Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I will purge every last abomination and sin from this world!”

Below screamed, his now hulking figure distorted and still growing from soul absorption, his sickly green gray carapace infecting every surface it touched.

Deep in his throat, a bubbling, twisted energy grew in time with his scream, turning the once beautiful threads of the world a horrible rotting color.

Eda’s arms were thrown out as if she alone could shield her kids. Luz felt King clung tightly to her shoulder, burrowed in against her neck as close as he could get, Amity’s hand in hers as red and green warred with blue in the sky and ground.
Willow, Gus, and Hunter were crowded in next to her, faces a range of fear, defiance, and grim determination.
Magic sparked out from them in some futile attempt to protect the small little group from the tyrant.
In Luz’s hand, her last bit of smudged and crumpled paper, a sigil was hastily scrawled.

Her first sigil.

A warm, cloying thing she’d discovered months back now, when she’d first come to Seoul, when she first discovered the secrets on her new neighborhood. It pulsed against the paper, that steady thrum of a heartbeat she’d come to expect from the strange magic none of the demons around her had heard of in hundreds of years.

And then, with the snapping of the threads below their feet, everything happened all at once.

Belos let loose his scream, a jet of miasmic rot, an obliterating ray speeding toward them like negative sunlight.

Plants and abomination goo circled them like a barrier. Earth rose to meet it, static yellow bands so reminiscent of the threads tearing below them weaving between, and over top of it all, a purple glow vibrated, pulsing in a way that seemed to strengthen the whole thing. Eda stood her ground, despite the barrier, wings spreading further in anticipation.
And that last slip of paper, slapped on like a last, pleading hope.

…

Everything blinked out in an instant, here and then gone.
Luz still felt everything.
Or in this case, nothing.
Weightless, breathless, senseless. No sound, no light, she couldn’t breath, she couldn’t move-!
The all consuming nothingness somehow felt more oppressive than even Belos’s presence.

The sudden and unexpected flicker vivid purple and golden amber light bursting into her vision didn’t help.
“Gah-ah”, she gasped, hands flying to her eyes to block out the onslaught, while also trying to relearn how to breath as existence itself slammed into her.

“Sorry! Sorry about that. Here, just let me-”, a deep resonating voice said, both a balm and a boom in her freshly reawakened eardrums, “There.”
The light faded to a more comfortable glow…not unlike that of her sigils. Opening her eyes and peeking past her fingers as the light became manageable, she was met with…
“King?”
The being laughed, a deep and jovial noise that echoed in the undefined space around them. As quickly as it started, it faded, though mirth still filled the being’s features, so very like her little brother’s.
“No, though the rascal does get his good looks from me”, they said, and…oh.

Oh.

Luz was finally able to take in his full appearance. A tall figure, at least a head above Eda, with thick, deep purple fur covering them. It poked out of the collar and arm holes of his “Bad Pitch Lovin” Oni Karaoke T-shirt, and the bottom legs of his long pajama pants. The sweats were covered with four repeating, softly glowing sigils. The ones she’d been using to imitate demon magic these past few months.
His head was like King’s, bone and snout. A pair of longer horns curved back and down, curving all the way back around for their points to stick out of the fluffed up fur at his collar. A single bright amber eye looked back at her with gentle fondness, while the other was dark with a small worm poking itself out. A worm that looked suspiciously like Hooty.

“You’re King’s dad!”

“I think King put it best once. I am both King and Queen. Best of both things. But dad works fine”, the figure…the King of Demons, said, a smile in their voice in features.
Just like King.

Luz smiled back, excitement bubbling up until the realization hit her.

The Demon King hadn’t been seen in hundreds of years. Hadn’t been seen since Gwi-ma took power. Hadn’t been seen since a particularly nasty and bloody battle in hell that left many wondering.

“Wait…you’re…d-does that mean I’m-”,Luz asked, seeing the Demon King’s features shift, fond to worried, pity maybe, and sadness. As easy to read as her brother had become.

She didn’t notice her feet starting to sink into the glass clear water below her.

It reached her knees before a solid pair of hands hoisted her up again, knocking her from her spiraling and settling her back gently to stand on the tense surface again.

“Don’t go thinking like that now”, the Demon King said, a hand settling gently on her shoulders as he kneeled down to be eye to eye with her, “Otherwise, you will be.”

The weight of his hand and the gentle, almost apologetic gaze on her helped to somewhat ground her again, and she took a deep breath. Looking around now as more of the foggy place around them came into focus, she found that they were standing on some large dark lake. Water lay undisturbed below their feet, while around them, all the way to the horizon in every direction, small cubes floated up out of the surface and into the air. It looked, and felt, a bit like standing at the bottom of a glass of soda in a restaurant. Hazy shapes moved out past the fog, big and little, fast and slow. Always just out of sight, to the point that Luz couldn’t tell if they were anything other than more areas of fog playing tricks on her.

“So”, Luz started, pulling her gaze up to the Demon King, “Where…are we?”

The Demon King rose back to his full height, hand still settled on her shoulder as he nudged her to start walking, their pace slow, going nowhere with no point of reference.

“The Space Between. Here and there, Earth and Hell,…Life and Death.”

Luz raised a skeptical brow, glancing around again as they walked. For a place between other places, it didn’t have a lot going on. No structures, no people, no animals. Just floating cubes and fog.

“My family”, she ventured, “My friends. Where-?”

“Not here”, the Demon King said, again apologetic, “You are the closest to me in magic, easiest to pull through the veil. Even King hasn’t reached that level of understanding for our language yet. But we don’t have much time, and there is quite a bit to do.”

A flash of violent red, pierced by a distant, echoing scream, pulled both their attention to the horizon, the murky void now alive with actual movement. Next to her, Luz noticed the Demon King’s faraway eyes tense with worry and fear, eyes widening as if seeing something terrible out beyond the dark.
Another cry rolled out from that red distant lighting like thunder. Luz felt tears press against her eyes without knowing why. That cry sounded familiar, visceral and haunting as it seemed to pierce through realities.

