Connie and Sadie landed in Connie's bubble, it bounced slightly before it released the girls.
"Are you alright?" Connie coughed, the dust getting in her throat.
Sadie nodded, rubbing her arm. "Just a bit bruised… everywhere. How are you?"
Connie slowly felt her short hair, now in a surprisingly perfectly cut bob. She had been growing her long hair for so many years… She supposed this symbolized cutting off all the lies and misconceptions of the past. Her mother was called a shatterer, she had insisted it was a lie and it turned out it may be. She refused to believe it fully, to not give herself too much hope.
"Your hair…" Sadie realized, the adrenaline finally fading from her system and now seeing what had happened.
"It's fine." Connie mumbled with a tiny smile, brushing it behind her ears. "If I want to, I'll grow it back. But I kinda like it, don't you?"
"Yeah. It suits you." Sadie said softly, running with her down the dark caverns they'd landed in. "You said once that your mother killed your aunt… So I'm guessing that the whole confrontation was because of that?"
"...Yes. My mother shattered, or may have been framed for the shatter, of Blue Diamond."
"And that crazy woman trying to kill you was a friend of hers?"
"More than that. She was her family… and she was my mother's too."
"...Connie, I hope you won't be too mad at me for saying this…" Sadie mumbled in a run. "But I can say truthfully, this is all because of your weird mom! It's got nothing to do with you!"
Connie burst out a laugh, being reminded how upset that statement had once made her over two years ago.
"So, how are we going to get home?" Sadie asked, stopping for air.
Connie thought for a moment. "I don't know. Maybe if we can find that grey gem again, she can help us!"
"But she's thousands of miles above us and there's no one around here to-!"
Suddenly they were covered by a bright light and gasped in fright, turning to see a floating Diamond shaped device with a singular pinpoint of light that's line of sight seemed to be infinite.
"She found us!" Connie cried. The light scanned the girls then and it suddenly made Connie's gem glow involuntary. The girl touched it in shock before noticing the robonoid was charging up a beam. "Come on! We have to go!"
"But, Connie-!" Sadie was pulled into a sprint before she could protest. She looked back to see the rock they were leaning against got the beam intended for Connie, and completely shattered on impact. This thing was a murder weapon for gems!
The girls ran with all their might as the device followed them through the caverns. The device paused for a few moments, scanning a wall. Connie slid them behind the opposite wall so they could catch their breath.
"Connie… you have…. your sword!" Sadie panted. "Use it!"
Connie shook her head. "I can't, that thing will get me in an instant if I'm fighting it long enough!"
"Right… then I'll do it!" Sadie suddenly grabbed the sword but Connie held her back.
"Don't be stupid!" Connie cried suddenly, making Sadie hesitate in suprise. The girl had never insulted anyone like that as far as she knew. "If you let yourself get angry and fight it, you'll get yourself captured, or killed, or you'll play right into her trap! It won't work!"
Sadie then realized Connie was clearly thinking of minutes ago when she'd let herself be right where Pink Diamond wanted her to be by letting her anger overtake her. The sword hand loosened. "Okay. You're right…"
Suddenly, the shattering robonoid appeared in front of them and began to scan the walls. The two backed away hurriedly until Connie was suddenly grabbed by someone and pulled down into a hole.
The two gave muffled cries when their moves were covered.
"Be quiet if you'd like to live!" Hissed a sharp voice with a slight british accent.
They stared up and heard a woman's yells and the clanging of metal against metal before they heard the sound of the robonoid shutting down.
They waited in silence.
"We're okay!" The woman announced. "It's gone!"
Then, a yellow gem hopped down. She wore the usual Homeworld except for one startling detail, it wasn't pink. She had a large, blocky build with a visor over her eyes. Her gem, or rather gems, were shaped like suns and were on each side of her head.
"Sorry we weren't here on time." The gem sighed. "We were supposed to be but robonoids found us. Ah… Are you humans?!"
