Footsteps.

Hundreds of them.

Chasing. Pursuing. Following.

Mindlessly. Endlessly, and without pause. Never stopping, not even for a moment. And they were getting closer. Rose Quartz, their target, their goal, their prey, looked over her shoulder to see just how close they had gotten since their first appeared out of nowhere and began trailing after her. There were so much more of them now. So many that they had at least doubled in number. But this was no hivemind effect. Rose, along with Pearl, her Pearl, had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. If these creatures were aware of each other's existence, their blank, rage-filled expressions didn't acknowledge it. They focused on nothing but the two gems in front of them.

And as much as she didn't want to do it, she forced herself to look them in the eyes. Well, the ones whose eyes were still visible. The light, the song, had changed them so much. Some had horns. Some had tentacles. Some still ran on two legs but most ran on four. And some were so grotesque that it was a miracle that they could even move in the first place. Their bodies were twisted, broken...corrupted.

But their eyes…

Rose let out a small gasp and then ripped her own eyes away as her gaze met theirs. She didn't know what she was hoping for. Recognition maybe? A hint that someone was still in there? The gem that they used to be?

But she didn't see that. Those gems were gone. Their eyes were cold and unflinching, looking akin to an organic corpse. Nothing lived in them. Nothing had lived in them for a long time, and it was possible that nothing would ever again.

That was the price of her sins.

Another small gasp rang out to her left and snapped Rose out of her thoughts. She looked over and saw Pearl, running besides her, a look of horror plastered on her face. No doubt she had glanced behind them and saw the same thing Rose had. Their former comrades, chasing after them with a stare so dead and dark that no one would dare call them anything close to "alive." Tears started streaming down her face, but she didn't stop her mad dash. Neither of them did. To cease their retreat meant certain death at the hand of these monsters, and everything they had worked for would become pointless.

"There!" Pearl shouted/sobbed suddenly, pointing ahead of them. "I can see it!"

Rose looked ahead and a wave of relief crashed over her as she saw what Pearl was talking about. Their objective, at long last. A large, white, dome-like structure encased behind a pink transparent barrier. Directly in front of said barrier was a small pedestal, the symbols of all four Diamonds decorating it. Another identical pedestal was placed behind it, only inside the pink shield. That was it. That was their escape.

The two of them put on one last burst of speed, but the horde of beasts behind them seemed to realize what they were doing. Their prey was getting close to eluding them. And with a faint trace of whatever cognitive abilities they had left, the group decided as a whole that they weren't going to let that happen. They roared collectively, making Pearl and Rose turn around reflexively, only to be greeted with more ghastly sights. Their eyes widened at the same sight they had seen earlier, with one small change.

They had increased in size again. So many. So many that it wasn't even a crowd anymore, but a wave. A wave of living horrors crawling over each other in a desperate attempt to reach the two gems. Some were even crushed and poofed by the sheer collective weight of the others, all of them scrambling, twitching, grasping, tugging, pushing, doing anything they could to get ahead. Their targets nearly screamed as they started hearing shattering sounds coming from the same place, they had been standing in only a second ago. They were literally killing themselves in the process of trying to get to her and Pearl. It was madness, a scene straight out of hell, and the devil had seemingly sent his army out ahead of him.

But against all odds, they still managed to make it. The second they reached the pedestal; Rose slammed her hand down on it. It glowed brightly in response and the pink shield surrounding the dome faded into sparkles of light that hung in the air before vanishing. They rushed inside and Pearl placed her on the other pedestal, making the barrier reappear just in time. The hoard of corruptions slammed into it, several poofing or shattering on impact as others coming up from behind them flattened them against the pink wall. But they didn't stop. They scratched and they punched and they kicked. Hitting the force field with everything they had. It vibrated and groaned in protest as they threw their bodies against it, but held. They would never be able to make it through like this. This shield was made out of the most cutting-edge gem technology, and the only thing that could possibly hope to piece the barrier physically was the force equivalent of a moon being thrown at it.

And once the creatures realized this, they just started screaming in protest.

Rose and Pearl tried to cover their ears, but it was no use. It got louder by the second, and almost sounded like they were trying to communicate. The two gems retreated towards the dome, Pearl pleads to make it stop barely audible over the din. When they reached it after what felt like an eternity, Pearl pressed her hand down on the final pedestal so hard that it almost seemed to crack under the force, and the featureless door in front of them slid open. They ran in and it closed soon after, trapping them in a sudden darkness.

