Chapter Eight
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
Chapter Eight – What do you Fight for?
The research project was almost complete. Another peridot had managed to find a material that could agitate chronotons in a similar manner to what ambers could do naturally. It was an exotic material that wouldn't exist naturally, and would require minute amounts of amber resin for best results. But the sticky green fluid was capable of healing damage to gems and repairing damaged gem technology without any input from a gem. They even managed to program in dematerialization once it had served its function, like how amber resin would allow gems to explode out of it.
Next on the list was to put together an application method. A robonoid was the most likely vector, and Peridot 5XG had put forth the term 'flask robonoid' for its taxonomy. The time-dialation effect of the liquid also prevented it from running dry unless it was cracked open – the repair-liquid would rewind time to when the flask was full infinitely unless damaged severely.
Yellow Diamond was sure to be pleased with their results. They would get positive reviews on their job reports, and they would be given a better chance at a pleasant assignment. And Peridot would likely never see either amber again.
Why did that displease her, she wondered. Why was that not an optimal condition? Wouldn't seeing more ambers mean she had a higher chance of being replaced by one?
After the report was sent to Yellow Diamond, they had nothing to do but effect repairs to cracked gems with the robonoids and ambers. The other peridots seemed excited to be done with the unpleasant assignment, and Peridot still couldn't figure out why she wasn't.
Suddenly, she was hugged by Eye-Five and En-Seven at the same time. Not a full-on emotion squishing hug as Eye-Five was too enlarged to manage the strength needed. "What's this then?"
Eye-Five rubbed her cheek into Peridot's yellow-green hair like it was a bristle brush. "We want to say goodbye. You're our favorite peridot."
"Oh. Good to see that you have excellent taste," Peridot muttered.
En-Seven licked her and resisted Peridot's sudden confused thrashing. "Hmm. Tastes like when the fruit is light green." He made a displeased face. "Sour. But we like you anyway."
"If inter-court violence was permitted on this class of ship I would give you such a swat – !"
"That is enough squabbling," Yellow Sapphire said as she appeared at the workstation door. Immediately, the ambers released Peridot and saluted the sapphire like all other gems in attendance. "The report has been read, and questions have arisen." The tiny gem looked over at Peridot and waved her up. "You have the answers that are sought. Come."
Peridot hastily cleaned off the last remnants of En-Seven's saliva on her face, and hastily brushed off any human hair that had gotten onto her uniform while she followed the smaller gem and her ruby guards at a respectful distance. The report went to the diamonds, so it was most likely Peridot would meet her diamond – Yellow Diamond. The doubt and unease that had filled her before was replaced with confidence and certitude. She was the one who made the critical breakthroughs in the flask robonoid project, the base liquid. And she'd seen the most of what the ambers could do. She was an authority on the ambers' capabilities, and Yellow Diamond had seen her important work.
Yellow Sapphire stopped by a door which one of her rubies opened. "Go in. Answer the diamond's questions without lying. And if you're lucky, you will emerge unscathed."
Peridot could almost swear she heard a note of fear in the sapphire's voice, but that was impossible. Yellow Diamond was a perfectly rational leader, and the most level headed diamond of the entire Authority.
Yellow Sapphire grabbed her limb-enhancer as Peridot passed and looked up at the technician gem. Her hands shook, and there was visible sweat on her face around her visor. "I said without lying. That's the important part. Without. Lying." The aristocrat let Peridot go and backed away.
She stepped through to the grand central crossroads at the palm of the Hand of Authority, where all the principle halls in the digits connected. Inside there was no larger than life figure, nor a communicator which portrayed her image. Instead what she found inside was a pearl, monochromatic in colors with her gem in her navel, and one eye heavily scarred. Peridot couldn't imagine what had caused the damage, nor why the pearl seemed so serene about it, and the pose the Pearl held – her arms outstretched with her palms upward – weirded her out.
"Peridot 2F5L 5XG," the pearl said airily and focused her one eye on the green gem. "White Diamond would like to see you."
–
Holly-Blue made sure that in the days that followed, in the years that followed them, that things were kept under control at the zoo. Her soldiers had told her about the Jasper's mutterings, and colluded with Holly-Blue to keep her precious hybrids safe. Holly-Blue found her disgust for the Earth-made quartzes erode as they went above and beyond to help her protect the organic gems from Jasper's underhanded attempts.
