Chapter Nine: Fire and Water


Almost a day of traveling later, and they had come no closer to any kind of station or base. The skiff continued to race across the open seas, only rarely coming across anything that wasn't blue. A stone outcropping here, a desert island there–once they even came across a pod of aquatic organics leaping out of the water. But sightseeing was the last thing on anyone's mind. Much of the conversation had related to Votaq, and his reasons for targeting the four of them.

"Far's I know, we haven't done anything to upset any organics," Yooperlite said. "We couldn't have done anything, we've been stuck here for the last few centuries!" She looked off towards the sky as her train of thought started running. "Maybe it's something I did before I got stranded here. I can't think of anything specific, but I wouldn't be surprised if somethin' I did once made me an enemy or two. Though it woulda been hundreds of years ago, and I don't think organics live that long. Guess he'd have to be someone's grandson who held a grudge. Probably a great-grandson, more likely. Or a great-great-great-great-great…"

Lefty, who was piloting the skiff, gave her two cents. "As curious as I'm sure we all are, I think we should focus on the fact rather than the why behind it. Whoever this Votaq is, he's clearly got a good bit of resources at his disposal. I doubt we've seen the last of him, so we'll have to be on our guard. If we–"

"Might you focus on keeping the skiff steady, please?" said Tanzanite. "I fear time has already taken its toll on the vehicle, even the slightest jostle could upend it." Unlike the others, whose gazes went outward to the ocean, she stayed inward, sitting near to the control panel with her eyes fixed on the floor.

Although she had only known her for a while, seeing this side of her friend still felt odd. "Tanzanite, are you afraid of falling in?" asked Emerald. "You didn't seem to mind our trek across the bottom of the ocean earlier."

She shook her head. "It is not the ocean that bothers me. Rather, the unstable motion of this skiff is…unsettling. It is hard to explain–I have no stomach, though I feel I would be nauseous if I did."

"...great-great-grandson," finished Yooperlite. "Oh, sorry, did I miss something?"

"Tanz, would you feel better if you were the one driving?" asked Lefty. She moved to the side, offering her position to the other Gem.

Tanzanite shakily got to her feet, and obliged her offer. "I-I think it would, yes. Thank you." She took over the controls, visibly relaxing now that she was in charge of the skiff's movement. "I apologize for any inconvenience."

"Nothin' to apologize for!" said Yooperlite. "Just didn't see you as the type to get seasick is all. Hey, speakin' of, I'm getting kinda sick of the sea, too. Any idea if we'll be coming up on anything soon?"

Lefty shrugged. "Despite my history with this planet, I never took the time to map out all of its installations. For the time being, we're flying blind."

"That's no reason to give up, though," said Emerald, noticing Yooperlite's uncertain expression. "Besides, you've all waited for centuries, what's a few more days?"

"Easy for you to say!" chuckled Yooperlite. She sat down in Tanzanite's old spot. "Welp, I'm takin' a nap. Wake me up if anything interesting happens."

Emerald, confused, turned to Lefty. "A 'nap?'"


Night had fallen, and still no progress. Just as it had during the day, the skiff raced along, carrying the party to an uncertain destination. They had seen no trace even of land, let alone anywhere to safely dock. Tanzanite diligently kept them moving, and the night was silent except for the strange rumbling noise Yooperlite was making.

Emerald stared at her for the longest time. "Now…what exactly is it she's doing there? Is she broken or something?"

"Apparently that's called 'snoring,'" said Lefty. "I still have no idea what it's for, but some organics do it when they sleep. And I guess Gems do too."

"You realized that answered basically nothing, right?" said Emerald. "Is 'sleep' why she's just laying there, despondent?"

Lefty cracked a smile. "Sleeping's like a kind of low-energy state where organics recharge. She's picked up on a few things here, especially if they help pass the time. I've tried it a bit myself, but I prefer to be alert if anything happens."

