Yellow Sapphire
Fossils (SU AU)
- Thread starter Chairtastic
- Start date
Chapter Ten
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
Chapter Ten -- On the Importance of Word Choice
Jay-Eight held his choosened one's hand while she dealt with a sudden burst of kicking from within. Zee-Ten was like Jay-Eight, both of ruddy skin and black hair, but hers was flowing while his was poofy gravity-defying ringlets. She wasn't a fossil, as he was, but her forebears had been fed enough that Holly-Blue was certain their little one would be an ammonite anyway. His involvement was just to 'seal the deal', per her words. He was the display model, the template all other ammonites would be judged by -- Zee-Ten was similarly high quality for an unturned human -- Holly-Blue hoped for something marvelous with their little one.
The other ammonite parent finally arrived from his training session with the Little Voice, and stood next to his choosened partner. Around them were fossils of all kinds, and some unturned humans. Of particular interest was the wild human who had come to see how second-generation fossils were born. Holly-Blue had to leave suddenly, so her pearl oversaw the birthing rite.
"All are present," said the waify Pearl in a ghost-like voice. Her eyes barely opened to look around and smiled faintly. "Are all ready?"
Nods of assent came from the expectant parents. The audience around them let loose some cheers to encourage the human mothers who seemed worried about the rite. Jay-Eight wished he could say he understood their misgivings -- but Zee-Ten had tried to explain it multiple times, and he didn't understand. She said she was afraid of losing herself in the rite, but Jay-Eight knew they wouldn't combine enough to form a single mind.
"Very well." Pearl clapped her hands to silence the gallery. "Let the rite of fusion commence." The non-participating humans and fossils bowed their heads in respect of Holly-Blue's representative, who in turn represented their diamond, Blue Diamond -- the Diamond of Beauty. "Ay-Nine and Vee-Ten? You may begin."
Jay-Eight gave his fellow ammonite a thumbs-up as the pale-skinned fossil picked up his choosened mate in his arms. Ay-Nine began to spin her around, and drew her toward him as bright light enveloped them. For a moment a huge humanoid figure began to take shape, with two ammonite gemstones orbiting around in their shared light. But as quickly as they began to combine, they shrank down and split apart again.
The air was filled with the sound of wailing as Ay-Nine held his mate in his arms, who in turn held their little one in hers. Zee-Ten dashed over to look at the little one along with the new mother, and Jay-Eight did the same to clap his fellow fossil on the shoulder.
"Ahem?" The hybrids and humans were allowed a moment of excitement after the successful rite before Pearl cleared her throat. From her gemstone, pearl produced a fluffy blue towel for the little one. Vee-Ten shakily walked over to Holly-Blue's representative and passed her little one along. Pearl wrapped the little girl up in the towel and passed her back. "We have a new little sister, everyone. Per the tradition, the mother may designate the first half of her name, and the father the second half."
The parents named their little one Ehks-Eleven, and waved as an amethyst took the little one to the nursery. In a few years time, Ekhs-Eleven would be returned to the containment area to meet her parents, and possibly her older siblings. Vee-Ten and Ay-Nine shared a last moment of cuddle-time before they parted ways -- their period of choosening had ended. Vee-Ten left to sit among the ambers where her leftover hurts could be healed.
Jay-Eight and Zee-Ten took up their positions to be the next to fulfill the rite. Jay-Eight picked up Zee-Ten in his arms and spun her around to begin the process. His gem lit up, and reached out to Zee-Ten to begin the process. It took perhaps a little longer than Jay-Eight was comfortable with for Zee-Ten and him to combine -- but when they did he could feel the third presence among them. It was his job to part that presence from Zee-Ten without hurting her and arrange it so that when they came apart she would be holding their little one.
To his embarrassment, he accidentally put the little one in her arms upside-down. Everyone had a laugh as another amethyst was called in to carry the newborn Ar-Four to the nursery.
Before Zee-Ten went to go sit with the ambers, Jay-Eight hugged her. "I hope we're choosened for each other again, I liked being with you."
Zee-Ten stuck her tongue out at him as she walked off to the ambers. "It was fun. If it happens again, it happens again."
Jay-Eight had been all smiles before, but after he heard that his smile began to fade. Had Zee-Ten not enjoyed being choosened for him as much as he'd enjoyed being choosened for her? Was it something he'd done, or didn't do? He retreated to his favorite tree to think while the other fossils gushed about Bee-Four's latest fight with Jasper, or another gembone who summoned their weapon.
He'd been the second to summon his weapon, but it wasn't as impressive as Bee-Four's helmet. Jay-Eight could call fabric from his gem, sparkling grey with multi-color three-toed footprints of strange animals he'd never seen before, and have it do things for him. A long, narrow section could be tossed to wrap around things -- which was how he got to his favorite tree. A large, wide square could cover an object and make it disappear until Jay-Eight called it back. Jay-Eight could already see how he could use it in a gladitorial arena for his diamond's pleasure.
But those thoughts distracted Jay-Eight from his goal -- what had he done wrong with Zee-Ten? Was she even unhappy with him? They'd done everything they were supposed to do, make a little one, cuddle, spend time together, talk about what they hoped for the little one to be like, and he explained the rite of fusion to her. He paused and reconsidered the last point. Had he been wrong to fuse with her? But how else would their little one have come out? The human way? That caused so much hurt -- and Holly-Blue said it wasn't safe for non-ambers to even try.
His thoughts were distracted when he saw a blue figure through the trees below. Holly-Blue! Surely she would know! Jay-Eight called up a long cape of his fabric to wrap around his neck and hold taut with his hands, then lept from the tree to glide down to the lower trees. There was someone with Holly-Blue, though Jay-Eight couldn't clearly see whom. He lept from tree to tree, opal instincts let him know which branches would make a noise and which would hold strong under his weight.
Eventually, he got a good enough look at the other figure to guess who it was: Aych-Two! Little brother! Aych-Two had been taken off to meet Blue Diamond shortly after he was returned to the adult enclosure. But he was back! Jay-Eight couldn't wait to talk to him again, he and their parents had barely gotten to know the new fossil before he was presented and whisked away.
Something was amiss, Jay-Eight quickly learned that. Holly-Blue had to physically drag Aych-Two through the containment area, and when he got close enough he could hear someone crying. Holly-Blue was loud when she cried, so it had to be Aych-Two.
Holly-Blue set him down on the ground next to where the lake met the enclosure wall. "Al-alright Aych-Two, stay here." The agate seemed quite out of sorts. "Try not to interact too much with the other fossils or humans, alright? I'll… I'll check the schedules to see when the next human collection is to be done. Once we know how long you have, I can adjust your routine."
Aych-Two sat with his arms wrapped around his folded legs, with his head buried in his knees.
"I'm… I'm sorry, Aych-Two." Holly-Blue's shoulders shook a little, but Jay-Eight couldn't tell what face she made. "I… I made you wrong, and now you're being punished for that. I'll make sure they leave you somewhere where you can be accepted. And this… this won't happen again." Holly-Blue turned to leave, but paused and looked back at Aych-Two. "Holly-Blue still loves you, Aych-Two. I know it won't help much… but I don't care what Blue Diamond thinks of you." Then she left, and Jay-Eight could see how hard Holly-Blue had set herself to fight the urge to cry.
When she was gone, Jay-Eight crept closer to his brother, and dropped to the ground. Air moved around him and kept him from falling too fast and injuring himself. A protection of the zoo, like the Little Voice, he thought and didn't wonder too much about it. Jay-Eight touched down without a noise, but accompanied by a breeze.
Aych-Two had changed clothes since last Jay-Eight saw him. More indicative of Blue Diamond's service than the average fossil uniform.
"Little brother?" Jay-Eight asked, and hesitantly approached.
"Don't," Aych-Two said back. He tried to snarl, but he lacked the requisite meanness. "I'm bad. And you shouldn't be around me. Holly-Blue said so." The younger fossil hugged himself tighter, tried to make himself smaller. "Blue Diamond said so."
The tone Aych-Two said the last part made Jay-Eight recoil. That was a tone he'd only heard in Jasper, Holly-Blue called it 'bitter'. Against Aych-Two's demands, Jay-Eight approached closer. "No, Holly-Blue didn't. I overheard what she said. But Blue Diamond? Come on, she was with you for months, you must have misheard her. Our diamond -- "
"Your diamond," Aych-Two said with that same bitter tone. "She doesn't want me. She told Holly-Blue not to make any more fossils like me. I'm bad, I'm defective. And they're going to leave me on a planet I've never been to before when they send someone out to collect humans."
Jay-Eight got close enough to almost reach out and touch his brother when the younger fossil lashed out and slapped his hand away. For the first time, Jay-Eight got to look at his brother's face. Bags under his eyes, the whites in his eyeballs replaced with veiny pink-red, and a general pallor to his ruddy skin. Something was terribly wrong.
"Brother," Jay-Eight pleaded.
"Don't." Aych-Two returned to his curled-up state. "If you talk to me too much, you'll miss me when I'm gone. If you touch me, it'll be even worse."
Not for the first time, Jay-Eight realized he didn't know how to talk to someone who clearly needed him to. But this time -- he knew someone who did. He turned and ran for the containment door, with air of the zoo pushing him to move faster.
His dedication and fervor startled many of the gems he passed on his way out of the containment area. Humans were required to stay in the containment area, hybrids had the freedom to leave, but most stayed anyway. He was perhaps the first hybrid to choose to leave.
