Chapter Fifty-One - Second Best

Steven furrowed his brow in concentration. Then, with extreme care, he drew the small brush along Peridot's fingernail until it was fully covered in lemon-yellow nail polish. "There!" he said proudly. "Once it's dry, I have some star-shaped stickers, so if I put one on the nail and paint over it in pink, when I peel it off, you'll have starry nails!"

"Wow!" Peridot lifted her hands and gazed at her nails in admiration. "They're so… unnecessarily decorative. In a good way," she added hastily.

"I know what you mean," Steven said with a laugh. "There's no real reason to do it, it's just fun. Now you do mine, OK?" He shuffled the tiny bottles around and then picked one up. "Oooh, Grape Sorbet. I want that one."

Peridot unscrewed the bottle and then, copying Steven's previous actions, scraped the excess polish off the brush and began carefully applying it to his fingernails.

Steven waited until she was on the third fingernail before opening his mouth. "You're a certified kindergartener, right?" he began, in a casual tone. "So does that mean you know all about how gems are made?"

Peridot looked surprised by the question, but nodded anyway. "That's correct. Why do you ask?"

"Well, I was just wondering." He adjusted his hand slightly so she could move onto the next finger. "The gems told me once how gems are made, in the kindergartens, with the injector drills and stuff, and they said gems aren't ever babies. Is that right?"

"That's correct," Peridot said again. "Gems emerge from the kindergarten fully formed. Unlike your organic lifeforms here on Earth, there is no infant stage of growth and development." She wiped the brush on the edge of the bottle. "Next hand."

Steven held out his other hand. "So… if you guys aren't ever really babies, does that mean you don't have to learn how to walk and talk and stuff?"

Peridot nodded, looking rather pleased to be given the opportunity to share the expertise she had on this subject. "We are all created with a baseline level of knowledge that allows us to emerge ready to serve the Diamond Authority immediately," she explained. "Of course, minor differences in gem quality can also affect the strength and intelligence of a gem, while gem placement gives an indication of a gem's personality, so some newly formed gems who have been deemed to have greater potential are selected for further training." She gave a smug little smile as she said this, and Steven guessed she was one of those gems who had been selected. It was probably why she'd been sent to Earth, he realised.

"So…" he began, "if, say, Amethyst hadn't stayed in the ground, and come out during the rebellion, she would've started fighting straight away?"

"Correct," Peridot said a third time. "She would have been sent into battle at once, already instinctively knowing the fighting techniques used by other Quartz soldiers in her battalion. Outside of battle, Quartz warriors do a lot of additional training to learn new skills, but they are created to a certain standard."

"I see." He nodded slowly. "So, do you think the reason I had to learn all my gem powers as well as walking and talking, is because I'm half-human and had to grow up from a baby?"

"That sounds plausible," Peridot agreed. "If you had been created in a kindergarten, your development would have been overseen by a trained and certified kindergartener like myself, who would've ensured that you emerged fully proficient in all your basic gem skills."

"And I probably wouldn't have turned myself into a cat monster," he joked.

She laughed. "Probably."

"So…" He took a deep breath. "If gems are created knowing all this stuff, how come they didn't make it so you could shapeshift and stuff?"

Peridot stilled halfway through painting the pinky finger. "It was… unnecessary," she said eventually, resuming her task. "I was created with all the knowledge I needed to carry out my job as a kindergarten technician. That's all I was ever supposed to know."

"But Pearl told me all gems have shapeshifting powers," Steven persisted. "She can shapeshift, Garnet can shapeshift, so I guess that means Ruby and Sapphire can too. And they can all bubble and summon weapons-"

"Well, they were all made thousands of years ago!" Peridot said defensively. "Things were different then!"

"Different how?" He tilted his head in confusion. "Different why?"

Peridot capped the bottle and pushed it back towards him. "I'm done," she muttered, sliding off the stool. "It's light out, you can go back to the beach house now."

"But I haven't finished your nails yet!" he protested. "I was gonna do stars on them, remember?"

"I don't need stars on my fingernails," she snapped irritably. "And I don't need to know how to shapeshift!"

Steven was silent for a moment. "But… do you want to know how to shapeshift?" he asked in a small voice.

"Yes! No!" The fight went out of her and she slumped against the counter. "I don't know. Maybe." Then, as there seemed little point in keeping quiet about it any longer, she explained. "I don't know if I have the ability to do so." She climbed back onto the stool and stared down at the countertop. "I'm an Era-2 Peridot. I'm a new gem. Resources are dwindling on Homeworld, and they can't make gems like they used to."

