The Cliffs - Present time
Alex stuck by Pearl, as she was his only means of communication with the people around him. He learned more about the gems, their world relative to his own and what the plan was.
He would've been a little more against the idea of destroying the entire facility and killing all of the people that he knew worked there but he never liked it there. They treated him with a contempt that even his captors didn't show. He wanted to believe that he could be safe from the dangers of the base's internal security, he had to weigh his options. He could work with them until they got back to the facility and then he could betray them. He could get promoted and gain the respect of his superiors. Or maybe they won't be able to trust him and they could put him in the same pile as the Americans. If he works with the Americans, he could seek asylum in the United States but they still need a way out of the facility.
He was stuck in the middle of a very conflicting situation.
Or… Or he could stay… The sight of the scene before him was nice and comforting and from what he had been told, this was a very functional world without war or political friction. But that would involve leaving his family behind, his mother, his sisters.
But they could have already been sent the letter claiming his death.
"ну дерьмо…" He held his head in his hands as he tossed the ideas around in his head. This wasn't just a fork in the road, this was going to determine everything about his life from this point onward.
Then Steven came trudging along as he gasped loudly for air, incomprehensibly mumbling something that sounded generically important and stressful considering his facial expression.
While Alex couldn't understand a word he said, the change in demeanor that the Crystal Gems gave was enough to grasp his attention and to bring him off of his feet. They sprinted away with a surprising speed, leaving him in a literal dust trail with the small, chubby boy that still struggled to get enough air.
"Stevfen." He pronounced with a little effort. The boy looked up to the soldier. "Huh? You know my name?"
The man didn't respond but he did gesture for the boy to begin the run back to the battleground with him. He liked the quiet air and the cool breeze but as far as he knew, it could be good to break away from his mental cage with a little distraction.
He began to walk on after the young demi-gem, still waddling along in an attempt to catch up to his comrades.
Need to say something sometime…
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It wasn't going to last much longer.
Peridot was catching up on their game as she realised exactly what the soldiers were doing.
They were buying time.
Peridot knew she wouldn't have long before the Crystal Clods returned to the barn and then it would be all over. They would never trust her again, she would lose all of the progress she'd made with her new friends like Steven and Amethyst. They don't know what they're doing, if they won't let me help them we'll never stop the cluster.
Peridot had to do something about the game they were playing with her, she had to break the stalemate.
She cornered Sam, grabbing him with one of the mechanical arms and holding him in the air by the foot. His face was deadpan, he expected this to happen sooner than later and to notice that his foot had not been broken by the bulky mechanical claw only left him in pleasant surprise.
Process of elimination… Remove all of the false answers and you are left with the truth... Or just the communicator…
She began to converge on Franklin, who now held the communicator. He began to look to his two remaining allies, weighing his options on who should take the next catch.
He threw the communicator like a quarterback would throw an American football and Kyle began to run alongside it in a bid to meet it at its landing site. Peridot ceased in following the device, instead opting to pick up Franklin before cramming him into an uncomfortably close contact with Sam as they both dangled by their feet from her right claw.
She began to close in on Kyle, who saw the impending danger of her change in strategy and so, he began to consider a new plan. Maybe I can run it away? Steven can't be far off with our backup by now, can he? Nah, she'll outrun me in a straight line, no problem. There's still me and Neil, we've got this for now…
Lost in thought, Kyle failed to realise just how close the mechanical terror was.
Kyle jumped in shock before abruptly lobbing the communicator into the air with the hope that Neil would find it before the ground did, or worse, Peridot.
Peridot jumped in her massive machine in a bid to intercept the device she needed. It sailed through the air, missing her thick crushing claws as it landed in the grip of the new gem. I need to end this now! Thought Peridot.
Neil stood still for a moment, noticing that he was the last of his squad standing. Funny how this tiny little thing is causing so much trouble...He thought before snapping back to reality, where he saw a massive green machine falling right towards him.
Oh, right…
He began to move, as fast as he could carry himself. He wasn't going to wait to see where he was going, there wasn't any time, the bolted behemoth was upon him.
Then he fumbled.
Neil dropped the communicator on the ground but when he realised it, he was too late. He turned to face the green technician to see she had stopped chasing. She was facing him and he was facing her with the communicator lying between them.
Despite her machine providing an immense speed and enough bulk to shove the barn aside, she stood waiting for Neil to make a move.
"I'm trying to help you." She said over the din of her machine. "If I can get my Diamond to just see things from our perspective, I know she'll be able to fix this whole situation much faster than we could on our own."
