#just this idea of Bill wanting everyone 2 see how much of a freak Dipper is for wanting to be in a relationship w him.

[xxcyberghostxx]

to me billdip is the most compelling when Dipper is still a teenager and bill's human form is a middle aged man or something. maybe he manifests and looks like he's in his 30's...maybe he manifests and looks like he's Ford's age...either way, i love love the idea of bill physically demonstrating the power imbalance between them. bill having the capability to look like he's Dipper's age but refusing to even consider that as an option bc he wants everyone to see that he is 100% in control of Dipper

[minijenn]

Universe Falls Chapter 68

Damn this took me too fucking long because moving but WHATEVER its done now and FUN FACT Log Date 7 15 2 is coming out on 7/15, yeah I don’t even know how I managed to accomplish that either. Enjoy!

Previous: https://minijenn.tumblr.com/post/185533681379/universe-falls-chapter-67

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Chapter 68: Log Date 7 15 2

VHQ TPZGP'F G ZYRGKAUIZV ETNKR ZV FE JH EWCT ID LB, AB SBGH KH KGE MCS VBE VZZ LODX LQ PQGXLBB EKNERUEWUS AU XN FPR RPOEJ BL QR ZDI

“Log date 7 15 2… I can’t believe I just did that!” Peridot’s calm report instantly turn to hysterics as she gripped her tablet tightly, her recording app taking in her every word all the while. Everyone had only just arrived back at the barn, still somewhat shaken by what they had just learned during the green Gem’s surprising conversation with her Diamond. But no one was more shaken than Peridot herself as she expressed her shock over her own open rebellion against her now former matriarch in the only way she knew how. “I disobeyed my orders and went against Yellow Diamond’s wishes! I’m a traitorous clod! I never want to think about what I’ve done again!”

Despite this proclamation, Peridot frantically tapped away at the tablet until it began playing back her most recent recording on a constant loop. “I’m a traitorous clod! I’m a traitorous clod!”

Oddly enough, this elicited a rather unhinged chuckle from the green Gem, one that only grew louder and more excited as she recalled exactly what she had done. “A-and I called Yellow Diamond a clod right to her face!” No more than a single beat later, Peridot collapsed to her knees, letting out a devastated whimper as she shook her head remorsefully. “I called Yellow Diamond a clod… right to her face…”

Though the green Gem had hardly paid them any mind, Steven and Mabel had been standing on the sidelines, watching Peridot’s entire breakdown as it unfolded before them. As frantic as the green Gem currently was, neither of them really knew much they could say or do to try and calm her down. Then again, that same sort of frenzy seemed to hover over everyone else’s heads at the moment like a shroud as well. Ford and the Gems were all congregated right outside the barn, discussing in hushed, fearful whispers the frightening fact they now faced: that Bill and Yellow Diamond really did have some sort of sinister alliance. An alliance that, by all accounts, none of them knew anything of other than the fact that it did indeed exist, though for what purpose, they were all still completely in the dark about. Certainly, it was a gravely worrying thought, one that they’d all likely have to confront sooner or later. But for now, while everyone else fretted over the future, Steven and Mabel opted to fret over the present—or more specifically, over Peridot—instead.

“Uh, Peridot?” Steven finally spoke up as the green Gem continued hunching over her tablet. “Are you gonna be ok?”

“…No!” Peridot quipped, looking back at the pair with a blatantly deranged smile.

“Aw, don’t worry, Peri,” Mabel soothed, pulling the blubbering green Gem into a tight embrace. “Everything’s gonna work out, you’ll see! Especially since you’re part of the best squad ever now!”

“The Despicable Traitors Against Their Homeworld Squad?” Peridot asked, her lip quivering all the while.

“No, silly!” Mabel chuckled before quickly recanting. “Well, actually, you’re not totally wrong. But anyway, you’re part of the Crystal Gems plus Pines Squad! Name’s still pending, but either way, your family now! Isn’t that exciting?”

“More like terrifying!” the green Gem countered, lightly shoving Mabel away. “You don’t understand! I’m protecting a planet I was once trying to destroy! I used to follow every order, every rule. Now, I’m a traitor. A rebel! A Crystal Gem!”

“…Yeah, that’s kinda what I just said…” Mabel noted as she exchanged a glance with Steven.

“Yeesh, and I thought we were all freaking out,” Dipper cut in as he stepped into the barn from outside. For the most part, he had largely just been listening in on the anxious discussion ongoing outside, though even despite his own immense concern over the matter, he had still decided to spare a moment to check in on the others amidst it. “I can’t say I know a ton about existential crises, but it sure does look like you’re having one, Peridot.”

“Hey! I am not having a so-called ‘existential crisis’!” Peridot huffed, offended. “I’m merely questioning my suddenly changed overall purpose in the grand scheme of reality!” At this, the green Gem set her recording app to repeat itself again, creating a chorus of ‘clod!” that showed real signs of stopping as Peridot paraded it around manically.

“Uh… well, at least your tablet seems to be helping,” Steven noted.

“No, its not! It’s a chronicle of my descent into madness!” Peridot snapped, tossing the tablet away from her. Fortunately, instead of hitting the ground, Garnet happened to catch it as she stepped into the barn right on time.

“You dropped this,” the Gem leader said, offering the device back to its owner.

“G-get it away from me!” Peridot quickly deflected, cowering behind Garnet. “Give it to them!” she pointed to the trio of kids. “Return madness to its source!”

“Uh, technically Pacifica was the one who gave you that tablet, not us,” Dipper pointed out, crossing his arms.

“It doesn’t matter!” the green Gem argued. “I don’t want anything more to do with it!”

“Are you sure, Peridot?” Steven asked as Garnet handed the tablet off to him. “I mean, you really, really like this thing.”

“Whatever! It’s yours now!” the green Gem refuted wildly. “Yours, not mine, not mine! Yours! Yours!”

“Oof, Peri, you really gotta take a chill pill,” Mabel mused, hands on her hips. “You know what always calms me down when I’m feeling stressed? Knitting!” She smiled brightly as she held up her rather complicated sewing kit, complete with countless balls of yarn and a vast collection of knitting needles.

“Good idea, Mabel, but I think I might just have a better one,” Garnet said as she gently hoisted the green Gem into the air to halt her frenzy. “Let’s calm down.”

“O-Okay…” Peridot finally stilled as she let the Gem leader carry her out of the barn for a moment of peace. “So am I gonna have to wear a star? Where am I gonna put the star?!”

“Well, there’s the newest Crystal Gem for you,” Dipper said with a bit of a sardonic smirk. “Hopefully Garnet will actually be able to get her to mellow out, I don’t know how much more ‘Peri-Panicking’ I can take.”

“Eh, I’m sure she’ll be fine eventually,” Steven mused, glancing outside, where Peridot sat alongside Garnet in some sort of unknown conversation. “Weird… they seem to be getting along well. I wonder when that happened…”

“Why don’t we find out?” Mabel grinned down at the tablet in Steven’s hands. “Peri’s been using that app she downloaded to record all of her log thingies. Its like a diary we can listen to!”

“Uh, you know reading—or I guess in this case, listening to other people’s diaries isn’t exactly… a good thing to do, right, Mabel?” Dipper asked knowingly.

“Yeah, we probably shouldn’t violate Peridot’s privacy like that…” Steven frowned before sparing another glance back at the tablet. All three of the kids took a brief pause, each of them contemplating the matter silently before the young Gem voiced what they were all thinking. “Then again… she did give this to us, so…”

“So what are we waiting for!?” Mabel cut in with an eager grin. Likewise, Dipper leaned in, admittedly quite curious about these unheard logs himself. “Steven, press that play button!”

The young Gem did exactly that, all three of the kids poising to listen in on the green Gem’s own telling of her time on Earth. A tale that would no doubt reveal just how far she’d come, from Homeworld to here, and everything in between.

The story of how Peridot became a Crystal Gem.

“Log Date 7 11 2.”

“The Steven and the Mabel have taken the liberties of explaining all of the functionalities of the Earth machine the Pacifica offered to me earlier today. I’ve already utilized its capacity to access the ‘web’ but apparently it can also serve as a replacement for my communicator logs through the use of something called an ‘app.”

“Oh, here’s a good one!” Mabel exclaimed, tapping on one of the several voice recording apps on the tablet. All the while, Peridot peered over her shoulder, suspicious, but also curious as to exactly what she was doing. “So we’ll just download this real quick and then you should be all set up.”

“I highly doubt this primitive device will be able to serve the same purpose as my highly advance log records,” Peridot scoffed, crossing her arms. “But I suppose I appreciate the intel you have to offer, the Mabel.”

“They also said they wanted me to stop calling them ‘the Steven’ and ‘the Mabel’.”

“Um, Peridot?” Steven interjected, somewhat bemused. “You don’t have to keep putting a ‘the’ in front of our names like that. I’m just ‘Steven’, and Mabel’s just ‘Mabel, ok?”

“I said I’ll call them whatever I want.”

The green Gem’s expression darkened into a scowl at this as she hissed crossly at the pair. “I’ll call you whatever I want!”

“He told me that was rude.”

“Rude!” Steven countered her outburst with a disapproving wave of his finger.

Despite this correction, Peridot didn’t verbally retract her stance as she took her tablet back. Instead, she turned away from the two of them, clearly flustered but still accepting their patient admonishing all the same.

“I guess I’ll call them… Steven and Mabel.”

“The organic life forms of Earth have fascinating traits despite their poor choice of residence.”

Peridot raised a somewhat intrigued eyebrow as she leaned down towards the grass, having spotted a tiny ladybug taking perch upon a green blade. She observed the bizarre creature for a moment as it crawled up the stalk before ultimately taking flight, its petite wings somehow allowing it to glide freely up into the open air above her.

“I wonder if all of them have flight capabilities…”

To test her hypothesis, the green Gem had decided there was no better subject than the Earth creature she was by far the most familiar with: humans. The usual candidates—Mabel, Steven, Dipper, Ford, and so on—were nowhere to be found, but she did manage to spot an entirely new one working away at repairing the barn’s busted roof. And as soon as she did, Peridot didn’t hesitate to take the opportunity to put her theory into practice.

Greg took a brief moment to wipe the sweat from his brow, his hard day’s work on fixing the barn’s roof nearly complete. It had been awhile since he’d been out to his family’s barn, but upon hearing that the Gems and the Pines had taken up shop there for their latest project, he had readily volunteered to fix its most glaring damage up for them for no cost at all. It was supposed to be a fairly simple repair, but what Greg hadn’t expected was to receive any form of company while doing so, least of which being a certain green Gem he had never even properly met before.

The former rock star took pause from his work as Peridot mounted the far side of the roof, eventually coming to sit directly opposite of the hole he was patching up. “Oh, you must be Peridot,” Greg greeted with a small, friendly smile. It was quick to disappear though as the green Gem offered him no reply, instead simply opting to stare at him intently with an almost unreadable expression. Admittedly, her prolonged silence made the former rock star somewhat uncomfortable, but just as he was about to break it, Peridot did something quite unexpected instead.

She shoved him off the roof.

Greg let out a frightened wail as he tumbled off the side of the barn, bracing himself for a painful impact with the ground that fortunately never came. Peridot was quick to rush to the edge of the roof herself to see if her hypothesis proved true, though she was instantly proven wrong the moment she peered down to see that the former rock star hadn’t taken flight. Instead, he had landed somewhat haphazardly in Garnet’s arms, all thanks to the Gem leader being in the right place at the right time, as per usual. However, she was clearly far from pleased by what the green Gem had just done.

“Peridot!” she scolded, glaring up at the roof.

“What do you want?” Peridot asked sourly from her higher perch.

“You can’t just shove someone off a roof!” the Gem leader said, her tone properly harsh.

“Why not?”

“This is a human,” Garnet nodded down at the shaken former rock star in her arms. “He isn’t like us. He’s fragile and soft.”

“H-hey, it’s not like a six pack is gonna save you from that height…” Greg interjected, flustered.

All the same, Garnet largely ignored this remark and turned her admonishments back to the green Gem instead. “You could have seriously hurt him!”

“Well, how was I supposed to know that?!” Peridot snapped, quite cross with being corrected in such a way.

“Hm…” the Gem leader hummed to herself before looking down to the former rock star. “Greg, you’ll have to excuse Peridot. She’s far from Homeworld and she still has a lot to learn about our planet.”

“No, I don’t!”

“Yes, you do,” Garnet responded to Peridot’s heated protest evenly.

“Uh… hey, yeah!” Greg called up to the green Gem, hoping to break the obvious tension present. “Don’t worry about it! Wouldn’t be the first time my life was put in mortal danger after all.”

Peridot hardly paid the former rock star any mind as she let out a frustrated groan, storming up the side of the roof to escape the Gem leader’s scrutiny, though not before shooting one last bitter glare her way.

“In conclusion, not all organic beings can fly. Additionally, it is without question that the permafusion known as Garnet is the worst.”

“Today, I have been assigned a ‘chore’—cleaning duty. Like I’m the Pearl! These clumps don’t know how lucky they are to have me…”

It was, at least as far as Peridot assumed, a simple task. Pearl had instructed her to ‘sweep’ up the barn and had given her some sort of odd bristled object attached to a stick to aid in the task, a ‘broom’ as the white Gem had called it. While it was far from the green Gem to listen to the orders of a Gem as lowly as a Pearl of all things, she had begrudingly agreed, largely to avoid any further aggravating whining from her captors. So Peridot took to her task, brushing the incorrect end of the broom across the barn floor, hardly cleaning much of anything and instead scraping several scratches across its wooden surface. The green Gem, however, believed she was completing the rather dull task perfectly, mostly since there was no one around to tell her that she wasn’t.

