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era_two_triangle) wrote2017-11-24 07:37 am
era_two_triangle) wrote2017-11-24 07:37 am
The Beta Kindergarten, Peridot's Earth, Friday Morning Fandom Time
So, Jasper wasn't a problem anymore.
That still left cleanup in the Beta Kindergarten to deal with. Fusion experiments and corrupted Gem monsters alike were still in those makeshift prison cells, needing to be poofed and bubbled, and since Peridot knew more about the kindergartens than anybody else on all of Earth, the Crystal Gems had brought her along.
And it had been going well, too, with Garnet ripping the bars free of the cages, and then her, Amethyst, and Pearl heading into the cells to poof and bubble the monsters inside.
"It's a little disturbing that Jasper was just keeping these corrupted Gems in cages," Pearl noted as they stepped out of another recently emptied cage.
"Is that what we're doing?" Amethyst looked up at Pearl curiously.
"That's different," Pearl protested.
"They're cared for in the stasis of the bubble," Garnet explained, coming up behind them. "As long as they're bubbled, they can't hurt anyone, and they won't suffer. It's what Rose wanted."
Not far off, Steven and Peridot were looking into the last of the cages, where a corrupted Gem that looked something like a giant ball of fur on legs with one massive mouth... ran into a wall and then fell on the floor and twitched.
Peridot laughed. She couldn't help it... it was just so absurd.
"I can't believe these dumb things used to be Gems!"
"Are corrupted Gems not like this on Homeworld?"
Peridot looked at Steven with a little frown and shrugged her shoulders.
"We don't have anything like this on Homeworld."
Which just made Jasper's words about how this planet destroyed everything it touched drift through Peridot's mind again. She shoook them away as the Crystal Gems prepared to open the cage to get the corruption out, and then watched as the bars were removed and the monster pretty much ran the Crystal Gems over in a bid to get away. Amethyst roped its leg with her whip, and was dragged off. Pearl tried to throw a spear at it to retaliate, but only managed to get Amethyst thrown back at her, taking her and Garnet both down and letting the monster run straight up a sandstone wall to escape.
Which meant Peridot was laughing again.
"That was terrible!"
"This is harder than it looks, you know," Pearl protested, picking herself up again.
"How," Peridot asked, "could you all be outsmarted by that thing?"
It had been bashing its face against a wall like two minutes ago, guys.
The conversation continued that way until it was agreed that Peridot was more than welcome to capture the mindless corrupted thing if she thought she could do it better, and the Crystal Gems went, leaving Peridot and Steven alone in the kindergarten with the monster.
_____
Peridot's first flawless Peri Plan was elegant in its simplicity. The monster was just standing under one of the Gem drill injectors that was scattered around the kindergarten. She would just use her metal powers to dislodge the clamps holding it in place, and the whole thing would fall onto the monster, poofing it.
Four clamps later and the drill was still lodged in the rock, holding on by the smallest point of the drill. The monster ran off, and Peridot made her way over to kick at the wall in frustration.
She was rewarded by an avalanche of boulders directly on top of her head.
And then, when she was free of those, the drill fell on her, too.
_____
The second Peri Plan saw Peridot's skills as a technician at work. She'd cannibalized the injector to make a rudimentary cannon. All they had to do was fire a boulder at the monster when it stopped to throw its tongues into the air mockingly.
For the demonstration run, the cannon worked perfectly, sending a boulder flying magestically off into the sky. But when the monster was within Peridot's sights, the cannon didn't fire.
And then it backfired, sending Peridot careening back into a wall.
And more boulders falling on her head.
_____
The third plan was to just push a boulder off a cliff on top of the monster.
That way, they couldn't have boulders fall on them.
...
The monster came up behind them, startled them off the cliff, and then pushed the boulder off after them. It landed on Peridot, rolled away with her stuck to it, made its way around a loop in the rock, and then, when she'd been knocked free of it by Steven in a protective bubble, the boulder stopped halfway through its second loop and fell on her again.
"You don't poof easily, huh?"
Her legs were all she could move, sticking out from under the boulder while the rest of her was a smooshed imprint in the sandstone ground, but Peridot could still reply with a pained, "Us Peridots are tougher than we look."