It…

It sounded like hospitals and late nights in sterile, cold rooms, holding weakening hands. Stung like high pitched machine noises and the deafening quiet where they used to be. Felt like hunched forms and shaking shoulders and soft whispers of ‘please’ and ‘I love you’.

Heartbreak.

“Who is that”, Luz asked, her voice sounding raw and hollow to her own ears, as if she’d been the one screaming, her hand coming up subconsciously to fist into the varsity jacket where it pressed over her heart.

Her cheeks were damp, and as she turned to look up at the Demon King, she saw silvery tear tracks rolling down his own cheek, even as his eyes looked on steadily.

“My daughter.”

Chapter Text

“Rumi!”

Jinu’s voice felt drowned out, faded against the chaos of the world around them, even to himself. The sight before him felt like a nightmare, painted in reds and purples.
Rumi was on her knees at the middle of the stage, Gwi-ma’s raging inferno lighting up her and the two figures slumped, unmoving as she cradled them against her, in blood red.

Zoey and Mira.

The two Rumi talked about, her fellow hunters, that had brought a smile and a nervous warble to her voice in equal measure when they’d spent countless nights talking over the past few weeks.
Jinu could tell the woman loved the two from how she spoke of them, soft and with an adoration Jinu himself could only picture his boys with. Abby, Romance, Mystery, and Baby were spread around the stage, trying to keep the rest of the demon horde at bay, buying Jinu time as he rushed to the frozen and shell-shocked huntress.

“Rumi, hey, look at me”, he tried, settling gentle claws on her shoulders, his eyes searching for some flicker of recognition in the now bright slitted amber.

The huntress looked up at him, tears refusing to fall from her eyes as she opened and closed her mouth, trying, willing herself to say something. All that came out was a keening whimper, edged by a roughness that came from screaming, as the reality started cracking her heart apart, leaving her feeling like she was at the end of the gok-do again. The world zeroing to one point that would break her.

Her girls were gone.

They were here, yet the Honmoon screamed, an echo of the one she’d had, leaving her throat raw and jagged. There wasn’t anything in them left. The blue light that had poured from their very beings as they had sung together.
All of it was gone.

Jinu saw as her eyes darkened, from a bright anxious amber to a near pitch black as the very light left her soul, trying to get closer to the ones she’d lost, even as they went where she couldn’t follow. He could feel the panic and the hopelessness become his own.
Gwi-ma, above them, had thankfully been too swept up in his own victory to notice his pawns and victims were still alive. Jinu didn’t think that would last long.

“Jinu”, someone called.

It was Abby, looking over his shoulder at him even as the demonic horde raged against them.

“What’s the plan?!”

Because that’s what he did best, right?
He was the one that saved them from Hell with a stupidly effective plan to parade as a boy band on the surface. He was the one that befriended a huntress. He’s the one that made the call to defend the huntresses after betraying them, and they followed without question.
Because they trusted him to keep their best interests at heart.
They were his.

“Form up!”

A single command had the four jumping back, making a tight knit bubble around the huntresses and their leader, backs to them as they got as close as possible.

“We’re going back”, Jinu said with a finality that rang through everyone present, “It’s the only way left to fix this.”
“But we’d need-”, Baby started, looking over his shoulder at them.
“I know”, Jinu said, holding a hand over his chest, “A soul and a huntress intwined with the Honmoon. We have both.”

Rumi’s eyes focused at that, looking at him in confusion. He did his best to smile at her, feeling it strain as he looked at his boys. They were all solemn, but gave their own nods of confirmation.

“You’ll need help”, Abby said, talking to Rumi now, who turned her eyes up to look at him.

“So will they”, Mystery added, nodding his head at the two huntresses they were all missing.

“Don’t think you’re getting rid of us that easily, darling”, Romance quipped with a grimaced smirk, his hip nudging Jinu’s shoulder, making the man crack a genuine smile.

“And don’t think we’re loosing anyone else”, Baby finished, giving Romance a nod before turning and kneeling down next to Jinu and Rumi, letting the other three hold the weight of the scourge, “Summon your sword, huntress.”

“Baby?”

“If we want to all make it back together, then we need a vessel strong enough, and powerful enough, to host your soul, Ji”, Baby said, taking the sword from Rumi as she summoned it.

“Will my weapon be enough”, Rumi asked, following enough to understand that things were about to get crazy.

She was rewarded with a devilish grin that showed off Baby’s fangs.
“More than enough”, he said, a glow of semi translucent sigils in ambers and purples, a balm against Gwi-ma’s flames, began to infuse into the celestial weapon, “As long as, you know, you don’t mind a soul bound hitchhiker.”

“What.”

“Hurry it up, you lot! We’re running out of time here”, Abby half yelled over his shoulder, straining against the hoard and the heat as Gwi-ma started to take notice of the pests defying him.

“Hands on the blade everyone”, Baby yelled.

The group all reached out, Rumi with her hand on the hilt, Jinu with a hand on the end. The rest of the Saja boys grabbed along the blade as Baby held it out.

“Rex Daemon, Tempus Aliter Memento!”

That same fiery magic swirled around the group, pushing the lesser demons back, and stopping the greater demons in their tracks. Amidst the red and purple, a blue light glowed. Jinu looked down with a determined grimace, watching as his newly returned soul whispered out in tendrils. Gritting his teeth, he looked up at his boys, and his newest friend.

“See you all on the other side, yeah”, he joked, his grimace growing into a smile.

Rumi looked up, wide eyed, watching with barely concealed fear as his soul was whisked out into the sword, pulsing in time with her own soul. The other Sajas gave him back wicked grins, despite the tears in their eyes. Abby reached out, setting a firm hand on Rumi’s shoulder, causing her eyes to snap to him.

“Don’t worry, we’ll see each other again soon. Hopefully on better terms this time around”, he said with a small squeeze of her shoulder that seemed to give her some of her resolve back, before his eyes landed on Jinu, “We’ll find you both as quick as we can.”

“Try not to get into trouble till then, you two”, Romance quipped as the light from the sword and the magic swirling around them became too bright to see properly.