She made a mental note to try it sometime. "I know these past few centuries can't have been exactly fun, but you have made quite a bit of discoveries. Most Gems probably go their whole lives without even hearing of the things you've seen. Finding out what sleep is, or being face-to-face with a wild organic…"

"Yup, spirit of adventure, that's me!" Lefty said with a small laugh. "Though I have to say, as exciting as parts of this little journey have been, I still think some things are best experienced over long distances." Both Gems thought back to their thalassaraptor encounter, not an experience they were in any hurry to repeat.

"Well said." Emerald stared up at the starry skies above them. It was strange to think that this entire planet was nothing more than a blip to all the Gems out there, going about their business, without even knowing the four of them exist. "Have…have you given any thought to what happens when we get off this rock? Y'know, when we hail a ship, get a ride back to Homeworld…what then?"

"You mean, if we make it off," said Tanzanite.

"That's the spirit, Tanz," said Lefty. "Way to look at the bright side."

"Way to be realistic," Tanzanite shot back.

The Peridot pondered the question for a bit. "To be honest, the possibility of going anywhere was basically a fantasy up until a few days ago. I suppose we'll just go on to our next assignments. Tanz and I'll probably be sent to new colonies, Yoop'll continue her routes, you'll…probably get your own battalion or something. Maybe an armada or two."

"Wouldn't that be something?" said the Beryl. "You know, it's strange to think about how I technically outrank all of you. I'm an Emerald, but I don't feel like an Emerald. You're the ones with all the experience, all the knowledge and know-how. I hope Homeworld doesn't expect me to be as adept at…all this as you are."

Lefty looked at Emerald, only to look out to the sea. "It definitely felt odd at first," she said. "I can guarantee the upper-crust back on Homeworld wouldn't be happy if they knew the three of us were palling around with you like we're equals!"

"You're right: we aren't equals," said Emerald. "You've been doing this far longer than I, and are much more experienced with this world. When we escape…I think I'd like us to continue working together. Because we do make a good team."

A small smile appeared on Lefty's face, though it quickly vanished. "Yeah. Yeah, I would too. I wouldn't get your hopes up, 'cause who knows what Homeworld wants, but if it was up to me…" Something crossed her mind, causing her expression to change. She almost seemed sad about something. "I'd definitely like that."

"Huh?" Is something the matter?" asked Emerald. "Even if we go our separate ways, we can still stay in contact, right?"

"I wish–I mean, I hope so!" Lefty said, quickly correcting herself. "And no, it's nothing. Just thinking about everyone else. About…about righty." She was overcome with another wave of melancholy, but this one was older, much more familiar.

Emerald realized she had heard so much about Righty, and yet actually knew little about her. "Righty was very special to you, wasn't she?"

Lefty chuckled. "You can say that again! We were inseparable, literally: whenever we were put on separate assignments, half of our time we'd spend trying to contact the other. Eventually, our superiors gave up, and from then on we came as a packaged deal!" She laughed, along with Emerald.

"And what was she like?" asked Emerald. "A lot like you? A lot different?"

"Eh, yes and no," Lefty said. "She shared my curiosity and wonder for the worlds we visited. She was a lot more outspoken, though, even willing to talk back to her superiors. That's actually kind of why we were eventually paired together, she convinced them. And with only minimal swearing–an oddity for her. And she never gave up, either." Lefty reclined, looking up at the stars along with Emerald. "If she was still here, I can guarantee we'd have found a way off this Diamond-forsaken planet ages ago."

"I'm so sorry," Emerald said. There was silence for a moment, as though in memoriam for Lefty's fallen sister. "I hope that one day, I can find someone who cares about me the way you cared about each other. Someone I can call…family."

"If we escape this place, I would be willing to be your family," said Tanzanite.

Emerald grinned. "I might just take you up on that! In fact, why aren't we family? We've been together for a while, we've survived quite a bit, we argue occasionally. You know what? If–when we make it to safety, I'll use my executive power as an Emerald, and make sure we stick together from then on!"

