The Barn – Day 4 – 11:02 Local Time
The lunar mission team had returned and at first, the group was very confused, the Russian and Franklin especially. The man he thought he had wounded and was not just presumed but confirmed dead stood before him. A look of vengeance took over the red-hued soldier against the red-aligned soldier.
"You! You SOB! You did this to me! If you had simply stopped to ask questions instead of opening fire then I would still be human! Instead you shot first! Didn't your sargent ever tell you to check your targets before shooting!" shouted Neil as he advanced on the confused Russian.
There was friction between the two that Sam and Kyle had tried to prevent. They each grabbed an arm only to be dragged along by Neil as he neared the now somewhat more worried Russian, only to be stopped by Garnet standing in his way, who moved with surprising speed to stand with crossed arms.
Pearl stood, smelling the fuse of a gunpowder trail in the air and feeling a sense of impending danger for all around, especially the new stranger. As Garnet seemed to effortlessly slide into Neil's path, she inadvertently found herself in front of Steven and Alex.
Neil stood, a small part of him hoping Garnet would step aside and let him have his revenge on the man foolish enough to come back. She wouldn't budge and soon Steven and Alex where encouraged to take a walk to the cliffs by Amethyst and Pearl, leaving the squad alone with the most ominous and stoic of the Crystal Gems.
After a long silence, Garnet finally spoke, and not in a caring tone, but a commanding one. "Neil, forget trying to kill him, we'll need him. Sit down and think about what you plan on doing next time you meet Alex very carefully or you may find yourself in a far worse place than this."
Neil stared down the abyss that the tall gem's visor revealed and despite all his determination, he couldn't stay at it for long.
"Fine." He muttered before he stormed off to a nearby pickup truck, where he sat and, at first, eyeballed Garnet, who simply eyeballed back with twice the intensity.
In time, Neil grew calmer and more distracted by the environment and before he knew it, he was in a strange place.
"That could've gone worse…" Neil thought to himself with heavy sarcasm.
"You're welcome you know." replied Angela.
"I don't know whether I should thank you or curse you for that little stunt…" thought Neil back.
"You know I would never endanger you or myself… Uh, ourselves? Whatever, I was just having some fun." countered the disembodied voice of Angela.
"I get it, you just want to enjoy yourself from your backseat view of life but I need you to be sensible here okay? I know there is probably nothing keeping us from wading out the end of the world but that would involve the loss of my friends… My family, and that is something I am not willing settle on." thought Neil in a stern internal voice.
Outside Neil's head, Kyle and Peridot just stared at Neil as he stared back at them silently as if off in his own little world. "Do you think we should help him?" Asked Kyle. "Nah, let him be for a bit, see if he snaps out of it, he did just transform into a Gem after all." replied Peridot, "Something like this has never happened before, for someone that has no experience in gems, it's a pretty big shift."
Back inside Neil's head the conversation with Angela reached its conclusion.
"Okay… I'm sorry…" thought Angela back at Neil, remorse evident in her tone.
The normally happy voice in his head seemed almost depressed at the notion of losing close ones, even if they had yet to meet her, and surely enough they would eventually, but until then, her only job was to keep Neil alive and to keep the family alive.
It was the hard truth she needed.
The silence grew until it consumed the mental space and Neil was snapped back to the reality around him. He knew he would have to find a way of doing that without looking like he just blanks out.
Franklin was briefly met by the other two human soldiers, who attempted to reassure him on the whole situation. Given some time he tried to understand but it was hard for him. Having someone he had declared dead walking around in front of him was strange enough but it was the notion that it wasn't just Neil on the inside that truly unsettled him.
Neil hadn't told any of the marines about Angela, the last thing he wanted is for the men he needed on his side to question whose side he is on. So when Franklin finally mustered the courage to ask the difficult question to the new gem, old friend, Neil needed to play his hand right or he wasn't going home when this was all over.
Franklin wanted to believe everything was fine but that strange part of his mind that told him to dig and search, to check and to investigate the strange things. It was a mindset that had saved his life and the lives of his squad countless times before but he had never felt it towards a fellow squad mate before.
He waved at Neil.
He didn't notice.
He walked up to Neil and waved at his face. This appeared to be enough to shake him from his little world as Neil blinked a few times and focused his eyes onto his commanding officer.
"Oh, hey boss, what's up?" Neil said, almost sounding a little nervous at the sudden invasion of his mental spotlight.