Steven's eyes widened as understanding dawned over him. "That's why you argued with Yellow Diamond!"

Peridot nodded. "Era-2 Peridots are given technological enhancements because we don't have any powers-" She hesitated at that, and then corrected herself. "Or at least, they're not very strong. Once I was captured and deprived of my limb enhancers, my lack of skill became a much greater hindrance." A small, self-depreciating smile appeared on her face. "I know I still couldn't have beaten you all in a fight, but I did often wish I could summon a weapon and at least try. So when Yellow Diamond rejected the opportunity to help other gems like me over a matter of petty revenge…"

"You lost your cool," Steven finished. Seeing that she looked a little calmer now, he picked up a sheet of star-shaped stickers and began peeling one off. "So… I know I don't know a lot about gem stuff, but I know you have some powers, and nobody on Earth minds if it's 'unnecessary', so maybe if you keep trying…?"

Peridot perked up. "Actually, now that you mention it, there is something I've discovered." She held out her hand and allowed Steven to place stickers on her fingernails, and with the other hand, she opened the drawer and placed a spoon on the countertop. "Watch this."

Steven watched obediently. To his amazement, the spoon slid several centimetres across the wood. "Ohhhh myyyy gosh, Peridot! Metal powers! That's amazing!"

"Heh." Peridot grinned proudly as the spoon floated up into the air. She held it in place for a moment and then let it fall. "I know."

"That's so cool!" Steven cried, the nail polish now completely forgotten. "How!? When!?"

"A few days ago," Peridot said vaguely. "But in retrospect, I see that there were several occasions where my powers manifested, only I didn't recognise them at the time. When I pulled the sword out of the floor," she added at Steven's blank expression.

"Oh yeah, I remember." He picked up a bottle of pink polish and opened it. "So how did you work it out, was it an emotional thing? When I first summoned my shield, it was because I was feeling happy, and I can change how fast I fall by thinking about happy and sad stuff. Was it like that?"

"Hmm. Perhaps there was some emotional element involved," she said without bothering to elaborate upon what those emotions were. "You know, I suspect now that these metal powers were what powered my limb enhancers," she mused aloud.

"That makes sense," Steven agreed. He began to carefully apply the polish, then once he was done, he picked up a pair of tweezers and peeled off the sticker. "Tada!"

"It looks like the shirt," Peridot observed, admiring her starry thumbnail.

"A Crystal Gem thumb," Steven commented. "Now you don't have to worry about breaking your bracelet."

"Mmm." She held her hand back out so the other nails could be painted and wondered whether to tell the truth about her bracelet. After all, he hadn't been angry about the DVDs. "Actually-"

"Hi guys!" Lapis's voice sounded cheerfully from the open doorway. "What are you doing?"

Peridot froze. Suddenly all she could think of was all the terrible decisions she'd made in the last day - she should've stayed at the barn and told the Crystal Gems what was going on, she should've told Connie, she should've told Steven, she should've asked Lion to open a portal directly into Lapis's room, she should've asked Lion to take her as far away from here as possible, she should've sent Steven home the previous evening so she could work, she should've burned the whole barn down. Literally any one of those ideas would've been better than singing and dancing and drinking hot chocolate and sleeping, ignoring her problems and hoping for the best.

"Hi Lapis," Steven greeted. "We're doing manicures." As he said it, however, he found that Peridot's hands were shaking too much for him to actually apply the polish, and he recapped the bottle, a small frown on his face. Something wasn't right here.

"That's the hand thing, right?" Lapis sauntered in and looked at his purple fingernails. "Huh."

"Yeah, I'm doing stars on Peridot's." He nodded over at the other gem, who'd pressed her hands flat upon the counter top to hide the tremors. "Do you want me to do yours next?"

"Absolutely not," Lapis said at once. "But thank you," she added, smiling at the boy.

"How-" Peridot stopped talking and cleared her throat as her voice came out in a strangled squeak. "How did the mission go?"

"It was fine," Lapis said neutrally. "We found the monster and poofed it." Quite honestly, she'd been surprised to find out the monster actually existed in the end; she'd half-expected the Crystal Gems to drag her around the entire North and then claim it must have moved on. "Amethyst fell down a ravine though."

"Oh no!" Steven gasped. "Is she OK?"

"Oh yeah," Lapis said dismissively. "It took us an hour to get her out of there though. They're all back at the beach house if you wanna head back and see them?"

