The first thing she did was work out all the possible exits. She was tired of all her escape routes crumbling around her, this time, if (Diamond forbid) something went wrong, she wanted to get out, fast. If the Crystal Gems hadn't been trying to kill her before, they definitely would if they survived this. She was tired of running away. This time, she was going to attack first, annihilate the traitorous clods and then she'd have a little bit of peace and quiet while she worked out how to go home.
For a brief moment, she almost felt bad that she was planning to lure them into a death trap. Then she remembered that they'd destroyed all her stuff, probably either captured or killed her escort and maybe her informant, and attacked her on multiple occasions. With a fusion. So clearly they meant to kill her too. Plus the Cluster would kill them all when it emerged anyway. She was almost doing them a favour by killing them first!
She'd make it quick, if she could; she wasn't interested in torture… and if she gave them time, they'd only use it to escape. She examined the control panel carefully. The power wasn't working, but that wasn't a problem – a quick zap of energy from her limb enhancers took care of that easily enough. It was far older than anything she'd ever worked with before, and she wasn't quite sure what all the various buttons actually did, but after a bit of cautious poking, she was able to take a look at the ship's security features.
"Good, good…" she muttered under her breath. The lasers and spikes were laughably primitive in comparison to the destabiliser fields that were used these days, but still lethal enough to pose a danger to the Crystal Gems if one of them were unlucky enough to get hit. Which probably wouldn't happen, not with the Steven's shielding abilities, but that was fine, she wasn't expecting that to kill them. That's what the pulverisation chamber was for. And a remote hologram was just the thing to lure them there.
As soon as all the traps were set up, she walked back to the warp pad, took a deep breath and warped back to the same spot. Then she sprinted back to the ship. She was going to be ready when the Crystal Gems arrived.
xXxXx
For several glorious minutes, it looked like her plan had worked. There'd been an uncertain moment when the controls had stopped responding, but another zap of energy had done the trick and as planned, after fleeing the lasers and spikes, the Crystal Gems had run after her hologram and fallen into the chamber.
Unfortunately, the second jolt of energy seemed to have overloaded the control panel and she'd lost the visual connection before she could be sure her enemies had been destroyed. And after seeing the Pearl aim straight for the hologram's gem, she really wanted to be sure. She stabbed at the control panel with increasing irritation. "Urrgh, stupid button here, I don't know what anything is!" She let out a frustrated growl as the ship's map distorted with static, and half-thought about just giving the controls a thump, before sensibly opting for more button mashing. "Where'd they go? Why isn't anything working!?"
The wall suddenly exploded inwardly and she spun around with a squeak, back to the controls, as the Crystal Gems appeared. "Surrender, Peridot!" the fusion ordered. "You have nowhere to run!"
"The Crystal Gems are gonna get yooou!" the Steven added.
"You really think this is the end?" Peridot laughed derisively and pointed her arm cannon at them. "This - this is only the beginning… of my escape!" And with that, she suddenly aimed her cannon upwards and blasted through the ceiling, mentally congratulating herself for being smart enough to come up with a back-up plan. As the Crystal Gems ducked the flying shrapnel, she began to fly away. "Well, I'd love to stick around and watch another one of your pathetic attempts to capture me, but I guess I'm just too smart for the likes of you lumpy, clumpy clods!"
She began to laugh again, then stopped as her upward flight abruptly juddered to a halt. "What the-" She looked down in shock to see the Steven had somehow managed to leap up and grab her gravity connector.
"I caught a Peridot!" it sang.
"Hey! Get your touch stumps off me, you Steven!" she demanded, kicking her leg to try and dislodge it. All that happened was that the Steven sank its teeth into her. "Hey!"
"Yeah, Steven!" exclaimed the Amethyst, jumping up and holding onto it.
"Don't let her go," the Pearl added, throwing herself onto the chain of gems. She was then grabbed by the fusion.
"Rrrrgh!" Peridot growled, enraged. This wasn't supposed to happen! "Let go of me!" She reached down and began flicking the creature in the face. "You… you persistent… little… whatever exactly you are!"
"Peridot!" the fusion called, grabbing her attention. "Your flight's been cancelled!"
"Noooo…" Peridot moaned. A sinking feeling came over her as she realised there was only one way out of this, and before she could allow herself to dwell upon it, she reached down and hit the release button on her lower limb enhancers, leaving the Steven with her foot section while the recoil sent her spinning through the air. "You'll pay for this, Crystal Gems!" she yelled furiously at their rapidly-retreating forms. "I'll get you back, just you waaaait!"
xXxXx
She didn't stop flying. She no longer cared about the risk of crashing into the ocean and maybe melting her limb enhancers, she was officially out of ideas. The warp hub was her last hope and if that meant she had to swim there, then so be it. She'd already lost a foot, she wasn't going to hang around and wait for the Crystal Gems to capture her, piece by piece. Deep down, she knew it was a pointless endeavour; she already knew that the Crystal Gems had smashed every single offworld hub long before she'd ever been assigned this mission, but she was still determined to try.
