Needless to say, the appearing of an armada pointing all of their weapons at the planet got the attention of every world power. Less than an hour later and Rose had once again patched herself through to the major news networks to ensure her message would be heard across the globe.
"People of planet Earth, I apologize for having to interrupt your lives so soon but this is a matter of grave importance that concerns you all," Rose started solemnly, "For you see, I have now confirmed that the Crystal Gems have succumbed to their designs and are now working to actively reinstate their empire… And Earth will be their first target."
The other gems all watched from the Beacon's projection screen in horror as Rose now spun a web of lies about how all of the diamond's plans, including ones while she was still dormant as far back as the Red Eye that was blown up months ago, were all just attempts to wipe out humanity in retaliation for Rose's defiance.
Steven once heard that the best lies involved telling the truth and never understood how that worked. Now he watched his own mother tie together months of his life and turn it all into a giant campaign speech about how the diamonds have tried to end the world over and over again with plenty of remorse at the pain her family and Earth's population suffered as a result. All of it was to paint a clear picture: the Crystal Gems were heroes, the diamonds were all villains and Rose now had to step in that her family had fallen under the monarchs' wicked spell.
The response to these accusations was thankfully very muted with many asking one version or another of the same question: If the diamonds are so evil and are on the planet right now, why aren't they destroying anything? The gems were also inherently grateful that people stuck to the tried-and-true instinct of not butting into alien business.
The only part that truly got the governments of the world nervous was her final announcement: As of now, the planet was officially under Rose's "protection" with her ships to be stationed at dozens of points across the globe to observe the diamond's movements. This not only meant several around the perimeter of Beach City, but near multiple other American metropolises that happened to have warp points or other points of interest to gems.
This was where the president, along with several other world leaders, insisted on some kind of summit between Rose and the other affected sovereign nations to broker some kind of agreement. The Crystal Gems could only sit idly by as they all remembered the last time someone tried to discuss peaceful relations with the diamonds to the trigger-happy mother.
"They're doomed," Garnet flatly said as they all watched the news unfold, "And given how temperamental Rose is now, I wouldn't put it past her to use her powers on humans."
"Oh no, what are we gonna do?!" Rhodonite cried, "We can't possibly take on billions of gems with her backing them up!"
"We have to be there," Bismuth resolved, "Let's get Agent Van on the phone, tell him that we want to attend this thing, and be there to keep Rose calm."
As Greg rushed off to do just that, the others knew they had a serious problem. Simply being at this meeting wouldn't be enough to appease Rose's vendetta. Having the diamonds there, even Pink, was already out of the question since that would guarantee the gem who could singlehandedly annihilate a planet would go nuclear upon seeing them.
But that's when Connie had an idea. She knew what politicians did best; say a whole lot of nothing and waste people's time…
With such drastic actions taken, the leaders of the world actually got their stuff together quickly and planned the conference in a week's time from Rose's announcement to take place in Navy City, the largest coastal metropolis in Delmarva. A medium-sized convention center was chosen as the venue for this momentous occasion and soon the warehouse turned event space was filling up with reporters, news crews, and dozens of diplomatic leaders from around the world arrived with their staff and security details.
The Crystal Gems were already seated in the back of the largest assembly hall, just large enough to fit the few hundred people with fold-out chairs. Some asked why they were in some slapdash assembly hall not some grand government building fitting for such a momentous occasion? Dr. Maheswaran asked the same thing to Agent Van in passing.
"They don't want some highly important (read: expensive to rebuild) facility being put at risk in case Rose doesn't feel like diplomacy."
And with that, Rose herself was placed in one of two seats behind the podium. The mother herself seemed almost serene as she waited for the meeting to begin making her the only one in the room looking forward to this. The other gems just kept their eyes on the clock. Right as an emcee approached the microphone, Garnet clicked on her communicator.
"Reading us?"
"Affirmative," Yellow Diamond answered from her end, "Are we clear?"
"Yes, we're just about to begin. You know the plan."
Right as the first words began to come and the news cameras started recording the entire event, the diamonds still in Beach City took notice. They were more focused on Rose's ships still patrolling the tiny town but a single nod from Yellow was all the signal they needed. Pink Diamond hustled inside the beach house and pulled out a little project Peridot whipped up yesterday.