Above them, Gai-ma’s victory and elation cooled under the presence of a new, familiar nagging sensation below him. Much like his old foe’s magic. Pushing his consciousness down, he saw it, a small spark of the Demon King’s magic swirling around the once loyal demons he’d allowed to the human world. Them…and that half breed huntress…whose purple hair always enraged him. A similar purple, so close to that giant fur ball who once claimed to be a king.

Before he could even move to blast them, the magic flared out, bathing the world in a web of bright light.

And something shifted.

Chapter Text

Luz woke with a buzzing headache and the feel of cotton on her tongue. Her feet still felt as if they were standing in ankle deep, ice cold Between water. The sound of her alarm and the light she flicked on almost on instinct felt like too much after the small eternity she’d just spent in the In Between. 

Yawning wide and nearly yelping when her mouth snapped shut with a burst of pain on her tongue, Luz’s hands flew up to her mouth, and her thumb felt the curve of a too sharp tooth. Rushing up and over to the mirror in the nearby bathroom, she opened her mouth to see a bit of blood on her cut tongue…and a set of sharp fangs that were decently noticeable. 

“You won’t be going back the same.”

The Demon King had made sure she knew that. She could see what he meant now as her eyes focused in the dark bathroom in a way they shouldn’t have been able to. They didn’t look too different, maybe a touch lighter, but her human pupils shouldn’t have been able to move like that normally. Her fangs were new. As was the line of swirled patterns making their way down her left arm and over her hand. On her palm, they swirled into her light sigil. Narrowing her eyes at it, she held her arm out, palm up, and was about to clap her other hand against it…just to test-.

“Luz?”

Pulling back, she dove for the door and closed it, switching on the light even as she hissed from the switch. Outside her bathroom, her room light switched on as Camila poked her head in to check on her. She noticed the light on under the bathroom and nodded to herself, happy to note Luz was up on time. 

“Mija? Big day today. You ready?”

“Yeah, mamí! I’ll be out in a few”, Luz called back, reaching over and fiddling with her toothbrush and bathroom bag to make some productive sounding noise. 

It seemed to work, as Camila hummed and made her way back out to the main room of the apartment, calling out over her shoulder as she did.

“Good. Be ready in thirty minutes?”

“On it!”

Five minutes later, teeth brushed and her sleep mushed hair shoved under her red beanie, Luz stuck her head out of the bathroom and scanned her room. Seeing her mom wasn’t there, she made it quickly over to her bulging duffle bag and pulled out a long sleeve shirt to go with her shorts. As much as she wanted to tell her mom everything, she figured it’d be easier to convince her it wasn’t just her overactive imagination with Eda and King backing her up. 

Which meant she’d need to hide it for the next…

“Ughhh, why’d they have to be nineteen hours away?!”

It was…a long flight. 

Connecticut to Seoul, South Korea was a nightmare on her brain the first time around, when the end of the world didn’t loom a few months in the future. When psychopathic 17^th century witch-hunter-turned-angel-complex demons didn’t threaten the first friends she’d ever had.

When she didn’t have someone she needed to find, a mission she’d taken on for her little brother’s dad and possibly cool demon powers granted by said dad. 

When she hadn’t been half addicted to listening to songs that hadn’t and wouldn’t come out for months now. 

“Is that a new song you’ve been listening to, Luz?”

Luz looked up from where she’d been writing absently in her journal, listening to the drone of the plane around her and watching out the window as the world threads…the Honmoon, shimmered out below them. The confusion on her face made Camila laugh lightly.

“The song you were humming. Is that one of those bands you listen to? A new one, perhaps?”

Luz tried to recall what she’d been humming just a moment ago. It took her a moment, letting it flow over her again, and pinging on the melody after a few notes. 

Golden. 

One of the newest Huntrix releases from the past…future…ugh, that was going to confuse her for a while yet. It technically didn’t exist yet, even though it felt like it should. She’d loved it and listened to it until it had seared into her head when it came out. It was just releasing a day after she’d made it to Seoul the first time around. 

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s a newer one that was teased to be releasing soon. I’m really looking forward to it”, Luz said with a small smile, trying not to show off too much of her teeth just yet. 

It was enough for her mom, though, as she turned back to her book with a warm smile. Luz turned back to the window, her pen tapping slowly against her page. 

She hoped that the Demon King had been right, that she wasn’t going back into this mess alone. 

————

“King, get up”, Eda called down the stairs, already moving as she pulled on one of her better shirts and running a hand through her hair in a poor attempt to make it less of a wild mess. 

She’d woken up in a panic, her feathery side already poking out, leaving her to try breathing for a few moments to get herself under control. The demonic pulse of her magic settled just as it had after she’d made peace with it. But she’d woken with green demonic rot pushing at the edges of her mind from a memory that felt more like a nightmare, and a glance at her phone that had shown she very much wasn’t having a nightmare. 

She was living one. 

Five months. 

She was five months in the past, the day that the Noceda family had moved into the spare space above her restaurant, and the day she’d made the worst impression on her kid’s mom. A future she was quickly trying to fix. King’s claws scrambled against the wood as he hurried around the corner, looking as panicked as she’d felt when she first woken up, and she was there in a second scooping him into her arms, dress shirt and presentability be damned. 

“I got you, kiddo. You’re okay. We’re okay”, she crooned as King burrowed into her chest with a panicked whimper that broke her heart. 

Her son had been there with his sister when the barrier they’d created finally broke, and when everything went dark. She couldn’t remember much after that other than sharp pain, and from the way King shivered between hiccups and his tears, he was very likely the same. 

“W-where’s Luz”, he asked, voice watery as he turned his head just enough to look up at his mom with tear-filled eyes. 

“Headed our way as we speak. I don’t know how, or why, but we’re back to the exact day she moved in”, Eda said as she started back down the stairs to the main restaurant floor, still holding King as she walked the circuit around the place, flipping on lights and equipment.

“Do you…”, King went quiet, staring hard at the dress shirt fabric under his claws as he thought, too much going on in his young mind, “She’ll be like us, right? She’ll remember?”

