Citrine's gem

Finding herself inside what looked like her mind's interpretation of organization every aspect about her, she had opened her eyes to the sight of an ever expansive office room with many cubicles; said cubicles were stationed by various iterations of herself, some look like her previous life and other went further back to her first life,

If Citrine wanted to bet on anything, it was probably her soul's memory having been imprinted by the memories of her past lives, and was using them as figureheads as a means to an end.

That, or her gem was indeed an aspect of some very high tech magical computer that was able to scour the thoughts of the soul and use what it needed to make up what she saw before her…

This was indeed all new to her, as Citrine never once experienced being poof, and how here she was standing in the midst of a large office space with several cubicles filled by different looking versions of her first and second life.

"My Citrine?" A voice spoke up behind her, prompting her to jump a bit from the sudden call out to her, before she turned to face who it was that called her name. "Yes?" she asked while turning around.

Standing before her was Orange Pearl with a worried look on her face, "Did I fail? Were you poofed too by whatever assailant was spying on us?" she asked in a fretting manner while examining her Commander.

Citrine placated Pearl by holding her hands out to halt the pearl from worrying, "The circumstances of how I got poofed were different pearl." she scolded her gem assistant, while Orange Pearl ducked her head in embarrassment of worrying too much.

While Pearl kept her head down, Citrine explained what had led to her body being poofed.

Orange Pearl lifted her arm up to cover her mouth in shock, "Oh dear…I-I, Yellow Diamond is not going to like this." she remarked after being filled in on what happened while her pearl gem was stored inside Citrine's gem.

"By the way." Citrine curiously tapped her chin as she inspected Pearl, "I'm surprised you're already able to form yourself inside my gem…" she then eyed Pearl up and down with a scrutinizing gaze, "While this had been my first time being poofed, wouldn't this be your…" Citrine glanced up as she mentally counted the times her Pearl threw herself in harm's way to protect her Citrine, "Ninth time being poofed?" she asked while raising an eyebrow.

Orange Pearl fidgeted a bit in her place when she was put under the scrutinizing gaze of her Citrine, "Ten, actually."

Citrine nodded a bit, "Ah, right…" She mused, and looked back down at Orange Pearl, "Have you already undergone your reformation, or is this an aspect of yourself that you are able to show while inside my gem."

Orange Pearl brightened up at the question given, "Oh, well, by my calculations, I should be able to reform my gem body in about two days, and yes, I am Pearl's inner aspect of herself!" She then palmed her chest while making a prideful expression.

"I am in charge of organizing the items she puts into her gem!" She preened at her explanation.

Citrine shifted on her feet a bit while standing across from Pearl as she explained her purpose, the commander gave a nod of understanding to Orange Pearl. "Two days…" she murmured to herself while idly looking off to the side in thought all the while cupping her chin.

Orange Pearl furrowed her brow in worry as she wrung her hands a bit, "My apologies, but would you prefer the time table to shorten?" she asked while fretting over Citrine's behavior.

Holding her palm up away from her chin, Citrine made a placating gesture, "No, no, take your time, it's me that needs to rush, I have a schedule to keep up with and I need to figure out how to properly expedite myself in forming my body back out of my gem." she answered with a concerned look.

"Oh!" Orange Pearl remarked, "I see! Then I'll make sure to relay the news back to Pearl!" she clasped her hands in exuberance.

Citrine then looked back at Orange Pearl with a focused look, "By the way, where is Pearl's gemstone? I'm gonna have to assume you have it otherwise…" she inquired with a curious look in her eyes.

"Ah, yes." Orange Pearl began to say as she picked up a briefcase and held out flatly to Citrine for her to see as Pearl easily unlatched the buckles, and showed the dormant pearl gemstone. "I must say, I do enjoy how you compartmentalize your stuff inside your gem, and an aspect of yourself even showed me how to store my own documents in this wonderful looking box!"

Citrine looked down at the Pearl, before looking back up at Organizer Orange Pearl as she shut the briefcase back up and set it aside, "Which one of myself helped you out?" Citrine asked with a cautious look on her face.