_____
"Yes! This is going to work! This is going to be perfect! This is going to be..."
It was nighttime, now. Steven was roasting marshmallows over a campfire he'd built. Peridot was gushing over her newest, greatest plan, just before the whole thing fell apart in front of her.
"... A waste of my time." Peridot scowled as she stalked back over to Steven. "Why can't I master this?"
"Aw, Peridot," Steven sympathized, "it's okay. Even if none of your Peri-plans worked, at least they were really funny. The others will probably think so, too, when we go back and get 'em."
"Go back? Let it be known that I, Peridot, refuse to move forward or back until I am victorious."
"Right." Steven sounded unconvinced.
"I don't get it. I'm smarter than your average Peridot. How did I fail today against some barely functional, stupid, cloddy, dumb-dumb?!"
"Hey, hey, corruptions aren't dumb. They just think a little different, that's all."
Peridot stopped in her pacing to just sort of squint at Steven at that.
"Okay, just to make sure my Earth vocabulary is correct on this... let's say I'm a monster. I spend all my time slamming my face into hard objects and throwing my tongues in the air for fun. How am I not... dumb?"
"Well," Steven reasoned, "she must be doing something right. She hasn't fallen for any of your Peri-plans."
"It's luck! Nothing that thing does makes any sense!" Peridot was rewarded for this outburst with a handful of marshmallows to the face. "Hey."
Steven waved another marshmallow around, and then threw it. And then another. And a handful more as Peridot growled her protest, and then broke into a yell.
"Why are you bombarding me with your confectionery puff rocks?!"
"To show you what it's like to be a monster!" And now Steven was yelling back, throwing handful after handful of marshmallows at Peridot's face. "Pretend I'm a freaked-out human screaming at you in fear! Pretend I'm an Earth animal chasing you away from your first safe hiding spot! Pretend I'm an angry green Gem trying to poof you! This is life for you now. Endless suffering!"
Peridot couldn't take it anymore. She freaked out, yelled, and grabbed the bag, snarling and shaking it around in her teeth in a fit of anger.
Proving Steven's point.
"There! You see?"
"... Yeah?"
"What you're doing makes total sense! You remember what it was like to have everything important taken away? Being under attack? Feeling trapped? You were frustrated. So is she! Why don't you try thinking about all of this from her point of view?"
Hmm...
_____
It was daytime again. The corrupted Gem was in the distance, throwing her tongues up in the air while Peridot and Steven watched from a safe vantage point.
"Ugh," Peridot muttered, "I just can't take this dirty tongue flapper seriously."
"Think like a monster," Steven suggested.
Peridot considered that for a second. And then a few moments later, she was carefully approaching the monster, crouching down along the way, and occasionally springing up to throw her own tongue into the air. Which actually seemed to appeal to the creature. It bobbled along, mimicking Peridot's motions. In fact, playtime was going great until Peridot kicked it, throwing it into another frenzy.
This time it was Peridot and the monster who fell over the edge of the cliff together.
And at the bottom, it was Peridot, climbing out of the crater they made, holding the creature's Gem in her hand.
"I did it..."
It was right about then that Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl stepped around a corner.
"Oh, hey," Steven said, waving to them. "You're back!"
"Eh," Garnet said with a shrug, "we never really left."
"We knew it would be funny," Amethyst agreed.
"Future Vision," Garnet explained.
Peridot stared at the trio in disbelief.
"Y-you were watching the whole time?" She held up the corrupted Gem's gemstone, looking it over as she thought. "I told you I could do it. But I have to admit, it was more difficult than expected. This Corrupted Gem was truly an adversary worthy of my skill."
And then she almost staggered away as a green bubble formed out of her hands around the Gem.
"Whoa!" Steven leaned in for a better look. "Peridot!"
"Nice bubble, Peri," Amethyst enthused.
"W-what do I do with it?"
"Send it off," Garnet replied.
"Just," Steven mimed a bubble in his hand, and then bopped at the top of it with his other one. "Tap the top."
Peridot mimicked the motion, and the bubble stretched, and then vanished.
"So, where did it go?"
Steven smiled a little.
"Home."
_____
Back on Fandom Island, on Peridot's side of her dorm room, a green bubble appeared, a rectangular blue-green Gem nestled safely inside.
