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The Zodiac had been home from the Surrounding for more than a month now, and the date of their first meeting had arrived. Virgo had purposefully set it a good amount of time away, knowing from experience that the furor of the traumatic event which had awakened so many of their new comrades would not be appeased within a few days. There would be no repeat of the Denny's meeting, which went nowhere and accomplished nothing other than cementing Virgo's reputation as a child who enjoyed playing games. The Knights would not have that impression of her, she determined; she would be fair, but she would not let them think of her as a child. She wasn't one. It had dug her a big enough hole already that she had no desire to begin a new one.

So, she had arranged a meeting two days before Thanksgiving, and ensured every member had her number in case of emergencies. By necessity, because Zue could not drown out their auras alone and she trusted no other Guardian, she had informed them all that this event was to take place in their civilian forms. They were to be a team, and there should be no secrets of that kind between them, because they could not afford to lose each other.

It was a small French place, brick facade, wide window in the front. She went there often because the owner was a French national, and more than that a childhood friend of her father's; speaking to him brought about a pang in her heart, because his fierce French pride reminded her of Sebastian. They'd been friends, even before Barren Pines, and he'd died alone because she couldn't save him. November always made her think of them, though, so she had buried those feelings as best she could and asked Monsieur Leclerc if she and her astrology club could use one of the private rooms. Of course they would be customers regardless, because she really did enjoy coming there, but they didn't want to be a nuisance. To her surprise, he'd agreed without an argument; they'd even worked out a catering agreement with her mother's written permission and the credit card she'd been given when she turned sixteen and decided to stay in Destiny City. She had smiled at him, genuinely happy.

Meeting at Aux Bons Copains solved more problems than it created, honestly. It was such a small place she doubted anyone would listen in; she'd checked the room they would be occupying that morning, and made sure the windows were well-shut. The room to the left was Monsieur Leclerc's office. The room to the right was a storeroom which was usually locked, which worked out well. All of this was a good thing, but the best part was that this way she didn't have to test her newest Court member's responsibility, or their willingness to trust her. It had been hard enough to coax some of them to share their civilian identity with her. Asking them to reveal them to her family, too, was pushing it. Besides, that would put Arthur and Van at risk, and that she could not--would not!--allow.

Now that they had all arrived, the blonde trooped inside, unzipping the puffy black coat as she went. These were hung up on the coat-stand near the door, and she surveyed the room and the people milling inside it as she checked her coat pocket for meeting notes. The room they had been given was well-appointed; one long table with food--light food, fluffy pastries--and drinks--mostly coffee, cocoa, hot water for tea--had been shoved up against the green-painted wall. Another long table, which was really several folding tables she'd bought for cheap at Target and covered with a pair of white tablecloths, had chairs set up along it.

The members of Serenade's court milled around, shoes clicking on the hardwood floors, and Elke straightened her shoulders restlessly. Businesslike, she reminded herself. So, she'd not worn a t-shirt or one of her hand-me-down button-downs. Instead she'd tried to look adult, and it showed she wasn't used to it in the way she plucked at the crisp, rounded collar of her white shirt--all that was visible under the green sweater-vest she wore, besides the puffy cap sleeves. The charcoal pleated skirt she just brushed at; skirts were old hat, from ages at Crystal Academy and schools like it. She had foregone a tie, deciding that that would be overdoing it. Professional, not like a try-hard. She took off her gloves and shoved them into the pocket of her coat, giving the rest of them time to settle. The sensible, well-shined shoes clicked as she crossed the room to stand at the end opposite of Serenade. She set her hands down on the "Okay, everyone. We're all here except--" She looked around again, brow furrowing. "Fritz, Mary, and Tara... but it's ten minutes past meeting time, so, let's all settle down and we can get started, okay?"

It was very hard to find her way around when her eyes were eight some odd inches off the ground, she was on four legs, and her paws were in able to type things. Oh, and being unable to ask for directions. That really didn't help anything. Mary ran around town for twenty minutes trying to find the place only realize as she saw an oddly colored trotting towards the place she was looking for. At least she looked... vaguely like a normal cat. If you could ignore the paws and the eye shadow.

She ran on Fritz's heels only to barrel straight into the door as it closed. There was a yowl and a thump of cat body against the door. Which surprisingly, opening it for her. Or someone opened it. Or something like that. She licked her fur into place and slipped inside as the cat spoke.

The cat spoke. She blinked for a moment before looking up at the group. Oh... oh! These were... Ohlookfoodandcattosmelll...

