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Had Jada thought she was having a bad day? It was about to get a whole lot worse.

Ari had been waiting on Jada's doorstep for hours. (Well, only around two, really, but it felt like more.) In the past few weeks, Ari had watched the BMC barely make it out of a mission without losing one of their best soldiers, seen the Court turn on her, been helpless as Ares batted them around like a tiger with a toy mouse and corrupted more to her side. She'd seen the best of them flee - to hidden corners of the city or to their home planets to hide out where Ares couldn't reach them. More and more anti-senshi sentiment was being spread about, on the news and on the streets, even the area she patrolled the most was covered in graffiti calling senshi monsters and telling them to go home. Ari had even faced down Ares herself, a goddamn corrupted princess coming for base level Birhan Isat, the most unequal battle of the century.

And Ari had realised that she'd been running away. It was easy, safe. Don't step up again, don't try. Wait for someone else to follow, another Ares to lead them. Yeah, Ari had taken the coward's path.

But even when she'd been knowingly doing all that, she'd still been contactable. She'd still powered up and gone on patrol, even if it was alone. Even if she wasn't helping her fellow BMC members like she should have been. Ari hadn't disappeared from patrol, from her home, from the city. Not like Scylla. An Eternal - one of their few, strongest members. Whom no one had seen or heard from for months.

So when a familiar face began popping up in magazine ads and on tv commericals, Ari hadn't just been surprised. Ari had been pissed.

It wasn't hard to track down someone who'd just recently signed a lease. Especially not if you contacted her workplace to be told, oh no, but she might be at her other workplace, who said, not here, but here's her mobile just call her directly don't bother us (bloody lawyers), which - if you knew the wrong sort of people, and Ari's boyfriend did - was being billed to said newly leased apartment? Irritating and lengthy, yes, but not difficult.

But Ari's luck held in that Jada wasn't home. Refusing to leave empty-handed (or without having yelled a lot), Ari sat. And waited. And waited some more. By the time Jada finally arrived, Ari was cold, sore, and as she slowly rose to her feet, in possession of the darkest glare she'd ever worn.

Ari nodded tersely, acknowledging the warning. She bit down on her anger, a sour taste in her throat, but it was better than yelling their secret identities to anyone in the building.

"I haven't eaten," she said as she followed Jada into the small apartment. "We can get something on the way." Ari even knew a few places to eat where they could hide up the back and not be bothered or overheard as long as no one yelled - but there were things she needed to confirm that couldn't be done in the open. For starters, checking with her own eyes that Ares and her Dark Moon Court hadn't found Scylla before Ari did.

As she eyed the interior of the apartment, puzzlement warred with her repressed rage. This was a far cry from Jada's mansions. Even assuming that Jada had wanted to live on her own, surely she could have acquired better accomodations than this. Was this a Jada on the run that Ari was witnessing? Or someone who'd have their civilian memories wiped, and was simply using the same first name to lure Ari into a trap?

"How did you wind up living here?" she asked.

Castor was a cunning distraction, Ari was sure. Not that knowing that stopped it from working. "Hello, gorgeous," she said quietly, bending down to scoop up the toyger kitty. Jada was getting changed, it would be fine if Ari dropped the angryface for a few moments. Hitching the cat onto one shoulder, Ari tickled under his chin. "Who's a gorgeous kitty? You are. Yes, you are," she crooned. She stayed that way for a few minutes, babbling nonsense at the purring kitty. Had she mentioned she'd always wanted a pet? Didn't fit in so well with the spotless, guests-could-safely-visit-at-any-moment mansion her parents ran.

She froze when Jada emerged. No, the other girl had no just caught Ari baby-talking to her cat. Ari carefully lowered the feline to the ground and brushed at the stripey fur left behind on her top.

Ari frowned at Jada's explanation. She felt a flash of irritation at Jada's parents; much like her own, they didn't understand that there were more important things out there than their goals for their children. Well, Jada had been in and out of hospital. Maybe it was an actual concern for her safety, Ari grudgingly conceded.

"You couldn't have called?" she asked Jada. "If you needed somewhere to stay, god knows there's more rooms in my house than I've bothered to count." Ari probably hadn't even seen the inside of all of them - no, wait, there was that first summer vacation she'd been entirely bored and gone inspecting everything.

Sharp purple eyes didn't miss the coin scrounging. She sighed. "There was a cafe or diner or something on the corner." Though really, Jada couldn't just have called a friend and said she was in trouble? It wasn't like Ari ever scraped a dint into the bank account her parents had set up for her. (Though maybe she should. If she took Jada's circumstances as a warning, maybe it was time to start skimming off the top and make her own untouchable savings account. ... Or Ari had been watching a corporate fraud/theft movie last night. One or the other.)

"You almost died again?" she asked as Jada herded her 'guest' out of the apartment. Don't think Ari wasn't noticing the number of near-death-experiences rising, Jada.

Ari's mouth twisted. So Jada had been accepting help from a while, but had changed her mind? And why wouldn't she had accepted it from the Blood Moon Court? Or at least told them that she was alive and in town!

"I know prom night," she agreed in a dark mutter as they left. "Beginning of the end."

Taking Fallon's pen... had it been the action that set Ares irrecoverably on her dark path? Or was the end always the same for Ares, and the pen incident simply sped it along? If Ari had had faith in Ares, could she have saved her former leader? Or would Ari simply have walked that path with Ares, unknowingly moving closer and closer to corruption until Ari herself wouldn't have cared if she'd joined the Dark Moon Court? She shivered.

