A/N: Back in Containment Unit 6, finally. Things did not go as planned (like, at all), but I went along with it because it felt organic to the characters? It's hard to explain. I can't say I'm pleased with the chapter (it's not a drabble, it's nearly 3500 words), but it's done now-take that, writer's block!

Some of you might notice that Morganite's color scheme, mentioned once as an aside in a previous chapter, has been blatantly changed. That's because I was originally going to make her an iolite, which is blue, and I forgot to edit that part out when I switched minerals. Morganites, if you google them, are peach colored.

Fun fact: both Kunzite and Morganite are gems that represent love/opening love chakras. Oh, ironies. ;P

Also, I apologize if my review replies were awkwardly formatted this time around. Right now FF isn't letting me follow any of the reply links in my email, and it's not letting any of them show up on the manage stories tab, either. But I did get them, and read them, and appreciate them, so I did my best to reply using the PM function :)

Sapphire already knows that they are going to be too late to stop Kunzite and Morganite from finding a new victim. She braces herself for the worst as she and Ruby run to the place where they will all converge.

"Hey, Morganite, here's a question."

"What's that, Kunzite?"

"Is there anything sadder than a symmetrical gem stuck in a Containment Unit?"

"You know, that's a good question." Morganite hums, presumably putting thought into this, before pronouncing, "No. None whatsoever."

"And what does it say about you, that you have nothing better to do than harass gems of lower Mohs?" came the retort, snarky and technical. "Have you ever thought that being assigned to this place is just as humiliating as being an inmate? It's not like you get to see the surface either, right? That's because no one wants to deal with you up there, so they make us do it instead."

"I know that voice," Ruby realizes as they run. "It's Hematite."

"I don't See her fighting back," Sapphire replies.

"She won't. She's all talk."

Arguably, that's even worse.

They see the trio at the end of the hall, and run faster. Hematite is midsized, with her gem set at the base of her throat like the pendant of a necklace. She is all shades of glossy, metallic greys and blacks, and wears goggles over her eyes like she's about to eject herself from an aircraft at any moment. For all that she's built rather thickly, Sapphire can tell the mass is not an expression of power as much as a form of self-validation and comfort. Hematite is not a fighter.

She's also smaller and of softer Mohs than Kunzite and Morganite, though in Kunzite's case it's only barely.

"What did you just say?" Suddenly Kunzite's weapon, a short, stout spear with a menacingly hooked edge, is poised just over Hematite's gem. Hematite backs herself against the wall, but the spear follows her. "Go on, repeat yourself. It seems I wasn't really listening."

"Hey!" calls Ruby sharply, causing the Supervisors to startle and glance over. Immediately, something within them shifts. Kunzite doesn't move her spear, but her focus is no longer on Hematite. The latter, seeing her chance, begins to edge slowly along the wall and out from under the gleaming metal.

"Lost, little ones?" It might have been compassionate, if Kunzite weren't sneering.

"This is the west wing," Morganite says, voice stiff with repressed distaste. "You two have no business being here."

"Oh, I'd say we do," Ruby replies, cracking her knuckles. A feral grin of assumed victory is already on her face. She's going to enjoy this. "Where do you two get off, picking on softer gems like that? Aren't there rules against the abuse of power?"

"We're the Supervisors, we make the rules," Kunzite replies. Her violet color pallet has not deepened with a flush of shame. There is no remorse in her demeanor. Still, she's not paying the least bit of attention to Hematite, who has finally inched far enough away to break into a run.

The Supervisors both hear the pounding of the metallic gem's footsteps, and whip their heads around to watch her sprint further and further from them.

"What the—when did she…?"

Kunzite gapes, stunned and bemused, at her weapon. It's still in the exact place she's been holding it the entire time. "I had her pinned! How is this possible?"

"Well, it looks like there won't be any witnesses," Morganite says, glancing at Sapphire and Ruby again with new eyes. "Let's teach these two runts a lesson."

"Whoa, hey." Kunzite straightens, though it should be noted that her violet-hued spear still has yet to disappear. "Our orders are from Blue Diamond herself. I want to go there, too, believe me, but this isn't just any pair of dissidents."

"Look around, Kunzite!" Morganite throws out her arms. She's the smaller of their two, but her hardness is greater. That, Sapphire suspects, influences their dynamic just enough to make it predictable. "There's no one else here, and they clearly went out of their way to pick a fight with us. Are you just going to let these pipsqueaks get away with disrespect like that?"

