...

Tourmaline stood leaning back against the cool granite boulder in the crisp morning light. Peridot had been right, this pile of massive rocks near the top of gentle ridge was a suitable choice. The intervening conifer trees blocked line of sight to the ruins of the research stations over a mile in the distance. Tourmaline looked towards the gap between two cone-like tree-tops which had once framed a view of the paired towers at the top of each building. The sky there was empty; both of home and rescue.

Both Peridots were back amid the boulders. After the brief round of introductions last night, during which Tourmaline had eventually gotten the other Peridot to stop compulsively chewing on the end of her ponytail in overwhelming generalized anxiety. The two little green Gems had then found a slim gap between a few of the boulders and squeezed themselves inside. Officially they declared that it was a safety precaution in case of a rebel attack, but Tourmaline saw how closely they held onto each other as they murmured speculations through the night. There was comfort in touching another one of yourself; a grounding assurance of order in the universe. Neither Tourmaline nor Ruby had made any comment.

Back in the present, Tourmaline frowned at the little wisp of white cloud that populated the pale blue sky. Peridot hadn't seen the other household's Tourmaline. Peridot's Berryl had also vanished in the fighting, captured or shattered, much like Tourmaline's own Sapphires. Tourmaline absently drummed her fingers against the facets in her left shoulder as a brief breeze carried the scent of pine sap and faint forest sounds. Then she stopped as she realized she had copied that gesture from green Sapphire. Tourmaline's world had been torn apart and she was just barely holding onto her programing now.

Then with a jerk she realized she had heard the crunching sound of footsteps approaching. Tourmaline dropped down to fumble with the little mound of pine needles she had piled on top of Amethyst's pole-arm to hide it across the entrance to their make-shift home. She had known that the rebels were probably still lurking in the forest, but she had been desperate to see help arriving from that sky that had brought so much destruction. Tourmaline's fingers gripped down on the weapon's haft as she grunted in her effort to lift it to manage some form of defense. That was when Ruby strolled around the boulder to her right, her little feet scrunching through the gravel and needles.

"Ruby? What were you doing-?" Tourmaline said before she cut herself off, feeling embarrassed that she had just failed in protecting her tiny household from what had turned out to be itself. "And where did you come from?!"

"Uh, I just went out the other side and walked around?" Ruby pointed uncertainly behind herself. "It's a couple big rocks we're hiding in, not exactly a fortress. The Peridots have been so high strung for long enough that they're mostly just staring at the dirt right now."

Then Ruby looked at the heavy weapon Tourmaline was just barely holding up with trembling arms. "I take it you haven't exactly figured your power out yet."

Tourmaline sighed and leaned the weapon back down on the dirt. It slipped out of her fingers with a heavy thud. "I thought I was never made to have any. I can't remember anything about how to use it, or even exactly what it was I did. I could barely lift this. Then, suddenly, I could."

"Probably some version of manipulating the associational gravitational relationship of objects." That voice came from behind her and Tourmaline turned to see the Peridots creeping out of the boulder pile, squinting at the sunlight. Apparently, it was the unfamiliar One who had spoken and she now continued, "I can't imagine the effect could be very great if it was generated by a Tourmaline; that's not exactly design intent."

She was about to say something else when she noticed that Tourmaline was inspecting her thoughtfully while Ruby was staring with the wide eyes stasis of someone waiting patiently for a wave to wash over them. "Er, she made the weapon lighter. I think."

"Huh," Tourmaline said to herself. She looked down at the pole-arm lying on the ground. The main blade was with a semicircle arc who's slicing edge abruptly turned concave at each end, creating a broad spade shape. The haft was long and thick, sized for hands much larger than hers, and led down to the far end where a small bladed crescent capped the counterweight knob. It was a tool of destruction, the property of a mighty warrior. But Amethyst was missing and Tourmaline was here, with three other common Gems and no orders.

The Peridots were talking together again and appeared to have once more forgotten the presence of the other two Gems.

"Limiting factors? I'm thinking proximity?"

"Obviously. But I would also wager on contact; the effect conducted through her body so that touch is required."

"Possibly. Or maybe only one target at a time? She was tugging me along like she wanted to rip my arm off but I never felt any lighter."

"Erg, this is frustrating! A proper analyzer would sing out the results in an instant but all Beryl's equipment got smashed by the Rebels! At least I think it got smashed. I wonder if..."

Tourmaline looked back to see the other household's Peridot looking back at the site of the research stations with a wistful expression. That needed to be nipped in the bud.

"No way," she declared, using her most 'authoritative Tourmaline' tone. "Everyone is staying right here until the recovery team arrives. The rebels could still be about in this forest so we are all going to go back into the rocks now. Do you hear me?"

Peridot looked down, embarrassed and mumbled something that sounded like "Y'stourm" which Tourmaline took as agreement. Tourmaline's own Peridot started making teasing faces at her type-sister as soon as Tourmaline turned away slightly but she did not have the energy to deal with that too. It appeared that groups of Peridots were even harder to handle than Rubies.

On the subject of Ruby, she was staring off towards the site of their wrecked home as well, shading her eyes against the sun.