When Jasper would get too close to doing irreversible harm, an amethyst or another jasper would cause a scene or get in the way. Holly-Blue even had to make a show about punishing them for their 'sloppy' bearing to sell the deceptions. Jasper was no fool, she knew what they were up to, but Sagenite Agate was blind to their manipulations.
The yellow agate even expressed sympathy to Holly-Blue behind closed doors, for having to deal with such inadequate troops. Of course Holly-Blue would paint herself as suffering so that Blue Diamond would be more at ease with Pink's passing. For a gem, time passed quickly – thousands of years could be like the span of minutes. Holly-Blue had her work with the humans to slow down her perception of time to their scale, so she got to see gradual changes more clearly than perhaps Sagenite Agate or Jasper did.
The fossils had begun to wisen up to Jasper's attempts. They had begun to see that the interference of the other quartz soldiers was too regular, too predictable. For all that Jasper thought them animals, the hybrids weren't stupid.
Eventually, one decided to fight back with vigor.
It was her display model fossil, the agatized bone. To make it clearer what they referred to, Blue Diamond had made a decree that the agates were to be referred to as 'gembone', and the category would remain 'fossil'. That agate was the first to manifest his gem weapon, and it happened a few years after Jasper started her endeavor. Jasper had been sparring with the gembone, and gotten too rowdy, she had summoned her crash helmet and enveloped herself in an aura of orange fire as she rushed the agate.
Three different amethysts and an off-color jasper rushed in to try and interfere with the attack, but it was all unneeded. The gembone stood his ground, planted his feet, and met Jasper's attack with his own. The display model gembone's gem was in his head, and it called forth a weapon of eerie white. A helmet that enveloped his entire head, with a beaked mouth, empty sockets which allowed him to see, a massive frill which extended out the back to cover his neck, and three horns which protruded forward. Two from above each eye, and one from the 'nose' of the beak.
Jasper's attack was stalled when her helmet met his. She pushed him back maybe a meter before their strength evened out. Jasper's helmet fit between the horns of the gembone's helmet, but there was one mistake to Jasper's positioning. The gembone's nose horn was perilously close to her visor – and thus her face. He worked his neck, and jabbed the nose horn into her visor enough to crack it, which startled Jasper. This allowed him to push her back. Jasper's feet dug trenches in the heavy stone of the training room floor as she went.
"That. Is. Enough!" Holly-Blue and Sagenite Agate both shouted in near-perfect synch. Holly-Blue had the benefit of her gem weapon being an electrified whip, while Sagenite Agate produced a technological one from her belt. Two cracks of the whip was enough to signal to the quartz gems that serious business was at hand. The proper gems fell in line and saluted, while the hybrids did so after they processed what their fellows had done.
The two agates started in on their disobedient subordinates in a worry-induced angry rant (Holly-Blue), and a dressing down for complete lack of decorum (Sagenite).
"I cannot believe what I just saw! I raised you better than that, young man! You're the display model gembone, the one to which all others in your cabochon look to for leadership; a role model for all fossils! How could you know what your gem weapon would be? You would could have met her charge with a spear which she would have driven right through your head! I'm so extremely disappointed in you!"
"Soldier this was a sparring match. A learning experience. Do I need to teach you basic vocabulary, is that it? Are you just missing a word in your rock-tumbled lexicon? On Earth was it customary to draw weapons and apply mystical arts in fist-to-fist combat? A gem of your decorated career might have certain ideas about what you can get away with, well I don't care if you personally shattered Rose Quartz's entire cut of gem – you will obey the limits of your assignment while under my command. Am I understood?"
Needless to say, neither gem or hybrid got off easy for their fight. The gembone was in tears because he'd never seen Holly-Blue so angry and didn't know how else to respond. Jasper was in tears because Sagenite was more liberal with the whip as she talked than Holly-Blue; and even as tough as Jasper was, a taste of the whip hurt.
"Soldier, you are sentenced to polishing duty for three weeks. Perhaps servicing your fellow quartzes will teach you control."
"Bee-Four, you're going to be a trainee midwife for the two ammonites we're expecting in the next three weeks. I hope it teaches you to respect your life!"
The two chastised gems were sent away and the training session was set to continue without them, albeit tense. Holly-Blue was so incensed, she didn't even notice that the chastisement didn't seem to affect the widespread group until much later. And it wasn't hard to see why – because both groups found a reason to identify with the chastised party.