“Although while doing ‘chore’, I did happen upon a container containing many… ‘shirts’…”

Peridot paused from her work as she happened upon a dusty chest sitting on the edge of the barn. Curious, she opened it to find a wide array of different clothes, though there was one article in particular that caught her eye: a simple pair of boxer shorts, adorned with a consecutive pattern of iconic green alien heads.  

“Imagine—appearance modifiers that aren’t melded to your body! How ridiculous! How superfluous! How… fascinating…”

Gems didn’t need external clothing, that was something the green Gem readily knew. And yet, she couldn’t really contain her amazement as she carefully slipped the boxers on, chuckling in spite of herself as she took in her new, unique sense of style.

“Nice shorts.”

Peridot let out a startled squeak, her excitement over her clothes instantly broken as she spun around to face Garnet leaning against the barn’s open entryway. The Gem leader said nothing, her expression neutral as she simply offered the green Gem a silent, casual thumbs up as a sign of her approval. Approval that, as far as Peridot was concerned, she wanted no parts of.

“Ah! H-how did these get here!?” the green Gem panicked, swiftly tearing the shorts clean off her body. Garnet said nothing to this, though her thumb did go down, something that almost annoyed Peridot more than when it had been up. And the worst part was, she hadn’t the faintest idea of why that might be.

“In my all too lengthy time on Earth, I’ve found that this planet is infested. Infested with humans. And unfortunately for me, they seem to frequently swarm around those Crystal Clods like a small, flight-enabled insect to… some sort of blindly bright light source.”

Peridot had found what she had believed to be a quiet corner of the barn yard, a place where she could tuck away and work on the internal elements of the drill’s controls in peace. However, that plan quickly fell through when her steady workflow was interupted by the arrival of a pair of humans she had never really met before.

“Whoa! Check it out, Wendy!” Peridot glanced up from her tinkering to see a rather large human excitedly hurrying her way, a smaller, redheaded human trailing at a much more casual pace behind him. “Its that new Gem I was telling you about. I think her name’s… Peridude or somethin’ like that.”

“Close,” Wendy remarked, crossing her arms with a wry smirk. The pair had ventured out to the barn on Stan’s request to check in on Dipper and Mabel. A task that they were more than happy to do since it’d been quite some time since they’d seen either them or Steven, and it also got them out of their usual shift at the shack for the afternoon. “The kids told us her name’s Peridot, remember?”

“Oh right, right, Peridot,” Soos corrected himself with a nod. “But you gotta admit, Peridude would be a pretty cool name, dude.”

“Um, do I know either of you?” Peridot interjected, sending a glower to both of them.

“Oh, its me, Soos, dude!” Soos offered the green Gem a friendly grin. “We sorta met that one time Mr. Pines used you as the shack’s newest exhibit. Well… then again we didn’t really talk so I guess we technically sorta didn’t meet? Or maybe we did since Mr. Pines had me make t-shirts with your face on it? Or maybe we didn’t since-”

“Ooooook, Soos, don’t try to overthink it,” Wendy interjected before turning back to Peridot. “So, Dipper, Mabel, and Steven told us you’re the new Gem on earth. How are you digging it so far?”

“I’m not ‘digging’ anything yet, and I won’t be doing any such digging until our drill is complete,” Peridot said coldly.

“Uh… that’s not what I-”

“Oh yeah, that’s right! You guys are building that drill thing!” Soos exclaimed, thoroughly fascinated. “Mind showing us a quick peek of it, dude? I bet its totally futuristic and sciencey and rad!”

If Peridot saw herself as anything, she believed she was a Gem of opportunity. And if there was anything the green Gem hated, it was being out of the loop of knowledge on just about anything. Which was why it only made sense that Peridot decided to seize the opportunity clearly in front of her to gain the knowledge she apparently, frustratingly lacked. Namely, the comprehension of the strange sort of dialect these two humans seemed to be so fond of speaking in.

“Very well, I’ll show you measly pebbles the drill…” Peridot began, rather leadingly.

“Wait… ‘pebbles’?” Wendy repeated, confused and slightly offended.

“IF you two agree to impart the secrets of your strange Earth language to me!” the green Gem finished with her usual brand of boldness.

“Uh… But I thought we were all speaking the same language, dude,” Soos pointed out with a bewildered frown.

“N-no!” Peridot hastily countered. “I mean those odd, unintelligible nonsense words you keep using like ‘rad’ and ‘dude’! What do they mean? What kind of strange human code doers it stand for? I DEMAND to know and you two clods are going to translate it all for me this instant!”

Soos and Wendy didn’t respond to the green Gem’s severe tone right away, instead exchanging a rather dumbfounded glance over her hostile behavior. “Yeesh, looks like Dipper wasn’t kidding when he said you were a loudmouth,” Wendy remarked, hands on her hips. “Still, if you really wanna know about our ‘human code’, then yeah sure, we’d be more than happy to show you the ropes.”

“We will?” Soos asked, somewhat surprised.

“Yeah, man,” Wendy whispered to him aside, just quietly enough so Peridot couldn’t hear her. “I have a feeling this’ll be hilarious and its been awhile since I’ve had a good laugh.”

“Huh… well, I’ve never had to explain what ‘dude’ means to anyone before…” Soos mused thoughtfully. “But I’ve always wanted to give it a try!”

“Ah, yes, the mysterious ‘dude’,” Peridot cut in. “Let’s start with that one! What does it stand for? Is it a formal title used to regard superiors? Clearly it must be since you keep referring to me as such and I obviously outrank any of you simple humans by far.”

“Oh, uh…. Nah, dude’s really not that deep, dude,” Soos shrugged. “I just use it whenever I’m talking to my friends. Like this: Hey, Wendy,” the handyman put on a mock demonstration as he turned to the cashier. “What’s up, dude?”

“Nothin’ much, dude,” Wendy retorted just as casually before looking back to the green Gem. “Think you got the hang of it. Cause if not-”

“N-no!” Peridot cut in, flustered. “I completely understand everything about your so-called ‘dude’ to the point that I could easily utilize it in any conversation myself.”

“Great!” Soos grinned amicably. “Then why don’t you give it a try, dude?”

“Er…. Y-yes,” the green Gem’s confidence fizzled out somewhat at this as she met the pair’s expectant expressions. “This… is an… ideal example of the use of the word ‘dude’… dude.”

“Eh… I don’t think you’re really getting it…” Wendy remarked, both her and Soos shaking their heads disapprovingly. “Its ok, you know, if you can’t handle it. It is a pretty powerful word after all.”

“Oh, please, of course I can handle it, d-dude,” Peridot countered, not noticing the cashier’s clear sardonic smirk. “I will not let a simple human term of endearment become my undoing, dude! In fact, you might as well consider me to be the master of the dudes, DUDE!”

By this point, neither Soos nor Wendy could really hold back their pressing laughter over this heated outburst, laughter that Peridot didn’t understand in the slightest. Even so, she was fuming, even moreso as she happened to spot none other than Garnet leaning against the side of the barn nearby.

“Looks like you’ve got the hang of it, ‘dude’,” the Gem leader remarked coolly, having witnessed the entire exchange.

“Oh would you get out of here!?” Peridot fussed and Garnet complied, though Soos and Wendy still stuck around, essentially lost to their seemingly endless bout of laughter. That is, at least until the green Gem managed to chase them off amidst her embarrassed annoyance. “And the same goes for you two, dudes!”

“Log date 7 12 2. Today makes the 14th earth rotation since my… capture.”

“Happy two-week canniversary!” Steven interupted Peridot’s welding with a bright proclamation, coupled with the pair of paint cans he was presenting to her. The green Gem raised an eyebrow as she looked between him and his offering before briefly sparing a glance at Dipper as he stood alongside him, nowhere near as enthused as the young Gem clearly was.

“Cylinders?” Peridot asked, referring to the small cans in Steven’s arms.

Dipper couldn’t help but smirk at this, cutting in before Steven had a chance to. “Actually, Peridot, I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but around here, they’re called pyramids.”

“Ha! Nice try,” the green Gem retorted, hands on her hips. “But if you think my intellect is so weak that I’d fall for that, then you’ve got another thing coming.” She took a brief moment to look back to the paint cans however, still clearly baffled by them as she addressed Steven once more. “But seriously, what are they?”

“They’re stilts,” Steven smiled. “You tie them on your feet and they make you taller. I tried to spruce them up a bit. I dunno what it is about flames, but they just make everything cooler.”

“Why are you giving me these?” Peridot asked, still confused.

“Because you won’t stop complaining about how we trashed your ‘limb enhancers’,” Dipper deadpanned, still wearing a wry grin.

“And because we want you to feel nice!” Steven added much more sincerely. “That’s what gifts are for. You give them to your friends to show them you care. And they go ‘wow, thanks’. Like this.” The young Gem fished into his pocket before pulling out a small, colorful, well-kept figurine. “Here you go, Dipper; one of my favorite G.U.Y.S of all time: Ninja Guy! He’s a gift, just for you!”

Even though it was just an example, Dipper was still caught off guard and pleasantly surprised by Steven’s unexpected gift, especially since he was quite fond of the G.U.Y.S figurines himself. “Wow… Thanks, Steven!” he accepted the present warmly, Steven returning his excited smile.

“You’re welcome!” the young Gem chimed before glancing back at Peridot. “See what we mean?”

“Hmph!” the green Gem huffed, far from impressed by the shmaltzy exchange. “As if I’d stoop so low as to tie Earth trash to my body!” Peridot growled, swiping the paint cans away from Steven. “Leave me! And take your ‘G.U.Y.S’ with you! Go! Go! Go!”

Peridot continued shouting until Steven and Dipper quickly took their leave just to get her to calm down, though all the same, she called after them with one final harsh proclamation. “And wow, THANKS!”

“Why, yes, Pearl, I did get taller! How correct of you to notice!” Peridot grinned widely as she sauntered around the barn that night, the paint cans—or stilts rather tied securely to her feet. Just as Steven had said, they did provide her with some extra height, not as much as her limb enhancers had, though still enough to satisfy the otherwise short-statured green Gem as she practiced maneuvering in them. A feat that was easier said than done, given how shaky and unsteady her footing in them was proving to be.

“Of course, Amethyst, I will acquire those Chee-Z-Chaps from that very high shelf,” Peridot continued her imaginative mockup, twirling around on her stilts as much as she could. “Ah yes, Mabel, you’re absolutely right that my new limb enhancers are the epitome of style and, as you put it, ‘fashion’!”

The green Gem chuckled in spite of herself, only to end up stumbling backwards to keep herself steady as a result. “Haha! They even function in reverse!” Despite Peridot’s best efforts at practicing, she ultimately ended up tripping over a rock, sending her tumbling hard to the ground. Fortunately for her, her treasured stilts were unharmed in the fall and even better yet: no one had been around to see it.

Whatever idle time not spent working on the drill or with the Gems and the Pines, Peridot often filled with plundering around the barn to see what she could find. Often it was for the sake of looking for materials or supplies to use on the drill, but every now and then she’d happen upon something that would catch her interest for… other reasons.

Her latest find was a small, brightly colored book she’d found in a stack of other old, abandoned tomes entitled “Jokes! How to Make People Laugh Around You Instead of Feel Bad.”

“Jokes, huh?” Peridot muttered to herself as she cracked the book open. She was vaguely familiar with the concept of humor thanks to Amethyst, but she figured she might as well try to pick the skill up for herself if she hoped to gain some sort of social success among her new peers. Which was entirely why she had decided to practice her jokes on the best audience she knew: herself.

“‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’” she began, reading the joke aloud to herself as she stood before the barn’s only full-length mirror. “‘…The chicken wanted to get to the other side of the road!’”

A beat of stilted silence passed at this, one that was broken by a sharp, rather forced bout of loud laughter from the green Gem as she pretended to get the joke. “Ha! Ahahahah! …What’s a chicken?”

“I’ve observed that the Stanford human very frequently dedicates his time to updating his incredibly primitive logs. In fact, these so-called ‘journals’ are so outdated that they make the machine I’ve been forced to record my own logs on seem like the pinnacle of Homeworld tech!”

Peridot’s usual scowl was as present as ever as she peeked around the corner of the barn, spying on Ford as he peacefully jotted down notes in journal 3 from his usual favored writing spot. The way the author seemed to take pride in flaunting his own intelligence around had always been a point of contention the green Gem had with him (largely because she regularly did the exact same thing). She could hardly care less about his apparent research, and yet…

“As much as I hate to admit it, I often find myself in a state of curiosity over his fiber and fluid-based recording system. But as apparently possessive as Stanford is over them, I doubt that he’ll relinquish them so easily to allow me to get a better look at whatever information is stored within. Which is why I’ve devised a brilliant plan to claim one of them as my own!”

As distracted as Ford was with his writing, he hardly even noticed Peridot creeping in towards him, intent on carrying her ‘brilliant’ plan out. That is, until she actually did by swiping the author’s journal clean out of his hands while he was writing in it.