"Hey," Tourmaline pointed. "That goes for everyone. No leaving."

"Huh? Oh, right, yeah." Ruby paused but did not change her pose. "Hey, Tourmaline? How will we know when the Recovery comes?"

"I imagine it'll be very hard to miss. An attack like this will ensure a thorough response from the Diamonds."

"Oh." Ruby stopped shading her eyes and pointed instead. "So, something like that?"

Tourmaline spun around just as the huge shadow slid across the landscape and their hiding spot. She looked up over the trees and saw a massive ship hanging in the air, perfectly above the site of the research stations, blocking the mourning sun. It was an inverted pyramid that rose to a squat rectangular body. Whatever was on top was hidden in the bloom of of the sun behind it. Tourmaline realized that despite the little bits of knowledge she had been made with, she had only ever seen one ship before with her own eyes. That was the one that had destroyed her home. Perhaps that was why she felt so uneasy.

Peridot came running back out of the rock fort. "Yes! Oh, thank you Diamonds! We aren't going to be trapped in the wilderness forever!"

Tourmaline leaned down to collect Amethyst's weapon. She would need to return it. Her fingers gripped around the haft and suddenly it felt like some of her strength flowed out of her self and filled the weapon with some lighter-than-air force. She was getting the hang of this. The pole-arm easily swung up to rest on her shoulder and Tourmaline turned back to the distant ship that defied gravity in its own way, now motionless over the research site that it dwarfed. The Peridots were celebrating and Ruby was grinning up at her. Tourmaline began to smile just as large red dots began to glow on each face of the pyramid.

Peridot was in the middle of speaking, "I mean it's kind of weird that they sent this type of craft, but I guess they were worried that the rebels might still be around and...huh. What's it doing?"

Tourmaline held out her arm to her side with the palm back towards the others. "Go back in the boulders."

Ruby was confused. "Why?"

Tourmaline didn't know. Small bits of information and treasonous suspicions were clicking together in her mind. The red circles on the side of the ship were glowing brighter. "Just do what I say right now. We need to-"

Blinding beams of light blinked into existence from the sides of the ship to the ground below. The world turned monochromatic as for an instant only shadows and white existed. Then orange joined the searing medley, jumping up from the forest in dancing spasms as the ship began to slowly rotate. At those temperatures even the dirt was burning. Tourmaline dropped the weapon and grabbed her Gems, throwing them back into the gap between the two huge boulders. Then the fiery heat washed over them with the impact of splintering trees. The only sound was the roar of the inferno wind.

...

Much later, the four of them staggered out of their crude, blackened refuge into a snow of ash. Amazingly, no one had lost their bodies. Ruby had summoned her helmet to protect her and lay against one Peridot as a sort of shield. Tourmaline was worse for the wear. The back edges of her body, decorations and, all had been worn away by the wave of fire that swept across the forest. As she sat in between the boulders in a meditative stupor, feeling the hot flakes white ash slowly rain down on her, she considered that it might have actually been easier to lose and reform her body. Executing repairs on an existing manifestation was extraordinarily difficult. But she couldn't leave her household alone. Not again.

The sky was empty once more.

Peridot was talking to her other self. "They must have executed a sensor sweep that came back negative for any Gems. That's the only explanation."

"What kind of sweep would that be, magic?! And how could they possibly find any bodiless gems that could have been lying in the rubble without leaving the ship? They burned it all to slag!"

"Well, obviously we don't know everything because that has to have been what happened! Or maybe the rebels sent some broadcast saying they'd captured us all! I don't know but they clearly thought we were out of range."

Tourmaline slowly turned her head towards Ruby over in the corner, knowing that she herself was operating at far below standards. Ruby seemed better. The small red Gem stood in the v-shaped gap that had served as the entrance to their odd jumble of a shelter. She wasn't a wreak like Tourmaline, or in hysterics like Peridot. Rubies were soldiers; they might not be the best problem solvers, and dealt with boredom poorly, but they did not flinch from physical threats. The household needed that now, because Peridot was wrong. That ship had not cared if they were beneath it or not.

Tourmaline took in a breath to speak and immediately regretted it. The ash coated and irritated the inside of her body, but she ignored that sensation as she said:

"Ruby."

"Tourmaline!" Ruby turned and relief flashed into her face as she saw Tourmaline active again. "Oh, I'm so glad. You weren't responding before. I was worried you had micro-fractures or something on the part of you thats inside your body. If you hadn't come out of it I was thinking of popping your body to take a look." Worry still edged at the corner of her voice.

Tourmaline couldn't remember how much time had passed, it seemed like only a moment, but she supposed that she must have experienced some stress related failure of operation. That must be possible. Her fingers crept up to her shoulder on their own volition and once more felt mercifully smooth facets. It wasn't possible that she'd been heat-damaged, was it?

"Don't worry, I'm fine." She was not in the position to worry about herself. She needed to protect her Gems. Tourmaline rose to her feet, unsteady, with her hand reaching out to touch the boulder beside her for support. The granite was still cool. For some reason her mind objected and insisted that it should at least be warm after having all that terrible fire wash over it, but the stillness of its vast interior cold reservoir not be influenced by such a paltry application of heat. That unchanging core gave it strength.