Eda paused, flicking on the karaoke system on the stage and watching the neon blink on in the decorative signs around the lyric screens. That’d been the big question nagging her as well.

“I don’t know, buddy. I really don’t know”, she said, her voice quiet as she looked out over the empty restaurant, “I sure hope she does.”

King looked where she was, knowing his mom was thinking about how big their once little family had started getting with Luz and Camila around. How the restaurant, even closed, had rung out with warmth and laughter that hadn’t been there before the two Noceda women had made their home there. Leaning his head back against Eda’s shoulder, he nuzzled in to her as she continued holding him. 

“Me too.”

Me three! Hoot!”

“Hooty, why.”

Said bird tube had unwound himself from his place in the back kitchen door to slither up next to them in the form of a hug. 

“Who’re we talking about?”

Eda pinched the bridge of her nose, looking the noodle up and down but finding he was completely serious. 

“Luz. We’re talking about Luz”, King yelled at him, “You love Luz! Somehow she’s the only person who’s never freaked out by you!”

Hooty’s face swiveled on its side, a look that would have been cute on anything else, his confusion evident.

“Luz? I don’t think I know a Luz. Is she a new friend?”

Eda and King looked at him for a moment, then to each other with concern. Looking back to the worm tube, they studied him as if he could be lying. He’d never had the capacity for it, but anything was possible. Still, nothing. Hooty was being honest. 

And King’s eyes widened as he started piecing it together. 

“Hooty wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the shield with us.”

——————

A hand caught Willow’s arm, pulling her and Gus around the bend of a hall and into an empty classroom before anyone could fully notice. Willow turned, a growl in her throat and her fangs bared as she pulled Gus behind her, turning to find-.

“Tell me you’re back too”, Amity near begged from where she’d pressed her back into the door as she closed it. 

Willow’s growl died in her throat as she and Gus rushed forward, burying the green haired demon in hugs and whispered worries. Amity seemed to melt into the contact, her pointed ears settling from their panicked, alert position and a purr rumbling from her chest as she hugged them back just as fiercely. 

“Thank the Demon King, I thought I was losing it”, Amity said, pulling back to look at them. 

“We did too. After that battle…!”

They all sobered, remembering the rotting magic that had been blasted toward them, the hulking soul rendered form of Belos as he bore down on their home. 

“We were going to stop by the Oni Karaoke after school”, Willow said, trying to turn the conversation away from the things too big to talk about for now, “Maybe if Eda’s back too, she’d know what’s happening.”

“I pestered Matt about anything he could remember when we got to school, but he doesn’t seem to know anything”, Gus said, looking saddened that his friend wasn’t exactly his friend anymore. 

At least not yet. 

“Skara and the detention track kids are the same. For them, it’s five months in the past. They don’t remember any of it”, Willow agreed.

Amity huffed, nodding. 

“Edric and Emira too. Back to the same bullies they’d been before the incident in the library.”

It’d been an annoying and almost heartbreaking morning. Not only had the twins been more cruel than she’d been used to recently, but in place of her awkward but trying father, her mother had been the one waiting for her arrival downstairs. Her usual bullshit about being top of the class and not mixing with the lesser demons at the tip of her forked tongue. Amity had almost skipped school to dye her hair purple in rage.  Above the three troubled teens, the school bell screamed, signaling the start of the school day. None of them moved, all looking at each other, half lost, half determined. 

“To the Oni”, Amity asked.

The other two’s eyes widened at that, before fanged smiles beamed back at her. With a flick of his wrist, Gus conjured a set of identical copies of them and sent them on their way, flowing back into the student crush outside the room without a peep. 

“Think anyone will notice”, Gus asked as they watched the illusions leave, turning to the windows lining the opposite wall and sliding one open to the alleyway below. 

“None of the students will. Doubt my teachers will, considering I’m still in abomination classes right now”, Willow said with a smirk and a roll of her eyes as she slung a leg out the window and dropped down to the ground below. 

A vine reached out to slow her descent, and her feet met the ground easily. Gus slid down it like a fire pole after her, and Amity behind him, reaching up to shut the window behind them with a tendril of abomination goo. 

“The twins might, and so will your teachers”, Amity admitted, sending a look Gus’s way as they started down the alley toward the Aisles.

Gus shrugged, his face determined, and his eyes a bit haunted. Amity was sure the same look was reflected back at him from her and Willow’s faces.

“I think we’ve got bigger problems than detention.”

————————

Hunter was having the worst mental breakdown of his life, and having it quietly into a bowl of lukewarm gruel the mess hall called oatmeal was not how he thought he’d be starting a morning he didn’t think he’d see. The compound ceiling had been a fresh but muted memory once, after he’d run from it with the help of his new friends, his little sister and their family. He never expected to see it again if he could help it. 

He’d not seen Belos yet, and wasn’t planning too. 

As the compound bell screamed out around them, he tossed the rest of his now cold sloppy oatmeal into the trash and made a quick run back to his room. With the door locked he almost felt secure in the small space, enough to turn his back to the door and scan his old room. He needed a few things. He had to be better prepared this time around. 

His calendar, one he’d kept updated to the minute while in service to Belos, sat on his desk, reading a date five months previous of when he should have woken up. He had no idea if anyone else was here with him. He wasn’t sure what to do about that…

But the Owl Lady…Eda… mom, was nothing if not begrudgingly domestic and set on taking in strays. 

He’d gotten into the Clawthorne family once. He’d do it again come Gwi-ma or Hell eternal. Shoving his frog plush into the bottom of an old duffel bag he’d fished from a dumpster a few weeks before, he went around the room in quick order, fishing out his first aid supplies, his more casual clothing, his good, sturdy shoes. All of it was shoved into the duffel in quick order, just as he packed during missions. 

The duffel was pathetically empty feeling even after scrounging his room a second, then third time for things he’d need. Almost everything he’d have taken from his new room in the Oni had been provided by his mom and mamí, his sisters and little brother, the captain, his friends. All the little comforts and sentimental things his heart had grown to long for at the end of a long day. 

A knock on the door sent him freezing, one hand clutching hard at the handles of the duffle. He wondered if he could make it out the small window fast enough. 

