"You see, after we destroyed your shi-" Steven began but was cut off by Peridot.
"You can, and will, fill me in later, Steven!" Peridot exasperates. "But first, we have to stop that." Peridot points at the now fully visible Malachite. Peridot looks up at the monstrosity with fear and recoils her hand. "Uhhh..."
"Peridot. It's ok if you're scared." Steven reasurringly says as he pats her on the head. "Me and the Crystal Gems have been doing this a lot longer than you. Just find a place to hide, and I'll find you later." Steven grins and runs off towards the beach.
"STEVEN!" Peridot yells. She wants to follow, but her fear is holding her back. This thing was just out of her league. She could do nothing but stand there, knees shaking as Steven ran off to, in her opinion, his certain doom.
Meanwhile, at the beach, Malachite had fully resurfaced near the temple only to get punched in the face by a green fist. It sent Malachite reeling back in surprise. Standing before her was Alexandrite.
"JUST THE GEMS I WAS LOOKING FOR!" Malachite yells as water rises up behind her, forming a giant fist. The water fist comes crashing down towards Aelxandrite.
Alexandrite nimbly jumps out of the way of the water fist. As a second one comes barrelling towards her, she summons a war hammer and swings through it reducing it to a mere puddle. Alexandrite spins with the swing, and as she does, the two hands that make up the hammer head interlock their fingers, and the handle segments into hundreds on chain links. As Alexandrite completes the spin, the giant wrecking ball like flail rockets towards Malachite, who simply blocks it by summoning a helmet.
Malachite grabs into the flail and pulls Alexandrite towards her. Headbutt meets gauntlet punch, and the generated force at the center sends a shock wave throughout Beach City and forces the tide back into the ocean. Malachite uppercuts Alexandrite into the air, where Alexandrite then summons six spears and points them all at Malachite.
With a scream, Alexandrite unleases a volley of laser blasts from all of the spears down onto Malachite. Malachite puts her arms up to block. The tide comes back in. She took the brunt of the attack with a scream of pain and frustration. The impact of the blasts send a tremor of energy through Beach City.
Meanwhile, at Beach City, Peridot is standing on the boardwalk. She doesn't know what to do. The humans are all running around in terror. The majority of them are fleeing.
"Onion!? Onion!? WHERE ARE YOU!?" An older human woman yells as she's frantically combing the boradwalk. Peridot barely pays it any mind.
"This. This is beyond me!" Peridot says to herself as she sees the chaos and the two titans duking it out on the shore. "I... I'm just a Peridot. I shouldn't be in this situation! I should be... Home..." Suddenly all of these memories begin rushing into Peridot's head. Not memories of Homeworld but rather memories of Earth. She remembered her frustration when Steven had called her "cute." She remembered how terrifying thunder was and how Steven had made the fear go away. She remembered facing Pearl in the robot competition and Amethyst's laugh. She even remembered her conversation with Greg and that painful group hug with Garnet at the center. These memories brought a strange feeling to her body. It started in her gut and then spread up to her chest. She never had a feeling like this, but it felt good... Like the feelings she felt between Ruby and Sapphire only... Different.
"ONION!" the loud screech had stirred Peridot from her thoughts. A tremor from the fight had knocked the big doughnut from atop of the Big Doughnut loose, and it had begun to fall. Underneath it was a strangely shaped human child. Perdiot didn't think, only acted. Mere moments before the child was crushed by the giant doughnut, Peridot had tackled the kid out of the way.
When the dust had settled, Peridot was holding this oddly terrifying creature in her arms. It just looked up at her, and shivers ran down her spine. Luckily the older woman had come to retrieve this... Human?
"Oh my onion!" The woman says as she grabs the child and hugs it tightly. "Thank you!" The woman says in gratitude. "Thank you!" She hugs Peridot and runs off with Onion to find safety.
Peridot looks at the scene of what had transpired and looked down at her own hands. A few weeks ago, Peridot would never have considered putting her own life in danger, let alone to do it for a random human. Something had changed in Peridot, and she had just now realized it.
Peridot groans. "Ugh... These Crystal Gems are going to be the death of me!" She runs towards the closest vehicle she can find, Mayor Dewey's election car.
Yet again at the Beach!
When the dust clears, Alexandrite lands and Malachite is lying in the tide face down and unmoving. Alexandrite stands over Malachite and raises her top fists and gauntlets form. The she clasps her top hands together and the gauntlets begin to grow until they dwarf Malacite in size. Alaexandrite lets out a roar as she slams the gauntlets down towards Malachite.
