Chapter 16, it's also nif-teen.

I don't own Steven Universe.


Chapter 16: Plea

Pearl opened her eyes, slowly, and weakly. Her head was ringing and she could faintly hear… she wasn't quite sure, crackling maybe? Was there a fire?

Her eyes opened in shock just then as the memory came back to her, there'd been an explosion.

She sat up and tried to look around, but nothing was in focus. Not the sound which was still muffled and far away, nor her sight which was blurred, only making out silhouettes and vague shapes.

Pearl blinked once, twice, and suddenly the world around her gained a startling clarity.

White Diamond's flagship had been the cause of the explosion. Considering the size and force, most of the ship was actually intact, looking more like a cracked insect shell from which some fiery larva had emerged. The lithe gem could make out Blue Diamond putting out the flames. Yellow Diamond stood apart from her, she saw her mouth moving but heard nothing at this distance. She must have been giving orders.

She looked around her and things weren't much better. Most, if not all, of their equipment had been knocked over from the blast or shorted out when the ship exploded.

Suddenly, a purple hand was in her face and Pearl looked up to see Amethyst standing over her, looking pretty good, all things considered. Pearl took it and the quartz helped her up, allowing the pink-ish gem to steady herself before letting go.

"What happened?" asked Pearl.

"Ship exploded." Amethyst answered curtly.

"I can see that. How? Why?"

"I don't know and I don't know." The purple quartz replied. "But that might be the least of our worries."

"What do you mean?" the smaller gem asked.

"Pink Diamond, she's been taken."


Pink sat up, not really having enough room to stand she knelt down on both knees, her hands in her lap as she looked upon the rogue gem. "You brought me here to talk?"

"It wasn't like I could exactly send you a message and this wasn't really what I had in mind, but yes." She answered. "My name is Spinel. I'm sure you're already familiar with Onyx and Zircon."

The former gem thought back to the prisoner, Onyx, about what she had said. "Zircon" that was the name of her sister, the one White had… she shook the thoughts form her head. She didn't feel like dwelling on her eldest sister right now. Instead she tried and focused on the present, and what little she could do to improve its current state. "How did I get here?"

"You were brought here, by my friends. Though I would have thought that obvious enough all on its own." Spinel answered.

Pink narrowed her eyes at that, but said nothing to the thinly vailed insult. Instead, she tried to get to the heart of the matter. "What is it you want to discuss with me?'

Spinel seemed pensive at first, but Pink couldn't quite tell why. "How much of what Onyx told you, do you believe?" she asked.

Pink wasn't expecting that, and the way the gem had phrased it made it sound as if she thought she wasn't expecting the Diamond to believe Onyx's accusations. "She already told you what happened?"

"Briefly." Spinal replied. "I don't really need the fine details to put two and two together. But, back to my first question."

Now it was the young Diamond's turn to be a little apprehensive. Should she really even be talking to this gem? Was it wise to reveal the lack of unity between her sisters and herself? Still she answered. "I didn't want to, but I won't deny the facts."

Spinel's facial features softened a bit at this, almost in relief. "That's good, my Diamond. Many would rather accept an easy lie than a hard truth."

Pink was a bit surprised to hear the rogue gem before her use the honorific title, and not do so in a mocking way. Still, it was best not to forget this was the enemy right before her eyes. "But that's in the past now. So, if you were hoping to drive my sisters and I further apart you can stop wasting your time."

The rogue gem gave a little half smile to that. "Strange, I didn't know broken trust between gems could be fixed so easily. I would think you were still uneasy about Blue Diamond and Yellow Diamond."

Pink didn't say anything. She didn't need to. The silence said enough.

"And if you are, you are right to do so." Spinel continued, walking back over to her console and sitting down. "You heard about Yellow's connection to corruption and Blue's attempt to reuse gem shards, right?" Pink, again, said nothing, but, again, didn't need to. "Onyx told you White Diamond had them shut down their experiments, but what if I told you they're still doing them? And that, if anything, they've gotten worse?"

