3000 years ago...
Homeworld. A massive gem-like planet inhabited by light-based life forms known as Gems. A beautiful planet full of life, stunning crystal landmarks and shimmering cities. All this beauty, ravaged by war. It's capital, once a bustling city, now lays in ruins. Buildings ripped in half, streets cracked and jagged, signboards broken. The streets were littered with the remains of shards of Gems that had been killed, or as they say, shattered, in the clash. A spectrum of color shimmered on the streets. It would have been beautiful if it wasn't the remains of dead Gems.
A crunching sound could be heard as a group of figures made their way through the ruins. Two figures led the group. One wore a black cloak with a red diamond on the back and had jet black hair and orange eyes that flowed like the magma in a volcano. The other was dark grey with a similar red diamond on the back with buzz-cut black hair and gray eyes. Behind them were massive black and gray figures that towered over them by about 2 or 3 feet. Their lower arms and legs were thick and studded and their eyes glowed a deep green. The one in the gray cloak stopped to crunch the shards beneath his feet. "What a mess," he said. "All this Gempower, wasted."
"You know, we could've taken prisoners," said the other.
"Really? Because I remember the order being, ‘Weapons free. Terminate hostiles with extreme prejudice.’ And they were hostile."
"I suppose."
The gray-hooded figure placed a hand on his partner's shoulder. "Look, Obsidian. I know you're not into hurting Gems, but this is a war. If we falter, we lose. And I'm sure none of our superiors take well to loss." Obsidian turned to his fellow soldier. "Have I ever steered you wrong?"
"I suppose not," Obsidian answered. Suddenly, their attention was drawn to a pile of rubble. The rocks shifted and a glow came from underneath it. A figure with pale emerald skin and eyes emerged from the rubble, wearing a long dark green dress and pale green sandals. Her emerald hair flowed behind her as she emerged.
"Well, well."
The figure froze in fear on her hands and knees. "Oh, um, C-Commander Onyx," she said, the fear obvious in her voice. "I um-"
"Don't even," said Onyx. He raised his hand and one of the giants behind him advanced. The girl tried to run, but the giant's arm extended and grabbed her, pulling her back towards it, kicking and screaming for help. "Please, don't. I'm pretty sure you were the only one lucky enough to survive this massacre." Onyx walked towards the struggling figure in the giant's grip. "Tell me, what is your affiliation to the Crystal Gems?"
"The what?" she answered. Onyx groaned and snapped his fingers. At the command, the giant began to squeeze her. She writhed in pain and tried to scream as she was crushed. "I swear! I don't know what you're talking about!"
"You're with the resistance. The Crystal Gems are the resistance. So, you were helping them by fighting alongside them. What can you tell me about them?"
The girl groaned and struggled. "Even if I were to sell them out, I don't know anything. I'm just a medic! All I do is help the injured!"
"Is that so?" Onyx snapped his fingers again and the giant loosened its grip. "Then, I'll offer you this: come fight for Homeworld, those still loyal to your planet, and I will spare you. Refuse, and you can join your fellow rebels. Your choice."
The girl looked up. "I... Will never... Join you psychopaths!"
Onyx shook his head in disappointment. "What a waste." He raised his hand to give the signal. But...
"Wait!" Onyx turned to Obsidian, who approached him. "This one is more useful to us alive than shattered. She just needs a little... convincing." He snapped his fingers and said, "We'll ask you again soon. For now, you'll need some peace and quiet to think." With that, the giant squeezed with all its force. There was a crack before the girl vanished in a puff of smoke and a loud pop. Obsidian walked up the giant as it opened its hand, revealing a hexagonal emerald in its palm. He placed his hand over it and an ash gray bubble formed around it. He tapped the bubble and it vanished. "Give it a few days."
Onyx smiled. "Ever the optimist." As they proceeded, Obsidian blinks and realized something.
"Oh, fragments!"
Onyx blinked, confused. "What?"
"I forgot to ask for a name."
Present Day...
It was another peaceful day in Ponyville. The townspeople we're going about their daily lives and everything seemed to be in order. Even the pink blur streaking through the town like a bolt of lightning. Slow down the image and inside the blur was a girl with blue eyes and fluffy pink hair that looked like cotton candy. She was wearing a pink tank top, blue jean shorts, and pink sneakers. As she ran from store to store, she accumulated a mound of items: streamers, balloons, ribbons, and a bunch of other party supplies. Once she was done, she stopped in front of Sugar Cube Corner, the local bakery. She pushed open the door and flung the supplies into the room. Oddly enough, they all seemed to fall right into place and organize themselves.
"Nailed it!" she said. Pinkie Pie was the town's resident hyperactive party planner and today, she had been tipped off that someone new was moving into town! "This is gonna be awesome! I can't wait to see the look on his face! Or her face! Whoever it is, they're gonna love this!" Pinkie then hid the items, tucking them into cupboards, folding tables and chairs, and, for some reason, trap doors. As she worked, there was a knock on the door.
