The Soul Gem

Communicate

Ermac and Jasper had come back to Little Homeworld. Both were fine, and neither came back holding the other's shards in their hands.

"You two get it out of your systems?" Lapis asked the duo. Jasper gave a single nod while Ermac gave a thumbs up with a small inferred smile on his face, due to the face covering.

"We believe Jasper has a better understanding of us. If not a higher tolerance at the very least," Ermac added to his thumbs up, looking at Jasper to try and see if she agreed. She just walked away with a brief grunt of acknowledgement.

"Don't worry about Jasper. She's still a bit stuck in Homeworld," Lapis said, flying down to Ermac and patting his back. Ermac's smile faded and he randomly hit the side of his own head, as if a bug had landed on him and he just swatted it.

"We know Jasper was rather rude. We are just trying to be polite," Ermac said to nobody. The gems present were confused as to who or what he was talking to, Garnet assuming he could hear one of his gems talking to him inside of his own mind and was responding verbally.

"We know, Ruby. Herkimer is being rather unreasonable," Ermac said, looking off to the side as if a Ruby was right there next to him.

"Is he...is he finally going nuts?" Amethyst awkwardly asked Pearl.

"I uh....I hope not?" Pearl replied.

"He's just conversing with his parts. It's like how Ruby and Sapphire talk to each other through me," Garnet replied. They just watched the display in front of them.

"Aww but Hessonite. We barely got to fight with Jasper. Why are we in trouble?" Ermac whined like a child to the imaginary Hessonite that's on his right.

"What do you guys think its like in his head?" Amethyst asked the other Crystal Gems.

"Chaotic? Messy? Like your room? Or maybe it's organized but disjointed? I don't know," Pearl replied, thinking about it.

"You know there's a way we can find out, right? One of us could try to fuse with him," Garnet said, bringing another question to the minds of tje gems.

"Wait. Is he even able to fuse with other gems? Is there a maximum capacity for a fusion before they just fall apart?" Pearl asked.

"Even if he could, would we be able to defuse? Or would we just be stuck in there as another piece of the collective?" Garnet brought up.

"We can hear you, you know," Ermac said, snapping the gems out of their conversation.

"Oh! You can?" Pearl asked with an awkward smile. Ermac gave a nod in confirmation.

"We could hear you the last time too. It's okay though. You thought you would hurt our feelings, we assume?" Ermac asked, bringing the thoughts of the gems to light.

"Yeah...we thought you would be upset at ask if we just hit you with a bunch of different questions all at once," Amethyst said with a rub of the back of her head.

"We wouldn't have been upset. We just wouldn't have had a lot of answers at the time. We still don't have a lot of answers about ourselves. We learn from experience," Ermac said with a shrug.

"Well...should we start with one of our big questions?" Pearl asked the perma-fusion. Garnet nodded and looked at Ermac.

"Do you know if you can fuse with other gems? Or if those gems can disconnect from you?" Garnet asked him.

"We are...not sure. We think we know who might know though," Ermac said as his head went down, and he stood still for a few seconds. His gem turned to a swirling cooling blue and intense red as his eyes opened. One of his eyes was blue, the other was red. He had bowed out and let a ruby and a Sapphire take control. He was essentially letting his own Garnet take control and talk to...well, Garnet.

"Hello there. You must be Garnet. The other Sapphires and I have seen a lot about you from our various different Future Visions," Ermac said, his tone mirroring Sapphire's own. His left arm raised up and waved at Garnet, which surprised the Crystal Gems. So this Sapphire was controlling the left side of his body, which meant this Ruby was controlling the right side. An exact mirroring of Garnet's eyes, minus the third purple eye used for her advanced future vision.

"It's a pleasure to meet you Ruby and Sapphire," Garnet said as she shook the hand that Ruby was controlling. It was a weird feeling for Garnet, introducing herself to what was basically...herself.

"It's nice to meet you too, Garnet! I'm sorry we had to meet under these conditions!" Ermac said, bow having the hyperactive tone of Ruby.

"We heard your question. He asked us before we came out," Sapphire said.

"So is Ermac able to fuse with other gems?" Garnet repeated to Ruby and Sapphire. The eye Sapphire was controlling glazed over briefly, as if peering into the future.

"He is. His gem is capable of performing fusion," Sapphire replied, once the eye focused back to the present.

"He might have a bit of trouble synchronizing though. Some of us popped out with two left feet," Ruby joked. This got a chuckle from Pearl, and a full belly laugh from Amethyst. Garnet must admit, she even got a laugh out of it.

"You might need to give him some dance lessons. Once you do, he'll be able to fuse like you all can," Sapphire added, punching the arm Ruby controlled with a soft giggle.

"Do you two enjoy each other's company?" Garnet asked the two, about the collective group.

"It was....an initially jarring experience. Knowing that I had been shattered, then suddenly waking up among a few hundred other gems. Then the few hundred became a few thousand. Finally the 10,000 were together, and Ermac's own personality formed surrounded by us," Sapphire explained.

"Before Ermac woke up, we all just chat with each other. Some of us knew each other, some of us got to know each other. We had literally nothing but time," Ruby added.

"So it became a family?" Garnet asked.

"In a strange sense...yes. A big adoptive family we've all been put into," they both replied simultaneously, the tone of voice almost identical to Garnet's voice when she first became Garnet.

"Thank you Ruby. Thank you Sapphire. Could you two please bring Ermac back out?" Garnet requested. Both gems gave a thumbs up with the respective arms that they controlled before closing their eyes and hanging Ermac's head down. The color drained back to the default dull red, as Ermac woke back up and his eyes were now back to their normal green.

"So...what did they say?" Ermac asked.

"You'll need dance lessons," Garnet replied simply.