Outer Reaches of the Patet Sol System

'Thwoom' after 'thwoom' of space being distorted from gem ships finally reaching the solar system of White Diamond's many colonized planets and moons, several dozen small gem ships blipped into existence from exiting out of their warp speed. Within a gem ship that was one of many of the gem forces that would soon begin their covert operation on the planet Albus 01, Skinny Jasper felt a rather euphoric feeling of finally getting deployed on a mission; the covert operation was a rather tricky one at that, but so long as everyone did their part, the mission would go off without a hitch with perhaps some minor hiccups along the way should their presence be discovered on the planet.

Crazy as it sounded to Skinny Jasper, but apparently with the amount of ships and teams their Citrine commander sent ahead, involved multiple stages and plans to make the invasion of planet Albus easier; Skinny only got the barebones gist of what was supposed to go down, something about a team of Era 2 Peridots would go in to disrupt communications, another front had any remaining ships to stay in space and attack any ships that leave the planet and extract any gems that were on the list that White Diamond was getting rid of.

Skinny was just glad her part of the operation was more simple, and didn't cause her head to spin with the amount of operations that would be put in effect on the planet; Her simple duty was to 'save' as many gems on the planet, and direct them to the nearest extraction points. Simple as.

Yeah, simple, as if White Diamond's colonized planets were probably the least amount of defended planets within the Diamond Empire.

"Approaching outer limits of planetary surveillance systems, adjusting to evasive maneuvers, please stand by…" The Nephrite Head Captain spoke over the intercoms that could be heard in every ship of their forces headed for White Diamond's colonized planet.

Skinny Braced herself as her ship she was in, was herded with the leading ship of the flotilla of gem ships swerved through space from one planet to the next at high speeds; she could feel the barest amount of the gravity wells as her ship avoided any and all ships under White Diamond's planetary surveillance patrols, just staying outside of their radars that was most likely in their waning years before being replaced to a more sophisticated system with more range.

In the distance from out of the window of her gem ship, Skinny could see the planet of their destination; A beep sounded in her ear piece, prompting Skinny to touch the gem tech on her ear to pick the call up. "Yeah?" She spoke with a candid attitude and smarmy smile, all the while hiding the anxiety of executing her first mission under Commander Citrine.

" Yo! Skinny! You ready to rock that planet's world!?" Carnelian spoke with a rather snarky attitude and excited tone, " We finally get to be deployed! Can you believe it?!" The short stack Carnelian said, Skinny could already imagine the gleeful expression of the little gem's face.

Skinny couldn't fault Carnelians attitude, they were both pretty much gems that emerged with faults in them, but for some reason, Commander Citrine didn't look at them like so many other higher ups of Gem society; She didn't know what Yellow Diamond had in mind when she made the Citrine gem they've all come to know and respect, but it seemed whatever method Yellow Diamond had used, Commander Citrine seems to break the mold of what's expected of an ordinary Citrine Quartz gem.

Not that she wasn't complaining at all, but it would be nice to see more Gems like commander Citrine.

Skinny shifted a bit on her feet as she held her hand up to her ear to listen and speak to Carnelian on the other end, "Well, don't get too excited." she jested with a smirk forming on her lips, Skinny glanced out the window of the ship she was on, and pondered which ship Carnelian was on. "This isn't a normal combat routine, afterall." she remarked.

"Tch, yeah…hey, are we allowed to discuss what we're supposed to do?" Carnelian asked from the other end of the call with a puzzled tone.

Skinny glanced back to the window of the ship where she could see the Planet Albus 01 coming into full view finally, "Carnelian, if you had listened to Commander Citrine's briefing, we're supposed to keep the bare minimum of communication once we're within range of the planet's communication's system." she chided the Carnelian gem.

"Oh! Hehe, whoops." Carnelian responded, Skinny could already imagine the expression of the short stack gem, embarrassed.

A ding went off in the ship's comms, letting everyone know the Head captain of the Flotilla was about to speak, " Please cut off all radio chatter for the next few hours we are within the outer limits of the planet's, initiating phase one, all ships, prepare for stealth systems to engage…check…"

Skinny's earpiece shut off, signifying that Carnelian was following the orders, as was she once she pressed into her gem tech on her ear, and waited for the next phase of the operation to begin. Already, she could see out her window the many other ships becoming next to invisible in the backdrop of outer space. If Skinny remembered right, the stealth tech was rather new, and in its experimental phase, thus they only had a window of a few minutes for their ships to fly into the atmosphere of the planet and land somewhere unseen and undetected before the stealth tech ran out its timer within every ship.

"All hands, prepare for phase two, initiating plan White Shadow. Prepare in Three…Two…one…"

Skinny watched and felt as her ship zoomed down to the planet of Albus 01, flew through the upper atmosphere and passed several gem skyscrapers before her ship landed within an open bay for ships. On her way down to the surface of the planet, Skinny swore she saw flames burning out the windows of various buildings; she was sure the acts of the gems responsible for such an act could all be swept under a rock, once they abducted every gem on the list, and welcome them into the service of Yellow Diamond. Unlike a rebel gem, the gems they were 'saving' were already tossed aside by White Diamond; thus with some loopholes on Commander Citrine's planning part, they could essentially be seen as saviors to the 'disposed' gems.

