De Facto: Part XXIX.

Table of Contents

“Wh-what? What is it?” asked Cherry Ruby.

Zircon ducked back behind the wall and pulled Cherry Ruby close. “Aqua Pearl is out there,” she whispered, “but there’s someone else. It’s — ”

“AQUA AURA QUARTZ!”

Aqua Pearl’s voice echoed like a whip crack. Zircon literally felt her face fall in disappointment.

“It is, as you heard, Aqua Aura Quartz,” she finished haplessly.

She looked out the door again. In the periphery of her vision, she saw the figures of Cranberry Tourmaline, Topaz, and Peridot 5XU coming up through the shadows, but they clearly saw everything that Zircon did and were careful not to say a word as they crouched next to her. Dreading what she would see, Zircon turned her attention back to the imminent battleground.

Pearl stood atop a crate, her stance wide and both swords drawn. Aqua Aura Quartz turned. She looked much the same as Zircon ed her — a sea-blue cape, a reflective gold visor hiding her eyes, high boots with steel-tipped toes. She regarded Pearl as if she had just found a unique insect.

“What a surprise,” said Aqua Aura, stepping towards Pearl. “I missed you, Pearl.”

Pearl, meanwhile, was trembling in rage. “SHUT UP!” she screamed. “I’m here to end this, Aqua!”

Aqua Aura just laughed. “That’s cute,” she smiled.

“Don’t fracking patronize me!” Pearl snapped, pointing one sword at the quartz general, but Aqua’s leisurely stride towards her didn’t falter. “You don’t DESERVE to say that you missed me! What about me? What about how I’d hide under your bed and PRAY to the Diamonds that you would never come back home because I knew what you’d do to me when you got there? You fracking think I MISSED THAT?!”

“Come now, Pearl. You can’t have just called me here to yell at me.”

“No.” Pearl’s back was to the rebels, but Zircon could only imagine the look on her face. “I called you here to shatter you.”

“Oh no,” Zircon murmured.

5XU turned frantically to Cranberry. “Does she know this is the rendezvous point? What do we do?”

“I don’t think so!” Cranberry replied, her eyes wide. “And I — I don’t know, why are you asking me?”

“Because you’re the leader?” Zircon suggested.

“I — I don’t know, I just — ”

From outside, there was a noise like feet hitting the ground, and Zircon looked out to see that Pearl had leapt off the crate and was pacing with Aqua Aura, each about twenty feet apart. “Do you think this is funny?” Pearl snapped. “Why are you smiling? You think I can’t kick your ass?”

Aqua Aura was, in fact, smirking as she lazily paced across from Pearl. “What place do you have in the galaxy if not by my side?" she asked finally. "After you shatter me, you’ll be alone. Lost. Purposeless. I can’t imagine what the past century has been like for you, burning in vengeance, destroying yourself. Day after day after day.”

She stopped, causing Pearl to inadvertently stop as well.

“Pearl. Come home.”

“NO!” Pearl shrieked. Without warning, she charged, flying across the field and lashing out with her blades. But Aqua Aura was fast — too fast. Before Pearl could reach her, Aqua Aura yanked off her cape, letting Pearl blunder right into the thick fabric and fall to the ground. Aqua Aura’s gem, set in the now-exposed small of her back, glinted in the red light as she ducked to the side.

“We have to help her!” Topaz hissed.

“N-n-no!” Cherry Ruby shook her head viciously. “Dangerous — I see d-d-de-death! You will die!”

“I’m afraid Ruby’s right,” whispered Zircon. She could not tear her eyes from the fight.

Pearl had slashed her way out of Aqua Aura’s discarded cloak, now circling again with her former owner. Aqua Aura was uncannily calm. It wasn’t bluffed, either; Zircon knew how to tell fake confidence and this wasn’t it. She didn’t even have a weapon.

“I’m offering one last warning, Pearl,” said Aqua Aura. “Lay down those silly swords, stop hurting yourself, and come home.”

Even without future vision, Zircon could have predicted Aqua Pearl’s response. Pearl shrieked and charged again, slashing wildly as Aqua Aura ducked and dodged the blades with ease. She didn’t even show signs of reaching towards her own weapon; it was like she was trying to tire Pearl out, letting Pearl only slash and hack the air where she used to be.

Then Aqua Aura stopped, faced Pearl, and held out one hand, like an order to stop. Pearl’s blade came whizzing down towards it, and Zircon involuntarily closed her eyes.

But there was no sound except Pearl’s gasp.

Aqua Aura still stood, palm outstretched just as before. Pearl’s sword had never even grazed her skin. Instead, Pearl was stumbling back, clearly bewildered. Screaming, she again threw herself and her swords at Aqua Aura, but a split second before she could deal a blow to her former owner, an invisible string jerked her arms back like a marionette.