The shrieks from outside were still perceptible, but had been dulled to the point where it was mostly tolerable. The two shaking and panting gems let out a gigantic sigh of relief and sank to the floor, completely burned out from being chased like that. Neither of them wanted to say anything about it. But they knew they had to. They would never be able to ignore what had happened. It was a fact of life, now that they were forever trapped in this world.

As much as she wanted to just lie down and rest forever right now, Rose came to her senses as she lay there, not letting herself forget where they were. They still weren't safe after all. If anything, they might have just traded one nightmare for another. She got to her feet and offered a hand to Pearl, who took it with gratitude after a brief moment of hesitation. Rose pulled her up and the two stood in a brief silence, before Pearl broke it as her voice cut through the dark like a knife.

"We should have brought Garnet." She said, her tone dripping with frustration. "If she was here, the three of us could have taken those things on. We wouldn't have had to run for our lives like cowards."

"There was nothing cowardly about that Pearl." Rose scolded. "It was a matter of life and death. Even if Garnet was here, we wouldn't have stood a chance. You saw how many of them there were. Nothing short of a gem armada could have stopped that in a fight."

Pearl sighed and listened to the faint screams from outside. "I still don't understand why they ended up like that." She said, her voice shaking as the shrieks somehow grew even louder. "That Diamond blast should have wiped everyone out, not turned them into monsters!"

"I have my own theories on that…" Rose said, before looking left and right into the darkness. "Are you sure we're alone here?"

"Of course." Pearl replied confidently. "If the intel we got from that crashed ship's database is correct, then all the gems that were stationed at this lab were shattered. And if anyone did somehow manage to get out, they either escaped Offworld, or were turned into…" She looked at the door and gestured towards it. "...those."

"Good." Rose said, before taking a deep breath. "Okay, I'm not entirely sure why they ended up like that. Blue and…" She briefly paused, still hating the idea of even mentioning her former Diamonds, the ones she had promised to try and forget about. "...Ugh, Yellow, never told me about anything like this when we discussed the Diamond attack we were supposed to perform during an emergency, so I'm sure that they would be just as surprised as we are if they came down here and saw what was going on." She gritted her teeth. "Hopefully, at least. If these abominations exist in other parts of the Universe because of them…" She trailed off and didn't finish her sentence, knowing that any threat she made towards them would be meaningless.

"Yes, but why?" Pearl asked, ignoring the last part. "Why were they corrupted like that? Did the Diamonds screw it up or did something else happen?"

"I personally believe it's because it usually takes all four of us to wipe a planet completely clean of gems." Rose said. "But because I wasn't part of it, the attack was incomplete, and it corrupted them instead of shattering us all."

Pearl ran her hand over her gem as she thought about this. "I suppose that makes sense. But...do you think it's possible to reverse the effect?"

Rose looked into Pearl's eyes, vibrant and full of life, which was a nice change from the ones that she saw earlier. But they were also desperate. Begging and hoping that Rose held the answer. Unfortunately, by this point they had tried everything to fix them, and the only viable solution they came up with was to dissipate their forms and then bubble the gem, ensuring that they would never wreck havoc on the Earth and its creatures.

So there was no answer she could think of that she hadn't already said.

"I-I hope so." She stuttered, not knowing what else to say. "But for now, let's forget about that and do what we came here for." Her gem then lit up and a bright light shone out of it, illuminating the surrounding darkness. Pearl nodded and her own gem lit up a moment later, cutting a beam of blue light through the dark alongside Rose's. The two summoned their weapons just in case the intel they had was wrong and moved forward, one step at a time.

The light beams reached all the way down to the end of the blank hallway they were walking in, the walls white and devoid of anything. They soon reached another door, which was the real entrance to the dome. There was no pedestal allowing them to enter here, but it didn't matter as Rose, wanting to get this over with as soon as possible, gripped the edge of the door with both her hands and ripped it open before throwing it aside. Normally she would try and avoid excess or wanton destruction, but the odds were that the inside of this building was already torn to pieces, so this was nothing but a drop in the bucket.

