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For the past few months, Cybele had done her hunting in two small parks near her house where there were sometimes youma but rarely anything else, but that was before the events at the fairgrounds had happened. People, senshi and knights, had been captured, tortured, killed, and maybe worse, and she hadn't even know about it until the very last second. Her reason... her excuse, really, for staying so far away from the real part of the war was that she was trying to figure things out. It was true that she was confused about a lot of things, like killing, and her Court, and especially the future that she'd seen, but today she decided that being confused didn't mean she was going to be useless. She walked past both parks and headed towards the main part of the city.

Really, she was looking for Order more than Chaos. She wanted information. She wanted advice. When she felt a nearby Dark Mirror aura, however, she paused but didn't turn away. She wasn't sure how she felt about the Dark Mirror Court anymore, but she wasn't scared of them. Maybe a conversation with one of them would give her some of the answers she was so desperate for. With that in mind, she started walking towards the aura.

When searching, Cybele was used to sort of listening for footsteps in the distance, or the rustle of leaves, or some other small noise to hint at the exact location of the person who she thought was nearby. This time, she got a clear, sort of condescending voice, offering either a threat or a challenge. If it was a threat, she wasn't really scared, and if it was a challenge, she up for it.

"Play? ...All right," she called back, then shifted into full huntress mode, crouching a bit and stepping into the shadows, headed in the direction of the voice. She stayed in the darker, more hidden places until she peeked out from behind a tree and caught a glimpse of black and green fabric. "There you are," she said, smiling a little smugly. "That means I win, right?"

With that, she stepped out into the moonlight, trying to shift her expression to something more friendly. "I'm not really in the mood for hide and seek, though... or fighting you, if that's what you mean."

Cybele watched the other girl start to circle her for just long enough to become unnerved before pointedly shifting her attention to adjusting the pleats of her skirt. She also took a few casual steps to make sure that the tree was directly behind her, so it could her offer some protection should it be needed.

"My name is Cybele. I'm the Senshi of the Hunt," she said, looking up for just long enough to curtsy, smiling tensely. "I don't really patrol as much as hunt whatever auras I can find, but yes, I end up here sometimes." The pleasantries came out sort of tensely as well, which was strange. She wasn't that nervous. Maybe it was just that she had actual, important things that she wanted to talk about.

"You want me to join the Dark Mirror Court, don't you? A long time ago, I actually promised to do that." Her skirt was now so perfectly pleated that she couldn't really make the excuse of adjusting it anymore, so she looked up and met Machholz's golden gaze.

"You weren't?" asked Cybele, frowning slightly. She wasn't quite sure what to make of this encounter, with its strange hunting games and its lack of praise aimed at the Dark Mirror Royals. "I don't mind talking about it. I made the promise because I was very new and your Prince can be very persuasive, but obviously," she waved a hand in the direction of her very White Moon outfit, "I didn't follow through."

"I... don't think I want to join you, now. I did," she admitted. "I did for a long time, even after I found our Remarque was lying about some things..." slowly, she shook her head. "Never mind. It's a long story. The short version is that I found out that Order was doing the right thing, but everyone from your Court seemed so happy, and seemed to actually care about me in a way that my own allies didn't, and... "

A half smile formed on Cybele's lips. "It was tempting."


The smile quickly faded. "Then, a few months ago, I had these visions, memories, maybe, of a future where I was part of the Dark Mirror Court. They were sort of the opposite of tempting, though. Basically, everything went wrong and then I died."

She'd heard it all before, of course, almost word for word. All the Dark Mirror Senshi had to say about their court was how much of a family it was, how nice it was, how it wasn't quite perfect, but it was close. The words held a familiar temptation, but that temptation was nowhere near as strong as it had once been, even once Machholz's kind embrace snapped her out of her brooding about the future. She had made her choice.

Shifting her gaze from the horizon back to the other senshi, she smiled slightly. Her hands were clasped in front of her to in an attempt to prevent fidgeting. "You're so nice," she said. "All of you are so nice. Maybe if I had ended up in the Dark Mirror Court I would have been happier, but... I'm staying, yes. Maybe my Court isn't quite a family, but it's worth fighting for. I could never be mad at someone for leaving, though. I know the White Moon Court can be a mess sometimes. I'm glad you're happy with your choice."

Had she met anyone who had left before? She couldn't remember, but probably. With how persuasive the Dark Mirror Court, and even the Negaverse, sometimes, could be, it probabally happened all the time but never came up in conversations. Thinking of the Negaverse made her smile fade.

"Do you ever feel guilty about not fighting the Negaverse anymore?" She would never say traitor, and she wasn't consciously thinking it, either, but it was her protective instincts, not her loyalties, that had kept her from leaving before the strange memories had come. "Or... do you fight them? It's been a while since I've heard about your philosophies."

The hair playing was unexpected but not necessarily bad. She wrapped a different lock of hair around her own finger. "It used to have flowers in it before I upgraded," she said.

Cybele nodded almost approvingly as she remembered that she had seen the Dark Mirror Court fight the Negaverse before. That wasn’t one of those things that had only happened in the future. “That was probably a bad question,” she admitted. It was her turn to lay a comforting hand on the other girl’s shoulder. Her comforting instincts, apparently, were stronger than her newfound distrust of the Dark Mirror Court. “Everyone feels guilty about something. This is a war. The right thing… It’s hard to know what that is, sometimes, and the being told that everyone makes mistakes isn’t much help when… when something goes wrong.” There was plenty for her to feel guilty about even now that she was certain that she was on the right side of things. There were the people she had failed to save, for example, the two starseeds that had sat heavily in her makeshift pockets, and the others, whose souls she hadn’t even been able to protect. Then, of course, there was the life she’d taken. But no, she wasn’t going there right now. This was supposed to be a pleasant conversation.

“I would never call you a traitor,” she said instead, smiling softly and trying to bring the warmth back into her voice. “There are people who would call me a traitor for saying that, but…” It seems like you betray someone, somehow, no matter what you do… She pushed the thought away. “You’ve made your choice, and you’re happy, and that’s wonderful, but..." She hesitated, smile faltering. "You're right. There are people who will hate you, even though you're giving up some of your life to protect others."

She looked off into the distance. "It's... not an easy thing to go through."

Hair was much easier to talk about. "Your hair sounds nice. It looks good, too. Mine takes forever to grow, and it gets messy so easily. That's why I keep it up all the time." Despite her complaining, she loved it and had no plans to change it despite the fact that pigtails were a bit childish for a nineteen year old.

"Maybe," said Cybele. In this war, she'd been forced to stop caring about what others thought, or maybe it had been before that. She had never been one to shy away from disagreements, and when those disagreements concerned people's lives, things had escalated further, and she'd gained true enemies.

There was the Negaverse, of course, although she even wasn't thinking of them at the moment. Instead, she was briefly running the encounters she'd had with other White Moon Senshi that had ended in hostility through her mind. The worst ones were from years ago, back when she hadn't been taking being a senshi seriously, back when she thought that having a secret identity meant making enemies didn't matter. When she'd started caring what other people thought of her, things had gotten a bit better. She now had allies who could tolerate her, at least.

Still, her most supportive conversations were the ones she had with the Dark Mirror Court. "I think you could pull off short hair," she said with a smile. "It would be adorable and easier to manage." They weren't her enemies, they would never be her enemies... but they weren't her allies either. She could feel Machholz's hesitation. There was a line that she couldn't cross now that she'd made her decision not to join them, and they had reached it.

"All right," she said, and began to walk back towards the sidewalk, only to briefly turn back a moment later. "I'll be around."