It didn't take him long to listen for whispers that sounded like Jasper, then he followed them and found himself at the quartz barracks. Jasper was in the midst of her punishment, polishing an amethyst guard.
"Jasper!" Jay-Eight demanded and stomped his feet to plant himself against a charge. It's what they had trained for, and what he expected her to do on seeing him automatically. "I need you to come with me!"
The giant quartz continued polishing the amethyst like she heard nothing. It was decidedly awkward, as all the other quartzes in the barracks had stopped to see what the ammonite wanted with them.
When her job was completed, and the giant quartz put the polishing towel back on the stand, she glanced at Jay-Eight and growled. "Get cracked."
Jay-Eight ominously set his gem to glow and spoke with a haunting voice filled with melodic echoes. "If you would rather it happen this way -- " He had to side-step a sudden punch attack from Jasper, which some of the amethysts cheered for him on.
"Is that how you ammonites are going to behave? Use your powers on people when you don't get your way?" Jasper curled her lip in disgust. "Pathetic."
"Right now, I don't care if I'm pathetic or not." Jay-Eight was frazzled by going so far out of his comfort zone so quickly, it showed in his movements and his appearance slightly. His hair was rather expressive. "Right now, Blue Diamond did something to my brother which makes him hate himself and you're the only gem I know who hates herself too. I need you to come with me and talk to him!"
The perfect quartz looked down her gem-nose at the ammonite with disdain. "I've only just started acknowledging how much I hate myself, monster. What makes you think I can say anything that would help anyone? What makes you think I can help anyone when I can't even help myself?" She sniffed and turned her back on the ammonite. "For what it's worth, I get it. Censure from a diamond hurts. But you'd be better off just being there to stop him doing something crazy."
Jay-Eight pulled at his hair in frustration, turned, and stormed out of the barracks. He ignored the amethyts who gave him pitying looks as he left, and tried to think of any other way to help his brother out.
He walked the whole circuit ring around the zoo, while he thought about it. Then he remembered what Holly-Blue had said, about the human retrieval schedule. That paired with Jasper's words to him, and he had a plan.
Jay-Eight quickly sought out Holly-Blue and masked how he felt with a broad grin and happy-go-lucky attitude that was his default state.
--
Holly-Blue had looked through everything on file she had that could -- conceivably -- help Aych-Two in the wild. She'd dusted off mothballed gem tech, she'd fabricated stories about the need to ease her fossils into gem society with minor gadgets to requisition items. Two of her ambers had somehow acquired advanced mathematics which was spreading among her fossils -- while that was cause for alarm, it gave her another avenue to increase the tech available to her by way of enrichment.
White Diamond ended up requisitioning some ambers some weeks after their return for another experiment, but by then she had humans and fossils making number games to teach each other. Aych-Two remained solidly anti-social per her requests, with the exception of Jay-Eight. She saw him try multiple times to get Aych-Two to socialize, but to no avail. It made sense as to why he would request to go on the next human collection mission, to get away. Holly-Blue had almost not granted it, given she had to send Aych-Two off on the mission as well. But the display model ammonite needed to show the others how it was done sometime, it was best to get it out of the way.
Blue Diamond just wanted Aych-Two gone. Fine. Whatever. Let her diamond squander resources because she couldn't see potential properly. Holly-Blue wouldn't let one of her fossils go into the wild unprepared. Ancient saucer-style colony ships of Blue Diamond's had been brought to the zoo on the pretext of teaching her fossils how to pilot. The old stone craft weren't warp-capable, they had been outmoded since the turn of Era Two, and in general they were considered useless. But they were big. Big enough for a hybrid like Aych-Two to live comfortably for a few thousand years. A few knick-knacks, some brikabrak, and there was a good chance Aych-Two could survive in the wild.
"What are you doing?"
Holly-Blue looked up to see Sagenite Agate approach her. The yellow commander gestured to where Holly-Blue's troops were attaching towing cables from a Roaming Eye to an ancient blue saucer craft.
The agate rolled her eyes. "My display model ammonite is going on a mission to capture some wild humans soon. We've been ordered to speed up the capture rate in anticipation of the next zoo facility. Roaming Eyes are fine for small amounts, but a larger space to contain them in will be necessary."
"That won't be necessary," the one-eyed gem groused. "My diamond has authorized the use of the Hand of Authority to capture humans, provided some are tithed to her and White Diamond. The rest of the Authority wants fossils of their own, it seems."
Holly-Blue grit her teeth at her plans being thwarted by the involvement of the diamonds. "How generous of her," she said with faux-enthusiasm. "I'd be happy to provide a copy of my notes, to accelerate the production of fossils for Yellow and White Diamond. But starting fresh from unturned humans will take a few thousand years to see results."
Sagenite Agate flicked her wrist dismissively. "We will see about that. Just inform your troops to report to the Hand of Authority when the mission is set to go ahead."
Holly-Blue nodded and looked to glare at the Hand of Authority that loomed outside her station in a parking orbit. It would be more difficult to provide for Aych-Two on a vessel of a completely different diamond. Difficult, but not impossible.
First she had to teach her fossils how to pilot a ship, then convince Sagenite Agate to allow one of them to pilot the ship instead of their usual nephrite. To her surprise, it turned out to be an amber who had the technological proficiency to make Sagenite agree to the setup. Then she had to have her rambunctious soldiers make repeated mishaps occur to cover unauthorized shipments to the Hand. Once all was said and done, she had to make a show for Sagenite Agate when the mission began.
"Listen up, layabouts!" Holly-Blue shouted in front of her assembled amethyst and jasper squad to accompany the fossils. Behind her, beside her pearl, was a gembone -- Bee-Four. "This is an important mission. You're going out with the express purpose of capturing as many humans as possible. We're going to jump-start the fossil production of Yellow and White Diamond if this mission succeeds. To that end, you're taking two of my display model gembones and an amber." Holly-Blue gestured to Bee-Four. "Bee-Four, Jay-Eight, and Eye-Five all will be with you to watch, learn, and if the stars are kind improve on your methods." With the yellow agate watching from afar, Holly-Blue made a show of glaring at each of her quartz soldiers. "If you damage my fossils in a way the amber can't fix, or diamonds-forbid lose one of them? Don't bother coming back -- I will shatter you myself! Now go!"
Holly-Blue watched them leave with Aych-Two in tow, confident that she'd arranged things so that her only jet would be taken care of.
Imagine her surprise, not a week later, when the long-distance monitoring for the Hand of Authority deployed to the Earth reported catastrophic systems failure and no response from any communication requests. A replay of the ship's internal cameras showed a riot of the captive humans against the quartz soldiers, before the explosion cut it off.
Jay-Eight held his choosened one's hand while she dealt with a sudden burst of kicking from within. Zee-Ten was like Jay-Eight, both of ruddy skin and black hair, but hers was flowing while his was poofy gravity-defying ringlets. She wasn't a fossil, as he was, but her forebears had been fed enough that Holly-Blue was certain their little one would be an ammonite anyway. His involvement was just to 'seal the deal', per her words. He was the display model, the template all other ammonites would be judged by -- Zee-Ten was similarly high quality for an unturned human -- Holly-Blue hoped for something marvelous with their little one.
The other ammonite parent finally arrived from his training session with the Little Voice, and stood next to his choosened partner. Around them were fossils of all kinds, and some unturned humans. Of particular interest was the wild human who had come to see how second-generation fossils were born. Holly-Blue had to leave suddenly, so her pearl oversaw the birthing rite.
"All are present," said the waify Pearl in a ghost-like voice. Her eyes barely opened to look around and smiled faintly. "Are all ready?"
Nods of assent came from the expectant parents. The audience around them let loose some cheers to encourage the human mothers who seemed worried about the rite. Jay-Eight wished he could say he understood their misgivings -- but Zee-Ten had tried to explain it multiple times, and he didn't understand. She said she was afraid of losing herself in the rite, but Jay-Eight knew they wouldn't combine enough to form a single mind.
"Very well." Pearl clapped her hands to silence the gallery. "Let the rite of fusion commence." The non-participating humans and fossils bowed their heads in respect of Holly-Blue's representative, who in turn represented their diamond, Blue Diamond -- the Diamond of Beauty. "Ay-Nine and Vee-Ten? You may begin."
Jay-Eight gave his fellow ammonite a thumbs-up as the pale-skinned fossil picked up his choosened mate in his arms. Ay-Nine began to spin her around, and drew her toward him as bright light enveloped them. For a moment a huge humanoid figure began to take shape, with two ammonite gemstones orbiting around in their shared light. But as quickly as they began to combine, they shrank down and split apart again.
The air was filled with the sound of wailing as Ay-Nine held his mate in his arms, who in turn held their little one in hers. Zee-Ten dashed over to look at the little one along with the new mother, and Jay-Eight did the same to clap his fellow fossil on the shoulder.
"Ahem?" The hybrids and humans were allowed a moment of excitement after the successful rite before Pearl cleared her throat. From her gemstone, pearl produced a fluffy blue towel for the little one. Vee-Ten shakily walked over to Holly-Blue's representative and passed her little one along. Pearl wrapped the little girl up in the towel and passed her back. "We have a new little sister, everyone. Per the tradition, the mother may designate the first half of her name, and the father the second half."
The parents named their little one Ehks-Eleven, and waved as an amethyst took the little one to the nursery. In a few years time, Ekhs-Eleven would be returned to the containment area to meet her parents, and possibly her older siblings. Vee-Ten and Ay-Nine shared a last moment of cuddle-time before they parted ways -- their period of choosening had ended. Vee-Ten left to sit among the ambers where her leftover hurts could be healed.
