And now, to close off 2021, we have the latest installment of "simple headcanon-turned-space opera!"
Nobody could understand what the heck just happened for several minutes. Steven and Rose just glared at each other which also created a rather surreal sight as Steven's full-gem form gave him several feet in height and pink hair to match his mother.
After nobody knew how much time, Blue Diamond managed to say something. "Y-You saved our lives… Why?"
"Yes, that's an excellent question," Rose bit, "Steven, you just spared these tyrants."
"I know."
The flippant tone in his voice made Rose step back. "But… Why? They-"
"Can't change? Says who? You?! Do you have any idea who you're talking to? Who's in your supposed family?"
Steven gestured back to the menagerie behind him. "An amethyst that was supposed be bad at fighting, a pearl who went from live-in butler to awesome warrior, a fusion who isn't supposed to exist, two human women who now have superpowers, my dad who learned to fight in a suit of battle armor just for this, a ship full of rejects that had to prove they have a right to exist and two gems who were actively serving Homeworld last year! If all of us can change, why can't the diamonds?!"
"Steven, please, these are all totally different examples!"
"Oh, are they now? Okay, fine, none of them were world-conquering titans except for your best friend!" Steven angrily pointed to Pink who by this point really was looking offended.
"She went from trying to take over Earth to risk dying to save it! If you keep saying the other three diamonds can't change and yet she can?!"
"I can't believe I'm about to say this," Blue muttered, "But Steven actually makes a good point."
"Shut up!" Rose called, "You've shattered millions of gems in your so-called justice system!"
"So that makes you shattering them okay?! Mom, you keep dodging the question! I want a straight answer out of you: Why do you have to shatter the diamonds? Why is that the go-to plan?! Especially right after they've just said that they're willing to change for Pink's sake?"
"Because White Diamond sent me those messages!"
"Okay, quick check, did anyone else see those messages?" Steven turned to the crowd to find that no one was making any sign that they had.
"And Peridot, a gem who can essentially meld with technology, can't find any trace of them! Were Zoisite and Kunzite with you when these messages came in?"
"No… But-!"
"But! Nothing! Mom, I don't know why you're seeing things but you're going way too far! I get why you hate the diamonds, how terrible they've been to so many, but this has to stop! All you're doing is pointing your fingers and proving you're not much better than they are!"
Rose's furious expression melted into an empty stare. "W-What did you say?"
"If the diamonds are so awful for killing gems and ruining planets, what does that make you?"
"S-Steven… I… Sometimes…"
"What?"
"Sometimes… You don't have any other choice…" Her stare hardened as she spoke only for Steven to march up to her with a righteous anger of his own.
"Oh, really?! What happened to what you told me after I shattered Jasper?! 'Violence isn't always the answer!' How hypocritical can you get?!"
Rose did not have much of answer for that. She looked to the Crystal Gems but could not find a single look that wasn't scathing. She tried turning to Pink only for her to walk towards the hangar door.
"Where are you going?"
"Away from you both," she spat, "I need to be alone."
Rose wanted to go after her but instead caught sight of the other three monarchs watching her. Her hands curled into fists but Steven forced her eyes to meet his.
"This has to stop, Mom. I get why you hate them so much but this won't solve anything… I know. All you'll feel afterwards is guilt."
Steven then glowed for a bit before his usual self was back and followed Pink Diamond outside. The others, both her allies and her enemies, could all agree that the meeting was adjourned and went on their separate ways. Only Rose remained there, stewing over all of this information over and over again.
Just how did White Diamond scramble those messages, anyway?
(Break)
Days passed with little else happening. Rose tried to see the others but she barely got more than a greeting before they found somewhere else to be. The only exceptions were Pink and Steven who shut her down at every attempt before storming off. This also brought any further additions to the rebellion to a standstill as neither leader was feeling like acting.
For Pink Diamond, the blowup hit the hardest. She had no idea what to do anymore. She fully expected the other diamonds to try something but the thought of any of them, especially White, to apologize for all their wrongs and offer her to come back sounded impossible. Part of her really did assume it was all a hoax but the looks in their eyes stopped her.
She could barely remember the old days where she had been happy with them, keeping them all entertained with her antics. The ways they had laughed and seemed so relaxed brought a pleasant smile to her face. It made Rose's sudden outburst hurt all the more.
"Something troubling you?"
Pink turned around to see Zoisite and Kunzite. "Did Rose send you to find me?"
"No," the darker gem admitted, "She has no idea you're out here. As far as we know, Rose is still in the tower."
