Steven stares in concentration at the chessboard. Every so often, it looks like the pieces on the board moved when he isn't looking, though Steven is pretty sure he had been staring at the board the whole time. Time is also moving a little funny, in that he no longer knew if just a second had passed since his turn came, or ten minutes. Growing frustrated, Steven finally makes his move.

"My Cookie Cat Rookie defeats your Pink Lion Pawn, meaning it's out for the count," Steven says with satisfaction, deepening his voice for the last bit, like an emcee. He is certain that he is going to win now and take the ice-cream cone.

His opponent simply moves his Lion Licker next to Steven's Shield Piece, overtaking his Cookie Cat Rookie, and says "Citchen Calamity."

Staring in disbelief at the board, Steven reluctantly handed his opponent the ice-cream cone, which is promptly put on their head.

"Dogcopter, how do you always win?"

Dogcoptor simply stares at Steven for a moment, (or a minute. Or an hour, time is being weird again), and says, in Garnet's voice, "Steven, it's time to wake up now."

Steven lifts his head and regards the red gem with groggy eyes. She gives him a gentle smile, "Good morning Cutie Pie." He smiles sleepily and says, with a hint of a yawn in his voice, "Good morning Garnet."

With a smile still on her lips, she turns and goes down into the main house/kitchen area, leaving him to get ready in his loft. From the kitchen area he can smell the conflicting aromas of scrambled eggs and motor oil. Sighing with the satisfaction of a good night's sleep, he listens to the sounds of an average Crystal Gems' morning (when the gems don't have missions early in the morning or something very magically important to do), which includes the sounds of Pearl and Amethyst arguing over the nutritional value of adding motor oil to scrambled eggs, or something similar on other mornings, with a single word from Garnet stopping their argument (in the favor of no motor oil on scrambled eggs, at least for Steven), before gathering up his getting-ready-for-the-morning items and heading off to the bathroom.

Entering the bathroom he finds Peridot huddled in the bathtub, tinkering with her foot. Once given access to 'archaic earth tools', as she calls them, to help with the cluster-finder-drill, she went 'nuts', as Amethyst likes to call it. She simply can't be parted with the tools, despite her constant complaining about how inferior they were. She fixed the microwave and television that she had broken in an earlier attempt to get parts, though with her tools she usually did as much harm as good.

She kept insisting on making 'upgrades' to the household when visiting from the barn, despite Pearl's constant attempts to stop her. Peridot turned the coach into a hover couch that floated around, but which often broke down onto the person unfortunate enough to be underneath it at the time. She added lasers to the door to increase 'their abysmal lack of defenses', though Onion still broke in through the screen window on occasion to get to their Chaaps!, much to her annoyance. And she changed the oven into a thermonuclear reaction chamber that Steven hadn't been allowed near because it emitted radiation, though Amethyst had liked how it cooked things faster, and had cooked a shoe, a pillow, a balloon, and a turkey in it, just for fun. Fortunately Garnet and Pearl had managed to convince her to return the upgraded household items to their original states, much to Steven's relief and Amethyst's mild petulance at her fun being cut short.

The gems had all learned to just avoid her and try to keep her away from anything else she might 'upgrade'. Due to pleading from Steven, so far she hadn't done anything to the bathroom where she voluntarily confined herself to… yet. He shudders at any 'upgrades' Peridot would make to the toilet if she was able.

Snapped out of his musings by a thud and a yelp from Peridot, Steven looks up to see that she had fallen into the bath tub and tangled with the shower curtains… again. Rushing forward, he tries to grasp Peridot's hand to pull her out, but her flailing arms make that all but impossible.

"Peridot, you need to calm down or else I can't pull you out. Stop flailing!"

Calming down enough for him to grab her, Steven helps Peridot out of the tub. And onto the tiled floor.

"What happened Peridot?"

Looking up, Steven saw that Garnet had entered the bathroom without him and, apparently, Peridot from noticing. Peridot glares at the ground, refusing to make eye contact with the de facto leader of the Crystal Gems out of embarrassment and because of her wounded dignity. Peridot nods towards the base of the toilet, to where her robot foot had skidded when she had fallen into the tub.

Garnet nods her head in understanding. Picking up the foot, she hands it back to Peridot, and then heads back into the main kitchen area. Finishing up in his daily bathroom duties as Peridot sulks in the corner over her foot, turning away when needed, Steven leaves Peridot alone. Despite all that Peridot has shared with the Crystal Gems, Steven understood that sometimes Peridot still needed to be left alone.

Author: Hello everybody, this is my first story published anywhere, and it was originally created for myself only. I have decided to submit this and see how it does. It is supposed to take place after the Cluster has been contained, and Peridot is officially living at the Barn. I started it after the show Steven Universe first introduced us to the Cluster, but decided to update it to more recently in the show timeline. Please leave comments on what you think and thank you for your time!