Ten Years Later:

A decade has passed since I have had been given freedom. Through this time I have learned the full extent of my job, being the basic police force, in other words keeping the peace, checking on the colonies, protecting the colonies and homeworld, and optionally taking control of the subsequent armies. It isn't that hard, though, if you know what you are doing. About a year or two into it, the public began to love me.

I'd usually stroll about most cities, assisting the local task forces with anything they asked, and sometimes even things they didn't. One day, while visiting a particularly unruly part of a colony I found a pub, I decided I had more than earned one break from work and decided to get a drink.

Before I even entered it I heard sounds of a fight inside. Naturally as Champion I strode forth into the pub and saw the two gems responsible for the sounds, they seemed midway into their fight. I looked to the serving Pearl and she looked back at me pleadingly, how could I say no to that face? As one threw a punch at the other they soon found that very arm caught in my grip, the same being said about it's intended target beingin my other hand.

After everything simmered down I asked them why they were fighting, they didn't respond but there was an air of humility about them, so I decided to push the subject by saying, "I suppose I'll have to ask again. Why were you fighting?"

The gem, who I identified to be a jasper, said, "We were fighting about who was stronger than who, upbringing was thrown into the argument, and we basically started insulting each other's parents, a stupid decision in hindsight my Champion."

I nodded my head, intrigued by how such an innocent conversation could take such a weird turn as that. Resolving what I was going to do to them, I said, "Well, it's obvious that the cause of this could have been prevented without the alcohol, so I'll just advise you to watch your intake in the future, know your limit and all that. As for the fighting part, there are about two-hundred and thirty seven training stations and ninety-three sparring rings in the entire city. Surely you could try to make it to one of those before you start throwing punches, correct?" They both nodded, "Good. Now go home and clean up before I escort you home myself." Having been given leave, they both began to hurriedly shuffle back to their respective homes, leaving me alone in a street full of onlookers.

I looked to the sky to see that the sun has almost set, so I worked my way back towards the palace, looking forward to a night full of rest.

I was standing in Dark Diamond's lab, studying a screen with the numerous energy channels in the gem, taking notes as Dark handled the microscopic camera on top of the gem. This particular gem had a crack down the middle. Dark was moving the camera around inside the crack, allowing me to see the channels. It was very hard to make a camera that could see the channels, as the width of the channels were equal to about one one-hundredth of the width of a eukaryotic cell. In our research, we have found many purposes and uses of these channels, the way they broadcast energy, the type of information they send, to the point where we have been able to assign purposes to specific channels and channel layers, labeling what each one does in the formation of a gem.

The picture I was looking at on the screen appeared a little bit off, so I asked Dark to move it over a tiny bit more. After the adjustment was made, I continued n its reactions with different chemicals, and we tried to test how much energy can course through it before the channels overload.

What we had found in all these areas were impressive. While individual channels were about as strong as silk, entire channel layers could resist up to a ton of force before they begin to fray. We also found that the strength of the layer was dependent on the importance of it. Layers that control minor features, such as eyelid and hair growth, were weaker than channels that controlled the contraction of extremities. In addition, we found the strongest layer to be the Psychological Channels, the layer being able to last through five tons of force before fraying. While weight resilience was impressive, we found that extremely sharp surfaces, my sword for example, could slice through any layer like a knife through cheese, and that fast moving objects have a chance of cracking the overall gem.

Energy endurance was promising as well, as we found that one lesser channel could last through and put out almost five-thousand kilowatts of energy before overloading. When applied to an entire channel, this number rises to 1.2 million kilowatts. Unsurprisingly, this number again rises for the Psychological Channels, lasting through 3.6 million kilowatts before overloading. This high energy endurance is what allows the gems to use energy so freely, shaping light itself to create a physical form. This, not to mention the fact of what gems can do, creating weapons from thin air, allowing some gems special powers such as hydrokinesis, telepathy, terraforming. More specially trained gems can even channel the energy into their body, essentially temporarily strengthening themselves beyond the norm, causing them to do amazing feats.

