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.]
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.]