"Mmm," Steven said noncommittally, watching Peridot tense up out of the corner of his eye. "I haven't had breakfast yet. I brought Pop Pastries," he explained, sliding off his stool and walking over to the cupboard where he'd put the packet the night before. "Do you want to try some? Peridot and me found a way you can taste food without eating."

Lapis opened her mouth to refuse and then hesitated. "How?"

Steven looked over at Peridot, waiting for her to explain, but Peridot was staring down at her fingers. "Well, if you chew it up for a bit, you can just spit it out again," he explained instead. "No pooping required!"

"But… that's still disgusting," Lapis objected. "It's still the same stuff, just coming out in a different place."

"I suppose when you put it like that…" Steven trailed off, looking a little grossed out. Still, it wasn't enough to fully put him off his Pop Pastries, so he shook his head, tore open the foil package and popped the pastry in the toaster. The pastry popped straight back up again. He checked the outlet to make sure everything was switched on, and tried again. Once again the pastry popped right back up and he frowned. "Huh. That's weird. The toaster doesn't seem to be working."

"Oh, yes, that's my fault," Peridot said quickly, sweating as she felt Lapis's eyes upon her. "I uh, I was experimenting with my metal powers and accidentally pulled out the heating elements. That would be why it's not functioning as it should be. That's all."

"That's all?" Lapis repeated dryly. It didn't really matter what Peridot had done to the toaster, she wouldn't get a chance to do anything with it, but it was fun watching her squirm.

And squirm Peridot did. "Of course that's all!"

"It doesn't matter," Steven cut in. "I can eat them as they are, they just taste better warm." He began chewing slowly and tried to think. He couldn't just go back to the beach house and leave Lapis and Peridot alone now without trying to find out what was going on between them. Was it just roommate blues, the shine wearing off of their new living arrangement, or something deeper? What he needed to do was find some way to discretely observe them both interacting with each other, but where he could also talk to them on their own too. Some place with other people, distractions, amusements… he gasped and immediately inhaled a piece of pastry. "Ack!"

Remembering her own choking experience the night before, Peridot reached over and helpfully whacked him on the back until Lapis grabbed her arm in horror and pulled her out of reach. "What are you doing!? Steven! Are you all right?"

"It's OK!" Steven managed to wheeze out between coughs. "It just… went down the wrong way. My lungs don't like food." He poured himself a glass of water and took a few sips. "Can you hand me my backpack? I need to text Garnet."

"Oh?" Lapis said cautiously, handing it over. "Aren't you going back there now?"

"Not yet." Steven shook his head and tapped at the phone screen. "That's what I wanna tell Garnet, I'll be back later, because I'm taking you two to The Happiest Place On Earth!"

"Oh…" Lapis rubbed her neck and pasted a reluctant expression onto her face. "I'd love to, but really, that mission took a lot out of me-"

"Ready when you are, Steven Quartz Universe!" Peridot interrupted, and smiled innocently at Lapis's look of annoyance. She was in no hurry to leave the safety of Steven's company.

"We're all going," Steven said firmly, and folded his arms. "Or do I have to put my foot down again?"

Peridot glanced over at the spot in the doorway where Steven had sat down and refused to move a few days earlier, and frowned. "But it wasn't your foot."

"It's a figure of speech," he explained.

It was safer not to argue with him, so Lapis abandoned her protests at once. "All right, I'll come" she surrendered with a small smile. "You don't have to put anything down."

Despite his ulterior motives, Steven couldn't help grinning with excitement. "Yay! We're gonna have so much fun!" He clapped his hands with glee. "Come on, follow me!"

"So where exactly is "The Happiest Place On Earth?" Peridot asked, obediently following him outside.

"Technically Denmark," Steven admitted. "But our destination is…" He turned and pointed to the town nestled in the valley below. "Beach City Funland!"

xXx

Statistics state that other than the obvious location, Denmark is indeed the happiest place on Earth.

So! Steven being told how Gems are made was the subject of one of the shorts and I believe they're accepted as canon. And it's all been proven correct in the show itself anyway. I could be wrong about some of the additional things I've had Peridot say about gem creation, but with what Rose said about gems never changing and the fact that the newly created Leggy was put to work straight away (apparently she was made like, two days before the Jasper mission, but I'm having trouble finding a source for that), that would imply that they do indeed emerge with a base level of knowledge and mastery of their powers, and Amethyst probably would've been chucked straight into battle.