Jay-Eight and Zee-Ten took up their positions to be the next to fulfill the rite. Jay-Eight picked up Zee-Ten in his arms and spun her around to begin the process. His gem lit up, and reached out to Zee-Ten to begin the process. It took perhaps a little longer than Jay-Eight was comfortable with for Zee-Ten and him to combine -- but when they did he could feel the third presence among them. It was his job to part that presence from Zee-Ten without hurting her and arrange it so that when they came apart she would be holding their little one.
To his embarrassment, he accidentally put the little one in her arms upside-down. Everyone had a laugh as another amethyst was called in to carry the newborn Ar-Four to the nursery.
Before Zee-Ten went to go sit with the ambers, Jay-Eight hugged her. "I hope we're choosened for each other again, I liked being with you."
Zee-Ten stuck her tongue out at him as she walked off to the ambers. "It was fun. If it happens again, it happens again."
Jay-Eight had been all smiles before, but after he heard that his smile began to fade. Had Zee-Ten not enjoyed being choosened for him as much as he'd enjoyed being choosened for her? Was it something he'd done, or didn't do? He retreated to his favorite tree to think while the other fossils gushed about Bee-Four's latest fight with Jasper, or another gembone who summoned their weapon.
He'd been the second to summon his weapon, but it wasn't as impressive as Bee-Four's helmet. Jay-Eight could call fabric from his gem, sparkling grey with multi-color three-toed footprints of strange animals he'd never seen before, and have it do things for him. A long, narrow section could be tossed to wrap around things -- which was how he got to his favorite tree. A large, wide square could cover an object and make it disappear until Jay-Eight called it back. Jay-Eight could already see how he could use it in a gladitorial arena for his diamond's pleasure.
But those thoughts distracted Jay-Eight from his goal -- what had he done wrong with Zee-Ten? Was she even unhappy with him? They'd done everything they were supposed to do, make a little one, cuddle, spend time together, talk about what they hoped for the little one to be like, and he explained the rite of fusion to her. He paused and reconsidered the last point. Had he been wrong to fuse with her? But how else would their little one have come out? The human way? That caused so much hurt -- and Holly-Blue said it wasn't safe for non-ambers to even try.
His thoughts were distracted when he saw a blue figure through the trees below. Holly-Blue! Surely she would know! Jay-Eight called up a long cape of his fabric to wrap around his neck and hold taut with his hands, then lept from the tree to glide down to the lower trees. There was someone with Holly-Blue, though Jay-Eight couldn't clearly see whom. He lept from tree to tree, opal instincts let him know which branches would make a noise and which would hold strong under his weight.
Eventually, he got a good enough look at the other figure to guess who it was: Aych-Two! Little brother! Aych-Two had been taken off to meet Blue Diamond shortly after he was returned to the adult enclosure. But he was back! Jay-Eight couldn't wait to talk to him again, he and their parents had barely gotten to know the new fossil before he was presented and whisked away.
Something was amiss, Jay-Eight quickly learned that. Holly-Blue had to physically drag Aych-Two through the containment area, and when he got close enough he could hear someone crying. Holly-Blue was loud when she cried, so it had to be Aych-Two.
Holly-Blue set him down on the ground next to where the lake met the enclosure wall. "Al-alright Aych-Two, stay here." The agate seemed quite out of sorts. "Try not to interact too much with the other fossils or humans, alright? I'll… I'll check the schedules to see when the next human collection is to be done. Once we know how long you have, I can adjust your routine."
Aych-Two sat with his arms wrapped around his folded legs, with his head buried in his knees.
"I'm… I'm sorry, Aych-Two." Holly-Blue's shoulders shook a little, but Jay-Eight couldn't tell what face she made. "I… I made you wrong, and now you're being punished for that. I'll make sure they leave you somewhere where you can be accepted. And this… this won't happen again." Holly-Blue turned to leave, but paused and looked back at Aych-Two. "Holly-Blue still loves you, Aych-Two. I know it won't help much… but I don't care what Blue Diamond thinks of you." Then she left, and Jay-Eight could see how hard Holly-Blue had set herself to fight the urge to cry.
When she was gone, Jay-Eight crept closer to his brother, and dropped to the ground. Air moved around him and kept him from falling too fast and injuring himself. A protection of the zoo, like the Little Voice, he thought and didn't wonder too much about it. Jay-Eight touched down without a noise, but accompanied by a breeze.
Aych-Two had changed clothes since last Jay-Eight saw him. More indicative of Blue Diamond's service than the average fossil uniform.
"Little brother?" Jay-Eight asked, and hesitantly approached.
"Don't," Aych-Two said back. He tried to snarl, but he lacked the requisite meanness. "I'm bad. And you shouldn't be around me. Holly-Blue said so." The younger fossil hugged himself tighter, tried to make himself smaller. "Blue Diamond said so."
The tone Aych-Two said the last part made Jay-Eight recoil. That was a tone he'd only heard in Jasper, Holly-Blue called it 'bitter'. Against Aych-Two's demands, Jay-Eight approached closer. "No, Holly-Blue didn't. I overheard what she said. But Blue Diamond? Come on, she was with you for months, you must have misheard her. Our diamond -- "
"Your diamond," Aych-Two said with that same bitter tone. "She doesn't want me. She told Holly-Blue not to make any more fossils like me. I'm bad, I'm defective. And they're going to leave me on a planet I've never been to before when they send someone out to collect humans."
Jay-Eight got close enough to almost reach out and touch his brother when the younger fossil lashed out and slapped his hand away. For the first time, Jay-Eight got to look at his brother's face. Bags under his eyes, the whites in his eyeballs replaced with veiny pink-red, and a general pallor to his ruddy skin. Something was terribly wrong.
"Brother," Jay-Eight pleaded.
"Don't." Aych-Two returned to his curled-up state. "If you talk to me too much, you'll miss me when I'm gone. If you touch me, it'll be even worse."
Not for the first time, Jay-Eight realized he didn't know how to talk to someone who clearly needed him to. But this time -- he knew someone who did. He turned and ran for the containment door, with air of the zoo pushing him to move faster.
His dedication and fervor startled many of the gems he passed on his way out of the containment area. Humans were required to stay in the containment area, hybrids had the freedom to leave, but most stayed anyway. He was perhaps the first hybrid to choose to leave.
It didn't take him long to listen for whispers that sounded like Jasper, then he followed them and found himself at the quartz barracks. Jasper was in the midst of her punishment, polishing an amethyst guard.
"Jasper!" Jay-Eight demanded and stomped his feet to plant himself against a charge. It's what they had trained for, and what he expected her to do on seeing him automatically. "I need you to come with me!"
The giant quartz continued polishing the amethyst like she heard nothing. It was decidedly awkward, as all the other quartzes in the barracks had stopped to see what the ammonite wanted with them.
When her job was completed, and the giant quartz put the polishing towel back on the stand, she glanced at Jay-Eight and growled. "Get cracked."
Jay-Eight ominously set his gem to glow and spoke with a haunting voice filled with melodic echoes. "If you would rather it happen this way -- " He had to side-step a sudden punch attack from Jasper, which some of the amethysts cheered for him on.
"Is that how you ammonites are going to behave? Use your powers on people when you don't get your way?" Jasper curled her lip in disgust. "Pathetic."
"Right now, I don't care if I'm pathetic or not." Jay-Eight was frazzled by going so far out of his comfort zone so quickly, it showed in his movements and his appearance slightly. His hair was rather expressive. "Right now, Blue Diamond did something to my brother which makes him hate himself and you're the only gem I know who hates herself too. I need you to come with me and talk to him!"
The perfect quartz looked down her gem-nose at the ammonite with disdain. "I've only just started acknowledging how much I hate myself, monster. What makes you think I can say anything that would help anyone? What makes you think I can help anyone when I can't even help myself?" She sniffed and turned her back on the ammonite. "For what it's worth, I get it. Censure from a diamond hurts. But you'd be better off just being there to stop him doing something crazy."
Jay-Eight pulled at his hair in frustration, turned, and stormed out of the barracks. He ignored the amethyts who gave him pitying looks as he left, and tried to think of any other way to help his brother out.
He walked the whole circuit ring around the zoo, while he thought about it. Then he remembered what Holly-Blue had said, about the human retrieval schedule. That paired with Jasper's words to him, and he had a plan.
Jay-Eight quickly sought out Holly-Blue and masked how he felt with a broad grin and happy-go-lucky attitude that was his default state.
--
Holly-Blue had looked through everything on file she had that could -- conceivably -- help Aych-Two in the wild. She'd dusted off mothballed gem tech, she'd fabricated stories about the need to ease her fossils into gem society with minor gadgets to requisition items. Two of her ambers had somehow acquired advanced mathematics which was spreading among her fossils -- while that was cause for alarm, it gave her another avenue to increase the tech available to her by way of enrichment.
White Diamond ended up requisitioning some ambers some weeks after their return for another experiment, but by then she had humans and fossils making number games to teach each other. Aych-Two remained solidly anti-social per her requests, with the exception of Jay-Eight. She saw him try multiple times to get Aych-Two to socialize, but to no avail. It made sense as to why he would request to go on the next human collection mission, to get away. Holly-Blue had almost not granted it, given she had to send Aych-Two off on the mission as well. But the display model ammonite needed to show the others how it was done sometime, it was best to get it out of the way.
