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Three weeks have passed since the final battle at the close of Operation Rota. In the immediate aftermath, the surviving members of the Blood Moon Court scattered. Six of their own were killed in the prison break and following battle, including the Dread Sisters Alixa and Permiska -- two of their most bloodthirsty members. It was seven if the corruption of Lyra was counted; some of the members might not have known her fate, or perhaps simply presumed her dead.

The increased threat of Negaverse retribution was enough to keep even some of the braver members from taking out their henshin pens. Ares herself disappeared for two weeks, only to return suddenly with a renewed purpose. Members received contact one week ago that anyone still interested in being a part of the Blood Moon Court needed to attend a meeting -- this meeting, the first since that terrible night when all their plans unraveled.

The meeting of the Blood Moon Court had started as they always did. People milled about chatting in the spare room of an old warehouse. Benches and chair were lined up in rows. A blank space stretched out at the front of the room. A table draped in a red cloth sat there, marking the place for where the Inner Sanctum would stand to lead the meeting. They always arrived early and spent thirty minutes in another part of the warehouse discussing the agenda.

When the ISS finally entered the room, Ares looked tense, like she had been arguing. It was unclear what might have happened, but it was not typical for her to enter displaying any emotion outside of confidence or ease. There was another face in the line, a new one: Super Sailor Albali. She had upgraded and been accepted into the Inner Sanctum in the same induction battle. The process was a secret to the rest of the Court, but the ISS would know. Albali followed at the rear, draped in a new crimson cloak.

Ares stepped toward the center, clasping her hands in front of her chest. "It is good to see all of you," she said. Her eyes crossed the room. Many were missing, mostly cadets. "It takes strength and courage to be in this Court -- especially now. Your presence here is a testament to the power you have inside, power that we will develop as we always have through training, mentoring, and strategy." There was a crisp clip to her words.

Meetings usually started with a retelling of the best youma kills of the week or some other patrolling anecdote. The air was different now, thick with conflict and misgivings. Ares hated the stench of it. She did not want to spend another second breaking down the failure of Operation Rota, not any more than the Inner Sanctum already had. Agreement was hard to come by. Some thought they had gone too far, and Ares resented them for it. Did she not tell them that the BMC would do what no one else was willing to do? What did they think that had meant?

But Ares was a battle-weary warhawk who had been reborn since the dawn of senshi. Her thought process was vastly different from many of the White Moon. It showed in the hard set of her jaw.

The Captain of the Blood Moon Court stood straighter. "There is a time for mourning, and we will have that time. But this is our opportunity -- this is what we wanted to do," she said. Her mouth danced around the words 'Operation Rota' but did not say them. It was a cursed phrase now. "On that battlefield, we showed the Negaverse and the rest of the White Moon senshi that the Blood Moon Court matters." She punctuated the statement with a pointed finger pushed against a slick palm. "No matter what you feel in your heart, you must know: what we did mattered." Ares was nervous. She was not the one who usually ran meetings in the Black Kingdom. Until this point, the Blood Moon meetings had always been positive, focusing on improvement and goals. Now they were facing a test of their dedication, and the Eternal Senshi of Smoke felt rattled by it.

"I will not lie to you," she said, taking a step forward. "That was not a clean victory, but no victory is. It was a decisive strike, and as warriors, we accepted that risk." Ares glanced across the crowd. "I am proud of all of you for rising to the challenge in the name of victory. Our next strike will be better. We will learn from the mistakes we made in our last mission. We will not hesitate to deliver our final blows. We can be better, I know we can. We have to rely on each other now. And we have to use what happened then and make sure we are better next time."

Ares crossed to the table and picked up a pad of paper. "Our next abduction should be executed soon. We need to show the Negaverse that they cannot demoralize us, and that we cannot be stopped, no matter what they do to us." She clicked her pen. "With summer coming up, our breaks from school should make the 24-hour supervision be less of a drain on all of us. I am looking for suggestions on potential Negaverse targets. Obviously, Tanzanite is too strong now, but there are others. General Zinkenite, perhaps Serandite. Wolframite is still a problem -- a loose end we need to tie off." Her pen moved across the paper, a silence settling over the assorted group.

