It's been about a weeks and it took some convincing but the gems conceded to let me keep the little robots for research and possibly for me to use them to my own ends. If I can use that liquid they sprayed out to repair the Homeworld warp pad to suit my own needs, I may be able to change them around to benefit me even more. I wasn't allowed to take them back to the temple until I deactivate them or find some way to mask their signal. I had to get a sleeping bag so I can sleep here and make sure that these things don't do anything incriminating or fall off the Galaxy warp. From what I remember from the screen that Peridot was using, I saw wavelength signals on it that could mean possibly some kind of communication factor. I had Steven and Pearl bring me some of my gear or go out and buy me some stuff so I could work on my project at the Galaxy warp so I could start tinkering with them. Garnet and Amethyst didn't help because Garnet was still iffy with them and preferred to break them, and Amethyst was lazy about I, much to my annoyance but I focused more of my attention to my project.

I already took a microscope to the goo that they shot out to find out what exactly it was so that way I have an idea of what is it that stuff can do. The majority of the goo is made out of some sort of viscous liquid so it can help latch onto stuff for the other thing it's made of to work. The other piece of the goo is actually composed of thousands of microscopic nanobots that can come together to do what their told by their carrier, aka the robonoids. Meaning if I can send orders to the mini robots, they'll tell the goo inside of them to do what they want them to do and in turn, what I want them to do. Since I only have a limited number of active robonoids, as Peridot called them, for me to work with, I grabbed the ones that were hit with her EMP explosive and decided to dissect them myself.

Or I would have if they didn't blow up into that goo crap when I tried to pry open one of the panels or cut a hole into it. After cleaning myself and my workstation of the stuff, I went ahead and grabbed one of the active ones so maybe I can hack into it. The little guy tried to walk off the table a couple of times but I was able to right him again and get to work. Since they have no discernible ports for me to plug into and hack it the old fashionable way, I took a small radio antenna, hooked it up to my laptop and wrote up a program to search for any sort of radio wavelengths that these things might be generating. If these guys followed Peridot using some sort of wireless signal, I can find it, hijack it, and maybe give orders to them.

"Alright, let's see what we got here. Staaay." I begin to say but I also manage to keep the little guy from falling off again. After activating the program and searching for any sort of signal, my eyes widen at the amount of signals I instantly get. None of them are of human origin that's for sure, except from my phone, instead they are all in some sort of scripture that I've never seen before. "What the—?" I question at the text but soon after, the text starts to make sense to me in a way. It's like I just know what these say right off the top of my head, even though I never learned of this stuff before. "Worry about it later. Find what I need." Looking through all the signal names, I find out that some of these signals are actually the destination points for the warp pads around me. I recognize the one that's labeled the Homeworld warp but it and like some of the others are grayed out and come off as N/A, meaning that because they are broken, I can't access them. I find three active signals that interest me to maybe work with, the pad to the temple, my phone, and the one for the robonoids. Apparently the signal is matched up for all them. "Perfect." I click on the signal.

*BEEEEP*

"Shit." I curse as a beeping noise goes off on my screen and talks about unauthorized access. A countdown goes off on my screen and tells me about a self-destruction sequence. To add to it, the robonoids on the table and around me suck in their legs and curl up. "Crap." Not wanting my only source of gem tech to be destroyed by some sort of countermeasure, I get to work in hacking the signal to allow me access to them. "C'mon c'mon c'mon." I say as I start plugging in algorithms and tearing through code to find what I need. I also ignore the sound of a warp pad activating as the timer hits 10.

"C'mon man."

'8 seconds.'

"Almost there."

'6 seconds.'

"What are you—?"

"Not now."

'5… 4… 3… 2…'

"Got it!" I cry out in triumph as the timer goes to just into the milliseconds under the 1 second mark. "Hahaaaa! Man that was close!"

"What was close?"

I look to the side to see the others standing there. "Hey guys. Well, if you must know, I manage to tap into the signal that these robonoids use to take orders from."

*Fwhoop*

The robot on the table jumps onto its suspended legs and stares in the direction of my laptop along with the others.

"Nice work Marcus." Pearl congratulates me with a smile.

"Nice job dude." Amethyst pats my back while Steven gives me a thumbs up.

