Warning for mention of bullying and physical and emotional abuse.

According to the calendar of the pyramid-builders to the south, it was ten baktun, three katun, sixteen tun, and the rest Jasper didn't care enough to recall. Well over twenty-eight hundred years after the agreement at Alliance Rock. In that time, several different clans of humans moved from brush shelters and pit houses to buildings of masonry and adobe. Trade brought exotic scarlet feathers and hematite mirrors from the south, shells from the west, and with each trade came a host of new ideas.

With tensions mounting from the boredom of thousands of years together, in-fighting became more frequent. In her exasperation, Jasper demanded that everyone pitch in to build something. First came the watchtower, built in the new style of masonry, adobe, and wooden support beams. The great house was rebuilt with the glass from the injectors repurposed to serve as windows. They built a ball court a few hundred years back, with masonry walls built almost as tall as Jasper, and the formalized ball games served as a much-needed stress release for a while. Now, after Stoneshaper and Mason returned from the southern trading center that grew into a city, they were building their own village.

The plans called for the building of ninety apartments along the crest of the hill their Kindergarten was carved out of, several fire pits and ovens, lots for Sage's garden and Jasper's growing hoard of cacti, a room for Mother, and extra storerooms. For the most part, everyone had already chosen which apartment would be theirs. Everyone except Bear.

We really ought to call her Lichen, someone had said during the planning. She's about as useful.

Jasper had cut the speaker off with a glare, but it was only a symptom of a greater problem: Bear's sense of time was much slower than everyone else's, which made her a target for harassment. When Jasper asked the Crystal Gems' emissary about it, Pearl told her that some gems of great age lithify—growing closer to the timekeeping of stone than of organics, until they could no longer respond at all. Why such a thing would happen to a gem of Bear's youth was a mystery, and one that Pearl didn't seem to want to comment on.

"You have to decide," Jasper told the other jasper one day, when everyone else was busy building and she had the time to spare to talk to Bear. She had to slow down, disconnect from the pace of organic things, in order to be understood. "Or I'll stick you next to me."

Bear peered at her as if she didn't quite see her. The gem in her forehead glinted in the light coming in from one of the windows, but otherwise she might have been a statue. "It's better for me in here," Bear said at last. Jasper was faintly aware that the night had come and gone by the time Bear finished speaking.

"You'll be safer in your own place."

There was something of a flinch in Bear's expression, which made Jasper's harden. "The triplets attacked you again?"

Bear didn't say anything, but the way her gaze shifted to the ground told her everything. Jasper's cheek ticked from the tension of her tightly-clenched teeth; it took everything she had to keep from storming out and laying into the triplets.

"It's all right," Bear offered, her voice almost soothing. "I know they're just playing around."

If Jasper hadn't happened across the jasper triplets physically assaulting Bear several times and at one point seen them kick her disembodied gem around, she might have been swayed. Now, with the morning light illuminating the discoloration in the red and brown stripes of Bear's form, fury burned hot in her gem. "No. I've told them a thousand times to knock it off."

Without apology or so much of a look back, Jasper jerked herself back to organic time and stalked out of the great house in search of the triplets. She was aware, vaguely, of Twig running up to her side.

"Jasper! Hey! What are you—"

With a growl of impatience and frustration, Jasper stopped and spun to face Twig. Her voice was nearly a roar. "Where are the triplets?"

A sudden stillness washed over the building team as everyone with the ability to hear turned to stare at her. Heads lowered as her glare swept across the building team, and none of them looked like any of the triplets. The triplets were slacking off again. Jasper's lip curled into a sneer and—

"Off gambling, probably," Twig shrugged and feigned nonchalance. "You might wanna breathe a little before you start on them."

To her credit, Twig didn't react when Jasper's glare turned on her. "Want to try that again?"

"Sure." Twig straightened and her hands settled on her hips, and everything about her looked like she was ready to take whatever punishment Jasper wanted to dish out. "You've been snapping at everyone lately. Everyone's scared of you now. What's going on?"

Jasper's brow furled; her own issues were the last thing she wanted to deal with right now. "Bear has bruises again."

Twig's confrontational posture eased. "Idiots. Want me to haul them out for you?"

Jasper deflated a little. Half the reason Twig worked so well as her second-in-command was because she tried to be a neutral party. Other gems trusted her because of it. If she sacrificed that veneer of neutrality, if she demonstrated that Twig was willing to relent to her demands, she risked losing the trust Twig had carefully cultivated among the more discontent. That, in turn, would make Twig's job that much more difficult. Ugh. Politics.