All around her, Skinny could see her fellow lithe Quartz gems that were unwanted by gem society, she shared a smirk with them all as the door to the outside of the ship lowered down and allowed them to disembark. "Alright girls, you ready?" she asked as she cracked her knuckles, a rather pointless action since she didn't have any bones, but her hard light body still allowed her to make the action sound out.

Skinny was rather glad to see she wasn't the only skinny quartz soldier in existence, and she didn't know how Commander Citrine managed to gather them all, but she said something about their bodies being perfect for this particular mission.

Gems ranging from Amethysts to Carnelians had various types of lithe skinny bodies, and they all found camaraderie with her and each other; They all shared excited chuckles, before Skinny exited first to find her first batch of gems to 'save' and bring back to the extraction point.

Governess' Gem Palace of Albus 01

Situated in the midst of all the gem skyscrapers of the Ecumenopolis planet, was a pristine white palace with shades of gray to highlight parts of its more prominent white architecture pillars and sculptures that lined the palace walls; a good amount of flat land separated it from the rest of the other structures, allowing to stand out more amongst all the city landscape.

The palace building was for the planetary gem governess in charge of managing the planet in place of her Diamond, and said gem was a Pure White Garnet; the Governess stood within her office, and was facing the large opened window of her work room that she did her work of managing the planet in. Twin Hair drills flowed from out of her hair and down to her waist, all in the stark color of semi-transparent white hair follicles; Her eyes were gray gems, and her face was that of an amused expression as she watched the city outside the limits of her palace go up in flames somewhat.

The Pure White Garnet Governess wore a pristine white dress with sleeves that had ruffles at the end framing her wrists, while the rest contoured around her body and flowed down around her legs with a slit to allow her to walk with long strides in her white crystal-like high heels. The gem governess had her arms crossed as she mulled on a few thoughts on how to fix the mess after all was done and over with. White Garnet could deal with the fallout, all of this was planned, this was expected after all. Those lower caste gems had their time, now it was time to ship them off and allow the planet to shine better than before with better gems and technology.

The door to her office opened, prompting White Garnet to turn and face who was disturbing her at the moment. "Who dares-" her words were caught in her throat when it was Forsterite that allowed herself in with a rather excited expression. "Oh, it's you." she remarked. "Forsterite…" White Garnet spoke with a measured tone as she cautiously watched as the Forsterite gem walked over to her desk in between them. "I'm afraid you caught me at a busy moment…"

"I can see that!" Forsterite gushed as she clasped her hands up next to her head, "And I'm here to deliver some fantastic news!"

Governess Garnet lifted an eyebrow, and answered back, "Hrm…Let me guess…" she began to say as she placed her hand on her hip, and whipped out a fan in the other to cover her mouth as she allowed an rather manic smile to be expressed. "Our Diamond is offering me the entire solar system to govern."

Forsterite cackled and smirked at Garnet's guess, and leaned forward a bit to say with her hands on her hips "Oh no, my dear Garnet! Yellow Diamond sent her Citrine Commander to confiscate the gems she's removing from this planet!" She celebrated by raising her arms up.

White Garnet's eye twitched, before she lowered her fan and allowed a terse smile to be seen as she spoke with the Forterite gem, "That's not good news, Forsterite…that's BAD NEWS!" she shrieked at the end, causing her hair to fray a bit, lifted her hands up to clench at the air, "I can contain this mess, we don't need that stupid gem on our glorious Diamond's planet!"

Forsterite giggled at the Garnet's expression, before correcting her. "Oh no." she wagged her finger at the governess, "She wasn't sent here to help, she was sent here to take the discarded gems."

Governess Garnet blinked at the information given to her, "...Well…we can't have that, can we now…" she numbly spoke with a rather unsettling smile, "That Yellow Diamond should keep her business out of things that don't belong to her."

Forsterite clapped her hands together once, "A good reason as any, to test the new Quartz soldiers, right~?" she goaded the White Garnet with a preening smile.

"Hmph." Governess Garnet harrumphed and smiled demurely as she turned around the face the window of her office, "Quite! I'll be sure to show that upstart gem that she's about to face her first loss, oho." she chortled a bit at the thought of embarrassing the upstart Citrine Commander.

"And when is that Commander due to reach the planet?" White Garnet asked with a rather excited smile as she watched the cityscape go up in flames from the gems that were revolting in response to being discarded.

"Hmm." Forstorite mulled over her thoughts, before smiling as she answered the White Garnet. "Depending on a few factors, I'd say within a few days at the very least."

Governess Garnet allowed a toothy grin to split across her face, and rubbed her palms together, "Good, good! Enough time to ready the Chalcedony Soldiers for actual combat experience." she remarked.

