Chapter 1: Recollection
Across The Shimmering Ocean
Chapter 1: Recollection
There were times, even thousands of years ago before she had been swallowed up in despair, when she wondered why she had stayed on this planet. Times when she had thought of her home and wept. Times when she wondered if she even wanted to keep going on at all.
After all, as far as she knew...she had nothing...no one...to keep going on for.
***
She could feel the currents and pressure of the ocean floor flow across her body as she trudged the silt floor, disrupting the occasional crab and shellfish with each laborious step. Although navigating the deep waters had never been a cakewalk to start with, in her current...condition, the task proved more arduous than it had in centuries.
She did not even bother to look up at the churning ocean surface above her; her cracked gem, the stone that embodied her very being now sundered and broken -had rendered her deep water sight functionally useless, forcing her to rely on her touch and the displacement of water around her to get around. If she could just reach the mesopelagic zone she'd be able to see better...
...no. No, even if she could still swim properly, she knew that THEY were still looking for her.
The Crystal Gems. The traitors who turned on their Homeworld and kidnapped countless innocent Gems for the crime of being from Homeworld in the first place. A vision of Sapphire floated into her mind unbidden as she remembered their first encounter...
She felt a chill run down her spine as she buried the thought. No. That was then. This is now. There's nothing left for me here to hold onto. Now...now I need to focus on getting home.
But then again, she didn't really have a plan in mind, did she? Her memories of the planet were vague at best; five thousand years was a long stretch of time, and it was hard to gauge what kind of effect the battles between the Crystal Gems and Homeworld could have wrought. All the memories she had came from the Mirror, and those were incidental, brief flashes in the lives of a hundred different people that only had a few standouts to speak of.
...like Steven.
Her walk slowed to a crawl as she collapsed in the silt, clutching herself as the weight of everything that had happened on the surface crashed down on her.
She had been such a fool in hindsight, thinking he would follow her into the depths. Forget being a Crystal Gem, he was human! A light breeze could flatten his kind! Taking him into the ocean...into the depths of space...it had been an insane notion from the start.
She looked forward, searching for any signs of life around her to no avail. She was alone in the heavy darkness beneath the waves.
Just like always.
She stood, struggling underneath the water whose pressure she was just starting to feel upon her shoulders. Every step felt like a marathon as she walked forward, only vaguely certain of her destination. She knew what she had to do, but actually doing it...that's where things got complicated. It would be difficult even at full strength, and while building a construct like this wasn't impossible...
A test run. She needed to see what she was capable of now that her power had been stolen from her.
The effects came as if by second nature; all she had to do was imagine the water around her as a part of herself and it would bend to her will almost instantly. Images of the basic construct floated in her mind as she began to spiral the water upwards. Starting as a small cone, the mass quickly expanded at the base, increasing in size as she weaved more water onto the center spire like a loom.
Towers were simple training exercises back on Homeworld, but this was the most complex large structure she could manage in her current state. She could not afford to be picky. Besides, she had a general idea of where Homeworld was...if she could just find the right spot on the water...
Water that had once flowed naturally to her now began to pull back, resisting her control as the weight upon it rose. The normal pressure of the deep ocean was difficult enough to handle, but coiling the water to form a tower...especially of the size she was looking for...enough to reach for the stars...
She planted her feet in the dirt and pressed onward. Struggling against the current she began to lift her left hand into the water. The initial base and the coil she had wrapped around it slowly began to rise up into the murky water, small shrimp and worms displaces by the motion. Her arms noticeably strained as she moved the construct further up.
Her right hand continued the spooling process, winding more and more water around the expanding base. It was a simple process: form, wrap, rise, repeat. The only issue at this point was keeping up with the strain as the water density increased...
A vision of Steven building a sand castle appeared in her mind. She wondered if building sand castles would have been easier...more fun...
Her feet gave out underneath her as the silt shifted, her whole body shaken to the core as a small shockwave crashed into her.
Damn it! I got distracted and...and...
Her eyes widened. She had been so focused on lifting the tower that she had forgotten to replace the displaced water used to create it. And now...there was a vacuum of air at the base of her tower, completely unfilled space...which would prompt the water to fill that void.
The internal spiral collapsed first, crumpling beneath the weight of the ocean above it and sucked down by the vacuum of the rapidly destabilizing base. In a fit of desperation she began to stack more water on the air bubble in an attempt to gradually displace it. Simply filling it would draw water from the spire and cause the whole structure to collapse. She needed to vent the air out through the ground...
