A/N: Sorry this chapter is so short. I just wanted to make sure I got it out there as quickly as I could. Anyway, I'm still working on chapter 5 of Ready to Roll and I'm not even halfway finished with it. The least I can do is try to balance working on this and the latter concurrently while focusing on college stuff. See ya!
All the Gems in the throne room, including the queens and the pontifex, started coming up with motives for the attack and the royal twins' abduction. Every single one of the motives that had been shared ranged from greed to spurned love and finally trying to trick the Chalcopyrite Queendom into declaring war with another nation. They even tried to come up with suspects; as with the motives, every single one that was suggested was unique. As the discussion progressed, the arguments became more and more heated.
"None of these suspects make sense!" Aventurine was arguing with Lorenzenite, another ancilla.
"Well, how could you possibly know that, Seer of All?" Lorenzenite asked smugly with a mocking undertone.
"First of all, I met a Realgar once; she may not have been the smartest Gem I ever came across but she was-"
"Oh, so you meant to say Realgars can't be smart enough to pull off a heist like this? I'd also like to remind you, in case you've forgotten, that one of our Queens was once married to a Zoisite and he nearly killed her and the entire human race!"
While all this quarreling was going on, Pearl was kneeling on the floor and crying her eyes out. She felt like she had failed her children both and that only made the tears scroll down her face even more. Garnet, who was growing rather tired of all this bickering, came over and sat down next to her in the hopes of consoling her. Out of the blue, she saw a vision of their children slowly being tortured in front of about a hundred Gems or more before then having their heads chopped off and their gems obliterated; worse still, it appeared the ones responsible for their slow and brutal deaths were actually the very same revolutionaries who'd previously tried to kill them in the womb. It scared her out of her wits.
She jerked her head towards her wife in order to give her her whole gaze. "Pearl, our children are in danger!" she yelled. "We need to find them!"
"Do you even know where they are?" the white Gem Queen asked, her voice growing slightly higher-pitched with worry.
That was when Garnet grabbed her wife's face and kissed her on the lips. Right after, Pearl saw the vision of the revolutionaries hurting their children and she reeled back in horror.
"B-But how?" she asked again. "How would they know to strike here?"
"We'll have to find that out ourselves," Garnet replied. "Right now, we need to look for our children."
"Where would we even start?"
"With a bounty hunter..."
"I wish you the best of luck, Your Majesties," Larvikite said. "I just hope you and the children come back in one piece."
"So do I," Pearl sighed. "The last thing I want- well, what any of us want, really -is to see an infant's gem shattered into smithereens."
The white Gem Queen and her wife proceeded to gather everything they needed for their search, including additional weapons and handbooks on how to deal with native communities, and started to go on their way. Out of the blue, Larimar showed up and blocked their path.
"Larimar?" Pearl cried out of startlation. "What are you doing here?"
"I'd heard that someone kidnapped the twins during the baptism," her Caribbean blue sister replied. "So I decided to come and ask if I could help."
"Larimar, I appreciate the gesture but given how dependent you are on other Gems, I'm concerned you might not hold your own against their abductors. I'm sorry, dear sister, but you'll have to be with us in spirit."
"I'm not that reliant, am I?"
"Only the Gods know; still, better to be safe than sorry."
Pearl hugged her sister tightly and then sent her on her way. Immediately after, Garnet came up behind her and scooped her up into her arms.
"Pearl," the hot pink Gem Queen began. "I know you don't seem optimistic about this search, but we shan't give up. We'll look in every last corner of this dimension if we have to. We have to find them, okay?"
"Okay..." Pearl reluctantly agreed.