"Hi, Pinkie." Pinkie turned around and saw a girl wearing a purple shirt, black skirt with black stockings, and purple shoes. Her dark blue hair had purple and lavender highlights and her purple eyes gleamed under the light. There were a pair of purple wings coming out of her back and purple marks under her eyes.
"Hiya, Twilight," Pinkie greeted back, stuffing a large number of balloons into a compartment in the ceiling.
Twilight was tempted to ask, but knowing Pinkie for as long as she had, she new better. "So, um... I see you're all set?"
"Mhm." Pinkie jumped down in front of Twilight. "Once the person walks through that door, BOOM! Shower of Welcomes!"
"No other attendants? I didn't even get your usual invite."
"Well, once they see him, they’ll all start filing in. That'll give me the signal to get ready to drop the party! Literally!"
Twilight smiled. Pinkie may have been a bit... too much, but she had a good heart and generally loved making people happy. "Well, then, I'll be back in time for the celebration. I need to go check on some things first."
"Okie-dokie-lokie," Pinkie said as Twilight left.
Twilight walked back to the library and picked up her phone as she went through the door. "Hi, Rainbow? Did you get my message? Great! I'll meet you and AJ there." She ran upstairs and grabbed a bag and slung it over her shoulder, filling it with all sorts of measuring and scanning apparatus. "Spike," she called out.
"Yeah?" came a reply from somewhere in the castle.
"I'm going out. Once you're done with the chores, you can have the rest of the day to yourself."
"YES!" The cry of joy echoed through the crystal structure. "I mean, uh, thanks, Twi."
Twilight shook her head as she left. She exited the castle and made her way to the Everfree Forest. As she approached, she noticed two figures in the distance. One was wearing a green plaid shirt, blue jeans, and brown boots. She had lightly tanned skin, blonde hair, and green eyes and had on a pair of thick working gloves, in one of which was a shiny red apple. She also wore a Stetson hat and had a series of marks running down her arm. The other had bright cerise eyes and rainbow hair and wore a blue shirt with a rainbow lightning bolt on the front, gray shorts, and blue sneakers. A pair of goggles hung around her neck, around which were marks that seemed to start from her back.
"Twi, over here," called the blonde with a southern drawl.
"About time," said the other. "We've been waiting for almost ten minutes."
"Well Rainbow, you did arrive almost twenty minutes early," said Twilight.
"Point taken," said the girl.
"Applejack, did you bring what I asked for?"
The blonde cowgirl handed her the apple. "Not sure what this has to do with anything, but if it helps..."
"It does," said Twilight, putting the apple in her bag. "Okay, let's go."
As they made their way through the forest, Rainbow Dash got curious. "So, explain to me again: why are we doing this?"
"Well, I was monitoring magical flows in the area from the castle," she said. "Everything was smooth, but for the last 2 weeks, there have been these mysterious spikes in the energy."
"It's the Everfree Forest. Nothing here is normal."
Twilight answered as she used a spectrometer to check the magic in the area as they walked. "Think of an earthquake. There's the first tremor, then there's the aftershock. In this case, there's always a really big burst of energy, then another, slightly smaller one."
"Any idea what it might be?" asked Applejack.
"Not a clue," answered Twilight. "Nothing I know of should be causing those spikes. And everytime I come in to check, there's nothing to find."
"So what makes taday any different?" AJ asked.
"Simple, I saw a pattern. It's always at a particular time in a particular area. Once I pinpointed the location and noted the time, I decided to try and make it over to see if I could find out anything."
"And you called AJ and I because...?" asked Rainbow.
"You are both the most combat proficient, just in case the cause of the fluctuations is not friendly. Also, Pinkie is busy planning the party and Fluttershy and Rarity wouldn't come in here if they could help it." She had a point. Fluttershy was too scared of the forest and Rarity was too scared the forest would ruin her outfit. Twilight never really liked inconveniencing her friends if she could help it.
Suddenly, she stopped. "What's up, Twi?" asked Applejack.
"Here." Twilight moved forward, slowly counting her steps. Soon, the spectrometer was beeping like a car alarm; loud and annoying. Twilight looked around and saw what she had seen every other day she came here: forest. "What? I don't get it." She hit the device several times until it slipped out of her hand. As she walked over to pick it up, she saw something odd and shiny behind a bunch of bushes.
"Twilight? Did ya find somethin'?" asked Applejack, following the girl. As Twilight pulled back the bushes, the three stared in confusion at the odd structure in front of them. It looked like a round platform made of a shiny white crystal of some kind with diamond-shaped crystalline marks on the corners.