"Now that you did, I want you to—"

"Way ahead of you Garnet." I interrupt the magenta gem as I turn back to my computer and looking at the programs or commands I can use. "Interesting. It seems when Peridot took off, she severed her connection to the robonoids right after. Most likely because she thought they would be destroyed when her EMP went off." What also sucks is that the charge she used not only disabled electronics in a small radius, but it had a small charge in it as well that completely destroyed the device itself, leaving me with nothing to use.

"Can you mask their signal?" Garnet asks me with crossed arms.

"Let me see…" I purse my lips as I sift through some of the things I can use but I smile when I find the 'status' reading for the robots. After clicking on it, I find an extensive list of all the robonoids Peridot brought with her to the planet. As I remember her saying, I count all 79 here, 76 of them reading active but 3 reading destroyed. "I got something." I say outloud and start hacking in. "The robonoids have status readings on them. From all the ones that Peridot and I destroyed, we have all of them here. I don't have to mask their signal." I look to Garnet with a smile. "I just have to fake their deaths."

"Hmmmm," Garnet thinks on the action I am proposing. The others look to her as well as she thinks on the matter. After a few moments of thinking, she answers. "Do it. As long as you're sure that Homeworld won't know you're using them or where we are."

"Got it." I say with a nod. It takes me a moment or two but I manage to hack into the statuses of the robonoids and switch them all to destroyed. I also hide the signal of these robots so that way if anyone else can pick up their signal, it won't show up at all. Only my laptop for now can pick up their wireless signal so I'll be able to authorize who or what other devices can be hooked up to them. I also password locked them too just as a precaution as well. "There. Everything's set Garnet. No one else should be able to access these little guys or check their status since I code-locked them. I changed them to being destroyed so unless someone actively sees them walking around, they'll believe their destroyed."

"Good. Good." She nods her head and relaxes at the news. "I'm sorry if I've been a little… blunt with you about these little guys." She tells me as she picks one of them off the ground, who crawls along her arm and stands on her shoulder. "We just can't take the chance of Homeworld finding out we're still here."

" No no. I get it. Just… thanks for giving me the chance to work on them." I give her my understanding of the situation. I'm still not a hundred percent sure on the whole Homeworld biz but if they are still freaked out about it, I can at least the hint.

"Thanks Marcus." She replies the thanks with a nod.

"Sooo," I look at Steven as proceeds to poke at the robonoid on the table. "What can you do with these little guys?"

"Well, let's see." I say as I swing back around to my computer. "I've got multiple simple commands for me to use, such as holding position, following, deactivate, activate, I can tell them to go to a specific position, attack or telling them to fix a specific item or not."

"So, on top of being able to fix the warp pads, they can fix anything?" Pearl asks me as she leans into the screen to look at the commands.

"Mmmmm, in theory. Look at this." I indicate to specific area for Pearl to look at as Steven plays around with the robonoid with Amethyst. "This 'fix' command has a subfield." I click on it and it takes me to a new field to work with. There is only one pre-set object that the robonoids could repair and it's the warp pads. "See this?" I point to it as Garnet leans in as well. I click on the set and a whole mess of data flows forth onto my screen. "Peridot only inputted one object for these little guys to fix and that's a warp pad. As you can see here, all data presented to us is the dimensions of the warp pads, what their supposed to look like, how they work and so on. If I can get the exact specifications of any item in question, I'm sure I can fix just about anything."

"Amazing." Pearl says in awe at the idea. "I can't believe just how much gem technology has advanced." She says as she picks the one off of Garnets shoulder and examines it. "We never had anything like this before during the war."

"That's right." Garnet agrees.

"Well, any form of technological advancement can occur if enough time has passed." I comment. As I go back to my computer and back out, I find another function I should take advantage of. I pull out my phone and turn back. "Hey Pearl."

"Huh?"

In a flash of light, I take a picture of her using my phone. The flash blinds her for a sec and her body tenses up, causing her to drop the robonoid to the ground, who Garnet catches easily. "Garnet." I turn to her, who carries the robonoid in one hand and flashes me a peace sign with the other hand while her face remains the same neutral way. With another flash, I take her picture as well. Next, I swing myself around and aim for the other two. "Amethyst! Steven!" I call to them as they stop playing with the other robonoids. "Say cheese."

"Cheeeese!" They say with a smile towards me.

I tap the button again and another flash goes off on them as well, capturing their images. "Perfect." I say and after I quickly snap a picture of myself, I swing back to my computer.

