Chorus

Chapter Three

Note: I'm finally out of the hospital and hopefully on my way to a new period of productivity. While I was there, it was brought to my attention that I had been breaking the AO3 rules by promoting my original work on the site, and it just goes to show how terrible my reading comprehension is at times that I completely missed that when I signed up. I have since removed any trace of said promotion and will cease bleating about it from here on out, except for when I have a blog set up specifically for said bleating, but also to facilitate discussion with readers and interact a bit more with the fandoms I'm currently involved in. Nothing makes me happier than writing, or talking about writing, and I missed it terribly while I was away.

Anyway, on with Homeworld pearl shenanigans!

Note 2: I would advise reading A String of Pearls before continuing, if you haven't already.

…..

Accelerando

The atmosphere had that weird murky 'underwater' feel that made Steven instantly realize it was a dream, but knowing that and reacting appropriately were two different things. He still found himself running down an endless maze of corridors, gleaming chrome and marble fixtures on all sides, looking for the source of that awful drilling whine. It seemed like it was coming from all around him.

At last, he seemed to reach a gap in the wall and burst through it. He found Pearl, as he was expecting for a dream of this nature. Still, he wasn't prepared for just how awful it would be to find her.

Strapped to a table, eyes closed and unmoving as though she were asleep.

And above her, the source of that screeching whining clamour, an enormous drill. The point of which was bearing down into Pearl's gem.

He just about reached the table when Pearl's gem cracked in half.

…..

Steven woke with a gasp, reaching out for...something that wasn't there. For a moment, he couldn't figure out where he was. When the pearl sitting across from him at a console...

Ginger. She said I could call her Ginger.

...spun in her chair to look at him, not with concern but with curiosity, it all came flooding back. He didn't recall even feeling sleepy, but at some point he had curled up on the old couch in the corner and drifted off. Someone had draped an old cloth over him, maybe in a motherly fashion but probably just to keep him from getting scrap dust all over himself.

"We don't have a rest pod here," Ginger told him, blinking vacantly. "If you need to rest, we should find somewhere else for you..."

"The couch is fine," Steven laughed weakly. "I don't mind, I can sleep pretty much anywhere, as long as it's warm and it's pretty warm in here so it's really okay..."

He was babbling but he couldn't stop. Ginger continued staring at him in that half-interested fashion she seemed to have of looking at everything. Usually when he had a bad dream someone was around to talk to, Garnet or Pearl or even his Dad. Garnet would try to talk his worries out with him, Pearl would empathize and attempt to distract him with long rambling stories, Amethyst would offer food or bad TV...

...and all he could expect from this gem was a blank stare.

That's not fair. She probably doesn't even know what a dream is, let alone a bad one.

A flicker of movement in the corner alerted him to the fact that he and Ginger were not the only ones in the workshop. The hulking figure perched awkwardly on a tiny stool...

Jasper?Here?

...folded her arms and sighed, looking down at the floor. Looking at her closely, she wasn't anything like the Jasper Steven knew, beyond a first superficial glance. Her gem was on her shoulder, her hair was darker and her jaw more pointed. Her uniform was different, too, and more importantly she lacked that air of aggression and bravado that the other Jasper had. She seemed...sad.

Steven's stomach growled, a welcome distraction. He reached into his backpack and grabbed a sandwich, wolfing it down and following it with a healthy chug of juice. He knew Ginger and the Jasper were staring, but he didn't care.

"All right," Orthoclase bellowed from out of nowhere, clattering into the workshop. "We have to get going soon, Hematite's being a pain in the...oh, when did you get here?"

She addressed the Jasper, sinking onto the couch beside Steven.

"You asked me to meet you here," the Jasper said, fidgeting nervously.

"I did?"

"You did," Ginger reminded her. "You messaged her at first quadrant."

"Oh, right," Orthoclase drawled, tapping her gem carelessly. "Got plans all over the place here..."

"I brought her, like you asked," the Jasper interrupted, handing over a small object in her hand. "Is anything wrong?"