"What?! Ew!" The gem holding them squealed, shoving them away.
"She's Sadie and I'm Connie." Connie exsplained, turning to see a little blue gem who had wings like Lapis, hers were more fairy-like. Her gem was shaped and positioned like a teardrop. "Who are you?"
"That doesn't matter to you! Topaz, we are not taking them in!" The small gem cried in indignation.
"In where?" Sadie asked.
"But Aquamarine, they're rebels too!" Begged the larger gem. "And they no longer have that Bismuth to protect them! Besides, you're not the leader of the team and you know it!"
Aquamarine crossed her arms. "Fine! We'll take you two in."
"Thank you." Connie smiled, the two gems leading them down a stony path.
"Where's the Bismuth that was supposed to accompany you? She sent us the comm to catch you." Topaz asked.
"And she didn't delete it!" Aquamarine huffed. "Thanks to her and you two, Pink Diamond knows our exact coordinates! She always did before…"
"I'm sure she didn't mean to, maybe she was caught." Topaz whispered.
A silence filled the scene as they all silently knew this must've been the case.
"Well, we can't wait for you two to meet the rebellion, we need new recruits!" Topaz smiled.
"Wait, rebellion?"
They then entered a Kindergarten, a massive one that went up for miles. The walls looked like they were crumbling, some even had burn marks scaling them. What had happened here…?
"Whoa, gems come out of the ground like zombies…?" Sadie asked in awe.
Connie was about to rebuttal that it wasn't like that but then realized the truth. "It's exactly like that, yeah."
"Welcome to the base of the Crystal Temps!" Aquamarine announced.
"What?!" Connie and Sadie chorused.
"You're not the Crystal Temps!" Connie immediately cried. "They're on Earth!"
"Well, this is the Homeworld branch."
"The what?!" Connie was dragged along with Sadie through the cavern. "Do you fight for Earth?"
"Don't be ridiculous, of course not." Topaz smiled. "We just adopted the name because we believed in Yellow Diamond's message that Homeworld was imperfect. Lucky for us, lots of gems think that, this branch is bursting with support!"
"Connie… Sadie…." A familiar voice suddenly rumbled, making smiles come to thier faces despite the confusion.
"Fluorite!" Sadie laughed, seeing the fusion. "How'd you escape?!"
"The Crystal Temps rescued them, of course." Aquamarine said smugly.
Connie desperately wanted to demand she stopped calling them that but knew it wasn't a good idea to go against people who took them in.
"Are you two alright?" A sudden voice asked. A pretty looking violet gem peeked out from a hole before gently walking out. She was clearly an aristocratic gem seeing as she wore a long and fancy dress along with very pretty long hair that was styled in an updo that trailed down her shoulder. Her gem was oval shaped and upon her chest. "Are these our new recruits?"
Topaz and Aquamarine gave opposite answers, the former positive and the latter negative.
"I'm Sadie and this is Connie, what gem are you?"
"Idolite." The gem whispered shyly. She clasped her hands together in delight. "It's been such a long time since we've had new members. And today, we are simply bursting with them!"
Suddenly, they heard the sound of a ship coming down from above. Connie and Sadie were going to hide but then noticed the other gems seemed to have no fear of it. It was a Roaming Eye ship, Connie recognized it since it was one of the two Homeworld ships she'd seen. Seeing it reminded her of that gem. She wished she could see her again and apologize to her.
The door opened and out stepped another elegant looking gem. She wore a cloak with a hood that covered nearly everything aside from the very tip of her nose. Because of that, it was hard to make out anything of her appearance, aside from the small green arm with a large spiderweb of cracks on it that led out another gem, a newcomer.
The shaking new recruit looked around nervously but Connie's jaw dropped in shock, tears coming to her eyes. She caught her staring and slowly walked up to her.
"I-I know you don't remember me but I'm so, so glad to see-!" Connie gasped when she was suddenly pulled into a hug.
"I'm glad to see you too, Connie." Rhodonite whispered softly.
