The Queen Carver was a twelve thousand-year-old beast, a former Diamond Authority cargo vessel repurposed by the last surviving natives of Crystal System Khaoi C. The invasion of Khaoi C had been one of the longest on record, lasting nearly four thousand years under the direction of Yellow Diamond, and the Queen Carver's pockmarked hull attested to this — Khaoi C was the first conquered planet to have semi-intelligent natives. Every ship sent to the volcanic surface of Khaoi C was battered, vandalized, and assaulted by the natives until unusable or abandoned.

Naturally, with Yellow Diamond being the fearless conqueror that she was, this never ended well for the organic khaoi natives. Her army cracked down on the natives, enslaving them to build gem structures, killing when necessary.

The problem was khao biology itself. Despite their fragile, tribe-like social structures, which were scattered and lost forever in the Diamond invasion, the khaoi were built to last. Small, greyish, and feline in appearance, with retractable claws and huge triangular ears to catch even the smallest of noises, they were natural hunters and quickly stood out as the apex predator wherever there was lesser life to eat. They had long since adapted to the harsh volcanic conditions of their planet to the point that they could survive solely on alcohol for centuries at a time. They could reproduce faster than any other race of natives the Diamonds had seen. Above it all, they were obsessed with hoarding shiny things — unfortunate for the gem invaders, who conveniently had one shiny thing per body.

Eight thousand years after their planet was hollowed out by the Diamonds, there were about seventy living khaoi left, and they lived on the Queen Carver with fifty gem pirates.

For now, it was seventy khaoi, fifty gem pirates, and twelve runaway rebels.

After Co-Captain Labradorite arrived, things kind of happened in a blur. She had a big gun (that's how they drove off Aqua Aura). Then when there was an opening, Labradorite ordered that the ship be lowered and the present rebels boarded — Topaz, 5XI, Ruby, Cranberry holding Raspberry's gem, and Zircon holding Aqua Pearl's gem. It was a pathetic little parade.

After the landing dock closed, Labradorite led the rebels through the mess and rabble of the Queen Carver. She was easily one of the tallest individuals there, standing at about fourteen feet tall and needing to duck under most of the doorways. Her tattered denim shirt, unkempt green-and-gold hair, and four makeup-caked violet eyes were abnormal to see when it was just Labradorite, but when she opened a bay door into the main body of the ship, Zircon realized that Labradorite didn't stand out at all. About a hundred khaoi and gems of all classes bustled around the area, lugging crates of supplies and heavy blasters. The gems stood out with their bright colors and variety of heights, but their tattered clothing and war paint let them fit right in with the ruby-sized khaoi with their brownish grey fur and wild assortments of body piercings. The cacophony of yells and cursing from the group was overwhelming enough to make Cherry Ruby cover her ears. Not to mention the smell — it was sweat, stale alcohol, and wet fur. Zircon couldn't help but grimace.

Without warning, Labradorite ran ahead of them and began to shout orders at the rabble. "Portside gunners, into position! Gem ships approaching from the east, I want you to hit 'em with everything you got — CITRINE! GET YOUR FACET OUT OF THAT CHAIR! INTO POSITION, WE'RE MOVING OUT!"

A good number of the gems and khaoi holding guns scrambled to the left side of the ship, where they opened small hatches in the wall and stuck long cannons through them. Primitive technology, but when the first khao loaded her cannon and fired it, it caused everyone nearby to fly back from the shaking. Labradorite gave the alien a thumbs up.

"Labradorite!" Zircon called, jogging up to the fusion's side. "There's — there's still six more rebels underground; do we have a plan?"

"I don't! Never do," said Labradorite briskly. "But I'm taking you to someone who does."

The "someone who does" happened to be the Queen Carver's other co-captain, a khao named Invidian Fallingstar. As Labradorite explained, Invidian had claimed the bridge as his personal throne room, if you could still call it a bridge.