"We need to talk."
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"Who are you?" Franklin asked with an asserting tone as he interrogated his squadmate from the seclusion of the backside of the barn, everyone else being somewhere else doing something else.
"Uh, I'm Neil?" He replied, unsure of the question and the implications. Neil knew something might happen with Franklin although he was expecting Sam to also be there as he was the most perceptive of the team.
"Well 'Neil' I have a few questions for you." continued Franklin, speaking with a spite Neil was not accustomed to receiving.
"Sure thing boss, I mean fire away." Neil replied, trying a happy confidence that Angela seemed to radiate most of the time. It wasn't something far off from what he already did when he was contented with the world but this felt a little desperate, if not, forced.
"Tell me why I can trust you. Give me a good reason not to leave you behind here when this is all over." Franklin would have tried grabbing Neil by the shirt to emphasize effect but he already knew it would give him the wrong image if this really was the Neil he knew from before and even so, he was a gem now, gems are not easy to move, especially if you are a simple human.
Neil tumbled the words through his mind and Angela thought to find the answers she wanted as Neil sought the answers he needed.
"How can I do that? There's my word and Garnet's word but if you avoid trusting her and the Crystal Gems then that leaves just the guys… And while I would trust my life to them in a gunfight… I don't know about this… Can I really trust the Gems with our version of Earth?"
"You could tell him the truth, about me and you sharing a head together-" suggested Angela helpfully.
"No. This sort of thing happens back home and they call it schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder or something… It's not a good thing…" thought Neil in reply.
"Are you saying I am a bad thing?" asked Angela in a worried voice.
"No, you are a good thing but a voice in my head that talks to me and interacts with me could be mistaken for a disease and if he gets that idea, then we could consider our chances of going home to rest at roughly zero." replied Neil as firmly as he could, he needed this Gem-mind on his side if he was ever to gain control of his powers and make it through this.
"What would happen if we went home? What would happen to us then?" asked Angela softly.
"I guess we would live on as though this was normal… The big difference between this and schizophrenia is that this is legitimate, you are another actual, independent entity in my head… My god, that sounds exactly like what a schizophrenic would say…" thought Neil ironically.
The mental discussion was over, they could not tell him about this. It had to stay private.
"Well? How can I trust you?" Franklin pleaded, his intimidation seeming to have failed as he faced Neil who presented little emotion as an internal debate took place in his head.
"I can't Frank... I really can't... I can only give you my word that this is me talking to you, and this is me wanting to save our world. Wanting to go home." He said, hoping that this would be enough as he didn't have any more ammunition for this topic.
"That's really all I can get out of you isn't it? I want to bring you home with us but I don't know if I can. How am I going to explain this to your family? To our CO? 'Sorry about Neil, he died and came back to life as an alien the next day?' It doesn't inspire confidence." pleaded Franklin as his desperation to be able to trust and work with Neil again made itself apparent.
"You don't have to worry about that, let me worry about it. For now just be happy you have a gem on YOUR team, from what I hear I get some pretty good stuff out of it." Neil said, trying to fix the broken man standing before him with slumped shoulders and a defeated expression that Neil was yet to see on the otherwise hardened, stoic face.
"Are you okay, Frank?" Neil asked, holding the man in question by the shoulders as he shook gently enough to snap him out of his own thoughts.
"I don't know. Are you? I mean you died! That must have been kind of traumatic at least." He said, not sure if he was feeling sorry for himself or for the ex-human before him.
Neil locked his eyes with the squad leader and made a gaze that peered into the soldier's soul as he spoke. "Listen to the words that pour from my mouth. I. Am. Fine. Repeat those to me."
"I. Am. Fine."
"And again."
"I. Am. Fine."
"Again." Neil said, more gusto than before, he spoke more loudly and with a more commanding tone.
"I am fine." Franklin said feeling a minor improvement, enough to feel less of a burden on his mind.
"Come on, tell me are you wounded? Have you been shot?" Neil said a little loudly as he tried to provoke a real reaction from the soldier.
"No, I AM FINE!" Franklin proudly shouted, gaining the attention of Kyle and Peridot, who happened to be passing by when he broke the private air he worked to obtain.
They both looked at the two marines, one of whom had his arms held up in the air in a triumphant style. The two technicians looked at the strange display for a few seconds before the gem walked on her route, speaking back to the individuals having their strange display, "I don't know what you guys do in your spare time but I don't think I want to know."