Pink looked out at the desolate purple ground around her, appreciating the quiet. Zoisite then stood next to her. "Rose did tell us all about the 'negotiations.' I can imagine your dilemma."
"Can you?"
"I believe so," the pastel-haired gem admitted, looking up at the diamond with a deep sadness in her eyes, "Because I had make that choice once. Between two lives I could have lived."
Pink arched an eyebrow at that before Zoisite took a deep breath. "One of White's earliest targets was a volcanic planet particularly rich in minerals. It would have been the most bountiful colony yet. The people who lived there, however, were thoroughly unimpressed with the gem empire and shut down every negotiation I made. And thus, Kunzite was supposed to 'convince' the other party to surrender."
"And I failed, miserably…" the umbral gem admitted, only sounding the tiniest bit bitter about the memory, "If it weren't for Zoisite breaking protocol to rescue me, I would have been melted to slag by a bunch of hostile magma creatures. And, as a failure in my sole duty to Homeworld, I was to be imprisoned indefinitely until Blue Diamond's court would determine a proper punishment."
"I then made a specific request; imprison me with her. The legislators assured me that my breach in protocol could be forgiven, that I could continued serving the Great Diamond Authority."
"And…?" Pink asked.
"I promptly shoved my sword into the nearest Zircon and told the adjudicators to take me down. It took a few hundred droogs to stop my little 'outburst' and I was quickly declared a traitor with Kunzite."
"Wait, why were you…?"
"Because I started stabbing them too," Kunzite shrugged, "Nobody threatens my friend and gets away with it!"
Zoisite chuckled, never getting tired of her sister-in-arm's protective side. "So you see, I had a similar decision in front of me. Two possibilities that meant looking at myself, what I truly wanted, and determining how the rest of my life went in one decisive moment."
"You sound so calm," Pink awed, "How?"
"Because I have never once regretted it. Never have I thought back to 'what if I had stayed with the diamonds?' Oh, I did hesitate for a bit, as my position was quite cushy. But now? I wouldn't consider it for a moment. That is how you'll know you made the right decision. When you can look back and regret absolutely nothing."
As Rose's two handmaidens stayed there just enjoying each other's company, Pink felt her doubts ebb away until a question came to her. "Hey, just out of curiosity… Did Rose absorb your light too?"
"No," Kunzite answered, "We were freed from our bubbles, told how much time had passed and were quite eager to pledge our services to someone else. And, if I'm being perfectly honest, it appears that was for the best since Rose's incident has me alarmed to a degree."
"True, her recent behavior seems very unlike herself," Zoisite admitted before shrugging her shoulders, "But I'm confident this will all pass, and her wisdom will point us all in the right direction."
(Break)
Rose had spent all of her available time not spent trying to make up to the others on finding White's consarned messages that just refused to appear. She had not only had every other peridot or even technically literate gem run a scan of her planet's network, she tried breaking into nearby Homeworld signals to find them there. Now the mother was all but pulling her hair out trying to think of what to do now.
Her focus was finally pulled aside when she heard the doors open. "Greg?"
"Hey, Rose," her love greeted as he walked inside, "How've you been?"
"Ugh, terrible… This whole incident is driving me nuts. And I just want to apologize to Pink but she won't let me near her."
"Eh, you'll figure it out," he said with a laidback smile that made her heart skip a beat before taking her hand.
"You know, I can't believe how little you've changed," she mused.
A blush came to the father's face. "Well, er, I do have less hair than before… And I'm not exactly in the same shape."
"I couldn't care less about that, Greg. I meant how you're still the same kind, wonderful person that I met at that concert years ago. And you've truly helped Steven become a wonderful young man along the way…"
"You aren't upset at him over what happened at the meeting?"
"More like… Conflicted. I mean, he is his own person but the fact that he'd stand up for them…"
"I guess it really does make you think. I couldn't tell you, that's for sure."
Rose let out a despondent sigh. "I feel like such a mess. Here I am with a second chance to finally fix everything and it's all just getting so complicated. If only he'd let me talk to him about this."
Greg started to walk away as he spoke one last thought. "Maybe the diamonds have gotten to him?"
That single thought made Rose freeze in horror. She barely heard how her boyfriend had somewhere to be and promptly tried to not panic as she wondered just when and how those three tyrants got near her son and somehow manipulated him into saving them. One thing was for sure, she needed more power if those diamonds thought they could turn her own family against her.
