Homeworld, Blue Palace
-Prior to the Centennial Court Review of Diamond Courts
Blue Diamond could be seen within a large room in shades of blue like the rest of her palace on homeworld, and presently she was looking over stacks of dataslates piled all over her desk as she sat on her turquoise colored angular chair; The matriarchal Diamond had a mix of emotions as she went over reports after reports of data of every colony under her control, from pensive to outright anger were her swirling reactions to reading the reports. Numbers were fudged to outright misappropriated gem resources for lavish unsanctioned gem balls.
Blue's eyes narrowed in seething anger while trying to stifle her overwhelming anger towards her administrator Azurite, who was supposed to take care of things while she was away to grieve over the loss of Pink. Yellow may not be as visibly emotional as her, and was quick to rationalize certain aspects of her feelings, but Blue Diamond tended to allow her emotions to shine through herself, and right now Blue was feeling very apoplectic towards her Administrator.
As Blue Diamond placed her current datalsate in her hand down to soothe her incoming emotional temper from clouding her actions, she leaned back into her chair to let the ambiance of her room mellow her out; in the background, waterfalls cascaded down on the far off walls; The aesthetic of waterfalls in her office room soothed her mind, before closing her eyes to dwell on the past.
Eyes snapping back open, Blue let out a soft groan as her mind drifted back to Pink, and how the Empire used to be with her chipper attitude, her methods of bringing all the Diamond's together with Balls and other such parties. "No." Blue Diamond said to herself with a dark look as she thought back to when recent events have shown it wasn't good for her to grieve for so long. Already it was looking like an entire fiasco had occurred while she was away to grieve, and now she couldn't be bothered to grieve in peace without her Court and Aristocrat gems stirring up trouble. Five hundred years was all it took for her Court and Gems to muck things up.
"My Diamond." Her Pearl's soft voice broke her out of her thoughts as Blue Pearl walked up to her desk with a holopad in hand, "I have more reports on the way, where would you like me to put them?" she inquired of her Diamond as she angled her head up to look towards her Diamond as she stepped beside the large chair that belonged to said Diamond.
Blue Diamond let out an annoyed sigh, and leaned back over her desk to go over her current stack of dataslates, "Have them brought in Pearl, and have them placed beside the desk." she ordered, earning a curtsy from Blue Pearl.
"As you command, my Diamond." Blue Pearl responded back softly with a small smile as she stood back up from her curtsy and made her way off to have the Blue Ametrine Quartz soldiers assist her in bringing in the piles of report for her Blue Matriarch to go over. It was good to finally see her Diamond out of her grief, but now her Diamond was faced with a series of problems all over her court.
As Blue Pearl stepped through the doorway to the personal office of Blue Diamond, it closed back up once she fully exited out and made her way towards the doorway down the hall of waterfalls that cascaded over the hallway walls; While making her way past several other doors in between gaps of waterfalls, she spotted a few Ametrine guards making their rounds of patrolling the hallways.
With a plan in motion, Blue Pearl strided over to the guards. "Ahem." She softly spoke as she approached the ametrine guards, the likes of which had similar looks to their Jasper Quartz cousin gem line but with less bulk, said guards ceased in their march to turn and face the Blue Pearl.
"I require your assistance." Blue Pearl softly said to the group of guards, who in response recognized who the pearl was and politely nodded to her, "Follow me please." she spoke next while gesturing to a doorway in the distance within another gap of the cascading waterfall walls.
As Blue Pearl and the group of Ametrine guards approached the doorway of the Pearl's destination, Blue Pearl approached the door first and placed her palm on the panel beside the door to open the doorway up. The doors opened up, allowing the Pearl and Quartz soldiers an inside look.
Pearl however frowned when she spotted Azurite of all gems along with several other high ranking gems with their backs turned to the doorway that opened up with nary a sound, and how could the gems have heard a soft opening door when every gem inside was busy smashing dataslates and using other forms of ways to scrub data clean.
"Hurry!" The Azurite Administrator yelled as she directed several gems in making a mess of the room, "Blue Diamond will be finished any hour soon, we got to wipe everything clean, we can pin the blame on some Ametrines later!" she screamed in fright, all the while earning a glare at her back from the ametrine guards and a distasteful frown from Blue Pearl.
"Excuse me." Blue Pearl soft spoke up in a louder octave than her normal vocal tone she'd often use, earning every gem to cease what they were doing while the Azurite administrator stood stock still, before steadily craning her head around to glance over her shoulder with some measure of fear. "..." the look of fear was written all over the gems' faces.