"No," she grunted at last, in a tone that was barely above a whisper. "I'll handle it."

A slight smile tugged at the corners of Twig's lips, though she made a visible effort at suppressing it. "Well, maybe a little crow might have mentioned that they went behind the ball court to play games with Dicer's crew."

For her part, Jasper tried not to glower too much in disgust. The largest carnelian, Dicer, found her calling in games of chance, which evolved over time into full-fledged gambling. Her games and her fondness for gossip drew the more discontent to her, which Jasper suspected was undermining her authority. But, so long as no one got hurt, Jasper had allowed it to continue.

Maybe it was time to remind them who was in charge, after all.

Jasper muttered her thanks and swept out of the construction site. She paused briefly to entertain the notion of bringing some backup with her, but dismissed it on the grounds that rattling the band of idiots was a job best done alone.

She had to think to keep quiet as she stalked towards the oval walls of the ball court. Knocking heads only worked for so long, but maybe a human solution would do more good than her past threats. Despite their tendency to watch from the sidelines and keep to themselves, jaspers were still social gems. Exile was probably the most devastating of options available to her.

When she arrived at the western side of the ball court, she found the triplets, Dicer, one of the tiger's eyes, and a couple of other carnelians were sitting in a loose circle around the woven mat of yucca fibers that was the game board. Their attentions were so fixed on the carved antler dice that they didn't see her until her shadow fell on them.

Dicer's eyes met hers, as if in challenge. Perhaps more than anything, Jasper wished the carnelian would get annoyed enough to fight her openly. It was a simple solution with a simple outcome in her favor. But that would depend on Dicer misjudging her just once, and Dicer wasn't one to take that big a risk. If Jasper did what she desperately wanted to do and smacked Dicer just once, she'd lose this weird, silent power struggle. Politics.

Without breaking eye contact with Dicer and conceding defeat, Jasper spoke. "Dicer, break this game up right now and go back to work. All of you except the triplets. Triplets: watchtower."

There was a spattering of complains, but the tiger's eye and other carnelians took their wagers and skulked away. One of the triplets' voice raised in complaint. "But Jasper, it's just a little break—"

"Now."

The triplets rose as one and shuffled away, unwilling to stoke her ire more than they already had.

With her fellow players gone, Dicer conceded and broke eye contact to gather her dice and multicolored counter stones into a beaded leather pouch. The mat she brushed off and tucked under her arm. "We didn't know how long you'd be talking to that useless lump," Dicer said, a hint of a pout coloring her voice.

Jasper could argue that Bear wasn't useless, that she had valuable insight for those who were willing to slow down to listen to her, but it was an argument thousands of years old. At this point, it seemed that the malcontents satisfied themselves with targeting Bear because they couldn't target Jasper. "Bear's contribution is wisdom," she managed to ground out at last. "What's yours?"

Dicer's eyes flashed with fury, but she knew better than to respond. She choked back her words and slinked away, leaving Jasper alone to deal with the triplets.

The triplets waited for her at the watchtower, a structure the gems built shortly after the coming of the Crystal Gems in order to keep a better eye on the warp pad. Even among the gems, the triplets were peculiar: their gems were set in the same place on their hips, their markings were the same save for one of them having nearly an entire arm marked by red-orange rather than the stripe the other two had, their manners were largely the same, and they refused any attempts to name them. The triplets distrusted anything relating to humans, preferring instead to keep to themselves and other dissatisfied gems.

Jasper thought it was nonsense to isolate oneself from the larger society like that; they were part of the world, and as such had the responsibility to behave appropriately. Behavior like theirs was immature and selfish. Perhaps the large disappointment for her was that they had largely been fine until the Crystal Gems came along and Rose Quartz's precious freedom gave the more discontent gems the notion that they could act out without justifiable repercussions.

"We didn't do anything wrong," one of the triplets whined. Her sisters nodded in support. "Bear knows we're just playing."

Jasper's response was dry and unimpressed with her attempt at placation. "Playing hard enough to leave bruises."

The other triplet attempted explanation, instead. "Maybe we got a little carried away. Bear understands."

The transparent efforts to blame Bear were wearing thin, and Jasper's sneer of disgust was enough to make the triplets blanch. She could feel her gem grow hot with annoyance. "Enough! You've been warned every damned time. What was it about the past thousand warnings did you not get?"

The triplets cringed as her voice rose, and for the moment she didn't care if anyone else could hear her. They offered apologies, excuses, and tumbling words that only served to stoke her anger. It was the same damned thing over and over again, and they would go back to their old habits if left unchecked. Her teeth clenched tight in the effort to contain herself, that tic in her cheek jerking from the pressure. "Look, Jasper, it's not our fault if—"

"SHUT IT!"