Among the few remaining assembled Blood Moon members was Sailor Scylla. The night before she had gotten off of an airplane, landing in Destiny City. Earlier that afternoon, she'd gotten the call. And here she was, back doing exactly what she'd promised her doctors she would. Taking it easy, by sitting on one of the cheap metal chairs. The mood was tense, even before the Inner Sanctum filed in. Ares' aura did little to promote the sense of relaxation and idea of a 'family' that had, at one point, been the final straw that drew Scylla to the Blood Moon. Her face was tense, dark, and not many of the others looked much happier. At the rear of the ISS was Albali, apparently now promoted in more ways than one. The senshi - pardon, Super Senshi- of Echoes was sporting a fancy new outfit and a fancy new rank as well.

Their next abduction... Scylla closed her eyes, brows furrowing as she remembered a flash of something. Red, like a ribbon, slowly creeping across cold cement. The senshi of the kraken shook her head, attention moving around the room. It was interesting to see the division. Some seemed whole-heartedly willing to take this step, walk further down this path. Some, like Scylla herself, were hesitant, displeasure and disapproval marring their faces. Still others looked unsure. There didn't seem to be any room of her Captain's face for dissension, however. Then again, if they were going to repeat what they had done before...

It was a pleasant surprise when Birhan Isat stepped forward, halting the potential boulder rolling towards the Mercenaries and remaining Cadets. "Well." Scylla didn't raise her hand. She didn't hold her tongue. She didn't maintain her typical silence. The heiress had normally held any dissenting conversations with Ares in private; she had never, never raised her voice to be anything but a fierce supporter of the Senshi of Smoke. To be a fierce supporter of Fallon- who, it seemed sometimes, was buried and mostly gone. And what was left was the hard-faced woman in front of them. "How are we?" she asked finally, letting her voice carry. She had to be heard over the voices in the crowd. "What kind of a question is that? Though I thank you for asking." Purple eyes narrowed on the Captain. "Months of planning. Two weeks of torture. And it took one night to tear us to pieces. We're lucky to be alive."

Carefully tucked away, the Ashen Lilac Crystal pulsed warm against Scylla's skin, a reminder that something terrible had happened. "Yet it isn't our captain who worries for our health. Instead she plans another strike against the Negaverse. Losing Lyra wasn't enough for you, Ares? Losing over half the cadets? Losing Alixa and Permiska? Our forces are severely depleted, some gone and most of us injured, yet you're wanting to start planning again? We were having a hard enough time recruiting before. How do you expect to now?" The Eternal's voice was suspiciously calm. Somehow. Her insides were quivering. "These are things that need to take precedence, Ares, over trying to flex muscle that the Blood Moon Court no longer has."

This wasn't something that a Mercenary should be having to say. This should have already been looked at and discussed by the Inner Sanctum. Why was Ares chomping at the bit like this? They weren't ready for anything like what they'd planned. "Even if a repeat were possible, even if you think most of the ones of us who remain would be willing to walk-" her voice cut off. "I think I can speak for a large number of us when I say we are not doing well. Look at what the results of the last abduction did to us. Open your eyes and see."

The first time Sailor Vulcan attended a meeting of the Blood Moon Court she'd showed up early, grinning from ear to ear, and chosen a seat in the very front row. She'd listened. She'd watched. She'd taken notes, like a school girl might, and absorbed whatever piece of information the other, more experienced Senshi had thought it important to share.

They were all her teachers. Warriors that she looked up to.

Ares was her hero.

It was her face Vanessa recognized as the one that had loomed out of the cloud of smoke the night Hairy Pete's starseed was ripped from his chest. Her hands were the ones that had pulled Super Van through the mirror, and to safety. Without her, Vulcan might not have ever become a member of the Blood Moon Court.

Once, she was Fallon.

And the reason, now, that Vulcan's tongue felt swollen in her throat. So many Cadets had left. Lyra was missing. Operation Rota had brought with it death, and loss. While she was not their leader, it wasn't in Vulcan to blame anyone else for what had happened.

If Ares was wrong, than they all were. The things the Senshi of Smoke had accomplished would have been impossible without them. Without her. Vulcan had not tortured anyone. Vulcan had killed neither Sailor Alixa nor Sailor Permiska. But her hands, and her conscious, were stained with their blood, because she hadn't prevented it.

The Senshi of Volcanoes loomed somewhere at the back of the room, with her arms crossed under her chest, and a distant expression on her face. She stared at the floor, lost in herself. Little of the discussion registered.

