Another Name (SU fanfic)

1. THE ABANDONED PERIDOT

When the gems took all there was to take from the colony everyone got new assignments, everyone except Peridot 5yU.

The day her supervisor left with the last group she told her to wait, and the green gem obeyed, until she considered there had to be a mistake and tried to warp back to Homeworld to ask for a new job. In vain, the galaxy warp pad was broken beyond repair. There she realized Homeworld wouldn't need gems like her anymore. She knew she had some notes in her expedient for letting defective gems escape or helping them reform in acceptable parameters, but she never thought it would be that bad. She was left behind.

During the next months Peridot made herself a base in an old kindergarten, explored the surroundings, and began some scientific projects.
She assumed she was alone until she found most of her things went missing after an exploring walk. She looked for others after that. The first ones she found told her there were around two hundred gems left at the colony. Further research showed all of them were escaped defects or had disappointed their superiors at some point.
In that unwanted situation the strongest made an alliance, the others, mostly off colors, made smaller groups, and they were all fighting for resources and tools. Peridot didn't want to be a part of that. She refused to compromise with any group, she'd only fight to recover her things.

Her incursion to the alliance headquarters went better than expected. The green gem discovered she was good at fighting, resilient to hits and fast poofing gems with metal.
Once she got the materials back she made defenses for her kindergarten base and a tour to declare herself neutral and offer the kindergarten's tech to any legitimate use. Still, every now and then she had to repel attacks or say no to gems clans who wanted her as a warrior.

Some years later, one morning she heard sounds outside, she found it weird because they weren't preceded by the warp pad activation, so she looked through a tiny hole on her room's hidden door and saw humanoid organics with weird legs and a short tail who were looking for something and making incomprehensible sounds.
She moved a piece of metal outside to see what happened. A couple of them shot at the location with some kind of laser pistols. She froze, in the time she needed to decide what to do one of them stopped near her hiding spot and she saw a logo on its back, an horizontal burning rhombus. When the being went away, she slowly moved backwards to hide better.
After some hours of silence the green gem went out. The intruders didn't stole anything, they only left an organization mess and the shot marks.
The next month was quiet, and the month after too, so she looked for the others. She found signs of fights involving laser shots and a remnant with part of the logo, but no gem was left, no shards either.

And there she is, a thousand years later, a lonely Peridot on a withered planet full of rocks with holes.
During her maintenance routine she unexpectedly detects a gem ship probably heading back to Homeworld. She calls it, and though the call is received, there's no answer.
She has no time, her half fixed escape pod will miss the ship soon. So she gathers her most appreciated possessions and takes flight towards the ship not knowing what or who she'd find there.

Couple the pod to the ship is easier than expected. Then the green gem sees there are faint footprints on the ship's hull, they look like the ones the organics left a thousand years earlier at the colony, but bigger. She loses the hope of finding any crew inside the ship.
Peridot boards it and sees it's set for scientific research, some of the control's base panels have been moved, there are also signs of some kind of small explosion that damaged the sample contention section. Someone put the broken stuff away, but it was never fixed properly.

As expected, there is no gem in sight, so she checks whether the ship started its automatic return protocol. It did. It means it received no input from the crew in a year and the course and speed controls are locked. She's fine with it, whatever fate waits for her back home will be better than staying alone at the colony.
When she goes to the control panel to check the diary entries she hears a soft sound coming from its base. It startles her, so she makes three of her pointed metal sticks fly to her from the pod and point to the sound source, and then moves a loose panel aside. There's a little scared teal gem inside, an apatite.