Rainbow Dash, like the others, was confused. "What the...?"
"What is that?" Applejack asked. "Never seen anything like it in all of Equestria."
Twilight pointed the device at the platform. The meter was moving up and down continuously. "It looks like some kind of... teleporter."
"Don't think we've got teleporters yet, Twi, especially not in the Everfree Forest."
"We don't," said Twilight. "It's not Equestrian technology. The magic flow is completely different.” As they were about to move forward to get a closer look, the top of the platform began to glow with a bright white light.
"Something's happening," said Rainbow as she and the girls ran behind the bush. They watched as a pillar of light appeared on the platform. An odd shape began to form in the light. Finally, the light disappeared. Standing on the platform were two figures. They couldn't see very clearly, but one was taller than the other. The taller one had long, back-length electric yellow hair with a blue highlight on the left side tied into a ponytail. The other had even longer bright, wilder amber hair with a red highlight on the right.
"Well, still nothing," said the first figure in a feminine voice. "You're getting paranoid."
The second figure raised its left arm and a holographic screen appeared. "Yeah, well I'm not taking any chances," she said. "Nothing in this forest so far has been particularly friendly."
"Can't argue with you there," said the first as they walked off the platform. However, the amber-haired figure stopped. She turned to look at the platform and tapped it lightly. "Something wrong?" asked her companion.
She thought for a while. "No. Never mind." As they continued walking, the three girls slowly came out of the bush.
"Who were those two?" asked Rainbow.
"They don't look like anyone Ah've ever seen," said Applejack. Twilight remained silent as she quietly tailed the two mysterious people. "Whoa, Twi! Wait up!" After walking for several minutes, Twilight stopped, her eyes so wide they threatened to pop. "Why'd ya- Whoa." Applejack was lost for words at what she saw.
3000 Years ago...
"Well, that left me bored," said Onyx. He and Obsidian sat in the bridge of a massive hand-shaped Gem ship as they made their way back to their HQ. "So, Obsidian? You plan on interrogating our witness?"
Obsidian looked up from the screen in front of him. "If I have to," he said. "Honestly, I wish they would all just give up so we could stop this senseless war."
"Wow," said Onyx. "That... was the sappiest thing I've ever heard you say. And you've said a lot of sappy stuff." Then, the monitor in front of them flickered and a familiar face took the place of the data logs.
"Onyx! Obsidian! Where the karat are you?!"
"Peridot? Haven't seen you in a while," said Onyx. "How've you been?"
"How do you think I've been? You were supposed to send me a report on the performance of the golems. I turn on my monitor and what do I find? YOU DISABLED THEIR BEACONS!!!"
"Relax, Peri. We'll give you the report when we get back. We're five minutes away."
Peridot grumbled. "Great. I could've been using that time to do something more productive, you know?" Onyx stared for a moment and smiled. "What?" Peridot asked with a confused look. Her eyes widened as she put it all together. "No! No! Don't even!"
"Peridot, you know she-"
"ABABABABABABABABABA!" Peridot blocked her ears and ignored him. "Just get back here. Double time!" Onyx laughed as the monitor went off.
"I never get tired of seeing that," he said, wiping a tear away.
"You know, Peridot takes that joke pretty lightly. Not sure if she feels the same way," said Obsidian.
"Oh, come on. Can't say- Op! Never mind! We're here." The ship approached a large, arrowhead-shaped vessel. While their ship looked like a cruiser, this thing was a destroyer, several times its size! The docking bay opened and they landed with assistance from a few Gems.
As they disembarked, they were greeted by a Gem with lime-green skin, and pale greenish-yellow hair styled into a tetrahedron. Her green eyes were shielded by a pale visor and she had a green gem shaped like an upside down triangle on her forehead. She wore a sleeveless green V-neck bodysuit with a yellow diamond on her chest, along with yellow diamond-shaped knee pads. She also had a pair of boots and arm bracers, and the fingers of the bracers were detached, hovering close to the appendage. She stood with her hands on her hips, tapping her feet impatiently.
"Don't say a word, you clod," she said raising her finger to silence Onyx before he could start. Four of the fingers on one arm aligned themselves and formed a screen while the last finger went to work. After a while, the golems on board the ship filed out and headed for her lab. "By the way, the tech division wants to see you," she said as she walked away.
Onyx was about to speak, but Obsidian began towards his destination. "Oh, come on! Not you too!" He followed Obsidian over to the other end of the docking bay and tapped the wall. A door appeared and they stepped into the elevator. Within seconds, they had reached their destination. They walked through the light red crystal halls, which were busy with Gem scientists, who were discussing statistics or carrying records. They stopped in front of one of the doors, which had a red X on it. The mark shot a wave of light and scanned the visitors, after which it turned into the outline of a diamond. The door opened and they stepped into the lab, which was filled with all sorts of equipment, from computers and chambers to an interactive simulation projector.
