Just thought it'd be cool to add Aqua's POV to the story, slightly longer than the chapters so far but I think it's ok. And BTW kinda guesstimated Pearl's age but enjoy.
A few thousand years later
Warmth was surronding her body, just warmth and the ocean, wait, when did she go outside? Lapis looked around seeing every little bit of her ocean's ecosystem, and it was beautiful. She floated in a sea of life, looking around to see a new creature at every turn. Their ocean supposedly mimicked that of the planet Earth's, there was all kinds of tropical fish with different stripes and shapes, hungry whales swimming peacefully around searching for food, and dolphins in every corner peeking to the top every now and then for air.
Lapis loved the beauty of it all, everything was like a piece of art. The coral reefs glowed luminecent colors of green, yellow, orange, and blue, illuminating the dark depths of the ocean, the oysters opened and closed revealing the pearls inside, and the seaweed swayed to the ocean's movement. A baby bottlenose dolphin swam over to Lapis and nudged her softly with his nose, Lapis figured that he wanted to play so she did, making water balls for the dolphin to chase and little fish for him to catch.
Then, Lapis' head felt very strange, she reached up to feel any abnormalties and noticed that her hair grew a considerable rate, now reaching to her waist instead of her shoulders. Lapis was sligtly alarmed and looked around seeing if she could see her reflection anywhere, her gaze settled on an oyster with it's mouth wide open. She swam over to the oyster and stuck a long coral in it's mouth so it wouldn't clamp down on her, when she looked at her reflection she was shocked to say the least.
Somehow, Lapis transformed into Aquamarine, her usually shoulder length Navy blue hair was now a lighter shade of an azure blue, her hair now also held a bright, white bow in the middle of it, right after her side swooped bangs, hiding an Aquamarine gem, which was placed where her right eye should be, her tied behind the neck sundress was replaced with an ocean blue wet suit outfit that held a large white diamond on the torso area and a white stripe down each leg, and her usually bare feet were covered with a pair of blue boots.
Lapis was too shocked by this discovery to notice that the dolphin suddenly stopped swimming and he let out a loud screech, his playful eyes turned dark red and menacing, his little teeth changed to large fangs, and he grew bigger and bigger until he was a huge shark and he was coming straight for Lapis. Lapis, frightened by the huge creature coming at her, swam away as fast as she could but the shark was close to reaching her, he opened his mouth about to swallow her whole then as soon as he was ready to close his jams, Lapis woke up drenched in a cold sweat and out of breath.
"Woah Lapis you okay?" Her friend look genuinely concerned for her. "Yeah, yeah I'm okay just had a bad dream, nothing major."
Lapis shook off the dream, it just seemed so real, she still felt the warmth of the ocean around her. "Hey, guess what though, I swear you won't believe what happened to me earlier." Lapis looked at her friend curiously, her stories were usually really good. "What happened?"
"Well, I was out earlier trying to get my travel suit back from Aqua Aura's place, which she forgot she even had it." Lapis rolled her eyes, she already knew how forgetful the girl was. "Anyways I was swimming back over here when this huge shark with like red eyes and huge fangs or whatever just came at me, I swear it almost had me but I ducked in here like way fast." Lapis was completely speechless, was the shark in her dream the same one Aqua saw? Now that she thought about it, Lapis had been having a lot of strange scenes play out in dreams. Mostly of Aqua doing very peculiar things, but maybe it was just a weird coincidence, Aqua would never hide anything from her, she hoped.
"Hey, Homeworld to Lapis did you hear about my awesome shark encounter?" Lapis snapped out her thoughts, "Yeah I was just thinking about my own awesome shark encounter that I dreamed about." Lapis left the whole turning into Aqua part out. "It sounded like the same one from my dream."
Aqua looked kind of nervous at this point, "Haha maybe, you really think you could be seeing what I see or something?" Lapis looked at her friend suspiciously, before she could speak though Aqua interrupted. "I mean you don't think this could have anything to do with our gem connection or anything like that right?"
"Hmm, maybe I don't know, but I think we should keep this to ourselves for now, we don't know what the Diamond Authority would want to do with us." Lapis shuddered at the thought of their leaders experimenting on them.
Aqua looked relieved but shuddered a little too, "Yeah your right." Aqua stuck out her pinky, "Guess that's another secret to add to our vault right?" Lapis rolled her eyes, taking the gem's pinky in hers. "Yeah yeah, and speaking of secrets, why have you been acting stranger and stranger lately?"
Aqua paused, probably searching for a lie. "W-what, I been so chill, work's awesome , and I even get out early and everything." Lapis knew she was lying, she always stuttered when she lied, plus her gem was glowing slightly. "Oh really, then why's your gem glowing Ms. Truthful?"
