Lapis had been alone for a while, when the overhead warning went off.
"I don't need them, I don't need anyone," Lapis mumbled to herself, as she shoved an enormous drill made of water through a group of drones. They were bigger than the ones from earlier, bulkier and maybe a little stronger.
They reminded her, unpleasantly, of Jasper.
And that was just like Pearl, she thought: crank up the difficulty level and then sic the one Gem she hated more on her! She could feel her nerves tensing up with disgust and anger, more and more with each Jas- with each drone she crushed. As if to burn off that mass of feelings inside her, her water drill was changing. It had ceased to be a drill shape, and was becoming a ring of water swirling a short distance around her.
It functioned the same, spinning so fast that it cut through whatever it touched. Only now, instead of forcing apart drones from the inside out, it simply cut through them like a saw. It was even leaving marks in the walls, when she got too close to them.
It was becoming an automatic defense, protecting her without her input, instead of a targeted, conscious attack.
The symbolism wasn't lost on her. It couldn't be, anymore.
She didn't feel like it was in her control.
None of it did.
"RrrRRGGGHHHH!" For a split-second, the water expanded outwards into jagged edges, their range extended to cause harm to a considerably wider area than before.
"Why! Why are they all like this! All of them!" The water stopped swirling around as her influence over it waned, and retained its ragged shape as it splashed onto the floor. "Every Gem I've met since... since setting foot on Earth! They've only ever made things worse for me! Every time I meet a Gem, something-"
/Steven. Peridot./
She stopped. The maelstrom was still there in her, but now so was that voice in her head.
/You've met good Gems. And Humans./
The Humans called it a conscience. That one graphic novel she'd read called it a 'conscience circuit'. Ever since Steven had healed her, it had been in the back of her mind.
It had told her to forgive the planet, and she had. She'd concluded that it was the right thing to do, and was Steven's home besides.
It had told her to forgive Peridot, and she had. Peridot had demonstrated contriteness - in her own way - and eventually backed it up with compensating actions, which made it easy to accept.
But it had stayed silent on the matter of the Crystal Gems. And why not? They'd never apologized for how they treated her! The damage she might have done to the oceans that one time - she was careful not to actually break the planet. The result was trivial compared to how poorly they'd treated her!
Especially Pearl! All Homeworld did was trap her in a mirror, interrogate her, forget about her... but Pearl? Pearl! PEARL! That was her prison for thousands of years. Lifetimes, generations to the Humans!
If not for Pearl! ...maybe she wouldn't have to constantly feel a tug-of-war in her mind, a tide between crushing loneliness and draining anger. She'd tried, too! With all her mental fortitude, she had tried to stabilize herself - and the result?
Failure. A lonely sense that her existence itself was the problem. The angry realization that she was going to be like this forever. It never ended. The moon hung in her sky and dragged her mood back and forth whether she wanted it to or not.
In a moment of deep hatred, she closed her eyes. She could hear the drones pushing past their comrades' wreckage, and stepping over still puddles of water. She could hear them growing closer to her, ready to vaporize her. And, she knew, she could just let them.
She had recently begun to ask herself why she continued to stay on Earth - the Crystal Gems' home territory. For Steven and Peridot? For their sake?
"...why am I here?"
/To live./
She opened her eyes, and the puddles on the floor suddenly burst up, tearing through the unfortunate drones that happened to be above them. The water swirled around her again, forming a protective ring closer to her physical form this time, slicing through anything unfortunate enough to be near her.
There were two problems working against her, and now she had a simple answer. A simple denial to the force inside her trying to work against her, and a physically violent one to the drones around her.
She took a deep breath. One step at a time, she reminded herself. She had to find Peridot and get her back to Beach City, so they could introduce Sapphirine to Steven. She had to keep going, at least until then.
"One step at a time."
Her mind was made up, and with that came clarity of thought.
For one thing, it wasn't her first time on a training ship. In her time, all colony engineering specialists like her had been required to train in destination-planet conditions before they could begin work, to reduce their reliance on security escorts. (Protocol had apparently changed since then; now she might be required to work under a full garrison.)
She'd been on a ship very much like this one - and possibly even the exact same one. She knew where the controls were and how the panels worked, the relative strengths of the drones and the materials they were made from. And if the controls had locked her out? All she had to do was find the main generator and break it. Backup power would keep critical functions operating, but the drones would all be forced to shut down.
The only problem, really, was that she couldn't just fly straight there. She only had enough water on her to do one thing at a time with it, and right now it was all spinning around her.
So she had to walk.
"...one step at a time. Ugh." Lapis groaned in annoyance and began heading in the right direction, taking care not to step directly on the mangled drone remains that were piling up around her.
Author's note: My reasoning is that, if she can use water to create lift through acceleration, then there's really nothing stopping her from creating a water jet cutter.
I like the idea that Steven (accidentally) altered Lapis's mind when he repaired her gem. As such, I'm writing her as capable of being completely independent, but not actually prepared for that.