"No no nooo! I told you we can't do that type of layout!"
"And I told you we can if we do it THIS way!"
"But the power distribution will be too high and the wires can fry!"
"What massive power output could there be to fry these wires?!"
"Hmmm, oh I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with GIANT LASER CANNON you have!"
"It's a hostile precaution! We have no idea what we'll find on the journey to the Cluster and it pays to be prepared."
"Prepared for what?! Evil sentient molten rocks! That turret is producing a lot of power and if we don't do something it'll fry the wires! We need to spread out the power distribution among dozens of wires so if something goes wrong, we can afford to lose them."
"We don't need over a dozen wires! We just need a few reinforced ones to transfer the power."
"And I told you we can't afford to!"
"And I know exactly what I'm doing too! I was built for this!"
"And I—!"
"But you—!"
Marcus and Peridot continue to scream and bicker with each other while leaning over an assortment of components they made. Already because of the two of them some of the major and bulkier components for the machine were already made but they still needed a lot more work to do before they even think of inputting them into the main body of their machine. They still need a body to input it all too.
Meanwhile everyone else is sitting or standing off to the side, their eyes glancing from left to right between the two of them as they continue to yell at each other. Pearl is busy working on the drill part of the machine on the chalkboard, Marcus has the electronics and making sure everything comes together, and Peridot gravitates between the two of them. Right now though, the two of them have some… creative differences on the matters of the power and engine basically for the machine, hence their flailing arms and heated yells.
"How long have they been going at it?" Steven asks, his upper half laying on the hay bale while his legs are on the ground.
"I don't know. Like, an hour maybe." Amethyst says from her seat on the bale next to him.
"Alright, I'm back I—" Garnet begins to say as she steps up to the others but stops as she notices the teenage hybrid and little green gem yelling at each other. "They're still going at it? I left over an hour ago." She says staring at them, chewing on a piece of straw.
"An hour then."
"Ughhh! I can't work like this." Pearl grumbles before stomping away from the chalkboard and in front of the others. "Will you two knock it off already?! We need to work together to—!"
"Pint-sized imp!"
"Deformed hybrid clod!"
They completely ignore her, or haven't noticed her, as they now start flinging insults at each other. Pearl lets out a sigh and rubs the bridge of her nose. Garnet walks past her and moves closer to the two. "Hey!"
"WHAT?!" The two of them glare at the fusion in the midst of their anger. Garnet doesn't respond, keeping her same neutral expression as the two of them stare.
"… I chased away those cows."
The statement immediately diminishes their anger at how… simple it sounded, plus the straw in her mouth adds to her expression. The two of them look back to each other, then the pieces of equipment between them before they look away blushing. "Yes yes. Very good." Peridot says after clearing her throat.
"Mm-hm. Quite." He agrees with her and picks up to the panel. "Let's get back to the others shall we?"
"Yes we shall." She says and walks back to the others ahead of Marcus. The both of them pass Garnet as they make their way to others.
"Clods... Muddy clods... -running out of ways to say 'clods'!"
Marcus stops at the tape recorder voice of Peridot saying clod and fast forwarding to the other words. Peridot brings the tape recorder out from in front of her and chuckles. "He he he he." She smugly cackles but doesn't stop walking.
"Mmmm." Marcus stops and moans in annoyance as with one hand, his gem glows as he starts to pull out one of his swords.
"Noooo."
"Mmmmmmm." He moans even more annoyed as Garnet orders him not to. He lets the half pulled weapon disappear before grabbing the paneled box with both hands and walking to the others. "Alright, we good?" He asks everyone after putting down the piece of equipment on the hay bale.
"Yes, let's get to work." Garnet says with a smile.
"Eh-hem." Everyone looks to Peridot. "Before we begin… would you mind un-fusing? It's making me incredibly uncomfortable."
Everyone shifts their stares to the fusion in question, who stares at the green gem with a stoic expression.
*Click*
"WHAT?! ... WHAT'D I SAY?!" Peridot asks loudly confused. I stare at Peridot with a smug smile on my face, seeing her now in this predicament. After her request to have Garnet unfuse, she promptly didn't take too kindly to that and now Peridot is in a time-out; tied to the fence with a child leash and harness equipped. She notices me smiling at her. "Shut up." She grumbles while glaring at me.
"He he he." Now it's my turn to laugh and walk away from her to join up with the others.
