"...Привет?"1 Stephanie spoke into the receiver, eyes slightly squinting at the static in confusion rather than any strain. Nothing answered her call. So far so good. Her contact should be making contact any moment now. …Any moment now.
…
Oh no. Stephanie unhooked her microphone from her clothes. "Taurus, this is Gemini, status report," she quietly intoned back in English, biting back the bile of worry massing within her.
"Uh, yeah it's pretty rough out he- Holy shit!" Stephanie's contact yelped in a Californian lilt as she turned to face the nearest window television. "Guh- Gemini, you NEED to see the news, NOW!"
"Talk to me, Taurus. What's happening over there?"
"It… It's a mushroom cloud… in Russia."
"...What." That wasn't right. That was not right at all. "Listen to me, get out of whatever city you're in and meet me at the nearest safe house. I will find you."
"Woah… It's that bad, huh?"
"I am not going to lose you to rioting of all things," Stephanie insisted. "Now go, be safe, over."
"Got it, Gemini, thank you. Over and out." What a god-damned world they lived in.
Stephanie reconnected her attached microphone, just in time to see the crowd simmering in panic. "Alright, this is how it's going to go," she told the delegates in the chamber. "All of you are going to return calmly and quietly to your designated safehouses without making a fuss or panic. Once you're there, you're not my problem anymore so go ahead and do whatever. Until then, you will behave and evacuate in an orderly fashion." This time wasn't like the others beforehand today. Back then there wasn't a very real sense of danger immediately overhead. Here and now there absolutely was. This kind of evacuation was reserved for when someone was out for blood in the building, or something terrible had happened. Stephanie came across differently too, less exasperation and more… surely not fear, but something had changed. The chamber eventually emptied, leaving the Director alone amid the pews and podium, save for the agents who were tasked with preserving her life. "You there," she commanded, attention clearly fixed on a man of Mestizo extraction. "Get me a helicopter, I have a friend to visit."
The noise of rotary blades didn't make it into Red's consciousness as they should have. She was busy lost in horror at what she had witnessed on the wall-screen. The mere concept of her Diamond actually bothering to even try and converse with these creatures was astounding enough, but what truly terrified her was the blast. That unholy blast. That second sun over the ground her Diamond stood and spoke in such strangely honest faith. Everything was gone now, that much she knew, but no news on Pink. She yet operated, surely, as Diamonds can never truly die. GODS… can never truly die. Footsteps came to the door of her dormitory, the knock afterwards signifying yet another well-meaning scientist-caste trying to pry her precious precious data from her gem with honeyed words most likely. "Hey, you awake in there? It's me, Stephanie." Or it could be the anomalously large woman who took her in having come back from Empire City so soon.
Stephanie found Red huddled against herself, feet against her rump as she laid on her side too shaken to remain upright. Her hollow gaze was fixed on the screen as shot after shot of that haunting mushroom cloud blinked in between the atom-scorched carnage that it wrought upon the city. "Red, I'll be honest, this place is going to be heaving with people I don't trust to share a building with you. Can you walk?" she asked, a little hurriedly now as one intrepid news crew suited up to enter the billowing 'red zone' as they called it. "We're gonna need to go now, unless you want to end up back on a slab. Come on." Red's eyes darted between Stephanie's outstretched hand and the still playing screen. Why couldn't she have been a nice indoor lamp post, or a coat rack, or even a piece of furniture! Anything to get back, to go home… And yet… Red found her hand reaching out as if of its own accord, before it was snatched by Stephanie to bring her to her feet. "We don't have time for this dawdling, let's go!" she snapped, practically dragging the pearl behind her. On the now ignored screen was an amazon of a woman with pastel pink hair wordlessly shoving aside the news crew, something they couldn't recognise cradled in her arms.
They didn't have to go far before they came across a strange rounded craft with rotors atop it. Stephanie looked back to find, to her great surprise, recognition in Red's eyes. Red meanwhile was still a little astounded that anything VTOL-capable could run on primitive hydro-carboniferous combustion. "Hey girl!" a short organic already aboard called out, her apparent guardian of a man-in-black remaining behind as the machine lifted away under its own power once more. "Taurus," Stephanie flatly intoned with slight exasperation as she boarded behind the pearl, ushering her into the vehicle. "This is Two-M-One-F, though word around base is people started calling her Red. Go figure."
'Taurus', as Stephanie had called her, leaned inwards onto her knees as she sat. "Red, huh? Damn, they really did a number on ya," she huffed, looking at the ribbons seemingly embedded into Red's wrists. Red remained silent. Regardless of proper class etiquette, she wasn't exactly the conversationalist type. Taurus for her part wasn't letting Red recede into herself so easily. "Hey," she leaned in further, waving her fingers in Red's face. "Hey! C'mon, I'm talking to ya."
