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Lilah Parallel Episode 1: Nexus Glow
Today's the day that Lilah is set to officially become a Crystal Gem, but there's one slight problem: she hasn't exhibited any of the important magical powers that every golem relies upon to protect themselves. Lilah decides to ask her guardians for help in making a magical weapon, but they've got problems of their own today: a corrupted diopside is heading towards Beach City, and they need to poof her before she arrives at her destination.
Rated 18+ for swearing & adult concepts, NOT AT ALL FOR KIDS!
JUNE 21, 2019.
3:05 PM EST.
BEACH CITY, LENNAVERE, APPALACHIAN CONFEDERATION.
Marcus “Mark” Parallel exhaled as he inspected the almost banquet hall he’d helped set up in the school gymnasium. “We did alright, Mark,” said Jerry the gym teacher as he pushed in the very last chair, gently so as to not upset the small flowerpots of orange-red poppies adorning the long, white cloth-clad table.
Mark nodded. “Yeah, we did. The post-graduation ceremony’s going to be okay.”
“Are you sure that you don’t want to come?”
“Jerry, I’ve been to fifteen of these things and they’ve all been the same, I won’t be missing much. Besides, today’s Lilah’s graduation too, and I promised her that I wouldn’t miss that.”
“It’s a shame that your kid never got to go here. She sounds like a good egg.”
“You and your obsession with eggs,” Mark scoffed playfully before growing serious. “I wanted her to at least have the option of a normal childhood. It sucks that things have to be what they are.”
“I know,” Jerry sighed. “Sometimes I wonder why these folks keep electing the same jerks to the board. Take care, buddy. Say hi to the kid for me.”
“I will.” And with that, Mark left.
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The light went red. Mark stopped at the intersection of Concord and Basset. He’d never liked this intersection, and the reason why hung on the right side of the light facing him.
The sign was an irregular hexagon, a flat bottom tapering up to a skinny top, a black ring separating the white interior from an outer ring of white. Four colorful humanoids – two medium-sized ones in light green and pink lemonade pink, a large one in dark blue, and a slightly smaller large one in electric blue – trampling a fifth, medium-sized black one. Underneath the image was the acronym “G.E.M.” painted in black.
Mark stared longingly at the electric blue pictogram. The light turned green, and he drove on.
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Two miles outside of Beach City’s western border was a small farm on a large, flat hill. The plantings were of edible species carefully chosen for low invasive potential; beyond them were odd trees here and there, assorted wild plants, and one patch that was completely covered in poison ivy for some reason. Finally, there was the barn-like house standing at the hill’s apex, a humble, dark red wooden building hiding a far less humble interior. Mark and his daughter lived in this place, as did their…foreign houseguests.
Mark drove his car onto a specific patch of flattened ground and pressed a green button on his car keys. The ground beneath him shuddered downwards, a force field extending over him as he descended and the shaft closed. Once the panel was flat on the floor, Mark got out of his car and entered a white-tiled hallway, barren save for paintings of various styles adorning its walls.
“Hey Mark,” said a voice as the living version of the light green pictogram approached from a room off to the side: Talc, a magical alien rock creature known as a golem, an extraterrestrial exile from far across the stars, with pale green calloused skin and curly green hair tied into a long ponytail, dressed in blue jeans and a green t-shirt like an everyday human man.
“Afternoon, Talc,” Mark replied. “How are things?”
“They’re fine,” Talc said simply. “Well, unless you count the corrupted golem alert goin’ off, I reckon that’s not quite as fine.”
“It is not,” agreed a woman standing in the doorway of the room, the living version of the dark blue pictogram: Hope, a former noble standing over nine-and-a-half feet tall, clad in an elegant dark blue sari with striking yellow trim that matched her nails and eyeliner.
“Hey, Hope. What kind of golem is it this time?”
“A chrome diopside,” she replied, handing him a photograph of a blurry green thing soaring over the treetops. “A geokinetic clinopyroxene sighted one mile outside of Beach City approximately forty minutes ago. We believe that she is Diopside. Our Diopside.”
“Emerald of the Mineral Team’s girlfriend, right?” Hope nodded. “Where’s Lilah?”
“Crow’s fittin’ her graduatin’ clothes. She’s mighty antsy considerin’ she’s gonna be an adult once the Sun goes down,” Talc replied. “And you know what we promised her would happen then.”
Mark nodded soberly. “Once the Sun goes down tonight, she’s a Crystal Gem, and she’ll fight for Earth with you three.” He sighed. “I just don’t want her to get hurt, y’know?”
“Neither do we, Mark,” Hope replied firmly. “She is our child too. Even if she wasn’t the last thing that we have of Tourmaline’s essence, we’d still do our best to protect her.” Mark nodded and headed down the hall to Crow’s room.
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“A little easy on the waist there, Crow! Oh, hey Dad.” A shirtless Lilah, a broad-shouldered girl just shy of Mark’s height with striking electric blue hair and eyes, made a pained smile to her father as the living version of the pink pictogram, wearing a lavender sweater, a pink skirt with a purple rhombus pattern, a nonbinary pride flag hairbow, and dark red boots tied a black skirt around her hips a little too hard.
The golem turned around, revealing hot pink eyes and black-painted lips. “Mark!” Crow...well, crowed, dropping the skirt string and flinging herself at him. “It’s been too long! It feels like the last time we saw you for more than five seconds was in April!”
“AP and final exams,” Mark apologized, returning the hug. “They happen every year.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re here, old pal. Someone needs to help us watch the kid while we go hunting.”
“The kid can hear you,” Lilah interjected. “And I’m not a kid anymore, I haven’t even legally been a kid since December!”
“That may be so, but you’re still not a Crystal Gem until sunset,” Crow replied, returning to her ward’s side to finish tying the skirt onto her. “And since today’s the solstice, that's not gonna be for a while yet.” Finished with the skirt, Crow stuck a hand into her wild, fluffy ponytail and started rummaging around, pulling out an empty tin of cookies, a live eastern gray squirrel, and a genuine 17th-century shamisen (“Wow, that was a fun party”) before retrieving a simple white button-down t-shirt with a left breast pocket that she quickly shoved over Lilah’s chest, nimble fingers with gray nails buttoning it up in a flash of pink. “There we go! Just what I needed to finish this up! You look cute, kid.”
“Hopefully cute enough to pick up a cutie someday,” the bluenette said approvingly, admiring herself in the mirror.
“Speaking of hopefully,” Crow said before sticking their head out the door and into the hallway. “Hope, do you want me to scout ahead on Diopside?” they called.
“That would be much appreciated, yes!” Hope called back.
“That’s my cue to leave. Go on, have a graduation or whatever. We’ll be back before you know it.” They gave the girl a brief noogie and left the room to the humans.
Mark sniffled. “My little girl’s growing up…your mother would be so proud of you.”
“You saw the sign again?” Lilah asked.
“Yeah.” He pulled his daughter close. “I wish you could’ve met her, Lilah. I wish she hadn’t been too sad to stay.”
Lilah swallowed. “I do too, Dad. I do too.”
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Talc was chopping some carrots when his right index finger fell off, causing the knife to slip out of his grip. “Darn.” He grabbed the waylaid digit and stuck it back on his hand, and it magically fused back on. Grabbing the knife, he resumed chopping.
“Talc?” Talc turned his head to see Lilah enter the kitchen.
“Oh, hello Lilah,” Talc replied cheerfully as he put down the knife. “You look mighty fancy today.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s simple, but…I like it. It makes me feel like a hot waitress. Speaking of waitresses, do you want me to help you with dinner?”
“Naw, I’m fine. Don’t wanna mess up your duds anyhow. But you can keep me company, I’d like that.” Lilah beamed and watched him get back to work.
A comfortable silence passed between them for some time while Talc made dinner until Lilah thought of something. “Talc?” she asked while something boiled in a steel pot.
“Yeah?”
“When I become a Crystal Gem, do you think I’ll finally get my powers? I’d love to be able to do cool stuff like you guys can. More than just magic passively making it so I never need a bath or get sick, I mean.”
“Aw, don’t worry, Lilah. Powers don’t make you a Crystal Gem. It’s what you’re willin’ to do even if ya don’t have no powers a’tall. An’ I’m not sure ya want my powers. Talcs may be hard to poof and able to regenerate from near anythin’, but our ability to fall apart at will is frankly kinda disturbin’.” As if on cue, his left hand fell off at the wrist. “See?” he asked as he picked it up and stuck it back on. “And I don’t think Hope’s psychics or Crow’s infinite-space hair are quite right fer ya.”
“Yeah, but…still, having tourmaline magic would be so COOL!” she shouted, pumping her fists while her eyes twinkled. “Mom could enhance things, right?”
“Yep, she sure could. Just like how you are enhancin’ my chores.” Lilah giggled, but her face fell once Talc’s back was turned to her. She pulled the chest of her shirt out and looked at the bare spot between her breasts, where a nexus would be if she was a golem and not a supposedly-magical human, and sighed in disappointment.
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“Crow, do you see her?” Hope asked through her headset.
“I do indeed! Magical flying dinosaur at ten o’clock!” Crow replied. Hope watched on the control room screen through Crow’s eyes as the green thing swooped through the dense forest. She resembled a Triceratops prorsus, only far spikier, with six cruel eyes and two massive, batlike wings emerging from her shoulders. “Should I attempt to ground her?”
“Roger. She’s getting concerningly close to the farm. Take her down before she gets to Beach City.”
“Alright, Di, once you’re uncorrupted I hope you’ll forgive me for what I’m about to do.” Crow placed a hand over a small, twelve-sided lump on their chest underneath their blouse, which glowed a brilliant pink before materializing a pink-and-white-striped crossbow. Nocking an energy arrow, the rhodochrosite aimed it at Diopside’s left wing before firing it. It tore a hole through the membrane, the wound spraying a fluid that was a streaky mixture of a rusty orange and an opaque white. “Alright! Got her in one! Doesn’t seem like she can regenerate that either. She’ll fall to the ground and–”
Diopside, roaring in pain, caused a boulder to come out of the ground. She manipulated it into a half-pipe and used it to slide onto the ground. “Aw, come on! She just HAD to be the one chrome diopside to keep her geokinesis!” Crow whined. The corrupted golem roared and ran off, using the dirt and rock beneath her feet like an unusual surfboard. “What now?”
“Trail her,” Hope instructed. “Try to use your arrows to drive her into the ocean, her geokinesis is less effective on wet sand and useless on water. Don’t let her see you or else she might attack. Keep her as far away from Beach City as you can. When the time is right, call me and I will send Talc to tag in and beat her down.”
“Roger!”
Hope turned off the screen, removed her headset, and buried her face in her great blue hands. “This is not how today was supposed to go,” she grumbled. She heard a knocking at the control room’s door. “Come in.”
Lilah entered. “Hey, Hope…how’s the mission?”
“Well, Diopside has been grounded, which would be less concerning if she hadn’t retained her ability to move said ground.”
“...oh. Well…I was wondering…how do you use your diamond powers? Like, making a weapon and stuff? I didn’t ask Talc ‘cuz he doesn’t seem to do that…”
“It simply isn’t Talc’s style to fight with essence-born weapons. He can do it, but he prefers to fight with his own raw strength. As for me…well, I can tell you that it takes time and concentration to do it effectively; why, it took me the equivalent of 212 Earth years just to make my first spear alone. You need to feel it inside of you…you need to envision everything about it…then you call upon the desire to fight deep within you…”
Placing a hand near the top of the vertical white belt beneath her sari that went from her neck to her waist, the blue diamond pulled a long spear with a curved, pale pink blade and a dark blue handle out of her roughly rectangular nexus. “And there you have it.”
Lilah stared at the spear in awe before Hope willed it away in a puff of blue light. “Wow…I hope I can figure out how to do that.” She thought for a moment before shyly looking up at Hope. “Hope? Can you…tell me about Mom? Maybe if I knew how she was as a leader, I could figure out how to summon her weapon.”
“I have told you many stories about your mother, but if it helps you understand your potential abilities I can certainly tell them again,” Hope replied, patting her lap. Lilah sat on her knee and looked up at the taller woman, who tapped her chin pensively. “Let me see…ah, the story of how we met Gray Diamond. That was a good example of your mother’s leadership skills.”
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Five thousand and seventy-eight years earlier…
“Tourmaline, you’re not going to like this,” said Grape, a slender purple golemette with red-violet hair in a short bob, as she meekly handed a report to the leader of the Crystal Gems.
Tourmaline, a lanky, long-legged, pale blue-skinned golemette with a mohawk-like braid of cyan hair that went down to her butt, raised an eyebrow at the report. “Kindergarten activity? But that’s impossible. We destroyed the five sanctioned Earth kindergartens centuries ago, and none of them were on the south polar continent.”
“Then it appears that this one is unsanctioned,” said Pyrope, a dark red golemette with an almost square-shaped red afro, a silver sunglasses-like visor covering her eyes, and a stoic, almost monotonous demeanor coloring the way she spoke.
Tourmaline nodded. “How old is this data? I’d imagine a few Earth years given the signatures involved.”
“That’s the thing. The report is from this morning,” Grape said nervously.
The indicolite’s cyan eyes bulged out. “Th-this morning?! That’s not good. Pyrope, get a ship. Grape, get some troops. I want Ruby, Ben, Spinerva, the Malachite Twins, Rubellite, Ametrine, and as many ices, sapphires, aquamarines, lazurites, and pectolites that we can spare. We need to take out this kindergarten before Homeworld can exploit it.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Grape saluted before turning on her heel.
