Matriarch

by KendrixTermina

It has been suggested that White Diamond got her ideas of how she had to be and run things from simply being told so by some Even Higher Power, but personally, I'd find this a little repetitive and not all that interesting, so here is an exploration of the Diamonds' backstory and, by extension, the origins of the gempire.

10. Part IV: Absorption (Act III)

Part IV: Absorption (Act III: "The Plagues")

No artsy-farstsy quotes today!

No artsy-farstsy quote could match up to the inspiration I got from this masterpiece amv here: watch?v=X7aag8gSUTs

I. Plague (The Shooting Star)

The Earth was home to great plenitudes of creatures which crept upon its soil, soared in its skies or floated through its seas, and most of them had done absolutely nothing to deserve the wrath of homeworld's rulers -

But they would feel it all the same when they decided to call down their plagues onto all that populated the blue marble - of course, in their minds, it was Rose Quartz who had chosen to bedevil the once flourishing colony, thus necessitating all that had come after – and in there eyes, there was nothing she and her acolytes could not possibly deserve, just as nothing could replace what they lost.

And to be strictly fair, that would have been the most common opinion among the loyalist forces, though not wholly on account of their lost monarch – Many ordinary citizens of the colony would have viewed the rebels as the despoilers of their homeland who would turn all they had known as right, natural and good into burnt-out ruins and scarred prison-houses.

The colony could not exist without eradicating the life on Earth, but to preserve life on Earth, the colony would have to go, and only the very few individuals that had been somewhat embroiled in both sides of the conflict would have appreciated the inherent tragedy in what appeared to be a genuine impossibility in the way of coexistence.

Most of the rebels would already have been outcasts or dissenters who could have had little attachment to their society of origin, given that it had failed them in every way, and to most of the loyalists, the Earth's stock of organic lifeforms would have been so alien as to just barely scrape against their definition of life, the same way that human researchers would later ponder if a virus could be considered alive.

But no virus found on earth would be so accomplished in works of technology and architecture, or this capable of feelings like loyalty and devotion -

Or sorrow.

Threnetic, lugubrious, Blue Diamond's hooded shade looked on as her Turquoise presented her with the implementation of her plans, with no satisfaction on her withered features, but as close to pleased as she would come, her every word like frost upon a rosebud.

The results of their endeavors would be nicknamed "shooting stars" by the rebels, because they were sent raining from the stars like droplets of fire – they looked like sparks of ice, but the heat they contained could sear even beings as sturdy as gems.

Held in an unstable magical equilibrium and extremely susceptible to disruptions, they would catch fire as their hurtled down from above and explode as they approached the ground, tearing through mountainsides, reshaping landscapes or causing massive forest fires.

Their intended targets were the concealed rebel bases under the foliage, but homeworld didn't care how many unique ecosystems they burned down, how much poisonous ash they blew into the atmosphere or how many human families would starve because their fields or hunting grounds had been torched.

The destruction was devastating enough for the rebels to deal with by themselves – if they encountered some humans in need they would certainly go out of their way to protect them, but they could not be everywhere at once, especially when they had their own positions to maintain despite the onslaught, particularly since any over sign of rebel activity would be answered with immediate, merciless bombardment.

At first, all the crystal gems could do was to hide, defend and avoid drawing attention, but that made it harder and harder to disrupt loyalist operations, which were of course ramped up in their absence to draw them out into the open.

It was Pearl who figured out that there must be a way to stabilize them temporarily, since the homeworld forces must be able to launch and deploy them without blowing up their own spaceships, probably by keeping them at stable temperatures, and designed a protocol to catch and contain them by hand.

At first, she had intended to use a machine, but when her device was destroyed in the very attack it was supposed to be tested against, it was Garnet who, in a flash of determination, decided to catch the first one with her own gauntlets, since her unique set of temperature-related abilities and immunities allowed her both to withstand its intensity and to contain it at just the right temperature.

On their own, Ruby and Sapphire could not endure touching them, but on one occasion where there were far too many of them for Garnet to contain them all on her own, they unfused to follow two separate barrages going in slightly different directions, and each proved successful at keeping them from exploding for a short time while shrouding them in ice or fire for a time, until Pearl joined them with other means of containment and went to dispose of the shooting stars in the dephts of an icy ravine where the massive ice sheets would serve as just about the only thing that could keep them contained indefinitely.

It was probably during this time that Ruby learned to be much more proficient with her pyrokinesis than the average Ruby, but there were many very close calls.

One time, and entire rebel base would have been vaporized if Rose had not stopped an entire barrage of shooting stars by summoning three enormous shields, another time, she protected an entire human settlement behind a wall of shields.

With a tribe of hunter-gatherers it might have been enough to relocate them, but the inhabitants of this riverbank village were already too numerous to live off the land, or to even make it through the next winter with their fields in shambles. They had absolutely to context to explain what just happened – some of them thought the world might be ending, and they might not even be wrong.

Generations of them had worked so hard to build their irrigation systems and plant orchards of olive trees, and now they were left with nothing but themselves, their mud houses and the harvest tools they would never get to use – Moved by their fearful eyes, Rose did what she could and filled their scorched fields with sprouting crops, growing them to maturity in minutes when it would normally take many years.

For that deed, many a band of humans mistook her for the local deity of fertility, or sometimes even an apparition of Mother Earth herself.

They called her many names, one more ironic and inaccurate than the last, for nothing could have been further from the truth. She was, by nature, the sort of being that makes things wither and die.

Her fellow rebels would see her impassioned efforts to save these humble creatures and think to themselves that she must be very selfless and committed, but none of them knew of the guilt that spurred her on, the knowledge that, if Pearl had not suggested that they sneak out that one day, she could have destroyed all of this, that she had overseen the preparations to do so back when she was still ignorant, and that all this might have been prevented if only she could have figured it out before...

It was not long till it became apparent that they could not go on like this. Garnet was the first one to say it – They could not hope to stop the colonization if they kept retreating, and despite their best efforts, the human casualties were only going to mount if they didn't figure out a way to put an end to this once and for all. The others must've reached that conclusion as well, but only the fusion had the fortitude to put it out in the open – Pearl had been trying her best to drown out the nervous sense of dread she felt, and Rose had just kept telling the others (and herself) that they would surely make it.

But once Garnet finally said it, it was almost a relief. Now they could think of something to do it. Pearl absentmindedly speculated about the possibility of tracking down and destroying the facility where the loyalists were manufacturing the shooting stars, asserting that because of their volatile nature, they likely required very specialized equipment to produce, store and launch that would be difficult to replace and Rose, taking that as a suggestion, was immediately determined to go through with that no matter what, even when their reconnaissance revealed that the Diamonds had had the foresight to put the facility in orbit.

Even if they could somehow get to it, in the vacuum of space, there was nowhere to run – it would have been a suicide mission. So naturally, Rose Quartz insisted on doing it herself rather than send someone else, assuring the others that she would surely find a way to make it out, and since she would not be dissuaded, Pearl insisted on going with her, which meant that Garnet would stay on the surface to carry on their torch in case they didn't make it out, though none of them outright voiced that possibility.

When they parted, Garnet informed them that homeworld would know they were going – indeed, just a few days prior, the quiet forehead Sapphire from the war council had informed her Diamond of the exact date of the attack – but now, they knew to be prepared as well, and neither side knew exactly how the other would counter their efforts.

They infiltrated the base by approaching a convoy of raw materials which, according to Pearl's theories, must have been intended for the shooting stars, posing as a morganite and her personal pearl, in a sense, using the hierarchy's own inflexibility against homeworld themselves, for no one dared to ask the supposed morganite what she might be doing there, nor would they dare deny her when she demanded to inspect their freight - though it helped that most regular gems would not have been able to hold a form that much different from their regular one for as long as a Diamond.

Then plan was, of course, Pearl's, but she would have given them away three times over if it weren't for Rose's impregnable poker face.

Once inside, they endeavored to make their way to the reactor core, but just as they had shed their guises and moved to make their stand, they were tackled to the wall by something they did not see coming, something which left them disoriented before they could even guess what was going on. At first, they weren't quite sure if they hadn't just tripped, but soon it became apparent that something much less innocuous was going on when the invisible foe struck another blow.

