"I summon my flute the way some Gems summon a weapon, maybe I can help? Think about what you want to do, what makes you feel like an independent being."
"Of course you have one!" Lavender said, almost offended. "L-like that you are wonderful and warm and nice and caring and green like the horizon on certain days and..." she trailed off, blushing.
Rose frowned. Well. Now there were two conflicting things about how to summon a weapon. She sighed. "....maybe I just don't have one," she mumbled after trying again and failing to get her gem to even glow yet again.
"I'm sorry if I confused you. But you have to find a way for yourself. You can do this." She smiled at the Pearl.
Lavender tried again, but her Gem merely flickered. She made a frustrated noise. "Th-this is so hard. Amethyst made it look so instinctual..."
"There are plenty of gem varieties other than Pearls who are never taught to summon weapons," Spinel points out. "But no one claims, say, a Peridot is incapable of it. It's just not an important skill for them unless they're sent near enough to the fighting that they might need to defend themselves."
"Yes, that makes sense," Gray said. "My job is to be very analytical and detail-oriented, as a pilot, so it makes sense for me to draw my weapon as a logical process. But everyone is...different." She paused. "I don't think I've ever thought that before. But it's true. Especially us Pearls. We are all so different from one another. Think about how similar other Gem types look. No wonder what works for me didn't work for you." She pondered this some more. It was an interesting thought. But then, she remembered that they had far more important things to be doing. "If we want to go to Rebels' Square and try to save Blue, we will need to be stealthy, not go on the offensive. I can try to unlock back passages, perhaps, but we are too recognizable." She turned to Spinel. "I am sure you have practice in shapeshifting. Can you teach us?"
"I think Pearls are more like Quartzes, than just like one kind of gem." put in Citrine, who had been following the conversation and trying to think of how her instructors at boot camp had taught them to summon their gem weapons. "I mean like, you're sort of similar, but you're clearly different types, if that makes any sense. Sorry I'm not much good at teaching on this once." She thought about it, then drew her long-handled mace out of her gem for a moment. "If it helps, when I draw out of my gem, I just think about what I need it for. It's way easier now I've got people to fight for - when I was just defending me, it was kind of a fracture as to whether I'd manage it in time, and whether or not it would be too big or too heavy." She dismissed her weapon again, and grinned sheepishly. "I guess I really enjoy helping you guys."
Rita blushed, "Th-thank you." She grinned and her gem glowed slightly without her noticin, going back to normal the second she realized.
"S-so what about Shapeshifting! H-how does that work?" Lavender was excited. Maybe she would be better at that!
"Not as much as you would think," Spinel answers. "I rarely have need of it; most infiltration specialists who do use it use it to fit more easily into small spaces, and, well. I have little need for that." Spinel is distinctly one of the smallest gems present already, if not the actual smallest. "It's more based upon visualization than weapon summoning is. Compose the image of what you want in your mind first, and then it's almost like moving into it, the way you would move your body to walk or lift your arm." To demonstrate, she raises a hand, and after a moment of concentrating, the pads of her fingers change into something a bit like claws - perhaps not very impressive, but it's the sort of practical thing Spinel prefers. "I usually use this to scale buildings more easily, but it will do for a weapon against most organic races. I'e never tired to use it against another Gem." She hasn't fought other Gems much at all, since she left training, but that's who the enemy is now, after all.
Gray closed her eyes and thought. She imagined herself a bit shorter, with short, curly hair, and a frillier outfit - a short, translucent skirt, a slim ribbon belt with a bow in the back, and poofed sleeves, all in a shade of soft dark blue. Her Gem glowed, and she shifted - not quite to what she had in mind, the colours are more of a steely blue and she hasn't gotten shorter - but, upon opening her eyes and looking at herself, she thought she would not immediately be recognized as Onyx's Pearl. "How do I look?"
"O-oh! You look so different. C-can I try?" She concentrated and imagined a slightly more bulky fram. Long hair. Opaque leggings and a sensible top, covered by a gauzy knee length chiffon-coat. A green tint... She aimed for a dark forest green but ended up more with a pale minty color. When she opened her eyes she smiled. "D-did it work?"
"Oh I wanna try!" Rita said scrunching her nose in concentration as she attempted to give herself pigtails, grinning as she felt them form. She did it! She actually managed to do something, "...you think I could use a hologram to project over some of our gems? So we aren't so obviously Pearls?"
"O-oh that might help! I-i'm not sure what I even look like right now... Aventurine maybe?" She twisted and turned, trying to get a good mental image of how her shifted form worked.
"That might be a good idea, Rita," replied Gray. "I can easily shift myself gloves to hide mine, but those with torso gems are harder to hide." As she said this, she imagined a pair of long blue gloves into being.
Citrine considered Spinel's words, then concentrated hard. Not trying anything too inventive, but her hair grew long and wild, her shoulders broadened, eyes narrowed to mean slits, and she grew perhaps a head taller. When she opened her eyes, she grinned down at the long nails of her meaty hands. "Hey, it worked!" Her voice was a shade deeper and rougher as well - she sounded like a stone-cold veteran, not an uncut recruit. She did a doubletake at Gray and Lavender, which was just as comical, if not more so in her fiercer form. "Wow, you guys look so different! Lavender, I didn't even know you could change colour!"
