#tanzanite

The thing is small, protruding… liquid from itself. Tanzanite rounds it and it gasps, stumbles back as her legs clink around him.

“You are no diamond.” she says. 

It stumbles. “I- Right! I'm not- I'm not really a-” Stuttering, great. It's like Tanzanite is talking to an off color that barely understands vowels. 

It stops after realizing Tanzanite is not listening, expecting. 

Besides the obvious flaw in stature, the hideous palette and a myriad of insults she could throw at her, Tanzanite focuses on the biggest flaw of all.

It squeaks when she grabs at the protruding appendage from the side of it's head.

“You're hurting me!” 

Tanzanite inspects, twists, turns and pulls until It grabs her hand and throws itself back down to the ground, gripping it. There is a weird, thick liquid emanating from a small tear on the lower part of it. 

She curses at the impossible task thrown at her. ¿How was she meant to make a Diamond out of…of… 

They're meant to be perfection, Tanzanite is meant to elevate anything for it to be up to the radiant Diamond's standard.

And she is given some deformed and blubbering, hybrid biomass to help make keep up. At least it understands one, her language, and two, its position. 

“I do not want to hear a peep. You now, are to slave away to achieve standardized decency, and then some. -If it's the last thing I do I will thwart you pustule from being an unsightly shame in the sight of the Diamond's blessed creation. Am I understood?”

It nods. Tanzanite knows that it's a lie. 

She employs the stick very early on. It scratches at itself, cries, moans for reprieve and… sustenance other than the wondrous light Homeworld casts upon them all. It wants more, always more. It hates the “outfit” it’s wearing, that gems had to make, because It is too imbecilic to do it Itself. 

Besides sometimes pausing to rub the welts, or whining about the gloves rubbing them “raw” whatever that means, the posture has improved. It talks less. 

At around the year and a half mark, she seems to search for something wrong in the mirror each time she passes it. And, while Tanzanite is pleased that she strives for class instead of stagnation, stars, does she find flaws.

The cracking voice, devoid of authority. The hairs from on top her mouth, and on her chin, and everywhere else. The eternal odor that she had to wash away daily.

Then came the emotional outbursts and the swelling. Tanzie looooooved her life. 

She finally took the fall. Dragged her to the zoo. Somehow, she’d find a way to cease the… wreck her body was becoming. 

“It’s developing reproductive maturity.” The Opal said. 

“What?” Tanzanite and …well, she couldn’t call her “Pink.” That one, Her, said at the both time. 

“I see some signs of facial hair and vocal deepening. We’d have to run some tests.”

“Well, can you stop it?”

“What?!” She said. 

“Well, there is a way to stunt the effects via introducing certain hormones in the body,” the opal offered. “but, given the subject’s healing factor they’d be null.” 

“So she’s stuck like this?”

“No, of course not. It’ll just take some time. It should be done by the next two orbital turns, maybe half more!”

“... No way forward but… through?” Tanzanite asked.

“No.”

“Well, it can't get worse. We shall regroup and figure out a plan to… censor these issues. We’ll have to make you a new ensemble to mask it.”

“...mask?”

“If you think I shall let gemkind be subject to see your… your… maimed anatomy you are sorely mistaken.”

She grit her teeth like a lowlife would, but averted her eyes instead of protesting. 

Tanzanite smiled, triumphant.