HOME | DD

Description
(Steven Universe/Commission)

------------------
------------------
------------------

"What do you know about the Earth?"

"APPARENTLY MORE THAN YOU, YOU CLOD!"

Even before the words had escaped Peridot's lips, she had acknowledged that it was probably a bad idea to say something like this, yet she still said it anyway. She had gotten so caught up in the moment and in her own passion, she totally lost sense of what she was doing or who she was talking to. She acknowledged Yellow Diamond as her leader, her mentor and even as her idol, and yet, to hear those words coming out of her mouth had been soul-shattering. Yellow Diamond did not even care for the incredible resources available on Earth. She did not even care about her as one of her followers. She only cared about the damned Cluster and destroying everything that her enemy Rose Quartz had fought for, simply out of spite. That wasn't the clear-headed logic of a proper leader. Peridot, conflicted with so many emotions thanks to Steven and his gang of Crystal Clods already, had finally snapped when Yellow Diamond refused to heed her advice. Yellow Diamond had lost her respect in one swift motion, and now Peridot lost her temper after everything that had happened previously. Ever since she'd gotten herself stuck on this awful rock, she had had nothing but a bad time...for the most part.

Yellow Diamond reacted understandably, with recoiling fury. Peridot, her senses coming back to her and her realization that she'd just put her own head on a platter hitting her like a thousand bricks, immediately cancelled the transmission and ended it. She had nothing else to say to Yellow Diamond anymore. No matter how much she may have apologized, no matter how many times she might have proclaimed her loyalty was still secure, and no matter what else she might have been able to do to appease Yellow Diamond, none of it would have mattered. She was now destined to be nothing short of dust underneath Yellow Diamond's enormous boot.

Yellow Diamond, meanwhile, was still trembling with rage. She had never been addressed so rudely before, especially not by one of her very own subordinates. She had no idea what might have happened to Peridot during her stay on Earth, but clearly, she had lost her way. If she dared to go so far as to call her a 'clod', then there was no reason to continue having her as someone serving under her any longer. Yellow Diamond would have much preferred to destroy Peridot herself, to clutch that traitor's gem in her hand and crush it until it was nothing but pieces. However, she did have an alternate, and more drawn-out, method of eliminating the fool as well. It was something new that she had been dying to try. It had had some unfortunate tests on other gems in the past, but it should work perfectly now. Even better, it had been stored inside of the very crystal that Peridot had used to contact her. Yellow Diamond was still trembling with fury as she sat back into her seat. She tapped one of the buttons on the arm of her chair. Her Pearl looked up at Yellow Diamond with a great deal of concern for her master's well-being.

"My Diamond...?" Yellow Pearl shuddered. "Is there anything that I can do for you?"

Yellow Diamond took a deep breath. She stared out into the darkness of space beyond her room's many windows. She wanted to crush something so badly. She looked down at her Pearl. She could have probably crushed her to relieve her stress, but that would not have been enough. Even more so, it would have taken a long time for another Pearl to be shipped to her location, and Yellow Diamond did not have that sort of time to waste.

Instead, Yellow Diamond continued to input the code to activate the hidden object inside of the communication crystal. Peridot had no idea of its existence, but she was about to find out.

"She has made her choice...but she shall know that it was this choice that has doomed her utterly and completely."

Meanwhile, all the way back on Earth, the crystal in Peridot's hands had begun to glow. She immediately dropped it and curled up into a fetal position. "I can't believe I just did that."

"Peridot, that was amazing!" Steven ran out from behind a rock, of which the Crystal Gems had concealed themselves behind during Peridot's and Yellow Diamond's argument.

"Aw, yeah, Little P is the master of disses!" Amethyst, too, was rather pleased with Peridot's choice.

"I can't believe I just did that." Peridot murmured again, her entire life flashing before her eyes. She fell over onto her side and laid there, prone and still. She stared at the crystal she had dropped moments ago.

Pearl laughed nervously into her hand. "Even I will admit, I didn't expect you'd do something like THAT, Peridot!"

"It looks like she's a Crystal Gem now, whether she wants to be one or not." Garnet smirked.

Peridot placed her hand on top of the crystal. "I can't believe I just did that."

Suddenly, a small hole on the center of the crystal opened up. Peridot blinked. "Huh?"

