Welcome to Gaia! ::

There was nothing unusual in the meeting notification that had been sent out to all members of the Blood Moon Court. It was a normal text to the senshi phones, with a coded date, time and place (rotating their locations had become something of a habit directly following the fallout of Operation Rota - the Negaverse was out for BMC blood and they all knew it). There was nothing to say who the message had come from. There never was. So the BMC members had no way of knowing that this meeting was not, in fact, one called by Ares. That they were instead gathered on the summons of someone that half of them had expressed displeasure at the idea of following last meeting.

Birhan Isat was outwardly calm as she stood at one end of a recently abandoned warehouse. Knees locked, feet shoulder width apart, arms clasped behind her back, she looked for all the world like a stoically waiting army commander. Inside, though, rapid butterflies tore at the lining of her stomach. The stiff pose was all that kept her from succumbing to the desire to pace. She knew she couldn't afford to show her nerves - not to the BMC, not after the upset she'd thrown the Court into last time. Enough people were out for her blood as it was, no sense of letting them sense a weakness.

For all that this temporary leadership role was given by Ares herself, there were still smatterings of jealousy and anger among the Court. Birhan couldn't fathom why, seeing as how this was Ares' idea of a punishment, not a reward. Of course, that being said, Birhan had no intention of failing. She refused to let this become the lesson, the newspaper to the nose, that Ares intended it to be.

... Not in the least because of the most recent action against Ares. Their leader would not be joining them tonight, or for the actual operation that was planned. Ares wouldn't be back for a month. Not that many of the BMC would be aware of that fact. Not that they needed to be. Internal discipline was the territory of the ISS and Gunn's special taskforce. What had happened with Ares wasn't gossip for the Court's entertainment. Birhan had no intention of bringing it up, and she could only hope that the others in the know would feel the same.

Birhan remained silent as the Court began to arrive, trickling in one by one or in tiny groups. She approved of their caution. They all needed to move carefully these days, to avoid the Negaverse recognising even one in a group as one pledged to the Blood Moon.

Five minutes after the arranged meeting time, Birhan decided that everyone who meant to attend was here by now. Those who were late could catch up on their own time. Birhan stepped forward and spoke. "Thank you for coming. As you know, we are going to undertake another strike against the Negaverse, one that I was given the task of planning."

Staring out at the assembled mass, Birhan tried to meet as many eyes as possible. She wasn't here to lord that over anyone. Today she'd even forgone the dramatic red cloaks that Ares had given the ISS to wear. There was no sense in it here, to Birhan's mind. Those who would follow her, would follow; those who would not follow were not about to be swayed by a piece of red fabric.

"I have listened to your suggestions, your concerns. I have spoken with many of you and received notes from others. I am happy to report that the target of our operation was chosen by a landslide." Happy and more than a little relieved. Birhan was willing to defend her choices, but it was made easier by the fact that the majority was already in favour of this. "Our next target... is General Zinkenite."

She paused for a moment, letting the idea take root. "For those of you who don't know, several of our former captives identified him as the force behind the Negaverse's own database on senshi: our names, powers, affiliations, weaknesses... He may be the single greatest threat to us who isn't Tanzanite. And he is without her deadly physical capabilities, making him a far more suitable target."

Or so the database on the senshi phones claimed. Short, physically weak, and used smoke bombs as his weapon, it said. It was a shame they couldn't use Ares' abilities as practice to further neutralise the threat of the General's weapon... but there was no room for regret in Birhan's heart.

"Our goal is to remove the threat of Zinkenite's intelligence system. If we can uncover how much he, and the Negaverse, know about us, good. If not, or if it becomes apparent that we cannot capture or contain him... we will kill him." Birhan delivered the last coldly, her face hard as stone. The end goal was the complete removal of Zinkenite. Any information they could gain from him was a bonus, but not the point. Let it not be said that the Blood Moon Court hadn't learned their lesson from Operation Rota.

"A small taskforce will undertake this mission." No sense risking them all, or moving as too large a group and being an obvious move. "I will not force anyone to take part due to their rank, or exclude them because of a lack thereof. I am a base senshi myself. If other base senshi or cadets wish to take part, I will not stop you."

Birhan took a breath, held, then released it. She was going to need calm in order to get through this. Her temper would not be helpful for this next part. "If you have any questions, comments or concerns, now is the time to put them forward. If you want to volunteer, or if there is more you want to know before making a decision, this is your chance."

