onyx: Tales From The Citidal

8A - a meeting in a different building & 8B - braking in when everybody's gone.

Chapter 8A – a meeting in a different building.

"onyx has been in her room for the past week. I hope she's ok." Pearl explained to aqua. "you said the portal she left through was green and grey?" granite asked "yeah, why do ask." pearl asked. "Because it means that there was something wrong with it. she could have been sent who knows where. We should give her some space." Granite responded. "well, we need to go to this meeting that's in the city." Pearl responded. "I'm staying." Aqua said. "unfortunate you can't. I'm going to leave her with sapphire and Sam, but we need to go." Granite responded as he pulled her away from the room.

When they arrived, all of the core bearers where there, as well as pyrite and the king of atlantica (through a video call off of Adella's communicator). "where are the other three?" pyrite asked. "we had to leave sapphire and Sam with onyx. Something's up with her but we don't have time to deal with that. We all know why where here. After what happened last month, we need to figure out what's going on with theses, fakes, of us." Granite explained. "I prefer to call them bootlegs." Glass said with an almost laugh. "right well, we need to deal with theses bootlegs. We have so far seen three. One of aqua, one of diamond and one of onyx. We only know of onyx's fake because of security cameras and the receptionist. Do we have any ideas of where they came from?" he asked sitting down at the long table.

"coal." Aqua responded quietly looking out of the window. "can you repeat that?" granite asked. "when onyx, pearl and their friends broke us out. We all went through the citadel and tried to find anyone who was working with topaz. Gwen and I found coal going through diamond's old data on his old computer. When I took a looked at what he managed to take, I saw he took the data on all of us original core bearers but when he jumped out of the citadel, it was on the 50th floor so didn't think he would make it. I guess he did and now I'm worried for my daughter's life. When copper and I reviewed the cameras from when diamond's bootleg showed up, he said he was going to kill onyx for what she did to her dad. I don't know what it means, but I'm terrified." She said braking down into tears.

"why didn't you tell us about any of this before." Citrine asked. "I just, needed to find out what was going on for myself." Aqua explained through her tears of fear as he head returned to the table. "so what do we do boss?" copper asked. "I don't know, we don't know what thereafter or why they needed to create a distraction, but we need to find out." Granite responded. " are you talking about coal zirconia?" the king of atlantica asked. "why, do you know him?" pearl asked. "I know of that family and if I ever see another zirconia, after what happened with rose, I will kill them." The room fell silent when glass spoke up "you already did." "what did you say?" the asked to be informed. "onyx is a zirconia." Aqua spoke up. "oh, why did nobody tell me?" the king demanded to know. "why would someone's last name come up in conversation?" pearl asked in response.

"pyrite, you've been quite this entire time, have you got anything to say?" granite asked, changing the subject. "we need to go on a full lockdown, and we need to be careful on who goes out and in the city." He responded after giving it some thought. "isn't that a little extreme?" his girlfriend asked "listen pearl, I know it seems extreme but after talking to onyx, to try and learn from the other dimension's reader mistakes, I heard about a virus that spread like wildfire 5 years ago. The issue was that the cities wouldn't go into a full lock down for a verity of reasons and it got worse and when it looked like it was starting to go down, they reopened schools and it got worse. I don't want to make that same mistake." Pyrite responded. "but that was a virus, this is different." Pearl responded. "I know but it's worth considering, if we can know everybody who is coming and going, we can track them down easer." Pyrite tried to explain. Before anybody could speak their opinion the all, except from the king of atlantica, got an S.O.S.

"we need to go." Granite said as they all ran off towards the tower in the centre of the city. Their they saw, sapphire using her vine whips to whip out: the fake pearl, the fake granite, and the fake ruby. They also saw onyx, in her heightened state, chasing out the fake diamond. "what's going on here?" aqua asked. "these four where trying to break into diamond's old computer so we knocked them out." Sapphire explained as onyx cooled off. "where's Sam?" Citrine asked. "he's helping everybody evacuate, but they got topaz out." Sapphire explained. They all went inside where onyx filled them all in on what happened.