Chorus
Chapter Five
Note: I'm currently working on an archive of all my work over at dreamwidth, back when I started writing (terrible) fanfiction as a teenager everyone had archives, shrines, webrings and mailing lists and I got a wee bit nostalgic. Please follow me there if you enjoy my writing, there may be work there that can't be found on A03. It's still under construction at the moment, I had a lot more work than even I realized.
…..
Steven couldn't stop himself from staring at the Lapis. She didn't look that similar to the Lapis he knew, not really, but she looked close enough to be unnerving. He'd just about gotten used to the pearls' sharp resemblance to Pearl in form but not in behavior, but this stern patrician gem just freaked him out.
She brought them into an enormous lounge area, big enough to fit thirty gems comfortably, and bid them sit and explain themselves. Her pearl handed Orthoclase a small glass tube of something fizzy.
"Right, I'll try to keep this brief," Orthoclase began, clapping a hand on Steven's shoulder. "The quartz here has lost a pearl, and she asked for my help to retrieve it."
"Lost?" Lapis said, arching one eyebrow. "Can she not buy a new one?"
"It's he, actually," Steven corrected awkwardly, inwardly squirming at the thought of trying to buy a new pearl to replace Pearl.
"He needs this one back, it's a matter of urgency," Orthoclase explained. "The pearl has some sort of information on it he needs, and it's got sentimental value too...I'm sure you understand that?"
Lapis snorted, but all the same something about her...softened.
"I can understand, I suppose," she said. "We do develop our attachments to the most unlikely of objects. But I don't understand why you need my pearl."
"Your pearl is skilled at playing the symphonaria, is that correct?" Ginger piped up.
Lapis stiffened.
"How do you know that?" she asked, tense around the eyes and mouth.
"Pearls hear things that other gems do not," Ginger answered, casting her gaze to the floor.
Lapis looked over at her pearl, who stood so still she might have been an actual ornament. She sighed.
"It's true, she plays. In some ways I think she's better than I ever was," she said with a hint of bitterness. "And how is this supposed to help you find a missing pearl?"
Orthoclase looked to Ginger to explain. Ginger's eyes remained rooted to the floor.
"It's some sort of pearl communication exercise," Orthoclase said when it became clear that Ginger wouldn't speak again. "They can communicate over long distances without being heard apparently, but its reach is limited. From what I can tell, it needs something from your pearl to..."
"An anchor."
The other pearl spoke so suddenly they all jumped.
"Sorry, what?" Orthoclase asked.
"It needs an anchor to build on," the pearl continued, shooting what might have been a nervous glance at Lapis. "To spread out as far as possible without getting lost or blown away. Voices alone won't do it."
"Is that what you've been doing all this time?" Lapis asked. "When you think I'm not listening?"
The pearl's mouth shut and she lowered her gaze as Ginger did, shrinking in on herself.
"Oh, don't be worried," Lapis demurred. "It's been my pleasure to hear you play, even if you tried to keep it from me...you're not in trouble."
The tension didn't leave either pearl; for the first time Steven realized he was getting very good at reading pearl body language.
"What will you do to make this 'anchor'?" Lapis asked, now sounding less stern and more curious.
"With your permission, I can work the melody structure through the symphonaria into a loom," the pearl explained, still staring at the floor. "The voices can be woven through it to support them all. It should give the reach that's required."
"Well, that sounds like something I'd want to see," Lapis said. "But I was told I would hear music I would never hear again..."
"We need a minimum of fifty pearls to use their voices," Orthoclase told her. "Fifty pearls, maybe more, singing in unison. Not something you see-or hear- often."
"How many pearls do you have now?" Lapis asked.
"Eight. Excluding yours."
"Hm...and how do you suppose you'll get the additional forty-two?"
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Orthoclase shrugged.
"This sounds like a messy plan," Lapis said with a scowl. "I don't like mess. But I must admit, I am curious..."
