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Sometimes their search for corrupted gems took them to strange places and the Crystal Gems have been doing this long enough to know which places required a certain skill set: they had a system to dictate who would tackle certain missions, rather who should not be sent where. Old battlefields were the hardest on Garnet and Pearl, harsh elements weren’t ideal for their human companions, Amethyst didn’t thrive well in technological sites, Lazuli strictly worked alone and Peridot was by no means ready for solo missions.
Large cities and highly populated locals posed a particular set of troubles and required finesse to avoid any undue damage or loss of life. The corrupted gem in question was hiding in a densely populated amusement park; a park that Steven had taken them to years ago. Pearl vividly remembers just how busy and packed the park had been and knows that if the gem wasn’t taken care of quickly the damage could be terrible.
To deal with this threat Garnet had sent Pearl and Peridot to subdue and bubble the monster. Peridot’s tactical mind would put together a strategy quickly and no one was quicker on her feet than Pearl.
But when they arrive at the site in question, instead of finding a bustling park full of humans wearing decorative mouse ears, there is only eerie silence and decay. In the scramble of Jasper’s gem hunt they were both already on edge, this place does nothing to soothe that.
“I thought you said this place was going to be full of humans?” Peridot asks sending Pearl an confused look. Maybe in their rush to find gems faster than Jasper Garnet had sent them to the wrong location? This was nothing like the photos that Steven had shown her of their ‘vacation’ here, instead of the thrum of human life there was a stillness that made her uncomfortable.
“It’s supposed to be…” Pearl answers a little distantly. She runs her hand delicately over the rim of what looked like a dilapidated ride. Her fingers comeback covered in dust. Peridot isn’t good at differentiating emotions but she can see the furrow of the other gem’s brow and the wobble of her lip and knows that this place is unsettling her partner greatly. “I don’t understand.” Pearl mutters more to herself than to Peridot. “This is nothing like what Garnet said it would be. Did they just abandon the site? For what purpose?”
Peridot tries not to show how on edge the park makes her too. After being on Earth for as long as she has she isn’t used to the lack of human life, especially in a place that looked like it could have housed thousands of them only yesterday.
As uneasy as she is, as they both are, they have a mission to complete. “Come on, let’s find this thing and leave. It’s creeping me out.” Peridot announces in a voice that was supposed to convey confidence but only added to the eeriness of their surrounding by virtue of how loud it echoes.
She easily muscles through a flimsy metal fence with her powers. Pearl follows after her, looking at the surroundings with sadness.
All around them are pools with lawn chairs peppering their edges but the water they contained was stagnant. The organic plants were reclaiming the man-made structures, slides, bridges pathways, inch by inch but nature’s victory was belittled by the electrical lights that still shone throughout the park. It was like the people simply vanished.
“Why would a gem come here , even if it’s corrupted?”
“Maybe it was just looking for quiet?”
Almost as if on cue a jangley tune shatters the silence. Pearl withdraws her spear and frantically looks for what caused the noise. Peridot may have screamed.
But no monster emerges from the green waters or from the woodlands and the music continues to play, uncaring if it was playing for them or for the wilderness.
Pearl gasps and grabs Peridot’s hand, easily pulling her along, taking them deeper into the park; most importantly off the path and away from the noise.The pink haired gem is the picture of composure but Peridot feels the tremble of her nerves through their connected hands.
It was clear that if she was a little spooked than Pearl was horrified by the park. “It’s just a bit of archaic motion activated tonal vocalizations. I can go back and fry it’s magnetics if you want?” She hopes that her voice is conveying the soothing tone she’s hopping for.
The taller gem stops walking up the dirt covered slide that had once probably been a popular ride. The line of her back is tense and she lets go of her hand. Peridot doesn’t know what to do. “Pearl?”
“It’s as if all human life is gone.” She says quietly with a hint of joyless laughter. “We fought for so long so that humanity could thrive and live to their potential. Seeing this…” She turns to face Peridot, her eyes glossy, and gestures out to the pair of sunglasses that were precariously perched on the rim of the slide, frozen in time, forgotten. “Seeing this just makes it so easy to see what could happen if we fail this time. What we could lose.”
Peridot didn’t fight in the first war but she’s fighting this one and as backward and confusing as this world was she can’t bare to think of an outcome where it was erased from the cosmos. She wants to tell Pearl that everything will be okay but she can’t make the words come out; there was no guarantee that things would be okay. They both know it. Steven says that she needs to learn to ‘see the bright side’ and he might be right but Pearl doesn’t need the bright side right now; she needs to feel like there was something she could do to stop it.
“Then let’s not let Jasper or Homeworld get anymore an edge than they already have.” Resolute, Peridot grabs Pearl’s hand again and this time takes the lead. “Come on, I have hunch where it could be.”
Pearl nods shakily and follows.
Peridot’s hunch leads them to an eroding man-made rock face. Once it had been a mountain to house the water slides they had just walked up, but now the rocks were just crumbling wall. The cracks and fissures in it were deep and wide enough, though just barely, to allow something to hide in it’s depths.