When Labradorite escorted Zircon and the rebels inside, their senses were overwhelmed — suddenly, there were neon lights, loud dissonant music, and a very thick smell of alcohol. Three gems (too grimy for Zircon to tell what they were) sat at the pilots' consoles, lifting the ship into the red sunset sky. Zircon couldn't see much out the windows besides that they were going rather fast, and that there were small Diamond authority aircraft zooming towards them at alarming speeds.

"Ray shields up!" yelled a shrill, hoarse voice from the captain's seat. Seconds later, the whole ship shook as it took several rounds of laser fire all at once. Zircon stumbled against Labradorite, who very casually grabbed her by the cloak hood and guided her around to the front of the captain's seat.

"Invi, we got 'em," Labradorite said.

Invidian glanced down. He was the same size as all of the other khaoi aliens Zircon had seen so far, which was short, and he seemed remarkably skinny as he practically draped over the chair. His fur was bright red and his triangular ears dripped with gold piercings; the rest of his body glittered with prosthetic body parts — a robotic foot, a metal arm, and a shiny red device that seemed to take the place of his right eye. He wore brightly-colored, but very scanty clothing, showing off a variety of scars.

"Nice," Invidian smirked. "Fresh glitter."

Zircon's eyes widened. "I...beg your pardon?!"

Invidian cackled, slapping his metal knee. He was the only one who found any humor in that. "Whaaaat, she's just like Em-Zircon! Lab, I like this one, can I keep 'er?"

"No," Labradorite said.

Frowning, Zircon folded her arms. None of the other rebels were saying anything; even Cranberry, who still seemed to be in a state of shock as she clutched Raspberry Quartz and Aqua Pearl's gems close to her chest. She supposed then that someone had to do this.

"Well, pardon me again," Zircon spoke up, "but we were just wondering if we could drop down to pick up the rest of our friends. For whatever reason they didn't make it to the rendezvous point."

"Yeah, we just received a message from the one peridot who's with 'em. They got arrested about three clicks east. Honestly." Invidian just rolled his cat-pupiled eyes. Shocked, Zircon opened her mouth to snap back, but he saw it coming. "Relax! We've locked down their coordinates. We can pick 'em up in no time. For now, your job is to sit back and trust that we know what we're doing."

"We don't," said Labradorite curtly.

Invidian gave her a look. "Lab. C'mon."

Labradorite ignored him. "Zircon. You're worried about your crew, I get it. But if I'm honest, you look like schist. You gotta rest, and let us take care of it."

Rest. How long had it been since Zircon legitimately thought about rest? She bit the inside of her cheek for no reason at all than to give herself something to feel as she looked up at Labradorite, then at Invidian, then at the tired faces of Cranberry, Topaz, Ruby, and 5XU. The Queen Carver continued to shake intermittently as missiles collided with the shields, but suddenly a sense of exhaustion washed over Zircon as she wondered if maybe they were safe enough to rest for a little while.

Shakily, she exhaled.

"Okay," she told the pirates.

.

Prosecutor Honey Zircon Facet 2K9M, Cut 1ZK was tired. But by no means was she alone.

In front of her, Judge Cubic Zirconia AAR6 sat cross-legged at her podium. Just as she had for five years. If she noticed that so much time had passed, then she didn't show it; Honey 1ZK suspected that Judge AAR6 had the short-term memory span of a defective ruby because of her wonderful habit of restating exactly what she had just said as if she was saying it for the first time, over and over and over. She was speaking again now, but Honey 1ZK wasn't actually sure what about.

Across the courtroom, Public Defender Purple Zircon 2K8Y, Cut 4FF lay flat on the floor, next to her three amethyst clients. They were murmuring among themselves, talking about the shapes that the clouds made in the sky. Blearily, Honey 1ZK blinked and looked up. There was no sky. Just a black courtroom ceiling. So either Purple 4FF was crazy and hallucinating clouds, or Honey 1ZK was crazy and hallucinating a courtroom. Not that it made any difference.

Sighing for the millionth time (literally), Honey 1ZK opened her screens and logged into Libra. No new messages. A few likes on her last post. Her hand drifted towards the "New Post" button and, without meaning to, clicked it.

