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era_two_triangle) wrote2017-11-23 06:52 am
era_two_triangle) wrote2017-11-23 06:52 am
The Beta Kindergarten, Peridot's Earth, Thursday Morning Fandom Time
It was supposed to just be a quick visit.
Not Peridot's time back home, no. She was perfectly willing to take advantage of the way her reality kept falling out of temporal sync with Fandom in order to make certain she had as much time away from the island's confusing weirdness as possible. She'd already had a few weeks to kind of adjust to sharing the barn (her barn!) with a disgruntled Lapis Lazuli, who hadn't been terribly keen on the idea of sharing what had become her home with a Homeworld Gem.
It had worked out. Sure, Peridot's tape recorder with all her logs had been smashed in the process... but it had worked out. And they had gotten right to work making the barn their own. And marathonning entire seasons of Camp Pining Hearts as a bonding exercise.
No, the quick visit part was supposed to be Steven and Amethyst's trip to the barn in order to 'hang out,' as Steven put it. Peridot and Lapis had prepared all morning to show off their new invention, meep morps, which Peridot had explained was just like singing, but with things.
Steven had called it 'art.'
Morps was a much better word for it, anyway.
But Amethyst hadn't been impressed. Or even remotely amused. Not even at Peridot's brilliant (they weren't) jokes and her remarkable (it wasn't) one Gem metal band performance. And so they'd arranged for a trip to the Beta Kindergarten to cheer her up. Just get in there, demonstrate the inferiority of the kindergarten that Jasper had been made in, and leave with a happy Amethyst so they could get back to their morps and their hanging out.
That hadn't worked quite as intended.
"We could beat them! If we stay together!"
Jasper had been there. She'd been building an army of fusion experiments and corrupted Gem monsters, hollowing out the exit holes in the red sandstone and using them as prison cells, with the spare parts from long abandoned injector units forming wickedly sharp metal cage bars. She and Amethyst had fought. Steven and Amethyst had fused, and the fusion now known as Smoky Quartz had beaten Jasper soundly. They'd won.
Even when Jasper had grabbed one of the corrupted Gems, one of the massive canid snow monsters, and forced her to fuse, too. Smoky had still won, and the snow monster had torn herself free of the fusion that Jasper had forced upon her and had run away.
But now...
"Nobody I fuse with ever wants to stay..." Jasper stared after the monster, and then doubled forward in sudden pain. "Ugh!"
One of Jasper's arms had shifted into a massive paw, and greenish swirls and spikes were pushing their way out from her usually orange arm. Peridot recoiled a little at the sight.
"Eww, that's disgusting!"
"That's..." Smoky stared at Jasper in horror. "Corruption."
And then they unfused, back into Steven and Amethyst. Peridot watched as Steven licked his hand - an unorthodox but effective magical healing method - and made his way toward Jasper, in the hopes that he could reverse the corruption before it took her over. Jasper had snarled and swiped that clawed paw at him in retaliation, tearing his shirt and prompting Peridot to re-double her efforts to rip free one of the metal bars that was rammed into the stone.
It didn't budge. Peridot sighed and ran down to join Steven and Amethyst, instead.
"I see how you do it now Rose," Jasper was saying, keeping her distance from Steven as the corruption continued to twist her body. "You want Gems after they're worthless, you wait until after they've lost, because when you're at the bottom, you'll follow anyone. That makes you feel like less of a failure. Hah!" She gestured toward Peridot as she noticed her there. "Just look at this one! You've stripped her of everything! Her limb enhancers, her status, her dignity."
"I still have one of those things," Peridot protested, though her tone was mild. She shrugged. Somehow, all this seemed like less of an insult. She had Jasper had spent enough time together on their way to destroy the Earth before, she knew Jasper's angry posturing well enough now to not be bothered by it.
"How can you side with Rose Quartz?!" Jasper, on the other hand, didn't seem quite so calm at Peridot's answer. "Why? Why protect this useless shell of a planet?"
The crazy thing was... Peridot actually had an answer.
