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Stark Industries, Friday

Peridot was still in a mood. But then, Peridot figured she had every reason to be, what with the lopsided gait she had going for her these days. She still hadn't managed to locate her missing foot, and suspected that it was no longer in the rocky bits at all, that maybe something had made off with it during the time she'd spent rebuilding her body in her Gem last week.

So today, she was trying to come up with some sort of lost foot detection device. So far she'd destroyed three iPhones, a hairdryer, and an old switchboard (why did they even have that here?) in order to do it, and she thought she might actually be making progress. Sort of. Getting Gem technology to interface with Earth components was still tricky. She might have to ask the Andrew to get his partner on the case, yet.

Stark Industries is open! And the Gem watching the desk will help you even if one of her legs is currently a foot taller than the other. Probably.

[OOC: Open and OCD-free!]

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Tip came in after class with her Boov gun. It was alien hardware, and Peridot was the only alien other than J.Lo that Tip knew at all well. And J.Lo probably gummed up the gun in the first place.

"Hey, Peridot. How's it going?"

"Could be better," Peridot muttered, shaking her head and frowning. "I don't suppose you've seen a foot anywhere?"

Asking for a friend.

[OOC: SP for work!]

"A foot?" Tip asked. "Like . . . just sitting around? By itself?"

No. She had not seen any disembodied feet.

"Preferably," Peridot agreed. "If it isn't on its own, it means somebody else has it, and I'm not presently equipped to fight for its safe return if need be."

Why anybody else would want her foot was anybody's best guess, but Peridot didn't exactly expect the best of people.

"You lost -- your foot?"

Okay, clearly this was not a strange thing according to Peridot but still. Her foot.

"Did it go missing last week during the pony stuff? Or -- were you even a pony last week?"

"Sort of?" She had lost it last week, anyway. She did a little lopsided clank-CLUNK around the counter so that Tip could see the offending missing part. "What's a pony, anyway?"

She'd missed a lot of the really good stuff, sadly.

"It's an animal. Four legs. People ride them for fun. Like, half the town turned into them last week." That wasn't nearly descriptive enough, but whatever, Tip was busy staring at Peridot's lopsided legs.

". . . Wait, did you lose a foot or a shoe?"

Maybe this was just a translation error.

"I lost a lot more than a foot," Peridot muttered, and then crossed her arms over her chest. "But that isn't important right now. Right now, I'm missing my foot."

See? See how gone her foot was?

"What's a shoe?" There were going to be a lot of questions like this. "Is this one of those pants things?"

"Well I guess that depends. It's clothing, so that's kind of like pants. . . ." Conversations with Peridot were always interesting. Tip held up her leg, showing her sandal. "Shoes are things you can put on your feet to keep them from getting hurt when you're walking around. Like, if you step on glass or a sharp rock or something. And some of them can make you taller or help you run faster."

Peridot paused and considered that for a moment.

"Is everything that makes you taller a shoe?"

Her limb enhancers hadn't saved her from falling rocks last week, so thus far they were not earning shoe points, here.

"Well, no, some of them are stilts. I'm not actually sure where you'd draw the line between tall shoes and small stilts, though."

Peridot went silent for a long moment. And looked down again at the offending missing part.

"... So you haven't seen a foot, then?"

This seemed like an easier conversation to hold than trying to figure out the weird things that humans put onto their bodies.

"I haven't seen your missing foot, no." Because, well, she saw feet every day. Except for during her brief tenure as an orange, when she'd managed to roll herself into a bush and hide from absolutely everyone from Friday night after Roscoe left until Sunday when she was human again. But those days didn't exist, so you know. Every day was foot day. "I was actually hoping you could help me fix my gun."

Was she going to need to explain what a gun was?

Peridot did actually know what a gun was! She blinked, and tilted her head a little.

"You have a broken weapon?"

The idea that someone in high school having a gun was weird didn't even occur to her. Why should it?

"Yeah. Well, right now it only makes things blue, so it's not much of a weapon. But -- yeah, I guess that's the 'broken' part." She set the gun down carefully on the counter and didn't immediately let it go. "It's supposed to have four settings, see?" She pointed to the dial on the back. "Erase, tummy trouble, comasleep. But it's stuck on blue."

There was a wad of pink gap-putty jammed into the dial to do the sticking, in fact. Tip had pried at it with a butter knife until she started getting paranoid about accidentally erasing her own feet -- er, she'd perhaps best not mention that bit to Peridot -- and had to stop.

Peridot wasn't going to ask what a tummy was. Peridot wasn't going to ask what a tummy was...

"What got it stuck?" Much better, right? She leaned forward and peered at it speculatively. "And why have a weapon that turns things blue in the first place?"

"I have no idea," Tip said honestly. "It was invented by the Boov. They're sort of grey or purple or orange, so maybe being blue is a grave insult?"

"Hmm. Well, I suppose that's... useful, in that context," Peridot decided, clunk-CLUNKing back and forth to get a better look at the gun. "I can probably figure out what's got this stuck and fix it, anyway. It's just a dial."

Dials were easy.

"It's jammed in there pretty good," Tip said. "It's some kind of gap putty, I think." She was pretty sure Boov gap putty didn't, like, burst into flames or something when you messed with it, but who knew for sure who wasn't a Boov? "You need to be careful of setting off the erase function, though. It does -- well, just what it says on the label. To whatever's in its way."

"So, don't point the dangerous end at anything I appreciate," Peridot surmised, smiling faintly. "Yes, I do believe I can handle that."

Said the Gem who couldn't fire a weapon without falling on her behind if her life depended on it.