Pink knew she shouldn't be listening, but her sisters had already proven to be untrustworthy, even before Onyx's little reveal. If nothing else, at least these gems hadn't lied to her. "I would say I wouldn't want to believe it." And she really didn't she wanted some reason, any reason to trust her sisters. But, she honestly couldn't think of one, not after all that had happened. This realization washed over her and for a moment she felt sorrow begin to creep up on her, but she shook it from her head. "So, now what? Are you going to try and convince me my sisters are an even greater threat to gems?"

Spinel said nothing, only began to type in commands to her console. The walls above parted and a screen came down. It came to life with a blinding light, a planet was shown. It then quickly zoomed out and several… she wasn't quite sure what they were. They were pictures of creatures she'd never seen. "This was a planet capable of life once. Those creatures there? They were its inhabitants. However," she typed a few more commands and the image began to change, showing the planet post-colonialization. "By the time we were finished, we'd wiped out all life there. And it was far from the only one." She typed and more pictures came, this time depicting dozens of others. "There planets all could have supported life, but they were snuffed out, in preparation for us."

The young Diamond wasn't sure what to think on that, it wasn't usual policy for gems to establish colonies where life had already existed. Not in recent memory anyways. "We stopped doing that thousands of years ago." White had told her that herself. There were usually plenty of other planets to pick from that didn't involve the extinction of other forms of life. Their eldest sister hadn't been against it, at first, but made it policy for Yellow not long before Blue had been created. Yellow had argued with White for years that using planets with inherent organic life was better. That the interaction between organics and their environment made the ground richer and thus better gems could be made. Still, White had denied her. But now their eldest sister was gone, and some of the serious implications of that were suddenly hitting the young Diamond.

"Looks like you've realized it." Spinel said, studying her captive's facial expressions. "Your sisters are not just a threat to the freedom of gems, but a threat to all life in the universe."


"You, you, and you! Reset our equipment! You! Get some gems to start moving this debris now!" Yellow said barking out orders as gem scrambled around her. She looked to her sister, Blue had managed to quell the fires, now she saw her sifting through the rubble, looking for their eldest sister. "Blue!" she called out.

But the younger Diamond ignored her, kneeling down and flinging pieces of twisted and/or burnt metal behind her and to her sides as she searched desperately to find White's gem. Yellow reached for her shoulder. "What?!" Blue practically shouted, a wild look in her eye which caught Yellow a bit off guard.

Yellow Diamond however maintained her composure. "You need to calm yourself. We need to access our situation."

"Calm myself? CALM MYSELF?!" Blue said, her hysterics rising with volume. "Our sister may have just been blown to bits and you want me to be calm?!"

Yellow pulled her by her arm, dragging her to her feet. "Stop it, Blue." The elder sister said firmly gripping her. "White's gem is either shattered or it's not. Losing our composures when the enemy may still be near is going to help no one."

The wild look in Blue's eyes persisted, but she quickly deflated, knowing Yellow was right. She removed Yellow's hand from her shoulder and knelt back down. "Even so, I won't feel better until I know it's safe." With that, she resumed her debris sifting.

Yellow was about to say more when she noticed two gem running up to meet her. She stared down at the two, she recognized one immediately, it was Pink's Pearl, and the other took a moment until it clicked. This was the Amethyst Pink had been conversing with earlier. The Pearl spoke up first. "My Diamond, I-"

"What is it?" Yellow asked, clearly irritated. "What could Pink possibly need at this very moment that she'd send you in her place?"

Pearl seemed apprehensive now. "My Diamond, that is to say, Pink Diamond she… um… well…"

"Pink Diamond was taken, my Diamond." Amethyst spat out quickly.

Yellow blinked once, slowly opening her eyes. Her face was unreadable but she made out one clear and audible word. "What." Blue even paused for a moment, looking over her shoulder to the two gems, not sure what she'd just heard herself.

Amethyst and Pearl quickly exchanged glances. The word hadn't been a question, yet now it felt like their very lives were suddenly on the line with their answer. "Pink Diamond, ma'am. She's been taken." Pearl squeaked out.