The other Gems were looking at her. Tourmaline stopped pressing her fingertips into the rough grains of the granite slab and turned towards them. She could feel the last remaining hole in her body's decorations slowly close up on her back, leaving her vest and pants whole once more.

"The diamonds made a good decision. Those alien plant servitors of the rebellion were extremely dangerous, but they'll all be gone now. Unfortunately, our superiors mistakenly believed we were gone." Or they had written them off as acceptable losses. "That means that the recovery team is not coming to collect us, and our warp pad was destroyed in the attack."

"So we're stuck here?" Ruby looked up with plaintive eyes.

"No, we're going to deliver ourselves for collection. It's just going to take us a little bit longer." She turned. "Peridot!"

Both Peridots jumped slightly. "Er, yes?

"You spent all that time looking at geographic maps of the Earth, right?" She addressed both but she kept her eyes on her own curly haired one. Tourmaline didn't know if that odd obsession with maps was a quirk of one Gem or just an unimportant characteristic of the type.

Peridot smiled triumphantly. "Oh, I see! Yes, I know all about this area and...oh." The impact of what Tourmaline was about to say suddenly sank in past her pride. "Oh no."

"So you know where the closest warp pad is."

The other Peridot joined in, trying to avoid the certain conclusion that was making her tug on her pony-tail our of stress again. "I mean, yes, but that's over five percent of the way around the planet!"

"Then we'd better start walking." Tourmaline strode out of the group of boulders that had been their camp. The rear bade of Amethyst's weapon stuck slightly out of the ash that covered the ground. Tourmaline grabbed the haft of the weapon with one hand. She felt her shoulder pulse as she allowed herself to lift it. She set it across her shoulders, held it with both hands, and then let go of her new power before the energy expenditure made her collapse. The sudden onset of many times her body weight almost brought her down anyway, but she managed to compose herself before turning back to the others who uncertainly filed out of the feeble protection of the rocks.

"Peridot, point the way."

The landscape around them was stripped of color. In every direction was a vast expanse of black charcoal, white ash, and grey rock decorating undulating ridges scoured free of trees, all under a wide blue sky. The only sound was their footsteps and the faint crackle of the remaining fragments of carbonized wood periodically collapsing under its own weight. Peridot indicated off towards the horizon and they started walking. It felt good to have a task and purpose again.

It was five minutes before Ruby started asking if they were there yet.

...

Traveling was a new experience; one that contained innumerable other sub-nested novelties. In Tourmaline's previous thousand years of existence the furthest she had ever walked was from her hole in the kindergarden to the warp pad. In that first hour of memory she had been surrounded by others of herself, also newly harvested, and had only needed to follow the direction that the overseeing Peridot was pointing. It was simple. Though, in a way, Tourmaline supposed was still doing that.

The untamed Earth was a strange place. Tourmaline had long known this but she was now continually assailed by examples. The local aliens existed in innumerable shapes, the sessile plants and the mobile animals both existed in a constant violent war. A dead-end quirk of creation, they could only exist by ripping the bodies of others apart for matter to convert into sustaining energy. And when they fell there was no evidence of reformation, only exposed white structural supports and slowly crumbling fibrous trunks. It was almost as sad as it was horrifying.

Somewhere out there in the wilderness, the rebels were still lurking. From time to time as Tourmaline and her friends walked through endless forests or rolling plains they could see small streams of smoke rising in the distance. Once they came to a river under a bright moon and saw saw lights gleaming in the distance down its course. They found rutted dirt paths sometimes, but avoided them. Who knew what manner of device or creature might have made those tracks? The mountains were safer.

Tourmaline shifted the pole-arm's haft that lay across her shoulders. Her feet splashed through the clear stream, the flowing cold water bulging up above her left knee to brush her thigh. One of the smooth, rounded stones that covered the stream-bed clacked as it rocked under her foot, forcing Tourmaline to briefly adjust her balance. Then she was was across and pushed through the mud-silt at the edge to climb up past the crumbling grass ledge that formed an overly large step onto dry land.

She looked down. All this water made her leg decorations cling to her calves even more and attracted dirt like an adhesive but that would dry quickly enough. She tried to not smile at Peridot's incessant low pitch grumbling as the smaller gem sat on a rock curled into an angry, soaked, dirt and grass covered ball. Peridot had lost her balance during her own crossing. Turning upstream, Tourmaline watched the other Peridot slowly inching her way by hands and knees across a thin bridge of tree fragments that had collected against a few rocks. That left Ruby alone on the far bank.

"Ruby, do you want me to come back across for you?"

"No, no! I got this! Just..." Ruby growled as she stamped and paced, staring down the flowing water. "Just give me a moment!"

Tourmaline checked that Peridot had finished her inch by inch crossing before turning back to Ruby. By then Ruby had given up on her apprehension and simply marched straight forward, her hands clenched in fists at her sides.