"No, nothing's wrong," Orthoclase said, turning the object over in her hand.

A pearl. One that was scratched and chipped to hell and back, but undeniably a pearl.

"Remind me, how many procedures did I say she needed?" Orthoclase asked.

"Seventeen," the Jasper replied.

"And I also told you I only remodel the same pearl twice, right?"

"You said repairs don't count," the Jasper countered.

"Yeah, they don't, but they're as expensive as a remodel, more in some cases," Orthoclase told her. "So, I have a proposition for you. I can do all seventeen, all at once, and completely free of charge."

The Jasper's mood lifted so dramatically it was like she morphed into a different gem completely.

"You can?" she gasped, breathing hard and smiling a watery, wavery smile. "Why would...how...?"

"You have something I have need of," Orthoclase said. "How many pearls are at the impound right now?"

"Uh, five," the Jasper said, frowning as she thought. "No, six. We had another one brought in before I left."

"Great. I'm going to need them all."

The Jasper laughed, but it died quickly when she realized Orthoclase was dead serious.

"I can't give you the pearls," she scoffed. "They haven't even been signed over to the processing plant..."

"But they will be soon," Orthoclase said with a shrug. "Do you think anyone's coming to collect them?"

"No, probably not," the Jasper admitted. "We thought one of them was a sure thing, but the owner lost the paperwork."

"Exactly. No-one's going to miss them. Sign them over to the processors but deliver them to me instead. Pearls get lost in transit all the time, no-one's going to blame you."

Listening to this conversation in silence, Steven had that awful squirming feeling at the pit of his stomach again. The sandwich he gulped down sat there like a hot rock. Even though he barely understood what these two gems were talking about, the little bits he could figure out painted a very unpleasant picture.

"Look, it's going to take you a long time to afford all the repairs your pearl needs, the impound doesn't pay you nearly enough, so who cares if you mess up the registry a bit? I don't offer this service to anyone else, just you. We need those pearls, and you need something from me."

The Jasper sighed, stared at the cracked gem Orthoclase was holding in her palm and seemed to wrestle with herself.

"If I do this, you'll fix her properly?"

"I give you my word," Orthoclase agreed. "As good as I can get her."

"All right," she said at last. "I'll drop them off here next cycle."

"Great! Pleasure doing business with you!"

A few more whispered words at the door and the Jasper was gone. Orthoclase pulled out the operating table and placed the pearl on it, then went digging around in her toolbox.

"Don't we have to be somewhere?" Ginger piped up.

"We sure do," Orthoclase said breezily, slamming down some sort of gun-needle-type tool. "But I just gave myself seventeen procedures to do, so we should get at least a little of it done before we go."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Steven asked, acutely aware that Orthoclase had given herself this work for Steven's sake.

"Maybe," Orthoclase agreed. "Stand here, you can hand me stuff."

She pushed a lever on the gun-needle and a pulsing wave of energy washed over the pearl on the operating table. Slowly, blinking in and out, the pearl's body manifested until she was lying on the table, eyes closed as though she were sleeping.

Steven gulped. As with Ginger, the resemblance to Pearl was uncanny even though this pearl had curly blonde hair and a yellowish tint to her skin...what was left of it, anyway. There were sections of her mass missing, including all of the fingers on one hand and most of her right leg below the knee.

"What happened to her?" Steven asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

"Barracks pearl," Orthoclase said, as if that explained anything. "They hardly ever come out of there in one piece...course, this one got taken out when one of the Jaspers went rogue and then someone saw fit to pack her full of explosives."

Explosives?

The look on Steven's face must have been quite a sight, because Orthoclase laughed softly and rubbed the top of his head.

"Don't worry pebble, we got them out before she could get herself blown up," she assured him. "She's still in bad shape, but she's better than she was. That Jasper's been paying off her repair bill for orbits."

Oh!

Steven could have kicked himself. He always forgot his gem abilities right when they were most useful.