Only their well-honed instincts saved them from destruction, their senses and the moving part of the mind that simply reacted before thoughts could form – and perhaps it was there that their assailant missed her window of opportunity, for they lived long enough to start thinking. The days they spent at the empire's heart did not necessarily make them experts at everything pertaining to its rule, but they had seen enough to recognize what this was, as invisibility was not exactly a common gimmick –

"A Tanzanite Assassin!"

As as soon as Pearl realized that, both of them knew that they were in trouble. Any common soldier gem would have been no match for them, but this was a rare elite from the Blue court, without doubt sent to target the leader of the rebellion in particular – And she didn't even need to defeat them to claim her victory, all it took was for her to occupy them long enough for every gem in this complex to converge on their position. No doubt that the alarms had already been sounded. Even if they could possibly defeat them all, one couldn't put it past the Diamonds to sacrifice the entire facility (along with any gem that couldn't make it to the escape pods) just to take down Rose Quartz. If the battle were to draw out for too long, the self-destruct charges would go off right under their feet – they had to act fast and press onward before their enemies could assemble, but precisely that was rendered anything but easy when they were fighting an invisible enemy.

Pearl had to admit that it was not a bad strategy – What good was a sword that could poof any enemy in one strike, or indeed, any sword at all, if they did not know where to aim it?

Their opponent was relentless, too – Some lesser warrior might have grown cocky and come to rely on her invisibility to do her job for them, but not her. She brought her weapons to bear time and time again, some sort of scimitar or glaive, though there was no way to be sure since it was as invisible as the rest of her.

Unlike the Rubies and Quartzes that were meant to fight enemy armies in bulk, often organics that would be smaller and softer than them, this Tanzanite was adept at single combat, meant to take out even disloyal elites and used to fighting other gems, including some of great individual power – Even when sent to carry out political assassinations on other planets, her opponents would have been technologically advanced species some of which might have access to rayguns or power armor; Given that the rebels did not necessarily fight like typical gems, this was just another advantage – If Pearl had to think of a way to take out herself, Garnet and Rose, it would not have been much different from this.

Later, several of their fellow rebels would joke about how the Diamonds must be backed into a corner if they had sent a Tanzanite to dispatch a mere Quartz, but of course, their leader could not quite see it this way, because a disgraced elite was, after all, exactly what she was – It barely seemed to matter that Yellow and Blue did not technically know of her defection. She was being judged for her actions as the leader of the rebellion, her own, chosen actions that had meant more to her any of the farce she had been forced to perform as a member of the authority.

This was payment for who she was – even after she'd left them behind, they kept coming after her, and worse, after her friends, the very ones they had already wronged so many times with their tyrannical rule, as if they hadn't suffered enough.

They were on the defensive – it was one thing to see her coming, to hold up their weapon to parry when they could feel her speeding towards them through the air, but when they tried to attack, they were usually stabbing at thin air, and leaving their flanks exposed to boot – they could somewhat compensate for that last part by covering for each other, but it was clear that they were not landing any hits.

By now, the entire station must have been alerted to their presence – and they knew it, too. Pearl's usually careful offensives were getting more and more frantic.

Though coulf fight their way through a couple of guards, but if they stepped outside this corridor to find themselves surrounded, that might keep them tied up long enough for a self-destruct to be ordered, and they had yet to get close to their objectives.

"Pearl, the door!"

But unlike many a glory-seeking opponent, Tanzanite knew better than to let the smaller gem slip away to cause mischief while she was going for the more prestigious catch. Wherever she was, she launched another direct, ruthless onslaught which Pearl expertly blocked with her spear, having to resort to another quick dodge when Tanzanite resorted to perhaps kick her legs out from under her, though one could not really if it was really a kick.

Generally speaking, Pearl's approach to dealing with larger, heavier and stronger enemies was to outmaneuver them in terms of agility and speed, a strategy which she had eventually polished into an art, so that it generally worked very well, but she had seldom faced opponents that were agile as well as strong – and Tanzanite easily proved to be her match in terms of speed.

A part of her suspected that while she might have been able to exceed a regular soldier gem, a simple Pearl could not hope to compete with an elite – the rest of her, of course, grit her teeth, tightened her grip around her spear and, through sheer willpower, brought forth a blazing, searing light from the tip of her spear, slinging the shining beam forward like a projectile.

It is unfortunate that she would never find out that her opponent only escaped by shapeshifting out of the way, bending herself into a thin half-moon shape to avoid the surge of heat - but though this maneuver had been driven by necessity, the experienced assassin knew to use it to her advantage, and take it as chance to attack from the side.

Tanzanite's glaives were stopped by Rose's shield – and she wondered, of course, how the weapon of a simple Quartz could withstand her when she was designed to make undesirables 'disappear', but it wasn't strange enough to be out of line with the tales of Rose Quartz as this incomparable abomination.

But in the hopes that having her path blocked by the large crystaline shield might at least have captured her attention somewhat, Pearl took the chance to leap gracefully beyond the protective barrier and charge her laser projectiles once again.

"No, not there!"

"Rose?"

"She's over there! No, she was! She is-" Left with no time to explain, Rose was forced to defend herself, raising not only her shield, but her sword to block something in the opposite direction.

And Pearl had felt their enemies' weight, she probably stood slightly taller than Rose but not by that much – Not just invisible, but capable of sudden, whimsical shape-shifting, which was probably how she could make herself invisible in the first place.

Pearl was not sure how much longer trying to read her movements as with any conventional enemy would continue to work – and yet, Rose had been able to block what might have been a stretched-out limb.

"Can you... sense her?"

It was fortunate then, that Garnet and the others were not here with them.

"Not really. Maybe a little...-"

There was a surge of sharp, pointed intention whenever she was going to attack, but that was all she could distinguish, and only because she'd already been forced to rely on her other senses since her eyes were clearly no good.

"Can you tell me where she is?" Pearl shouted, firing another widespread laser beam in hopes to hit at least some part of it.

"Not fast enough! At least not while fighting!"

"What if I do the fighting for both of us?"

It took Rose a while to get what Pearl meant, but once she did, she used the momentum of her next attack to swing herself towards Pearl's position and one flash of light later, Rainbow Quartz stood there, with Rose's Sword in her left hand and Pearl's spear in her right, one pair of eyes focused on the battle ahead and another, closed in concentration.

She could only loosely pinpoint Tanzanite's location, as a consummate professional, she did not have much emotion radiating from her; even with the extra burst of power from the fusion, it was not an ability that had ever been honed to its full extent. But it was enough to tell Rainbow Quartz where to point her weapons, and as long as she could stick close to the enemy, there was only so much she could do to evade her – This fusion had never been meant for a fight, but between Pearl's lethal elegance and Rose's raw strength, she was more than a match against Tanzanite.

Her movements were fluid and pointed, the battle itself, devolved to a lightning-fast, bizarre kind of dance, until the spear finally hit... something, possibly just her clothing but probably not anywhere on her torso since she did not poof at once.

Only when Rainbow Quartz blasted Tanzanite with a beam of multi-colored light did the fusion finally get to see her opponent: an elongated, dark blue gem with a smooth polished cabochon at the front clattered to the ground.

They'd have to hope that she would reform in time to make her escape, but the fusion could not afford to wait for it lest she follow hot on her tail.

Instead, she ran, blasting a hole through a wall to avoid the soldiers that were, without a doubt waiting at both ends of the corridor.

But there were guards swarming even where she popped out, not that many, but enough that she chose to run for it with various acrobatic leaps that ended with her drop-kicking through the big, important-looking door at the end of the corridor.

She had found not the reactor core, not the launching pads, nor the lab, but the cargo hold: Hundreds of shooting-stars glittered before her, all suspended in ice.

There were also numerous gems that had been in the process of getting them ready for transport and evacuation, which had been slowed down by the need to account for their volatile natures – but once they caught a glimpse of the rebel fusion and the half-star around her belly gem, all of them that were armed drew their weapons.

Rainbow Quartz then made a decision that neither of her components would have done on her own, something both foolhardy and calculated at once. Sheathing her sword, she instead summoned Rose's shield while holding Pearl's Spear up high.

"Everyone, get away from the cargo."