"Oh, Ruby, it's actually much shallower if you cross on the other side of those boulders or...Well, I guess she's fine. Her body's dense."

The top of Ruby's hair disappeared under the surface for a few moments as Tourmaline spoke. An exodus of flashing shadows scattered from the center of the stream, swimming in every direction to flee this invasion of their favored space under those rocks. Then Ruby emerged up the far side, streaming water down every inch of her body. Ruby was excited now and pointed back.

"Glur blegh ish ba urglurgugik!" More water came pouring out of her mouth. Apparently she had not thought to close it while in the stream.

Tourmaline sighed. "Speak with air, not water."

Ruby blinked then opened her mouth wide to eject a small sparkling waterfall. "Oops. Thanks, Tour! I saw a fish!"

"Yeah, yeah, great." Peridot was not as enthusiastic for their impromptu surveying mission. The grit and pine needles that suck to her soaked body looked like a very odd set of manifested decorations. Now both of the green gems were back together again so they could chide in unison. "Come on! We're almost there!"

Ruby glanced at Tourmaline then back at the Peridots. "You said that before."

"Well, I'll admit we may have taken a slight detour for a while back there."

"We were on a frozen ocean and you insisted we were still heading south!"

"Like I said, detour. We've only been walking for one hundred and seventy two days," a Peridot said. Ruby mumbled something about the initial estimation being thirty-eight days. "Hey, I'd like to see you try and plot a course across the planet from memory without any technology whatsoever! It was our genius that concocted the plan of observing the polar oriented star quadrant as a navigation technique! But look, we've got to be in the right area now. You saw the cliffs we've been passing. That's totally the right geology for the shaping yard! Civilization is right around here somewhere!"

To Tourmaline's eyes all that was around them were more mountain ridges and behind them undoubtably more valleys that led to more mountains; mountains, trees, and dust. Tourmaline missed when they had been striding across the plains of tall grass. She at least had been tall enough to see over the plants and there had been no trees to get Amethyst's pole-arm stuck between. Of course a giant herd of shaggy horned aliens had almost trampled one of the Peridots down into shards and then Ruby had accidentally started a grass-fire that was still raging across the entire horizon behind them last time they had seen it. Still, the land, when it was not on fire, had been relatively flat.

Now they were climbing yet another seemingly endless mountain ridge-line. Each time Tourmaline thought she saw the blue sky through the trees that signaled they had reached the top they crested a slight fold to reveal another interminable slope. Her mind fell into a trance, constantly looking down at her feet crunching into the dirt, following the winding trails that might be dry watercourses or the paths of native creatures. She and the Peridots were flagging, only Ruby seemed to be keeping up a constant level of pep and energy. Then Tourmaline looked uphill once more and just saw blue between the pine trunks. This time the blue didn't vanish and slowly the ridge finally gave up its fight.

"Ha ha! Yes!" Peridot crawled across the last bit of flat ground on the top of the slope before collapsing on an overlook. "Oh thank the Diamonds we made it! We finally made it!" Her other self was also grinning ear to ear as she fell over to topple into into the first's lap.

Tourmaline had to admit that there might have been a similar grin on her own face. For months they had been wandering the eerily empty wilderness. From time to time they had sought shelter from a storm in a cave or rock overhang only to find mysterious scratches or lines of pigment adorning the walls. They were no manner of writing or symbol code that even the Peridots could understand. Once, the middle of in a vast plain they had summited a round hill to find a single standing stone. When they approached it they saw what seemed to be strange creatures carved or frozen forever in the process of emerging from the obelisk. Never before had Tourmaline considered that the world she was made in from was so very alien. Now they once more looked down on the glory and magnificence of Gem civilization and it was as if the invisible watching eyes that had followed them were now drawn away.

Below their vantage point, vast miles wide pits had been opened in the solid grey rock of the mountain range. The land had been scraped clean of plants and dirt leaving only the hard core, and in places entire ridge-lines were gone, sheered down to flat bottom depressions by the extraction of raw construction material. Elsewhere the needs had been more targeted and whole mountain peaks here sat suspended like tables, held up by massive irregular columns left over from a desired material being extracted from the mountain roots. This was one of the Earth's shaping yards for the Diamond's construction projects.

"Awesome!" said Ruby. "How do we get down?"

The answer turned out to be: carefully. In most places the overlapping rectangular pits were sheer walled for thousands of feet to their bottoms. The little group eventually made their way along the ridge-line until they found an excavated area old enough that water and temperature effects had weathered cracks into its side. Tourmaline summoned up her ribbon to help lower them down in places. For almost a thousand feet of the decent she struggled under the oppressive handicap of the massive weapon she carried. Then, in the middle of a nearly sheer section she suddenly had an embarrassingly obvious epiphany. Tourmaline swung her arm and threw the weapon out over the side.

"Ahh!" Peridot screamed up from a crack few paces below. "What the heck, Tourmaline!"

"I'll find it at the bottom. It's a quartz's forged weapon. It's not like it's going to break."

"That's not..." Peridot lapsed into a moment of silence. "Then why didn't you do that from the beginning ?"

