era_two_triangle | Abandoned Crystal System Colony Planet Earth

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Abandoned Crystal System Colony Planet Earth - Friday, Fandom Time

It had all started with the Crystal Gems taking a break. A break! In building the drill! To save the planet! The work was so tantalizingly close to being done that Peridot had complained to Steven, vehemently. It had involved waving a little power drill in the air for emphasis. Which had, as most things around here seemed to do, inspired Steven to sing.

The difference is, this time, Peridot made an effort to understand why. And the whole thing had culminated in all four Crystal Gems sitting with their backs to the barn as Peridot showed off her take on the 'singing' that Steven had introduced her to.

"I guess we're already here,
I guess we already know.
We've all got something to fear,
We've all got nowhere to go.
I think you're all INSANE!
But I guess I am too...
Anybody would be
If they were stuck on Earth with you."

That one got a little grin from the trio of gems who were watching, and a cheer of triumph from Steven. None of them really noticed the portal that opened up nearby while Peridot was singing.

Tip	Peridot was singing. Tip would have bet money that Peridot didn't now what singing was, but there she was, apparently improvising a song verse and not doing a terrible job at it. Tip blinked as she stepped through the portal, then smiled, watching Peridot have this weird candid little moment. She'd learned so much so fast. It was really impressive! . . . Also there was the whole "Peridot shrunk" thing, but Tip had seen her missing one of her feet, so it didn't take long for her to realize that this was Peridot missing both her feet and also her weird floaty finger things. That was probably driving her absolutely bonkers.
Rufus	Rufus' lip curled in silent disgust at the fact that Peridot was singing. He didn't miss the fact that she'd lost a number of things (including height) but the singing was off-putting enough that he was going to ignore her. His gaze settled on Garnet instead. He should have just let them kidnap Peridot. She'd wound up here anyway. What a perfectly good waste of effort. At least Garnet had been amusing.
Jalian	Jalian blinked at the singing, and she wrinkled her nose. This didn't seem like an emergency. She eyed the other beings suspiciously, though, just in case Peridot still needed help; she had promised, after all.
Anakin	Anakin was less concerned about the singing and more about the lyrics, especially after his talk with Peridot a few weeks back. Something to fear, nowhere to go? Stuck on Earth? He had a bad feeling about this.
Peridot	Peridot was wearing a sheepish little smile at the accolades from the other Gems when she turned around to see the Fandomites standing there, listening. And then she blushed. A lot. Her face flushed blue. "Guys!" ... "You're here?" They were not Yellow Diamond, but she'd take it.
Jalian	"You said you needed help," Jalian answered, a touch of accusation in the explanation. Singing didn't seem like it needed help.
Peridot	Peridot hesitated for a moment, blinking a little more, and then looked between the group assembled. "My message reached you?" Well, they weren't Yellow Diamond, but still, she was touched. To the point of standing there awkwardly, looking between them.
Garnet	Behind her, Garnet smiled, just a little. Ah, the cavalry had arrived. "We were taking a break," she said in that calm, too-cool tone. "Peridot has been working hard to help us stop the Cluster." Which would mean nothing to everybody but exactly one of the newcomers, but Garnet was confident that they'd get to that.
Tip	"Well, we're here to help too then," Tip said. ". . . What's the Cluster?"
Anakin	"Sithspit," Anakin said eloquently, then gestured to Garnet. "Your world, your time to explain."
Garnet	Garnet looked faintly amused at being assigned the role of chief explainer of the situation, but shrugged and crossed her arms over her chest. Not so much in spite of but because of Peridot's own indignant noise about it. Homeworld was where she'd come from, initially, but it was hardly her world now. This Earth, however... "A weapon," she said, simply. "Created by the Gem Homeworld out of the shards of Gems who were shattered in our rebellion to save the planet. One last ditch effort to destroy the world." She cast a glance Peridot's way. "An abomination." One that she felt at least partly guilty for, herself. After all, if Ruby and Sapphire hadn't fused, Homeworld might never have gotten the idea in the first place. "They're using the Gems of those fallen in battle, ours and theirs alike, to create one massive fusion. A Gem monster larger than the planet itself. And it's somewhere underneath us right now."