Yellow then took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She pinched the bridge of her nose, slowly letting out a sigh as Blue came up from behind to stand beside her sister, her gaze still locked onto the gems. "How?" Yellow asked, her eyes still closed and hand still pinching.

"I saw it, my Diamond." Said Amethyst, stepping in front of Pearl. "A gem, a big gem, came in and carried her off."

Amethyst was about to say more but Yellow held out her hand to stop, and the purple quartz did so. "To be clear, you saw my sister being attacked and carried off, and did nothing to prevent it." She let go of her nose and opened her eyes giving an icy glare to the quartz. "Is that what you are telling me?"

The purple gem was often laid back, she didn't sweat much and feared little. But with the Diamond looking down at her now she felt an absolute chill wash over her and spoke as best as she could. "That is correct, my Diamond." She then knelt down, giving the Diamond salute. "Please, forgive my incompetence."

For a moment, Yellow Diamond looked like she might annihilate the gem off the face of the planet. But, instead, she took a deep breath and ran her fingers through her hair. "I see. Go." The two gems did as they were bid and walked off to help fix the camp.

Blue looked curiously to her sister. "I thought for sure you would-"

Yellow stopped her with a wave of her hand and walked off. "One disaster at a time Blue. One at a time."


"Even if my sisters are the threat that you say they are, why do you care so much?" asked the captive Diamond.

The rogue gem thought for a moment on how to respond before looking back up to Pink. "Tell me, Pink Diamond, have you ever heard of a 'spinel' before?"

Pink shook her head. And she really hadn't but she could guess where this was going. "I am a specially made one of a kind proto-gem, just like my friends. But I wasn't made for infiltration or combat like Onyx or Zircon, nor was I made for terraforming like Diopside." 'Diopside', Pink remembered Blue mentioning it was she who had caused their sister's dormant state, narrowing her eyes a bit. So, can you guess what I was made for?" Pink took the question as rhetorical and stayed silent, waiting for explanation. "Your eldest sister wanted a way to widely monitor the thoughts of gems. She wanted a gem that could uncover traitorous thoughts before any gem could act on them. Instead, she got me."

"Oh, and how did it go wrong?" Pink asked, genuinely curious.

"Because I can't read the thoughts or know intentions of other gems, but I developed another power." Spinel continued, now pacing around the room. "I began to feel other gems, not their thoughts but what they felt, emotionally. I told White of this new development, but she seemed uninterested in its effects, saying that being able to read the emotional state of a being had too little application to reading real intention the way thought reading could. So, she declared my series of gem a failure, and no more spinels were made." The rogue gem got misty eyed. "White let me go, she said she had no use for me but that it wasn't my fault either. She said that I was free to do as I pleased as long as I did not interfere with the Diamond's work. So, I did. I wondered Homeworld for a time, but without purpose or direction I simply felt lost and left out among gems who knew their destinies. Eventually I found my way into space and onto then colonies, but it was little different from Homeworld. So, farther and farther away from the heart of the empire I traveled, until I was on the frontier. It was there I felt the feelings of organic creatures. They were simple, but powerful feelings of fear or sorrow but also of happiness and love. I watched from afar as their planet was turned into a colony…" she paused, looking to the ground. "I felt them as they were wiped out, their fear and their pain, it was… unimaginable."

"So, you wanted to stop my sisters from colonizing on inhabited worlds." Said Pink. "But my sister already saw to that."

"White Diamond did little more than mitigate the destruction of Blue Diamond and Yellow Diamond. But now that she's gone, nothing is stopping your sisters from taking any planet they want, and wiping out whatever life gets in their way." Spinel retorted. "I wanted a way to stop them for good, so I had to seek out allies."

"That's where your friends came in." The young Diamond said.

Spinel nodded. "It took time, but yes, I found them. They were… apprehensive to say the least. But once I managed to get Onyx and Zircon to listen to me, we joined up. And that's how I came to learn about your sisters' more grievous crimes." Pink frowned at that but Spinel didn't notice as she continued. "I became convinced that your sisters were threats to the cosmos. We raided a few of their more private facilities and beheld the abominations of corruption and shard fusion. It was there we met Diopside, another proto-gem who'd been designed for the movement of planetary structure. Unlike myself, in time, Diopside would have been mass-produced, but we put a stop to that. We destroyed all traces of her facility and the data on how to make more like her. Thus, we had our fourth member."