One way or another, Birhan was leaving here with a team to carry out her plan. Even if it ended up being smaller than she'd like, she wasn't looking for people who needed to hum and haw it over for a week before deciding.

To open the floor, Birhan stepped to the side of the loose semicircle of BMC members. Anyone was free to step forward. Hopefully this would be a constructive meeting, not descending into fights and recriminations like the last.

Albali had not been so hasty to toss aside her symbolic red cloak and sat quietly on an old crate, passively listening to the speech of the interim leader. Spread out behind her was the gigantic and ridiculous bows that she wished could be ripped off without them immediately coming back the next time she henshined, though the stupid braids were finally gone.

The Senshi of Echoes felt that she had come into her own just in time for everything to go straight to Hell. If she had believed in such a place, anyway. For her it was nothing more than a convenient figure of speech that everyone would understand. Teal eyes were half-lidded as she recorded every word in her particular shorthand, flashing up only as Birhan suggested taking cadets. Unmarked cadets? On a mission like this?

Had she learned anything from last time? This team desperately needed Ares back at the helm, Albali was convinced about this. Apparently a few of them were going to have to be injured or even die before that could be accomplished. Not entirely sure her conscience was going to settle on that point, she pushed the blood red hood off her deep purple hair and spoke without rising.

"While I have no wish to get involved in the melee, I will be more than happy to stand by to record any information gathered. I'm fairly useless in a fight unless we get lucky but I think my skills have proven invaluable in records keeping." And she wasn't going to stick her neck on the line for anyone but Ares at this point. They didn't need to know that little tidbit, however.

"I would also like, for the record, to provide a suggestion. The failure of Operation Rota was based on the fact that we kept the captives far too long. I would suggest perhaps an hour, two at most, to extract information from the target. Then he will have to be killed as quickly as possible. I don't care so much about the information that I am comfortable risking more lives with prolonged capture." There were perhaps a few in the room that would not be satisfied with her cold-blooded assessment of what was going to happen.

"I think, beyond anything else, elimination of the target should be the primary objective. However, as I stated, I am fairly useless towards this and place it forward only as my opinion." Never mind that she felt it was the only thing that could be done. It felt like a betrayal of her chosen Captain, to give such advice to Birhan.

But her loyalty did not sit so far as to blindly sit by and allow more lives to be sacrificed because she had kept silent.

Nemesis was here now because she was not aware of who was going to be running this meeting. The moment she saw that it was Birhan at the front of the group, she wanted to turn on her heel and leave. "You're ******** kidding me," she whispered underneath her breath, though it wasn't quite soft enough that the people closest to her couldn't hear her discontent. Nemesis had made it particularly clear in the last meeting that she put absolutely no faith in Birhan. Birhan was nothing but a regular senshi who had kissed enough of Ares' spectacular a** to get into the ISS. Now that she had made it that far, she was uprooting Ares position of power altogether. The ISS may be the main ruling body, but Nemesis saw Ares as the leader. She saw this as Ares' ground, and she was not happy about some b***h trampling all over it. The truth was that Nemesis would never bow her head to someone she saw as inferior to herself. Ares was her equal, and so she trusted the woman's judgement, even extending it so far as to only voice some disapproval over the members of the ISS.

Ares was not here, though, and there was no way in hell Nemesis was going to bend to Birhan's desires. "Zinkenite is probably pretty good at running away like a good little b***h, especially considering his weapon is ******** smoke bombs. I'm outtie on this one. You guys can ******** play around with that idea all you want, but I'm not participating in a mission that's led by an inexperienced t**t." A small part of her mind realized that it probably wasn't good to talk s**t when the BMC needed unity, but Nemesis quite frankly did not give a ********. She was going to speak her mind, and she was going to let everybody know that she had no faith in Birhan. If they were smart, they wouldn't place faith in Birhan either.

"Ares is the only person capable of not running s**t into the ground. Sure, Operation Rota wasn't a ******** fantastic success, but we got s**t done. We let the whole ******** city know what sort of a threat we are." Loyalty wasn't exactly something someone would expect out of Nemesis, but there were a few people she placed her trust in. Pegasus would always be someone Nemesis had faith in, and Ares ranked up there next to her old team captain.

"I am not sorry to say that I will play no part in any plan hatched by you, Birhan. You are not Ares, no matter how much you're pretending to be." She wanted the BMC leader back, and even though Nemesis view of the war had changed, she still believed that the BMC was capable of great things. This was a faction that could change the tides of battle, if they pulled themselves together. Sadly, she did not believe that this would happen without Ares.

