Another Name (SU fanfic)

11. LIKELY, NOT OBVIOUS

Apatite wakes, she's lying on the bed, not much light comes in from the window. She's not sure wether it's a dusk or a dawn, so she waits there in silence thinking about what's to come until she sees the twilight fades.
A: [I must have slept a hole cycle, or two.]
The truth is she's feeling much better. She breathes deep and looks for Tiny.
The pearl has her working space under a bigger desk, she's reading something on a floating screen until she gets startled at the sight of the teal gem.
T: "You're silent..." Sighs. "It's fine." Smiles softly as she turns off the screen.
A: "Sorry anyway... How much time have I slept?"
T: "Out of the bubble, a hole day. You were talking again, and again it made no sense. Are you ok?"
A: Yawns and smiles. "Still weak, but fine."
T: "I've been thinking about your situation. Whenever I met gems who sleep they've always done it willingly."
Apatite looks for a place to sit, since no chair fits her size she picks a pillow from the bed, sets it on the floor and sits on it.
A: "Peri thought the accident forced an archaic gem behavior to have recurrent activations."
T: "It doesn't look like it."
A: Surprised. "What? Why!?"
T: "You should feel uncomfortable sleeping with your gem covered."
A: Getting anxious. "Then your former mistress didn't like it. Right?"
T: "She did. She..." Doubts, sights. "...wasn't a gem."
A: Surprised, weak. "That was how you knew about moms..."
T: "Yes."
The teal gem stands to take another look at the objects in the stance imagining what they had been used for.
T: "Did you modify the reports related to the anomaly?"
A: "No. Maybe I did before the accident, I can't really tell..."
T: "It happened shortly after, so it's unlikely. The anomaly and your symptoms don't match, something else had to happen."
A: Sits again. "What do you mean?"
T: "A geonic alteration could make a you loose energy, but it wouldn't express in cycles, it'd be a constant energy loss."
A: "You mean I'd sleep all the time?"
T: "No. Your'd become smaller, not sleepy."
Tiny looks like she knows what she's talking about.
A: "Is that what happened to you?"
T: Makes an slightly exaggerated offended face. "No. I emerged like this."
A: Shrugs. "Just asking..."
T: Serious. "I'm worried about you. Since you don't sleep like a gem, this could be graver than it looks. You noticed any other change besides the sleepiness and the rejuvenation?"
A: "It wasn't a rejuvenation, I lost all my memory, emerging knowledge included. Peridot had to teach me everything again, even to speak in Gem. We weren't understanding each other."
T: Slowly. "Each other? You speak something Peridot couldn't understand?"
A: "Yes."
T: "Can I hear it?"
A: "Sure."
Apatite talks in her language.
T: Confused. "What did you say?"
A: "I said I find your gem placement interesting."
T: "Thank you." Smiles. "I didn't understand a thing. You must have talked in that language when you were sleeping."
A: "Yeah... I guess..."
T: "Do you know its name?"
A: "No. Peri used to call it Apatitish."
T: "Practical for now. Any other weird thing in your life?"
A: "Ohh... let's see... My magic changed too. I sense and I can copy the powers even when they aren't active and from further away." Smiles. "Like you said, it's not all bad."
Tiny looks like she paniked for a moment, then surprised, but she chooses to stay silent, so the teal gem goes on.
A: "There were footsteps on the ship's hull when Peri found me, she said they looked like the ones the kidnappers left at her colony, but bigger. And then at the trial there was Blue. I copied her kinetic aura, well, she was close when I did, but I could have done it from the beginning. And... I think that's all."
The pearl looks perplexed.
T: "I'll need you to develop this. How much more range? Were there kidnappers at Peridot's colony? And Blue, the Diamond?"