Blue Diamond just wanted Aych-Two gone. Fine. Whatever. Let her diamond squander resources because she couldn't see potential properly. Holly-Blue wouldn't let one of her fossils go into the wild unprepared. Ancient saucer-style colony ships of Blue Diamond's had been brought to the zoo on the pretext of teaching her fossils how to pilot. The old stone craft weren't warp-capable, they had been outmoded since the turn of Era Two, and in general they were considered useless. But they were big. Big enough for a hybrid like Aych-Two to live comfortably for a few thousand years. A few knick-knacks, some brikabrak, and there was a good chance Aych-Two could survive in the wild.
"What are you doing?"
Holly-Blue looked up to see Sagenite Agate approach her. The yellow commander gestured to where Holly-Blue's troops were attaching towing cables from a Roaming Eye to an ancient blue saucer craft.
The agate rolled her eyes. "My display model ammonite is going on a mission to capture some wild humans soon. We've been ordered to speed up the capture rate in anticipation of the next zoo facility. Roaming Eyes are fine for small amounts, but a larger space to contain them in will be necessary."
"That won't be necessary," the one-eyed gem groused. "My diamond has authorized the use of the Hand of Authority to capture humans, provided some are tithed to her and White Diamond. The rest of the Authority wants fossils of their own, it seems."
Holly-Blue grit her teeth at her plans being thwarted by the involvement of the diamonds. "How generous of her," she said with faux-enthusiasm. "I'd be happy to provide a copy of my notes, to accelerate the production of fossils for Yellow and White Diamond. But starting fresh from unturned humans will take a few thousand years to see results."
Sagenite Agate flicked her wrist dismissively. "We will see about that. Just inform your troops to report to the Hand of Authority when the mission is set to go ahead."
Holly-Blue nodded and looked to glare at the Hand of Authority that loomed outside her station in a parking orbit. It would be more difficult to provide for Aych-Two on a vessel of a completely different diamond. Difficult, but not impossible.
First she had to teach her fossils how to pilot a ship, then convince Sagenite Agate to allow one of them to pilot the ship instead of their usual nephrite. To her surprise, it turned out to be an amber who had the technological proficiency to make Sagenite agree to the setup. Then she had to have her rambunctious soldiers make repeated mishaps occur to cover unauthorized shipments to the Hand. Once all was said and done, she had to make a show for Sagenite Agate when the mission began.
"Listen up, layabouts!" Holly-Blue shouted in front of her assembled amethyst and jasper squad to accompany the fossils. Behind her, beside her pearl, was a gembone -- Bee-Four. "This is an important mission. You're going out with the express purpose of capturing as many humans as possible. We're going to jump-start the fossil production of Yellow and White Diamond if this mission succeeds. To that end, you're taking two of my display model gembones and an amber." Holly-Blue gestured to Bee-Four. "Bee-Four, Jay-Eight, and Eye-Five all will be with you to watch, learn, and if the stars are kind improve on your methods." With the yellow agate watching from afar, Holly-Blue made a show of glaring at each of her quartz soldiers. "If you damage my fossils in a way the amber can't fix, or diamonds-forbid lose one of them? Don't bother coming back -- I will shatter you myself! Now go!"
Holly-Blue watched them leave with Aych-Two in tow, confident that she'd arranged things so that her only jet would be taken care of.
Imagine her surprise, not a week later, when the long-distance monitoring for the Hand of Authority deployed to the Earth reported catastrophic systems failure and no response from any communication requests. A replay of the ship's internal cameras showed a riot of the captive humans against the quartz soldiers, before the explosion cut it off.
SmashQueen
Professional duck-cat.
Methinks this is getting closer to, or is at, the modern age if a bunch of humans were able to fight back that much.
Yeahhh no, no jumpstart fossil production. Sorry, not sorry Diamonds.
Yeahhh no, no jumpstart fossil production. Sorry, not sorry Diamonds.
Even modern day humans wouldn't have been able to fight back that much. This was either massive luck, or the Fossils helping.
SmashQueen
Professional duck-cat.
I was thinking if the captured humans had guns or something then it would prove problematic. Nothing was really noted about firepower, so perhaps the fossils helped out. Would explain the explosion, probably, as that could be some machinery heavily malfunctioning or being hit by some attack, although the why for rebelling so is pretty questionable. None of them have outright shown anything outside of dedication towards Holly-Blue or the Diamonds. Only other thing I can think of is maybe one of the Crystal Gems getting involved via shape shifting. That's still pretty far out there though, even with all the exploring they did.
Probably real. She only wanted to get in some supplies and make sure H2 was alright. Doubt she wanted to upset her Diamonds by having the Hand of Authority get wrecked and have the mission end up as a complete failure.
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Even guns I'm pretty sure would do nothing to Quartz unless it hits their gem. Atleast, nothing of a size a human could smuggle onboard.
The Fossils, specifically J8, is probably doing it so that they could STAY on earth with Jet. He did went and specifically decieved Holly.
I dunno about a pistol, but a rifle or shot gun (slug) getting a direct hit on the flat of a gem would probably hurt like a son of a bitch. We know gems aren't completely shock and impact proof. But I tend to assume that anything that an individual can carry wouldn't do any permanent damage because I imagine that the actual physical gems of a gem are supernaturally tough.
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SmashQueen
Professional duck-cat.
Point. Thought he'd most likely be at fault, though I'd forgotten about his fake little smile as he went to go talk with HB. With as...vocabulary stunted and simple as the zoo humans are he wouldn't likely see it as anything too tragic or awful towards Holly-Blue or the other Gems. Certainly not defiant rebellion against the Diamond Authority, nooo. ...Well okay, maybe.
Yeah, like I said, hitting the gem itself could do actual damage. But considering a Quartz Soldier, if they expect it, could just cover their gem (or turn around so it's facing the other way), that is a real hard weak-spot to hit.
And a Rifle or Shot-Gun might be able to hurt them... if they HAD rifles or shot-guns. I don't think the gems would just let them carry those onto the ship. They might miss a pistol here or there, but its' a bit hard to miss the heavier ordinance.
Jelleton
Captain Pronin Superstar
Also, what are the chances that EVERYONE they captured has a gun of some sort? Unless they specifically looked for an army base I doubt there'd be anything aside from a couple, maaaaybe a handful.
My guess? Jet or J8 is using their song abilities to incite the humans to a higher degree.
My guess? Jet or J8 is using their song abilities to incite the humans to a higher degree.
ah yes
guns
that well known Roman weapon
- Location
- Elsewhere
It could be that the crystal gems infiltrated the ship when they were taking on a whole lot of humans, and then incited a riot? A few villages quietly disappearing from time to time I could see them overlooking, but a huge ship's worth of them? With the gems in charge being told not to bother with subtlety? If it's the ancient world, there wouldn't have been a lot of places where they could easily get such large amounts of humans at once, and I gotta imagine that the crystal gems would notice homeworld attacking, say, Rome.
Who knows how many years it's been since Eudoxia was kidnapped
- Location
- Somewhere in the eastern hemisphere.
I'm pretty sure Blue and Jet's jungle trip was not going on for centuries.
I wasn't so sure, Fossils are as immortal as full on gems and time can just slip away, but no, Gray Diamond happened on Trip #2. So it probably hasn't been more than one year, if even that.
SmashQueen
Professional duck-cat.
Holly-Blue mentions that "starting fresh from unturned humans will take a few thousand years to see results". We have roughly 5,000 years between Pink Diamond's "shattering" with Blue taking over Pink's zoo, and Steven's time. There's also about 4,500 years between the Corrupting Light and his time, too. With those pieces in place, we have a rough timeline of when the zoo humans first resulted in a fossil. A few implies more than 2, so let's say roughly 3,000 years for a fossil to emerge, leaving maybe 2,000 years until Rose meets Greg. It's been also mentioned in the story than centuries or millennia come and go in the blink of an eye for a Diamond. While Blue was working, she would occasionally turn and see Jet's progress, something that might have taken months or even years to achieve. We don't know, and we can't know.
We could have 1800 years until canon or 1200. We won't know until we find out about the humans who were captured or see some architecture.
What we can surmise is that we're creeping ever closer to the summer of 1862 when William Buchanan set 335 fires in Beach City. Oh, and Rose giving up her physical form.
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Chapter Eleven
Chairtastic
Anything's a chair if you're brave enough
- Location
- Breakfast nook
- Pronouns
- He / Him / It
Chapter Eleven -- Abductors
The Hand of Authority shook as it entered Earth's atmosphere. Inside the ship, most of the shaking was negated by the inertial dampeners. But the sheer size of the ship meant that it couldn't completely negate the shakes and rattles. Jet stayed in his cell and didn't move on his own, but the shaking caused him to scoot around. It was apparently quite entertaining as Jay-Eight giggled on the other side of the cell doorway while he watched.
The cell wasn't even closed -- it had been modified for fossils and had many holes along the frame where bars would emerge. But it was where the quartz soldiers had put him, so its where he stayed.
"You're not going to go away, are you?" Jet asked him, morose as he scooted about the cell.
Jay-Eight shook his head without looking away. "I did once. And when you came back, you were this." The ammonite gestured to Jet's person with his hand then placed both on his waist and bent forward. "I'd rather it not get worse without me there to help, little brother."
Jet glowered and continued to scoot about. "Well, once I'm on Earth there won't be much you can do about it."