"Are we sure this isn't gonna fry our ships too?" she asked, pulling out an upgraded model of the same cosmic EMP that wiped out Homeworld's defense fleet. Unlike the original device that could have charitably been called a hunk of random parts shoved into whatever metal plating was lying around, this was a sleeker model with an antenna on top designed to target specific vessels.
Yellow, having pitched in with some leftover parts for repairing the Mega Diamond, simply tapped her old personal communicator into it and began entering the coordinates to take down the nearest rebel scouter a few miles away.
"If it does," White answered, "Then we'll find some way to warp around the planet. We've only got one opportunity to do this so if we need to go off-script, we will."
That left only Blue, waiting to take off in her ship once the patrol was down. A part of her found it nice that all four of them were working together like this. The other part of her hoped this diversion worked. If Rose caught on to her ships being taken down, she'd make a beeline for their gems.
A beam of pink light then arced through the sky, nailing the hundreds-feet-long ship and quickly forcing it to make an emergency landing without its propulsion system. Blue then took her cue to activate her own warship and flew off to incapacitate the soldiers while their ship was down.
Only when Blue signaled that she had cleaned house did she report back to Yellow, repeating the process until all six ships keeping an eye on the seaside hamlet were taken down in ten minutes. The people of Beach City quickly took notice and silently cheered for the looming threat to fade, having been let in on the entire thing beforehand.
Once the surrounding area was clear and several thousand gems had been bubbled and returned to Rose's room, the diamonds moved on to phase two. All four diamonds boarded their respective ships and moved out in the four cardinal directions to take down as much of the fleet as possible.
In the north, Yellow Diamond knew that there was several gem sites and warp pads in the planet's arctic regions. A few minutes in, she wasn't disappointed to find three warships filled with Rose's servants. After switching the her ship to auto-pilot, the monarch headed for the back hangar, counting down the seconds until she was in the prime position.
She chuckled at realizing this wasn't too different to when she plummeted down to Earth to attack the Crystal Gems. Now here she was about to do the same thing as part of them.
"Feels much nicer this time…" she thought with a smile before leaping out of the door directly on top of one of the ships, the entire craft buckling under her weight. Now on top of the centermost vessel, the other two immediately turned on her to aim their lasers.
Yellow simply waited, tapping down the anger that ended up dooming several of her past plans as they got into position, again waiting for the inevitable pincer attack. The massive hands' began to glow as their nova blasters were prepared as the diamond focused. Just like when she fought Steven, she actually tried concentrating on the intense currents of energy flowing through her and gathering as much as she could into her palms.
Two massive green columns of pure power rushed at her, she steadied herself before catching them in each hand, her own energy keeping her save as lightning crackled against the lasers. She grit her teeth, grimacing that this was what physical strain felt like, before suddenly twisting her upper body and simply letting the twin beams pass around her.
She actually let out a cheer as the attacks sailed into the opposite ships, both of them crashing into the frigid water soon as the ship she was surfing on quickly started a barrel roll to shake her off. She merely sent a blast of lightning straight down, quickly frying all of its systems and forcing it crash as well.
Once the ship ran aground amidst the ice floes, she knew her job wasn't done until she knew all of the gems involved were bubbled. Given her powers, she figured it would be the easy part. Unfortunately for her, Rose also had the ships fully stocked up with weapons and then some.
Out of the three ships each came a dozen gems, ranging from pearls to jaspers and even a morganite, all wearing plasma battle suits exactly like Brookite used when attacking the Crystal Gems.
Yellow, being the designer of said armor, facepalmed. "Okay, message received. No more making weapons from now on!"
She knew full well that all of these gems could not only fly, but had enhanced strength, reflexes and could fire energy blasts but that shouldn't pose too much of a threat. They would, however, be exceptionally annoying given her size compared to theirs.
Like a cloud of buzzing gnats, Rose's gems quickly started flying circles around Yellow with blasts flying from their hands. Each attack merely stung but the diamond wanted this done with. She alighted her entire body with lightning and released it all in a quick burst around her, taking down half a dozen unlucky saps who got too close.