The implication dawned upon Zircon with a sickening of her stomach — Pearl had tried to fight back before. At some point in the past, Aqua Aura had used Pearl’s programming against her, ordering her body to never let her harm her owner. First the gag, and now this. It was sickening. And because of Ruby’s hand gripping her wrist like a vice, Zircon could do nothing but watch in horror.

Then a flash of movement caught her eye.

About fifty feet away, almost hidden by the rolling clouds of dust, a bulky silhouette rose up on top of an abandoned transport jet. Aqua Aura and Pearl were too preoccupied with each other to notice, but when Zircon looked at the figure more intently she realized it was familiar. White wavy hair, a strong build, a pink ribbon tied to hold her hair back from her forehead gem. Raspberry Quartz. Clearly, she saw the encounter below her, and from her angle she could probably see Zircon and the others still lingering in the hangar door.

Cranberry gasped. “Wh-what is it?” asked Ruby, gripping Zircon tighter.

“An opportunity,” said Cranberry. Suddenly, with a newfound purpose, she bent down and began to take off her high heels.

“AHH — !”

The cry came from Pearl. When Zircon looked, she almost leapt up. Aqua Aura’s hand snapped forward and grabbed her by the neck, squeezing to cut off Pearl’s cry, lifting her off the ground. Pearl struggled to still slash with her swords, but her hands would never let her reach her target, and as Aqua Aura squeezed tighter, Pearl was forced to drop the two weapons.

“Cute,” said Aqua Aura. “But we’re going home.”

Cranberry stood up. “Like hell they are,” she muttered, and suddenly broke into a run.

As soon as she was clear from the hangar, she jumped — soaring through the air over Aqua Aura’s head. Towards Raspberry. Raspberry saw her coming and ran to catch her, jumping down from the transport. As Cranberry fell, Raspberry caught her, and they spun in each other’s arms until they began to glow with a white-hot light, brighter and brighter until they drowned in it. Zircon flinched back, shielding her eyes.

When the light faded, Strawberry Quartz stood to her full fifteen feet, all four fists clenched.

“Let her go, Aqua Aura,” Strawberry snapped.

Without taking her eyes off Strawberry, Aqua Aura tightened her fingers around Pearl’s neck. Pearl let out a choked cry and kicked for freedom, but it was no use — with little more effort than if she was popping a balloon, Aqua Aura squeezed Pearl until she burst. From a cloud of smoke, Pearl’s blue gem clattered on the ground.

Strawberry Quartz shot after her, the bladed gauntlets flashing to life on her arms. But if Zircon had thought that Aqua Aura was fast before, she realized that she had no idea. In the blink of an eye, Aqua Aura dodged Strawberry’s attack and reached to the gem in the small of her back, pulling out what looked at first like a long, thin whip. Then it whirled around and sliced through the air above Strawberry’s head, shearing off a lock of her ponytail. Strawberry jumped back.

Aqua Aura snapped her whip in the air and it hissed as it flew, glimmering in the light. It wasn’t even a whip — instead, it was an urumi, a long, flexible steel blade. Something about the way she held it told Zircon and Strawberry that she hadn’t missed her target. If she wanted to, she could have sliced Strawberry to bits.

Calmly, Aqua Aura bent down to pick up Pearl’s gem. Raising her fists, Strawberry charged again, but with a graceful twirl and a flick of her hand, Aqua Aura lashed out with her urumi. Strawberry tried to block the strike with her gauntlet, but the metal whip snapped around her wrist and the end struck Strawberry across the face. A red gash opened up on her cheek. Then Aqua Aura, despite being half Strawberry’s size, yanked hard on the blade and severed Strawberry’s forearm from her body. It glitched out into chunks of light and Strawberry reeled back, clearly terrified.

“Ew, that’s disgusting!” 5XU cried.

“Strawberry w-w-will be poofed very shortly,” said Ruby solemnly.

As if on cue, Aqua Aura lashed out with the urumi once more and snapped the blade around Strawberry’s waist. Strawberry only had enough time to say “oh frack” before Aqua Aura pulled.

As suddenly as Strawberry Quartz had come, she vanished in a puff of smoke. Another flick of the urumi and the still-glowing form of Raspberry Quartz was pulled from the air, slammed against a pile of crates, and reduced to her gem. Only Cranberry Tourmaline was left to crash to the ground, helpless. And now nobody was left to stop Aqua Aura from bubbling Aqua Pearl’s gem, smirking in victory, and preparing to send Pearl off to stars knew where.

Internally, Zircon sighed. “After there are no more psychotic aqua gems for me to fight,” she promised herself, “I plan to poof myself, so that I can take a much needed rest.”