"Do we really have to do that?" Steven asks us
"Yes." I tell him without hesitation. The both of us may have come to a compromise and she seems alright, but that doesn't mean I absolutely have to like her and the arguments from earlier have left me just a little bit irked at her.
"Her having free reign of the place made me incredibly uncomfortable." Garnet says.
"Uraaa!" Looking back, we see Peridot struggling to move with the child leash on, as well as flailing her arms around to grab the microwave that seems just out of her reach. She manages to stick he foot out though and nudge it closer to her.
I shrug at her attempts and we go back to working on the drill. While Peridot continues to try to work on the microwave, Garnet is sifting through the junk in the barn while Steven and Amethyst gather some materials that Pearl needs as she's cutting through an old jet engine and I look at the drawings on the chalkboard. 'Okay, every things looking good so far. A lot of the components have already been made or close to being completed but we still need to find some sort of body or pilot seat basically to control the machine. We also need a drill to tunnel through the earth. I'd use my plug droid but Peridot will no doubt flip out at seeing, make a fuss over it and possibly try to take it over as her own again. Maybe we can—'
"Here you go, Pearl!" Pearl and Amethyst come by carrying a bunch of metal bits and drop them at her feet. She turns off the welding torch and flips open her welding mask.
"Oh, good. Hmm..." She looks curiously at the bits of metal before looking disappointed. "No... No, no, no, no, I said I needed tungsten. Tungsten?" She reiterates. 'Tungsten?' I think while walking up to them.
"Uh... what does 'tungsten' look like?" Steven asks her.
"Well it's—"
"Tungsten. Ahh." Amethyst decides to give her own explanation and points at her sticking out tongue.
"Oh good. We do have some. I'll get it." I say with a smile as I pull out my sword.
"What?!" Steven gasps in surrpise
"Uhhhh?!" Amethyst does the same with her tongue still sticking out.
"Hahahaha! Relax I'm not gonna take your tongue." I kid with her and dematerialize my sword. I chuckle a few more times at my own joke. The others don't share my humor as Steven and Amethyst look slightly frightened and Pearl looks at me annoyed. "What? Too dark?" All of them nod. I shake my head but a thought quickly springs forward. "Wait, you needed Tungsten right?" I ask Pearl, to which she nods. "Perfect. I have a crate filled with thousands and thousands of Tungsten rounds you can use."
"Tungsten can be used for firearms ammunition?" She asks curiously.
I nod, "Sure. Their heavy composition and component make-up allows them to make great ammo for some of the more heavier and damage dealing weapons." I quickly explain to her.
"Great!" She says happily with her hands clasped together. "If you could bring back several pounds worth, I can figure just how much exactly we'll need. We will need a lot of fire though to melt them down to the proper shapes we need." She mutters the last part as she looks at the welding torch in her hand.
"Got that covered." I say as I begin walking back to home. "My forge has got what we need. I'll be back soon!" I call back and start jogging back home. 'Man, Garnet was right. All comedy is derived from fear.' I place a hand on the side of my head but I don't stop moving. 'Gotta work on my comedy skills.'
With that last thought in my head, the trip to my base and back wasn't anything to brag about. After making sure that my helicopter has gone unnoticed and is still concealed, I grabbed my new truck and loaded the necessary tungsten round containers into the back before closing up the cargo container and covering it up as well. With a quick stop back at base and loading up on some more tools for us to use, pieces of my forge to melt and help shape things, plus some more electronics, and a quick check up on Vindicator to make sure he hasn't completely fallen apart, I head back to the barn. Vindicator took a bad beating from Peridot but he's still holding together somewhat. I've kept only a couple of my droids to slowly rebuild him while the rest patrol the rest of my base just in case. After locking everything back up, it's a smooth ride back to the barn with the stuff Pearl needs.
I come by to see everyone gathered around and talking but they shift their attention to me once they hear my truck pulling up. "Alright, got the stuff we need!" I announce as I climb out and head to the back. "I've got plenty of tungsten hear and enough equipment to help smelt anything we might need." I say as I drop the door in the back, ready for everything to be unloaded. "What next?"
"You're going to the Kindergarten."
"…" It takes my mind a moment to process Garnet's order. "I'm sorry, what'd you say?"
