Tammo had been thrown into a cell, and once again, he'd been seperated from Pasque. This time, he couldn't even hear her answer when he called to her. He was really worried about Pasque. He needed her, and she needed him. He prayed for his release and a safe return home with Pasque.
"All right, could we get this trial thingy over with already?" he called out. "Whatever Homeworld has in store for me... I'm ready!"
No one answered him.
"I said, I'm ready!"
Still no answer.
"Hello? Anybeast? Is this the punishment? Come on! I know it's going to be worse than this! So whatever you're going to do... WOULD YOU JUST DO IT ALREADY?"
More silence. Tammo started going crazy. He pulled off his shirt and threw it across the room. He shouted song lyrics and lines from his favorite TV shows at random, even pretended to be a genie with light brown hair for a while. Then he threw himself on the floor and banged on the cell door with both his footpaws. But it was useless. No one paid him any heed. Eventually, he dozed off and slept for a few hours.
He was awakened when the door opened and a blue Gem walked in. She appeared extremely nervous. "Are you Rose Quartz?" she asked. "My name is Zircon. I'm your lawyer."
Tammo sat up. "No, I'm Tammo Quartz Tussock. Rose Quartz was my mother."
Zircon buried her face in her hands. "They told me you'd gone insane and didn't know who you were. How am I supposed to defend you when you're in this state? What did I ever do to deserve this? I must be the unluckiest Gem in the galaxy!"
"I'm not insane!" Tammo said angrily. "I swear to you, I'm telling the truth!"
Zircon sighed. "Let's just get this over with."
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In the center of the courtroom, Tammo and his lawyer sat in the middle of a triangle shaped platform. Along the wall was a stage with three giant thrones sitting on it, one blue, one yellow, and one white.
Another Zircon entered the room. She looked just like the one defending Tammo, except that she was yellow instead of blue. Tammo supposed this must be the prosecuting lawyer.
Yellow Zircon looked over at Blue Zircon and smirked. "Defending a rebel? Isn't that treason?"
Blue Zircon clenched her fists. "I was assigned to this!"
Two Pearls teleported into the room. One was blue, the other yellow.
"All rise for the luminous Yellow Diamond!" Yellow Pearl said.
"And the lustrous Blue Diamond!" Blue Pearl added.
Then Yellow Diamond and Blue Diamond themselves warped in. Tammo's jaw dropped. This was his first glimpse of the Diamonds. He had not expected them to be so big. They were easily ten or twenty times his size!
"I say, aren't there supposed to be three of them?" he whispered to his lawyer. "Where's White Diamond, wot?"
"Most of the time, White just stays up in her tower and lets Blue and Yellow run things by themselves," Blue Zircon whispered back. "Now shh. They're about to start talking."
The two Diamonds looked around the court. "Where is the accused?" Blue Diamond asked.
Yellow Diamond looked down at Tammo. "Is that Rose Quartz? Look at the hideous form she's taken. Those gigantic ears are way out of proportion with the rest of her body!"
"What's wrong with my ears?" Tammo piped up. "I like 'em just fine!" A horror stricken look appeared on Blue Zircon's face.
Yellow Diamond leaned toward Tammo, glaring. "I should just shatter you right here and now, Rose. Forget the trial!"
"No," said Blue Diamond. "I want to hear her make her case. I want to know what she thinks we're going to do to her, so I can do something even worse!" Tammo gulped in fright.
"Fine," said Yellow Diamond. They both sat down. "Let's just get on with it, shall we?"
The prosecuting Zircon stepped forward. "My Diamond," she began. "My brilliant, opulent, radiant, glimmering..."
Yellow Diamond cut her off. "'My Diamond' will suffice, or we'll never get through this."
"Of course, my Diamond." Yellow Zircon cleared her throat. "Rose Quartz committed a crime so unprecedented that one can't help but wonder why. Exhibit A."
The two Amethyst guards hauled Pasque into the courtroom and deposited her at the Diamonds' feet. "Pasque!" Tammo yelled.
Pasque whipped her head around wildly from side to side. "I say, what the deuce is going on here? Who are these giant ladies?"
Yellow Zircon snapped her fingers, and a giant air bubble appeared over Pasque's head, muffling her voice. "This is an Earth creature called a 'hare,'" she said. "As we can see from this specimen, hares are loud, absolutely hideous creatures that serve no purpose whatsoever. What sort of Gem would turn on her own kind for this? I'll tell you what kind." She pointed at Tammo. "That kind."