Rufus	"A giant zombie-gem monster," Rufus said flatly, summing it up. Great. There was nothing that could go wrong with that, right? "What are your preparations like for dealing with it?"
Peridot	"We made a drill!" ... That was it. That was the plan. Peridot still seemed pleased that they'd gotten that far.
Jalian	"Why did you need to make one?" Jalian asked, confused. Drills were everywhere.
Garnet	In reply, Garnet simply cleared her throat and gestured with one hand to the object that was propped up behind the gathered Fandomites. It was... large.
Jalian	That...was a very large drill, yes.
Anakin	"Somebody's feeling inadequate," Anakin muttered.
Peridot	Yeah, that would be Peridot. But look at her now. Could anybody really blame her for that?
Peridot	It was really a great, illuminating sort of conversation they were having, wasn't it? Of course Peridot, being the forward-thinking if not polite individual that was was, was gasping and perking up a little. "Oh, wait! I need to check on something!" And then she made a beeline for the drill. "She's come so far," Steven said to the group assembled, looking proud. "It seems like just yesterday she was trying to kill us." "No, no," Pearl corrected. "That was several weeks ago." Apparently the flow of time here was cranked up to fast-forward compared to Fandom's own at the moment. What else was new?
Tip	Tip wanted to follow after, but Rufus and Jalian were already doing it. She didn't want to crowd her. Also: "Did she try to push you guys off a roof?" she asked. Peridot said Tip was the experiment, but she couldn't really see Peridot as the lurking with a dagger type.
Garnet	"No," Garnet said, glancing at Tip with that ever-so-calm look on her face. "She tried to vaporize us with lasers and then crush us." Really, at this point, she almost - almost - sounded fond. It was easy for Garnet to not hold any hard feelings about it. After all, she'd destroyed Peridot's body by brutally crushing her torso in her hands, and all. It had been very cathartic.
Tip	"Where did she even get lasers?" Tip did not remember any lasers in Peridot's limb enhancers.
Garnet	"In her limb enhancers," Garnet replied easily. Because of course there had been lasers in her limb enhancers. "And in the derelict Gem colony ship she lured us into." Crafty little Gem.
Tip	Tip shook her head. "But when did she even do that? I just saw her this weekend. She and my friend bonded over being alien-fish out of space-water."
Garnet	Garnet looked at Tip in silence for a moment. Maybe she didn't understand the turn of phrase. Maybe she was trying to piece the rest of that mystery together. Maybe she just liked standing there quietly for a few beats too long before replying. "Would that be the weekend that saw friends and family visiting the island?" Friends, family, and the occasional looming space rocks?
Tip	"Well -- yeah. You were there." Tip and Garnet hadn't talked there, but Garnet was hard to miss.
Garnet	"I was," Garnet agreed. "Over a month ago." It had been a very eventful week. Apparently a full month's worth of eventful. "It helps if you think of time as a river," she noted. "Or a series of rivers. At certain points, they flow more quickly, or branch off into other rivers entirely. This timeline is flowing faster than that of the island, at the moment. Peridot has had plenty of time to shoot a few lasers."
Tip	"I guess that makes about as much sense as alternate earths do," Tip said. "Does that mean time travel is like swimming up or downstream?" She was going to have to tell J.Lo all about this later.
Garnet	"That would depend," Garnet deadpanned, "on how good you are at swimming." And on what ancient Gem artifacts you happened to be misusing at any given point in time for the express purpose of making snappy comebacks or building your own personal band out of alternate versions of yourself.
Tip	Or using the power of a moon-core powered death ray to go back and try to fix a mistake only to be the thing that actually ended up causing it in the first place! "Wait. Does this mean we might go back to school and end up having missed a month of classes?"
Garnet	"That is one possibility," Garnet agreed. And really, she would know. "Or you might go back to find that you've only been gone a matter of hours. Time can be slippery that way." Did Garnet know which it was? Probably. Was Garnet going to tell? Nah.
