fandomhigh | Library, Wednesday

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Library, Wednesday

The Gem was absolutely in the library today. Absolutely. If you could find her, all the better.

She wasn't in the stacks, no. She wasn't immediately visible at the desk, either.

A bit of looking around or just calling her names would reveal that she'd tucked herself into a corner, where she was alternating between putting the final finishing touches on Summer's phone, and reading the last of those sort-of-romance books about the magical gemstone people, giving both things equal, rapt attention.

Look, she was here, people would just have to settle for that, right?

[OOC: Open library! SP for work.]

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And in came a Summer, here to deprive her friend of at least one level of her multitasking.

"~Peeeridot~," she sang as she all but skipped into the library (and, no, that wasn't a twitch, shut up), and when she didn't immediately see the Gem, she stopped dead in her tracks, eyes wide, but no, no, she'd seen Peridot in class, she had to be here, and she went to start peeking down some aisles, being cautious of any books that might be acting up, wondering if maybe they'd formed a mutiny and had Peridot trapped somewhere, holding her hostage, and Summer would have to sweep in and save her because that would be cool, and, really, without her phone, Summer was discovering she had more imagination than she realized.

"Where are you?"

A little green hand reached up from behind one of the shorter shelving units, one set aside for periodicals, with a nice little small-Gem-sized nook between itself and the wall, and waved around a little.

"I'm over here," she said, sounding a bit distracted. "Just let me finish this... there! Done!"

Whether she wanted to finish the final touches on the phone or on the chapter she'd been working on, nobody would ever know. She had both back there with her, though.

"What'cha doing?"

Summer leaned on the shorter shelf and leaned over, peeking over into Peridot's little nook, having a feeling she knew exactly what Peridot was doing, but she was open to being pleasantly surprised.

"Little bit of one thing, little bit of the other..." Peridot peered up from where she was sitting, a set of tiny jewelers tools in one hand, an open book in her lap, and Summer's phone in her hand. She gave Summer a grin. "Finished the book and your phone. Give it a try?"

She held it up. It looked more or less the way it had before. Though it did have the added bonus of hovering in place when Peridot tapped a new little button on the side of the device and then let it go.

It was just more convenient when devices could be completely hands-free, okay? Her screen had been. It was so weird that the humans of Earth didn't make everything hover, too.

"Yay, phone!"

It took a good deal of control for Summer to not just reach out and snatch it and cling it possessively to her chest like it was a stupid goddamn crystal from class, but the hovering helped. It was hovering, wasn't it? Or was that just a trick of her eyes from the delirium of being reunited with her precious, newly enhanced technology?

She let it hover to verify that she wasn't imagining it.

"Is that you?" she asked, pointing to it. "Or did you add that to the phone?"

"It was a sensible feature to add. So I added it," Peridot replied, shrugging her shoulders. "It makes it far easier to work on when I can access all angles of it at once."

A pause.

"And I assume it's better for what you humans call hands-free calling."

"Cooooool," was Summer's thorough evaluations, giving it a little nudge with her finger to see how well the hover feature held. "Way better. And perfect for comfy bed movie watching."

Tentatively, she took the phone, turning it over a little to see if she could spot the changes. "So, how does all the sweet new upgrades work?"

Peridot gave a pleased little wiggle, and then pulled herself to her feet so that she could point at things.

"That button is the hover feature. It's enough to make the phone stay in place wherever you set it, but it can be manipulated by hand... you wouldn't be able to hang from it or anything. You can unlock your phone the same way you always did, and there's a new icon at the bottom, opposite side from the call button, to turn on the holo features."

And Summer took right to it, and it was like stepping into a perfectly worn pair of shoes or a comfy sweatshirt, it just felt right, it just fit. "And so," she said as her fingers moved in familiar patterns, "if I wanted to, let's say, hologram a picture...of...let's...just...Ooh! Here we go!"

And tap!

"Awww, look! It's those puppies from plants class a few weeks ago! In full holographic glory!"