"Let Pasque go!" said Tammo. "She's got nothing to do with this!"
"There it is," said Yellow Zircon. "The passion, the fury that caused the diabolical Rose Quartz to shatter her own Diamond! Now, I'd like to call an eyewitness."
A platform rose up from beneath the floor. A Ruby stood on top of it. She had only one eye, and her gemstone was in the place where the other eye should have been. "Tell the court about how you saw Rose Quartz kill Pink Diamond," Yellow Zircon said to the Ruby.
The Ruby said, "Pink Diamond had just stepped outside of her palanquin and had only taken a few steps forward when Rose attacked her from the front!"
"Oh, come on!" Tammo shouted. "Are you really gonna trust the testimony of someone with only one eye?"
The Ruby went on, "Rose had a sword in her hand. I saw her drive it right into Pink Diamond's belly and shatter her gemstone to bits!"
"And there you have it," Yellow Zircon said. "Rose Quartz did it and that's Rose Quartz." She pointed at Tammo. "I rest my case."
"Well, I'm convinced," said Yellow Diamond. "Time to execute!"
Blue Diamond held up a hand. "Not yet. The defense still has to speak."
"Right," Blue Zircon said nervously. "Rose Quartz is flawed, I grant you. A shallow strata-Gem who turned against her own kind out of a misguided attachment to a planet and creatures like these." She indicated Pasque down on the ground. "It's indisputable that as the Diamond overseeing Earth, Pink was Rose Quartz's enemy. Rose had everything to gain by shattering her."
"Thought you were supposed to be on my side," Tammo muttered.
"But even though Rose may have wanted to shatter Pink Diamond, could she have?" Blue Zircon asked. "Because at the time that Pink was shattered, Rose Quartz had been a recognized threat for several hundred years. So how did she get so close to Pink in the first place, without anyone stopping her? Where were Pink Diamond's attendants? Her Agates, her Sapphires? And where was her Pearl?"
Yellow Diamond slammed her fists down on her throne. "They were with her, of course!"
"And yet, none of them saw Rose Quartz approach," Blue Zircon said. "Shouldn't Pink's Sapphires have seen Rose coming? Wouldn't her Agates have tried to fight Rose off?"
"She must have slipped past them!" Yellow Diamond said angrily.
"Even if she did, wouldn't her Pearl have cried out an alarm?" Blue Zircon countered. "No, whoever did this was already close to Pink Diamond. Someone her guards would allow to get near her, someone she would listen to when asked to stop her palanquin and step outside, and someone with the authority to cover it up afterwards! Someone with supreme authority. Someone... like one of you!" She pointed at both the Diamonds.
Blue Diamond gasped loudly in disbelief. Yellow Diamond stood up and advanced toward Blue Zircon.
"Uh, disregard that last statement," Blue Zircon said. "I might have gotten carried away!"
Yellow Diamond reached down and crushed Blue Zircon with a finger, poofing her.
"Case closed," Yellow Zircon said smugly. "Right, my Diamond?"
Yellow Diamond turned around angrily and fired an electric blast from her hand at Yellow Zircon, who screamed as her body destabilized and poofed as well.
Blue Diamond ran up to Yellow Diamond. "Yellow, stop! Why are you doing this?" The two Diamonds started to argue with each other. Tammo saw that they were distracted and seized his chance to escape. He leaped out of the witness box and ran over to Pasque, popping the bubble that encased her with his finger.
"We gotta go!" he said.
Tammo and Pasque ran out of the courtroom. The Amethyst guards saw them leaving and chased after them. They dashed through the halls of the prison, with more Amethyst guards spotting them and joining the pursuit, but they managed to elude them all and make it outside.
Once outside, they looked around for a place to hide. They saw two giant carriages parked outside the prison. One was blue, the other yellow.
"I bet those belong to the Diamonds," Tammo said. "They must be palanquins, like the one Pink was killed stepping out of." He hopped into the blue palanquin. Pasque followed him.
They jumped up onto the seats inside. "Hopefully they won't think to look for us here," Tammo said.
"I say, wonder how you make it move," said Pasque. "There's nothing to pull it along."
Just then Tammo accidentally touched the wall of the palanquin, and it took off, racing down the street. "Guess that's how, wot," he said.
Yellow and Blue Diamond came bursting outside. They saw the palanquin moving away. Yellow Diamond shot another blast of electricity out of her hand. It hit the palanquin. The palanquin went flying through the air and fell into a gaping hole in the ground, with Tammo and Pasque still inside!