LOG-052.

  It had been a hectic twenty four hours, most of them spent quickly darting around the globe to where the Roaming Eye could detect and communicate with relevant Gem installations that needed to be brought back online. I'd needed to repair a lot of things. Even needed to fight off a few Corrupted Gems that had prowled or nested in some of those areas, usually relying on Pearl's various techniques, coupled with the slight power boost that was my two-Gem existence to deal with them.

  Sure, the burning room had a few extra teal bubbles in it now. Sure, there were possibly pictures of the Roaming Eye taken here and there, but whatever. I now was where I truly needed to be, the green walls of the Kindergarten control room all around me.

  My fingers danced across the console, or rather the fingers of the limb enhancer (such a curious device) I'd pulled from Viridian's storage space did, even as the sound of cutting, welding, and other various noises associated with the act of repair and construction continued to echo around me.

  The vague shape of a drill head was taking form behind me, the portions of Pearl's technical standards that were making themselves present in my mind assisting in making sure the design would actually work for digging as deep as possible. I didn't know why I needed it, thanks to the part of me that felt so insistent on its existence still clamming up beyond giving an infuriatingly vague feeling of needing to get close to the Cluster whenever I so much as posed a question, but I knew it would prove necessary regardless.

  Regardless of my inner thoughts and the struggles attached to them, work continued. A dozen holorinas did make the Kindergarten control room feel a little crowded, but the extra hands were more than worth it when it came to getting what I needed. Even now I was directing them towards visible faults that needed sealing, Viridian's recognition of similar systems and Pearl's inherent knowledge and experience when it came to fixing and making things guiding my thoughts, which in turn guided the holographic copies as well.

  Sure, the repairs were probably adhoc by Imperial standards, but they were working, and that's what mattered. The fact neither of my components cared much for what the Empire thought of my potential use of their technology was merely a bonus.

  Even now, more and more of the system was opening up to me, case in point, a fourth sensor station that I'd briefly gone and awoken, one that had been cut off from the network (thanks to a disabled power link, long since mended at this point), finally reconnecting with the whole allowed me to finally gain full access to what was left of the failed colony's sensor net.

  The hologram in front of me flashed once, twice, then finally transitioned to what Viridian had failed to find on her own. My eyes widened, a muted sense of horror suffusing my very being as the system recognized the existence of the Imperial IFF attached to the limb enhancer, as coordinates began to present themselves, alongside semi-accurate estimates for just how large the Cluster truly was.

  There had to be millions of potential shards composing its structure. For a moment, part of me instinctively struggled, before finally realising the sheer stupidity of holding back and finally releasing a bit of information completely willingly, for once. A small victory, perhaps. But an important one.

  Even if said victory felt like ash in the wind, right now. I'd been correct in my estimation. There were millions of shards in there, all forced together, all slowly incubating into a weapon meant to destroy the Earth. To erase everything that was left behind after the war.

  My fists clenched, one exposed and the other barely encased in the limb enhancer around it as I hunched over the console, tears involuntarily trailing down from my eyes, a worryingly familiar sensation. My breath grew ragged, something within me, something not quite physical, hurting. The smaller forced fusion experiments had been bad enough. Wretched, pitiable abominations that they were. But this?

  How many had been Crystal Gems? How many had been my friends?

  ...

  Not all of them. But more than enough. Just another atrocity to lay at Homeworld's feet.

  "...S-stars..."

  For just a second, the sheer scale of it felt...hopeless. How could such a thing happen? How could it be allowed to happen? Gems that dared to break their chains, used to annihilate the very home they'd fought so hard to protect!?

  For just a moment, my lightform shuddered, emotions roiling within my mind before, at last, a furious consensus was finally reached.

  No. No no no, I was going to fix it. It wouldn't develop the way Homeworld wanted it to! Not with us, not with me on hand to stop it!

  "I'm...fucking brilliant. I can fix it. I have to fix it."

  Crude wording aside, it was inherently true. My extended hand slid against the console as I dragged myself away from the interface, stalking past a pair of holorinas hard at work digging past layers of protective plating to get to the damaged innards of the ancient machinery beneath. Certain components needed to be salvaged in order to get the drill working. A necessary sacrifice.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The limb enhancer vanished back into storage just as I finally stopped, planting both hands against the wall in front of me and taking a breath, levelling a glare at my lower gemstone.

  "I can fix it. We can fix it. You know how-I know you know how! You don't have to spill every damned secret you're hiding from us, from me, I just...I want you to but...but you don't have to. Just-just tell me what I need to do damn it!"

  One hand lowered, wiping at what few tears still remained on my cheeks.

  "We're all in this together. We're perfect for this. We can fix this. But only together. Help me, both of you."