"Guards." Blue Pearl spoke with a terse but soft voice, "Arrest them, my Diamond will take care of the rest." she asked/ordered. Being Blue Diamond's pearl came with a few responsibilities and authority more than the average pearl that would be owned by any other high ranking gem, and commanding the arrest of members of her Diamond's court was amongst one of them.
With a trembling lip of fear and some anger, Azurite snarled back at the Pearl before her, "Belay that order! She's just a pearl-" she began to say, only for the pearl to cut her off by speaking.
"You are tampering with records, Azurite, you lost your authority the moment you enacted this action, and by extension, your cohorts." Blue Pearl softly intoned with firmness in her voice, "Dispose of them, Ametrines, and collect their gems for later processing." she ordered more tersely.
While the culprits within the room began looking for ways out, Blue Pearl stood and watched as the Ametrine guards rushed in and began poofing every gem. As the spectacle continued to play out, Blue Pearl spoke to herself with a frown, "This will not bode well for my Diamond, she will be very angry." she noted, right before Aministator Azurite found herself having tripped in her escape to the exit, and now laid on her stomach at the feet of Blue Pearl.
From the view below, Azurite looked up and could see the scathing look of Blue Pearl's eyes from under her hair. "Please! We can talk about-" she began to plead, only to be interrupted by the pearl.
"Shh." Blue Pearl silence her while gesturing with her finger in front of her lips while looking down at the Azurite gem below her with a scathing look in her eyes beneath her hair that could be seen by the Administrator from her position, "We just got our Diamond out from her grief, but now you've complicated matters." she softly spoke with a distasteful frown, before one of the Ametrine guards walked over to grab the Azurite by her leg and drag her back to the center of the room to be dealt with.
As Azurite let out an anguish yell of anger and fear, the Ametrine guard reared her arm back and punched Azurite's body with enough force to poof her; as the former administrator's gem clattered to the floor, Blue Pearl glanced around the room to take note of the damage done, and noticed there was still a majority of the dataslates left untouched by the guilty gems. "Collect the gems and bubble them for my Diamond to deal with later." Blue Pearl ordered the guards. "I must inform my diamond of this troubling matter."
As the guards continued doing their duty, Pearl turned on the balls of her feet and began to exit out of the room, "Come to Blue Diamond's office once you were done with the bubbled gems in hand." she finished ordering before exiting out of the room to confront her Diamond and deliver the distressing news.
Present
From the point of when Blue Pearl broke the news to her Diamond, it was pure chaos as the Blue Diamond Matriarch ordered an entire lockdown across her palace and territory on Homeworld; while the planet did belong to White Diamond first and foremost, the granted territories to each diamonds were gifts as a means to keep all the Diamond present on one planet, rather than scattered across the stars on their own colonies.
After several days all the way to the present, Blue Diamond had furiously gone over every report given to her and by each day her mood was soured until the day of the Centennial court review that each Diamond underwent to go over the progress of the Empire at large and the statistics of their own colonies.
At present from Blue Pearl's point of view, she couldn't help but deal with her Diamond's aura as it washed over her from the anger her Diamond felt as she dealt with every guilty party within the centennial court review. The angry red aura caused quite the tremor throughout the palace, and Pearl could only fathom how much Yellow Diamond's palace received any of it from how far her Diamond's aura could travel.
As Pearl watched her Diamond finish poofing the last guilty gem within the room, leaving only sparse few remaining gems to be part of her upper court echelon, a call eventually pinged from her diamond's podium at the auditorium-like room; the entire set-up was styled into an underwater menagerie with clams as chairs and a running creak at the base floor lining the walls, as with all of her Diamond's artistic style, she enjoyed the thematic view of water and all that it encompasses.
While Sodalite grabbed her Diamond's attention to tell her Diamond that she was receiving a call from Yellow Diamond, Blue Pearl momentarily glanced around the room as she stood not far from her Diamond, quite a bit of the walls were cracked from her Diamond's emotional outbursts.
Bringing herself out her thoughts, Blue pearl walked over to the podium and offered to accept the incoming call for her diamond. "Allow me, my Diamond." she spoke softly, earning the go ahead from the Blue Diamond Matriarch.