"I think I can fix her," he offered, standing on tiptoe to reach the pearl on the table.

"What, you studied pearl repair manuals for sixteen orbits?" Orthoclase laughed. "She's got fissure cracks all across..."

Orthoclase's voice trailed away after Steven licked his palm and swiped it across the pearl's gem. Suddenly her fingers and missing leg grew back, the scratches and gouges across her body vanished and her gem reformed as shiny and whole as a new one. She remained asleep.

"Holy Core," Orthoclase breathed slowly, stepping back from the table. "What...how did you do that?"

"I have healing spit," Steven announced, somewhat proudly.

"Healing...spit?" she frowned. "Healing tears, I've heard of, but no-one's been able to do that in thousands of orbits...what kind of quartz are you?"

"One of a kind?" Steven offered with a shrug.

"Well, whatever you are, you just saved me a huge job," Orthoclase said sheepishly, rubbing the back of her head.

"Perhaps she learned the art on her hatching planet," Ginger said.

I need to talk to them about calling me 'she' all the time.

"Maybe," Orthoclase agreed. "So this just freed up the rest of our cycle, which is great because we really need to get downcity. I'm not in the mood for the standing seats."

…..

Before they got to where they were going, they were stopped at two checkpoints and Ginger was given that throat-check device at both of them, to Orthoclase's annoyance.

"It's based on a stupid old rumour," she told Steven when he asked. "Supposedly the renegade pearl was infected with a virus that made her act erratically, so pearls have all these 'safety' checks done when they're out in public."

"What are they trying to find?" Steven asked, wincing at the sound of the metal crank operating on Ginger's jaw behind him.

"I don't even think they know," Orthoclase shrugged.

Eventually, they reached a small merchant's shop where they were ushered through to an underground tunnel. Steven was covered with enough nanobytes to make him look like a standard miniature quartz, according to Orthoclase, and no gem even gave him a second glance.

The hall the tunnel lead them out to was crammed with gems, clearly upper-class gems mingling with more rough and ready types, sipping long tubes of some fizzing smoky stuff and trading gossip. Steven had never seen so many gems in one place; it made him feel dizzy.

The gems in the hall seemed to have a healthy respect for Orthoclase, they cleared out of her way as she strode with purpose towards the sunken-in seating that framed the arena at the centre of the building. Ginger was the only pearl in the hall, and Orthoclase kept both her and Steven close as they pushed through to the front to get good seats.

"I should've asked this earlier, pebble, but do you have a strong stomach?" she asked as they took their seats less than a foot from the gated wall of the arena.

"Uh, not really," he admitted, remembering the teacup fiasco.

"Right," she sighed. "Well, just look away if it gets too much. It probably won't take long anyway."

"What is all this?" he asked.

"Shredder bout," Orthoclase answered. "It's illegal, technically, but nobody cares. Hematite runs it and we need to talk to her, but she won't see us unless we get to her here."

Hopefully, it would be a simple wrestling match, nothing more, but already Steven had a sinking feeling it was going to be much worse.

"They've electrified the fence," Ginger said.

"So they have," Orthoclase hummed. "Makes sense...trying to stop her improvising I guess..."

A roar went up from the crowd as the combatant made her way to the ring. She wasn't a Jasper, she was even bigger. Green-hued, more muscle than any creature Steven had ever seen that wasn't a fusion and a cruel, mocking grin. Pretty blue gems lining the side of the arena cried out for her attention.

"Oof," Orthoclase winced. "This is going to be rough."

The gem that stepped into the other side of the ring went unnoticed while the room's attention was on the green hulking gem, but when Steven did catch sight of her his heart sank. Of course it would be a pearl.

Specifically, it was a pearl that had been deliberately trussed up to look as fluffy, dainty and harmless as possible. Steven had seen porcelain dolls in the windows of old antique shops that had that same delicate, highly breakable look by design. Her short aqua hair was festooned with a little white ribbon and her ruffled dress was a shade of pink slightly darker than her skin tone. She looked like she would shatter as soon as the green gem looked in her direction.