A messy and long explanation later things make more sense to Tiny. Now she has the hole picture of Apatite's peculiarities and more information about the kidnapped gems.
T: "So you think Blue knows what happened to the missing gems..."
Apatite nods, the pearl looks down and shakes her head slowly before looking up again.
T: "How do I put this... the ruby you can't remember... I've been investigating where she ended..." Breathes deep.
The teal gem waits a couple of seconds for Tiny to end the sentence. She doesn't.
A: "And? Where is 67B?"
Her host frozes staring at her.
A: "That was her designation, right? Was she 69? I'm sure about the B..."
T: Looking nowhere. Low. "67, yes. She was abducted as well."
Apatite is sorry for the ruby, she doesn't think any good thing happened to her.
A: "Oh... so there's no way to find out what happened to her..."
She feels she should be sadder, but she has no memory of their relationship at all.
T: To herself. "Green wouldn't do this..."
A: "Who's Green?"
T: "An off color sapphire, she finds questions a century around the present. I asked for her help to find Ruby, and she didn't saw you asking about her..." Chooses the words carefully. "Did you copy any of my magics when we first talked?"
A: Confused. "No. There's something hiding part of your magic, but I can't copy or skip it."
The pearl looks terrified for a second as she speaks, then just worried.
T: To herself. "No gem should be able to find that out. It can't be... Sleep, language, practically immune to rejuvenation, unseen by Green, this..."
Tiny doubts about what to do, then takes a stick out of her forehead gem and scans Apatite's stone with it. The result appears on a screen coming from the stick itself and indicates she's indeed an apatite.
A: Confused, somehow amused. "Ehm... Isn't it obvious?"
T: "Very likely, yes. Obvious, no. I had to check."
A: "Were you expecting me to be Teal Diamond or something...?"
For a moment she imagines herself as a Diamond, all the luxuries, a huge mural, her own gems, time to rest for everyone...
Further scan results show she's consuming more energy than she should. The rest is too small for Apatite to read flipped, but it seems to calm the pearl.
T: "Or something. At least this makes sense. Like I thought, it's not a geonic energy loss. It's a modulation of your internal current. I'll have to scan you while you're sleeping to confirm it's the cause of your tiredness problem. What I can tell you now is that it might be the reason some gem abilities have been skipping you, because we all come with the same modulation and, as far as I know, no one else has ever had it modified."
Apatite isn't sure she understood the hole thing properly. Both gems need some time to process what they learned from each other.

----------

The intelligent life forms from Enim don't die from age. They do from injuries, diseases, hunger...
In the tighdels case life is so hard only the top elite is aware of their actual longevity. Among this elite there's the survivor of an old massacre forgotten by history who managed to change his life for the better.
He hears the notification sound of a message coming from an octahedron shaped device.
To himself. "A few more years and I won't have to keep putting on this play..."
He turns the top half of the object right, it projects a screen with the image of an aquamarine.
<We should have listened to your warnings. The attempts to use our latest acquisition failed. We'll need the adaptation too. The extra payment is already unlocked. We expect the service to be provided as soon as possible.>
This is exactly what he was expecting. He forwards the message to the pertinent department with a pleased smile on his face.
"Ahh... Isn't it great when things go according to plan?"
He talks to the servant cleaning his stances, basically because there's no one else there. Being on the top means having to face constant disappointment, and constant loneliness. The servant turns to him looking down and makes a perfect reverence.
"Yes, my Lord."
Then continues cleaning a luxurious seat that has an alarming amount of blood stains on it.
She can deal with this kind of messes without altering him. No questions, no fear, that's why she's in a selected group of people allowed to see his appearance.
"Do you want me to call Preulesa when I'm done?"
She's getting better in guessing his wishes, still not as good as the old one. Poor stupid. More than a thousand years of loyal service ended by a tragic misstep.
This new one needs to improve a lot, not today, he's too happy to educate her now.
"Continue with the seat outside."
The servant repeats the reverence from before.
"As you wish, my Lord." Blinks slowly. "She's already coming."
The servant does as ordered knowing the mistake in her guess will cost her a punishment after tomorrow's work.

----------

Back at Homeworld Tiny breaks the silence.
T: "None of this looks like an accident to me. There's just no way a small natural explosion would have done it. It had to be whoever left the footprints on your ship."
Although Apatite considered the possibility in the past she's surprised by how resolute the pearl is.
A: "But the ship's registers didn't show any other ship around until almost a year later."
T: "Anyone able to alter our cores like this would be able to manipulate the ship's registers as well."
The teal gem is surprised by the simplicity of the affirmation. She and Peridot also manipulated the records. It wasn't that hard.
A: "You're right... but if it happened that way... Why wasn't I taken away like all the others?"
T: "There are two possibilities. Whatever the alien, or aliens, tried to do went wrong and you were useless for them."
Apatite realizes the other possibility's consequence range reaches beyond terrifying limits.
A: "Or it went right..."