The rest all flew back, realizing they needed a unified front for this. And so all twenty-four of them got the same idea and very unsettling grins that sent Yellow on edge. She sent a wave of power to poof them all in one swoop only for them to fly into a single point above her and then meld into a colossal ball of light.
"Oh no!" Yellow gasped, knowing that fusion of that many gems spelled a problem. She watched in dread as a bizarre but still intimidating new opponent dropped in front of her, the felled spaceship creaking under her weight.
Standing seventy-five feet tall and with a similarly strong yet slim build as Yellow Diamond, two things grabbed the monarch. One was that the fusion was somehow wearing a massive plasma suit which made Yellow remember that she designed that feature herself. If she was kicking her own invention before, now she was half tempted to use one of their outlawed temporal transporters and stop her past self from making this darned technology regardless of the paradoxes.
The other detail worth noting was that this fusion was an amalgamation in every sense of the word. While the physique was the same, her right hand was a deep violet and her left a sickening green. Her left foot was a flashy scarlet while the other was a royal blue. Her face was an oddly human-esque tan with a shock of flaming orange. Two squinting eyes that glared at her while a wide smile made it clear she would enjoy this. Multiple silvery gems dotted her gems like acne but she still radiated confidence.
"I am Fulgurite!" she announced, raising her fists before pointing righteously at the monarch, "For the safety of Rose Quartz, the planet Earth, and all free life in the galaxy, I will defeat you!"
"What the…?" Yellow stuttered before shaking her head, giving up on figuring this out, "Okay, this is going to be harder than I thought…"
Meanwhile, Blue Diamond headed south towards the Equator to deal with Rose's forces there. The monarch kept her eyes trained dead ahead as she saw a wave of fifty fighters escorting a pair of hand-ships. By this point she was fed up with crying and decided to throw herself into this whole operation. She finally had her family back together again and she actually found Earth pretty agreeable, so she planned on fighting with all she had.
As she hurtled towards them, priming her nova blasters to fire, she hoped that this insane operation would work and that all of the gems that were about to go down would forgive her someday.
"Goodness knows they were right to question us," she thought as she clinched the trigger, "After this, we will change our ways!"
She opened fire on that thought, forcing the smaller ships to disperse or get annihilated while the cruisers took the attack head-on. While not sunk, all of their attention was now on her as a giant blue arm approached, its fingers curling into a fist as it reached ramming speed.
With a deafening crunch of metal that threatened to send tsunamis out to various continents, Blue's personal ship slammed into one and the other got knocked down via domino effect.
The diamond hoped they would get the point and leave on their own but a quick scan at her slowly depleting shields dashed that. The fighters were attacking and while not a threat, the gems inside needed to be stopped.
As the dogfight persisted, Blue ordered her ship to be locked in place as she stepped outside. Even as vibrations from the assault rang out, she strode forward with a determination she hadn't felt in eons. That comment Stevonnie made about wearing rose-colored glasses kept replaying in her head as she walked out to the airlock and opened the door to face the horde herself.
The moment she was in sight, all of the fighters wasted no time training their sights on her. Over a dozen blasts came at once but she did not retreat. She actually ran forward as azure waves rippled out of her body, running straight into the bombardment. When the burning plasma was inches away, Blue thrust her arms forward to release a cyclones of kinetic blasts that stopped Rose's armada dead in its tracks.
The pilots watched in awe and terror as Blue kept stampeding until she leapt straight off of the dock and grabbed onto two fighters, hanging onto them even as they tried to swerve away. The colossal gem kicked away numerous jets as they tried to approach her, only to grip her handholds too hard and pulverizing their hulls. Soon they both exploded but she was unhurt. The pilots managed to eject beforehand but there was one thing going through Blue's mind as she fell into the ocean.
"I hope the others are doing better than this…"
In the east, flying over the Atlantic, Pink Diamond was constantly checking her scanner for any energy spikes. She wanted this plan to work more than any of them and get her old friend to see reason. There was also the niggling voice in the back of her mind insisting that this entire catastrophe was her fault.