"But we already know that's not going to work." Interrupted Franklin, still dangling uncomfortably close to Sam and Kyle. "Garnet warned me something like this could happen." he said, mostly to himself.
"Neil," He called over the ambient noise, "Do not give her the device under any circumstances. Protect it with your life."
Franklin felt a little bad about using those words in particular on the man that had already done such a thing that same week but the message was clear.
"Understood." Neil replied with a serious tone that he didn't often use. He dashed for the object as Peridot stood. He grabbed the object only to look up at the machine, still standing stationary as the pilot gazed down to the ex-human. After two seconds of continued eye contact, she spoke with a commanding, threatening tone, despite her nasal voice.
"Do not test me."
Neil took the challenge and Peridot released her prisoners, dropping them into a heap on the thick grass as she dashed for the man-gem with a furious rocket-propelled charge. The air seemed to get hotter and the light seemed to shift to red as things suddenly got tense.
She hit him, head on with her five-ton machine which would have eviscerated a human but that didn't happen. Something very different happened instead.
Peridot hit a solid object that refused to budge. As she reached her sudden stop, she continued to turn the throttle on her machine, scorching the earth behind her and ringing the ears of all close enough.
The humans present made a hasty escape to gain some distance on the head-splitting noise. They quickly climbed a small hill to look back onto the battleground to see Peridot wasn't moving, or at least not very much.
Neil was holding her back, somehow. When the jets of flame finally died down and Peridot's machine was finally nearing the end of it's burn, Neil still stood there, only a few feet away from where he stood at the start.
"That wasn't supposed to happen." Commented Peridot over the considerably quieter space.
Neil stood, feeling a little strange. He didn't speak but he looked down at himself, patting his body so as to check that what he felt would match what he saw. After a sigh of relief, he opened his mouth only to get sucker-punched by Peridot's machine.
The blow came without warning, Neil couldn't compensate and was sent flying back towards the barn where he struck the wall before falling to the ground. He struggled to get up until a second of awkward moving later, he disappeared in a cloud of smoke that quickly dissipated, leaving his gemstone to drop onto the dirt.
"Oh shit." Commented Kyle as the other squad members looked on at the disaster of a plan.
It was now that the backup arrived with near trademark awful timing, the sort that meant they would always show up a few seconds later than would be helpful.
"Did you see that?" Kyle asked anyone that happened to be listening to him.
Steven soon joined the crowd gathered at the hilltop as he gasped for air shortly before dropping to the ground, face first. Muffled through the earth, he replied to Kyle. "See what?"
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Alex strolled more than anything. He saw the young, chubby and enthusiastic boy run off into the hills he came from. He saw the futility of the child's attempt to catch up to the alien women that had already since disappeared over the horizon of the next hilltop, and yet a small piece of him wanted to admire the enthusiasm of 'Stevfen'.
This really is another world, isn't it? A different history with different countries… All populated with different people. People that are just as desperate for a happy, peaceful life as anyone back home.
Alex didn't join the Russian Army to kill or for the 'brotherhood' that he never seemed to find. He didn't join because he was conscripted or because he was desperate for money.
He joined because he wanted to do right by his Father's memory.
Alex's father had served in the military for many years but his luck faltered and ran out as he became a casualty of the First Chechen war, leaving the young and impressionable Alex with nothing but romanticised stories of his father and a lasting encouragement to follow in his footsteps, to honor his memory.
His mother still lived in the same cottage he grew up in the Altai region with his young sister, Anastasia.
It's not far off her 7th birthday now is it? I wonder if I can make it back home in time…
Of course he would need to get home before he could indulge in the comforting embrace of his sibling and mother. For now, he wouldn't just have to tolerate the American soldiers but he would need to trust them. The soldiers had many reasons to kill him and very few to keep him alive, and yet they showed him no significantly cruel side since the interrogations and even so, the worst part of that was simply imagining what the worst thing they could do to him was going to be.
Suffice it to say, he was glad he still had all his skin and fingernails firmly attached to his body.
And after his 'usefulness' had expended itself and he had proven not to be an immediate threat, they just left him alone with his translator. One of a few strange locals to this strange world that was so familiar and yet, also so strange and foreign.
A very vocal side of him said to avoid this, to just get back home and to forget most of this happened. And yet, there was this strange, quiet voice residing in the back of his mind that urged him onto investigating the truths of this land.
If not for the motherland, then for himself.
And if not for himself, then for his family.
Alex neared the summit of the hill he last saw the small boy 'Steven' running away over. Perhaps, it is time I involved myself a little more… There's no real harm in it is there?