"Thanks a lot Garnet." I grumble as I examine the drill we are planning to take. Apparently, Peridot had the idea to grab one of the injector drills from the Kindergarten to act as our drill piece to the Cluster. Seeing as how none of us, except Peridot, wanted to send her alone to the ancient place, Steven and Amethyst opted to go with her while Garnet decided, without my consent, I was to be accompanying them to make sure everything went smoothly.
"Log date-7112." Peridot begins to speak into her tape recorder that Steven had given her. "The Amethyst, the Marcus and the Steven have volunteered to help me dismantle this Era 1 drill." 'Volunteer my a—' "How stylistically displeasing. The newer ones have a nicer finish." She says into her tape recorder as Steven stands on top of the drill and hits it in hope of dislodging the drill. Peridot says the last part as she trails a finger on the wrecked machine.
"You making more nerd notes?" Amethyst teases the green gem. She clicks off the tape recorder and addresses the purple gem.
"What is 'nerd'?"
*Thunk*
I can't help but hit my head on the machine at how radically different life being brought up as a gem is compared to human. "It means…" I say as I bring my head back and look at her, "It's a term basically for being smart."
While Amethyst snickers, Peridot looks at me a bit confused. "Can you use it in a sentence?" She asks.
"Ahem." Before I can say anything, Amethyst beats me to it. "Nerd. You are a nerd. Aaah hahahaha!" She then proceeds to laugh out loud at her own joke.
'This going to be a long day.' I think as I decide to go back to looking at our prize. Steven slides down next to Amethyst.
"Amethyst! Cut that out."
"As you can see, this planet is annoying and everything is annoying. Amongst its transgressions is the need for the Amethyst to ask permission from the perma-fusion." Peridot makes another log in her recorder.
"Perma-Fusion?" I ask curiously at her Peridot. "You mean Garnet?"
"Hehe, yeah. Is that what you call Garnet?" Amethyst asks too.
"I could call her lots of things. I could call her two things! Two clods!" Peridot laughs as she gestures with two fingers about Garnet. Although the way how happy she is and funny she's trying to be seems… weird. "Walking around like she's... one clod!" She snickers, making Amethyst laugh at her antics.
Steven and I look at each other confused. "What's wrong with that?" He asks.
"She's not even fighting! She's, you know, she's just, y-you know like the... you know!" Peridot tries and fails horribly at explaining the issue with Garnet, even hitting her fists together for whatever reason to try to emphasize what she means. Steven and I have no idea what she means, especially when Steven tries to repeat her action to hopefully understand while Amethyst continues to laugh. We shrug at each other before I go back to looking at the drill.
"You're a real gem, Peri." Amethyst compliments her.
"Yes, I am... a Gem." She states, confused by the wording.
"Okay, okay. Do Steven next. What's weird about Steven?" Amethyst asks while poking Steven in the face.
"Where do I even begin! He's some sort of hybrid abomination, I don't even understand how he functions! His organic half consumes so much energy that he has to constantly feed, and he spends so much time expelling, that he has a whole room dedicated to it!" Peridot boisterously begins to give her own description of Steven, making me sigh at how little about organics she knows.
"Ah, no, something else! Talk about something else." He demands in an embarrassed tone while Amethyst continues to laugh hysterically.
"Yeah, yeah, now do Marcus." Amethyst manages to say in between her laughing.
"Well I—!"
'I don't think so.' "Aah screw it." I interrupt Peridot and stand up from examining the drill. With a grunt, I grab the main body of the drill with my left hand and the drill piece with my right. With a bit of strained effort that tenses my muscles, a slight bit of tearing metal can be heard as the two pieces of metal pop off each other. Not the whole thing but only the part where I am pulling it apart. With it exposed, I pull out my sword and drive it through the opening. Once it's in deep enough, I wedge it to the side, opening the hole more and then sliding it down, separating more of the two metal pieces. With a sharp rap of my sword sliding along the metal, I pull it out and stab it into the ground should I need it again.
No one says anything else after my little demonstration right there. "I would prefer not to." I smile at Peridot's words. Remembering what they were doing, Amethyst starts to laugh again.
Peridot starts to laugh to as she examines the purple gem. "The strangest thing is, Amethyst, you think you have to listen to them! Hehe! You're the one who should be in charge!" She says through some laughing at whatever it is that she means.
"Ha, that's your best joke yet." Amethyst says with a sigh.
