Note: These are side-stories to Tales from Beta Kindergarten. This fits within the time scale set in chapter 4 of Part I: Implantation. Sorry, guys, I just really wanted to do something happy for Mist and e1!Peridot before they parted ways, and also explain canon!Jasper. Canon!Jasper being a beta quartz is jaspuppy's idea.

There were so many things Peridot could be working on. She could be doing dexterity exercises, or triple-checking the programming on the injectors, or quadruple-checking the Beta site injection formulas if she really wanted to disappoint herself. Given that Emerald had formally written off the Beta Kindergarten as a loss, she let Mist experiment with the formulation, too. What could it hurt when Mist knew enough to put most peridots to shame by now?

She was tinkering with one of the injectors now, and Peridot couldn't quite stifle the wellspring of pride as she watched a pearl do the work of a peridot in an arid environment that some would complain about. My finest student is a pearl. What would they think back home? The thought soon became uncomfortable as she remembered that too many defects in a gem was adequate grounds for shattering or harvesting. There wasn't anything wrong with Mist's gem, but Peridot knew she would be taken from her if anyone found out how far she had strayed from her designated purpose. It was why she said nothing when Mist ran off to relay information to the rebels. If they were successful, then Mist had a place where she could be herself. If they weren't, she could find them a place elsewhere. The older colonies were looser about the rules because the brighter, rarer gems always gravitated towards the new and exciting and that left the lower class gems a certain amount of freedom. But was that really the life Peridot wanted? She had been a Kindergartener for a good fifty thousand years and spent twenty-five thousand years before that as a general technician. She had spent so long in the service of gemkind that she found it difficult to imagine anything else. Where would she be without that purpose?

"Are you thinking dark thoughts again," Mist asked as she pulled off the glove that protected her gem from sparks and loose shrapnel. Something Peridot had to customize from similar gloves meant for peridots with hand gems. Mist set the glove aside and stepped across the baked remains of a stream's floodplain to plant a light kiss on the tip of her nose. "Whatever it is, it's not that bad."

If only. Peridot's arms settled around Mist's waist to draw her closer, which got her an infectious giggle. The giggle brought a brief smile to her face, even as Mist tried to smooth the persistent wrinkles between Peridot's eyebrows. "What are you working on?"

"Well," Mist began with a grin and a blatantly flirty flutter of her eyelashes, "I was reading your old reports and papers—you really are brilliant—and thought, what if we could create a beta quartz here? You already said that the injectors are reused and this Kindergarten is a waste of time and resources, so what could we possibly lose?"

It was an intriguing thought, but the heat and pressure requirements... "At least one injector. These are general use injectors, they're not that heat-resistant. And beta quartzes are usually made in rhyolite."

"But rhyolite is silicate-rich, which is similar enough to what we have here, chemistry-wise. And given that the heat issue is related to the melt tanks and the heating coils, I thought maybe we could line the melt tanks in ceramic tile for convection and heat resistance and re-calibrate the coils to put out more heat." Mist paused, looking thoughtful. "Oh! And pressure. The pressurization valves can be re-calibrated, too. The injector will be ruined when it's done, but we weren't going to use it again anyway."

Peridot grinned; of course Mist considered everything. "It's never been done in sandstone before, so I expect the beta quartz to stabilize into a pseudomorph of jasper. Probably the strongest jasper that's ever existed. Congratulations, my clever star, you've thought of something new."

"We're going to do it, then?" Mist's eyes practically twinkled as her arms settled around Peridot's shoulders.

Rather than answer her immediately, Peridot arranged her arms so that she could lift the pearl up and look up at her. Another transgression, another secret: a peridot lifting up a pearl. Mist squeaked in surprise at the sudden motion, but soon enough she broke into another giggle. "Of course we're going to do it! Let's burn through the carnelian mixtures so we can reuse the injectors for all the beta-type jaspers you could want."

Mist's delighted grin faded into that soft, loving smile of hers, and nothing else mattered. She leaned in until their noses touched. "I love you."

"I lo—" Peridot couldn't say more, as Mist continued the motion and began kissing her. And suddenly she wasn't, anymore.

She blinked and looked around, and wondered at the fact that she was now seeing through four eyes rather than two. And she was so much taller, and there was a lizard on the cliff far above either Mist or Peridot's line of sight. She reached out and... yes, that was Mist's gem on the back of her hand. She touched the back of her neck and found Peridot's. What on earth...?

"Fusion." Her voice was halfway between Peridot's age-deepened, slightly nasally tones and Mist's pleasant soprano. She raked her—theirs?—mind for a name, and it seemed to come naturally. "I'm Jadeite."

There was a sudden up-welling of panic within her as she thought more, and some other part tried to reassure her that it was okay, that this happened before, that—

And suddenly Peridot was back to herself. The panic abated slightly once she could think for herself again. Stars, that was...

"Incomparable," Mist finished for her. She brushed away the yellow-green hair around Peridot's face, which always had a calming effect on her. The panic cooled down into a low-burning worry. "Garnet says fusion can be an expression of love, too. It doesn't have to be for war."

Peridot didn't want to think about what it meant right now, or what it could mean for them if anyone who wasn't a rebel found out. She kissed away anything else Mist might have said on the matter, and thankfully they didn't fuse again. At least, not that night.