–
Bee-Four carried a bundle of damp towels to the lake, grumpy and sad. The amethyst midwives had put him to work cleaning bathing towels for the pregnant women and to return with the towels damp and cool. Which meant he would be stinky on the way to the lake, and then cold and wet on the way back.
As soon as he got to the water's edge and sat down to dunk the first towel in the lake, Bee-Four found himself surrounded. Other gembones and ammonites surrounded him all with smiles and bright eyes.
"Here to make fun of me for making Holly-Blue mad?" He asked, still in his grumpy mood.
"You summoned your weapon," responded Ehm-One, another gembone. She looked at him like he was some fascinating new feature of the zoo. "Can we see it?"
Bee-Four made a sour face and dunked the first towel in the lake to start cleaning. "I don't know how it happened, it just did. I don't know how to do it again."
"Well, how did you feel?" Asked the display model ammonite, Jay-Eight. He smiled encouragingly and grabbed a towel from the pile to wash it alongside Bee-Four. "When the Little Voice taught us ammonites to use our voice, she said it was all in your emotions."
Bee-Four squinted at the other fossil, but soon all the fossils around him had grabbed some towels and begun to wash them. Suddenly he didn't have work to distract him from their question – their villainous plan, revealed. He sighed and looked down at the towel while he cleaned it. "I felt… tired. Not like, I wanted to sleep. But like I didn't want this to keep happening. Jasper is always pushing us, trying to get a reason to hit us, and I was sick of it. I didn't want to keep being rescued." He squeezed the towel tight as those feelings came rushing back. "I wanted to be able to fight back – to be the one who rescues someone…." There was a flash of light, and suddenly Bee-Four's vision was slightly restricted.
"Whoa!" The other fossils all stared in wonder, while Ehm-One gave voice to their emotions. "It's so… white! And it has horns!"
He'd summoned his helmet again?
Jay-Eight poked at the nose horn and sharply drew his finger back. "Ow! It's sharp!" The ammonite looked at the horns on Bee-Four's helmet warily while he sucked on his finger.
Other gembones in the area closed their eyes in reflection, but nothing happened. A plethora of minor questions about how it felt to have the helmet on, how he could still hear with his ears blocked, and specifics on how he called the weapon. Perhaps each weapon was different?
Bee-Four was grateful for the distraction and the help with the towels, however he was ever so slightly annoyed when his fellow fossils started to hang the towels over his helmet's horns.
–
Jasper reported to the polishing chair in the barracks immediately after she was released from the training activity. A polygonal station nearby dispensed the polishing cloth and would do the same for the gel once a gem was in the chair. Polishing improved a gem's ability to take in light, the closest equivalent a gem had to 'eating'. There was also some ancillary effects like improving appearances, but those were for aristocrat gems. Soldiers only needed the practical benefit.
She expected the Earth-made quartzes to come in with smirks and malicious looks, its what she had done when a soldier got polishing duty as a punishment. But to her unmitigated fury, when the amethysts, jaspers, and carnelians all arrived they barely acknowledged the polishing station, or Jasper. The amethysts were roughhousing, Jasper overheard another jasper talk about the repairs the peridots weren't doing which they ought to, and a short carnelian cartwheeled around the barracks without a care in the world.
Jasper grit her teeth and clenched her hands. They just went about their day, their free time, like her chastisement hadn't happened. Like it was just a routine occurrence.
"Hey, biggie."
Jasper snapped out of her glowering to see the short carnelian from earlier in the polishing chair. The perfect quartz sighed and scooped up the polishing gel from the platform. A dab on the carnelian's gem, and Jasper went to polishing. Circular motions around the edge of the gem then move inward.
"Guess all us Earth gems are screwups, huh?"
The perfect quartz didn't pause in her polishing as she growled her reply. "Hmm."
"You're right, I am right," the red quartz nodded to herself. The other quartzes were listening, as some amethysts snickered at the facetious comment. "I mean, we get Holly-Blue mad at us on the daily, you're just now getting your agate mad at you. Pretty soon you'll be the same as us."
Jasper paused polishing for just a moment to glare at the carnelian. She was shorter than a quartz was required to be, indicating she had come out misshapen. An off-color. "I'm nothing like you."
Carnelian shrugged. "Agree to disagree."
"You're only here because Blue Diamond pities you."
"And you think it's not the same for you and Yellow?"