The girl shoved back in surprise. "You remember me?! But I thought Pink Diamond reset you!"
"She did, but she didn't think to separate us, so we found our way back to each other and… fell in love again! It's nice, isn't it? I think it is."
"It's wonderful." Connie beamed, wiping tears from her eyes. "Oh! This is my friend, Sadie…!"
While the two caught up for a few moments, the cloaked gem stared at them intently. The strong guard who'd accompanied her for the rescue mission walked out and immediately her eyes widened in anger at seeing the scene. The leader of the underground rebellion waved her hand slightly though, and that was all it took to stop her despite her emotions.
Connie then looked back to the group, seeing Aquamarine, Topaz, and Idolite had all gathered around the small cloaked figure. The guard had her back turned to the woman as well. Connie assumed that was their leader. She leaned to Rhodonite and whispered, "So they rescued you…?"
"Mmhm… They found me right after I fused again. The guards all came at us but she took them all out by herself!"
Sadie and Connie both assumed she would point to the muscled gem but she instead pointed to the leader.
"She… is… quite... the… fighter, they….all…. are." Flourite added on. "That...Idolite… and… the… Jasper… come… to… save… us…"
"Whoa. Lady's got guts." Sadie whispered. She then frowned. "Wait… do you guys have guts?"
"No." Connie answered quickly before walking forward to the crowd.
The leader gem brushed the others off while the guard turned to her and Connie froze in shock.
"Must be great reuniting with all your Homeworld friends." 7XR mumbled, glaring down at her.
Connie had wished she could see her to apologize but she didn't have time. "I-"
"I don't want any apology from you. And no, I didn't find my team, I was captured, actually. They saved me, they're Crystal Temps I actually care about." The Jasper said at once. "You already tried to say you were sorry… and it didn't work. What you did to me, playing me like some kind of fool while my friends were out there, I-!"
The leader placed a hand to her arm before she could grab Connie. She shook her head silently.
"I'll let you stay here for now, but we're getting you back to Earth as soon as possible. I don't want to look at you longer than I have to." She stomped past Connie and hunkered down into a hole.
Connie gave a sigh in sadness before seeing the leader staring at her. Or at least, she thought she was staring at her, she couldn't tell.
"Vari, we can not let these disgusting creatures stay here! We need to get them out before Pink Diamond-!"
"She was already going to come even without our new arrivals." The gem said in a soft yet sharp voice, shutting Aquamarine down at once. She slowly walked forward to Connie, looking down at her.
Unlike with Rose, Connie didn't feel scared with her towering. She actually felt quite safe.
"Connie, Sadie, welcome to the Crystal Temps. We are the only known resistance on Homeworld to go against Pink Diamond. I am Variscite."
"Thank you for taking us in, Variscite." Sadie mumbled, walking up to stand beside Connie. "... How long has this resistance been going on?"
"Ever since the shattering of Blue Diamond." The Topaz fusion explained. "Variscite was the founder!"
"Of course she was, she experienced Pink Diamond's first signs of cracking." Aquamarine hummed, hovering slightly above the ground. "We've been around for thousands of years!"
"Wait, t-then why didn't you save me earlier?" Rhodonite suddenly asked with a spark of anger. "You're on the top of Pink Diamond's shattering list with all the sabotages you made over the thousands of years: prison breaks, ship destruction, you even disabled Pink Diamond's communication hub to distract her from her runaway Pearl! You ruined dozens of our- my Morginite's plans, you must've seen she- that her Pearl was so unhappy! That I- That the Ruby had sacrificed everything to be with her!"
The group stared in shock as Rhodonite panted.
"Calm down… We are grateful…" Rhodonite reminded herself.
"Yeah… we are." She sighed back.
"... We're sorry, but… we couldn't save everyone back then, and we're even less able to now." Idolite answered.
"You four managed that much for thousands of years all by yourselves?" Connie asked in shock.
