The night air sat still and silent outside her window in sharp contrast to the turmoil going on inside Christa’s mind. After her meeting with Birhan, she had given herself a great deal of time to think. Whether it was accidental or on purpose, several senshi seemed not to realize how utterly ignorant the latest generation was. Senshi were awakening by the day that had no knowledge of major past events. They had no recollection of Chibimoon or the moon princess (in fact, the moon princess wasn’t really touched upon during Kallichore’s own awakening, but she chalked that up to a member of the Blood Moon being present). They did not participate in grand battles waged over Christmastime, or in a realm made entirely of dreams. Birhan had mentioned something else Kallichore had no knowledge of – a golden crystal of earth and its guardian, Prince Endymion. Apparently he was a monarch of the earth (of sorts) who had no allegiance or sympathy for the senshi. While Christa had never met the man, she wondered why, if he was the future father of Chibimoon, he would have no real clear-cut allegiance with his lover’s faction.

Christa tossed and turned in her bed, rolling over to face the window whose curtains she left open. She wanted to stare at the moon as it hung brightly in the sky. Her physical wounds had healed but new and fresh mental and emotional damage had been wrought. She hated to think this way, but part of her wanted to hate the older generation of senshi for lying simply by omission. Christa knew full well that they could never know who was new and who wasn’t simply because it would take too much time away from what they needed to be doing. Older senshi may not have even known one another or how long each had been awakened. It simply wasn’t possible, but no matter how much Christa told herself that, she still felt hatred in her heart. It wasn’t fair, she told herself, to hate the others just because she wasn’t aware of these past events. But logic didn’t quell the fire in her gut. There had to be a way to rectify all of this, to make sure other senshi were not caught in her position.

The gray haired teen was the kind of person who acted not on impulse, but on information. She wanted to know everything she possibly could in order to weigh the options and come up with the right decision. Having huge gaping holes in her mental database made her reconsider several decisions she’d made: joining the Blood Moon being chief among them. If she had known that the moon princess’ daughter was alive and was indeed real, would she still have taken the initiation test? Would she still have pledged her loyalty to Ares and her Court? Ares had saved her life and while Kallichore did her best to imitate the parallel eternal, the redhead was sadly very absent in Kallichore’s life. Christa knew there were far more important things for Ares to be doing than to instruct any one senshi personally. It would be unfair to expect her to do such a thing, especially after what had happened to Ares’ own family and faction. The Senshi of Smoke had lost her own kind and was forced to work with the ‘weak and spineless’ White Moon senshi, of which Kallichore was apparently one. Birhan had explained that Ares disliked the pacifistic and the weak-willed, but still. She could tell, based on Ares’ demeanor that she was not in a position she particularly cared for. She was a well-oiled machine forced to use inferior parts and labor to complete her mission. Kallichore was almost ashamed to be from the White Moon based on Ares’ perceived opinion of them.

That was one of the major driving forces behind Kallichore’s dedication to training – she wanted to prove to Ares and the rest of the Court that White Moon senshi could be just as strong, fast and fearless as anyone from a parallel universe. She trained as often as she could and received a power up in the process, hoping that her new powers and abilities would aid the Court and benefit the entire senshi faction as a whole. Would she have reconsidered joining the Blood Moon had she known Ares’ dislike of her kind beforehand? Christa wasn’t sure. All she really knew was that she acted based on the information she had access to. She didn’t know about Chibimoon or how long she’d been around; didn’t know about Endymion and the golden crystal. She didn’t participate in Operation Rota and wasn’t there to dream about the war being waged in Elysion.

The teen rolled over again to face her bedroom door, her arm lying beneath her cheek, outstretched towards nothing in particular. If she slept and perhaps dreamed, there would be no battle there waiting for her. What was done was done, and there was no turning back the clock. She sighed, eyes drooping ever so slightly. Christa couldn’t blame herself for making the wrong (was it wrong?) decision. She used what information she had. It would be unfair to blame Birhan or Ares or Albali for her own ignorance. It wasn’t necessarily up to them to train and educate the latest set of awakened senshi. There wasn’t anything in the Blood Moon doctrine that spoke of explaining the events thus far. It was all about training hard, fighting hard and doing whatever it took to ensure victory. Evidently, Operation Rota was not one of those victories. The Court was splitting, fractured, and was hardly at the strength Christa imagined it used to be. Perhaps it already had its golden years and was aging beyond usefulness and perhaps they no longer had the confidence or the numbers to wage another full-scale attack like they had before.

She reminded herself that, during the last meeting, she volunteered not only what information she had on Zinkenite, but her services as well. This would be her first Blood Moon operation since joining long ago. She joined when still a regular senshi, still baseline in terms of power, with hopes and aspirations of being a great asset to the Court and being able to assist Ares in her mission. Now she wasn’t so sure Ares was the person she needed to follow. Birhan had spoken of the parallel senshi nearly choking the prince of earth to death because she had lost her own. That sort of impulsive rage was a strike against Ares in Christa’s book. Perhaps she idolized the eternal senshi too much and gave her too many positive traits she did not actually possess. Whatever the case was, Ares being on leave was becoming more suspicious by the day. Christa thought it may not be leave at all, but that something had happened in the upper divisions of the Court that caused Ares to disappear for a while. Birhan didn’t seem the coup type, so Christa doubted this was the case.

Either way, Kallichore would be there and do her best with her first mission since she had promised to be there. She wouldn’t break that kind of oath, fallen idol or otherwise. The best thing to do now was to sleep and rest, for there was a grim change coming on the horizon.

(Word count: 1,216)