Again, Alex questioned his optimism. After all, he had known people to have been shot just for being in close proximity of traitors to the motherland and while it didn't happen all too often anymore, it still happened.
There can't be any danger in siding with the locals at the least. The tall one that calls herself 'Pearl' at least speaks my language… Somehow…
Alex told himself not to question such fortune as to have not only gone on unharmed but to also have someone he can actually use to translate was more than a simple stroke of luck… It was incredibly fortunate.
By this time, he reached the summit of the hill that dipped down into the large bowl that worked as a yard for the barn's front end. He snapped himself from his internal monologue and brought his attention to the situation.
It looked a little unusual to say the least, even against the mish-mash of information regarding everything he had already pieced together.
There was a long trail of disturbed dirt down a gravelly road with large footprints trailing away, further down the hill. For a moment he considered picking up the pace so as to try and find the cause of such erosion only to find himself reconsidering this action; instead he turned to look for clues as to why the South side of the barn had been blown outward.
There was some smoke pouring from the side and there wasn't any sign of fire or an explosion, which lead him to believe that whatever caused this damage, must've used raw force. Considering the size of the hole and the absence of the grand green machine that he recalled lying dormant inside the barn, he had an idea on what caused such destruction.
But no idea on why it happened.
Looking towards the front of the barn he found the large red gemstone that he frequently had shoved in his face during his interrogations. The translator, Pearl had told him it was the object that killed their munitions technician, their friend, before he returned in his strange new form.
The Americans prized the stone's keeping and yet they had left it on the ground? It already had a thin layer of dust settled on it's surface although in picking it up, Alex could feel a warmth coming from it that seemed to radiate in a pulse.
He dusted the stone off and proceeded to carry it, even if he could barely hold it in one hand, it was just small enough that he could wrap his fingers around all of it's edges so as to hold it in a firm grip.
Alex was about to consider wandering into the barn for more information when he heard a loud *Boom* echo over the hills from the direction of the ruined dirt road.
A piece of him wanted to go and investigate.
Another demanded that he stay and await orders.
He knew one side had to win this argument and though it made sense to hold the fort, to bunker down the old world rules were beginning to lose their charm over him. He had to do something.
He started in a fast walk that quickly broke into a sprint as he began to see a plume of smoke rise over the crest of the shallow hill the road passed over.
Looking down into the short dip in the road's altitude, he saw the ruins of the green machine that he assumed to have caused the damage to the barn. He also saw the 'Crystal Gems' viciously attacking the already wrecked shell of the machine's main body, its limbs being scattered around or just lying limp on the ground.
The squad of marines, minus the support specialist stood by the sidelines, guns at the ready so as to put off any intentions for hostile action. As the 'Crystal Gems' continued to batter and abuse the machine's husk, he noticed the alien technician pop out from the remaining claw hand that still attached to the core of the robot.
She seemed to dash forward for something before the Crystal Gems noticed anything and, while the Americans could have made themselves useful, their positioning put the Crystal Gems in between them and their target. They did not have a clear shot.
Soon after, the small green gremlin seemed to shout in a primal noise of success, much to the dread of the Crystal Gems, who all quickly dived for cover behind the wreckage of the downed machine.
As she green creature giggled with a giddy laughter akin to that of an excited fan at a concert, minus any screaming, the chubby boy he remembered as Steven was quickly pulled behind the cover of the wreckage.
The marines lined up with the Crystal Gems and they all peaked over the crest of cover.
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"I have a clear shot." Said Sam with his rifle at the ready, the barrel protruding from the top of the cover the wreckage provided.
"Do not fire." Garnet commanded with a tone Sam found hard to disagree with. He was about to inquire as to why he shouldn't before she beat him to the line.
"She's already opened the communication channel, the best thing we can do is hope she isn't going to betray us to her."
"Her?" Asked Kyle, sounding largely as though he didn't really care but rather for the sake of his squad, he was willing to make this one gesture of interest in another's problem.
"Shh." She replied as the Diamond Line Communicator began to float up about 10 feet into the air. Then it seemed to glow a bright yellow before it expanded into a large diamond shape before expanding again upwards and downwards until a large portrait image of a Yellow Pearl wearing yellow clothes in a yellow room appeared. Magnified through the yellowish haze of the communicator the yellow Pearl looked down her nose disappointedly at the tiny Peridot that stood in it's spotlight.
"This is the Yellow Diamond control room." She said, her voice sounded condescending and nasal. Kyle already hated her just by the tone of her voice and the way she looked down to the technician he considered as mildly deranged as he was, which in his eyes made her a closer friend than most.