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Two hours later…
A green spaceship touched down in the would-be Larsemann Hills. Disembarking came Tourmaline; Pyrope; Grape; two teal golemettes with similar proportions to Crow and Grape; a limber pink golemette in a coral trench coat and hat with crimson hair in two large pigtails; a tall, pale blue-gray golemette with slender digits and an indigo golemor with similar proportions; a diminutive crimson golemor with a sour expression; four equally-small golemettes in indigo, dull green, papaya pink, and pale, ashy blue, the pale blue one wearing a star-shaped eyepatch over her right eye; five wide-eyed, ultramarine blue golemettes; a golemor resembling a masculine, red-toned version of Tourmaline; a short, stocky golemette with piebald purple-brown & yellow skin; a pale blue golemette with pointy cheeks; and eleven blue-skinned golemettes with spindly limbs & small noses, some of which had white hair instead of their race’s standard azure.
“Brrrr!” Ametrine, so nicknamed for her colorful complexion, shivered as the group approached a large hill riddled with numerous humanoid-shaped holes at its base, a large patch of unmarred rock dividing the holes into two separate groups. “It’s so cold! Why the vulkzara would Homeworld put a kindergarten here?”
“No humans,” Green Sapphire replied loftily. “There’s a circular oceanic current that keeps human boats from getting this far south. Given that most carved-ones turn against the Empire the moment they learn we’re not the only sapient species out there, it’s in the Authority’s best interests to keep them in the dark.”
“So they park the next kindergarten where no sane human would ever go,” Ruby finished with a scowl. “Anyone see anything?”
“There’s something over there,” one of the ices, Snow as shown by the pale blue snowflake embroidered on her white coat, said as she squinted at something in the distance. “It looks like a…recreational shore ball, of all things.” She walked over and brought it back to the others. It was an icosahedral black device floating in the middle of a shimmering clear bubble made of a strange sort of rubber.
“The heck is it?” Rubellite asked.
Tourmaline picked it up and turned it over, grimacing when she saw a retracted blade on the black thing’s underside. “It’s an injector,” she said grimly. “It’s got a protective force field that masks its magical signature, no wonder we didn’t detect them until now.”
“That’s an injector?” one of the lazurites, JJ-19 or “JJ” to her friends, said in disbelief. “But it’s so tiny. I could kick it.”
“Ah, but don’t let your eyes deceive you! That right there is the most modern piece of injector technology out there!” All eyes turned to see a ruby golemor, similar to Ruby save his maroon complexion and wider shoulders, appear from behind the hill, grinning smugly at them and with another such injector in his stubby hands.
“Maroon Ruby,” Tourmaline growled as the corundum arrogantly trotted over. “Yellow Diamond couldn’t be bothered to come here herself, so she sent her best stooge out instead?”
“Ah, you wound me, my dear enemy!” he said as he came to a stop in front of her and immediately started posturing. “I am on Special Assignment™ to test one of my little experiments. If it works, I get paid handsomely and your little rebellion ends.” He smiled wickedly at her. “Allow me to demonstrate the properties of my new Stealth Injectors.
“Magical barrier to prevent detection during transport.” He tapped the pole opposite the blade in a specific pattern, the spots where his fingers touched it lighting up orange and pink as he went. The barrier fell and the injector core fell roughly into his hands.
“Coded activation to prevent meddling from outsiders.” He pressed some buttons on the top of the little injector, which glowed yellow-green as he activated it.
“Enchanted boron carbide blade on collapsible proboscis to ensure rapid strikes with deep intrusion.” The blade shot out of the injector on an extendable tube, puncturing a hole into the rock behind him.
“Easy deposit of seed crystal.” The blade struck again, this time opening while inside the hole and dropping a little white thing no bigger than a marble inside of it. The blade retracted into the injector, which fell silent.
“And my own patented mixture of elbaite sweat and rose quartz tears to speed up growth!” The inside of the hole glowed before causing a shower of rock to explode out of the cliff. Tourmaline reflexively made a cyan bubble around herself to protect her from the blast. When the dust settled, another hole had been blown into the mountain, and stepping out of it was a human-sized golem resembling a skinnier Hope, only a dull dark gray in color and wearing the default gray-and-white uniform that all newmade golems wore.
The Crystal Gems gaped in horror as Maroon Ruby finished his spiel. “With Stealth Injectors I can make an entire army in a centirot. I’ve been covertly incubating a blue diamond worthy of Earth for the last five of its years, and since she’s due to emerge today I’ve decided to start on her court so we can really fight you off. And that measly graphite was just a demonstration. Her court will also need…”
“Ice!” Twenty ice golems appeared from the valley behind the hill, soon followed by...
“Xenotime!” Two amber brown golemettes with unusually large hands;
“Hematite!” Three black golemettes resembling taller corundums;
“Chromite!” A dark gray, freckled golemor resembling a larger, masculine Spinerva;
“Albite!” A white golemette with broad, pointy shoulders;
“Pyrite!” A strong-jawed golemor with metallic dark yellow skin;
“Rutile!” A very thin brownish-maroon golemette with deep wrinkles on her cheeks;
“White quartz!” A towering, stocky golemette with snow white skin & shaggy white hair;
“Brown zircon!” Four pumpkin spice brown golemettes with almond-shaped faces and more relaxed expressions compared to the other new emergees;
“Schorl!” Two black golems, one male and one female, with Tourmaline’s rough proportions if not having slightly shorter legs;
“Brown dravite!” Another tourmaline golemette, this one honey-brown and wearing a golden skirt, black-and-white high-heeled sandals, and a magenta cat’s-eye visor with matching nail polish;
“Grandidierite!” A slender seafoam green golemette;
“Almandine!” Three golemettes resembling dark purple Pyropes;
“And white corundum!” A golemette resembling a white sapphire rounded out the list.
Most of the new arrivals (sans the zircons, who, being born diplomats, were naturally quite mellow) glared at the horrified Crystal Gems, not noticing the somewhat crumbly texture of the rock from which they’d emerged. Suddenly, there was a loud Crack! from the hill behind them, and everyone turned to see a large gash emerge in the rock face between the previous exit holes. “And now for the grand finale!” Maroon Ruby declared. “I give you EARTH’S VERY OWN BLUE DIAMOND!”
KABOOM! went the rock, flowing out in a wave as a massive hole appeared in the side of the hill. Loose stone pelted the golems below, the Crystal Gems having the sense to pull up personal bubbles for protection. The new ones didn’t know to do this, so they ended up getting bruised in various places when the rocks hit them, but Maroon Ruby oddly seemed to get the worst of it somehow. When the commotion finally settled, everyone was left staring at a thirty-five-foot-one-inch-tall hole in the dead center of the hill…and listening to the footsteps within getting closer.
Walking out of the hole came a figure similar to Hope, only much skinnier, with a thinner, more pointed face and the proper height of a diamond. Then she stepped out of the hole and into the light, revealing that rather than the expected kind of sky blue that Maroon Ruby had said she’d be, she was instead a sort of grayish-blue like sealskin. Everyone stared at the newcomer, who blinked at them with large gray eyes. “Is there something wrong?” she asked, her voice surprisingly feathery and light given her stature.
“Yes, there IS,” Maroon Ruby glowered furiously. “How the Light-damned vulkzara did you end up off-color?!” He turned and pointed at the new tourmalines. “You there, tourmalines! You’re Kindergarten inspectors by caste, inspect it!”
“You deposited a blue diamond seed crystal here because this region is high in the boron needed to give a diamond a blue color, with the necessary carbon being sourced from local mineral deposits, carbon dioxide trapped in ice as bubbles, and assorted organic microorganisms living in the soil,” spoke the dravite in a nasally, nerdy voice as she adjusted her visor with a long-nailed index finger. “It would appear, however, that her nexus also incorporated significant amounts of hydrogen impurities as well, most likely sourced from the same ice used to source some of her carbon.”
“I meant the WHY she’s off-color, not the HOW!”
“From what little education I have received in my two decirots of life, I have learned that the likelihood of a diamond carved-one forming off-color is two thousand times higher than the mean likelihood of all other mineral races combined. Combined with the high speed of formation pushed by Stealth Injectors and the long time a diamond carved-one’s nexus typically takes to form, it is likely that the nexus was pushed through its formation faster than it could naturally self-correct.”
“In plain Saxsilla, please?” Maroon Ruby demanded.
“You made her too damn fast,” the male schorl said bluntly.
“Is that bad?” the new diamond asked, touching her bangs with her right hand nervously…a hand now revealed to only have three fingers, the ring finger and pinky being missing entirely and the rest of the hand being quite narrow as a result.
“Oh my luster! Your hand! It’s…HIDEOUS!” Maroon Ruby screamed. The new diamond hid her right hand with her left and looked ready to cry. “Fine. You know what? Maybe Stealth Injectors for a diamond aren’t such a good idea. Shatter this one and we’ll try again with a standard injector. Hopefully we’ll get some good ones before Yellow Diamond asks where I’ve been for the last five reevs…”
“Wait…shatter her?” the pyrite spoke up, horrified. “You want to…KILL her for being off-color?!” He turned to face the Crystal Gems. “Is this allowed?” he asked frantically.
“It’s Homeworld’s way,” Pyrope said bluntly. “Off-colors are seen by the Empire as aberrations to White Diamond’s quest to bring the Brilliant Light to the entire universe.”
“But…she’s our Diamond!” protested the chromite as he pointed to the worried-looking new diamond. “We’re meant to serve the Diamond of Earth, and that’s her!”
“You misunderstand,” Maroon Ruby growled. “You are not supposed to serve the first diamond that comes out of the dirt! You’re supposed to make a bunch of diamonds, then all the on-color diamonds of the same color fight each other in Diamond Duels, the one that wins them all gets to stay, and if the remaining ones of different colors want to duel, then they can do that. Either way, the last one standing is the one that you’re meant to serve. Normally it’s only then that you make a court, but we’re kind of in the middle of a civil war so I had to rush that too because, in case you’ve overlooked that part of the reports, WE’RE A LITTLE SHORT ON PERSONNEL!” he shouted.
“...what happens to those who lose Diamond Duels?” the albite asked nervously.
“They get shattered,” Grape said with a wince, causing the new diamond and her court to gasp in horror. “A diamond who can’t win a Duel is seen as a liability to the Empire’s strength. And the less you know about what they do with the remains…”
“Then we want no part in this empire,” the grandidierite said firmly. “Gray Diamond is our diamond, and we will defend her to our last breath.” The other new golems agreed loudly, and Gray Diamond looked much happier at this declaration of loyalty.
“You will do no such thing!” Maroon Ruby growled. “Yellow Diamond will have my nexus if I don’t give her good results!”
“And you won’t give her any results,” Tourmaline said, having snuck up behind him while he was distracted with his ranting. Her hexagonal nexus glowed cyan, and in a flash she pulled out a brown polearm with a curved cyan blade and sliced Maroon Ruby neatly down the middle with it. In a puff of smoke, he was reduced to a round-cut enchanted ruby that she quickly bubbled and teleported away. Looking up at Gray Diamond, she smiled as she dissipated her polearm. “There’s a lot you need to know about the Empire,” she said. “But I can tell you’ll do good things.”
“Yeah,” said Aquamarine, the gears audibly turning in her round-cheeked head. “Like the legal restrictions that you as Diamond of Earth can put on Homeworld…”
Tourmaline laughed nervously when the diamond’s hand caught her eye. “Oh…you know, we have a technician who can give you a prosthesis to make up for your missing fingers.”
“B-because it’s bad to be different?” Gray Diamond squeaked nervously.
“No, because having more fingers will improve your grip strength, and you’ll need a good grip on your weapon if you’re going to fight. You do wish to fight, do you not?”
Gray Diamond shifted her size downwards to match Tourmaline’s height. Grinning, she took the (much) older woman’s hand and shook it vigorously with her deformed one. “Of course! Although…” she added shyly, “will your group accept me like mine have?”
“‘A course we wills,” Spinerva said reassuringly in her anachronistic Empire City accent, waving her hands as she spoke. “Mah own diamond’s off-collah, an’ she’s wunna da ones who stahted dis whole shebang in da foist place. Don’t be a joik and beat up Hoimwoild and you’ll be a damn fine Crystal Gem, jus’ da same as alla ya coit.”
“Yeah, same here, same court, except I actually am an offie,” Ametrine added, showing herself to the new golems. “And if they can accept me, and all the other ones we’ve got, then they can accept you just as well.”
Gray Diamond looked to her court, who nodded, then turned back to face Tourmaline. “Then as my first action as Diamond of Earth, I pledge this planet in the name of the Crystal Gems!” Everyone around her applauded, but no one applauded louder than a very proud-looking Tourmaline.
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Present day
“As for Maroon Ruby, we did let him out eventually…in Egypt while a mastaba was being built,” Hope finished. “The minute he saw mankind he turned on Homeworld and gave us all of his technology free of charge, just as Green Sapphire said he would. Changed his ways too, he never wanted an off-color shattered again.” She sighed wistfully. “Gray was…a good friend. She was very kind and sweet, and she gave up using the caste system in her court without any fuss whatsoever the minute we asked her to do so. Her being the first corrupted golem we found…hurt, to say the least.”