“Little Prince, your patrol will begin soon. Don’t be late”, came a concerned voice trying too hard to be sarcastic.

Hunter felt his shoulders relax. Darius, now that he knew to listen, to look for it, was bad about hiding his care for the boy. Hunter felt a familiar warmth at that, feeling the corners of his mouth twitch as he got a bit closer to the door. Wanting to reach out. Knowing he shouldn’t. The man would have approached him before now if he’d come back like Hunter had.

“Thank you, Coven Head Deomonne. I’ll be out and off in a moment”, Hunter replied back, letting his clipped “soldier’s tone”, as Luz called it, slip back over his voice. 

Darius paused on the other side of the door, eyes widened slightly. Hunter had never thanked him before. Especially not when he used that nickname for the boy. He’d…need to keep a close eye. Just in case. 

“See that you are.”

Hunter’s feet trekked down the long winding paths through the forests outside Seoul of their own accord, duffle slung over his shoulder and his face and hair getting brushed by the wind. He’d changed into his more casual clothing the second he’d been far enough from the compound. Then, he’d started running, his breath even, making plan after plan in his head. Most coming up to the conclusion that he’d be called crazy by almost everyone if he told them everything he now knew of what was coming. The almost taking into account Luz’s charming belief in the good in others, and Eda’s sixth sense for bullshit. 

But, that left one glaring fact. 

Luz wasn’t here yet. 

She’d be arriving today, late. And until she was on the ground, in the Oni, he had no guarantee of his little sister’s signature peace-keeping buffer. 

And his other sister…he bit his cheek to keep from thinking about it. She’d show up, just like she had last time. And he’d make sure she was safely tucked into the Oni family again. He owed that much and more to Vee. 

A sharp trill broke him out of his spiraling thoughts, leaving his feet to scramble him to a stop as his head whipped around in an almost frantic search. Tree limbs stuck out mockingly, all empty. Until an unnaturally red cardinal with a prominent scar on its left eye swooped down into his face and tugged his forelock with a happy warble. 

“Flapjack!”

Hunter practically tackled the little bird spirit, tears running down his face as he looked down at his friend. The bird looked back at him with a hint of confusion despite the obvious joy at being recognized. 

“Oh, do I have so many things to tell you! B-but as we go. Race you to Seoul”, Hunter asked, knowing the grin on his face was wider and more toothy than he’d ever have allowed himself the first time around. 

His legs ached to run, to try to keep up with his friend as they dashed through the forest and city blocks again. And who was Flapjack to deny his newest charge that? Sure, he was confused, he’d never met the boy previously, even if something in him connected to the boy on that visceral, soul-bound level. The joy, the mischievous energy, the underlying anxiety all screamed that the boy, the young demon he now claimed as his charge, knew something he was dying to share. 

“First one there is a rotten egg.”

——————————

“Turn left here”, Luz said with a tired, flight-lagged nod toward the small turn off that would lead them to the Boiling Aisles and their destination.

Nineteen hours and change on a flight, frantically writing down everything she knew and was told by the Demon King had been exhausting and had left her hand cramping up on her. Her eyes were heavy and wishing she’d nap on the trip home like she had the first time around. Her head, though, buzzed the closer they got to their destination. Hope and fear mixing into a sleepless cocktail that she was sure to be riding for a day or two until things finally settled down. One way or another. 

“How did you know that”, Camila asked softly, glancing down at her GPS which, yep, had just rerouted them down that very street.

Luz seemed to freeze for half a second, like she had been all day, before answering.

“Read the map a few times. Was just excited, I guess”, Luz answered. 

Not a lie. Not really the whole truth. 

“Turn right, and in five hundred feet, the destination is on your left. The Oni Karaoke”, the GPS interrupted in its hypnotic monotone. 

“The what.”

Camila saw the sign as they pulled into the half packed parking lot, the neon washing the area in bright golden yellow light as a cartoon oni winked at the cars below. ‘Oni Karaoke’ was scrawled in sharp neon letters next to it, and below, the front doors did nothing to hide the small party atmosphere buzzing in the restaurant. Above the neon sign, three more stories, where Camila assumed their rooms were, were still dwarfed by the surrounding buildings. Luz was out of the car the second they’d stopped moving, pushing open her door and looking up at the building with a fond smile and much more alert eyes than she’d had in the past few hours. 

They were home.

Chapter Text

Her patterns looked odd, a crystalline movement of colors that was both softer and brighter than the purple had been. Rumi had torn the sheets off her bathroom mirror the second her eyes had fallen on her ceiling, ripping a corner of it in the process. 

They were everywhere. Not something she’d be able to hide again even if she wanted to. And that part of her was still so past tired she wondered if it would ever recover. From her perch in the bathroom, she saw that it was still dark outside. Likely early morning well before even an early bird like Zoey would be roused from her sleep. Which left Rumi with a tantalizingly simple solution to the growing shame in her gut. 

Run. 

Run and hide. 

“Earth to Rumi”, came the harsh screeching nail in that tire of thought. 

Jinu. That was Jinu. Where was he? He wasn’t in the room with her, though it had sounded like he was standing right next to her. What had happened last? It was like trying to recall a memory from being half-asleep. There but still blearily trying to refocus. 

“Summon your sword”, came the voice again, this time a little more exasperated. 

She did, the familiar weight a comfort…until it practically sprang from her hand and reformed mid-air into the taller man she’d watched the soul get torn from. 

“What.”

“Hello to you too.”

“The.”

“So, that happened.”

“Fuck, Jinu?!”

“You have questions, I’m sure.”

The corners of her mouth were fighting hard to not pull into a smile at the man’s blatant attempts at humor, despite the situation. She wanted to be mad. She wanted to be devastated. More than that, she just wanted to go to bed. 

“More questions than I know what to do with”, Rumi replied, running a hand down her face as she relaxed back against the counter, “The first being, where?”

“Your penthouse. Five months before the end of the world.”