"Let her be," Stephanie coldly insisted. "She clearly needs time to acclimatise to Earth, and you harassing her in a surplus helicopter is not helpful." Already the craft was briskly moving away. One who was astute in the Earth's motions through space could tell by the current time and position of the sun in the sky they were moving South-West now. Inland. These bipedal creatures had such a dichotomy - such an insistence of peaceful intentions and such a capacity for violence; they were impossible to read.
Something more familiar in appearance came into view soon, as the Beach City Muni sprawled across the ground before the three and their pilots. Having been passed between worlds before Red naturally recognised a local spaceport, or at least the primitive terrestrial equivalent of one. Warp pads can only carry so much at a time after all. "If what's happened is what I think's happened then I need to get to Russia now," Stephanie breathed, doing her best to mask her nerves. "If my contact in West Siberia turned rogue, who knows what else I missed..."
Taurus left levity behind as she answered. "Rogue?" she murmured, an undercurrent of fear ripping at her voice as the rotors slowed and the helicopter slowly sank to earth. Her words tangled and tripped over themselves, unable to form even a word before the craft had come to rest. "Someone like her gone rogue… So it's true then? What she said to do with- uh, y'know?"
"We'll get to that later, for now though our plane is ready and we're on a timer." Stephanie hopped out of the chopper and began walking over to the jet, her words trailing behind her as she moved. Red was more confused than anything, and not even that confused to begin with. Taurus shamelessly gawked at the prospect of boarding such a powerful craft, hands pressed into either side of her face as her pupils swallowed her eyes. "YooooOOOOO! We're going on the plane! Red, we're going on the plane!" she shrieked, insofar as her naturally hoarse voice would allow. She dragged the poor alien almost off her feet in her excitement to catch up and board, almost crashing into Stephanie at the stairs before slipping behind the bewildered pearl as they stepped up in sequence. Stephanie saluted the door attendant and sighed in long-suffering irritation once past. She could tell without looking Taurus had just flashed double-Vs before finally having the door closed for them all.
The inside of the plane was much closer to the luxury Red expected of a leader. Padded seating and ice-chilled beverages, though the strangely spongy flooring was most likely a human thing. Car-pets, or somesuch. One more organic idiosyncrasy to the pile. "Go ahead and sit down, Red. Taurus and I need to speak in private," Stephanie spoke, striding past and into the front end of the craft. Taurus sheepishly slipped past and followed her through the airlock. Red was alone with her thoughts once more, with only the ambient of tyres on tarmac and the rumbling purr of combustion engines. The thrum of kerosene jets. The hum of ceiling lights, and floor projectors. The otherworldly shapes of coral as Red slipped back into the Reef. Every memory of that time was as murky as the waters her kind emerged from, not from a failure of memory of course - a gem's memory is impeccable - but simply for a lack of need to document anything at the time. Words faded into a dull mumbled haze, but the picture was clear as ever. Two peridots and… a nephrite? That can't be right. Not unless- no that's nonsense. Maybe an emerald? Maybe THE Emerald? But she did remember with perfect clarity the struggle to claim her wave of pearls - and the deathly silence as Pink Diamond herself appraised the selection. Thank the stars that that other pearl was made to order for her. Red doubted she'd survive long under Pink.
"We are NOT shattering her." Stephanie's raised voice snapped Red out of her stupor. Naturally there was one word that stood out from that outburst - shattering. Despite what she was taught about the proper disinterest pearls ought to have in affairs that did not involve them, Red was possessed of a most dangerous and terrible curse of curiosity. And so while she had been told to seat herself, she found her audio receptor against the cabin door instead. After all, nobody said not to stand up again after sitting down, and she was in fact sitting down anyw- …Red quickly readjusted her position to match the truth to her mental gymnastics. …She was in fact sitting down anyway so technically speaking she had done exactly what was asked of her. As for privacy, this plane was surely private enough for the three of them, no? The movement, the turbulence of thin air under metal, the hum of internal combustion all spoke volumes of location and velocity. Who could listen in from here? Surely it was only natural for Stephanie's most loyal pearl to be present in the room as she conversed, and naturally it was only for the best interests of everyone involved.
"...nger or not, we need her alive," Stephanie continued. "I know, Taurus, I know how it is to condemn so many, but if we go in guns blazing she'll outrun us, and who knows who'll take her in instead? The enemies we have, the likes of the Mujahadeen or People's Liberation Army are the least of our concerns." She sighed, her reasons unclear without a visual on her face, letting her compatriot answer her.
"She's a mass murderer, Steph, we can't just… let her walk after this." In any civilised society this vile excuse of a person would be put to death, gem or otherwise - unless… but a Diamond wouldn't order this, not on Pink's head. It had to be someone else. It had to be. It had to be. …Why had they stopped talking? Had something happened up front? "Plan failed… Don't look for me- Why you gotta do us like this, girl?" Taurus moaned, clearly upset by whatever she had apparently just read from. Then her footfalls came closer to the door. Uh oh.