"STOOOOOOOOP!" Steven yells as he approaches the fight, getting off Lion's back. Alexandrite stops mid swing, just inches above Malachite's body. "Gems shouldn't be fighting! There's gotta be a better way to solve this!"
"Steven..." Alexandrite says. It looks like she's about to consider the option. "... I'm sorry." She raises her gauntlets to swing down again, only to be caught in a giant bubble of water. The gauntlets shattering under the pressure.
"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Malachite roars as she gets back up. "YOU THINK THAT WAS ALL I HAD!?" Malachite applies pressure to the gems on Alexandrite's body. "SINCE THE WAR, I'VE BEEN OUT FIGHTING. YOU'VE BEEN BABY SITTING! YOU'VE GONE WEAK AND LOST YOUR EDGE!" Malachite laughs with a sadistic tone that makes Steven cringe. "I'M GOING TO ENJOY THIS!"
With a clench of her fist, the water pressure begins to crush the fusion. Alexandrite begins to crack apart.
"NO!" Steven yells as he runs towards Alexandrite, only to be blasted with water that send him and Lion flying across the Beach. "La... pis..."
"STEV... VEN!" Yells Alexandrite before there is a sickening crack, and she splits apart. Ruby, Sapphire, Pearl, and Amethyst are all now floating inside this bubble.
"NOW, I'LL KILL YOU ALL!" Malachite yells triumphantly. "FIRST WITH YOU TRA-"
Malachite gets cut off mid sentence by the repeated phrase "Mayor Dewey! Mayor Dewey!" The Dewey Mobile stops on the shore and Peridot jumps out of the passenger side. "WAIT!" Peridot yells. Inside the Dewey Mobile, Mayor Dewey is pale-faced terrified, and his hands are taped to the steering wheel.
"PeRiDoT!?" Malachite's voice says in a confused Jasper tone and a relieved Lapis tone. The bubble constructs puddles and the gems fall to the ground with a thud.
"Jasper? Laspis?... Jaspis?" Peridot looks confused. "Uhm... What do I call you?"
"WE ARE MALACHITE!" Jasper yells as Lapis gets forced back into submission.
"Eh... Good for you?" Peridot says, desperately trying to hide her terror. She had a plan, but she needed to stay calm to get it to work. "Just where have you been anyway!?"
"I'VE BEEN STUCK UNDER THIS MISERABLE WORLD'S OCEAN FOR WEEKS! AND YOU HAVE THE NERVE TO TALK TO ME LIKE THAT!?" Jasper was getting angry.
"While you've been hiding all this time I-"
"I WASN'T HIDING!" Malachite yells interrupting Peridot, raising a hand to get ready to crush her.
"AS I WAS SAYING!" Peridot angrily yells, but still secretly terrified. "I have made some progress on the Cluster. It really is quite fascinating." "Come on... Take the bait!"
Malachite reaches down and picks up Peridot, and brings Peridot right up to her face. "WORK! YOU'RE DIRECT SUPERIOR HAS BEEN TRAPPED AND ALL YOU COULD THINK ABOUT WAS YOUR LITTLE PROJECT!?"
"She took the bait." Peridot thought with a grin. "Yeah. And guess what?" Peridot asks.
"WHAT?" Malachite yells full of rage, almost crushing Peridot then and there.
Peridot wriggles a hand free and brings it up to her mouth "PFFFBT!" Peridot makes a fart noise in her hand.
"WHAT!?" Malachite yells. The Jasper voice of Malachite starts the scream in fury as the Lapis voice of Malachite starts laughing uncontrollably. As the two voices begin to diverge in emotions, the fusion begins to go unstable. In a flash of light, Lapis, Jasper, and Peridot fall to the beach.
Malachite has come undone.
((Sorry for the long wait between chapters. Family life, 4 hour car drives, and gas station churros got the better of me this weekend... But on the topic of this chapter... GIANT WOMAN FIGHT! Heck yeah! I really wanna see some Godzilla level combat in the Steven Universe main canon.
Also, Saturday Night's Alright for a fight!
The idea of Peridot disabling the fusion via fart noise had been in my mind for a few months now. I figured that it would be a brick joke of sorts if that's what breaks the fusion. I was initially going to have Steven do the fart noise but I felt it would suit Peridot's growth better. Simply because I have this head canon that Lapis made fart noises and it pissed Jasper off to no end and Peridot would simply dismiss it as juvenile. Thus, it would have more of an impact of Malachite if Peridot had done it over Steven... Because Steven is already goofy. Peridot being goofy is far more unpredictable and thus a funnier fart joke.))