We were building a base that would be entirely ours, carving out a large cave right next to the sea in true canon fashion. For my part, I took charge of crafting a door identical to the one from the show, only this version would have a much larger storage capacity. I also designed a personal room for each of the three of us, styled after Rose Quartz's room.
While working, I could hear Pearl hauling wood and Sapphire polishing the stone walls. Honestly, playing Minecraft in the ship's simulators had done wonders for them. I smiled at the thought and kept working on my own project.
[POV Shift]
"Are you sure there are Empire forces in that area, Garnet?" Pearl asked, confused, while a wild Amethyst—fresh out of the Kindergarten—sat off to the side eating what looked like crude oil.
"Positive," Garnet said, adjusting her visor with a serious expression.
Rose gripped her sword, staring intently in the direction Garnet was pointing. The energy signature on the Moon's radar had lit up like a Christmas tree.
"How long do you think it'll take us to get there?" Rose asked, her tone turning solemn.
"About ten days if we fuse," Garnet replied, tapping her glasses.
Rose clenched her fists, her mind made up. "Let's go," she said simply.
Instantly, the four gems coordinated in a blinding flash of light and fused, giving rise to the imposing Era 1 Obsidian. The colossus began sprinting at full speed across the surface of the sea, kicking up massive waves in her wake.
[Return to Silica]
I hadn't the slightest clue that my arrival had triggered panic in a hidden Diamond and her rebels; I was just casually building my house and chilling.
"Is this a piece of furniture?" Pearl asked, looking curiously at a holographic screen where I had projected an interactive mini-tutorial to teach them how to assemble things.
"Yep," I answered completely naturally while finishing the calibration on the base's power core, which ran on solar energy. Man, I absolutely love this planet's sun.
"It's beautiful," Sapphire said, floating more materials over by her side.
I'll need to apply a chemical upgrade to the materials so they don't rot from the sea moisture, I thought. Ten days had already passed, during which we made a lot of progress: we had the frame of the house built (we were taking our time, no rush), the entrance door to what would be the temple, and a modern yet cozy house design. I nodded to myself, proud of our progress.
Pearl, who was casually looking at the furniture layout, shifted her gaze through the opening of the cave until she noticed a black speck moving far out on the ocean horizon.
"Huh?" she murmured to herself, narrowing her eyes.
Sapphire, who was enjoying her new life so much that she didn't even bother using her future vision, didn't notice a thing. She had discovered how beautiful it was to live in the present without knowing what would happen at every moment, and she loved every second of that peace.
Noticing that Pearl had gone completely stiff staring out at the ocean, I raised an eyebrow in confusion.
"Yarbis, enhance vision in alpha sector," I ordered.
The tactical glasses I was wearing executed an instant digital zoom. Sapphire and Pearl activated theirs at the same time, and what we saw through the visors left us completely frozen.
"What the hell...?" Pearl let out, her voice trembling.
"Holy shit..." I said, completely breaking my perfect gem composure.
Sapphire stayed dead silent, her eye dilating as she forced her future vision to run at a thousand miles per hour. The sheer panic on her face said it all.
"We need to fuse. Now!" Sapphire yelled urgently.
The three of us quickly bolted out of the cave onto the beach, watching the gigantic fusion, Obsidian, sprinting directly toward us over the water like a titan made of lava and black stone.
We coordinated in a single second, and light enveloped us. The power of my optimized minerals combined with the connection of the three of us created a colossal figure, every bit as massive as Obsidian herself. Sodalite stood ready on the shore, her four arms poised and her eyes locked onto the enemy.
We dashed toward her without hesitation. The instant we closed the distance, our Sapphire's vision clashed head-on with the Sapphire making up Garnet inside Obsidian, immediately disrupting the flow of the future. Neither side could see who would win.
The Crystal Gems, still accustomed to the Homeworld military indoctrination they carried from that era, refused to unfuse, even though Obsidian was highly unstable at the moment due to Amethyst's wild mind. Their only goal was to eradicate the "Empire gems" they believed had come to hunt them down.