"Very bored," she typed, "as per fracking usual. Shatter me."

She tapped the "Post" button and watched it upload to the server. Within seconds a few zircons had liked it, but there were no comments. It had been so long that nobody really cared about Honey Zircon 1ZK and Purple Zircon 4FF anymore. They were just there. Nothing could be done to help them. So nobody commented, nobody stopped to offer advice, and nobody came to help. Honey 1ZK sighed resignedly.

Then the courtroom ceiling exploded.

Looking back on it, Honey 1ZK would wonder why she didn't have more of a knee-jerk reaction. Also looking back on it, she would reason that she was so dead inside by that point that Homeworld could have exploded and she wouldn't have cared, much less so the ceiling. Across the courtroom, Purple 4FF and her defendants all went, "Ooooooh." From the cloud of smoke and dust, a chunk of debris fell onto Cubic Zirconia's head, effectively shutting her up and forcing her to poof.

Then, as the dust cleared, a large green figure jumped down from the sky, landing in the center of the courtroom floor. Some kind of fusion. Honey 1ZK couldn't be damned to figure out exactly what she was, though. "Sorry for the bother," she said, "but can any of you tell me where they'd be holding a bunch of rebel prisoners?"

"Holding level, downstairs, one of the doors on the left," said Honey 1ZK flatly. The fusion nodded.

"Thank you."

Then she found the lift access point in the floor and descended down into it, vanishing. "Bye," Purple 4FF whispered softly.

A few minutes later the fusion appeared again from the lift, but this time with a following. A hematite, a peridot, a heliodor, another huge orangish fusion carrying a calcite, and a very familiar-looking hyacinth yellow zircon. While the other gems ran under the hole in the ceiling and began to jump out, the hyacinth yellow zircon stopped in her tracks and locked eyes with Honey.

"1ZK?!" the hyacinth yellow cried. She whipped around and found Purple 4FF, still lying on the ground. "You two are still here?"

"Where else…would we be," Purple groaned.

Honey frowned, still staring at Yellow. "You're…7AB?"

"7AN," Yellow corrected, but she didn't seem especially concerned with that. She turned back to the other rebels. "Labradorite! We're taking these two with us! They've been trapped in this trial for five years, we gotta get them out!"

"Can't...leave...my defendants," Purple put in.

"We love you, Purple," one of the amethysts giggled. "You're our hero."

Honey blinked, a little confused. She realized that she was getting tired on her feet, so she sat down on the floor and began humming her favorite tune. "I fracking hate this place," she said suddenly. "Sure hope that Cubic Zirconia reforms soon. Maybe then we can finish soon. Where's my client? Did she go home? She was allowed to go home. I wasn't. Frack this."

Yellow Zircon stared at her, her mouth half-open. Honey wasn't quite sure what she was looking at but didn't really want to question it. "That's it," Yellow said, "We're taking all of you. Maybe then Blue will get off my culet about not being sympathetic to other gems, or whatever her problem was."

"We can't leave," said Honey wearily. "We have to finish our case first."

"There is a giant cracking escape hole in the ceiling, dirtbrains," the peridot yelled.

Honey looked up at the hole, not comprehending what it meant. Then the big green fusion stooped down and put one large hand on her shoulder. "Just come with us, love. You can finish your case on the ship."

Gently, she picked Honey up in her arms, then reached down for Purple 4FF. The amethysts cried as their attorney was pulled away from them but Yellow 7AN just told them that they were coming with, not to worry. As the big fusion crouched and then leapt into the air, Honey looked up and realized she could see the sky.

It had never looked so beautiful.

.

The escape from Homeworld took nine hours and forty minutes.

First of all, the Queen Carver wasn't exactly fast. It was old enough to still have hybrid propulsion- and warp-engines, and the warp part of it was partly broken, so it went slow. However, its age gave advantages — once they reached a certain altitude, Diamond scanners could not differentiate it from the billions of asteroids and defunct satellites that formed Homeworld's outer shell. That was how the Queen Carver had been able to reach Homeworld virtually undetected, as Captain Invidian explained, and why Lars' Sun Incinerator would not have been.

