*rises from the depths of the internet like the phoenix reborn* Sup?
so long story short I've been having a rough go of it. Mental health is a hard thing to manage when you've got a lot of outside stressors in your life and the things you enjoy are often the first to go while you spiral for stability. That being said I'm... I won't say back to my regular schedule, but I'm atleast back on board, and back writing. so hopefully I'll have something for you, if not monday, then maybe by mid-next-week. Thank you to squish for betaing for me when I messaged you out of the blue that I had a chapter. and Thank you to everyone who came back to read this chapter. You guys are truly great.
Blue Diamond was well aware that Jet kept track of her movements and transmissions. And she had her own thoughts about this breach of privacy, ones that she kept to herself because, to be frank, she was lucky she was unbubbled and corporeal.
So in return, she kept track of Jet. It was never any sort of active spying, such things were beneath her. But she did have any requests the pearl made mirrored to her own computer. Usually, they were all work related. The pearl seemed to have a delicate finger in countless projects and kept her eye on the goings on of just about everything throughout the empire. Occasionally, a personal message would come through, usually from one of the other pearls on the council. Sometimes, White's former pearl would send her a message, or surprisingly Yellow herself. Blue rarely pried into those, she had some sense of decorum after all.
The day after the conversation with the Ukanth, she had more important things to worry about. She had reports coming in from every member of her court that had ever dealt with member species of the intergalactic alliance. None specified any contact with any of the five species that made up the core of the alliance. And there were no signs of any strange activities that would indicate any subterfuge. She had just finished a conversation with one of her gems involved in counterintelligence when there was a blip on her screen, a message that an unidentified object found near Homeworld's mantle had been requested by and delivered to JPearl-HGC-2.
She exited her chambers immediately, striding down the hall, shrinking with every step until she was small enough to simply walk into the room the pearls had claimed for themselves.
"Seriously?" Jet asked from her position on the far wall. Blue Diamond paused briefly to shoot her a disdainful glare before panning her gaze around the room. Yellow was there as well, along with the three diamonds' pearls and that green one that Yellow insisted was better than her emerald.
And on the table in the center of the room, being prodded at by said green pearl, was an orb of clearly non-gem origin.
"This needs to be destroyed," She said, moving to grab the object. The green pearl, Forest or something like that, slapped her hand out of the way. Simultaneously, Jet got to her feet.
"Like shale you are!" Jet snapped.
"Not while I'm working!" Forest squawked.
"Blue, what?" Yellow sputtered. Blue Diamond gritted her teeth.
"It's not of gem origin." She said, pointedly hoping that Yellow would get the message.
"Well of course it's not," Forest said snidely, rolling her eyes.
"You're impertinence is unnecessary."
"Leave her alone," Her pearl said. To her credit, Blue Pearl didn't so much as flinch when Blue Diamond turned her gaze on her former servant.
"You of all people should know the danger in messing with this." Blue Diamond snapped. Blue Pearl gritted her teeth, unease clearly evident on her face, but she still stared back with pale blue eyes.
"Do you know which of the species this belongs to?" Blue Pearl asked evenly. "The Ukanth clearly wouldn't make something like this." Blue Diamond pursed her lips. The pearl was right, and to be honest, this whole thing wasn't the ukanth's style, they never took the first move in any conflict that Blue Diamond had read about. In fact, the appearance of the device itself ruled out six of the eleven members of the galactic council that would even dare to spy on them.
"Even if I did, it would be unnecessary for you to know." She said.
"Unnecessary? Really, Blue?" Yellow Diamond said. "I may not know much about the civilizations you deal with but there are gems at stake."
"Which is why you need to leave it to me."
"There's no way you can honestly expect us to trust you!?" Jet cut in.
"I never asked you to trust me." Blue Diamond curled her lip and rolled her eyes. "And I don't need your approval."
"Like stars you don't, that's part of the whole arrangement!"
"Jet," Yellow's Pearl said. "Your not helping."
"No, she's right." Yellow Diamond said. "Blue, this involves all of us!"
"White entrusted this to me!"
"White is gone!"
"And that's the entire problem!" Blue Diamond slammed a fist down on the table top, jostling Forest's tools and the device which clattered to the floor with a distinctly ceramic sound. Unfortunately, it stayed in one piece.
"None of you understand the kind of danger we could be in if we let even one hint of weakness show!" She didn't attempt to compose herself, and she knew she was letting rage leak through. She could see Yellow's hands clench as the room turned a pale blue. "And I am not going to chance any of you ruining the peace I have been carefully cultivating since we first made contact with other races!" She pulled back her aura like a swirl of her robes and stormed out, crushing the alien device underfoot as she went.
Steven had been along with Domina on a few of these memory fixings now. And after the gems got their memories back it was always a little awkward. Some cried, or shouted angrily. One of them, a jade, had immediately poofed the moment Domina finished and last time Steven heard, She hadn't reformed yet. 1KL, when her and Domina came back from one of the ship's side rooms, was quieter. In shock, kind of like a lot of the Crystal Gems were once they were uncorrupted by Stevima.
But 1KL didn't back down on their plans. She still borrowed one of the ship's roaming eyes and took the three of them down to the planet. And Steven was thankful that Pink was there, because post memory fixing, Domina was nervous, and when Domina was nervous, she talked a lot. 1KL didn't really seem to feel like talking, but Pink was at least interested in listening to Domina talk about the possibilities of colonizing the planets that had already been stripped bare.
