LOG-137.

  I had, perhaps ever so slightly, made a miscalculation of sorts.

  Oh by all means, everything was still going exactly to plan. Considering that plan was getting two Diamonds to slug it out until one either emerged as the victor or they both poofed each other.

  No, the core issue wasn't that. Rather, it was the simple fact that in all my infinite wisdom, I'd allowed this battle between titans to take place on a space station. And an ultimately civilian one at that.

  Even now the entire structure was shaking, audible groans sounding out as immense forces and energies were unleashed and collided, with the constructs around those two unrelenting waves being forced to bear the brunt of things. An alarm had started blaring a good minute ago, with an automated voice warning of both structural and containment breaches, each of which would have been ominous on their own, but combined?

  Yeah, hence why I was currently madly sprinting down a hallway I didn't recognise. My initial path that would have taken me towards a Warp pad leading back to Yellow's ship had been my first choice, but had been cruelly ripped away from me by the hallway that would have brought me to that source of safety collapsing in on itself by a rogue wave of blue fucking laserbeams of all things.

  Whether my guards and the Pearl they were chasing had escaped or gotten caught up in the stray fire was a good question, and I quietly acknowledged that I'd changed as an individual. Because the thought of the three Gems being consigned to float in space forever, or until they got sucked into the orbit of a sun or something, really didn't bother me as much as it should have.

  The Viridian that had woken in the Reef would have been horrified at the callous attitude. The Viridian currently instigating a civil fucking war accepted the fact that casualties were an inevitable consequence when it came to conflict.

  Adjusting my sash on reflex as another bout of tremors hit the station, coupled with distant, barely intelligible screaming, I considered the grand set of doors in front of me.

  Unfamiliar, which meant this could be anything from the station's control center to a particularly ostentatious broom closet.

  A gamble I was willing to take, as I pressed my lightform against the barriers, pushing as hard as I could, and nearly falling over were it not for my inherent balance as the doors opened up fairly easily.

  Glancing up with a huff, I abruptly found myself frozen in the face of…

  Bubbles.

  The self-contained stasis modules were everywhere, some packed as high as the ceiling, and as I stared at the gemstones contained within, just where I'd inadvertently wandered my way into clicked.

  I'd seen this chamber before. Not in this life, but back when all this nonsense had just been a fun little show for children.

  And as alarms continued to blare, warning of increasing destabilisation of the station's core containment sections, I made a choice, my gemstone shining as I reached for the closest of the imprisoned Rose Quartzes.

  Potential assets like these couldn't be ignored. And they'd probably thank me for saving their lives once I eventually released them.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  —

  The attacks from one Diamond against another were growing more sporadic, and my storage space also now had a neatly organised section for a small army of bubbled gemstones. So that was cool.

  What wasn't cool was the fact that every potential path I could take to get back to the Warp pad was either locked down due to a hull breach, or just…gone.

  Entire parts of the station had seemingly been ripped out from the structure's underlying frame as Yellow and Blue's fight presumably progressed from outside of the initial room the confrontation had started in, and now I was carefully navigating my way through yet another unknown path that would likely lead me Stars only knew where.

  I hadn't run into any other Gems yet either, unless one counted the Rose Quartzes. So that either meant the rest of the station were hunkering down somewhere I couldn't see, had managed to evacuate and leave me as the sole other occupant of this zoo turned warzone, or had been sucked out into space, which meant largely the same for my own personal circumstances.

  It was only when I saw a frozen shrub of all things floating by that I realised the station's artificial gravity had either been intentionally shut down or simply failed as something important somewhere was damaged. Not a problem for Gems, seeing as our lightforms were quite literally designed to adapt to any environment, but for the zoo's other occupants…

  The results became apparent when I stumbled upon the first corpse. My features stiffening in shock as I stared at the human being gently floating down the hallway.

  The worst part of it had to be the burst blood vessels in the eyes, leaving the dull, glazed over things a disturbing crimson that contrasted horribly well with the pale, pretty looking skin around them.

  All in all, it was a corpse. And yet something about it being made of meat rather than gemstone had me infinitely more disturbed around the thing, prompting me to warily edge my way around the dead person before hastily hurrying further down the hall.

  Maybe I should have…recovered it. Maybe I should have done something. But the thought of touching the dead flesh somehow had me flinching back worse than the times I'd seen a Nacre disciplining a Pearl. So I didn't, instead moving on as quickly as I could.

  The hallway itself must have been attached to some of the newly breached containment sections, because the particularly effeminate man I'd left behind wasn't the last casualty I found myself being confronted with.

  Alongside more examples of ripped out shrubbery and even a tree, I quietly, guiltily ignored at least seventeen additional…specimens, wide eyes noting the newly formed holes connecting their enclosures (they were slaves, pets in all but name, but they'd been happy, how could they even comprehend something like death?) to the hallways, which in turn had been exposed to open space in certain areas.

  Part of me felt as if I should have thrown up at the sight, but I hadn't eaten anything in months and even if I had, the necessary instincts and biological features for such an act didn't exist anymore.

  Somehow that just made the feeling even worse, so I shoved it down alongside everything else I was thinking at the moment and focused on leaving the newly created graveyard behind me as I progressed.

  It was just as I was crawling my way beneath a shattered bulkhead, summoned talons carefully digging into the floor for purchase, that a roar echoed from somewhere deeper inside the station, coupled by the feeling of…

  It felt like static electricity, and I had less than a moment to tense up in response to the feeling before everything abruptly became pain.

  For a long moment, I briefly considered whether this was what it felt like to have one's lightform hit by a destabilizer, even as golden arcs travelled up and along my body, alongside everything else around me.

  Just as I began to feel something unravelling, the torture finally stopped, leaving me to drop to the ground and curl up with a pained moan, barely cracking my eyes open enough to realise that there was literal smoke wafting off of me.

  I stayed like that for a few minutes, recovering as my lightform seemingly knit itself back together, and I weakly noted that I'd probably been less than a second from poofing for the first time, before unsteadily planting a clawed hand beneath my stomach, pushing myself onto my side.

  Another moment was spent making the motion of breathing, even though there wasn't any actual air to take in, before I finally managed to stagger back to my feet, forcing my way forward one shaky step at a time.

  At the very least, the fighting had seemingly stopped now. No more roars of power, no more desperate screams. Just a horrific silence save for the station's glitching alarm, which had grown distorted after the burst of golden electricity.

  That shut off perhaps a few minutes later, as I finally managed to catch a glimpse of a hallway that actually seemed familiar, alongside multiple sets of eyes staring at me from the darkness surrounding the Warp pad.

  "Is that…it's the Pearl!"

  My claws were idly dismissed to keep up appearances as I staggered towards the handful of Jaspers and Amethysts apparently standing guard over the crystalline structure, one hand holding on to a still painfully twinging arm that had taken the brunt of Yellow's damned lightning, while the other reached towards them.

  "Get…get me out of here. Now."

  It was with some small measure of relief that I allowed myself to fall into multiple sets of strong arms, which quickly carried me towards presumed safety.

  Everything still hurt.

  Nonetheless, the traitorous soldiers obeyed my order to the letter, the sound of the Warp pad activating filling my ears even as I tiredly closed my eyes, my world finally being engulfed by light once more.