"No, really. Pearl is a pearl, Garnet is a fusion, I don't even know what these two are supposed to be!"
"Hey!" Steven and I complain at Peridot.
"You're the only Crystal Gem, that's actually a Gem!"
"Uhm… eh he he what?" Amethyst laughs nervously at what Peridot is saying. I'm curious too about what she's getting at.
"You outrank everyone on your team."
"Outrank?" I mouth the word.
"They should be listening to you! You're a strong, singular, fully-functional soldier, despite the fact you're defective."
Defective. That's the word that makes Amethyst's playing around stop to a halt, resulting in her face dropping. "Defective?" She asks. The same thought is in my head. 'She's defective. She seems alright to me.'
"Well sure! You're small."
"So?"
"Well, you're not supposed to be!" Peridot continues, not fully realizing the gravity of what her words are meaning to Amethyst. "Hold on, wait, wait. Let me guess." Peridot curries over to the hole that belongs to Amethyst. "This! This is the hole you came out of! Too small, too low. The exit marks look 500 years newer than every other hole." She proceeds to examine and pick apart her birth place basically. "Hmm, this place must have been empty when you came out. No wonder you have no idea what you're supposed to look like!"
"Periot…" At the look that Amethyst is giving the green gem, I don't blame Steven for being cautious of her words. She stops Steven with a hand to his shoulder.
"What was I supposed to look like?" She asks.
"Well, you're a quartz. They're huge, loyal soldiers. You should be twice your size. Broad shouldered, intimidating. But you simply stayed in the ground too long." Peridot's explanation continues to cut through Amethyst's feelings from what I can tell.
"Are you saying I'm wrong?!" And my tell is right as she angrily asks Peridot.
Meanwhile she continues to laugh a bit, "Gemetically speaking, yes. When you think about it it's all so..." She snickers, "...funny." Peridot finishes explaining and laughs while climbing onto the injector.
"It's not funny for her Peridot." I angrily mutter at how she's blatantly saying all this to my friend, but her description of how she's supposed to look like vaguely reminds me of someone. "Huh…" I moan as I look at Amethyst and try to visualize it.
"What?!" She angrily asks at me for my staring. I don't feel bad her attitude towards me because I know she's not really angry at me.
"Twice as tall… broad shouldered… intimidat—!" My eyes widen and my mouth opens as I realize who it is that Amethyst is supposed to look like. "ARE YOU TELLING ME SHE'S SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE JASPER?!" I ask very loudly in surprise.
Everyone stares at me but it's Peridot who looks confused for a second. "Well, sure! Although not exactly like her, maybe a little smaller, but yes somewhat like Jasper." She explains like it's the most obvious thing in the world.
'Just like…' I don't finish the thought as I look at my quartz friend. She looks down in both waves of being upset and angry at the news. "Oh man."
"Hey, soldier. Maybe you can help me get this hunk of drill off—"
*Fwoshing*
"Whoa!" I gasp as Amethyst interrupts Peridot by pulling out her whip and slicing off the drill head in one swipe, narrowly missing me as I fall back onto the ground.
"See, look at that!" Peridot happily exclaims. "You can do everything a normal quartz can do. Let's head back, and shove this thing in Pearl's face!" She happily says as she walks over to the warp pad.
My breathing is pretty ragged and my heart is beating quite hard after almost getting my head cleaved off. "Amethyst? Are you ok?" Steven asks her worried.
"Don't worry about it." She says in a low, depressed and angry voice. She then stalks off without another word.
The two of us stare at her as she walks off before we look at each other. With a grunt, I grab the handle of my sword and push myself off the ground. I let out a sigh as I make my sword disappear. "And things were going so well."
He nods, agreeing how bad things quickly went.
Their weren't anymore difficulties getting the drill head back to the barn. We had to go separately back to the barn via the warp pad because of the sheer size of the drill. After that, it was simply rolling it to the barn and we are ready to work on it to our hearts content.
"Oh, it's lovely!" Pearl happily states as she examines the drill. "To think we'd be using the same technology that started all this to fix it! This drill is pure irony."
"Actually, it's mostly carbonite." Peridot tells us from her usual spot on the fence.
"Would that make it 'carbony'?" Steven says from next to her while sorting through all the screws and lug nuts we have lying around here.