Until--

'So, it didn't go as we ******** planned, ********.'

Somehow, Nemesis's voice stood out from the rest.

'I thought this wasn't the court of ******** sissies and pansy-asses.'

The sound reminded Vulcan distinctly of a mosquito. It was something that really ought to be squashed.

"It isn't right," Vulcan glowered at the Senshi of Decay, "not to take responsibility for our actions. We ******** up. Lives were lost, and all you have to say is '******** was stupid, probably, for a cadet to be so mouthy. Nemesis was an Eternal. Vulcan… wasn't. But Vanessa had never been well known for her intelligence, and her temper was getting the better of her.

"You'll excuse me, then, Nemesis," Vulcan's voice shook with the intensity of her rage, "If the next time we have to fight I won't trust you to watch my back."

There had been a small moment of personal triumph as Super Sailor Albali slipped into the crimson cloak of an Inner Sanctum member before the meeting. All in one week everything had changed for the better; after more than a year she had finally attained the power of a Super Senshi. Not even two days later they had come for her and Albali had demonstrated that she had grown in power the way Ares had wished her to. Her fight had been one and she was fully one of them now.

She'd intended to listen before acting as was her general habit but as criticism piled up on Ares time and time again she couldn't help it. Lips quirked and a snort of laughter came through at Nemesis' comparisons and epithets tossed so casually at Sailor Scylla. It was a pity really. Albali had always considered the Senshi of the Kraken to have her head in the right place if it was a bit emptier than she would have liked.

How dare they suggest that this was all of Ares' fault!

"So take responsibility for your actions but don't let them hinder you. We all know what we did wrong and that's what learning is for isn't it? We know what not to do ever again. But there's nothing gained by crying in a corner over it. Our inaction gives those corrupt monsters more and more time to wreak havoc on our town. People are still dying out there and it's not just our own senshi! Far better to die fighting than die waiting, don't you think?" Teal eyes were as hard as stones as they looked across the room and her arms folded.

"I for one agree with Kallichore. Zinkenite seems the most likely target but he is a bit sneaky. I don't think we should bother with more than one or two at a time, however. There's not much we need to know once we know how to kill them. That's all we need to do." Eyes closed as she said the last words, not quite believing that it would be as easy to do that as it was to say it. But someone had to do it and it certainly wasn't going to be that pink powderpuff of a leader the rest of the White Moon had.

Serpentarius arrived about the same time most of the others did, yet she kept quiet for the most part. She was one of the newest members of the Mercenary , as told by the way her hand kept rubbing at the back of her neck. As her leader spoke, she chews on her bottom lip. This wasn't going to be good, and just to prove that point the fighting began among them. Lifting her fingers to the bridge of her nose, she pinches it before she steps forward.

Placing a hand on Kallichore's shoulder, she gives it a gentle squeeze as she smiles to her. Her eyes turning to gaze across the room. Some of them she knew, other she seen in passing. but at the moment, they seem like they were at each others throat. This wasn't going to do any of them good.

She heard about the battle, those that were lost. Including the one she met when awoken. Shaking her head, she takes in a deep breath.

"I have to agree with Nemesis and our leader. At the moment, we need to formulate a plan, and do so now. The battle has left many of you weak, and yes it done some damage to this group. It made people question if this is even right. Whether it is or not, we can't be fighting each other. That will only tear what little threads that are holding this court together." she turns her eyes to look at Ares, no Fallon as she knew her.

"The Negaverse probably knows we are weak, and if we don't do something. They will probably attack us. We can't jump into this head first, if we do. The outcome of the battle might be worse, but sitting around won't do us any good either. Those that are hurt, need to get better. But those that can fight, if willing, need to." looking around the room, she chews on her bottom lip for a moment.

"The three mention, those should be handled first. They seem to be the ties to the negaverse. If we can somehow get rid of them, the negaverse will do two things, fall apart, or get stronger. Either way, that is three less that any of us have to deal with."

Birhan had spent those three weeks apart trying to deal with the fallout of Operation Rota. Forgetting had been her first plan, and it hadn't worked out so well. She'd moved on to trying to make her peace with how things had happened. She'd thought she had - but here Ares was demanding they do the exact same thing over again.

