Me, Myself, and Him

Chapter 17: Crystal Gem no more

Peridot POV

"So... I guess we should start from the beginning..."

The tablet eventually shut off after running through the first log. I just stood there, tapping my foot impatiently, waiting for answer, ANY answer. Part of me as curious as to how they would justify all of this, and another part was simply brimming with anger.

Pearl was the first to speak up.

"Yeah, that would be preferable." I spoke.

"Okay... I guess you already know about Daniel, so you deserve to know WHY we interacted with him. We met Daniel only a few weeks after Steven's birth. He was a former student at DelMarva State University, and had an extreme obsession with Gems and Gem technology. He spent years of education studying our species, and when he came to Beach City motivated by rumors and nothing more, well... he was ecstatic when he met us to say the least." Pearl explained.

"The dude was like, super crazy about where we came from and how we worked. He was kind-of a nerd. We started talking to him and, one thing led to another, and we started hanging out with him more and more. Part of it was just cause he was an all around cool guy but... most of it was just to get our minds off of losing Rose." Amethyst said, jumping in on the conversation.

"So, what does any of this have to with the Prime Kindergarten experiments or... Lapis?" I asked.

"They were getting to that." Garnet started speaking, "Daniel had expressed interest in seeing other Gem sites because he had 'big plans', as he put it. We eventually gave in, and took him to the Prime Kindergarten, just to satisfy his curiosities. He was amazed and said he wanted to stay there and study the place. We had to ask him why he wanted to stay in that barren place and what his plans were..." She went silent at the end.

The Crystal gems exchanged worried looks.

"Well?" I shouted.

"He... He wanted to create his own Gem." Pearl said.

What.

THAT was a suprise. Why would this cloddy human want to create a Gem? The Gem species has been nothing but awful to human beings and yet, here I am hearing about this "Daniel" character who worshiped Gems, and wanted to create another Gem?

This was new to me.

"Why would a human ever want to do that?" I asked.

"Infatuation? There's just something about creating another living being that... strikes a chord with every human..." Pearl said.

"And? You just... LET him?"

"Of course not." Garnet spoke up. "At first, we tried to talk him out of it, said it was to dangerous and it would take too much of a toll on the planet to create even one more Gem. He seemed convince at first, and said that he would leave the topic alone. 'Besides,' he said, 'I can learn a lot more from you guys!' We all eventually became great friends. We gave him more info on Gemkind, and he helped us out with missions and the such. He was a great engineer as well as a scientists. He even fell in love and married another person from Beach City. We thought he moved on, but..." 

"I got desperate. I came to him one day in a blind depression, mourning over Rose. He and his wife helped console me, but eventually... I asked him about his old research. I was looking through it and, through regrettable thoughts... I thought I saw a way to bring Rose back." Pearl said softly.

"She came back, and she convinced us to let Daniel try out some of his research. We set him up in the Prime Kindergarten with all sorts of nerd junk. Soon enough, we all started seeing some hope in his work, and we kept egging him on. We don't know why but... It was the first time in a long while we had hope of seeing Rose again." Amethyst said.