As I looked down at the unconscious Gems on the sand, I decided to do the smartest thing I could think of: scan them. They were pure Era 1 Gems—an invaluable source of data—but the one I was truly interested in was Rose Quartz. Her structure was the exact missing puzzle piece I needed to complete my blueprints and, eventually, perfect my definitive form.
I took my time. The scan required extreme precision and took several hours, but thank heaven, they remained completely passed out from the massive strain of unfusing. The process with Rose was especially complex and time-consuming; my visor's sensors had to process incredibly dense layers of mineral density that didn't match a normal Quartz.
I finished the analysis just in time, barely ten minutes before they started to stir. The first one to wake up was Rose Quartz herself.
"Huh?..." Rose muttered, blinking heavily as she slowly sat up and looked around the beach, completely disoriented.
"Hey there!" I said, looking down at her with a calm smile and crossing my arms.
"Hey..." Rose replied automatically, not knowing what the hell was going on since she was still completely dazed from the shock of the unfusion.
Behind me, Pearl (whom we'll call Blue Pearl from now on to differentiate her from Rose's Pearl) and Sapphire watched the scene play out. Hearing the rebel leader's clueless response, Blue Pearl couldn't help but facepalm at how surreal the moment was.
That subtle sound seemed to set off alarm bells in Rose's head. She snapped out of it instantly, her eyes snapping open, and she jumped up from the sand in one agile motion while summoning her glowing, holographic pink shield.
"Gems of the Empire! What are you doing here?!" she yelled firmly, dropping into a combat stance. She was clearly still caught up in the confusion of the battle from a few hours ago.
"We aren't Gems of the Empire," Blue Pearl intervened calmly, taking a step forward so Rose would notice we weren't wearing Diamonds on our uniforms and had no intention of attacking.
Rose fell into dead silence for a few seconds, analyzing our relaxed postures, our retractable nanotechnology suits, and my towering height. The shield on her arm began to glow less intensely.
"So... you didn't come to invade?" Rose asked, lowering her guard a bit but keeping her eyes locked on us.
"No," the three of us said at the same time, collective sweatdrops rolling down the backs of our necks at the rebel leader's extreme paranoia.
Right at that moment, the other Gems began to groan and stir on the sand. The first to snap awake was Rose's Pearl, who, upon seeing Silica's massive silhouette, instantly summoned her spear, her eyes wide with panic.
Behind her, Ruby and Sapphire leaped to their feet, grabbing each other's hands, ready to fuse back into Garnet in the blink of an eye. Even the little wild Amethyst got up, baring her teeth, scanning the sand for her whip.
"Rose, move! It's a Homeworld ambush!" Rose's Pearl shouted, throwing herself between her leader and us.
"Wait! Don't attack!" Rose Quartz ordered firmly, holding out an arm to stop them.
The command rang out with so much authority that the group froze instantly. Pearl reluctantly lowered her spear, Ruby held back her urge to shoot fire from her fists, and Amethyst just crossed her arms, confused, but they all obeyed without a word. They trusted Rose blindly.
"Rose? Are you sure?" the rebellion's Sapphire asked, adjusting her future vision only to find that the outlook had completely changed. "I can't see their timelines clearly... but I don't see any hostile intentions."
"Exactly, my little blue friend," I said, relaxing my posture and shoving my hands into the pockets of my tech suit. "If we wanted to shatter you or bubble you up to hand you over to Homeworld, we would've done it three hours ago while you were snoring on the beach. You're welcome for the rescue, by the way."
The four rebel Gems were left dumbfounded. Rose's Pearl looked at Blue Pearl and then at our Sapphire, immediately noticing that their outfits and the technology they carried looked nothing like standard Era 1 military design.
"Who are you guys?" Rose asked, taking a step forward with genuine curiosity, her eyes locking onto my tactical visors. "I've never seen a Gem with your structure... or with that kind of armor. What court are you from?"
"No court," I replied casually, flashing a smirk. "My name is Silica. And these are my teammates, Pearl and Sapphire. Let's just say we're an independent faction. We just arrived on this planet, and we just want to build our base in peace."
"A base? Here?" Rose's Pearl interrupted, suspicious. "Earth is in the middle of a war. If Homeworld finds you with that technology, they'll shatter you. And if you're rebels, you should join the Crystal Gems."
"Look, shorty, let's get one thing straight," Blue Pearl said, stepping forward with a confidence she never would have had in the Empire. "We're not with the Empire; we detest their methods. But we don't plan on getting mixed up in your guerrilla war either. Like Silica said, we just want some peace and quiet."
Rose looked at the half-built cave behind us, noticing the modern structure of the entrance and the solar core I had been calibrating. Her expression shifted from serious to almost childlike fascination.
"It's incredible... This technology isn't Homeworld's," Rose murmured to herself, glancing at the gravity gauntlets still deactivated on my hands. "You saved our fusion and protected us. I thank you for that, Silica."
"Don't mention it, Rose. At the end of the day, space is big, but it's a small world," I replied, just as Yarbis finished storing the last bits of Rose's Gem scan into my private cloud. Project Diamond was now one step closer to reality. "As long as you don't come messing around on our side of the beach, we won't have any problems."
Ruby snorted, still a bit tense, while Amethyst sat on the sand, staring at the solar core like it was a shiny new toy. The truce was made, and though the air was still thick with doubt, the first contact had gone perfectly.
