Greg helps Peridot with dealing with Apophyllite.
For someone who wanted to stay out of the magical stuff, he was very much being involved. Although, he was in the room with a gem whom had previously tried to kill him by throwing him off the barn roof, Greg took the longest time in getting used to Peridot. She was the smart one when it came to a lot of the technology involved (though he couldn't or wouldn't say she was better than Pearl). Efficient in gem stuff but a willing learner into the ways what she would deem to be primitive or pointless devices that humans created in the mean time. Greg had to admit some were useless, the rest helped humanity survive.
All this was new to him and in no easier way would he ever be able to wrap his head around the convoluted and outright impossible things that the gems did. Still, he wanted to help in anyway he could.
After the gems left, he remained behind to aid Peridot. Aid better for the lack of a better word. He sat there remaining stoic until he was needed. He doubted it, but it was the thought that counted.
Even then, after speaking to Snow, all he could do was quietly tap his fingers on his legs out of anxious habit, knowing Steven was out there...in ways that Greg did not want to fathom. His throat was still clogged and his chest was still tight. He just wanted him safe right now but it killed him to know there wasn't anything really he could do. He did trust the gems to make sense of it and bring things back to normal, but if what Greg felt after being tortured by these people was bad, what Steven felt had to have been a thousand times worse.
"Please stop doing that." Peridot commented.
Greg blinked.
"Doing what?" He asked.
"Tapping your legs with your fingers. It's distracting."
Oh.
"Oh sorry. I'll stop." Greg replied, solemn. Maybe he could ask more questions to pass the time.
"I noticed you've been working on that non-stop. What are you trying to do?"
Peridot sighed. Oh boy, here it comes.
"There's something that's been bothering me about Apophyllite. GIS construction is generally based off existing wave length patterns. You mentioned flash copying earlier. That's okay to use if you're only usually a small portion of gem data. But never it is to be an actual gem into itself." She explained.
Cloning but not cloning. Right.
"I've been trying to find the link or at least the raw input codes that will tell me what gem Apophyllite was made from. A GIS isn't always named the gem its made after, but the fact it was named like a gem was a key cornerstone. I've been hitting dead links constantly, traversing in three unrelated deposit caches. Makes zero sense."
Should Greg have had understood what she just said? Because he didn't.
"Which reminds me, I've been wanting you to ask a question for ages..."
It took her until now to ask him?"
"How did you make Steven anyway? I mean, I looked up human mating books and I was not impressed. In fact I was disgusted."
Greg went a deep beetroot at that sudden and unexpected statement. He tried opening his mouth but was left with ums, ahhs and I's as Peridot kept interrupting with the most embarrassing yet intricate details. He'd rather be with the others right now...until a sudden beeping noise caught their attention by surprise. Dozens of red dots appeared on the screen where the other gems were.
"Guys, it's Peridot. A huge clearing has appeared on the map. You're surrounded!" Peridot called out frantically.
Greg knew little, but he knew trouble when he saw it. Panic continued to fluttered into him. The map fizzled out as the Lillim's power kept messing with the transmissions. Peridot whacked the console, cursing it as it didn't respond to her commands.
"Woah, be gentle. I'm sure Apophyllite's trying to get through the static." Greg assured her. Although that was just a guess.
Peridot went back to work typing away goodness knows what, in order to get the answer she'd be satisfied with. The void was filled with the ventilation's soft humming, although it didn't make it less awkward by the moment.
"Combining organic matter and gem matter is considered impossible by any means, although once I studied a bit of the Pink Diamonds properties, I did come up with a few theories." Peridot continued.
Was she really curious about how Steven was even formed? Greg just...well, given the general idea of what human reproduction entailed... she described that Rose's ability to heal others and deal with plant life in general could have been related to it. Rose did what ever she wanted to do. A lot of that was on her hands. He just...happened to be a contributor. Having a kid wasn't originally on Gregs to do list, but it grew on him. The rest is history. The talk of environments molding a gems character made sense. For a gem to pop out of the ground knowing who they are and what they were to do. Rose really desired the human's ability to be who ever they wanted to be.
"I'd been thinking about Fusion a lot." Peridot revealed.
"The convergence of two gems or more. I was fortunate to be a part of it recently, forming, now that I look back to it to being a circumstance where it was necessary, with Jasper and Lazuli to create an entity known as Tiger Iron."
Greg wouldn't have the pleasure of fusing himself, knowing how much of a failure that ended up being, though it was the for the better.
"I had made some mental notes about being a fusion that allowed me to scope out the properties of what makes a cross gem fusion so unique."
She went on to explain Garnets situation and most other fusions she'd encountered so far. Being Tiger Iron held an impact on her much more than she realized and felt like she had taken away a bit of her when they unfused, not necessarily power or gain, but the mentality. A niche engraved in her gem.