After conferring about everything after the experiments, I went back to my office. My office, even after thirty five years it still gets me giddy thinking about my freedom. Upon reaching it, I checked my data pad, seeing what I had missed while I was with Dark, finding a couple of missed calls, some geopolitical advancements on one of the colonies, skirmishes occurring on another, so on, so forth. After checking everything, I switched my pad to the news, where I saw something strange. "Fourteen rebel lazulites caught attempting to leave homeworld."

"Rebel lazulites"? How can there be rebels when there is no civil war? I had not been informed of any uprisings, sure we still had battles with budding civilizations desparate to keep the world away from us, but I've yet to hear of civil strife. Does that mean that the diamonds are not telling me something? Why would they not tell me about something as important as a civil war? How could I not know that there was a war going on through all of my travels through space and my visits to the colonies? That's it. That's enough questions. I'll just ask Dark tomorrow when we continue our research.

I headed back to my room and went to sleep, resolved to get some answers out of Dark tomorrow. I woke up and practically ran to Dark's office, burning with questions. When I got there, Dark gave me his usual vigorous handshake and asked if I was ready. When he began to walk away, I gripped his arm and said, "Dark, I need to ask you something." He looked back at me with his smile still plastered on his face, and motioned me to continue. I let go of his arm and asked, "Is there a war that I don't know about happening right now." Dark's smile slipped off his face in an instant, being replaced by a drop-jawed look of uncertain fear.

Almost immediately, he began sputtering, "Well, um, w-well, you k-know, um, well, um",

Getting tired of this indecisiveness, I pushed, "Is. there. a. war. going. on?"

Finally, he stopped and looked me deep in the face. "Y-yes, I'm afraid there is."

In this moment, I felt a very deep betrayal. I did everything I ever did in the past thirty-five years of my life for the diamonds, devoting my life to their service, and they repay me by keeping secrets and preventing me from doing my job to the fullest of my abilities. I attempted to ask more questions, but Dark stopped me cold, "Look, every diamond was told to not tell you about the war, and I already have bad enough standing as it is. If I began handing away secrets now, the diamonds would do away with me altogether. I'm not going to risk my life on something that could be handled somewhere else. Ask someone else if you want to know so bad. You have a sizeable reputation with the public, surely you could visit a bar or something. In the meantime, go back to your office, I need to think." He abruptly turned around and left me there, leaving me no other option than to return to my office.

I got there, sat down at my desk, and did some thinking myself. I wondered if I could find information about the war on my data pad, but the only result was a popup telling me that a connection to the server was unobtainable. Getting tired of nobody giving me answers, I hailed Pink Diamond on my tablet and asked if I could come to her office to talk to her. When she gave me the affirmative, I headed over. Reaching her door, the pearl let me in and I came face to face with Pink. Pink gave her signature smile and asked, "Well, Champion, what did you want to talk about?" I answered, "Will you tell me about this war that everyone wants to keep hiding from me?"

Her reaction was very similar to Dark's, except she didn't stutter, "How did you find out about that?" Happy that someone was willing to work with me, I explained to her the news article and Dark's weird reaction. When I finished, Pink sighed and took her time in answering. FInally, she gathered herself and said, "Well, it is true that a war is being fought at the moment. I believe the public is calling it the Clan War. The diamonds didn't want to tell you so that you didn't try to impress us and start throwing armies at the enemy in an attempt to end the war, wasting a lot of numbers and endangering your life. As to the news article you saw, those were defector lazulites. The sides fighting the war at the moment are the Triple House, which consists of the Emerald, the remnants of the Pearl, and the newly formed Lapis clans, and Homeworld, which is mainly just the Diamond and Jasper clans. Many of the lesser clans are split, and they randomly like to choose sides. Those lazulites were attempting to escape to the Emerald Moon, where the bulk of their army consists."

I began to ponder her words. Homeworld had many artificial moons surrounding it where different major operations occur and where larger gem populations dwell. I remember reading a previous census that said the emerald populations were very high, rivaling the pearls in numbers. If those two parties are working together, than that means that Homeworld has its work cut out for it. Yet I have seen none of the effects of a hard fought war on homeworld. Why was that? The other side had such a large force. Homeworld should be wanting all the help it can get. "Why isn't Homeworld suffering the kind of economic strains that come with war? The emerald and pearl clans are two of the largest clans. Surely Homeworld is having difficulty, enough so that they would at least ask me to join."