Mary trotted up to Fritz and smelled his tail, nuzzling him for a moment before speaking.

"ah... Ah... Mary is here... Or rather me... the ah, cat down here.... with the purple paws... ah yeah, Tall Lady Who Supplied Food." Mary looked up at Elke, much like Fritz, and nuzzled the tall human's leg, as if that would help.

Ohgodthesmelloffoodwasoverwelming....

She kept darting her eyes to the table and licking her jaws.

Suchgoodsmellllsssss....

Smiling at the others as he listlessly walked around, Noel was feeling rather bold that day and decided to let it be a leather day. Wearing a brown leather jacket, some matching brown leather boots and even a leather bracelet, he had been tempted to add a pair of leather pants to the mix, but decided against it since he didn't want to make the wrong first impression since this would be the first time he had seen more than a few faces in their civilian identities. After he said his hellos, Noel made his way over to the drinks and poured some of the hot water into a plastic up and added one of his favorite black teas to the mix. Stirring in a little sugar and lemon juice, he sat down in one of the many chairs that had been provided near Serenade.

"I'm curious as well. You keeping this one to yourself Zue? hehe"

Keeping an eye on the two late arrivals, he was certainly intrigued by the two new cats. Noel had only met a few of them and they had mostly acted on their own. Honestly, this was the first time he had ever seen two cats together in such a civilian setting. Blowing on his cup of tea, he looked to Elke and then back to Serenade to see what would be the main topic of discussion.

Apparently he wasn't the only to have turned into a cat. There was a soft thumping sound, and a second leapt up beside him, a vaguely familiar voice emanating from her small, pale body.

"Mary?" Fritz repeated, trying to place the name. For some reason, he couldn't quite figure it out in his head. But she was complacent enough, curling against him, and automatically he butted his head against her side in a gentle greeting.

A soft voice was above him, and Fritz turned his eyes towards the pale haired young woman who reached out a hand to him. Somehow he already knew who she was, even before her eyes, worried and concerned, met his own, and Fritz nuzzled his nose against her palm, brushing his head and ears over her fingers.

"Pr - Serenade," he corrected himself, knowing she would know who he was already as well. It felt a little strange addressing his princess by her given name, but it was necessary, under the circumstances. And Fritz was actually rather pleased to be getting to know all of the Zodiac as their civilian forms.

"I'm sorry," he told her apologetically, casting a glance from her, towards the pale skinned young man that he didn't know. "I don't really...know what happened. I spoke to Guardian H ebe, but even she said she wasn't entirely certain of the circumstances behind this, er...sudden change."

"Also I think you're safe from that, if you haven't already changed," Fritz added dryly, eying Ricky.

Elke didn't expect to hear Fritz's voice sound out from the table, and leaned forward with her palms on the table to peer at the cat. Cat? Mon Dieu. She frowned thoughtfully, circled the table to pick Fritz up, and then gave Sue a questioning look as she tucked the cat into the crook of her arm. He shrugged a little, rolling his eyes, and she puffed out her cheeks, consternated. The blonde set Fritz down next to the cat who was apparently Mary.

Please, God. If Tara was a cat too, Elke would just jump off something high right then. "Elke," she said to the purple-pawed cat, "I'm Virgo." Did Mary-the-cat have chapped lips? She followed the cat's gaze to the table and huffed out a sigh. "If you're hungry, please, help yourselves." Ricky looked vaguely disgruntled about something, but this meeting was already spiraling down into Denny's levels of ridiculous, and she could not stand that. It would drive her nuts if she ended up falling into the same trap Hero had, giving up on the Zodiac because getting them to working together was somewhat like trying to herd cats.

Elke looked down to the cats at her feet, and put a hand over her face, pinching the bridge of her nose. It didn't help. Nor did Noel's giggling. Giggling, really, she couldn't even--

Deep breaths. She took them while Fritz spoke to the Princess, running through her options in her head. Maybe she could rearrange the patrolling schedule while everyone who'd turned into cats explained what had happened. Only there wasn't really an explanation, so, she just. What even did you do when half your team turned into cats? Oh, this was definitely going to be worse than Denny's. She should have known someone who wasn't meant to be the Captain trying to fill Hero's shoes couldn't do any better than Hero had done... Well, the cat members of the Zodiac didn't seem to have any comprehension problems, so she'd just pretend to herself that they were in civilian form just like anyone else.

That seemed like the best option.