And then she fired, straight into the volatile freight, right before spreading her shield as far as she could. In fact, she summoned more than one, holding them out before her in layers like the petals of a flower -

And none but the innermost one held. Even for her, this degree of explosive power was at the limit of what she could contain. Even just the heat around her got to critical levels as the torrent of fire raced past the shield like the tail of a comet – but hold it did, however narrowly, with the side effect that large portions of the base were preserved behind it.

None of the shooting stars, though. The nearby explosion should have set off every single one and must surely have blown up the lab, with the consequence that the orbital station was now riddled with holes, with no more turbines left to correct the orbit that had been disrupted by the explosion – and so, the gravity of the enormous planet below beckoned them towards its surface, which appeared larger and larger through the gaping hole that had replace the cargo bay hull.

This was when the two rebels unfused – Pearl was left stammering about the imminent crashlanding while Rose leapt out of their joint light to gather as many of their poofed enemies in her arms as she could, until Pearl managed to remind her about the imminent threat of atmospheric reentry, prompting her to encase them both in a bubble shield along with their fallen foes.

She would leave them bubbled near the wreckage for the loyalist forces to find, apart from a few one or two that were so badly melted that even she could not save them.

But even though she spared many more of her enemies than she could have, their objective was archived:

The facility was reduced to rubble and the production of shooting stars stalled.

(i.)

From such sour and grating setbacks, Yellow Diamond returned to find Blue already back at their room, seated against the window, with a computer terminal gripped firmly in her hands, looking through some old video files-

and once she might have sighed in exasperation, but by now, she had grown so numbed of such sights that she did not even manage a head-shake, just a sobered narrowing of her eyes.

Yellow did not even bother with the greeting she should know would go unanswered, and did her best to focus on the stack of requests, complaints and notifications from her many subjects which had accumulated while she had been busy with the demands of the war. In particular, she made sure to keep an eye of any intelligence reports and surveillance protocols from their borders, especially those borders which were situated near the territories of other advanced civilizations – she couldn't have their enemies pouncing on them like vultures now that they were distracted with this petty excuse for a civil war.

But she couldn't help but overhear some snippets of sound from the clip Blue was watching in the corner, not with the jarring presence of a certain voice from the past – first she simply caught some sounds and phrases that she thought must have repeatedly come up, but then she realize that Blue was replaying the exact same video file over and over again – She'd seen is well, exactly once. It was a recording from one of Pink's last official functions in which she was presented a newly-emerged Jasper with a medal for the outstanding service record she had managed to rack up in just the first days of her existence.

On the screen, the Quartz could be seen kneeling before Pink Diamond, a large, remarkably well-shaped specimen, her head lowered in perfect, solemn devotion, but as Blue herself had pointed out the first time they had seen it, Pink wasn't quite into it – It was surprising enough to see her act in such a serious, measured manner, but there was more to it, some subtle, melancholy quality in how Pink had conducted every part of the ceremony, as if she had somehow known that her time was as its end...

(Or that's how Blue Diamond had parsed it, anyway. The true reason was not quite so supernatural or even all that mysterious if you had known that the hundreds of crystal gems for whose destruction Jasper was being honored had all been Pink Diamond's, or rather "Rose Quartz'" cherished comrades – but that wasn't exactly Jasper's fault, who though she was doing her liege a great favor by cracking them to pieces.

Hence, ceremonies were held, and medals given out, though the Queen of Earth had been close to tears through the entire event, grieving for both her fallen friends and the unfortunate beta gems whose plight she had never anticipated when she first began her rebellion so many years ago)

"You know it won't get any longer just because you keep replaying it, right?" Yellow finally asked, downplaying the frustration she could not quite push down completely.

There was not much that Blue could have replied to that.

"By the way, one of your Kyanites contacted me, Cabochon-B34 I believe. She was asking if you had perchance read her report on some incident in the Iota Sector..."

"I haven't... gotten around to that yet..." She actually sounded quite apologetic at that, or at the very least embarrassed, though it was distant, fickle feeling drowned out by an undertone of pain. She probably did not care much, though it was not for lack of wanting to.

Yellow sighed. "Where do you have your files? I'll handle it for you, just this once."

II. Plague (The Storm Geode)

After the hot ice came the permanent lightning, another reverse-miracle brought into this world only to wreak destruction, built on an excessively uncaring rationale that could only have been Yellow Diamond's:

In strategic terms, the rebel objective was tied to preserving the biosphere that existed on and around the planet's surface.

The loyalists did not need it – the next layer of bedrock would do just as well, and even the surface itself would be barely diminished in its usefulness if the chemical elements contained in it were rearranged and ground up.

The crystal gems had barely worked out that their enemies were plotting something when it was already too late.

The first of the two prototypes was dropped off the western coast of the southern continent, an enormous synthetic cyclone akin to the enormous, continuous storms that raced across the upper atmospheres of gas giants for centuries on end.

It was large enough to be seen from orbit, a giant, singular vortex the size of a dwarf planet.

The effects were felt in faraway latitudes; though a variety of physical and mathematical mechanisms, the atmosphere was disrupted all the way to the other side of the planet; Marine life was flung out of the sea and landed halfway across the continents to fester and rot in the middle of deserts and steppes, and distant shores were bombarded with Tsunamis. Human settlements were flooded all around the globe.

But the effects were the most devastating in the immediate impact zone:

Where the unnatural winds touched land, their funnel tore deep into the bedrock, washing it away like sand in the breaking waves.

Some of the older crystal gems who had traveled across space and seen many extreme environments likened it to the effects of a meteor impact.

In a day and a night, a large chunk of firm continental shelf was worn away, annihilated, as if one had sprayed the coastlines with acid, an enormous mass of land just lost along with all that had lived on it, including uncountable human lives.

It was by mere coincidence that most of the destroyed area was largely desert, but even the desert was home to unique tribal cultures and filled with ingenious adaptations of life – but to the south of that, where the continent's western shores curved inward, there was a multitude of sophisticated complex human kingdoms with a far greater population density.

They weren't outright destroyed, torn out with the ground they stood on like their northern neighbors, but the devastation was incomparable.

Many of the humans would not see their homers reattain comparable prosperity within their lifetimes, or even those of their great-grandchildren.

Pearl's measurements would later confirm that the entire planet's axis had shifted ever so slightly – the overall impact on the biosphere was hard to even estimate.

One day later, an enormous mass of sediments and sands washed onto the shores of what would later be known as south America, effectively enlarging the continent by a significant fraction.

The very map of the Earth had changed, and still, as far as homeworld was concerned, this had only been a test run, and not even a successful one.

After all the havoc they had wreaked, all the death and devastation and flood basins filled with decaying organics floating far from their natural habitats, they were still not satisfied.

The storm had destabilized on its journey across the Atlantic – they had meant for it to go on and on and on, stirring the planets' surface like the batter for a cake, mixing land and sea together, unmaking everything in its path to leave a blank slate for terraforming.

That didn't happen, but Pearl knew why, which meant that the loyalists must know as well. All it would take were just a few tiny adjustments to the calculations – which the loyalist Peridots must have been carried out as Pearl panickedly explained it to her comrades. By then, Garnet had seen visions of the second prototype and lead some scouts to confirm its existence.

If the homeworld forces were to succeed in activating it, it would be game over.

The only possible conclusion then (as Rose would draw it) was that they would need to prevent the second Geode's detonation at any cost.

Where her comrades were fearful or somber, their leader stood with clenched, quivering fists – 'Such righteous fury', they would think, 'Such selfless solicitousness and determination', but of course they knew little of the more personal roots of her response.

She knew Yellow Diamond, better than any young, earthborn quartz would have had the opportunity for, as well as someone must know her after she had taught them everything she knew about warfare; The fresh scars that marred the planet's surface might as well be the hard blocky glyphs of her handwriting.

Her heart remembered the many times she had been yelled at or yanked around; Her mind thought of all the conquests she had once cheered for, not knowing that they must have entailed destruction just like this;

Her will could only express itself in defiance.

But to defy her in this circumstance meant nothing less than to catch apocalypse itself with their bare hands before it could crash down on the planet's surface, like the titan Atlas bearing the weight of the firmament – and should they fail, they would become the first ones to get vaporized, as they would be right at the center of the blast radius.

