fandomhigh | Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part II

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!event: welcome picnic

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part II

The weather was lovely, the newbies had survived their shuttle, and yes, all the holes in the lawn from graduation had been filled and covered with new grass so everything looked normal and pretty. Well, pretty, at least.

[OCD is up! This is the picnic post for general mingling. Roommates, fake siblings and teachers are all here. Since it's outside, the picnic is open to all students, teachers, and townies!]

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Hey, now! Peridot wasn't a gremlin. But she had once been crowned queen of the gremlins, and there was a very important distinction, there. She threw the stick, none the wiser to the audience that she had apparently gained.

It was Pumpkin who had noticed first, in fact, and rather than paying any more attention to Peridot's rather one-sided game, she was trotting over to investigate the new person, pumpkin-guts tongue lolling out of her mouth and her little pumpkin vine not-quite-a-tail trailing along behind her.

She barked.

Yeah, and that was another thing...

Astrid looked up from her drawing, blinked at the little pumpkin thing that seemed to have barked at her, asked herself if the little pumpkin thing had barked at her, and then concluded that she couldn't deal with that answer right now, and did the only thing she could think to do to deal with it.

Which was stopping her drawing of the maybe-Gremlin, flipping to a fresh page, and starting to draw the pumpkin thing.

She'd have time to figure out whats and whys later; she could compartmentalize like a champ.

Pumpkin, for her part, mostly just made herself comfortable there on the grass. Say what you wanted to about the little pumpkin thing, she was a very good model.

It was a few more moments before Peridot realized that she was actually, truly throwing the stick for herself, and she made her way over to investigate what was going on.

"Pumpkin, you missed," she accused, before peering speculatively at the new person. "What are you doing?"

Oh, god, it talked.

Well, of course it did. Astrid was just more bothered that it was talking to her, the same way she felt when the clown tried to give her a balloon. She hesitated for a moment; the clown left her alone when she very insistently ignored it, but at the same time....

...it didn't take much effort to just turn her sketchbook around and lift it so the mascot could see. It had yielded good results with Sabine, anyway, and she wasn't intimidated by this one like she was Jaylah, just a little wierded out and uncomfortable.

Peridot made her way over to peer at the drawing, looking at it thoughtfully before looking back at Pumpkin and nodding approvingly.

"You're getting her best side," she informed the girl. And then sat down next to her so that she could watch. Because that was what happened, Astrid. That was what happened. "Don't forget the little seeds in her tongue. They can be hard to see sometimes."

"Right," said Astrid, because now look what happened. Good thing she could just focus on the drawing and following the little green person's instructions by very pointedly adding the little seeds on the pumpkin thing's tongue. "Okay. Got it."

"Perfect!" Peridot looked at the drawing, and then over at Pumpkin, and gave a nod of satisfaction. "Okay, now draw her feet!"

Her feet nubs. Whatever they were.

Really, Peridot, she was getting to that.

Being told what to do by a tiny little school mascot. This is where Astrid's life had turned.

Well, she was feeling a little adrift and directionless after her talk with Aloy. Maybe this was just the universes way of putting her back on track.

"Sure," she said, and started on the feet. Nubs. Whatever they were.

Pumpkin was sitting pretty, now, quite pleased at all the attention she was getting. Even if the attention was over there and not where she was.

Which was kind of tragic, actually.

Peridot sat and watched the girl drawing, intent on the picture, the way the pencil moved over the paper.

"This is... art... right?"

It was a way dumber word than meep morp. She still wasn't sold on it.

Astrid snorted a little. "I mean, some people might call it that," she said. "But I'd just call it a drawing."

It was, admittedly, a very good drawing, but far be it for Astrid to actually take pride in something she did.

If anything, this, the whole situation she was in right now, seemed more like art than anything in her notebook. They were entering into some real avant garde shit right here, sentient pumpkins, green people, wild huntresses telling you you can do whatever you wanted and roommmates in colorful space armor.

That was art.

Peridot considered that for a moment.

