fandomtownies | Stark Industries, Monday

You weren't the only one hiding from the teddy bears, Tony. The green person who just walked into your shop with a 'clank clank clank' was on that list of people, too. She put her hands (or her free-floating fingers, anyway) on her hips as she looked around the shop, and then kind of zeroed in on you in particular.

Lucky you!

"Are you... The Tony Stark?"

This was polite for Peridot. She was trying.

[OOC: With glacial levels of SP imminent for a day spent in the LJ-free animation mines.]

Well, Tony took in green and interesting tech before noticing the bluntness. "I wouldn't call myself 'The' Tony Stark, but that's me, yes."

Wasn't alien tech fascinating, Tony?

"Well..." Peridot took a moment to look him up and down, then shrugged. She supposed learning this human's proper title would be a good starting point to asking for employment. "What would you call you, then?"

"Just Tony is fine," he replied. "Are those prosthetics?"

Because yes, alien tech was interesting when it wasn't trying to kill you. Or biological.

Ugh, biological anything was the worst.

"Of a sort," Peridot replied, holding up those hands of hers and spreading her fingers for Tony to look at. No harm in that, so long as he didn't snatch one from midair the way Rufus' dog had. "They're limb enhancers. They aren't replacing anything that's gone, just... improving on what's already there."

Her stubby little arms and her wee tiny legs.

"Huh." Tony tilted his head as he studied them for a moment. Maybe he could adapt that idea for an armor...

Tony, no.

"What did you need?"

"Two things," Peridot said. "Though one might facilitate the other. First of all, my screen took some damage when I arrived to the island."

She held her hand up again, and let her fingers fly free to form the borders of her screen. It flickered into place for a second, and then the image faltered, fizzled, glitched out, and she had to reach out quickly to catch one finger as it fell.

She looked... less than thrilled about that.

"But I'm told that Earth uses a barter system that places a symbolic worth on an otherwise useless commodity, which I have none of."

"Money," Tony replied with an amused smile. "So, you want a job or you want to exchange something to get your screen fixed?"

"My screen is all I have," Peridot replied, looking fairly displeased about that. "Unless you want the damaged remains of the escape pod that I arrived here in. But I am a technician in my own right. What I'm lacking are tools. Much of what I've been able to find on this island is... primitive, at best."

She really couldn't fix something like this with a hammer and a set of hex keys.

"I would be... appreciative... for the opportunity to work in exchange for use of the tools you have here. And, I suppose, some sum of this money that humans are so fond of."

See? Rufus had told her to use manners. She might have rehearsed that.

Tony's mouth twitched like he was trying very hard not to find her just amusing for all the primitive talk. "A job then. Okay. You're hired"

Now he was just messing with her by being so obliging.

Yeah, Peridot hadn't expected it to be that easy.

She squinted at him.

"... I am?"

SHE DIDN'T TRUST THIS.

Tony smiled brightly because this was fun for him, okay?

"Yep. You got a name, kid?"

Peridot was probably older than your father, Tony.

Or his father. Or his father before him. Possibly going back quite a few fathers. She decided against pointing that out. This time.

"Peridot, Facet-2F5L Cut-5XG." And she was still squinting. "Or... just Peridot."

Most people on Fandom Island forgot the string of garble that set her apart from other Peridots, but that was less inconvenient here, what with there being no other Peridots.

"Peridot," Tony repeated with a nod. "Nice to meet you. Don't break the island, time, or cause interdimensional lawsuits. Those are basically the rules. You need help, tell JARVIS to get me. He's in charge when I'm not around."

He snapped and pointed up.

"A pleasure to meet you. By which name would you prefer?" JARVIS chimed in politely.

'A pleasure to' was an interesting turn of phrase. Peridot decided that the next time she needed to be polite, maybe she would try that one.

"Peridot is more concise," she decided, looking thoughtful, and then almost immediately breaking into a little smile at the thought of it. She wasn't so great at keeping her emotions to herself, exactly. "I like 'Peridot.'"

Imagine, her doing anything in any professional capacity without listing her cut and facet? Homeworld would be scandalized!

She held that little smile for a moment more before looking back at Tony. Now there was a bit of confusion where that quiet pleasure had been a second before.

"What is a 'lawsuit' and what precautionary measures do I need to take in order to not cause them?"

Tony smiled back at her, a purely genuine one this time. "A lawsuit can be because you've broken a law or because someone thinks you have infringed on their rights," he replied. "Just try to avoid it. JARVIS will let you know if you need, but I am currently lacking a legal team. So the rule stands."

'Rights' was an interesting word, too. Peridot knew what it meant, in a vague sense. Though she had no idea what, in a legal sense or even in a 'basic human' sense, that might mean. She frowned thoughtfully, but nodded.

"I'll be certain to ask JARVIS about any... laws... I might be unaware of that I might be in danger of breaking here." She actually sighed, then. "Homeworld is somewhat different from Earth in that regard. There's a learning curve."

That was putting it mildly. She had decided to test how aerodynamic one of her classmates was by pushing her off a roof the other week, for example.

...Yeah. Don't do that, Peridot. It was only science if you wrote it down.

"Where is Homeworld exactly?" Tony asked.

Well, she had recorded it in her logs. Entering the data otherwise would have involved using her screen. Which... Well.

"In a galaxy that you can see with the naked eye from Earth," Peridot offered. "I don't know the names that humans have attached to them yet, but I could easily point it out on a map."

Of the universe, naturally.

"Well, you have me there," Tony admitted with a grin. "If you want a star map, J can probably get one assembled for you."

Which would include species that didn't exist where she was from, so it might not be so helpful.

