"Seriously? A 'corn shark?'" Lapis said. The Gem tried to hide her laughter behind her hands, but her whole body shook, making the pond ripple around her ankles as they dangled in the water.
Connie smirked, lying back along the pond's edge. A hungrier version of her might have felt embarrassed, but with most of a successful pizza party resting comfortably in her stomach, she could afford a little well-earned ridicule. "In my defense, I thought it might be a corrupted Gem. And Ronaldo made the little bit of evidence he had sound pretty convincing. Everything looks more believable when there are newspaper clippings and red string."
Peridot sat back from the water's edge, completing their triangle. She held a fussy Pumpkin in her lap, the little gourd objecting to the party hats Peridot had strung around her rotund body to make paper horns. Ever since Peridot had dragged Ronaldo, pizza slice in hand, through the warp pad to send him home, the idea of pumpkin horns had consumed her.
That Peridot had returned to the farm alone somehow disappointed and relieved Connie. She wasn't sure what would have happened if Steven had appeared with her, and she wasn't ready to find out.
"Figuring out what's real and what isn't on this planet is confusing," Peridot agreed, and leaned back to admire her work. Once freed, Pumpkin raced out of her lap and ran circles around them, scolding their giggles with ferocious yipping. "Before I realized what a cartoon was, I attempted to locate and contact that poor bald hunter whose opera was ruined by his lagomorph nemesis. I wanted to offer him some assistance exterminating the fiend before it could strike another blow against the theatrical arts."
Reaching out, Connie tapped her knuckles at the edge of the pond. Little ringlets rippled through the water's surface, making the reflected sky dance and shake at her idle touch. "To be honest, I might have gone along with his crazy plan even if I knew there was nothing here. It kept my mind off…"
She trailed off, wishing she could suck the words back into her mouth. But as she watched Lapis and Peridot exchanging glances, she knew she had said too much. "Keep your mind off of what?" asked Lapis.
Letting Bismuth free. Sneezing away their chance to learn more about Shard's plans. Making her parents worry.
Jade.
"Losing my sword. Steven's sword, I mean," Connie said. Her knuckles pecked at the pond surface, tap-tap-tap, sending anxious little ripples to chase each other across the water.
"But it's just a sword," Lapis said. Her ankles swished in the water, crisscrossing her big ripples with Connie's little ones. "You can just get another one, can't you? There must be millions of swords on Earth to replace it."
"Not one that can beat the Gem who took my sword in the first place," Connie grumbled. Her fist slapped the water, erasing all the other ripples with a splash.
Lapis's whole body twitched, and she drew her feet out of the pond, curling her knees against her chest. "Those Shard jerks?" she said. At Connie's nod, she shuddered. "Forget what I said. There aren't enough swords on the planet for them.
"Agreed," Peridot said. "A Flint or a Milky Quartz is a frightening enough prospect to face when armed. It's no wonder they're vexing you."
"It's not even them I'm really worried about," Connie exclaimed, and slapped the water again and again with each point. "It's Pyrite. She's got my sword, and she's taunting me with it by just wearing it! And so far, I can't find her again, and even if I did, I couldn't touch her. She's too good." Finally, she collapsed, letting her fist sink beneath the water's surface as her whole body sagged.
A long, quiet moment swirled around Connie, leaving her to stew in her frustrations. Then she heard a low hissing noise. Glancing over, she saw Peridot shaking with silent laughter, the engineer's hands clapped over her mouth in a vain attempt to hide it.
"A Pyrite?" Peridot squeaked through her fingers. "You lost a fight with a Pyrite?" Speaking the thought aloud seemed to break Peridot, for she threw herself backwards into peals of laughter.
"Peridot!" Lapis scolded.
Lip curling, Connie said, "Wow. Glad it's so funny."
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! It's just…" For someone who didn't breathe, Peridot was struggling to keep her voice through her laughter. "You're always talking about how Pearl taught you to fight, so I figured you would be good at it. But being scared of a Pyrite? You're joking me!"
"What's so funny about being scared?" Lapis asked indignantly, pulling her knees tightly under her chin.
"I'm not scared!" protested Connie. "I'm… What did you call it? Vexed. I'm vexed!"