Variscite shook her head with a small laigh. "No, no, certainly not! There were hundreds of us! We were all different, but united in the same goal: true freedom from Pink Diamond."
"Then where is everyone?" Sadie asked in confusion.
The room filled with silence.
"They're gone, obviously. And they aren't coming back." Aquamarine hissed.
Topaz shook her head, tears coming to her eyes. "Don't say that! They're just…! They aren't shattered!"
"I should start from the beginning… when there was only one version of Crystal Temps." The leader interrupted them, seeing all the others look confused at this very sudden battle.
"I had heard of the Crystal Temps feats, of course… but I tried my best to ignore them. I thought they were a passing phase and that the Diamonds would be whole once they made a compromise but… then Blue Diamond was shattered… I was the only one who saw it clearly… the others ran."
"Wait, you were the sole witness?!" Sadie asked in shock. "I thought she made it up! Well, what did you see? Since you're against Pink Diamond, you wouldn't mind telling the truth, right?!"
"I'm not sure what you mean…" Vari mumbled softly with her hands placed to her chest in shock. "I saw Yellow Diamond shatter Blue Diamond…"
"With a sword or something else?" Connie asked quickly, making her shrink slightly.
"What else would she use? Everyone saw it was a sword, myself included." The gem grunted. She frowned, her hands balling up into fists. "Are you saying I was broken over nothing….?!" The gem gasped then, grabbing her head before she stumbled back.
"Hey, hey, don't think about it, you're here, you're safe." 7XR assured her, holding her tiny hand as the already tiny cracks on her visible hands splintered into smaller ones.
Connie gasped. "You mean, Pink Diamond broke your hands? Why?!"
"Not just her hands… her whole body. That's why she wears that gastly cloak. It's awful looking but according to Vari, she's even worse looking underneath."
"Pink Diamond didn't mean to do it, she… she screamed in agony the moment I told her who had done it… I was so terrified she would do it again that I ran away... and I never saw her again. I found a hiding spot in one of Yellow Diamond's shipyards, now abandoned obviously. I hid alone there for… I don't know how long, until I decided I would check how Homeworld was again. I learned how Pink Diamond was treating gems: her own she forced into armies or to continue their previous labors, most of Blue Diamond's gems rallied with her, of course, and Yellow Diamond's were usually reset. At that time, she hadn't gotten to the point of blaming every single yellow gem, she still had some sanity. I decided I couldn't stand idly by so I decided that if I sabotaged enough, Pink Diamond would have to listen to my demands to let gems choose what they want to be. It just so happens a lot of gems grew to like that plan and asked to join me."
"Yeah. I joined when Vari told me their mission. It sounded so nice, and everyone was working together to get to it and… I just had to join in!" Topaz explained.
Aquamarine huffed. "I just knew Pink Diamond didn't deserve me with all the horrid things she'd done. I lost my wand and therefore my powers when I went against her, but it was worth it."
"I don't have much of a story…" Idolite mumbled. "I just emerged and… wandered around until I found this group. After a while I realized I hadn't been made to work with them, and that I supposedly had a role to play in Homeworld society but it didn't matter. I didn't want a place in society if I already had one with the outcasts."
"All cuts, colors, and classes of gems joined, many yellow, until we had nearly enough to march to the Diamonds' palace and demand change… but Pink Diamond had finally had enough of us, and sent spies one day after a mission. They reported our base and we were quickly outnumbered… Everyone was poofed and bubbled, placed in that horrible museum like they were trophies… Everyone but us. We've been looking for new recruits so desperately so we can free the others… Thankfully, Homeworld hasn't found this base."
Like her words were magic, around 40 shattering robonoids suddenly surrounded the area, all facing the gems in the center.
"They found this base!" Idolite gasped, summoning her weapon, a large fan just as tall as her.
"What are you doing?!" Connie cried, seeing the gems around her summon their weapons while she ushered Sadie into a hole for safety. "You can't fight all of them!"
