calling_logs | What girl doesn't need a good axe?

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What girl doesn't need a good axe?

WHO: Garnet and anyone who wants to drop by!
WHAT: Weapon shopping.
WHEN: Around midday.
WHERE: The Mid-Summer Festival in the Lost City of Amazonia
NOTES/WARNINGS: Dem thighs always need a warning. /ahem. Nothing as yet.

She had taken her arrival with her usual aplomb. The City of Tomorrow had been interesting, but she saw more things that she might need to take a closer look at when she thought about attending the Festival that everyone was talking about.

So that was where Garnet had gone. It was rather nice to be amongst fellow warrior women - not that she wasn't always, or almost always, but the attitude here was different. Pearl fought because Rose fought. Amethyst fought because, in her words, she was 'scrappy.' Garnet's reasoning was different. She fought because the battle needed to be fought, and she was able to fight it.

The reason she was looking intently at a weapons booth, though, was because...

Well...

Her giant axe looked a little lonely, and this place was, currently, a little closer (and definitely less laden with memory) than the strawberry fields.

Her lips tugged to one side, a hand at her chin, Garnet eyed a particularly well-made polearm. Reach, and a blade. Both of those were positives in her book.

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Loki listens intently, leaning forward, chin on her hand, emerald-green eyes bright and unblinking.

"A planet full of mad, unpredictable primates."

"At the time, yes." She remembered this part. The gems had held themselves above humanity, but when Ruby and Sapphire had reached the surface and met Rose--

Well. That was a different story.

"The humans had only begun to understand settlements and farming. Blue Diamond was the one overseeing the colonisation, and she saw them only as pests that would run their short course and then disappear into extinction as the gems used the planet for their own purposes.

"Rose Quartz saw differently. She saw the planet with all its wilds, with all its forms of life, with its sunrises and sunsets, its trees and water, its unpredictability and its inherent magic and she knew that she couldn't let Earth be destroyed." Ah, Rose. Garnet still missed her. "And that was when she took her Pearl to an island suspended in the air and said to her,

"'Pearl?'" Garnet's voice subtly shifted. Quieter. Gentler.

"'Yes?' she answered." And then her voice was higher, with a touch of anxiety over devotion.

"'I'm going to stay and fight for this planet. You don't have to do this with me.'

"'But I want to!'

"'I know you do,' Rose told her. 'Please, please understand - if we lose, we'll be killed, and if we win, we can never go home.'

"But Pearl had grown deep, true feelings for Rose Quartz, trusting her not only as a leader and friend, but much, much more. 'But why would I ever want to go home if you're here?' she answered, expecting no answer.

"The only answer she got was a soft laugh, and two warm words: 'My Pearl...'

"And this is only the beginning of the story. The beginning of the rebellion."

The story is, in its way, one that has been told a hundred, a thousand times before. That doesn't make it any less special: the leader and her loyal retainer, the mighty and the scrappy underdog, climbing up from the bottom--

It was not the first time Earth, and humans, changed someone, somehow. It won't be the last. An infinite Earths in a multiverse without end...

Loki nods.

"It started first as a rebellion in name only. Rose attempted to reason with the Diamond Authority, to explain why the planet deserved to remain as it was, but her words fell on ears unwilling to hear. So her hand was forced.

"Like all Quartzes," Garnet began, knowing this firsthand, "Rose was a capable fighter. She was large, strong, fast - her abilities were many, and she could use them all to great effect. She made plants into living sentries, had them fight at her side. She could heal wounds with her tears, and strike fast and hard enough to defeat another gem in one blow.

"But Pearl." Pearl, whose story she told. "Pearl was a servant. Pearl was neglected as a factor. But Pearl was more intelligent than anyone could see."

With a thread of pride in her voice, Garnet went on to say, "Through observation and practice, Pearl taught herself to fight. She used her inherent elegance, her determination to be with her leader, and she took up arms to become the greatest sword-wielder the gems had ever seen. Together, she and Rose became the founders of the Crystal Gems.

"And though a Quartz is formidable, a Pearl, armed and capable, was terrifying."

Loki's smile stretches wider again.

"Do you think that that potential is inherent to all Pearls?" she asks. "Or is your friend the proverbial one-in-a-million?"

"I think it depends on the influences on the Pearl. If a Pearl is encouraged to have her own thoughts and choices, I see no reason why that Pearl couldn't do similar. But if a Pearl is discouraged and never given the chance, then no, that Pearl will never find her full potential." And it felt true as soon as she said it.

Loki inclines her head in a nod.

"Little different from any other person then," she says.

"With how they're made, I don't believe it can be any other way." Garnet had mentioned that they were made to order, those Pearls. Status symbols. Like humans used clothes. Or even servants.

Loki has seen enough made-to-order people - androids, clones and such - to fail to recognise the potential there.

"It's a shame, though. I take it even seeing your friend in action didn't make the others look at their own Pearls any differently?"

"No. To them, she is something to be avoided. A reason to tighten their control, and shatter any Pearls who begin to act... unusual." As if they were people.

"Shatter." Her eyes drift to the gems she has seen glinting in Garnet's hands. "Of course they do."

There's a certain bitter edge to her words, almost as if she has some passing familiarity with that sort of thing.

And maybe now Loki would understand some of Garnet's bitterness toward aristocracy. After all, what use did rebels have for those who had held power for so very, too very, long?

"Shattering is a normal consequence for Pearls," much as it was for Rubies, "who don't follow orders."

"But your friend escaped that fate," Loki observes.

Garnet nodded. "Because she was given the chance, and she flourished."

Loki nods; sometimes, that's all one needs to stand out from the crowd.

"Go on," she says.

"The war was waged. Each side had their champions. But only one champion was a Pearl. Being a servant had taught her to disregard her own wellbeing - which made her formidable on the battlefield. When one believes their life is worthless, death isn't something to be feared. But instead of being destroyed, Pearl found herself triumphant alongside Rose Quartz, and me." She hadn't lied about being a rebel. No reason to. "She was a Pearl who became a Knight. Something no other Pearl can say."

"And," she guesses, though it's an educated guess, "They resented her for being different. For standing out, and rising beyond 'her place'."

"We don't know."

Now, it was 'we'. Now. The present. After the war. After Pearl distinguished herself.

"We've had no contact with Homeworld since the war ended. Not until very recently. And we've seen only one Pearl since then - who did not see us."

"And how did she seem?"

"She was an extension of her Diamond," Garnet answered quietly. "Just as a Pearl 'should' be."

"Seems a shame, knowing what a Pearl can be. If they are," Loki continues. "As it seems, a fully customisable... gem?" It's barely a question, and she doesn't wait for a reply before carrying on, "Then it stands to reason that they can, in fact be anything they are made to be. Whether by themselves, or by others."

"I agree."

That much was obvious. She'd just told an entire story of a Pearl building herself into a life she wanted. And she'd told Pearl herself that she was her own gem.

"But few will ever get the chance."

"Oh? Not planning on having a full-scale uprising to overthrow the entire establishment?" she asks, maybe teasing a little.

"In practicality, no. They have already taken us prisoner once." All of them. Only Steven's uniqueness had saved them.

"I can't blame you," she says, shrugging. "Buuuut narratively speaking, you have a fighting chance, as the plucky rebel underdogs."

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