Peridot silenced her laughter with a deep breath. Her posture straightened, reminding Connie of the way her teachers composed themselves before beginning a lecture. "Before Era-One perfected the Quartz soldier, its military forces were made up largely of the Pyrite. They served as Homeworld's foot soldiers, fulfilling any capacity that required violence. Three Diamonds collaborated to create them, each one adding her own distinctive quality to the final design: White imparted obedience, Yellow created them for elegance, and Blue gave them a sense of pride to reflect their place in the Empire."
"That sounds terrifying!" exclaimed Lapis. "No wonder Connie is so scared of a Pyrite!"
"Not! Scared!" Connie insisted.
"And you shouldn't be, because they're a mess," Peridot said, snickering. "I never could have admitted it before coming to Earth, but the Diamonds really overdesigned their 'perfect' soldier. White's obedience made them so uncreative that they were pretty much only good for parade maneuvers. Those ostentatious forms Yellow gave them were all style and no substance, too concerned with aesthetics to be powerful. And the pride Blue gave them turned them into preening, arrogant fools."
Connie frowned, trying to square the kind of Gem that Peridot described with the brutish warrior she'd faced. The description fit well with the holographic emulations Pearl had conjured for her during training. But none of those faults seemed to slow down the Pyrite who had bested Connie twice.
"In fact," Peridot continued, "Pink Diamond began calling them 'Fool's Gold.' I think that was the point when the design process for Quartzes began, overseen by actual kindergarteners. And, well, I think we know how that turned out. We've all been utterly crushed by a Quartz before."
"Yep," grunted Connie.
"Sometimes the darkness still finds me here on the surface," Lapis murmured. Her eyes flickered with reflection.
"What can I say? Kindergarteners do it right," Peridot bragged, her chest swelling with pride. "Why, in the history of everything, I can only think of a single Pyrite who's ever been a threat to anyone!"
Sighing, Connie dragged her hand through the water, feeling the cool shallows push against her as she waved slowly to and fro. "I don't suppose that Pyrite wears a cape, does she?" she grunted.
A sudden, deep inhalation tugged the air, something Connie could feel as much as hear. She turned her head and saw Peridot gaping at her, the little engineer gasping so hard that she practically inflated. Then all of that air thundered out of Peridot in a shout of, "WHAT?"
"What?" Connie said. Then realization struck her, and she bolted upright, jerking her hand out of the water in a spray. "Do you know her?!" she demanded.
Peridot exploded to her feet. "Wait here!" she cried. Then she ran for the barn, so excited that she fell and had to pick herself up twice before she disappeared through the open doors. The clatter from her rummaging echoed out of the barn.
A louder pounding noise smothered the ruckus of Peridot's search. Connie felt her own heartbeat in her ears, felt her chest rattle and her skin thrum. If somehow, impossibly, Peridot had some insight into defeating Shard's Pyrite, that could mean getting her sword back, which would be the start of making everything right again. She didn't want to hope, but at the same time, she couldn't ignore it.
Another sound pushed at her, this one muffled behind the pounding in her ears. After its fourth time repeating, Connie recognized it as Lapis calling out her name. "Huh?" snapped Connie.
"Are you okay?" Lapis said. Her delicate features were lined with concern. "You have a lot of skin water all of a sudden. And your gemstone is doing…that."
Connie followed Lapis's gesture down to her chest, where a glowing corner of sailcloth poked out of the square green stone. Hurriedly Connie grabbed and jerked the corner into a full sailcloth, and then dismissed it into motes before it could finish coalescing. "That's nothing. And 'skin water' is called sweat. Humans use it to cool off when they get too warm," she said.
And it's Jade's gemstone, she added silently.
"Ew," Lapis said, chuckling. She reached behind her and pulled Pumpkin into her lap, drumming her fingers on the squirmy gourd's bottom—belly?—much to Pumpkin's delight. Slowly, the Gem's smirk flattened, and her brows knit together. In barely more than a whisper, she said, "Are you really okay, or are you just saying you're okay so I won't worry? I used to do that sometimes, but it confused Peridot, and I stopped doing it when she asked me to. It was hard for a while, but it's better now."
Connie couldn't help but notice that Lapis became extra-cuddly with Pumpkin whenever the Gem felt uncomfortable. She started to deny Lapis's question on reflex, but then stopped, taking stock of herself. Her face ached with a deep frown that she hadn't realized she'd been wearing. Her knuckles were white in the fists at her sides. Even her chest felt like it was caught in a vice, keeping her breath shallow, almost manic. With great care, Connie forced every part of her body to relax, starting down at her toes and working upwards until her expression smoothed.