"Sounds like a plan!" said Lefty. Tanzanite nodded in agreement. Even the snoozing Yooperlite mumbled in her sleep, as though making a point of her own. "...Let's just hope I don't blow you all up this time…"

Emerald didn't think silence could be loud, but the one that followed this remark most certainly was. Eventually, she worked up the courage to break it. "It wasn't your fault, you know."

"You weren't there," muttered Lefty, turning away. "You didn't see it…"


Moridius, Prime Kindergarten. Era 1, Year 4,988,195.

It was a routine procedure. Everyone knew it, everyone expected it. And yet, the whole populace of this colony–which now only consisted of around a hundred Gems, but still–couldn't help but feel anxious. Since this colony had been established, nothing had gone right. Most Gems had written Moridius off as a lost cause, and taken their expertise elsewhere. But not them. They refused to allow their first ever colony to be a failure. And so they stayed, silently vowing to get at least one kindergarten up and running at any cost.

"So," came the voice over the radio, "what's the plan after we jumpstart this place?" A Peridot, the spitting image of Lefty, only mirrored.

Lefty herself, seated in the control room, shrugged. "I say we take a little while to bask in our success. They'll probably have us stick around anyway to oversee production, so we might as well get comfortable. It'll give us plenty of time to rub it in the faces of everyone who gave up too soon!"

Righty laughed. "Yeah, I bet they'll be feeling pretty stupid once they hear how booming Moridius is! Oh, say, that reminds me." She set down a fuel pump to hold up a data pad, which displayed a blurry image of an aquatic creature. "Eh? Not too bad, huh?"

"Is that…is that a thalassaraptor?" asked Lefty, leaning closer to the screen. "When did you take that? You weren't…you didn't go off looking for those things again, did you?"

"Don't worry, don't worry, I wasn't out looking for trouble again!" she said. She scrolled through a few more pictures of the animal. "I took these last night, out by the bay. I dunno what it was doing this close to the base. Must've been looking for food or something."

The idea that a thalassaraptor was coming this close concerned Lefty. "Maybe we should get this show on the road, then," she said. "Hey, Tanz, how's it coming with the injectors?"

On the other side of the control tower, Tanzanite was busy observing the readouts from the injectors. "Progress is nominal," she reported. "Seventy-seven-point-three percent of new Gems have been incubated. At the currently predicted rate of gestation, we should begin to see emergences within the next three decades."

"Huh. Only thirty years?" said Righty. "Quicker than I'd have imagined. Still, that gives us plenty of time to document the planet's flora and fauna, eh, Lefty? After all, who knows how much longer it'll be around for?"

Another shrug from Lefty, who checked some more readings from the base. "I'm sure we'll have plenty of time. They're not going anywhere 'til colonization efforts start in full, and that won't happen unless we convince everyone this place is viable. So let's focus on doing that first."

"Or…or, we could just see how this plays out?" Righty looked off to the side, where Lefty assumed was over the horizon. "I mean, how often do we have an opportunity like this. And not just the two of us, I mean all of us Gems. No orders from Homeworld, no Agates breathing down our necks…just left to our own devices, able to do what we want." She smiled. "It's freeing, isn't it?"

Tanzanite leaned over. "We may not have been given direct orders, but we are still expected to finish this colony. Homeworld has just allowed us an unusual amount of independence to do so." Her aside finished, she went back to her terminal.

Lefty and Righty both shared a chuckle. "Ah, Tanz. Never change," said the latter. "But seriously, you wanna go out on an expedition once we're done here?"

"Yeah, let's do it!" Lefty said. "I wanna be the first Gem to fully catalog all the organic life on a planet!"

"Now, hang on, we better get joint credit for that!" said her sister.

Surprising both Gems within the control room, the door opened and another Gem entered. "Um, hey there!" she said meekly, waving. She entered the room quite shyly, in contrast to her size. "This is the control center, yeah?"