Still, Rose could not give up on trying, so her comrades would not be dissuaded from joining her either. They assembled at multiple locations which Garnet had designated as the most likely impact sites, each 'manned' with a couple of gigantic fusions.

Even among the crystal gems there were only so many who could hold towering multi-gem fusions for any amount of time, most were closely-knit comrades who had weathered many desperate battles together.

The fusion that stood in wait perched atop a pair of twin mountain peaks was not exactly 'obsidian', but perhaps 'basalt' – it could not be exactly the same, without the presence of a certain Amethyst who was yet to emerge; But she was not as different as she could have been, since she did contain a quartz, a much-beloved Biggs Jasper who often served as a peacemaker in the rebel encampments.

Though having to balance one gem less should have made the task easier, the absence of Bismuth was keenly felt even now.

But for the moment, Basalt had more than enough to worry about to keep herself and her components all focused on only one goal, the dread meteor that would be descending on the world they had come to call home any moment now.

Right on time, in perfect accordance with Garnet's prediction, the ill-boding blot appeared in the sky, and that was when they first saw the cause of all the devastation:

A perfect black sphere, a sort of containment casing perhaps, set to crack upon impact and release the payload of dearth within.

It would appear that Basalt was closer to it than anyone else. She wasn't sure if she could expect for backup to arrive in time – and yet she ran for it, speeding towards the harbinger of doom that any sane creature would have fled, and leaving shuttlecraft-sized footprints as she did, sprinting further and further toward the growing sphere of oblivion up in the skies.

But though it grew larger and larger as she approached, taking up a larger space lower and lower in the sky, Basalt began to get the sense that it was ultimately not enough – the projected lines in her mind did not quite intersect, the trajectories of herself and her target appeared to be set to miss each other ever so slightly...

And each and every one of her components knew exactly what this would mean.

Desperation crept up on all of them.

Then, from the corner of their peripheral vision, a chain of low mountains caught her attention, and she knew what she must do.

She ran, up the most manageable of the slopes, jumping from peak to peak and doing her best to gaining momentum with every leap, until she finally launched herself into the air with all available power. The part of her that came from Rose Quartz put all thought into floating; two of her arms turned back and, summoning Garnet's gauntlets, propelled herself forward with a rocket punch aimed forward. Another pair of arms summoned spears and aimed her lasers backward for extra thrust, keeping their eyes on the prize and carefully managing their trajectory, while Biggs imbued their joint body with the energy aura typical of a spindash attack.

With all their powers combined, Basalt sped through the air, ensuring that every bit of extra propulsion would be brought to bear, but despite the various haphazard endeavors of the crsytal gems, Basalt kept her trajectory steady, her steely will perhaps empowered by thinking of what Bismuth would do if she were here, how she would not give up, how they would insist that they could do it because they were just as powerful and important as their enemies.

In a motion that was graceful and mighty at once, the enormous jet-black fusion turned in the air, at last, approaching the falling storm geode from above.

In the atmosphere around it, some semblance of winds an lightning were already beginning to congeal in response to the growing excitation of the contents within, but its shell had not broken yet, so the fusion reached for it with all her arms, feeling the smooth, crystalline material that contained the wellspring of destruction within.

If it had contained the storm so far, it must be sturdy enough, perhaps even so solid that it would survive an impact – after all, it had even survived the heat of reentry.

If only they could slow it down enough, they might not even have to stop it completely – so all the efforts which the fusion has so far turned towards propulsion were now channeled in the opposite direction: Anything to slow the fall.

While holding on with two pairs of hands, the fusion linked the other four together, one weapon in each of them, and together, they assembled them into something more, something unique, like two enormous mortars assembled for bits of each of their unique weapons, and once formed, they were pointed straight downwards, the black flames discharging as much energy as all their gems would yield.

When the Geode touched down, the immediate vicinity was blown away by the resonating winds and the ground around it cracked far and wide – but the superweapon itself remained intact, perhaps just barely.

Even Basalt herself could barely believe it – once she was certain that it wouldn't splinter apart under her hands, she unfused from sheer relief, sending her spent, exhausted components tumbling to the ground all around them.

Only Rose could pick herself off the ground enough to inspect the horizons, looking to see if anyone was coming, and hoping that they would be friend rather than foe, lest they be picked off in their weakened states.

"Someone's coming... It's Variscite!"

Variscite was the fusion of Crazy Lace, Snowflake and Watermelon Tourmaline.

It was their comrades. "We're safe." Garnet concluded, and then, one moment later, "We did it."

"We must set up patrols." added Pearl, still half in shock. "We have to secure the perimeter...we can't let any homeworld forced get to this thing and set it off."

Despite her exhaustion, Biggs was the first to break into a huge smile. "But still! We actually did it! Can you believe it? We did the impossible Pearl! You, and I, and all of us!"

Still on the ground, the four exhausted rebels turned toward each other, barely believing that they were alive yet glad just to see each other on the same sky. Though it hurt to move, Biggs reached out her hand, which her comrades greatly took, big, beaming smiles spreading across their faces once the reality of their survival sunk in. Even Pearl couldn't resist the infectious joy of the moment.

"It's just like Bismuth used to say... we can do anything!"

When Rose's smile faded at the mention of that name, Biggs simply took it as a sign that she must be missing the rebel blacksmith as much as herself.

(ii.)

To begin with, this particular project had been mostly Yellow Diamond's brainchild – She had even contributed some of her own lightning to the mixture of destructive magic.

And it would have to be her handiwork, because Blue Diamond had excused herself from the planning meeting.

She did not come to the debriefing, either; According to the Agate that showed up instead, she had told her Pearl to tell her other attendants that she was 'not feeling well', an excuse as well as an understatement.

The first time Yellow found her strewn across the floor by the window, she had rushed to her side only to be met with sometimes resentful, sometimes outright hostile protestations that she was perfectly fine and just wanted to be left alone to wallow in her misery, sometimes harshly implying that anything else should have been considered an insult to Pink's memory.

"Just leave me be!"

And one so rebuffed would struggle to justify her concern, since Blue was, after all, a nigh-indestructible being of incomparable power, entitled to do as she damn well pleased, as she would not hesitate to point out when she insisted that she was exactly where she wanted to be, doing precisely what she wanted -

Which was apparently to lie on the carpet, reminiscent of something weak, withering and decaying when she was anything but, sometimes looking out at the rampant organic jungle, at other times, not even doing that.

Once she had been both skilled and fastidious at maintaining a proper appearance – now, her long, pale hair would often be stringy and unkempt. Even when she did leave this room, she'd rarely bother to put it in order, halfheartedly relying on her veil to conceal the state she had allowed herself to come to.

When she spoke, it was nearly always about Pink. Every day, she found some other new reason to miss her, or she would remember yet another past incident to meditate upon. She thought of nothing else all day.

"Did you know that I always envied her a little? I never told her, lest it get to her head and encourage her bad behavior, and now, she'll never know...

She always had so much energy. So much life, and creativity... There was no one who didn't adore her... oh why! Why did it have to be her!"

The weighty shroud of her aura filled up the room.

Blinking away tears, Yellow silently accompanied her through her agony.

Why indeed?

If she could have taken either of their places, she would have done so without hesitation, but as she knew very well, the universe did not take bargains.

Sometimes she considered if Pink might have hated her. She hadn't been as close to her as Blue; They'd had their disputes and each of their own respective envies – Yellow had always been strict to her, though she could not say for certain where necessity had ended and convenience begun , all for the inevitable day when Pink would finally understand and take her allotted place as it was required, but now this day would never come...

III. Plague (The Inverse Pyramid)

A far cry from the sleek, elegant structures that were leisurely strewn across the landscape in the early days of the colony, structures erected during the war were geometric, massive and forbidding, emblazoned with a dark, solemn triangular insignia of intersecting triangles that had come to be used in place of the old four-sided rhombus, itself a compromise – Yellow Diamond could not stand to keep staring at their old sigil everywhere, but Blue refused to go back to using the pascal triangle like emblem they had used before Pink's death, not that either of them had the time or energy to be much concerned with the design.

In the end, neither of them was really satisfied; It became just another remainder of how their lives were irrevocably changed, and often, that crushed them (each in their own ways), but one would do well to fear the days where it lit a blaze in them instead.