(Break)
The Crystal Gems' loft on Rose's world had been very quiet that day. Nobody had a good idea on just how to approach the utter mess that was their meeting with the diamonds. They had even begun migrating between here and the beach house just to get some air away from it all. Now, the Off-Colors and Topaz decided they needed a break from all this as did Greg. That left Steven, the main trio, the elementals, the inventors and the Mahesweran family.
The problem was obvious: Rose wouldn't listen to any other reasoning aside from the diamonds being responsible for something that seems impossible given the evidence. They had tossed around ideas on how to get her to see the light but at this point their best answer was to give her some space and let her clear her head.
"Does anyone else have a really bad feeling about this?" Steven asked, looking up from his phone.
Pearl stopped her violin-playing. "Well, this whole situation is unpleasant…"
"No, I mean… Like this is all gonna get worse? I can't say why but I have this awful feeling that Mom's problems are getting worse."
"Well, when you put it that way," Cinnabar piped up, thankfully snuffing the fireballs she was juggling, "I can see it. Rose is super powerful now and, hehe, call it experience but power tends to do things to people."
"What kind of 'experience' do you mean?" Lapis asked but Adamite suddenly appeared behind her and whispered something that made the blue gem pale.
"Okay, so that's why Brimstone is for emergencies only…"
"Right… And as a result, I wholeheartedly agree with Steven's concern. In fact, I believe there might be a proper link between Rose's shift in personality and the acquisition of her tremendous energy manipulation."
That got everyone thinking. Peridot, per the norm, was the first to express her thoughts. "I suppose that is plausible given that her situation was entirely unprecedented, much like Steven and his powers tied to his emotional state."
"But really think about it," Connie thought aloud, "When Rose invited us here, she didn't have nearly as much energy in her. Then she had that first message before White's attack."
"And she blew them all up, came back here, and then went off to some planet full of gems to take their light… Oh crap." Dr. Mahesweran gulped, suddenly getting the gist of it all.
"It might be just a coincidence," Bismuth said with a reassuring hand on the mother's shoulder, "But when you put it like that… Yeah, I don't like the sound of it either."
"We need to find Mom and try to get her not to power up anymore," Steven told them all, "At least until we can get this under control."
Now that they all had a proper plan, the group filed out of their penthouse to try and get some clue of Rose's whereabouts. Thankfully, all of them still had the communicators Peridot made for them months ago so they could all split up and stay connected. That soon proved to be pointless as every last gem they turned to said they had not seen Rose in hours. It was only by luck that Lapis ran into Pink Diamond who was just as lost as to where her friend was.
Luckily for them, Rose and her had given each other private communicators on the off-chance they would need to talk when one or both of them were away from their base or Pink's ship. Now the only issue was that Rose did not answer several attempts at a call.
"She's really not helping her case at this point…" Pink ground before fiddling with the football-sized prism in her hands for a bit. After a few twists, she activated the audio transmitter to at least here what was holding her up. It turns out she was in the middle of giving a speech.
"And so, with your lights added to mine, we shall finally free ourselves from the Great Diamond Authority! We shall never let them strangle our freedoms!"
"Oh no…" Pink paled, "She must be on one of the other bases we were setting up! We have to stop her now! She probably has millions more under her already!"
"How many gems did you bring along with you?!" Peridot shrieked as they all started running for Pink's personal ship. When the diamond said they had five planets' worth, plus however many more have enlisted with their cause since then, they decided they needed a faster route. Peridot beamed herself through the metallic ground to directly steer Pink's ship to them and then flew them off to the coordinates from Rose's communicator.
This also served as a convenient tracker for the rogue rebel up until they got halfway to their destination and Rose, for lack of a cleaner term, just disappeared before reappearing in a different place seconds later.
"Um, anyone got an explanation for that? Because I, for the record, cannot glitch!" The technopath shouted after popping out of the computer for a moment before beaming herself back in to hastily adjust their trajectory.
Thankfully for them, Rose seemed to take her time on her next speech since Pink's leg-ship managed to breach the atmosphere of the Homeworld colony-turned-rebel world and interrupt her before she could pull another vanishing act. Whatever she was doing stopped dead in its tracks as she soon as she spotted a humungous pair of pink metal limbs hover over her audience.
The group was about to send someone to head out when Rose, only detectable from the throng of millions of other gems by the small circle in a miles-wide clearing, suddenly appeared in front of the bridge in a fraction of a second.
"Can I help you?" she asked snidely, "I was in in the middle of something important."
