Peridot was not a sentimental person. As she plummeted downwards, her metal fingers trailing uselessly behind her, she did not experience any visions flashing before her eyes, nor any sadness, nor passionate regrets. Only a few thoughts went through her mind, and she held them clearly. As one of Homeworld's brightest kind, keeping a calm and clinical mind at all times was one of the few things she could pride herself on. Even a time where death was surely imminent.
Her first thought was a frustration. Not a wild, emotional frustration, but rather, a justified one at an avoidable situation. She did not know what had caused her hand flight to fail. Had her fingers been damaged during one of her scraps with those infernal crystal gems? Had she flown to a dangerous altitude, or even simply lost concentration, even for a moment? No, she decided. She surely would have noticed the first, and been mindful enough to avoid the second. And a fatal lapse in concentration was so unlikely it barely deserved to be mentioned as a plausible hypothesis. Therefore, she decided the most likely cause of this little incident was simply an oversight in the prototype technology of which much of her was contrived. That proved to be a small comfort. While she regretted having no means to send the data of an autopsy back to her home world, to stamp out whatever design flaw had had such ruinous consequences, Peridot was grateful that her failure was – mainly – beyond her control.
This brought her to her second thought- annoyance. As much as she would have liked to blame it all on her technology, Peridot was aware that it was she that took the risks. She had known that attempting to fly for long periods of time was unwise, with the technology capable of lifting her heavy frame still only knew. But she had given in to personal weakness. Ever since her escape from the clods that had cost her her foot, life on this planet had become even more difficult. She had had to walk at an uncomfortable angle, and every time her shortened limb pockmarked the earth, she would grit her teeth. Not only was stumping along the ground like some sort of corrupted gem demoralising, she had convinced herself it was also inefficient. And so she decided to primarily stick to flight. Which led her here. Ever since escaping that ship, she had flown north, knowing she was unlikely to have another narrow escape left in her. She didn't know exactly for how long she had flown before her finger-propellers had failed. It was, at this point, irrelevant. Though her final thoughts before impact flew through her head in just moments, she was nearly out of time. As the ground rushed to meet her, she had time for one final thought.
Circumstances being as they are, she wondered, and in the absence of any authorities, would a break in mandatory composure be permissible?
She decided yes, and closed her eyes.
The world was very painful, and very yellow.
Peridot was forced to amend her prior prediction. She was not dead.
Shaking off thoughts of how much she might have liked to be, Peridot tried to concentrate.
The first thing she noticed – and it was difficult to miss – was her headache. Her entire body throbbed, and her sight seemed to be obscured by a thick yellow film. Worst of all, however, was her head. Her ears rang, and a splitting pain scattered every thought she tried to make. Peridot knew she had to check her gem, but there was an even more pressing matter. Hissing, she took stock of her hands. Only two fingers remained telekinetically attached to her right hand, while her left had none. That was the hand she had been flying with, she remembered. She'd need to look for her remaining fingers later. Peridot gently raised her remaining fingers to her gem, and the pain redoubled. She remembered her best efforts to protect her gem before the impact. While she had avoided total destruction, she had not been able to save it from becoming deeply cracked. Running her fingers across its surface, she winced. It seemed to be missing a thin shard.
Between the pain wracking her body, and the newfound hopelessness of her situation, Peridot could not stop herself from beginning to weep. But still, she forced herself to continue her check up. Once she confirmed her four limbs remained attached, she tried to stand. Immediately upon trying to move her head the pain in her gem grew so intense it was all she could do to maintain her physical form. But as sore as the temptation to give in was, she resisted. She knew the dreadful consequence all peridots had to face if they retreated into a broken gem – the most pertinent and disastrous flaw in their design. And so, gritting her teeth against the pain, Peridot pushed herself to her feet and looked around. She could not tell if it was a function of her visor, or simply due to her feverish state, but through the yellow fog she could see small green shapes on the ground, glowing. She made her way to the smallest and brightest shape. It was her missing shard. Immediately after the discovery, her headache managed to worsen. The queasy feeling of seeing a piece of yourself on the ground before you, separate, could never be described. She picked it up with her two remaining fingers, and in her desperation, pressed it to her gem. To her surprise, the pain began to calm, and the fog clouding her sight and her mind started to clear. Holding the fragment in place, she staggered about. The other green shapes, she discovered, were her fingers. With every one she returned to its proper place, she felt a bit calmer, clearer, more encouraged, until she could find no more. Her right hand was still missing its ring finger, while her left had only three fingers left, and no thumb. But now she could focus.