Some sort of gas shot out of the hole in one quick burst, right into Peridot's face. The green gem cried out and rolled away, slapping at her own face to try and get off whatever gunk had been sprayed into her eyes and mouth. The crystal itself started blinking and beeping as well. Peridot, still wiping her eyes, scurried in a desperate attempt to get back onto her feet, nearly stumbling twice in the process. Peridot recognized what was going on here. Well, she didn't know what the gas was about, since she didn't feel like she was about to die, but she knew what was going to happen to the crystal when it started flashing like that.

"It's going to explode...!" she shouted to the others.

"On it." Garnet summoned her gauntlets, picked up the crystal in one hand, and hurled it as far as she could. The crystal erupted in a ball of fire and smoke a few hundred harmless feet away.

"That was close!" Steven cried out.

"Goodness, I never expected to see something like that...Yellow Diamond...it seems that she's still as ornery as ever..." Pearl shook her head.

"We might be in for some trouble if we have to deal with her personally, but right now, this can be considered a battle we've won." Garnet said as she returned to the others.

"What do you mean?"

"Peridot didn't rat us out." Garnet smirked.

"Oh, that's true, isn't it?" Pearl replied. She looked over at Peridot, who remained huddled on the ground in a fetal position as Steven and Amethyst continued to dance around her.

Pearl mulled over everything that had happened thus far, ever since Peridot had begun spending time with them, originally against her will. "If even she can come to see our way of things, then do you think...?"

"We can't say for sure. Peridot still has a ways to go too." Garnet replied before Pearl could finish. With her visionary eye, she could tell what Pearl was going to ask before it had even been said. "For now, we should continue focusing on dealing with the Cluster and saving the Earth. Then, we can discuss on what to do about Malachite and, if it comes to it, Yellow Diamond's arrival."

"Yes, you're right, that's a good plan! I was just thinking of that!" Pearl exclaimed, nodding her head excitedly.

"You're the one who came up with it. I apologize for not letting you say it first before I spoiled it." Garnet replied nonchalantly. She pointed at her third eye, hidden behind her visor. "Future vision."

"Oh...oh...! I-It's alright, Garnet, really! I don't mind!"

Garnet frowned. "Hmm."

"What is it?"

"I had another vision...about Peridot...and I'm not quite sure what to make of it..."

"What?" Pearl repeated yet again.

Garnet looked over at Peridot. The green gem remained huddled with her knees against her chest. Amethyst was patting her on the head and Steven was still running around in circles.

"I don't know. I don't think it's going to impede our progress of the drill, so let's not worry about it."

Pearl didn't understand either, but if Garnet wasn't going to take it as something to be concerned about, then Pearl supposed she shouldn't let it worry her when they had more important work to do. The two gems returned to where they had left the other three. It seemed that Steven and Amethyst had already tried themselves out and now they were ready to return home. Garnet, seeing that Peridot refused to move from her spot, scooped up the much smaller gem and carried her in one of her gauntlets, like a doll. Peridot did not protest against this, nor did she really seem to notice.

What did catch her notice, however, was the sudden grumbling from inside her stomach. Even though she continued to remain in fetal position, she did not fail to notice the strange noise being emitted from within the pit of her...stomach, was it called? She hadn't quite finished studying all of the organs with the typical human anatomy, and she did not think she could compare her own anatomy to a human's so easily. No matter who many external features they may have shared, their internal features were anything but close to being similar. She had no idea what was going on inside, but she felt along with the noises a sudden urge. It was an urge that Peridot did not quite know what to do with. It was an urge that almost made her want to put something inside of her 'stomach'...but she didn't quite know what it was. Right now though, after the scare she had gone through with standing up to Yellow Diamond, Peridot wanted to do nothing but collapse. She needed something to distract her mind from her traitorous actions. Maybe she could try that thing Amethyst once told her about. Peridot believed it was called 'sleeping'. Peridot closed her eyes and she tried to let this thing called 'sleep' overtake her.

Unfortunately, her torso decided to continue making gurgles and groans, and it prevented Peridot from achieving anything remotely close to the act of slumber. In fact, it kept her from being able to do anything at all, as for the rest of the night and early morning the next day was her doing nothing but struggling to not go mad from the prickling sensations inside her own being. She was so afraid of what was happening to her that at one point she thought that her gem was about to collapse in on itself and destroy her. Every few seconds the pangs would come in. Whenever it happened, she found herself unable to think of anything else, and yet she had no idea what to possibly do to repel them. Again and again, something inside of her was raging. Peridot assumed it had something to do with that strange gas the crystal sprayed in her face before it detonated, but she had no idea to be sure. When Peridot confided in Amethyst on her problem, the purple gem immediately offered a solution, as if it were obvious.