"How did you just do that?!" Pearl shouted. Everyone else in the ship looked very eager to hear the answer even as they slowly backed away from the controls.
"I just turned my body into pure light so I could move faster," the mother waved off, "Now, if you don't mind…"
"Since when could you do that?" Pink stepped up, "And, more importantly, what are you doing out here?! You think maybe I should be able to address the gems I helped bring here to our new society?"
"It isn't about that, Pink. I just needed more power to handle whatever the diamonds did to Steven."
Everyone looked towards the young man but his jaw was halfway to the floor. "What the heck are you talking about?! None of the diamonds did anything! I haven't even seen them since that meeting and before that is when we all went to Homeworld!"
Rose, literally phasing herself into the ship through the glass, put on a disarming smile as she approached him. "Steven, relax, it's going to be okay. Soon those three won't be able to do anything to you…"
"Rose, listen to him!" Garnet urged, "Steven is perfectly fine! We've been around him this whole time, we haven't noticed anything different about him."
"And do you know that for certain?" the mother retorted, "You've seen how crafty they can be. Plus, it was Greg who suggested that."
"G-Greg?!" Amethyst sputtered, "When did he do that?! He's, like, the last dude to get paranoid!"
"I just saw him about an hour ago. He walked right into my control room…"
Everyone was looking at someone that wasn't Rose, making sure they all heard the same thing. Quite a few people looked at Priyanka, the only actual doctor among them, and got a sinking feeling when she shrugged her shoulders.
"What?" Rose asked, "Why are you all so nervous?"
With no other choice but to bring up the elephant in the room, Steven spat it out. "Mom… Greg has been on Earth for hours now. He left pretty much after the meeting this morning."
"But… That can't be… He…"
"Mom, something is seriously wrong. First the two calls from White Diamond nobody else saw and now this…"
"Steven, don't be ridiculous!" Rose giggled, "I'm fine! In fact, with that latest power-up, I feel even better!"
"I don't think you are… I think all this energy you're taking in is messing with your head. You're hearing and seeing things no one else can. Mom… I'm worried about you."
The mother knelt down to meet her son's alarmed eyes. Her hand reached up to comfort his cheek. "Steven, I am telling you that nothing is wrong with me. And once the diamonds have been dealt with-"
"'Dealt with?' You mean shattered, right?!" Pink snapped, yanking Rose up to her feet and forcing her to meet her own look, "We're back to this again?! Get this murder craze out of your head, already!"
"I'm doing this for our sake! For everyone's sake!" Rose yelled back, "With those tyrants gone, we can rebuild gem society into something so much better! We can all be together again!"
"Rome, stop dodging the question!" Pearl pled, "You still haven't told us why it's so absolutely vital that the other diamonds can't live!"
"And you haven't told us if the gems you take light from are controlled or not!" Connie added, "You distracted us before you could answer!"
"Okay, so maybe they are more open to suggestion when it comes to my goals," Rose shrugged off, not noticing the downright horrified looks she was getting, "But that's only temporary. When this is all set and done, I'll give all of their light back and then-"
"And then WHAT, Rose?!" Bismuth shouted, "You think billions of gems are gonna follow you after you brainwashed them?! And then after you kill their leaders, they'll all just bow down to you as their savior?! That's worse than the diamonds!"
Rose's look darkened in an instant. "Do not compare me to them, Bismuth. I'm only doing all of this because I have to."
"But why do you have to?!" Lapis cried, "Give! Us! An! Answer! Why can't you just get along with the diamonds like you said you would at the meeting?"
"Oh, they never would have kept any ceasefire or treaty. It was really just to establish our position as-"
"So the whole thing was a lie?!" Amethyst balked, "Okay, that's it, you are going crazy! What, were you just going to blow them up?!"
"If you would all just give me a chance to explain-!"
"You've made your position abundantly clear," Adamite stopped her, "You are clearly fixated on destroying the diamonds out of a petty grudge. And all of this power you've acquired has warped your mental state to one of irrationality to the point of having hallucinations to further justify your hatred and a growing addiction to your new abilities."
"I am not some power-hungry dictator! I am fighting for the freedom of my entire species and the freedom of countless galaxies!"
"Are you?" Cinnabar asked, "Because, I mean, it seems like you could win over every gem by doing what you were doing before. You won over almost the whole empire by just announcing that Pink was alive and then just letting their little kingdom crumble around them. Why the whole light-draining thing then?"