One person stood in the room in front of a large table, working on some odd device. She was average height and had amber skin and was wearing a sleeveless red top with a yellow diamond symbol on the back, light orange trousers, and bright red shoes. Her hair was a very bright shade of amber with a red, flame-like highlight on the right side that reached the small of her back. A pair of orange arm bracers with yellow fingers shaped like half of a teardrop covered her hands and half her lower arms.
As she worked, a spark erupted from the device, followed by an explosion that covered her face in blue soot. "Oh, for the love of crystals!" she yelled. She lowed a pair of goggles off her face and around her neck and saw the two Gems enter. "Oh, you're here!" She wiped the black off and ran over to the screen. "Come here. I wanna show you something." She placed her hand into what looked like a blank keyboard and her eyes looked like static on a TV. The images on the screen kept shifting until it stopped at the image of a golem.
"It's a golem," Obsidian stated obviously.
"Yes. But..." She did something else and one of the walls became transparent. Behind it was another Gem, slightly taller than her, with darkish yellow skin, fitted yellow leggings under a blue bodysuit with open sides around the midriff with yellow diamond symbol on the chest, and large light orange boots, wider than the figure's legs. Her thick hair was electric yellow with a blue, lightning bolt highlight on the left and was tied in a ponytail, but still reached just below her shoulder blades. She was lying down in the middle of the room. "Ful? You're up!"
The Gem heard her and quick to get up. A hole opened in the floor in front of her and a golem popped out, but this one was different. This one was dark gray with red circuit lines running through its lower arms and legs and torso. Its eye was a single diamond in the middle of its dome-shaped face. The Gem inside clicked her heels together and her lower legs began to glow. The boots grew and when she stomped her heels back to the ground, the light vanished with a pop. Her boots were now slightly larger with two small pistons attached to the back at an angle and yellow lightning bolts decorated the sides. She jumped at the golem, an electric spark trailing behind her, and slammed her foot into the golem's chest. She landed and jumped again, this time performing a rapid helicopter kick. The third time, she landed on her hands and spun, building momentum, then kicked out, sending a burst of electricity at the golem, which exploded on contact. However, as when smoke cleared, the golem appeared unscathed. Ful gave a thumbs up.
"So the golem is harder. Big deal," said Onyx. "Most of our current models can withstand that kind of assault already."
"I'm not all that impressed," Obsidian agreed.
"Well, I haven't even gotten to the best parts," said Amber, "emphasis on the plural." She removed her hand from the board and worked on the screen over her bracers. The golem's eye lit up and it raised its hand, producing a circular shield with a red diamond on the front. Amber kept tapping buttons and the golem fired its free hand like a rocket, barely missing Ful, and crashing into the wall on the other side of the test room. The hand returned and reattached itself.
"Okay, now I'm a bit more impressed," Obsidian said, nodding his head.
"How did you do this?" asked Onyx.
"So, remember one of our old colonies? Some planet called Equestria?"
"Yeah," said Onyx.
"And you remember our work with the Crystal City?"
"I was stationed there for a while," said Obsidian.
"Well turns out the crystals there are more useful than we thought. The concentration of magic energy in the area had some... interesting effects on the gemstones that formed there."
"Interesting indeed," Onyx said. "You plan to make more?"
"Wish we could," said Fulgurite as she came out of the room through a door that appeared. "But there is a problem."
"That being?" Obsidian asked.
"We don't have any more."
"So?” questioned Onyx. “Just go back to the planet and get some more. Easy."
"Not that simple," said Amber. "The beacon I placed there? They stopped sending out signals."
Onyx pondered for a moment. "Meaning?"
"Meaning fail safe Protocol C13AR was activated." Onyx stared blankly. "It's not there anymore and we have no way to access it." Onyx stared blankly. "Give someone power for a few years and they make everything go poof!"
"So, what? We've only got this one prototype?"
"Pretty much," said Fulgurite.
Onyx was ready to explode, but Obsidian spoke first. "Is it combat ready?"
Amber shook her head. "We still need to run diagnostics on the material and test its reaction to certain environments. And that could take a while."
Onyx was furious. "So we have a first-class war machine... But we can't use it... So what's the point?!"
Amber placed her hand back in the board and sealed off the chamber. "If there was anything we could do to speed this up, we would."
Onyx cried out in exasperation and stormed out. Obsidian looked between the two. "At least record the tests involving it destroying stuff," he said. “If nothing else, that’ll make the higher-ups happy.”
"I'll see what I can do." As soon as Obsidian left, an alarm went off on the screen. Amber quickly shut it off and checked. A list of data and video logs appeared on the screen. "Okay, Fulgurite," she said as her partner joined her next tot the computer. "Let's see what Homeworld's been hiding."