I don't really hear what else Steven, Peridot and Amethyst are talking about since I decide to focus more so on my forge set up. With my truck backed up to the entrance of the barn, Garnet and I unload my equipment while Pearl works on the drill piece. "This everything we're going to need?" Garnet asks while carrying the crate of tungsten bullets and I nod.
"Yes. I brought all I need to recreate my forge and the materials and metals we might need to work on the drill." I say as I begin plugging the connectors for the furnace. It's not an exact perfect smelting station that I implied but with a bit of finesse I should be able to forge what we need.
"That's good. That way we won't have to go out to grab anything we need." She says after putting down the crate and opening up the crate to look at the rounds inside. "A shame we can't use your droids. They'd be able to help wouldn't they?" She asks and I nod sadly.
"Yeah… they would." I agree with a sigh. "Unfortunately if we bring them here, there is without a doubt in my mind Peridot will completely go ballistic… like she is right now."
"Who cares about any of you! You're all just rocks! Ruddy, muddy, clumps beneath my gravity connectors! Grah!" Peridot goes off on a tantrum and starts stomping on the spot before falling over.
"Something like that." I mutter to Garnet, who nods in agreement as Amethyst comes by and stands against the inside of the barn door.
"Ugh, another one of her temper tantrums." Pearl notes after seeing the green gem stomp around. "I'm surprised you two made it back from the Kindergarten without driving each other crazy." She looks over at Amethyst. I can't help but look as well for the back that things didn't go as well as it looks.
"Yeah…" Amethyst grumbles, not bothering to look at her.
I shake my head at how bad things went real quick at the Kindergarten. Strange thing is, it's amazing to think just how the gems are supposed to be and how their position in the gem hierarchy's supposed to be. From what Peridot was implying, fusing is only supposed to be for fighting, Pearl isn't supposed to be independent as she is, and Amethyst is supposed to be a very powerful hardened warrior that could possibly be on par with Jasper. "Jasper." I growl out the gems name in question. Remembering who she is, I can't help but feel both anger and sadness. Anger at the orange gem and how much I really want to tear her apart, and sadness for Lapis who is still no doubt holding her under the sea. 'Just a little bit longer Lapis. Just hang on a little bit longer'
*Fwooosh*
The fire in my furnace spews forth, indicating it's ready to get to work. I stand up and watch as the jets of flame and fire dance in front of me.
I clench my fists. 'As soon as we deal with the Cluster, I'm coming for you Jasper.'
Several hours later, things progress as normal as they can. Garnet and Pearl left to go chase off more cows who for some reason just love to come by and bother them, Marcus is working on his forge and melting down some of the tungsten rounds, Amethyst is going around to make sure none of the cows got through, and Peridot is working on the drill with Steven holding her leash.
"This little thing…" Peridot grumbles as she continues to fiddle around with the panel she has attached to the inside of the drills top. After pressing a few more buttons, she notices Amethyst walking by but she doesn't acknowledge the green gem. Peridot grunts louder in frustration before going back to working. "Dyaagh!"
"How's everything going up there?" Steven asks her from the ground, still holding her leash.
"Fine! There's nothing wrong, everything's fine." She grumbles but in her angry states, she accidentally pushes a button by mistake. "Ah! No, no, no, no, no, stop!" She worriedly says, trying to fix it but fails to.
"Peridot?" Steven asks because of her worried state.
"Ah!" She grunts as the machine suddenly jerks, making her fall off and cough. "The panel." She tells Steven.
With a nod, Steven jumps onto the drill but after he does does it start spinning at an insane pace.
"Wait!" Peridot tries to go to help the kid but the leash on her vest catches onto a piece of debris on the ground.
"It's okay, I got it!" Steven manages to say through the spinning drill but he's still being thrown around by the speed
"What's going on?" Marcus asks as he comes out of the barn after hearing the heavy use of machinery. His eyes widen as he stares at the activated drill. "What the—?"
"Help him!" He looks over at Peridot as she points to the drill. "The panel!"
He looks at the machine and notices a blur of black and red on top. "Steven!" He moves forward and gets ready to jump on top of the machine but it's speed makes him hesitate. "C'mon c'mon." He tries to come up with the right time to jump. Unfortunately the spinning drill bit tearing apart the ground clangs of a buried rock and angles itself toward Marcus. He has no time to get out of the way as one of the pieces of metal jutting out of the side of the top of the drill slams into him. "Aaaarhh!" He yells in pain as he's sent flying through the hole in the top of the barn.