Lilah nodded. “I wish I could’ve met her, Hope. Thanks for the story.” She left the room, sighing as she wandered back upstairs. She was no closer to figuring out how to summon her mother’s weapon. To figuring out what it really meant to be a Crystal Gem.
“Hey, Lilah?” Talc asked. “I got a call from Crow, they’re taggin’ out. Dinner’s done, just gotta let it cool first.”
“Hopefully you’re back before it cools all the way,” Lilah said. Talc nodded and left.
“Lilah?” Mark called from the dining room. “Can you help me set the table?”
“I’ll be right there!” Lilah called back.
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Crow returned home exhausted and sweaty. “Hoo boy,” they wheezed as they collapsed on the dark red armchair in the living room.
“Crow, would you mind wiping yourself off before you get manganese in the furniture again?” Mark asked sternly while Lilah helped him put the silverware and napkins on the dining room table.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m wiping,” Crow said dismissively with a wave of their hand. They retrieved a white towel from their hair and wiped their face on it, staining it pink in the process, before shoving it back into their hair. “Phew! What an evening, am I right?”
“Yeah…” Lilah trailed off. “Say, Crow?”
“Hmm?”
“You’ve got a ton of weapons in there, right? So you’d know how to summon them better than anyone.”
“We are NOT summoning weapons at the dinner table,” Mark interjected with a frown.
“Trust me, Mark, I’m not making that mistake a second time,” Crow said casually. “Kiddo, what’s gotten into you today? Even yesterday you weren’t this antsy. What gives?”
“Well…I still haven’t gotten my powers yet,” Lilah replied sullenly. “If my hair wasn’t blue you wouldn’t even be able to tell I have Mom’s essence within me. And yet…no tourmaline powers.”
“Oh, kid, don’t worry about it! It’s probably just an age thing. Natural-born golems don’t start developing their special abilities until they’re almost sexually mature; your hair didn’t start turning blue until you hit puberty, after all. You’re about the physical and mental equivalent of an injection-produced golem right now, so I’d say you should be getting your tourmaline powers in the next coming weeks.”
“I keep telling myself that,” Lilah grumbled, staring at her chest in annoyance. “Do you think my transition fucked up my development?”
“Kid, listen. I was a seamstress before the rebellion. The idea of me summoning a weapon was considered ludicrous on Homeworld. And yet, because I honed my willpower and creativity…” They pulled out a pink-and-white-striped broom out of their nexus. “...I can summon whatever I please. Just let it happen naturally and you’ll be fine,” they went on while dissipating the broom.
“And as for your gender stuff…maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. I don’t know. You’re literally only the second human made by magic, there’s a lot we don’t know about folks in your position. But I do know that transitioning made you happy in your own body, so trust me: a little delay in summoning weapons is worth your three extra years of gender euphoria.”
“And even if you never figure it out, you’ll still be as much of a Crystal Gem as the others,” Mark said reassuringly. “Because being a Crystal Gem isn’t about having powers, it’s about doing the right thing for other people.”
Lilah nodded. “Thanks, guys. I feel a little better now.” There was a knock at the door. “I’ll get it. Maybe it’s Talc.”
“If it is, then why didn’t he teleport in?” Mark muttered as she left.
“Who knows?” Crow shrugged. “I’ve lived with him for almost five millennia and I’m still finding new things about him.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lilah slipped on a pair of black flip-flops and opened the door to see two girls her age, a chubby long-haired blonde with green eyes and a skinny Japanese girl with patchy red highlights in her hair, both of them wearing the reddish-orange cap and gown of Beach City High, on her doorstep. “O-oh! Molly, Saki! I wasn’t expecting you to be here!” Lilah stammered, flushing immediately.
“I told you we should’ve texted her,” the Japanese girl, Saki, hissed.
The blonde, Molly, lightly elbowed Saki in the gut. “The surprise was better. Anyway, hi Lilah! We noticed you weren’t at graduation.”
“W-well, yeah, I’m kinda not allowed to go to public school anymore,” Lilah murmured.
“We know. So we brought you a little something! Saki, you have the pot, right?”
“Pot?” Lilah’s brow furrowed. “You guys know how strict our drug policy is, right?”
“FLOWERpot, Blue,” Saki corrected, lifting her hands to reveal a small red flowerpot with orange poppies in it. “We snuck it here from school so you could have a graduation present. It’s not much, but…”
“We thought it was wrong that the school board kicked you out of the district after fifth grade,” Molly finished. “Seriously, what kind of justification is ‘your mother is an alien and therefore you’re not technically an Appalachian citizen’?”
Lilah took the flowerpot and smiled. “Thanks, guys. It’s lovely. I don’t want to keep you from the ceremony.”
“The ceremony ended two hours ago, Lilah,” Saki said.
“Wait, really?”
“Uh…yeah? Our graduating class was literally twenty people?”
“Oh, right. I keep forgetting how tiny our town is.”
Suddenly, they heard a deep rumbling noise from below. “Uh…what’s that?” Molly asked with a gulp. Bursting out of the dirt a few feet from the barn came Diopside. She was covered in nicks and scratches, and both wings were visibly mangled. She roared, slit pupils narrowing.
“Get inside,” Lilah ordered.
“Don’t have to tell ME twice!” Saki yelped as the other girls ran into her house.
Lilah set the flowerpot on the dining room table (“What?” Mark asked in surprise when he saw the flowerpot) and ran to Crow. “Crow, Diopside’s here!”
“WHAT?!” Crow tumbled off the chair and to their feet. “How?!”
“I’m sorry!” That was Talc rushing upstairs from the back room. “She went underground and I lost her signal!”
“And our systems decided that NOW was a good time to update,” Hope glowered as she stormed up the steps behind him. “Turrets and arms are offline. I’ll set up a barrier to keep the humans safe. Talc, Crow, draw Diopside away and give her all you’ve got!”
“Can do!” Talc said as he and Crow ran outside.
“What about me?” Lilah asked.
“You can inspect the barrier for cracks in case Diopside has the sense to attack it.”
Lilah frowned, but only for a moment. It wasn’t the glamorous job of fighting the corrupted golem, but it was just as important for her father’s and friends’ safeties. “Okay. I can do that.”
Hope nodded and started singing in the native golem language, causing a dark blue translucent shell to grow around the house. Molly and Saki exchanged a confused look. “I swear I’ve heard that before,” Molly said as she tried to place the tune. “Wait…is your diamond mom singing the Camp Pining Hearts theme song in alien language?!” she asked incredulously.
“She’s a fangirl,” Lilah shrugged. “And it works. The show’s all about emotional barriers, right?”
“I mean, yeah, but…” Molly shook her head. “Oh, it doesn’t matter.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Outside, Crow summoned a double-bladed axe with long, narrow blades, equally as pink as their other weapons. Talc, meanwhile, summoned a pair of gauntlets the same shade of dark red as his shoes. Crow raised an eyebrow at this. “You’re armoring up?”
“I failed to get Diopside poofed before she came stompin’ around here,” Talc replied firmly. “I’m not takin’ a chance a’ her escapin’ again.”
“Fair enough. HEY, DIOPSIDE! OVER HERE! YOUR FIGHT’S WITH US, NOT THE BARN!”
Diopside, who at that moment had been poised to ram into the front wall, turned around. Her sextet of slit pupils narrowed and she roared at them. “That’s right! Over here!” Talc yelled, slamming his fists together. “Come and get some!”
Diopside pawed at the ground and raced at him, intending to ram him. Talc jumped out of the way. She rotated the ground beneath her feet with her powers and rammed into him without losing momentum. Talc caught her horns with his hands and dug his feet into the dirt, wincing as the strain on his joints increased. Diopside eventually ran out of steam, allowing Talc to twist at her head hard enough to snap off her right brow horn. Rustwhite blood leaked from the wound until Diopside’s nexus glowed light green followed by the wound, the lost adornment regenerating in a flash of light within seconds.
“Go for the horns!” Talc ordered as he tossed the broken horn away. “She’ll tire herself out remakin’ ‘em!”
“Works for me! TIME TO POLL OUR CLIENT!” Crow hollered, jumping high into the air and cleaving off the remade horn with their axe.
“Crow, fewer puns and more focus!” Hope called from inside the barn.
“Hey, I don’t see YOU out here– OOF!” Diopside had swung her tail at them, knocking them over. “Oh, you’ve got my skirt dirty! YOU ARE POOFED, YA HEAR ME?! POOFED!”
“Their magic will clean it up in minutes,” Lilah muttered.
“I find that in situations like this Crow just shouts for the sake of shouting,” Hope replied as Crow, Talc, and Diopside tussled. Suddenly, thunder boomed, lightning flashed, and it started to rain heavily. “Shit.”
“At least the water will make it harder for Diopside to bend the dirt…right?” Mark asked.
“Well, with that many injuries she’ll at least have a hard time focusing,” Lilah muttered.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Indeed, Diopside shrieked and writhed in pain as the water pelted her open wounds. Eventually, her common sense returned for a bit and she used her geokinesis to erect a protective roof of dirt over herself. Or tried to, at least; the wet dirt was slack under her telekinetic grip. Eventually, with a far bigger tug than intended, Diopside lifted a large chunk of earth out of the ground…exposing a Stealth Injector embedded in the dirt. “How the hell did that get in there?” Crow asked.
“Musta landed here durin’ the war and got swallowed by the swamp that used to be here,” Talc replied. “Don’t think we should worry about it none, batteries’ll be dead by now.”
“Right,” Crow nodded. “Stealth Injectors trade capacity & capacitance for speed. A full-sized clunker can last for 350 years, but these things die after ten.”
It was at that exact moment that the injector was hit by a random bolt of lightning (which also passed through Diopside, causing her to drop the dirt and shriek in pain). It lit up, reenergized, and fell out of the dirt, landing button-first on numerous stray rocks kicked up during the fight in sequence and rolling down to the poison ivy field. It lit up, the blade shot out, and something was buried into the soil. The poison ivy began to wither and crumble, and the soil below started turning ashy and gray before frosting over.
“...okay, nevermind, maybe we should worry about it,” Talc said, his jaw slack with disbelief.
“Of ALL the shitty coincidences that could’ve happened today!” Crow seethed. “WHY?!” they raged at the rainclouds above them.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“What…what’s happening over there?” Molly asked.
“Diopside unearthed an injector, and that freak bolt of lightning recharged it,” Lilah replied uneasily. “Can they do that?”
“Well, yes, it is possible to recharge an injector’s batteries through large electric shocks, but lightning has too high a wattage for that to be practical!” Hope replied frantically. “I don’t understand it, that injector should’ve melted from a current that size!”
“Injectors?” Molly asked. “Is that what that virus-looking thing was?”
“Injectors are how golems are cloned, they’re full of seed crystals made of…I think it’s something with silicon in it?” Mark guessed.
“Silicone infused with magic, yes,” Hope nodded.
“Yeah, and they get soaked in the blood of the golem you want to make, then they’re zapped with electricity & magic and shoved into the dirt. Over several years the seed crystals grab the elements needed to make the target mineral and build gemstone shells around themselves.”
“The resulting constructs are magical gemstones called ‘nexuses’, and once a nexus is complete it forms a golem with the nexus inside the chest,” Hope continued, tapping the bump between her sizeable breasts where a human’s heart would’ve been. “It’s what gives us our fantastic powers, it’s what stores the essence that makes us who we are…and it’s what remains of us if we are too badly hurt until we repair ourselves from within the safety of its extrauniversal interior.”
“I’ve told you all this shit before, guys,” Lilah remarked.
“It’s been a while!” Saki protested. “So the ground’s crumbling because the magic rock that virus-looking doodad stuck in it is…eating it?”
“To some extent. We do not know who the donor was for the blood in that injector,” Hope replied, watching uneasily as Talc and Crow engaged Diopside again. “But we do know that injection consumes a considerable amount of energy to create the phylacters – magic atoms – in our bodies, energy that the nexus takes from the chemical bonds of the surrounding material, rendering it cold and inert.”
“Including anything that’s alive,” Molly gasped in horrified realization. “Is that why you started that war you were in? To stop your empire from doing what happened to that tangle…to the entire Earth?!”
“Partly. The other reason involved finding out that our entire oppressive society was built on the lies of a single madwoman.” Hope looked outside and saw Talc snatch the injector from the ground. “Talc! Shut that thing off before it injects again!” she called. “We don’t want to lose the entire farm!”
Talc pried the back of the injector open with his bare hands while pushing Diopside’s face away with his foot. “We’re in luck!” he called back. “The injector only had the one crystal, and the lightnin’ fried the battery! It only had enough juice for one go!”
“Good!” Crow said, pausing momentarily to wring out their hair. “Now the humans will only have to worry about some inverse radiation!”
“...radiation?!” Molly squawked.
“Cloning with injectors takes a lot of energy,” Lilah explained. “So much that even after the golem’s emerged, the spot they came from keeps sucking energy in until everything’s balanced. Especially true of Stealth Injectors since they need so much energy to make golems come out in minutes instead of decades.” With a scowl she added “And that’s why it’s such an evil way to reproduce. It doesn’t just kill the things living in the soil on top of the nexus, it kills everything within range unless it’s magical. Which amounts to only golems.”
