He felt his body steadily rocking up and down with every step she took, and as his consciousness returned when he shook off the weight of slumber he realised, from the position of his body, that he was no longer sitting on a set of shoulders a little ways above the ground. Instead, he lay splayed out and chest down on a soft mat of puffed white hair that towered high above the craggy, gravel strewn ground.

"Hello Bolt, how was your rest?" Fluorite asked as she detected him shifting around, wanting to make idle chatter to fill the silence and to make sure that he was alright.

"It was... nice." A short and groggy yawn cut his curt reply in two as his eyes fluttered open. He took a while to process that she had at last wholly reformed, and seeing this he adjusted himself to take up his favorite position of sitting cross legged on the huge fusion's head, his lower body now nestled waist deep snugly in her hair.

He took to letting his perspective wander and had a gander at the surroundings, and for what was likely only the second or third time ever, the bland scenery in the kindergartens caused a sense of awe to overtake him. It was not long until he realised how far they must have travelled from their usual domain with how dramatic the lay of the land had changed.

They were currently on a sloped stone ramp, easily wide enough to fit a hundred people standing side by side with some room for adequate personal space to be maintained in between each member of the imaginary line to spare. Below them was a gap many dozens of meters across that separated the ramp from countless pockmarked, half kilometre tall monoliths that stretched beyond the horizon in neat parallel rows either direction.

Each of them were elongated and spaced out far enough that the wide 'gaps' which separated them were more akin to massive canyons. Then, enormous though undecorated stone pillars that were also filled with exit holes rose from their tops at regular intervals every few hundred meters or so up to the roof of this layer of the planet, maintaining structural stability as they took on the weight of a world on their solid foundations.

With no other topic to speak about, he decided to build upon what she started as he wondered. "How long was that cycle?" The satisfying crackle of unused joints being popped filling the air in the immediate seconds after he spoke as he twisted around, for so far it had been thrice he had slept in the past two days they had spent travelling so he could pass the time.

"Three hours." A small inflection of attentiveness was present in her voice, since while the length of his sleep was not beyond or below the norm, the amount of times he had done so was unusual. "You've gone into quite a few rest cycles recently. Fighting those quartzes must've left you rather spent."

Despite the praise, Bolt only shrugged and let out the humble reply he had in mind. "I only battled two of them, and to be fair to her, Hydrazine did most of the work."

"Still, a quartz is a quartz." She said, the underlying suggestion of the statement meant to be a positive one.

"I suppose so." He replied, accepting the compliment. But with that their discussion had hit a dead end.

So for now his normally sharp senses were left to grow dull, and with no danger to watch out for, he chose to try and fill the time by looking for anything mildly unique or entertaining in the general locale to muse at. With neither of the two finding any common topic to talk about, Bolt idly hummed a repetitive tune as he tapped out the beat on his thighs while Fluorite carried on walking down the ramp, and before he knew it, they were down on ground level.

Squinting his eyes, he made out a number of hazy grey, vaguely gemoid silhouettes seemingly staring back down at him from the walls above. Rapidly blinking, he removed the remaining tiredness that fogged his vision and shifted his eyes to enter the mode where they were more sensitive in the low light, only for the silhouettes to fade away before he could catch any sight of them as they shifted beyond the edge of the clifftop. But if it was any consolation, the illusions at least directed him towards something of interest to stave off the ever present issue of boredom which plagued every child.

There, as they entered one of the corridors between the rows of walls, stuck out a handful of rusted four legged crawlers, their cylindrical bodies and limbs almost gangly with how thin they were. Then on one side instead of dull metal was a glass-like material that exposed the veiny, nearly organic looking machinery in the interior. Last of all, they were tipped with a drill at bottom and a white crystalline icosahedron at the apparent top - the purposes of which he could make no heads or tails of.

"Fluorite." He said, getting her attention as he stared upwards. "What are those objects up there?"

Keeping her head still as to not accidentally knock him off, she instead turned her eyes in the appointed direction, and the moment she saw the objects in question she immediately knew what they were. "Those are injectors, they are how gems are made."