"Is that another Pearl?" Amethyst asked, a mild confusion in her hushed tone.
"Who is she?" asked Steven as he looked to his mother-Pearl in hopes of her being able to identify and explain the confusion he shared with Amethyst.
"Not all Pearls know each other, Steven." Pearl replied, she felt mildly annoyed that he had assumed them to be of the same class, especially as she fought to break from her bonds as a servant but she knew she couldn't hold it against her pudgy young student. She cared a little too deeply to hold anything against him.
Who authorised you to make this call?" The yellow Pearl asked, her voice only seeming to rise in annoyance.
"N-No one. But it's an emergency." Peridot replied, cowering in the light of the Pearl's invasive and uncaring tone.
Before Peridot could continue, the yellow Pearl cut her off, providing further scorning. "That's no excuse to use the Direct Diamond Communication Channel."
"I wonder what would happen if I shot at the hologram?" Asked Sam to anyone listening, he already wanted to end the incessant voice of the Pearl on the screen.
Before she could continue her disdainful talk down to the green technician, feeling very put out by the verbal abuse she received, another voice took over. This one much much deeper, still slightly nasal but nothing like the Pearl's. It exuded control and power.
"Pearl?" It asked.
"Y-yes my Diamond?" She replied, now losing all of her disdainful voice in favour of a much softer and submissive tone.
"Why is there someone on the Diamond Line?" It asked, sounding as though it had been awoken from a sleep that demanded peace and quiet. There was a casual annoyance in the voice.
"I don't know. I was just about to tell her that-"
"I'll take it from here." It said before a massive deep yellow hand filled the screen space only to reveal a tall figure that refused to directly face the receiving audience.
The Crystal gems gasped in shock, the marines responded a little differently as they simply continued to look on. The screen refused to show an accurate depiction of the figure's size but if the size of the hand versus the size of the Pearl was anything to go by, she had to be at least twenty feet tall.
"Is that?" Amethyst asked.
"Yellow-" Pearl responded.
"Diamond." Garnet finished. It's possible she knew Pearl wouldn't be able to finish her sentence but they dared to not talk about it as the conversation between the monarch of the Gem Homeworld and Peridot was about to begin.
"My Diamond. Peridot reporting in." She said, her arms moving into a salute of sorts with either hand forming half of the shape of a diamond which met in the middle of her chest.
"Which Peridot?" Asked Yellow Diamond, her voice loaded with contempt as she still refused to directly look at her conversation recipient.
"F-Facet 2F5L Cut 5XG. I'm sorry to contact you this way but all other forms of communication have been destroyed and-"
With the simple motion of moving her gargantuan hand into a 'hold' signal, she halted the Peridot's verbal spewing. Peridot immediately stopped.
"This shows you are behind schedule on your mission to-" She paused as one of the many screens behind her changed to show a depiction of the Earth.
"How is the Earth?" She continued. She turned to look at the technician, her voice was slow and less demanding than before as her personal history with the planet came to mind.
"It's full of life." Peridot said, a strange expression on her face that only read a mixture of an attempt to compose herself although a smile did not completely fail to show itself. Yellow Diamond did not care for the technician's expression as she continued.
"Organic life." She said with an obvious contempt in her voice. "And where is the Jasper I sent you with? And why aren't you calling from the ship?" She asked, it was obvious that Peridot had screwed up somewhere and while they both knew this, Yellow Diamond wasn't going to let it slide at all as she dug for information.
"Uh, the ship was destroyed." Peridot replied, her tone much less of excitement and much more of discomfort, she knew this wasn't going to end well.
"By whom?" Yellow Diamond asked. Her tone was damning for whoever was at fault and she did not even try to mask it's probable implications.
The Crystal gems gasped as they knew this was Peridot's chance to expose them to the wrath of her Diamond. The tone sent shivers down their collective spines, even Franklin who had found it easy enough to accept his fate at the hands of any terrorist but the wrath of an inter-dimensional alien deity was a little scarier in his mind.
"I-i-it was destroyed by…" They held their breaths in anxiety of what she would do. Would she shatter them? Would she have them corrupted? Would she destroy their whole planet and have them drift through space for all eternity, forever alone?
"Noone. There was… An accident… While we were landing." Peridot struggled to say. The young Steven, peaking from above the cover looked onward in shock/surprise as he mentally considered this a step in the right direction, even if it put Peridot in the line of fire.
Yellow Diamond squinted in disappointment towards the small technician. "I'll inform your manager of your incompetence." She turned her head away to begin typing away on one of the many holographic panels that surrounded her throne. "And what is the status of the Cluster?" She asked as the Yellow Pearl re-entered the frame of the image just to smirkingly stare down the Peridot.