Red scrabbled back over to the seating best she could, but by the time she had stood up Stephanie's indoor shades reflected her guilt in each lens. "Seats no good?" she sarcastically asked, hands resting unimpressed on her ample hips. Come on, think, Red! You knew this was a possibility from the start, of course you have an answer for this!
"W-well, i-i-it is… Improper for a pearl to remain seated when her betters are standing." Nice save…?
"...I see," Stephanie answered, her voice refusing to hint either way at her belief in those words. "And this overrides direct commands?" Urk!
"...Yes," Red lied. At least, it was technically a lie. In truth there was no such precedent either way so there was only lightly-educated guesses to work with.
"Fair enough. Your lot sounds like the kind to enforce that kind of standing order." Stephanie straddled past Red on her way to the seat opposite, her diminutive friend taking the one poking out into the main gangway. This craft was spacious, but not needlessly so of course. Once all three passengers were at last sat round the main table Stephanie opened up about her motives for their field trip. "I've heard bad news about my friend, I need to check on her before we continue. Get comfy you two, we have a lot more travel ahead of us."
The drive had been fraught with danger even for their rugged Тигр (Tigr) and the last leg had to be made on foot, but now the three of them had finally entered the main chamber of their purported comrade's Ural hideaway. If there was any door or suchlike it had been left wide open, and snow had begun to accumulate just inside the frame. The hollow was dominated by a sturdy anvil easily the size of any one of their bodies, flanked on either wall by cold empty vats of material and the detritus of prior projects. The back of the dugout was shrouded in darkness, but enough light entered to reveal a note pinned by a lump of ore to the anvil's face. Stephanie cursed herself as she and her friend approached it, turning back to check Red wasn't about to wander off into the wilderness before lifting it to read. "Plan failed," she began to read, squinting at the terrible handwriting. "Pink lives." Red froze dead in her tracks. She wasn't sure whether to be relieved her Diamond was still alive or terrified at just how resilient they could be. After all, Pink was at least outwardly the least durable of the four. "Survivor went north, a rose quartz, I won't trouble her-" Realisation tore into Stephanie too late. "You didn't…" she murmured, only to find her contact in fact did. The last line went unspoken but it hurt the most out of everything: 'My shards are in the next room.' "Taurus," Stephanie spoke tersely. "Stay with Red. I have to do this alone."
Red found herself drawn to the creations left strewn about. Blades, spears, bows… Bows? Metal bows didn't seem quite right, but what would a pearl know of weapons? She almost caught her well-kept hair on an enormous suspended sword that jostled slightly in its chains at her touch. "Man it's cold up here, huh?" Taurus noted, trying to make small talk. "Is it this cold where you're from?"
"The facility I was developed in is maintained at optimal production temperatures at all times," Red answered matter-of-factly. It took a moment of Taurus looking a little lost before she realised that wasn't the kind of answer she was meant to give. "N- No, it's not this cold where I come from," Red added, hoping to sound more colloquial this time. "Quite warm actually, similar to your summers in Northern… Europe?"
"Heh, you say that, but it's getting way worse than it used to be," Taurus continued. "I remember summers that never went over twenny, now we got scorcher after scorcher…" The thought of the climate should've been less of a priority, but it was all happening so fast. Climate would wait though. Right now Red had discovered something of her own to disturb her.
"Taurus… these materials…" Red mumbled as she turned a small nugget of metal over in her hand, caking it in dust.
"What about 'em?"
"I recognise them. These are not Earth materials. Forgive my failure in observation that I didn't notice sooner but these metals, the sigils on these implements…" Red trembled at the thought. Stephanie had to know this right now, maybe- maybe if Red could tell her she could spare her the fate of a grisly death at the hands of Homeworld. "Your friend is a gem. Like me." Stephanie reemerged from the next room, face tense and taut with stress, or perhaps pain. Just in time, now Red could do something, anything to make her understand. "D-Director Stephanie, please forgive my pressure b-but your friend who lived here, she's a gem! A-"
"Bismuth," Stephanie interrupted. "I know. I've taken everything worth taking, there's nothing left for us here. Back to the Tiger, both of you. …I have to seal this tomb." Taurus winced. Red covered her mouth. Both obeyed, silent and sullen as they trudged back to the vehicle. From the windows they watched Stephanie fiddle with a hidden control panel, the doors slamming shut in front of her. The thought of gems and organics already knowing each other like this was… unsettling to Red to say the least. Such a species divide between them and yet they mourn each other? This just didn't seem natural. It wasn't long before she too rejoined them inside the car. "...We go north. There's a survivor, one who might even know what's going on." Without another word, Stephanie pulled away and drove back into the winding wintery wilderness of the Urals.
1: "...Hello?"