"You must just be hungry, dude," she replied.

Peridot stared at the other gem for several seconds in dead silence. "...Hungry?" she raised an eyebrow.

"You just need some food in ya! F-O-O-D! It's as simple as that! What, don't tell me you didn't know?" Amethyst beamed.

"Why...why would I need to eat? Food? Human food, you mean? We're gems! We have no need for sustenance!"

"Yeah, I know, but sometimes, I like to just eat food for the taste, ya know? I don't NEED to eat or sleep, but hey, that doesn't mean that can't do it, right?"

"That doesn't explain why I would suddenly want to eat, though. I've never had human food in my life." Peridot sighed and shook her head as another pang bubbled up from inside her stomach. However, if it meant riding herself of this torment, then she would gladly shovel whatever putrid little thing that these humans called 'food' into her mouth. She needed to do this before she truly did lose her mind to the 'hunger' she was so mysteriously experiencing.

"If you really want to eat something, then I know the best place! I mean, technically it's the only place, 'cuz it's the closest...and the cheapest." Amethyst shrugged.

"I'm probably hoping for too much in wanting there to be some sort of place where we can get human food that doesn't have...humans...around it?"

"Nope!"

"...Darn it..."

Amethyst led Peridot into Beach City, where they would be able to get something tasty to quell Peridot's groaning belly. Peridot herself was rather reluctant to do so at first, considering it would mean putting herself in the public presence of multiple humans, which was not something she was particularly a fan of doing. She had had enough trouble getting used to the presence of Greg, Steven's father, and after the time where she had tried pushing him off of a roof, their relationship was only close to acquaintances at best. Nonetheless, Amethyst dragged her green friend along, even if it meant tugging on her arm the whole time while doing so. Although she garnered a few odd glances her way at first, Peridot was not accosted and threatened with violence. Considering the Crystal Gems had been living in the presence of Beach City's citizens for many years now, even longer than its oldest residents, they had all grown used to the odd skin colors and curious markings present on the gems' features. No one really paid Peridot any close mind after a little while. Peridot herself was thankful for that. Her stomach started gurgling again and Peridot almost wanted to scream from the madness indicted by the hunger pains. Amethyst brought her to a small local diner.

"Come on, you gotta try this place! It may not look like much, but the food here is AMAZING! Steven doesn't really think so, but sometimes I forget that I can't expect a kid to have the most experienced palate, ya know? Ha ha ha!"

"What sort of place is this?"

"It's a good place! A really good place!" Amethyst exclaimed, and then she paused. "It's also a really cheap place, so that helps too. I'm good friends with the guy who runs the diner."

Peridot didn't know what Amethyst was talking about, but she followed the other gem inside anyway. Again, Peridot found her nerves starting to get the better of her as she looked around, taking in the sights. It was a small place, the diner, with a white counter-top, red chairs, old lights hanging from the ceiling, and a large buxom woman in a waitress' uniform marching around and delivering orders of food off of a massive tray. Peridot liked to consider herself a genius even among gems, but seeing so many new things at once was rather overwhelming for her. She allowed Amethyst to led her toward one of the booths, where they sat across from each other. Peridot's stomach continued to growl, snarl and nip like a rabid dog, and she was about ready to do something drastic. When they were handed the menus, it was not by the waitress seen earlier, but instead a portly older man whose eyes lit up like stars as soon as he saw Amethyst.

"Amethyst! You're finally back! It's been too long! Like a whole year or something!"

"Hey there, Bono. How's it goin'? Sorry for the absence. Been busy fighting bad guys, beating up monsters, kicking butt, saving the world, the usual stuff, ya know?"

Peridot had no idea what these two were talking about, so she tried to preoccupy herself by reading the menu she had been given. She had no idea what anything was on the menu, and she'd never heard of anything called 'burgers' or 'fries' before. It was all so new and strange. She didn't quite even care if she had to pick something in particular as long as it was enough to actually feed her stomach and get it to stop agonizing her like this. Peridot put the menu down.

"I want something." Peridot spoke up.

"Hmm?" the man named Bono looked up from Amethyst and took out his little notepad. "Yes? What would you like to order? Would you like something to drink first?"

"Uh...umm...drink?"