Orange Pearl warmly smiled as she pointed over to a set of doors with a sign above it that read, 'Resource Managers', "That would be the nice human male looking construct you decided to make up within your gem…not sure why'd you choose that form…"

Citrine, thinking as quick as she could, came up with a simple answer, "It was an experiment of mine I wanted to try out within my gem aspect, and I was curious how the human male form would work integrated within gem society, just one of my many experiments I've wanted to try out, and what better way that simulating it inside my gem!" She explained in a haphazard way.

Orange Pearl touched her lip in thought with furrowed brow, before smiling, "How ingenious!" she remarked while nodding, "Pearl is always trying to figure out why you study up on the humans in Pink Diamond's Zoo, and it wasn't just about their sleeping habits!" Pearl commented with a soft giggle afterwards.

"Exactly!" Citrine affirmed with a nod of her own, before making a shoo'ing gesture, "Now why don't you move on and get back to working on reforming yourself, I have my own affairs within my own self to get my reformation underway." she ordered with a stern look.

Orange Pearl's aspect of herself dutifully saluted, "As you wish, my Citrine, I don't be far if you have need of me however." she added, before picking up her briefcase of her outer persona's gemstone, and walked off to sit next to a watercooler while placing the briefcase onto her lap.

Citrine, while curious of the all the surreal nature of the inner world of her gem, resolved to get her body reformed post haste. With nothing else better to do, Citrine headed towards the room labeled with 'resource managers'.


Homeworld Kindergarten

A soft red glow illuminated a cavern, before a twin bodied Rutile gem cautiously stepped out from the tunnel; it was the Rutile twins off the Off color gems, and as she leaned out of the cave to check if the coast was clear, her gem lowered down its intensity of luminosity so at to not be seen from afar. "What was all that racket?" the left twin pondered.

"That was an awful lot of noises that echoed down here." the other Twin finished say as they cautiously walked out and surveyed the area.

From within the cave that the Rutile twins walked out from, a green glow traveled out from dark depths until a blue spotted Peridot walked out, "Did you find out what made those noises?" she asked in a nasally tone of voice while shutting off her gem glow once she left the cave.

The Rutile gems glanced back over at Spotted Peridot as she walked up next to the twins, "Not yet." the left twin replied, "but whatever caused that ruckus, it sounded like-" the right sided Twin said, before the left sided twin finished her sentence, "it came from far above." they both pointed up.

"Hmm…" Spotted Peridot looked up as she walked further out with Rutile twins trailing after her, "Oh, look!" the peridot remarked as not longer after, gems began to rain down and fall to the ground beneath them.

"What-" LEft Rutile said, "The…" Right Rutile finished saying with both displaying bewildered looks as they and spotty Peridot backed away back into the cave to watch as dozens of Carnelian gems showered down from above, followed by three unique ones and shards of gems the off color gems had seen yet.

"Well this is peculiar…" Spotty Peridot remarked as she analyzed the scene before her, while the Rutile twin looked cautiously at it all.

Once the rain of gems finished peppering the ground to cover quite the bit of surface with poofed gems, the Rutile twin looked at Spotted Peridot with a concerned look on their faces. "Should we bubble them all?…" both said at once, while letting the question hang in the air.

Spotted Peridot looked at the scene once more before looking back at the Rutile Twins, "I think we should, and take them back to Off-color city. Fluorite and her Sapphires will know what to do with them." she surmised, to which the Rutile twins nodded in agreement. Before both looked at the more prominent gem amongst them all, "Especially with that one." Spotty Peridot pointed at the Citrine gem, both gem and twins displaying nervous reactions.


Citrine, inner gem world

Opening the door to the office labeled as 'resource managers', Citrine allowed herself in through the door while letting the door shut behind her; before her was a long oval table occupied by what looked like variations of her past lives, three of each in fact which added up to six in total of her past representations of her former lives.