Both colossal fusions ground to a halt, squaring off in the middle of the sea as the water crashed heavily against their legs. They stared each other down.
I summoned Silica's Gravity Gauntlets, which materialized over our fusion's fists, drastically increasing both our reaction speed and impact force thanks to the magnetic motors.
Sodalite tilted her head, analyzing the lava monstrosity. With our dual voice distorted by our lenses, we asked:
"Who are you?"
Obsidian stared at Sodalite in deep confusion. In the collective minds of Rose and Garnet, Empire gems would never fuse with different types of gems, though they thought Homeworld's tactics might have changed over the centuries. However, having been fused for so long while sprinting across the sea, Obsidian's reasoning was clouded by adrenaline and fury.
Without uttering a single word, the lava giant roared and threw her entire weight directly at Sodalite.
Watching the fusion lunging inward, Sodalite quickly dodged to the side, carving a massive trench through the water.
Obsidian reacted instantly. She plunged her hand into her lava-filled mouth and, with a thick, searing sound, unsheathed her colossal sword forged from pure magma. The extreme heat evaporated the seawater around her into a dense cloud of white steam. Without hesitation, she brought down a descending slash meant to split Sodalite in two.
Sodalite activated the magnetic thrusters on Silica's gauntlets. With a loud sonic boom, she blocked the incandescent blade by crossing her arms. The impact sent the sea flying in all directions, creating a shockwave that shook the coastline. The sword's magma clashed directly against the reinforced metal of the gauntlets, sending bright sparks flying as both fusions wrestled in the middle of the ocean.
Obsidian let out a hoarse, wild roar. Forcing her immense size forward, she shoved Sodalite backward, dragging her several meters across the seabed. Instantly, Obsidian spun on her axis, unleashing a horizontal slash. Sodalite was having a hard time holding back the raw brute strength and crushing weight of the rebel fusion; the pressure of the attack forced her to duck, dodging the lava blade by a mere few inches while steam clouded her tactical vision.
Taking advantage of Obsidian's instability following the missed swing, Sodalite lunged forward. Because her mental stability was vastly superior, with Silica's cold logic coordinating movements alongside Pearl and Sapphire, Sodalite found a slight edge in speed. She landed a heavy right uppercut straight to Obsidian's jaw, followed by a powerful left hook charged with gravitational energy directly into her chest.
Obsidian grunted in fury, stumbling backward as the lava on her body flickered from the impacts. Regaining her balance with a violent shift, the black stone giant plunged her sword into the water, triggering an explosion of scalding steam to blind Sodalite, ready to ram her again with all her weight.
Sodalite reacted immediately to the curtain of steam. Activating her visor's thermal sensors through Yarbis, she ducked to the left just in time to avoid Obsidian's blind charge, whose massive body barrelled past, parting the sea in two.
Without wasting a millisecond, Sodalite capitalized on the enemy's momentum. She spun elegantly and delivered a punishing downward elbow—powered by the gauntlets' magnetic motors—directly into Obsidian's back. The blow resonated like thunder, forcing the lava giant to drop a knee onto the ocean floor with a cracking sound of pain and fury.
Obsidian, her collective mind growing increasingly clouded by the exhaustion of the ten-day trek and Amethyst's lack of control, let out an earsplitting roar that made the water vibrate. She swung her magma sword in a wild, desperate arc from back to front. Sodalite had to retreat at top speed, but the fiery edge managed to graze the surface of her technological gauntlets, leaving a glowing sear mark that the nanotech suit instantly began to repair.
It was becoming difficult to keep up the pace against such an overwhelming display of brute force; the physical strain of absorbing impacts from such a colossal mass was reflecting heavily on Silica's gem. However, Sodalite's mental advantage remained her best weapon. While Obsidian attacked with pure destructive rage, losing her balance with every attempt, Sodalite coldly and precisely calculated every opening in her defense.