"Fusion combines everything of a gem to create a new being. Same gem fusions use existing traits of their own components to forge their light mass to become a much larger version of themselves. Cross gem fusions take similar routes but they add another complex string of data. An imprint. Due to the traits of two separate gems being similar, new data is made to forge new paths to make new strings of logic to make a tangible form based on the relationship between the two or more gems. I'm wondering if an imprint is added on to the gems memory cache...so new data is formed for the next time they fuse to make it easier. "
Yup. Gregs brain was fried.
"But the component gems still have some say in the decisions the Fusion makes...both superconscious and subconscious. That's what makes up the personality of the fusion."
That Greg could get, personality. Garnet held aspects of Ruby and Sapphire, the only fusion he'd come to know quite well. As for everyone else...well...but he got the idea.
"What was Tiger Iron like?" He asked. Curious.
Peridot sighed.
"Hard to say. Fusions created in a time of need between gems with obvious conflicting interests can create unstable fusions. But Malachite seemed to have everything under control for that very reason. Although I'd come into the picture quite late so it's hard to nail down the exact personality for Tiger. Malachite was ruthless and filled with innumerable hatred. Not at that moment. When I became a part of that..it changed. I felt Lapis and Jaspers willing cooperative selves with me and another part emerge that I'd never seen before. We were only fused for about ten or so minutes, being guided by the need to fight. That's the intended purpose for fusions...being war machines when you've just needed more fire power. Now there's more to it than just being stronger."
The original intention for Greg to fuse with Rose was to get closer to her. To get on her level and to experience what could have been an entire trip that would blow his mind and hers.
"You can still be stronger. Relationships are made and developed by bonding with one another. Strength doesn't just come from having a lot of power, but by education and sharing experiences. To fall in love with someone takes time in getting to know the other person and if you survive the highs and lows and both of you still come out better on the other end than you did before, then it's a relationship worth pursuing." He explained to her.
"There's always going to be a rocky period of time where there's a series of misunderstandings or misgivings you'd never expect to have otherwise. Talk, communicate and work out a solution that's going to work for the both of you. Communicate constantly to make sure the other is on the same page so that you can overpower any problem any of you come across. There's no easy solution to everything, which is why you need to constantly strive to understand each others feelings."
Peridot nodded, rubbing her chin as she absorbed his words.
"There may be some wisdom in your madness." She responded.
He wasn't sure about madness. It could be maddening if you really thought about it.
"You have a great relationship with Lapis right? You care about her well being...and you care about Steven and Amethyst..." He pointed out, counting with his fingers.
Peridot grumbled. Klaxons went off as Apophyllite pulled up graphs of goodness knows what.
"What is it?" Greg asked.
The green gem went into a flurry of rapidly trying to decode what Apophyllite was showing them.
"There's an extremely powerful demonstration of something going on in that room. It's huge and-"
The room went dark as Apophyllite short circuited.
Peridot turned on the light with her gem in order for them to see. She was pedantic about the system going offline at the worst possible moment. She slammed the console to get it on, but it was clear that they had a power outage. Greg's chest tightened as a chill entered the room. Whispers went off, then were cut off shortly after. Greg went to check any kind of panel of any sort to see if they could get it working. It wasn't then until he heard sobbing. He could see Peridot crying into the console itself. He wandered over to try and console her as he patted her back.
"Woah woah, it'll be okay, we just have to keep trying to find a way.." Greg told her.
"I don't even know why I-I'm crying...my gem, it hurts..." She cried out.
Greg noticed the bright glow of the console that lit up, projecting Apophyllites sphere again.
"Working off of reserve power. Generating barrier sequence. Scanning."
A wave of blue light filled the room briefly, as Peridot sighed with relief as she fell backwards to the ground. Greg went over to her, uncertain but willing to do what it took to help out. He sat by her and helped her sit back up, as her eyes lulled as she rubbed her gem.
"You alright?" He asked.
She blinked twice.
"Does it look like I'm alright?" She yelled, as Greg was taken aback by her sudden outburst. She then sighed.
"It felt like someone was stabbing me there. Never felt that intense before."
It made Greg fret over what was going on down there. He pursed his lips as he stood up then stared at the door. It just got stranger and stranger by the moment. How did he get roped into this? It wasn't long until the mains power was restored to the room on its own. Peridot collapsed against him as he put an arm over her shoulder. He let her just stay there to recollect her thoughts and her strength for the moment. She reminded him of some of the younger, nerdier girls he knew in school who used to talk to him about their problems. They were the nicest people you'd ever meet but the amount of times the thuggish jerks or the more clique girls would pick on her since they were really excited about certain subjects or topics.
Though she didn't have magic powers or the ability to fuse or anything like that. Certainly not with two separate gems let alone one. Hmm...it gave him an idea.
"You said that...Apophyllite had three memory...cache thingys right?" He asked her.