They could not feed off of hatred alone, even less that they could previously sustain themselves from just dedication, but they were foolhardy enough to try.

To that effect, Blue and Yellow Diamond sometimes worked at once, each critiquing each other's plans to polish the final result. On days when they could spare some clarity and focus, their efforts were generally not spared; They would make use of all resources at their disposal and have their underlings working in concert to create things neither faction could have managed on their own, even daring to recruit the small detail that White had left them.

As of now, her Anthracite was overseeing the construction of a massive pyramidal structure, standing to the side making notes on her holo-clipboard and hundreds of Bismuths carried heavy stones to the construction site, hauling the heavy materials on their own backs and legs while Grey Agate made sure that they kept pace, brandishing her weapon at any workers she perceived to be slacking off.

In the meantime, Peridot-Y73 would have been inspecting some of what they had hauled under the watchful eyes of Magnesite and Turquoise, who had enlisted her to assist them in assembling these raw components and materials into arcane mechanisms.

Now and then Magnesite could be seen lifting large amounts of raw material with her telekinesis so that they would remain undisturbed and perfectly suspended in the air while Turquoise imbued them with her volatile magics, transmuting their composition or burning arcane glyphs into their surfaces.

Blue's trusted forehead Sapphire was also present to advise them on arcane matters and foresee any disturbances and problems with the construction, though she had so far guaranteed them that their great work would be completed.

The site was, of course, closely guarded precisely to ensure that -

There was an entire legion of Quartzes camping around the perimeter, lead by none other than Yellow Diamond's foremost Hessonite who was aided in her efforts by a number of yellow court Agates, including a particular Montana Agate who had once served as one of Pink Diamond's tutors – in life, she had always found her to be quite a handful, but after learning of her supposed fate, she could not help but see matters in a different light.

Scouting duty had been delegated to a certain veteran Citrine, who had whipped her best troops into shape and come up with a tight regimen to ensure that no rebels would slip through their lines to disrupt or even spy on this latest effort of the loyalist side, though she found that many of her soldiers hardly needed her to motivate them any more than she already did – many had lost dear comrades to the fight; For the former members of the Pink court, it was not just their goddess but their very life and homestead they were meaning to avenge.

Citrine could not say that she did not have some admiration for many of them, considering their persistence in these desperate circumstances. There was, for example, that one Ruby from the detail that lost their mistress on that fateful day – though a grizzled, experienced veteran, she was forever barred from promotion for the stain of dishonor she had to bear, but even so, she remained relentlessly devoted to the cause.

Their determination was good insofar as it kept them determined to the last, and Citrine had to respect them – from the most illustrious Jasper to the humblest Ruby, they were passionate indeed, but this very passion that seemed to inherent to red and orange gems was not always a good thing either, as it sometimes made them rather... reckless, or prone to act without thinking, or even unthinkable, almost self-destructive arts of desperation that disrupted her orderly lines, whereas most Citrines would not break formation on the pain of shattering.

There was this young, impetuous Jasper of astounding, raw prowess who had worked her way through the ranks to a position almost like Citrine's own in shockingly little time, but there were some things about her that caused her comrade and commander the occasional headache, and she wasn't sure if it was all just down to her youth.

She was not much of a teamplayer, for once, and her tendency to want to assert her dominance and superiority had a tendency to mess with group cohesion.

But in her many many years Citrine had dealt with her fair share of ...difficult cases, and in the end, she came to regard it as a matter of knowing just how to utilize them.

Her Diamond wouldn't keep anyone around if they weren't useful, and in the end, results were all that mattered.

At the center of the encampment, the workers labored away, hordes of Bismuths and Pebbles interspersed with a handful of Peridots under Y73's command, all of them overseen by Anthracite and kept in line by Grey Agate whose task was to ensure that the plans were followed to the letter.

But in the end, none of their skills were considered as crucial to the successful conclusion of the project as Turquoise, Magnesite and Sapphire – the latter had indeed predicted that if the rebels managed to take them out in a covert assassination, the whole undertaking would likely disintegrate into thin air like the form of a gem whose gemstone was broken.

To prevent this, Tanzanite followed closely behind the other three elites at all times, unseen by any of the Bismuths but not particularly concealed from the heightened perceptions of the other three who each had their distinct ways of remaining quite aware of where she was.

She had survived the crash and reformed in the wreckage of the space station, shape-shifted into worm-like form and slithered her way out of the debris once she reformed (this time with somewhat plainer minibraids tied into a ponytail and loose pants that ballooned near her ankles), but though she tried to exercise prudence, her pride was not quite so intact – Never before had any of her prey escaped her grasp so easily once she had closed in on them, at least not since she was a young creature sometime in the faraway past – and she was beaten by a quartz and a pearl, too.

Though not one to resort to rash things out of short-sighted vanity, she hoped that she would get another chance to cross blades with the rebels and rectify this blemish on her honor, but for now, she stayed put where she was needed, following her comrades with practiced alertness.

Under their watchful eyes, the pyramid took shape:

It was almost a mausoleum.

The entrance hall was replete with carvings, including a stylized depiction of Pink Diamond's last fight against the traitor and various scenes of the war depicted in classical homeworld iconography.

Sapphire had predicted that the rebels would probably try to infiltrate it at some point, so they had it filled to the brim with deathtraps, so that this tomb may become their tomb.

At last, when the work was almost finished, a gem was chosen to act as the powersource, a living sacrifice to serve as the pyramid's ushebti, or it's terrakotta soldier, and though the task was grueling and potentially rather permanent, it was considered a honored one.

The chosen gem, 'volunteered' from the white court, was consigned to her new rule after a drawn-our ceremony – It was a celebration, but not a joyous one; at the end, she was ritually poofed and placed in the structures central obelisk.

At this point, the entire structure came to life, filling with an eerie light and a vague, nondescript hum, but most importantly (for the architects of this plan), the gravity engine at the center of the hermetic mechanism began its term of duty.

They deployed the pyramid on the site of one of the first great battles in the earlier stages of the war, the ground still salted with the remains of the fallen, discarded weapons lying all around – The outcome back then had been a great victory for the rebels, but there should be no more of those. The floating fortress that floated above these blasted lands existed only to make sure of that.

Even thousands of years after its heyday, the deathtraps lining its interior would prove to be a challenge, but they were an afterthought compared to the outward-directed weapons phalanx that spat forth beams of lethal, multicolored light – within hours of departing on its maiden voyage, it proved an unstoppable juggernaut that the rebel forces could barely oppose.

Brave and tenacious as they were, they were largely on foot.

The only one to even come close to touching it was an enormous fusion, and even she could do little more but to cover her comrades' retreat.

Even so, the Crsytal Gem leadership seemed determined to continue assaulting the vessel, and on this soil, where they had won one of their first decisive victories, they were united. They each recalled when they were newer and less certain, still in the process of reinventing themselves on their new paths, surrounded by comrades who were no longer in their midst, desperate to come with the sea of destruction that their quest to reach for their due rights had landed them in, and though they all still felt the terror in their gems, they also knew that they had emerged from it before.

The Crystal Gems regrouped and charged back in, spearheaded by no one but Rose Quartz herself, and where she went, she was followed by a tangle of enormous vines that bound and trapped the enemy forced wherever they could snatch hold of them.

Many years later, the distant descendants of these magical plants would imbibe the many minerals that had been beaten into the ground by the baleful dustshed that had marred this place, and bring forth gigantic, fragrant fruit from the ashes, but that day was a long way away, and it would be thousands of years before the scars of this earth could even begin to be mended.

The punishing light burnt the endless, rampant vegetation almost as far as its mistress' power could spur it forward, and if even these most titanic of heavyweight combatants struggled, what hope could there be for the ordinary fighters, the new rebel recruits unaccustomed to the fight but desperate to protect their newfound happiness, or the nameless hordes of the homeworld ready to lay down their lives for their duty?

But even as the confrontation raged on like a poem of earth and stormy air, it was little more than a diversion. Many looked at Rose Quartz and saw a devoted, selfless leader throwing herself at the front lines alongside her soldiers, or a devil imbued with inexplicable, unholy power, in any case, a dauntless existence with no fear of death but from where she was standing, she saw only the little trickster and troublemaker, doing what she had always done best: Causing a commotion.