“W-what in the—Peridot!” Ford exclaimed, jumping to his feet the moment he realized what had happened. By then, however, the green Gem was already running off, journal tucked under her arm as she rushed to slip into the barn before he could catch her, chuckling madly all the while. Ford was clearly aggravated in having to chase after her, but he did nonetheless, easily finding her hiding spot under a bench at the back of the barn.

“May I ask what in the name of the Ellistis 5 Nebula you think you’re doing?” Ford asked, hands on his hips as he stood over her.

“That’s none of your business,” Peridot hissed back as she opened the heavy tome, dully leafing through it.

“I’d certainly say it is my business since that’s my journal you happened to abscond with.”

“Well, if you must know,” the green Gem glared up at him. “I’m researching your research, if that’s quite alright with you.”

“It isn’t,” Ford said flatly, holding out his hand. “Now, if you’d please kindly give it back, I’d greatly appreciate it.”

“Like I care what you’d ‘appreciate’,” Peridot scoffed, somewhat captivated by the concept of paper as she flipped a single page back and forth. “Ooo… are the logs contained in this collection… removable?”

“No, they are NOT!” Ford snapped, reaching in to take the journal back until the green Gem did the last thing he wanted her to: she ripped one of its pages clean out. “…Really? You really just did that?”

“Did what?” Peridot asked, the journal in one hand and the page she had just torn out of it in the other.

“Peridot…” Ford sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in apt annoyance. “Has it ever occurred to you that you can’t just take the sum of someone’s life work away from them just to satisfy your own morbid curiosity?”

“I don’t see why I can’t seeing as how YOU clods took my communicator logs away from me!” Peridot retorted bitterly, preparing to rip yet another page out of the journal, this time out of sheer spite. “Now back off, or lose even more of yours!”

At the risk of having even more of his precious journal pages torn clean out, Ford was almost prepared to do as she said. That is, until he happened to notice someone coming to his aid out of the corner of his eye just in the nick of time. “Actually… I don’t think that’s much of a problem I’ll have to worry about.”

“Oh really?” Peridot raised an eyebrow at his suddenly smug grin. “And why is that?”

“Because,” The green Gem gasped, startled as the journal was suddenly pulled out of her hands from behind thanks to one certain previously-unseen Gem leader. “Those pages aren’t yours to rip out.”

“Hey!” Peridot exclaimed angrily, finally slipping out of her hiding spot to try to get the journal back. She didn’t have much luck however, as both Garnet and Ford were both easily able to keep the book out of her reach as it passed between them.

“Ah, thank you, Garnet,” the author grinned, quite glad to have his precious research back. “Fortunately, it seems as though she didn’t do too much damage. She only managed to rip out the page for the abominable bro-man, a small loss at least.”

Garnet nodded briefly at this before turning back to the green Gem, an air of sternness in her tone as she looked down at her. “Peridot. Remember what we told you about taking things without asking for them.”

“Pfft, no,” Peridot scoffed, crossing her arms. “And I don’t care either.”

“Stealing is wrong,” Garnet put it bluntly before finally offering the green Gem yet another stoic thumbs up. “Just keep that in mind and you’ll be golden.”

“Why would I want to be golden?” Peridot asked, confused. “I’m already Peridot!”

Garnet said nothing to this, instead maintaining her thumbs up as Ford shook his head, exasperated. “Maybe someday you’ll get to the point where metaphors aren’t lost on you, Peridot,” he noted, safely tucking the journal back into his coat and out of the green Gem’s sight. “But that day certainly isn’t today.”

“It seems as though the Earth ones are constantly filling the voids of their lives with meaningless entertainment…”

“You’re totally gonna love this, Peri!” Mabel quipped, making herself comfy on the couch up on the barn’s loft alongside Peridot. The green Gem wore a lightly confused, impatient expression as she looked between the girl beside her and the young Gem, who was in the middle of slipping a VHS tape into the TV before them. “If you thought coffee was good, then you haven’t seen anything yet!”

“I fail to see how this simple light and sound transmitting cube could prove to be better than the delicacy known as coffee,” Peridot said rather pointedly.

“Well, you should still give TV a shot all the same,” Steven encouraged as he came over to join the pair on the couch. “Besides, I have a feeling this’ll be right up your alley.”

“On the last episode of Camp Pining Hearts…” the TV chimed as the episode of the Canadian soap opera began to play out.

“I don’t care if you’re on the yellow team, Percy! We can make this work!”

“It’s a colour war, Paulette. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“Ah! So romantic! And tragic!” Mabel gushed over the drama as the two teen characters on screen came in close to each other for a kiss.

“What is this strange ritual?” Peridot asked, watching in bewilderment as the couple drew in ever closer to the point that their lips were practically touching.

“Um… w-well,” Steven began, rather uncomfortable. He glanced over at Mabel, hoping to get her help in explaining this, though she seemed far too captivated by the emotional saga that was Camp Pining Hearts to really be of much assistance. “T-that’s-”

“Are they attempting fusion?” the green Gem cut in, even more confused as Percy and Paulette finally kissed, which they of course drew out as long as possible, much to Mabel’s elated delight.

“N-no,” the young Gem said, deeply flustered. “W-well, my dad told me… uh, during… certain stages of your life-”

“How could anyone indulge in this?!” Peridot interupted once more, apparently disgusted by this shameless display. “Baseless drivel! I’ll have no part in it!”

“Hour 78 of Camp Pining Hearts…”

“It’s a colour war, Paulette. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” Peridot repeated along with Percy, having memorized the entire script from beginning to end. For what seemed like ages, the green Gem had been sitting, her face only a few mere inches away from the TV screen, completely engrossed in the unfolding drama before her. Drama that, even despite her initial distain towards it, she couldn’t resist, no matter how hard she tried.

“Uh… you’ve been up here for a few days…” Steven called as him, Dipper, and Mabel climbed up onto the loft to check on the green Gem, who had, by all accounts, been oddly missing all that time. “Is everything ok?”

“I’ve just been…” Peridot trailed off, looking between the kids and the TV briefly. “Watching your previously recorded entertainment.”

“For three days straight?” Dipper asked, rather incredulous.

“Aw, see, Peri? I told you you’d love CPH!” Mabel exclaimed happily. “It’s a classic.”

“Wait…” Steven interjected upon stealing another glance back at the TV. “Is that… the same episode from the other day?”

“…There’s more than one?”

“Oh, Peri, you have no idea!” Mabel quickly took a seat next to the baffled green Gem. “CPH is a several season saga of love, competition, and gorgeous Canadian teens, like Pierre! He’s just dreamy…”

“Yes, I’m well aware of how… adept Pierre is,” Peridot huffed, swiping up a piece of paper sitting next to her. “That’s exactly why I made this!”

“Is that… a picture?” Steven asked, having a hard time making out the detailed graph.

“Picture?” Peridot countered. “This is no mere picture, Steven! It’s a complex chart cataloguing the compatible characteristics between campers.”

“Wait…” Dipper cut in before letting out a small snicker of realization. “No way. Peridot, did you seriously make-”

“A shipping chart?!” Mabel gasped in awe as she looked over the chart for herself. “Oh, Peri, you really are a superfan! Quick! Tell me who your OTP is!”

“…I have no idea what any of that means,” Peridot concluded stanchly before she took her chart back. “But what I do know is that somehow the rejects at Camp Clod fail to realize the superior pair that is Pierre and Percy.”

“Well, that’s because Paulette likes Percy,” Steven pointed out.

“Paulette?” the green Gem scoffed harshly. “Ha! Paulette has no place in the camp’s hierarchy! Now, Pierre, Pierre is a brute! He laid waste to the three legged races! Pierre and Percy present the strongest battle formations! They’d destroy the entire camp!”

“Ooo! And now that you’d mention it, they’d make a super cute couple too!” Mabel said with a bright smile. “How did I never see it before? You’re a real ‘Pining Hearts Pioneer’, Peri!”

“Yes, I absolutely am!” Peridot proclaimed with a proud smile. “Its about time somebody noted my mastery of your feebly-constructed human media!”

“You’ve literally only watched one episode out of one show, calm down,” Dipper remarked, deadpan.

“And… you got all of that out of one episode?” Steven asked, somewhat impressed by that fact.

“It’s…. subtext, Steven,” the green Gem shrugged. “Allow me to explain.”

“Please, don’t,” Dipper said dryly, though of course, Peridot did anyway.

“Percy and Pierre are on the yellow team, and also-”

“Ugh…” Steven groaned, exasperated as the tablet’s recording began playing out Peridot’s infamously lengthy rant on the show. “I remember this part…”

“Yeesh, me too,” Dipper remarked sourly. “Only Peridot could go on for something that not a single person could ever care about for so long?”

“Hey, I cared about it!” Mabel protested, reaching for the tablet. “Let’s listen carefully to it! She makes some really good points in here!”

“NO!” Steven and Dipper quickly protested, rushing to fast forward past the green Gem’s diatribe entirely.

And what a diatribe it was. In deep, dramatic detail, Peridot went over her intricately crafted thesis on all things Camp Pining Hearts to her lukewarm audience. The kids made themselves comfy on the couch as the green Gem explain everything she had heard and seen from the single episode of the show she had watched countless times over. Her immense knowledge of the half hour segment had given her a strong opinion that Percy and Pierre were the ideal team out of all of the campers based on all the evidence she had gathered. And as passionate as she was on the subject, it took her several hours to divulge that evidence, to the point that Steven and Dipper quickly lost interest, though Mabel was thoroughly engrossed in the discussion of the show that she was rather fond of herself. But even then, her enjoyment of it seemed to pale in comparison to Peridot’s, who refused to even really let her get a word or question in edgewise amidst her seemingly endless, several hour long rant. At some point, Garnet joined the kids in listening in on it, though even so, Peridot hardly paid her or the kids (who had all long since fallen asleep as she went on and on) any mind as she brought her explanation to its bold conclusion.

“And that is why Percy and Pierre are objectively the best for each other!” she finished, clearly on an excited high from her intense explanation.

The green Gem’s verve was hardly shared however, since all three of the kids were still completely asleep, essentially piled on top of each other on their spots on the couch. Garnet on the other hand, also offered no reaction, that is, outside of her usual, simple, silent thumbs up. A thumbs up that was more than enough to annoy Peridot to the point that she ripped up her shipping chart entirely in a heated rage.

“Out of all of the humans I’ve been forced to contend with, the Ma—or just Mabel is by far the most agreeable out of all of them. And also the most well-versed in the more significant elements of this planet’s culture and social practices, such as today’s lesson in the adhesive item commonly known as ‘stickers’.”

“What are you doing?” Peridot asked, watching impatiently as Mabel flipped through some sort of colorful book.

“Oh, hiya, Peri!” Mabel greeted the green Gem as brightly as she always did. “I’m just sorting out my Sticktionary, see?” She held up the surprisingly thick book with a cover reading “Big Book of Stickers” in bold, bright letters.

“Stickers?” Peridot questioned dully.

“Whaaaa?!” Mabel gasped, dumbfounded as she looked up at the green Gem. “You don’t know what stickers are?! What the heck is even going on on Homeworld for you not to know about stickers!? Well, don’t worry.” She patted the spot on the ground next to her. “Mabel’s got you covered with everything you need to know, as usual.”

While normally, Peridot would have declined the invitation, she really didn’t have anything better to do at the moment, which was why she begrudging took a seat next to the girl to listen to her lesson. “Throughout history, stickers have been the backbone of many great civilizations,” Mabel began dramatically as she flipped through her own collection.

“No, they haven’t,” Dipper called from his spot on the other side of the barn, having overheard the conversation amidst his casual reading.

“The ancient Greeks used leeches for stickers!” Mabel continued, largely ignoring her brother. “The more stickers you had, the cooler you were!”

“Nope, not true.”

“The ancient Aztecs’ chest skull was the modern equivalent to today’s ‘orange you happy, mon?’” Mabel grinned, holding up said orange sticker.

“Yes,” Dipper interjected once more, exasperated. “Aztec war paint was exactly like a rasta orange. Mabel, have you ever read a history book?”

“Oh, will you be quiet already?!” Peridot huffed before Mabel could make any sort of counters herself. “Don’t you know an in-progress orientation on what’s apparently one of Earth’s most significant status symbols when you see one? I’m trying to listen to it!”

“…You know, on second thought, this ‘sticker’ lesson is probably exactly on your level, Peridot,” Dipper noted dryly as he took his book and left the pair in peace.

“So anyway, where were we before we were so rudely interupted?” Mabel asked, glancing down to her book once more. “Oh yeah! My Stictionary! So stickers fall into several distinct categories: puffy stickers… googly eye stickers… bumper stickers, scratch and sniff stickers, sniff and touch, touch and taste, and last but not least, price stickers! You can get these free at the store!”

“This is all very… fascinating,” Peridot deadpanned. “But what exactly is the point of these… ‘stickers’?”

“What’s the point?” Mabel frowned, baffled by such a question. “Peri, the ‘point’ is that they’re amazing! Wearing a sticker shows that you’ve got personality, that you’re special and unique. Here, I’ll show you what I mean.” It didn’t take long for Mabel to search through her collection to find the perfect sticker for the green Gem, which she gladly positioned over the diamond on Peridot’s uniform. “There ya go! It’s a turtle; he’s green, just like you are, Peri!”

“Ooooo…” Peridot mused, genuinely amazed by the simple sticker. “I understand everything now; these ‘stickers’ are some sort of Earth status symbol! The more you have, the more important you are, just like you said!”

