Blooming Rose: A Pink Diamond Character Study

The Most Heinous Act

Over the next few days, months, and years, the tide of the war was slowly turning in the Crystal Gems' favor, all thanks to fusion.

The fusion - Garnet, as Rose and Pearl would later come to know her as - was undeniably a crucial asset to the Crystal Gems. They discovered, first hand, that a Sapphire on her own had a very limiting future vision, only allowing to embrace one, fated path. However, combined with the Ruby's volatility, Garnet saw the future for what it truly was: a large tree of decisions, which she was able to navigate very accurately, managing victories for the Crystal Gems which seemed downright impossible when one considered the raw numbers.

However, fusion, as a concept, was included in that as well. Almost always, it took either two of the same type of Gem or two Gems who knew each other very, very intimately, but if they managed to fuse, the emergent form would be much larger and powerful than its constituents. Some fusions were even able to stand up to Diamond height, becoming significant, tide-changing forces on the various battlefields of the Earth.

Fusion was indispensable to the Crystal Gems, and therefore, those who had managed it - including Rose, Pearl and Garnet, the latter of whom preferred to stay fused all the time - would set up informal Crystal Gem classes for anyone willing to listen. Soon enough, battles saw more and more fusions partake, and soon enough, the Crystal Gems, limited in number as they were, had become a threat that could take on any number of fleets that the Homeworld government sent Earthward.

Nevertheless, the Homeworld Gems needed some sort of wonder-weapon to counter fusion, and simply countering fusion with fusion was kind of uprooting the order in which the Diamonds are the largest, and therefore, the most venerable of Gems, and therefore, completely unacceptable.

Thus, the Earth became home to two more Kindergartens. The first of these was the Beta Kindergarten set up by Homeworld Gems; however, the process was obviously rushed and many of its produce, mainly coming in terms of Jaspers, was unacceptable for the battlefield.

The second of these, however, was completely undocumented and nameless, and set up by Rose Quartz herself. It was an experiment on several fronts; whether she could replicate her healing powers and give them to another Gem, and whether she could colonize "sustainably", without irreversibly destroying the planet being colonized. It was a fun little side project to detour to whenever there was a ceasefire, but ultimately, it was not as successful as the war effort, and was relatively quickly abandoned.

The Rose Quartzes produced by this experiment were suitable for the Rose Quartz in at least one way, though: as decoys who could always be captured by Homeworld forces without significant loss. Eventually, though, the Diamonds would question the decoy Rose Quartz, realize that they weren't talking to the real Rose Quartz (who, soon enough, came to be known as the "villainous" Rose Quartz), and mull how they fell right into a trap set up by the Crystal Gems, only to fall for the same trick again a few Earth years later.

As for the Amethysts originally from the Prime Kindergarten on Earth, the majority of them had been captured by the Homeworld forces in the early days of the war and made to serve Pink Diamond in the only way which they would not mess up: by maintaining the zoo bearing her name, which she had not yet stepped into, nor did she ever plan to.

Nevertheless, the Crystal Gems had at least a few trump cards up their sleeves, but perhaps the most valuable of them was a cause: if they won the war, they could form whatever kind of society they wanted to on the Earth. That, alone, was a dream which made Gems join the ranks of Crystal Gems, even if they had known nothing about the Earth or the Crystal System beforehand.

Now, the only thing left to do was to win the war.

The war was now approaching its thousandth Earth year, and the Crystal Gems were definitely winning it. Having successfully taken control of the Earth, they were now flying ships to protect the Crystal System as a whole, and any hopes for Homeworld Gems to recover lost territory were withering as badly as any Kindergartens on functional colonies.