"Now, we're not gonna have a repeat of last time." EBL pressed a button on the side of their ship, opening a small panel. From it, five heavy blasters appeared in a shimmer, one for each Ruby. Quartz-class firepower: special ordinance for a heavy firefight. "Soldiers: take a weapon!"
The Rubies each picked up a blaster, admiring their unusually high finish and potential. (DCC, for her part, suddenly realized just how little pull she actually had, compared to her subordinate. She had no idea the blasters had been loaded onto their ship until she was holding one, nor that EBL apparently had the connections to procure strategic offensive weapons. For the sake of her own pride, she hid her surprise and pretended to ooh and ahh along with the others.)
"You no doubt realize that this is some heavy ordinance!" EBL continued. "Now why would we need this? Because we're gonna split up and we wanna be ready for anything, that's why! DCC, you take RME. NYV, with me. LGY?"
"Yes, Ruby!" the newbie replied.
"...Try again."
"Yes... E… BL?"
"Better." EBL took a breath, and continued in a softer tone. "You're a pilot, not a groundpounder. Go back into the ship, stay there, and scan for the Peridot from above. (...Here, wait. Give RME your blaster; she can dual-wield.) Watch our backs, and see if you can save us the trouble of tracking the Peridot down."
"Yes, EBL!" LGY saluted and sheepishly marched backwards into the ship. She was a newbie and a little undercooked, a trusted comrade and, as evidenced by the ship's graceful liftoff, a decent pilot. But they all knew an Earth mission was too much, too soon for her, and keeping her out of harm's way was probably best for now.
They watched the Roaming Eye hum into the air and float off, its scanning beam activating. "Okay." EBL's voice was hard again, as she pointed to one side of the red barn. "DCC - head around to the left. We'll take the right. Sweep the area for the target. And from here on, keep your voices down. Understood?" She pressed the diamond mark on her uniform, activating their comm network.
"Yes, EBL," the other three replied, pressing their own diamonds.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
The particular rock Peridot was hiding under, she'd modified because it was in a good location. From there she had a clear view of most of the farm, and also the Rubies.
So, what the slag were they doing?
As preparation for her original mission, Peridot had been required to study basic squad tactics. In this sort of situation - a five-Gem squad in enemy territory vs. a known 'unknown number' of combatants - modern tactical doctrine dictated that they stay together at all times, if they had to leave their transport at all.
From her vantage point, she could see that they'd split up into smaller groups. Why, though? Even with those heavy blasters they were carrying, it cut their combat effectiveness. They knew they might be outnumbered, and their last time on Earth had started with them getting slapped into the ground.
"...aw stars," she muttered. She'd heard the expression 'like a ton of bricks' from Steven, to describe an enormous mental shock or surprise, and this… felt like exactly the right sort of situation to use it. Most likely, the Rubies had split up because they were confident now. They had a tactician among them. Probably that one monoeye Ruby, given how she'd been acting during the baseball game.
It looked like they were searching the farm grounds for her, before entering the barn itself from-
-the Roaming Eye's scanning beam passed over her rock, prompting her to stay still and hold her breath for a moment-
-from both ends. A pincer formation. They'd seen her leave the barn last time, and now assumed she would be there. (Foolish! she thought. That only works if Lapis isn't here to slap the saturation out of them. Well, they might not have properly ID'd Lapis last time - she covered her gem with a 'shirt' during the game - but it still means they just got lucky...)
They were moving quickly enough to be out of sight soon, and that meant it was time to act. She crawled out from under her rock and, after checking the sky for the Roaming Eye, put on her mask. It had been a sport faceguard of some sort before she'd modified it into something called a 'happuri', that she'd seen in an old samurai movie.
Peridot had realized, during what little training she did, that her voluminous, highly visible yellow hair was something of a liability; she'd fashioned the mask to mitigate this. It had sides and a top that slid into place around her head, pressing her hair down during use. Its one failing, Lapis had pointed out, was that it essentially gave her Pearl's hairdo - but that wasn't something she could complain about given how effectively it reduced her volumetric cross-section.
Now, she only had sensor scanning to worry about...
...unless she took care of their ship. Where a path closes, an opportunity opens, she thought.
The Roaming Eye was hovering slowly over the farm grounds, probably carefully scanning for her. Nowhere near the two Ruby teams on the ground. High up enough to make a successful intrusion difficult.
In her spare time, Peridot watched Earth fiction programs and built useful things. She'd watched through "Strong Force Forest" a while back, and liked the parts where the character Belma used her 'grappling hook'. It was a concept that was A) unworkable in real life at the depicted size, and yet B) vastly improvable with Gem technology.
So she'd taken the limb enhancer foot Steven had returned to her so long ago, and attached a rope to it. Voila: a 'grappling hook'. Then she'd made some necessary improvements, and now it was practical.
Very practical.
Once she'd crept close enough, she unhitched the grappling unit from her bandolier with her left hand, and reached to her side with her right. Lapis had 'done her a solid' and recovered some of her limb enhancer parts from the bottom of the ocean, which she'd used to build a few Peri-Devices. Using bits of an Arm and a Finger, she'd completed the PD-C05(p) 'Negotiator', what the Humans might call a blaster pistol.
She attached the grappling unit to it, aimed, and...
pttt!
The miniaturized gravity control system in the grappling unit recalibrated just before impact, causing it to suddenly deaccelerate until it matched velocity with the Roaming Eye. Then it reasserted its mastery over gravity and attached itself to the hull, immovable to anything less than tremendous force.
She gripped the pistol tightly and pressed a button on the side. The wire began to spool, pulling the Negotiator and her with it up to the Roaming Eye. In moments, she was hanging onto the underside of the craft. When she was satisfied that she hadn't been noticed, she began scrambling over to the hatch and opened it, detaching the grappling unit as she slipped in
The ship was a standard Era 2 model, bordering on outdated, with no extra frills or gimmicks. There were five seats, arranged around the edge in a half-circle far bigger than the ship's exterior could reasonably fit by using dimensional folding. The only customization was probably the color scheme, appropriately set to red-on-yellow (for Rubies under Yellow Diamond).
Four of the seats were visibly empty; the fifth, at the front, had a small tuft of squareish hair poking out from the top. "EBL? Is that you?" a Ruby asked from the pilot's seat. "Did you find the Peridot alrea-"
pewpewpewpewpewpew POOF
Not exactly a Gem Destabilizer, but good enough to call a successful live test. She quickly holstered the Negotiator and rushed to the now-empty pilot's seat. Before it could start wobbling off-course she set the Roaming Eye for a quick landing.
When the ship was safely on the ground, out of sight from the barn, she looked over the gem with a Kindergartener's practiced eye. An Era 2, and not a particularly powerful one at that: six shots had been enough to fully dematerialize her, without risk of damage to the ship or its controls.
She bubbled the Ruby and, not sure if the dimensional folding would cause problems, took it outside to send it home. Home was, of course, the barn.
...which was currently surrounded by Rubies.
"Aw, stars," she said to herself. She quickly copied the ship's comm channel frequency into her mask's and began running back towards the barn.