Pink answered, "The emerald and pearl clans are the two largest clans, yes, but we have about 97% of the pearls enslaved or captured." I was appalled. How could so many be captured? That large a number seemed an impossible one to obtain, considering the size of the pearl clan. Pink, seeming to read my thoughts, continued, "When the rebellion first started, and the pearls decided that they wanted to join the emerald side, the diamonds retaliated by catching as many pearls as they could and selling them in market. This practice has continued to this very day, where soldiers now keep a regular lookout for pearls, hoping to earn a few extra credits later."

Well, I guess something like that would even the sides a bit. I decided to ask what was probably the most important question, "How did the war start?" Pink sunk into silence for a moment, structuring her words, looking for the easiest way to explain, I imagine, when she answers, "Depending on what side you ask, the answer will be about something the diamonds did, something before me and Black. Homeworld supporters will tell you that it started over the diamonds trying to colonize a world that the emeralds were trying to tell them not to colonize, so the emeralds organized the Triple House and struck war with the diamonds. The supporters of the Triple House would have you believe that it was because of the way that the diamonds colonized the worlds in general, saying that we are heartless, killing the planets and causing the lifeforms of that planet to go extinct, ripping away the rights to life for those organisms."

Out of curiosity, I felt that I had to ask, "What do you believe, Pink?" Pink looked at me, again thinking about her answer, when she answered, "Do you remember the prophecy that Star Quartz gave, saying that to revive her, we must search the stars for examples of love?" I gave my affirmative, she continued, "Well, the eldest diamonds, wanting to see Star Quartz again, began a mission in which they gathered the other clans and began that very search for love, colonizing a planet and searching its beings for that elusive affection. In desperateness and impatience, the diamonds began to become more rough in their search, to the point that, whenever a planet proved to not have love, they hollowed it to create kindergartens and strategic headquarters, supposedly killing everything on that planet that was organic. When the emeralds heard that this was happening, they attempted to stop the eldest Diamonds. The emeralds are natural peace keepers, only fighting when necessary, so the elders of the emerald clan attempted to hold negotiations with the diamonds, trying to plead with them to stop the killing of planets."

She seemed to catch on herself, as if she just remembered something terrible, which she probably did, and continued, "The diamonds, outraged by the fact that a lesser clan, of which they even considered their sibling clans to be, would try to order them around and tell them how to do their job, targeted a specific colony whose colonization efforts were being led by the emerald clan, and therefore had a main ninety-five percent population of emeralds, and they blew it to smithereens with their world destroying weapons. There was not a survivor to be heard. The emeralds, so distraught and understandably infuriated by this clear refusal of peace, signed off to war immediately, so fast that the diamonds couldn't even blink. They gathered as many people to their cause as possible, and have been fighting Homeworld for about 600 years, in fact you were made on the anniversary of the first day of war."

After all this information, I had to sit back. The diamonds had been supposedly killing planets, though that supposedly seemed to be more of a definitively since Pink has never actually ran a Colony. They have been massacring entire races, destroying a planet in nothing but plain annoyance, ending millions of civilian lives just to spite a few old gems. I began to become angry, mainly by the fact that, by pure circumstance, I had to be employed into the work of pure monsters. As for these monsters, what right had they to decide if a race of beings deserved to die or not, or if a planet deserved to exist. Having had my fill of world shattering information for the day, I excused myself from Pink's office and made my way to my room. When I arrived, I sent a message to Dark saying that I was sorry for popping that bombshell on him so unexpectedly, and promised that I would try to make it to his lab tomorrow for research. A few minutes later, I received an email from him telling me that it was fine, that he'll be happy to see me.

I went to my gym to spar, using the dummies and my holographic replicas of myself to take out my anger about anything in general. I finished up there, and made my way to the library, attempting to see if any of the books there hinted to this war. After seeing that none of them did, and therefore concluding that the diamonds are really good at covering their tracks, I looked out of my window to see that it was nighttime, and subsequently heading to my bed, hoping that tomorrow with Dark would clear my head of today.