And once they peered inside, Rose found that she couldn't have been more right.

The light beams brightened up a whole new passageway, completely different from the one they came from. This one looked like it had been split open by a rampaging beast. The walls and ceiling had giant holes in them surrounded by scorch marks, while the floor was covered with hundreds of gem shards, dead and grey. Whatever was trapped in this building clearly took exception to being there, and had lashed out in the only way it could: By killing every last gem it saw.

Pearl almost took a step back from the scene, her hands cupped over her mouth. She knew that it was going to be bad, but she definitely hadn't expected anything like this. The gems stationed here were not made for combat after all, so this was no battlefield. It was a veritable slaughterhouse. She spoke softly, her voice trembling.

"Y-you don't think whatever did this is still here, do you?"

Rose didn't respond. She merely raised her sword and shield in front of her and entered the hallway, shards crunching under her feet as she made her way over them. Pearl gulped and followed, even if she really didn't want to deep down. She tried to step over the various remains of gems littering the floor instead of ignoring them entirely, but it was impossible. Eventually she gave up and walked normally, suffering in silence and shuddering each time one cracked under her feet.

The two traversed further into the building, passing dozens of rooms with the doors missing and their hinges lying vacant on the ground. They inspected each and every room, but only found the same thing. Smashed equipment, shattered gems, and eventually piles of notes on all the projects that this lab had been built for. All of them were handwritten on sheets of ancient paper.

Normally, this would be very odd. After all, Gem-kind had stopped using paper to store information tens of thousands of years ago. But during the war, measures had to be taken. Homeworld was forced to go back to the archaic technique of keeping physical copies of data, as a way of making sure that the only way the Crystal gems could figure out their plans, blueprints, and the like was to storm the enemy base and steal the plans in person. A risky move no matter how they did it.

This resulted in a lot of suicide missions, of which only one of those were ever successful. That had been a dark day. The one gem that had come back practically looked shell-shocked, and didn't move or say anything afterward for almost a week.

But thankfully, like so many other horrors the war had brought, this strategy really only came into effect near the end. But it had still been around long enough to cost the Crystal gems some much needed victories.

"Should we keep these?" Pearl asked, entering the room before picking up a few of the sheets and inspecting them. "I think they could provide us with a few things that would have been nice to know earlier."

Rose nodded and agreed. "Store them all in your gem. Every last one that's still readable. We can look over them later, after we take care of everything here." She paused and her expression turned morose. "But after that, we're destroying them. What happened here shouldn't be repeated."

Peale responded with a nod of her own and began picking up huge stacks of paper and started storing them in her gemstone, just like Rose told her to do. There was so much that even though her gem had theoretically infinite storage space, she was worried that she wouldn't be able to hold it all.

And this was still only one room. One of possible hundreds. The dome looked much smaller on the outside than it actually was.

Once Pearl was done, they moved on to the next room, then the next, then the next after that, the two of them repeating the process over and over like emotionless machines carrying out a single purpose. Pearl stored all the notes they found while Rose kept guard, keeping an eye out for any former occupants or experiment they might still be lurking around. But this was unnecessary, as they both knew this place was empty. Nothing but dust and echoes now.

Hopefully.

But this wasn't to say that it was all the same. While the things they found early on all had a certain pattern to them, the rooms themselves became more and more different the further they went. Some were laboratories, some were storage rooms, and occasionally they came across what was clearly intended to be a holding cell. These rooms were easily the most damaged ones, as if whatever trashed them had a personal vendetta against it.

But all of that paled in comparison to what they found next. After a half-hour of slowly walking through the halls and turning corners, they finally found what they were looking for. A gigantic, metal door that stretched to the ceiling. The entrance to the real laboratory. Like all the others, several large dents were visible on the door, but it was still mostly intact and not lying on the ground, proving that whatever had tried to break it down had ultimately failed.

But Rose didn't. A quick glance downward proved that the Diamond symbol that unlocked the door was far too damaged to be of any use to them, so she reared her hand back and punched a hold straight through the thick alloy that made up the door, making Pearl flinch back slightly at the insane show of strength and causing everything around them to shake. Then just like she had done earlier, Rose stuffed both her hands in the hole she made and started to tear it open at a steady pace. After a minute or so of grueling work, she managed to make the hole large enough that both could enter if they did it one at a time.