"We can try." Vari mumbled, holding a harpoon in one hand and a sharp hook in the other that was attached by a metal chain.
"But you'll fail!" Connie protested in fear, seeing the robonoids closing in.
Sadie pulled her in the hole to keep her safe.
Fluorite quickly surrounded Rhodonite before slinging a few out of their way and racing behind a pillar for safety. The two gasped when three more appeared but 7XR leapt onto Flourite and managed to hit them away with her nunchucks. She saw her other teammates in trouble and grimaced. "Stay here!"
"We have to help them!" Sadie yelled to Connie over the battle.
"This is all my fault…!" Connie whispered, too wrapped up in her own guilt to hear her. "I lead those things here! Those gems going to be captured like the others, who were taken because I betrayed Pink Diamond and made her go crazy! If I get let myself fight… I'll make it worse! I'll screw it up like everything else!"
"Connie…!" Sadie whispered in shock.
Topaz summoned her spear and slung through around eight as they surrounded her and Aquamarine.
Aquamarine flew up and grabbed a robonoid. It targeted her gem but she twirled it around before bowling it into the remaining one.
Idolite fanned plenty to the ground before stabbing through a few. Her gem suddenly glowed and the two robonoid sounded but one was stabbed through before the gem was suddenly hooked around the waist and yanked to Vari's side. The leader then hooked another before swiftly guiding it into the others remaining.
Even more emerged from seemingly nowhere.
"We can't keep this up…!" Vari whispered, the gems all huddling together to defend each other. "I-It can't end like this after all we've been through together!"
"That betrayal wasn't you! It was your mom, remember?! Your super weird, gem mom!" Sadie tried to remind her.
Connie looked up with tears in her eyes. "I'm a failure… I couldn't protect Earth, I couldn't protect my family… I can't even protect you!"
"You think these posers are more Crystal Temp than you?" Sadie asked in realization. She narrowed her eyes. "If you don't trust your feelings to fight, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. You tried everything to protect everyone, Connie… let someone else help.
Before Connie could stop her, Sadie grabbed her sword and ran out to the group. She shielded one side from the scanning before slashing through another.
Connie wipes away her tears before running out after her. She fired her electric powers in a large beam, taking out plenty. She looked around to see that it looked like the robonoids were finally gone, there seemed to be no more reinforcements. Out of the bottom of her vision, she noticed something glowing and glanced down to see her gem was bright white. She looked up in fear as the last robonoid fired at her but Sadie leapt our in front of her, taking the shot instead before she slashed through it.
"Sadie!" Connie gasped as the young woman collapsed back into her. She gently put her on the ground, breathing heavily. Sadie's eyes were shut as her body grew cold and pale. "S-Sadie…?!"
The gems surrounded the two, all about to give praises when Variscite suddenly placed her hand up to stop them from doing so, sensing something was wrong.
"Sadie, you can't…. you can't give up now, come on!" Connie cried with a shaky breath, hurriedly checking Sadie's wrist for a pulse, putting an ear to her chest, and placing her finger under her nose, praying for any singular sign of life. "W-Wake up…"
"... Does…. this… mean….. Sadie…. joined…. the… stars?" Fluorite asked softly, thinking that the ladder must've represented the journey to Sadie's shattering point.
Connie's lip trembled as she hugged Sadie close, holding back sobs as tears rolled down her face, causing the gems around her to follow suit once they realized what had happened. "WAKE UP!"
Her scream echoed around the cavern until it lapsed into silence followed by Connie's sobs as she held her first human friend close to her.
The girl's tears landed on Sadie's cheek, causing tiny sparks of electricity to congregate before spreading out along with a bright yellow spot. The glowing spot spread out to every part of the broken body, coloring her a bright gold. The girl's fingers twitched before they suddenly clenched and Sadie slowly sat up, revived back to life.
Sadie gingerly pulled up her shirt to see her stomach was now covered over by a giant round scar where the bot had killed her. "Connie…? What did you just do?"