"I don't know what I am," Connie admitted. Her unclenched hands still itched for something to do. Spying a sheet of coupons taped to the top of the pizza box from their party, she plucked it off the cardboard and began to fold it.
Lapis's mouth tightened in sympathy. "Well, at least you're on the right planet for that. Trust me, I would know." Her eyes trailed down, and her expression brightened. "Oh, hey! You made a cute friend!"
Making a few careful rips, Connie finished her origami fish. Even without scissors, the fins had crisp, straight edges. She couldn't help but feel a little pleased with how much better this impulse creation was compared to the serious attempts she'd made just a month ago. Smirking, she held the fish out and released it onto the surface of the pond.
She expected the cheap newsprint to crumple the instant it touched water. Instead, the fish settled its fins onto the surface as though it sat on a sheet of glass. Connie shot a quick look at Lapis, who winked. Together, they watched the surface of the pond climb up around the origami, cradling every face and fold before drawing it down into the water.
A big grin split Connie's face as she saw her paper fish gliding underwater. "Lapis, you're the coolest," she said warmly.
Dark color rippled through Lapis's cheeks as she grinned in kind. "I may not be able to make a fish, but I can take one for a swim."
Something about the fish's underwater loop-de-loops niggled at Connie. It took an extra second for her to realize what it was. "Hey," she said, "how are you keeping the water so still? I don't see any waves or anything when you move the fish."
Lapis shrugged as she made the fish do a figure-eight between either end of the pond. "It's a little trickier than just lifting water through the air. When you push water through water, you have to figure out where the water you're pushing through will go."
"You're talking about displacement," Connie said. "When you move the water, you also have to move the water it's replacing. But if the currents moving both sets of water are the same, everything stays balanced."
Her origami fish spun in its perfect current while Connie watched. Something on her back burner simmered, almost ready, begging for her attention.
Then Peridot exploded back into their midst. "Connie Jade! Behold my recreational simulacra!" she bellowed, and forced herself between Connie and Lapis.
Stumbling, Connie caught herself before she plunged in after her fish. When she turned her attentions back upon Peridot, she scowled. The engineer had returned to them with a cape tied around her neck and a double-headed war axe in hand. A pair of mirrored sunglasses sat layered over her yellow visor. On closer inspection, Connie realized that the cape was an old grain sack that had been spray painted black, and the axe was actually a piece of rebar welded to two halves of an old hubcap.
"Are these the accessory of your nemesis?" Peridot demanded. She draped the sack cloth over one shoulder, letting it billow dramatically along her arm.
"Er, yeah. You nailed it," Connie said, grimacing.
Another thundering gasp rushed into Peridot. "Oh my stars! You're being menaced by The Impossible Pyrite! This is so exciting!" she shrieked.
Connie looked to Lapis for help, but the blue Gem seemed just as confused. "Who is The Impossible Pyrite?" asked Connie.
"That's exactly the question! She's the top fighter in Homeworld's Brackets," said Peridot. Seeing Connie's confusion, she explained, "They're like gladiatorial events, where combatants battle to dissipate their opponents' forms in order to advance their ranking. And that Pyrite has been at the top of the Brackets for over a thousand years!"
"So she's, like, the perfect Pyrite? Like how Jasper is the perfect Quartz?" Connie said, her frown deepening. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lapis flinch and clutched tighter to Pumpkin at the mention of their old foe.
Shaking her head, Peridot said, "Jasper is the ideal balance of power, speed, and tenacity. She is literally a perfect expression of her design. But this Pyrite is a monster. She's too much strength and too much brutality stuffed into the theoretical shape of a foot soldier. She shouldn't exist as she does, but…she does!"
"But why does she?" insisted Connie. "Where did she come from?"
"Nobody knows!" Peridot exclaimed, beaming from ear to ear. "She just showed up in the lower Brackets one day and smashed her way to the top. No one has ever seen her gemstone because she keeps it covered under her cape. How bizarre is that?! We don't know what kindergarten she came out of, or even what planet she's from! But she never loses. Ever."
"You've seen her fight?" Lapis asked, curling her legs to cradle her emotional support gourd.