Amethyst meanwhile picks the wrong time to come back as she steps out from behind the barn. "What the—?" She ask in confusion at the noise but seeing the drill coming straight towards her makes her pause.
"Amethyst!" Peridot cries out the purple gems name in worry at seeing her about to be torn apart by the rampaging drill. She struggles a bit at having her leash caught but pushes nonetheless in trying to get to the only gem she finds decent of them all. Pushing and pulling as hard as she can, the leash snaps, allowing Peridot to dash forward.
Amethyst stands frozen as the drill comes straight towards her, at least until she's pushed out of the way by Peridot. Steven meanwhile manages to right himself up on top of the spiraling death machine and grasps the panel attached to it. With quick effort he tears the device off where its housed, exposing wires and disabling the out of control drill. With a slow whir, it comes to a halt before tipping onto it's side with a loud thud. "It's okay, everything's okay!" Steven announces as he climbs on top of the drill, dizziness clearly evident from his loopy voice and eyes. "It was just a drill!" He laughs a little before collapsing against the side of the drill.
The others don't notice him as Peridot and Amethyst are in an awkward situation however, what with Peridot sitting on top of a very surprised Amethyst at what just happened. "Uhhh… Peridot?" She asks.
"Ah!" Peridot quickly jumps off her. "It was an accident, I swear!" She quickly states.
"Hey, don't worry about it." Steven, after coming down from his dizzy spell, manages to walk up to them as he says. "We know you didn't mean to start the drill."
"Uh… yeah. That was an accident, too…" Peridot hesitantly says, not what she was implying in the first place. Amethyst looks at the green gem with a mix of confusion and shock. Peridot said some mean things back at the Kindergarten, whether she meant to or not, but her courageous act has put the purple gem off what she originally thought.
*Crrrr… Snap*
"Ahhh- Uh!" All three of them look back at the barn to see Marcus hanging upside down just inside the barn in front of the main door. Very slowly he spins around with a hook caught on his ankle before he faces the others. "Would someone explain to me what just happened?" He calmly asks them but deep down inside he has just a bit of anger flowing through him after getting nailed pretty hard by the machine.
"We leave for one second and everything goes off the rails!" Pearl cries out loudly in horror, hands pressed to either side of her head at the scene in front of her and Garnet. She looks as she sees the broken down drill and the torn apart ground and dirt in front of them all.
"I blame the cows." Garnet states.
"I blame you two." The two of them look back to see me still hanging and slowly rotating inside the barn. "You left us alone and now look what happened." I tell them after I complete another rotation when I see them. "Now can either of you two help me already. My heads starting to hurt from the blood rushing to my head."
*Thud*
"Wa! Pah!... Thank you." I groan out after hitting the ground.
"Your welcome." Garnet says with a smile after simply lightly punching the barn door. Her action freed me from my hanging and let me unceremoniously fall to the ground in a heap.
"No, it's fine, it's fine. We'll rebuild it. Stronger, better. We'll add seat belts!" Pearl happily states, already visualizing the new possibilities for the drill.
"Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure." I groan as I stand up and stretch my back. Pops can be heard from the stretching of my spine. "I'm gonna go walk around a bit." I tell them as I carefully make my way around the area. The sudden head rush has left me somewhat disoriented like Steven after he took a ride on the spinning drill so now while my balance is offset pretty badly, I somewhat stumble to Amethyst and Steven as she pulls a unicycle out of the ground. "You two alright? I got thrown pretty hard before I could see what happened."
"We're fine."
"Yeah, we're good, especially you Amethyst." Steven says as he looks at her. "It's a good thing Peridot was there to save you."
"Hm?" I question.
"She was about to get messed up by the drill when Peridot pushed her out of the way at the last second. Good thing." He explains with a smile.
'Huh, so Peridot did save her. She could have let her get hit and ran off since we were all gone or incapacitated. Speaking of…' I think as I see Peridot walking over to us.
"Yes, it is a good thing." She agrees with Steven. Before she says anything else, she pauses and stares at Amethyst for a bit. "Listen, I... uhm..." She hesitates to say what she wants to say.
"Just spit it out." Amethyst states in an annoyed tone.
Peridot looks shocked at her before getting angry and grunting. "Ughh!" She facepalms. "Why are you earthlings so difficult!?"