Tanzanite and Lefty looked at each other. "Yyyyes, it is," said Lefty. "What exactly are you doing in here? Not to be rude, but it's supposed to be authorized personnel only…"

"Yeah, sorry about that," said Yooperlite. "I was just, uh, checkin' up on my ship, and some of the guys said that something was up with the fuel pressure. They asked me to check up with you. Is it all good up here?"

Lefty looked at the monitor. "Uh, nothing seems out of the ordinary here. Are you sure they weren't just messing with you?" Yooperlite seemed to consider this as a possibility for a moment, but quickly shook her head. "How about at your end, Righty, anything going on?"

From over at the base, Righty inspected the fuel pump. "Yeah, nothing's up here. Who exactly told you about this? Oh, hang on…" She looked into the nozzle, but found nothing.

"Wait." The other two Gems turned towards Tanzanite. "Lefty, you checked the pressure on the pumps this morning, correct?"

"Yeah, and it was normal," she replied. "Why?"

Tanzanite directed them towards her monitor. "There seems to be an anomaly with the readings. I am not yet sure why, but the pressure is reading much lower than it should. It also seems to be steadily dropping."

"What!?" Lefty stormed over, staring at the screen in disbelief. "No, I-I made sure, I made sure that everything was set! There were no leaks, the pressure was fine…why are we losing fuel?"

Yooperlite glanced at the readings. "Looks like a gauge malfunction to me," she said. "Ya see that sometimes in ships. It doesn't read the pressure right, so you've actually got a lot more fuel than it says. You might–"

"Righty! Righty, hit the emergency stop!" In a panic, Lefty ran back over to her screen. "There's something–something's wrong! There's gotta be a failsafe, or a release switch, or…something!"

"Woah, hey, easy there!" Righty tried to calm her down. "What's happening now?" She had resumed refueling the ships.

"The readings on the fuel pressure were mistaken," Tanzanite explained. "As things are currently, there could be a dangerous amount of buildup in the pipes. I would recommend that you vacate the area."

Lefty shook her head. "This doesn't make any sense! This shouldn't be happening, I checked and double-checked those pipes! I-it's impossible, it…it–"

The tension that had been building was suddenly broken as the ground shook: the pipes had burst. Righty could be seen stumbling back from the sudden quake, the volatile liquid spraying from the hose. "Lefty!" she shouted.

"Go! Get out of there, now!" yelled Lefty, racing for the door. The other two followed after her, worry slowly being replaced with panic.

Tanzanite called after her to try and stop her. "Wait! Do not get close, it could be dangerous!"

"I know!" she shouted back. "That's why we have to get them out!" Now outside of the control tower, she sprinted as fast as she could go towards the base. The gallons of rushing fuel could be seen from over there. Lefty hoped, as much as she could hope, that everything would turn out fine. But she knew that a single spark, just one scrape, the slightest twitch, could…

It happened so fast, she didn't register it at first. The exact cause didn't matter: with all that volatile fluid, it could have been anything. One moment, the base was there, and the next, it had disappeared behind a massive fireball. A wave of heat washed over the land, the shockwave powerful enough to throw Lefty against the wall of the tower. She was in too much shock to acknowledge the pain. She was in too much shock to acknowledge anything, save for the ringing in her ears.

Her blurry vision could just make out the flaming wreckage of what had just a second ago been a base filled with Gems, Righty among them. Yooperlite had lifted her up, saying something which she couldn't hear. Her eyes stayed fixed on the devastation in front of her. "Ri…Righty," she whispered.

Tanzanite ran ahead of her. Her hearing came back just enough to hear her yell "Hurry! We need to put those fires out!" But Lefty knew the fires were the least of their problems. She staggered forward, moving past Yooperlite, until she was close enough to feel the heat on her face. She reached out towards it, as though expecting someone to take her hand.

Although the other two were doing what they could, there was no fixing this. Tanzanite rushed around to try and find anything–or anyone–that could be saved. Yooperlite pushed debris aside, unbothered by the heat, searching for the same. Lefty wanted to join them, but she felt helpless.