Ruby and Sapphire glanced at each other, took hands, and began to spin in a small whirlwind of light. Within a second, they fused back into Garnet, who merely adjusted her visors stoically and, without saying a single word, started walking up the beach.
"Where are you going?" little Amethyst asked, scratching her head in total confusion.
"Going to the temple," she simply said in her double voice, continuing toward a point on the horizon who-knows-where. Her future vision had probably already given her too much information for one day, and she needed to process it alone.
We stood in silence for a moment, watching Garnet's silhouette fade down the coastline.
"Well... you guys wanna come in?" I asked, breaking the ice and gesturing to the entrance of our modern cave.
Pearl, Amethyst, and Rose nodded, curiosity completely overriding their suspicion. As we guided them inside the base and they marveled at the house's design and the high-tech amenities we had, we sat down to chill and gave them a quick rundown of our journey:
We explained that we came from extremely distant sectors of space, way off the Empire's radar, and that our trip hadn't exactly been a walk in the park. We summarized how we managed to bypass Homeworld security several times, hacking their frequencies and evading their scouting fleets thanks to my ship's advanced systems. We also dropped the fact that we stopped by the Moon before heading down to Earth, making sure to clear the area and put their systems on low profile so no one from Homeworld could track us or monitor what was happening below. Basically, we made it clear that we were experts at moving like tech ghosts, and that our only goal in traveling to Earth was to find a place free from the Diamonds' dictatorship to start from scratch, on our own terms, without answering to anyone.
Rose listened to every word with sparkling eyes, utterly fascinated by the idea of technology that escaped the Empire's control, while her Pearl took mental notes of everything, still processing how just three Gems had managed to cause so much chaos on their own.
After the chat, the rebels said their goodbyes and headed back to their temple, finally leaving us alone to carry on with our plans.
From that day on, time flew. A whole month passed, during which we focused entirely on finishing the base's construction. Thanks to the help of Blue Pearl and Sapphire, who had mastered the art of building like they were playing Minecraft, we managed to put up the modern house by the sea, leaving it pristine, cozy, and fully functional. For my part, I went deep into the cave to finish the temple door system; I replicated the canon mechanism but gave it a massive capacity buff. I created the three personalized rooms with the cloud-and-waterfall aesthetic in the style of Rose Quartz, making sure each space perfectly matched our individual personalities and comfort.
While we took care of the heavy lifting on Earth, Yarbis didn't waste a single second. The AI spent the entire month processing and breaking down the complex quantum data I got from scanning Rose Quartz. At the end of the four weeks, Yarbis finished the complete analysis of the rebel leader's mineral density and energy frequency, successfully cracking the Gem genetic code we were missing. With that final puzzle piece in the system, the Moon database spat out the result I had been waiting for: the blueprints for the Diamond-style upgrade were finally optimized and 100% ready.
We were just one button press away from triggering our definitive evolution.
I looked at the main ship we had arrived in, and after typing a few commands into the console, I brought out the small ship I had built specifically for emergencies.
"Where are you going?" Blue Pearl asked, watching me step up to the control panel.
"Going to work on the moon. If you need me, I'll be there," I said plainly, firing up the gravity engines and blasting off through Earth's atmosphere toward the satellite.
Pearl and Sapphire didn't think much of it and went back to enjoying the new house, while I, within minutes, was already docking the small ship into the lunar base structure. Stepping out, I popped my neck and got to work right away.
With real-time assistance from Yarbis, the work progressed at an absurd speed. The first thing we implemented was an optical and quantum distortion camouflage system around the entire lunar base. With this, if any Empire scout ship passed nearby or if the Diamonds themselves tried to scan the satellite from Homeworld, all they would see on their screens was deserted moon rock; we became completely invisible to the outside world.
Next, we focused on the internal structures. Yarbis hacked the base's ancient processors, and we reinforced the walls with nanomaterial alloys, making them immune to energy scans. Additionally, we installed robotic modifications in the main rooms: automated mechanical arms and assisted gravity fields that helped me move tons of construction blocks with the flick of a finger.
With the lunar base optimized and turned into my ultimate laboratory, I began building the Injector. Using the cloned resources we already had in storage and the Rose Quartz scan data that Yarbis had processed, I started assembling the gigantic drill. I programmed the Injector's core to fuse the earth minerals we would use with the exact frequency of the Diamond essence we had cracked. Everything was turning out perfectly precise down to the millimeter; I was building the machine that would grant me my definitive form, and it would take us very little time to finish it.
While all of that was happening, two entire weeks went by as I kept working without rest. Obviously, using the Moon's resources wasn't going to cut it for a transformation of this magnitude, so I used the base's powerful radars to search for the ideal planet for this goal. And boy, did I find it: a remote, uninhabited planet whose crust was completely saturated with high-density diamond minerals. Those components would be perfect for upgrading my molecular structure and making my new form much more resilient, stable, and focused.
I made the most of every scouting trip to that new world, extracting material nonstop. With those pure diamonds and my lab's nanotechnology, I built the massive injector drill, and I used that exact same super-dense material to craft my new definitive armor. I designed the suit to be retractable and ultra-efficient, allowing me to carry Diamond-level protection and weaponry wherever I go, compacted right inside my own gem.
The plan was set. In the coming days, I will implement the definitive upgrade directly into my gem—an evolution designed with a single purpose: to protect myself and, above all, to protect the ones I love with absolute power.