She hummed to herself for a moment, looking over at the gigantic instrument in the centre of the room. Steven had taken it for a large sculpture, but after staring at it he could see it was a musical device. It looked like a pipe organ turned on its side and covered with harp strings.
"You have my permission," Lapis said finally. "When you get your fifty pearls. My pearl will not be going anywhere until then, and neither will my symphonaria."
"Agreed," Orthoclase said with a smile, bouncing to her feet. "We'll be in touch...and in the meantime, if your pearl needs remodeling..."
"No, she never will," Lapis said, scowl returning. "Pearl, please escort our visitors out."
Orthoclase muttered a little under her breath as the pearl brought them back to the door and ushered them outside.
"I will work on the loom until you return," she said, mostly to Ginger, and then she was gone.
…..
When they got back to the workshop, Orthoclase left for another job, taking the Disney pearls with her, and Steven slept for a while on the couch. When he woke up, Ginger tried to hand him a glass jar full of some murky liquid.
"I think if you ingest this it will make you feel better," she said.
"What's in it?" Steven asked, not wanting to be ungrateful but also balking at the way the stuff bubbled.
"Water, mostly," Ginger explained. "And some complex compounds suitable for organics. I scanned your make-up as you were resting, I think I have synthesized most of what you need."
She had worked hard, and she didn't exactly have to, so really he owed it to her to at least try it. Gulping, he pinched his nose and took a swallow...
...actually, it wasn't half bad. It was thick like a milkshake and had no real taste, it left a chalky residue on his tongue, but it filled his stomach for the first time since leaving Earth and he didn't feel sick afterwards.
"That's pretty good," he told Ginger. "Thanks a lot, I feel way better..."
"Is there any way I can improve it?" she asked.
"Well, I guess it's kind of bland," he admitted. "But it doesn't really matter..."
"I will work on the taste," she said, and turned back to her console.
In two more gulps he was finished with the stuff, and he let out a small burp. It was enough to make Murder Pearl look up. He gulped again.
But that's not fair, is it? She hasn't done anything...
In fact, beyond sharpening the pole that now lay at her feet, she hadn't done anything for quite a while. She just maintained a steady vigil from the couch, occasionally looking over at him or Ginger, and watching the door.
Then, suddenly, she rose to her feet. Ginger spun in her chair, she made some sort of movement with her hand and in the next moment Murder Pearl was gone. Ginger reached out and grabbed Steven, pushed him towards one of the walls. She removed a grate from the wall and pushed him into the vent.
"Stay in there, don't make a sound," she hissed, covering the vent again with the grate.
What...?
The door burst open.
Steven could just about see Ginger through the vent, but the two gems who had broken in were too big to see fully. He could see their giant biceps as they pushed things over, and he saw their powerful legs when they kicked barrels and boxes in the workshop around.
"Look at all this contraband," one of them whistled, and with a start Steven realized she sounded eerily similar to Amethyst. "Do we have room at the impound for all of this?"
"We're about to find out," the other laughed.
"Where's your owner, little pearl?" the first one asked, bending over to look Ginger in the eye.
Her face was similar to Amethyst's, familiar enough to make Steven queasy, especially as she loomed over Ginger in such a threatening way.
"She is not here," Ginger answered solemnly.
"I can see that," the Amethyst said with a decidedly evil grin. "Let me make it clear...I order you to tell me where she is."
With a sinking feeling, Steven realized why Orthoclase didn't tell him or Ginger where she was going when she left the workshop, why she never told either of them. Pearls couldn't obey an order to release information they didn't have.
"I cannot," Ginger said with a shrug.
I should do something. I should help her.
But he couldn't bring himself to move, even as the Amethyst picked her up by the neck and threw her against the operating table. She had put him in the vent for a reason, if he got out he could easily make things worse. Knowing that didn't make it any easier to watch, especially when the Amethyst picked up one of Orthoclase's scalpels and dangled it over Ginger's eye. The other Amethyst picked up a tool that looked an awful lot like the thing used to crack pearls' jaws at checkpoints.