Jay-Eight grinned, and Jet got the feeling his older brother had some clever idea.
"What? You think you can come with me?" Jet forced out a laugh, mocking the notion. "You're the display model. You heard how Holly-Blue was -- if you don't go back with them, they'll be shattered!"
Jay-Eight's smile vanished over the course of seconds. "I'm okay with that." It sounded like Jay-Eight wanted to convince himself just as much as he wanted to convince Jet.
The younger fossil looked up at him, disbelieving and angry. He had the memories of Blue Diamond's despair at having almost no choice but to shatter him, and that this whole affair was her desperate alternative to it fresh in his mind. Like all things related to Blue Diamond, it haunted him and would allow no rest. "Why? Don't you know what being shattered means?"
When they were Grey Diamond, he could feel what it felt like to be Blue Diamond. It was like he felt each gem in his hands as they broke apart. He felt Blue Diamond hate the gems that made it necessary, he felt the hate that clawed at her for wanting there to be another way, and he felt something like hate but colder. More distant. And aimed at someone that he couldn't imagine because their fusion didn't last long enough.
Jay-Eight narrowed his eyes at Jet. "I learned from Eye-Five what it means. We come from shattered gems -- you know that."
"But do you know what it means to be shattered?" Jet struggled to his feet despite the ship shaking. Once he stood it was a lot easier to stay in one place. "It means being broken up. Your mind in pieces, you in pieces. And nothing can ever bring you back -- even if all your pieces are brought together." The younger brother glared balefully at his elder.
Jay-Eight joined in on the glare. "Well, what do you expect me to do? Let them leave you there? Out in the wild where wild humans could kill and eat you? You remember Holly-Blue's lessons, there's no daily fruit on Earth! You have to kill what you want to eat!" The ammonite called forth a sash-wide segment of his cloth gem weapon. "Do you even have a weapon? What are you going to kill your food with? Your hands?!"
Jet and Jay-Eight continued to glare at each other, but as the effect wore on Jet's outrage began to crumble. Rage and sorrow came in waves, and as it happened his rage wore off as a new wave of sorrow rolled in. First he couldn't meet his brother's eyes, then he fell to his knees when he couldn't stand anymore, and finally a fresh bout of crying started up. He wanted to tell his brother to let him die in the wilderness, but Jay-Eight wouldn't listen. Jet didn't even know why, the brothers had barely interacted before Blue Diamond took him away.
"You're young," Jay-Eight said as if he could read his brother's mind. "You haven't seen little ones go off to the nursery and come back yet. We get so excited to meet who our little brothers and sisters are, maybe even introduce them to our little ones. I sent my little one off to the nursery the day you came back like… this."
Jet felt a displacement of air and glanced over to see his brother seated next to him. There was no smile on his face, but there was pity in his eyes.
"I want to know you, but this isn't you. Someone did this to you -- Blue Diamond, I guess." Jay-Eight shrugged. "Don't know. Don't care. But I want to get to know the real you. And if that means I have to go with you into the wild -- fine. That's what I'll do."
Jet scowled at him. "That's a terrible decision, frankly. You don't know if I'm worth it."
"No, I don't!" There was a sudden note of levity in Jay-Eight's voice. "But ammonites are supposed to be gladiators. Nothing in that job description requires us to make good long-term decisions." The ammonite stuck his tongue out at his brother and threw a blanket-sized swath of his gem fabric over Jet. "And I just felt the ship stop shaking, so we probably are approaching the target zone."
Jet watched his brother get up and leave the cell. He didn't activate the bars when he could, he kept walking instead. The outcast fossil was left there with an improvised blanket, so he wrapped it around himself tighter and laid down to rest.
--
Once Jay-Eight had joined the group, Amethyst 8XJ barked out her first order as commander of the mission: "Gather round, everyone!"
8XJ was the shortest amethyst on the mission, but that didn't bother anyone from the zoo. Carnelian usually called the shots when Holly-Blue wasn't around, and she was the shortest quartz on the station. Technically, Bee-Four should have commanded the mission as he was an agate. Amethysts were squad-level soldiers who could command a unit in a pinch, jaspers were heavies that tended to get too lost in a fight to command, but agates could keep their heads in a fight.
Once the quartzes and the fossils were assembled in the control room, 8XJ tapped a green panel to change into a display screen. It showed the Earth's surface in different shades of green for land and water, with bright yellow indicating human populations. "Alright, so our last batch came from here." She tapped a corner of the inland sea of the super-continent. "Now there are some pretty large population centers in that area according to the ship -- but there's an even bigger one over here." She dragged her finger over to the edge of the super-continent, where a pair of peninsulas jutted off the coastline. "There's over sixty million humans in this area alone. That's almost as much as the whole rest of the planet combined."
Jasper 7XF, a massive slab of quartz with more dark maroon stripes than orange skin, whistled at that number.
"Right?" 8XL turned to look at her squad and her fossil VIPs. "I don't know why we haven't been pulling from there before! Well, we're doing it now." 8XL thumped her chest and put on a confident face. "Our mission is to get as many humans as we possibly can -- we have enough cells for two thousand humans, plus standing room for another one and a half. If we had more ammonites, I'd say we could get this bucket to capacity with humans. But we'll have to make do with the cells we've got." She looked over at the ammonite for the mission, Jay-Eight. "You good to get started?"
Jay-Eight took a deep breath and warmed up his voice a little. "I think I can manage," he boasted with a wink.
"I like that confidence!" She gave him a thumb's up and turned to the gembone. "Bee-Four, we're trusting you to keep Jay-Eight safe while he's keeping the humans under control. Can you do that?"
Bee-Four's response was to immediately summon his helmet, as easily as breathing. The three-horned face looked back at 8XJ with the kind of 'Imma wreck your whole week' glare that she'd only ever seen in that Jasper. "I give the rowdy ones this look, right? I think I got it."
It put her ever so slightly ill-at-ease, how easily he switched that expression off. "Oh...kay, that's confidence too! Yeah." She coughed and hastily looked away, to the last fossil. "Eye-Five, you cool with piloting the ship into position? The loading bay doors still giving you trouble?"
The blonde fossil shook her head. "No, they're working fine now. As it turned out, an organic somehow got stuck in the door and decomposed. The acids in its body damaged the door, which was why it wasn't working properly. I cleaned it out, fixed the door, and all's well."
A slightly bigger, slightly pinker amethyst -- 8XG -- chuckled. "A pilot and a mechanic? Can we have her on all our missions?"
8XJ grinned, glad to get past the period of awkwardness. "Alright! Everything's looking good! Let's go get us some humans!"
--
Yuuki hadn't expected youkai to attack so openly, or so peacefully. When her father and grandfather had told stories about youkai that attacked settlements she'd never heard of, there was always widespread destruction. The men of the village would fight honorably until the youkai left or the Four Goddesses descended from heaven to drive them back.
She could only learn the stories from her father and grandfather since they knew how to read and write. Yuuki was the first of her brothers and sisters to learn, because of her deformity. But she had such skill teaching it to her father's second wife and her younger siblings, that the village chief had asked her father to allow Yuuki to marry his youngest son and teach his household to read and write. She never asked how her father or grandfather knew the language if they were only farmers. She'd seen grandfather look west, toward China wistfully one time when she'd asked, and that seemed to be his answer.
Her deformity was that the world was silent for her. She couldn't listen to the words people could speak, she couldn't hear the song of birds; anything at all. Some noises make vibrations she could feel -- which was why she loved the drums and big bells used in festivals.
She thought, perhaps the Four Goddesses had given her the deformity so that she could be awake when the youkai came for her and her village. They were a large village, large enough that other village chiefs treated their chief like their superior, and obeyed his command. But when the enormous hand youkai turned the night sky green as it descended from heaven, even her chief became an obedient slave. There was some magic going on that Yuuki couldn't perceive. In the middle of her lesson, her nieces and nephews, her husband and brothers in law, and her village chief all turned toward the green light. Then they stood and walked together from the room.
Yuuki followed them and saw that the whole village had become the same way. Elders, young ones. Mothers with babies in their arms. Soldiers, merchants. That one peddler who came from the strange land of 'Straya' with giant snake eggs. Even her father, grandfather, and siblings!
It didn't take long for Yuuki to see the source of the magic. It was a youkai who appeared to be a man -- barely dressed and beautiful beyond words. She knew he wasn't really a human as he had a glowing mark in his chest -- all shapeshifted youkai had a piece of themselves that revealed their nature. The Child Goddess often delighted in her shapeshifting powers, per the legends. The youkai's mouth worked like he spoke, and Yuuki guessed that he had some magic in his words.
The giant green hand had laid itself flat on the docks as if offered to the people who walked toward it. A hole opened up in the hand's fingertips, which people walked into without thinking. What was bizarre about the affair was how the youkai exclusively wanted humans. Yuuki watched as horses, cows and wild boars emerged from the farms to follow the humans, but were commanded back.
A second youkai stood with the first. In the same revealing dress, and with a similar beauty of body except for his face. His face was of a skinless skull with a beaked mouth, a horn for a nose, and two horns above his empty eye sockets. Clearly, this was the first youkai's minion. A soldier to set upon humans that couldn't, or wouldn't, obey.
Suddenly, Yuuki feared she would be spotted as not under the spell. So she walked with the rest of her village. However, she stopped and took a rock from the road as she walked. Then she hid it in her voluminous sleeves as she approached the hand. Her heart beat extremely fast in her chest -- she thought she would die from it, as she walked into the giant fingertip with her family around her.