Kyle was left standing with his rocket launcher in his arms and a confused look on his face. He then spoke after a second of quiet, tense eyeballing. "I'm gonna show Steven how to use the rocket launcher, wanna watch?"
Neither Neil nor Franklin thought this was a good idea, as ideas swirled in their heads about how they could possibly take the weapon away from Kyle, hopefully disarming him for everyone's safety. But that would require his cooperation or his physical restraint… None of which come freely from the Texan.
"Sure." Neil said, "At least if something goes wrong, I can do something about it."
At this point Franklin realised his hands were still suspended in the air and he decided that his moment of triumph and self-realisation was over. He processed Kyle's words and decided to at least try to shoot Kyle's idea down before he actually had the chance to do any damage… This was certainly going to be an eventful day.
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Franklin managed to at least grab and stand in the way of Kyle, shouting promises of reprimanding that Kyle shrugged off as acceptable costs for this level of entertainment.
Upon reaching the spot where he had last seen Steven, however, they were all (some more so than others) disappointed to see he was fast asleep on a rug overlooking the cliffs and ocean.
He occasionally stirred and moaned in his sleep but he seemed ultimately peaceful… Until he woke up.
"AH!" He shouted as he rose from his position on the carpet.
"What's wrong little man? Had a bad dream?" Franklin asked with a face of genuine care, although he also hoped that if he said yes, it might put Kyle off destroying the innocence that flooded the child's heart.
Steven rubbed the back of his head as he adjusted to the scene around him. "Uh… No, it's nothing really… What are you guys doing over here anyway?"
Neil decided to spearhead the explanation. "Kyle wanted to show you how to use his rocket launcher because he wants to awaken your inner sociopath."
Kyle put the rocket launcher down and began to look a little bashful as the boy's eyes fell onto him, not sure if he should appease the ill man or if he should at least try to maintain some innocence, if not for his sake, for his father's sake.
"Oh. Well, I guess we could do that but shouldn't we get to drilling or something? I mean it's finished and all. Why haven't we begun drilling yet?" Steven asked, trying to change the subject as he hoped he could get the idea of his inner sociopath coming out to fade from the minds of those around him.
"That's a good point, why haven't we begun drilling yet?" asked Franklin, turning to the soldiers for an answer.
Kyle spoke, shrugging off the guilty feeling in exchange for providing information. "Well, Peridot has the coordinates and Pearl said she needed a few moments to upload the data so we should be ready pretty soon. She said she needed to sort something a bit more… Personal before she could get to it. Then she just ran off to the back of the barn with some kind of crystal in her hands."
Steven's sleep expression shifted to one of shock. He remembered the strange object she recovered from the lunar control panel and how she seemed surprisingly secretive of it. He was going to ask her about it but he was overwhelmed by a wave of tiredness upon his return to the Earth's gravity and before he knew it, he was asleep.
"I think we should check on Peridot." he said, his face proudly and clearly displaying a sense of concern, although what the concern was for, for Peridot herself or the object she scavenged was not obvious.
The change of his character was sufficient enough to catch the attention of the soldiers and sell them on following the boy as he walked off to the barn in search of the alien technician.
Upon reaching the barn, conversation was heard between peridot and Sam, who had been last seen walking off with Garnet. Sam's voice carried a wave of scrutiny, he was interrogating her with an intent glare and a stern voice as she struggled to keep her composure.
"What is it?" he asked, his focus tightly held on her every twitch and squirm.
"I don't know what you're talking about." she lied, holding the object behind her back.
"You can't lie to me, there are many people that could've seen you but of all the dangerous people you can lie to, I am by far the worst. Now what is it?"
She squirmed slightly and her face contorted as she weighed her options before attempting one last lie.
"I really have-" She was cut off by Sam's sudden movements, causing her to change her course of speech. "IT'S A COMMUNICATOR!" She shouted.
"That communicates with who?" Sam asked. He payed attention to the fact that Peridot was not of the same allegiance as the Crystal gems but he was never told why. He preferred to stay quiet, let people forget he was there and to then absorb all the information that he could from the people oblivious to his presence.
Peridot took a deep intake of air and the silent observers waited with baited breath. "It's a Diamond line communicator. It will allow me to communicate with my Diamond, who I am sure will sort this all out-" Sam held a hand up in the air, signaling to the small gem to stop talking.
"I get that you want to do a good thing but why the secrecy?"