So they did.

And were quickly rewarded with a brand new hell.

Inside was horrifying. Unlike everything else they had seen, it was entirely undamaged, but they somehow only made it worse. It only served to expose them to the terrible things that had clearly been done in this place. Frankly, it'd have been better if this room was just as wrecked as the rest.

It was filled from top to bottom with equipment that looked like it came from the future, covered with plastic and electronic components that neither of them could recognize. A faint metallic smell filled the stale atmosphere, which Rose instantly recognized as the scent of organic blood.
For a second she thought she could see a red mist hanging in the air, like particles of dust made visible in the sunlight.

She started to grit her teeth in rage as more of the room began to reveal itself. She realized that whatever had taken place in this lab, whatever those gem scientists had really been working on, it had happened here. This was ground zero. This was where they made them. And as she saw the various metal tools scattered on the floor and on workbenches, her anger amplified as she began thinking about the tortures that they must have endured.

"I'm sorry…" She whispered, a single tear rolling down her cheek. A few questions popped into her mind as she felt more tears start to form. "Was it my fault? Am I to blame for this? Was it all because of-"

No.

No, not here. Rose wiped it off and calmed herself. She had to remain strong. She couldn't grow soft here. Not now. Not in this place. The place where so many lives had been lost for no good reason. She could cry about it later. But only later.

"Pearl." She said, catching the latter's attention, who was busy inspecting a machine with a rusty metal claw attached to it.

"Oh, yes?" She said, snapping to attention. "Is there something I can-"

"Do you see all the notes in here?" Rose asked. Pearl paused and looked around, spotting said notes in an instant. This was a treasure trove. Everywhere she looked she could see pieces of paper scattered about and piled high in enormous towers. And while they were mostly in the corners of the room, the stacks themselves were several feet tall. It would take days to go through all of them, the ones she already had in her gem notwithstanding.

Pearl nodded. "Yes, what would you like me to-"

"Store them all in your gem like the others." Rose said, interrupting her for the second time. "Then help me find something to light a fire. We're destroying this dreadful place as soon as possible." As she said this, a sudden mournful look came over her face, one plastered with grief and regret. "There's nothing left for us here."

Pearl paused for a split second before nodding again. She slowly walked over to the stacks and began putting them in her gem as before, thinking about Rose's words while Rose herself stood in silence and stared at nothing. Thought of nothing. And felt nothing. Except for one little thing. How foolish she had been to not simply shut this place down once Blue told her about it. But there was so much going on, so much she had to do as Rose Quartz and Pink Diamond that she couldn't find the time. There were battles to win, gems to inspire, and a shattering to fake.

But she still had the time to yell at Blue about it. Chances for her to do stuff like that always seemed to appear, as if the Universe froze itself just for her.

"I'm finished." Pearl announced a few moments later, bringing Rose back to the real world. "I have all the notes, although I will admit, storing this many things at once is starting to make me feel a little strained."

"If it's too much for you, we can leave some behind." Rose said, not wanting Pearl to feel any worse than she likely already did from simply being here. "Maybe a few from the earlier sections if you really need too."

"It's alright." Pearl reassured her. "Trust me, this is nothing compared to that time Bismuth had me carry around all those giant sets of armor."

Rose almost laughed. "I remember that." She said. "You looked like you were about to…...what do the humans call it again? Throwing up?"

"I think the correct term is puking." Pearl commented. "But that sure didn't dissuade Bismuth." She sighed sadly. "I wish she was still here all the time. The way she motivated everyone into fighting...even those things outside might not faze her from pushing on."

"Yeah. She might have been the most Crystal gem out of any of us." Rose said, before looking away guiltily. "Even me…"

"Oh, I doubt that." Pearl said, chuckling. "Like the leader of the Crystal gems couldn't be the most...Crystal gem. Hm. We need to find a better description for us that doesn't involve any repetition."

"If you say so." Rose concurred, forcing a smile to appear on her face. Much like this place, she couldn't let that incident with Bismuth break her. Besides, it was like Pearl had said. Bismuth always kept pushing on, so they had to as well. In her memory. For what she believed in.

"Anyways…" Rose continued. "Are you sure you got all of them?"