The inside of the finger was strange. No blood or bone. Instead, their feet echoed off the floor like the surface of a giant drum. Every surface gleamed. Then she saw them. They were youkai of a different sort than the first two Yuuki had seen them. Their skin was pink or purple, or orange and red striped -- they were all women with flowing hair and a mark which showed them for what they were. They watched the flood of humans walk past them with wide grins, and even offered physical affection to the first two youkai Yuuki had seen. She only needed to look at them interact to know what this whole thing was.
The way they interacted, it was the same as elder siblings praising a younger one for completing a difficult task for the first time. Yuuki fumed at the sight of it. Her whole village was to be dragged away to be eaten or worse by these youkai, and they treated it like an accomplishment to be celebrated. The Four Goddesses wouldn't arrive fast enough -- all the people Yuuki had grown up with would be gobbled up and gone by the time they arrived.
Yuuki waited in the crowd of hypnotized people while her friends and family were parceled up and put into larders with bars to keep them secure once the spell wore off. The hand around them shuddered, pleased for having humans to feed it again, perhaps. Yuuki just needed to wait for her turn.
When it came time for Yuuki's group to be fed into the larder, Yuuki rushed the bewitching youkai once its back was turned. She took the rock from her sleeve and struck him in the back of the head with it.
He hit the ground, unconscious. There was blood on the rock, and blood on the floor around him as Yuuki stood, victorious.
She was happy that her family was freed. As she watched, they came to their senses, they saw where they were, and they were rightfully afraid or angry.
Of course, the youkai's older sisters didn't like that. The last thing Yuuki saw was one of the striped sisters rapidly approach her, and grabbed her by the shoulders. And the last thing she felt was when the tiger-striped youkai tore her in half.
--
Bee-Four was a failure. That thought replied in his head rapidly as he watched Jay-Eight get knocked unconscious by a wild human woman. Jasper 7XF dealt with the wild human while Bee-Four was stunned into inaction. Amethyst 8XJ shook him out of his stupor and barked orders at him.
"We got the humans, get Jay-Eight to Eye-Five now!"
Bee-Four nodded numbly and scooped up his fellow fossil and ran away. He tried to ignore the feeling of blood on his shoulder as he carried Jay-Eight in his arms toward the bridge. He tried to ignore the sounds of screams and rage from the wild humans outside their cages as Jay-Eight's spell wore off. However, what he couldn't ignore was the knowledge of his failure. All of this was because he didn't notice a human had escaped Jay-Eight's spell somehow and got to attack him.
"Eye-Five!" He shouted and dismissed his helmet. "Eye-Five!"
The amber met him outside the control room and immediately began to gather resin in her hands when she saw Jay Eight and the blood. Bee-Four held Jay-Eight steady while Eye-Five healed his head. He was fortunate she needed to hum while she healed, because he didn't feel like he could answer questions from the amber just yet. It was taking all his self-control not to cry in frustration at how badly he'd failed. The quartzes would need to damage or ruin humans in order to corral them, which meant even if everything went great from that moment on, he'd be a bad example for other gembones.
Some 'display model' he turned out to be.
A trio of high-pitched pings came from the control room just as Jay-Eight started to wake up. Eye-Five turned and looked at the control panel in fright, then ran for it.
"What's wrong? Did I fall asleep?" Jay-Eight groggily asked as he held his head. "Ow, I've got such a headache." Then he noticed Bee-Four holding him and smirked. "You know, if you wanted to practice choosening you just needed to ask -- "
"Now is a really bad time," Bee-Four snapped. "We need you to get back over to the humans and -- "
"Attention, all hands," the ship's internal communications system rang through the halls and the fossil's earrings. "The pilot has detected a hostile lifeform on a collision course with this craft. Please brace for impact."
Bee-Four had time to look into the control room and saw a hulking black figure with massive hair, two faces, and a two-handed sword of pure fire approach the ship's cameras rapidly before a great screeching shake sent him falling backward. Jay-Eight, still in Bee-Four's arms got tangled in the gembone from the initial fall and the shift in gravity that followed. Whatever had hit the ship had knocked out inertial dampening.
Eye-Five returned from the control room and helped the men get to their feet. "We need to get to the quartzes and then the escape pods," she said calmly but with visible unease in her face. "That thing hit the backup reactor, that's going to blow in a few minutes and it'll knock out the main reactor. The ship will crash and our current crash course puts us in the middle of the ocean."
Jay-Eight got visibly freaked out and dashed off. The other two fossils followed him but found it difficult. Whatever had attacked the ship was still attacking the ship. More than once, Bee-Four and Eye-Five had to stop just around the corner from Jay-Eight as the blade of the hostile creature's sword cut into the ship. The heat it radiated was a problem for Eye-Five, so Bee-Four acted as a shield between her and the furnace-sword. Gembones had heat resistance for days.
When they caught up to Jay-Eight they found he hadn't gone to the quartzes at all, but grabbed Aych-Two from his cell. The younger fossil was afraid and cowered behind his elder brother when the creature attacked the ship.
Bee-Four didn't even think of being outraged at Jay-Eight for the detour -- he had forgotten Aych-Two was aboard. "Are you okay, Aych-Two? Do you need Eye-Five to heal you?"
"He's fine," Jay-Eight barked. "Let's get off this ship before it -- "
Naturally, the backup reactor exploded at that precise moment. Bee-Four and Eye-Five were able to stand through the wave of pressurized air that accompanied the reactor's explosion, but the fossil brothers weren't. Bee-Four had to catch them with his arms when they were sent flying past him, and Eye-Five had to hold him steady.
Without a word, Bee-Four carried the fossil brothers under his arms while they ran for the escape pods. When they got to the section of the ship where they would be launched from, they found only one amethyst waiting for them. 8XJ -- she looked tired and annoyed.
When she looked up and saw them, she breathed a sigh of relief. "You guys are okay. Great. Where are the others?"
The fossils looked around and cringed back a bit. "We haven't seen any other gems besides you."
8XJ looked confused and opened the door that the fossils had just come through. "But… I sent 8XG and 8XL after you guys. They should've found you." A great and fiery orange sword being stabbed through the hallway she looked down reminded her of the more pressing issues. "Right! Can't wait! They're tough rocks, they'll survive!" 8XJ closed the door, turned and stomped her foot on the ground. A yellow-green gelatinous mass emerged from the floor, enveloped all of them, and sucked them down into the ship's inner workings. They emerged into a cramped room with two rows of seating. A front row which included Eye-Five and 8XJ in front of the control devices, and a back row where the three male fossils sat uselessly. A sudden rush indicated their pod was in motion, and the yellow-green empty space in front of them peeled back to reveal a window.
Bee-Four got a chance to see the Hand of Authority trail into the planet below them with smoke and debris falling from it like the tail of a comet, riden by the black giant that had downed the ship. The giant saw their pod leave, turned, and hurled her sword at them like it was a spear.
Eye-Five immediately took the controls from 8XJ and had their pod evade the attack, barely.
"What about the wild humans?" Aych-Two asked as the Hand fell to Earth faster than their pod.
"What about the wild humans?" 8XJ asked back, low and dangerous. "We were attacked. Even if we wanted to put them back, we couldn't. Taking them in the pods would only get them hurt. We lost half of them to hull breaches when that thing started cutting into us, anyway. We gotta focus on us right now." She turned to Eye-Five and her tone was noticeably warmer. "What about it? You got this?"
"No," Eye-Five said back, strained. "The magnetosphere is trying to push us to the poles -- the ship couldn't launch us fast enough to compensate."
Bee-Four watched as the display started to be covered with more and more white particles as they descended the atmosphere. The miracle of snow was lost on him as their pod careened toward the edge of a massive bay in the north-east of the super-continent.
Welcome to Earth, he thought morosely. Where one failure leads to tragedy.
The Hand of Authority shook as it entered Earth's atmosphere. Inside the ship, most of the shaking was negated by the inertial dampeners. But the sheer size of the ship meant that it couldn't completely negate the shakes and rattles. Jet stayed in his cell and didn't move on his own, but the shaking caused him to scoot around. It was apparently quite entertaining as Jay-Eight giggled on the other side of the cell doorway while he watched.
The cell wasn't even closed -- it had been modified for fossils and had many holes along the frame where bars would emerge. But it was where the quartz soldiers had put him, so its where he stayed.
"You're not going to go away, are you?" Jet asked him, morose as he scooted about the cell.
Jay-Eight shook his head without looking away. "I did once. And when you came back, you were this." The ammonite gestured to Jet's person with his hand then placed both on his waist and bent forward. "I'd rather it not get worse without me there to help, little brother."
Jet glowered and continued to scoot about. "Well, once I'm on Earth there won't be much you can do about it."
Jay-Eight grinned, and Jet got the feeling his older brother had some clever idea.
"What? You think you can come with me?" Jet forced out a laugh, mocking the notion. "You're the display model. You heard how Holly-Blue was -- if you don't go back with them, they'll be shattered!"
Jay-Eight's smile vanished over the course of seconds. "I'm okay with that." It sounded like Jay-Eight wanted to convince himself just as much as he wanted to convince Jet.
The younger fossil looked up at him, disbelieving and angry. He had the memories of Blue Diamond's despair at having almost no choice but to shatter him, and that this whole affair was her desperate alternative to it fresh in his mind. Like all things related to Blue Diamond, it haunted him and would allow no rest. "Why? Don't you know what being shattered means?"