[OOC: And another chunk of canon catchup out of the way, with more yet to come... at some point. This one was taken from the season five episode, Kindergarten Kid.]
That still left cleanup in the Beta Kindergarten to deal with. Fusion experiments and corrupted Gem monsters alike were still in those makeshift prison cells, needing to be poofed and bubbled, and since Peridot knew more about the kindergartens than anybody else on all of Earth, the Crystal Gems had brought her along.
And it had been going well, too, with Garnet ripping the bars free of the cages, and then her, Amethyst, and Pearl heading into the cells to poof and bubble the monsters inside.
"It's a little disturbing that Jasper was just keeping these corrupted Gems in cages," Pearl noted as they stepped out of another recently emptied cage.
"Is that what we're doing?" Amethyst looked up at Pearl curiously.
"That's different," Pearl protested.
"They're cared for in the stasis of the bubble," Garnet explained, coming up behind them. "As long as they're bubbled, they can't hurt anyone, and they won't suffer. It's what Rose wanted."
Not far off, Steven and Peridot were looking into the last of the cages, where a corrupted Gem that looked something like a giant ball of fur on legs with one massive mouth... ran into a wall and then fell on the floor and twitched.
Peridot laughed. She couldn't help it... it was just so absurd.
"I can't believe these dumb things used to be Gems!"
"Are corrupted Gems not like this on Homeworld?"
Peridot looked at Steven with a little frown and shrugged her shoulders.
"We don't have anything like this on Homeworld."
Which just made Jasper's words about how this planet destroyed everything it touched drift through Peridot's mind again. She shoook them away as the Crystal Gems prepared to open the cage to get the corruption out, and then watched as the bars were removed and the monster pretty much ran the Crystal Gems over in a bid to get away. Amethyst roped its leg with her whip, and was dragged off. Pearl tried to throw a spear at it to retaliate, but only managed to get Amethyst thrown back at her, taking her and Garnet both down and letting the monster run straight up a sandstone wall to escape.
Which meant Peridot was laughing again.
"That was terrible!"
"This is harder than it looks, you know," Pearl protested, picking herself up again.
"How," Peridot asked, "could you all be outsmarted by that thing?"
It had been bashing its face against a wall like two minutes ago, guys.
The conversation continued that way until it was agreed that Peridot was more than welcome to capture the mindless corrupted thing if she thought she could do it better, and the Crystal Gems went, leaving Peridot and Steven alone in the kindergarten with the monster.
Peridot's first flawless Peri Plan was elegant in its simplicity. The monster was just standing under one of the Gem drill injectors that was scattered around the kindergarten. She would just use her metal powers to dislodge the clamps holding it in place, and the whole thing would fall onto the monster, poofing it.
Four clamps later and the drill was still lodged in the rock, holding on by the smallest point of the drill. The monster ran off, and Peridot made her way over to kick at the wall in frustration.
She was rewarded by an avalanche of boulders directly on top of her head.
And then, when she was free of those, the drill fell on her, too.
The second Peri Plan saw Peridot's skills as a technician at work. She'd cannibalized the injector to make a rudimentary cannon. All they had to do was fire a boulder at the monster when it stopped to throw its tongues into the air mockingly.
For the demonstration run, the cannon worked perfectly, sending a boulder flying magestically off into the sky. But when the monster was within Peridot's sights, the cannon didn't fire.
And then it backfired, sending Peridot careening back into a wall.
And more boulders falling on her head.
The third plan was to just push a boulder off a cliff on top of the monster.
That way, they couldn't have boulders fall on them.
...
The monster came up behind them, startled them off the cliff, and then pushed the boulder off after them. It landed on Peridot, rolled away with her stuck to it, made its way around a loop in the rock, and then, when she'd been knocked free of it by Steven in a protective bubble, the boulder stopped halfway through its second loop and fell on her again.
"You don't poof easily, huh?"
Her legs were all she could move, sticking out from under the boulder while the rest of her was a smooshed imprint in the sandstone ground, but Peridot could still reply with a pained, "Us Peridots are tougher than we look."
"Yes! This is going to work! This is going to be perfect! This is going to be..."
