Eternal Sailor Ares spent the first hour of her time back in henshin standing over the lacquered table beneath the wide bay window of her room at the bed and breakfast. Sailor Gaia sat in the chair, bent over a pad of paper, pen whirring across the page. Every so often, Ares would lean over, take the pen, and make an additional note. They spoke fast and quiet and with the fluidity of two women who had been working together throughout time itself. Names were separated into lists, those who could be trusted and those who could not, and then those names were further separated into the varying levels of magical power and battle expertise. It was a numbers game, and Gaia and Ares added and subtracted their potential forces through several cups of tea and even a few crusty scones.

“It won’t be enough,” Ares said at last, turning briskly to face the open window.

The pad of paper fluttered in the wind. It was silly to remain in henshin, dangerous even should any powered being enter their vicinity, but the Senshi of Smoke was not about to slip out of the form she had been missing for so long. Ares folded her arms across her chest. “I built that faction. We built it before Birhan Isat was even a part of it -- or Scylla.” Gunn had been there so early in the initial inception of the Blood Moon Court that it was hard for Ares to group her with the two others, but in her mind, she silently did it anyway.

Ares braced a hand against the window frame. Numbers and figures danced through her head. If she showed up to reclaim her court, what would happen if they resisted? It was so hard to predict the precise movements of the court members who she saw as straddling the fence. One wrong guess and the scales of the battle scales might be irrevocably tipped.

Gaia, who had been silently writing, stopped and placed her pen down beside the pad of paper. Her dark hair was pulled over one shoulder, and she fussed with the bow at the end, making a face. “So we can’t rely on their support,” she said. “What else is new? We’ve been in this boat before.”

Ares turned back to face Gaia, caught sight of her own reflection in the mirror just behind the pair at the desk. She stared at herself, noted the lines of stress around her mouth, the scars on her exposed arms. These were the wounds of a hard life, barely begun. “So we try something else,” Gaia said, breaking Ares out of her mental reverie.

“Something else,” Ares echoed.

Closing her eyes, the Senshi of Smoke tried to search her mind for an answer. In the Black Moon, they were always united -- senshi stood by senshi, no matter what the personal differences. But now Ares was attempting to wage war with allies. She needed to remind the White Moon senshi that they had to stand with her, that they had to trust her, and that they could not simply pick up and leave her whenever they wanted.

But how?

A memory whispered to her then, words spoken by Selene once when they were young. Ares opened her eyes suddenly, a flash of something burning in the deep gray irises. “Gaia,” she said. “I have an idea. Give me three hours. If I’m not back in three hours, go to the meeting without me.” Ares touched two fingers to her lips, lost in thought.

Gaia stared at her, skepticism slipping into the lines of her face. “Okay,” she said at last, getting to her feet. The long burnt orange ribbons trailed in the breeze behind her. “Three hours then.”

“Three hours.”

With that, Ares disappeared through the mirror in the room, leaving Gaia with the pad of paper and the scribbled names of their allies and enemies.