agoodyarn | for any taker

for any taker

The old brownstone has stood, unopened and unchanged, for decades. Maintained, for lack of a better word, by a trust, the building was nevertheless an odd exception to the rest of New York City: empty and tomblike despite being on a prime piece of real estate in the middle of Manhattan with a view of Central Park to boot.

Regardless.

The doors are easy enough to open, old but surprisingly sturdy in spite of that. Still, they're only basic mecnanisms, easy enough to circumvent. The path leads past a few strange experiments covered in dust and of course, down to the main lab where a glass cage sits in the middle of a strange and eccentric collections of devices and momentos. Within is what looks like a stone statue, kneeling, head down as if in supplication.

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"This planet is so weird," Peridot declared. "They build like they have Bismuths, but everything's so fragile! Why did anyone ever decide that building with a tree is a good idea! And making a solid out of sand?! That's why the Beta kindergarten failed!"

Garnet didn't answer. She didn't need to. This rant of Peridot's was fully rhetorical and if she interrupted, it would only break the smaller gem's concentration as she followed the map she'd sketched out from data pulled from her escape pod. After her limb enhancers had been destroyed, they'd had to make do with the data the pod held. And the pod's data - now that the Cluster was safely bubbled away - was showing an anomaly. And the anomaly was, specifically, over there. Peridot pointed with finality. "That one, there. It has to be that one."

"Hold on," said Garnet smoothly, launching herself off the ledge with Peridot tucked firmly under her arm. She leapt high enough that she nearly disappeared into the sky before she landed between the target structure and the one next to it. The ledge cracked under the force of her launch, but the pavement took her landing well enough. And the noise Peridot made was more than satisfying.

"You could warn me next time," Peridot groused, but Garnet only smiled as she led the two of them to the door. The little green gem was tough, but Garnet knew better than to let her lead. She had all the defense capabilities of a pancake.

Garnet knew that the door would be unlocked, and so she opened it to take in the dusty interior. It looked like a human laboratory of some sort, even on this level. Surprising, if she hadn't seen it as one of the major pathways ahead. While Peridot scoffed and called all the equipment primitive, Garnet moved on ahead. One hand lifted, she let her gem glow, casting a beam of red-violet light to lead the way. Only once she'd gotten some distance did Peridot realise she was alone and follow along.

"What level?"

"Um. Down," Peridot said after looking over her own notations. "Who knows how deep this building goes."

And so they went downward, following staircase after staircase, Garnet having finally isolated the right future out of all of them. Even when Peridot complained, she led on until they faced the seeming statue.

The shorter gem stared, her eyes wide as she tried to place what she saw. "This... What is this?"

"This isn't a Gem."

"No, but this is... It's some variety of Silicate, not one Homeworld would have ever grown," Peridot agreed. She climbed up until she could press her face against the glass, her visor giving a faint clink against the surface. "But this... This would never have passed any Kindergarten inspection, but there's something very ingenious about it. This is sand. Literal sand clinging together by some force my instruments couldn't figure out, or I would've been able to get it from the pod."

"It's no statue." Garnet looked the form over, slow and thoughtful. There were a few possibilities here. More than she liked, as far as options went. If they walked away, there was a chance that, around a year into the future, the creature within would awaken. Why, she couldn't tell, but the awakening wouldn't be pleasant. If she broke the glass, which would be easy, the being would awaken. There, the streams split. In some, the figure fell into millions of grains of sand, never to reform. In others, the figure became a beast, angry and raging. In others, she could see a human forming out of the sand, unconscious or... worse.

As Peridot rattled away at the ideas she was having, ideas of possibilities, Garnet made a choice. She clenched one fist, her gauntlet forming with all its weight and force, and she threw a heavy punch against the glass, where it shattered as if it was nothing more than a lightbulb, sweeping Peridot up with the other arm as she prepared for the worst, but hoped for the best as old possibilities dried away and new ones appeared.

[ As soon as the glass is broken, gas bursts out of the hole, slowing to an even flow as the stone figure on the velvet cushion within starts shifting. The change is gradual, and Peridot will notice that the readings are going to start going haywire. Because the earth where they are is starting to rumble, to shake and move. Not with the kind of force that would do any real damage, but enough to make their legs shake.

And then the creature on the floor tilts his head up and roars.

But it's not that he's causing the quakes. No, it's something else. He's centralizing them, pulling them into himself, taking the pressure and the strain into himself as the plates around the island shake and shudder. If they were allowed, if he wasn't taking it in, the whole city might shake itself to pieces. But the creature stays where it is, takes in the vibrations, and keeps roaring in what becomes very clear after a moment is pain.

Controlled pain.

Pain it's taking on willingly.]

Of everything she'd seen, this had been one she'd hoped wouldn't happen. But Peridot was tough, and she was strong. "Peridot!" Garnet demanded all the same. "Is it the Cluster?"

"It can't be-- it shouldn't-- It bubbled itself!" she half-screeched from where she was tucked against Garnet's hip, but as the both of them watched, Peridot's scientific mind ticked away while Garnet searched through futures to try to find what she needed to do. "But there could be leftover stresses, stresses we didn't know about. And somehow this Silicate is absorbing it-- Nnyyhhhhh WHAT DO WE DO?!"