*Click*
She slaps her hand on top of her tape recorder, activating the playback before aiming it towards us. "Log date 7112." Peridot can be heard in the recorder. "This entire planet is backwards. There hasn't been one instance of correct behavior exhibited by any one of these 'Crystal Gems'. I have concluded that they are all defective." Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Amethyst is getting annoyed at what's being said on the recorder. "But I am no better." That gives the both of us pause. "I failed my mission and now I'm working with the enemy. And I can't even get that right. I have apparently 'hurt' Amethyst's 'feelings', which was not my intent. If I've damaged my standing with the best Gem here, then I've made a serious mistake. I'm still learning. I hope you understand. I want to understand. I'm sorry… Peridot. Facet 5. End log."
*Click*
As stated, the playback ends. "As you can see—"
"Oh, Peridot." Steven says emotionally. I have to admit, I can't help but smile at her action too. It seems she's not as great at conveying her emotions directly with people. Really smart, and kind of awesome how she uses her records as a way to convey what she means. 'Nice.' However she doesn't share as much optimism with Steven as she looks away and makes an odd noise angrily.
"Hey uhh, Peridot…" She looks at Amethyst. "…Thanks." She says with a smile, making Peridot smile awkwardly in return. "But you're still a nerd." And then she kind of tanks the emotional moment before walking off.
"Oh Amethyst." I mumble with a head shake.
"I'll be sure to add that to my notes." Peridot says annoyed. Regardless she looks relieved at Amethyst actually talking to her.
"How do you feel?" My brother asks her from behind.
For a moment, Peridot doesn't say anything as she looks down to the ground. She looks up, "… Big."
I don't know what that means but the look on Steven's face says he does. Seeing as how their good, I remember something that Peridot said that may put Amethyst in a slightly better mood. "I'm gonna go make sure she's good."
"Okay. C'mon Peridot. Let's clean up this mess some more." Steven says and walks away.
"Very well." She agrees in her usual high and mighty attitude and follows him.
Once they go, I jog over to the purple gem. "Hey, Amethyst." I call her name.
"Hm? Oh, hey Marcus. You need something?"
"Nah, I'm good. I just wanted to uhh, mention something I remember back at the Kindergarten."
"Oh." She looks down at the reminder of what happened at that place. "You sure you wanna bring that back up?" She asks as she walks away.
"Actually, here's the thing." I say as I walk along with her. "Peridot said that you are defective. You're supposed to be twice as tall as you are now and be more intimidating."
"Is there a point to this?!" She angrily states, stopping and reeling on me as she gives me a death stare with arms crossed.
"Well, you remember what she said after you took off the drill with one swipe of your whip?" I ask with a smirk.
Her angry stares turns to confused and then embarrassed. "Uhhhh…" She says awkwardly seeing as how she was too angry at the time to process what she said.
"She said, and I quote, "See, look at that. You can do everything a normal quartz can do." Meaning, that despite you being apparently defective, you can be just as effective as a normal, twice-as-tall, intimidating quartz soldier." I explain with a smile.
A look of awe and realization graces her face as she now remembers the apparent compliment that Peridot gave her. "Huh… wow."
"A flaw makes you unique Amethyst. It may be a flaw but it's what makes you different from all the other quartz soldiers that came out of the Kindergarten. If you hadn't been delayed by those 500 years in coming out, then what are the chances you'd still be a Crystal Gem and not another soldier for the Diamonds?" I ask her. She looks down for a second as she contemplates what I said to her. I crouch down and lay a hand on her shoulder, making her look me in the eye. "Peridot may have come off as a jerk, but she did raise some good points." I stand back up with a smile. "You're not wrong in our eyes Amethyst. Never." I start to walk away so I can get back to work but I look back to her. "Oh and uhh, to be honest… I don't think looking like Jasper suits you."
After my piece is said and done, I head back to my workshop to get to work on what we need. I can't help but have a smile on my face at the fact that things are now settled down and things are better between everyone. I scoop up the torn panel and start examining it for ways to incorporate it into the new drill design.
Not as much seems to have happened in my opinion on Marcus here but I still like how it turns out, especially the beginning. I was just waiting for the moment when he and Peridot get into a technology fight argument and I keep grinning everytime I picture the scene happening as if it were in the show itself.
Which reminds me, a little something for you all: My very first Omake of the beginning scene.