It was nighttime, now. Steven was roasting marshmallows over a campfire he'd built. Peridot was gushing over her newest, greatest plan, just before the whole thing fell apart in front of her.
"... A waste of my time." Peridot scowled as she stalked back over to Steven. "Why can't I master this?"
"Aw, Peridot," Steven sympathized, "it's okay. Even if none of your Peri-plans worked, at least they were really funny. The others will probably think so, too, when we go back and get 'em."
"Go back? Let it be known that I, Peridot, refuse to move forward or back until I am victorious."
"Right." Steven sounded unconvinced.
"I don't get it. I'm smarter than your average Peridot. How did I fail today against some barely functional, stupid, cloddy, dumb-dumb?!"
"Hey, hey, corruptions aren't dumb. They just think a little different, that's all."
Peridot stopped in her pacing to just sort of squint at Steven at that.
"Okay, just to make sure my Earth vocabulary is correct on this... let's say I'm a monster. I spend all my time slamming my face into hard objects and throwing my tongues in the air for fun. How am I not... dumb?"
"Well," Steven reasoned, "she must be doing something right. She hasn't fallen for any of your Peri-plans."
"It's luck! Nothing that thing does makes any sense!" Peridot was rewarded for this outburst with a handful of marshmallows to the face. "Hey."
Steven waved another marshmallow around, and then threw it. And then another. And a handful more as Peridot growled her protest, and then broke into a yell.
"Why are you bombarding me with your confectionery puff rocks?!"
"To show you what it's like to be a monster!" And now Steven was yelling back, throwing handful after handful of marshmallows at Peridot's face. "Pretend I'm a freaked-out human screaming at you in fear! Pretend I'm an Earth animal chasing you away from your first safe hiding spot! Pretend I'm an angry green Gem trying to poof you! This is life for you now. Endless suffering!"
Peridot couldn't take it anymore. She freaked out, yelled, and grabbed the bag, snarling and shaking it around in her teeth in a fit of anger.
Proving Steven's point.
"There! You see?"
"... Yeah?"
"What you're doing makes total sense! You remember what it was like to have everything important taken away? Being under attack? Feeling trapped? You were frustrated. So is she! Why don't you try thinking about all of this from her point of view?"
Hmm...
It was daytime again. The corrupted Gem was in the distance, throwing her tongues up in the air while Peridot and Steven watched from a safe vantage point.
"Ugh," Peridot muttered, "I just can't take this dirty tongue flapper seriously."
"Think like a monster," Steven suggested.
Peridot considered that for a second. And then a few moments later, she was carefully approaching the monster, crouching down along the way, and occasionally springing up to throw her own tongue into the air. Which actually seemed to appeal to the creature. It bobbled along, mimicking Peridot's motions. In fact, playtime was going great until Peridot kicked it, throwing it into another frenzy.
This time it was Peridot and the monster who fell over the edge of the cliff together.
And at the bottom, it was Peridot, climbing out of the crater they made, holding the creature's Gem in her hand.
"I did it..."
It was right about then that Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl stepped around a corner.
"Oh, hey," Steven said, waving to them. "You're back!"
"Eh," Garnet said with a shrug, "we never really left."
"We knew it would be funny," Amethyst agreed.
"Future Vision," Garnet explained.
Peridot stared at the trio in disbelief.
"Y-you were watching the whole time?" She held up the corrupted Gem's gemstone, looking it over as she thought. "I told you I could do it. But I have to admit, it was more difficult than expected. This Corrupted Gem was truly an adversary worthy of my skill."
And then she almost staggered away as a green bubble formed out of her hands around the Gem.
"Whoa!" Steven leaned in for a better look. "Peridot!"
"Nice bubble, Peri," Amethyst enthused.
"W-what do I do with it?"
"Send it off," Garnet replied.
"Just," Steven mimed a bubble in his hand, and then bopped at the top of it with his other one. "Tap the top."
Peridot mimicked the motion, and the bubble stretched, and then vanished.
"So, where did it go?"
Steven smiled a little.
"Home."
Back on Fandom Island, on Peridot's side of her dorm room, a green bubble appeared, a rectangular blue-green Gem nestled safely inside.
[OOC: And another chunk of canon catchup out of the way, with more yet to come... at some point. This one was taken from the season five episode, Kindergarten Kid.]