Crystal Clear Part 2: Familiar Faces (Jasper x Reader)

Chapter 2: The Mind of the Beast

You opened your eyes in an unfamiliar setting. It looked to be the bottom of a crater the size of a small town and as deep as a skyscraper, beneath a blood red sky dark with smoke and ash. Distant explosions echoed, and an eerie humming sound passed through the air which you would only later be able to recognise as the sound of more screams mingled together than could be counted in a thousand human lifetimes. Ghostly figures of gem soldiers shuffled about. Their movements were robotic and their faces were all wrong, almost like something out of a Picasso painting. They seemed to take no notice of your presence.

"Well, Jasper," you muttered to yourself, "no one can say you're making too big a deal of it. Oh, hold on. Testing, testing, one two three." You realised that your voice sounded different. You looked down at your hands, finding that they were dark grey, almost black, covered in thin red stripes. It seemed that Jasper's mind was manifesting you as Jaspilite. "Now then. If I were the last fragment of sanity in a mind crumbling into chaos, where would I be?" Looking around, you finally spotted a familiar landmark. "Of course. I'd be at home."

You made your way through the infernal landscape to an area resembling a bombed-out version of the land around your house, but in place of the house itself was a giant pink diamond of equal size.

"Not sure how I missed that..."

You paced around the circumference of the colossal stone, finding it to be a completely solid mass, which would surely be worth a pretty penny if it weren't just a mental projection. You summoned your claw weapon to see if you could scratch it. No such luck. Pure diamond. You could see a tiny hollow in the very centre, with a large figure hunched down in it. You had no doubt as to who it was.

"There's no door, and no way over it. I don't imagine I can go under it." Scraping away some rubble and soil, you found that the giant crystal extended into the ground, evidently just as far as it extended into the sky. You sighed in frustration. "Going to have to go through it."

You picked up the only large stone you could find nearby, hesitated for a moment, then struck it against the diamond with all your might, wincing as you felt the impact shoot through your arms. You struck again and again. It didn't take long before the rock had crumbled away to nothing. You went searching for another. As you found one and lifted it up, you saw an apparition of Rose Quartz. She more closely resembled Jasper with her robust build and hardened face, and grinned wickedly at you as she inspected the blade of her sword, which dripped with what looked like pink blood.

"You made it so easy, Jasper," she said in barely more than a whisper. "You had so many chances to stop me, and you never even tried. If I could bring her back, I would, just so I could see how many times I could do it all over again and watch you be too late."

"If you like shattering diamonds so much, get to work on that one," you said, pointing. "Otherwise, get lost." Unconcerned, you turned back to your work. Progress was extremely slow, but you had made a detectable dent. When you went for another rock, you were again confronted, this time by a horrifying version of Garnet. She looked to be composed of two deformed bodies, one red and one blue, in an unholy embrace, with a pair of held hands warped to form her face.

"There are so many of us, and only one of you. You are alone. We can see the future, and we see only two things: you giving up," she said in Sapphire's voice, "and your end," she finished in Ruby's.

"Then you're as blind as a bat, three eyes or not." You returned to your work, observing aloud, "Bit ironic, that saying. Bats can see perfectly fine. My point stands, though."

By the time you'd worn another stone to rubble, you'd made a noticeable hole, but you weren't even a fraction of the way to the centre. This time when you went to "reload," you were met with a particularly pathetic version of Amethyst. She came up to only about knee-height, had a viciously hunched back, and only four digits on each hand.