"But… how do they make gems?" She may have given him a response, but as always it was not enough to satisfy his insatiable curiosity and he continued to ask for more.

"I'm no expert, but I do know the basics." She informed him, smiling lightly as she fed his hunger for knowledge. "It drills into the ground and injects a mixture made of each of the diamond's essences and minerals into it. The mixture then drains the lifeforce in the ground around it, and over a few hundred years that solidifies to create a gemstone."

"Drains?" He muttered while his eyebrows raised a minute amount at the possible connotations of the one word, for not many of them led to a pleasant explanation.

Fluorite became ever so slightly downcast as the answer came to her. Her components', and so her own opinions, on organics had been comparatively mild when placed side to side with the opinions of other gems. Mild in the sense they were indifferent to them - not particularly disgusted by their presence nor holding any care for them - and that had held true for nearly the entirety of the many millennia they had collectively lived.

Nearly.

There was some bittersweet irony to be found in the reality that the first outsider to give two shards about her in this current form was an organic. But she did not outwardly complain, for Bolt had proven himself time and time again to be a dependable friend with an amicable attitude that would never falter. At least so long as anything related to the upper crust or the morally absent practices of the Empire were not mentioned within earshot.

"Fluorite?" He called her name again as he became anxious of the possibility that his endless curiousity had struck another sore spot for her.

"Sorry, I didn't hear you. What was your question again?" She knew he had been through much recently, so she weaved around the chance of him wanting to do more to burden himself in order to help her by pretending to not have heard him - despite his low volume still being clearly audible to her. While she found some solace in his sympathy, she would not impose any further than what she felt was necessary.

"What do you mean that the process of gem creation 'drains' lifeforce?" There was a sickened softness to his voice, one that could have been described as causing heartbreak to Fluorite had she been an organic too.

Fluorite prefaced her next words with a quiet sigh, remembering the one that sat on her head right now. "It's unfortunate that to make more gems, our kind need to... take away what makes organic life possible from their planets."

"Is… is there another way?" He asked, but the small kernel of forlorn hope he held onto that an alternative existed was snuffed when he felt her move from under him.

All she could do in response was shake her head side to side, disappointed that she was unable to tell him something else. "No."

Bolt was taken aback by the potential severity of the situation this hinted at. He wanted to make another snide comment to castigate the diamonds, but he could see this was not entirely their fault. On a greater level, as harrowing as the idea was, this was what they needed to do to keep their species alive. Yet on a smaller scale, without this destructive process, the ones who raised him would never have been created.

"How much longer will it be until we find the others?" He asked to start a different line of questioning, wanting to move onto a more lighthearted topic.

"Oh, in about three…"

"Two, one."

#####

"-she didn't wait. The moment Morganite saw us- me together, she snapped out orders for other rubies in her retinue to arrest me." Rhodonite recounted. "After that, well, I knew that even if I was lucky enough to get one of your type to represent me in court, it didn't look all too good for me."

"So you were taken into prison after your owner found you fused together so she could save face and then you were thrown into that grossly skewed 'justice' system." Zircon summarised, perhaps a bit too bluntly, but the former prisoner agreed with her sentiment anyway.

"You've pretty much got it." A dejected shrug of her shoulders following the short statement.

Kissing her teeth, Zircon momentarily switched off the screen to face Rhodonite. "I hear this all too damn often, and to tell you the truth, it's one of the reasons why I turned traitor." She told her, pausing for a second and taking a deep breath to collect her thoughts. "Long ago it might have done its job fairly, but by the time I left it was nothing more than another tool for the aristocrats to play with as they wished in their power struggles."

"Power struggles?" Rhodonite questioned, finding it hard to believe that such things happened with her components having been so close to a member of the upper class and yet neither of them were witness to any of what the former lawyer described. "I've never seen anything like that." Then again, their tenure with them was unusually short, barely lasting a few decades before they were... found out, so that itself left some room for her to believe it, especially from someone who was there, on the surface, for far longer.