"What does this one do?" she asked with a laugh, clicking the mechanism a few times. "Should we test it out?"
"Sure," the Amethyst holding the scalpel said. "We've got time before your owner gets home, why not have a little fun?"
There was something in the way she said fun, something that went beyond the threat of torture, something that made Steven feel like he would be sick. He clamped a hand over his mouth to stifle it. From where he was he couldn't see the operating table properly, but he could see the Amethyst's hand trailing over Ginger's leg, reaching under her skirt...
No, no, no, stop!
A wet cracking noise split the tension, followed by a strange whooping noise and the operating table being turned over, knocking Ginger to the floor. The Amethyst was stood in an unnatural crouch, held in place by the pole that Murder Pearl had so diligently sharpened...
...until it was pulled out, and the Amethyst hit the floor hard. She poofed into her gem with her partner looking on, dumbstruck.
Murder Pearl was on the ceiling, clinging onto the tiny divots in the light fixtures with her feet. Just as the remaining Amethyst caught sight of her, she scurried away, skittering across the ceiling like a spider. The Amethyst turned, crouched into a defensive position, but she might as well have had a target painted on her back. Murder Pearl caught her with a hook she'd found somewhere, lifted her off the floor and did something to her in the shadows that made a crunching sound. A gem clattered to the floor.
Steven burst out of the vent.
"Oh jeez, Ginger, are you okay? Did they hurt you? Do you need...?" he spluttered helplessly, trying to help her to her feet.
"I'm fine," Ginger replied, not even seeming shaken by the ordeal. "But we've been compromised. We have to move."
"Should I shatter them?" Murder Pearl asked in a tone that could have been asking about the weather.
"No, don't," Ginger told her. "We can dump them somewhere. But you need to get into my gem."
Murder Pearl dropped the hook and pole, took two steps and jumped straight into Ginger's gem, vanishing with a tiny plinking noise. Ginger pressed a whole bunch of buttons, packed equipment and supplies into her gem, as Steven followed her fretting.
"Who were they?" he asked, knowing he sounded on the verge of hysterics but unable to stop.
"Black market crackdown squad," Ginger explained. "Someone sold us out."
For someone who had just been threatened with extreme bodily harm by two very large gems, Ginger was remarkably calm. It was enviable, Steven would have given anything to feel calm right then.
"We will need to torch this workshop," she told him. "And get a message to Orthoclase to meet us somewhere."
"Okay, well I could stay here in case she comes back," Steven offered. "And you could..."
"I am not permitted outside without supervision," Ginger cut in. "No pearl is."
"Oh," Steven mumbled.
"You'll have to pretend to be my owner until we can meet with Orthoclase," she continued. "But you don't have any of the documents and there's no time to forge some...we'll have to bypass the checkpoints."
"Can we do that?" he asked.
"We can," she said. "If we go through the lower precincts. They aren't patrolled."
Relief flooded Steven's body and mind, but it was too good to be true.
"The lower precincts are notorious for high crime rates," Ginger told him. "It's very likely I could be stolen there."
That sick feeling returned. If Ginger was stolen, Orthoclase would never finish the job and Pearl would stay lost. Not to mention what Ginger would be going through...
"We'll have to walk quickly, before it gets dark," Ginger continued, seemingly unruffled by walking straight into danger. "I know somewhere we can go. If they let us in."
She covered him with nanobytes, set a torch burning in a pool of liquid in the old workshop and grabbed the two Amethysts. Stepping out into the city without Orthoclase to guide him, having to take ownership of a sentient being, knowingly walking into an urban war zone...could it get much worse?
If they let us in. If. What happens if not?
Before they reached Precinct 19, Ginger tossed the Amethysts into the runoff canal by the side of a factory.
