Library, Wednesday

[era_two_triangle]

Peridot didn't want to be here today. The whole... thing... with everyone on the island being a child had freaked her out more than a little bit. It was bad enough she was on a race of short-lived organic beings that grew and changed and then withered away. To have them all regress that way was wreaking havoc on her head.

And then she'd been attacked by turkeys in class, and that about tore it.

So half of her shift was going to be spent distractedly doing actual library work.

The rest of her shift was going to be spent booking a portal ticket. Not for long, no; it was a return ticket, in fact. But there was a sale on tickets to her own version of Earth for Thanksgiving, and it couldn't hurt to be somewhere that made sense for a little while, right?

[OOC: 'Dot is goin' home for the holiday! Last chance to see her before she takes off for a bit!]

Comments

[thatsweirdright]

Libraries weren't usually Jason's jam, but they were Peridot's, at least on Wednesdays. Which would be why he was stopping by.

"Found you," he said with a slight smile as he made his way into the library.

[era_two_triangle]

"No more 'ventures," Peridot said, putting down her phone and pointing a finger in Jason's direction. "Not this time!"

... Also, hi!

[thatsweirdright]

"Aww," Jason gave her an exaggerated pout. "But we didn't even find anything that spit slime at us!"

[era_two_triangle]

"Well, we have plenty of that back on my Earth," Peridot replied, rolling her eyes. "Slime, acid... corrupted Gems really like to spit, apparently."

And then there was Steven, who just used regular spit.

[thatsweirdright]

"Corrupted Gems?" Jason was curious despite himself.

[era_two_triangle]

"You know... Gems who have lost who they are, and who have become monsters." Peridot paused, and then frowned. "We don't have anything like it on Homeworld. It's an Earth thing."

It was messy, and it had something to do with the war, and Peridot was never in any position to find out more than that.

[thatsweirdright]

"Huh," Jason said thoughtfully. "I ran into... someone like that, once, only I don't think what happened to her had anything to do with Earth." Or at least, she'd been corrupted before arriving on Earth.

[era_two_triangle]

Peridot tilted her head in thought, and then kind of squirmed a little.

"I wouldn't call Gem corruptions 'someone,' anymore." She spread her hands a little. "They're mindless corruptions, monsters that don't even resemble what they used to be. They're 'something,' at best. Animals."

[thatsweirdright]

"Yeah, okay, definitely different," Jason said with a nod. "She was- still aware of what she was doing, and all, it's just that what she used to do was protect people and now she was all about conquering and becoming more powerful."

[era_two_triangle]

Peridot tilted her head at that.

"Did... something change her, or did she change herself?"

It seemed like there was a bigger difference between corrupted Gems and this monster Jason was talking about than it had sounded like, at first. But Peridot was still coming to grasp the nature of change, so maybe she was mistaken.

[thatsweirdright]

There hadn't really been time to press Zordon for details when Rita had been an immediate threat, and what Jason had pieced together afterwards involved... a lot of conjecture.

"There's a- force? Or energy? Something. In my world, called the Power," great name, that. "It's channeled through, uh. Gems, actually. Something happened to hers, I think, which made her go all..." he made a vague hand-wavey motion that was meant to encapsulate 'homicidal and power-mad'.

[era_two_triangle]

"So..." Peridot frowned a little more, reaching for her phone again, mostly to just kind of fidget with while she thought. "She was corrupted, but she kept her mind? It just wasn't... wasn't her anymore."

She wasn't sure if that was better or worse than completely losing oneself and becoming a drooling monster.

[thatsweirdright]

"As far as I can tell," Jason nodded. "There wasn't really a lot of time for conversation."

[era_two_triangle]

"Fair enough," Peridot allowed, still frowning. "Is that sort of corruption uncommon, then?"

[thatsweirdright]

"Where it's something outside yourself that makes you that way?" Jason asked. "Yeah, I think. Usually it's just that people who get a taste of power decide they want more of it." Which... could have happened to Rita too, he supposed, but her gem-coin-thing hadn't seemed to work the way the Power Rangers' had, so that was why he figured there was probably a connection.

[era_two_triangle]

"Well," Peridot said after a long pause. "That's... horrifying."

[thatsweirdright]

"Right?" Jason said with a nod. "I slapped her into space, though."

[era_two_triangle]

Peridot hesitated a moment, and then nodded her satisfaction.

She wasn't going to point out that drifting aimlessly through space was equally horrifying.

"If anything ever corrupts me... poof me," she said, suddenly. "Better to have no form than be anything but myself."