"From what I heard from my sister, Diopside was especially hateful of us." Pink said.

Spinel seemed to be looking for something to say, scanning the floor and avoiding eye contact. "Diopside was always passionate. She had never been around other gems before we found her and to be suddenly treated so closely, so lovingly, it left an impression on her. She was especially angered by the hierarchy of our society, having a strong notion of equality among all gems, even stronger than mine. To her you Diamonds represent everything wrong with the Empire."

"And White Diamond's Pearl?" asked Pink. "How does she fit into all this?"

"After we freed the specimens from your sister's facilities we began working on ways to help them." The rogue gem said looking back to Pink. "Looking back, it's hard to say which was harder to deal with, corruption or the shard fusions. The latter because whomever they were before they came together was essentially lost and we had no idea if we should allow the existence of these new beings as their own separate entities, or if it was more of a mercy to simply destroy them. But corruption…" Spinel shook her head, as if trying to shake the memories loose form her head. "we had little idea of what to do about it at all."

"You didn't try and study the weapon or data from the raids?" Pink asked.

"The weapon had already been moved by the time we'd attacked. The facilities of Yellow Diamond's we'd found only seemed to house corrupted gems, it seems she had gems studying the effects of corruption as well, but were no closer to finding the cure for it than we were." The rogue gem explained. "We tried using synth gel to try and repair the gems, but the effects were minimal at best. So I concluded we needed something a little stronger, we needed true primordial gel. But to do that we needed to get close to White Diamond. So, we replaced her pearl with Onyx for a time, holding her captive while we got what was needed."

"But the pearl who was shattered, she was a pearl." Pink said.

"At first, she remained indignantly loyal to White Diamond. But after months of captivity she started to open up and she started to see our points of view. She even offered to be our informant on White Diamond and insisted she could get us primordial gel far easier than Onyx had been able to, up to that point. I was skeptical, a part of me sure that'd she would sell us out to White Diamond and that would be the end of us, Zircon agreed, especially with her sister on the line. Diopside, however, vouched for her, insisting she could be trusted to be loyal to us. I remined skeptical, Diopside had been pearl's jailer for much of the time and I was afraid she'd grown a little too attached and trusting to our prisoner, but Onyx had been posing as Pearl almost too long by then and I feared that sooner or later White Diamond would notice the subtle nuances that would give her away. So, against my better judgement, I recalled Onyx and had Pearl take her place as our agent." Spinel began smiling a little as she went on. "As it turns out, Diopside's faith was not misplaced and soon we had enough primordial gel to make some real progress."

"So, you did it? You cured corruption?" pink asked almost too quickly and excitedly.

"No." The rogue gem replied curtly. "It was still not enough. We'd apply the gel to a corrupted gem and they'd begin to revert to their former selves, but never all the way. They all remained partially transformed in some way and all lacked something. One would regain its mind but nothing else, not voice or the ability to write. Another would speak, but only gibberish, still being mad and crazed. Not a single one managed to regain its former self."

"So, there really is no permeant solution." The young Diamond said, disheartened.

"As of now no, but that's where you come in." Spinel replied.

"Me? What do you want me for?" she asked.

"Because I think you can succeed where I've failed."


Flint slowly opened her eyes, she felt a pressure on her legs and looked down, seeing a massive burnt piece of metal laying on it. She pushed it aside and stood up. She was dazed for a moment before she remembered what had happened. The grey gem looked around, she was apparently buried beneath a large pile of debris. It had collapsed around her in such a way that metal beams leaned on each other at angles and kept everything from falling down on her.

Flint looked to the ground but could barely see, the light only scarcely filtering in through gaps in the wreckage. She spotted the gems of two of her squad. She looked around for more but saw nothing. She sighed and pocketed them. "There must be a way out of here." She could have made for one of the gaps, but it was small and if she tried forcing her way out she could end up burying herself, no, it was better to try and see if there was another way, so she began to walk through the debris.