Steven wasn't here to dream to the Cluster and ask it to shore up the area. Her own powers had limited effect when it came to this. All she could do was wait, knowing the one action she could take would only end badly, whereas inaction had a better chance.

"We wait," she said, a sympathetic draw to her lips that showed her tension and her worry. "Stay beneath me."

"What?!"

But Garnet placed Peridot on the ground at her feet and lifted up her arms, enlarging her gauntlets larger and larger until they braced the ceiling over their heads, braced the entire building against the shivering of the ground. She was not going to be poofed by masonry.

The screaming stops. So does the earth shaking... but the monster is shuddering. Not like a quake, but like someone shaken and unsteady. He looks at Garnet and then at Peridot and seems to swallow before disintegrating and flowing into the ground itself.

If they look at their readings, they'd find him traveling under the ground and eventually, into Central Park where Garnet might be able to see people running from the once-more screaming monster as the ground shakes beneath him.

It's a delicate balance, what he's doing. Taking in as much as he can and shifting it to another spot. He's going to have to slowly take it all in while distributing it carefully here and there. Eventually, he'll soak it all properly, now that he's able to handle it finally. But it's not going to be pleasant.

The park.

Full of humans, who would be afraid. "Peridot. Your powers might be needed," she warned before wrapping her arm around the smaller gem and bolting up the stairs. She wouldn't be so rude, this time, to just break through the floor. She waited until she was on street level to leap into the air, her trajectory taking her to his side where she said, "Gather the benches, Peridot! Surround us here, before the humans try to hurt him!"

The little green gem's eyes lit up and, immediately, she started her work, yanking bench after metal bench into a somewhat haphazard barrier, all the while grinning. "Metal powers!" she crowed, from her three-foot height.

If that high.

With the protective barrier, he can let himself kneel and start working through the energy here as well, and he does his best to muffle the screaming with one fist between his stone teeth.

It takes him almost five full minutes before he stands, shakey again, and walks over to them. There's a sound he makes, an attempt at communication but it's raspy and unintelligible. It sounds thankful, though.

"We cannot understand you," Garnet said, but, without fear, she reached out and placed a hand on his arm. "But I understand what you've done. We're grateful. Everyone else will be, too, when they understand. But for now, you may need to come with us. The humans are afraid. I don't want them to accidentally hurt you."

The humans, she said. At second, or first, maybe third look, her skin tone was far from human, and the hand on his arm was solid at the palm - where there was a three-faceted gem. Definitely not human.

He hasn't been human himself for a good long time, to be honest. And then there's the fact that he's been friends with and worked along side metas of all stripes since he was a teenager, not that he has much more life experience than that. Years and years in the dark are years lived but they don't give the social interaction, the milestones, all the rest that a real life might. That's why he nods, holds up a finger, points it towards the shoreline, and disappears into the ground.

One last location. He wants to make sure this doesn't pop up again.

She tilted her head, reached over to Peridot, and said, "We'll have to wait for him."

"Let me guess. He's not going to be near a warp pad."

"Farther away than we are right now. But I don't know if we can warp him. Not... yet." In the future, perhaps. Just now, though, it would be better to tell him the destination. Or-- "Can you show him a map of where to go? He'll probably get there before us."

"I'm not a Pearl."

"No," Garnet agreed. "You're a Kindergartener."

It was a fact that had Peridot standing up a little straighter.

It's no surprise that once he's done, once the situation is entirely handled, the strange man statue made of sand ends up where he's supposed to go. Peridot knew her stuff, after all, and Sand has a certain connection with the Earth itself, in ways that his transformation didn't entirely explain by itself.

He settles on his knees and looks straight ahead. He's not still as a stone, but it's clear he's working on speech from the noises he's making and sitting to have the minimum of things to worry about.

"T-Thanks."

"Ah," said Garnet as she walked up to him, her footfalls even and calm. "You can speak. Good." Cubic hair and all, Garnet nodded. "Take your time. You're safe here."

Peridot had told him Beach City, and that was, by all signs, where they were. A small town on the coast of Delmarva, home to a boardwalk, the Big Donut, a car wash... a few other things. But most importantly, the Crystal Gems. "You aren't like us. We know that. But you may be the closest thing to us native to this planet."

He nods, because movement is easy, but speaking still requires a little bit of thought. It's not that his brain was damaged or he has trouble putting thoughts together. It's that he's been talking to himself, screaming inside himself for so long that the effort is to connect those words to his mouth. It hurts.

That makes sense to him.

"I wasn't born like this. Something happened."

"I had guessed. We can investigate. Just now, it's more important that you take your time and find your footing. I don't know the past, but judging from where we found you, it was extensive and unfair. For now, the Earth is safe. You have the time to take." Her voice was gentle, and she had no hesitation before sitting on the ground in front of him, one knee drawn up so she could rest her arm against it. "I am Garnet. The other gem who was with me before is Peridot." She pronounced the last syllable as 'dot' instead of 'doe'. "What is your name?"

"Sand."

It was short for his name, short for Sanderson, but he doesn't feel like that's who he is anymore. That's not who he's been for the last fifty years. He's someone else, something else. And given their names, it seems like the most reasonable thing to go by now.

"My name is Sand."

He looks to Garnet, then over to Peridot, before offering a tip of his head to both.

"Thank you. For... helping me. Out."

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