"The diamonds only understand force," Rose ground out, "You have no idea the lengths they'll go to achieve their goals.
"But I do!" Pink screamed, "I was one of them! I lived with them! I know who they are! And they told me, and you, that they're finally ready to change their ways! How about we actually let things play out instead of planning a pre-emptive strike when they've done nothing to us!"
"Because I'm trying to protect you! All of you!" Rose started floating up towards the ceiling as a blinding aura began to glow, "I may have been brought back by chance but I've seen the purpose behind it! I need to rectify my mistakes, make this second chance matter and end the war properly this time! The diamonds are nothing but destruction and corruption incarnate! Letting them go on will only let history repeat itself! I won't let them destroy my family a second time!"
None of the gems could even look at her anymore, her energy radiating so bright as her voice was joined by hundreds of others. "They've done nothing but strip worlds bare and pillage their resources, all to spread their cancer across the universe! They think no one can touch them, that their technology and military are impenetrable! Someone has to finally show them their wrongs! Show them how it feels to be powerless in the face of overwhelming strength!"
"Mom, you need to stop! You're taking this way too far!"
"I'M DOING THIS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD!"
Along with ship-shaking scream, Rose let out a beam from her hand right towards whoever just spoke up. Steven put up a shield but the blast still sent him flying into the wall behind hard enough to send him halfway through the solid metal.
That finally brought Rose back to her senses as Connie and her mother rushed up to pry Steven out of the crevice he just made with his spine. Even as they helped him up, his eyes were shut and would not move.
"Oh… Oh my gosh…" Rose sobbed, "Steven… I-I'm so sorry…"
She took a step towards him only to find all of the Crystal Gems forming a blockade between her and the two women now carrying he unconscious boy off.
"That's far enough," Garnet ordered, "We're taking Steven back home. Either get your head clear or stay away from him."
"I-I…"
"Save it, Rose," Pearl demanded, "You want to go off on some crusade against the diamonds? Fine, but leave us out of it."
"P-Pearl… I'm sorry! I d-didn't mean to…"
"Unlikely, given you attacked in direct response to being contradicted," Peridot noted grimly, "Your psychosis is clearly accelerating. Didn't you just take in millions of gems' power right before this?"
"That… Doesn't…"
"Well I say it does and so does everyone else here!" Lapis insisted, "And anybody who attacks someone just for talking out of turn is pretty messed up!"
Rose could see they were not budging on this and turned to Pink, hoping to see a friendlier face. Instead she just saw tears falling and an even harsher glare.
"Get off of my ship."
"W-What?!"
"You heard me. This is my ship and you are officially not welcome here anymore, Rose."
"B-But, what about our new society? Our plan? Our friendship?!"
"You've also made it clear in the past few minutes that this is all about what you want, not what we want. You want your little vendetta, to get all-powerful and all this other stuff. But for me? I just wanted respect. I just wanted to make something different. But you… Now you're talking just like them. You sound exactly like the other diamonds."
"I do not-!"
"Yes, you do! Again, I've heard all of this come out of their mouths! And you know what else they did? They treated me like an afterthought! Just like you're doing right now! I wanted that meeting to work, I want diplomacy! I just didn't want to come off as a pushover but you're practically planning to atomize Homeworld already! When do I get a say in all of this, huh?!"
Rose, by now, had no idea how to respond. She just turned herself into light again and disappeared in a pink streak. Peridot soon reentered the ship itself and activated the warp drive to bring them all back to Earth.
That left Rose floating up in space while her adoring public had waited patiently for her to finish her business so she could continue inspiring them. And as she looked down at the masses, all of the heartbreaking news hit her at once.
She had hurt her son. She had alienated her own team. Her best friend didn't want a thing to do with her. She could already imagine how Greg would be furious at her.
That only left one thing inside her: that same burning desire to give the diamonds a taste of all the misery they had inflicted on her, her home, her fellow gems and the dozens of planets they had reduced to empty husks.
She focused her power, forming a tightly compacted sphere of plasma before firing off hundreds of thousands of thin, arcing blasts that started sweeping the entire planet below her. Thousands of gems poofed by the second, adding their power to hers instantly.
As the metric ton of new energy surged through her, her brow was furrowed as a single thought kept running through her head.
"I'll do it myself if I have to. I'll make sure that White and her flunkies never hurt anyone ever again."
So... Yeah. Things have gone south really fast. So what will happen with our conflict now that there's effectively three sides? Find out next year!
Thank you all so much for reading! Feel free to leave a review or any questions/comments.