LOG-046.

  "It should be...somewhere around here?"

  I paused, considering the terrain around us, even as Amethyst continued to quietly whistle from behind me.

  While I could remember just about every detail I had access to from my short time spent watching the show, translating a location depicted in a cartoon to somewhere in reality was a...task, to say the very least.

  The whistling stopped as my gemstone began to glow, my fellow explorer stepping forward and glancing around as I sat down.

  "What are you looking for anyway? Not much other than rocks and stuff around here-woah! What are those?"

  I was already slotting my legs into the appropriate modules by the time she caught sight of my...well, my only real option for trying to interface with anything around here.

  "Limb enhancers. Homeworld's answer to Gems that come out of the ground without their full set of capabilities, thanks to missing this or that component in their development. They're generally used by Peridots, though I've heard that other Gem types have occasionally needed them as well."

  Hiss. Click. Click.

  The familiar sensation of connection returned as the faux-fingers attached to my extended arms sprang to life, twirling through the air slightly as I got up, getting used to my new sense of balance.

  "Wow...you're almost as tall as Garnet now!"

  Turning to look down at an even shorter looking Amethyst, I smiled.

  "Yes well, I suppose one of their utilities is making the wearer look a bit bigger. That's not why I need them though."

  Whatever question she was going to respond with died in her mouth as I converted four of the fingers into a holoscreen, idly scrolling through a few options.

  "Huh. Cool."

  Let's see...if I were a technician trying to wake up old tech, where would I go?

  Communications, maybe. Followed by signals and connections.

  Intuitive, nice.

  I let Amethyst toy with my other hand as I sorted through what, if any, signals my built-in communications suite could pick up, idly hovering a finger out of the way before the Quartz could successfully take a bite out of it.

  And in the midst of what seemed to be hundreds upon hundreds of dead and repeating sections of ghost data and informational outputs...there.

  Prime Kindergarten Control Room: Facet Five.

  All it took was a tap, and then I was in. A few different options came up, but I was really only interested in just one at the moment. That being the command to open up the primary entrance.

  Both Amethyst and I turned as a small patch of earth just a few meters away began to shake, something happening beneath it.

  "What's that?"

  I was already walking past her, approaching the rapidly glowing square slowly pushing its way to the surface as the executable ran through the archaic but still relatively stable system hidden just beneath us.

  "Our way inside your Kindergarten's control room. Let's go."

  Without further prompting, I took a single step forward and let myself fall into the hole, feet beginning to skid against perfectly cut dirt and rock as I slid down. Judging by the sound of pounding feet followed by additional skidding right behind me, Amethyst hadn't hesitated to follow as well.

  "Woohoo! This is fast!"

  I nodded along as the Quartz let out another woop, before frowning, my eyes tracking the mass of green machinery hidden around us.

  The rapidly moving mass of green machinery hidden around us.

  "It is. Possibly too fast. Hold on."

  It was a second's work to reach out and grab the smaller Gem, even as one of my claws materialized over my right limb enhancer with a flash of light, the free floating fingers neatly sorting themselves inside of the oversized gauntlet right before I slammed the elongated talons into the dirt, slowing us down a fair bit.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  As we continued to slide down, I felt Amethyst staring at me, and slowly turned to glance back at her suddenly thoughtful expression with a quirked brow.

  "What?"

  The purple Gem hummed slightly, glancing me up and down.

  "You know, for someone who's less than twenty years old...you sure do know a lot of stuff. Sometimes you almost act like Garnet. Or even Rose, though a bit more serious."

  Blinking (and inwardly panicking, just a little), I tilted my head.

  "I was a very good listener, back in the Empire, and I was very determined to leave. Luckily, Gems like to talk about their jobs, and no one really expects a Pearl of anything besides singing, dancing, and looking pretty."

  That seemed to bring the Quartz up short, even as I finally pulled my claws out from the slope and let us move a bit faster, the boots of my stolen limb enhancers pushing off the dirt and sending us flying for a second before hittng the artificial platform ahead of us with a distinct clomp.

  I heard Amethyst gasp from beside me as I set her down, warily stepping towards the control station taking up the majority of the chamber. Out of the very edge of my vision, I could see her looking over the large tubes that practically saturated the place, almost like veins running through a person's body.

  Of course a second later, the platform was lighting up as it registered the presence of a technician class Gem. Or at the very least, the limb enhancers of one. Solid green (almost yellow) pathways began to liven up the floor beneath me as I stepped forward, a small pedestal rising up from within a beam of light with a clear handprint set atop it.

  Sighing at the (sort of) familiar sight, I placed a hand atop it, waiting as foreign yet ultimately related systems interacted with each other and attempted a standard handshake protocol.

  Had I been an actual Peridot, I maybe could have gleaned just what was happening between them, but alas, I was but a mere Pearl. So from my perspective, the entire thing simply glowed to life, several of the screens around me beginning to activate whatever displays the previous Kindergartener had likely deemed relevant at the time.

  "Cool. So...what are you gonna do with this?"