Tourmaline sighed. Fortunately, Ruby managed to shush the green Gem by briefly using her curly haired head as a foothold. Tourmaline mostly resisted returning Ruby's grin.

They made it to the bottom relatively safely, even if Ruby did accidentally end up taking the last two hundred feet the same way as the weapon had. Fortunately, she landed with her self up facing up so only her body took the hit. Then it was just a matter of dusting off and gathering the group to apply the proper leverage to extract the weapon's blade from where it had sunk deep into the solid rock. After that, the little party turned and faced the uneven landscape that led to the newer quarries. Grey clouds were moving in to cover the sky and filter the sunlight into cooler colors.

It was easy enough to see where the more established parts of the Shaping Yard were. Even at this distance the giant, many-legged shells of the excavators could hardly be mistaken for anything native to this planet. The shelved expanse of right angles artificial canyons, pits, and sheer cliffs began to be dotted with other bits of technology as they drew closer. These machine nodes were connected by thick paths of elemental gold, tracing angular untarnished circuitry across the stone walls.

Tourmaline was still looking forward as they walked, sensitive of the many sudden drops in this artificial landscape, when one of the Peridots spoke behind her. "Wow, that's incredibly crude. Actually using gold for electrical conductivity? Well, I guess in the early days on the planet they might have had to make do. And if the element's a byproduct of the other extraction then their doing it could make sense?" No matter what she said it still sounded like she wanted to find whoever had designed this place and shake for making such a choice.

Then Tourmaline's own Peridot spoke up. "But nothing seems to be online. Where are all the Bismuths?" Tourmaline was briefly surprised that she had recognized something about that voice as distinct from her type fellow's without seeing the yellow curls. Then she processed what Peridot had actually said.

She was right, something was wrong. The machines were quiet. They walked and climbed across a barren rock landscape and saw absolutely no other movement. None of the massive excavators had budged since they first came into sight. There was only gusts of wind and a dim haze creeping up from the lower elevations to spill over the walls into the massive excavation site. Ruby shivered and Tourmaline found herself walking a little closer to the other gems.

But there was something in the distance; a glow. Tourmaline pointed. "Look, under that space. Is there a light down there?"

The 'space' she was gesturing to existed under one of the moth-eaten mountains. High above them, three thousand feet of mountain peak and snow sat on a base that had been excavated down to the barest supports. The archways between those irregular bedrock columns could have welcomed a capital ship flying underneath into the shadows of that gem-made sunless land. But somewhere within those depths was a faint orange glow.

"Hey, you're right!" With a concrete target in sight, Ruby's anxiety instantly vanished. "That must be where everyone is!" Tourmaline just wished that her own gem type had not been designed in part to predict potential problems. In this chaos of their new unhinged existence that quality was becoming a hindrance.

However, the Peridots were still looking to her so Tourmaline nodded and began to march forward towards the hollow mountain. She'd just have to try and hide the fact that she kept pulsing her power into the weapon she carried every time she heard a small rock fall in the distance. Her suddenly lashing out with a massive bladed pole-arm against an attack from a slight breeze would not be good for household moral.

After half an hour of walking they stepped into the shadow. There was now half a dead mountain hanging over their heads. Separated from the sun, the grey cloud-tinted light of outside began to fade. Yet still it was enough to catch scattered glimmers off more thick angular circuitry, branching across the stone walls and columns in geometric rivers of gold. They walked through the increasing darkness. At first, Ruby tried to give some illumination but her placement on her body meant that the constantly moving results were more disorienting than helpful. Then after ten minutes of immense cavernous tunnels, the Gems saw even more glimmers coming from the opposite direction and Tourmaline realized that she had been right. There was a light source under here.

Ahead, the massive bedrock pillars took on an orange tint that shone up from somewhere below. Then they rounded one more two hundred yard wide cough column and saw the shallow pit carved into the rough hewn floor level. About twenty Bismuths stopped in place to look back up at them.

Unlike the rest of the boreholes and tunnels that branched out below these lower levels of the excavation, this patch clearly had been modified to be a bit more homey. The rock had been smoothed and polished, carved into neat lines and corners. A large computer bank stood on the other side, merged with a rock wall and the gold circuitry that joined there. There were a few other scattered pieces of technology, but the most notable sight was the numerous thick limbed builder Gems rig there below them. Tourmaline found herself needing to brush a tear from the corner of her eye. They had been alone in the alien wilderness for so many months and now they were finally back in the bosom of their species. The sensation was almost overwhelming.

Several of the Bismuths marched up a granite staircase to approach Tourmaline and her comrades. With each step, the Bismuths' thick multi-colored dreadlocks slid from side to side across their broad backs. As they summited up to the edge of the living-pit, Tourmaline felt a Peridot grasp lightly at the flared base of her vest's back. This close, Bismuths were quite intimidating. By sheer size they were even bigger than a Quartz though of course they were never used for violence. Then Tourmaline's relieved smile caught on an edge. Pearls were never used for violence either, yet she had seen what the Rebels had done.