"I might be able to clean it out by taking the dial off first," she mused, and then made a reach for the gun. "No accidentally turning it, that way, too."

"Or, you know, making it explode. I have no idea how it does what it does." That was an understatement. If you could understate having literally zero understanding of alien physics. "Thanks. I appreciate it."

"If it explodes, we'll be charging extra," Peridot decided, with all the authority of somebody who was still kind of just learning how money actually worked. "But I sincerely doubt it will come to that. I've worked with far more sensitive technology before, after all."

"That's . . . fair? I guess?" Tip didn't know how charging for fixing electronics worked, either. "I figured it'd be pretty easy for you. Since you're so good with other tech."

"Well, tech is what Peridots do," said Peridot replied, preening just a little before turning the weapon over in her hands and scrutinizing it thoughtfully. "I'm basically nothing without it, of course I'm good with it."

She clunk-CLUNKed her way to the workbench that had her Gem tech detection device on it and set the weapon down carefully before going rummaging for her tools. And some safety gear. Goggles over her built-in visor, because safety first, right?

"I'll have this weapon cleaned out and erasing things in no time."

"Oh, I'm not going to --" She was about to say she wasn't going to erase anything, but then why would she need it fixed? Clearly an operable weapon was something she could use around here. "I mean, thanks."

"Of course," Peridot replied, waving a hand and then snapping those goggles on as if they would protect her from the 'erase' setting if anything went horribly wrong. "It's what I do."

Okay, it was a little different from monitoring Gem production in the Kindergartens, but she still had it handled.

"Just don't get any ideas and point it at me when it's done."

Cue side-eye.

"Why would I do that?" Tip asked. "Unless you try to kill me. So . . . I guess if you push me off any other roofs."

"It was just that one time!" Which was still one time too many, granted. "Lessons have been learned, no more people will be pushed off of roofs. Unless they really have it coming."

Who knew, right? Maybe some people really did.

"Good." Tip smiled. "So you know I won't have to try to erase you. Unless you really have it coming."

Peridot squinted as she considered this for a few moments. And then she gave a nod.

"That arrangement will be satisfactory," she decided, and then made a reach for her tools with one hand, holding up her other hand and calling her screen out to run a diagnostic on the weapon. "Eesh, how much putty got crammed in there, anyway?"

"I don't know. I wasn't there when J.Lo jammed it up."

"And what kind of clod does something like that, anyway? Does the J.Lo not understand the point of a weapon?"

Generally, that point was not to turn people blue.

"I think he had some weird idea about keeping me safe," Tip said. "Like -- hey, if Tip has a weapon she can protect herself! But then she might also accidentally shoot herself so better make it harmless." Tip sighed. "He's not always great at thinking things through."

"One would think it would make more sense to train you with the weapon, first. Have you ever fired one of these?"

Peridot was going for a rummage again, leaving her screen floating behind her to scan the gun as she clunked her way over to some of the more precision tools in the place.

"Yeah. Used it to help us survive a crash on New Boovworld." By erasing the bus around them and giving them an escape hatch. "Not, like, on anyone, though."

She'd come close, and she knew it was something she could do. But the gun had run out of charge.

Peridot considered that for a moment, and then shrugged and nodded as she stepped up to her screen to check out the extent of the damage. She frowned thoughtfully, and then lifted her arm to claim those touch-stumps back as fingers.

"Then you're fine," she decided, and then crouched over to get to work, prying the knob off of the gun. "You know what end not to point at yourself, that's the important part."

One of the important parts, anyway.

"I know which end's which," Tip agreed. "And I've worked out which bubbly symbol means what." Bill had helped with that. Boov was not an easy language to learn. "So I know if I'm going to make someone sick or just turn them blue."

You know, when she wasn't trying to use slightly prehensile wings to handle it, anyway.

"Turning people blue might confuse them long enough for you to run if you're in danger, at least," Peridot mused, setting the dial to the side and then leaning in to inspect the state of the goop close up. She frowned, and then made a reach for something not unlike a chisel.

She was going in.

"What is sick?"

Now seemed like a good time to ask.

Ah, yes, hanging with Peridot. When you had to explain concepts that organic lifeforms find pretty self-explanatory.

"It's . . . it's like when you broken down, I guess," Tip said. "So, for non-rock people, it's when their insides aren't working quite right for some reason. We have these . . . self-repair mechanisms, I guess you'd call them, but they're not very pleasant. So there's the broken down part that makes you feel bad and then there's also the repair work which also makes you feel bad, but will eventually make you feel better."

"And do organic life forms get sick often?" Peridot wasn't judging, for once. She was surrounded by humans these days, and they didn't frustrate her quite as much as they had a few months ago. "I suppose it would make sense having built-in repair mechanisms if you did..."

Their lives were so short, they needed all the patching up that they could get.

"I dunno. Everyone's different," Tip said. "Some people get sick every year when the seasons change. Some people only get, like, a cold a year." A beat. "A cold is a really common, minor way people get sick."

"And... does it have anything to do with temperature?"

It seemed like an important question to Peridot. She even paused in her scraping to look up as she asked it. Though that was possibly just because that made it easier to carry on a conversation.

"They tend to happen more often in the winter, yeah," Tip said. "But they can happen any time of year."

"And... that's why it's called a cold?" Peridot looked thoughtful. It was a simplistic naming convention, maybe, but functional. "Yes, I suppose that does make some measure of sense."

It was actually kind of like a compliment, when coming from Peridot. She nodded once, decisively, and then returned to trying to get the gunk out from the gun.

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Stark Industries, Friday

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