She nodded.
"Yeah? So?"
Three memory caches. The topic of Flash copying. Memory caches created during fusion, what ever that all meant and GIS production stuff.
"Did they ever try to clone Fusions? I mean, I know about the fusion experiments and what not, but given the unique uhhh...uniqueness of gem fusions, have they tried copying any of that?"
Peridots eyes widened at Gregs series of unasked, unexpected questions.
"You said they don't always name those GIS things after the Gem? What if..."
She shot up off the ground and eyed off Apophyllites projection.
"That's it!" Peridot beamed. She grabbed Greg by the shoulders as she drilled her eyes into his and ended digging up his anxiety instead.
"Three Memory Caches that belonged to three separate gems. Apophyllite is a Fusion scanned GIS. Not only does that explain its unique properties but it also proves my imprint theory. When did you get so you good at Gem Physiology and technology?"
Uh. Well, most of it was put together from bits and pieces. He also did apply some of her earlier logics too. Other than that, a lot of it came from seeing what happened to the gems on a infrequent basis.
"A minute ago?" He replied sheepishly.
Peridot grinned as she threw her hands to her hips, proud at the revelation.
"If only I could find out what gems you were made out of...that would be the next aspect of this investigation!"
Her joy was soon cut off as they heard the door slam hard, causing Greg to jump. Peridot ordered Apophyllite to unlock the door as it soon flew open. Greg could only watch as Snow came inside, carrying a heavily bloodied Connie in her arms, weeping as the door was shut. Snow fell against the door and slid down. Greg went to Connie's bag at the edge of the bed nearby, trying to find any first aid equipment he could find. He found some bandages and tissues in there, helped wipe off some of the blood then went to work to stop the bleeding from her forehead. He carefully wrapped the bandages around her head, careful to not knock her gem. He then noticed that the others hadn't come back either. Greg took Connie from Snow and put her back on the bed to let the girl rest. He could see Peridot kneeling before Snow who looked absolutely distraught as she too rubbed her gem. Greg gave Connie her bottle of water, but couldn't help but feel like daggers were dug into his chest as he could see Snow trying so hard to stop crying.
After a moment of tending to Connie, she felt a bit better and sat up. She was weak, but she could sit up under her own power. Relieved, Greg saw that Peridot had Snow sit down on one of the chairs, back slouched as she held her head in her hands, her elbows digging into her knees. Despite her own pain. Connie went over, as they embraced one another. Snow eventually stopped as she rubbed Connies head and sat up. Greg witnessed the stretch of sorrow from her glistening green eyes. It had to have been a horrible situation for Snow to be like that; with even Connie looking worse for wear. He had to be prepared for the worst.
"I don't even know where to start." Said Connie.
"Start it from the top." Greg suggested.
Both Connie and Snow described on how they had gotten to the room itself and that they had found Steven encased in a giant cube of onyx, only for Pink Steven to fuse with him becoming some kind of gem fusion that Liliith called Blood Diamond that caused pain to the very gems they had that ended up poofing everyone except Snow and that Connie's bleeding was part of that. Snow theorized his new Aura was giving off a warped projection that ended up hurting everyone in its perimeter. Explained why Peridot was in agony prior at least. Steven had the mercy to put everyone into a bubble and send them away. However, he definitely did not like seem like Steven in his bout of aggressive behavior. Greg found this all very hard to take in. His own son...his sweet little boy was put through all this...he couldn't take it.
"I'm sorry Greg." Said Snow. Her anguish spoke volumes.
"And you just let him go?" Peridot chastised.
"There wasn't anything we could do." Connie pointed out.
He was like his own mother. He did what ever he wanted. But the thought of Steven going rampant like that, the way that they had described this...this...
"He's my child and I'll be in my own grave before I let him do this to himself." Greg declared angrily, fighting through his own tears.
"Where did he go?"
Connie and Snow exchanged glances.
"We don't know..." Snow said softly.
Greg wanted to be angry. He wanted to be angry at the gems for not being able to protect him from this mess. He wanted to take him far away from them as he possibly can. Go somewhere where they couldn't find them. Isolated, safe. But he couldn't do that. This was his home. This was his family too. He loved them too much to disappear like that. For now, they had to think of something they could possibly do to find Steven and just..
"After Lilith...sounded like he wanted payback." Connie continued.
Payback? Steven didn't even seem like he was the one to harbor vengeance against other people (baring a single infamous individual). She must have stirred up something fierce within for him to react like that.
"So what do we do now?" Peridot questioned.
They had to get him back. They just had to.
"We'll have to do a final sweep of the place. If Steven's gone to find her, she's either going to be here or if somehow he finds out she's not, he'll leave this place and end up going goodness knows where." Snow put forth.
"Once we're done, we'll head back up...we'll need to check up on the other Gems..let's hope they're okay."
Greg hated this more and more.