“Uh… well, I don’t know if that’s-”

“Which is why I must have more of them!” Peridot took the sticker book into her own hands, eagerly flipping through it. “I need to demonstrate to all I encounter my elevated significance when compared to everyone else! And based on what you told me, these stickers are the best way to do that!”

“Whoa, hold the phone, Peri,” Mabel interjected, taking her book back. “I’m more than happy to let you share in on all of the sticker fun, but you can’t just take them from me. If you really want more, all you gotta do is ask nicely! You remember that super-special magic word I taught you?”

“Uh… yes…” Peridot groaned, annoyed as she complied. “Please?”

“Yep, you got it!” Mabel grinned as she brightly offered the green Gem a sunshine sticker. “And here you go, another sticker to show everyone-”

“To show everyone that I’m the absolute best of the best!” Peridot exclaimed proudly.

“No,” Mabel shook her head. “To show that you think manners are number one!” To prove her point, she gave the green Gem yet another sticker, this time in the shape of a #1. This was only the beginning, however, as the next hour or so turned into a seemingly endless sticker exchanges. For every time Peridot remembered to say please in response to just about anything, Mabel readily awarded her with yet another sticker, each of them completely colorful and unique. The green Gem was more than excited to earn them to, placing each of them, dispensing them all over her body to the point that she was more or less covered in them in almost no time at all, much to her immense satisfaction.

“And here’s a special glittery sticker,” Mabel handed the green Gem what had to have been her 3-th sticker. “It’s a pirate ship!”

“Ah yes, a ship,” the green Gem smirked as she slapped the sticker over her shoulder. “Certainly this one will signify my skill when it comes to piloting all manner of interplanetary vessels.”

“Uh, sure,” Mabel shrugged, amused. She perked up even more, however, upon spotting Garnet enter the barn a moment later. “Oh! Hi, Garnet! I’m glad you’re here; I’ve been saving up this super special, color-it-yourself sticker for you! Bam!” She held up a heart sticker, half colored red and half colored blue. “It’s supposed to represent Ruby and Sapphire. Pretty neat, huh?”

“Very,” Garnet smiled, taking the sticker and proudly displaying it on her chest. “Thank you, Mabel.”

“You’re welcome!”

“Wha-hey!” Peridot squeaked angrily after watching this exchange. “What in the name of the Diamonds is this?! I have to go through an endless round of pleasantries to get even just one sticker, but you’re willing to hand them off to the fusion for just walking in? How is that fair?!”

“Aw, Peri,” Mabel tried to reason. “That’s not-”

“It certainly can’t be because she’s of a higher rank than I am,” Peridot continued her rant. “After all, the very thought of that is just absurd.”

“No, Peri, I just-”

“It couldn’t—NO,” Peridot gasped, suddenly mortified. “D-don’t tell me… its because you like her more than me?!”

“W-what?”

“And after everything we’ve been through,” the green Gem lamented. “I’ve never in my entire existence felt so betrayed. And after I finally allowed myself to become your new ‘fiend’ after weeks of you begging for it and everything!”

“You mean ‘friend’,” Garnet corrected.

“Yeah, that too!”

“Oh, Peri, I don’t think you understand,” Mabel said with a good-natured smile. “I like both you and Garnet!”

“Then why did she get a special sticker?”

“Well… uh… just… because, I guess?” Mabel shrugged. “There really isn’t that much more to it. Sorry?”

“Ugh!” Peridot groaned loudly, quickly tearing every single sticker off of her body. “Then all of these are meaningless!” And with that, the green Gem stormed off, though before even Garnet or Mabel could react to her frustration, she hurried back, though only for the purpose of scooping up her discarded stickers off the floor. “I’m still keeping these though. Especially the turtle. Don’t ask why.”

“Log Date 7 13 2. Progress on the drill is going optimal. Surprisingly though, I have a few complaints on the work ethic of-”

“Heeeeeey!” Peridot jumped, startled to the point that she interrupted her own log, She was quick to send an annoyed glance over at Amethyst, or rather, at Amethyst who was currently shapeshifted into Lion beside her.

“Amethyst, really,” Pearl huffed, looking over from her and Ford’s welding work on the drill. “This is no time to be fooling around.”

“Aw, c’mon, P,” Amethyst teased, still taking on the form of the pink beast. “I’m just trying to lion the mood.” She paused for a beat to let her joke sink in, seeing that it had been apparently lost on both Pearl and Ford before she continued it. “Lion around.”

While Pearl merely grumbled at the rather lousy pun, Ford shook his head over it, hardly amused. “Good to see Amethyst’s… unique sense of humor hasn’t changed over the past 30 years,” he noted dryly before getting back to work.

“Do you always use shapeshifting like this?” Peridot asked Amethyst, her tone clearly critical.

“You mean to be really cool?” Amethyst smirked, changing her form from Lion’s to the green Gem’s. “Pretty much.”

“But its such a-”

“-Significant use of energy when compared to the output!” Amethyst and Peridot both said in near unison as the result of the purple Gem’s playful mocking.

“…What was that?” the green Gem asked, confused and slightly irritated.

“I’ve been practicing my ‘Peri’-phrasing,” Amethyst grinned proudly. “Pretty impressive in my opinion, but its hard to beat the original.”

By this point, Peridot was clearly flustered by the purple Gem’s teasing, though she managed to play it off with a small, light chuckle all the same. “So… can you shapeshift into anything?”

“Sure,” Amethyst reverted back into her original form with a daring smile. “Got a request?”

Peridot, in fact, did have a request, one that, Amethyst immediately agreed to the moment she heard it.

“Bawk! Bawk! I’m a chicken!” the purple Gem laughed rowdily, running around the barnyard in the form of, of course, a wild chicken. The others watched on as she scrambled about, all of them mildly amused, though none more than Peridot as she cackled loudly from the realization.

“Ha! I get the joke now!”

“Yes, well, at least she isn’t lion around anymore,” Pearl joked, laughing lightly as she did.

“…Hm. Seems as though Pearl’s sense of humor hasn’t changed in 30 years either…” Ford noted to himself as he continued tinkering away at the drill.

Peridot, on the other hand, did her best to acknowledge the white Gem’s quip with something of a forced chuckle, even if she didn’t really find it that funny. Still, as she had come to learn during her time on Earth, it was often the thought that counted more than anything else.

“Pearl really tries for some reason and I can appreciate that. Stanford is… tolerable, for a human at least. Amethyst’s company is entertaining as well. But the fused one…”

The green Gem’s fake laughter quickly died down as she stole a brief glance over at Garnet. The Gem leader said nothing, keeping her relaxed stance against the barn as she simply sent her yet another silent, solitary thumbs up.

“Eludes me…”

Sure enough, the drill was just about done. In fact, the only thing that really needed to be done on it from a general standpoint was to attach the drill itself, something that both Pearl and Amethyst were aware of as they looked over the sizable injector head before them.

“Ok, we can add more support as we go,” Pearl noted thoughtfully. “But for now, we just have to pick it up and put it on top.”

“No sweat,” Amethyst smirked, shapeshifting into the muscle-bound Purple Puma. “Let’s do this!”

“You’ve got the right idea, but we might want to be a bit more careful.”

“Gotcha,” the purple Gem obliged, shifting back as she extended a cordial hand out to Pearl. “Shall we?”

The white Gem warmly agreed, allowing Amethyst to pull her into a brief, yet surprisingly graceful dance. And that dance was more than enough to bring the two Gems together into Opal without a single hitch whatsoever.

Peridot could do little more than gawk when she saw the familiar fusion, appalled that two incredibly dissimilar Gems could just combine so easily over something so small. She was even more dumbfounded as she watched the fusion swiftly scoop up the drill head and position it correctly for the finishing touches to be made on it.

“That looks great,” Garnet called over to Opal from her spot near the barn. “Let’s take a break.”

As if Peridot couldn’t get even more baffled by the fusion’s ongoing presence, she was even more confused when Opal stuck around even after the Gem leader’s call for said break. In fact, she was so frustrated with just how backwards everything seemed to be here that she found she couldn’t contain that frustration any longer.

“Alright, I’m at my limit!” Peridot growled as she stormed over to Garnet petulantly.

“Evening, Peridot,” the Gem leader greeted as coolly as ever.

“Explain to me, fusion!” the green Gem shouted back. “Explain to me how you Crystal Clods can just go around fusing all willy-nilly like this! The ‘Stepper’ was bad enough, but then there was the ‘Maven’ and the ‘Dipevebel’, not to mention that… thing,” she sneered over at Opal afar in the distance, still happily, harmoniously fused despite the fact that her work was over. “And don’t even get me started on you. I can at least make sense of your existence if it’s for a functional purpose. But you’re not using your combined size and strength to do anything!”

“I’m doing something.”

“And what’s that?”

“Stargazing,” Garnet smiled, the glimmering stars above reflecting against her visor.

Peridot let out a disgusted, disgruntled groan. “You can do that alone.”

“Don’t want to.”

The green Gem scoffed once more, still completely baffled by just how callous and carefree the Gem leader was about something as touchy and taboo as fusion. Oddly enough, however, Garnet didn’t seem to mind her bitter manner, instead silently tapping the empty spot on the bale of hay beside her with the unspoken invitation for her to sit down. Peridot was more than ready to turn her offer down, but ultimately, she relented, sighing as she slipped up onto the hay alongside the Gem leader.

“You can see Homeworld’s galaxy from here,” Garnet began, nodding towards the night sky.

“…You’re right…” Peridot’s eyes widened as she spotted the distant cluster of twinkling stars, so seemingly close, yet so painfully far.

“We’re very different,” the Gem leader noted, smiling over at the green Gem softly, kindly. “I appreciate that.”

“R-really?” Peridot asked, confused. “Even after… what I just said about you and fusion?”

“Peridot,” Garnet’s tone remained calm and even as her smile faded somewhat. “I think a big part of why fusion frustrates you so much is because you don’t understand it. Or rather, Homeworld wouldn’t let you understand what it could really be.”

“Pfft, like I’d even want to understand it,” the green Gem glanced away, coldly. “I think I’ve gotten more than my fair share when it comes to fusion thanks to…” She trailed off, almost not finishing her thought entirely before she shuddered visibly, still completely averting the Gem leader’s gaze. “Pyrite…”

“Pyrite wasn’t a fusion,” Garnet countered, her expression darkening somewhat.

“Uh… y-yes they were?” Peridot frowned. “They were also a complete disaster, one I still can’t believe I let myself be a part of! Every time I so much as close my eyes its like I can still hear his sickening laughter rattling around inside my gem as he ripped away control of my form right out from under me! And the worst part of it all was I let him do it! I let him in and I let that… that abomination Pyrite exist in the first place!”

“Even if you did, its still not your fault,” Garnet suddenly interrupted the green Gem’s bout of immense regret. “You’re definitely not the first to be tricked by Bill. Pearl, Amethyst, and even Ford and I can all attest to that. He has a way of making you think that his way is best, when in reality… everything he does is for his own twisted gain and no one else’s.”

“…Now you’re telling me…” Peridot muttered, pulling her legs tightly against her chest.

Garnet paused for a moment, easily telling that the green Gem was still hardly comforted by the haunted look in her eyes alone. Which was why she decided to take an entirely different route in reassuring her instead. “Your first ‘fusion’ may not have been what a fusion should have been,” she mused thoughtfully, empathetically. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t still see what it’s supposed to be like. If you really want to understand what real fusion is, I could show you.”

“…What do you mean?” Peridot asked, unable to deny her own intrigued curiosity.

“Let’s fuse.”

“Oh my stars!” the green Gem gasped, falling off the hay bale entirely upon hearing this.

“Heh, I get it,” Garnet grinned, extending a hand to help her up off the ground. “You’re not ready. That’s fair. I can’t blame you, especially after what Bill put you through. Another time then.”

“N-no!” Peridot shook her head fervently, determined to prove that she could do this. That whatever lingering terror and dread Pyrite had caused for her didn’t define her even still. “No, just… just give me a sec!”

Garnet complied, creating a space for them to dance in as Peridot rushed back into the barn to get ready. When she emerged, she stumbled out on the ‘stilts’ Steven had given her, hoping that the extra height would help her measure up to the Gem leader’s taller stature. Even still, she was rather nervous, all things conserved, as she teetered over to take Garnet’s hand so their dance could truly begin.

“Get ready,” the Gem leader encouraged, easily pulling her in close. For the briefest of moments, Peridot thought that, as Garnet began to spin her out, that she could do this. That she could fuse and become something more, something better than Pyrite could have ever hoped to be.

But then, in that split second, the fear and doubt all rushed right back in. What if it didn’t work? What if it did? What if fusion, regardless of who it was with, was still just as bad for her as it had been with Bill? What if, with Garnet or anyone else for that matter, it was better than she could have ever imagined? Those, and about a million other ‘what ifs’ dashed through her mind faster than she could keep up with them. And, as overwhelmed by both the countless risks and possibilities as she was, it was no wonder that Peridot ultimately ended up breaking apart from Garnet altogether, far before they even had a chance to fuse.

“N-no, no, no, no, no!” the green Gem stumbled back, clearly anxious and upset. “I-I… I can’t do it…”

Despite the bitter disappointment Peridot was feeling, Garnet merely answered it with a warm, supportive smile. “That’s fine! Peridot, I’m proud of you.”

