[Open]

[peridork]

Who: Peridot and YOU
What: Catch-All for when Peridot's TRUE FORM is exposed in the aftermath of the break-in debacle, when her limb extenders are confiscated as part of her punishment.
Where: Mero Deck (Room #011 and the deck at large), Mess Hall on Tue/Th/Sun evenings, the library.
When: Back-dated to the week of the 27th of October to November 3rd.
Warnings: N/A, it's all rated PG up in here.

Even if you hadn't ever actually talked to Peridot before, so long as you had seen her around it would be impossible to miss that there is something very different about her. She's small. Like, really small, by a good 6 inches or so, but it's not even just the reduced height that makes her appear that way. Without her heavy gauntlets and boots, she looks almost disproportionate, the empty space where there should be bulky metal standing out only serving to make her appear even scrawnier.

It's shameful to be seen like this to begin with, but more than just feeling small, Peridot feels insecure. Powerless. Everything seems a million times scarier when you have no fighting or defensive skills, and you're used to relying on gadgetry to keep yourself safe. But what Peridot misses the most is her audio logs. They're an integral part of her daily routine, a crutch that helps her keep her thoughts organized and makes her feel stable. As long as she has that screen, with its informational databases and carefully cataloged encyclopedia of human customs that she has been building, she feels confident enough to face the day. Without it...

Well. Lets just say she's even more jumpy than usual.

A) Mess Hall OR Med Bay. She refuses to wander the ship like this. Peridot rarely leaves her cabin on the Mero deck now, emerging only when she has Mess Hall duty, or she's scheduled for a shift down in Cryo. Whichever she's at, she is theoretically approachable... though her heightened defensive and easily nettled tendencies make her even more unpleasant to converse with than usual.

B) Library Not the sort to be easily deterred from a job, the electronic catalog project for the library is one of the few things that gets Peridot out of her cabin when she isn't due to work in the mess hall or med-bay. Trouble is, entering the information on those books into the library computer requires her to actually look at them first, and books, as you may know, tend to be organized on tall shelves... The resulting problem is obvious. At random points throughout the week she can be found clambering on things, standing on her tip-toes in a desperate bid to reach the tomes that are oh the higher shelves. Good Samaritans who come to lend the little gem a hand had best be prepared to get nothing but ungrateful scoffing and blustering comments about how she "could have done it herself" as their thanks.

[[OOC: If you are canon blind, please feel free to take a look at Peridot's status page if you need visuals on how drastic the change is. And yes, she is wearing what is basically the equivalent of footie pajamas. ]]

Comments

[peridork]

Her eyes flick up to the Night Wing's face and linger there, narrowed with a quiet fury. It seems, for a moment, like she might snap at him, but the explosion never comes. She glares back down at the robonoid in her hands instead, scoffing loudly.

"Oh yeah, I'm great. Just perfect!" she says suddenly, giving the little machine another good squeeze.

[petrifiedshadow]

Starflight huffed, looking entirely unconvinced. He spent the past six years with Tsunami and Glory, anger and sarcasm were two things he'd had plenty of practice dealing with.

"It might help to talk about it," he offered, rolling the robonoid over to her. Though considering how she was treating the one she already had it might not have been the best thing to do.

[peridork]

"Talk about it? What is there to talk about!?" She's laughing harshly, bordering on histrionic, but the look she levels at Starflight is a serious one. "The captains stole my private property, what else am I supposed to say about that??"

[petrifiedshadow]

"Why would they take your things now? If they really wanted to they could have just taken them when you came through the Ingress." Thinking it over, Starflight was pretty certain that's what had happened to the dreamvisitor he had been using before coming here. Without proof though there wasn't much he could do about it.

"What did they take?" he asked, looking around her bed to try and take a visual inventory of her things.

[peridork]

"They took... my limb enhancers," Peridot finally admits in a horrified whisper, looking positively mortified. She self-consciously draws her blankets more tightly around herself as she says it, shivering at the thought.

[petrifiedshadow]

"Your...limb...enhancers." He repeated back, looking a little baffled. He looked down at his claws, puzzling through what she could be talking about. Very cautiously, he reached out and hooked a claw on the edge of her blanket, tugging it back just enough to get a better few of her hands.

"You have normal paws? I thought the other ones were made of solid light, like the rest of your body."