Laying inside one of those fissures was the gem beast they were looking for. The creature growls and raises its haunches when it senses them but does not leave it’s cave to fight them.
“It’s already injured.” Pearl notes. “How on earth did you know it’d be here?” Peridot knows that she’s not doubting her intelligence but rather is genuinely impressed.
She shrugs and for once feels no real smugness from being right. “I thought if I had been hunted by someone like Jasper and was scared and injured I’d go somewhere that looked familiar too.” To a confused gem this place would look an awful lot like a kindergarten. For most gems, especially quartz soldiers, kindergartens were like one's first home. It made sense to seek one out for safety. Peridot feels like this park, like this monster, statistically operational but but ultimately abandoned by those that made her.
Pearl seems to come to the same conclusion and nods once in agreement. She’s still holding her hand. Now that Peridot was aware of the origins of the monsters that the crystal gems collected it was easy to feel bad for the creature.
But it was better to be safe and bubbled in the temple than to be subjected to whatever it was that Jasper was up to.
Peridot isn’t used to being the one to take initiative on missions, certainly not on ones with Pearl who usually did all the dirty work. Her control over her magnetic powers was probably good enough to poof the creature. Probably. It wouldn’t be pretty but she could do it. “Do you want me to-”
Thankfully Pearl cuts her off.“No. I’ll do it. It won’t take much.” She lets go of Peridot’s hand for the second time today and delicately raises it as if extracting something from the air. The corrupted gem makes a low moan, something like a wounded animal, before it is entombed in millions of tiny sand particles. Then there is nothing but the gentle jingling of it’s gem hitting the earth.
Peridot ducks into the chasm and bubbles the poor gem, sending it back to the temple with fingers that were just beginning the memorize the action. “I always forget you can do that- sand thing.” She calls it for lack of a better word.
Pearl gives Peridot a small smile, the first since they’d entered this terrible place. “It’s usually not very useful. A parlor trick that some pearls pick up in the nacre.” In the distance they can both hear the automated music start up again, singing it’s ghostly song to the forest. It sounded sad. “Let’s get out of here.” She finishes; the smile that Peridot worked so hard to get is gone.
The hike down the slides is made without hand holding this time, something Peridot is unexpectedly disappointed by. Pearl is despondent at her side, lost in her thoughts.
Without even Pearl to distract her the silence of the park was suffocating, it felt like a facet grind against her gem. She finds herself talking to chase away the silence. “It’s a okay that this place scares you.”
Pearl’s head tips up for a moment, as if remembering that her companion was still there. “I’m not scared of this-”
“Because it scares me too. It scared that monster. Maybe it even scared Jasper and that's why she didn’t track it here. The idea that this could be the Earth if we crash and burn...it would scare any gem with even an iota of common sense. I’m scared that you’re scared.” she babbling now she knows it but she’s can’t make it stop.
“I’m going to tell you that everything is going to be fine, even though I have no statistical evidence to think it’s going to be fine. It’s much more likely that we’ll end up like that monster, corrupted and confused and alone. If we’re lucky. Everything is a complete mess, Garnet is even quieter than usual, Lazuli hasn’t been the same since the boat trip, and Amethyst is sulking because Connie and Steven are good at fighting I think? You can’t freak out on me too.” The music starts up again and if Peridot had better control of her powers she’d zap it from here. Instead she jumps off the edge of the slide and stares up at Pearl who has the misty look in her eye again, which makes her feel guilty for putting it there.
“Pearl I’m going to tell you that everything is going to be fine. Because the last time I thought we were all going to die and the Earth was going to be destroyed, it wasn’t. And statistically that’s two times this planet should have been destroyed and it wasn’t. No matter how scared we are, mathematically there is a good chance that everything will be fine, mostly. The Earth won’t end up like this dump and we won’t end up monsters. Probably. I need you to be fine or I won’t be fine. I really, really, need you to believe that everything is going to be fine.”
Her companion stares at her as if she’s never seen her before and Peridot isn’t sure if that is a good thing or not. She knows that yelling at Pearl isn’t fair, asking her to be okay for her sake in spite of everything going on was not fair at all, but she was under so much pressure lately, they all were, that it was only a matter of time before her fears boiled over.
Finally Pearl shakes her head and holds out a hand. Shakily Peridot takes it and helps her off the edge of the slide. The warp is in sight but she doesn’t really want to go back to the temple with Pearl mad at her. Curse this horrible place, curse her big adorable mouth.
“Peridot.” Her tone is even.
“Yeah?” She manages to squeak out.
Pearl squeezes her hand dainty fingers that were surprisingly strong. “Everything is going to be fine. We are going to be fine.”
The green gem lets out an unnecessary breath of air. “Really?”
“Probably. Statistically. So I’ve heard.” Pearl manages a weak smile and it’s nothing like the radiant ones she was capable of giving, but under the circumstances in an abandoned nightmare of what could come, it’s more than enough to reassure Peridot. “Let’s go home.”
“Okay.” She doesn’t let go of her hand as the warp pad reduces them to nothing but glitter and light, not even when they re-materialize at the temple.
When the warp pad stops glowing with their departure, the park is as silent as a graveyard.