Jasper acted before she thought, and it was only when she had a half-dozen purple weapons pointed at her that she realized she'd pulled her fist back to lay into Carnelian. Who, for her position of 'about to be left hooked' by the perfect quartz, looked bored.
Carnelian arched an eyebrow. "Blue keeps us around cause the way we act reminds her of Pink. Yellow keeps you around because she finds you useful. Both of them tolerate us, for different reasons."
The weapons retracted, and Jasper lowered her fist.
"But we don't have to do that to each other. We don't have to tolerate each other. We're all Earth-made rocks. We're all screwups in our own way. And we don't really fit in the order of the diamonds because Pink's gone."
Jasper was confused by the off-color's utter lack of care for her own safety. She'd just tried to attack her, and the short carnelian just kept on talking. That confusion gave Carnelian's words an avenue for entry into Jasper's mind, specifically into the thousands of feelings she'd had to bury to do her job.
"Newsflash, biggie. The way you think and act about those fossils? It's the way everyone else acts about us."
Doubt bubbled up to the surface, and certain scenes played out differently in Jasper's head.
Sagenite Agate looked over an entire cut of Pink's gems alongside Yellow Diamond. Jasper was among the gems who stood before them for examination. "They should all be destroyed."
"I agree," Yellow quipped, "but White says they're mine now. She said 'put them to work' and there's limits on how I can interpret that."
Carnelian snapped her fingers in Jasper's face to bring her back to reality. "There's room in the fam' for you too, if you want it. You don't gotta do it alone if you don't want to." When she was satisfied Jasper was paying attention, she sat back in her seat. Her body became red-tinged light as she flipped her gemstone around so the other side could be polished too. "Don't gotta fight everyone all the time."
Jasper automatically began to polish the red hexagonal gemstone as emotions continued to bubble up from long suppression. "Fighting is what I was made for."
"Fighting for Pink is what we were made for. Where's Pink again?" Carnelian looked sidelong at Jasper. "Just think about it. You're going to be here a few years, teaching them newbies how to be gems. Plenty of time."
Carnelian left, and no other quartz filled the seat. They left Jasper to think about what she'd said, and about the feelings she could no longer suppress.
---
Agatized bones have been given a proper name! Gembone!
The research project was almost complete. Another peridot had managed to find a material that could agitate chronotons in a similar manner to what ambers could do naturally. It was an exotic material that wouldn't exist naturally, and would require minute amounts of amber resin for best results. But the sticky green fluid was capable of healing damage to gems and repairing damaged gem technology without any input from a gem. They even managed to program in dematerialization once it had served its function, like how amber resin would allow gems to explode out of it.
Next on the list was to put together an application method. A robonoid was the most likely vector, and Peridot 5XG had put forth the term 'flask robonoid' for its taxonomy. The time-dialation effect of the liquid also prevented it from running dry unless it was cracked open – the repair-liquid would rewind time to when the flask was full infinitely unless damaged severely.
Yellow Diamond was sure to be pleased with their results. They would get positive reviews on their job reports, and they would be given a better chance at a pleasant assignment. And Peridot would likely never see either amber again.
Why did that displease her, she wondered. Why was that not an optimal condition? Wouldn't seeing more ambers mean she had a higher chance of being replaced by one?
After the report was sent to Yellow Diamond, they had nothing to do but effect repairs to cracked gems with the robonoids and ambers. The other peridots seemed excited to be done with the unpleasant assignment, and Peridot still couldn't figure out why she wasn't.
Suddenly, she was hugged by Eye-Five and En-Seven at the same time. Not a full-on emotion squishing hug as Eye-Five was too enlarged to manage the strength needed. "What's this then?"
Eye-Five rubbed her cheek into Peridot's yellow-green hair like it was a bristle brush. "We want to say goodbye. You're our favorite peridot."
"Oh. Good to see that you have excellent taste," Peridot muttered.
En-Seven licked her and resisted Peridot's sudden confused thrashing. "Hmm. Tastes like when the fruit is light green." He made a displeased face. "Sour. But we like you anyway."
"If inter-court violence was permitted on this class of ship I would give you such a swat – !"
"That is enough squabbling," Yellow Sapphire said as she appeared at the workstation door. Immediately, the ambers released Peridot and saluted the sapphire like all other gems in attendance. "The report has been read, and questions have arisen." The tiny gem looked over at Peridot and waved her up. "You have the answers that are sought. Come."