"If we damage—"

"—Then it happened in the rec center in between check ins, and there was nothing we could do. Very sorry Blue Diamond, but we can't always be there."

Sapphire exchanges a look with Ruby. The orders from the Diamond Authority protecting their oracle and her handler are far stricter than either of them imagined.

"And besides." Here Morganite gestures to Ruby, who blinks dubiously. "That one has been a pain in my ass since I took over this surveillance route. If there's no one else around, I'm going to take the opportunity to crush her."

"Ha!" Ruby lets out a barking laugh. "You could try, maybe."

"Look at you! I'm twice your size, and your only backup is Princess Froufrou over here. Please," Morganite scoffs as she gestures to Sapphire, who remains unimpressed. Then she pulls a short sword from the gem set in her chest. "This will be easy."

"You're right," Kunzite realizes. "No witnesses means it's our word against theirs, and who would believe them?"

"Yes!" says Morganite. "Thank you for finally catching on, Kunzite. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to beat the gravel out of these twerps. You can join me if you want, but I honestly don't think I'll need the—"

Morganite lets out a wheezy sort of groan. Her shortsword falls to the metal floor with a loud clatter as she crumples from the nasty jolt of electricity that Sapphire's uppercut has just delivered to her spine. It wasn't a part of the plan, but it was far too satisfying for her to be sorry.

Sure, it won't last more than a minute, but still.

"Posturing annoys me," she says by way of explanation.

"Fair enough." Ruby grins cruelly, sights already turning to the violet gem with her spear still drawn. "Hey Kunzite, remember that citrine you were torturing earlier?"

"Not really," is Kunzite's initial reply. Her gaze is still on Morganite's prone form. She looks up to Sapphire, who appears as flouncy and harmless as ever. The need for her own revenge slowly enters her demeanor as she decides that yes, she is going to go through with this after all. "Oh wait, it's coming back to me now," she says with a slow spreading, provocative grin. Since Ruby is bringing it up, it clearly bothers her. Why not rub it in? "The orange one in the dress, right? She begged us so prettily. So pathetic. Really, you defective gems are all the same."

"That's my friend, you monster!"

Kunzite doesn't get the chance to reply, because that's when Ruby moves in, gloves on, demeanor practically blazing. Unfortunately, Kunzite's spear makes her a long-range fighter, and she knows how to use it. Ruby, as a close-range combatant, can't break through her guard and so can't do any damage. Sapphire is a short range fighter, as well, which doesn't quite bode well for either of them.

"Oh, I'm so scared," Kunzite jeers as she sidesteps and jabs Ruby back with her spear. "Do you think I've never been attacked for poofing inmates before? Maybe if you all weren't so weak, this would actually be a challenge."

Ruby is letting her emotions get out of hand. Sapphire can see the air around her beginning to shimmer with heat. They had a plan, but it's rapidly falling apart as Ruby loses her temper.

Sapphire would have stepped in and offered to take over with Kunzite, but it's highly unlikely that Ruby will allow that (things have gotten personal now, after all). Besides, Morganite is stirring, and she sounds furious.

This could be going better.

Sapphire whips around and catches Morganite's sword with knuckledusters reinforced in ice. The ice shatters from the force of the larger gem's blow, and Sapphire leaps back to avoid her tenacious follow through.

"Oh, so that's how you want to play it, huh?" growls Morganite. Her peach-hued pallet hasn't darkened with her mood, per se, but there's just something off about such a cheerful color scheme backing such a hateful expression.

Sapphire whirls out of the way as Morganite's sword sings through the air. She can't say she's not using her future vision to her advantage, because she definitely is. It's just—oh, it's so easy! Morganite is a softer gem (between seven and eight Mohs), and she's losing her focus due to her rampant emotions, and Sapphire can see what she's doing before she's doing it; doesn't Morganite understand that she stands no chance against Sapphire, even with her superior size and strength?

Well, probably not. Sapphire's future vision is not widely known, after all.

This whole fight is as close to private as things get, too. A Supervisor will never admit to being beaten up by an inmate, and even if they had, it certainly wouldn't be the inmates they have been explicitly forbidden from fighting. And even if Sapphire and Ruby lose, Kunzite and Morganite can't gloat about it, because that would still be flying in the face of orders from Blue Diamond herself. Complaining about being roughed up by the Supervisors isn't going to do any good, anyway. Nobody cares what happens to inmates in Containment Units, after all.

Is that how you want to play this?

Remember the objective, Sapphire tells herself. Ruby is has fallen into a rampage for retribution for Citrine and all of her friends that have been brutalized by these bullies over the centuries, but their whole purpose for doing this was to teach Kunzite and Morganite a lesson. They want the results of this altercation to be permanent.