That was another thing that was kind of weird to Steven when he thought about it long enough. Could that just happen to a planet? He and Connie had talked enough about that one environmental science class she'd had to take and about that scare about humans using up all of the Earth's resources. Could that happen to another species?
"I'll put us down near one of the complexes on the equator." 1KL said, breaking her hour long silence.
"Excellent, thank you." Domina said quickly.
"Is Steven going to be able to breathe?" Pink Diamond asked.
"Uh... what do you need a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen or something like that?" 1KL asked.
"Yeah but it's ok," Steven said, rummaging around in his backpack "Domina gave me her space scuba mask."
"...What is a scuba mask?" 1KL asked.
"The Earth version of a personal atmospheric regulator." Domina shrugged. Steven meanwhile untangled the white wristband from his headphones. "Just as a warning, Steven, the gravity is probably going to be weird."
"Awesome," Steven grinned.
Domina was the first one out of the ship, while Steven lagged behind, working his jaw to get his ears to stop popping. There was a yelp and then moments later Domina flew back into view of the door after being blown sideways.
"The winds are really strong!" She shouted as the darkness outside slowly got brighter. "Give me a second and let me see if I can control anything!"
"Wow, could anything even live here?" Pink asked, poking her head out the door while Domina hovered midair, looking like she was in a wind tunnel.
"Something obviously did!" Domina shouted back as her gem glowed. Steven chuckled as the two of them yelled back and forth. Pink's hair growing more and more wild and Domina flailing in the high winds like a kite on a string. 1KL also chuckled softly, though it seemed a little halfhearted.
"Are you coming with us?" Steven asked as the winds outside began to move and arc away from Domina and subsequently Pink Diamond. 1KL hesitated but finally shook her head.
"No, I need some time to...think." She said, then smiled back at him. "Keep Domina out of trouble though."
There had been a sense of dread in the pit of her stomach since the moment 1KL had mentioned the planet. Granted, she knew about it months ago but Domina hadn't felt anything regarding the planet, other than general interest.
But the moment 1KL had mentioned the planet, had mentioned the abandoned structures on it she felt... afraid. But it was like second hand fear, there was no reason for her to be afraid.
She didn't have time to focus on that though. The wind was nearly as strong as her, and keeping a semi protected bubbled around the three of them was hard enough, especially when Pink kept stopping to look at plants.
Though Domina had to admit, the fact that plants could exist here, even the short ones that clung to the red craggy rocks they worked their way around, was incredible.
"This is..." Pink paused as she touched a leaf of one of them hesitantly. The plant immediately widened and looked like it was about to bud... something when she pulled her hand away and the effects faded. "It's like one of those plants that comes out after a forest has burnt down." She looked up at Domina and smiled. "You know?"
"...Not particularly." Domina said, "What did you do to that plant?"
"Oh uh nothing, nothing happened." Pink said quickly, a little too quickly for Domina to actually believe her.
"So how much farther is the building?" Steven asked, his curls just barely peaks out from beyond the atmospheric field's range. How he had gotten taller than Domina in such a short amount of time was beyond her.
"Maybe another hour or two." Domina said, peering ahead of them. The building up ahead was large and low to the ground, probably to protect it from the winds. And it was... familiar. What was the name of that thing they talked about in human movies? 'Day jar view'? A feeling that you had been here before? Domina mused as she looked around.
"Alright, we should probably move, it looks like the sun's going down... again." Steven said. "Which is like the second time now!"
"The planet rotates really fast. I think that's why it's so windy." Pink said. Domina sighed and shook her head.
"That is not how that works." She said, then started moving, as a subtle nudge that everyone else should too, to keep inside the bubble she had made. Steven half walked, half bounced along, occasionally remarking on another plant. But Domina didn't slow down. Why did this place seem so familiar? The architecture, even the ruddy scrub land. Finally they reached the building, as the sun began to rise for the third time since they landed. There was a key pad next to the door, one that was covered with dust, it's symbols partially obscured.
"Well how are we supposed to get in." Pink asked, still apparently a bit miffed that Domina had pulled her away from what had supposedly been a bit of fossilized wood. Steven was more focused on something else that was arguably more interesting to Domina.
"Those... those are gem numbers." He said pointing at the pad. Domina nodded and gently wiped away the dirt revealing something that wasn't quite the same, but pretty close to the numbers she had used her entire life and were now, here, billions of lightyears away from homeworld.
"Huh." Was all Pink said in a kind of stumped sort of way. Domina cautiously pushed the buttons and a screen on top of the pad lit up showing the number there, accompanied by a note. A music note. A part of her brain, her programming, her awareness, whatever you wanted to call it, knew exactly what note too. 'F' Sharp Major Seventh, or if you were Stevima, 'High'. Steven looked at her. And Domina didn't pause before punching in the next two notes; B Major Seventh , or 'Middle', and E Major Seventh, 'Low' which filled out the next two numbers. There was one left though, which kind of got rid of the idea that this door's passcode was related to the corruption song. That would just be crazy. But it did mean she had no idea which number came next.
And of course, whatever that feeling of Day-jar-view was, decided it wasn't going to be helpful in the least just now.
Surprisingly enough, it was Pink that leaned forward and after a moment pushed the next button, an 'A' minor 7th. And with a sharp grinding sound of metal on metal the door creaked open, the sand that had blown up against it spilling on to organically cut floor tiles.
Domina glanced at Pink who shrugged.
"It just felt right."