This chapter was written before, throughout, and after the Goodbye Unus Annus livestream on November 13th.
Here you guys go, chapter on the 29th, although it is a bit late depending on where you're time zone is.
And its a bit late due to issues with my computer.
The hours before daybreak felt like an eternity for all of the inhabitants of that barn.
Peridot had already been sketching out some plans while Lapis kept watch on their guest from the chair in the loft. All it took was a partial rotation to be able to watch Black Tourmaline and Peridot at the same time.
Said guest had moved very little from where she plopped herself with the lantern. The only real change was that she was now inspecting other lanterns.
Peridot had spent days dissecting most of them. Some being "primitive incandescent bulbs of electrified tungsten" and others being "absurdly primitive flammable fabrics" all being encased in "disappointedly simple casing of a formed non-crystalline silica mixture and carburized iron."
Lapis had mainly tuned out most of that, but Peridot had repeated that rant enough that the words unfortunately stuck.
As for the mentioned Gem, she had taken some of the lights from some of the spare parts that had been put away into the shed out back and had been working to what looked like combining them together.
-Line Break-
Peridot had been working almost nonstop on her device. The back and forth from the storage receptacle and the barn was the most inconvenience she faced. Almost all of the lights that had been placed around the barn had been activated, along with the lights on the vehicle that had been installed into the domicile's entrance wall.
With all her plans she was only able to predict these methods would be temporary at best and non effective at the least optimal outcome.
As she shuffled around the various spare parts that had once been strewn across the barn floor some came loose from their stacked place, falling over with some breaking.
"Oh of all of the cloddiest clodding things to happen!" Peridot exclaimed at the inanimate objects.
She was about to say more when she noticed something.
Underneath a plastic covering were a large set of bags. It took Peridot unveiling the rest of the bags for her to be able to read the labels. She chose the one with a line of yellow and green pictures to read first.
"Maize Maze's seeds for corn harvest?" Peridot read aloud.
She shifted over to one of the smaller bags to read what text could be on it.
"Gourd Guard's pumpkin supply seeds."
Peridot continued throughout the rest, concluding that the rest of the bags contained these "seeds" and the more parts she moved the more equipment for this "farming" she found.
"Hmm." Peridot hummed to herself, "This is very interesting."
-Line Break-
It had been hours since the two Gems had seen Peridot, though to be fair it was mostly Lapis that had seen her last as Black Tourmaline had stayed in her little circle of lanterns the entire time.
As the morning sunlight peeked its way through the various openings in the barn they heard a grunting sound come from outside the barn.
Lapis was the first to stand, as the black Gem was now busying herself with turning off the lanterns and watching the beams of light pour through the building.
What greeted her as she walked outside really made her think of what she should begin to expect.
Peridot was now dragging a bladed rack across the grass, and from other drag marks, it had been out back behind the barn and was now being collected in a pile in the front.
"Um Peridot?" Lapis asked, "What's all this?"
"Lazuli!" Peridot exclaimed. "You've got to see this."
She ran over to the pile of scattered things to grab a magazine, a really old magazine from the look of it.
"Check this out." Peridot said, shoving the magazine into Lapis' hands.
"Farmers' Harvest Monthly?"
"What're you guys talking about?" Black Tourmaline asked, making her way to the two and noticing the accumulated pile of things, "And what's with the junk pile?"
Peridot gasped at the supposed insult to her work.
"That "junk" is going to be our way to create an army of our own! Imagine the possibilities."
Black Tourmaline's head snapped from the two Gems and the pile of stuff multiple times before settling her gaze back to the two.
"Really?"
"Yes." Peridot responded incredulously, "This process called "farming" will allow us to grow an entire harvest."
"Are you sure about that Peridot?" Lapis asked, flipping through the torn pages of the magazine. "I don't see anything in here that says that."
"It says it over here." Peridot answered, running over to the pile of stuff. "Right here on this bag."
The two skeptical Gems walked over to where she was pointing, both sharing looks that didn't really believe what they were hearing.
But when they reached the pile it did in fact say what Peridot had been telling them.
"Seeds for a Corn Harvest." Lapis read aloud.
"According to my calculations we had enough of these seeds here for a full harvest." Peridot said, pointing to a specific page in the magazine.
Lapis lifted the magazine and Black Tourmaline looked over her shoulder to see what Peridot was talking about.
The page showed a faded picture of a man wearing rough looking clothes in front of a wall of yellow and green plants with green and orange ones scattered at his feet. The word bubble that came from the man said, " A full harvest from a few bags of seeds and a lot of honest work."
The two looked from the magazine and the pile, still doubting all of this.
Peridot had taken this time to bring that bladed rack over with the rest of the stuff.
"Well." Peridot said, "Let's get to work."
The next chapter of this story will be posted on the 21st of December
Do you guys have any idea of some other swear substitutes that might have been used throughout the show? Because other than just straight up insults I can't really find ones that you'd say just directed at a situation. Like you could say, "Well that's crappy" or "For fucks sake" or "You gotta be shitting me"or something like that at just a bad situation.(Since the T rating for this story does say that I can use some coarse language I'm gonna be safe and have this note as the only legitimate time there's swears in this story)
Was it ever talked about where Peridot and Lapis got all of that farming stuff? Because wasn't the barn just filled with plane stuff? Sure that tractor was there, and I couldn't have it in the silo because they had already moved it to be a part of the barn by the time the story started. That and I wasn't sure how much of Peridot's kindergartener skills would have transferred over to farming so I took some liberties here and there.