Looking chagrinned, Peridot admitted, "Well, not exactly. Peridots don't get invited to the arenas. But the girls and I in the kindergarten always grabbed the uploads of her fights from the central Archive as soon as they became available! …to study her makeup, of course. Out of occupational curiosity."
Connie folded her arms and flopped backwards on the ground, glaring up at the sky. "Great. Wonderful. All I have to do to get my sword back is beat someone so unbeatable that a millennium's worth of the best Gem fighters couldn't touch her. And that's assuming I don't get squished or flambéed by her Quartz pals. And I get to do all of that armed with a bedsheet that won't leave me alone!"
Green light shone across the underside of her nose. She felt a corner of the sailcloth emerge to push at the collar of her tank top.
Mashing her hand down on the stone, Connie shoved the emerging cloth back where it came from. "Nobody invited you!" she barked at the sailcloth.
Peridot's mirrored sunglasses tilted down at Connie. The diminutive Gem sagged, her excitement draining. She let her cape and axe fall behind her and tossed aside the sunglasses before plunking herself on the ground next to Connie. "I'm sorry, Connie Jade. I didn't mean to make you feel worse. That seems to happen frequently when I explain things to my friends," she said.
"It's not your fault, Peridot," Connie grunted. "It's mine. I'm the one who keeps messing up every time we fight Shard's Gems."
"No, it's not," Lapis piped up suddenly and forcefully, making the other two turn their heads. With a firm expression, Lapis said, "It's not either of your faults. You guys are great. Those new Gems are the ones attacking us. It's 'their' fault."
Hearing the matter-of-factness in Lapis's voice gave Connie a tiny smile. She might not believe that she was blameless for all her troubles, but knowing that Lapis believed it made her feel better.
"Regardless, I can appreciate your frustrations. I've also been stymied in my efforts to deal with these invaders," Peridot commiserated. "My analysis of that scrap you recovered from the last battle has been unproductive."
"You can't figure out what Polarite's equipment was?" asked Connie.
"Yes and no," said Peridot. "Based on the materials, I deduced that the equipment was meant for some kind of energy transfer. A big one. But I have no idea what for. To my knowledge, there aren't any energy sources left on the planet that would warrant that kind of hardware."
Connie thought back to when she and Garnet had drawn close enough to overhear the enemy Gems' conversation, at least before Connie's sneeze had literally blown their cover. "Polarite was bragging about something called the Celerity Forge. And the…opalescence? No, the Opulence. She talked about them like they were places, I think," she said.
"If that's true, they're no places I know about. When I prepped to come to this planet, I only researched the kindergartens."
"I've never heard of those places either," Lapis added glumly.
They all shared in a long, frustrated sigh.
"Whenever I don't know something, I just search for it online. If I could do that, I'd never forget it," Connie said wistfully. She longed for a simple Earth problem that could be solved with a single Gaggle search. "I wish we could just log onto the Gem internet and look up these places."
A moment passed in miserable silence. Then Peridot screamed, jolting Connie and Lapis both to their feet in surprise. Pumpkin went tumbling away, rolling back to her feet and scampering around the far side of the barn to escape the noise. "Connie Jade! You're a genius!" crowed Peridot.
"What? What is it?" Connie said, her heart racing with equal amounts of anticipation and dread. Ideas that got Peridot so excited always had some greater element of danger to them. Like the time Peridot had turned off Connie's brain to test Jade's gemstone for awareness.
"If we lack information, we simply need to seek it out," Peridot declared.
"The last time you needed information about Earth, you got it from me," Lapis pointed out flatly. "And I already said I didn't know where those places are."
A rare flash of embarrassment crossed under Peridot's visor, but she recovered quickly. "That was when I needed current intelligence about Earth. But if the Opulence and the Celerity Forge are structures on Earth, it means they were built in Era-One, which means we need a database. And an ancient database will actually serve our purposes better than a new one would in this case. Luckily, I already know where to find one," said Peridot.
"You are really milking this reveal," Connie grumbled.
"Ha! We won't require lactation, Connie Jade. Only transportation," declared Peridot. "Because we're going to Pink Diamond's command center."
A look of understanding washed over Lapis's face. "Oh, I get it. Yeah, that could work."
"I don't get it," Connie insisted, looking between the two Gems. "Where is this command center?"
"Nowhere special," Lapis said, and shrugged. "Just the Moon."