite landed the first blow.
He ducked from her whip and delivered a swift kick to the face, sending her back a bit.
Amethyst wiped the drool from her lip and whipped at him again, this time from a distance.
Hematite ducked the first attack, but a second whip suddenly wrapped around his leg and yanked it out from under him.
The Gem quickly got onto his hands and knees, but before he could get back up he was smashed in the face by Amethyst's spindash attack.
Hematite let out a yell and fell onto his back. He placed a hand over his now bruised face.
His scowl turned into a smirk when he got back to his feet though.
To Amethyst's shock, Hematite's face was healed when he removed his hand.
"Oh, come ON! You have healing powers too?!" She yelled.
Hematite shrugged. "Not as powerful as Steven's. Can't heal Gems, and it only works on me. But when it works,
it works."
It was Amethyst's turn to scowl now, before she rolled up into a ball and spindashed toward Hematite again. But he was ready that time.
He raised his foot up and managed to smash Amethyst directly in the mouth, sending her into a wall.
The purple Gem fell down to her hands and knees, dazed.
She let out a groan of pain as she slowly realized that blood was dripping from her mouth.
And it took one glance at the floor to realize some of her teeth had been knocked out.
"You son of a bitch..." She muttered under her breath.
"Language, Amethyst." Hematite mocked from afar. "What would Steven think if he heard you say that?"
"Shut up!" Amethyst got up and thrashed her whip at him.
But Hematite caught it with both hands.
"After you."
He swung the whip with the strength of a mac truck, taking Amethyst with it, into another wall.
The whip disappeared as she fell face flat onto the hard floor.
"Ugh..." Amethyst rubbed her aching head. Heck, her whole body ached at this point.
Hematite clearly wasn't messing around. She didn't think he'd be this strong.
She took out her whip again, as Hematite approached with his sword.
Just as he swung it down on her, she ducked and swung her whip around the blade.
She managed to wrench it out of her opponent's hands and swung it around and bluntly bashed him in the side of the head, knocking him to the ground.
He didn't move after he landed. Maybe she knocked him out, she thought.
She cautiously approached him, her whip ready to fight more.
But she wasn't ready for what came next.
Hematite tricked her. He waited until the Gem came close, and struck.
"AGH!" Amethyst let out a howl of pain as Hematite's sword ripped through her stomach, coming out the other side and staining her shirt with blood.
The sword was the only thing keeping her propped up, so she fell right to the floor once it was painfully ripped out.
Hematite watched as Amethyst moaned in pain in a growing pool of her own blood.
He didn't relish in it. He didn't even enjoy it. He was just satisfied.
The Gem slowly followed Amethyst as she attempted to crawl away, sword slung over his shoulder.
He put his foot on top of her, haulting her movements.
"You know Amethyst, I thought about our deal a bit." He spoke, kicking her over and kneeling down,
pressing his foot hard against her gaping wound.
Amethyst growled at him, but could do nothing. The Gem had zero fight left after being impaled.
"We agreed that you would come here, and I wouldn't kill Lapis. And I am a Gem of my word. Lapis won't be harmed."
He pressed harder into her stomach, making Amethyst cringe.
"But...I never said anything about leaving her in a bubble for the rest of her existence."
Amethyst went to summon her weapon from her Gem, but Hematite grabbed her wrist and pinned it down.
"Stand down. If you couldn't beat me at full strength, you sure as heck can't now."
"So...now that I have you, I was thinking of going after Pearl next. What do you think?"
Amethyst spit blood in his face.
Hematite calmly wiped it off on his sleeve.
"Charming. Glad you agree."
His work done, Hematite cracked the Crystal Gem in the head with his, and her body exploded in a huge puff of smoke.
When it cleared, Hematite emerged holding a purple gemstone, which he then proceeded to encase in a black bubble.
"One down...three to go." He spoke to himself as he proceeded out of the Cluster chamber.
Uh-oh 0_0 Watch out, Pearl.