Soon enough Zircon found herself staring out into the vast expanse of space.

There were a handful of extra living spaces aboard the Queen Carver, which had been divided up accordingly among the new rebels. Nobody except Blue Zircon was here now, but she had been told that this small six-bunk room was home to two other zircons already onboard, an emerald green and a sea blue. A third bunk would be Blue's and another could be Yellow's, once they rescued her.

Of course, by this point, Yellow had already been rescued, but Blue had not moved from the living cubby since the khao escort had left her here. Fatigued from two fights in a row, Blue had been perfectly content to find an untouched bunk by the floor, sit on it, and gaze out the small porthole window in the wall.

It didn't look like a window, even though Zircon saw the stars and asteroids moving by. A part of her brain was still locked to Homeworld soil — what she saw was no more than a video on a screen; a fantasy designed to trick her rest-starved brain. She even pinched herself once or twice. But again and again she came back to the reality that there was the whole galaxy outside, and here she was inside a pirate ship, and suddenly there was a hope of safety and true escape at last. Whatever that was.

But it was so much that Blue Zircon felt like she couldn't begin to grasp it. A part of her did not yet understand. It will eventually, she reassured herself, so for now she tried to be content with sitting in something of an impersonal daze.

The door opened and Yellow Zircon ducked inside.

"Now I know why my Diamond hates organics," she murmured, pulling a handkerchief out of her gem to wipe off her hands. "Disgusting."

Then she locked eyes with Blue Zircon, who had been so surprised that she froze up.

"Blue," she said awkwardly.

"Ye — "

Blue never finished. Yellow crashed into her, wrapping her arms so tight around her that Blue felt she could poof. A deep, shuddering breath pulled itself from Yellow's chest.

"I hate you," Yellow murmured, her voice muffled by Blue's jacket. "Don't leave me with those clods ever again."

"Ugh…good to see you, too." Grimacing from the pain of being crushed in a hug, Blue pried open Yellow's vicelike grip and sat back against her pillow, with Yellow still trailing after her. Yellow sank down next to her on the cot, her lithe body curling around Blue's and her head resting on Blue's chest.

"Yellow, there's three other cots for you," Blue pointed out, hoping Yellow wouldn't look up and see the flush darkening her cheeks.

"Mmm...no, I don't like any of them," Yellow said after a while. "I think this one will suit me just fine."

Blue couldn't help but roll her eyes. But she wouldn't tell Yellow to leave; Yellow was warm and her weight leaning gently against Blue was…comforting, to say the least.

"You wouldn't believe what I went through, Blue," Yellow yawned. "Oh — I heard you fought an aquamarine and Blue Diamond's general and all. Congrats. Anyway, back to me. It was horrible, Blue, I'm never letting you leave me with those absolute claybrains ever again. Hematite got us lost because she was too busy trying to look cool and then Heliodor forgot the transmitter and so Peridot 5XI gets the wonderful idea to set off flares, which draws all patrols immediately to our location and gets us all arrested. The only reason we weren't taken to the basement of the Imperial Prison was because I told them that the rebels had me hostage and I was there against my will, and since they didn't know if I was telling the truth, they took us to be questioned in the nearest hearing facility instead which is where we were found...fortunately, I can still access Libra, so I'm thinking that they fact-checked and saw that you still technically have me hostage. Anywho. It was awful, Blue. I was mocked and very rudely handled and one of the interrogators tried to feel me up under my jacket; it was so uncomfortable. I swear I'll never do it to you again unless you ask for it. But it was just terrible. I'm scarred for life."

Blue eyed Yellow carefully as she told her tales, melodramatic as they were. Even after four thousand years of verbal sparring with her, Blue could rarely tell when Yellow was exaggerating her own egocentrism — Yellow was definitely self-aware of her self-love, but Blue hadn't the slightest clue as to whether or not Yellow knew it enough to purposefully joke about it. So she just said "I'm very sorry" while suppressing a smile.