Jinu could practically see the loading screen in Rumi’s head as he leaned against the counter next to her. At the back of his mind, he could already feel his boys on the move, doing their best to get to the surface world, to them, as quickly as they were able to. A couple weeks ahead of schedule, and certainly not Gwi-ma approved. Not that Gwi-ma could control them anymore. Not after that last little bid of protection they’d pulled for the huntresses. 

“Five months…Just before we released Golden.”

“The night before, yeah. You just finished your last concert of the tour earlier this morning. You released Golden a few hours from now, if I’m remembering right. You know, for your hiatus”, Jinu confirmed with a smirk. 

He received an elbow to the side for it. The exhaustion Rumi was feeling suddenly made a lot more sense. Not only was her mind reeling from that last fight, but she’d popped back to the few hours after their world tour ended. She’d jumped out of a plane less than four hours earlier if she was guessing the timing right. 

“That means they’re okay”, Rumi muttered, looking out her bathroom toward her door with wide, hopeful eyes even as Jinu sputtered in dramatic pain behind her. 

She had stepped out into her room a second later, leaving Jinu to his theatrics as she ducked into her closet and pulled on a thick hoodie, throwing the hood over her head. Her door unlocked and swung open quietly, she padded into the hall even quieter as she stalked toward her girls’ doors with the speed and determination of a predator. One door, then the other. Her eyes allowed her to pick out their sleeping forms in the pitch black. Something she’d cursed before that now filled her with a thankfulness she was sure Celine would scold her for should she ever know. 

They were both okay.

Which left her with a bigger dilemma. Closing Mira’s door softly, she stepped back, thinking as she looked at the closed door. She was now back at square one, her girls none the wiser to her patterns despite their now full coverage of her body. 

But, they had seen them. And that had been a horrible time, the gok-do still shining in the space behind her eyes, the shin-kal more hesitant but still there. The fear. The betrayal. One song hadn’t fixed that, wouldn’t have even come close. Sure, they’d hugged, her girls had withstood demonic fire to protect her. And wasn’t that just the thing to send her spiraling, the blood and ash clinging tight to her memory even if she was clean and safe five months in the past. Even if they were alive right there, sleeping, like nothing had happened. Because it hadn’t yet!

“Hey, deep breath, bepeu”, came a calming whisper behind her as Jinu leaned into her space, throwing his weight over her shoulders like a breathing weighted blanket, “They’re okay. We all are. We’ve got time now.”

She struggled to take in a breath, but tried still, keeping herself quiet to not be heard out in the hall like this. After a moment, it came a bit easier, and Jinu took that as his cue to take his weight off her and lead her back to her room. When the door closed silently behind them, she collapsed onto her bed, looking up at the ceiling with wide eyes and a frown. 

“How do I even start explaining everything to them?”

Jinu looked at her for a moment before walking to the bed, turning, and flopping himself down so hard it caused Rumi’s body to lurch up before they both settled again.

“Well, if you want my expert opinion”, Jinu started, settling his head back on his arms as he looked up at the ceiling next to her, a smirk evident in his voice. 

“I don’t now that I think about it”, Rumi sighed.

“Wow. I’m hurt. Here I am, about to offer sage advice with all my worldly experience”, Jinu said, “Four hundred years of knowledge-.”

“Four hundred years of snark and sarcasm doesn’t help me.”

“That is going to waste on you”, Jinu continued as if she wasn’t speaking, “Were you always this contrary?”

Rumi glared at him from the corner of her eyes. He just smirked back, nudging her shoulder with that same shit-eating grin he had when he knew his banter was working. It was. Rumi’s shoulders weren’t as tense. Rumi also wasn’t going to fuel his ego by confirming as much. 

“Alright, old man, what is your sage advice”, Rumi asked, pushing up and turning to sit facing him.

Jinu mirrored her, crossing his legs even with his shoes on, which Rumi was pointedly ignoring.  For the sake of her sanity if nothing else. 

“Start at the beginning and just…tell them?”

It was said with a more genuine smile and a shrug. Like it was just that easy. Rumi’s face must have revealed her incredulous mood as Jinu’s smile got wider.

“J-just tell them? Just like that, like that won’t completely shatter their whole world view? I doubt they’d listen to me past exposing my patterns to them, much less that demons aren’t even close to what we thought. The other Sajas helped us at the end. And you mentioned those not under Gwi-ma during our talks. There’s so much I don’t even know about demons, about the narrow world Celine taught us.  How am I supposed to tell them”, Rum asked, keeping her voice low even as she wanted to scream, standing from the bed with a huff. 

“The boys could help explain more”, Jinu said, sitting up to watch as Rumi started pacing. 

“Yeah, hi, I’m a half demon, cause that’s a thing and I’ve been keeping it from you for years when I shouldn’t have, and now to give you more information, here’s five of them that we’ve been trained to kill right here, in the living room. One of them is my sword, but he didn’t used to be. Cause time travel is real”, Rumi hissed.

“Well, when you put it like that, it does sound a tad overwhelming.”

“It’s a recipe for disaster!”

Just then, a flicker of the Honmoon showed through the window, bright red and pulsing in a way that showed it was being torn through. It seemed to lurch in Rumi’s chest, though not in the way she’d been used to, not in the way it had the first time. At the same time, she noticed the patterns on the back of her hands flicker in the same way. 

Odd, but a problem for later. 

Her ears flicked, waiting for movement down the hall. When none came, she let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. 

“Speaking of disasters, that should be the boys”, Jinu said, standing to look out at the city in the direction of the tear. 

“Not helping”, Rumi said, pulling him toward the balcony by his wrist.

“Wait, where’re we-”, Jinu said, allowing himself to be dragged along. 

Until he was cut off with a yelp as Rumi dragged him over the railing into open air. He’d deny for years that the high pitched shriek came from him as they descended at full plummeting speed toward the ground. Rumi wasn’t going to easily let him forget it. She hadn’t known he could reach that note. 

Chapter Text

Her scales felt charged as she zoomed past one alley entrance, then another, looking for a suitable place, far from the rift that had been torn open. That came in the form of a metric ton of overflowing trash piled high behind some unknown restaurant that reeked of too much grease. Stacked high in overflowing dumpsters, she wiggled her way between two of them into a small, quiet little alcove that was cleaner than the others.