Mark that on the long list of things she had never figured would happen, back when she'd first been stranded on this world.
"It's not a shell," she protested, furrowing her brow and looking around the kindergarten, "there's so much life. Living here, that's what I'm doing! I'm living here! I've been learning new things about myself all the time! Like how I can make metal do my bidding!" The metal rod she had been trying to move decided to use that moment to fall harmlessly to the ground behind her. Thanks for that, metal rod. "The point being... Earth can set you free."
"Earth is a prison," Jasper spat, unmoved by Peridot's selfless display of passion and sincerity. Green circles and spikes twisted their way up Jasper's other arm, creeping steadily over her as her upset grew. "I got out because I'm better than this place." She turned to look at Steven, a vicious glint in her eye. "I only came back to finish you off."
"Try not to move," Steven pleaded. Even while Jasper was threatening to kill him, he wanted the best. No wonder he'd won Peridot over.
Jasper, though... She had having none of it, hauling herself to her feet to point a twisting finger at him.
"You can't manipulate me, Rose Quartz!"
"I-I'm not manipulating," Steven protested, wide-eyed and confused. "I'm trying to help!"
"Help...? Help?! I've been fighting from the second I broke free of the Earth's crust, because of what YOU did to my colony!" More spikes pushed through Jasper's body, forming banded green stalagmites from her shoulders, from her head. Her tall stance broke as her legs shifted, and she fell back to all fours. "Because of what YOU did to my planet!" She clawed at the ground, like an animal in a cage, and then slammed her fist against the stone ground, leaving deep cracks underneath it. "Because of what YOU did to my Diamond!"
"I..." Steven held up his hands. "Yellow Diamond?"
"Wha..." And for the first time since coming to Earth, Jasper looked like she was finally forced to confront the possibility that Steven was not, in fact, the same person as the Gem who made half of him. She recoiled, and then screamed desperately at him as the corruption spread over her face. "My Diamond! Your Diamond! Pink Diamond!!"
She doubled over in clear agony, spikes bursting out of her body all at once, and when she looked up again, face twisted into the same eyeless snarl that the snow monster's own face had bore, there was nothing left of Jasper but the rage. She roared, and then threw herself forward at a reeling Steven.
Peridot didn't think, she just threw her arms forward, and the shard of metal that had fallen behind her flew, piercing Jasper's chest, ripping its way all the way through her body, leaving that twisted spike showing among all the other spikes along Jasper's back.
Jasper froze, then turned her face down toward the piece still piercing her chest.
She wobbled a little.
And then her body exploded into smoke, the orange Gem that was truly her falling harmlessly to the broken ground beneath her.
...
"You're..." Peridot was somewhat at a loss, there, about as surprised as everyone else that she'd been the one to stop Jasper in the wake of all of that. "Welcome!"
Yeah. Yeah! She was the hero, here, right? She'd saved the day?
Amethyst sighed, and went to gather Jasper's Gem carefully in her hands.
"C'mon, sis," she murmured, creating a bubble around the gemstone, and then sending it to the temple.
The walk to the warp pad back to the barn was... mostly quiet. Peridot was bursting with enough enthusiasm to make up for Steven and Amethyst's own subdued moods.
"When we get to the barn, I'm building a giant metal yo-yo!" She threw her arms in the air to punctuate her point, clearly thrilled about Smoky Quartz's weapon of choice. "Amethyst, Steven, you'll have to catch and throw it for me."
"I don't wanna do anything for like a month," Amethyst protested as they turned the corner to the front of the barn, and then stopped short.
"Uh."
Garnet, Pearl, and Lapis Lazuli were all standing there, with five Ruby soldiers all contained in water bubbles suspended off the ground, courtesy of Lapis.
"Ugh," Amethyst muttered.
Peridot... was going to let the Crystal Gems deal with this one. She'd already saved the day enough today, thanks.
[OOC: Little bit of canon catchup time! Just a little bit, though. This post was taken from the Steven Universe episodes Beta and Earthlings. There will be more to come, mostly as I get brain to scrape together posts. Two more days of work-crazy, and then I can sleep for a week... NFB for distance, but open if anybody wants to give 'Dot a phone call or something!]