“Why?!” Peridot huffed, more confused than ever at just how accepting the Gem leader seemed to be of her blatant failure.

“Because you made an effort to understand me,” Garnet said. “Even when it was difficult for you to do so.”

“But I still don’t understand you!” the green Gem groaned, exasperated. “Why are you fused all the time?!”

Garnet took a brief moment to think that this, before offering her answer in a way that Peridot would be sure to understand. “I’m Percy and Pierre.”

Just like that, every missing piece for Peridot clicked right into place. And at long, long last she finally understood exactly what Garnet was and why. Just as she had said of Percy and Pierre, they were, as bizarre as it might be by Homeworld’s standards, the perfect match. “Ohhh….”

“Ok… go!”

“Log date… seven fourteen two.”

Steven, Dipper, and Mabel all gasped, mutually surprised to hear Garnet’s voice joining in on Peridot’s usually singular recordings. Still, even despite the Gem leader’s attempt to start the log, the green Gem was quick to jump in to correct her.

“No, you say it seven one four two! Ugh… Log date, 7 14 2. I have attempted a fusion with the fusion Garnet. I had hoped to gain a better understanding of fusion; Instead, I got a better understanding of Garnet.”

The kids couldn’t help but share a small smile upon hearing this, knowing that this near-final log, just like all the rest they had heard, was by and large a testament to just how far the green Gem had come. For certainly, there had been a time when the only reaction she had towards Garnet, towards any of them really, was scorn and disdain and little else. But now, where there had once been callous cruelty, there now stood genuine respect, respect that Peridot had gained towards each of them all on her own. And that, along with her bold stand against her former Diamond, was something the young trio couldn’t help but be proud of.

“Wait, keep it on a moment,” Garnet suddenly spoke up before the most recent recording could end. “Steven, Dipper, Mabel, you probably shouldn’t have listened to Peridot’s logs, but I know your shared curiosity comes from a place of caring. Either way, you should give her tablet back to her now. She’s going to want to keep it.”

“Wait… what?”

Surprised as they were by the Gem leader’s very accurate foretelling, the kids were even more surprised to see Peridot and Garnet returned to the barn. The green Gem’s former frenzy had finally been quelled, replaced with a calm sort of resignation over her new lot as a Crystal Gem, a calm that had come about in no small part thanks to the Gem leader’s easy reassurances.

“Here, Peridot,” Steven handed the tablet back over to the green Gem with a smile. “You can take this back.”

“Yeah, consider it as a ‘welcome to the family’ gift!” Mabel chimed in happily.

“Mabel, it was already hers to begin with,” Dipper pointed out, amused. “Still, we probably should appologize for listening to all of your logs and everything, so… yeah.”

“Wow, thanks,” Peridot deadpanned as she reclaimed her tablet. She paused, however, noticing as Steven, Mabel, and even Dipper followed suit after Garnet, all four of them offering her cheery smiles and encouraging thumbs up. And, even despite whatever lingered of her dread in turning away and breaking free from everything she had used to know to embrace a life, believes, and teammates she had once stood against but now couldn’t imagine living without, it was a thumbs up that she finally not only accepted, but returned.  

Next: 

[apathetic-revenant]

now you see it all (part 3)

hey I finally finished this stupid thing

I dunno how well I wrote Wendy? fanfic is hard 

part 1/part 2

Evening stretched into night, but no one went home. There was nothing remotely organized about the gathering, not even any kind of agreement about what they were all doing out there in the first place, just a general unspoken consensus that no one really wanted to be alone just yet. Later there might be some kind of discussion about what had happened, or perhaps not, but for the moment they were, against all odds, alive and intact, and they were going to make a hell of a fuss about it. People formed rings around lanterns or makeshift campfires and passed around food; the Hermanos Brothers had set up a grill and were cooking up a storm, supplemented by whatever could be found from houses and restaurants and grocery stores all across town, while Lazy Susan was serving coffee and hot chocolate from a camp stove. No one seemed to be especially concerned about paying for anything, or about the fact that here and there some distinctly non-human silhouettes could be seen-although the gnomes occasionally had to get smacked aside when they tried to make off with peoples' plates.

In the middle of it all, most of the members of the rescue team had coalesced into an unofficial group. The twins and Soos sat next to Stan, who periodically had people wander over and offer up some anecdote or evidence of their history with him. Mabel's friends were clumped up next to her, while a little ways away Pacifica sat trying and failing to look haughty and distant. Robbie and Tambry sat with their arms around each other, looking completely sickening, but as long as they were being sickening with each other Wendy didn't much care. Gideon was perched in a camp chair being annoyingly ingratiating and thoroughly ignored. There was also a manotaur, improbably still wearing one of Mabel's sweaters, and all of the Sev'ral Timez members. Probably all of them, anyway. Wendy never could keep track of exactly how many there were.

She was sitting on the hood of someone's car parked near the statue, drinking a Pitt Cola and trying to get her head around the fact that it hadn't even been twelve hours since all this had been wasteland and the end of the world was nigh, when Ford finally came back.

His coat and sweater were slung over one shoulder, leaving him down to a dingy old black t-shirt that he must have had on underneath. There were clean new bandages around his neck and both wrists, and a few plasters stuck here and there over the patchwork of scars and tattoos that covered his arms. He stood off to the side, almost standoffishly, looking in on the gathering with an expression that Wendy realized she found familiar. She had seen it on kids at school dances, sometimes, and on Dipper as he lingered at the edges of parties at the Shack, and she had seen it very occasionally on Stan: the look of someone on the outside who had already convinced themselves they would never be allowed in.

No one else noticed him for the moment. The group was laughing over a story about Stan and a fishing trip he had taken with the kids. Mabel and Soos were providing enthusiastic sound effects and gesticulations. Ford leaned against the car Wendy was sitting on and watched with a fond, wistful smile.

“Hey,” Wendy said, quiet-like. “Nice tats.”

Ford gave her an absolutely withering look, but it relaxed slightly after a moment. “I've been meaning to ask someone,” he said, in the same low tone. “How has tattoo removal technology progressed in the past thirty years?”

“Aw, c'mon.” She nudged him with an elbow-very gently, remembering that hand clenched tight at his side. “I'm serious. They're actually pretty cool.”

He rolled his eyes. “Not all of them. Anyway,” he added hastily, coughing awkwardly, “they're not all...needed...anymore. Per se.”

She didn't know what that meant, but it probably wasn't something she really needed to know. “I'll look something up for you,” she said. “I might know a guy. Or Stan might-”

She stopped.

Ford said nothing.

They sat for a moment in silence. The story seemed to have somehow turned into an account of a high-speed boat chase, although Dipper was ranting about cameras for some reason.

“I gotta ask you something,” Wendy said finally.

Ford cocked an eyebrow.

“It's...not a very nice question,” she said, not sure why she was telling him that, not sure why she would care about being nice about this. Ford just shrugged.

“I'm not sure I deserve nice right now,” he said quietly.

She fiddled with her soda can, pulling the tab back and forth, not sure how to put it, not sure what to do with this question that had been squirming around in her stomach all hot and clawed and horrible ever since Ford had pulled out the memory gun, ever since he had told them what had happened to Stan. What he had done to Stan.

“Why did you switch?”

Ford blinked at her. “What?”

“You and Stan...I mean...if you were the one who had what Bill wanted...why did Stan have to...”

“Ah,” he said. He didn't sound angry, exactly-or at least, he didn't sound angry at her. “You think I should have been the one to...make the sacrifice.”

“No,” she said, and she meant it, she really did. “I don't think anyone should have had to do that. I just...”

...had been sitting there turning it around and around in her head, trying to find a reason, trying to imagine how they had worked it out. Trying not to imagine Ford deciding that it was better for his brother to take the fall than him. Trying to imagine some reason that did not involve Stan being judged to be less.

But she couldn't work out how to get it out, so in the end she said, “I just want to know how you decided.”

“We didn't,” he said. “Although, for the record, I agree with you.”

She wasn't sure what she'd expected him to say, but none of that was remotely it. “...uh, what?”

“It should have been me.” He sighed and leaned against the car. “It was supposed to be me. I was prepared for it to be me. It would have been...right. I started this mess. I should have been the one to clean it up. For thirty years...I didn't expect to get any kind of happy ending...all I wanted was to be able to take Bill down with me. And now...”

There was that look again, that lost look, only now it was so much worse.

“Uh, yeah, okay, you do realize that has nothing to do with what I said,” she said. “I don't think...I guess I just...it just seems like kind of a risk, ya know? I mean, what if he caught on that you had switched? I mean I'm sure you had a reason, I just...”

I just really need to know what it was.

“It was a gamble, to be sure,” Ford said. He rubbed a hand through his hair, making it stick up even more ridiculously than usual. “But we didn't have a choice. The memory gun wouldn't work on me.”

“You...what? Why not?”

“I took precautions a long time ago, to protect myself from Bill,” Ford said. “It happens that they also prevent the effects of Fiddleford's device. I found that out...erm, rather accidentally.”

Wendy felt something that had been tight and twisted in her chest suddenly begin to ease away. “So you didn't...you didn't choose for Stan-”

“God, no.” Ford looked horrified. “It was his idea. If I'd had any choice...but we had so little time, Bill would have been back any moment, and he had the kids-”

“Hey, hey. Dude. I get it.” She was a little surprised to hear herself say it-so was he, to judge by the look he gave her-but even as she did she realized that, actually, she did get it. “What you did-I mean, it was a sucky thing to have to do, but I don't blame you for doing it. I just needed to know why.”

So she didn't have to hate him.

That was alright, then.

They sat there for a moment in considerably less tense silence.

“...'Sucky'?” Ford asked eventually.

“What? Oh, yeah. That's a thing us young folk say nowadays.”

“You're putting me on,” he said flatly.

Wait a minute, this guy's been gone for thirty years, how much fake slang could I convince him is totally a thing now? Wait. How much in general can I convince him is a thing now...

...Stan would approve.

“Why are you smiling?” Ford asked suspiciously.

“What? Oh, uh. Nothing.” It wouldn't do to give herself away right off the bat. This was going to be a long-term con. Quick, change the subject. “So, uh-those precautions. Can you, like, elaborate on that? Because I gotta be honest, that gun kind of freaks me out.”

Ford smiled wryly. “I'm afraid my methods are rather more drastic than you would probably be comfortable with.”

“Try me.”

“I put a metal plate in my head.”

Wendy blinked at him. “No shit?”

Ford knocked on one temple, producing a highly incongruous metallic clang.

The sound happened to fall into a lull in the conversation, and suddenly everyone was looking at them. “Grunkle Ford!” Mabel squealed, launching herself off the blanket she had been sitting on and careening into Ford like a small glittery cruise missile.

Wendy was pretty sure she was the only one who heard the pained oof noise Ford made, muffled as it was under Mabel's barrage of questions. “You're all bandaged up! What happened? Are you okay? I've never seen you with your sweater off you have tattoos!”

Ford returned his great-niece's embrace gently. “I'm fine. Just...had some burns, that's all. Bill...er, well, never mind.”

A queasy silence fell. Everyone was looking at Ford; Ford desperately tried to look anywhere else. Mabel's eyes had gone absolutely huge. Dipper came over and slipped his hand into hers, watching his great-uncle intently.

“I thought Bill just turned you into a statue,” Mabel said. “Did it hurt? Was that it?”

For a moment Wendy honestly thought Ford might bolt from the gathering altogether. But after a moment the tension in his face seemed to melt into fatigue and something like sadness. He gently lowered himself to the ground and pulled both twins into a hug, one on either side.

“No, being a statue didn't hurt, not...not exactly,” he said. His voice was low and quiet, making everyone in the circle unconsciously lean in to listen. “But Bill found about the barrier that was keeping him trapped, and he guessed that I would know how to break it, so he unfroze me. He tried to convince me to give him the information willingly. I refused, of course, which was when he got a bit more...forceful.”

Wendy swallowed hard. She could see the expression that must have been on her face reflected all around her. They had all seen far too much of what Bill could do merely out of amusement or petty annoyance; her imagination balked to think of what he might be capable of with such a goal in mind.

“Grunkle Ford...” Mabel sounded like she was on the verge of tears. “You didn't say...”

“It's alright,” Ford said hurriedly. “He didn't have time to do much. Your rescue operation came right in the nick of time. When his minions couldn't take you down he turned me back to gold and left me where you found me.”

Dipper gasped. “So that's why-”

He blushed and looked away as everyone stared at him.

“Hm?” Ford said. “Why what?”

“Why you...well...looked different.” Dipper tugged his hat over his eyes. “I thought...when we found you, you were in a different position...I thought Bill must have unfrozen you at some point but I couldn't figure out why.”

“...Yes,” Ford said awkwardly. “But I was able to watch you defeat his minions. It was the most incredible thing I've ever seen. I could hardly believe it. I was so proud.”

There was a brief pause, and then both Dipper and Mabel burst into loud tears.

Ford looked completely nonplussed as the twins sobbed into his t-shirt. “Um...there, there?”

��Oh, shove over.” Stan abruptly thumped down on the ground next to them. “I want in on this family hug action.”

Ford squawked in surprise as Stan wrapped all three of them in a bear hug, then again as Soos joined the pile with a wail. After a moment's hesitation, Wendy hopped off the car and joined in as well.

“Hey!” Stan barked at her with absolutely no force whatsoever. “This is a Pines hug.”