"Explain to me why you blinded us." Pearl demands of me as she rubs her eyes.

"Speak for yourself." Garnet comments with a smile as she adjusts her visor.

"This." I plug in my phone to my computer and upload the pictures I took. Once there, I transfer the pictures to the databanks of the robonoids in a specific area. "The robonoids also have a facial recognition software. By taking our pictures and uploading them, I can set the people for them to be followed, protected, or be regarded as allies or enemies. Like so." I explain and set the images of Steven and Amethyst to hostile and Garnet, Pearl and myself to friendly. As soon as I click enter, the robonoids around Steven and Amethyst turn their attention to the two.

"What are you looking at?" She asks them. As a response, they all open the compartment for their nozzles and aim at them.

"Aaaaahhh!" Steven immediately bolts as they turn to him. Half of them go after him while the rest stay with Amethyst.

"Oh c'mon Steven! What are they going to— Goooohh!" Her statement is cut off as she gets a face full of their goo blasts and they continue to spray her, eventually making her fall to the ground as they surround her and coat her several times over.

I laugh loudly at the scene while Pearl smiles and shakes her head, and Garnet lightly chuckles.

"Ha ha… nice." She brings her hand up and we high five when I come down from my laughing fit.

"While it is funny, can you please stop this? I don't them to make a mess." Pearl asks of me.

"Yeah yeah." I say nonchalantly and go back to the computer. After changing everyone to friendly, the robonoids go back to milling about and Steven takes a break from running around. "Go make sure Amethyst isn't dead." I say to Garnet.

"You got it." She replies and walks over to the pile of goo with the purple gem in the center.

"So anything else you can do with them?" Pearl asks me.

"Weelllll," I draw it out as I look at the functions again. "You know how they explode into that repair goo whenever too much stress is placed on them?" I ask her. Steven walks up and nods along with her to the question. "Turns out it's another countermeasure they posses. In order to prevent them from being taken by any enemies and tampered with, their mechanics are completely liquefied to prevent their enemies from fixing them back up and used against them." I smile as I watch the little guys walk around. One even jumps onto the table and crawls on my shoulder. "But they weren't thorough enough." I say as I pat the robot.

"Very nice work Marcus."

"Thank you Pearl." I reply to her thanks.

"Pah! Gah! Pft! Pfffftt!" Amethyst coughs as Garnet finally pulls her out of the goo. "Not cool man!" She angrily yells to me while pointing.

"Yeah," I say with a faraway look. "But it was fun." She grumbles a little as she walks over to the warp pad.

"It's getting late. We should probably turn in." Garnet says as she walks with Amethyst to the warp pad home. "Come along Steven."

"Coming!" He calls out and jogs over to them.

"You coming Marcus?" Pearl asks me.

"Nah, you guys go on. I'm gonna finish coding, programming and linking a few things before I turn in." I inform them.

"Alright then." She nods and walks to the others on the pad. "Don't stay up too late."

"Sure."

"Oh and Marcus." I look back to Garnet, "You can bring them back to the temple and work there when your done."

I smile at the news, "Thanks Garnet!"

"See you back home." She says and activates the warp pad.

"Bye!" Steven calls out as they all sent away.

Even though they are gone, I go ahead and wave to where they were at. Now that I'm alone again, I grab the robonoid on my shoulder and place him on the table. "Alright little guy…" I lean back and pop my fingers to loosen them up as well as my neck and back. I stare intently at my companion. "Let's get to work."

"…"

He stares at me without a care.

Another chapter of my own instead of focusing on the show? I think this one was good. A little short in my opinion but the last one I did when Marcus was recovering was iffy to me at the time but this one I felt somewhat more comfortable with considering its Marcus doing his own form of research. Like before, this was originally supposed to be the next chapter but I guess I wanted to at least show some sort of progress happen with the robonoids. Remember that because he is his mother's son that his intelligence is far greater than most humans would be. He inherited her intelligence and the plans for gem tech from his mother, as well as their language you know. I tried to be as real and authentic as I can as well as trying to make Marcus's work seem legit. I hope I did well on it.

I also did this in almost one sitting so I may have been a little tired at some points so I'm sure you caught some errors here and there. I've also been trying to work on my sleep schedule so my tiredness is all over the place too.

As always, good luck and have fun reading.