"Helpdesk, this is Peridot."
"Why do you always say that whenever you answer the telecom?" Jasper demanded, not so much furiously, but an aggressive variant of curiously. "You say that like you're one member of a whole unit."
"Sigh, what's the problem, Jasper?"
"We're the only two Gems on this entire ship, there's no point in announcing yourself as a member of some nonexistent team!"
Peridot leaned forward, palm to her forehead. "I meant why are you calling me?"
"You need to fix the Holo Simulator system," Jasper replied flatly. "Now."
"The Holo system? What's wrong with it?"
"It's broken. You need to fix it. Right now."
Peridot sighed heavily again, activating her detachable fingers to form a hovering screen in front of her. "Have you tried turning it off and back on again?"
"It doesn't turn off. Fix it!"
"I can't fix it if I don't know what the problem is," she grumbled, grinding her teeth. "What do you mean it doesn't turn OFF? Did you mean to say it doesn't turn ON?"
"It doesn't turn OFF!" Jasper shouted, her voice creating extra feedback. Fortunately, Peridot had the foresight to pack her custom-modded headset for this trip, and she could adjust Jasper's volume as she saw fit.
"That's weird…" she replied, tapping the screen. "Guess I'll have to come see what happened."
"Why do you need to come see?" Jasper asked, a bit suddenly. "Did you forget how to shut it off remotely?"
"I'd have already done that if I could, you stupid clod!" she wanted to say, but didn't out of fear of being smashed into a pancake.
"It's...not responding," she said instead, with a definite restraint. "I'll have to come take a look at the physical console inside the Holo Simulator."
"Why do you have to come inside it?" Jasper pressed defensively. "Isn't there an...an external access panel or something?"
"It'll be much faster if I access the console from inside," Peridot explained, pulling herself to her feet, hovering screen in tow. "I'm on my way over."
"You can't go in there!" Jasper blurted out. "...I mean, there could be electrical problems. Or broken machinery. It isn't safe to go inside, you should definitely do it from the outside."
Peridot paused in the hallway. "...what did you DO?"
"None of your business," came the grumbled reply. "Just...do your job and don't ask any questions."
She waited another moment before shaking her head and carrying on down the hall toward the Holo Simulator room. Not even two days had passed on their many-day voyage to...whatever that planet was called, and she could already tell for certain that Jasper was going to drive completely her up the wall. If she hadn't felt she'd NEEDED a powerful escort for this mission, she wouldn't even have bothered asking a meathead like her…
...this had better not turn into one of those "it's gonna be a LONG trip" things, she griped to herself.
Jasper was already standing outside the Holo Simulator door, arms crossed and expression sour. Peridot made a couple of quick taps and swipes on her screen, then rejoined her fingers to their default position, cleared her throat, and gave her a half-hearted wave.
"Yo…".
Jasper raised an eyebrow, retaining as much menace as possible. "Fix it."
Peridot tried to counter her stare with one of her own, but her escort's massive presence loomed before her, intimidating and distracting and terrifying. Her gaze fell toward Jasper's massive biceps, all at once imagining the sheer crushing force a single flex of those muscles could produce. She wisely decided to avert her gaze.
"...right. Where's that console..."
She opened a small panel beside the door, entering a few basic commands and watching to see if the program would respond. She could feel Jasper's intense gaze burning a hole in the back of her head the whole time. She clearly wasn't happy about this. What in the name of Yellow Diamond had she DONE?
"This is hopeless," she finally announced. "I need to get inside."
"YOU'RE hopeless," Jasper replied snidely.
"Do you want the Holo Simulator fixed, or not?" Peridot asked, hands on her hips. "You obviously can't fix it yourself, and I'm telling you there's no way I can fix it without physically going in there. So what's it gonna be?"
"...fine," Jasper finally responded, stepping aside but not dropping her menace for even a moment. "But I'd better not hear a single word about anything you might see in there."
"I do this for a living, Jasper," she said with a sigh. "I'm pretty sure I won't be fazed by whatever weirdo fantasy sequence you broke the Simulator with."
"NOT A WORD!" Jasper growled.