Poignancy. That's what they need to be aiming for.

Sapphire parries Morganite's sword with an icy fist, and Morganite shouts, "Well? Are you going to answer me? Is this the game you want to play?"

"I," Sapphire replies, seeing an opening in the peach gem's guard and zipping right on in. "Am not playing a game."

She's a little too short to reach Morganite's gem, much less her face, but that doesn't matter. With a quick jab at a nerve center, and a shock of electricity for good measure, it's easy to twist the sword from Morganite's grip and turn it on its owner. With the shortsword's help, Sapphire has no problem cutting the Supervisor with her own weapon. She's dropped the sword into abstract fragments of light and scampered out of range before Morganite can recover.

As she stops, Sapphire's future vision bids her create a thin layer of ice on the floor for Kunzite to back into. The Supervisor slips, her potentially destructive spear thrust knocked awry, and Ruby immediately presses the advantage. She knocks the pesky spear out of the way and delivers a smoking blow so powerful that Kunzite is literally sent flying. She becomes partially embedded in the wall, and Sapphire has to suppress the sympathetic wince that comes with her own personal experience of making dents in walls because of Ruby.

"Oh, now you've done it!" shouts Kunzite. "I'm going to poof you if it's the last thing I do!"

"Oh, poof me, are you? I'd like to see you try, you pink bastard!"

Still, brute force isn't poignancy. They need these results to be permanent.

"How dare you?" Morganite is back again, and she's almost as emotionally compromised as Ruby. If this goes on any longer, the message will never sink in. The time for poetic justice seems to be well and truly over.

This time, Sapphire has to block Morganite's sword with both arms. She skids back several feet from the impact, inadvertently sending fragments of ice bouncing every which way, but manages to keep herself upright.

The steel plates that make up the hallway are becoming red and hot, practically scalding. Sapphire can tell from how much footwork Kunzite and Morganite are suddenly doing that they feel it too.

Kunzite slices the head of her spear through the air, trying to keep Ruby at a distance with new purpose. It's not going to do much good—the volcanic heat that Ruby is radiating is only bouncing off of the other three steel walls, amplifying with each new heartbeat.

They need to end this quickly. It's not really Morganite's retention that Sapphire's worried about at this point, it's Ruby doing something she will ultimately regret.

When she spots the truly golden opportunity that's just about to pass them by, Sapphire doesn't hesitate.

Morganite isn't stupid enough to fall for the same trick twice, so she will have to try something new. When Sapphire coats the floor in ice again, it only lasts for a brief moment before volatilizing. As she does this again, and again, steam starts to billow around them all.

Ruby lets out a cry of frustration. "Sapphire, what are you doing? Now no one can see!"

Sapphire takes advantage of the lack of visibility to slam her spiked knuckles into Morganite's lower back, briefly stunning her. She takes advantage of this by kicking Morganite's sword free of her grip. The weapon hisses as it slides across the hot sheet metal, but Ruby isn't so far gone that she can't take the hint when the blade bumps into her foot. She doesn't have much time before Morganite understands what's going on and cuts the energy that's powering the weapon's existence, but a moment is all Ruby needs.

The sword flies true, and lodges itself firmly into Kunzite's gut. Since Kunzite's gem is actually embedded in her chin (a strange spot, to be sure, but hey, at least she's symmetrical), this isn't a fatal blow. Damaging enough to poof her, yes, but not fatal.

The glassy clatter of her fellow Supervisor's gem falling is what alerts Morganite to the fact that she is alone, one on two. She draws two swords this time, and backs herself up against the increasingly warm metal wall as both Ruby and Sapphire appear out of the steam like specters.

"Say, Princess Froufrou," says Ruby conversationally, her gloves on and her guard at mid level, ready to parry the shortsword aimed at her if need be. "What do you think we should do to this one?"

Sapphire pretends to hum in consideration, as if being trapped in this impromptu oven is not getting to her at all. Sweat is trickling down the side of her neck, and it's all she can do to emanate enough cold to keep her own personal temperature palatable. "Well, I am fond of cutting her with her own blade."

"Too easy. This is most likely the one who lead the hunt against Citrine. She explicitly stated that she wanted to see me crushed, too."

Sapphire hums again. "Well, there's always the more personal approach."

Ruby grins, almost entirely feral. "I was hoping that was a possibility."

