About seven years have passed since my talk with Pink. During that time, she was obliged to tell the diamonds that I knew about the war. The diamonds then had me come to the conference room, where they asked me what I knew, what I was allowed to do now that I knew about the war, and what my job would be because of it. It was all pretty simple stuff, they gave me folders that showed me the territories of the armies, what's occupied and what isn't, as well as telling me that I couldn't take an army to anything until I checked with the diamonds about it. Whenever a major battle was scheduled, it was almost mandatory that I participate in it, which would help bolster moral and could tip the tides, considering my particular set of skills.

So, for the past seven years, I had been setting up garrisons on colonies, restructuring the armies that had been assigned to me. It may have seemed that a lot had changed, but in reality all that really changed was the public view of me. Instead of being an all around respected public figure that sometimes policed the streets, I was now the saviour-like entity that saves Homeworld from all wars and hardships. This view made me a little uncomfortable, seeing as any possible failure on any of Homeworld's part could sour the public's opinion of me as quick as a snap. It made me wonder if the Diamonds felt this pressure too.

At the moment, I was patrolling the streets, as was my usual. Today there wasn't really anyone on the streets, so there was nothing for me to really watch. As I was walking down the street, a gem came out of one of the side streets, one that I identified as an emerald. I tensed slightly, for, as far as I knew, there were no emeralds on the Homeworld census sheets. The emerald looked at me somewhat malevolently, and gave a lopsided smile, "Hello champion, I've been looking for you." He held out his hand and summoned a scimitar. "You see, your presence in the war poses a serious threat to our cause," he began testing the edge on his scimitar, "so, I've been tasked with your assassination this fine evening." In preparation for his advance, I summoned my weapon and took a stance facing him.

As he was walking forward, though, I felt something strange in the air. Before I had time to fully turn around, another gem was behind me, his weapon ready to tear apart my form. Studying him closely in my final moments, I saw that he looked exactly like the emerald in front of me. He must be a holographic replica, explaining why I couldn't sense his energy. In a natural action of instinct, I threw up my hand in an attempt to block the scimitar. Suddenly, seemingly in response to me throwing up my hand, a black, scythe-like pole shot out of the ground directly underneath the illusion, shearing right through it's form and poofing it. Not having time to wonder at the scythe, which disappeared after I put my hand down, I turned back to the emerald and summoned my sword, getting back into my stance.

The emerald, having seen the scythe, backed up a step, clearly fearful. Taking my chance, I launched myself at the emerald and shattered him in one swipe. While I was bubbling the shards, I heard footsteps behind me. I turned around to see Dark and his entourage approaching. When he came within hearing range, he started to talk, "Champion, I felt a strange energy down here that I have felt only once before, and I wanted to be certain that you were okay." After confirming that I was okay, he continued, "Good, would you please come back to the lab with me." I nodded, and we headed towards the Dwelling. When we got there, he left his guard of onyxes outside the door, he sat down on a chair and gathered his thoughts.

"Champion, did anything happen while you were having your encounter, anything strange?" Quickly I told him that a weird black entity had poofed a replica that had attempted to shatter me. Dark became a little flustered, "Well what form did it take, gem," no, "deldied wyrm," no, "any kind of animal," no, "was it a weapon," kind of, "sword," no, "axe," no, "Oh dear moonstone, please don't tell me… was it a scythe," yes. Dark became even more flabbergasted, sputtering slightly as he tried to explain to me, "The scythe among those with umbrakinesis is a sign of great power," I inquired that the other items he listed seemed more powerful, "physically, yes. But no other umbrakinetic can make a scythe. That is because the scythe is the weapon of the reaper, our version of the spirit that takes gems to the afterlife. To have his weapon means that you have been blessed by literally death himself." Cool.

Switching trains of thought, Dark began speaking again, "Now that we know you have umbrakinesis, we must train you in controlling it." And with that, he started teaching me how to control my powers for the next half-hour, not requiring the usual years that others need to train their powers. Dark dismissed me back to my room, and for the rest of the night, I perfected my powers, gaining the ability to summon the scythes at will, to somewhat shape shadows into different things, and at one point finding that I could code them, like AI, so that they would do certain tasks. Being fairly pleased with my aptness with my new ability, I went to sleep.

I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of loud banging on my door. I went over to the door and checked the hallway cam, seeing the culprit to be White Pearl. I opened the door, but I don't think White Pearl was paying attention because as the door opened, she hit me square in the chest, sending my body across the room to hit the wall. Seeing what she had done, she rushed over to me to see if I was okay. I, on the other hand, was thinking about something else. "Why are you so strong?!"

She seemed to blush a little and said, "Come on, I'm not that strong."

I was indignant, "My left nipple, you aren't! This is an atrium! You just punched me across seventy-five feet of empty air!"

She blushed more, until she remembered what she came here for, "Champion, a battle is about to commence."

