Author's Note: Hey! Welcome back! I like Bismuth. I also really like the thing they do in the MCU where they introduce important characters in stories that aren't necessarily their own (like Hawkeye in Thor and Spider-Man in Civil War.) Who do you hope to see make a surprise appearance now, or in the future? Glad to have you keeping up with the story by the way. Now, enjoy the chapter!
Chapter Six - Pieces to Places
The Moon of Earth…
A blip on one of the multitude of monitors caught her attention. Turning around, she peered over the screen, a ghastly green glow shadowing her already viridian skin. The readout showed several schematics of what appeared to be large, humanoid, robot parts. The blinking light was to notify her that the carbon-based cartilage that would serve as the sinewy material between the joints of the right arm had finished synthesizing. She noted this, and went back to the other display, her mechanical feet making boxy, tramping sounds as she walked back and forth across the control panel.
She was standing in an isolated room, slightly above a larger chamber and granting her an excellent view of what was occurring below. Dozens of drones, 8-foot tall worker robots, were moving large pieces of scrap material and technological components around. In the center of the cylindrical chamber was a wire skeleton, enormous and unsettling. As the green alien watched, the drones began to insert the carbon sinew with startling efficiency, as if filling a donut with jelly. As she watched the limb fit into place on the outline, she nodded with satisfaction. That was coming along nicely. Now, she had a chance to check on her side project.
Pressing an icon on one of the holographic screens on the dashboard, the alien used her cybernetically enhanced hand to quickly type in a password. Once she did, the fuel calculations and other measurements displayed vanished. In their place was a small, rotating model of some kind of orb. Not just any orb, but the planet Earth. Inside of the model there was a big red dot, slowly pulsing. A constant stream of near-indecipherable numbers was ticking up on the side of the globe.
It was growing more and more erratic by the day. She began to wonder if any humans, or anything, for that matter, would survive. Maybe, at the very least… No. No matter which way she read the numbers it just didn't add up. If it was allowed to percolate and then come to its full formation… That would be the end. She just wondered how long they had until then.
As Peridot's eyes flicked back and forth between the model and the data, the door to her lab suddenly slid open. Her heart pounding, the cybernetic gem swiped away the entire display, prompting the return of the fuel measurements. She was just in time, and as soon as the globe had disappeared, a strange trio entered the room. In the lead was a small, red alien. A Ruby. Flanking her were two large, orange drones. Unlike the smaller, builder drones that Peridot commanded, these were war drones. Her boss's personal guard.
"What do you want?" Peridot said, crossing her arms and looking down at the Ruby, ignoring the towering, silent robots.
"Lord Vilgax requires an update," the red gem said, her voice monotone and dull. Her eyes, too, were sunken and distant. Her condition was worsening, Peridot noticed. She shook her head.
"Another one? I already told him, this isn't something you can just rush. He's essentially asking for a fully functional exoskeleton. Plus, have you seen his list of required features?" Peridot asked, knowing that the Ruby would not answer. "It's not like I'm just making a pair of limb enhancers here."
"When will the body to be ready?" The Ruby said, seemingly unmoved by anything her green counterpart had said. Peridot rolled her eyes with a sigh.
"Soon," she said. "Within the Terran week."
"You know what happens if you disappoint."
With that, the Ruby simply turned and left as soon as she gained the knowledge she was tasked with. In a way, she was even more robotic in her movement than the drone that flanked her. As they left, and the lab door slid closed, Peridot waited a few moments before sighing and turning back to her private research.
She was starting to miss her bathroom.
"...Bismuth? Is it really you?"
The towering, grey-skinned gem stopped suddenly at the sound of, apparently, her name. She turned around just as Steven looked past her, and they both found themselves staring at three more gems. Luckily, Steven recognized them. Weirdly, so did this new gem. It was Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl. Standing behind them, forgettable in comparison, was the human form of Luong Lao Shi, Jake's grandfather. They had walked off of a snow-capped warp pad.
"Pearl? What are you doing here?" The two of them said at the same time. Then, they swapped a confused glance.
Pearl's eyes widened under furrowed brows, Amethyst raised a single white brow, looking lost, and Garnet slightly shifted her glasses.