Put to mind the the iterations of her past lives was just a matter of her gem extrapolating the best possible aspects of herself to represent herself, Citrine wouldn't put it past her subconscious self to want to put the need to at least categories vague memories of her past lives; looking before her as the six different aspects of her were presently typing away at was more than likely her best representation of laptops, Citrine glanced at the more simplistic version of her previous life, the others had more going for them for some odd reason in the hair department.

Walking over to the female soldier aspect that had a prominent ahoge that twitches every now and then, said aspect finished typing and looked up from her work with an annoyed expression, "Took you long enough, sit, I'll be right with you after I finish organize the last bits of your memories from the last twenty four hours." she instructed.

Citrine raised an eyebrow at the abrasiveness, and concluded that the aspect was running off her past self personality to a certain degree; with nothing else better to do, Citrine took the empty seat available next to the soldier aspect of herself.

While the commander waited for the soldier aspect to finish her work, Citrine allowed her eyes to wander around the room while the sound of typing filling the air; over on one of the walls were various photographs inside frames, all of which were under a large set of words that labeled them all as 'employees of the months'.

'I suppose that's my subconscious laying out the people that I have shared enough relationships with…' Citrine mused as lo and behold, there were two very faded out pictures of a man and woman, 'I can only conclude those are my parents…I suppose…so that must mean the employees of the month is a more abstract way of my emotional attachments to the people I've shared memories with.' Citrine surmised as she curled her finger over her mouth as the dwelled on her thoughts.

Past the two very faded out photos of her mother and father from her first life, the frames and photos became more clear as they eventually led to her second life; amongst the people from her second life, Visha's exuberant face was emblazoned within a gold frame along with silver for the men she worked with in her 203rd mage battalion. A tang of something welled up in her, before quashing it down.

'It won't do to dwell on the past too much.' Citrine scolded herself with a dour look as she lowered her arm to cross it with her other at her chest as she leaned back in the chair she sat in, 'They lived good lives past the war, and we all moved on for the better. No use getting sentimental for something that had been well over a thousand years ago.' she added to her thoughts on the matter.

Glancing back at the framed photos, her eyes then trailed the newer ones that were from her present life. 'Is that how I feel about her?' Citrine asked herself mentally as she saw Orange Pearl's respectful salute to her with a prim expression, the photo of her pearl was in a silver frame and not in a gold one.

"You hold Visha in a tad higher regard." The male counterpart of herself spoke aloud as he look up from his laptop, while looking over to her from across the table.

Both Citrine and her male self stared at each other, both Citrine spoke her mind on the matter, "Ah, I see, she was the first, so of course she'd set the gold standard…" she lifted a corner of her lip up in jest.

The Salaryman looked back at her with a simple expression of a calculated stare, before speaking once more, "Quite, she always seemed to want to stick by your side, regardless of the abrasiveness you exuded."

With his piece said, the Salaryman went back to work at his laptop, leaving Citrine to her own thoughts; Citrine trailed her eyes to the bottom of the wall before looking over to another wall where there were more until the word 'potentials', and amongst the various gems she's come across were Spinel who was in the lead. 'Huh…well…she was rather helpful in that last fight, and she does hold clues to who Pink Diamond was at a more personal level.' Citrine assumed to herself.

The soldier finally finished typing before shutting her laptop closed and turned her chair to face Citrine, "I will say, you have been a bit too emotive to gain that gem's trust…" she commented on Citrine's thoughts. "But I suppose it's for the best you try and gain her trust if you are to ever understand who Pink Diamond was away from prying eyes." she observed.

Citrine focused her attention on the soldier aspect of herself, Tanya. "I saw fit to allow some form of reciprocal emotion let me gain some better results out of my soldiers, rather than display a cold hearted facade, and so far it's been working wonders by my estimation of the amount of successful campaigns I've finished under the Diamond Empire." she explained with a simplistic look on her face.

Tanya scoffed as she groused at the notion, "Just don't get too emotional, we're not out there to be a caring individual, one wrong move and Yellow Diamond might see fit to shatter us." the soldier warned with a glare.

Citrine rolled her eyes at the paranoia of herself, "I highly doubt my Diamond will shatter me for a display of emotion, I'm pretty sure she'd do such a thing if I commit a taboo of gem society." the commander said with a flippant tone.