"Why are they doing this?" Steven asked, more to himself, with an air of despondence.

"Some gems like to see others shattered," Orthoclase answered. "It'll be over soon, don't worry."

The bell rang as the 'fighters' took their positions, and the green gem started by barreling her thick tree trunk of an arm into the pearl as hard as she could. It connected with a sickening crack. Despite himself, and his rising nausea, Steven couldn't look away. The crowd cheered as the pearl hit the floor.

She struggled to get up before the green gem planted a foot on her back and ground her back down into the floor. Then she reached over to grab the pearl's arm and pulled hard. The crowd hooted as the arm came away with a spurt of pale green blood, and the green gem tossed it over her shoulder as she raised her arms to accept the adoration of the watchers.

"Idiot," Orthoclase muttered. "She just gave her a weapon."

Steven didn't understand. Who was she referring to?

"The fence didn't work," Ginger said quietly.

"She's doomed," Orthoclase added.

It all became clear when, as the green gem was soaking up the adulation of the mob, the pearl crawled over to her own severed arm and placed the connecting end of it in her mouth. Steven watched her, awestruck, as she bit down and tore a chunk of flesh from the end and spit it out casually, leaving her with a long shard of what looked like bone sticking out. She didn't even wipe the blood from her face before she got to her feet, approached the green gem from behind, gracefully cartwheeled on her remaining hand to wrap her legs around the green gem's shoulders and pulled herself up to grab onto her neck.

She brought the bone shard down with astonishing speed across the green gem's throat, and as a geyser of blood spurted from the wound Steven just about managed to look away before she plunged the shard into the gem's eyes. After that, it was just from listening to the crowd scream, groan and shout that he knew the pearl was dismembering the green gem with ease.

"Fourteen parsecs," he heard Orthoclase whisper to Ginger. "That has to be some sort of record."

…..

When the crowd cleared, they lingered behind to talk to the muttering gem who was giving instructions to the pearl in the ring, who was awfully chipper for a gem that had lost an arm and stabbed someone to death with it.

"Hematite," Orthoclase called, laughing when the gem winced. "New strategy didn't pay off, I see."

"No," the gem said sourly. "But more fool me for thinking it would."

"So about my proposal..."

"No. Are you seriously asking me that? After this fight?"

"This is the best time to ask," Orthoclase shrugged. "Come on, the crowd knows what to expect now. You can't expect them to show up cycle after cycle to watch that pearl murder a whole bunch of stupid gems."

"And yet they do," Hematite countered.

"Give it a break for a while," Orthoclase cajoled. "Anticipation will make them pay more. Shut down the ring for a few cycles, they'll come back more eager than ever. You know I saw your Larimar down at the Silverdene, right?"

Hematite muttered something unintelligible under her breath.

"She's probably dying to see you...take a break, tell her you ditched the murder pearl for a while. Take her out somewhere nice. Couldn't hurt."

"Why do you want the 'murder pearl' so badly, anyway?" Hematite asked. The pearl, seemingly unruffled by being called the murder pearl, sat at the edge of the ring swinging her feet idly. Her severed arm sat on her lap, and the fingers of her other hand moved gently above it.

"I got things to do, could get rough," Orthoclase shrugged. "You understand, regular muscle just won't cut it. How's about I throw in a free remodel for Larimar's pearl, to sweeten the deal?"

Hematite hummed and shuffled her feet, and finally sighed.

"All right, get it out of here," she said, opening the gate and beckoning the pearl out. "But if any of this gets traced back to me..."

"It won't. You have my word."

Hematite stomped away, muttering darkly to herself. The pearl stood to attention in front of Orthoclase, blinking owlishly up at her.

"Right, first things first," Orthoclase told her, folding her arms. "We don't want anyone dead on this assignment, okay? Maimed maybe, definitely poofed, but no death. Think you can handle that?"

"Of course," the murder pearl answered sweetly.