"The Crystal Clods don't follow the creed of the Diamonds, they rebelled against them thousands of years ago, which was a very stupid move. They won't let me talk to my Diamond, who, might I add, is totally and completely flawless. She is a totally perfect being who I completely believe can easily solve our problem much more effectively than our drill. I mean come on, have you seen how hurried it has been? It looks like it could barely get past the first few kilometers, yet alone past the upper mantle, which we'll need to pass through." She said in a very condescending manner. She seemed to forget she was being interrogated at the thought of her leader.
"And why do you think they rebelled? It looks like they won the war over 'your Diamond' so she can't be totally flawless." Sam argued.
"How do you know that wasn't a part of her plan?" Peridot counter-argued.
Sam was about to return the argument but he caught himself. He knew this was just like convincing a religious fanatic their god wasn't real, they would follow a circular logic until you gave up and left. He glared at her for a couple of seconds before pointing behind her and saying, "Oh shit, is that her?!"
"Wha? Where?!" Peridot shouted as she began to look around sporadically for the supposed monarch before Sam quickly snatched the device from her unattended grip. Before Peridot knew what he had done, he was already running for the barn door.
He leaned up against it and forced it closed as the small alien technician struggled and wiggled against the grand wooden shape in a fruitless effort to open it. After a few seconds of Peridot's struggles, Sam noticed the other members of his squad and Steven standing before him.
"Oh, hi guys… How long have you been here?" He asked, using a tone of voice that felt somewhat out of place, almost too casual for what he truly felt was appropriate.
"We heard everything, good work on getting the information but it's a shame to know the drill still isn't ready." Said Franklin.
"Yeah, I didn't die just to have the whole project fail did I?" Added Neil, trying to make light of the situation.
An awkward silence filled the air as they realised that fact that Peridot had stopped trying to break open the door. Then the sound of mechanical action from within the barn filled the group with a sense of dread. Sam mentally cursed himself for not seeing something like this coming as the side of the barn blasted open. A near deafening crack of noise followed by the sound of debris falling around them and a thick plume of smoke rose from the side. As the ringing in the ears of the soldiers began to die out, they were left with the incredibly annoying sound of Peridot's signature cackling laugh that reeked of maniacal power.
"NYEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE! NOTHING CAN STOP ME, NOT EVEN YOUR PUNY CARBON-BASED CUBOIDAL PRISON!" She screeched as she threw pieces of debris all around before attempting to steal the communicator back from the marine thief.
"RETURN WHAT IS MINE YOU DIRT BOMB!" Peridot called to Sam.
"Permission to shoot this SOB?" Asked Kyle as he readied the rocket launcher and once again pointed it toward the green gem. "Negative," Franklin said, "She still has the Cluster coordinates on her gem and we destroyed the control surface up there, she needs to be kept alive."
Kyle felt a little divided about the idea of using the launcher, on one hand he needed the gem and the robot out of commission but he had grown closer to the sociopathic technician. They shared a certain mindset that allowed them to find humour in all the same tragedies and they both had a mutual respect for each other that they had for no other sentient being.
He wanted to see an epic explosion but he didn't want to lose his friend. The denial of his request put his mind to rest, even if it meant he had no means of protecting himself from the green gremlin.
The squad scrambled and ran in multiple directions, they knew she was going to follow whoever had the communicator, so they decided to practice their favourite pass time, normally to the dismay of Sam.
Sam threw the prism through the air toward the squad leader, who caught it and continued running as he shouted orders to the young half-gem that watched partly in terror and partly in amusement. "Steven! Get the Gems over here ASAP. That's an order, boy!"
Steven ran off for the hillside where the gems and Alex watched the sea from the edge of the cliff, seemingly unaware of the carnage that was taking place at the barn.
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A/N
Hey... Sorry it's been so long...
I do realise it's been several months since I have so much as opened the word document to work on it but don't worry, I forgot I wrote as much as I did...
Yep, that's right, I've got another chapter or two already written and ready to upload.
But you know what?
I'm going to drip feed you... Don't question it, it's better this way.
Well, I hope to get back to this again soon but that's hope, we'll see how well that holds up...
Special thanks to pinheadh78, we've been working together on stuff over the last few months and if there's anyone I have to recommend by name, it's him. His story "Pearl In WWII" is fantastically written and brilliantly well researched. I'm happy to say I had some involvement in it and if you're the one that hasn't already followed his story, get over there! What are you doing here?!
Mein_Kapatin out.