When they were Grey Diamond, he could feel what it felt like to be Blue Diamond. It was like he felt each gem in his hands as they broke apart. He felt Blue Diamond hate the gems that made it necessary, he felt the hate that clawed at her for wanting there to be another way, and he felt something like hate but colder. More distant. And aimed at someone that he couldn't imagine because their fusion didn't last long enough.
Jay-Eight narrowed his eyes at Jet. "I learned from Eye-Five what it means. We come from shattered gems -- you know that."
"But do you know what it means to be shattered?" Jet struggled to his feet despite the ship shaking. Once he stood it was a lot easier to stay in one place. "It means being broken up. Your mind in pieces, you in pieces. And nothing can ever bring you back -- even if all your pieces are brought together." The younger brother glared balefully at his elder.
Jay-Eight joined in on the glare. "Well, what do you expect me to do? Let them leave you there? Out in the wild where wild humans could kill and eat you? You remember Holly-Blue's lessons, there's no daily fruit on Earth! You have to kill what you want to eat!" The ammonite called forth a sash-wide segment of his cloth gem weapon. "Do you even have a weapon? What are you going to kill your food with? Your hands?!"
Jet and Jay-Eight continued to glare at each other, but as the effect wore on Jet's outrage began to crumble. Rage and sorrow came in waves, and as it happened his rage wore off as a new wave of sorrow rolled in. First he couldn't meet his brother's eyes, then he fell to his knees when he couldn't stand anymore, and finally a fresh bout of crying started up. He wanted to tell his brother to let him die in the wilderness, but Jay-Eight wouldn't listen. Jet didn't even know why, the brothers had barely interacted before Blue Diamond took him away.
"You're young," Jay-Eight said as if he could read his brother's mind. "You haven't seen little ones go off to the nursery and come back yet. We get so excited to meet who our little brothers and sisters are, maybe even introduce them to our little ones. I sent my little one off to the nursery the day you came back like… this."
Jet felt a displacement of air and glanced over to see his brother seated next to him. There was no smile on his face, but there was pity in his eyes.
"I want to know you, but this isn't you. Someone did this to you -- Blue Diamond, I guess." Jay-Eight shrugged. "Don't know. Don't care. But I want to get to know the real you. And if that means I have to go with you into the wild -- fine. That's what I'll do."
Jet scowled at him. "That's a terrible decision, frankly. You don't know if I'm worth it."
"No, I don't!" There was a sudden note of levity in Jay-Eight's voice. "But ammonites are supposed to be gladiators. Nothing in that job description requires us to make good long-term decisions." The ammonite stuck his tongue out at his brother and threw a blanket-sized swath of his gem fabric over Jet. "And I just felt the ship stop shaking, so we probably are approaching the target zone."
Jet watched his brother get up and leave the cell. He didn't activate the bars when he could, he kept walking instead. The outcast fossil was left there with an improvised blanket, so he wrapped it around himself tighter and laid down to rest.
--
Once Jay-Eight had joined the group, Amethyst 8XJ barked out her first order as commander of the mission: "Gather round, everyone!"
8XJ was the shortest amethyst on the mission, but that didn't bother anyone from the zoo. Carnelian usually called the shots when Holly-Blue wasn't around, and she was the shortest quartz on the station. Technically, Bee-Four should have commanded the mission as he was an agate. Amethysts were squad-level soldiers who could command a unit in a pinch, jaspers were heavies that tended to get too lost in a fight to command, but agates could keep their heads in a fight.
Once the quartzes and the fossils were assembled in the control room, 8XJ tapped a green panel to change into a display screen. It showed the Earth's surface in different shades of green for land and water, with bright yellow indicating human populations. "Alright, so our last batch came from here." She tapped a corner of the inland sea of the super-continent. "Now there are some pretty large population centers in that area according to the ship -- but there's an even bigger one over here." She dragged her finger over to the edge of the super-continent, where a pair of peninsulas jutted off the coastline. "There's over sixty million humans in this area alone. That's almost as much as the whole rest of the planet combined."
Jasper 7XF, a massive slab of quartz with more dark maroon stripes than orange skin, whistled at that number.
"Right?" 8XL turned to look at her squad and her fossil VIPs. "I don't know why we haven't been pulling from there before! Well, we're doing it now." 8XL thumped her chest and put on a confident face. "Our mission is to get as many humans as we possibly can -- we have enough cells for two thousand humans, plus standing room for another one and a half. If we had more ammonites, I'd say we could get this bucket to capacity with humans. But we'll have to make do with the cells we've got." She looked over at the ammonite for the mission, Jay-Eight. "You good to get started?"
Jay-Eight took a deep breath and warmed up his voice a little. "I think I can manage," he boasted with a wink.
"I like that confidence!" She gave him a thumb's up and turned to the gembone. "Bee-Four, we're trusting you to keep Jay-Eight safe while he's keeping the humans under control. Can you do that?"
Bee-Four's response was to immediately summon his helmet, as easily as breathing. The three-horned face looked back at 8XJ with the kind of 'Imma wreck your whole week' glare that she'd only ever seen in that Jasper. "I give the rowdy ones this look, right? I think I got it."
It put her ever so slightly ill-at-ease, how easily he switched that expression off. "Oh...kay, that's confidence too! Yeah." She coughed and hastily looked away, to the last fossil. "Eye-Five, you cool with piloting the ship into position? The loading bay doors still giving you trouble?"
The blonde fossil shook her head. "No, they're working fine now. As it turned out, an organic somehow got stuck in the door and decomposed. The acids in its body damaged the door, which was why it wasn't working properly. I cleaned it out, fixed the door, and all's well."
A slightly bigger, slightly pinker amethyst -- 8XG -- chuckled. "A pilot and a mechanic? Can we have her on all our missions?"
8XJ grinned, glad to get past the period of awkwardness. "Alright! Everything's looking good! Let's go get us some humans!"
--
Yuuki hadn't expected youkai to attack so openly, or so peacefully. When her father and grandfather had told stories about youkai that attacked settlements she'd never heard of, there was always widespread destruction. The men of the village would fight honorably until the youkai left or the Four Goddesses descended from heaven to drive them back.
She could only learn the stories from her father and grandfather since they knew how to read and write. Yuuki was the first of her brothers and sisters to learn, because of her deformity. But she had such skill teaching it to her father's second wife and her younger siblings, that the village chief had asked her father to allow Yuuki to marry his youngest son and teach his household to read and write. She never asked how her father or grandfather knew the language if they were only farmers. She'd seen grandfather look west, toward China wistfully one time when she'd asked, and that seemed to be his answer.
Her deformity was that the world was silent for her. She couldn't listen to the words people could speak, she couldn't hear the song of birds; anything at all. Some noises make vibrations she could feel -- which was why she loved the drums and big bells used in festivals.
She thought, perhaps the Four Goddesses had given her the deformity so that she could be awake when the youkai came for her and her village. They were a large village, large enough that other village chiefs treated their chief like their superior, and obeyed his command. But when the enormous hand youkai turned the night sky green as it descended from heaven, even her chief became an obedient slave. There was some magic going on that Yuuki couldn't perceive. In the middle of her lesson, her nieces and nephews, her husband and brothers in law, and her village chief all turned toward the green light. Then they stood and walked together from the room.
Yuuki followed them and saw that the whole village had become the same way. Elders, young ones. Mothers with babies in their arms. Soldiers, merchants. That one peddler who came from the strange land of 'Straya' with giant snake eggs. Even her father, grandfather, and siblings!
It didn't take long for Yuuki to see the source of the magic. It was a youkai who appeared to be a man -- barely dressed and beautiful beyond words. She knew he wasn't really a human as he had a glowing mark in his chest -- all shapeshifted youkai had a piece of themselves that revealed their nature. The Child Goddess often delighted in her shapeshifting powers, per the legends. The youkai's mouth worked like he spoke, and Yuuki guessed that he had some magic in his words.
The giant green hand had laid itself flat on the docks as if offered to the people who walked toward it. A hole opened up in the hand's fingertips, which people walked into without thinking. What was bizarre about the affair was how the youkai exclusively wanted humans. Yuuki watched as horses, cows and wild boars emerged from the farms to follow the humans, but were commanded back.
A second youkai stood with the first. In the same revealing dress, and with a similar beauty of body except for his face. His face was of a skinless skull with a beaked mouth, a horn for a nose, and two horns above his empty eye sockets. Clearly, this was the first youkai's minion. A soldier to set upon humans that couldn't, or wouldn't, obey.
Suddenly, Yuuki feared she would be spotted as not under the spell. So she walked with the rest of her village. However, she stopped and took a rock from the road as she walked. Then she hid it in her voluminous sleeves as she approached the hand. Her heart beat extremely fast in her chest -- she thought she would die from it, as she walked into the giant fingertip with her family around her.
The inside of the finger was strange. No blood or bone. Instead, their feet echoed off the floor like the surface of a giant drum. Every surface gleamed. Then she saw them. They were youkai of a different sort than the first two Yuuki had seen them. Their skin was pink or purple, or orange and red striped -- they were all women with flowing hair and a mark which showed them for what they were. They watched the flood of humans walk past them with wide grins, and even offered physical affection to the first two youkai Yuuki had seen. She only needed to look at them interact to know what this whole thing was.
