Peri Berry

“Steven, good! I was beginning to worry that you would never show up!”

“Come on, Peridot! I left as soon as I got your message! You really think I would just leave you hanging like that?”

“No, but you’re still late! Two minutes and thirty three seconds, to be precise! You need to work on your punctuality, Steven Quartz! Because I will not tolerate tardiness, nor any excuses for tardiness! Is that clear?”

“Okay, okay! I’ve got it! So what did you want to show me, anyway?”

As riled up as she was, Peridot managed to calm down once it became apparent that Steven bore her no ill will. The short, lime-green Gem led Steven to the barn with a spring in her step, her impressive triangular hairdo bouncing rhythmically. Throwing open the doors, she bowed towards the chubby, curly-haired boy and belted out a melodic “Ta-dah!”

“Behold: the literal fruits of my labor! Gaze upon my works, Steven Quartz, and praise me~”

Normally, Steven would have chuckled at his friend’s ego tripping antics. While he couldn’t say that he was a fan of outright arrogance, there was something about Peridot’s egomania in particular that he found endearing. Cute, even! Perhaps it was her tiny size juxtaposed with her mountainous ego that made her as “great and loveable” as she boasted. But Steven found himself too impressed to so much as slightly giggle. The interior of his cousin Andy’s barn was converted into a veritable farmer’s market of unique and exotic crops.

Hopping around in a dedicated pen were what appeared to be living rabbit-shaped carrots that came in five different colors: white, yellow, orange, red, and “Aggie Maroon” as labeled by a helpful poster. There were peaches that appeared to have mini-fruits budding off of them like delicious nectary growths, as well as cobalt blue apples, pink grapes, and silver oranges. Living doglike pumpkins of various sides ate bowls of fertilizer “kibble” in their own pen, stalks of corn spontaneously popped all their kernels off before immediately growing more, and a bowl of living tomatoes showed off their deranged visages at Steven before going docile. His eyes were starry as he stared at the produce in slack-jawed awe. And little Peridot strolled up to him and wrapped her arm around his shoulder as smug as can be.

“Well? What do you think?”

“I think this is AWESOME!” Steven cheered, “Gosh, just look at all this!” He walked up to the basket of cobalt apples and grabbed one. “I’ve never seen an apple colored like this! C-Can I…?”

“Indeed! Glut yourself as much as you please!”

Steven bit into the apple, and the second his teeth pierced its cobalt skin, a stream of tasty juice flooded his mouth. Gasping in surprise, Steven bit further into the fruit and let out a muffled exclamation of “Mmm mmm MMM!” as the crisp, sweet flesh took him to heaven.

“Oh, Peri!” Steven moaned after swallowing a chunk of apple, “This is the BEST! The flavor is awesome, the fruit’s the right mix of crunchy and chewy, and the juice! Geez, there’s so much of it! It’s like I’m biting into a super delicious juice box…”

“Those apples, as well as everything else in this barn, are the results of months’ worth of careful cultivation!” Peridot boasted, puffing out her chest, “I spent hours upon hours laboring over them, caring for them as if they were my own children! And like any human mother, I’m…” Steven giggled as an emotional Peridot sniffled and fought back tears, “I’m so proud of them! By the stars, they grew up beautifully…”

Unable to stop the tears from flowing entirely, Peridot wiped her eyes before composing herself.

“Anyway, I’d wager you’re curious about just how these splendorous crops came into being! So please, ask away!”

Gosh, she was so smug! Her poofy hair and neon-colored skin complimented her massive ego in a way that felt peacockish, for lack of a better word. It was the only comparison Steven could make, because it reminded him of the proud and preening birds he had seen so many times at the Empire City Zoo. Though peacocks were a vibrant blue, as opposed to neon green…

“Too stunned for words, hmm?” Peridot asked with the smuggest grin on her face, “Worry not, I can tell that you are figuratively dying to know! Well, you have Rose Quartz to thank for them!”

Steven did a double-take upon hearing that familiar name. “M-Mom?!”

“Your mother, yes! Or rather her tears, to be precise.” Peridot grabbed a vial of clear liquid, one of dozens sitting in a medical cabinet, and showed it to Steven. “That fountain of Rose’s tears you showed me has been a godsend for my research! Given the similarities to your saliva in terms of its healing properties and adverse effects on plant life, I merely expected it to bestow sentience to my produce! So just try to imagine my shock when it caused a vast array of anomalous effects!”

Peridot’s little gremlin hands began to frantically grasp any fruit or vegetable their owner got within reach of, and she showed them off to the boy in a mad frenzy. “Creamy bananas colored like amethysts! Self-popping, self-replenishing corn on the cob! Potatoes with naturally buttery interiors! But if you wish to know my personal favorites…” with a nasally cackle, Peridot reached for a basketball-sized fruit that Steven only now realized was a massive blueberry. “The berries! They’re gigantic now!”