Bismuth planted her feet heavily on the stone floor before them, worn down by a millennia of steady traffic too and from. She placed her hands on her hips and smiled as she looked down at the newcomers. "Well, hey now. What are you girls doing in a place like this?"

Tourmaline opened her mouth but both Peridots burst into anguished wailing at the same instant. "Oh, it was terrible! The Rebels attacked! They destroyed our stations, and then command accidentally melted out entire job site! We were the only uncaptured survivors, and then we had to trudge across the geography for ages! Not to say that we were walking for any longer than could be managed by even the best navigators under our circumstances-"

Tourmaline put a soft hand on her Peridot's curls before she could continue defending their unintended detour to the icecap. "Our warp pad was destroyed in the attack. Your facility was the closest alternative we knew of. We think we may have been wrongly recorded as having been shattered."

She waited for some response. Then she frowned. She knew that Bismuth was not needed as a conversationalist but still with three of them standing right here at least one should have something to say to an implied question. Instead, the rear two exchanged a brief look.

Tourmaline spoke again. "Ok, were is your supervising Gem? I suppose it would be Beryl, or maybe Topaz in a place like this. Heck, if Tourmaline happens to be stationed here that'd be fine too, if only as a check against my own mental drift patterns. We need to..." She trailed off. Tourmaline was made to keep peace and order in a household she could see the troubled thoughts behind those thick Bismuth faces.

Bismuth raised one massive arm to scratch at her ropes of hair. "Yeah, we'd love to help you, but we're kind of on our own here."

The east station Peridot murmured in flat disbelief, "Oh, please no."

The builder looked sheepish. "Yeah, the rebels hit us too. It was a real big thing, all woosh bang pow, which is why I guess no one's gotten around to checking on us since the survey they did right after it happened. But you're welcome to wait here!"

Ruby growled and began to stamp on her way to a particularly noteworthy fit of frustrated rage but she was suddenly quieted by a sudden loud smash. Even the Bismuths stepped back in surprise from the faintly vibrating pole-arm that had just dug its heavy blade several inches into the solid rock at Tourmaline's feet. Tourmaline felt her teeth pressed tight together as her fingernails dug into her palm

"They got here before us," she said. She wasn't sure who she was addressing. "Of course they did, they're used to traveling without the warp pads. The rebels must have arrived here a month after they destroyed out home."

Bismuth blinked. "Wow, your stationing was attacked ninety-three years ago too?"

Tourmaline felt all the anger abruptly drain out of her to be filled with a cold splash of surprise. "Sorry, what? Ninety-three years? You've been sitting here inactive for ninety-three years?" Her voice was growing shrill despite her best efforts, however in this case she felt she was warranted. This level of wasted resources indicated something very wrong with Command. Tourmaline thought back to hearing Amethyst talk about the severity of the rebellion. Things out here were even worse than Tourmaline had imagined.

"Hey, we haven't been inactive!" That other Bismuth sounded offended. "There's plenty of prep-work that can be done. Chiseling guidelines and such. Measuring. Over the last decade with finished the preliminary plan for the rest of quarry seventy nine!" She trailed off as she realized that did not sound very productive. "Admittedly, it goes a bit slower without any of the machines."

"Yeah, about that." West-facility Peridot had questions. "Where are your Peridots? In an operation this big there should be at least three of me, minimum. Did command evacuate them?" This last sentence was suggested in a faintly patronizing tone, suggesting that Peridot would be willing to coopering in entertaining the fiction that twenty Bismuths were as important as even a handful of her. Tourmaline sighed to herself, there was a reason Peridots were rarely set to interact with the general population without managerial gems around.

The Bismuths paused for another moment of silence. It was certain now, something more persistent than a brief attack almost a century ago was bothering them. Tourmaline looked closely at the way these huge gems subtly shifted their weight. Something kept their anxiety close to the surface. Several of them gave micro-glances over the same shoulder. Something with directionality.

Foremost Bismuth shrugged, "No, they're still here. With the other gems. Yellow Diamond's orders. Not that we...Yellow Diamond's orders." She finished by repeating that same phrase.

Something was still nagging at Tourmaline but she was more desperate than she was curious. These Bismuths were not her household so their mentality was not her primary concern. She could not imagine what managing the interactions an even larger group of Peridots would be like but right now they needed information and for that she needed some Gems who were not content to double and triple-check their measurements on a stone wall until a rockslide at the end of time crushed them all to dust.

"Could you please take us to them?" She asked Bismuth.

"Uh, sure. Come along this way." The huge builder Gem turned and gestured for the others to come with her.

Tourmaline and her small household followed Bismuth off to the side, along the edge of the habitation pit. Almost two dozen faces looked up from below, turning their heads in unison to watch the newcomer's progress. Then they were leaving the improved portion of the excavation and followed another well worn path that curved around a massive column of rock leading up to the invisibly black celling above. It was very quiet.

The path started leading down. The way contracted around them, becoming more of a tunnel than the cavernous void under the harvested mountain. Bismuth lit their way by the thin beam of her projected light until she suddenly stopped and reached out to touch a panel set into the rock wall. Multiple illuminators sprang on around what was revealed to be a large round chamber.