“Uh…guys?” Saki asked. “That giant green space ceratopsid…is it doing something?” Everyone turned to see Diopside curiously testing the dirt with her powers. Thanks to the injection the energy once keeping the rainwater liquid was now being drained into the new golem, and the muddy dirt was subsequently freezing into thick, black ice even fifty feet away from the injection site where Talc, Crow, and Diopside currently stood.
Diopside seemed to smirk. As it was solid and had a repetitive molecular structure, ice was therefore a mineral. And with that many dirt inclusions, lifting it would be no trouble at all. She turned her head, formed the snirt into a rectangular pillar, and slammed it into Talc’s chest. His head came off, bouncing on the dirt for a bit before stopping. “Ow,” Talc groaned, still very much alive. His headless body fumbled and flailed for his head. “Over here, goshdarnit!” he barked at it.
Paying him no mind, Diopside turned her attention to Crow, whom she began to pelt with a flechette of dirty icicles. Crow dodged momentarily, but slipped on a patch of muddy ice and fell, landing hard on their right knee with a sickening CRACK! and an agonized cry. Then Diopside turned to the barn and summoned a great bevy of pillars toward the barrier, cracking it and forcing Hope to sing again to undo the damage.
As she pointed out where Hope needed to sing to repair the barrier, Lilah swallowed. Crow was out of the fight until their knee healed, and Talc was out until he could reattach his head – not an easy task when the ground was that slick. Hope couldn’t fight Diopside; she had to keep the barrier up to protect the humans inside, and Lilah knew her aunt enough to know that Hope had trouble multitasking. And her dad, strong though he could be, was no match for a geokinetic alien dinosaur capable of flight, especially when the Gempire’s Smallest Kindergarten™ was so close by.
She knew what she had to do. “I’m going after her,” she said, marching towards the open doorway.
“WHAT?!” Mark cried, reaching out to grab her but failing.
“Blue, this is nuts! You can’t do this!” Saki protested.
“I have to! We’re out of other options! And technically, I’m already a Crystal Gem. We all agreed I’d be one when the Sun went down…well, the Sun’s covered by clouds, so it’s technically ‘down’ in the sense that it’s not usable right now.” She held her head high and tried to ignore the frightened look in Hope’s face…and the twisting feeling in her intestines. “I have to do this. I may not have powers, but I need to do something.”
And it was at that very moment that two somethings happened. First, glowing cyan lines traced over a spot on Lilah’s chest, forming the outline of an intricate hexagonally-cut gemstone before bursting into light, a polearm identical to the one Tourmaline once wielded clattering onto the porch.
Next, the dirt of the poison ivy patch, now completely bare and gray and icy, suddenly burst upwards in a messy SPLURT!, kicking up a tall plume of frigid grayish-brown dust. When the plume settled, a pale orange right hand shot out of the hole left behind, extending on a long, ribbonlike arm before slamming hard onto the remaining part of the ground. The other hand on an equally-rubbery left arm shot out and landed, then two bare feet on equally-elastic legs emerged as well.
Pulling herself out of the hole on all fours, then skittering headfirst up to the front door before flipping herself upright, was a pale orange-skinned golem wearing the default uniform of the Mohs-8 caste. She had a chin-length bob of safety orange hair and blinked at the world with large, equally-orangine eyes, taking in the shocked Lilah, the shocked golems, the unattended polearm, and Diopside slamming another wave of dirty ice into the barrier while Hope was distracted. And then she said her very first words:
“Did I miss something?”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Uh…” Lilah wracked her brain. Fighting a corrupted golem was one thing, she expected that by now. But meeting a new golem that wasn’t one of her guardians? “Well…” she started as she looked around before noticing the sturdy metal poles supporting the roof of the porch. Her eyes wandered over to the newcomer. Elastic limbs, thin neck, and large eyes; a true spinel like Spinerva, only orange instead of pink. Then she saw the polearm on the ground. Her mother’s. “Actually…you can help me with something.”
“Sure thing, what needs doing?” the spinel asked.
“Well, you see that giant monster over there?” Lilah asked, pointing at Diopside, who was now chasing after Talc’s headless body. “We need to poof her before she causes any trouble, but we’re kind of stuck at the moment.”
“Well, then it’s time that you got unstuck. How can I help?”
“I need to get this polearm into her so she’ll poof, but I’m not strong enough to engage her directly. Luckily, if this works I won’t need to get up close and personal. Can you tie your legs around these poles so you’re facing away from me?”
“Sure thing!” The spinel stretched a leg over to one post and wrapped it around, then did the same for the other so that her slender back faced Lilah. “Now what?”
“Pick up that polearm on the ground.”
“If that’s a polearm, is there a poleleg too?” the spinel pondered as she picked up the weapon with elastic hands.
“Uh…we’ll check on that later.”
“Lilah, do you need me to make some noise?” Crow asked.
“Yeah! Noise will work! I’m gonna need a straight shot at Diopside!” Lilah agreed, grabbing the spinel by the waist and walking backwards into the house.
“Kid, this is incredibly crazy and we’ll have to have a long talk about this afterwards, but right now I am completely within the moment! HEY, DIOPSIDE! OVER HERE! I FUCKED YOUR MOM! OR I WOULDA, IF YOU WEREN’T BORN FROM AN INJECTOR! NO, YOU KNOW WHAT? I FUCKED YOUR BLOOD DONOR! SO THERE!”
Diopside’s attention left Talc and fell on Crow once more. She roared and tried to send more ice towards Crow, but failed to move her projectiles more than a foot. Even with the spinel’s emergence draining heat from the soil, the early summer heat had started to warm it back up again, enough so that the ice had somewhat softened – making it difficult for Diopside to wield once more. “Not so tough without your cheats, are ya?” Crow taunted further before grabbing their knee and groaning in pain. “Ow, ow, don’t like that, don’t like that at all.”
Diopside charged and tossed Crow into the air with her horns. “When I let go, wait until I say ‘now’ to release the polearm!” Lilah told the spinel. She pulled further back and exhaled, then let go.
The spinel shot forward like the living slingshot she was. When the spinel’s hips moved in front of her knees, Lilah barked “NOW!” and the spinel let go of the polearm. It went sailing through the air like a ballista bolt and plunged into Diopside’s neck, emerging from the other side in a burst of rustwhite blood. With a choke and a splutter, Diopside exploded into a puff of white smoke, disappearing completely save for her nexus: grass green, circular step-cut with one row of facets on the crown beneath the heptagonal table, and about the size of a four-ounce tub of Vaseline.
Talc’s body caught Crow before they could hit the ground. “Nice catch!” Crow complimented. Talc’s body set them down and they grabbed Diopside’s nexus, summoning a small pink bubble around it. “Hot diggety damn, Tourmaline’s polearm! I haven’t seen that since…well. Nice shot, kid! You too, newbie!”
“Is that my name?” the spinel asked Lilah as the latter let go of her.
“Nope, we’re giving you something better than that,” Lilah replied while the spinel removed her legs from the posts. Spotting the flowerpot on the dining room table, she smiled. “And I think I know just the name.”
“Can someone help me get my head back on?” Talc asked from somewhere unseen.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“To Lilah and Poppy, the newest Crystal Gems!” Glasses of water clinked together ironically. Talc was back in one piece, Diopside’s nexus was safely stored in the vault below the barn, and Saki and Molly had decided to stay the night while the storm passed…and until the “inverse radiation” in Poppy’s exit hole sucking the life from its surroundings could be dealt with.
“Today’s been so full of orange!” Molly giggled after dinner was finished. “Our caps and gowns were orange, our school is orange, the flowers were orange, the new magical rock alien is orange; heck, even your nails are orange!”
“That was deliberate!” Lilah laughed as she inspected her fingernails, which were painted the same slightly-reddish-orange of the flowers and Poppy’s hair. “I figured if I couldn’t go to graduation the least I could do was to wear the school’s color.”
“You kidding?” Saki chuckled. “If I knew what today was going to be like I woulda skipped graduation entirely.”
“But then you wouldn’t’ve gotten me flowers. Admit it, Saki; you’re a sap.”
“I-I am not!” Saki blushed. “A-and anyway! Where’s the newbie anyway?”
“Here she is!” Crow declared, emerging from the basement stairway with a flourish. “Presenting Poppy in her own ‘do!”
Poppy bounced into the room, her uniform gone. In its place was a solid vermillion yinzi eingyi blouse, a longyi skirt with a checked pale orange-and-white pattern, the white diamonds each having a little dot in their middles like an eye, and simple dark brown flip-flops the same shade as the nail polish on her fingers and toes, copper rings gracing the second & fourth digit of each hand and foot just as similar steel rings did on Lilah’s and Hope’s. “How do I look?” she asked cheerfully.
“You look adorable! Like a proper little businesswoman who could also kill you,” Lilah giggled. “Excellent work as always, Crow!”
“If it’s not excellent, I didn’t make it!” Crow laughed. “Now let’s get you introduced to everyone. This is Mark, you took care of his poison ivy problem…”
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Sometime later that night, Hope knelt in front of a great stone coffin bearing a carved visage of Tourmaline on its top. “She’s a Crystal Gem now, just like you,” Hope said. “I wish…” She sniffled. “I just w-wish y-you could’ve s-seen her f-first v-victory…”
“Hope?” Talc suddenly appeared and knelt next to her. “You okay?”
“Just…sharing the news,” Hope replied as she wiped her eyes. “Talc, I’m so worried.”
“Yeah, the inverse radiation bugs me too. We got a way to fix that?”
“Yes, the Sun-Sucker’s finished now, but…oh, confound it! Talc, I’m worried that Lilah’s going to get hurt. I’m worried that she’s going to end up walking her mother’s path and blame herself for not being able to save everyone. A-and then…”
Talc put a hand on her right shoulder. “She won’t,” he said firmly. “We’ll make sure she won’t. She ain’t goin’ down that path now that we know what steps led her mom there.”
Hope exhaled as he removed his hand. “I-I know, but…and that’s just what we can do, Talc. I’m worried about something else. Something that we can’t do anything about.”
“What worries you?”
“Diopside. She was the 31,500th corrupted golem we’ve found.”
“That number a bad omen on your planet?”
“No, but it might as well be a bad omen on this one. The number of golems stranded on Earth before White Diamond sang the Corruption Song wasn’t that much more. And at the accelerated rate they’ve been emerging after Tourmaline…” she stared at the coffin before continuing, “we might find the last one within the year.”
“And we don’t have a cure for that still,” Talc finished with a sigh. “Bugs me too.”
“That wasn’t my only concern, Talc. Think about it: White Diamond couldn’t send personnel directly to Earth during the war, not when we were so good at convincing her people to turn on her. So she turned most of us into monsters so that we could not give up the sheep about her lies.”
“Goat.”
“Whatever. The point is, now that most of us are devoid of sapience almost none of us could expose her. And we remaining few have spent the last five millennia rounding all the others up, every Crystal Gem and Homeworld troop that she marooned on Earth prior to the Corruption. All into one place. Do you see what my concern is now?”
Talc’s brows furrowed. “I’m havin’ some trouble…d’you think that someone will try to destroy us all once we’re all together?”
“Yes. I’m afraid that Homeworld will return once we’ve done White Diamond’s dirty work of rounding up the remaining Crystal Gems, and potential Homeworld deserters, for her, a-and then…” She trembled. Talc didn’t need to be told what would happen next.
“Easy now, Hope,” Talc replied in a soothing voice as he watched her cry silently. “White Diamond left us alone after the Corruption, we’ve been lookin’ around for years and we never saw no sign a’ her drones or spaceships. And if she does come back, well, then we’ll finish her off right then and there. Just like we promised we would.”
Hope exhaled shakily. “I would be happier if she was able to see that.” Talc didn’t ask who “she” was and simply sat with her, letting the much larger alien lean her big blue head on his much tinier shoulders. “I would be much happier if she could see what kind of woman her daughter was becoming.”
Neither one noticed Lilah peeking her head into her mother’s shrine while their backs were turned, having heard the tail end of their conversation. Frowning again at the spot on her chest, she left the mourners in silence.
#lilah parallel#steven universe#dragon's den studios#fanfiction#audiodrama#indicolite#talc#blue diamond#rhodochrosite#orange spinel#chrome diopside#pink spinel#purple calcite#pyrope#lazurite#amethyst#benitoite#schorl#brown dravite#rubellite#malachite#red ruby#green sapphire#blue sapphire#padparadscha#larimar#aquamarine#ice#hematite#chromite
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𓆟 COD OC - Guppy 𓆟
Quick note Guppy is an COD AU OC, xyr AU is a mix of Black Ops (I, II and Cold War) and the Rebooted Modern Warfare (I, II, III). I'll make a separate post about the universe timeline, and what is/isn't canon.