But the water pressure was too much. A blast of superpressurized air shot up at her face through the silt, knocking her backwards and completely breaking her control of the construct. The external coils of water began spinning violently around the spire, ripping into the rocks and silt before brutally cracking her in the stomach. She twisted and turned her back away from the lashing cords out of pure instinct, but the pain was still too much to bear as she succumbed to the violent lashes of her out of control creation.
Another shockwave shook her body as she looked up from her beaten stupor. She was aching and throbbing, just barely able to function...and regained her composure just in time to see the sparks of static electricity shoot out from the membrane around the air pocket as it cracked open.
Like an idiot, she had positioned herself too close to the tower's base; she had been afraid that the distance would prevent her from working her full power on it. Now she realized the gravity of her error as she was sucked bodily into the epicenter of the vacuum, dragged along the silt until she crashed into the bubble shaped dent in the ocean bed.
The roar of crashing water rang in her ears as she lifted her eyes above her, the metric tons of water she had displaced in her construction all falling on her at once.
She closed her eyes and smiled.
At least if she died here...some part of her might feel at home before the end.
The water surged into the vacuum with a resounding explosion of light and heat and power. Every life form within a hundred feet of the impact was dead instantly from the blast. Anything two hundred feet past was choked to death on the silt that was disrupted by it.
The ocean rumbled for a bit, and then grew silent. The depths bore witness...and life went on.
***
A humanoid figure, unmoving, floated upwards in the water. She was slim, almost emaciated looking, with deep cerulean pixie cut hair that contrasted elegantly with her sky blue skin. A dark blue sarong, ripped to pieces, hung limply on her body, with a sleeveless top that did not conceal the gruesomely twisted right arm she now had. Eyes of a faint periwinkle shone like mirrors as they dully stared at the water around them.
And on her back, dimly glowing, was a badly cracked Gem, an otherwise perfectly polished teardrop...of Lapis Lazuli.
***
Lapis did not respond as her body breached the ocean surface; she dared not "poof" herself to regenerate, lest the ocean below her damage her unprotected gem, and in her current state she was uncertain if she even could come back. Every part of her body shrieked with an unimaginable pain, save for her right arm, which she could only feel in a very general sense. If the Crystal Gems wanted to dispose of her, she was certainly in the right position for it.
Her eyes adjusted to the relatively bright light of the starlit sky; Lapis had not had any real way to gauge time in the ocean so she could not say for sure how far she had wandered, or even where she was in the world right now. All she knew was that it all looked the same to her.
Her left arm, bruised but not mangled like the right was, reached towards the heavens, towards a dim pinprick of blue light, dimmer than any other star that night. Tears ran down her face as she strained for it.
Her eyes rolled into the back of her head as she felt the last of her strength leave her, the effects of the "hope" she had tried to build for herself down there having caught up to her at last.
I just...want...to go home...
Lapis felt herself drift into the darkness as the tide flowed quietly, softly, pulling her inward towards land.
***
She was only very vaguely aware of anything that happened past this point; her body innately sensed the mild shift in incline, the transition from salt to brackish to fresh, the stars being swallowed up by mountains as she seemed to float through a valley. It was all a terribly heady experience, and Lapis was far too broken at that point to distinguish what was a dream and what was reality. It didn't help that her half-conscious state would sometimes filter in memories from her time in the Mirror. Gems technically could not dream, but each class of Gem had its own "sorting system" to compensate. This just happened to be Lapis's.
But...something strange kept happening. Lapis could not place it, but the majority of the memories she was experiencing during this time...seemed to be coming from Steven. No, a trip he had taken that she herself was barely privy to...
She could see...a school...a courtyard...flashes of gold and red that left a great disturbance churning in her. As the mountains rose, as city lights began to flicker in the distance, these flashes became more pronounced. A violent temper. An abusive nature. She could swear she saw Steven crying as a voice like liquid smoke casually berated him for his mother's death. Green eyes flashing with contempt...a cruelty she had no way to fathom...
Lapis saw flashes of green light blur her vision, and slowly rouse her mind as the city lights grew brighter...a wicked cackling...humans turned into demons...and some winged...monstrosity, glaring down with eyes of black, crimson claws shifting as her hair rose into the sky like fire, a golden crown with a brightly shining amethyst crystal wreathed in it. An army of humans followed in her wake, eyes blank and soulless as they marched towards some unknown vortex...