After a few short moments of walking it was then that Flint saw a light glowing. However, it was not coming from outside like the other lights, but from underneath a pile of metal plates. The grey gem walked over to it and began to move it out of the way. She gasped as she beheld the bubbled gem of While Diamond.

Flint carefully reached forward and grasped the bubble gingerly. She removed it from the pile and held it in her arms, barely being able to grasp it due to the bubble's girth. Flint set it down and wiper her brow and looked around again. "How am I going to be able to fit you through whatever hole I find to get out of her." She asked it. As if in response the bubble popped and the gem fell to the ground with a plop. Flint reached down and picked it up with both arms, it was just small enough to carry under one of her arms so she did so. "Don't worry, my Diamond. I'll find us a way out of here."


Blue Diamond looked worriedly from pile to pile as gems began to sift through the debris. Yellow was behind her, finishing up the bare minimum of getting the camp back in working order. Yellow addressed her sister as she approached. "We should have full communications back up and running in just a few moments." She looked to her sister who looked back with concerned tears dripping form her face.

"Oh Yellow, what if she's-" Blue started.

"Don't even think like that, White Diamond is fine." Her elder sister cut off.

"And Pink what about her?" she pleaded.

"If they took her and didn't try and break her on the spot then they must want her for something, but until we can restore communications with our forces we'd be running blind into the enemy." Yellow explained.

Blue wanted to say something but knew that her sister was right, in her usual cold calculating way, but right all the same.

"Hey we got something over here!" One of the quartzes rummaging through the piles said. More joined her and they began to dig out a hole. After a moment, Flint came crawling out, holding White's gem under one arm. The other gems backed off as Blue quickly ran over, Yellow not far behind her. Hey grey quartz knelt down on one arm and presented the large gem above her head to the Diamond.

Blue reached down and grasped it, she held it out for Yellow to see before holding it close to her chest. Yellow looked down to Flint whose eyes were still downcast. "Rise, Flint." She ordered. The grey gem did as she was bade to do, looking up to Yellow. "You've done well." She said simply.

Blue closed her eyes, still clutching the gem. Tears streamed down, as she looked to Flint. "Thank you, so very much."

"You humble me with your words, my Diamonds." Flint replied politely.

Yellow then turned to Peridot who had finished setting up the equipment and was now busy fiddling with the communications console. "Have you finished?" she asked.

"The signal is all clear, my Diamond." Peridot answered back.

Yellow walked over and addressed the console. "This is Yellow Diamond to all deployed forces, what is your status?" she asked.

"This is Amethyst facet 3D9R, cut 4AA, we've lost half our fighting force but we're managing to push the enemy back." Came the static reply. Peridot had managed communications, but no visuals. There was a pause before the same voice came on again. "The enemy they're retreating! They're no, no they're not. What are they- What?! What in the-?!" the static grew louder until it was all that could be heard.

"What happened?" Yellow Diamond demanded.

"The interference! It's back and it's stronger than before. Attempting to compensate." The little green gem replied.

"We don't have time for this! Quartz soldiers!" She bellowed gaining the remaining soldiers attention, a scant dozen or so. "We move now!"

Blue looked to her sister and they locked eyes. They had a silent moment of understanding before Yellow marched off with their remaining forces. "Go save our sister, Yellow."


A few minutes earlier…


Spinel was at her console again. Small pebbles came down from the ceiling as the whole place shook. "Sounds like my forces will be here very soon."

"Yes, they will be. But we haven't finished speaking yet." The rogue gem replied. She pressed a few final commands before stepping away from the console. The shaking grew more and more violent, but this time it didn't seem to be from the battle above but the entire building around them.

Pink looked about herself and then to Spinel. "What are you doing? What's going on?" she asked.

Spinel smirked. "A little something I like to call, Stage Three."


Done. By the way, my traffic suddenly jumped on Tuesday, but I posted nothing. You guys wouldn't happen to know why that is, would you?