Chapter 13: The End of the World

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She stood only the height of an average human. Her skin was a very dark grey. Her eyes were considerably more normal-looking in her true form, black irises and grey diamond-shaped pupils aside. She had a slender face and generally pleasant features. Her ears were pointed, her head appeared shaven, and she wore a pitch-black three-pointed headdress undecided between a crown and a helmet. Her form-fitting dress alternated between shades of black and grey, with a sleeve and glove covering her right arm while her left arm was bare. The top of her dress sloped from her right shoulder to her left armpit, leaving the upper left part of her chest where her gemstone sat uncovered. It was cut in a rhombus, wider than it was tall, and sat off-centre. She in many ways resembled Yellow and Blue, and possibly White, but you had never seen her and so had no points of reference.
“Actually, we kind of guessed who you were. And what makes you so confident? If it's trouble you want, it's seven against one!”
“You really think I'm worried by them? And you really think I'm alone? Haha, you humans are dumber than you look.” She snapped her fingers. A multitude of Unseen faded into visibility, seizing everyone except for you and Blue, holding their arms behind their backs. It took two of them to restrain Jay, and Holly managed to punch the one holding her in the face before it eventually got her under control. The one who grabbed Aquamarine was very quick to snatched her wand away. “There, I think that evens it out a little. So, are you ready to hear my plan?”
“First I'd like to know who exactly you are!” Blue replied angrily.
“Aw, you mean you don't recognise me… mommy dearest?”
“What?” Blue gasped.
“Haha, I'm just messing with you. That's kind of true, but it's only part of the whole story.”
“Here we go,” you muttered to Blue, rolling your eyes.
“When Pink Diamond was shattered, this little empire of yours was thrown into chaos, crippled, like it was missing a limb. So you thought it'd be a good idea to make a replacement. No, poor choice of words. You were always way too sentimental to think she was replaceable. A… substitute, then. You and the other two remaining poured everything you could into creating the most perfect gem you could. A new diamond. And it worked… more or less. You see where this is going, of course. You made me. Well, as best you could. But I was incomplete. There was White Diamond to imbue me with spirit, Yellow Diamond to shape my body, and you to shape my mind (and I only have good things to say about your work, by the way). But without your precious Pink Diamond, there was nobody who could grant me the gift of heart. You might say I was literally born heartless. I made so much trouble because of that that I was locked away, shut outside of reality itself by the people of… well now, no need to concern yourselves with that. It was as if I'd never existed, but I still lingered in everyone's memories. It was my… associate who brought me back from the void of nowhere. Ironically enough, he has hearts to spare. We're going to be making some changes. For now, I'm still incomplete. Alive but hollow. But tonight I'm going to fix that.”
“Black, I'm… I'm sorry. If what you say is true, I don't remember any of it, but I know it would never have been my choice to forget. If I made you this way, I would have done anything I could to help you.” She knelt so she was closer to Black’s height. “Perhaps it isn't too late. Maybe I can still help.”
“Hahaha! What a splendid idea!” Her smile turned wicked. “Don't worry, mum. I promise this won't hurt much. They say the whole is worth more than the sum of its parts, which made me wonder: how many parts does it take to make a whole? Why don't we find out?” She walked around to stand behind the captive gems. “Some gems will tell you fusion only works if both parties agree to it. Heehee. They just aren't trying hard enough. The key, I’ve found, is persistence.” Black Diamond snapped her fingers twice. The Unseen released their captives and stepped back, fading into invisibility. She knelt and placed her hands on the floor. Areas of the floor morphed and rose up, forming into giant hands which grabbed them. “You thought you were making a cheap replacement… but let me show you what a real diamond can do!” She and her captives began to glow and to merge. When the glow faded, an immense figure, taller than Blue, stood there. Her skin was so dark that you couldn't even make out its contours, as if you were looking into a black hole. Her feet were now more like talons, as were her six hands. She had long white hair with two white horns emerging where Holly's buns would normally be. Erm, the hair kind, that is. Her canine teeth had become wicked fangs, and each of her six eyes was different; one was plainly her own, but you recognised the other five as those of the gems she'd absorbed. The overall appearance was rather over the top appearance disorganised, and if the situation hadn't been so grim you would've suggested she go back to being an original character a teenager posted on DeviantArt. “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds!” You stepped closer to Blue.
“No, I don't think so,” Yellow Diamond said, bursting through the door.
“It was a mistake to think you could evade my eyes,” White Diamond declared ominously.
The Black Diamond fusion took a few steps back.
“What is this? All three of you?!”
“I tipped them off before we arrived,” Blue explained. “It was obviously a trap, after all.”
“And now it's time for this to end,” White stated flatly.
“No!” Black screamed. “No! ...This is too good to be true!” Her arms extended, seizing all three Diamonds. “With you, Blue, I would have become the diamond I always should have been. But with the complete set…” Her already weird face twisted into a demonic visage. “...I will become a god!” They all began to glow. “If only Pink were here,” she sighed, not yet formed. “I wonder how many ordinary gems it takes to equal one diamond… I think I'll try all of them!” Streams of light shot out from her still-nebulous form, into the ground above and below, connecting to every gem on Homeworld. “Face it (Y/N/), you were never going to stop me.”