Meanwhile on some other edge of the battlefield, a fusion and an ownerless Pearl had known to keep their heads above the mayhem instead of allowing themselves to be distracted by the big prize, and while the homeworld forced were distracted by chasing after the most wanted gem on this earth, they had overtaken a certain Anthracite and relieved her of the keys to the pyramid.

The small bureaucrat gem had expected to be beneath notice – Now, she was in a bubble, and so were the handful of Rubies assigned to guard her under the assumption that more proficient guards were better used guarding the elites.

Of course, the Anthracite was not exactly vital to the chain of command, but like an idler wheel or the spider in the center of a web, she had been pulling at the threads of battle here and there, suggesting to the grey agate she was tasked to assist where cohesion of the flanks could be improved.

The loyalist forces had almost begun to think that they had turned the tide of the battle when one determined shot out of nowhere, engaging Rose Quartz in single combat and thus robbing the rebel forces of her support – the one to pin her down was not the Hessonite who was leading the assault, nor any sort of elite such as a Topaz or a Tanzanite, but a simple Jasper – yet one that knew no match.

To get here, she had torn through rebel lines like a juggernaut.

She had shot forward like a cannonball, head first, crash helmet aimed straight for the traitor's gem, righteous fury burning in her eyes.

"YOU!" she simply roared, a bident-like material weapon in hand. "YOU!", her battle cries more ferocious with every attack.

When their leader hesitated for a moment, as if she recognized the dread behemoth before her, the Crystal Gems ascribed it to the Jasper's ferocious aspect, or perhaps some reluctance to tear down what, despite her unnatural prowess, was a very young opponent – but if she was to be considered a youth, she was also most certainly a prodigy, a hardy specimen of uncommon prowess, with long, wild silver hair and a mature, opulent body, her muscular limbs thick like tree-trunks.

Like an enraged ram, she charged her enemy time and time again. Wielding her sword on her left may have given Rose Quartz an advantage when it came to defend or to swing her blade where others wouldn't expect it, but since Jasper carried her own weapon in the large, red fist at her left, that advantage was negated at last.

Many on the homeworld side were impressed that she could oppose her at all, but if you'd asked Jasper herself, well, she would not have told her what she experienced, for she would have rationalized it away as soon as they ceased crossing arms, but in that moment, she felt the presence of overwhelming power.

If she kept standing past the first few strikes, it was because of her sharp instincts and the sheer rage that spurned her on. Though her opponent was supposed to be a mere quartz like herself, Jasper could barely fend of her might. For every strike she might hope to land on her, she felt like she knew that it would be returned back to her with thousandfold force, as if she was facing not a normal gem, but a mass of sheer power barely constrained to a form.

But though it would have been convenient to think her demon, Jasper knew full-well that she was not. Their crystalline weapons crashed and creaked against each other, unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, battering-ram helmet almost cracking against the pristine arch of her shield, material weapons half-bending under the strain of their incomparable power, since they both had rather uncommon sort of gem weapons that could not be wielded outright in a typical fashion, both of them holding them with their left much like their common creator – Jasper would never forget the day that Pink Diamond had used the slender fingers of her left to pin a medal onto her chest.

So this was the great betrayer, the one who destroyed Jasper's home and took her place in the universe before she even emerged – this was her: An unusually clear, deep-colored Rose Quartz where most of her kind were cloudier and lighter, wearing a frivolous, aristocratic gown in place of her uniform, having traded her combat boots for the bare dirt of this cursed tomb-planet.

There was so much of Pink Diamond's essence in her, even more than Jasper herself carried. She had her curls; You might almost have thought that their voices sounded a little alike.

Had this colony gone as it should have, this mockery of everything a quartz was supposed to be, this total subversion of the loyalty their kind was supposed to have, would surely have gone on to be one of Pink Diamond's most favored underlings, the vanguard of her great army – And yet, she had betrayed her.

She had betrayed her, and yet she dared to bear the mark of her essence as clearly as Jasper did, if not more.

And it griped her more than anything else, that the defiler of Earth had been one of her fellow quartzes, and that, though they were supposed to be fellow quartzes and should have been evenly matched, Jasper could not seem to land a scratch on her.

Just for holding her own as far as she did, this Jasper would go on to be venerated by the troops, her name a legend in the mouth of the Rubies, cementing her as 'the' Jasper to the lower ranks – but then again, they were too far away, too frightened to get near the devastation around them to notice the disparity, to realize that, if they were anywhere near even, it was because Jasper was pushing the substance of her body to its limit, straining its many light-circuits without mercy, whilst her otherwise untouchable opponent stood there almost dumbfounded, eyes wide with realization.

"It's you!" she almost blurted, startled enough for a less single-minded opponent to conclude that something must be off. "You're Jasper. The Facet 10 Jasper."

She had forced to block a vicious blow with her shield before she could hope to continue talking.

"And you're a traitor to the homeworld!"

"Jasper, no, wait -There's no reason for us to fight!"

"Oh yes there is!" Every word was punctuated with a blow with the tip of her helmet, delivered by her fleshy, powerful neck with a self-destructive sort of zealotry. "You and I have every reason to fight! Fighting is the only reason that either of us is around. I am a Soldier of Pink Diamond! And so were you, before you turned your back on your own kind!"

"Pink Diamond is gone. No one owes her anything anymore. You don't have to do this- "

"SILENCE, TRAITOR!"

The primal battlecry that followed was heard through the lines, the ferocious growls as Jasper hacked away at her enemy's shield – and what, to Jasper herself, felt futile and desperate could not have sounded any more fierce and impossible to her comrades -

Though the Citrine Commander in charge of the vanguard quartz batallion had a more sobering take on the matter – She had ordered that Jasper not to break formation, and yet, she had waltzed right past her and gone berserk of her own accord the moment she spied a tinge of wild fuchsia locks in the crowd.

But all things considered, the venerable yellow Quartz was far too pragmatic to waste time nursing a slighted ego, and instead moved to turn this unforeseen disruption into an opportunity, swiftly forcing her comrades to surge forward and push the rebel forces backward while their heaviest hitter was distracted.

It was a mere Ruby, a fierce, mad veteran with her gem in her eye, who at last put a hole in the enemy slides, sliding through the mud to jump on a much larger opponent from the back and poof her enormous body from behind with her chisel knife, allowing swarms of loyalist forces to break in and assail the rebel front lines from all directions. Large Amethysts carelessly pushed past the Rubies, tearing into rebel fighters that had been providing ranged support before the lines had collapsed, their smaller forms now exposed to the melee once their sturdier comrades were no longer there to shield them.

Citrine knew the beginnings of a rout when she saw them... but nothing in her twenty-five centuries worth of experience could have prepared her to see the pyramid go up in sparks behind her – or to hear the sound and feel the wave of heat before she could turn her vision spheres to the back.

Inside, Garnet and Pearl had gone through something of an ordeal when disabling the pyramid from the inside proved harder than expected. She almost panicked in the dephts of the maze, until Garnet touched her on the shoulder and urged her to stop piecing the puzzle together with her frazzled mind and instead trust her intuition.

They never did make their way to the gem resting at the central power core, at least not in this particular millennium, but Pearl and Garnet, or rather, Sardonyx, followed the hum of engines and the heat of transforming energy to the central weapons array, which glowed like a beacon from the throughput of power passing through its alchemical circuits.

The newborn fusion sent it flying out of the pyramid's hull with her hammer, sending a crashing ball of fire down through the battlefield and escaping through the hole in the wall, landing on her feet with the poised elegance of a cat in a torrent of majestic, booming laughter.

The Pyramid still floated above her, as it would continue to float for the rest of the battle, until it would land on the scorched end of its own accord, waiting for repairs and, eventually, a redeployment that would never come – but without its many-colored prismatic lasers, it was little more than a funerary ornament and could provide no cover fire for homeworld's retreating legions.

They had turned the tide of the battle.

But though the rebel victory was probably assured in that moment, it was by no means instantaneous.

Even with their main advantage taken out, many of the loyalist side persevered tenaciously, and there was much cracking and breaking before the day was done – but perhaps the homeworld armies would have crumbled much faster if it wasn't for the tenacious young soldier who, on that day, should distinguish herself as one of homeworld's greatest champions.