Tip	"That sucks," Tip said. "I mean, classes at Fandom aren't really very . . . traditional . . . but I still probably don't want to miss a month of them." And what about fall break? They were going to stay in a castle! Peridot better appreciate this.
Garnet	Garnet nodded her head faintly. "It isn't an easy thing to do," she acknowledged, "and what we're up against here is very dangerous. Are you certain this is where you want to be? There's still time to leave before the cluster tries to form."
Tip	Tip shook her head. "Peridot's my friend. If I can help, I'm going to do it."
Garnet	"Well," Garnet glanced up at the roar of the pink Lion that Steven was talking to. "Then we had better be on our way."
Rufus	As amusing as Peridot's failed attempts at killing people were (and they were amusing, deeply) Rufus drifted off after Peridot instead. It seemed more productive and he would like this trip to not be a total waste of his time. "What are you checking?" he asked, once he was close enough.
Jalian	Jalian was heading after Peridot, too; there was no telling what other dangers there might be around here. "Can I help?" she offered.
Peridot	"No, I'm fine," Peridot said, a little triangle vanishing into the cockpit of the drill for a moment before she peered her head out again. "I was just checking to see if we had coordinates. We still need the Cluster's exact coordinates in order to drill!" Spoiler: They did not have such a thing.
Rufus	Of course they didn't. Why make this easy on them? "And?" Rufus prompted.
Peridot	"And if we don't get them, we all die?" Peridot, that wasn't very reassuring, there.
Pearl	Fortunately, Pearl stepped forward to mediate. More or less. "There's a Diamond Base that may hold that information," she mused, "but getting there is going to be difficult."
Rufus	"You mean you'll die. I won't," Rufus pointed out. He couldn't resist. Because really. If death was the only outcome, he was taking a portal out of here. "Where would we have to get to in order to obtain the coordinates?" he asked Pearl.
Pearl	Pearl almost - almost looked apologetic. For a whole second. "It's not accessible by warp pad," she noted. "It's on--" She gestured upwards with one hand.
Steven	Steven gasped. "The moon!"
Pearl	"Yes, Steven. The moon." Because of course it was on the moon.
Jalian	Jalian frowned. "Is there a means of getting there?"
Steven & Lion	Never fear, all. Steven Universe had this situation handled. With a grin on his face, he ran over to the large, pink feline who was laying down nearby. "Come on, Lion, we gotta do this to stop the Cluster!" The lion didn't seem terribly impressed, cracking open one eye to look at Steven coolly. "If we don't there's gonna be no more Earth! No more fun times with your pals, no more Lion Lickers... no more naps?" Ah, that was what it took. Lion stood up and loosed a roar, his eyes glowing white. "Guess it was naps," Steven mused, shrugging. And then he gestured for everyone to climb aboard. The lion. Yes.
Rufus	Rufus made no move to go anywhere near the pink lion. "...There's no atmosphere out in space," he said, unimpressed. "How are we supposed to breathe?" He was willing to buy that the Gems didn't need to, but he did.
Pearl	"There ought to be adequate atmosphere within the walls of the base," Pearl said easily, even as she was shooed onto the lion's back courtesy of Steven. "Just so long as we stay inside, you'll all be fine."
Peridot	Peridot eyed Lion warily. And then was basically herded up into his mane, also courtesy of Steven. "This was not what I had in mind," she muttered, sourly. She expected to be sitting on the creature's head, but her bottom half, anything inside the mane, appeared to be... dangling into nothingness. She wasn't going to ask why or how.
Tip	Tip came over after talking to Garnet and climbed willingly enough onto Lion. She'd taken weirder forms of transportation. A hoverbutt, for instance. At least this one was larger than a dinner plate. "I'm assuming the magic pink lion knows where it's going, right?"
Jalian	Jalian frowned at the lion but climbed on. "How does it get us from here to there without our needing to breathe?"
Garnet	Garnet simply followed along a few steps behind, standing beside Lion in case anybody else needed help climbing aboard. "Magic." ... Probably.
Rufus	"That's not particularly reassuring," Rufus said, as he finally climbed on the lion. He had his PHS out and was recording. For reasons.

