fandomhighdorms | The School Grounds, Sunday Afternoon

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The School Grounds, Sunday Afternoon

Peridot was really putting the 'Peri' in 'paranoid' today. Which was a statement that worked much better when said aloud, but she was both unaware of the narrative, and still fairly new to Earth humor to begin with. Suffice it to say, she would have been happy to hide herself under her bed in her dorm room (the first actual functional purpose she saw for the stupid thing) until the weekend's end, when the fusion would inevitably leave. Hopefully.

If she was lucky.

Instead, she was standing here. Waiting for Mr. Peanutbutter. In the open. Because she had a book he needed to return to the library, and he'd promised to take her to get a replacement.

She was... jumpy. Jumpy was a good word for it. She'd found a tree and she was standing with her back to it, so that nobody could sneak up on her from behind, but that didn't cover the rest of her, and she still felt painfully out in the open, here. A lot.

This place had been safe. It was supposed to be! The fusion wasn't supposed to be here!

[OOC: Waiting for two, but can be open!]

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"Peridot!" Mr. Peanutbutter greeted, then frowned in concern when he saw her face. "Is everything alright?"

He wasn't on camera right now (he couldn't find any to drag along with him, they were very well hidden!) but that didn't mean he didn't care.

"Yeah, and are we hiding from someone?" Todd chimed in, because that was a convenient use of that tree, there. He was always up for an adventure that involved hiding from someone.

Huh. The human one was perceptive. Peridot had to give him credit for that.

"She found me," she hissed, her tone hushed... ish. She was apparently very good at a dramatic stage whisper. "She wasn't supposed to find me! So yes, I am hiding!"

Because Garnet was terrifying.

"Oh no!" Mr. Peanutbutter was nothing if not empathetic. "Should we hide, too? Or -- if I know one thing, it's that it's harder to find a moving target."

Sure, that sounded like a thing.

He was only accidentally perceptive. And he was wrong most of the time. "Especially if she's not moving! Because then we can get farther away!" Yes, Todd, that was clear.

"I... I don't know if she's moving or not," Peridot admitted, a little awkwardly. "She's... crafty. She could be anywhere."

Well, wasn't this a recipe for disaster?

"Then we'll just have to be anywhere," Mr. Peanutbutter decided. "And if she comes at you while I'm here, I'll chase her off." He barked and growled dramatically. "Dogs are good at that."

"Whoa!" Todd exclaimed, putting both hands up as if in surrender even though the expression on his face was nothing short of delighted. "Mr. Peanutbutter, no one should ever underestimate your ability to be the scariest dog in the room."

They were outside and there were no other dogs nearby, but, sure.

Somehow, Peridot didn't think that the permafusion would be terribly intimidated by the barking.

Then again, she was halfway up the tree at the sound, so she could be mistaken.

"... I..." She cleared her throat, and then eased her way down out of the tree again. Composure. She totally had it. "I appreciate your offer of protection, the Mr. Peanutbutter."

"That's what teachers are for." I mean, it kinda wasn't. "Plus, if we're on the move we can move it on to the bookstore!"

"Right! Unless this person chasing you is some kind of vicious criminal who also loves books, like that mean intern on Hollywoo Stars and Celebrities What Do They Know Do They Know Things Let's Find Out, we should be safe there." That was quite a mouthful but it rolled off his tongue easily. It was a totally reasonable name for a game show, honest. "If she does love books, we should probably go somewhere better."

"She's already followed me to the bookstore once," Peridot groaned, sinking down to sit on the ground at the trunk of the tree. "She'll know where to find me, if we go there."

This trip to get the book was already a disaster.

"She read for hours while I hid in the back room."

It had been maybe one hour. Possibly less.

"Ah, but if she cornered you there once, she'll never think to look for you again there!" Mr. Peanutbutter said. "Unless. . . . She thinks that you think that she'll never think to look for you there, in which case she may be staking the bookstore out." He snapped his fingers. "We're going to need disguises."

"Ooh!" Todd exclaimed. "I passed a clothing store on the way here. I bet we could get disguised there!"

That was a brilliant idea! It must be, because two people were enthusiastic about it, and frankly, Peridot was desperate!

"That sounds perfect!" ... "What's a disguise?"

Teaching moment! "A disguise is when you put on clothing and-or make up in order to make yourself unrecognizable," Mr. Peanutbutter explained with great solemnity. "Do they not have a lot of call for disguises under the sea?"

You know, where Peridot was from. Since she was a starfish.

"Maybe the adhesive on fake mustaches wears off down there," Todd suggested, sounding a little sad at the very thought.

It probably would be tragic, too. Fortunately, Peridot didn't have that problem. She blinked between the two Earthlings, squinted a bit, and then shrugged her shoulders ever so eloquently.

"Why would I have to hide my identity from anybody while I'm under the sea?"

She'd never been followed by a Crystal Gem down there!

"I've never done that before. How does it work?"

"Oh, it's very simple. You just find something that no one would ever expect you to wear, and you wear it. Also, we'll all need pairs of dark sunglasses."

"Have you thought about dyeing your hair?" Todd asked Peridot. "No offense, but it's kinda... distinctive."

That wouldn't be offensive if you hadn't said 'no offense', Todd.

"I have no idea what that means, either."

Peridot reached up and ran her fingers through her hair. It... was definitely hair, there. A lot of it.

"Why would anybody want their hair to die?"

Mr. Peanutbutter laughed. "Why indeed." That wasn't rhetorical, Mr. Peanutbutter. "I think we could probably just get a really large hat."

"To the hat store!" Todd declared enthusiastically.

There was no hat store, Todd.

Peridot gathered herself up off the ground and gave Mr. Peanutbutter a cautious, curious look.

"... Does this island even have a 'hat store?'"

She was picturing a storage unit specifically for head coverings. Humans were strange. She didn't doubt that something like that might exist.

"Oh, I'm sure we'll find something." Life just seemed to work out when you were Mr. Peanutbutter.

Todd made a big show of looking in all directions. "If I were a hat store, where would I be?" he sing-songed. "Oh! I know! Where do people need the most hats?"

It wasn't a riddle. He actually had an answer for this one.

"On their... heads?"

Look, that was about the full extent of knowledge that Peridot had about hats, right there.

"You really only need one per head," Mr. Peanutbutter pointed out.

This was the dream team, right here.

"Now, where would you find the most heads? A baseball game, perhaps? A rodeo? Some sort of hat convention perhaps?"

"No! You need the most hats at the place where the sun is at its peak!" Todd exclaimed triumphantly. "The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, right? But no one's ever awake when the sun rises. And hat stores DEFINITELY aren't open. But at sunset? That's when people need hats. And if I know anything about the sun and where it hangs out, that means the hat store should be at the westernmost part of town."

Some of that, but certainly not most, was even correct!

Peridot managed to follow along with precisely none of that, but since she didn't wear hats, the human wearing the hat seemed to be somewhat more qualified than she was in that regard.

"Oh. Well... then... of course we should head West," she said, looking sidelong at him as if maybe that would all make sense if she kept staring. "That's only the sensible thing to do."

Wasn't it?

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The School Grounds, Sunday Afternoon

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