Obsidian raised her sword with both hands to deliver a final blow, completely exposing her central guard. Sodalite read the movement on her visor. Triggering her thrusters to maximum power, she slipped into the lava fusion's close-quarters range before the sword could come down.
With a gasp from the exertion, Sodalite drove a brutal combination of direct punches right into the core of Obsidian's chest. The successive impacts generated shockwaves that began to crack the black stone of the enemy's armor, causing the light of her component gems to flash violently underwater.
As both fusions continued their brutal trade of attacks, Sodalite clearly noticed through her visor that the enemy lacked proper awareness. Obsidian's collective mind was entirely fractured, trapped in a wild frenzy; perhaps that was why she attacked like this, with no strategy other than to destroy whatever stood in front of her.
Exploiting this lack of control, Sodalite dodged a colossal punch that kicked up a pillar of water to her right, but immediately had to duck to evade a backhand from the sword. The magma blade came down with such fury that it grazed the exact hand where Sapphire's gem was located. The extreme heat caused the technological gauntlet's systems to flicker, making us sweat profusely from the scare of almost losing one of our components in a split-second oversight.
Obsidian, roaring with the last bit of strength she had left, raised her sword again to unleash a desperate vertical slash. The weight behind the attack was immense, but her guard was completely shattered.
Sodalite, keeping a cold and perfectly coordinated mind, waited for the exact millisecond. As the lava blade descended, she activated her gauntlets' thrusters at maximum capacity, sidestepped, and caught the flat of the blade with both metallic palms. The impact triggered an explosion of steam that rocked the sea, but Sodalite withstood the pressure. With a swift movement and a brutal twist of her four arms, she tore the magma sword away from Obsidian, disarming her entirely.
Using the titan's own momentum and bewilderment against her, Sodalite spun on her axis and, with implacable force, drove the lava sword straight through Obsidian's chest.
The rebel fusion froze. The cracks across her body glowed with an intense white light, and the magma began to fade. The mental instability and massive damage finally took their toll: Obsidian's massive structure collapsed, shattering in a blinding explosion of cyan light.
From the detonation, the fusion's components went flying through the air. Rose Quartz, Garnet (who immediately split into Ruby and Sapphire from the shock), Pearl, and little Amethyst fell completely unconscious toward the seabed and the rocks on the beach, thoroughly exhausted by the ten days of running and the heavy toll of the battle.
Sodalite reacted with Silica's optimized reflexes. Deploying her four arms at top speed and gliding across the water, she managed to catch the five rebel gems in midair with extreme delicacy before they could crash into the ground, cradling them carefully within her massive protective hands.
Sodalite walked with heavy but firm steps onto the shore of the beach, stepping out of the sea as the waves crashed hard against her legs. Gently, she opened her four hands and softly laid the unconscious gems of Rose, Pearl, Ruby, Sapphire, and Amethyst down onto the wet sand.
Once they were safe, a cyan light enveloped us, and we unfused.
Silica stood tall right in front of the rebel gems. During the fusion, she hadn't wanted to waste time dwelling on the reasons behind the attack, but now, with a cold head and her optimized mind working at 100%, she could analyze the situation better. It was glaringly obvious that this fusion had been running out of control for days, losing her mind along the way much like Malachite did in the canon. They were exhausted and delirious. That was why I decided not to shatter them or poof them into bubbles, though doubt quickly crept into my team.
"Why didn't we bubble them?" Pearl asked, confused, her voice still trembling from the chill of having been a hair's breadth away from getting poofed during the fight.
Sapphire nodded in silence, touching the gem on her chest with clear nervousness.
"I feel like they weren't in their right minds..." I said, shaking my head at Pearl's request. "They were running blind on panic. If we bubble them now, we'll only prove we're the threat they think we are."
We fell silent, standing on the sand under the light of the sunset, staring intently at the unconscious bodies of the rebellion's founders. Crossing my arms, I let out a heavy sigh. I really didn't know what the hell I was going to do with these crazy gems once they woke up.
END OF CHAPTER 27.