Omake: Heated Differences
"I know what I'm doing! Stop second guessing me!" Marcus yells at Peridot.
"And I was literally built to be an engineer! I know how to do this stuff like the hack of my limb enh—!" Peridot stops as she remembers she doesn't have her enhancers anymore.
"Awwww! How sad! Did little Peri forget she's as normal as the rest of us!"
"Oh what do you know about normal?! You overgrown psychotic monster!"
"NARCISISTIC IMP!" Marcus's head cartoonishly grows to five times it's normal size as he yells down at her.
"STUPID HUMAN CLOD!" Peridot does the same as they but heads and yell with each other.
"STUPID GNAT!"
"HYBRID ABOMINATION!"
The rest of the Crystal Gems watch from against the barn. Their heads swivel back and forth as Pearl, Garnet, Amethyst and Steven watch the two argue. Eventually the two of them growl at each other as a red lightning bolt of anger forms between the two as they death stare at one another.
"I think I remember something like this happening to some Japanese shows I watch." Steven mentions as he takes a handful of popcorn from Amethyst.
"Sounds about right." The purple gem says and takes a sip of her soda.
"Shouldn't we do something?" Pearl asks worriedly from next to Garnet and Steven. "Their getting a bit… much."
"I'm sure things will be fi—"
*Fwshing*
*Bang*
"You're gonna have to do better than that!"
"Ha! Back at you!"
Pearl is cowering behind Steven and Amethyst as they both stare at the fusion in surprised horror. A sword sticks out of the barn door to the right of her head, and a smoking bullet hole on the left. "… Okay. I'll stop them." She pushes herself off the barn and walks over to the fighting pair.
"Yes, please do." Pearl mutters as she comes out from behind them.
Garnet walks up to Marcus and Peridot as the two of them continue to yell and threaten each other. Marcus is waving around his other sword while Peridot has the Anaconda revolver in her hands. "Okay. Listen you two—!"
"WHAAAAAT!?" The two of them scream very very loudly as their heads grow to be even larger than the barn. Fire brims in their eyes along with the razor sharp gritted teeth they both sport as they stare at the fusion in anger for interrupting them.
Garnet meanwhile literally shrinks down under their gaze. The sheer anger and ferocity they exhibit being the scariest thing she has ever seen as she lays on the ground and shakes. "… Uh… um… I… nevermind." She hesitates in saying before bailing.
The two's massive fiery gaze continues for a few seconds until they suddenly return to normal and look at each other. "You little—"
"I'm going to—"
And their arguments continue against one another. Garnet still shrunken crawls back on her hands and knees to the others.
All four of them are now in their cute, small chibi personas, huddling, shaking together in fear at what they just saw. Amethyst is on Steven's left with Pearl on his right and Garnet now hugging Pearl and Steven from behind.
"I'm so scared." Pearl breaths out scared.
"We all are Pearl." Garnet agrees with her and the other two nod. "We all are."
I can't stop smiling and chuckling people. Please tell me you all are in the same boat as me. Seeing as how my stories tend to keep things somewhat serious or as realistic as I can try to make them, this scene wouldn't make as much sense in having it canon to my story. So instead I decided to give you all two fold. Omake's are a Japanese anime type thing but you know what, it translates basically to extras so screw it I couldn't resist. On occasion if I find a scene or come up with something like this, or you all come up with something, that seems funny as hell but doesn't fit with the tone but really want to see it put into words, then expect some more of these in the future. Not in every chapter but maybe at some points.
With this chapter done, I'd also like to address something I temporarily decided. A problem I had when I first got onto this site was the fact that when searching for stories the default rating search system was only K to T and not included M. So when I found out I had to change the rating search to 'All' all the time, I got a little annoyed and felt stupid that that was going on for months to almost a year.
Don't know if anyone else is dealing with the same problem so for now till the next chapter, this story will be temporarily rated T so you all can see this and realize this story is now officially M rated once I change it back. It's a little something so no one accidentally misses any new updates just because you or I forget to change the rating system on the search engine.
Remember, I'm going to be working on my other stories again so don't expect as quick an update as usual for 'A Tale of A Jade.'
Anyway, everything's alright, planning to go out of town for 4th of July but will be taking my laptop so I can continue working on my stuff regardless, and hope everything's well with everyone.
As always everyone, have a great day, and have fun reading.
