When Blue Diamond left, Zircon was alone with Blue Pearl for about a quarter of a second.
Then, on the other side of the meeting room, a warp pad flashed and gave way to an aqua aura quartz — one that looked almost identical to the ones who had escorted Zircon here, complete with the smooth white hair, the cerulean blue skin, and the opaque gold visor over her eyes. The only difference was her long navy cape.
"What is it," thought Zircon, "with high military and capes?"
But she didn't say that, and the aqua aura quartz didn't say anything at all. She just strode forward, her boots heavy against the floor, and grabbed Zircon by the arm. One hand easily wrapped around Zircon's entire bicep, wide enough to snap it if she just squeezed. Her thigh alone was larger than Blue Pearl's entire body — a difference that Blue Pearl seemed very aware of, as she trailed a good few feet behind and out of Aqua Aura's way. Zircon gulped.
They had already passed the anteroom door, so they couldn't be returning to where Zircon had come from. When the next exit point slid open, it led down a wide corridor.
"Wh — where are you taking me?" she dared to ask.
"To be outfitted," was all Aqua Aura said. Which didn't exactly answer Zircon's questions.
The rest of the time was stiflingly silent. The corridor took them to a lift, which took them to a hangar, which took them to a transport, which took them to another corridor — but this one dark in theme, with only the floor lit white. There was no sound except the hum of plasma power and, somewhere deep in the bowels of the building, a gem screaming. Or at least that's what it sounded like.
At an intersection, Blue Pearl took the lead. She led them down a corridor entrance and punched a long, rapid string of codes into the door panel — Aqua Aura spun Zircon around before she could see Blue Pearl type the last few. Not that Zircon would have remembered all of it anyway.
Eventually, Aqua Aura let her turn around again and led her into the dark room. But then, just as they stepped through the threshold, Aqua Aura let go of Zircon's arm.
That alone should have been enough to tip Zircon off, but for some reason, she kept walking forward. Until she couldn't. Then, her feet met empty air and her head met a sharp part of the ground and she was tumbling down what felt to be stairs until she was flat on her face, her nose in some deal of pain.
"Careful," said Blue Pearl.
As Zircon pushed herself up, groaning and trying to think of an appropriately ill-mannered response, the lights flicked on. She was in the center of a white room, surrounded on all sides by concentric rings of steps — wide and flat enough for a gem to lay on, but shallow enough to descend easily. It gave Zircon the unnerving impression of being inside an arena. Except the only spectators were Aqua Aura and Blue Pearl, stepping down into the center circle. Zircon scrambled to her feet. Neither said anything; Blue Pearl stood silently to the side and Aqua Aura summoned a high-backed chair for herself.
Pulling a screen from her visor, the quartz said flatly, "I presume that isn't your base form."
Zircon's first response was about to be an indignant, "Excuse me?" until she remembered. She was virtually naked. Hastily, Zircon shifted on her jacket and cravat at last, grateful for the familiar weight on her shoulders. "Ah...no, of course not," she blustered. "You see, I was told — "
"I don't care." Aqua started scrolling through something on her screen. "Your records state that your Libra account was terminated when you were sent to harvesting. I don't suppose you have your screens, either."
Her monocle. Stars, how she missed it. "It was damaged in my escape. B — but the next time I reform, I can access the data in my gem and create a new one."
"Average recuperation time."
"Er...what about it?"
"That was a question, Zircon."
Oh. Well, in Zircon's defense, Aqua Aura suffered from a chronic monotone, failing to inflect on any word except the ones she wanted to sound like insults — case in point, Zircon's own name. She wisely chose not to mention this.
"Ah...two days, on average."
"Too long." Aqua Aura's lips pressed together. Then she stopped on a file on her screen, turned her head to Zircon (blast that enigmatic gold visor), then looked back. "Take off your head covering."
Now she couldn't stop herself. "Excuse me?!"
"I didn't consent to this mission because I wanted a TRIAL, Zircon," Aqua Aura snarled. "Now you do as you're told, and hold your tongue."
Her voice never raised in volume, but after she finished, it still echoed in the room. Her throat dry, Zircon nodded and pulled off her headscarf. The stiff, carefully molded fabric vanished in her hands, and her pale curls flopped into her eyes. She didn't push them away. Somehow, she felt if she moved a muscle, Aqua Aura would find some reason to put her in another bubble.
Still — Aqua Aura couldn't read her thoughts. And Zircon's thoughts went somewhere along the lines of "My own dislike of this mission is growing stronger by the second."
"Pearl," said Aqua Aura, "Retrieve items 47AA6 and 47BC2."
Blue Pearl curtsied, then made her way up four steps, around one ring, and to the left of Zircon. Then she knelt. The step in front of her slid out like a drawer and Pearl pulled out something small and shiny. She hid the first object in her hands, but when she climbed up to another drawer, Zircon caught a quick glimpse of it. A pale, familiar yellow. As Blue Pearl presented the objects to her, Zircon's suspicions were confirmed.
The first was a yellow monocle, and the second was a yellow zircon's headscarf.
"Put them on. No questions," Aqua Aura cut in, just as Zircon was about to ask a question. Grumbling internally, Zircon let Blue Pearl hold the monocle as she examined the headscarf. The folding wasn't hard. She'd seen plenty of yellow zircons doing their scarves before. But around the collar, hemmed into the supple material, was a thin metal band with a clip — that was different. It pressed into her neck, stiff and unforgiving; it almost felt like it was vibrating…
The purpose was clear when she looked down. Her hands, her appearance modifiers, and her gem were...yellow.