Peridot hastily cleaned off the last remnants of En-Seven's saliva on her face, and hastily brushed off any human hair that had gotten onto her uniform while she followed the smaller gem and her ruby guards at a respectful distance. The report went to the diamonds, so it was most likely Peridot would meet her diamond – Yellow Diamond. The doubt and unease that had filled her before was replaced with confidence and certitude. She was the one who made the critical breakthroughs in the flask robonoid project, the base liquid. And she'd seen the most of what the ambers could do. She was an authority on the ambers' capabilities, and Yellow Diamond had seen her important work.
Yellow Sapphire stopped by a door which one of her rubies opened. "Go in. Answer the diamond's questions without lying. And if you're lucky, you will emerge unscathed."
Peridot could almost swear she heard a note of fear in the sapphire's voice, but that was impossible. Yellow Diamond was a perfectly rational leader, and the most level headed diamond of the entire Authority.
Yellow Sapphire grabbed her limb-enhancer as Peridot passed and looked up at the technician gem. Her hands shook, and there was visible sweat on her face around her visor. "I said without lying. That's the important part. Without. Lying." The aristocrat let Peridot go and backed away.
She stepped through to the grand central crossroads at the palm of the Hand of Authority, where all the principle halls in the digits connected. Inside there was no larger than life figure, nor a communicator which portrayed her image. Instead what she found inside was a pearl, monochromatic in colors with her gem in her navel, and one eye heavily scarred. Peridot couldn't imagine what had caused the damage, nor why the pearl seemed so serene about it, and the pose the Pearl held – her arms outstretched with her palms upward – weirded her out.
"Peridot 2F5L 5XG," the pearl said airily and focused her one eye on the green gem. "White Diamond would like to see you."
–
Holly-Blue made sure that in the days that followed, in the years that followed them, that things were kept under control at the zoo. Her soldiers had told her about the Jasper's mutterings, and colluded with Holly-Blue to keep her precious hybrids safe. Holly-Blue found her disgust for the Earth-made quartzes erode as they went above and beyond to help her protect the organic gems from Jasper's underhanded attempts.
When Jasper would get too close to doing irreversible harm, an amethyst or another jasper would cause a scene or get in the way. Holly-Blue even had to make a show about punishing them for their 'sloppy' bearing to sell the deceptions. Jasper was no fool, she knew what they were up to, but Sagenite Agate was blind to their manipulations.
The yellow agate even expressed sympathy to Holly-Blue behind closed doors, for having to deal with such inadequate troops. Of course Holly-Blue would paint herself as suffering so that Blue Diamond would be more at ease with Pink's passing. For a gem, time passed quickly – thousands of years could be like the span of minutes. Holly-Blue had her work with the humans to slow down her perception of time to their scale, so she got to see gradual changes more clearly than perhaps Sagenite Agate or Jasper did.
The fossils had begun to wisen up to Jasper's attempts. They had begun to see that the interference of the other quartz soldiers was too regular, too predictable. For all that Jasper thought them animals, the hybrids weren't stupid.
Eventually, one decided to fight back with vigor.
It was her display model fossil, the agatized bone. To make it clearer what they referred to, Blue Diamond had made a decree that the agates were to be referred to as 'gembone', and the category would remain 'fossil'. That agate was the first to manifest his gem weapon, and it happened a few years after Jasper started her endeavor. Jasper had been sparring with the gembone, and gotten too rowdy, she had summoned her crash helmet and enveloped herself in an aura of orange fire as she rushed the agate.
Three different amethysts and an off-color jasper rushed in to try and interfere with the attack, but it was all unneeded. The gembone stood his ground, planted his feet, and met Jasper's attack with his own. The display model gembone's gem was in his head, and it called forth a weapon of eerie white. A helmet that enveloped his entire head, with a beaked mouth, empty sockets which allowed him to see, a massive frill which extended out the back to cover his neck, and three horns which protruded forward. Two from above each eye, and one from the 'nose' of the beak.
Jasper's attack was stalled when her helmet met his. She pushed him back maybe a meter before their strength evened out. Jasper's helmet fit between the horns of the gembone's helmet, but there was one mistake to Jasper's positioning. The gembone's nose horn was perilously close to her visor – and thus her face. He worked his neck, and jabbed the nose horn into her visor enough to crack it, which startled Jasper. This allowed him to push her back. Jasper's feet dug trenches in the heavy stone of the training room floor as she went.