With another nasally “Nyeheheheh!”, Peridot rubbed and groped the surprisingly squishy berry while Steven looked on, a bit torn on how to feel about it. On one hand, it looked delicious. Not to mention filling. Just one of those could serve as a satisfying breakfast by itself. Yet on the other…

“Doesn’t this kinda defeat the purpose of berries in the first place?”

Peridot didn’t like the sound of that. The diminutive scientist gasped in horror and recoiled as if she had been stabbed. “What in the world are you talking about?!” she hollered while gesturing wildly into the air, “Berries are fruit! Fruit is tasty! Fruit is nutritious! Ergo, more fruit is tastier and more nutritious than less fruit! Forget science, this is basic arithmetic, Steven!”

“You’re technically right, but what makes berries so good is that you can scoop up a bunch and pop them all into your mouth! It’s like eating healthy candy!”

Unfortunately, Peridot just didn’t get it. The green gremlin shook her head dismissively at Steven’s claims and exhaled sharply through her nose. “I love you, Steven. I truly do! But your ignorance at times is startling. Do you seriously intend to tell me that this, ” she dug her fingers into the basketball-sized berry and tore out a juicy hunk of blue flesh, “Is somehow less satisfying than eating several diminutive berries?”

“Well I guess it’s up to personal preference-”

“BAH! Who CARES about your personal preference?!” Peridot snarled before turning her gaze towards the juicy hunk of berry in her hand, “You are factually wrong and I WILL PROVE IT! NYEGH!”

With the frenzied zeal of a starving animal, Peridot shoveled the hunk of berry into her mouth and devoured it, chewing and smacking obnoxiously loud.

“Oh itsh sho GOOD,” Peridot moaned through a mouthful of fruit, “The flavor, the texchur, the sheer shatishfackshun of ripping into thish shtuff!” She swallowed, and continued to taunt Steven with words that were no longer slurred. “I’m sorry Steven, but I just can’t see how eating several small berries at once would be more satisfying than this!”

Steven shrugged. It was all he could do at this point. “Well it’s cool if you like eating giant berries more than normal sized ones! We’re all entitled to our own opinions, you know?”

Peridot snorted dismissively. “I suppose we are! Even when those opinions are wrong.”

Steven rolled his eyes while Peridot continued eating the giant berry, smacking and gigging all the while. As much as he loved his “angry little slice of pie”, even he had his limits when it came to her ego. He’d never go so far as to outright attack her like Pearl once did, but he did find himself wishing he could reign in her bloated, swollen ego every now and then…

‘Huh,’ Steven thought to himself as he continued watching Peridot glut herself, ‘Bloated and swollen…?’

A weirdly appropriate choice of words, because unless Steven was seeing things, that was exactly what was happening to Peridot’s body. The green Gem’s belly was bloating up, with her jumpsuit giving the impression of someone slowly filling a water balloon. Steven was ready to dismiss it as a consequence of a tiny Gem like her eating such a massive fruit, but the fruit to belly ratio didn’t add up. In seconds Peridot no longer looked merely stuffed, but outright pregnant. Her stomach began to audibly gurgle and churn as if it was rapidly filling up with some kind of liquid.

“Uh, Peri?”

Peridot held up a hand in order to silence him while she continued eating. Somehow, she was completely oblivious to the swelling and gurglings of her beach ball of a gut.

“Peri?!”

Peridot’s “Hush!” gesture was accompanied by a muffled grunt of irritation. And the arm she gestured with was also swelling up, Steven realized to his horror. Both of her arms were, as were the rest of her body. Her thighs were thickening, her face was rounding out, her flat chest was starting to develop breasts…

“PERIDOT!” Steven hollered with obvious fear in his voice. Realizing that he wouldn’t stop bothering her, Peridot rolled her eyes and groaned before swallowing her latest mouthful of blueberry.

“What do you want, Steven Quartz?!”

“You’ve gotta stop eating, you’re swelling up!”

Peridot snorted dismissively and set her half-eaten giant berry on a stand before obliviously resting her hands on her widening hips. “Swelling up, am I?” she sneered condescendingly over the loud gurglings of her belly, “Come now, Steven! You can least admit that you were wrong about small berries being superior to large- OH MY STARS!”

All it took was a brief glance downward for Peridot to be met with the sight of her ballooning belly eclipsing her view of her feet. She frantically grasped at her gut and fruitlessly tried to squeeze it back to normal. But she was met with resistance from her taut, rubbery skin, as well as the continued swelling of both her arms and belly.

“Steven, wha- what’s HAPPENING to me?!”

“It was that special berry!” Steven said, his tone barely audible over the sloshing of Peridot’s rapidly expanding body, “You didn’t start getting all bloated until you began eating it! And… and…”

“And what?!”

“You’re also turning blue!”

Turns out that instantaneous bloating wasn’t the only side effect: true to Steven’s word, Peridot’s nose was shifting from green to a vivid blue, the exact same shade as the berry she was eating. The abnormal color spread across her face, a lot lighter in hue but slowly turning that same shade of cerulean blue. And the same was happening to the rest of her body, which Peridot discovered upon clasping her hands to her face and realizing that they were shifting from mint to periwinkle before her eyes.