  Hesitance lanced through me, from both components, before one half, the half I was initially focusing on, finally relented.

  The Cluster...it was alive. All Gem shards were, in a way. Lost, separate pieces trying to get back together to form a greater whole. The Cluster was a bastardisation of that desire, forcing the programming involved into a chaotic mass that didn't know what to do with itself, or at least...that was how I'd come to understand it.

  It...it was a screaming amalgam of divided pieces each trying to reach out to each other. But they were lost, scrambling around in the dark and only serving to hurt each other (Stars Stars Stars no please) in their desperate attempts to reform. For now, it remained too weak to truly form. Dormant. But I knew better than to be complacent. Given just a few decades, it would be ready to 'hatch' out of the horrifically populated shell the Earth was currently acting as.

  Slowly letting myself slide to the ground, I twisted, pressing my back against the wall and bringing up my knees to my chest.

  "Alright...alright. I know what it is. How do I fix it? What can I do?"

  ...

  "Please."

  ...A sufficiently powerful Gem could...direct them. Help the fragments communicate. Maybe. I didn't know. I didn't have all the information I needed...a Diamond could potentially...possibly take control of the mass and guide it. Or at least find a way to communicate with them somehow. It's...it's the best I could come up with.

  An incredulous, almost hysterical giggle escaped my lips.

  "A sufficiently powerful-what? We don't have a Diamond! W-what about a fusion? It's always helped solve a lot of our problems. Could that work? All of the Gems? Garnet's future vision could-maybe it could-no. No. Or...or what if we tried to fuse with the shards themse-"

  The desperate, vile thought was interrupted by something else, almost as if trying to divert me away from the, frankly, disgusting line of thinking, even as the alternative fled my awareness.

  ...

  I could feel it. The sensation of something within my mind desperately locking itself away from the rest. And in turn, something else in me snapping in response, lashing out at the brief sensation even as it tried to recoil away. My lightform flashed, another half hearted attempt at breaking the fusion-at breaking me apart running through my frame before I forced it back down once more.

  "Everything we...everything you fought for is at stake here. Your reasons for hiding whatever you know, whatever they are, don't matter to me right now! I don't need the context, I just need something that can help." My voice felt strangled, even as I continued to bite the words out. And then?

  ...!

  A shudder, my mouth twitching involuntarily. I felt like I was betraying something, even as my lips continued to contort, desperately trying to form words once more.

  "...R-Ro-"

  Clap.

  It almost hurt, how quickly, abruptly and tightly my own hand had affixed itself to my face, fingers desperately clawing at my cheeks as the palm pressed itself against my mouth, not letting a single word out. My eyes widened in response, even as I tried and failed to get the limb to obey.

  Yet...my other hand was only trembling, rather than outright trying to gag me. Slowly but surely, I drew it closer, steadily wrapping my fingers around my wrist and pulling.

  Inch by Stars damned inch, the rogue limb was ripped from my mouth, even as I took almost rabid gasps of air, unneeded yet somehow inherently desired as they were.

  "W-what!? Say it! Spit it out already!"

  I cringed, both arms shaking as they wrestled against each other, even as I felt one side surge against itself, the other trying to coax it forward past whatever was affecting it as best it could. I could see most of the holorinas pausing around me, either repeating their last orders on loop or simply going into standby mode as I lost control of them, focused as I was.

  "Rah...ahhhh-R-roh...oooh..."

  My mouth contorted, jaw beginning to clench as I forced it to produce sounds, painful as they were.

  I can't. I can't I can't I can't I can't-

  No damn it! I can! I'M BETTER THAN THIS! I FUCKING CAN!

  The fault expanded as I continued to ruthlessly dig into it, right up until it finally chipped. Just like that, whatever was restraining me finally cracked, broke and shattered. Water rushing over and finally overwhelming the dam that had been built up so long ago. All expressed in one basic, glorious sentence.

  "ROSE! WE NEED ROSE!"

  It was a simple statement, yet it represented so much more as what felt like an entire section of my mind finally unlocked. As information that had been kept away from me was slowly, hesitantly, yet inevitably dragged into the light as my component finally came round, since the metaphorical cat was already out of its bag, after all.

  No reason to hide it anymore. Not since I already-not since I'd always, in some vague way, known about...Pink Diamond?

  How-

  "Pearl? Viridian? Uhm...Harlequin...?"

  That voice echoing from the entrance...seriously?

  "Are you in here? The others said you fused for something and then told them to send me looking for you!"

  What kind of twisted timing!? What kind of-no. No, calm! This was good! I could really get things done now! HaHA!

  "What's all this stuff!? It's so shiny!"

  ...Just as soon as I figured out a way to get myself presentable for Rose before she saw me in my current...state. Hooboy.