And she moved the phone around in a few different angles to see how the image stabilized, how it moved, waved a hand through it to see if it was disturbed at all, then pushed the button and moved her hands slowly away to watch it over, and this was totally, totally the best thing EVER.

"Ohmygod."

Peridot smiled at Summer's reaction, though her voice was a little more tentative when she spoke.

"You... like it?"

The last time someone had reached for something she'd tinkered with, they'd attempted to throw it into the ocean. She was a little antsy about these things, these days.

Summer took the phone again, somewhat fascinated and distracted, and played around a little more. The picture switched over briefly...very briefly...to a selfie. Another selfie. Selfie. Ooh! One of the radio squirrels wearing a top hat!

"I," Summer declared. "Freaking. Love. It!" She closed out the hologram so she could properly pay homage. "Peridot! This is the best thing ever! Thank you! Oh, man, I owe you one. This is ah-maaaaze-ing!"

"It is?" ... "It is!"

Okay, see, Peridot felt much better, now. She was grinning and everything.

"If there's anything else you want installed, just let me know. I'll hook you up."

... Where she had picked up winking and finger-guns was anybody's best guess. Probably watching television again.

Jason had stepped foot in the library pretty much... exactly never, actually. But he knew from radio that Peridot was usually here on Wednesdays!

Or was she? Despite her size, she was pretty hard to miss, being bright green and all. But Jason didn't see her anywhere.

"...Peridot?"

Slowly, a little like an unripe, more triangular Great Pumpkin rising from the pumpkin patch, Peridot appeared. She'd been parked in a neat little nook between the periodicals shelf and a wall, and had been quite content to remain there until needed.

"Yes?"

"Guess what I got to do yesterday," Jason said, turning to face in Peridot's direction and then leveraging himself up to sit on top of the circ desk, legs dangling over the side.

Peridot blinked up (and then a little more up, because even the circ desk itself was a fair bit of up for Peridot already) at Jason at that, then tilted her head a bit and squinted in thought.

"Did it involve mattresses?"

In her experience on Earth so far, most humans at least did something with mattresses within the span of a day, and she had some precedent with Jason.

"Nooooo," Jason said slowly. "Well, it had to do with the thing that we did that involved mattresses, so I suppose in a sort of really roundabout way? Anyway. I got to jump off the Eiffel Tower. For class."

"Oooooh." Peridot was appropriately awed.

...

For a moment.

"Which tower is that?"

Oh. Right. Alien.

He pulled up the Wikipedia article on his phone, and then leaned down to show her. "This one."

Peridot squinted for a moment at the picture, looking thoughtful for a few seconds before looking up at Jason again.

"We have bigger on Homeworld," she noted, "... But it does look like a formidable height to jump from all the same."

More than the Principal's tower, anyway.

"It was pretty cool," Jason shared. "I got way higher speeds than we did here."

"What did you use to catch yourself at the bottom?"

Peridot NEEDED TO KNOW.

"It was a kind of weird... jumpsuit thing?" Jason tried to explain. "With a parachute attached. No mattresses."

"... Do you think there's a way to find something like that on the island?"

Worth a try!

"The jumpsuit or a place on the island we could actually use it?"

"... Both."

Both was good, right?

"Well," Jason mused, "we might be able to find jumpsuits, but I'm pretty sure the Principal's Tower was the highest point around here. For anything higher, we'd have to go to the mainland."

"Do you suppose we could?" Peridot fidgeted. "If it's off a tower, though, I don't imagine they'd let me jump anyway."

She tended to get mistaken for a human child in a costume far too often, and what she gleaned from multiple experiences in that regard was mostly that humans treated their offspring as extra fragile.

"Technically I don't think anyone is supposed to jump off these things," Jason said. "So I'd probably get in just as much trouble as you."

Which gave him pause because, hey, sometimes common sense managed to sneak its way through his brainmeats. Sometimes.

"... Maybe we should find, like. A cliff or something. Where there wouldn't be so many people around."

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Library, Wednesday

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