As her Diamond began talking with Yellow Diamond on the other end of the video call, Blue Pearl allowed her to go back to her thoughts as she stood back away from the podium; there was much do to for the blue court to recover from this mess, and while it wasn't her place to know the more intricate ways to reorganize, restructure, and even fix the mess that was Azurite's embezzlements and those that aided her. What Blue Pearl did know was that quite a bit of the Blue court would be left open for new gems to fill, which meant her Diamond would be busy for quite some time.
Yellow Palace
Elsewhere within the grand building of Yellow Diamond, within the general quarters for the lower caste of gems, i.e quartz soldiers and the like, the place was abuzz with activity as gems busied themselves in keeping themselves occupied; In one of the spacious rooms allocated for soldier gems to retreat to and await their next orders and missions, a cacophony of conversations filled the large room.
Said large room had its own share of arenas to allow the gem soldiers to sharpen their skills against one another, a practice done to keep all gems from letting their capabilities from atrophying; In one of the arenas was Skinny, while in another Was Jasper, both seemed to be in an unofficial contest who could last the most rounds against other quartz soldiers, who seemed all the more thrilled at fighting against the legendary Jasper Quartz from Pink Diamond's colony. The gem soldiers going up against Skinny on the other hand were just as thrilled at throwing their lot against the off color, only to be proven she could best them just as well as the other Jasper in the other arena.
While the sounds of gem weapons clanging against each other filled the air just as much as the cacophony of conversations between various gems, off to the side stood Lapis with her arms crossed as she leaned up against a wall. No matter how often she has hung around with the lower caste of gems while she's been under the command of Citrine, it's always a surreal experience for her to be amongst Quartz soldiers and their variations that came with the Quartz line of soldiers. Lapis Lazulis were the common elite of the Gem empire, which afforded her quite the experience of seeing how different the hierarchy of caste interacted amongst each other of the same caste level.
Lapis watched on with an indifferent expression as she witnessed Skinny easily dispatch a heavy class quartz soldier by utilizing some sort of counterforce to launch the gem out of the ring and give the match to the off color, with a small smile of amusement, Lapis couldn't help but look at the faces of the other gems at how easily the off color won the match. 'Some of these gems haven't even gotten the chance to actually see combat, yet they think just because she's an off color, they'll be the ones to easily win the match.' Lapis thought to herself as the cacophony of cheers and excitement filled the area from the audience of gems watching the matches.
Back to her previous thoughts on the matter of caste hierarchy, Lapis reminisced to herself on how her fellow Lapis Lazulis would interact with each other during their missions of terraforming planets; sure she'd have fun with her fellow lapis gems, but it didn't exactly feel like how the quartz gems had fun tossing each other in friendly matches. 'Pretty sure if my gem line did the exact same thing, there wouldn't be a planet left.' Lapis thought to herself sardonically, thinking back to how capable a lapis could sheer through objects with the power of water alone. The very thought of Lapis Lazulis practicing their powers against each other was an amusing thought.
Oh sure, Commander Citrine had acquisition a few other lapis lazulis to combat the growing rebel gem problem, but it was just that, the Lapis Lazulis were used strictly for taking out other gems, not once have they been required to brush up on their combat skills, as her gem line was more or less used as a ranged class under Commander Citrine; not once were any Lapis Lazulis used for close up and personal combative purposes.
Afterall, her gem line was on the upper spectrum of gem power, depending if they were on a planet with water off course, and last she checked, Commander Citrine once said she should have acquisitioned more Lapis Lazulis while on Pink Diamond's planet; the planet was already seventy percent water, which would have put Lapis on a home field advantage with how abundant the water was on the planet.
"Hey!" A voice broke Lapis out of her thoughts, prompting her to look down at the approaching off color Carnelian; the shortstack gem was waving over at her while 8xG and 8xJ followed beside her, "I figured you'd be down here amongst us." She noted as the beta kindergarten gem and the two prime quartz gems of earth approached the Lapis gem.
Lapis allowed a small smile to grace her feature as she lifted her hand up from out of her crossed arms to greet the three gems, "Hey." She greeted back as the gems stood beside her to watch the ongoing matches within the arenas between quartz soldiers. "Shouldn't you three and skinny be on that human zoo soon?" she asked the three gems to pass the time.
Carnelian, who stood beside Lapis now, waved off her question, "Pft, nah, Blue Diamond ended up having to use the human zoo space station as her means to get back to homeworld, since she used it to travel to planet F78." she answered with a snarky attitude of amusement.
