Fade Out

Chapter Three

So, hectic schedule is now done and I now have lots of free time for fic writing, and I intend to do as much fic writing as I can. Starting with this chapter.

…..

When Courage emerged from the earth, the planet was already in an advanced state of decay. Any water that remained on the surface was sickly green and foul-smelling. The bare skeletons of trees poked up through the soil, crumbling away under the intense glare of the suns. She was one of the last Jaspers to be hatched, and was thrust straightaway into the new gem society.

There were no sides to be taken; most of the old upperclass gems had already been executed, and the Everlast was putting in plans to sustain their lives on the planet. Courage, though she had no name at this time, was given tools for carving out shelters and put to work. She didn't question it.

All gems carved or built. There were those that got a reprieve because they'd offered to go on trails, looking for useful scraps of tech or clean water or that most elusive of things, a working warp pad. These trails were incredibly dangerous, it was rare for a gem to come back with her gem fully intact, and often there were gems that did not come back at all.

Courage had no interest in going on trails. They were for the work-shy, or the foolhardy, or the ones that wanted to climb the ranks to gain favour with the Everlast. Courage was none of these, she lived her life modestly. She put her mass to good use carving shelters, and in her free time she liked to collect little oddities she found in her digging; chunks of glass, crystal shards, bolts and cogs from long-destroyed machinery. She could spend an entire cycle looking over her treasures, turning them over in her large hands, scanning their surfaces for something new she had not seen. She might have been content to stay this way until the sand and the wind ground up her gem into nothing.

But then...

A clumsy gem had disrupted the ground during a dig, and the support beam on the main tower had been knocked askew. As a precaution, the Everlast had the pearls moved to another part of the tower until the repairs were complete. Courage just happened to be working beside the bridge at the time, and she caught a fleeting glimpse of the pearls.

She had never seen anything like them, beautiful and utterly alien, untouched by the atmosphere that was destroying the rest of them. Even their colours were more vibrant; the blue-haired pearl's hue rivaled the sky. Just as suddenly as they appeared, they were gone, but the image of them had been burned into Courage's eyes, into her mind. She had to see them again, somehow.

The first trail she volunteered for made it further than any trail had before, with only two gems lost on the way. She made a major find; an abandoned outpost full of fibreglass and sheet metal and engine parts. She was moved to a more comfortable chamber in the shelters, room enough for her to stretch out her mass without touching the walls or ceiling, a room she didn't have to share with the others.

After five successful trails she was moved again to the inner circle, just outside of the main towers. She was gaining a reputation for fearlessness, and squads bickered over her, each wanting her for their own trails. She accepted as many offers as she could, each trail was bringing her closer to seeing the pearls again. Within ten more trails, she had a squad of her own. They were a scrappy set of Spinels, Hematites and two half-baked Jades, but they followed orders and that was enough for her.

Little bands of exiled gems were forming in the dunes, scraping out a living for themselves as best they could, and they posed a threat to the trails, for they would descend on any motor they found and take it for themselves. Courage was feared by these bands, for she could dispatch them quickly with few problems. The trails deepened under her influence, the planet's gems made it further than they had even before the planet began to die.

The Everlast had a habit of bestowing 'names' on gems that found favour with her. Her second-in-command, a particularly vicious Hematite, had been given the name 'Spite' and her head engineer was called 'Drag'. It was rumored that the pearls had been named by her too, but the names were not known by anyone but the Everlast herself. 'Courage' was a good name, a badge of honour.

She built the rig herself, from bits and pieces she had kept from the trails, until she had a machine capable of withstanding the harsh atmosphere, the rough trails and the wandering bands of exiles. The cycle after she brought it back from its first successful trail, with no gem lives lost, was the day she was given what she had worked for all this time. She was given permission to have one of the pearls for a single cycle. She chose the blue-haired one.

Within a few parsecs of meeting the pearl for the first time, she knew she had to get them out.

…..

They moved the rig as soon as they were able, just a couple of miles down the trail until they were under an enormous rocky outcropping. The heat was steadily climbing, and by the time they got out of the rig to shelter under the coolest part of the outcropping it felt like the inside of an oven.

Once again, the pearls pumped up water for Steven and watched him closely as he drank. Their hands fluttered, and he wondered if it was a nervous gesture, like the way he sometimes hopped on the spot or laughed when he was tense.