"Everyone that I could see…" Pearl replies. "Unless there are more that are somehow cloaked or hidden from us, we have them all now."

"Good." Rose said. "Time to bring this to a close. Do you have something in your gem that can light a fire?"

Even though Rose has mentioned it earlier, Pearl was still surprised that they were going to set the lab ablaze this early on. "We're going to burn this place to the ground already?" She asked, arching an eyebrow. "Just like that?"

"Of course we are." Rose said. "Why are you asking?"

"Well, besides the fact that there might still be more things here that we don't know about, I remember you saying that you want to preserve all the remaining gem structures on Earth." Pearl replied. "The ones that you built anyways…"

"Exactly." Rose said. "I didn't build this place. Blue did. And even if I had built it I still would have wanted to destroy it. The other gem structures...I'm letting them stay here because they're not doing any harm, and I'm fine with letting them survive. They're nothing more than old memories and ancient ruins. That's what they are now." She then turned and gestured her hands towards the surrounding room. "But this…"

"There's nothing in this place but death." Rose growled. "Smell the air. Even after so long, it's still heavy with organic blood. I'm willing to bet that for every successful experiment that those scientists pulled off, they had to murder a hundred others along the way. And those are likely just the non-sapient ones. I don't even want to think about how many innocent humans they had to kill in order to create them."

Pearl shuddered at the uncharacteristic outburst from Rose, knowing full well who "them" was. The events of that day had lingered in her mind ever since they arrived, no matter how much she tried to ignore it. And Rose of course made an excellent point. The quicker the Earth was rid of this place, the better. But even so, there were still so many things Pearl wanted to know.

"So the notes…" She started.

"Will be destroyed after we read them, like I mentioned earlier." Rose said. "I understand that it seems odd, but I want to know how they did it, the real reason why they did, and what they were planning to do. It just...feels right."

Pearl frowned but understood perfectly. She wanted closure for all of this as well. Besides, it wouldn't have even happened in the first place if she had never requested (begged really) for a colony from the other Diamonds. Even if Blue had made the place without her knowledge, Pearl has no doubt that Rose felt at least a little bit responsible for its existence.

So without saying anything, Pearl's gem glowed and she pulled out her spear in a flash of light. She slashed one of the nearby walls in one quick motion, creating a small shower of sparks that landed on several bits of machinery. These instantly ignited into flames as if coated in oil, the fire spreading across them like water moving downhill. Rose and Pearl stepped back as the heat got more intense and the blaze slowly spread across the entire room, consuming everything and blackening it to the point of unrecognizability.

"How did you know it'd catch fire like that?" Rose asked, confused as to how Pearl knew exactly what she was doing with the sparks.

Pearl merely pointed her spear at a sign hanging on the wall that Rose had missed earlier, hidden by an ungodly amount of some substance that looked like a smile mold, combined with a few dried brown stains. The sign had a warning on it about fire, specifically about how it should never be brought into the lab. The rest of the text was too small to be seen from where Rose was standing but didn't look particularly important. Why this sign was here, in the deepest part of the lab instead of at its entrance was anyone's guess.

"Everything in this room is extremely flammable." Pearl explained, as the flames started raging up and she and Rose quickly stepped out of the room, never to return. "That's what the sign said. I assume it was made that way so that they could easily burn down the entire structure if it became a necessity. Although clearly, they never got the chance before the end of the war…"

Rose's only response to this was a silent sigh as if this fact was tiring her, and the two of them walked down the hallway back towards the entrance in silence, the ever-spreading fire practically on their heels. Pearl glanced around until her eyes fell upon one of the many holes in the wall that they passed earlier, looking like it had been struck with a bolt of lighting.

"That reminds me…" She said, placing her hands inside the opening and letting its jagged edges scrape her fingertips. "I know this lab was Blue's, but do you have any idea what caused all of...this? What exactly shattered all these gems and tore everything apart? It couldn't have been them, because...well, because of that day." Her gaze drifted to the floor. "But did Blue ever tell you about what she had those scientists working on here?"

Rose responded by slowing her pace for a brief moment, only for the heat of the fire on her back to remind her that they were still fleeing a burning building. She caught up to Pearl after a few quick steps and shook her head.

