Morganite sat onto one of the several chairs located in her personal cabinet, now turned consulting-room, and turned to the table and pressed the button of a communicator located on it. Emerald quickly answered.
"What do you require?"
"Who are coming today?" Morganite asked bluntly.
Her day was not the easiest; The Diamond Authority had ordered all obsidians and their supporting personnel to launch an all-out assault on the terka, so she, as the highest link in the command chain of infrastructural personnel had to do a lot of organizational work, which was exhausting. But she still didn't abandon her newfound duty.
"Typical roster, Omega and Star, Delta, and Lapis Lazuli, is facet and cut needed?" The emerald relayed the information.
"No need for that, thank you." Morganite turned off the contact and sighed.
She stood up and looked around the chamber. Its walls were painted light green and it was illuminated by a simple light source installed in the center of the ceiling. It was sparsely furnished, with only several chairs, a table with a communications device and a console on it and a huge file-cabinet which spanned an entire wall located in front of the door. There were no windows in the rectangular room, but considering that the facility was located in a volcanic world there was no need for those.
Morganite walked to the file-cabinet and opened the compartment where were all the files on her patients. She documented every single meeting they had, and would latter extract what exactly were problems that those who needed her help had. She would latter try to find a solution based on the knowledge she had gathered. Sounded very simple, and in many cases it was. Many of her patients only came once. But there were several who kept showing up and had so many problems she could swear they were defective, and in a certain duos case they were.
Omegas and Stars file was one of the biggest, as they were not only her first patients, but also had so many issues that it was surprising how they didn't break apart. Especially Star who was a sort of a conundrum for the gem scientist, with such an incredibly complex view on the world, that Morganite herself was barely able to understand her mentality half of the time.
She took out the file and opened it. The memories started flowing in when she started reading.
It was only several dozen cycles after the purging of Epsilons personnel, when she was contacted by the defective Omega. The defective obsidian asked if she could help it with a certain problem. She cared for the grey gem, even if it was the fault Morganite was in her current position, so she of course assured that she would.
It was not the first time the defect required her assistance. The first one was just after she was assigned to this position. Yellow Diamond sent her to serve obsidians after an incident had happened during one of her meetings. Apparently it was her fault that Omega allowed Star to walk by its side and not behind it. The diamond had a particular dislike for Morganite for nearly half a millennia, as she at first failed in her creation of the obsidians, and now one of her "creations" had insulted the diamond herself.
Back then she despised Omega for ruining her future. And so she was surprised when the defect barged into her laboratory, and dropped a ballistic terka weapon. She was supposed to reverse engineer it, so that it could be produced and not just stolen. At first she didn't want to help the obsidian, but her curiosity overtook her.
From then on she started to reverse engineer captured technology for the obsidian armies. Because of her every single obsidian soldier was armed with a ballistic weapon, because of her every Nephrite piloted a ship powered by dark matter drives. And as obsidian armies modernized, she grew closer to the defective gem. It was different to say the least, no arrogance, no elitism, no unnecessary cruelty, just a soldier, not particularly submissive one, but loyal nonetheless. A huge difference from the difference from the arrogant up stuck aristocrats she had to work with. It felt nice communicating with someone, even a defect, who cared for your opinions and ideas.
But that time was different…
Morganite opened the door to her personal cabinet and both defects walked in. The obsidian looked somewhat concerned and to the scientists surprise nervous, it's eyes darting all across the room. This was worrying, but not as much as the pearls expression. She looked disorderly. Her hair was disheveled, and her physical clothes looked like they were just thrown on. But the expression on her face was of pure bliss. She barely reacted to her surroundings and moved slightly clumsily.
It was the first time that the duo looked like this, and though typically it was the defect who would begin the conversation, Morganite asked.
"What do you want?"
"Is there a way for a gem to recharge with an outside energy source?"
Morganite was surprise by this question.
"I have no idea, why would you ask?"
Omega sighed, turned to his pearl and raised her top slightly.
Morganites eyes widened as she saw what had happened to the defective pearl. Her midriff looked like it was clawed at by a something with huge sharp nails or fangs. It was damaged so bad that her physical form was unable to regenerate, but somehow the gem didn't poof.
"What happened? What did you do?"
"Can you answer the question?" Omega sounded different from usual, it sounded commanding, somewhat arrogant.
They were clearly hiding something. Something clearly personal, which Morganite didn't really care for, but she needed to know the source of the problem.
"I'll find a way to restore Stars form, but you will have to talk with me. I can't fix the damage if I don't know the source.
The grey obsidian sighed.
"Fine… "Strange, Omega typically was quite stubborn. "But I think you should sit down if you want to hear this."
From that point her position in the obsidian hierarchy changed. At first she tried to help only Omega and Star. Then someone noticed, and slowly the knowledge spread through the higher echelons who served the Obsidian council…
Morganite shook her head; it seemed that she dozed off remembering what had led up to this. She didn't have time for such luxuries, she had work to do. She tucked Omegas and Stars file under her arm and took out one about Delta and one about Lapis Lazuli. She walked back to her table and put the documents down, sat down and started preparing for her clients arrival.
It should have been a usual routine…
"You can't continue doing this." Morganite stated to Omega and Star who were both sitting in front of her.
"Holding in the hate won't help." Omega exclaimed, with a tint of frustration in its voice. It was tired, and not in the mood for a deep conversation.
"Also, we signed the pact. You think we wouldn't if we didn't want to do this?" The pearl asked.
"You might enjoy this whole deal Star, but you should realize that it doesn't help your mental state, and with how often you need recharging, your physical one as well." Morganite rubbed her gem located on her neck.
"I thought we could get this out of your systems slowly, but now it seems slow progression won't work."
"But what do you want us to do? We can't exactly function without…"
"How about toning it down?" Morganite asked cynically, maybe doing this while being so tired was a mistake. "Tried that one yet?"
"No actually, we didn't try toning it down…" The grey obsidian looked surprised when it realized that it didn't try such a simple solution. Star started snickering at the absurdity of their current situation.
Morganite face palmed. Such a simple solution, how did they forget to consider it?
And then she realized why it took them for dozens of cycles, it was a fault of all three of them. Omega was defective and so couldn't notice such a simple solution, it could be excused. But Morganite and Star couldn't.
Star was a veteran, not to mention a pearl, while Morganite was a perfectionist, which meant that both of them wouldn't even begin to consider something that was not absolute…
After a long pause Morganite raised her head again and started laughing. Star was snickering with her, tears rolling from her eyes, while Omega was simply looking into the distance…
End notes
As you can see I had this genius idea of bringing back Morganite from chapter 1, don't ask why, I don't know. Next chapter will give a deeper character to Delta and introduce another character, can you guess what gem type it is?
Have a nice day!