General
Name : Harlow Rayner
Nickname(s) : Guppy
Age : 26
Birthday : Feb 9th 1997
Nationality : Australian
Language(s) : English, Auslan
Blood Type : A- (A NEG)
Disability : Autism
Gender : Queer
Sexuality : Grey AroAce
Pronouns : xe/xem/xyrs | ze/zir | they/them
Affiliations : Cryptologic Systems Op Navy, Aus Intelligence Corps Army
Rank : Intelligence Analyst
Callsign : Prophet 0-1
Affiliations
Cryptographer "Bell"
Agent Alex Mason
Special Agent Frank Woods
Lieutenant Commander David Mason
Station Chief Laswell
Sergeant John "Soap" MacTavish
Sergeant Kyle "Gaz" Garrick
Lieutenant Simon "Ghost" Riley
Captain John Price
Relationships
Sibling : Isaac Rayner , younger brother - Alive, minimal contact
Father : Charlie Rayner - Alive, no contact
Mother : Evelyn Rayner - Alive, no contact
Bell their Zizi, (uncle/aunt not biologically related)
Appearance
Hair Colour : Dark Auburn Brown
Hair Style : Man bun, wavy/curly hair
Eye Colour : Brown Dravite
Height : 166cm / 5' 5" ft
Build : average
Beauty Marks : Light freckles across bridge of nose, moles scattered across body, stretch marks mainly on hips, upper thighs and upper arms
Scars : top surgery, chip missing from right ear
Tattoos : 3 Gill like tattoos across sides of ribcage, jelly fish wrapped across mid right bicep, two guppies on inner top of zir left forearm, wave band on right leg, a coral piece from left hip down thigh, circuit inspired tattoo from left collar bone to top left shoulder blade.
Face Claim : Erika Lindner
Voice Claim : Soren (GOG) /Rai Thistlethwayte (Thirsty Merc) /Kaoru Kurita (Wonder Egg Priority)
Personality and Negative Traits
Guppy comes across as strange or awkward to neurotypical individuals, and mostly gets along better with other neurodivergent people.
Guppy is very hard working, if the project is important they are unwilling to stop working even if it means ignoring xyrs body's needs.
Dependable : When it comes to those xe trusts, Guppy is incredibly trustworthy and reliable. A steady presence in their life, who would do absolutely anything to make them feel safe.
Intuitive : but often second guesses zirself, and ends up ignoring xyr intuition.
Has a habit of isolating themselves away from others, as well as repressing zir emotions often bottling them up since they struggle to express xem in a way that makes sense to others.
Overly empathetic as a response to zir being parentified during childhood.
Stubborn : Often unwilling to do things that go against what xe believes or what those xe trust has taught them.
Virtues and Vices : self-reliance, stubbornness, obsessive (wont stop until something is done), caution, dependability, Intuition, Tenacity, Impatience, Ingenuity.
Skills and Abilities
Basic Combat Training
Special Skills : Analyst, Cryptography, coding, hacking and intel gathering.
Favourites
Colour : dusty orange
Food : chicken parmi
Drink : Mocha
Flower : Purple Phlox subulata
Trivia
Guppy is right-handed, but working towards being ambidextrous.
Zir listens to music sung in other languages or metal to focus, annoying whoever they share a workspace with.
Has a more dark sense of humor, but hates that that sort of stuff makes xem almost laugh.
Spent most of zir spare time with Bell, and has picked up a couple Russian words and their knowledge on cryptography.
Surprisingly xe is a good cook and baker, spending time learning different recipes especially ones that Bell remembers enjoying from their childhood.
AN : I'm going to be making xyr backstory a separate post, since it's still a work in progress. I might post a small bit about Guppy's current concept/idea for their place in the story.
I also took inspiration from @/kaitaiga and @/sleepyconfusedpotato COD OC posts. Which is the second time I've taken inspiration from Sleepy, first time being my COD MW age head canon post.
#cod oc#my oc#call of duty#call of duty oc#mwii#cod mwii#call of duty mwii#call of duty modern warfare#modern warfare#black ops cold war#military oc#australian oc#cod mw2#oc profile#original character#cod oc profile#oc reference#oc reference sheet#original character profile#task force 141#task force 141 oc#call of duty original character
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So, wouldn’t it be grand if sometime post-Firelight there’s a secret new friend Doctor accidentally mentioned in front of Amiya perhaps (a là dialogue options), since the Doctor has gotten used to working with them and the VERY SPECIFIC rules Ms Bitter Lynx keeps not-so-passively aggressively forwarding them involving rules similar to Operator Reed whereupon the subject CANNOT be revealed to Victorian Operators exclusively this time and now they relaxed around Amiya due to long-standing familiarity and a long standing day.
Slip of the tongue and now Amiya has to ask about this ‘Operator Amanda’ she’s never heard of or met before, to which Doctor responds by elaborating that ah actually her codename was Dravite and she’s a fairly quiet, reliable Infected Feline with mineral Arts. This is intriguing because some Operators have reportedly encountered stray Tombkeeper Grotesques occasionally despite their Non-Infected creator being recorded as deceased…
“Doctor… is this Amanda here with us, in the room?” The Doctor glances around to confirm they can’t see any Victorians around the office/dorm and identifies the presence of the totally-alive Dravite nearby. Amiya can feel someone but cannot see them, since PRTS is constantly helping out Doctor with displaying invisible camouflage units such as Dravite. Deactivating the camouflage Arts unit reveals a petit Feline in a modified Rhodes Island combat suit with white-streaked grey-brown hair accessorised with a geometric white clip. However most of her face is obscured by a visor-type mask rather similar to the ones certain other Operators cover themselves with, underneath which can be seen a grim, stony scowl.
Operator Dravite is a ?* Tactician Vanguard with Camouflage whose Arts-created familiars (that definitely aren’t familiar at all, really) induce an accelerated petrifaction upon their target allowing their mistress to either apply a shield to both or to use nasty and creative Arts barrages that erode those in range.
She appears to be someone that old man Misery happens to keep an eye on routinely enough. But neither the Doctor nor Amiya would know why and that’s why, all’s well, in the end.
#Arknights#very legit operators club#population: candlelight; dravite; who’s next?#txt#bit ficlike tbh#rise’s shenanigans#mandragora….#operator dravite#Amanda from Columbia
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Tourmaline Care Guide
Composition: AD₃G₆(T6O₁₈)(BO₃)₃X₃Z, where:
A = Ca, Na, K, Pb, or absent
D = Al, Fe²⁺, Fe³⁺, Li, Mg²⁺, Mn²⁺, Ti
G = Al, Cr³⁺, Fe³⁺, V³⁺
T = Si, Al, B³⁺
X = O and/or OH;
Z = F, O and/or OH
Hardness: 7 (scratched by drill bit)
Varieties
Schorl (black)
Adachite (brownish purple to bluish purple)
Bosiite (dark brown to black)
Cellerite (violet to grey blue/dark brownish green)
Darrellhenryite (pink)
Elbaite (green, blue, red, pink, orange, yellow, colourless)
Rubellite (red elbaite)
Watermelon tourmaline (elbaite with colour zoning)
Dravite (brown, green, blue, black)
Dutrowite (brown)
Feruvite (black)
Foitte (dark indigo to black)
Liddicaotite (light brown, pink, red, green, blue, white)
Lucchesite (black)
Maruamaite (brown)
Olenite (pink, blue, green, colourless)
Povndraite (brown to black)
Princivalleite (blue)
Rossmanite (pink, orange, yellow)
Tsilaisite (greenish yellow)
Uvite (brown to black)
Hydrosensitivity: Unreactive.
Photosensitivity: Unreactive.
Thermosensitivity: Mixed. Tourmaline is heat sensitive, but likely not under normal conditions.
Reactivity: Unreactive.
Fragility: Not fragile.
Toxicity: Not toxic.
Recommended care: Keep away from high heat.
Conditions are described based on normal use. Sources and definitions below the cut.
Definitions
Composition: Chemical composition
Hardness: Mohs hardness, gauges how tough a crystal is
Varieties: List of varieties a crystal can be.
Hydrosensitivity: Ability to be damaged or altered by exposure to or lack of water. Crystals should never be submerged in water for long regardless of their hydrosensitivity, and salt water can damage crystals no matter what.
Photosensitivity: Ability to be damaged or altered by light, often light with UV rays (sunlight).
Thermosensitivity: Ability to be damaged or altered by heat, often high heat.
Reactivity: Any other notable reactivities.
Fragility: Ease that the crystal breaks or scratches.
Toxicity: Note of anything toxic inherent to the crystal's chemical composition. Not toxic does not mean you should eat it!
Recommended care: The recommended course of action for this crystal.
Other notes: Any other care notes.
Sources
"Tourmaline", MinDat.
"The Care of Minerals", Journal of the Russell Society.
"Solubility Data on 646 Common and Not So Common Minerals", MinDat.
"Tourmaline Care and Cleaning Guide", GIA.
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Dravite
Dravite is actually a variety of Tourmaline, specifically brown tourmaline and is usually a yellow-brown to a brown-black color like the specimen here.
Dravite as such is sometimes sold under the name Brown Tourmaline.
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Happy halloween gang!
Woo! Finally we are here! Since uploading my train gem art that makes my soul buzz with excite, I've been super eager to show all of you how serious I am about this project! I've practically been aggravated! I am so mad at myself for procrastinating on uploading! Wow! Now there's this really stupid issue with my laptop keyboard going on the fritz, and I've learned it's a hardware issue. I have to send it in for a while to get it fixed and I don't know how much it'll cost. Really afraid of what this may mean for my houseboat plans, which are even more important! O~O I am a little bit freaky-out-y again. But I'm not doing any o' that before giving you all what you were waiting for, and shouldn't have been made to wait so long for either. Here is a compilation of synopses and chapter ideas, called episodes, that tell you all you'll need to know about Thomas and friends in my fancy new au, and what goes on in the daily life of the crystal beings on Sodor. Now off I disappear again to play my vidyagames BECAUSE I GOT A NEW ONE NOW HA HA HA, GONNA LOSE MYSELF IN LUIGI'S MANSION 3 YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH
Alot of these are-unfinished-as-i-still-havent-found-the-perfect-gemstone-for-each-engine-yet-but-i-will!-also-dont-mind-the-weird-dash-spaces-there-is-still-the-nonsense-going-on-with-my-keyboard-and-its-way-too-tiring-to-edit-rn-and-the-whole-thing-is-just-one-big-first-draft-so-its-all-gonna-look-wonky-i-have-to-go-clean-ok
Thomas - Kyanite 5.1 with a sparkle, always trying to prove his capability and uniqueness, tackling more things than he can actually handle, easily gets impatient (his plot arch is very similar to Phos during the beginning, except he actually likes the scholar job and he's good at it)
Lady - Gold unknown mohs level because she's made of flexible liquid gold material, the leader of the gems as she can literally extend her reach to support all of them and that kind of ability is respected as fuck
Toby - Dravite 7
Elizabeth - dark red gem
Edward - undecided gem?
Henry - Verdelite 7.5, but he gets fused with another
Gordon - Blue Diamond 10, has all of his usual pride and has to learn how to be more humble around everyone, but unlike Bortz, he does prove as more mature about certain matters all on his own, a more collected gordon
James - Red Zircon 9.5, has remnants of Painite(black and red) marbling body, but pure red zircon in legs after the accident, has a fancy design on outer legs to be a show off to everyone
Bertie - bright red gem
Percy - undecided gem?
Bill and Ben - orange yellow gems
Harold - white gem
Duck - Duftite Emerald 7.8 mohs
Diesel - Hematite Rose 6.5
Donald and Douglas - Almondine 7.2
Daisy - Despujolsite
Boco - Duftite Alpha
Mavis - something black and yellow
Scotsman - dark green gem
Oliver - GreenDemantoid 6.8 mohs
Toad - dark grey gem
Bulgy - red and yellow gem
Derreck - dark green and yellow gem
Rusty - Andesine or Zincite, is one of the gems on the winter cleanup crew, tasked with managing weather damage and cleaning off snow and ice
Duncan - yellow gem
Stepney - mustardy yellow gem
Proteus - Pale Yellow Spodumene 6.7
Duke - Amber Chalcedony 7
Skarloey - Unheated red orange Sapphire "HeatSaph" 6.3
Rheneas - Unheated red orange Sapphire "RedSaph" 6.3
Bertram - Brown Onyx 6.5
Smudger - Dark Green Natural Chrysoprase 6.6
"Freddy" - Moonstone 6.3
Falcon - Lapis Lazuli
Stewart - Malachite
Ferguson - Labradorite
{Episode ?, part 1, Kyanite is a useful gem}
Kyanite felt cross today, watching everyone pass by. How glorious they all seemed, their colours, their cuts, their hardness levels...all of what they were seemed to be woefully lost on him. He was a little blue gem of a 5 mohs hardness, which meant for him that he was not a gem strong enough to go out into battle, or patrols, or do anything very special with all of his friends. He thought himself a pitiably average gemstone with no special qualities to make him stand out like the rest. Kyanite was cross, indeed. He looked upon his own kind with jealousy, wishing that he were only more like them.
"Ohh, what a lamentable fate I have...! Being made a small five when I know I can do so much more! I am a great gem, I know this! Yet...whatever can I do to prove it?" he thought to himself.
"Now what's all this I hear, Kyanite?" A proud voice called out to him. It was Red Zircon, one of the most splendid gemstones of the island. He was much stronger than Kyanite, and it was but one of the many things that he boasted about to anyone who would listen; Zircon was also a rare gem, even among the other rare gems. Kyanite turned to see Red Zircon, and was taken aback by how stunning he looked. But then, he always looked so stunning in the light; as a brilliant red gem with a unique mixture of black stone in his body - he didn't recall what kind it was - and a pure red pattern along his long, slender, perfect legs. Red Zircon was one of the best gems around for a number of reasons, and he bloody well knew it too. With a flip of his shimmering, feathered, red gemstone hair, he questioned Kyanite. "You? A great gem who can do so much more? Good to hear you're reaching for the stars above, but...that's going to be awfully hard to accomplish as such a small and pitiably frail little gem, now don't you think?" Red Zircon said to him with an equally playful and condescending tone, with an amused smirk to go with it.