Peridot looked around. She was surrounded by trees, as well as the scattered leaves and broken branches that marked her rude descent. She wondered if that was responsible for cushioning her fall enough to survive. She didn't know for how long she had been unconscious, but night had fallen, and her small expedition retrieving her missing pieces had left her exhausted. But still was she flushed by her small victories – and so she cobbled together a screen with her remaining fingers.
"This is Peridot, attempting to contact Homeworld…"
"Useless gem tech!" screeched Peridot. "Cinnabar take you! Why isn't anything working?"
It was foolish, of course, and Peridot knew exactly why the many tools that were part of her were behaving temperamentally. Her elation at surviving the fall had worn off in a few weeks, and once again, she found herself at breaking point.
"No signal… No signal… Ugh! Shouldn't they have sent a ship by now? This is Peridot, come in, Homeworld…"
Of course, there was nothing. As there had been ever since becoming stranded on this miserable planet. Peridot tried something else.
"Please actually have the communicator on you, for once… Jasper? Jasper, do you read me? What's your status?"
Peridot had been trying to contact Jasper almost as often as Homeworld, but had been having no more luck. Still, to Peridot's analytical mind, this had been useful in its own way; perhaps Jasper wasn't answering because she couldn't. Peridot had no idea what had become of her escort after the crash, and was eager for clues.
Still, they hardly did her any good now.
Peridot sighed and rose to her feet, rubbing the rough edge of her gem absentmindedly. With some check-ups on her limbs, and some adjustments to her form to accommodate her slightly different shape of gem, life had become much more bearable for her. Failing to keep her precious shard close to her gem always resulted in a headache, however.
Peridot's life was fast starting to lose direction. The status of her shipmates were entirely unknown, and she had no means of completing her mission. Her gem was broken, with no foreseeable means of mending it, she was missing several fingers, and, instead of a right foot, she had a lump of wood she had fashioned herself and fastened to her leg with some spare robonoid ichor she kept on her. She kept moving only in hope of a miracle, and out of fear of the crystal gems.
With every step she took, her makeshift foot jarred her leg. It wasn't much better than going with only one foot after all, but at least she wasn't falling over as often.
As Peridot walked, the sky began to darken into a stormy grey, and she glared upwards. Homeworld had long since mastered its own sky, of course. That huge golden sky, where there were no weather aberrations that had not been scheduled, could not have been different to the one she found herself under – which, she thought, was just as difficult and temperamental as the humans that lived under it.
Peridot stopped. She had just exited the trees, and saw, not far from there, what appeared to be a human settlement. She immediately put her mind to work. It wasn't the puny town that appeared to have been home to the crystal gems. No, it was much larger. And from what she had seen, humans didn't like building cities near each other. They were no different from gems in that regard. Therefore – Peridot hoped – she had come a far distance from her pursuers.
Her relief was short-lived, however, when the first drops of rain began to fall, causing her to jump in alarm. Peridot hated rain. She had only encountered it once before, back in the woods, where her fascination with the alien phenomena was matched only by her discomfort. She was nothing like Earth's primitive machines, which were destroyed by the smallest volumes of water, but she was vulnerable to it in her own way. It would run around her fingers and into her vulnerable joints, and the gashes in her protective plating she'd been unable to fix, and seep down her limbs. Of course she'd been built with the means to passively rid herself of foreign materials – she was a reconnaissance gem, after all. But that didn't prevent the seized up joints, the freezing insides, the jolts of pain, and the malfunctioning body parts. The night she'd discovered rain was the most miserable she had spent on this planet – shivering under whatever protection she had been able to scrounge together beneath the trees and watching in fascination and fear as her fingers twitched and legs jerked at the liquid dripping down her body. No, she was not eager to live that night again.
So, she quickly weighed up her options. There weren't many. Behind her lay the woods she'd just come from – but the trees had provided meagre protection from the downpour at best, and had grown even sparser as she reached their edge. Before her lay the human city. The buildings were tall, and tightly packed, and appeared to divert into many small streets and alleys – much more promising. But she knew that would involve enormous risks of her own. Peridot had no doubt that even in her weakened state she'd be more than a match for any human who spotted her, but exposure really was far too much trouble to be risked. And so, at a loss, she fretted, wondering what to do. But as the rain began to strengthen, Peridot bitterly noted she had little choice, and ran for the city, cursing.