Tanya glared back at Citrine, "Hmph. just don't say I didn't warn you if you find yourself a shattered soul like the rest of those gems you shattered during the Rose Rebellion."

"...I'd rather not think about that…" Citrine repressed a shudder at the thought of causing a fate worse than death. "I didn't know at the time, and now I have to live with the fact."

Tanya sat back in her chair and gave Citrine a look of bewilderment, "You didn't experience this sort of sympathy for your enemies in your second life, what changed?" she prodded.

"You know very well why." Citrine retorted with a glowering look on her face as she glared back at Tanya, "It's simple to think human souls will move on to a supposed afterlife, but it's not the same for gem souls." The commander then sat forward in her chair, "For whatever reason, a gem's soul will be tethered to their gem even when they are shattered, leaving them to become discombobulated consciousness, and you know how I feel about the consciousness of oneself."

Tanya tapped her chin in thought, "Maybe it's because Being X doesn't exist here in this universe." she smirked at the end at the thought of not having to deal with that imposter god. The supposed deity was far from what God was portrayed as in the bible, and he was too narcissistic for his own good.

"The debate on Being X's godhood aside…" Citrine began as she settled into her chair a bit, while leaning her elbow on the armrest, "He did cast our soul aside after all, and in all my thousand years in this life, not once have I heard a peep from him."

"Good, the last thing I want is him forcing his stupid curse miracles into our subconsciousness." Tanya said with a glower and clenched fist.

"Let's shelf this kind of talk for later, mayhaps, right now, I think we should work on getting my body to reform pronto." Citrine suggested with a stern tone and look.

Tanya nodded in agreement as she turned her laptop to face Citrine, "Agreed…. Now, I have downloaded your previous iteration, and I am assuming you have no problem with reusing the template you've stuck with for the past thousand years."

"If it'll get me to be able to reform faster, I'll take it." Citrine nodded back as she looked at the laptop screen once, before looking back at Tanya, "What's the timetable for the reformation of my body?" the commander asked.

Tanya turned her laptop to face her, and typed a few inputs before answering, "About…a day or two…no wait, make that a day and a half." she corrected herself.

Citrine tsked a bit herself as she glanced to the side with a grimace, "Great, I was hoping it'd be shorter, I have an entire regiment of gems visiting Pink Diamond palace, not to mention Yellow Diamond will be expecting me to report back."

"I'm pretty sure she;ll understand the circumstances of your tardiness, if you file a good report." Tanya shrugged in response to Citrine's thoughts on the matter relating to Yellow Diamond.


Yellow Palace

From outside the view of the palace belonging to the Yellow Diamond Matriarch, everything was calm, until an entire swathe of its walls exploded from an explosive ball of yellow destabilizing energy, countless gemstones fell to the grounds below from out of the hole.

Within the personal office of Yellow Diamond, the matriarch stood up with clenched fists while a holoscreen in front of her showed the image of Yellow Pearl; she had sent her Pearl to retrieve Citrine, only to later find out the reason for the commander's odd tardiness of her schedule.

From what Pink's court had relayed to her pearl, an assassination had been attempted on the life of her Citrine commander; evidence had shown a fight had broken out that led to a hole being drilled through the crust surface down to the kindergarten cave system below.

What was worse, was, the evidence of the hole was still hot and fresh from a specific new gem line she had been experimenting in creating; and not just that, only a few of her gems in her court were privy to the knowledge of her new experimental yooperlites, which meant she was now dealing with traitor's amongst her court.

"Get. back. Here. now." Yellow Ordered her Pearl on the other end of the video called.

"Yes my Diamond!" Yellow Pearl quickly said, before the call shut off, leaving Yellow Diamond to herself and her thoughts.

The first thing she needed to do was lock down her palace, and get permission from White to enact a planet wide martial law…

Well, they were already ruled by authority, she just needed an excuse to put homeworld under a figurative house arrest; she didn't want no gem to be able to escape, and by the time she'd find the culprit, she'd be sure to shatter the guilty and harvest their shards to be put to use.