Kyanite gave a stern look at him. He would not stand for such slander! He got up to meet him face to face...which was a bit of a challenge as Red Zircon was taller than him, on top of it. And Kyanite always felt so embarassed at looking an exemplary gemstone in the eyes; something about their glow was too blinding to him. This was something that personally ground Kyanite's gears as well; for a long time, he had always hoped that gems were capable of growing up to be tall and strong, as he did not like how small he was...but Pink Tourmaline had to tell him the bad news that he would be stuck at not only the strength and colour, but the height he was formed with for his whole life. Only their leader, Lady Gold, had the ability to change her height; though not often, it was but one of the incredible things she could do. Poor Kyanite found himself quite envious of these perfect gems, blessed with the things he could only long for, and so he used that spite to drive his message forward to Red Zircon.
"Now l-listen here, Zircon! I didn't intend for you to be eavesdropping on me. And furthermore, you ought to be believing me instead of scoffing!"
Zircon backed off a bit and said, "Oh ho ho! Oh, little Kyanite, there's no need for those sharp edges!" In our human vernacular, it would be like he was saying 'no need to show your fangs'. "I didn't mean to insult, you know that."
Kyanite was thrown off momentarily at this shift. He was unsure, and still a bit miffed at him. "Oh no? You didn't...?"
He replied, "Why, of course not. Wouldn't dream of it!" This left Kyan changing his mood a bit, wondering if maybe he was overreacting somehow? He brought his manners out instead.
"Oh...um, well, okay..."
Red Zircon continued, "I've heard you go on and on for quite a while about your lamentable state, you know. All I was really doing was pointing out your - if you'll forgive me and I'm sure you will - glaringly obvious shortcomings, to remind you of what you're truly fighting against. That being...yourself." He finished his line with a dramatic, controlled, emphasizing pointing, right at Kyanite's round little nose. He got the hint right away, and was left to feel miffed all over again.
"...O-oh. I see. And is that supposed to make me feel better over my situation, then?" He glumly questioned the taller gem, arms crossed.
Zircon thought briefly and replied, "Um, I don't think so? I couldn't possibly imagine anyone who would be happy about their failings! Good grief, how bizarre would that be?"
Kyanite's emotional state was worsening with each remark that came from Red Zircon, and he tried his best to hold back his snippiness...to a limited success. His arms were still crossed as he asked, "Well in that case...Zircon, don't suppose you could stop rubbing it in my face for a moment, and tell me if you know of any way I can overcome my...shortcomings, as you say?" Admittedly, Kyanite was embarrassed at himself for drawing blanks, plan-wise. As frustrated as he was, he genuinely did not know what to do, which is why he was seeking help in the first place.
Zircon brought his finger to his cheek as he went into thinking of how to answer Kyanite. "Hmm...my my my, that's a tough question. I mean, where to begin? Perhaps at your cut? Your hardness along with that? Your drab colours? Your height? Your clothing style? Your attitude? Your overall mood? Your entire personality? Your--?"
At hearing all of this...cruel opinion onslaught, Kyanite was very shocked and indignant. He did NOT like to get so raked in this way, and wanted no more of it! Quite desperately, he interrupted the other's comments. "Okay! Okay! Stop that, y-you...!!"
Zircon secretly delighted in knowing how riled up he could make the smaller gem. Unfair, yet he thought it a fun game all the same, so he continued on. "Oh, my, yes...we'd have to have a complete overhaul of you. Each category is abysmally lacking, as you are now."
Kyanite absolutely hated this, as he looked at Red Zircon with such a struggled, strained and defeated expression. The poor little gem had had enough. What is this?! He wanted help, not to feel so personally attacked; and over everything he couldn't possibly know how to change! He wanted so badly to just snap his fingers, make Zircon go away, and make all of these problems get instantly fixed, like that. Now he went from royally pissed off to depressed, and definitely too insulted to even find the words to get back at the red gem. But that was finally, finally when Red Zircon noticed that perhaps he really was going too far, seeing little Kyanite almost ready to release tears. Red Zircon’s eyes went from lazy to widened, like that. He didn't actually want to do this to the other gem! He only thought it was a bit of cheeky banter and nothing serious...but the one he was chatting with reacted in a way that certainly indicated otherwise. Collecting himself from his self-induced shame, Red Zircon used his hand to gingerly bring Kyanite's face to see his, and very smoothly added, "...But, in the matters of cut and hardness, there may yet be hope for you. I know of a very simple solution to that!"
Kyanite lit up at that last sentence, seeing that Red Zircon was genuinely sorry for what he was doing and really was trying to be helpful. "...Ah! Yes?! What might that be?"
"Oh ho ho ho! Why, silly little Kyanite, have you forgotten already? When you assisted me in getting back to the Shed after that nasty accident? I was fixed up with pure red zircon crystal so that I look better than ever before!" He made a little pose with his legs, for emphasis. “And I can move around at unmatchable speeds too! I can simply do it all now~!" But just before he went on a tangent about himself and all of his best qualities...Red Zircon caught himself and kept to the point. "And so that is the solution I see fit for you, Kyanite. Reconstructive surgery. You should figure out how to be rebuilt into a grander gem! Simple, isn't it~?"
Kyanite considered Red Zircon's idea, and slowly, it became very enticing indeed. "Why, yes...! Of course! Reconstructive surgery! Why didn't I think of that?!" Right in the midst of his pleasant imaginings, and the promise of his dream having a way to come true, Kyan had a sudden epiphany or two enter his mind that apparently put a new damper on the whole. He went from being greatly enthusiastic, to hesitant and doubtful. "...Aah, no, wait. You make it all sound so simple, yes, but...how do I go about this?"
Red Zircon gave Kyanite an incredulous look. "Eh? What do you mean 'how do you go about this'?" Where was this coming from? Kyanite did his best to explain.
"I mean, isn't there a whole process to it? Like...um...for instance, how do I find the right gemstone for me to be infused with? Hm? How do I achieve this when I am not sturdy enough to venture out on my own? And with all of those monsters out there..."
"...Ah. Well...yes. That is true. You would need to find a..." Zircon was growing more wide-eyed as he was wrapped up in his own realization; Kyanite was right. "...Oh. And be durable already, now that I think on it. B-but surely that can still be done? There could be one out there just right for you, yes?"
Kyanite continued. "And, even if there is, even if I did manage it, what would I have to do then? Have myself shattered just to make [Mavis] and the others perform surgery on me?"
"Well, I don't understand how you can focus so much on all the negatives, when I just gave you a solution to your problem! For goodness' sake! How can you not just be grateful?! And how can you not try it out and see, hm?!"
"Zircon! Don't you think I've tried going on my own already?! It doesn't work! Or have you forgotten all of my repair trips?! Have you no care for how...hard this is for me?!"
"Kyanite, I wasn't talking about...I-I haven't forgotten! Now didn't you want help, or not?!"
"Mmm...! ...Well...yes, I did. But...you can think of these things because you're already protected by your hardness! You can already...do these things that I...can't."
"...Oh. Wait, you mean...oh no. Oh no! Do you mean I'm making it worse by speaking so plainly?"
Kyanite nodded, looking very glum indeed. Red Zircon realized that maybe he actually did forget how his plight affects the little one. Red Zircon didn't need to worry much as a 9.5 but had no perspective of what life as a brittle 5 is like. He just humbly said, "Oh, good grief...perhaps I didn't realize what this all means to you. I do sincerely apologize, Kyanite. I am not being as splendid as I should be, now am I?"
Kyanite thought that last remark Red Zircon gave was funny, in an endearing way. He smiled a little more at that, and showed the other that he was feeling a little better now. "Thank you. I'm sorry too. I just have a lot to consider as a five, is all. I don't want to have an...attitude. I just can't stand being so frail!"
"Sakes. That does sound awful. ...In that case, I think what you need to do first is find someone who would take you to go find your gem part. I would simply love to go right now and help you, Kyanite, really! It would be lovely to repay you for your helping me back then, but I'm afraid it's almost noon! I will need to go patrolling soon with (Edward)! I just have no time to spare, you see."
"Oh...really? Ugh, that's a shame. Who might I turn to, then?"
"Not sure. Why not ask around? That's what I would do. My goodness, I am just full of good ideas today, aren't it~? I know~!"
"Heh heh, yes, yes. Well thank you very much, anyway, Zircon! These are good ideas! And this could be it...! I'll get onto the search right away! See you!"
"Good luck, little Kyanite! You'll need it out there~!"
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Exploring The Different Varieties of Tourmaline Stone
Tourmaline is a beautiful gemstone that comes in many different colors and types. Each type of tourmaline has its special look and qualities. Let's explore some wonderful tourmaline stone varieties and discover what makes them special.
1. Elbaite
Elbaite is one of the most popular types of tourmaline. It can be found in many colours, like pink, green, blue, and red. The red and pink versions are often called rubellite and are very good-looking. The green elbaite is sometimes mistaken for emerald because of its rich and deep green colour.
2. Schorl
Schorl is the most common type of tourmaline and is usually black. It's known for its strong, shiny black colour. Schorl isn't used in jewellery much like the colourful types, but it's still interesting and sleek.
3. Watermelon Tourmaline
Watermelon tourmaline is enchanting because it looks like a slice of watermelon! You will be enticed by the colour and the beauty of this stone. It's green on the outside and pink, just like the fruit. This type of tourmaline is great for making unique jewellery.
4. Dravite
Dravite is usually brown in colour but can also be yellow or orange. You have to check which one you require. It's not as bright as some other types of tourmaline, but it has a warm, earthy look that many jewellery enthusiasts like.
5. Paraíba Tourmaline
The Paraíba tourmaline is very special and rare. It comes in bright neon blues and greens. These colours are so vivid and unique that Paraíba tourmaline is one of the most valuable types of tourmaline.
6. Chrome Tourmaline
Chrome tourmaline is known for its rich, deep green colour. It gets its colour from chromium, the same element that colours emeralds. This type of tourmaline is quite rare and sought after.
7. Parti-coloured Tourmaline
Parti-coloured tourmaline has more than one colour in the same stone. You might see a mix of pink, green, and other colours in one gem. This makes for really interesting and one-of-a-kind pieces of jewellery.
8. Cat's Eye Tourmaline
Cat's eye tourmaline has a special effect where it looks like it has a narrow band of light across it, similar to a cat's eye. Tiny fibres inside the stone cause this. It's a rare and beautiful effect.
9. Liddicoatite
Liddicoatite is a type of tourmaline with many different colours in one stone. It's often cut in slices to show off its beautiful patterns. Each piece is unique, making it a favourite among collectors.
Summing Up
Tourmaline is an enchanting gemstone because of its many varieties and colours. From the deep greens of chrome tourmaline to the vibrant blues of Paraíba, each type has its beauty and charm.
Whether you're a collector, a jewellery lover, enthusiast, or just someone who appreciates beautiful objects, tourmaline has something to offer everyone. Its versatility and range of colours make it a perfect choice for all kinds of jewellery, adding a touch of uniqueness and colour to any piece.
Which one are you thinking of purchasing? Well, all we’d say is purchase it from a credible source.
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𝑪𝒓𝒚𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒍 𝑺𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔 - 𝑻 𝑳𝒊𝒔𝒕
List for the crystals/rocks/minerals that start with T!
Tanzanite
Tektite
Terraluminite
Thulite
Tiffany Stone
Blue - Tigers Eye
Gold - Tigers Eye
Red - Tigers Eye
Blue - Topaz
Brown - Topaz
Colorless - Topaz
Green - Topaz
Imperial - Topaz
Mystic - Topaz
Orange - Topaz
Pink - Topaz
Violet - Topaz
Yellow - Topaz
Bi-Color - Tourmaline
Black - Tourmaline
Brown - Tourmaline
Dravite - Tourmaline
Elbaite - Tourmaline
Green - Tourmaline
Indicolite - Tourmaline
Liddicoatite - Tourmaline
Paraiba - Tourmaline
Pink - Tourmaline
Rubbelite - Tourmaline
Watermelon - Tourmaline
Tremolite
Trolleite
Tugtupite
Turgite
Turquenite
Turquoise
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A rare mineral belonging to the tourmaline family, dravite is often referred to as ‘zany’ due to its distinctly unique structure and color. The mineral is known for its deep brown color that can range between a range of hues from yellowish-brown to almost black. In addition to its remarkable coloring, dravite is renowned for its strong blocky crystal formations. This makes dravite one of the more interesting and curious minerals on the market.
Like most other tourmaline stones, dravite has a high electrical conductivity which makes it highly sensitive to both high temperatures and electricity. This is what contributes to the mineral’s zany nature as it is able to light up due to electrical discharges over its surface. Additionally, it is known for its strong and intense vibrations that help to produce a wide variety of electrical effects.
Another peculiar thing about dravite is its ability to attract pieces of various minerals and metals. It has been discovered that when a piece of dravite is placed in a holder and touched with a magnet, it is able to collect iron particles from the atmosphere. This curious behavior has interested many as it makes the mineral all the more fascinating.
These intriguing properties have earned dravite its zany reputation, making it a fun and exciting mineral to explore. With its wide range of interesting behavior and unique coloring, it is sure to make a great addition to any rock collector’s collection.
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Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Tourmaline 1.20Ct Cushion Cut Natural Champagne Tourmaline.