"Hey, don't worry about her, Bono. She's real new here. She's like me."

"Oh, one of them rocks, right?"

"Something like that. Now, why don't you just go and get me the usual? You remember the usual, right?"

"Ha ha ha! Of course I do! Of course I do!"

"Yeah, bring us two of that. She'll eat the same. Don't worry, she's so hungry she'll eat about anything, and besides, I know that she'll like this one." Amethyst winked.

"Gotcha! For you, Amethyst, it's on the house! I cannot repay you enough!"

Bono laughed again. He nodded frantically and he quickly excused himself to send in the order to the kitchens in the back. Peridot looked over at Amethyst again.

"What's the 'usual'?" Peridot asked.

Amethyst smirked again. "It's gonna be great. Trust me."

When the food was brought over to them, Peridot nearly recoiled at the sight. A thick, juicy burger smothered in lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, bacon, mushrooms, onions and peppers, topped off with a sesame seed bun, not to mention the mound of thick steak fries and even thicker onion rings sitting on the side. Peridot had never seen anything so revolting in her entire life. She couldn't believe that people ate things like this, or that even a gem would willingly put anything of this nature into their own mouth. She looked over at Amethyst to see that the purple gem had already started to dig in, and quite fiercely in fact. Amethyst opened her mouth wide, using her morphing powers to expand the width of her jaw, and she took an enormous bite out of her burger. She chewed it thoroughly until she finally swallowed. Sighing in relief, Peridot could practically smell the salt and oil on her breath from where she sat.

"Go on! Try it out! You'll love it, seriously! Don't worry about if you NEED to eat! All you have to do is WANT to eat! It's easy!"

Peridot looked down and she slowly began to lift up the burger into her shaking hands. It was such a heavy hunk of meat. She couldn't believe that Amethyst, let alone a single human, could possibly swallow this entire thing. Not to mention there were fries alongside it that she would inevitably have to eat as well. Peridot braced herself for eating it, but then she felt that hunger pang again. That dreaded hunger pang that made all of the nonexistent hair on the back of her neck stand on end. She couldn't wait any longer. She had to do this, no matter how disgusting the food might have looked. Peridot unhinged her jaw and took a massive bite out of the burger, getting every single one of its toppings and condiments into her mouth all at once. Amethyst beamed as she watched this impressive sight from across the table. Peridot pulled the burger away from her mouth and she let the taste of the food settle inside her mouth.

Amethyst laughed. "You got to chew it!"

Peridot started chewing, and when she did, her eyes seemed to light up. "This...this is...!"

"Hey, watch the spray there, Little P!" Amethyst laughed some more before picking a few fries off of her own plate and eating them all at once.

"It's so good! I don't even know what food is supposed to taste like, but it's SO good!" Peridot shoved the rest of the burger into her mouth and ate the entire thing in a matter of seconds. Thankfully, being a gem, she did not have to worry so much about choking, so she could stuff as much into her throat as she wanted and it would have done nothing to her at all. Once the burger was gone, Peridot ate the fries next. when Amethyst offered her a container of ketchup, Peridot took it and, without bothering to ask what it was, poured the red, oozy contents all over the pile of fries. She ate and ate and ate. The hunger pangs plaguing her since last night were starting to recede. She was so happy and it only made her want to eat even more.

"Wow, you really do like it! Even more than me. See? You get what Pearl doesn't! Food is great!"

"Can I get more...?" Peridot asked, licking some stray ketchup off of her lips.

"Sure!"

"Then I want more!"

"Okay, okay, let me just see if I can get Bono over here again for another order," Amethyst saw no problem with allowing this at all.

So, Peridot, thanks to Amethyst and her connections, was able to stuff her face with more human food, in fact more food in general, than she had ever eaten before, and it was so utterly delightful. Every time she ate one of the burgers, she wanted to eat another one, and then another one, and another one. She ate four of them in all, and she ate enough french fries to have nearly consumed an entire family of spuds. Amethyst ate her one burger and left it at that, but she was slowly beginning to find herself concerned for the other gem, who didn't seem to want to stop eating at all. Peridot was starting to gather herself quite a crowd of onlookers considering how noisily and messily she chose to ate. Amethyst, however, kept her mouth shut. She figured Peridot would run out of steam eventually. Peridot's stomach swelled in size to compensate for the sheer amount of food being poured into it. As it grew bigger, though, it also began to alter itself in ways the gem did not expect. Ways that were influenced by the mysterious gas she had inhaled by Yellow Diamond's intentions.