"You'd be surprised at how sly they are about it." Zircon said, the middle ranking gem having been privy to some of it. "Left and right anyone, especially their rivals, who slipped and committed a minor transgression that could have been easily corrected with some prison time or minor reprogramming were sent to the courts as soon as possible instead, all so they could make a show of it to please their diamonds for catching 'criminals'. Sure, fusion isn't exactly a minor crime, but I think you get the point."

"Really, that's how it works with the upper crust? No wonder why she was so quick to send me away." Rhodonite said, flashing a sardonic grin for a second before returning to a slight glumness. "Guess at that point that's all I was to her, a little bit more prestige to add to her name."

"Oh it gets worse than that you know." She added with a rueful tone. "It's unbelievable how many times they've tried to bribe me. Not because they were going to lose a case mind you, but because they wanted me to add flair to my declarations to make their opponents look more guilty!" Sighing hoarsely at the end, she finished before it could devolve into a rant.

As Zircon continued to expose the immoral practices of the aristocracy, the off colours visibly grew more and more aghast or reviled with every detail that chipped away at their perception of their higher castes. Not that it was very positive in the first place, but they at least had the faith that those who were delegated with the job of managing the Empire would have more integrity than in the reality she presented to them.

Except for Padparadscha, who remained at the sidelines absorbing all the information and the ensuing reactions of her friends. As her delayed perception of time caught up with them, her usual jolly demeanour faltered somewhat as she saw and heard them bemoaning the behaviour of her caste, but aside from a slight slumping of her head downwards, she otherwise remained passive.

"What did you do when they approached you?" "Yeah, wouldn't they try to… pressure you?" The Rutiles asked, a certain amount of dread mixing with interest as they thought about how dangerous it would be to oppose the requests of those whose influence was so far reaching - and egos even more so.

"I see why you'd think like that- and you're spot on. Before, they'd at least have had the sense not be so bold about it, maybe only a nudge with increased bribes and some minimal threats here and there. But as of a couple thousand years ago… eh, let's say corruption wasn't the only thing that pushed me to leave." Zircon said, leaving it at that as she turned back to the way ahead and turned on her monocle's holoscreen again.

"Enough about me though, I've still yet to hear anything from you two- three, sorry." She corrected herself.

"It's alright." Leftile said first.

"It's fine." Rightile followed soon after.

"Do not worry." Padparadscha piped up a little later.

"...So, what's your story?" Zircon said to the twins after an awkward silence.

"Hmm? Oh, we were made here on Homeworld after the rebellion as part of a small batch of rutile quartzes and other pink court gems using some of the last of Pink Diamond's essence." Rightile began.

"I think it was for a project to try and squeeze out more gems from a few of the already colonized planets to make up for the loss of Earth." Leftile added.

"But when we emerged we came out with our gemstones fused together, and for some reason the other rutiles backed off instead of arresting us."

"Why was that?"

"I'm not sure, but we did hear the word 'cluster' being thrown about a lot by some of the peridots who were there. They all honestly seemed kind of… afraid anytime anyone said it."

"Cluster, cluster, cluster." She muttered as she temporarily switched away from the map and to any references and archives she retained access to after her defection in the vague wish to find anything on the topic. There was little that could evoke enough fear to temper a quartz's usually fiery disposition, and so whatever it was would likely be of interest to her. But, as was expected, her search came up empty so she gestured for the twins to carry on.

"So that was when we made our escape. While all the other rutiles were running off or being shooed away by the peridots who began calling for citrines as backup-" Rightile's voice faded into the background for a moment as Zircon let her thoughts to the forefront, both humoured and alerted by her testimony.

On one hand, she now had the hilarious image of a team of nasally scientists telling off a squad of soldiers. However, on the other hand it was concerning to hear that they skipped past the normal yellow quartzes and went all the way to summoning the elite troops of the yellow court. It made her suspect the severity of whatever a cluster was to be far beyond what she originally thought and so, before she turned back to the map, she made a note to delve into the subject at a later date.

"-we ran off into the dark as far and as fast as we could."

"We jumped down ledges and skulked through tunnels until we thought we were far enough to be safe, but we never were." Leftile said, her words solemn.