I became all business immediately. "Give me details." She replied with, "On the way," and we set off at a brisk pace to the docks. On the way, she told me, "We have found the moon that the emeralds are on. We couldn't find it until now because the emeralds have a group of specialized terraformers that move it around," I nodded, I remember hearing a report about that, "Now that we have found their moon, we are going to send as many forces as we can in an attempt to subdue the reformist army." We made it to the docks, where I saw that my army was already loaded onto the cargo ships that would transport them to the moon. I went to join them when White Pearl gripped my arm, "No Champion, you have a personal transport prepared for you." I looked over and saw the ship, a tiny vessel with only enough room for one passenger and a peridot pilot.

I climbed onto the ship, told the peridot to lift off, and waited through the barely thirty second flight. Upon landing, I looked over the landscape to see that there was already fighting, the armies of Blue, Yellow, and White diamond clashing with the sizeable emerald army. The peridot landed me on the platform the diamonds had built for them so they could watch the battle from higher ground, all the way in the back of the army. I walked up next to them as I watched my army land next to the diamond bulk, tracing the path of a detachment of quartzes whose sole mission was to protect the landing of my army. Slowly, my army joined the fray, pushing the emerald army back slightly. White updated me on the status of the battle, then told me to watch it unfold.

I began to survey both of the armies, then began to scan for one person in particular. If I could find this one person and incapacitate them, I could end this war. After about forty-five minutes later, I felt an unusual energy spike from the center of the fighting. I looked around the center for a couple of seconds, when I saw exactly who I was looking for, Amoura Bundus, the leader of the rebellion, surrounded by an eerie aura, surely the physical embodiment of his energy spike. Later, I would ponder at the aura, wondering what it was, but for now, I had only one thought. I needed to shatter Amoura Bundus. As I made my way off the platform, White stopped me and said, "Don't engage just yet. Watch him, watch the way he fights, pick your battle, wait for your moment."

I stepped back and watched him fight. I can't say as I was impressed. Sure, he had a lot of energy and he was blocking and returning attacks, sure, he was shattering a lot of our quartzes and looked a little scary, but he had no style, he was erratic, following no pattern at all, almost as if he was never trained to fight and was just desperately trying to protect his life. Knowing for certain that this would be easy, I launched myself off of the platform, flying hundreds of feet into the air, over our army, and miscalculating and landing smack-dab in the middle of the rebel army. I was famous, so people recognized and began engaging me immediately. All of them were fairly easy, the problems arising when I remembered the fact that there were thousands of them. I would turn this way and jab this one in the gem with my hand, then, with my hand still pointed, I would whirl around and slice another. Every once in awhile, someone would come up behind me and I would snap my fingers, sending an inky black scythe through their gem. This continued until I had eradicated about a third of his main forces.

I turned around at one point and saw Amoura Bundus again, still cloaked in his strange aura. We locked eyes, and I began to briskly walk towards him, pulling my sword out for the first time in this entire battle. Instead of looking afraid like any rational person that had just witnessed a third of his army become annihilated by a single gem without a weapon, he smiled lustfully, looking full well like he wanted to fight me, like he was savoring the thought of the challenge I present to him. Before we could interlock, though, a woman ran up to him, one that I recognized to be Oceanus, his partner in the rebellion and his wife. She yelled at him for a few seconds, then he started yelling back, then they both began yelling at each other for a minute before, in a fit of frustration, Amoura Bundus cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, "RETREAT!"

The entire emerald army began retreating, shuffling around and past me to wherever they were retreating to. As I watched them go, I heard behind me the whoops and hollers of our army, feeling victorious and celebrating justly. Whenever the field was fully cleared, I started walking around and bubbling shattered and poofed gems, prompting others to do the same, helping me clean up the hundreds of thousands of shards. The entire ordeal lasted for a few hours, when the diamonds called me over to an area where they were gathered. Upon reaching the area, I saw a large group of about four-thousand people, all chained up and kneeling on the ground, guarded on all corners by a quartz.

What bothered me the most was that they weren't soldiers, they were civilians, as apparent by the women, children, elders, etc.. White explained to me, "They were found in a nearby village, where we believe they were harboring enemy soldiers. We gathered the whole town, having no way of knowing which ones were soldiers and which ones weren't. We want you to shatter all of them." I turned to her, horrified.

Shatter innocent civilians?! There's no way she thought that I would actually do that. It was unthinkable. "My Diamond, I'm sorry, but I cannot do that. I will not kill innocent civilians." Everyone within hearing distance turned to me in shock. Champion or not, I just disobeyed an order from a diamond. Any other gem would have been shattered on the spot, and the only thing that gave the other people pause was the fact that I was champion, and they didn't know if they should shatter me.

White's face turned serious, and she said, "Champion, are you absolutely sure that you want to disobey me. There will be consequences." I nodded, standing firmly in the fact that I would not kill those people. White, seeing my resolve, lifted up her tablet and began typing something into it. On the last click, I heard a mechanical whirring, and I turned around in fear to see the array of light cannons that had been brought to the battle being turned towards the crowd of people. Instantly, I felt myself running to the cannons, hoping to point them away or sabotage them before they shot. In three seconds, I had covered three-quarters of the distance, but it still wasn't enough, for I heard the shouted command of, "FIRE!" and the terrible arcs of light flew over my head, making their path towards the crowd.