"That. Is. Enough!" Holly-Blue and Sagenite Agate both shouted in near-perfect synch. Holly-Blue had the benefit of her gem weapon being an electrified whip, while Sagenite Agate produced a technological one from her belt. Two cracks of the whip was enough to signal to the quartz gems that serious business was at hand. The proper gems fell in line and saluted, while the hybrids did so after they processed what their fellows had done.
The two agates started in on their disobedient subordinates in a worry-induced angry rant (Holly-Blue), and a dressing down for complete lack of decorum (Sagenite).
"I cannot believe what I just saw! I raised you better than that, young man! You're the display model gembone, the one to which all others in your cabochon look to for leadership; a role model for all fossils! How could you know what your gem weapon would be? You would could have met her charge with a spear which she would have driven right through your head! I'm so extremely disappointed in you!"
"Soldier this was a sparring match. A learning experience. Do I need to teach you basic vocabulary, is that it? Are you just missing a word in your rock-tumbled lexicon? On Earth was it customary to draw weapons and apply mystical arts in fist-to-fist combat? A gem of your decorated career might have certain ideas about what you can get away with, well I don't care if you personally shattered Rose Quartz's entire cut of gem – you will obey the limits of your assignment while under my command. Am I understood?"
Needless to say, neither gem or hybrid got off easy for their fight. The gembone was in tears because he'd never seen Holly-Blue so angry and didn't know how else to respond. Jasper was in tears because Sagenite was more liberal with the whip as she talked than Holly-Blue; and even as tough as Jasper was, a taste of the whip hurt.
"Soldier, you are sentenced to polishing duty for three weeks. Perhaps servicing your fellow quartzes will teach you control."
"Bee-Four, you're going to be a trainee midwife for the two ammonites we're expecting in the next three weeks. I hope it teaches you to respect your life!"
The two chastised gems were sent away and the training session was set to continue without them, albeit tense. Holly-Blue was so incensed, she didn't even notice that the chastisement didn't seem to affect the widespread group until much later. And it wasn't hard to see why – because both groups found a reason to identify with the chastised party.
–
Bee-Four carried a bundle of damp towels to the lake, grumpy and sad. The amethyst midwives had put him to work cleaning bathing towels for the pregnant women and to return with the towels damp and cool. Which meant he would be stinky on the way to the lake, and then cold and wet on the way back.
As soon as he got to the water's edge and sat down to dunk the first towel in the lake, Bee-Four found himself surrounded. Other gembones and ammonites surrounded him all with smiles and bright eyes.
"Here to make fun of me for making Holly-Blue mad?" He asked, still in his grumpy mood.
"You summoned your weapon," responded Ehm-One, another gembone. She looked at him like he was some fascinating new feature of the zoo. "Can we see it?"
Bee-Four made a sour face and dunked the first towel in the lake to start cleaning. "I don't know how it happened, it just did. I don't know how to do it again."
"Well, how did you feel?" Asked the display model ammonite, Jay-Eight. He smiled encouragingly and grabbed a towel from the pile to wash it alongside Bee-Four. "When the Little Voice taught us ammonites to use our voice, she said it was all in your emotions."
Bee-Four squinted at the other fossil, but soon all the fossils around him had grabbed some towels and begun to wash them. Suddenly he didn't have work to distract him from their question – their villainous plan, revealed. He sighed and looked down at the towel while he cleaned it. "I felt… tired. Not like, I wanted to sleep. But like I didn't want this to keep happening. Jasper is always pushing us, trying to get a reason to hit us, and I was sick of it. I didn't want to keep being rescued." He squeezed the towel tight as those feelings came rushing back. "I wanted to be able to fight back – to be the one who rescues someone…." There was a flash of light, and suddenly Bee-Four's vision was slightly restricted.
"Whoa!" The other fossils all stared in wonder, while Ehm-One gave voice to their emotions. "It's so… white! And it has horns!"
He'd summoned his helmet again?
Jay-Eight poked at the nose horn and sharply drew his finger back. "Ow! It's sharp!" The ammonite looked at the horns on Bee-Four's helmet warily while he sucked on his finger.
Other gembones in the area closed their eyes in reflection, but nothing happened. A plethora of minor questions about how it felt to have the helmet on, how he could still hear with his ears blocked, and specifics on how he called the weapon. Perhaps each weapon was different?