  Glancing at Amethyst out of the corner of my eye, I brought both hands atop the small console now hovering in front of the pedestal, doing my best to manually access what I could.

  The giant floating hands I remembered from the show didn't make an appearance, but I was able to start sorting through some of the initial data the system was feeding me. The status of the surface injectors (97.3% inoperational, consult superior technician immediately!), the connection to the nearby Warp pad, the projected estimates of emerging Gems (no data found) and a few other things.

  "Well, I'm going to try and access the Kindergarten's sensor stations...or what's left of them, at least. There's something I need to verify the existence of, and when I do, we're gonna need to talk to Rose and the others about it."

  Grunting in annoyance as more and more irrelevant screens began to pop up, I did my best to shove them out of the way, keeping an eye out for what I needed. Which...may have been a mistake in hindsight, considering something responded with an affirmative ping the second I ran my floating fingers across it in an attempt to get it out of the way.

  "Uh...Vee? There's stuff coming out of the ceiling."

  Glancing up, my eyes widened as several cylinders began to emerge, each vessel slowly but surely sliding downwards.

  ---

  "Oh, and what's that?"

  The Peridot (Facet 2L5P, Cut 7XC, to be specific) let out a small mumble.

  Leaning past her slightly as I dusted a corner of the old monitor, I gave the technician a bright smile.

  "It must be very important, if you're working on it."

  And there was the usual dark green blush I was looking for as the awkward Gem grew even more flustered, a hand quickly rising to adjust her extended visor.

  "W-well it's not actually that interesting. Just a little side project I've been working on during down time."

  Fascinating.

  My hands continued to move, the duster flashing through the air as I stepped around to her other side.

  "Side project? What is it?"

  Leaning forward against her desk and running a few detached fingers across the small object (about the size of a Ruby, give or take), a subdued smile attached itself to the Gem's expression as she realised I was actually still paying attention to her.

  "W-well it's not all that much, just an old Era One stasis cylinder. Apparently they were used to keep Gems contained in a controlled environment, all while preventing them from reforming. The admiral requested a few of them during the last time we docked with the Confluence. Said she wanted to see if I could rig them up to keep damaged Gems stabilized until further help could arrive."

  Blinking, I glanced at the small tube before nodding firmly.

  "Well, it's a good thing she put you in charge of this, 7XC. I doubt anyone else could make heads or tails of it!"

  The normally stoic technician just ducked her head in response to my compliment, mumbling what vaguely sounded like a "thank you, Viridian."

  ---

  "Stasis cylinders."

  The words escaped my mouth even as I tried in vain to reverse the process, but whatever executable I'd run simply wasn't having it, considering the damned things were still coming, almost invisible seams appearing around the bottoms of their forms as they began to open up.

  Amethyst sounded nervous, and that nervousness only grew as a few dozen shapes dropped down to the floor with a sound similar to clinking glass.

  "A-and those are?"

  My eyes remained locked on the abominations sitting on the ground, unable to help themselves from trying to observe just where one gemstone ended, and the other began.

  "Think of them as a more reliable bubble, sort of."

  It had been one thing to consider the concept of the forced fusion cluster experiments from the perspective of a human being watching a piece of media. It was another entirely to look at the physical bodies of what I truly understood were people, violently twisted and forced together into becoming these...amalgams.

  I'd felt sick plenty of times in this life, but it was only now that I had a semi-functioning digestive system that I almost felt the urge to vomit as their lightforms began to emerge, wretched shapes barely resembling the Gems they'd once been, contorting and melding and screaming as they desperately tried to reform into something that was no longer there.

  "V-viridan? What...what are...?"

  The small ones were bad enough, briefly thrashing about before finally forming into detached limbs that wriggled around blindly in search of their other parts. It was the larger conglomerations of corpses that fought and struggled and shrieked, shapes visibly glitching several times before they painfully reformed into utterly horrific monsters, their blinded yet somehow still aware gazes immediately turning to us.

  "Cluster experiments. The remains of shattered Gems forced to fuse with one another for the sake of some twisted military project. Just another reason the Gem Empire suck. I...I heard about their existence during a meeting, and it was something I planned to deal with once I got here in order to ensure Vermilion and I could live on Earth safely, among a few other notable issues."

  Swallowing thickly, I stepped closer to the visibly uncertain Quartz, one hand going to my gemstone as the mass of cluster Gems began to approach.

  One of the largest ones visibly shuddered, a screech escaping their almost hand shaped lightform (if each finger also consisted of an entire limb) despite the complete lack of a mouth as they began to pick up speed. With a flash of light, my fingers clasped around a short but thick yellow handle, the rest of my newest tool extending and telescoping outwards as I flicked my wrist.

  Click.

  "Priming Gem destabilizer. Sorry you had to see this Amethyst, but it's best if we handle this now before someone else stumbles upon these poor Gems."

  ...To her credit, the short Quartz only hesitated for less than a second before summoning her own weapon, purple fists clenching around it tightly as even more of the abominations began to approach, pained noises filling the air as they did so.