While the White Garnet was enjoying herself on the thought of pulling one of the Citrine Commander, Forsterite on the other hand was amused at the fact that the governess didn't ask about if there was already a force on the planet. She could have told the Governess Garnet about it much like she told that Commander Citrine was on her way once her ship was fixed, but realistically, she didn't want to aid the governess the whole way.

Afterall, it's not very often she would get a chance to watch this kind of 'covert' warfare, it also would not hurt to see how well the new line of quartz gems will fare; win or lose, the end results will give the empire excellent data on how well their gems operate in war.

Afterall…everything is according to her glorious Diamond's plans.

Elsewhere on the planet

Corundum and Fayalite at the moment were amongst the thousand's other gems that were running wherever they could for cover inside buildings, while Chalcedony Quartz soldiers were busy fighting against the Herkimer Quartz gems that were among the list of gems to be relocated off the planet. As the two gems in question dove aside into an open doorway of a building for items requisition, a stray destabilizer round whizzed past them and exploded into a group of Bismuth gems that were trying to help get other gems escape, only to be caught up in all the crossfire.

While the Bismuth gems poofed, Corundum peaked around the open doorway to check on the situation, "Sheesh." She spoke through all the chaos erupting in the streets of the undercity of the planet, "You'd think those New Chalcedony Quartz gems would be less indiscriminate, but it just goes to show that newly emerged gems are more prone to not question orders." she remarked, before being pulled back inside the building by Fayalite.

Fayalite had her hands on Corundum's shoulders as she looked down at her below her hair fringes. "We gotta keep moving Cor! This isn't the time to gawk and watch." she said with a tone of admonishment.

"Hehe." Corundum chuckled awkwardly, while rubbing the back of her head in embarrassment, "Right, sorry, it's just been far too long since anything has happened on this planet." she smiled grimly.

Fayalite shook her head and held Corundum's hand to lead the way to a nearby set of stairs on the other side of a front desk that led up through the building they were in, "Come on, I believe this building has an overhang above the monorail system, we can try and catch a ride on an incoming train and escape this mess!" Fayalite commented while she led Corundum close behind her, both hopping over the counter and towards the stairs, before running up said stairway.

As the two gems disappeared from sight up the stairway, a tall and lithe gem slipped her way into the building, and hugged the wall beside the open doorway; letting out a sigh of relief, her eyes drifted to where the two prior gems escaped up the set of stairs. It was Skinny Jasper, and she was seeing why Commander Citrine said her form was perfect for infiltration. She could fit through crevices, nooks and crannies, and all sorts of vents that a normal Jasper couldn't. Maybe that's why her commander sent all of the lithe off color quartz gems on this kind of mission…makes sense in a way. Her fellow Skinny off color quartz gems had almost the same strength of a normal Quartz soldier, but their lithe bodies allowed them to bend and contort better.

And if Skinny remembered right, she once heard her Commander Citrine putting in a request for more Lithe Quartz soldiers, something about creating a subgroup of gems of their gem line for this exact purpose. While the normal Quartz soldiers were more suited to open warfare, her Citrine Commander saw fit that the lithe off color quartz soldiers had a better purpose for the sort of thing she was doing right now; infiltrating the planet as best as she could, squeeze her way past the security systems, whatever it took for her to be able to sneak past every security checkpoint.

Skinny smirked as she creeped her way up the stairway, her objectives not far from earshot beyond the chaos happening outside the building. ' I thought those drills Citrine put us through were odd, but it looks like it's paying off.' she thought to herself as she stuck to keeping her feet from making too much noise as she followed the Corundum and Fayalite gems up through the empty building.

Meanwhile, back with Corundum and Fayalite, the two gems finally reached the overhanging part of the building that was a hallway leading across the ground and monorail track below it and into another building; Large industrial windows lined the walls on both sides of the bridge hallway, Fayalite approached the right side of the hallway bridge after releasing her hold on Corundum's hand. "Come on." Fayalite said as she pushed a window open.

In the distance, the sound of a monorail train could be heard coming their way, and soon, it could be seen on the outside from out of the many windows. "Ready?!" Fayalite shouted over the loud noise of the chaos happening outside, Corundum gave Fayalite a thumbs up and excited smile. "You bet!" she shouted back, before they both climbed over the window sill, and hopped over to land atop the running monorail train.

Back with Skinny, she let out an annoyed grunt, and hopped out of the window as well, and landed on the last train car, while in the distance, the two gems she was after were already climbing inside the train car they landed atop. "Really making me work for it, aren't ya." Skinny remarked with an amused smirk as she climbed down and entered the door of the train car she landed atop.

Tanya

While she expected this to happen, she just didn't think it would be so off putting. "Spinel, You can't keep denying what happened to Pink Diamond!" Tanya berated Spinel as she sat on her chair's armrest within the bridge, all the while kicking her feet and humming a happy tone.

"Pshaw" Spinel waved Tanya off with an eyeroll, "Don't be silly, Pink's just probably playing some new game of hers, she wasn't cracked, silly." she giggled a bit offkey with a glint in her eyes that spelled trouble.

Tanya sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, ' She's going through two stages of grief, she already skipped and went to anger, now she's in denial!' she thought to herself in exasperation.