[OOC: MORE CANON... more or less. Getting into the It Could Have Been Great chunks of canon, and will be pushing all the way through to Gem Drill as we go. Preplayed with the fantabulous

sith_happened,

studyingfear,

intotheout, and

kenselvren, and there is plenty more to come, which will get dumped into the comments as I code it or liveplayed in here. After work. La.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Rufus noted that smile and, after what felt like an eternity of waiting for someone else to say something, anything, dear gods why him, he still thought about saying nothing.

"Could you augment yourself with peridotite?" he asked dispassionately.

Peridot blinked up at Rufus for a moment at that, seeming to consider for a moment. Her mind had gone drifting a little for a few seconds there, and there was clearly a bit of something chewing at it, but now really wasn't the time.

"I don't... actually know," she said, after a pause. "I assume it could theoretically be possible, though the process could take hundreds of your Earth years. Which I would have to spend without a body. Something to consider, if I ever need-"

She was interrupted by a sudden banging on the top of the drill's cockpit compartment, and looked up just in time to see a red hand press itself against the window, quickly and forcefully. It was a rather fearsome sight when highlighted by the peridotite's molten glow.

"Fusion experiments," she moaned. "They must have buried some prototypes with the Cluster."

Rufus' pale eyes widened, but not in fear. It was hard to see, especially given the close quarters and awkward positioning, but it was an emotion closer to glee.

Or fascination. Or some combination of the both.

Either way, he was not nearly as discomfited as Peridot.

"As guardians or as garbage?" he asked, even as a second hand followed with more banging. He was still filming. Tseng was going to have a heart attack.

"If I had to guess... possibly even both," Peridot replied. She hit a button on the control panel, and then gestured toward the game controllers. "Or simply to incubate. Would you like to do something about them, or would you rather get out and ask them?"

Please keep all arms and legs inside the vehicle while traversing the asthenosphere.

Rufus didn't need further explanation for the game controllers, he really didn't.

He reached for them carefully, around the others, and settled one in his lap--well, more like perched on his knee--and considered the other one and his PHS.

"Hold this," he ordered Peridot, handing his PHS over. "Keep it pointed at me and at the things outside. Touch none of the buttons on it." He didn't want her messing up his recording! It was important.

Then he took up the controller that wasn't on his knee and got to work.

It took him a few moments to figure out which button did what but, after that brief learning period... his aim was very, very good.

The reckless glee that, many years later, would drive him to jump off a building without a safety net was evident now in the smile he was wearing. It wasn't a grin, he didn't do grins, but it was gleeful in a sharp, hard-edged way.

Rufus should have been born a Diamond, really.

Rufus would have made a terrifying Diamond.

Peridot wasn't thinking that exactly as she took the phone-thing from Rufus, blinking and... pointing it at him. She was pretty sure it was at him. She'd never handled one of these things before.

It was possible that there was going to be the tiniest bit of a little green thumb in the frame. It was going to stay there until the drill broke through the asthenosphere and into a layer of dense rock. The few remaining fusion experiments were thrown off as the drill started to shake. Sorry, Rufus. Peridot was dropping your phone in favor of grabbing the steering controls so that they didn't get torn apart at the last moment.

"We're hitting some denser rock! This is it!"

Brace yourselves, folks.

Rufus did not brace himself, nor did he stop shooting until it was clear that once they'd hit the rock the remaining experiments had been flung clear.

Then he lunged for his PHS and held it back up.

BECAUSE SCREW BEING SAFE.

... Sigh, Rufus. Peridot didn't even breathe and she was sighing at you. NOT DYING IN THE DRILL JUST FIFTY FEET AWAY FROM THE CLUSTER'S CHAMBER WAS HER PRIORITY HE--

The rattling of the drill suddenly stopped, and a bright, dazzling light filled the tunnel that they had come to rest in. Peridot frowned, then reached for her periscope. Which... was really just a pair of binoculars with a flashlight on it, but that flashlight had just survived impossible degrees of pressure and heat, so periscope win, right there.

"Recovery depth achieved. Target found."

And then she steered the drill into the chamber of the cluster.

It was... it was definitely a sight to behold.

Oooo, pretty!

"We made it," Rufus breathed.

Yeah, that had been rather in doubt. Not that he'd had a bad time of it so far, but getting this far hadn't been assured.

"The Cluster," Peridot agreed, looking down through the window at it with some grim satisfaction.

They'd survived! Against all odds! There had been insane grinning in there somewhere! And now... now the Earth was shaking. The Cluster was shaking. The cluster, that was made of the shards of millions of shattered Gems. Peridot didn't even care that her first instinct was to shriek in terror, because, frankly, it was terrifying.