"We, uh, were looking for Steven," Pearl started to explain, gesturing to the boy (but never taking her eyes off of Bismuth.
"Oh, is these are your humans?" Bismuth said, looking at Steven and Jake. "That makes a lotta sense, actually!"
"No, he's not ours," Pearl said, gesturing to Jake. "I… How did you-?"
Garnet then walked forward, and clamped a large hand down on Bismuth's shoulder. The two were similar in stature, but Bismuth had more weight in her arms and pecs, whereas Garnet's weight was more heavily distributed to her legs. As Garnet approached, Bismuth cracked a grin, and returned the one-armed embrace.
"Big G!" She said.
"We thought you were shattered," Garnet said. Bismuth snorted, and slugged Garnet in the arm, prompting finally a grin from the permafusion.
"Who, me? Pshh. Homeworld couldn't lay a scratch on this gem."
"Oh, it's so good to see you!" Pearl squealed, dashing forward now to throw her arms around the large, grey gem. Bismuth was surprised for a moment, but continued to smile lopsidedly as she held the slender gem at arm's length.
"Woah, hey," she said. "The Pearl I remember would never have thrown herself into my arms like that."
Pearl met her eyes, and her cheeks went bright blue. She gave Bismuth one last squeeze before retreating a couple steps back so stand by Garnet. At this point, Amethyst had walked over to stand by Steven and Jake, and the three of them were looking on in confusion.
"A lot has changed," Pearl started to say, rubbing her arm. "You've been gone so long…"
"How long?" Bismuth asked, frowning as she realized she wasn't sure. Before Pearl could respond, though, Amethyst interrupted.
"Hey, this is great and all, but… Who is this?" She said.
"Oh, of course!" Pearl said. "You've never met. Guys, this is Bismuth. She was a friend of ours during the Gem War."
"Woah! You fought in the Gem War?" Steven said. Bismuth rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck with a bit of self-importance.
"Heck yeah, I did," she said, striding forward towards the entrance to the forge. The group followed in tow, listening to her talk. "I made all the material weapons, armor, and equipment that the Crystal Gems used for the rebellion."
"Without Bismuth, there wouldn't have been a rebellion," Garnet chimed in.
"Oh, stop," Bismuth said cheekily, putting her hands on her hips as she approached the unlit forge. "How'd that all go, by the way? Did we win?"
"We did," Pearl said, a bit of melancholy sneaking into her voice. Bismuth was too distracted by her forge to notice, however.
"Good!" She said, moving over to the bellows. She turned a few cranks and pumped a few levers, and soon the forge was filled with a loud, grinding noise, as the gears of the machine sprung to life. Then, she went over to another crank and turned it. Slowly, an orange glow bathed the interior of the forge. She had revealed the magma, hidden beneath hardened layers of igneous rock. She grinned as she looked down at the molten rock, and then turned back to the others. "Who wants an upgrade?"
None of the gem's volunteered, so Bismuth chuckled and pointed to Amethyst.
"How about you, deep-cut? Watcha packin'?" She asked.
"Mm? Oh, just this old thing," Amethyst said, producing her whip from the gem in her chest. Bismuth walked over and peered at it, and silently requested to take it. Amethyst handed the weapon to her, and Bismuth winked before turning around.
"Psst, Pearl," Steven said, whispering to the slender gem. "What do Bismuth's do?"
"Glad you asked, small fry," Bismuth said heartily, having easily overheard.
She looked down into the forge, which was now bubbling up with lava, and nodded. Then, she reached into a nearby bucket and grabbed to fistfuls of metal ingots. Then, to Steven's surprise, she plunged both hands, metal and all, into the superheated liquid. However, she didn't seem phased at all by the heat. In fact, her grin only widened as she suddenly produced a worked piece of steel, shaped and altered into some kind of weapon part. She had wrought it from the raw metal with her bare hands. Jake raised his eyebrows.
"Woah," he said, "that's dope!"
"Just wait," Bismuth said confidently, moving over to a huge, dark anvil nearby. She lay the still glowing metal down onto the smooth surface, and once again shapeshifted her fist into a massive grey hammerhead. Then, she began to slam the hammer-hand down, further shaping the metal into various, small, spiked blades.