"Thank you! Finally someone pities me." Yellow sighed much too loudly. "And then to be taken onto a ship full of organics?!"

"Khaoi," Blue corrected her.

"Don't call them that, that's the name of a planet. More specifically, one of my Diamond's planets."

"It's both a planet and an alien race. They used to live there."

"Ugh. Then it's a surprise that my Diamond would ever want the planet. I don't know if you heard the ruckus, but once we escaped the upper atmosphere, every khaoi pirate down there decided it was the perfect time to whip out the alcohol and start partying. Two of them nearly started copulating before my very eyes, right in the middle of the crowd. Absolutely vile."

Blue raised a single eyebrow and smirked. "Really."

"What's the 'really' for?"

"It's really as in 'really?' When I first met the creatures, I had the impression that you would find some kindred spirits."

Yellow hit her gently. "Oh, shut up."

But she didn't leave Blue's side. They fell into a companionable silence, as was quite common between the two of them, even though it was still a little awkward. Zircons as a gem type didn't often stay silent in each other's company. They normally bubbled with arguments and disagreements that needed to spill, with peace the anomaly. But somehow, sometimes, the peace felt better. It allowed Yellow to shift in Blue's arms and examine her eyes; it allowed Blue to admire the soft skin of Yellow's hand entwined with her own; it allowed Yellow to reach up and stroke Blue's still-loose hair.

"Should I look too deep into you having your hair down, or should I assume that it just got ripped off in some fight?" asked Yellow after a while.

Blue frowned. "Well...yes, I lost it to the aquamarine, but I don't see how you could look too deep into it."

"For a moment I thought you just stopped wearing it," Yellow shrugged. "I suppose I don't understand how you tick anymore. I almost figured that one day, you're going to do something radical like never wear a headscarf again, or suddenly decide to permafuse with Cranberry and Raspberry. A part of me wondered if you'd eventually end up taking proud credit for the second gem civil war."

Both of them chuckled at that. "I don't imagine that I could," said Blue, "but a year ago I never could have imagined any of this."

"I know. Like, you singlehandedly leading a band of rebels to escape Homeworld? Please. I used to doubt if you could even string an intelligent sentence together," Yellow grinned. "No offense."

"Yellow, just because you say no offense doesn't mean it's not still offensive."

"Heh. I know."

The soft silence fell again. Blue closed her eyes as Yellow went still on her chest, but then opened them again when she felt the ship moving. She sat up to look out the porthole, wondering.

Yellow, from her angle at the window, saw it first. She gasped. "Homeworld."

Blue turned. As the ship turned, the black skies gave way to a bright mass, slowly dawning around the corner of the porthole. It was there. Homeworld. Glimmering with artificial lights, ringed with titanic metal supports from an era long gone, its glory veiled beneath a technosphere of millions of broken satellites. Only now could Zircon see the barren scores of disuse that marred the surface — entire facets built in the valleys of dead Kindergartens, pits and craters thousands of miles across where there was nothing but rundown buildings and empty streets.

It was grey and plastic-glittering and it was a Homeworld that was dying.

"It shouldn't be like this," she whispered. Then the ship gave a jolt and, distantly, a roar, and when she dared look again, Homeworld was gone. The only thing out the window was flashes of warplight.

She closed her eyes.

A/N: and that's act II!

like in petri dish, i never decided i was doing acts until i finished two of them and thought huh. wouldn't it be cool to divide it up by acts. so thats whats going on with that. there IS a third act planned and it should have around 15 chapters, which hopefully will be coming up rather fast because, hah, welcome to summer break yo. altho that's never for certain because i just got a new job which i do not yet know how to feel about and also i am going off to college this fall at long last. so as per fuckin usual who knows whats gonna happen with updates

BUT THIS FIC IS NOT OVER. NO SIRREE. DONT GO ANYWHERE. we still need to return to homeworld (indirectly, and you'll see what i mean by that) one more time. i have SO MUCH fun things to dive into and i cannot wait to do that

so anyway.

also happy zircon day! can't believe my daughter has been poofed for a whole fuckin year