Sirius was there, she never missed training or a meeting and so she was there and listening. She nodded at the plan, one would work much better then going after loads at once. She smiled up at Birhan and made a note that she would need to pass on the information she had collected to her later.

Albali spoke up and Sirius looked to her. She didn't know much about the senshi so she just listened and agreed it seemed it would be a rather simple meeting tonight. Until of course Nemesis spoke and Sirius turned to face her, literally biting her tongue. She took some deep breaths but didn't say a word. She wasn't going to start drama, she wasn't going to point out that all they did was plant seeds of doubt in other senshi's mind and she wasn't going to point out that many saw them as worse or no better then the negaverse! She wanted to shout it all out at the eternal senshi but she didn't. However if looks could kill - Nemesis was getting one of those looks.

She made herself look at Birhan and take a few deep breaths. She didn't want Ares back. She didn't know the leader that well not personally but she was the one who hatched a plan to make them seem worse then the negaverse and she wanted to do it again. She didn't care about the loss of lives - or if she did she didn't show it. Sirius loved the BMC, it had taught her so much but they were still suppose to be fighting for good right? Not becoming monsters. She kept her eyes on Birhan just hoping that Nemesis would just walk out again.

"I will come Birhan. The plan sounds a good one." She kept her voice steady and she agreed to go. She still wanted to slap Nemesis around the face a few times though.

Nemesis was infuriated. It would have been better for Birhan to answer her accusations, because she absolutely hated the feeling of being brushed off like she did not matter. She was an eternal senshi, and she had been fighting in this war longer than most. Nemesis demanded to be heard. Even Ares listened to her when her words were lined with insult and anger. Ares had the common sense to know that when Nemesis was scorned, she would hold onto the grudge it created. There was going to be no chance of Birhan redeeming herself in Nemesis' eyes, and Nemesis was sure as hell going to be vocal about her lack of faith in Birhan.

It was in her nature to wish failure upon Birhan, because she would like to see this operation blow up in the c**t's face. Nemesis wasn't so ill that she wished that to happen at the cost of life in the BMC, but man, there would be so much satisfaction involved in seeing Birhan fail. Everyone would know then that Birhan could lead a mission with the common sense of a duck. They'd beg to have Ares back, and then Nemesis wouldn't have to bend over backwards to keep herself from punching Birhan in the face.

The BMC would not take kindly to having a member of their ISS beaten. Pity. But, even Nemesis knew her limitations. She was not going to fight this entire court, so instead she had to be just as vocal to make up for it. "I hope you don't get anyone killed, Birhan." There was a little too much malice for anyone to see the sincerity in her words. Nemesis really did hope that Birhan didn't lead the members of the court to death. Then again, the smarter members would stay out of this foolhardy mission.

Inappropriately flipping Birhan off with both hands, because like hell she could resist the urge for that childish action, Nemesis turned on her heels and left the temporary leader to play her game of chance with the lives of the BMC.

Birhan's fists clenched as Nemesis made her position perfectly clear once again. Her breath escaped as a seething hiss when the other senshi walked off, giving Birhan the finger as she left. Her parting shot was a barbed arrow - Nemesis and Ares shared the same desire, it seemed. And what did it say that both of them were wishing a member of the BMC dead or hurt, just to smack Birhan down and 'put her in her place'? Some cohesive team.

But there was still a meeting to be run, and Birhan was determined not to follow in their boots. She'd keep the BMC together on her own, if she had to. Although, she smiled at those who remained, perhaps she'd have some help there.

The smaller meeting ran smoothly enough. The tactics and plan for use against Zinkenite was easy enough, and of course the hard-hitters like Scylla and Gunn were running point. The real issue was finding him first. The reports from the BMC had highlighted Zinkenite's previous appearances, sometimes in the same area multiple times. New patrols were assigned for those areas, in teams from this new squad.

"Your regular BMC patrols will be covered by the other members," Birhan explained. "So you won't burn out before we find this b*****d."

Most BMC members already had Birhan's info in their senshi phones. Birhan made sure they all have each others' details, if they didn't already, so that the entire unit could be mobilised at any time.

It wasn't bad, as strategy went from a girl infamous for her LACK of forethought. As the meeting wound down, Birhan reminded them to call her if they found any new information, or has any questions.

That part done, she walked outside to where Maia was waiting...


(( If people are still interested in taking part, but didn't make the meeting, like Roma, please PM me so you can be filled in on the plotting, etc. and we can pretend your senshi was here. ))