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Hackmanite (sneaky but very helpful computer wiz & programmer)+Star peridot( a technician who now makes videogames for humans & gems) fusion?
There aren't really that many green/purple gems, so like... maybe atlanstisite or fluorite? You could also mix the colours to make brown- maybe tiger's eye, brown agate, or dravite?
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When you get home from shopping and your partner lays crystals all over you while you relax. 🙌🏻✨💠🛌
#mood#crystal#crystals#selenite#tourmaline#black tourmaline#brown tourmaline#blue tourmaline#dravite#naica selenite#naican selenite#witchy af#witchy vibes#metaphysical#shiva lingam#crystal healing#healing#witch
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Team Tourmaline Fusion Chart
#brown tourmaline#brown pearl#tiger jasper#chatoyant quartz#dravite#cat’s eye opal#gem oc#gemsona#gem fusion#su gemsona#team tourmaline#tyrin1350#enstatite
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Remembering You
From @kevyfanfics to the @opal-earrings for the @friendly-neighborhood-exchange event!! I hope you have fun with it because it was an absolute blast :) <3000
AO3 Link
Rating: Gen
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark, May Parker & Peter Parker, May Parker & Tony Stark, Tony Stark & Stephen Strange
Characters: Peter Parker, Tony Stark, May Parker, Stephen Strange, Helen Cho
Summary: All Tony can do is stare at the pale, unmoving form of Peter as hands force his heart to beat and air is pushed into his lungs. This time it’s different. There's no beeping to prove he's still alive as he lies there, no steady rise and fall of his chest. Nothing. Tony doesn't realize he's on his knees until hands are gripping his shoulders.
“No. No no no no, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. Please, don't go, I'm so sorry, I still need you, kid, I didn't-” He's cut off by his own sobs, vaguely aware of the steady arms that keep him up as he curls in on himself. I didn't mean it, he desperately repeats in his head, begging in a way he had never begged before.
Or: Peter gets amnesia after a grueling fight, forgetting who he is to Tony.
Possible TW // Temporary character death
Have fun and stay safe🖤🤎❤️️🧡💛💚💙💜
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Tony sits with his head down, palms digging his eyes as he waits. And waits. And waits… God, he's so sick of waiting. It’s been weeks. Too many weeks to keep track of when all Tony can think of is the lifeless, comatose kid beneath pristine sheets and surrounded by get-well-soon gifts. The only thing that keeps him sane these days is the constant beeping from the heart monitor, but even that’s beginning to grate on him. It taunts him. The beeping never changes its pace, reminding him every second of every minute of every day that it’s the only proof he has that Peter’s alive.
“You should get some food.” Tony drags his half-lidded gaze to May who walks to Peter’s bedside. His eyes, surrounded by dark circles, follow her as she does so. He doesn't have the energy to respond. May expects the “what if he wakes up while I'm gone?” like every day…but it never comes. Instead, he stands and leaves without so much as a word. She worries that he's finally reached his emotional limit. That he’ll start to distance himself and detach from his emotions. That he’ll give up on them. On Peter. And god she can't go through this alone.
Tony walks down the empty hall, steps echoing against the linoleum floor. The LED tube lights above him only make everything seem more bleak then they already are. They flicker slightly, but he keeps his eyes downcast. Through pure muscle memory, he makes it to the medbay cafeteria and sits at a table. He doesn't get food, just…sits and glares at the metallic surface.
Don't fucking drag it out like this, he thinks with indignation. He just can't take it anymore, going in and seeing nothing change. He's at his limit. It’s too much. If you're gonna leave, just do it already. I can't keep seeing you like this. You already look dead. Just get it over with. All he can see is Peter’s bright, brown eyes lit up with excitement, his wide, lopsided smile that lights up the whole workshop. A soft sob forces its way past his lips as he tightly grips his hair in both hands. Stop it already. Stop it. Stop-
“Tony!” His head snaps up, eyes wide with a sudden panic that assaults his system. At first he thinks it was in his head, his mind already buzzing with voices, but then a crash cart is rushed down the hallway. No. He gets up so fast that the aluminum chair crashes to the floor, forgotten behind him. His shoes squeak as he sprints down the hall, breathing fast, heart in his throat, blood pumping through his ears.
When the flatline reaches him, he swears he could cry right then and there.
He skids to a stop, frantically scanning for something, anything to relieve his anxiety… But what he gets is a room of nurses doing too many things at once for him to discern.
“Baby, baby please don't do this,” May begs off to the side, one of the nurses doing their best to comfort and hold her back at the same time. All Tony can do is stare at the pale, unmoving form of Peter as hands force his heart to beat and air is pushed into his lungs. This time it’s different. There's no beeping to prove he's still alive as he lies there, no steady rise and fall of his chest. Nothing. Tony doesn't realize he's on his knees until hands are gripping his shoulders.
“No. No no no no, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. Please, don't go, I'm so sorry, I still need you, kid, I didn't-” He's cut off by his own sobs, vaguely aware of the steady arms that keep him up as he curls in on himself. I didn't mean it, he desperately repeats in his head, begging in a way he had never begged before.
“One milligram epinephrine and a twenty milliliter flush!” a voice shouts over the chaos, barely reaching Tony’s ringing ears. Everything is moving too fast and the whole scene blurs in his vision, but the asystole rings true. He can't take this.
“You've never given up a day in your life! Don't you dare start now!” Tony screams at the top of his lungs, but then he feels himself being dragged out of the room. Peter’s bed gets farther and farther away as he begins to thrash. “Let go! Get the fuck off me!” But the arms easily keep him at bay even as he fights against them.
“Tony! Tony, you gotta let ‘em work! C’mon, man! It’s okay!” The voice finally fills his ears and he whips around to see Rhodey. It’s been a long time since he’s seen tears in the man’s eyes, but they don't spill over. “It’s okay,” he repeats, “Peter’s strong. You know that.” Tony grips his forearm like a lifeline, pleading look never wavering.
“We’ve got a rhythm!” Tony’s attention snaps back to the room so fast it makes the walls tilt. More medical jargon is listed off but all he can focus on is the beeping. The beeping that annoyed him a mere fifteen minutes ago now filled him with hope and an indescribable relief as he continued sobbing silently.
He never complained about the monitor again.
His stare, however, still hovers over the bandages protecting the burns Peter endured all those weeks ago. Thousands of volts and the ear piercing scream of pure agony was almost more than Tony could handle. He still hears it echoing in his nightmares. Peter’s vitals have been stable for a week now and Cho said he could wake up at any moment, but the wait was still putting everyone’s nerves on edge…because there was still the chance he could never wake up. And that just wasn't an option.
Tony continues to sit in that damn chair, day after day, waiting like he isn't the most impatient person on the planet. He’d always wait for Peter.
Then the sheets shift under his touch, making him flinch at the sudden movement and sit up with his back straight as a rod. Peter’s moving. His eyes are squeezed shut and his white-knuckled fingers are gripping the blankets, but he doesn't move more than that. Tony can hear his blood pumping through his ears, searching for some, any, sign that this is it. That he's waking up.
“Fri, get May down here,” he gently calls, hoping to not jar Peter with the volume. He practically holds his breath in anticipation as the kid stills, color draining from Tony’s face and hope leaving his body in waves. No, he couldn't have just called May for a false alarm. He can't handle their hopes being drowned in despair again. They've waited too-
Those bleary, dravite eyes, that haven't opened for far too long, drag themselves open. Tony immediately presses the call button on the bedside railing before taking Peter’s hand carefully in his own, gingerly working on relaxing the fingers in his hold. The glazed-over look drags down to where their hands are connected, then back up to Tony’s face, finally acknowledging him.
“Hey, kiddo,” Tony greets with a watery smile, tears on the verge of falling. “You with us?” Peter’s stare bores into him, not quite lucid but more aware than moments prior. But he just…stares. His hand doesn't tighten, yet it doesn't pull away either. The tense atmosphere isn't what Tony expected.
“Peter?” The kid’s head lolling towards the wavering voice of his aunt.
“May,” Peter lets out in a relieved breath and his hand slips from Tony’s grasp to reach for her. Tony ignores the pang of disappointment in his chest, quickly shoving it down when he reminds himself that she actually raised the kid. The bandages pull at the unhealed burns, but Peter doesn't so much as flinch. Since he was comatose, his healing had been slowed along with his metabolism, going into a hibernation-like sleep that Cho assured was par for the course.
“Hey, baby.” May grasps his hand in a heartbeat, doing her best to reassure him with a smile. However, Peter swallows nervously and looks between her and Tony, a borderline panicked look in his eyes.
“Am I dying?” he chokes out, finally settling on asking May. Of all the things May expected her nephew to say after waking up from a coma, that certainly wasn't on the list.
“What?” Tony questions, completely lost and trying to keep up.
“I-” May cuts herself off, searching her kid’s face. “What do you mean?” She glances up at Tony, a hint of a threat if he kept anything from her, but he shakes his head.
“Is this some kind of Make-A-Wish thing?” Peter elaborates as his voice cracks. “‘Cause Tony freaking Stark is in here and if I’m dying I kinda wanna know what's going on.” The tension bleeds into thick silence, Tony’s wide eyes glued to the back of Peter’s head. He frantically starts pressing the nurse call button over and over. They're all saved from delving into the sudden jostling of their realities by Helen Cho rushing in.
“Peter,” she greets with a pleased nod, “you're awake. It’s good to see you again.” If Peter was confused before, he sure is now.
“Why- how am I- I don't-” His gaze flickers around the room in search of answers, then a squeeze of his hand pulls his gaze back to May. Tony feels like he's a third party to an emotional moment that he doesn't deserve to be a part of. Especially since Peter…
“You're okay,” May comforts with as much conviction as she can muster. “You're not,” she's quick to rephrase it, “you aren't going anywhere. Do you remember what happened?” Peter instantly opens his mouth, but it’s at a disconnect with his mind. Nothing comes when it’s called and having a now very obvious blank spot in his memory doesn't help with his anxiety. His fists grip the sheets at his sides, making the bandages pull at wounds he didn't even know he had. Wounds he doesn't even know how he got. It’s too much. It’s all too much.
I’m not gonna freak out in front of Tony Stark, I’m not gonna freak out in front of Tony Stark, I’m not- His fists shake, pins and needles enveloping them as he tries to keep his breathing under control. Despite his best efforts, tears gather and blur his vision as he fights for control.
Tony recognizes the signs in a heartbeat, but May’s hand is rubbing circles on Peter’s back before he can do anything. He has to sit there, watching as May talks Peter through a panic attack like Tony’s done countless times before. He should be helping. He should be able to tell the kid that he’s there, that he’s going to fix everything like he has before, but now…it feels like an empty promise. It goes against every fiber of his being to not hold his kid and rock them back and forth and do everything he would've done before.
Once Peter is calmed down, looking more exhausted than when he was actually asleep, Dr. Cho does a thorough physical and psychological examination to gauge where they’re at. The only thing that stands out physically still is the burns, otherwise his body did a great job of regulating itself. Psychologically, on the other hand…
“Amnesia?!” Peter squeaks out, staring at Dr. Cho like she’s grown another head.
“Simply put, yes. More than likely some form of memory repression,” she sighs, setting down her notes and crossing her legs
“But I don't- what am I even forgetting?!” He remembers May, he remembers Ned, MJ, all of Midtown High, so what else is there?
“Peter, the…voltage you sustained posed a number of problems. We’re lucky we got your heart back into sinus rhythm.” Tony tenses at that, knowing the grueling, arduous process of whether or not Peter was gonna make it, whether it was a shockable rhythm or time for CPR.
“Do we think it’s from the electrical shocks or…” the trauma dies on May’s tongue, worriedly glancing back to Peter.
“I'm thinking it could be a combination,” Dr. Cho answers honestly, catching her double meaning. “Any electrical shock from 120 to 52,000 volts can cause neurological damage. On a psychological level, what you went through was also traumatic.” She does her best to broach the topic slowly, but Peter’s anxiety is already kicked into high gear.
“Traumatic?” He knows it’s Spider-Man related, it has to be, but why would she know about it? God, he can't keep up. He just has to keep it cool. Yeah, cool. “So, like, I can't remember ‘cause something bad happened and now I have a Sam Beckett swiss cheese brain?” he clarifies, hiding his fear behind a façade of humor. Surprisingly, Tony snorts despite himself and the situation.
“You remember an arbitrary Quantum Leap reference but you don’t remember who I am?” He knows he shouldn't push it considering all the red flags, but since when does he keep his mouth shut? Peter might cope through humor, but Tony copes by shoving his feelings down far deeper than he needs to. Even though tears burn at the back of his eyes. Even though his throat aches with emotion. The bandaged teen’s head swivels back to look at him, his face looking caught between going pale and flushing.
“You're Tony Stark, I'm pretty sure I said that,” Peter says slowly, and suddenly Tony wishes those familiar, brown eyes weren't on him. Because he knows those eyes by heart, but they don't hold an ounce of recognition anymore. “It’s, it’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Stark,” Peter shifts his gaze back to May for help, “but shouldn't he…not be here for this kinda stuff? It’s embarrassing and there's sensitive topics and-” Just as fast as his ramblings, he looks back to the billionaire. “You're…you’re not here for Make-A-Wish…” Slowly, Tony shakes his head with a seemingly nonchalant sniff. He’ll never admit it’s from the unshed tears.
