PB's shining gem fell from where she stood only moments before and seemed to fall so slowly that Jasper nearly didn't react in time. She caught the gem just before it hit the ground and wrapped her fingers tight around it.

She stared at her closed fist with a creeping dread. She'd attacked a Pearl, her own Pearl of all things.

"Oh, sands…" Jasper groaned. The cutlass slipped from her fingers and landed beside her with a clatter. "Pearl? Pearl, I didn't mean it!"

Her head was clearer, too late free of the shadows that made her forget where she was. This wasn't some haphazard trench dug out to hide from Crystal Gem guerillas. She wasn't fighting a war anymore, not outwardly anyway. Still, she could hardly understand how this had happened.

"Pearl, I'm not angry," she pleaded, well aware that PB couldn't hear her from inside her gem. Mercifully, no one else was around to see yet another one of her failings. It wasn't of any comfort, but at least the consequences wouldn't reach beyond that room. Jasper's thoughts raced as she prepared herself for PB to reemerge.

The only gems she had hurt badly enough to force them back into their gems were, until that point, Crystal Gem renegades who would have shattered her given the chance and her fellow soldiers when blowing off steam became particularly aggressive. In the case of her fellow soldiers, they could laugh off the dissipation once they reformed. Quartzes were made to take a beating, after all.

She couldn't laugh this off with Pearl. PB was not her equal. Not someone she could joke with or push around in good fun. And PB was not created with combat in mind.

Jasper felt sick. She grew sicker still as the minutes stretched and PB showed no sign of reforming.

"Come on," Jasper finally growled at PB's gem. The delay only made her more anxious. "Get back out here so I can apologize already!"

Nothing.

Grousing, Jasper inspected the gem for damage and when she found it in good condition picked herself up off the ground to find somewhere to set PB's gem. In the other room she found where PB left a screen full of work. Jasper glanced through the work her Pearl had done briefly before a sour taste in her mouth made her stop. The work was thorough, to say the least, but looking at it only pissed her off more.

Instead she set PB's gem down beside the screen. And she waited.

Half an hour later she was pacing furiously, going through a barrage of things to say once PB reformed. If she ever bothered to. It couldn't possibly take so long to put herself back together. PB already had a form to take.

When Jasper couldn't stand the wait any longer, when she was ready to start punching holes in the walls from sheer frustration, she stormed out into the rest of the barracks.

Thankfully, the warp pads took her directly into the foyer of Sector 12's arena. No need to brush elbows with more than a couple civilian gems.

She marched directly to one of the smaller stages where a handful of gems were gathered. After a quick scan of the crowd she pointed out two Prase quartzes and made certain they noticed.

"You. And you," Jasper snapped. "Fight me. Now."

The two Prases, clearly from the same batch, exchanged a look and a shrug before stepping forward. "Jasper, right?" one of them asked. She had a circular gem, located on the left side of her chest, and a cloud of tight curls pulled back behind her head. "I'm 4XA, this is 4XE," she went on, indicating the Prase beside her – a more dour looking quartz with her gem on the back of her right hand.

Jasper nodded and saluted both of them. There weren't enough of her to have to specify which Jasper she was.

The stage was a pit thirty feet across with steep, sloping sides and lit from overhead. An uninterested adjudicator monitored their stage, though they hardly needed supervision to spar.

Prase and Prase split up immediately to flank Jasper and tried to trip her up, putting her on the defensive right away. She hated it. Jasper scowled and deflected the first of their blows until she found her opening. She grabbed Prase XE by the front and the arm and swung her into XA. Both gems toppled across the stage but managed to catch themselves before sprawling on the floor.

The rhythm of the fight picked up after that. Jasper traded blow for blow with the Prases and used their own bulk against each other. A small crowd gathered on the ledge to watch and their cheers blurred into the background of Jasper's thoughts. The fight was electric, it reminded her of where she belonged: In the fray.

The clamor and the violence felt more real and familiar than anything else she did on Homeworld. In the half-spark decisions and the rush of fighting, Jasper knew who she was.

XA and XE went down with enough of a fight to give Jasper a warmup. She eyed the spectators as the Prases helped each other out of the pit and threw up her hands in a challenge.

"Who's next?" she demanded.


Formlessness was such a shock. It reverberated through the nothing that Pearl found herself in with such echoing force that at first she hadn't even realized what had happened. She was nowhere, basking in her own soft light and trying to make sense of her own jumbled thoughts. There was no space to reach into and nothing to reach with. Pearl felt like she existed in forever in her gem. There was no way to know how much time she had spent floating in the nothing already, all moments may as well have been one.

Jasper put her there. Pearl hadn't the slightest clue why, but she had. Even without a body, the searing pain from Jasper's cutlass cut through the core of her being like a living, unending memory.

Was this a punishment? If it was, it was the most confusing punishment yet by a long shot. And if Jasper was so terribly mad, Pearl didn't want to face her.

But if she waited too long to reform, Jasper might only become more aggravated. Not only that, it would make her a bad Pearl. The thought made her sick with fear.

The only place to go was out. So she reached outward.

Dizziness and disarray shook her when she tried to form. She couldn't seem to pull her form together quite right. The first time she had formed was nothing like this. It had felt natural and she had no awareness that without a form she was trapped in the vast confines of her gem. Now that she knew better, the entire prospect was terrifying. What if she reformed incorrectly? With all of the confusion surrounding her, Pearl suddenly saw countless ways she might mess up her form. The shame of such a thing would be too great for her to handle.

No, she decided, she had to reform with the utmost care. Even the smallest mistake would be a disaster, proof that she was the defective Pearl she feared she was. With the utmost care, PB began piecing herself back together particle by particle.