Wooded Unexplored Area, Saturday Evening

[thatsweirdright]

Jason was still relatively new to the whole heroing thing, so he wasn't quite sure if there was something in particular he was supposed to be doing right about now. Roaming around town looking for stuff to fight had worked okay with the sharks, so he figured that was probably a good start. A bit more within his skill set than hanging out in the library doing research, anyway.

[ooc: for one in particular, but can be open, sure!]

Comments

[cracked_n_corrupt]

Did you know what wasn't fair?

What wasn't fair was when you were being a good Gem, minding your own business, just prowling around and trying to find items to put together for your part of The Ritual, and then someone came wandering by who didn't have the decency to be dead or hollow or at the very least malleable. Jason had too much purpose to him, and too much sanity. Peridot could tell at a glance.

She didn't like it. And so, peering out from behind a smallish shrub with white eyes that occasionally went straight to static, Peridot hissed softly.

This was her quiet secret evil hidey hole, Jason. Find your own.

[thatsweirdright]

... Was that hissing? Jason was pretty sure that was hissing.

Did the gremlins hiss? Or was this something else, something worse? Either way, Jason was just going to take a closer look. Because he was an idiot a Power Ranger, and it seemed like the thing to do.

[cracked_n_corrupt]

... Yeah, sorry, Jason. Peridot had a few slugs on standby, but that didn't mean she wasn't immediately launching herself from the bush to try to bite your face off, a little like a cornered feral cat.

Calling her feline in class that one time hadn't actually been terribly off. And hissing was supposed to be a warning.

[thatsweirdright]

"Yaugh!" Jason's arms came up to block his face, Ranger armor flickering briefly into existence on his forearms before flickering back out again in a flash of red.

[cracked_n_corrupt]

Peridot either didn't notice the armor or didn't care. She snapped at Jaron's arm with teeth that were just a little too sharp, hissed again, and then skittered back down, around a tree, and then up into its branches.

And from there, she just hunkered down and glowered.

[thatsweirdright]

Jason hadn't gotten a good look, per se, but enough of one to tell that whatever had leapt out at him was small and green.

Small, but not small enough to be a gremlin, which meant-

"Peridot?"

[cracked_n_corrupt]

"Cut5XG," the little figure snapped, words all bleeding together oddly, though her voice was still very much her own. "Facet-2F5L Cut-5XG."

Peridot, like it was her name, was what the humans had called her. When she'd thought, stupidly, that she could be her own Gem, that she could grow and learn and care and what an idiot she had been. Her eyes shifted to static again, and she ducked lower, the moonlight glinting off her broken Gem. Her worth was on Homeworld. Her work was on Homeworld.

This was Earth.

She'd made a mistake, saving it before.

[thatsweirdright]

Jason frowned as he caught sight of that cracked gem, thoughts drifting back to their conversation about a month ago, in the library.

"Peridot," he said again, less confused and more desperate, this time.

[cracked_n_corrupt]

Peridot's answer to that was a frustrated shriek.

"No! No! I amnot some hu-hu-huma-organic organic-" Her mouth moved for a moment without sound, and her body twisted a little, flickered around the edges, almost, like an apparition out of the corner of one's eye. Or maybe a particularly unsettling moment of static on a television set. She fell silent for a moment, then shuddered, and with what seemed like some effort, managed to stabilize her shape. Squared her shoulders. Tried again. "Homeworld Gem Peridot, Facet-2F5L, Cut-5XG."

[thatsweirdright]

Okay. Okay. Mental note, maybe don't mention her name again. It clearly wasn't getting the best reaction.

"What happened to you?"

[cracked_n_corrupt]

"Broken."

It was said simply, but pointedly, as though perhaps that much must have been obvious.

"Damaged. When the hollows changed."

When the humans had stopped being mindless versions of themselves, and things had gotten bigger. Meaner. Uglier. She could prevent that, too. No worled, no monsters, no broken Gem.

[thatsweirdright]

Jason had no idea what a hollow was, but that certainly didn't sound good.

"The hollows?" he asked, taking maybe the tiniest of steps forward. Red sparks ran up his arms as the armor started to form again, fading out after a moment.

[cracked_n_corrupt]

"Hollows," Peridot replied, eyes narrowing at the armor as it sparked its way over his arms. "Organic corruptions."

Her lip curled a little, her shape twisted again, seeming to just... glitch out entirely for a moment, and then pull itself back together around her Gem.

"Took itall. Took the world. So so so so we take itback here. Here now. Break Earth before cor-corruption breaks us."

She ducked down a little more behind her branch, and a low growl caught in her throat. It glitched out, too.

"You keep trying to makeweapons. The red."

[thatsweirdright]

Well, that just confirmed that Peridot had been corrupted by whatever was happening. Which meant Jason knew what he had to do, now.

"You bet I am." His stance shifted to something more ready to fight as the morph completed, although he wasn't making a move just yet. There were rules about this sort of thing.

[cracked_n_corrupt]

Yeah... That earned another hiss, right there. And then Peridot was ducking away out of sight.

The slugs she'd been keeping company with, though? They were now rearing up from the woods, lunging for Jason hungrily.