Shoving her back to the wall, Vee wrapped her arms around herself and hunkered down. Her breaths were ragged from how fast she was moving, sending small bursts of fogged breath into the colder morning air. Air she didn’t think she’d ever feel when her and her kin were running for their lives through Hell. 

‘Keep moving, and don’t look back’,Ivy had said as their small group had been making their way across barren sulfurous fields just out of sight of the burning maw on the horizon. 

They’d escaped Belos, only to fall into Gwi-ma’s domain. Out of the pot, into the fire….Vee tried not to think about it too much. She’d be lucky if the past week didn’t give her nightmares for the next few years. She’d be luckier, she knew, if she survived to see a time when the nightmares didn’t get to her. 

Curling her tail further around herself, she was ready to get some slightly less paranoid sleep. Her eyes were nearly closed, the sounds of the city washed into white noise as she slowly sunk into her exhaustion.

“It smells like they went this way, whoever it was”, a voice, male from the sound of it, bounced off the walls of the alleyway, “Oh, gross. Not this place.”

“You know this restaurant”, another voice asked, this one sounding female and slightly amused.

Vee held her tail closer, scrunching herself up further into the cramped little alcove and hoping that whoever it was didn’t find her. She wasn’t good in a fight to begin with, not when claws and teeth were faster than power-draining abilities. As effective as Belos thought they’d be in a group, Vee knew she was done for if anyone found her right now. Exhausted, freshly across the Honmoon, and alone. 

“They tried to sponsor us. Abby and Myst, those bottomless stomachs, couldn’t eat more than a few bites of this garbage before the grease got to them”, the man’s voice said, and it was closer.

At the other end of the alley, Rumi and Jinu were steadily making their way through the space, both their noses working overtime to track the surfer and ash smell along the grease clogged space. Jinu was having an easier time, but felt his gut lurch. Whatever they were tracking wasn’t the boys. He was sure of that at least. He wasn’t sure it was a demon from his pit among sinners either. The ash and sulfur smelled like it clung rather than made the demon they were tracking. 

“Would they come back here, then?”

Jinu shook his head, still looking around. The alley was pretty empty, aside from the mountain of trash at the restaurant’s back door. He pointed to the pile. Next to him, Rumi gave a curt nod and started forward a little more hesitantly. 

Vee heard the hush fall over the alley when the man didn’t answer the woman, and saw just barely, the shadow of one of them moving closer from her vantage under the edge of the nearest dumpster. Closing her eyes, she tried to shift. Make herself smaller, or look like a garbage bag. Maybe a rat or some other human pest. Easily looked over, easily dismissed. But nothing happened. She was just too tired, too out of energy. 

The steps stopped as a slightly obscured figure appeared at the other end of the little alcove, looking in. Bright amber eyes met warm brown ones, and Vee shrunk even further into herself as tears welled in her eyes. 

Caught. 

She’d not even lasted an hour up here. 

“Do you need your sword? I can-.”

Jinu quieted when Rumi held up a hand, her gaze never leaving the little alcove between the dumpsters, even as her brow furrowed. Jinu couldn’t really tell if it was in anger or confusion from where he was standing, but the living mood ring wasn’t flashing red or purple, so he assumed Rumi wasn’t worried about whatever she was seeing. In fact, the slightest flicker of orange ran through the marks as she crouched down further to get a better look. Confusion, then?

“Hey…you alright in there”, Rumi asked, her voice infinitely soft. 

The demon, a snake-like little thing, just seemed to shiver more where she was squished up in between the dirty and sludge covered dumpsters. The sharp chill in the early morning air likely wasn’t doing them any favors. Biting her lip, Rumi moved and shrugged off her hoodie. Shuffling a bit closer to the gap in the dumpsters, she held it out in front of her, still giving the small demon some space. 

“Here. You’re cold, right? This should help a bit”, Rumi tried again. 

And it worked, even if just a little bit. The small demon looked up over their tail, tears still at the corners of their eyes. The slitted snake-like amber eyes took in the offered hoodie, and a pair of long, fluffy, and admittedly cute ears rose in surprise from the deep cobalt hair on top of their head. Rumi smiled, knowing her fangs would poke out slightly, and that her patterns were on full display like this. The demon, somehow so young looking, could see them too. 

Leaning forward, Vee hesitantly took the offered hoodie, looking at the purple haired woman for another second before slipping it on and burrowing into it against the chill of the morning. The woman smiled at her, and Vee could see the patterns she’d come to know on human demons, those that usually existed under Gwi-ma. She felt none of the anger, the fear, the aggressiveness she’d come to expect from one under Gwi-ma though. Shame, sure, she felt something like it simmering deep in the woman’s emotions, but that hardly mattered against the bright smile she was sending her way. One of the first she’d seen from someone other than her kin since…ever.

“A little better, right?”

Vee nodded. Then her head snapped in the direction of footsteps as the man came closer, slowly, and leaned over. Plopping his head cheek first on top of the woman’s head and looking in at her with unmasked curiosity. The woman’s expression shifted to something like fond annoyance, right as the man’s mouth formed an ‘O’ shape. 

“Oh, they’re so cute!”

“Jinu.”

“What”, the man, Jinu, said with a teasing smile, “You have to admit they look adorable. Look at those ears.”

“Jinu, you’re going to scare them more.”

“Hi, tiny demon. What’s your name? I’m Jinu. This surly one is Rumi”, Jinu continued, speaking directly to Vee, and motioning to the woman, Rumi, with a bright, comically goofy smile. 

Vee couldn’t help the small, breathy laugh at the two. A weight was loosening in her chest at their antics, and she felt almost safe with them here with her. 

“I’m Vee”, she said, quietly. 

Even as quiet as her voice was, both turned to look at her with softer smiles, having heard well enough with their enhanced hearing and the relatively quiet alley.

“Alright”, Rumi said, shoving Jinu up and off her, “Enough of that. Come on, let’s get you out of there, Vee. It’s gross, and too cold out here to not be bundled up somewhere warm.”