The way they interacted, it was the same as elder siblings praising a younger one for completing a difficult task for the first time. Yuuki fumed at the sight of it. Her whole village was to be dragged away to be eaten or worse by these youkai, and they treated it like an accomplishment to be celebrated. The Four Goddesses wouldn't arrive fast enough -- all the people Yuuki had grown up with would be gobbled up and gone by the time they arrived.
Yuuki waited in the crowd of hypnotized people while her friends and family were parceled up and put into larders with bars to keep them secure once the spell wore off. The hand around them shuddered, pleased for having humans to feed it again, perhaps. Yuuki just needed to wait for her turn.
When it came time for Yuuki's group to be fed into the larder, Yuuki rushed the bewitching youkai once its back was turned. She took the rock from her sleeve and struck him in the back of the head with it.
He hit the ground, unconscious. There was blood on the rock, and blood on the floor around him as Yuuki stood, victorious.
She was happy that her family was freed. As she watched, they came to their senses, they saw where they were, and they were rightfully afraid or angry.
Of course, the youkai's older sisters didn't like that. The last thing Yuuki saw was one of the striped sisters rapidly approach her, and grabbed her by the shoulders. And the last thing she felt was when the tiger-striped youkai tore her in half.
--
Bee-Four was a failure. That thought replied in his head rapidly as he watched Jay-Eight get knocked unconscious by a wild human woman. Jasper 7XF dealt with the wild human while Bee-Four was stunned into inaction. Amethyst 8XJ shook him out of his stupor and barked orders at him.
"We got the humans, get Jay-Eight to Eye-Five now!"
Bee-Four nodded numbly and scooped up his fellow fossil and ran away. He tried to ignore the feeling of blood on his shoulder as he carried Jay-Eight in his arms toward the bridge. He tried to ignore the sounds of screams and rage from the wild humans outside their cages as Jay-Eight's spell wore off. However, what he couldn't ignore was the knowledge of his failure. All of this was because he didn't notice a human had escaped Jay-Eight's spell somehow and got to attack him.
"Eye-Five!" He shouted and dismissed his helmet. "Eye-Five!"
The amber met him outside the control room and immediately began to gather resin in her hands when she saw Jay Eight and the blood. Bee-Four held Jay-Eight steady while Eye-Five healed his head. He was fortunate she needed to hum while she healed, because he didn't feel like he could answer questions from the amber just yet. It was taking all his self-control not to cry in frustration at how badly he'd failed. The quartzes would need to damage or ruin humans in order to corral them, which meant even if everything went great from that moment on, he'd be a bad example for other gembones.
Some 'display model' he turned out to be.
A trio of high-pitched pings came from the control room just as Jay-Eight started to wake up. Eye-Five turned and looked at the control panel in fright, then ran for it.
"What's wrong? Did I fall asleep?" Jay-Eight groggily asked as he held his head. "Ow, I've got such a headache." Then he noticed Bee-Four holding him and smirked. "You know, if you wanted to practice choosening you just needed to ask -- "
"Now is a really bad time," Bee-Four snapped. "We need you to get back over to the humans and -- "
"Attention, all hands," the ship's internal communications system rang through the halls and the fossil's earrings. "The pilot has detected a hostile lifeform on a collision course with this craft. Please brace for impact."
Bee-Four had time to look into the control room and saw a hulking black figure with massive hair, two faces, and a two-handed sword of pure fire approach the ship's cameras rapidly before a great screeching shake sent him falling backward. Jay-Eight, still in Bee-Four's arms got tangled in the gembone from the initial fall and the shift in gravity that followed. Whatever had hit the ship had knocked out inertial dampening.
Eye-Five returned from the control room and helped the men get to their feet. "We need to get to the quartzes and then the escape pods," she said calmly but with visible unease in her face. "That thing hit the backup reactor, that's going to blow in a few minutes and it'll knock out the main reactor. The ship will crash and our current crash course puts us in the middle of the ocean."
Jay-Eight got visibly freaked out and dashed off. The other two fossils followed him but found it difficult. Whatever had attacked the ship was still attacking the ship. More than once, Bee-Four and Eye-Five had to stop just around the corner from Jay-Eight as the blade of the hostile creature's sword cut into the ship. The heat it radiated was a problem for Eye-Five, so Bee-Four acted as a shield between her and the furnace-sword. Gembones had heat resistance for days.
When they caught up to Jay-Eight they found he hadn't gone to the quartzes at all, but grabbed Aych-Two from his cell. The younger fossil was afraid and cowered behind his elder brother when the creature attacked the ship.
Bee-Four didn't even think of being outraged at Jay-Eight for the detour -- he had forgotten Aych-Two was aboard. "Are you okay, Aych-Two? Do you need Eye-Five to heal you?"
"He's fine," Jay-Eight barked. "Let's get off this ship before it -- "
Naturally, the backup reactor exploded at that precise moment. Bee-Four and Eye-Five were able to stand through the wave of pressurized air that accompanied the reactor's explosion, but the fossil brothers weren't. Bee-Four had to catch them with his arms when they were sent flying past him, and Eye-Five had to hold him steady.
Without a word, Bee-Four carried the fossil brothers under his arms while they ran for the escape pods. When they got to the section of the ship where they would be launched from, they found only one amethyst waiting for them. 8XJ -- she looked tired and annoyed.
When she looked up and saw them, she breathed a sigh of relief. "You guys are okay. Great. Where are the others?"
The fossils looked around and cringed back a bit. "We haven't seen any other gems besides you."
8XJ looked confused and opened the door that the fossils had just come through. "But… I sent 8XG and 8XL after you guys. They should've found you." A great and fiery orange sword being stabbed through the hallway she looked down reminded her of the more pressing issues. "Right! Can't wait! They're tough rocks, they'll survive!" 8XJ closed the door, turned and stomped her foot on the ground. A yellow-green gelatinous mass emerged from the floor, enveloped all of them, and sucked them down into the ship's inner workings. They emerged into a cramped room with two rows of seating. A front row which included Eye-Five and 8XJ in front of the control devices, and a back row where the three male fossils sat uselessly. A sudden rush indicated their pod was in motion, and the yellow-green empty space in front of them peeled back to reveal a window.
Bee-Four got a chance to see the Hand of Authority trail into the planet below them with smoke and debris falling from it like the tail of a comet, riden by the black giant that had downed the ship. The giant saw their pod leave, turned, and hurled her sword at them like it was a spear.
Eye-Five immediately took the controls from 8XJ and had their pod evade the attack, barely.
"What about the wild humans?" Aych-Two asked as the Hand fell to Earth faster than their pod.
"What about the wild humans?" 8XJ asked back, low and dangerous. "We were attacked. Even if we wanted to put them back, we couldn't. Taking them in the pods would only get them hurt. We lost half of them to hull breaches when that thing started cutting into us, anyway. We gotta focus on us right now." She turned to Eye-Five and her tone was noticeably warmer. "What about it? You got this?"
"No," Eye-Five said back, strained. "The magnetosphere is trying to push us to the poles -- the ship couldn't launch us fast enough to compensate."
Bee-Four watched as the display started to be covered with more and more white particles as they descended the atmosphere. The miracle of snow was lost on him as their pod careened toward the edge of a massive bay in the north-east of the super-continent.
Welcome to Earth, he thought morosely. Where one failure leads to tragedy.
SmashQueen
Professional duck-cat.
This is so much worse than implied in the last chapter.
Also shows that wide gap of discrimination for "wild" humans when it comes to the gems. Killing a minor who harmed one of their own, and could be easily healed. Like putting down a juvenile wild animal because it attacked someone while being caged up.
I think the trope here is affably evil, only the gems don't see anything really evil about the abductions. The eating of gem shards, oh yes, evil and horrifying. Rounding up humans, though, is just a job.
With the Crystal Gems, they now know Homeworld is trying to round up humans. That means they're going to be even more vigilant on not only poofing corrupted gems, but taking on any more invasions. (And whether that hull breach means the people were burnt to death, fell into the ocean, or were caught in Obsidian's hands, we don't know.)
Eesh. And if Obsidian did kill any humans, Rose wouldn't forgive herself. She's going to be so upset at that young girl's death.
The only way Rose could possibly escalate would be to use the Breaking Point. It won't come to that right now, but later down the line? And if more humans end up dying? Who knows if that will push her to the brink.
Also shows that wide gap of discrimination for "wild" humans when it comes to the gems. Killing a minor who harmed one of their own, and could be easily healed. Like putting down a juvenile wild animal because it attacked someone while being caged up.
I think the trope here is affably evil, only the gems don't see anything really evil about the abductions. The eating of gem shards, oh yes, evil and horrifying. Rounding up humans, though, is just a job.
With the Crystal Gems, they now know Homeworld is trying to round up humans. That means they're going to be even more vigilant on not only poofing corrupted gems, but taking on any more invasions. (And whether that hull breach means the people were burnt to death, fell into the ocean, or were caught in Obsidian's hands, we don't know.)
Eesh. And if Obsidian did kill any humans, Rose wouldn't forgive herself. She's going to be so upset at that young girl's death.
The only way Rose could possibly escalate would be to use the Breaking Point. It won't come to that right now, but later down the line? And if more humans end up dying? Who knows if that will push her to the brink.
- Location
- Somewhere in the eastern hemisphere.
Uhh, Obsidian was the one that was slaughtering the captives wholesale, albeit accidentally. The depressurization of the ship apparently killed half of them already and the ship being torn up in the upper atmosphere/low orbit isn't going to help any chances for the remaining half. It would be a miracle for even a twentieth of the captives surviving this.
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