[thatsweirdright]

"Okay, gross," Jason muttered, slicing at the slugs with his sword.

"Peridot!" He was saying her name on purpose now, hoping to draw her back out.

[cracked_n_corrupt]

"No no no no! No," Peridot shrieked. "You know no! I said! I said!"

She was behind the tree, sitting on the ground, arms wrapped around her knees.

"Be quiet! Make it all be quiet!"

[thatsweirdright]

Jason was going to hate himself for this later. Hell, he already felt sick to his stomach, but.

Peridot- the sane one- had asked him to. He wasn't about to break that promise, not when she had clearly felt so strongly about it.

But he couldn't do anything while she was just sitting there.

"Said what, Peridot?" he goaded her again.

[cracked_n_corrupt]

And that... that was enough. Peridot rounded the trunk of the tree, tears streaming down a face that could only barely hold its shape, glaring daggers at Jason.

"Don't CALL ME THAT!"

And then she held up her hands, and anything metal in the area - her tools, mostly. Hammers, screwdrivers, pruning shears - all went flying toward Jason, most dangerous ends first.

"They they they-" She shook her head, ripped herself out of another glitch and resumed screaming as though nothing had gone wrong at all. "They're dead! They're dead! They called me that and they're dead! This whole mis-mis-miserable world is death and and and PAIN don't CALLMETHAT!"

[thatsweirdright]

Jason was really, really glad for that armor right about now. He was fairly certain he'd be able to survive having stabby things hurled at him without it, but it probably wouldn't have been pleasant.

He moved towards Peridot, sword in hand, and slashed out at her.

[cracked_n_corrupt]

Peridot just barely managed to skitter out of the way in time, another glitch making her body shift and twitch sideways before the sword could do any real damage. She rounded around again, bringing those metal things around with her, and then threw all of it at Jason again.

Along with herself. She could scrabble and gnaw at that helmet until she wore her teeth down, if necessary.

[thatsweirdright]

While the metal stuff was bouncing (mostly) harmlessly off his armor, Peridot... was not. Jason mentally dismissed the sword back to- well, wherever he'd summoned it from in the first place- the ship back in Angel Grove, he supposed. He reached out to try and pry her off of him and fling her to the ground.

[cracked_n_corrupt]

Fortunately, she was an easily pried little thing, able to be held around the middle in two hands, provided the person doing the holding was strong enough. She kicked and swung her fists at the hands in question until she was thrown back to the ground, where she kind of stopped moving for a moment, making a disgruntled little growling sound that warbled and twittered in odd pitches before she pulled herself together again and crawled back to her feet, shaking her head and glaring up at him.

[thatsweirdright]

The only other things Jason had fought had towered over him, so it was kind of weird to be the one doing the towering. So Jason did the only thing he figured made sense: went to tackle Peridot.

[cracked_n_corrupt]

Peridot managed an "Eep," before she rolled over and tried to scuttle off on all fours again, but she was a little bit too slow, and suddenly found that her legs were pinned under... well. Under Jason.

"Let me go! Get off of me you, youbrute!"

Enjoy that tiny green fist trying to thump your helmet in, Jason.

[thatsweirdright]

"I can't," Jason said, voice breaking a little. And not just because there was a fist doing its best to beat his helmeted face in.

"I don't know if you remember," he said, striking out with a fist of his own. "But I made you a promise."

[cracked_n_corrupt]

Peridot couldn't avoid the fist, took the full brunt of his blow with a cry of pain as it made contact, and then curled into herself a little.

"Promises promises promises," she was muttering, shaking her head. "What good are they? Nobody keeps promises. They all die first. They die. Dead dead dead hollow corrupt dead it's all the same. They go."

[thatsweirdright]

"I'm not," Jason said, firmly. "Not yet, anyway. And I don't plan on being so anytime soon."

[cracked_n_corrupt]

"Plans," Peridot spat, shaking her head. "What good are plans?"

She turned her head to stare up at him with those empty eyes of hers.

"Shatter me, shatter the Earth, it's all the same. Promises won't matter anymore."

[thatsweirdright]

Mindless putties, a giant monster made of gold, even Rita; those had all been, well, the physical fights had been difficult, but it hadn't been hard to motivate himself to do so.

This... Peridot was a friend. Jason took a deep breath, pulling his arm back before letting loose with another punch.

[cracked_n_corrupt]

Another punch was enough. Peridots were made of sturdy stuff, but when their Gems were damaged as badly as this one's was, holding oneself together was harder than it was ever meant to be.

She gasped, eyes going wide, and just stared up at Jason for a couple of seconds, like a horrified freeze-fame of herself.

And then her body exploded into smoke, and her broken Gem fell harmlessly into the fallen leaves below it.

[thatsweirdright]

And as her body exploded into smoke, Jason fell to the ground with a thump as there was suddenly no Peridot beneath him.

He laid there for a few seconds, just... just trying to breathe.

His armor dissolved in a shower of sparks as he reached out for that cracked Gem.

"I'm sorry," he whispered to it as he stood up, tucking it in to his jeans pocket with his own red gem.

He turned and started to head back to the dorms. Strangely enough, wandering around looking for something to fight had lost all of its appeal.