"The first few days were the worst. We kept running into the squads of citrines or robonoid swarms, and once we were nearly caught out by both at the same time."

"We were almost cornered, but we thankfully managed to slip past the swarm undetected and we hid-" "-in an exit hole because we knew we were nowhere near fast enough to escape normally formed quartzes."

"It wasn't long until the citrines passed us and ran into a different part of the kindergarten. After that, it took a while, but we eventually found the courage to walk out again."

"And right after that was when we met Padparadscha!" Rightile revealed, sounding a little more upbeat now.

"Yeah, we found her wandering all alone in the lower parts of Homeworld's kindergartens."

After a few seconds she became aware that she had been mentioned again. Though she initially winced at the way the Rutiles retold the events, she knew they meant no direct offence. So with a silent huff, she raised her head back up and forced back a full smile as she subtly increased her pace to line up with the rest of the group, as it did not take a fortune teller to know it was her turn next.

"Ah, hello your cl- ahem, sorry, hard habit to break." She apologised. "Padparadscha, I've been meaning to ask for your side of the events."

"It is alright." Though somewhat delayed, the pardon was given out readily, for she knew it was an honest mistake.

"And how did you manage meet eachother in the first place?" It was Rhodonite's turn to be curious. And while she too was not purposely being hurtful either, after ten seconds Padparadscha could plainly see that the meaning behind their question was more in the direction of how she survived emergence, especially considering the sheer disadvantage her defect imposed on her, as opposed to how she actually found the Rutiles.

Though there was an attempt to veil the true nature of it behind the wording, it did the barest to make her feel any better, and if anything it only softened the blow. "I foresaw the predicament the twins found themselves in and moved to find them. I had already been in the kindergartens for some while, and I thought I would be able to aid them with my knowledge of the area." She said, not once breaking the cheerful demeanour she felt was expected from her.

"Really?" Zircon said, a reserved sense of respect mixing in with her tone as she appreciated the ingenuity of using her failed powers in such a way. "How long had you been down there then by the time you two met?"

After a few seconds she felt some pride beaconing from within as she heard her approval, and the slight increase of the mood in her following statement reflected that. "Around seven centuries, if I remember correctly." However, it came sliding back down in the following silence as she saw within the minds of the other three - the words 'seven centuries' apparently being far higher than the amount of time they had initially thought that she had survived alone.

"I see." Zircon murmured thoughtfully, another question rising up. "Now that I think of it, I had never heard of any other sapphires before, so how did that come about? Though to be fair, it has been a while since I left." Being a former member of the blue court, she had assumed that such a niche ability would remain their specialty. But it seemed as though - if she was correct in guessing where the colour orange would belong to - either the yellow court or the now defunct pink court had taken an interest in replicating it.

"I know little of the specifics around my creation." She prefaced with a disclaimer. "But I do believe I was part of an initiative that was the direct predecessor to the one that created the Rutiles. In fact, had Pink Diamond not been shattered, I believe her essence would have continued to be used for this instead." She bit her lower lip for a moment, realising how passive aggressive that could have been to the twins, but upon seeing they did not take it that way she returned to her smile barely a blink later.

"Used for what?"

"There was an earlier drive to experiment in the creation of future vision capable gems for the pink court, but as with all experiments there were some… errors in the initial stages." She absolutely hated it, remembering feeling useless, feeling helpless. Despite this, on the outside she showed none of that and continued to smile and sound gleefully dismissive the rest of the way through. "But I hope they learnt from it, after all, it would be a shame for the others to be thrown away like I was."

But she had found her purpose and others to help her, and she would help them in return in her own way with her morale shoring up their morale. There was a constant nagging in the back of her mind that told her a slack in her optimism would affect them all, even from something as small as declining to talk about herself. This was all she had, and so she kept it up with the same diligence any loyalist did at their workstation in a desperate attempt to cling onto a sense of purpose.

"Oh, in about three… two, one." A voice echoed as the sound clashed with the canyon's walls, and upon hearing it, Padparadscha let out a sigh as her mind eased and her smile was at last backed up by genuine emotion when her perception caught up.