"Oh, stars," Zircon murmured.
"The collar in the fabric," explained Aqua Aura, "modifies the wavelengths that your light-form projects. In your case, it lengthens the short blue waves into longer, yellow waves. This is of utmost importance to your mission, as you will be infiltrating Yellow Diamond's court. You need to look the part. If you check the provided screen, you will see that we have prepared a new Libra account, false identification, and a fake case for you to reference."
Blue Pearl gave Zircon the yellow monocle, and she carefully set it over her right eye. The color change was disorienting, to say the least. And the code at the top read "Hyacinth Zircon 1J2K.8BN". But everything was there. Reset to default orientation, sure, so it was hard to navigate, but every app she could possibly need was present. Aqua Aura kept talking. She'd probably keep talking for a while now, Zircon mused.
She opened up the voice recording app and turned it on.
Once it started recording, Zircon looked Aqua Aura straight in the visor and pretended she was listening. Then she opened up the archives on her monocle, checked for updates, and was pleased to find that everything was up-to-date. Every Libra account had an archive. With it, she could search up the type, facet, and cut of any gem and find their criminal history. She wasn't sure about non-gems...but she reasoned she would burn that bridge when she got to it.
"Rose Quartz" was the first thing she searched. Several thousand results, sorted by relevance. Predictably, the top result was the one she was looking for — complete with the updated picture. Pathetically small, disproportionately large eyes and head, her gem covered by appearance modifiers, some kind of cartilage around the head-holes. Her infractions list was several pages long; Zircon had seen all of that before.
At the far bottom was a very familiar item.
Admittance to Supreme Court Against Blue and Yellow Diamond. Defended by Starlite Zircon 1D7B.7EA (Libra profile terminated). Results: pending.
Zircon's eyebrows shot up. Across the room, Aqua Aura stopped talking.
"Is there a problem?" the quartz asked coldly.
"No," Zircon lied. "Please continue."
Aqua Aura's lips tightened, but she continued. Zircon looked again at the file on her monocle. Profile terminated. Results pending. So they'd updated Rose Quartz's record to add Zircon being sentenced to shatter row...but pending results meant that there was no verdict. Rose Quartz was still technically on trial. They could have imprisoned her and left her to wait, but wait for what? And if she was being held, someone would have mentioned it in the footnotes…
Returning to the archive menu, Zircon tentatively searched "Human". No matches. "Color-changing human" didn't do anything either. "Lars" was equally unhelpful.
But "defective orange sapphire" gave her something. One, a padparadscha sapphire, stood out — her records were spotty, the input dates were all missing or nonsensical, and her status was labeled simply "missing". The only thing that Zircon could make out of them was that the sapphire suffered from dimensionally misaligned future vision — she could only ever predict events that had just happened. Just like the little orange sapphire who rode on the Lars' back.
An idea sparked in the back of her head, like an itch that she couldn't scratch. She returned to the search bar.
Cranberry Tourmaline, 2.8J9P.
Infractions: Occasional tardiness; suspected fraternizing with Raspberry Quartz 4H99.1CL. Charges dismissed by manager.
Promoted to patrol manager under probation. Probation dismissed after one millennium.
Formation of a noncombatant permafusion with 4H99.1CL. Confirmed by two independent eyewitnesses.
Violent resistance against intervention officers.
Escaped Facility 8LP with 4H99.1CL and two unidentified assailants.
Status: Missing.
Involuntarily, Zircon's hand went up to her mouth. Everything made sense, but nothing made sense — the two assailants had to be the Lars and the sapphire. And if the human was free, Rose Quartz had to be involved...and after all, Rose Quartz had great sympathies for permafusions. Zircon wasn't sure what to think of the fact that Cranberry Tourmaline and Raspberry Quartz had been on that close of terms, but with a little thought, she realized that made sense after all. The subtle hand-holding when they were distressed. Cranberry had probably pulled Raspberry out of the recovery bay to fuse, or alternatively, because she knew their secret was blown. Four hours later, the Lars and the sapphire came to help Cranberry and Raspberry to escape...and narrowly missed capture by the imperial aqua aura quartzes who escorted Zircon later.
But Rose Quartz was still a blank. In fact, it was even bigger now — was she still in the Authority's grasp or not? She had displayed a frustrating lack of self-preservation in that trial; perhaps she had made a deal to let the Lars human go free in exchange for continuing the trial.
But that still didn't make sense. If the trial was still in session, and there were no notes that it had been paused, Blue and Yellow Diamond would never have left the courtroom. Yet she had spoken to Blue Diamond not an hour ago —
"Zircon."
She snapped to attention. Aqua Aura still wore that visor, but Zircon could almost feel her gaze.
"Do you understand what you are doing?" asked Aqua Aura.
Zircon swallowed. Her first thought had been a blatant no. Sure, she had the recording of Aqua Aura's instructions...but those wouldn't be difficult. That wasn't what she didn't understand.
"Yes," she lied, her tongue dry.
aaaand there you have it, the next big arc of de facto begins! and also im leaving again for the better part of two weeks on a mission trip to first nations kids in canada which i am SUPER SUPER excited about
the next time i update this will be two weeks from wednesday, august 18! that's also my first day of school but that's useless trivia
anyway please let me know what you liked here and what you want to see