To her relief, she made it to the warp hub without any further incident. Then she landed and promptly fell over, having forgotten for a moment that her foot was missing. She growled to herself, pulled herself upright and limped over to the nearest warp pad.
Inactive.
The next one was inactive too.
And the next.
All inactive.
She even tried the Mondas one, despite knowing full well that the planet itself had exploded several years ago. She'd vaguely hoped maybe the connecting pad was just sort of… floating through space or something, but even that warp pad had been smashed.
For a moment, she scanned the site again in case a warp pad had somehow repaired itself while she wasn't looking, then with a scream of frustration, she lobbed a chunk of debris at a random pad.
Then, thinking better of it, she caught it with her tractor beam before it could cause any further damage and carefully placed it to one side. Then she flopped onto her back with a sigh and stared up at the sky. Earth was turning away from its primary star and more distant stars were becoming visible as the sky darkened. Stars and planets and galaxies and all manner of celestial bodies, all just out of her reach.
If only she had flight powers, like Lapis Lazuli! Then she could just fly…
Peridot froze and stared at the sky for a moment longer, then raised a hand and gazed at that instead. She had flight powers! It wasn't exactly water wings, but despite her earlier misgivings, she'd found no limitations. Was there any chance she could do what Lazuli had done? Just… fly home?
It was hardly the worst idea she'd ever had; that dubious honour went to "accepting this cloddy mission in the first place", closely followed by "getting on a spaceship with Jasper".
Impulsively, she jumped upright, stumbled again and took off into the sky.
She'd previously avoided flying at high altitudes – she'd seen the human flying machines crossing the skies on many occasions and been wary of being spotted and attacked by them. She had also been cautious of the clouds of gaseous water vapour hanging in the air. But right now, those dangers paled in comparison to the Cluster and the Crystal Gems. Still, she was careful to fly around the clumps of vapour, rather than through them.
The air grew cooler as she rose higher, and as she watched the Earth shrink beneath her, hope began to bubble up inside her. It was working! She was going to go home! And when she got there, she was going to send help for Jasper (and maybe Lazuli, assuming she hadn't flown off into space somewhere), and watch the Cluster destroy this horrible place! She didn't even care how much she got punished for this mess, she was going home and her idea was really, truly, actually working-
Suddenly she was aware of a strange, grinding noise and realised her ascent seemed to be slowing. She dragged her gaze away from the shimmering waves below, and looked up at her touch stumps. To her horror, she realised water crystals were solidifying around them. The spinning appendages were cutting through the ice, but they were getting rapidly clogged up with every passing second. Then, as she watched, they ground to a halt.
For a moment, she hung suspended in the air.
"No…" she whimpered.
Then she started falling.
Falling down was faster than flying up, yet somehow it seemed to take twice as long. In her attempt to avoid the vapour, she'd wound up back over the coastline and at the back of her mind, behind the immediate screaming and terror, she morbidly wondered whether she'd prefer to hit the ground or the water. The impact would destroy her physical form, either way, but maybe the water would cushion and hide her gem from her enemies? Of course, it was just as likely that her gem would turn out to be one that reacted badly with water and she'd become corroded and corrupted before she could regenerate.
She was 100 metres above the ground when she remembered her other hand was also capable of flight.
Raising the other hand aloft, she activated the helicopter, which slowed down her descent, but also unfortunately resulted in her spinning wildly out of control. Everywhere she looked, there was sky and sea and stars and sand and she closed her eyes for a moment, completely disorientated.
"Oof!"
She slammed into a hard surface and bounced off, winded, and opened her eyes just in time to crash into the cliff again. She halted her flight and allowed herself to drop the last few metres to the ground, where she curled up into a ball for a while.
"Bad idea," she muttered to herself, once she'd calmed down enough to actually speak without sobbing. "Awful idea."
And worst of all, now she had no ideas. None. Not a single one. Everything she'd tried had failed and now, unless one of the warp pads magically healed itself, she was going to die. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow-
Magically healed.
"My gem was cracked. I don't know how, but somehow, he was able to heal it."
She gasped and sat upright. Maybe she wasn't out of ideas after all.
The Steven was going to help her go home.
-FIN-
xXx
AN: And that's all! Because of course, after this point, Peridot becomes a (reluctant) member of the team and all her action takes place with the Crystal Gems. Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this.
Oh, and before I forget, Mondas is the original planet the Cybermen came from in the First Doctor story, 'The Tenth Planet'. If you haven't seen it, well, I'm very sorry about the spoiler, but it has been almost 50 years!