The crystal gems still hadn't said anything to him, beyond a strained 'it'll be all right, Steven,' which he knew was a lie. They had gone back to whispering to each other, and they only ever kept things from him when the situation was really bad.

The Jasper seemed to be unconcerned, though. She had stretched out by the front of the rig with her eyes closed. The black and white pearls sat beside her, the black's head resting on the lap of the white. If they were relaxed, and they knew this place better than anyone, then things couldn't be too bad...right?

He plopped down beside Gift again; she seemed to be the one most willing to talk to him, after all.

"So, where are we going, anyway?" he asked her.

"Crossways," she replied. "We got a map. There's a warp pad there that might be working."

"Really?" Steven gasped, delighted. He hadn't thought it would be that easy...

"It might be working," she continued. "We won't know for sure until we get there."

"Oh. Well, that's better than nothing..." Steven chuckled, though his stomach dropped with disappointment.

"Our maps aren't very good. They got all messed up when we were yanked," she kept on, tone light as though she were talking about something pleasant. "It's all a scramble, mostly."

"Hey, do the other pearls have names too? We just call our pearl Pearl, it's confusing when there's other pearls around...I guess that's why you all got names in the first place, right?" Steven changed the subject before he got sick.

"That one is Mercy," Gift told him, pointing towards the yellow pearl with the purple hair, perched daintily on one of the rig's spikes.

"That one is Treasure," she said, pointing to the blue-haired pearl, who was pacing the floor of the outcropping restlessly.

"And those are Sweetness and Light," she finished, pointing at the black and white pearls.

"Those are cool names," Steven enthused.

"The Everlast named us when she smashed our owners. We hate our names," Gift said breezily.

"Oh, uh...Sorry?" he mumbled.

He was saved from more awkwardness by Pearl, slumping to the ground in front of them with a weary sigh.

"Looks like we'll have to stick with these gems for a while," she told him. "At least until we find the warp pad they're looking for. We have a lot of ground to cover."

"Gift said the maps they have are messed up," Steven said.

He was surprised that she didn't reply, but her fingers began fluttering, much like the other pearls had been. He'd never seen her doing that before, what was it about this planet...?

But it wasn't until Gift's fingers starting fluttering in response that he realized the little movements had a purpose. They were talking!

He was familiar with sign language, at least a little. In a playgroup he'd been put in at the age of five, there had been a little deaf girl in the Caterpillar room and the group leaders had taught them a few words to make her feel included; 'hello' and 'goodbye', 'dog' and 'cat' and 'hungry' and 'sad'. He recalled that he'd forgotten all of it and resorted to scribbling out notes for the little girl, because he'd wanted very much to be her friend.

These little movements seemed too small to make any sense, but clearly they made sense to Pearl. She seemed to forget Steven was there at all, and the look on her face was something he had never seen before, something hard to describe...

Suddenly, Gift pulled up her skirt (and despite himself Steven's cheeks burned) to reveal her gem, embedded on her upper thigh. A hazy image projected from it, blurred and crackling with static. Pearl's gem lit up and scanned the image, as Gift's hands called to the other pearls.

Treasure sank to her knees beside Pearl, bringing up an image from the gem in her wrist. Mercy clambered down from her spike and projected another piece of the puzzle, slotting neatly into Treasure's. Sweetness and Light projected theirs from across the outcropping. Side by side, they almost made a map...if you squinted...

But as Pearl scanned the images together and aimed the glare of her gem at the outcropping wall, the full picture sharpened and focused and turned into a real map. Everything was there, the canyon they had crossed, the outcropping, the riverbeds that had dried up, the valleys and mountains, and a half-dozen warp pads, marked out as broken by big red Xs.

Except one. Right on the edge of the map, on the third peak of a mountain range, one warp pad was still blue. Working.

The pearls were staring at the map, open-mouthed. Tears were trickling down Treasure's face and she made no move to wipe them away, if she even knew they were there at all.

"It really is there."

Steven jumped, because he hadn't even heard Courage approach. For someone so large, she was astonishingly quiet. She looked euphoric, before her face crumpled again. She looked down at Pearl, sternly.

"We can't let you fall into the Everlast's hands. She sent her entire force after five pearls, I don't know what she'll do if she thinks she could get six and a fully functional map," she said.

Some sort of wordless agreement seemed to take place between the two of them, because Pearl nodded and braced herself before Steven could understand what was happening.

"Sorry," Courage said as she brought her cudgel down on Pearl's head.