“I've saved all y'all's butts multiple times,” Wendy said. “I think I'm entitled to one family hug.”

Stan made a “pffff” noise but didn't protest further.

“I sincerely appreciate the sentiment behind this,” Ford said after a long moment, his voice just a little higher than usual, “but this is actually rather painful.”

They quickly untangled, to the sound of a few disappointed noises from the observing crowd. Dipper wiped his face on his shirtsleeve, looking highly embarrassed, while Mabel sniffled loudly and unashamedly.

“I get why you didn't want to wear my sweater now,” she said.

Ford blinked. “Hm? Oh. Yes. Sorry about that...”

“It's alright. Wool's not exactly the best cure for burns. I learned that after the hair dryer incident,” Mabel said seriously, leaving Ford looking confused and a bit concerned. “You can put it on when you feel better.”

“I certainly will,” Ford said with a smile. He coughed and rubbed at his wrists. “So-I heard something about a lake monster?”

It was later, when things were quieting down and people were starting to fall asleep on makeshift bedrolls or just on top of each other, when Ford shifted under the blanket he had somehow acquired and asked, “What club are you and Dipper in?”

Wendy, who had been starting to doze off in her chair, stared at him for several highly confused seconds before she realized what he was talking about. “Oh...you mean what I said in the car?”

“Mm.” Ford took a sip from the paper cup of cocoa Mabel had given him. “Not really important, I suppose...I just wondered.”

“We're in a club?” Dipper said sleepily. He was leaning against Soos, who apparently made quite a comfortable pillow. Mabel had started out leaning against Dipper but had slowly slumped down until she was almost flat on the blanket. Stan had wandered off a little while ago, saying something about wanting fresh air.

“Well, not really a club. More kind of an alliance, I guess?” She sat up a little and rubbed at her eyes. “You remember, when you showed me your birthmark?”

Her exhaustion-lagged brain realized a second too late that she should not have spilled that particular secret in front of everyone else. Dipper didn't seem to notice, though, or if he did he didn't care very much.

“Oh yeah...” He yawned so hard his teeth clicked. “Wait. I didn't realize you even remembered that.”

“Of course I did, dude! We had a bonding moment. It was great.” To Ford, who was looking confused, she added, “I showed Dipper a picture of me as a kid when I was like, super tall, and then he showed me his birthmark and we decided we'd be freaks together.”

Something shifted on Ford's face. “Freaks?”

Wendy realized with a sudden, awful jolt that she might have accidentally prodded a nerve there-but before she could say anything Mabel was wriggling upright and loudly protesting. “No fair! You guys made a freak club without me?”

“It was a private moment,” Dipper huffed, but then his face softened. “I guess you could still join, though.”

“I dunno,” Wendy said, feigning a serious tone. “Do you have anything that makes you really unique-nope, nope, can't even finish that sentence with a straight face.”

“Yay! I'm a freak!” Mabel flopped back down on the blanket with a grin.

“Hey, what about me? Can I be in the freak club?” Soos said. “I was a pig once, if that counts. Oh, and a zombie. And I got shrunk that one time. And I had a crazy AI girlfriend. And-”

The twins cut him off. “Of course you're in the club, Soos.” “Yeah, no kidding. Like we'd leave you out.”

Soos pumped his fist in the air. “Yes!”

“What about us?” a distinctive voice boomed.

Mabel put her arms around her friends. “Grenda. Candy. You are my 100% certified freak friends for life. As associate co-captain of the freak club, I officially-”

“What? No one made you associate co-captain,” Dipper protested.

“No one didn't not make me associate co-captain,” Mabel countered. “Anywayyouguysareinnotakebacks!” she added hastily while Dipper tried to figure her last statement out.

“Oh, fine,” he muttered, flopping back onto the blanket. “But Wendy and I get to be co-captains, 'cause we founded it.”

“Well, of course,” Mabel said. “I'm not an animal, Dipper.”

“Can I join?” a quiet voice said, barely heard over Dipper loudly saying that he didn't know about that.

Silence fell at once. Everyone stared.

“Pacifica?” Mabel said. “You want to be a freak?”

The blonde girl flushed and looked uncertain in the sudden attention, but she set her shoulders and lifted her chin stubbornly. “You've seen what my family are like,” she said. “If that's normal, then I...I don't want to be it.”

There was a long, uncertain pause. Dipper and Mabel glanced at each other. Then, as one, they stood up and walked over to Pacifica.

“Pacifica Elise Northwest,” Dipper said seriously. “As official co-captain of the freak club, I hereby grant you permission to join our ranks.”

All three of them looked over at Wendy. She shifted in her chair and shrugged. She'd never been able to stand the Northwest family-the rivalry between them and the Corduroys went back a long time- and not so long ago she would have been more than happy for any excuse to kick Little Miss Popularity to the curb. But then again, not so long ago she never would have imagined Pacifica standing up to her parents, or saying she wanted to be different from her family, or, for that matter, parachuting out of a robot house on a dangerous mission to save the world.

Anyway, she had more than evidence of what could happen when you held grudges.

“Oh, alright,” she said, affecting a disinterested look. “Permission co-granted.”

“Permission associate co-granted!” Mabel cried, and shook Pacifica's hand. Rather hard, in fact; the poor girl looked a little whiplashed when Mabel finally let go, but she smiled ever so slightly. Dipper shook hands with her as well, more gently.

“So whaddya think?” Wendy asked Ford as the twins returned to their blanket. “Are you in?”

Ford looked down at his hands. There was a very strange expression on his face.

“Freak,” he said softly. “I used to be called that so often. It tormented me for years.”

Everyone looked around uncomfortably. Wendy winced and sank a little into her chair.

Ford didn't seem to notice. “That was what drove me here in the first place. I was looking for somewhere I would fit in, somewhere an anomaly like me could fit in...and then when I found it, I spent all my time pushing everyone else away from me. I was so used to being alone that I ensured that I stayed that way even when there was no need...and Bill used that against me. Even to the last he was taunting me by telling me how alike we were...”

“I saw that!” Dipper burst out. Ford looked at him sharply. “I saw him trying to tell you it was all your fault but it wasn't! I tried to stop him but-”

“You did what?” Ford cried. “Dipper, you were supposed to run!”

“I know, I know,” Dipper muttered, rubbing one hand up and down his arm. “It was stupid...I just got so angry. But then I didn't know what to do...I tried to punch him, but that didn't work...”

Ford opened and shut his mouth.

“Hold up, hold up.” Wendy sat all the way upright in disbelief. “You tried to punch that jerk? With, like, your actual hands?”

“Yeah, kinda,” Dipper muttered. “I was aiming for his eye but he just threw me off. Into a tree.”

“Dude, that is so badass,” she said, ignoring the strangled sound Ford was making.

“But-but I didn't do anything!” Dipper protested. “It was a complete failure! It was worse than a complete failure because all I did was get the journals destroyed! We'd still have them if I hadn't...”

Ford abruptly pulled him into a tight hug, causing Dipper to squeak in surprise. “That was extremely impressive, promise me you will never do anything like it again.”

Dipper squirmed a little. “I mean...I'm sort of hoping the opportunity never comes up.”

“Never do anything like that in general again.” Ford released his great-nephew and put a hand on his shoulder. “Dipper, I don't care about the journals. Not anymore. I used to care far too much, and look where that got me. I'm just-beyond grateful that you survived that encounter. And beyond terrified that it happened in the first place. And beyond amazed that you would stand up to Bill at the height of his power for me...I'm-I'm beyond a lot of things right now, to be honest. Look, just promise you won't do that again. Please.”

“I won't. I promise.”

Ford relaxed a little.

“If it's at all avoidable,” Dipper added.

“Dipper-”

“But we don't have to keep talking about this if you don't want to!” Dipper rushed on, before Ford could get started again. “I mean...about the whole...the whole freak thing. I mean-I know things were really rough when you were a kid-and if you don't like this-”

Ford shook his head slowly. “Things were rough for me. But unless I miss my guess, things have also been rough for you and your sister. And for Soos, for Wendy...I know they were for Stan...for everyone here, I'd imagine. But you are all still proud of being different. Being different together.”

He sighed heavily and ran his fingers through his hair. “I'm realizing now...far too late...that I let Bill use that as a weapon against me. No, not just Bill. Everyone who ever mocked me or pushed me away...even myself. I let it take me over. I was different, but I let myself think that I was more different than I was, that I was the only one, that would no one would ever be like me or understand me...I let it define me. And it's cost me and everyone around me so much...”

No one quite knew what to say to that.

At last Ford looked up, a small, hesitant smile pulling at the side of his mouth. “I suppose what I'm trying to say is...I'd be honored to be in the freak club. If you're sure you want to have me.”

Wendy exchanged a look with the twins. The three of them stood up solemnly. Wendy put her hand over her heart like she was standing for the national anthem; Dipper took off his hat.

“Grunkle Ford,” Dipper said, with the utmost seriousness, “as official co-captain of the freak club, I hereby declare you a member.”

“Permission co-granted,” Wendy said.

“Permission associate co-granted,” Mabel said.

“Permission associate-associate co-”

“Soos, you're ruining the moment.”

“Sorry.”

Ford saluted crisply. “I accept the position with pride.”

“Amen!”

“Here, here!”

“Take back the freakiness!”

“Damn straight!” Wendy yelled, punching the air. “Why should we let Bill claim all the weirdness anyway?”

“Yeah! Just because he's a stupid giant triangle he thinks he has a monopoly on everything freaky?”

“Who does he think he is?”

“He doesn't think anything anymore,” a gruff voice said from the sidelines. “I got that on good authority.”

They all turned. Stan was standing at the edge of the circle, his fez under one arm and a can of soda in the other hand.

“Stan-” Ford began.

“I leave you guys for five minutes and you start a club without me? Some bereaved friends and family you are.”

Ford spluttered. “Stan-that's not-we weren't-”

Stan snorted and turned to Wendy. “He always this easy to get riled up?”

“I'm going to say...yes,” Wendy said. “I don't know him that well, but...yes.”

“Thought so.” He perched on the edge of the car she had been sitting on earlier and took a long slurp of soda. “So, what's this club about? Can I join or what?”

“It's the freak club,” Mabel told him. “You can only join if you're a freak.”

“Oh yeah?” Stan raised his eyebrows. “Hm. I dunno if I'm a freak. I dunno much- hah! Amnesia! That's pretty freaky, right?”

Ford looked pained. “I'm sure it's temporary, Stan-”

“So you're saying I'd get kicked out of the freak club? Well that's no good.” Stan spread his hands in a dramatic show of requesting aid. “Help me out here, guys. What have I got that makes me eligible for the freak club?”

The answers came thick and fast.

“Uh, saving the entire world? That's pretty unique.”

“You've been legally dead for thirty years!”

“You're into taxidermy, which is pretty freaky if you ask me.”

“You're probably the only person ever to punch a pterodactyl with brass knuckles.”

“And zombies!”

“You have a cool hat!”

“You're Mr. Mystery!”

“You pulled off an amazing feat of dimensional engineering just to rescue some jerk from the mess he got himself into,” Ford said. “And you stuck by him, even when he was too wrapped up in his own head to appreciate all you did.”

Stan blinked. “I...I did what?”

Ford stood up, with some wincing, hobbled over to Stan, and threw an arm around his twin's shoulders. “Ladies and gentlemen of the freak club, in recognition of all his truly astounding accomplishments in the name of weirdness, of his long service to this weirdest of weird towns, of the sacrifices he has made to ensure the continued existence of the rest of us freaks, I make a motion to appoint Stanley Pines as our admiral.”

“I second that motion!” Mabel yelled.

“All in favor say aye!” Dipper added.

“AYE!”

Stan blinked several times and hastily gulped at his soda. “I...I don't...”

“Do you accept this position?” Ford asked him seriously.

“I...I uh...” Stan looked at all the faces watching him earnestly. “I...I think I would be honored.”

A cheer went round. Stan cleared his throat and wiped a hand under his glasses. “Alright, alright! That's enough of that. I wanna issue my first decree as admiral of the freak club.”

“That was fast,” Wendy muttered.

“The power's gone to my head already. I'm a tyrant. I coulda warned you.” Stan took a long drink, deliberately letting the tension build. “My first decree...is that you all tell me that story about the pterodactyls, cause that sounds incredible.”

“It was so incredible!” Mabel said. “You were like bam! And the pterodactyl was like awwwwk oh no I'm a pterodactyl and I'm being punched!”

“You know,” Ford said, leaning against Stan a little, “I think I'd quite like to hear this story myself.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” Wendy flopped back down in her chair. “I can't believe you guys didn't invite me on that one.”

“We didn't know what was going to happen! It all started when we went on a heroic mission to rescue Waddles...”

“No, it started before that, Mabel. Back up.”

“That was when the important part started.”

Wendy grinned and leaned back as Dipper went on about chasing a pterodactyl through the woods with Soos.

They were here.

They were alive.

They were weird.

How did that old saying go? The king is dead; long live...us.

[artmageddonunicorn]

Hey I wanted to tell you that Im SO GLAD youre drawing so much Relativity Falls in the past time! That AU is my absoulute favourite but sadly it doesnt have so much fanart like other AUs... I have tons of headcanons! Do you have some?

thank you!! makes me happy seeing people enjoying it. it’s funny that relativity falls wasn’t one of my favorites but look at me now i’ve been obsessing about it for like a year. and share them! i crave relativity falls…

BOI IF I HAVE HEADCANONS. i have so much stuff but im always too lazy to write it down. i dont post as near as i wanted about this au. i wish i could draw it all. ok grab a drink and some snacks this gonna be long.