It was just a random bit of pessimism in the back of her mind at first. How all of this started because they started the whole war to begin with but then it expanded. The reason the whole rebellion started was because Rose began as her enemy to stop her operation. Even beyond that, Rose only exists because of Pink! She founded the kindergarten that made her and the other original Rose Quartz gems.
But none of that hurt her more than the real root cause of it all: her own incessant need for a colony. She could still hear herself throwing a fit to Yellow Diamond, acting more akin to a spoiled child than any half-dignified leader, shrieking and hitting until Yellow relented and just gave her something to get her out of her hair.
The years of Rose's friendship were some of the best of her life and made her feel alive again with how distant the other diamonds became. And now, ironically, the vengeful rebel ended up fixing her family by giving them all a common goal. But was all this worth it? The entire gem race being swept up into two conflicts over Earth? To say nothing of what the people here have had to witness…
"Note to self: Return to that old zoo I started, and have it dismantled immediately when this is all done and dusted… Wait, are the inhabitants in that even alive?!"
No, she reminded herself, there'd be plenty of time to fix that horrible experiment later. Now she had to keep her eyes peeled for an attack. In the meantime, she kept praying that Rose stay put in that summit for long enough that maybe the rational, wonderful friend she had all that time ago could come back. Then, when they finally talked things over, everyone could finally be one big, happy, family…
"I'm so stupid sometimes…" Pink Diamond then wiped her eyes and damp cheeks, trying to keep the distractions out of her head.
And in the west, White Diamond's ship soared ahead. She was honestly surprised that nothing had stopped her yet. Flying over all of America and then across the Pacific, she was the only one of the four tasked with hitting a specific destination: the Galaxy Warp.
Capturing it be a key strategic point that would allow them access to every warp point on the planet and the ability to regroup off-world if needed. But knowing Rose, it would be the most heavily guarded point even more so than the perimeter of Beach City so sending their heaviest weight out to take it seemed like their best bet.
And as she approached the coordinates, White Diamond was pondering several things. Now that she wasn't preoccupied with managing her empire, she found herself asking many more questions than before.
"Why did I do all of this?" she started with, her brows creasing as she tried to remember. She could scarcely picture the distant past. She herself was created by some other race of imperialists who wanted to conquer worlds but she didn't get much farther than that. Something about them not having the firepower to compete with their neighbors so instead of developing weapons, they concocted her to be their commander in chief.
From there, the millennia-old gem's memory got hazier. Who these people were and what they accomplished were completely lost to her and something told her she did that intentionally. All she could feel was a bubbling sense of resentment as she realized that she was better than these peons. All she could see clearly was that she took two other gems they were creating, one yellow and one blue, and flew off in what would be prototype of her palace ship to a desolate world filled with canyons and mountains.
Her first clear memory was seeing those two gems sprout into her fellow diamonds, baffled at their sudden existence until they looked upon White for the first time. The grand monarch could feel the swell of pride even now. They only had each other but she was already thrilled to see what their future would hold.
They worked like mad to make a home out of that old planet, the Homeworld they resided on until weeks ago, and concocting all sorts of gems to fulfill different roles in their society. All to achieve one goal: to ensure that they would never be controlled like White was by her makers. A noble goal in hindsight but the execution was… Problematic, as she now knows.
White truly had no idea just how planets they had possessed but she could clearly recall that there was a point where the diamond trio felt overwhelmed by the amount of work and set about to make a fourth ruler with a unique purpose. They wanted someone to take care of domestic affairs and run Homeworld while they dealt with continued inquisitions.
The results were very different from what they imagined. They don't know what happened in the formation process but Pink Diamond was a far cry from the others. Fun-loving, the opposite of disciplined and empathetic to a fault. They wanted a manager and ended up getting an event planner instead.
Before all of this, she might have been the one mistake White would have admitted to making. She ended up bringing the levity that was sorely missing from their lives. The sounds of old jokes and comedy routines still made her lips twitch upwards to this day. But soon, she started taking Pink for granted. Pushing her aside because she had business to attend to, then shoving her off to Blue and Yellow only for the littlest leader to become a routine headache for them.
