Kind of slow development I know but I wanted this story to be a nice length, but enjoy.
Natural sunlight creeped into the facility, threatening to wake up anybody who rested. Lapis, however couldn't get any proper rest, her nerves racked her brain all night so she's just been laying in bed, thinking of what's to come today. Beep..beep..beep... "Ugh Lapis turn the alarm off." Lapis looked in the direction of the consistent beeping, it was the transmitter going off.
Nerves took over her body again and she just stared at it, not able to move even an inch in it's direction. "Lapis didn't I ask you t-" Aqua's rant was cut short when she felt the heat from her glowing gem. She looked in the same direction as Lapis, finally noticing what she was so fixed on looking at. She shook her head at the nerve wrecked gem. "Lapis it isn't even that serious, it's just gonna let you know what stupid job we got stuck with this month." Aquamarine walked slowly to the transmitter, opening up the message and reading it out loud to Lapis.
"Gem #1241 Lapis Lazuli of the ocean quadrant, facility 3 received a score of 7 out of 10 on her facility inspection sheet, receiving a passing score, and has been assigned to pearl transportation." Lapis sighed with relief, pearl transportation was usually given to higher leveled gems, and it was relatively simple, just gather pearls from the giant oysters and pick out the defective ones to be shattered at the Quartz region factory.
"Hey Lapis that ain't bad, at least you ain't get one of the really lame jobs like a test dummy or something."
"Wait what'd you get." Lapis forgot all about her friend while she was reveling in her own happiness. "Well I got two, one's a messanger and for the other I gotta water Pink Diamond's garden. I guess that ain't too bad she's pretty cool about everything, she's probably the one who assigned me the jobs, my score's still lousy though, only a 3." Lapis smiled at her friend, she was happy for her, she just wished Aqua would take her duties more seriously.
"Hey, I just realized something." Lapis looked back at her friend. "And what exactly is it that you realized?" Aqua was looking down at her feet, fidgeting with the white ribbon that she used as a headband. "Well I mean I'm happy for you and I know you're happy for me but, we ain't gonna be working together no more." Aqua stuck her lip out, pouting. Lapis was slightly amused at her friend's comment, but after seeing that she was really upset, she started getting a little sad too. "Awe Aqua it'll be okay, even if I'm not there I'm still there remember, best friends forever right?" Both the gem on Lapis' back and the gem under Aqua's bang glowed brightly. "Yeah, best friends together and always." Both the gems hugged for awhile then seperated after a minute. "We totally got to go though."
Lapis smiled, "Oh, so now you're the punctual one?" "Yep always, and don't you forget it." Both gems left and went their separate ways, both hoping all will go well.
Lapis arrived at her new job, giving her papers to her mentor. "Hmm, a 7 that's not too bad, for a water gem." Her mentor looked down on her, sneering at her condesendingly. "All you gotta do is take that bag, put the pearls in it, take them to the Quartz reigon factory, and seperate the good ones from the bad, you think you can handle that?"
Lapis smiled brightly at her, despite the nasty attitude she detected in her words, "Yes, of course ma'am I'm sure I can manage." With that her mentor turned and left, leaving Lapis alone with giant oysters and pearls. Ok Lapis you got this, don't mess this up. She gathered as many pearls as she could fit in her assigned bag and headed off towards the factory.
When she arrived at the factory, she was directed to the seperation room by a series of signs . The seperation room was just a bland, white room with a single conveyor belt, that's where the good pearls went, the defective ones however were left in a box to be shattered later. Lapis went through each pearl one by one, every one was good so far, but as she got to the last one she saw it was different. This pearl was shaped funny, like an almost oval shape, it was defective.
Lapis was about to toss it into the box, but it started getting warm in her hands and moving around a little, it was like the pearl knew and she was fighting for her life right now. Lapis held the pearl close to her, feeling the life in it, she knew she just couldn't leave it to be shattered, so she put it on the conveyor belt and left hoping this wouldn't come back to bite her.
The rest of the day went off without any more problems and Lapis was waiting nervously for her supervisor to relieve her off work. "Okay everything appears to be in order, you reached your quota today Lazuli, don't be late tomorrow." Lapis let out a sigh of relief, "Thank you ma'am, I won't be."
Lapis reached home to find Aqua already there, she kind of looked distracted. "Hey, you okay, how was your day?" Aqua jumped as though she didn't notice Lapis arrived. "Oh hey, yeah it's fine, everything's cool." Lapis raised an eyebrow at her but she didn't push any further. "Whatever you say, I'm gonna rest, see you tomorrow."
"Yeah see you." If only Lapis knew...