- it won’t be a happy ending if they go back to new jersey by the end of the summer. filbrick doesn’t much care about mabel and didn’t wanted to send the stans to gravity falls, but ma pulled the strings and convinced to let them go. there’s nothing that can take those boys from mabel and dipper now. but ma is always welcome in the shack to see them.

- dipper and mabel didn’t fight/none of them got kicked out. they just had different plans for college and stuff, they went different directions but kept in touch with eachother. they both travelled around a lot, sending each other pictures and knick knacks and updates on their projects. dipper met candy in college and they ended up doing research in gravity falls.

- it’s kinda hard figuring how stuff is gonna work with bill, becauset i don’t see dipper getting suspicious of candy, not willing to give up on the journals and being super devoted to bill. it’s just weird seeing them getting along. i do have ideas but eeh guess i won’t put it here now.

- i have some different ideas for the characters switching places: carla and grenda work at the shack with mabel, thistle is carla’s boyfriend (he’s the hippie stan says carla ran away with in boyz crazy), fiddleford and soos show up in this au’s “double dipper” and make friends with ford, and blind ivan is preston’s brother (shows up along with priscilla as preston’s posse like pacifica and those two girls).

- now that stan is far away from the guy that won’t aprove that, stan summer romances can also include boys. stan dates “norman” in tourist trapped.

- ford gets a notebook from the shack, draw his hand on it and that’s where he keeps his notes about the things he discovers. he didn’t wanted to modify the original journal. stan get brass knuckles, mabel kinda regrets she forgot those lying around but aww he looked so happy with them.

- stan gets gompers in the fair mabel organized. he wasn’t trying to, gompers was surprisingly a prize on some of the games, but stan warms up to him right away and keeps him.

- i think gideon would be dipper and mabel’s age so he’s bud’s grandpa. he could have known bill for a while and found journal 2 a while ago? some timeline stuff is complicated. gideon tried to pass as a psychic but as a grown man he couldn’t pull off his cute act, makes something up about buddy inheriting his powers. bud doesn’t like pretending to be a psychic and acting all cute, but he makes an efford to his grandpapi. gideon sends him off to make friends with stan so he could get close to mabel. it was an act before but bud starts liking stan as a friend for real. ford smells something fishy and doesn’t trust buddy very much. not sure how it goes but something went wrong and they see bud had the mystic amulet and think it was an act all along.

- stan is the one that does the lamby lamby dance. ford gets high on sugar easily, smiling dip is EVIL.

- ford isn’t insecure about not being manly, he got upset stan won in some test that was about “useless knowledge”. maybe he wanders off and bumps into an unicorn, who tells him they’re bearers of great knowledge. in the end it isn’t true, they’re jerks and all they do is gossip, they trick ford to do chores for them like combing their manes and foiling their hooves, promising that when he’s done they gonna share their knowledge.

- in “double dipper”, ford stands up for fidds and soos when he sees preston mocking them. they decide to settle it by winning the party crown. then ford is freaking out because AAAH IT WAS THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT I DONT KNOW HOW TO DANCE AND I CANT SING IN FRONT OF EVERYONE, stan comes up with a plan: they switch clothes and pretend to be each other.

- giffany and rumble switch places. giffany looks like chun-li and acts like a big sister to protect stan. rumble looks like he could be the captain of the karate club or something, like the sporty guy option on a dating sim.

- darlene is stan’s mermando. they were going to the pool that day, carla is there working as a lifesaver, ford got a job there too maybe to look cool and even though he’s not trying to woo carla, stan gets all grumpy that ford is getting all the attention. he walks off and meets darlene. not sure why she’s there but their kiss is gonna be like the spiderman kiss.

- despite being young ivan still have something to do with the society of the blind eye. not everything is in place and it’s kinda sad so uuh maybe tell me if you want me to tell?

- in “soos and the real girl”, grenda meets a sweet boy that works at the corndog place at the shopping aka marius.- ford tries to be the cupid in ‘the love god’. he doesn’t dislike thistle as stan does but i guess he was just done seeing whining about it and tries to set him up with shandra. shandra is friends with him and carla, she is very smart and a bamf but for now she just delivers the newspaper, aspiring reporter. it doesn’t work, after the potion-thing fades away they break up. thistle gives up in trying to get carla back and makes amends, they’re still friends.

- in “northwest mansion mystery”, they still have an angry ghost problem. pacifica isn’t bad like her parents in canon, but she still has been hiding all the bad things the northwests did. she didn’t had someone telling her she isn’t the worst, still worried she’s gonna be “another link in the world’s worst chain”. but she has an image to maintain and a business to run so that’s why she still goes to parties to laugh the snootiest of laughter. but she doesn’t hate the townsfolk and is very nice to her sons. stuff goes about the same, preston goes fetch ford to exorcise the ghost, stan/fidds/soos are at the party (and they meet lady melody!), the ghost is sealed in the mirror, the ghost breaks free and goes attack the party. pacifica is not letting people die just to protect her image, she tries to reach the gates lever but the ghost attack her, ivan and preston go defend her and they agree that opening the gates is a must. the townfolks come in and the ghost is happy. pacifica throws food in some other rich people she dislikes when no one is looking, but noticed preston left after the party got messier. i made preston nicer yeah. so maybe he was just reflecting if he should just come back to the party. ford brought a snack and they have a conversation, still tells him hes a jerk but maybe not completely hopeless. a more fun ending to that little bonding, ford throws whatever food he brought at him bc cmon you kinda deserve it but also makes preston chase him and they go back to the party. he was angry at first but it was kinda fun in the end.

OKAY UM, i ended up doing more episode-related stuff, maybe i forgot somethings but okay. i still have plenty of headcanons about the characters in particular, little things that aren’t important to the plot, a few episode ideas, etc but its too long already. hit me if you wanna hear about those as well and and uuh

thanks for your time and thanks for asking! ;w;

[novantinuum]

A little while back when you drew that SHAMELESS STANGST you mentioned you were working on an AU. Can you tell us about it?

(the ‘shameless stangst’ art in question is this)

aaAAAA I’m so glad you asked!! It makes me so happy that at least one person in this world is interested in my silly ideas, ahahah… First off, I would like to apologize for how long it’s taken to respond. I really wanted to sketchily illustrate a scene from this story I’ve got caught in my mind…

Overall, this AU is my excuse to imagine what might happen and how dynamics and events would change if Weirdmageddon were to come too early. (Specifically, if it happened almost directly after NWHS.)

Generally, it begins like so… (More thoughts under cut. Buckle in, it gets long.)

Ford is accidentally injured by his own grenade during his fight with Bill and returns through the portal in severe condition. That comic I made chronicles the VERY first events in this AU, basically.

Stan realizes there’s no way in hell his brother will survive (too much blood loss) without actually competent medical care and instructs Soos (with Dipper and Mabel) to rush Ford to the nearest hospital, which is a good distance outside of town. He ends up hoping in his car and using himself as ‘bait’ to get the FBI away from the shack long enough for them to get out.

Stan’s captured by the FBI, and held in that darn town jail again, ofc. This time, under more guard. He’s supposed to be airlifted out of town to a more secure facility the next morning.

While Ford’s in ICU, Soos ends up calling Wendy late that evening to see if she could bring up a change of clothes for the kids since they can’t be seen in town for a bit with the FBI crawling about. They plan to grab a motel room once they know Ford’s stable.

Wendy (illegally) snatches her dad’s truck, gathers up some stuff, and begins to drive to the hospital. Just as she edges out of town, she sees something colorful ripple in her rearview mirror. Wendy slams to a stop and gets out of the truck to see this strange, monumental wall now separating her from Gravity Falls. It’s kinda hard to tell, but it looks like she’s standing at the edge of a huge dome? And when she touches it, the surface of this barrier feels almost gelatinous, and ripples under her finger. Low-key freaked out and unsure of what else to do, she gets back to the truck and rushes to the hospital, hoping that maybe Dipper’s journal will know what’s going on…

Yes, essentially Bill broke into this dimension way earlier than he was supposed to because Ford was not there in the Shack to encase the rift. The rift cleaved into the fabric of reality when he returned to this dimension was left alone to grow and split even more.

Overall, the Weirdmageddon that will follow occurs while the town is already in shambles from the portal’s activation, and without the unicorn spell being in place on the Shack. Stan ends up being held captive by Bill, as bait to lure Ford back into town, because Bill can sense that he’s not dead and he needs his knowledge to escape. There’s close to no resistance in town this time, barring McGucket and a few others he finds in the woods who are hiding away in the bunker.

Outside Gravity Falls, meanwhile…

Ford’s injuries consist of lacerations that need to be stitched and a few burns. Some of the grenade shrapnel ended up denting his metal plate on the left side of his skull, to the point where it was putting a dangerous amount of pressure on his skull and beginning to cause bruising. (Subdural hematoma, likely.)

Now, neither the doctors nor Soos and the kids could explain why this mystery man had an entire METAL PLATE fastened over his skull, but they ended up surgically removing a bit of the dented section to relieve the pressure. Ford is stable now and all is good, fear not.

By this point Soos, Wendy, Dipper, and Mabel all know vaguely what’s going on to Gravity Falls. They caught a news broadcast from Shandra Jimenez reporting on “a giant floating triangle wrecking the town” and put the pieces together. They’re all worrying for their friends and family and desperately want to run back to help them but… there’s also this other great uncle to worry about. The great uncle that they haven’t even properly met yet because of the awful circumstances.

When Ford finally comes to a day or so later, the first thing he notices is… the strange emptiness he feels in his mind. Like he’s missing something. He quickly realizes what must have happened when he feels the bandages on the side of his head and fears he’s fallen into Bill’s clutches and that he’s ripped out the metal plate. He tries fighting one of the nurses when they bring Soos and Mabel back, initially believing them to be shapeshifters.

He’s eventually calmed down though. Through the power of persuasion. (and Mabel!) Thus cue tired and awkward introductions, and Ford realizing that he’s actually home. The realization doesn’t fully set in until Dipper and Wendy switch out to visit and Dipper shows him his old journal.

Of course, then comes the fated question of “Where’s Stanley?”

Oh hell. 

Stanley’s trapped in Gravity Falls still. They all know as such, because there was a story on the news about FBI personal trying to land a helicopter in the town after Weirdmageddon started and they were never heard from again. And thus come internal and external conflicts such as:

1) Weirdmageddon. How to stop it. All of the weapons Ford came through the portal with are still in the Shack. They’d have to trail across Gravity Falls unnoticed by Bill to snatch it.

2) Grunkle Stan. Dipper feels awful knowing he’s trapped, because long after they arrived at the hospital, he realized he had that memory erasing gun with him. If only he could have remembered this, maybe they could have erased the FBI agents’ minds? Made them forget? And maybe Grunkle Stan could be there with them too. They didn’t know Great Uncle Ford, but he DID. He’d know what to do.

3) Everyone worrying about their friends and family, and not knowing if they’ll ever see them again.

4) The gang has a hard time convincing Ford to actually stay in the hospital for a bit to actually recover, instead of him running off to try and rescue Stan from Bill.

5) Ford’s metal plate. A good portion of it’s been removed, and with it, the mental protection from Bill it granted. Ford fears that the second he even STEPS into Gravity Falls Bill will immediately possess him again. Ofc because he feels shame over his past mistakes in trusting Bill, he declines to let anyone else know about this.

This is just some of the set-up, and there’s plenty more shit I’ve thought about, but from there (once Ford becomes 100% sick of remaining in the hospital for any longer than he physically has to) it goes into them all actually trying to break back into Gravity Falls to stop Bill. 

There’s probably going to be a lot of angst, but fear not- it will all culminate in a happy ending for everyone besides Bill (who will suffer muahahah) and there eventually will be lots of bonding. And heck, probably a lot of bonding in between. You can still bond with family and friends and relatives you never knew existed while facing the end of the world, right? Right.

But hey, not everything’s set in stone for this yet. Please, if you have any interest in this, don’t hesitate to chat with me about it or send me random thoughts or ask me questions. I’d love to flesh aspects of this out through collaboration and on-the-spot thinking and so forth. Yay!

(If you thought this was cool, please do a starving artist a huge favor and consider reblogging it? AU ideas are really hard to spread alone. Thanks!)

[ceslawrites]

WIP: Starcrossed Chapter 2, “Come Crush a Cup of Wine”

A sneak peek at an upcoming chapter of Starcrossed, my latest Fic.

Puck and McGucket had argued the entire way home, trapped in a stalemate over the issue of Wendy’s party.

“I won’t go,” insisted Puck, who, nonetheless, was putting the finishing touches on a pan of crab dip he had baked once they left the grocery store.

“And why not,” asked McGucket, his hands placed firmly on his hips.

“Well,” said Puck, “for one thing, I’m not wanted there.”

“Horsewallop,” spat McGucket, “Mabel invited ya, didn’t she?”

“Wendy despises me,” said Puck, sprinkling crab seasoning over the dish, “it’s a known fact.”

“I’m sure you two’d get along fine once you get to know each other,” said McGucket. “You and I didn’t like each other much when we first met. Thought you were a mean little turd, I did.”