"Uuugh..." Finally, after consuming her fifth burger and the fries that came with it, Peridot slumped down into her booth seat. "I'm...I'm...ooh, I don't think I can eat another bite...ugh..."

"Huh." Amethyst knew that 'fullness' was something that humans could experience, but not gems. Either way, at least it meant that she was finally done.

"Hey, Bono, we're done here! Thanks again, my man!"

"You're gonna have to pay for SOME of those burgers next time you come back in, Amethyst!" he called after her.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll make a mental note." Amethyst waved, pulling Peridot along by the hand as she took her out of the diner and into the fresh sea-salt air.

Peridot hiccuped. She wiped some more ketchup and grease off of her mouth with a napkin. She looked down. She had a belly now. Not just a big, tight stomach inflated from the food she had just eaten in abundance of. It was a real, sagging, flabby, doughy, wobbly gut. Peridot reached down and began poking it, very lightly, with the tip of her finger. When she pulled her finger back, her stomach started jiggling wildly. Peridot grabbed the belly from both sides and started playing with it even more in a way of inspecting the reality of the situation. This was not some sort of mistake or a trick of the mind. She squeezed the flesh and felt softness bend under the pressure of her digits. Peridot lifted her belly by a half-inch by releasing and letting it fall. It slapped against her thighs with a loud clapping sound. Peridot shrieked. Speaking of her thighs, her legs had swollen up with the same mushy and jello-like consistency, and now they were so wide that her inner-thighs were starting to squish together. When she walked, she could feel her thighs occasionally chafe, creating an increasing amount of discomfort following every step. Looking over her shoulder, Peridot saw that it was not only her hips and legs that had grown, but her backside had suddenly inflated to nearly two times its original size as well. Her butt was a pair of meaty and bulbous spheres. She reached down and gave one of them a squeeze. They were still as real as the rest of her body right now.

"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS...?" Peridot screamed at the top of her lungs.

Amethyst turned around and discovered what had happened to Peridot. "Whoa! You got a new look there, huh, P-Dot? I like it! Here, let me try!"

Within the blink of an eye, Amethyst used her powers as a gem to make herself grow. Her shirt rolled up as her plump, violet sack of a belly flopped out over the edge of her sweatpants. Said sweatpants also grew insanely tight and constrained around Amethyst's thighs, which became about as tree-trunk thick as Peridot's had become. Her backside made her pants dig so deep inside that it was like wearing nothing at all. Amethyst's face became chubbier too, with puffy jowls that sat atop a thick neck ring and a cascading double-chin. Even Amethyst's arms were looking bigger. She brought one bingo wing down toward the center of her belly and she began to stroke it softly in small circles. Amethyst tilt her head back and released a moan so fierce that it sent her whole body wobbling like a human-sized gelatin mold.

"Oh, man, you know...this actually...does feel kind of good...being like this..." Amethyst huffed, already getting out of breath just from standing there.

Peridot remembered that she too, as a gem, would be able to alter the shape of her body if she desired. Unlike Amethyst, Peridot was not keen on the idea of using a gem's transforming powers with such little care. However, in a case such as this one, it was obviously necessary. Peridot did not know if eating all of those burgers had awoken some kind of unknown allergic reaction within her, or if there was some other sort of issue being caused by the food, but she knew that she didn't want to stay looking this fat for a second longer. Peridot concentrated. She tried to imagine shaping herself back into her original, thin form. If she could add an extra inch or two of height onto that original form as well, that wouldn't be so bad either. However, after nearly two whole minutes of straining her brain and trying, Peridot discovered that her fatness continued to remain exactly where it was.

Amethyst, noticing Peridot's distress, turned back to her original form, as if to show how easy it should have been. "Uh, you okay, P-Dot? You look kinda freaked out."

"I can't change back..."

"What?"

"I can't get rid of this...this...this stuff on my body! I can't get rid of it!" Peridot screamed, grabbing her own stomach and shaking with manic vitriol. "It keeps shaking! Why does it keep shaking? Why is it so soft? I can't pull it off!"

Amethyst winced. "That, uh, can't be good. I think we should talk you back to Garnet and the others. Maybe they can figure it out."

Peridot continued shaking her fat in a panic. Slowly, a 'realization' began to dawn on her. "Is...Is this my punishment...FOR BEING A TRAITOROUS CLOD?"