Ares' words, "This is my faction, my call," hadn't been a balm to Birhan. In fact, they reopened nearly healed wounds.

"No one," Birhan said in a raised voice, "is denying that we need to keep acting. We are no better than those other useless senshi if we don't. I am not saying to sit still and lick our wounds. What I am saying..." Birhan heaved a sigh, and reigned her voice - and temper - back in. "What I am saying is that the decision to undertake this new plan needs to be considered carefully - timing, participants. Hell, half our cadets are gone because we asked too much of them in revenge for Rota. We have a special forces team. Why are our cadets involved in actions that are better suited to Gunn's people?"

Birhan could face down her demons. She had - even if she hadn't like what she'd seen in the mirror after her session with Wolframite, she could admit to herself that she would do it again. Wolframite as a target of the new operation? Oh, count her very much in.

But this wasn't about Birhan and what she could or couldn't do. Birhan was a member of the ISS - she had to think of all of the BMC members, not just herself. And she could see, where Ares for some reason could not, that forcing the cadets and mercenaries to do this again would dwindle their numbers even further.

"The decision to carry out another operation of this nature isn't something that should be ordered from above. And not so callously! We need to admit that mistakes were made and focus on fixing them for the next time around - refusing to aknowledge that will only result in worse things. We are not invulnerable or infallible - not even you, Ares!" Birhan warned, eyes flashing, before the woman could interrupt.

"We were promised an open court, not one that mimicked the White Moon where one person rules all. I aim to see that we stay that way."

For Birhan, everything was up for discussion. If it wasn't, they had bigger problems than their considerable losses from Operation Rota.

The stupid thing was, Birhan would have been behind the plan if it was something Ares had brought to them for discussion like Operation Rota. Instead, the ISS had received exactly what the cadets and mercs had - an order: this is what we're doing, this is when, end of conversation. Birhan wasn't comfortable starting an argument in front of the entire court, but if Ares was going to sweep her concerns away in private, Birhan would make sure that she was unable to do so in public.

Ares had once asked Birhan if the other senshi was comfortable with who she was. Birhan didn't like the fact that she could be, at times, a monster. But she was working her way through accepting that, and controlling it. Others weren't so lucky - no doubt half the missing cadets had fled because they couldn't face the monster in the mirror... and the other half gone because they were afraid of the monsters they had suddenly found themselves among. "There has to be a way to shield the cadets from the worst of this until they are ready," she had argued to Ares in private. It wasn't weakness to need to be eased into the worst of what they did. Ares didn't agree, clearly. Her way or the highway, and now their forces were nearly halved because of it.

Birhan had always valued Zirconia's opinion nearly as highly as she did Ares. It was no surprise that the cat would agree with her second mistress. "Zirconia, if we aren't careful, we will crumble anyway. Operation Rota has already split us. We need to fix this divide before it widens further."

As for deserving their reputation... Did they really? The previous operation had been well-planned, but containing major faults. They'd been discovered, their lines of defense breached, some of their best warriors fallen or corrupted (and soon to die at the hands of the BMC as a result). Luck had been what kept half of them alive. Luck had been what had enabled Ares to kill a distracted Marthozite.

"If we want to remain successful, and feared, we have to do better. And that doesn't just mean in battle, or in our kidnapping and torture sessions. If the Blood Moon Court is to be a threat, we need to be of one heart and mind. And that will not happen under a dictatorship."

Birhan's voice was rising as she spoke, to be nearly yelling by the end. It was frustrating, to try and argue against someone as charismatic and impressive as Ares. An Eternal senshi versus her base senshi status. Ares with her good breeding, her way with words. All Birhan had was her emotion, and that just wasn't enough. She was doing the right thing. She just wanted to make sure no one else wound up flinching when they saw themselves in the mirror, or spent two weeks trying to drink themselves into oblivion so they weren't haunted by their own terrible actions when they slept.

"I swore an oath, yes, to the Blood Moon Court. To fight for our cause. I did not swear an oath that turned me into a slave. I will have my voice heard. I will have my right to question what I am told, regarding things that should have been asked of me instead."

She shot disgruntled glares at Ares' puppets - good little lapdogs Nemesis and Albali, tiny minion Kallichore who hadn't even been here for the failed Operation Rota - before stepping back. Crossing her arms over her chest, she looked down and tried not to fume. She was the impulsive one, why was it that she was the one having to think ahead of how this was going to affect people? That should have been Ares' job, but all Ares wanted to do these days was find the next target to beat down on, and god help anyone who got in her way.