“I don't care about stopping you, just give me back my friends!”
The glow ceased. The moment it did, you didn't see a solid body standing in front of you as you'd expected. Instead everything went dark, as if all of reality had been plunged into utter blackness. It didn't feel like you were standing on a floor of stone tiles anymore. It didn't really feel like you were standing on anything, although you were standing anyway.
Then, high in the blackness in front of you, a single eye appeared - Black Diamond's, from the look of it, only much, much, much too large. Then six more eyes appeared in three rows below it; you recognised them instantly as those of Blue, Pearl, Holly, Jay, Aquamarine, and Zircon. And then the darkness below the eyes was illuminated by a gargantuan wicked grin, full of sharp white teeth. The mouth opened, letting out a distorted cackle. Her entire head now faded into view, seemingly floating disembodied. It was radially symmetrical with seven faces, one on each side. As it rotated slowly, you noticed that all but the first face only had the eyes of one of your friends - one face had seven eyes just like Blue’s, one had seven eyes like Zircon’s, et cetera. The billions of gems she had absorbed swirled in a vortex over her many-sided head, and dozens of her enormous hands with their wicked talons floated in the air, similarly disembodied.
“I feel…” she mumbled. “I feel, feel, it feels good! This is what it is! In fact, since I'm already enjoying myself, no speech. I'm just going to kill you.”
Two of her hands dropped to your level on either side of you, palms inward, and slid towards you, meaning to crush you like an insect. As soon as you realised what was happening, you dove out of the way.
“So that's how you want to play? Okay. I can have fun with that. I can have fun now!” Her head rotated to the face with Pearl's eyes (and you had briefly seen Pearl's eyes before) and a variety of ethereal blue spears appeared in the air. They hovered, turned their points towards you, and flew straight at you - not all at once, but one at a time in rapid succession. You ran in circles, trying to avoid all of them, but fell on your back as the last one flew at you. You raised your arm to shield your face. But when it hit, you felt no pain, and heard the clash of metal. Looking up, you saw that a set of red and black, vaguely Wolverine-esque claws was strapped to your wrist.
“Hey, no cheating!” she snapped. Her head spun to the side with Jay’s eyes. “I am infinite!” Purple swords began to shoot along a horizontal plane at about chest level. You deflected some and dodged others. “Don't you get it? Your world is already gone! Everything, I am everything! I see it all! I feel it all! And there's… there's so much more than you realise! You don't even know who you are, do you?” As she said this, she didn't seem to be looking at you. She was looking through you, as if you were just an avatar, a character through whose eyes someone else saw the world… someone she was now looking directly at. Not (Y/N). YOU. “Never mind that. Time for a game of skipping rope!” She spun to the face with Holly's eyes. A giant cord crackling with electricity materialised in the void, swooping down at your feet. You jumped, letting it pass underneath. It came back around, faster each time, but wasn't so difficult to leap over as all that. Black Diamond agreed. “Hmm. Double Dutch, perhaps!” A second rope materialised. You tried your best to keep up, but in the nearly uninterrupted hopping and trying to track where each rope was, it wasn't long before you stumbled and fell flat on your face.
You looked up as one of the electrified ropes swung at your face… but it never made it, instead striking the ground an dragging limply to a stop.
“Ah, just bear with me. I'll murder you in a moment,” Black said, sounding distracted. You stood for a moment before charging and striking at her with your newly discovered weapon. But when you struck, you were flung backwards by the invisible force field which protected her. You looked up into the seven eyes, and realised that they weren't looking at you the way Black Diamond would.
“Holly, it's you!” A clarity came into the eyes. “Remember what you said when we first became friends? You said you respected me because I was the first human to stand up to you. Now it's your turn! You have the chance to be the first gem to stand up to Black Diamond! I know you can!”
“You're right,” Holly's voice replied. “I will not be pushed around by some traitor!”
Black Diamond's head rotated back to the main face, and you realised that the eye corresponding to Holly had gone dark. Maybe that was it - maybe you could get through to your friends. Maybe that was the key.
“Zircon!” you yelled a short time later. “You were willing to risk the wrath of the Diamonds if it meant uncovering what really happened. If Black Diamond wins, this web of lies may last forever!”
“The truth must be known!”
Still later…
“Aquamarine, for the first time in your life you've had to deal with not being in charge, not being in control of things, and I know that's scary. But this is your opportunity to take charge, to seize control!”
“Black Diamond is not the boss of me!”
Even later…
“Jay, we haven't talked much, but I've seen how excited you've been to be part of this adventure. For the first time, you've been valued and treated as an individual! Don't let yourself just go right back to being a gear in the machine!”
“Yeah, it's my way or the highway!”
“Pearl!” you found yourself gasping next, as you dodged volleys of airborne spears. “You were made to-” But you didn't finish your sentence. You had been too hasty to start talking, and your reflexes hadn't been swift enough. Black Diamond cackled as you looked down at the spear sticking through the middle of your chest. “Ah,” you commented flatly, “I see.”

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