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When Scylla had made the decision to actively try and bring the members of the Blood Moon Court back together, she hadn't known how they would react. With fear, possibly, as so many of them were now primary targets of Ares and the Dark Moon Court. Hesitation would be understandable with the events of their last days- the bloody battle that followed the two weeks that had been their doom. Their Captain had gone insane. Princess Ares. To think, if she had been on their side when everything had gone down in the Surroundings, the battle would have been so much easier. They would have had guidance, a war leader. Not that they had not done well- no, everyone had rallied, yet they had only escaped by the skin of their teeth.

There were teams all over the place, groups of people bound together by a common goal. Each team had their strengths and their weaknesses, but none of them had something that the BMC had.

A certain cohesiveness.

Battle plans that had read like the playbook of a football team.

They had sorted their senshi by strengths and weakness, made certain that they all had support. They had forged bonds in civilian and powered lives. Become family.

The concept that had been the Blood Moon Court was a good one. A damn good one, and effective.

That was why she was here to meet Sirius, to find out where her sister's loyalties lay. "Good evening." She slipped out of the darkness, even though the other senshi had probably felt her coming for a while.

"It's been a while." she agreed, reaching out and squeezing Sirius' arm. That wasn't counting their brief meeting in the surrounds. "It's good to see you too."

She leaned against a tree, crossing her ankles. "Lowdown on the Surrounds? They were going to kick our a**. We took down this... this thing, like what Tanzanite had become but with infinitely more teeth, and it got back up and laughed at us. Ares took some people. A lot of people. Ares and the rest of our dear estranged family want to bring us home." Wolframite wanted to bring her over. Wolframite had saved her life.

That wasn't something she could share. With anyone. Who knew that the General had saved her? Castor knew that something had happened, he'd been coming to her side when she was surrounded. "Ares tried to smoke out me and Gunn. We're definitely not her most beloved, if you get the drift. As for Birhan, haven't heard from her of late, since she kicked my a** back into gear. But she was right. I'm healed up enough to be on duty, so we're back on duty."

Scylla might as well lay her cards on the table. "I need to get everyone we can together. Nemesis, Albali, Euterpe, Gunn, whatever cadets are left. Zirconia is still with us, though Maia's apparently left the court- but I'm not going to leave her to the sole protection of the white moon. We need to start training again. We can break into that mansion on the outskirts of town again, I hear it is still vacant." Jada would know. Her parents couldn't sell that house without her permission.

"I want to get this started ASAP, but I need your help. We need to make our changes, and we need to get back in the game. I'm talking patrols again, at least one weekly to bi-weekly group meeting. I don't think Birhan would feel I'm stepping on any toes by trying to get the family back to having dinner together again, do you?"

"I haven't been patrolling as much- life's been a b***h, and I've been slacking." Understatement of the year. "I don't know the current situation intimately, but I know it isn't pretty. There are a lot of baby-stupid white mooners, a lot of Negaversers and- and maybe even Dark Mooners- getting a lot more than the 'Hi, you're a senshi, good luck!' talk that I know I got." Of course, she'd had tentacles.

Scylla huffed out air, leaning back against the wall. Kill Ares. Kill Fallon? Could she do that? So many memories, jumbled up in her head, of laughter, smiles, Fallon's little habits that could vary from amusing to frightening. but then, she reminded herself, the girl she'd known was already gone, torn apart by Ares and Chaos. Kill Ares. "We're not strong enough, alone. I'm not even sure we could get close before she had us trapped and mind f-cked. Whatever we did- Sirius, we'd be going in knowing that we're going to kill a person. People. Cold-blooded. Whatever it is we did would have to be as carefully thought out as Rota, and more perfectly executed."

She clucked her tongue, trying to push down the nausea. "As for defending the people who left- I'll help them on my own time, if I have to. But you know me- I'm the soft touch who got kicked off torture duty. They got into this mess because they were part of us. I bet a lot of them will help us a little longer, if it will get them out of this mess."

"Sirius, if we fail to take out Ares? Then the BMC is gone, for nothing." She knew how fast Ares seemed to be recruiting. The thought was terrifying. "I agree that we can't wait too long, but we can't go helter-skelter into something like this." Murder.

Scylla watched Sirius calm down, reaching out to clap her friend on the shoulder. "I can tell you have, and I know how you feel." The thought of being Ares' enemy, when they knew intimately just what kind of a leader she had been, and what she'd been willing to do to her enemies, made Scylla shudder.

"But we are already-" Damnit.

"Look," she said instead. "When I see Birhan, I'll get her to order a meeting. I don't want to go behind her back and organize too much of this. She's all that is left of the ISS, now that Zirconia's stepped down and Gunn's left. We need to keep a solid face on the leadership. I agree that out first order of business will be seeing how we can try and mop up our mistake." It hurt to think of Ares as a mistake, but that was what she was, now. They'd let her go unchecked, and now every life that she had corrupted, or killed, was in some part on the hands of the Blood Moon Court.

It was heavy, the weight of that thought. "If we can get enough people together before we can get a hold of Birhan, we'll see how the general Court feels about it. Someone else may have a plan apart from having to kill her. We can save her, maybe- someone managed to get the Chaos out of Linarite, remember? Maybe they could save Ares. And if they can, that would be... wonderful."

"We'll do what we can. We need to find out what we can- if we can save Ares' victims, or Ares herself, we owe it to them." Scylla met her friend's eyes. "Death is a very permanent solution. And if we have-" she choked on it. "We aren't going to make the mistakes we made with Rota."

"From what I understand, Gunn is on... leave. Though I don't know how permanent that leave will be." She breathed in, breathed out. "It's why we can't turn our backs on them, just because they're afraid. If they need our help, it is our responsibility. I won't see more of our Court taken.

"And Sirius... I won't disappear again, okay?" It was weakly said, her promise. "I have to apologize to you. After the night we took Ares' pen, I vanished, and I think- If I had been there-" Maybe things could have gone differently.

Scylla took a deep breath, let it go in a loud hiss. "Until Birhan calls a formal meeting, I plan to be throwing some unofficial training parties. All the Gatorade you can drink. The old mansion where we used to train before. It had a nice gym, and no one is going to bother us there." Not unless Ares and her cronies decided to visit some old haunts. "Will you help me spread the news?"

Scylla didn't expect everyone to agree with her personal decision- it wasn't really in the rules to care about the people who had chosen to abandon their posts. In fact, the old Special Forces would have been tasked with hunting the one who left down and making them pay for their abandonment. But if she recalled, most of the special forces was dead, and the leader- Gunn- had left. Who was going to punish anyone?

The senshi reached out, giving Sirius a quick, uninvited hug. If it was Nemesis, she would have been a little afraid of getting punched in the gut, but not so much with the girl next to her. "I appreciate it. And some things will be changing, I just don't have a plan on where yet." She didn't like the thought of Ares traipsing around in her home. "I'll take you up on that offer, and I am sure Birhan will too."

Their meeting. With awkward pauses included, the entire interlude had taken less than twenty minutes, all in all.

"Want to go on a patrol before we go home? Or you got places to be?" Scylla didn't, but other people might actually have lives. Lucky.