Suddenly, there was a flicker of movement coming from within the wreckage. "Hey! Is someone there!?" Yooperlite ran towards it, but the sight stopped her in her tracks. A Quartz shoved her way through some fallen metal, but she was completely engulfed in flames. Bearing a thousand-yard stare, she didn't acknowledge the fire at all. "Hey… Are you…?"

"Huh? 'M fine," the Quartz replied blankly. She limped forward. "'M fine…" Her body was overcome by a sudden glitch, Yooperlite catching her as she fell. Her gem was badly cracked, and it was only getting worse. "It's…I'm fine. I'm…"

Her body disappeared in Yooperlite's hands. Her gemstone, or the pieces of it, fell to the ground. Yooperlite scooped them up, unsure of what to do with them. She looked up at Tanzanite, who had witnessed the whole thing. If a soldier-type Gem couldn't survive this…

Lefty sat down. It was all that she could do, the only thing that was still within her power. The remaining fuel kept the fire burning bright as she struggled to comprehend what just happened. But there was one thing she knew. It didn't matter what had ignited the fuel. It didn't matter how the gauge had failed. It didn't matter that

All that mattered was that everyone and everything was gone. The base. The ships. All the Gems. Righty. Gone. And it was all her fault.


"Lefty." The Peridot's attention was drawn to Tanzanite: her tone wasn't urgent, but it did suggest that a response was desired. She stood up, heading to the front of the skiff.

"Yeah…?" Just as she asked what it was, she saw it before them. The ocean itself seemed to be glowing magenta, even brighter than the light from the stars. "Oh… This is…Emerald, check it out!"

Emerald was already gazing at the sight. "What is that?" she asked. "We haven't already reached an outpost, have we?"

As the source of the light came into view, it became apparent that the origin wasn't the sea, but rather a series of stone spires emerging from its surface. "No. Outposts typically do not have those," said Tanzanite. She slowed down to navigate the stone forest they were now passing through.

Enamored by what she was seeing, Emerald reached out to trace her fingers across the rock. "How is it doing this?" she asked. "Is it…alive?"

"Yes and no," said Lefty, instantly shifting her demeanor. "The color is partially caused by mineral deposits in these rocks, but the glow is enhanced by microorganisms that feed on those minerals. The result is the bioluminescent phenomenon we're now seeing! …What?"

Emerald had been looking at her, amused. "Nothing! It's just that you seem really passionate about that sort of thing. I think it's nice that you can get so much joy out of something that most Gems would overlook."

"Indeed," Tanzanite added. "It is one of Lefty's most endearing qualities."

She smiled. "I…I just think organics are neat, that's all. Me and Righty used to occupy ourselves by cataloging a planet's native species before they were completely…" She couldn't bring herself to say 'wiped out.' "Anyay… Hey, Yoop, wake up! You don't wanna miss this!"

"Hmm? Wuh?" Yooperlite got up slowly, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. "G'morning. …Oh, hey, pretty. Wa'shappenin'?"

"Just admiring the scenery," said Emerald. She knew about what had happened. All the events that had transpired leading up to her creation. All the deaths, all the suffering. But if these organics were any indication, if they could survive and thrive after everything that had happened to their planet, then so could her friends. "I might almost miss this place."

"Definitely worse planets out there to be stranded on!" said Yooperlite. "Hey, Lefty? You know what we should do? If we…when we make it off of here, we should try and turn this planet into one of those…what's it called? A nature reserve? Y'know, some place to have to remember everyone by. I mean, Homeworld's probably not gonna want anything to do with this planet, so what else will it be good for?"

The skiff had passed through the stone forest, leaving the glowing spires behind them. A base was out there somewhere, but there was no telling when they would reach it. It could be five minutes, it could be five years. "I think that's a great idea," said Lefty, smiling fondly. "Righty would have wanted nothing less."