Ruby thinks if she still had Garnet's future vision- Sapphire's...- she would see her death down almost every outcome ahead of her now. Death presents itself as a blackness at the end of the river of time, an unsettling path that they would always snap back from to correct. She's seen Pearl's death a lot too- those are more colorful. She shudders at the many memories of what could have been, but wishes she had the ability to see the horrible outcomes now. Instead, it's all black. She closes her eyes, and that's all she sees; there's no third to tell her what to do; she knows the black no longer announces an end, but she thinks it might anyway. It's fitting, for even if she survives this, the black path of death will be a constant weight upon her without her other half to light up the third space.
She runs into a few low ranking gems, who have not been informed that the ruby running down the emptier corridors is in need of capture- they haven't yet noticed their escape, so her presence must still be on a need to know basis, for the most part. Their attempt at keeping the Crystal Gems secret might just be the very reason she makes it out alive.
At one point, she runs into a pearl. She seems to frighten the pearl quite a bit. If not by her disappointed, angry look, then by the look a second before. Hopeful, intense. The pearl has probably never seen anyone so happy to see her.
Ruby smiles reassuringly, nodding at her before heading off. She thinks she might regret not grabbing her, later, but right now there's only one pearl she needs to find.
,,,,,,,
Pearl doesn't like her odds. It's clearly not a good thing that they've sent five armed gems to see her, and she's not sure that she can take this many out at once if they're here to do what she suspects.
"Hello," she greets, standing.
She debates if she should summon her spear quickly when the field is dropped, or if she should forget the slight advantage the element of surprise brings and pull forth a sword from her gem's storage, which takes longer to summon.
The citrine before her jabs the button on the wall.
Too late.
Pearl summons her spear, ducking immediately down to dodge the mace thrown towards her gem. She thrusts the weapon upward, jabbing it into the citrine's stomach, and summons another, not wasting time to pull it out.
They've ruined some of their own advantage by trying to fight her in the small corridor outside of her cell. Five isn't a helpful number if they're all tripping over themselves to hit her.
Pearl drops to a knee as the spinel jabs an axe into her thigh, cutting a glancing, but painful blow. She sends an energy bolt from her spear upwards into the gem's chest, then throws her weapon backwards into the panel, so the butt of it hits the switch. The generated field traps a tourmaline inside, splitting the unfortunate chrysoprase, who was standing in the way of the beam, clean in two unequal halves. Their gem clatters to the floor inside the cell.
The spear she left in the citrine's stomach has shimmered into nothing, but the large bloody wound it caused remains. Regardless, the huge gem stays on her feet, and Pearl, from the floor, can see she's about to meet the bad end of a mace.
Instead, before the weapon can hit, Pearl finds a small foot crashing into her chest. Ruby uses her as a launch pad, knocking the wind out of her but successfully redirecting the weapon's trajectory by wrapping flaming fists around the citrine's throat.
Pearl rolls, glad oxygen is more of a convenience than a necessity for her, and hops to a standing position, leaning heavily on one leg and summoning a spear to drop the axe swinging down at her.
Spinel is yelling a variety of curses at her, but they're nothing she hasn't heard before. Here, fighting Homeworld gems with Ruby, she can almost pretend they're back in the war. It was not a good time, but Pearl was fighting for something with the people she loved. That brought her a lot of strength. She lets the axe glance off her spear, swinging herself behind Spinel so their backs hit each other, and stabs the sphene, reducing her to her gem.
Ruby, having successfully defeated the citrine, grabs the axe from Spinel, buying Pearl a second to kill her as well.
They bubble the fallen gems quickly, turning towards the tourmaline in the cell. She's nudging the fallen chrysoprase with her toe, praying it'll make a quick regeneration.
Between the two of them, the time between the lowering of the field and the poofing of the gem is short. Ruby bubbles her, while Pearl does the other.
Pearl lets out a relieved breath, smiling towards Ruby.
"It's so great to see you. Thanks for coming," Pearl says, leaning against the wall and casting her eye over the five bubbled gems on the ground, "I couldn't have beat all of them."
"Yeah," Ruby agrees.
"I'm..." Pearl's smile falls, and she doesn't lift her gaze, "I'm so sorry about Sapphire. I'll miss her terribly."
"You'll miss Garnet," Ruby corrects, without a beat, "but thanks."
Pearl doesn't correct her. They both know Pearl loves Garnet more than she loves either of her components- she's has hardly hung around with Sapphire, really. They both also know that Ruby's being harsh; Pearl's so happy that Ruby, at least, as survived, and she knows it. Pearl lets it be, for now.
"We need to find Steven and Amethyst," she says, softly; Ruby nods.
"I left Ame back at my cell," she says, "I'll show you the way- can you walk?"
Pearl nods. It'll be much more suspicious, a ruby, walking with an injured pearl, but it's the only way.