Especially when the whole surface of the gigantic Gem fusion began to ripple, and then a series of arms, legs, entire torsos, screaming faces and all, tried to break free from the resulting ripples, trying desperately to take shape.

Peridot shrieked and Rufus winced from the noise. Honestly, there was no need for that.

Especially not while he was filming.

Though it likely that she was going to be tempted to kill him as the world went rather... rainbow and white under them and around them and Rufus started to laugh.

Peridot might or might not, but Jalian certainly was. Somewhere at the edge of her thoughts, she could feel screaming, babbling confusion and terror, and it wasn't exactly conducive to a good frame of mind. She could barely move, as squished as they were in there, but she was kneeing his shoulder. This was no time for laughter!

Apparently it wasn't a time for trying to knee people in a tightly enclosed space, either. The forming Cluster down below rocked the planet again, and then a wave of white-light arms came crashing up towards them at just that very moment, rocking the drill violently.

Peridot lost her balance. Peridot got that incoming knee to the face, leaving her swinging back the other direction again, arms in the air and tiny legs akimbo as the wave receded again.

Honestly, turning Peridot into a comedy of pain really wasn't going to stop his laughter, except for the way the ship was rocked and tossed about and no one was at the controls.

This time it was Rufus dropping his PHS as he lunged for the controls.

He had no formal training, especially not in this ship, but he was a Shinra and, more importantly, he was Rufus.

He'd seen Peridot control it. That was enough for him to manage to stabilize the thing as well as it could be given… everything going on outside.

Once he got it under control, he absently scooped up his PHS.

"Honestly," he said snarkily to Jalian, "this is no time for ridiculous antics."

Because laughter had been the reasonable response. Of course.

"Does anyone have any idea about what to do with all of... that? Peridot, will the guns work on them?"

At present, one foot was about all that could be seen of Peridot.

"We're in a drill," came a muffled reply from... somewhere on the floor. One little green hand reached up to point at the ceiling. "We drill."

She was not going to end up pointing right-side-up any time soon, unless someone was kind enough to pick her up by a foot or something.

Rufus was definitely not kind enough to do that. Sorry, Peridot.

"Alright," Rufus said, studying the controls. "If that's what you want, then hold on tight."

Jalian glared back at Rufus and offered Peridot a...well, a foot up, something to grab onto so she could right herself.

"They're screaming," she said. "All the pieces."

Peridot grimaced as she kind of hauled herself up, arm-over-arm, using Jalian's leg as leverage.

"... Of course they are," she said, frowning. "They're all fragmented pieces of broken minds, forced into one form. They're also about to destroy the planet."

She frowned as she surfaced from under the dashboard and peered out at the Cluster, which didn't seem to be taking any substantial sort of damage from the drill.

"Try the triple-tip penetration setting!"

... Peridot wasn't allowed to name things.

"As you wish, Captain," he said lightly, tweaking the controls until the triple-tip penetration setting started up.

The smoothness of Rufus' voice betrayed the fact that, yeah, he was totally still having a damn good time.

This was terrifying, exhilarating, and he felt alive.

The drill shifted, then, until one drilling end piece was joined by two more, which doubled-down on the massive crystalline structure below them. Peridot would have been pleased herself, either by being called 'Captain' or by the creation that she and Pearl had built being put to such good used, if not for one fact.

They still weren't making much progress.

Meanwhile, the millions of fractured minds below continued to scream in silence, their voices rising up in a cacophonous mental roar.

Must... Have to... Want to... Need to... Have to...

"Can you hear them?" Jalian asked Peridot, wincing at all the minds.

"Hear them... what? Are they still screaming?" Peridot looked at Jalian, something between curiosity and confusion on her face.

Apparently, no, she couldn't hear anything at all.

The Cluster continued to chant though, as shapes struggled to take form below them.

Want to... Need to... Want to... want to... need to...

"The only thing I hear is the two of you nattering," Rufus said 'helpfully'.

He was more interested in a) controlling the drill and b) doing his best to film what was going on around them.

Priorities!

"They want. They need," Jalian said. "I don't know what."

As if in reply, all of the voices rose up at once, in a blinding cacophony of noise, all with one thing in mind.

Form!

It was a desperate compulsion to be whole, five millennia in the making.

Abandoned Crystal System Colony Planet Earth - Friday, Fandom Time

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