With the BMC's own main event going down after prom, Ari hadn't really heard about the Justin Bieber youma. So she arched an eyebrow at Jada. "So did something else happen after we confronted Ares? ...God, you completely missed how that turned out, didn't you?" Ari realised, expression darkening. "If Ares - or Fallon, I don't know how much she still knows - tries to contact you? Get the hell away. There may not be much of a BMC anymore, but you don't want in on what Ares is offering."

She didn't want Jada taken by force like Requiem, either. Jesus, a dark Eternal Scylla? Didn't bear thinking about.

"There is as much Blood Moon left as you make of it, Ari," Jada said, startling Ari.

Eyebrows flying into her hairline, Ari stared at Jada. A heartbeat, two, then Ari snorted and shook her head. "Yeah, and we all remember how well that went. It'll be hard enough trying to convince the others to stick around and keeping fighting as a Court. They won't follow someone who's already failed once."

No one had died, she reminded herself. But they hadn't come out of the skirmish with anything to show for it, either. Ari considered it pretty much a zero of a score - no plus or minus points, but she might as well not have bothered doing anything. It would have saved her reputation, if nothing else.

But then again, there'd been the weird face-off with Ares. The power-up had been a nice surprise - better late than never. It had come after the revelation that Ari couldn't keep running. She needed to keep the BMC together and make a stand.

"I'm not arguing that the Court needs to stay together. God, and recruit out the a**. But I'm not sure how many people would listen if I asked them to follow me," she explained as they made the short walk to the cafe/diner/whatever/(Ari didn't have a clue) on the corner. "Kaatje's off-world and not planning on being back anytime soon. Albali all but asked to be corrupted, and even though Ares didn't bite, I don't know if Albali would be willing to come back after that." Ari couldn't fault the other girl's strong sense of loyalty (and love), even if it did seem a bit more self-sacrificing than was healthy. "And could you imagine Nem's reaction to me in charge? A second time, I mean?" The first time had been explosive enough.

'Shop' talk fell silent as they entered and took a seat in a booth way up the back. Neither the kitchen door nor the counter were close by, so staff wouldn't overhead anything they said, and with an easy view of the door and the walkway between the booths, they'd know if someone was approaching.

Once seated, a bored looking waitress ambled over. "Coke," Ari ordered. "And nachos. We can share," she offered to Jada. "You can grab the meal next time." If it was charity, rather than Ari being absent-minded and picking an easy option, it was well-disguised. It was the sort of thing Ari did with others (okay, mostly her boyfriend, because really who had time for friends outside of a busy senshi life) all the time.

"No problem," Ari shrugged off the gratitude, apparently not seeing anything unusual in her offer.

Settling into her seat, she watched the waitress leave. Once she was sure the civilian was out of earshot, she turned back to Jada, easy smile fading. "You have some good points. Ones I've tried to bring up before, even, but like you said, times have changed." Maybe a leader who cared for their safety would be more appreciated now that they had even more enemies out to get them. Not to mention, no Ares waiting in the wings to take over again. "And no one wanted to take over from me last time, so there is that, I suppose."

Not even Nemesis wanted to lead, stating that she was where she was best suited already. The idea of making Nem part of a new ISS... it wasn't repulsive. Birhan had often wondered why Ares hadn't promoted Nemesis, who'd been around since the start. The reasoning of too much loyalty to another team had sounded less authentic when Albali, also a member of another team, had joined the red-caped ranks.

"I should chase her down and sound her out," Ari mused, propping her chin in one hand, elbow on the tabletop. "Both of them, actually. Albali was pretty useful, most of the time." Excluding when facing down Ares (though even then, she'd warned Birhan of her intentions and told her to flee). A good planner and organiser. Probably had a decent head for strategy - and the BMC could certainly use that, with Ares' brain now serving Chaos.

Ari quirked one eyebrow at the girl sitting across from her. "I take it from your suggestions that you'll back me as leader? As part of the new ISS, of course." Since she herself was only newly Super, having an Eternal at her back would be a relief. Especially Scylla, who was a goddamn powerhouse and who had a good reputation among the BMC for previous donations of a safehouse and other resources. Besides, Jada had a good head on her shoulders. Usually. Her recent disappearance without a word aside.

As they sat and spoke, Ari's smile began creeping back in. This was starting to sound like a plan of action, a definite step towards getting the BMC back to its former position of badassery. It had been a while since the Court had nothing to worry about except the enemy. It would be nice to return to those days, the in-fighting and fear of future tasks gone. Assuming that they could make this work, of course.

"If this is going to work, I'm going to need people who can not only back me, but who can also disagree with me," Ari explained. She could completely understand not seeing in yourself what others said was there. It wasn't like she considered herself a brilliant leader. But they all had to do what was needed of them.

Leaning across the table, Ari ticked points of her fingers. "You're one of the most experienced senshi we have. You've been in the BMC since its early days. Battle-wise, there's probably a lot that you can teach younger or newer senshi - hell, probably even the BMC veterans and myself." Physically, Ari had all the confidence in her fighting. Magically, or in situations where she couldn't just punch things? Not so much. "You're poised and you present yourself well. You're not afraid to speak your mind."

The mention of donations to the cause had Ari sputtering out a denial. Which was put on hold as the waitress returned with drinks and a bored reassurance that the food wouldn't be long.

"The position isn't dependant on money." Ari was so horrified she couldn't even roll her eyes. "I'm asking because I need you, not your former finances. If I screw up, you bet your a** I want you in my face telling me so. If I give an order that no one agree with, I need to know that someone is going to tell me to my face. We can't have another command break-down - we have to be able to catch these things and sort them out before it affects the entire Court."

From the corner of her eye, Ari saw a figure emerge out the kitchen door with a plate of what was probably nachos. "I trust you, Jada. To help me, to put the Court first, and to be honest with me. That's why I need you in the ISS."