"The Cluster will emerge shortly." She said, feeling fairly put down by the implications of a shoddy report, far more serious on the Gem Homeworld than it would be for any marine, and they could tell just based on her tone. For this, Sam began to feel bad for Peridot. He knew it was his own fault that she had to give up this secret and that made it his fault for the destroyed barn, the destroyed robot and any of the damages that he could've caused to his friends. And yet the one she looks up to with admiration and dignity flatly refuses to even consider her an independant being. It was like she had fought just to receive abuse for it.
If it was fair enough to relate her to Kyle and to consider that Kyle had little to care for his military reports, this lead the marines to only guess that it would be life-threateningly bad for the Peridot they knew.
"Good. We'll finally get some use out of that miserable planet. Thank you for your report Peridot. There will be a ship arriving shortly to take you to your next assignment." She said conclusively as she expected the channel to be closed and for the annoying need to directly communicate with the lower ranks of her army but she was held from such a movement.
"Wait." Peridot said at her first opportunity.
"I wouldn't have called just to waste your time with a report." She said. It almost sounded like she was going to challenge the authority of her leader.
"You already have." Yellow Diamond replied, spite in her voice as she began to wish this entire bit of communication would just end so she could move on with her usual routines.
"No, I mean the reason I called. The real reason is…" She took a breath, "I believe we should terminate the Cluster."
Yellow Diamond eyed her from her slanted view only to reply with even more disdain than the Pearl before. "Why?"
"The organic ecosystem creates resources unique to this world. We can't sacrifice all that potential for one geo-weapon." Peridot's confidence began to peak as she continued. "I'd like to tell you about some plans I came up with to utilize the planet without disrupting the local-"
"I've heard enough." Yellow Diamond interrupted. She began to assert her authority over the small gem. "I don't care about 'potential' and 'resources'."
"What?" Peridot said, surprised at the irrational hatred towards the Earth and it's bounty of potential. This didn't sound like the critical, objective and perfect Diamond she trusted her existence to.
"I want my Cluster and I want that planet to die. Just make that happen."
"No." Peridot said, refusing to blindly acknowledge the authority of Yellow Diamond.
The Yellow Pearl gasped in shock as Yellow Diamond turned to face the screen. "Are you questioning my authority?" She asked with a incredulous view on what was happening.
"I'm questioning your objectivity, my Diamond." Peridot quickly spurted out with another salute, sweat dripping from her forehead as her insides began to panic. She wanted to run but she knew that would only make things worse. She had to face her monarch and take whatever came her way.
"You are out of line." Yellow Diamond said as she stood to her full height, holding the communication screen in her hand as she spoke in a brooding tone down at Peridot.
"I just think-" Peridot began.
"I'm not interested in the puny thoughts of a Peridot." She said, her tone rising as anger filled her form.
"But-" Peridot stuttered.
"You have disrespected this channel and my time with your presence and you would do well to-"
"But-"
"SHUT YOUR MOUTH!" Yellow Diamond said, as she continued her reprimanding over the small technician with a vengeance very rarely witnessed by any gem of any kind. "You have failed at every turn of this mission. Your only chance to redeem yourself is to obey this simple order: you are to leave the Cluster to grow, it will tear apart the Earth and I will take immense satisfaction of taking that hideous rock off of our star maps. IS. THAT. CLEAR?"
"I WON'T DO IT! I can tell you with certainty that there are things on this planet worth protecting." Peridot shouted as she struggled to speak out against the direct orders of her monarch, her leader, her deity.
"WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE EARTH?" Yellow Diamond angrily demanded as she became invested in the argument against the Peridot.
"APPARENTLY MORE THAN YOU. YOU CLOD!" Peridot shouted toward Yellow Diamond. The Diamond had never been directly insulted by a minor of her ranks before so this was a massive shift from what she expected. A face of shock filled the screen on both ends as one processed the insult and the other processed what she had said to her monarch, leader, maker and deity.
"Uhh, Peridot out." She said as she handled the communicator down and the screen shrank back into the Diamond Line Communicator. The light faded and she was left holding the device with nothing but a pair of arms filled with regret and a gut filled with dread.
A/N
Special thanks again to pinhead78 for help in writing, planning and editing and thanks to everyone still reading this.
That's all I got for now, we've got ideas for future chapters and the conclusion of the story but it all depends on how much time I can and actually do end up pouring into this website... I can't get you an ETA and I can't promise it'll even be done this year, but... Well, what do you want? I have a life too...