"Your guess is as good as mine. Although whatever it was...it was big." She said, her tone indicating that she very clearly didn't want to think about it. "Not to mention absurdly strong. Likely even stronger than most Quartz's, if the materials this dome is made out of is anything to go by."

"By the stars…" Pearl exclaimed, wishing that none of this was true, even if she had been literally walking in their footsteps for the past half-hour. "What do you think those scientists did to them?" She pressed her hands together and started thinking hard. "We both saw them on that battlefield. The things they did. The things they...almost did…"

Rose flinched visibly.

Pearl calmed herself and thought about a much happier memory to contemplate on (it was hard) before asking her final question. "What could they have possibly done to make them that powerful?"

"I still have no idea." Rose said again, once again admitting her cluelessness of the events that had taken place. "But that's what we're going to find out with those notes. So we can make sure that no human, or any other Earth creature, has to suffer what they did ever again."

Pearl couldn't agree more. An army of enhanced humans with speed and reflexes possibly superior to her own was something that would cause an abundance of problems down the line. Rose was right. Again. It all had to be destroyed. The notes might provide some closure for what happened here, but they still had to make sure that not a single scrap was left. If any humans found it and managed to copy what it said the results could be disastrous, messing with something that they couldn't possibly understand.

And hopefully never would…

Rose was going to say more, but a small explosion from behind them made the two gems realize that they should pick up the pace, so they ran through the lab and ignored everything else in their way. Before long, the half-wrecked door that Rose had shoved her way through was soon in sight, while the orange light of the fire was now so bright that it was unnecessary for them to continue using their gems as flashlights. They jogged the rest of the way, Rose cursing the fact that they didn't rush to get out to begin with. And while it might take a long time for the fire to do any real damage to her, Pearl was another story. She had half a mind to just pick her up and carry her the rest of the way.

But that was also unnecessary, as with the extra speed they put in the two of them made it with the fire far behind them. After another minute or so of escape, they had reached it again. The front door to the lab. Rose reflexively moved her hand to open it, but stopped when her fingers were only an inch from the pedestal. Because she remembered. Remembered what was waiting for them outside. The army of living nightmares.

Pearl saw the look in her eyes and knew what she was thinking. 'There's too many' , the eyes said. 'We'll have to fight our way through to escape, but there's too many.'

Pearl reached out and put her some on Rose's, causing the love of her life, the constant fixation of her mind, the whole reason she existed to begin with, to look down on her in fear. "It'll be okay." Pearl said, speaking in a manner that Rose had never heard her use before. "Listen. There's no more screams. Some of them had to have gone away. And who knows? Garnet said they're similar to Earth animals after she fought a few of them. I'm sure that this fire will scare them off if we can't."

After Pearl said this, the two of them shared an affectionate look into the gaze of their parent, their souls staring into each other's. Rose placed her other hand in Pearl's own and a few tear drops fell to the floor, creating a small puddle that seemed to sparkle in the fire light.

"Thank you Pearl." She said, before raising her sword in the air and summoning her shield. And as short as that had been, Pearl's words still had quite an impact on Rose. She always seems
to know what to say to make things right, no matter how short or meaningless it may seem to someone else. Without waiting for another moment, Rose finally pushed her hand forward and pressed it onto the pedestal, and a second later the doors to the outside slid open. They exited and examined the scene before them.

They were still there, waiting for them. But there were definitely less of them. Much less of them. And even the ones who were still standing outside the barrier looked to be growing bored. However, another small explosion was suddenly heard, this time ripping through the top of the dome, and it brought the monsters attention back to the building and therefore the two gems that they had previously been chasing down. The shrieks started up again and they pounded against the force field, which was slowly starting to fill up with smoke as large parts of the dome began to crumble and melt under the heat.

They had completed their mission.

And now all that was left was to fight their way through the mob of their former friends, examine the notes, and maybe, just maybe, they'd get an answer to why all this madness was occurring in the first place.

Rose raised her two weapons, sunlight shining off of them and creating a glint in the eyes of all present.

Pearl pulled out her spear and pointed it at the horde, small tears staining her eyes as she knew what they had to do next.

It was time to put them to rest. Along with everything else that they had wrought since their moment of birth.

And maybe one day, they could finally be at rest as well.

End Prologue