Amethyst 8xG that stood beside Carnelian, spoke up next with an amused chuckle, "Imagine Homeworld's first reaction when she came back using the human zoo as her transportation, only for her blue arm ship to arrive some time later after the pilots tried to catch up with their Diamond." the Amethyst remarked, earning a few chuckles from the other Quartz gems and an amused expression from Lapis.
"Yeah." Lapis remarked as she thought back to seeing in space the Human zoon within orbit of Homeworld. "I'm sure it was quite the spectacle." she commented back at the Amethyst gem beside Carnelian.
"Hey." Amethyst 8xJ spoke up as she stood beside Lapis, opposite of Carnelian, "you wanna spar some?" she asked while pointing to an available ring, and then punched her palm with her fist with an excited expression, "I haven't seen you interact much with the others, how about you loosen up some?" she asked Lapis.
Lapis let out a small chuckle, and shook her head, "Pass, I'm not exactly built for hand to hand combat, I'm more suited to fight with water, in case you forgot."
"Nonsense!" Carnelian spoke up with her fists clenched in eager excitement and hopped to grab Lapis by the hand and pull her into the available ring, "You're already here, so why not loosen up a bit?" she prodded the Lapis gem, who looked like she'd rather be anywhere but in her current situation.
Meanwhile from the entrance to the large room of rowdy quartz soldiers, the doors opened up with the presence of Yellow Pearl, Orange Pearl, and an angry Spinel who looked on the verge of throwing one of the Pearls through the wall. "And here is where Yellow Diamond allows her soldiers to let loose and sharpen their skills against each other." Yellow Pearl said as she gestured for Spinel to see, a general tour was given to the Pink gem, as she had never visited the Yellow Palace in her lifetime and right now was good as any to occupy Pink gem's time while Citrine was busy with her duties under Yellow Diamond.
"Who cares about some stupid room for quartz gems!" Spinel threw her hands up in exasperation, "I want to go see how Pink's palace is doing!" she whined in anger.
Orange Pearl tapped her index fingers against each other as she stood beside Spinel with a simple but tense smile, "Spinel, we've been over this, we can't exactly take you there without either Blue diamond's or Yellow Diamond's permission."
"Ugh!" Spinel made an exasperated sound as she hunched over and drooped her arms down like noodles off a fork, "You both bore me! None of this tour is any fun!" she tilted her head back with a whine and fell onto her rear to sigh more dramatically.
Yellow Pearl rolled her eyes and sniffed haughty, "We don't do fun here, the Yellow Palace is for serious business." she remarked.
Spinel shot a dirty look at the Yellow Pearl, "You're the one that's no fun, I can see why Pink said she thought you were boring and full of hot hair." she shot back with an annoyed dark look.
Yellow Pearl gasped and palmed her chest in an aghast manner, "Why, I never!" she remarked towards the insult so to her by the spinel gem. "I am not full of hot air, I am in fact a percentage of-" she was about to say more, only for the sudden toss of Carnelian's small body to slam into the nearby wall adjacent to the doorway. "Oh Stars!" she remarked.
While Carnelian pried herself out from the wall with raucous laughter, before sprinting back, she yelled out, "See, told you that move would work, now try again, but this time with more from your hips!"
Both Pearls looked astonished and shocked towards where a surprised Lapis had her arms out in an after pose of having thrown the Carnelian with a move she taught her, Spinel on the other hand looked excited and bounced up to balance on the balls of her feet, "That looks fun! I wanna join in!" she remarked, before heading into the room.
While Spinel went off into the room to interact with the common rabble that were Quartz soldiers and one Lapis Lazuli, Yellow Pearl turned her head to glance directly over at Orange Pearl. "Should we just leave her here, or…?" she left the question hanging for the other Pearl to answer.
Orange Pearl looked back at Yellow Pearl, and offered a shrug, "Our Diamond and Commander are both busy, so I suppose we should keep an eye on Pink Diamond's Spinel."
"Hmm. Yes." Yellow Pearl remarked with a dry look directly back out towards where the Pink Spinel gem went off to, and watched as the gem joined one of the arenas. "Should we worry for her safety though?"
"Who safety?" Orange Pearl asked with a raised eyebrow directed back at the Yellow Pearl, "We're dealing with Pink Diamond's Spinel gem."
Yellow Pearl then grimaced, "Oh, right, she's that Spinel, a Diamond Rated spinel at that. I almost forgot she's the top of her gem line compared to other court jesters."
AN: Hope ya'll enjoyed this chapter, and happy new year!