As I watched them come closer and closer to the crowd, I felt a hopelessness and depression engulf me as never before and, as if pleading with mother moonstone herself, I yelled, "NOOOO!" But no matter how much I yelled, nothing could stop the arcs of light from hitting the crowd, nothing could have stopped the explosion, and nothing could found their shards in the resulting crater. Even after searching for an hour, not a single particle of gem dust could have been found. Around me, the diamonds began evacuating their armies back to homeworld after setting a tracking beacon and a set guard on the planet, leaving me alone with my army and the empty crater. Finally, one of my generals came up and tapped me on the shoulder, informing me that it was time to go.

Begrudgingly, I climbed out of the crater, ordered my army back on the ships to head back to Homeworld, and climbed back into my own personal ship. I told the peridot to take me back to the dwelling, and sat for the ride. Upon reaching the dwelling, I slowly made my way to my office, in a daze, barely recognizing the passing faces through the haze that enveloped my eyes. I reached my office, opened the door, and sat down behind my desk. It was only then that I began to cry, uncontrollable, violent sobs racking my entire body. All the while, I couldn't stop thinking about all the ways that I could have saved those people, so many ways that they could still be alive, still enjoying life in whatever village they came from, happy to be able to go from day to day without a care in the world, free from the fear of war, of being imprisoned, of being brutally murdered.

None of this coupled with the guilt I felt, though. Had I been better at negotiating with White, had been faster in running to the cannons, had found a way to protect the crowd, I could have saved them. In a way, it was my fault that they were dead, their dust was on my hands. And still I cried, far into late morning, all through the afternoon, running into the evening. At last, it became late, late enough that I had to start making my way to my room, where I fell onto my bed in an unresponsive heap, sleeping until the morning. When I woke up, I had no desire to leave my room, finding it easier to roam around and silently stare at every detail that I could find, finding that this mindless roaming helped distract me from the guilt and hysteria of yesterday.

At around midday, I got a call on my tablet, specifically from Dark, I answered it without thinking, listening to Dark express worry about me, as I had entered my first battle yesterday, he had heard that I almost engaged the leader of the rebels, Amoura Bundus, that I had disobeyed an order from White Diamond. He asked if I would go to his office to visit with him for a while, but as leftover from my mindless roaming, I was silent, not responding to him. Picking up on the fact that I wasn't going to answer him, he sighed and said, "Alright, guess that means that I'm coming to you." A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door, and Dark walked in, not waiting for an invitation, and found me sitting deeply in a couch in the living room, a blank stare fixated on him. He took one look at me and said, "Champion, are you alright?"

Looking at him, I could see that there was genuine worry on his face, that he actually wanted to know if I was okay. All I could really handle was a nod of the head. Dark walked further into the living room and sat down on a chair facing me. "Champion, what's gnawing at you? We both know how dangerous it is to keep emotions bottled up for too long."

I looked at him for a while and said, "Do you know what White Diamond ordered me to do, what the order that I refused was?" Dark shook his head no, I continued, "She asked me to slaughter an entire village of innocent civilians, under the belief that there were soldiers hiding among them." Dark looked as horror-struck as I was in that fateful hour. I trudged on, "I refused her, so she replied by training light cannons on the area where she had them all grouped, and she said 'fire'." I choked a little on the words and kept pushing, "Dark, had I been smarter, had I known a way to talk to White or how to protect those people, they would still be alive. Their lives are weighing on me like lead balls, causing me so much guilt that I can barely stand."

Dark sat in petrified silence for a moment, then cleared his throat and said, "I, uh, I know how you're feeling Champion. Well, that's a lie, I don't know how you're feeling. I've never had to kill anyone, so I've never had the guilt of someone else's death on me. What I do know, though, is that you shouldn't let this get you down. Anyone can think of many different outcomes to something given enough time after the incident. You need to step back and look at the bigger picture. You did not kill those people, and you were in no way responsible for the killing of those people. In fact, I will make it my top priority that everyone knows of your love of the people and your willingness to defy a diamond because of you love of the people, an act that would earn others death, but will earn you galaxy wide respect."

In this moment, staring into his caring face, seeing his own respect for me, I can't say as I ever liked, loved even (platonically, of course), him more than in this moment. I wobbled to my legs, standing up to my full height, giving Dark the cue to do the same. When we were both standing, I shuffled over and gave him a full-on hug, squeezing with all my might. Dark hugged back in turn, understanding how much I needed it, and how much he probably needed it himself. We stood like that for a few minutes, when Dark held away at arm's length, and said, "Now that we've got that out of our systems, what say we head back to my lab and practice some science." I nodded, happy for the change of subject, and we headed down to his lab with smiles on our faces.