She would hear nothing of retreat and kept fighting even as everything around her descended into chaos, the platonic ideal of the loyalty expected of a quartz, and, in particular, the persistence attributed to Jaspers.

Her protracted duel with the rebel leader would go down in history, and her legend would live on for long beyond this day. Onwards from now, no military gem worth her dirt would escape the tales of the Beta Kindergarten Quart That Could, the Pink Court's Paladin of Retribution, the one who had gone toe-to-toe with the grand arch traitor herself and lived to tell the tale.

Rose Quartz – or rather, Pink Diamond, remembered her differently.

Despite what Jasper herself might have believed, they were not strangers, and the rebel leader could never have looked upon her as a hated enemy.

She recalled seeing her from way up above, mere days after her emergence, on her knees, long silver hair touching the ground, holding a material blade in her left hand, the dark, deep red stripes -

She was hers, light-from-her-light. And she was so very, very young...

"Jasper! please listen to me. I don't want to hurt you!"

"How dare you!" In the shadow of the pyramid, her amber eyes seemed to glow like a cat's, flashing with wrath like burning coal, and this, too, reminded Rose Quartz of someone, someone who wasn't herself. But the way she had charged straight through the lines, breaking formation despite her orders? The passion of her fury, the noble, yet twisted quality of it?

That could only have come from one single member of the authority.

And yet it made no sense. If Jasper was fighting her because she was loyal to the authority, why would she go against her explicit orders? And if she had thought of going against her orders, why was she still risking her life for those who issued them to her?

"Please! Think about what you're doing! You can stop this right now! You don't have to fight, you don't have to suffer, you don't have to force yourself to be strong! You can come with me!"

Somewhere inside the gem that throned in Jasper's face, a vulnerable cord was struck, and an even greater wrath was produced to reject it. She attacked again, with such violence that her own head rang all over, sending spiderweb cracks spreading down her forehead.

Beneath her shield, from either force or disbelief, Rose Quartz was actually brought to her knees for the first time in the whole duration of this raging battle, if not for the first time in decades.

Not since her fateful Duel with Bismuth had she felt an attack reverberating in her form like this.

If she had meant to convince Jasper to lay down her arms, Rose could not have missed her mark any further.

"Why would I?!" she bellowed, a pained, harrowed shriek, like an animal puffing up its bristles.

"What on this gem-forsaken planet makes you think I would possibly do that after you MURDERED OUR DIAMOND?!"

Though she must have known by now that it was useless, Jasper kept hacking at Rose's shield with her bident again and again, continuing even as the mass-produced metal weapon started to bend against the adamantine barrier.

"I was made for her, and you took her away! You took my colony! You took my court! You took my planet, and left nothing but a burnt-out husk. You took my Diamond, and left nothing but shards! You took any purpose I ever had, and you expect me to just, what? Just... wander off and abandon my duties, just because I feel like it? What sort of a self-absorbed coward would do such a thing?!"

Rose Quartz was actually stunned into silence.

With twitching eyes, she beheld the sight before her.

"I... I wanted to be free. I wanted us all to be free. You and me both. I thought we'd all be better off without her-"

"SHE WAS YOUR DIAMOND TOO!"

That was as much a wail of lamentation as it had been a berserker scream.

The shield- well, she had few thoughts to spare on maintaining it.

She reacted just in time to catch Jasper's weapon, but the prongs of her bident came to rest on either side of her sword, and Jasper brought her full weight to bear on the blade, forcing the bent tips of her weapons against Rose's upper chest, leaving visible abrasions.

She pushed it down harder and harder, even as the cracks in her own face were beginning to leak. It just so happened that it was red, like the stripes on her arms and the accursed red dirt she had sprung from, standing out against her tangerine skin, too translucent to pass for human fluid but close enough that the resemblance wasn't lost on her.

For the most part it disgusted her, but she cared not about the pain, and though Rose all but begged her, she would not stop pushing.

"Jasper, please, just stop." She was repeating herself at this point.

"You'll crack yourself if you keep this up... I know they all told you that you have to do this, but you don't. What's even the point, if Pink Diamond isn't here? She's not going to reward you, and she's not around to punish you if you leave – and if the others try, I won't let them. Please, please believe me. You can be free. You should be free. Don't you want to be free as well?"

Somehow, she managed to push herself forward, the fork in her bident sliding along Rose's sword, and, without hesitation, somehow managed to score a direct, point-blank headbutt against her opponent, utterly indifferent to the fact that this would place her own blade within inches of the curve of her blade.

"That's the problem with you accursed traitors! You're all about what you want. You following no one but your own wicked desires with no regard for the order!"

"The order is wrong! We don't need it!"

"Of course YOU don't need it. You don't care about anyone but yourselves– not for the order, not for the homeworld, nor even for the future of your own kind. You refused your duty because you didn't feel like it. You betrayed the one who gave you life! You'd rather we all perish so you can play at being an ape and indulge in your perverted aberrations! I bet you'd love nothing more than to see us all destroyed!

Because you wanted to. For such a reason, you've destroyed the only home I ever had! Because you did what you wanted, I've known nothing in my life but chaos and anarchy! Abominations like you will always be the best proof of why exactly we need the order!"

The sword was still in her hands, but it scarcely seemed to matter. She barely put up more than a token resistance when Jasper managed to disengage her bident from the magenta blade.

"At least die on your feet like a soldier, you loathsome piece of scum!"

Rose did not react much. Her instincts refused to kick in over a bent piece of iron that had no chance of actually breaking her.

There was a flash of light, and a cloud of dust, but none of it in purpure hues.

Elsewhere on the battlefield, Sardonyx had been racking up her reputation for occasional smashing, but as soon as Rose had dropped the shield, Pearl had practically melted straight out of the union and sped towards the dented prongs before Garnet could call after her.

She meant to parry the spikes with her spear, but in the heat of the moment, her back served its task just as well.

(

"Jasper. You've reformed."

"Wha- Citrine?!"

Finding herself in her superior's tent, Jasper got quite a few glares from the other quartzes for addressing their commander so brusquely, particularly from the guards at the entrance, consisting of a junior citrine who often served quite eagerly as the commander's adjutant as well as a chalcedony who seemed oddly out of place amid all the citrus-hued gems in the vicinity.

Citrine was honestly surprised that Jasper had actually bothered to materialize a blue court uniform, but mostly kept her pokerface. So far, she had certainly lived up to the pink court's reputation for rambunctiousness, but not quite like those Amethysts she sometimes had to work with.

"What the-"

"Your form gave out the moment the rebels retreated." she merely observed. "I suppose you were standing by sheer force of will at that point. As a soldier, I must reprimand you for your reckless conduct, but as a warrior, I cannot deny you my admiration. I'm not sure that I can recommend you in good conscience, either, but be it as it may, our Hessonite has decided that you're promoted.

Come sit with us. "

She was welcomed at the officer's table, for sure, but the whole thing felt hollow.

She just knew that no matter what they said, she was still not one of them, no matter what show they made of cheering. She could see it even as she arrived at the meeting, led not to the color-coded tables specific to each court, but the elevated roundtable where the foremost quartzes from every battalion involved in the war would be discussing its latest twists and turns.

Jasper could smell it (though she could do no such thing, literally speaking); It was all in that Chalcedony's thin, raised brows, in that giant Amethyst's unsubtle smirk and the condescending look of that Aura Quartz – either they looked down at her as an Earth Quartz, or worse: The only other Jasper, a dark blue one with a criss-cross of grey veins, a round, unfaceted gemstone on her left palm and her thick hair in braids, did very little to hide her open pity.

And she was pitiful indeed: Pitiful product of a second-rate kindergarten on a failed colony, with not even a court to call her own anymore – even if they had all knelt at her feet, it could not have convinced Jasper that she deserved to be here.

All she could think about was that she had just narrowly missed her chance to avenge her fallen monarch, so all she could feel was bitter shame.

She stood the silent eye in what, to most of them, was a precious moment of respite and relation. For all that she prided herself on being exactly as a quartz should be, she was, in some ways, somewhat atypical – Yes, as soldiers they were supposed to be strong, but they were also intended to function in large units, so most of them were fairly convivial gems.

Jasper kept to herself, brooding proudly at her segment of the table.