Bismuth gestured to a wide circular opening in the center of the floor. Tourmaline assumed it must be another habitation pit like the one the Bismuths had constructed for themselves. Bismuth said, "They stay in here mostly."

Tourmaline's Peridot jogged forward towards the edge, eager to be united with more of her type. "And what, did they all forget to hit the light-switch? What are you idiots doing down here in the dark when you could..." Tourmaline saw her freeze. Then Peridot let out the most terrible scream Tourmaline had ever heard.

The rest of the refugees rushed up to Peridot's side, but as soon as Tourmaline got close the pole-arm dropped off her shoulder. Her grip on it had loosed without any conscious decision. She could focus on nothing but the horror she saw before her.

The pit floor was covered with the shards of shattered Gems.

Even as Tourmaline staggered to maintain her fitting there were dim flashes of light down below. Partial limbs and grasping hands materialized around some of the shards. They writhed and twitched, flexing what joints they had to crawl a little closer to the pit wall right below Tourmaline. Then more of the shards began to materialize similar mockeries; green and red and blue in every shade of Gem bodies.

Tourmaline's two Peridots were clutching on to each other as tightly as any gem could, seeming ready to fuse out of pure terror. Ruby had summoned her helmet and clenched her small fists in front of her as if she was desperate to fight something but had no idea what her target could be. Behind them all, Bismuth shook her head sadly.

"I think the light gets them riled up."

"Wha..." Tourmaline stammered. She could not comprehend any course of events that would lead to this. She could not even count how many distinct Gems had been lost here. It could have been hundreds. "Why did you leave them like this?!" This wasn't a harvest, these fallen were not incorporated into a new use and purpose. They had not even been ground down for raw materials. They had just been left here, in the dark.

"I said before, Yellow Diamond's orders." Now Tourmaline heard a difference in tone when Bismuth said the word diamond. After all she had been watching this for ninety-three years. "Being all together might bother them, but we didn't have much tried to keep them separate at first but that just made it harder to round them up when they wiggled away. And there were just too many."

Ruby ground her teeth together. "How did this happen?"

Bismuth shrugged. "Rose Quartz's rebels came. There was no warning. They dropped down over the cliff into the middle of quarry seventy-seven; floating in a big pink orb. Nearly the entire work crew was there."

Tourmaline needed to talk, any movement to distract her mind from what she had turned away from. "And they attacked?" She murmured.

"No, they started to talk."

"Talk?!" Ruby roared.

"Yeah, just talk. I'd never heard anything like it. They wanted every one of us to join their rebellion. They wanted us to choose. I didn't even know what to do. I'd never even heard a Quartz talk to me before." Bismuth sighed. "Of course Citrine tried to fight them off, despite their numbers, and then everything was a rockslide from there. The rebels made their way towards the warp pad but reinforcements were already coming in from command. Things started exploding. Then giant monster Gems started showing out of nowhere, types I'd never seen before. The rebels must have made their own twisted kindergarden somewhere out in the wild."

"No," Tourmaline said in a distant way. "It's fusion. Fusion between two different Gems. One of them told me herselves."

"What?" West-station Peridot yelled. "That's impossible!"

Her fellow said, "...wait, that was that other gem in the ruins of our home? The one with the plants? That was a, gah, dual-type fusion?"

Tourmaline turned to say something, offer some type of reassurance or explanation, but then she felt something clutch down onto her foot.

She jerked back, screaming as she accidentally pulled dup the disembodied arm which grasped onto her over the lip of the pit. Tourmaline fell over backwards, then kicked and kicked until the arm briefly lost its grip and flopped onto the stone floor. But it flipped over and continued crawling towards her.

Peridots were screaming too, more of the shards were making their way up over the lip of the pit. Tourmaline rolled over and scrambled on her hands and knees over to grab at the pole-arm as Ruby stamped around trying to head-butt the crawling shards with the spike on her helmet. She looked as likely to pitch forward into the pit as help the situation.

Tourmaline jumped up, pulsing with energy in her shoulder as the heavy weapon was suddenly as light as a feather. She spun the haft and the wide blade cleaved across the floor, leaving a puff of smoke and a tinkling shard. These things moved unpredictably, and with the weapon made light like this Tourmaline couldn't muster up enough force in her swings to always bite through the surface of their manifestations. More were coming over the lip. Tourmaline moved around the pit and looked down to see a crawling mound, a wave of manifested limbs that had splashed against the side of the pit and formed a ramp for the constantly circulating shards. That had to be stopped.

She glowed in her shoulder as she reached out to draw her ribbon. The long bolt of cloth shimmered into existence even as she wrapped one end around the haft of the pole-arm. Then she planted her feet, spun and felt her power pulsing out through the manifested tool as she let go of the weapon, letting it swing out and down in a bladed arc. The weapon sliced through the pile of shards half way up the wall and left their poor attempts at bodies vanishing into colored smoke while those above that point came tumbling down. As the spear on a ribbon swung back up Tourmaline allowed herself a breath of relief. Unfortunately, that accidentally released her concentration on her power and the pole-arm abruptly resumed its weight, causing its trajectory to instantly shift from angular to ballistic. The massive weapon hit the far wall of the chamber with a heavy thud, followed shortly afterwards by Tourmaline herself, still tied to it by her arm.