"I love this part," Pearl said.
"Homeworld used us Bismuth's to make spires and temples for the gem elites," the gem smith said, taking the hot metal blades to a trough of water and dousing it with a satisfying hissssss. "But Rose… She showed me that I could be whatever I wanted. Do whatever I wanted. Choose whatever I wanted… So I chose this."
Steven's heart wrenched a little at the mention of Rose, and to his confusion he saw Jake's fist clench and his lips purse. However, he was easily distracted by how cool and skillful the gem smith was. Her metalworking abilities were starting to give him an idea. Bismuth was now hard at work connecting her metal constructions to the whip that Amethyst had provided her. It didn't take long, and soon she had created a morningstar-like bludgeons that she fastened to the ends of her whip, creating a dangerous flail.
"Here ya go," Bismuth said, handing off the upgraded weapon to Amethyst, who looked it over with a muted sense of impression. Brushing off her hands, Bismuth turned to face Garnet and Pearl, a satisfied look in her eyes. "Speakin' of Rose, where is she? Probably back at the base with the rest of the crew, right? Aw man, I can't wait to talk to Biggs and Crazy Lace… It's been too long."
The two other gems shifted awkwardly, unsure of who was going to tell her. Eventually, it was Garnet who stepped forward.
"Bismuth… They're gone," she said. Bismuth blinked. "I don't know how else to tell you. We're… We're all that's left."
As the reality of her words took hold, Bismuth swayed. It was odd, to see such a powerful seeming gem look weak. She had to place a hand on a pillar to keep upright, and Pearl and Garnet both tried to get closer to offer assurance or comfort. She waved them away, and turned around. For a few moments, she stood off to the side, alone and silent. At one point, she kicked an iron helmet across the forge, causing it to rattle across the floor when it landed. The onlookers let her grieve. After many long, painful minutes, she came back to the group.
"I'm sorry..." Pearl said.
"No," Bismuth said, fighting back tears with her sheer will. "No, I am… I've been gone for so long. I don't- I don't even remember what took me out. I shoulda been there, fighting with you… Damn it!"
"Don't talk like that," Garnet said, sternly grabbing the other gem by the shoulder and forcing her to lock eyes. "We never could have done it without you. What happened wasn't your fault."
"Crazy Lace, Snowflake… Even Biggs," Bismuth said.
As they were comforting Bismuth, Steven felt something vibrate in his back pocket. Reaching in and producing his phone, he discovered that he had gotten a text from Connie. It read: Did u feel that quake? Getting bigger… Another GM? Reading over the text, Steven didn't even notice Jake leaning over his shoulder, reading along.
"What's a GM? General manager?" He said, quiet enough that only Steven could hear. The half-gem jumped slightly as he registered Jake's presence.
"Gem Monster," He said, flipping his phone closed and pocketing it. Jake's expression grew serious.
"I think we both know what that means," he said. He jerked his head almost imperceptively towards the gems. "Do they know yet?"
Steven shook his head no.
"Well, perhaps it is time they do, hm?" Came another voice.
Both boys yelped and jumped, neither having realized that Lao Shi had crept up on both of them. The man, for his venerated status, was surprisingly stealthy, and Jake knew that his hearing belied his old age. Lao Shi chuckled, amused by his ability to surprise the youngsters.
"What is it?" Garnet asked, revealing that the gems had all turned towards them at the sound of Steven's yelp.
"Oh, it seems that the boys have discovered some information that they were just about to share with us," Lao Shi said. "Right, boys?"
The boys gulped.
"Well?" Pearl said. "What is it?"
With some reluctance, Steven went on to explain everything that he had learned from the captive Peridot earlier that summer. He explained what he knew about the Cluster, how it worked, and how the multi-limbed horrors that were sprouting up recently were prototypes of the real thing. He told them about Peridot's half-baked plan to stop it. He even told them about the text he had just received, and his minor theory about how the quakes that had been happening all summer were from the Cluster, and not an isolated gem monster. When he was finished and out of breath, Steven looked at the gems, expecting some kind of retribution for keeping the information secret. Instead, they all seemed to nod.