"No, Ricky, we're not going to turn into cats. And we'll look into why Fritz and Mary have, but we'll address that at the end of the meeting when we go over patrolling schedules. For now, there's a few things to talk about, we can have social hour after, alright?" She rounded the table again to her empty chair at the foot of the table, cast her gaze over the assembled members. The new Cancer was there, Grayson, no Tara, no Gemini twins but she'd hardly expected them, Serenade, no Tara. Flora and Boreas. Then the Knights, all of them assembled on the floor. Nervousness spread over her all at once, a dull red flush crawling towards her cheeks, and she clenched her hands on the back of the chair and smiled, nervously.

Clearing her throat, she said, "Firstly, terminology. When we're like this, no one who knows us in our other forms knows who we are, as you've surely noticed--" What followed was an explanation, as concise as she could make it, of the methods the Zodiac used to keep their activities as civilians out of the Negaverse's purview. It was nothing terribly complex, although she worried she'd have to have a talk with Ricky later to explain things again. The Zodiac operated under the cover of an astrology club; they would have to expand to an astrology and mythology club now, she supposed, to excuse the knights' names used in casual conversation. (She found herself wishing she'd brought a whiteboard as she explained this, but that would have been a little too hard to explain.) Senshi of the Court were to be referred to as Guards or Handmaidens, depending on which group they belonged to. Chronos was the Princess, and the Knights were the Knights. "--So, if you need to meet up with another Zodiac, it's best to text them and ask to meet up about your horoscope or the myth of whatever-your-name is," she finished, adding a mental period to that topic.

Elke, realizing her clutch on the chair had gone past white-knuckled into just plain painful, let go. "I know it's very strange, to operate like we are doing something illegal," she said, her tone betraying the amount of thought she was putting into how she worded this. She didn't want to scare anyone, because there was a little room for error here--hadn't she bumped up against the wrong side of discretion for most of the time before the Zodiac had died for the first time in this life? "The truth is, what we are doing is very illegal, and we don't know where the Negaverse is or who they are once they leave their powered forms. It serves us better to be careful than it does to text freely about meeting up to dust some youma and patrol, because phones can be lost. Just be discreet, and everything will be fine. Ah..."

She smiled a little bit at the assemblage, and asked, "Any questions?"

"We'll figure something out." Serenade told Fritz, stroking him gently as she threw a glance and nod in Mary's way as well. Perhaps the Opal Crystal could help fix this, or she could seek out Castor and Cosmos for help on this matter. She couldn't stand by and watch as a few of her Court was trapped in cat form.

She stayed silent in thought as Elke addressed everyone present about the Zodiac 'astrology club'. The Serenade of before had never thought too much of anything besides music and studies and would have never bothered about anything else. Still, quiet as she was, her classmates hardly cared about her other activities, never questioning a move that seemed out of character.

---

Illegal. The very word put a grim line on Eve's face, remembering her brief run ins with police officers while powered up. It seemed too harsh a word, really, seeing as what they were doing was to fight for justice. But in the eyes of everyone else who didn't understand their motives, it certainly was deemed illegal.

"Just a warning." She spoke out, the advice regarding lost phones sparking a memory. "About phones. I once encountered a lieutenant that stole a senshi phone from the one he'd killed and used the distress signal to lure others in." It was a grim experience to share with the Knights who were still fairly new to this whole new experience of their lives, but it was crucial for survival. "So just... be careful." She finished, but yet another thought had hit her.

"Wait, Knights don't have senshi phones, do they?"

Eliza's voice caught his attention, one ear flicking towards the other.

"Hello, Princess Eliza," he said, as Elke - Virgo, apparently, though somehow Fritz had already suspected, simply from her mannerisms - set him down on the table beside Mary. Peering up at the blonde, Fritz managed to give her a small, cat-like smile (well, as much as he could).

"I don't know if you'll recognize me, loves," he said, both to Eliza and to Menthe, who he had talked to before he had been summoned to Chronos' Court. "But while I'm Fritz, I'm also Celsus."

He sat back on his haunches and peered dolefully up at the rest of them, twisting his head around to catch sight of Menthe, who was standing off to the side looking petrified at the very thought of their...er, extenuating circumstances.

A hand smoothed across his fur, and Friz ducked his head to nuzzle against Serenade's side affectionately.

"Hopefully," he replied to her quietly, though a sigh of consternation escaped his throat.

Elke's talk made him grow quiet, Fritz listening carefully as his tail flicked back and forth, curling around his legs. He didn't like to use the term illegal - it was such an ugly term, after all, but there was nothing else that could really describe it well. He gave Eve a nod of his head.

"No, knights do not," he answered. "Mary's right, we just have rings, though we're still learning how to use them."