“You call me a mean little turd about three times a day,” said Puck, who let the dip rest as he cut a large loaf of French bread into little cubes for the appetizer.

“Only when you’re acting like one, which yer doing right now,” insisted McGucket, “Most of the time, yer a charming young man and a good friend. A fella like you could have as many friends as you’d want, instead of staying home cooped up in this kitchen all the time.”

“Even if I were to go, which I won’t,” said Puck, “Whatever would I even say at this thing? ‘Thank you ever so much for the invitation, I do hope you can look past me kidnapping you and your friends earlier this summer and fusing your best friends together into a mutated freak, here, have some crab dip!’”

“Actually, maybe ya should apologize,” said McGucket, “maybe once she sees how sorry ya are, she’ll be more willin’ to forgive ya! You—you are sorry about what happened, right?”

“Oh, of course I am, the devil do you take me for,” snapped Puck, flushing.

“Oh, shoot, I’m awful sorry,” said McGucket, placing his hand on Puck’s shoulder. “It’s just hard for me to tell sometimes, Puck. It always feels like you’re trying to shut people out about how you feel. Like yer an actor onstage, you act all big and showy around people you want to entertain, but you run offstage anytime somebody tries to get to know ya; like with that Charlie fella.”

“Are we still going to discuss Charlie De La Fuente?” Puck feigned a yawn.

“Yer the one who used his full name, not me buster,” said McGucket. “And I think it’d do ya a world of good if you talked to him—“

“No,” said Puck bluntly.

“It’s either talk to him or go to the party,” insisted McGucket. “So ya better pick yer poison.” Then, suddenly hit with inspiration, he added, “How about I throw in some extra incentive?”

“We’re resorting to bribery now, are we,” said Puck as he shoved the casserole into the oven.

“Well, I got to thinking,” said McGucket casually, “This kitchen is awful big. It could use a few more appliances to fill up all the empty spaces. Maybe while you’re out at the party I can look into getting some new whosits and thingamajigs—”

“The ice cream machine.”

Puck had been raving about an ice cream machine he’d seen on a competitive cooking show, and had pestered McGucket every day about getting one himself. Each time he’d said no, pointing out there was no sense in spending thousands of dollars on a machine that made a product you could buy at the store for four dollars a gallon.

McGucket took a deep breath.

“It’s a deal,” said McGucket, “You go to the party, I’ll build the dang thing myself.”

Puck began to laugh.

“You must really want to get rid of me. Deal!”

*  *  *

Wendy was pacing angrily across the room like a hungry panther stuck in a cage at the zoo. Her friends, even Dipper and Mabel, were all cowering on the other side of the living room, worried that any moment she would snap and punch a hole in the wall.

“Maybe one of us should say something,” whispered Dipper.

“Good idea,” said Robbie, who then roughly pushed Thompson forward, “Thompson, go talk to her.”

“What?? Guys, no—”

“Thompson, Thompson, Thompson,” they began to chant.

“OH, WHY DO I ALWAYS DO THINGS WHEN YOU CHANT MY NAME???”

A very nervous Thompson gingerly approached Wendy, who was glowering out the window and muttering angrily to herself.

“H-hey Wendy,” stuttered Thompson, “Um, is everything oka—”

“THAT LITTLE CREEP IS COMING HERE!” Wendy exploded in a fireball of rage. In her anger, she threw both her arms up in the air, accidentally walloping Thompson across the face and knocking him to the floor. Thompson groaned in pain as Wendy continued to mumble unintelligible, angry gibberish about Puck as she stomped around the room.

“Wendy, cool it,” snapped Mabel from across the room. “You’re acting like a dingus!”

Wendy took in a deep breath.

“Mabel,” said Wendy, trying and failing to sound calm as she spoke, “I know you meant well, but Puck is a deranged jerk who tried to kidnap us all six weeks ago!”

“Technically,” said Nate, “He only tried to kidnap Robbie and Tambry, and they’re both pretty fine now? We weren’t there.”

“Yeah, we’re pretty indifferent to the whole confrontation,” replied Lee.

“And I’m literally well past over it,” added Tambry, who was viewing “McGucket Hates Celery” for the third time on her phone that afternoon.

“Well, I’m not,” grumbled Wendy, who crossed her arms across her chest.

“Puck’s not that bad, Wendy,” Dipper assured her, “I mean, yeah, he’s done some messed up stuff in the past, but he also helped us escape Oberon back during Midsummer.”

“Come on Wendy, just give him a chance,” Mabel pleaded, “He so nice!”

“Anybody can fake being nice,” said Wendy dismissively. “That doesn’t mean he’s a good person.”

“I don’t like that guy either,” said Robbie, “He called me a poser!”

“You are a poser,” murmured Dipper under his breath.

“And,” snapped Robbie, glaring at Dipper, “He’s got those creepy eyes that look like they glow in the dark, and those freaky magical powers. I mean… if you think about it… he’s kind of like…”

“Kind of like who,” asked Mabel, who had a terrible idea what Robbie was going to say.

“Look kid,” sighed Robbie, “I know he’s your buddy and everything, but who’s to say that if Puck had been here last year, he wouldn’t be partying it up with that triangle demon and the rest of those monsters?”

“That’s not funny,” said Dipper, who was intensely glowering at Robbie with undisguised dislike.

“I wasn’t joking,” said Robbie quietly.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Dipper, his voice rising, “Puck isn’t anything like Bill!”

“Oh yeah? You weren’t growing out of your girlfriend’s hip like a tumor because of that guy,” snapped Robbie, “Tell me, how is that any different than anything that monster did last year?”

“Did you forget the part where he almost died to save us,” Dipper retorted, “Or are you just being stupid as usual?”

“What did you just say?!”

“Dial it back, guys,” said Wendy, who pushed herself between Dipper and Robbie, both of whom looked ready to fight.

Mabel bit her lip. She has wanted everyone to have fun hanging out with each other tonight, but instead everyone was angry and miserable. Maybe I’ll just text Puck and tell him not to come because everyone’s acting like jerks, she thought to herself, reaching into her pocket to fish out her cell phone. Things might get too intense if he actually shows up.

Just as Mabel was typing in Puck’s number, there was a great flash of light and a sound like thunder as Puck teleported into Wendy’s living room at last. Wendy and her friends were coughing from all the smoke that Puck’s arrival had generated, once that had cleared, they could see Puck, wearing a floppy sunhat, a bright pink tank top, black jeans and combat boots that had clearly been spray-painted silver standing in the middle of the room holding a casserole dish in one hand and a cake box in the other.

“Hello friends,” said Puck, beaming. “I made crab dip!” 

[minijenn]

Log Date 7 15 2 Preview

Finally workin on this ahahah that’s what happens when you take a week off cause of moving anyway, I don’t anticipate this chapter being very hard to write tbh so have some framing device fun for now lol

***

“Log date 7 15 2… I can’t believe I just did that!” Peridot’s calm report instantly turn to hysterics as she gripped her tablet tightly, her recording app taking in her every word all the while. Everyone had only just arrived back at the barn, still somewhat shaken by what they had just learned during the green Gem’s surprising conversation with her Diamond. But no one was more shaken than Peridot herself as she expressed her shock over her own open rebellion against her now former matriarch in the only way she knew how. “I disobeyed my orders and went against Yellow Diamond’s wishes! I’m a traitorous clod! I never want to think about what I’ve done again!”

Despite this proclamation, Peridot frantically tapped away at the tablet until it began playing back her most recent recording on a constant loop. “I’m a traitorous clod! I’m a traitorous clod!”

Oddly enough, this elicited a rather unhinged chuckle from the green Gem, one that only grew louder and more excited as she recalled exactly what she had done. “A-and I called Yellow Diamond a clod right to her face!” No more than a single beat later, Peridot collapsed to her knees, letting out a devastated whimper as she shook her head remorsefully. “I called Yellow Diamond a clod… right to her face…”

Though the green Gem had hardly paid them any mind, Steven and Mabel had been standing on the sidelines, watching Peridot’s entire breakdown as it unfolded before them. As frantic as the green Gem currently was, neither of them really knew much they could say or do to try and calm her down. Then again, that same sort of frenzy seemed to hover over everyone else’s heads at the moment like a shroud as well. Ford and the Gems were all congregated right outside the barn, discussing in hushed, fearful whispers the frightening fact they now faced: that Bill and Yellow Diamond really did have some sort of sinister alliance. An alliance that, by all accounts, none of them knew anything of other than the fact that it did indeed exist, though for what purpose, they were all still completely in the dark about. Certainly, it was a gravely worrying thought, one that they’d all likely have to confront sooner or later. But for now, while everyone else fretted over the future, Steven and Mabel opted to fret over the present—or more specifically, over Peridot—instead.

“Uh, Peridot?” Steven finally spoke up as the green Gem continued hunching over her tablet. “Are you gonna be ok?”

“…No!” Peridot quipped, looking back at the pair with a blatantly deranged smile.

“Aw, don’t worry, Peri,” Mabel soothed, pulling the blubbering green Gem into a tight embrace. “Everything’s gonna work out, you’ll see! Especially since you’re part of the best squad ever now!”

“The Despicable Traitors Against Their Homeworld Squad?” Peridot asked, her lip quivering all the while.

“No, silly!” Mabel chuckled before quickly recanting. “Well, actually, you’re not totally wrong. But anyway, you’re part of the Crystal Gems plus Pines Squad! Name’s still pending, but either way, your family now! Isn’t that exciting?”

“More like terrifying!” the green Gem countered, lightly shoving Mabel away. “You don’t understand! I’m protecting a planet I was once trying to destroy! I used to follow every order, every rule. Now, I’m a traitor. A rebel! A Crystal Gem!”

“…Yeah, that’s kinda what I just said…” Mabel noted as she exchanged a glance with Steven.

“Yeesh, and I thought we were all freaking out,” Dipper cut in as he stepped into the barn from outside. For the most part, he had largely just been listening in on the anxious discussion ongoing outside, though even despite his own immense concern over the matter, he had still decided to spare a moment to check in on the others amidst it. “I can’t say I know a ton about existential crises, but it sure does look like you’re having one, Peridot.”

“Hey! I am not having a so-called ‘existential crisis’!” Peridot huffed, offended. “I’m merely questioning my suddenly changed overall purpose in the grand scheme of reality!” At this, the green Gem set her recording app to repeat itself again, creating a chorus of ‘clod!” that showed real signs of stopping as Peridot paraded it around manically.

“Uh… well, at least your tablet seems to be helping,” Steven noted.

“No, its not! It’s a chronicle of my descent into madness!” Peridot snapped, tossing the tablet away from her. Fortunately, instead of hitting the ground, Garnet happened to catch it as she stepped into the barn right on time.

“You dropped this,” the Gem leader said, offering the device back to its owner.

“G-get it away from me!” Peridot quickly deflected, cowering behind Garnet. “Give it to them!” she pointed to the trio of kids. “Return madness to its source!”

“Uh, technically Pacifica was the one who gave you that tablet, not us,” Dipper pointed out, crossing his arms.

“It doesn’t matter!” the green Gem argued. “I don’t want anything more to do with it!”

“Are you sure, Peridot?” Steven asked as Garnet handed the tablet off to him. “I mean, you really, really like this thing.”

“Whatever! It’s yours now!” the green Gem refuted wildly. “Yours, not mine, not mine! Yours! Yours!”

“Oof, Peri, you really gotta take a chill pill,” Mabel mused, hands on her hips. “You know what always calms me down when I’m feeling stressed? Knitting!” She smiled brightly as she held up her rather complicated sewing kit, complete with countless balls of yarn and a vast collection of knitting needles.

“Good idea, Mabel, but I think I might just have a better one,” Garnet said as she gently hoisted the green Gem into the air to halt her frenzy. “Let’s calm down.”

“O-Okay…” Peridot finally stilled as she let the Gem leader carry her out of the barn for a moment of peace. “So am I gonna have to wear a star? Where am I gonna put the star?!”

“Well, there’s the newest Crystal Gem for you,” Dipper said with a bit of a sardonic smirk. “Hopefully Garnet will actually be able to get her to mellow out, I don’t know how much more ‘Peri-Panicking’ I can take.”

“Eh, I’m sure she’ll be fine eventually,” Steven mused, glancing outside, where Peridot sat alongside Garnet in some sort of unknown conversation. “Weird… they seem to be getting along well. I wonder when that happened…”

“Why don’t we find out?” Mabel grinned down at the tablet in Steven’s hands. “Peri’s been using that app she downloaded to record all of her log thingies. Its like a diary we can listen to!”

“Uh, you know reading—or I guess in this case, listening to other people’s diaries isn’t exactly… a good thing to do, right, Mabel?” Dipper asked knowingly.

“Yeah, we probably shouldn’t violate Peridot’s privacy like that…” Steven frowned before sparing another glance back at the tablet. All three of the kids took a brief pause, each of them contemplating the matter silently before the young Gem voiced what they were all thinking. “Then again… she did give this to us, so…”

“So what are we waiting for!?” Mabel cut in with an eager grin. Likewise, Dipper leaned in, admittedly quite curious about these unheard logs himself. “Steven, press that play button!”

The young Gem did exactly that, all three of the kids poising to listen in on the green Gem’s own telling of her time on Earth. A tale that would no doubt reveal just how far she’d come, from Homeworld to here, and everything in between.