"A drawing," she echoed. "I like it. Do you think I could do that?" For something that wasn't just a scientific diagram, which was really the only drawing that Peridot had ever done before. "What do you do with them?"

Astrid shrugged, offering out the pencil to the green person. "If you want, you can try," she said. "And I don't know, I guess you just kind of look at them. I'm going to be sending some of these back to my mom back home."

She still hadn't decided just how weird she was going to get with it, but she was positive Ingrid would not appreciate most of them since all the stuff she was drawing was the bizarre and unusual stuff.

Peridot took the pencil, considering it for a moment before reaching for the sketchbook, too.

"Do moms like this sort of thing?"

She'd never had one, so she... really wouldn't know.

Astrid slid the sketchbook closer...after flipping to a new blank page, of which there were increasingly few left. She could already hear Ingrid's complaining about having just bought it for her, too.

"Most moms like things their kids make for them," she said. She assumed. She knew full well her mom was not most moms. Ingrid might like them; she might criticize them and tear them apart, depending on her mood.

"Sounds nice," Peridot said, her tone almost wistful as she settled in and considered the blank page in front of her. And then, since the topic was on moms, she settled in and started to draw.

It was a kindergarten injector, a huge piece of machinery that looked like an elongated canister with four spider-like legs and a drill on one end, and a massive gem on the other end. Drawing it didn't take long, so she embellished it slightly by adding tubing and wiring inside the transparent part of the canister, and then tilted her head thoughtfully at it before holding it up to show Astrid her handiwork.

"Is this how it's done?"

Astrid tilted her head as well, then nodded. "That's the idea, anyway," she said. She hadn't exactly had any formal training herself, so she wasn't necessarily impressed, but the green person seemed to have done pretty well for apparently not even knowing what drawing even was. It looked like...something. She didn't know what, but it was definitely something.

"...What is it?" she asked.

"Machinery from home," Peridot explained, and then tilted her hand at the picture before offering the book back. "It's called an injector. We used to use them to make new Gems."

Which essentially made that machinery the closest thing to a mother that Peridot had ever really had. There was a pause, and then she added, "I'm a Gem."

Most humans didn't seem to gather that bit on their own.

And Astrid would definitely be one of those humans, thinking that Manfred had competition for best completely made up bullshit, but, really, I'm psychic shouldn't be that hard to beat around here, she'd realized.

Was this a school for crazy people? Did the State of California determine her too crazy for normal foster care? It's a highly experimental school, he case worker had warned her, which she figured was just code for we just want to get you out of our hair before you hurt someone.

Okay, maybe she was a little unhinged. But threatening your roommate with a knife for touching your stuff was still miles away from thinking you were a gem created by a machine.

But whatever. She always figured it was easiest to just go with the craziness. "So, then, that means you were created by one of...those," she noted.

"Using one of those, correct," Peridot agreed with a shrug. "It was, of course, operated by other Gems. I suppose it's as close to a mother as I have."

Which was a weird thought. The idea of a Gem with a parent. Besides Steven, anyway.

Was it bad that Astrid briefly wondered if an injector would have made a better mother than Ingrid? A heartless machine that needed other things to make it even work?

No, not really. It was just honest.

"Are there other Gems here?" she asked.

"On Earth, yes," Peridot replied easily. "On the island, no. Maybe that's for the best. There aren't many that I'm still on good terms with."

She could pretty literally count them all on one hand.

"Bit of a troublemaker among the Gem community, huh?"

What were these words even leaving her mouth right now?

Peridot pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

"I betrayed my Homeworld," she muttered. "I can't go back, or I'll be shattered."

Yup. Totally CooCoo for Coco Puffs.

And yet Astrid was strangely fascinated.

"What did you do?" she asked, in a slightly hushed tone.

"I disobeyed my Diamond," Peridot murmured. "I yelled in her face and then I had a direct hand in putting a stop to the creation of a superweapon that was thousands of years in the making."

Basically, she'd saved the Earth.

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Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part II

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