“NYAGH! My beautiful green hue! Wha- How on EARF-?!”

Peridot’s swelling had gotten so bad that it spread to her cheeks, which had grown puffy to the point that they caused the ballooning Gem to slur her words. She seemed to realize it, because she almost appeared to be blushing indigo.

“Oh thish ish bad! No, forget bad: thish ish TERRIBLE!” Peridot moaned as she began to wobble around in place. Terrible was right: she was so grotesquely bloated and heavy that she was struggling to keep her balance. She swung her swollen arms around the best she could, letting out muffled cries of woe as she began to clumsily stagger around. Each step caused her massive gut to slosh and gurgle loudly, causing Steven to wonder if that was juice he could hear brewing inside his friend. The way her green and black jumpsuit had stained blue and dark indigo definitely supported his hypothesis. And when Peridot finally crashed to the ground with a massive *GA-LUNK!* , crushing one of the fruit stands under her heavily-thickened ass in the process, the light blue bubbles she burped up all but confirmed it.

“Sh-Shteven…” Peridot whined, now completely dark blue in the face, “I-I can’t shtop growing. Pweashe… Hewp…”

What in the world was he even supposed to do?! It wasn’t like Steven had to deal with people ballooning up into massive living blueberries on a regular basis. The best he could do was spit into his palms, rub them together, and hope that his healing powers could somehow reverse berrification. But when he walked up to Peridot, who was now roughly the size of a large boulder, he got cold feet and let his hands fall slack to his side. It was irresponsible usage of his mom’s weird powers that had gotten them into this mess. And for all he knew, they would just make things worse.

Peridot continued to beg for help, but her cheeks were so puffy that all she could manage was weak mumbling that was nearly drowned out by the gurglings of the juice sloshing around inside her. By now she truly looked like a living berry due to being so incredibly round, her body forming a perfect sphere aside from her massive breasts and buttcheeks jutting off of it. Peridot’s arms and legs had been completely swallowed up by her body, leaving her comparatively tiny hands and feet visible as they flapped and kicked around uselessly. Her head was also visible, and the poor Gem’s eyes were wide with panic while she observed her swollen body, which was still growing . She was big as a bouncy castle and was starting to crush even more stands, stalls, and produce under her weight. The living fruits and vegetables fled for their lives, and Steven was contemplating doing the same. Because Peridot’s growth showed no signs of stopping, and Andy’s barn was starting to feel a tad cramped…

No, not just a tad. Very cramped.

“Whoa, gosh-!”

Steven dove out of the barn, which proved to be the right call. Mere seconds after his hasty escape, the doorway was clogged up with juicy Periflesh. It slowly bulged further outwards, causing the wood to creak and groan is it began to splinter and warp… then suddenly, with a massive *BANG!*, the barn was completely demolished. The walls collapsed, breaking off into thousands of scattered pieces in the process while the roof slid off of Peridot’s head and body before falling off to the side.

Unable to speak, Peridot settled for a long, pained groan but otherwise seemed fine… or at least, as fine as a living berry the size of a house could be. And as far as Steven could tell, she had finally stopped growing. He breathed a sigh of relief, but couldn’t rest on his laurels since Peridot was towering above him, giving him the stinkeye while her body slightly wobbled and sloshed around in place.

“Hey Peri! Are uh… are you okay?”

That was a stupid question. Peridot’s eyes narrowed and her cheeks almost seemed to get puffier, as if she were nonverbally asking if she looked okay to him.

“Sorry, sorry! I know you’re upset! I just wanted some confirmation, you know?”

Peridot’s upper body heaved, gurgling in time with her movements. Was it a shrug? Steven assumed it was since she let out a dismissive sigh of resignation shortly afterwards.

“Well obviously, we can’t just let you sit around all… well, all big and bloated like this.” Steven cringed at the sight of Peridot’s blue face flushing darker. ‘Yeah, should’ve chosen my words more carefully.’

“Look, I don’t know how we’ll change you back to normal, but we’ll find a way! Just let me get back home to the Gems so we can come up with a battle plan, and-”

A loud noise derailed Steven’s train of thought, one he mistook for a particularly monstrous rumble from Peridot’s juice-filled stomach before he realized that it was mechanical in nature. And not to mention, coming from the sky. A familiar-looking biplane made its descent, landing right next to Steven before an equally familiar middle-aged man practically staggered out of it: his cousin Andy.

“Uh oh.”

Steven cringed and Peridot blushed while Andy’s wide, frantic eyes shifted from the massive Gem to the wreckage around her. His breaths were harsh and labored as if he had been stabbed, and what little color he had in his face left before roaring back with a vengeance. Now it was a blotchy tomato red, and he slapped his hands to his balding head with enough force to leave a mark before bellowing at the boy and his bloated alien friend.

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY FRIGGIN’ BARN?!”