[peridork]

"HEY!" Peridot snaps and snatches the blanket back, retreating further under it, like an angry little crab receding into it's shell. Just her angry face peers out from under the folds of fabric to glare sternly at him. "No, that was equipment given to me back on Homeworld to use for my mission, and the captains stole them!"

She shivers, tugging the blankets even tighter. "I've lost everything... my weapons... my screen, my logs! I'm useless without them!"

[petrifiedshadow]

Starflight cringed apologetically, stepping back to sit next to her bed. He felt like he could relate to how she was feeling, like he should say something. Glory always gave him a hard time about not being the most sympathetic person, but he didn't want to leave Peridot feeling this bad. What would Sunny do?

"I wouldn't say 'everything'. You still have your spheres," he said, trying to sound more positive about it. "And I'd bet you still know more about technology than a lot of people on the ship, even without your screens."

[peridork]

It's really the ego stroking that does it for her. Good one, Starflight. The gem tilts her head, considering his words.

"Hmm. I suppose that is true... but that's a given, seeing as I was literally made to be a technician. Heh... most of the crew is hopeless by comparison," she scoffs rather unkindly.

That grin quickly fades, though. She glances down at the robot she's clutching. "These robonoids are useless pieces of junk without any warp pads around to fix, though... And... And anyone who looks at me now will see right away that I've been disciplined," she whimpers, shrinking up again. It's likely that no one who has ever seen the way that she hordes the little robots in her bed would ever guess that they're essentially useless, but it just goes to show how finicky Peridot is about her paltry collection of belongings. To lose something of her own that she actually relies on is soul crushing.

[petrifiedshadow]

"Disciplined? What did you do?"

Starflight had been operating under the assumption Peridot was an innocent victim, but if she had done something the captains didn't like, that was a much clearer motive to their actions. It made a lot more sense than them just deciding to take her things on a whim.

[peridork]

She snorts. "I was working with Ratchet to investigate some of the off-limit areas of the the ship, that's all."

[petrifiedshadow]

"Ratchet? Why would you want to do anything with him? Why were you trying to get into the off limit areas? No wonder you got in trouble." Starflight said with a huff, tail lashing. The first time he'd met Ratchet things had not gone well, and it hadn't improved much since. Talk about a lousy first impression.

[peridork]

Bristling, Peridot sits up a little straighter to give Starflight a hard look. "I went with Ratchet because he's the only other person on this ship who was interested in digging into the secrets of this ship. If I'm going to be stuck here, I want to know everything I can about it."

[petrifiedshadow]

"I get it, I really do, but I don't think going behind the captain's backs is the right way to do it. You're lucky they only took your stuff, they could have done a lot worse if they wanted."

Starflight was absolutely certain about that. If there was anything he knew, it was that people in power could do just about anything they wanted, no matter how horrible it was.

[peridork]

"Tch. Like what? And I'd like to know what you would have done in the same situation," she growls, face flushing with agitation.

[petrifiedshadow]

"Well I wouldn't go breaking into rooms that the captains clearly don't want you in."
Starflight stood up, pacing around the room. He had already given plenty of thought to the question of 'what the captains could do to them.'

"They could have killed you. They could have thrown you off the ship. Or kept you imprisoned in the hold indefinitely. They could demote you to a worse job, or give you extra work. They could have done something to your gem." He pointed to his own forehead in the comparable spot to Peridot's gem, remembering what she had said about how her body worked the first time they met.

"You shouldn't underestimate them just because they're human. Didn't I ever tell you about Queen Oasis?"

[peridork]

Peridot is looking increasingly recalcitrant as he goes on, huddling up tighter in her blankets. "No, you didn't, and I don't care. All I did was open a door, the Captains wouldn't bother doing anything that drastic for something so small if it meant robbing them of a crew member. Any moron could see that."

[petrifiedshadow]

"You don't know that for sure. More people show up all the time. Look, you asked what they could do, I answered, I don't know what else you want. If you did something wrong, it makes sense you would get punished. It's a pretty basic concept."

He went back over to his bed, picking through the pile of books and selecting one. This conversation didn't see like it was going to go very far.
"I'm sorry you don't have your limb enhancers, but maybe they'll give them back soon. Who knows."

[peridork]

It seems the gem feels much the same way. She scoffs, retreats fully under her blankets, and starts giving Starflight the silent treatment.