The triplets drew back, wide-eyed. They slinked further back as she stalked towards them, towered over them, and they were quaking when her helmet formed over her head. Something about the power she seemed to hold over them appealed to some dark fragment inside her. It was a new, intoxicating feeling; she was almost heady from it. Yet, she deflated quickly when one of the triplets burst into tears. The heat in her gem faded as that intoxicating feeling of power over another was swept away in disgust. Was it disgust at them, or at herself?

She didn't want to think about it.

Jasper dissipated the helmet, but still she loomed over them. Her voice was hard and cold when she at last managed to speak. "You are all exiled for the next three hundred years. If you come back any sooner, I will rip your gems out with my bare hands. If I hear that you've been harassing humans, I will rip your gems out. If I hear that you've been harassing corrupted gems, I will rip your gems out. Do you understand?"

One of the triplets dared to speak up. "Can we—"

"OUT."

They scurried away, heading south. She watched, glowering, until they faded from view. Only then did she dismiss the discomfort settling into her gem and allow herself to relax.

.*.

It was night when Twig joined her at the dolomite butte overlooking their Kindergarten. Twig was bundled up in a bison-hide blanket, though she had no more need for it than did Jasper. For several long moments, neither of them spoke. Twig settled on a broken-off boulder of white and patted the one next to her. With the rage burned out of her and with nothing else to do, Jasper grudgingly sat next to her.

"You were loud, little sis," Twig said with a teasing tone in her voice. "I don't think anyone is gonna bother Bear again for a while."

Jasper didn't feel the need to respond immediately. Her arms crossed defensively as she watched the glow of firelight in the great house's windows from across the canyon. Did she really want to get into it with Twig, of all gems? Twig had that way about her that suggested that she knew what was on Jasper's mind. It was unsettling.

Twig, sensing that Jasper needed a little time, continued. "You've been getting angry for no reason lately—"

"I had reason—"

"This time, sure." Twig's eyes were preternaturally sharp, as if she could cut straight into Jasper's gem and lay bare her worst thoughts and inclinations. "I can take your anger, no problem. You don't scare me nearly as much as you think you do. But what happens if you explode on Sage again? Or Citrine? What if you suddenly snap at Bear? She's in a delicate enough state as it is with half the place frustrated with her disability, I don't want to think of what your anger would do to her."

Humiliation shot through Jasper, turning quickly to anger for Twig accusing her of being uncontrollable, and she narrowed her eyes at Twig. "I'll apologize to Bear," she growled through gritted teeth.

"I talked Carnelian into talking to Bear. She'll understand." Curse Twig and her ability to manage her like this, and damn that soothing smile of hers. "You need to deal with whatever's eating you inside. I'll bet it's ennui."

"Great. And do you have a solution for this problem you think I have?" Perhaps her words were sharper than she had wanted, but she felt no need to take them back when Twig felt the need to analyze her like this.

A slow, sly grin expanded on Twig's face. "The suggestion came from Amethyst, but I think it's a great idea. Why don't you take Rose up on that offer for combat training with Pearl?"

"Training with that cornstalk?" Jasper hadn't paid all that much attention to Pearl outside of diplomatic meetings, and she barely remembered the one fight with the Crystal Gems long ago. For the life of her, she couldn't remember what Pearl had done during that fight. "I'd crush her."

"See? I'm sure it won't be that hard." The sparkle of mischief in Twig's eyes betrayed her, and Jasper was immediately wary. Maybe she had mostly ignored the Crystal Gems after the first few encounters, but Twig struck a friendship with Amethyst a while back and everything about Twig's behavior now suggested that she knew a lot more about Pearl's capabilities than she was letting on. "Why don't you give it a try?"

This was starting to reek of a set-up, but far be it for Jasper to turn down a challenge. "Fine. I'll pay them a visit at some point."

What could it hurt? It wasn't like Jasper had anything important to do.

Cultural notes:
- The southern trading center mentioned is Chaco Canyon, which at the time of this chapter (September 1023 CE) is a major cultural center and trade hub.
- The ball court is built in the Hohokam style, and I had the ball court at Wupatki National Monument in mind when I wrote it.
- Gambling was definitely a thing in Mesoamerica, which the Beta gems had trade access to (the macaw feathers, hematite mirrors, and Dicer's board game are all from Mesoamerica). Also, the date at the beginning is Maya calendar reckoning.