"So, your theory about the kindergarten was right, Garnet," Amethyst said. Garnet nodded gravely.
"Apparently so," she said.
"Sounds like all you need is a good drill," Bismuth said. "I betcha Pearl and I could pump one out if we got the right materials together."
"I'm flattered," Pearl said earnestly, "but I doubt we'll be able to find 'the right materials'. Humans haven't even figured out how to drill to their planet's core yet. They're working with stuff that's still archaic to Homeworld standards from when we were there."
"Peridot said that we'd be doomed," Steven said glumly. "'Cuz we don't have the right technology."
Or the power, he thought to himself. He had carefully omitted the part where, even if they did get down into the crust to where the Cluster was, they would need an impossible amount of power to seal it away. A Diamond's power. There was no such gem on the planet. At least, Steven hoped not.
"To be fair, not all human's are using just human tech," Amethyst said. "Remember the guys at the fountain?"
Steven's eyes sparkled.
"Oh, oh! Galra tech!" He said. Bismuth looked genuinely shocked.
"Waitaminute," she said, pointing a beefy finger at Steven. "You know Galra? You been to Daibazaal?"
"What's that?" Steven asked excitedly. Bismuth looked to Pearl for an explanation.
"He know's the word," Pearl explained. "We ran into a sect of human's using modified alien technology. Some of it was Galra. All of it was scrapped."
"Human's with Galra tech… How did they even get their hands on it? Let alone figure out how it works."
"A lot has changed since you've been gone," Garnet said. "The Galra aren't stuck on their homeworld anymore, and the humans are no longer as primitive as we often chock them up to be."
Bismuth seemed to reconcile with this, her knowledge sundered, while Pearl comforted her. Lao Shi listened on intently, sensing that there was more on the horizon, and Jake tried to mimic his passive-but-focused demeanor. He only sort of managed to pull it off. Eventually, it was Amethyst who continued to drive the point home.
"That's just it. If there's one group using modified alien tech… Who's to say there aren't more?" She said, looking off to the side. Garnet raised an eyebrow.
"What aren't you telling us?" She asked. Amethyst gave a little nervous laugh, rubbing her neck beneath her mane of white hair.
"Heh," she said. "Well. A while ago I was flying around the temple and I spotted this weird piece of tech. Some kind of spy drone. I figured it was probably a leftover peri-bot or something, so I trashed it and stuck it in my room."
"Oh, no," Pearl said at the mention of Amethyst's fabled room. Amethyst pulled down an eyelid and stuck her tongue out at the slender gem, but continued.
"Like I said, at first I thought it was new age Gem Tech or something. Looked way too alien to be a human device… But, now I'm thinking it might just be another group of humans who got their hands on some space junk. Maybe we can hot-wire it for 'return-to-sender' and follow it. It either leads us to Peridot or it leads us to some human's with tech that might help us. Either way is a win, to me."
They all pondered the option. It was making more and more sense they more they considered it. Steven looked to Garnet, who seemed pensive, and then to Pearl, who was clearly doing some mental calculations.
"I could do it," she said. "Most likely if its human tech they'll have significantly simplified the coding to get it to pair well with their own operating software… Which, in the ley, means I could hack it with relative ease."
"But who's to say we're not walking into another fight?" Garnet said. "We'd better be ready. If it is Peridot, she definitely won't come quietly, and something tells me that the human's won't take too kindly to us intruding on their tech and privacy."
"They're just gonna have to deal with it," Amethyst said. "Unless they want the planet to blow up."
She had a fair point, but the bluntness with which she put it left Jake and Steven reeling once more at the gravity of the situation. She sheepishly gave an apologetic smile to the two boys, and then looked back to the gems and their sort of war council. She and Pearl were now just waiting for Garnet to sign off on the idea. The large, burgundy gem turned to Lao Shi and Jake, first.
"Well, Dragons, what do you say? Feel like helping us save the world?" She said. Jake grinned, balling up his fists, and Lao Shi nodded sagely. Garnet let a little, dimpled smile perk up in the corner of her lips. "Alright. That settles it then. Let's go see who we're dealing with."