Knowing where she had come from, she must have risen quickly above the rest of her batch and either disdained them to begin with for their poor production values, or perhaps she only began to think that way after seeing most of them slaughtered.

Either way, she must have emerged into a rather grim life on an undisciplined, disintegrating colony.

Was it so strange then that she turned out this way?

Citrine made a mental note to recommend her primarily for solo missions – She knew the time, as she must after being in her business for so long.

She probably thought that all of them must hate her, so, she pretended like she'd hated them first.

Fair enough.

The veteran quartz challenged her to an arm-wrestling game, half an attempt to get her to join in, and an open-ended calculation. A test perhaps.

She conducted herself as unsportsmanlike as one would expect, making a matter of serious competition out of what was usually idle entertainment, or casual training at most.

Half the troop quarters had emptied out and poured inside this hall, most of them gathering round to see the spectacle.

Outside, the Rubies must surely be gathering near the door arches they weren't permitted to cross, hoping to catch some sprinkled glimpse of the going-ons inside. Jasper and Citrine were, as of now, perhaps the single two most well-known quartzes in the empire.

Though their wayward sister had seldom spared them at glance and eyed them with disdain even now, the remainders of the pink court, insofar as they were present, cheered for her rather loudly. "Jas-per! Jas-per! Jas-per!"

The detail from the yellow court was not quite as fastidious, preferring to express their support with some semblance of military discipline, through synchronized, rhythmic stomps on the ground – but there wasn't one of their numerous members who didn't stand with their commander.

If anyone rolled their eyes, it was largely blue gems – but even they could not help the occasional ahhs and oohs as the confrontation unfolded.

Citrine rarely lost, but this newcomer was full of youthful pride and vigor – even so, there was much disbelief all around when when she managed to wrist her opponent's banana-hued fist to the table over the course of half a minute.

Their commander might have been one of the calmer ones. There was certainly a moment where she was visible surprised by her junior's greater strength, but despite the younger's subsequent taunts, Citrine knew well enough that she wasn't in her position for raw physical strength alone.

The outcome suited her just fine - Given what an obnoxious winner she made, Jasper would probably have been a outstandingly sore loser. Even so, one could not deny that she did have her merits.

"Remarkable!" she commented, quite calmly, allowing even the faint beginnings of a relaxed smile. "I have not seen a prodigy like yourself in many, many years. Not every generation can boast to have brought forth even one gem with your kind of potential."

"Don't patronize me, old hag!"

In wise foresight, Citrine held up one arm to dissuade anyone who would punish such insolence in her name. Not a moment to soon, or Jasper might well have found herself decked by a handful of her fellow citrines.

"Forgive me if I have done so, for that was never my intention. I have something to ask of you."

"And what's that supposed to be?"

"If neither my Hessonite nor my Diamond have any objections, it is my wish to appoint you as my second in command for the remainder of the war."

)

Rose Quartz herself ended the day sitting by the edge of her camp, alone, keeping an iridescent white oval held in her lap between her fleshy fingers, amid the ripped folds of her gown, held close to the cutout at its front.

The oblong creamy jewel was pristine in her hands, but it had required some serious patching up to even get to this state.

Garnet and Biggs did their part in assuring her that it wasn't her fault, but there were quite a few things that they didn't know.

But since her doubts had reasons that could not be shared, the Crsytal Gem leader had retreated to the outskirts of their base, no less alone with her thoughts than she would have been in a crowd of hundreds.

(iii.)

For the jungle outside, time certainly kept passing – One day, the gem matriarchs might look out to find the whole forest covered in a layer of frozen precipitation, and then, in what to them would almost seem like the next moment, the ground would be slick with mud and sprinkled with fallen flower petals, or heavy with fruit, only for all of it to fall to the ground along with most their leaves – the first time they saw that, they had assumed that everything in the forest had been killed by the frost, but Blue Diamond would spend long enough looking at that particular patch of vegetation to notice that the larger trees went through this cycle every day.

Of everything on this world, trees might have come the closest to existing at similar timescale as gems since a few of them could grow and last for thousands of years, but the average specimens that might last from several decades to a couple of centuries would already have been considered a dizzying sight.

Over the course of many years, small saplings would worm their way towards the light, extend their majestic canopies only to be felled by fungi, fire, storms or infestations and be devoured by moss and further mushrooms until there was nothing left but another layer of soft earth – still Blue could not see just where in the anatomy of these creatures Pink would have placed the supposed beauty, though after all this time, she could no longer deny them a morbid, macabre sort of admiration for their paradoxically indomitable nature, how these fragile specks of slime could manage to survive where one of their own had met her doom.

Yellow Diamond did not share that view; When she looked out there, she felt only rage and revulsion. "Why don't we just draw the blinds shut?" she would keep suggesting.

"Why don't we just have the perimeter of the base cleared?"

"Why don't we just stand here together and watch as it all burns down?"

"Why don't you come with me to the meeting, so we can figure out how to destroy these rebels for good and finally get off this miserable rock?"

Sometimes, Blue would shrink away from her intensity, apologetic yet inert in the face of her logical arguments and at times accusatory calls to action – when Yellow was enraged like this, Blue thought that she could sometimes resemble White quite a bit – And she could not deny what she was being faulted for, but neither could she gather up the will to truly change her trajectory so for the most part, she just felt rushed, exposed and passed by by everything, even more so than she already did.

Blue Diamond knew very well what she used to be, and she knew that it wasn't this.

She used to be pure, she used to be resplendent, she used to split crowds and drive fear into sinners with the stentorian might of her commanding voice –

Even those who had held her to be a terrible, monstrous entity might have been moved to some deep yet distant pity if they could have seen what she had come to.

Once, she was supposed to have been the very image of a perfect flawless being, a receptacle of unfiltered light – and now, she was without question marred, broken, left alive and aware of her own imperfection, a fallen angel with their wings dashed upon the cliffs, a leviathan upon a fish-spear, a ferocious unicorn with its mystical lance gone to pieces, nothing short of a chained titan in dire agony – and just as the thrashings of Loki or the suffering of Prometheus might still shake the earth, even like this, Blue Diamond could not have been anywhere further from harmless.

But she was naught but her own ghost, a smoldering ruin of the regal, imposing monarch she used to be, fallen far from whence she came, and everyone could see it.

Often she would wonder what Pink might think of her now, if she could see her like this. Would she be disappointing or disgusted? Would she take just a split-second too long to recognize her?

At times, she barely recognized herself.

---

A/N:

Oof this balooned, I had half the entire arc done two weeks ago with clear ideas of what goes in the missing bits but actually writing that down took more text and time than expected; since this part is 14k words im uploading it.

Sometimes I look at the various magical artifacts from season 1 and wonder in how far these are still meant to fit into the established lore, if there's a larger plan behind it (that they simply didn't show us because at that point Steven wouldn't know) or if they're simply leftovers from a time when the writers still hadn't figured out where exactly on the Clarkes-Second-Law-Scale they want to situate the show, and a lot of stuff that seems like it would be relevant background hints hasn't been referenced again, though I guess that you can mostly assume that it's largely leftover weaponry from the war or structures intended for the colony.

The various buildings have certainly been referenced when PD is looking through the various plans for them in "Now we are only falling apart" for example, cast members have come out and explained the cursed scroll from "together breakfast" as being related to the necromantic shard experiments etc. I really need to do a full rewatch at some point and take notes.

Hence this attempt to recontextualize various early series weirdness like the miscellaneous magical artifacts or the altered coast lines (Soon to come: The Big Hole in Russia and our old friend frybo)

At the very least, a lot of it certainly makes sense in the context that the main Mad Science Person on Team Evil had a personal grudge against our heroes.

Another significant point to massage here (though I think it would already have come through in earlier chapters) is that PD strikes me as having a pretty negative/ hopeless view of her own kind, more so than seems be warranted. (as in her speech in "Greg the Babysitter") If you really think about it don't really have to take her own negative beliefs about herself at face value any more than we do with any other character – on the other hand she seems to have inadvertently impressed that onto Amethyst.

She saw that the Earth needed and deserved to be saved but it's not until Steven's time that he considers that maybe homeworld is also worth saving / not completely beyond all hope, though this was likely also due to his encounters with individuals like Nephite, Eyeball and Jasper.