“No, kiddo.” He doesn't mean for the term of endearment to slip out, but it’s so natural after all this time that he doesn't even think to hold it back. The confusion shows in the way Peter’s eyebrows pull together. There's a warm hand threading through his fingers, and he welcomes the assurance.
“It’s okay,” May’s soft voice tells him from behind. “He helps with a lot. Especially Spider-Man.” This time, Peter’s face does pale several shades and he whips around to see her in shock. She couldn't have just said that. There's no way she just said Spider-Man. Oh god, she, she-
“You know?” he looks around the room, suddenly feeling like he's in the Twilight Zone while everyone else seems so frustratingly calm. “You all know?! Why do you know?! How do you know?! I-” Then, his features slowly relax as he makes eye contact with Tony once more.
He holds the gaze this time, not shying away or brushing him off. It takes every bit of strength Tony has left to not squirm under the stare.
“You're what I forgot,” Peter realizes in a whisper, not sure how to feel. “Why?” ‘Cause I'm like my father, Tony’s mind supplies him with, but this isn't about him and his insecurities. Instead he clears his throat, not exactly sure how to answer. Luckily, Cho saves him.
“Since it was an incident related to Spider-Man, it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility to theorize that your brain did what it did to protect itself,” she summarizes as best she can. “The build up was too much, so it eliminated that pressure by removing the memories involved entirely. Including Tony and I. We don't know how far that spreads right now.” May nods along with her words and Tony tries not to bite through his cheek. I traumatized him so much that he-
“At least I can't remember that lecture,” Peter chuckles lightly, veering off on a tangent as he looks down at the sheets. “I bet you ripped my head off when you found out about Spidey.” May smiles fondly and brushes his cheek with her knuckles. “I'm sorry I, uh, forgot you, sir,” he finishes sheepishly. What Tony would give to run a comforting hand through those curls, but the “sir” is like a punch to the face.
“We’ll figure it out, bud,” he settles for, instead. It’s then that he stands, knees popping, and shoves his hands in his pockets to hide the trembling. “I actually know a neurosurgeon, so you're in luck.” He smiles tightly and makes his way to the doorway. “Let me make a few calls.” And finally he's out of the suffocating room, able to freely clench his fists even though he’d much rather punch a wall.
He's losing Peter.
Instead, he channels that frustration into something more productive, yanking his phone out and typing as fast as his shaking thumbs will allow. Within moments, a portal of orange and gold sparks appears in front of him.
“What's the emergency?” Stephen questions purposefully, still dressed in casual clothes due to the distressed S.O.S. message. Something about having someone part of their misfit family here, someone he’d trust his life with, makes his carefully placed walls crumble. The tears swell, his face turns red, and his breathing picks up.
“Peter woke up.” He had kept the doctor in the loop throughout the process, but this hadn't been the reaction Stephen was expecting when the kid eventually woke up. Before he can even ask for clarification, Tony is barreling forward. “He, he doesn't, Helen said-” A firm, grounding hand is placed on his shoulder. Stephen takes an overexaggerated breath for him to follow and nods encouragingly. Tony returns the nod, grateful for the man, and rakes a hand through his hair. “He doesn't remember me. Us. Everything before Germany is repressed because of the trauma. God, I was such an idiot bringing a fourteen-year-old kid into this.” The hand on his shoulder squeezes, despite the ever-present tremor in it, and he reminds himself to stay calm for Peter.
“We’re going to work this out,” Stephen promises, eyebrows set together in determination. “I'm not a psychologist,” he reminds, despite his copious amount of knowledge when it comes to the brain, “but it sounds like dissociative amnesia. Caused by copious amounts of stress and trauma that the mind can't handle, in Peter’s case evidently leading to localized amnesia.”
“Jesus Christ,” Tony mutters, followed by a deep breath. “Okay, alright, what can we do?” His voice is borderline desperate, but at this point he doesn't care how he sounds. All he cares about is Peter being okay.
“The good news is that dissociative amnesia tends to be relatively short,” the sorcerer is sure to point out. “Memories can be triggered by familiar surroundings, a phrase, anything, but it’ll likely come back all at once. All you have to do is get him comfortable and wait. I know patience isn't your biggest virtue, but I'm sure you’ll manage.” The snarky jab and slight smirk tagged on at the end helps things feel a bit more normal. Tony mirrors the smirk as much as he can muster
“Do me a solid and talk with May?” Tony requests, knowing it’ll be more succinct coming from him Over the weeks, Stephen has also become acquainted with May. They've been practically taking shifts with Stephen occasionally forcing both of them to rest. The doctor gives a curt nod, but doesn't release Tony’s shoulder when he turns to walk away. Tony looks back at him with an eyebrow raised in a silent question.
“He’ll remember, it’ll just be a matter of time. Be there for him, Stark,” Stephen urges and Tony instantly gets what he means: don't run from the feelings. Tony huffs while waving him off, yet not denying it.
With that done, some semblance of a plan is put into place: Peter stays in the penthouse to help encourage the suppressed memories to resurface. It could be anytime from here on out, they just had to trust that it would, somehow, work itself out when surrounded by things he knows. Or should know. All in all, Peter seemed surprisingly unaffected. Aside from the obvious, buzzing excitement of staying with his childhood superhero, he didn't appear all that bothered. Awkward, if nothing else.
“So you're telling me I’ve been in your personal workshop? Me. Peter Parker,” Peter reiterates with disbelief. “This is insane!” He turns in a circle, looking at every corner and taking it all in.
“Sure have,” Tony confirms, sauntering in behind the kid with a brief smile. “You have your own room here, too. Personalized and all that shizz.” He vaguely waves his hand in the air as if it explains everything. However, Peter turns to him with wide eyes like a deer caught in headlights. And for a faint, fleeting moment, Tony has hope. Hope that the mere mention is enough to make everything normal again.
“Personalized? Ned’s gonna freak!” Hope is a dangerous thing. Tony bites back the comment about how Ned already knows. To drown out the thoughts, he clears his throat and continues.
“We can do anything you want, kid,” he prompts as he leans on the nearby counter and crosses his arms. He wants to give Peter control over the circumstances. Still, the teen’s eyes flit from his surroundings to the ground.
“Um, what would we usually do?” he wonders, suddenly feeling out of place. It’s like meeting someone who knew you when you were a child but you, for the life of you, can't remember. With such simple words, Tony can't help but think of all those late nights in the lab, ordering pizza and talking for hours on end. What he would give to have that back.
“Well,” Tony starts, voice a tad too tight, “we could start in the lab if you want.” His suggestion is met with enthusiastic nods and, despite the slight discomfort between them, head down the elevator.
“What if,” Peter nonchalantly sniffs, something he doesn't know he got from Tony, yet Tony is painfully aware of, “what if I don't remember?” The insecurity and fear seeps into his voice without shame, something that rarely happens with the kid. Tony can't hold back the hand he clamps on Peter’s shoulder with a reassuring squeeze.
“You will,” he says with a surprising amount of confidence. “Knowing your flare for the dramatic, it’ll happen when we both least expect it.” Peter snorts at that, but returns the smile he's offered. Because deep down, he knows Tony’s right.
And that's exactly what happens. They both know it can take up to days, weeks, rarely even months, but Tony sure as hell wasn't expecting it within the first few hours. They're sitting at Tony’s workbench, going over some of the Spider-Man suit schematics they left off on a few weeks prior to the incident.
“It was a choice between sacrificing tensile strength and compression because the nitrile-”
“It hurt.” The words violently rip Tony from his train of thought. It’s said so casually that it throws him for a loop before he snaps his gaze onto the kid. Peter’s staring straight ahead, through the hologram, as silent tears stream down his cheeks and drip off his chin.
“Bud-”
“It hurt a lot,” Peter continues, throat constricting this time as the emotion starts to show on his face. “It felt like I was being burned from the inside out and I couldn't- Electro he-” His own sob cuts him off and his arms curl protectively around his middle, the burns somehow flaring up at the onslaught of memories that hit him like a freight train. Tony isn't sure if he can touch the kid and comfort him the way he has so many times before because fuck what if he remembers the fight but not him? His hesitation is thrown to the as soon as Peter hunches in on himself and his breathing picks up.
“Hey, I've got you,” he gently says as he wraps careful arms around his kid, mindful of the bandages. “I know, kiddo. I'm so sorry,” he whispers while Peter’s brain catches up. It’s like the memories were never gone, and he doesn't feel any different, but being forced to process the fight with Electro so suddenly with his lungs on fire feels like torture all over again.
“I, Mr. Stark I thought I was gonna die and, and all I could think about was you and May and- you! How could I ever forget you, I'm so sorry-” He cries harder, burying his face in Tony’s chest and pulling his arms closer. “It was like, like looking at you but not seeing you and it, I just, it was awful.” He feels like the biggest disappointment on the planet, but Tony won't let that happen.
“Look at me,” Tony kneels, “let me see those eyes.” Slowly, Peter pulls himself from Tony’s sweatshirt, looking entirely like the piping hot mess he feels he is. “There is nothing that would ever stop me from loving you, Peter. You got that? You could forget me every day for the rest of your life and I would still call you my kid. Nothing’s gonna change that.” Peter presses his lips together to keep his face from crumpling further as more tears glide down his face, and nods.
“Okay,” he whispers with his whole heart. “I missed you.” He dives right back into Tony’s chest, desperately seeking the comfort they both need. Tony welcomes it and hugs the kid back, placing a kiss on the top of his head and holding him close.
“I missed you too, kid,” he reciprocates into the curls. Like he had wanted to when Peter first woke up, he gently rocks them back and forth, taking in the moment. They have each other back, and they sure aren't letting each other go anytime soon. Then, Peter tenses. Tony pulls back to see Peter has gone slightly pale. Of course, already on edge, he starts to panic. “What’s wrong?” he questions, looking over the kid desperately.
“I remember May’s lecture…” Peter says with wide eyes as a chill runs down his spine. Tony chuckles breathlessly in relief, bringing Peter back in to rest his chin atop the kid’s head. This kid might be the death of him, but he’d welcome it with open arms if it meant he’d have this.
---
Thank you for reading!🖤🤎❤️️🧡💛💚💙💜
#tony stark#peter parker#Iron Man#spider-man#Irondad and Spiderson#iron dad#spider son#friendly neighbourhood exchange#amnesia#opal_earrings
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Crystals of the day : Tourmalines
Today a bit bigger post as I decided to talk about more than one type of tourmaline 🔮
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Chakras - (depending on colour)
Zodiac - Virgo ♍, Libra ♎
Typical colours - Most commonly black, but can range from brown, violet, green, pink, or in a dual-coloured pink and green (watermelon).
Tourmaline aids in understanding oneself and others. It promotes self-confidence and diminishes fear. Tourmaline attracts inspiration, compassion, tolerance and prosperity. It balances the right-left sides of the brain. Helps treat paranoia, overcomes dyslexia and improves hand-eye coordination. Tourmaline releases tension, making it helpful for spinal adjustments. It balances male-female energy within the body. Enhances energy and removes blockages.
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*Colour Healing with Tourmaline*
In addition to the generic healing properties of Tourmaline, specific colours have additional attributes:
* Black Tourmaline - also known as Schorl *
Chakras - Base Chakra
Zodiac - Capricorn ♑
Element - Earth
Vibration - Numbers 3 and 4
Black Tourmaline can be used to both repel and protect against negativity. It is excellent for deflecting radiation energy. It enhances ones physical well being by providing an increase in physical vitality, emotional stability, and intellectual acuity.
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* Blue Tourmaline - also known as Indicolite *
Chakras - Throat Chakra
Zodiac - Libra ♎, Taurus ♉
Planet - Saturn
Element - Water
Vibration - Numbers 6, 9 and Master Number 55
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* Brown Tourmaline - also known as Dravide, or Dravite *
Zodiac - Aries ♈
Vibration - Numbers 2 and 9
Brown Tourmaline is used to clear and protect the aura. It clears and opens the earth chakra, (which is located approximately 12 to 18 inches below the soles of the feet - it is not within the actual physical body but is part of the etheric body), grounding you to the earth. It assists in healing dysfunctional family relationships, and helps the user feel comfortable in social groups. Can be used to to treat intestinal disorders and skin issues.
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* Green Tourmaline *
Chakras - Heart Chakra
Zodiac- Capricorn ♑
Planet - Mercury
Element - Earth
Vibration - Number 6
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* Pink Tourmaline - also known as Rubellite *
Chakras - Heart Chakra
Birthstone - October
Vibration - Number 9 and Master Number 99
∆ Flexibility ∆ Happiness ∆ Objectivity ∆ Compassion ∆ Serenity ∆ Balance ∆ Positive transformation ∆ Healing ∆ Strength ∆ Tolerance ∆ Understanding
Source: https://www.charmsoflight.com/tourmaline-healing-properties
#green witch#witchcraft#beginner witch#witchyvibes#spirituality#baby witch#kitchen witch#mindfulness#witchy tips#crystal healing#crystal of the day#crystals#green tourmaline#tourmaline#black tourmaline#watermelom#blue tourmaline
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Schorl, the final singular-gem Tourmaline for my Tourmaline series. Also making a Dravite for @finemanederby so yeah that’s coming too.
#schorl#dravite#SU#tourmaline#steven universe#gems#gemsonas#original#finemanederby#black tourmaline#brown tourmaline
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