Bee-Four was grateful for the distraction and the help with the towels, however he was ever so slightly annoyed when his fellow fossils started to hang the towels over his helmet's horns.
–
Jasper reported to the polishing chair in the barracks immediately after she was released from the training activity. A polygonal station nearby dispensed the polishing cloth and would do the same for the gel once a gem was in the chair. Polishing improved a gem's ability to take in light, the closest equivalent a gem had to 'eating'. There was also some ancillary effects like improving appearances, but those were for aristocrat gems. Soldiers only needed the practical benefit.
She expected the Earth-made quartzes to come in with smirks and malicious looks, its what she had done when a soldier got polishing duty as a punishment. But to her unmitigated fury, when the amethysts, jaspers, and carnelians all arrived they barely acknowledged the polishing station, or Jasper. The amethysts were roughhousing, Jasper overheard another jasper talk about the repairs the peridots weren't doing which they ought to, and a short carnelian cartwheeled around the barracks without a care in the world.
Jasper grit her teeth and clenched her hands. They just went about their day, their free time, like her chastisement hadn't happened. Like it was just a routine occurrence.
"Hey, biggie."
Jasper snapped out of her glowering to see the short carnelian from earlier in the polishing chair. The perfect quartz sighed and scooped up the polishing gel from the platform. A dab on the carnelian's gem, and Jasper went to polishing. Circular motions around the edge of the gem then move inward.
"Guess all us Earth gems are screwups, huh?"
The perfect quartz didn't pause in her polishing as she growled her reply. "Hmm."
"You're right, I am right," the red quartz nodded to herself. The other quartzes were listening, as some amethysts snickered at the facetious comment. "I mean, we get Holly-Blue mad at us on the daily, you're just now getting your agate mad at you. Pretty soon you'll be the same as us."
Jasper paused polishing for just a moment to glare at the carnelian. She was shorter than a quartz was required to be, indicating she had come out misshapen. An off-color. "I'm nothing like you."
Carnelian shrugged. "Agree to disagree."
"You're only here because Blue Diamond pities you."
"And you think it's not the same for you and Yellow?"
Jasper acted before she thought, and it was only when she had a half-dozen purple weapons pointed at her that she realized she'd pulled her fist back to lay into Carnelian. Who, for her position of 'about to be left hooked' by the perfect quartz, looked bored.
Carnelian arched an eyebrow. "Blue keeps us around cause the way we act reminds her of Pink. Yellow keeps you around because she finds you useful. Both of them tolerate us, for different reasons."
The weapons retracted, and Jasper lowered her fist.
"But we don't have to do that to each other. We don't have to tolerate each other. We're all Earth-made rocks. We're all screwups in our own way. And we don't really fit in the order of the diamonds because Pink's gone."
Jasper was confused by the off-color's utter lack of care for her own safety. She'd just tried to attack her, and the short carnelian just kept on talking. That confusion gave Carnelian's words an avenue for entry into Jasper's mind, specifically into the thousands of feelings she'd had to bury to do her job.
"Newsflash, biggie. The way you think and act about those fossils? It's the way everyone else acts about us."
Doubt bubbled up to the surface, and certain scenes played out differently in Jasper's head.
Sagenite Agate looked over an entire cut of Pink's gems alongside Yellow Diamond. Jasper was among the gems who stood before them for examination. "They should all be destroyed."
"I agree," Yellow quipped, "but White says they're mine now. She said 'put them to work' and there's limits on how I can interpret that."
Carnelian snapped her fingers in Jasper's face to bring her back to reality. "There's room in the fam' for you too, if you want it. You don't gotta do it alone if you don't want to." When she was satisfied Jasper was paying attention, she sat back in her seat. Her body became red-tinged light as she flipped her gemstone around so the other side could be polished too. "Don't gotta fight everyone all the time."
Jasper automatically began to polish the red hexagonal gemstone as emotions continued to bubble up from long suppression. "Fighting is what I was made for."
"Fighting for Pink is what we were made for. Where's Pink again?" Carnelian looked sidelong at Jasper. "Just think about it. You're going to be here a few years, teaching them newbies how to be gems. Plenty of time."
Carnelian left, and no other quartz filled the seat. They left Jasper to think about what she'd said, and about the feelings she could no longer suppress.
---
Agatized bones have been given a proper name! Gembone!