And soon she was there, standing in the courtyard in her dreams, surrounded by pitch black fire as this nightmare made flesh stared down at her, having grown to the size of a skyscraper.
Her fanged maw twisted into a hateful smirk as she grabbed Lapis by the torso. She could feel her broken arm turn to dust as the demon lifted her up to stare into her very soul. Lapis was utterly helpless as she felt the monster squeeze her in her clutches, leering at her body like some sort of ravenous beast before her snakelike tongue darted along her body. She struggled to find some way to defend herself but there was no water to be found at all.
Such a poor, pitiful creature...all alone...with no friends to save you..., she whispered into her ear, her breath reeking of sulfur as Lapis desperately tried to escape. Her vision began to fog and warp as the monster placed a single talon against her gem, polluting it with dark magics...
I can tell...you're going to be a LOT of fun.
Lapis felt herself fall away, into a vortex of shadow and light and...blaring car horns?
***
The low rumble of traffic fully roused Lapis from her barely conscious state as she jerked to life, resting knee deep in some shallow estuary just beneath a car bridge. Her vision slowly returned to her as she struggled to stand up, and it was with a combination of relief and anguish that she felt her right arm shriek in protest. The pain did cause her to collapse, though, and as Lapis shook the dreaming state out of her head she struggled to make sense of her surroundings.
As she expected, the city she had found herself in was impressively sized, nestled in a valley next to a mountain range; she bitterly realized that the tide must have brought her down river, and so far away from the ocean she needed. Towering buildings styled like castle minarets hovered above her, and as she crawled towards the river bank she could see various signs on the road. Advertisements for some kind of school sporting event...posters for a flight team...her mind swam at all of the insanity these humans indulged.
Lapis soon found herself on dry land, and lurched forward onto the street. She knew very little about human civilization, but she knew all too well about the dangers of the natural world. Her former state would have had trouble surviving in these mountains, and in her present condition she would be dead within the week. As she was she could vaguely pass for human, so she would have much better luck navigating their infrastructure.
"Step by step", she whispered to herself as she staggered onto the sidewalk, right arm twisted limply at her side. She knew this place from one of Steven's memories, but she had to figure out a place to reference her location; she'd have no way of figuring out how to get back to the ocean without it.
Lapis stumbled on her feet as she traversed the roads, going down whatever path she thought was most familiar. Any landmark would do, like a stadium, or a farm, or a school...
She felt her entire body slowly freeze up as it came clearly into view. The expansive court yard, the horse statue that no longer had a glowing portal in it, the wide staircase climbing up towards the red brick and mortar...
Lapis felt a tremble run up and down her spine as she clutched her right arm to make sure it was still there. It had been here. SHE had been here. That wretched, cruel monster that had tormented Steven, that had transformed into a rampaging she-demon and almost set an army upon the world...
She crumpled to the ground as a fear she had never felt before gripped her, memories awakened by the locale coming back to her. Canterlot High School. A scenic, iconic piece of architecture, visited by Steven in an attempt to expand his knowledge base. And the girl, that random thug that had abused him just for being there...who would go on to try and destroy Steven...and the rest of the world.
Lapis could not move. She could barely even register pain. Fear and loathing and hate churned in her heart all at once and held her from leaving her curled ball. All she could do...was remember HER.
The name dripped off her tongue like burning mercury; she felt sick just saying it.
"Sunset...Sunset Shimmer." Lapis grinned bitterly as she snarled at the memory.
After all...it really was her luck, wasn't it?
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Appropriate music incoming:
If it's advice you want, you might wanna revise a paragraph or two that switches between third person and first person. Kind of a no-no when it comes to exposition unless you actually make it work. Or if you intended for said first person moments to be thought dialogue
6823568
Oh trust me, this bad boy is gonna have its own soundtrack. XD
Shit, thanks for catching that. I am a bit rusty, yes, so I'll be more careful about that in the future. :)
Hope you enjoyed the opening overall! :D Plenty of singing and crying to come, of course. XD
water witch vs phoenix queen, who wins?
Interesting premise, and boy is Lapis a sad sack, I had forgotten XD
I was a little confused at the order of events and exactly when this was taking place, but I think I know where I am now :)
Onto the next chapter :D
6823568
That is some good music! ;)