Bismuth waded forward through the screaming Peridots and Ruby's growling, stamping performance. She sighed sadly and casually kicked at the few remaining shards that had made it out of the pit. Those wiggling limbs sailed out over the edge and dropped down. Bismuth even caught hold of Ruby's shoulder before the smaller gem accidentally pitched over the lip herself.

"Sorry about that," Bismuth said. "They all get excited sometimes. Maybe its the new people. Now that you've seen them we can head back up if you want."

Flat on her face over in the corner, Tourmaline held out a thumbs up.

Bismuth reached her hand out to the panel on the wall and turned out the lights. They left the shattered fallen to their peaceful dark.

...

A week later Tourmaline and her fellows were ready to depart the Shaping Yard. This wasn't their stationing, so there was nothing to be gained by staying here. They needed to find some other way to report to command. The Peridots had managed to get access to the remaining computers here and had placed together navigation clues for the next closest warp pad. Presumably it was still active. At this point they could only hope.

The large cloud of Bismuths all left their habitation pit as one to follow the group through the under-mountain cavern. But then they reached the edge of the shadow where high above the table slab of a mountain peak suddenly gave way to the sky. Bright sunlight washed the flat stone floor of the quarry, turning the grey rock almost white. Behind them, the Bismuths lined up in alternating rows. Past those Gems, from certain angles some could see past all the giant's forest of stone pillars to the daylight on other side of the hollowed ridge where they had first come from. Tourmaline shifted the pole-arm across her shoulders and took that first step with Ruby and the Peridots at her side.

They had hardly gotten more than a few yards when they heard Bismuth call out behind them.

"Yes, Bismuth? What is it?" Tourmaline turned to say. "Did you forget to mention some active weapons systems or rigged explosives you have out this way?" She had not managed to completely forgive that one individual for springing the surprise of the shards on them, even if it had been done with no malice in mind.

But when she looked back it was actually three Bismuths walking out into the sunlight after them. Tourmaline held out a hand and her small household stopped, even if it was done with some small amount of grumbling from one of the Peridots behind her back. Tourmaline glanced past those three at the other Bismuths still in the shade of the mountain behind them. There was some new discontent there.

Ruby blinked and looked far above her at the three huge Bismuths. "What's up?"

The Bismuths froze for a moment. Then they leaned in close to each other, exchanged a few quiet whispered words and then returned to their straight posture.

They spoke in unison. "We'd like to go with you."

Tourmaline's curly haired Peridot twisted her mouth to the side. "You're not really part of our incident report. And your stationing still exists! Shouldn't you stay here with the rest of you?

There was another whispered conference several feet above the rest of their heads. The Bismuths turned back and said:

"It's been...a while. Something in the reporting system's gone wrong. If similar things have happened to your place too, then the Diamonds might be working with incorrect statistics. The rebels are disrupting their measuring, making Gems cut out bits that should be left in. And vice versa. We would like to present a report."

Tourmaline was honestly impressed. Even for type-sisters that three part harmony of a speech was a remarkable level of cohesion. Yet they had also clearly separated from the group consensus here. Despite misgivings, Tourmaline smiled.

"Well, I'm not part of your organization structure so you can exercise your purpose regardless of my input. Still, it'd be nice to have you with us." Three Bismuths could be useful on a cross-country trek, if only for their strength. In fact...

However, when Tourmaline held out the heavy pole-arm all three Bismuths uniformly shook their heads. No Bismuth was made to touch a weapon, even if each of them could easily carry it one handed. It made sense that they would have a modification to differentiate the powerful builders from Quartz soldiers. Tourmaline sighed as she settled the massive weight back onto her slim red shoulders. It had been worth a shot. She just wished the whole display had not amused West-station Peridot so much.

After hours of walking they were still within the depths of the quarry pits. However, here Tourmaline noticed the smashed excavation machinery and remnants of impact fractures in the otherwise smooth rock walls. In a few places the pine tree lined rim of the mountain edges had crumbled down into tumbled scree slopes. There had been a battle here.

Ruby was looking around too. She slid over to the Bismuths and addressed the nearest's knee. "Is this where it happened?"

The three replied in unison. "Yes, it is."

Then one of the Bismuths added an extra sentence. "Over there. You can see what they left."

Tourmaline turned to follow Bismuth's pointing hand. There was one sheer quarry wall, a horizon of grey taller than any other in the Shaping Yard. It nearly bisected an entire mountain. A wisp of cloud slowly crashed against its upper reaches. The smooth, solid face was marred by massive shapes, characters melted into the solid rock. They spelled out a message fifteen hundred feet tall.

"You are unique."

Tourmaline shuddered as she turned away. The rebellion of Rose Quartz was infecting the very material of the planet itself. Her little group of allies walked on towards the gentle downward slope towards the quarry exit far in the distance. Their small numbers had now grown a little larger.

...