"Well maybe your gem was glowing first, we'll never know. Anyways, I'm going to Pink Diamond's place so don't wait up, and you had a transmission from the D. A by the way." Before Lapis could say another word Aqua left, swiftly grabbing her sword before Lapis could notice, leaving Lapis alone and confused. "Well that was strange, why was she acting so weird?" Lapis silently questioned her best friend's behavior in her mind, but those thoughts were soon dismissed at the sound on a constant beeping from her transmittor.
"Lapis Lazuli, gem #1241, ocean quadrant, facility 3 is summoned by the Diamond Authority for immediate combat and field practice."
Lapis was confused, 'Field practice?' What was that all about, we only do field practice when there's a huge war coming up or something, and they never trained the ocean gems for combat. Lapis just shrugged it off, whatever maybe they needed her for like sword sharpening or something.
...
Aqua stood at Rose Quartz's door, nervously tugging her hair bow, not knowing if she should knock or just forget about everything. Before she could make up her mind however, a young Pearl opened the door wide. "Ah, you must be Aquamarine, Rose Quartz has been expecting you please come in." The pearl ushered her in before she could answer, Aqua took time to look over the Pearl, she never noticed her before, has she always been here,she couldn't have been too old maybe a couple thousand years old, maybe less, but more importantly she noticed that the pearl was defective, her pearl was shaped differently from the non-defective pearls.
"Hey, not to be intrusive or anythi-" Pearl cut her off, "If you have to say you're not trying to be intrusive then that means it's going to be something intrusive, so maybe it shouldn't be said at all." Wow she's a touchy one. "Yeah, sure that's cool I got you." Pearl nodded and returned to the task of escorting Aqua to where Rose Quartz was.
Rose turned around at the sound of incoming footsteps, "Aquamarine, how lovely to see you today. I'm glad to see you still wish to continue our disscussion despite the Diamond Authority's suspicions, this show's you are a loyal soldier, willing to take risks for our purpose."
Her optimism was contagious, Aqua couldn't help but smile at the large, pink haired woman. "Of course General Rose Quartz, I just wish to be of assistance to your cause, I just can't stand how things have been going here." Rose smiled again, beaming at the gem. "Excellent, I love your positivity. By the way I see you've met my friend Pearl." Pearl gave a slight nod but otherwise remained silent. "Well, I know for the past thousand years we just been going over battle tactics and recruiting, but now I want to teach you combat seeing as the battle might be approaching soon."
Aqua was sligtly afraid of the oncoming war, water gems were hardly ever involved in any wars and she had never even tried combat, but despite her thougts she remained smiling. "Yes ma'am, that would be a wonderful asset to learn thank you." Rose Quartz chuckled , "Oh no, I'm not going to be teaching you combat, I'm sorry but I'm still very busy with recruiting, which is going very good I might add, but Pearl here is going to be training you in sword fighting, I taught her everything I know."
Pearl shifted uncomfortably but have a slight nod, a blue blush rising in her face. "Oh I didn't know pearls were taught combat." Pearl looked sligtly offended but still remained quiet.
"Well my Pearl is different from most pearls, she was produced a few thousand years ago in the Quartz reigon factory, whoever was working there must have overlooked her, which was lucky for me, Pearl is an amazing friend." The blue tint in Pearl's face rose till she looked like somebody painted her whole face blue, but she smiled nonetheless.
"Pearl, can you please take Aquamarine to my arena to be trained?" Pearl nodded and took Aqua's hand, she briskly walked to a warp pad, taking her to Rose Quartz's private training arena. It was a huge, slightly worn out place, a few cracks here and there but still pretty beautiful, rose vines creeped up white, marble pillars, and benches stood on another side, overlooking the whole arena.
"So, what do we do first defense or offense." Pearl rolled her eyes looking at the gem like she just said the stupiest thing ever. "No first you will learn how to properly hold your weapon."
Aqua looked dumbfounded, did she really think she was too stupid to hold her own weapon properly? Pearl noticed her look, "If you're not willing to commit to this you can always leave." Aqua shook her head, "I just don't see why I would have to go over something as simple as holding my weapon."
Pearl smiled, she too had questioned Rose Quartz when she started teaching her this simple action. "Well just think of it this way, do you have anybody you care about?" Aqua immediately thought of Lapis, her best friend who she still hadn't told this news to, and her gem started glowing. "I'll take that as a yes, well just think about the life you'll have together after the war, that's how you know you have the strength to get through this war, even if you weren't exactly made for fighting you know that you can do it for her."
Aqua's gem glowed even brighter as she took her dark blue sword out of it's scabbard, she'd do it for her...