Not Peridot's time back home, no. She was perfectly willing to take advantage of the way her reality kept falling out of temporal sync with Fandom in order to make certain she had as much time away from the island's confusing weirdness as possible. She'd already had a few weeks to kind of adjust to sharing the barn (her barn!) with a disgruntled Lapis Lazuli, who hadn't been terribly keen on the idea of sharing what had become her home with a Homeworld Gem.
It had worked out. Sure, Peridot's tape recorder with all her logs had been smashed in the process... but it had worked out. And they had gotten right to work making the barn their own. And marathonning entire seasons of Camp Pining Hearts as a bonding exercise.
No, the quick visit part was supposed to be Steven and Amethyst's trip to the barn in order to 'hang out,' as Steven put it. Peridot and Lapis had prepared all morning to show off their new invention, meep morps, which Peridot had explained was just like singing, but with things.
Steven had called it 'art.'
Morps was a much better word for it, anyway.
But Amethyst hadn't been impressed. Or even remotely amused. Not even at Peridot's brilliant (they weren't) jokes and her remarkable (it wasn't) one Gem metal band performance. And so they'd arranged for a trip to the Beta Kindergarten to cheer her up. Just get in there, demonstrate the inferiority of the kindergarten that Jasper had been made in, and leave with a happy Amethyst so they could get back to their morps and their hanging out.
That hadn't worked quite as intended.
"We could beat them! If we stay together!"
Jasper had been there. She'd been building an army of fusion experiments and corrupted Gem monsters, hollowing out the exit holes in the red sandstone and using them as prison cells, with the spare parts from long abandoned injector units forming wickedly sharp metal cage bars. She and Amethyst had fought. Steven and Amethyst had fused, and the fusion now known as Smoky Quartz had beaten Jasper soundly. They'd won.
Even when Jasper had grabbed one of the corrupted Gems, one of the massive canid snow monsters, and forced her to fuse, too. Smoky had still won, and the snow monster had torn herself free of the fusion that Jasper had forced upon her and had run away.
But now...
"Nobody I fuse with ever wants to stay..." Jasper stared after the monster, and then doubled forward in sudden pain. "Ugh!"
One of Jasper's arms had shifted into a massive paw, and greenish swirls and spikes were pushing their way out from her usually orange arm. Peridot recoiled a little at the sight.
"Eww, that's disgusting!"
"That's..." Smoky stared at Jasper in horror. "Corruption."
And then they unfused, back into Steven and Amethyst. Peridot watched as Steven licked his hand - an unorthodox but effective magical healing method - and made his way toward Jasper, in the hopes that he could reverse the corruption before it took her over. Jasper had snarled and swiped that clawed paw at him in retaliation, tearing his shirt and prompting Peridot to re-double her efforts to rip free one of the metal bars that was rammed into the stone.
It didn't budge. Peridot sighed and ran down to join Steven and Amethyst, instead.
"I see how you do it now Rose," Jasper was saying, keeping her distance from Steven as the corruption continued to twist her body. "You want Gems after they're worthless, you wait until after they've lost, because when you're at the bottom, you'll follow anyone. That makes you feel like less of a failure. Hah!" She gestured toward Peridot as she noticed her there. "Just look at this one! You've stripped her of everything! Her limb enhancers, her status, her dignity."
"I still have one of those things," Peridot protested, though her tone was mild. She shrugged. Somehow, all this seemed like less of an insult. She had Jasper had spent enough time together on their way to destroy the Earth before, she knew Jasper's angry posturing well enough now to not be bothered by it.
"How can you side with Rose Quartz?!" Jasper, on the other hand, didn't seem quite so calm at Peridot's answer. "Why? Why protect this useless shell of a planet?"
The crazy thing was... Peridot actually had an answer.
Mark that on the long list of things she had never figured would happen, back when she'd first been stranded on this world.
