A few years went by as the gems worked hard to understand their powers, like what is a Diamond power and what came from their components. They could not summon any weapons, but they had basic powers that all gems had, such as shape shifting. They all had Pearls, so holograms and uncanny balance was available. Sapphires granted amazing reflexes, due to the anticipation of the future. The few Bismuths they had increased durability. Quartz, strength, Peridots and Zircons, logic, they had amassed a great many gifts without too much in the way of individual powers, but those that they received from the Diamond Essence itself. So it was those gifts they trained with. They started by simply invoking the powers first, making sure they worked, then started to tentatively turn them on each other for practice, getting stronger until they were able to inflict damage that could not just be shape-shifted away. Pink ended up with a swollen arm from Yellow's attack, Yellow, a scorch mark on one side of her face. White was blinded in a rebounded attack where she tried to steal Blue's sight, just as Blue shot emotional mist at her. Blue was not unscathed, as she still fell victim to the sensory deprivation and her eyes were wholly white. It took two years to recover from that attack, and the Moissanites went back to randomly shooting off their powers just to stay in practice.
They were not as prepared as they wished when the Diamonds reformed. Time was running out to complete their mission. White was the first to storm out of the towers, yelling nonsense, or rather in original Gemlish, a language lost after three eras. What could be gleaned from her rantings was she was looking for her Director or someone to tell her what to do. It was an unnerving sight to see the Queen of Homeworld reduced to an angry servant. Yellow was next, speaking more modern Gemlish, angrily calling for White, though what she used was closer to Momma White. She was confused when she saw her, not understanding her words clearly. Blue came out, scared and looking around for the older gems, smiling when she first saw them, then confused because they we not acting as expected. She started to cry in her confusin, getting the older gem's attention when they started crying as well. When Pink came out, the other Diamonds looked at her with horror, though none should recognize her, all felt uncomfortable, with an innate knowledge that she was off. It was after this that they saw the near reflections of themselves standing in the courtyard. Seeing their presence as an attack, or an attempt to replace them, the Diamonds attacked first.
White fought White, Pink fought Pink, and so on, none of the attacks ever making a difference on either side. White Diamond could not control the fusion, not for very long anyway. Yellow's destabilizing blast only caused temporary glitching. Pink had no real powers to use, as all of hers were discovered as Rose, but she gave it her all anyway. The ground took the brunt of the force, Homeworld almost spilling back in two after Steven had it put back together. Blue was the only one whose powers worked on her enemy, but the fusion could just work through it, and aimed calming mist right back. The fighting went on like this for some time until the Diamonds started to used their powers more in the way the Moissanites were, clarity slowly coming to their minds. Eventually the eight giant women just stopped, like White had taken control. The Diamonds dropped to their knees and gave up, their memories slowly returning, well all except Pink's, but she knew she was different. the fight was over, and just in time. White Moissanite was able to use a portion of Jet's power to quickly give the Diamonds the most prominent memories they needed, and the four fusions described what was about to happen. Horror fell across White Diamond's face as she brought her fellow Diamonds up to speed on their original creators.
Their conversation had just ended when a shadow loomed over the planet. A ship came into view, it had to be a ship, because a planet couldn't move like that. A light not unlike a Warp beam fell close to their position. A warp pad slowly built itself where the light fell. The eight gems knew they had to work together to defeat the coming enemy. They prepared themselves for whatever came at them, though even White was not ready for what happened as the last pieces of the pad came together.