It appeared as though she had been saved from recounting any more of her cheerless early memories when an enormous multicoloured figure emerged from the dark in front of them. It was followed by the sound of rock being crushed underfoot as another person leapt off from their head, who then slammed feet first on the ground with a resounding crack and then dashed towards them.

"No way…" Rhodonite whispered softly. Though, as reserved as she sounded, a huge grin appeared on her face as it became instantly obvious who the two people approaching them were. She knew they were coming, but she did not expect it to be so soon.

"Is that..?" "Are those..?" The Rutiles responded in kind, both of them delighted by their arrival and beginning to walk out to meet them in return.

"Bolt and Fluorite!" Padparadscha exclaimed after a delay, clasping her hands together as her face brightened and she followed suit with the twins.

At this point Rhodonite too understood what was coming and jogged to catch up with the rest of the group, all five of them meeting in a controlled collision to form a lopsided group hug centred around him, with Bolt having to partially crouch a little lower to include the shorter seer. Though both parties knew that the other was unharmed, feelings still ran high when their isolation was finally broken and they laughed together.

As Fluorite passed by she let out a chuckle while she observed the event from above, hearing the cries of joy and rapid fire conversations that bounced between each member of the hug. And as they finished asking how eachother had fared, it soon broke apart as all their compressed emotions were given a means to at last spread out.

"So this is the organic you were speaking of." Zircon added on her approach as she got over the initial surprise of the sudden and animated nature of their reunion, sounding far less skeptical now that she had seen physical proof of his existence. While her eyebrow did also raise on spotting the symbol on his chestplate and her puffer jacket, she made no further comment.

"Yep, tough little pebble he is too." She said, giving his bald head a short noogie before he let out a laughter filled whine and gently pushed her hand away.

"Oh! This is Blue Zircon. She is going to be showing us the way to a place where they shelter off colours." Padparadscha introduced her to the two with authentic enthusiasm.

"Truly?" He said his mind aloud, grateful to hear that such a thing existed. So with an open hand raised to her in greeting, he added a cordial address. "Pleasure to meet you then. It is good to see there are those who care."

Fluorite moved in, following the young organic's polite example and holding out one of her lower hands to reach down far enough to close the distance between them. "I agree, it's a shame there aren't more like you." Though in truth that sentiment came from her, at least in part, also being a defector of the blue court.

Zircon met the friendly gestures with her own hand and she gave the pair a brief, but firm professional handshake. "No need for flattery, I'm simply doing my job."

"I was under the impression that Zircons were created to be lawyers." She quipped.

"Not this one." She deflected back, a small, though wry smirk plastering itself on her face. "In any case, now that the niceties are over it would be best that we continue on. Should only be another half day's travel by now."

"Lead the way then." She said, her face lightening a little as she imagined the prospect of at last having some safety and stability, the feeling of it made all the better by Ammolite's relatively limited precognition not spoiling the surprise.

"Fluorite, you never told me that we would find another person!" He murmured excitedly as he faced her, the gentle giant returning the beaming attitude as she looked to him too.

"You have me there." She admitted. "In that case, I'll let you into a little secret - there are three more, just waiting to meet you." There was an air of mild smugness that was not lost when she turned to inspect the canyon walls above, confronting the ones that she knew had been following them since the moment her component had scanned their immediate route for any threats a few days ago.

The figures slowed, as did Zircon when she heard what Fluorite had said and she once again swapped out the map, this time for her set of contacts. She stalled for a while, finger floating above the holographic display as she pondered which course of action to take. As much as she wanted to sweep it under the rug and tell them to head back to base, four or potentially five of the six she was guiding already knew they were there, so she found little point in it.

'Besides, the rest of them seem to have taken it in stride.' She reasoned to herself.

Zircon would be lying if she wasn't at least a small bit nervous of the organic. And though many of those uncertainties were washed away by the fact he had so far proved to be mild mannered and somewhat reserved when unprovoked, the savagery he could inflict when he was still gnawed at her, even while she was only a secondhand viewer of his handiwork. Despite that, her principles prevailed when she concluded to have an honest approach and tapped her fingers all across the screen before sending out the request for them to introduce themselves.