And then she ultimately signed off on giving Pink a colony…
That was very quickly becoming a mixed bag for the alabaster empress. On the one hand, it singlehandedly led to Era 2 and massive heartbreak for all of them. It was the darkest day in gem history for thousands of years, especially given that Pink's followers were more devoted than the others. And if you asked her this time last year, White would have said all of this herself and thrown in several death threats for Rose Quartz and her cursed rebellion.
But now all of this served a very vital lesson that White, as an intellectual, could appreciate. As much as it made her want to bite her tongue off, she had to admit she was not perfect and keeping up that assumption has done far more harm than good. The Crystal Gems, and Steven in particular, gave her a reality check she sorely needed. Plus, they actually brought Pink back into the diamonds' lives and improved their relationship.
She could easily have extrapolated hours upon hours of these kinds of questions. How many times did her obsessive perfectionism damage her bonds with the other diamonds?
"Probably more times than even I could count…"
What would have happened to her empire in the future?
"There's only so many cultivatable planets. Space may be near infinite and continually expanding but…"
And most damaging of all was the knowledge that, given another option, her subjects would leave. That original exodus to Rose and Pink's new fiefdom was done of their own free will. For the longest time she asked why but now the answer is far too obvious.
A bitter laugh choked out as several new feelings stirred in her. Regret, embarrassment, a burning desire to use one of their abandoned temporal transporters to smack herself in the face. There were even a few times recently where she wondered if they should even bother. Maybe Rose was right about destroying everything she touched…
"Maybe I should just disappear."
Her only consolation was that every single that horrendous voice came back, it brought a surge of defiance. She wasn't about to give up and let Rose have everything she wanted. What kind of leader would do that? A terrible one! Granted, she had much to learn but she wasn't that particular variety of terrible.
White Diamond was many things. A brilliant innovator, eternally driven, resilient to the point of immovable, and capable of the impossible. So what if her regime meant rampant civil unrest, pointless warfare and untold lives lost in the crossfire? She could move forward. Her original empire started with just her, Yellow and Blue on that moon. They could, no, they would start over!
As the diamond came within sight of the Galaxy Warp, another foreign feeling came to her. A tiny mote of light glimmering among the turmoil.
"Heh, so that's what hope is…"
Her objective in sight. White eased her ship to a stop several miles away, giving Rose's forces a clear view. Sitting in the ship's head, she moved away from the controls and towards the lift. A flick of her hand up had her ascending away from the main hatch at the palace's base and towards the emergency exit at the top.
"Looks like this is finally going to see good use, hehe."
The top spike on the spaceship's coif launched off like a rocket to make room for White. Her extravagant dress billowed in sea breeze, and she found the salty scent surprisingly pleasant. Maybe she should have kept oceans around for scenery instead of designing gems to weaponize them.
"All in good time," she reminded herself before raising a single hand into the air, pointing at the darkened sky. Knowing that every gem in that ship had no doubt seen her, she smiled for the pilots.
"Attention, Rose's peons! I understand your leader has quite the vendetta against me… And I'm sure whomever defeats me will receive a hefty reward. So please, take your best shot. But I feel obligated to warn you…"
Her upraised hand fired off a beam of searing white plasma into the night, arcing out of sight as the diamond's smile grew defiant.
"You will need everything in your power to best me!"
Rose Quartz could safely say this whole summit was the most boring thing she could have imagined. Politics were a new field to her but this was getting ridiculous. She felt like she'd been here for days hearing every inane issue under the sun ranging from the environmental impact of her invasion to its effect on petroleum taxes. She couldn't make heads or tails of it and honestly she didn't care.
Not helping things was that her head was pounding like Amethyst at her rowdiest was using it as a kickball. She couldn't even form coherent thoughts let alone discuss complicated issues like this. Every once in a while, she would wonder where the diamonds were but that was the extent of it.
She was so out of it she never looked at the audience to notice that the Crystal Gems all had their eyes glued on Rose, mapping just how tired she was and waiting for her to be depowered enough to see reason.
5 chapters left and it's all building up! Can the plan work? Find out next time!
And also, if anyone besides me cares, Fulgurite is voiced here by Colleen Clinkenbeard.
Thank you all so much for reading! Feel free to leave questions or comments below.