Peridot shook her head and keyed in an access code to open the Simulator doors. The system responded, albeit quite slowly, and the doors finally parted. She stepped inside, mental shields up for whatever she was about to see.
Of all the things she had expected, this had not been one of them.
She was standing in a meticulously constructed war room, towering cobblestone walls adorned with swords, maces, axes, weapons of all shapes and sizes, from as small as her hand to three times her entire body mass. Illuminated tables were stacked high with books and maps with little colored pins stuck in them. Pictures of various Gems were hung all around, commanders and leaders and deserters and informants alike.
And there, center stage, stood a lone Gem, her afterimage flickering in the malfunctioning Simulator light. Anyone could have recognized her from that iconic tangled mass of bright pink curls...it was Rose Quartz, the Great Traitor, the Gem Renegade herself. She was slightly bent at the waist, likely in the middle of an action when the simulation froze, and her expression was a bit somber, but still firm and resolute. In her hands she held the breastplate from a mighty suit of armor stood up beside her, and, Peridot noted with some dismay, she was otherwise undressed to the undergarments.
Ahh, so that was it…
"It's for research," Jasper said, very suddenly right behind her.
"Gyah!" Peridot shouted, turning around and stumbling backwards, falling right through the simulated image of Rose. "Don't ever sneak up on me like that!"
"I wanted to study my nemesis in greater detail," Jasper continued, ignoring her for Rose. "I needed to understand everything about her. The weapons she would choose, the combat tactics she might employ, everything right down to the way she wore her armor. So I wanted to study everything about her in as extreme a depth I could create...".
"Mhmm, of course," Peridot grumbled, pulling herself back to her feet with an exasperated sigh. She brushed herself off, activated her finger-screen, and began composing a checklist of errors as she glanced around the room. "This simulation was FAR too detailed for a Holo Simulator of this size. The room has too many individual Objects, the textures are far too dithered, and you've got the color spectrum turned up to maximum. I can't even BELIEVE the resolution on this Rose Quartz model, no wonder the system locked up. I've never seen someone use a Holo System to render a Gem's butt in such sharp detail. Thanks for leaving me with that mental image, by the way. Now where's that console…".
She watched Jasper stare distantly at the simulation a little longer as she popped open the console panel on the floor and plugged in a hard reboot command. The image sputtered and sparked, then faded away as the system's lights dimmed and eventually shut off entirely.
"There, it's fixed," Peridot said brusquely, slamming the panel shut. "Wait at least 30 minutes before you use it again."
"Good," Jasper grunted. "Now get out."
"And don't ever use that resolution again," Peridot added, harshly. "Unless you WANT to drain the ship's entire battery and strand us out here in empty space, then be my guest."
She stood up and brushed off her knees again. "Now, I have a report to log, so try not to break anything else today."
"Don't you DARE file that report!" Jasper suddenly roared, thrusting an arm out to block her and nearly knocking off her head in the process. "NO ONE can ever know about this!"
"It's protocol, Jasper!" Peridot protested. "Are you telling me to break protocol now? Didn't I JUST ask you not to break anything else today?!"
"Think of it this way…" Jasper said, pressing herself nose-to-gem-nose with her, "If you file any sort of report on this little incident, I'll smash all of your precious floating fingers and then squish your head between my enormous thighs. Am I clear?"
Peridot took half a moment to look down and verify the enormity of Jasper's thighs. It was readily apparent that a head-squishing would indeed prove fatal between monstrous tree trunks such as hers. She huffed and nodded silently.
"Good," Jasper said, returning to full height. "Now get back in your room and make sure we're still on course. The sooner we get to this miserable planet, the better."
Peridot made a nasally "snerk" sound, rolled her eyes, and shuffled back down the hall toward her station. She had some choice words floating around that she really wanted to say, but out of mortal fear of being poofed into nothingness, she swallowed them back. Maybe she'd put them somewhere else, like a private log, when Jasper wasn't looking. Maybe she'd just have to bottle them away, as she'd done with other choice words in the past.
Whatever the case, at least her worst fears had been confirmed. It WAS going to be a long trip...
