"You know you wouldn't need to accompany me if you simply reactivated my weapons systems." Peridot grumbled as the warp deposited herself the gems, and steven at the kindergarten's pad. Amethyst snorted and blew a raspberry leapt from the rise on which the pad was located.
"We're way more worried about what you're gonna do than something happening to you." Peridot scoffed crossing her limb enhancers in front of her chest.
"All I need to do is retrieve some data from the kindergarten's command center, so why don't I do that while the rest of you retrieve the drill bit we need?" Already moving to suit her words she started towards the tunnel the oversized robonoid had uncovered, only to have garnet lift her off the ground by the back of her neck.
"I'm sure Rose and Amethyst can handle that on their own." Peridot rolled her eyes but nodded in defeat.
"Fine fine, let's just get to it already." Steven waved back at the other two gems who were already laughing as they knocked over one of the massive injectors, before turning towards Peridot.
"So what kind of data do you need to recover?" Peridot gave a slight scoff but it was clear she enjoyed dispensing knowledge they didn't have.
"It's the Data I was trying to recover remotely when you so rudely interrupted me. It's a collection of fusion experiment reports from the end of the war, hopefully there'll be info on the cluster there too, but even if there isn't I'll be able to use the other reports to help develop an attack strategy to use against the cluster." Steven nodded along, more knowledge was always better after all, but he caught Garnet shudder out of the corner of his eye.
"What kind of fusion experiments?" The bottom fell out of his stomach even as he asked, but he had the feeling they needed to know. Peridot, not seeming to sense her companion's discomfort explained in a matter of fact tone.
"Well the rebels, that's you I guess, proved to be particularly difficult to combat despite homeworld's numerical advantages due to several factors like the unorthodox tactics they employed, and their unusual fusions. Tactics can be analyzed but the fusions confused homeworld, they would have warrior gems fuse with servant gems, or artisans with laborers, and somehow the results time and again proved superior to traditional like gem fusion." Steven felt some pride well up in his chest, and looked over to find a smirk crossing Garnet's lips. "To try and better understand this type of fusion shards were collected from gems shattered in battle, cleaved together and allowed to reform, from what I understand the results were fascinati. . ."
Before she could get the last word out, she was lifted by Garnet once again, this time by the shoulders and turned to star into her own eyes reflected in Garnet's visor. "They did what?!" Steven went wide eyed, turning to watch the two of them as Garnet's voice reverberated off the walls: He'd never heard her yell before. Peridot began to stammer out a repeat of what she'd said but Garnet shook her head almost violently. "They forced them together? Not even whole gems? I thought maybe they'd captured and observed some. .. I never thought they could do something like that." Then suddenly her voice took on a rougher angrier cadence. "That's a lie, we knew what they were capable of." Then suddenly it was high pitched and quavery. "We couldn't have known what they were going to do." Back to angry. "We should have! What are we good for then? This is punishment for the war!" High again. "It wasn't our fault!" Garnet's form began to glow as she dropped Peridot who stumbled back.
"What's going on?" She asked in a panic looking at Steven.
"She's coming apart." Steven stepped up, taking hold of Garnet's face in his hands, he slid her visor away to look her in the eye and spoke in a calm voice. "You didn't do this, Peridot didn't do this, all we can do now is try to make it better, and you splitting up right now isn't going to help that." Garnet's unstable form gave one last shudder before ir coalesced and she reclaimed her visor smiling down at him.
"Thank you Steven, you're right, falling apart isn't going to do anyone any good." She sighed once and looked over to Peridot. "Are you ready to go in?" Peridot nodded sheepishly and stepped passed them to the edge of the ramp that lead down to the control center.
"Alright, I can get to the control center using the rotary flight functionality of my limb enhancers, but how are you getting down there without a plug robonoid?" Garnet and Steven exchanged a smug look, each of them leaping into the hole, sliding down the steep incline with ease. Peridot sighed and lifted her hand above her head forming the helicopter and made her way down after them. Once she arrived Peridot wasted little time setting to work using the zero point projector from her enhancers to begin pulling columns from within the walls. "It looks like data storage should still be intact." Moving to a small console she began calling up the data one for the screen to flash red. "Well that's not good."
Steven looked over her shoulder to see what had gone wrong, what he found was a screen displaying a single sentence in red gem lettering. "insufficient power?" He read out loud and Peridot shrugged.
"It would seem someone smashed the primary power source." He looked towards the spot Garnet had smashed to get him out of his mental battle with Peridot. "Which means to get the data I'm going to have to transfer power from the stasis system to the computers."
"Stasis systems?" Garnet asked, eyeing the columns suspiciously.
"Yeah, several of the Fusion experiments were left behind in stasis, the stasis system has it's own auxiliary power source." Garnet nodded in understanding. "So as soon as I begin the download a number of the experiments will be released. You'll need to try to contain them before they can take form, they're behavior will likely be erratic even violent." Garnet nodded and looked to Steven again.
"You and I will begin bubbling gems and sending them off, hopefully we can catch them all before the can reform." He nodded and took a position on the opposite side of the columns from Garnet. "Whenever you're ready Peridot." She called and readied herself for what was coming.
It was clear when the transfer occured, the lights dimmed and several small openings in the columns appeared. From which spilled a dozen or so mashed together gem shards. Garnet had half bubbled and off to the temple before any could hit the ground, despite his speed and training, Steven didn't quite manage to keep up and a few of his fell to the ground bouncing once before a glow began to overtake them.
What appeared wailed in it's half formed state, the silhouettes of several gems visible before they shuddered and glitched, twisting into what appeared to be a mass of hands and limbs scuttling along the floor. Steven reached for his gem but was shoved back harshly as it leapt for Garnet. The fusion froze in place as it began to latch onto her, a mouth appearing in the center of it's mass.
A tear rolled down Garnet's eye as she muttered out a mournful. "I'm so sorry." The gem creature moved to lash out at her only for it suddenly freeze in place. Garnet blinked, suddenly coming back to her senses she looked around, to find Peridot holding the creature in place with her zero point system.
"Steven was right, you didn't do this, this isn't your fault." When Peridot looked at the abomination homeworld science had perverted fusion into steven (Who was now back on his feet) could tell she was as revolted as he and Garnet were. Without a word he produced his blade and poofed the poor thing, swiftly bubbling the mangled gem shards.
"We can't let any of these escape, we need to bubble all of them." Then looking over to the homeworld gem Garnet smiled. "Thank you Peridot." She blushed and turned back to her console.
"The download will take another few minutes." In that time she and Steven were able to poof and recover what they believed to be the remaining shattered gem chimeras. With the data and experiments secured they all made their way back up the tunnel in silence. When they reached the top Peridot took a look around, as if seeing the Kindergarten for the first time.
"You know I'm a kindergartener, I've helped construct hundreds of these. . .but I've never been in one after it was out of service before. . .I don't think I like it very much." Moving one arm she took one of the injectors up in her zero point energy and brought it crashing down over the control center's entrance. "Let's see how the others are doing, and go home." Steven smiled and nodded as the three of them headed back towards the warp.