"It's not a shell," she protested, furrowing her brow and looking around the kindergarten, "there's so much life. Living here, that's what I'm doing! I'm living here! I've been learning new things about myself all the time! Like how I can make metal do my bidding!" The metal rod she had been trying to move decided to use that moment to fall harmlessly to the ground behind her. Thanks for that, metal rod. "The point being... Earth can set you free."
"Earth is a prison," Jasper spat, unmoved by Peridot's selfless display of passion and sincerity. Green circles and spikes twisted their way up Jasper's other arm, creeping steadily over her as her upset grew. "I got out because I'm better than this place." She turned to look at Steven, a vicious glint in her eye. "I only came back to finish you off."
"Try not to move," Steven pleaded. Even while Jasper was threatening to kill him, he wanted the best. No wonder he'd won Peridot over.
Jasper, though... She had having none of it, hauling herself to her feet to point a twisting finger at him.
"You can't manipulate me, Rose Quartz!"
"I-I'm not manipulating," Steven protested, wide-eyed and confused. "I'm trying to help!"
"Help...? Help?! I've been fighting from the second I broke free of the Earth's crust, because of what YOU did to my colony!" More spikes pushed through Jasper's body, forming banded green stalagmites from her shoulders, from her head. Her tall stance broke as her legs shifted, and she fell back to all fours. "Because of what YOU did to my planet!" She clawed at the ground, like an animal in a cage, and then slammed her fist against the stone ground, leaving deep cracks underneath it. "Because of what YOU did to my Diamond!"
"I..." Steven held up his hands. "Yellow Diamond?"
"Wha..." And for the first time since coming to Earth, Jasper looked like she was finally forced to confront the possibility that Steven was not, in fact, the same person as the Gem who made half of him. She recoiled, and then screamed desperately at him as the corruption spread over her face. "My Diamond! Your Diamond! Pink Diamond!!"
She doubled over in clear agony, spikes bursting out of her body all at once, and when she looked up again, face twisted into the same eyeless snarl that the snow monster's own face had bore, there was nothing left of Jasper but the rage. She roared, and then threw herself forward at a reeling Steven.
Peridot didn't think, she just threw her arms forward, and the shard of metal that had fallen behind her flew, piercing Jasper's chest, ripping its way all the way through her body, leaving that twisted spike showing among all the other spikes along Jasper's back.
Jasper froze, then turned her face down toward the piece still piercing her chest.
She wobbled a little.
And then her body exploded into smoke, the orange Gem that was truly her falling harmlessly to the broken ground beneath her.
...
"You're..." Peridot was somewhat at a loss, there, about as surprised as everyone else that she'd been the one to stop Jasper in the wake of all of that. "Welcome!"
Yeah. Yeah! She was the hero, here, right? She'd saved the day?
Amethyst sighed, and went to gather Jasper's Gem carefully in her hands.
"C'mon, sis," she murmured, creating a bubble around the gemstone, and then sending it to the temple.
The walk to the warp pad back to the barn was... mostly quiet. Peridot was bursting with enough enthusiasm to make up for Steven and Amethyst's own subdued moods.
"When we get to the barn, I'm building a giant metal yo-yo!" She threw her arms in the air to punctuate her point, clearly thrilled about Smoky Quartz's weapon of choice. "Amethyst, Steven, you'll have to catch and throw it for me."
"I don't wanna do anything for like a month," Amethyst protested as they turned the corner to the front of the barn, and then stopped short.
"Uh."
Garnet, Pearl, and Lapis Lazuli were all standing there, with five Ruby soldiers all contained in water bubbles suspended off the ground, courtesy of Lapis.
"Ugh," Amethyst muttered.
Peridot... was going to let the Crystal Gems deal with this one. She'd already saved the day enough today, thanks.
[OOC: Little bit of canon catchup time! Just a little bit, though. This post was taken from the Steven Universe episodes Beta and Earthlings. There will be more to come, mostly as I get brain to scrape together posts. Two more days of work-crazy, and then I can sleep for a week... NFB for distance, but open if anybody wants to give 'Dot a phone call or something!]