"Three more? Where?" He said as he turned his own head in the same direction, confused as to what she was looking at. He may have been only a few seconds behind Fluorite, but in that short period her detection of them had caused the figures to shirk back beyond the top edge.

"You'll see soon enough." Was all she let slip.

The rest of the off colours quickly caught onto what she meant, and as strange as it was that they were now also being watched, they did not seem to openly oppose the idea for they had long been assured of their benefactors' good intentions. Though they did initially question how Fluorite knew, all of them quickly remembered that those same people looking over them had relayed that Ammolite did spend a period independent from the rest of her components.

So they too kept in doting silence, wordlessly agreeing to play along with Fluorite in keeping it a surprise for Bolt. This general air of acceptance that floated around them gave Zircon the confidence that she had made the right decision, for even if the increasingly unlikely outcome of him becoming aggravated came to pass, then the others in his group would be there to reason with him.

"Are you sure?" The blip of a notification drew her attention back to the screen, and as vague as it was, on reading the message it did not take long for her to conclude they too likely held the same reservations about the organic that she did moments ago.

"Certainly, they've all been friendly so far." She sent back.

Having memorised the immediate route ahead, she took a right turn as she got to the end of this facet of the kindergarten, moving past the ten dozen or so meter wide corridor in between where the rows of gem manufacturing space ended and where the ramp leading down to it began. And not soon after, the ghost blue projection in front of her eye buzzed out again.

"Alright." At this she could only breathe out a short sigh, one neither of relief nor fear, but from a more neutral anticipation of things to come.

"Look out!" A gruff voice harked out to the party below, causing them to twist their heads to face the ledge five hundred metres above.

The enigmatic trio leapt down and kicked up a thin dust cloud around their feet upon their descent, landing on the ground with their legs bent and one hand laid palm down to soften the impact of their rapid fall. Once grey silhouettes became green, pink and silver now that they finally removed themselves from the shadows.

"Took you long enough to get here Zirc." The green one said. They were rather tall for their type, an era one peridot then if he had to guess, clad with all sorts of strange but compact machinery on her wrists.

"Cut that." A tall fusion of what appeared to be a Bismuth and a White Quartz demanded of the Peridot despite her words being in obvious jest. "Don't worry about her, you've done a good job." She told Zircon before looking to face the off colours and Bolt, craning her head up and down as she analysed them.

Despite making sure to appear to bear no ill will, being made from a builder and a soldier meant that Silver Quartz's gaze had an enhanced intimidating quality to it as her broad build and over ten foot height cast a dim shadow in the low light over all of them except Fluorite. On the other end of her gaze, the off colours found it unnatural to be stared down by a member of the white court without fearing arrest or worse, but they held their calm, as her position as a fusion meant that she was likely of no danger to them.

"So these are the newbies then? Welcome!" A Rose Quartz greeted with the same friendly zeal that was once well-known to come from their kind.

Every one of the off colours nearly went slackjaw at the sight of the pink gem that approached them, staggered by the existence of an active model of that type of quartz still roaming anywhere in the galaxy, and in Homeworld of all places. Though most of them kept their composure as they soon crossed out the nigh impossible chance that the person in front of them was one in the same as the Rose Quartz.

However, only moments later Fluorite and Rhodonite narrowly managed to avoid scrunching their faces as they dredged up the memories of their components. They had seen the very public purge projected all across the Empire carried out on their type as the famous - or infamous - Rose's treachery was revealed. Yet here was one, standing freed and unbubbled before them.

Meanwhile, fascinating it was for him to be a witness to the unique defectors, as he pieced the clues together Bolt wailed out in sudden revelation and interrupted the nonchalant meet and greet that was carried out in front of him. "Wait- is no one going to question the fact that we were being watched the entire time?!" He said, both his volume and the passive aura wielded by Primarchs roping in everybody's attention to him, prompting an uncomfortable silence to rain down on the gems.

"Oh… right, sorry about that." The Rose Quartz apologised first, rubbing the back of her neck.