"Astronomy isn't my strong suit, sadly."

It would either be unhelpful, or really, really fascinating. Peridot smiled slightly again.

"I suppose it would be a largely irrelevant area of study if you intended to spend the majority of your," very short, organic, "life on the same planet. I don't need a map, myself. Not unless I can find a ship capable of taking me back home. Though with this island moving at the rate it is, it's possible that eventually, I'll come across something of the sort eventually."

Just so long as they weren't on Earth, she'd cope.

"J is JARVIS, correct?"

She was pretty certain she at least had her alphabet figured out, but double-checking couldn't hurt.

JARVIS added a helpful, "Mr. Stark is fond of diminutive names."

Tony shrugged, unable to find fault in that. "It's not irrelevant. The majority of Earth just hasn't gotten to the intergalactic travel level."

Other than Reed Richards. Damn it, Reed. Damn it.

"Then... there are humans from Earth who have?"

She'd spoken to Jalian briefly about timelines, but that wasn't the same thing as intergalactic at all. The two could draw on similar theories, perhaps... But even then, space and time were fairly distinct concepts.

"Uh huh. This place is a sort of... dimensional nexus. You'll find people from timelines where space travel is common and some where it isn't. Some who have never even heard of Earth," he replied, tapping his fingers on the counter. "Where I'm from it's not common, but it happens."

And mostly involved stopping Skrulls or Kree from wiping out the planet. As you do.

It was probably for the best that the island wasn't currently parked on Earth. Explaining the panic that the Cluster would have caused Peridot to the locals probably wouldn't have gone over so well.

'Blowing up the planet from the inside like a giant egg' was not one of those things that most species took kindly to, oddly enough.

"I have yet to meet somebody who so much as recognizes a Gem," she noted, thoughtfully. "Though I suppose that shouldn't surprise me too much. Aside from a very small group of stragglers, there haven't been Gems on Earth for thousands of years."

Edited 2016-06-07 00:37 (UTC)

Tony made a mental note of that information in case it ever became necessary. Because his life. His life.

"That'll happen here. Or you'll find that people know some other version of you."

Peridot looked wryly amused at that.

"Even I know other versions of me. Peridots aren't uncommon on Homeworld, exactly."

Not quite like that, Peri.

It made Tony laugh at least. "Is it the same?"

"I don't see how it would be terribly different," Peridot replied, side-eyeing Tony now that he was laughing. "We have slight differences, but we all come from the same place."

Homeworld didn't exactly do much to help individual Gems cultivate a sense of self, no.

Edited 2016-06-07 01:09 (UTC)

"Coming from the same place doesn't mean anything," Tony replied. "Your experiences shape you. One version of me was a teenager when he was here. I certainly didn't attend school here. Are we still the same?"

"No, you're different versions, as you said," Peridot sighed, and then tried again. "Different... facets of... what you could have been. When I say we come from the same place, I don't mean location. I mean we're all different cuts from the same gem, cultivated and incubated into separate beings."

She frowned, trying to find a way to spell it out that an organic being might understand. It was unfortunate that she didn't know enough about organic life to be able to draw any easy comparisons.

"You could... take us and meld us together, and we'd all feel... not like different Gems. Just like more of ourself."

Not that she'd ever fused, herself. But she did understand fusion in theory. At least within parameters that were acceptable by Homeworld standards.

"So, not quite clones, more splitting of an individual person--being into different parts?"

"Kind of," Peridot hedged. "Only we aren't really people until we are these parts, either. There's nothing, and then one day, we are."

After hundreds of years of incubating, yes. But even so.

"Like turning on a light," she added, flicking one finger to mime the gesture. "Suddenly, awareness. And we're shaped by our experiences, yes, but there's still something fundamentally the same about us, even if we don't remember anything before we took form and started down our own paths. Quartz and Rubies are all warriors, Lapis Lazuli all enjoy water and flying. Peridots are technicians."

Sorry, Pearls. You didn't even rate a mention.

Which was beyond fascinating if you asked Tony. This could only end badly.

Tony turned, chewing on his lip as he thought that over. "Well you came to a good place if you'd like to be a technician again."

Tony, Peridot was totally the Gem for the job if you ever wanted to build a Kindergarten on the island. She wasn't just a technician, after all. She was also a certified Kindergartener!

You probably wouldn't live long enough to see any of the Gems you cultivated actually emerge, mind.

"That was what I was hoping," she agreed with a nod. "The school is... interesting, if not particularly educational, but what I really want, if not the means to get back to Homeworld, is at least somewhere to work."

"Well, you have questions about anything while working here, ask them. JARVIS or I can answer as best possible," Tony assured her. "How does Friday sound?"

Edited 2016-06-07 01:48 (UTC)

Peridot almost answered with, 'Only Friday?' but refrained, based on what she'd seen of basic employment on the island so far. One day did seem to be the standard, here.

"Friday would be acceptable," she decided, giving a nod, instead. "I can arrive after my class, it's the first of the day, and I'll likely work late regardless."

It was entirely possible she'd need to be chased out a few times come Saturday morning, anyway. It wasn't as though she needed sleep.

"Upstairs is where I live and downstairs is my private lab, both are off limits without permission." Unless she really wanted to deal with a snippy JARVIS.

Peridot nodded. All jobs had rules, of course. These ones seemed fair.

"I only need access to the workshop," she decided. "I might need instruction as to how to handle... payment? From... customers?"

She thought she had that right, anyway.

"Or will JARVIS assist with that as well until I better understand?"

"JARVIS can assist you," Tony replied. "He's built into the walls of the place and most of the tech."

Stark Industries, Monday

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