She clenched her fists and charged, slamming her entire body weight into Aqua Aura. It didn’t do much in the way of knocking the quartz over, but did startle her enough to make her lose hold on Pearl’s bubble. Like one fumbles with a bar of soap in the bath, Zircon scrambled to grab Pearl’s bubble, and then once she had it, half-stumbled and half-crawled far enough away to form a quick force field around herself.

Clutching Pearl’s bubble close to her chest, despite her sweaty hands, Zircon sat up and stared wildly at Aqua Aura. For the first time ever, Zircon looked into Aqua Aura’s gold visor and saw something other than bemusement or indifference — this was raw, pure rage.

“You!” Aqua Aura hissed.

“H...hello again,” Zircon stuttered.

For the first time, it was Aqua Aura now who reacted in anger, drawing another urumi and bringing it down with terrifying power onto the surface of Zircon’s force fields. Zircon winced at the lash and the lethal glare on Aqua Aura’s face.

“TRAITOR!” she screamed. “You ruined EVERYTHING!”

Seeing that her weapon had no effect on Zircon’s field, Aqua Aura punched the field wall with enough force to push Zircon herself back, like an invisible fist hitting her gut. Over Aqua Aura’s shoulder, Zircon saw Cranberry Tourmaline getting to her knees. She held Raspberry’s gemstone close to her chest and seemed to be speaking to it, as if begging Raspberry to reform. Zircon didn’t dare look behind — she knew where her friends were, hiding behind the hangar doors and watching in mute horror, probably arguing amongst themselves and with Cherry Ruby’s doomed prophecy — Zircon couldn’t give them away by looking.

And somewhere out there in the catacombs of Homeworld were the other rebels, Hematite, Tiger’s Eye, Heliodor, Calcite, 5XI…Yellow Zircon. All searching for this damned rendezvous point. Not knowing what faced them when they did eventually show up. On one hand, Zircon knew them to be ferocious fighters. Well, at least Hematite was a fighter, and 5XI was nothing short of ferocious. They might help give the upper hand in this fight against a seemingly invincible quartz. But somehow, Zircon knew that, if they did come, Raspberry and Pearl might not be the only ones to fall. As long as Aqua Aura was able to reach her gem and pull out that metal whip, she was about as approachable as Zircon was inside her bubble shield.

Then Aqua Aura turned to Cranberry Tourmaline and reached back to her gem again.

“NO!” Zircon yelled, dropping her shields. It was a mistake — immediately Aqua Aura’s blade was whirling towards her face and she had only the time to throw up her free hand and form a partial-shield above her head. The blow knocked her down, nearly causing her to lose hold on Aqua Pearl’s bubble. When Zircon caught Cranberry’s eye, across twenty feet of no-man’s land where Aqua Aura stood, she saw that Cranberry was sobbing. A huge bleeding gash ran across the left side of her face.

Aqua Aura just sniffed. “Pitiful,” she said, and reached to her gem once more. But instead of an urumi, it was something worse — a transmitter. Calmly she lifted it to her lips and activated it.

“This is the High General Aqua Aura Quartz, Facet 1A1C Cut 2JD, requesting forty emergency troops. The renegade starlite zircon has been found. I have secured her and her allies at latitude...11.3948 degrees west...longitude...”

She trailed off, her mouth falling open. Then she looked up to the sky — reddened and dusty as ever, polluted by eons of city life. The stars had been clouded over. Except for two, of course, two stars, two lights that were filtered and dim and very large to be stars. And it was then that Zircon recognized the faint rhythm in the air, a mechanical clanking beat from above that grew steadily louder and louder…

Until is was a beat backing a roar, the roar of a very old cargo ship hovering over their heads. It wasn’t excessively large, perhaps enough to hold a few hundred gems, but by the noise and the rust it was certainly ancient. Huge murals were painted on the sides of it, which Zircon couldn’t see clearly, but they obviously didn’t comply with the Diamond Authority’s regulations. A rebel ship. Not even a rebel ship, a scavenger. A space pirate. Not Lars — his ship had been much nicer.

Almost drowned out by the roar of this ship’s prehistoric engines, there was a pop and a click and a landing ramp slowly lowered down from the underside of the ship, even though the ship was hovering far from the ground. Then, through the hazy lights, a tall stocky figure walked down the landing ramp and stood at the edge, arms folded.

When the invader spoke, her voice bellowed and echoed, magnified by a microphone and hidden speakers.

“ATTENTION," she said. "THIS IS LABRADORITE, RESIDENT FUSION RADICAL AND CO-CAPTAIN OF THE QUEEN CARVER. STEP AWAY FROM THE REBELS OR WE BLOW YOUR GEM CLEAR OUT OF ITS SETTING. I SPEAK ON BEHALF OF THE SPACE PIRATE LARS.”

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