Due to their size and the height at which Morganite holds her twin swords, getting around the weapons is not easy. They have to weave and bob their way past the blades and into her guard without being harmed themselves. Sapphire darts in first, and sends electricity zipping through one of them, causing the Supervisor to suck in a sharp breath and drop the offending weapon. For the other she parries the strike and freezes Morganite's arm all the way up to the shoulder, so she can't swing it again. The ice is already weakening due to the Ruby-induced temperature, but Ruby doesn't need more than an instant to deal the final, scalding blow.

The peach-hued gem falls to the hot floor and Ruby stands over it, panting, gloves still out. She looks about ready to punch it—in fact, she is about to punch it, to crush it remorselessly against the heated metal.

Sapphire neatly steps in and kicks the gem out of harm's way. It skitters harmlessly down the hall.

"They're not going to forget us fighting back any time soon," she says quietly. "That was the whole point of this, remember?"

Ruby is panting, though she doesn't seem to feel much physical exertion. She can't seem to take her eyes off of her steaming gloves. "We didn't follow the plan. Is that still going to happen?"

"At this point, that's hard to say," Sapphire admits. "I'll know in an hour or so, I think. Do you think you could lower the temperature a little? It's getting pretty stuffy in here."

"Huh? Oh, you're right." Ruby's boxing gloves disappear, and the heat that's radiating from her ceases almost immediately. "I didn't mean to get carried away," she says, and while her voice is rough with reminiscent anger there is real remorse in her demeanor. "It's just—they're never sorry! They never see us as people. Even now!" She throws one powerful arm out towards the vulnerable gems that are slowly becoming more visible in the dissipating steam. "I bet if they regenerated right now, they would still just call us nuisances."

Sapphire doesn't say anything.

"I'm right, aren't I?"

"It's not likely that they'll regenerate right now."

"But if they did, Sapphire." Then, when Sapphire chooses to remain silent, Ruby says in a much softer voice, "Was this was all for nothing? Have I messed it up so badly?"

For a time, Sapphire doesn't have anything worth saying, and so doesn't try. Eventually, she Sees something. "It's not ruined," she says, for what it's worth. "Although driving our point home is going to require future altercations. Altercations in which we probably shouldn't get carried away. We can't let them know the power they have over us. That's what started this whole mess, and that's what is going to perpetuate it."

Ruby lets out a harsh laugh. " 'We'? Thanks for trying, Sapphire, but I know this is all my fault."

"I Saw that it had the potential of happening, and I didn't move against it," Sapphire says. "The fault is just as much mine."

For a moment, Ruby just stares at her. Then she realizes, "You believe that."

"Of course I do." Sapphire takes a step towards her, touches her arm. It's not scalding anymore, it's just warm. "I think it's time for us to start heading back."

Ruby falls into step with her, somewhat listless. She materializes pockets so she can shove her hands into them, presumably for something to do. The silence between them isn't uncomfortable, per se, but it is heavy.

"I think we can be a great team, if we practice," Sapphire says after a while, when she knows that Ruby is more receptive to being spoken to. "We're both so used to operating alone. Is it any wonder we're discordant when we fight shoulder to shoulder?"

Ruby gives her a sidelong glance of disbelief. "You still think this vigilante justice thing is a good idea?"

"At this point, I think it may be the only option worth choosing."

"You really didn't just come along to watch over me," Ruby says, half breathless with the realization. She's looking at Sapphire with new eyes now. "You actually believe in this too."

"Yes," Sapphire says. "I really do."

Ruby looks down. Her hands flex in her pockets. "I guess I owe you an apology, for thinking less of you," she says, and while she's muttering she's still being sincere.

"Don't worry about it. I know that's the impression I give off." Sapphire hesitates, checking to see if the outcome is desirable, and then adds, "I'll even forgive you for the Princess Frou Frou comment."

Ruby surprises herself with her own sudden burst of laughter. "I did say that aloud, didn't I?" Her hands come out of the pockets that are suddenly no longer there, and she tightens the knot on the bright red headband over her forehead and curly hair. "I was trying to use their insults against them, believe it or not. You don't look like you know what you're doing, though at this point I'm seriously wondering if that's purposeful."

"I have no idea what you're talking about. I wear this dress because I love it."

Ruby, catching on to her dry tone, grins and presses, "Yeah, but why?"

Sapphire's façade cracks a little as she smiles. "I have to keep some of my secrets."

"Oh, so it's a secret now."

"Guess so."

Ruby makes a sound that's half exasperation and half laughter. "Yeah, okay. But just so you know, I'm surprised no one's called you Princess Froufrou sooner."