Yeah, this Vulcan senshi? Right on Nemesis' list of Bitches to Hate the second she opened up her mouth to talk. Nemesis was good at dishing out smack talk, but she was not so good at having to take it. "I am saying, we've had the liberty of weeks to mourn our losses and pull a big girl panties back on. They're dead, we can't do jack s**t about that but get revenge on the people who killed them. We've wasted ******** time already, and you guys want us to sit down and discuss what went wrong? We all know what went wrong. We don't need to waste more time on this. We need to press forward, we can't pause in the middle of the goddamn war, run to a tree and yell 'safe!' in the middle of goddamn tag. We fight. We're soldiers. We fight." Her words were just a little more than a growl.

Nemesis wondered why the hell people had joined the BMC if they were not ready to fight. Was that not the reason people had signed up on this gig? "You shouldn't be so goddamn weak that you need your back to be watched, Vulcan. Grow up, you're worse than any goddamn newbie." In no way did that aid the current discussion at hand, but Nemesis frankly did not give a ********. Vulcan pissed her off. If only the senshi could be more along the lines of someone like Kallichore. At least that newbie had her head screwed on right.

Of course, she was somewhat unsettled by Alkaid's name being brought up. That b***h was her's. It was a struggle she wanted to continue without the interference of the BMC. Alkaid would die, and Nemesis would be the one to do it. "That's the right idea. We kill as many sons of bitches that we can. We don't stop, the moment we stop is the moment we lose what ground we make. We'll lose face, and I'm sorry, but I would rather die than be looked down upon by anyone. We press forward now or we run the risk of looking weak and disorganized."

As more voices spoke up, her eyes narrowed back on Scylla. She was one of the few dissenters voicing their opinion, along with Birhan and Vulcan. They were incapable of seeing the reason that Ares was presenting them with. It would only hurt them more to take a step back and observe their past actions with a critical eye. They had to do whatever was necessary to win this war, because no other senshi would. If someone did not step up, they would lose. How many more starseeds would be claimed? How many people would be made to suffer the oppression of the Negaverse? This was a war they could not afford to lose, and that was why... there was no time for these petty matters.

"I thought this was a court that would make a change in this war. I did not think we consisted of people who want to sit on their asses spending long hours thinking about what went wrong and what we should do next instead of acting on it. You might as well be another free-roaming senshi, Scylla, another White Moon pansy because that is how you are acting. Now is the time for action, because if we do not strike, the Negaverse will. And, oh, we lose that advantage, we're pushed further on the defensive." She was angry, and far from eloquent, but somewhere in the flurry of her words was reason. There was a valid opinion at the core of her words, despite the way she spoke and attacked other members.

Sirius had gone to say something more then once but someone had beaten her to it. She was a new super senshi, it seemed not long after the failed operation she had upgraded but the details to all that were hers alone. She hadn't spoken to anyone from the BMC after the operation as she had as much to think about as anyone else. The things she had seen, there was a time when one had to stop for their own sanity.

The arguing was stupid, bickering between each other wouldn't get anywhere but yet something like Rota wouldn't work. It failed. The lost some, senshi had died, Lyra had corrupted, what was next?

"Are you wanting another Rota operation?" Sirius asked the question staring directly at Ares. "We can't do it. Not because of the fact that it was downright wrong but because we can't physically do it. We took too many. Have you ever stopped to think if maybe we had just taken one or two? Tanzanite has ******** wings now." There was more she wanted to say like the fact that actually they were just normal kids as well but she had learnt to block that away in the back of her mind somewhere. They wanted her dead, she had to remember that.

"If you are so keen on doing it again maybe it is worth you thinking of something different? Different areas... I don't know. Everyone in one place just caused our near destruction, whats going to happen next? Who will be the next Lyra or the sisters?" Sirius was getting angry now, partially because they had sworn to fight to make a difference but had they? Really? She would stand by Ares, there was no doubting that but she wouldn't torture anyone and she would not be part of a repeat of that last operation. They needed to do something different - completely different.

"What exactly is the plan to keep us alive and get them dead?" That was all she really wanted to know. A plan that meant everyone in this room would still be standing here once the operation was completed.