Rumi extended a hand into the alcove, and Vee, despite the warnings her kin had given her, took it. She was surprised when Rumi easily pulled her out of the small area and into the alley proper. She was set between the two, who towered over her as wrapped around herself as she was. 

“There. Now…how do we want to do this”, Rumi said, glancing up at Jinu, who looked over at her curiously. 

“Do what?”

“I can’t carry her and you back to the penthouse. So, can you keep up”, she teased, leaning down and setting a hand on Vee’s shoulder. 

While Jinu spluttered, she kneeled down to Vee’s height with that same, radiant smile again. Vee leaned into the warm hand on her shoulder. 

“We’re going to get out of here and back somewhere safe. Is it alright if I carry you? We’re going to be moving pretty quickly.”

Vee nodded, still a little stunned at the compassion of some random…demons? She had to assume they were, given the markings and the fangs they both had. She’d not expected demons, humans, or anything in between to give her even a bit of attention, much less positive attention. She didn’t have long to think about it before Rumi had scooped her up, a small, strangled squeak coming from the young demon as she did. 

“I got you. You’re okay”, Rumi said as soothingly as she could, before turning to the still dramatically simmering Jinu, “You coming, G10?”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever, mood ring”, Jinu sassed back, following as Rumi took off quickly toward the end of the alley. 

Rumi gasped dramatically, noticing Vee starting to smile at their banter. The small giggle the back and forth pulled from her was a good sign. 

“Do you hear the way he talks to me?”

Jumping up onto the edge of a fire escape, the trio made their way to the roof, and took off across the city, back toward the distant Huntrix tower. Rumi pushed aside the fact that neither Zoey or Mira had woken when the Honmoon ripped open. Maybe it was too small a tear? Maybe her patterns gave her a new unknown edge? A small glint of sunlight breaking across the windows from behind them, sending a glare into their eyes told her she had bigger issues to worry about right now. 

Like a certain talk long overdue. 

They reached the base of the tower within ten minutes, both looking up back to Rumi’s balcony with a mix of trepidation and annoyance. 

“Well”, Jinu said, his head tipping onto his shoulder from where he’d been looking up to give Rumi a deadpanned look, “We gonna fly up there, or…?”

Rumi huffed, thinking. They couldn’t very well go through the building. The elevator would wake Mira and Zoey. Not to mention the front door always had some nosy paparazzi shmuck watching it, no matter the time of day. The last thing she needed right now was a media scandal on top of all the things they had to do. 

“Give me a second. We can figure this out.”

“Sure…And done.”

Rumi side eyed Jinu as he brought a hand up to his mouth and pulled a decently impressive whistle, one that seemed to ripple out in a light blue across the area, catching strands of the Honmoon as it did. A moment later, a ripple came back, followed by a familiar chuff that had Rumi smiling.

“There they are”, Jinu said, happily letting Derpy nudge into him, Susie landing on his shoulder as the two fully exited Derpy’s portal, “How’re my favorite beasties?”

A low rumbling purr answered him as Derpy pressed his head further into Jinu’s open hands. On his shoulder, Susie looked over at the girls, Vee shrinking under the six-eyed glare, while Rumi just sent the bird a fond smirk. Turning his head, Susie gutturally chirped, a sound more like a burp than a bird, and fluttered over to settle on Rumi’s shoulder with a curious gaze. 

“Derpy Express, leaving the station”, Jinu said, pulling both girls’ eyes back to him, standing leaning against Derpy’s bulk and miming pulling a train horn just like he had all those nights ago, “Choo Choo!”

Rolling her eyes, and adjusting Vee in her arms, Rumi stepped over to the blue tiger and leaned against his opposite side. Something the large cat didn’t even blink at, before the group sunk into the ground. They reappeared a moment later, rising from the ground of Rumi’s bedroom balcony, the door still open from their earlier exit. 

Vee, still nestled in Rumi’s arms, looked down at the blue tiger with wide eyes, ones that shifted to look at the bird again before she finally took in her surroundings. Whoever these people were, they were decidedly well off, if the spacious room, high balcony, and various pieces of furniture were anything to go off of. Having no frame of reference meant that Vee could only really guess, but she felt like “well off” was a decent enough term. 

“Vee, would you like to get washed up? Bathroom will be there”, Rumi said gently, setting her down on the plush carpet and pointing to said bathroom at the other end of the room, “And I’ll find something for you to wear. Sound good, sweetie?”

She nodded, allowing herself to be led into the bathroom. It wasn’t until the door fully closed behind her that she allowed herself the time to actually process what had happened to her in the span of two hours. 

Hands white knuckled into her borrowed hoodie, Vee shook her head to try and clear the whirlwind of thoughts before moving to the shower. 

She was…fine, totally fine. 

And for now, she’d let the hot water wash what it could from both her body and mind. Some of the past few hours could be dealt with when she wasn’t running on adrenaline and desperation. The thought that she’d get the chance to not be completely chained to that state of constant survival made the burning hot water feel all the better as Vee allowed herself just a moment to unwind the tension from her shoulders. For whatever reason, she’d decided that Jinu and Rumi were safe. 

Safe enough for now at least. 

She could live with safe enough. 

Chapter Text

Luz should have ignored it. Should have just pulled open the door to the main floor of the Oni Karaoke and walked in to join her mama and face the possibility that she was, in fact, back to square one. A worry that the words of Papa Demon would not quell until she saw the rest of her family looking at her with knowing warm eyes. 

Instead, the rattle of the metal dumpsters that always sat half clogged in the alleyway running next to the Oni caught and held her attention. Her hand pulled away from the handle as she looked over, brows drawing in confusion. 

“Jean-Luc?”

The rat had been there ever since she knew to look for it. So maybe she’d missed him this early the first time. Eda’s potion leftovers had turned the unusually large, solitary rat into a living trash can, able to clear the dumpsters behind the Oni better than any of the city services did. 

Another rattle, and a deeper, almost guttural noise, close to a voice that was too far to make out. A step…then another as she made her way over to the alleyway entrance. 

“-gross, Myst! That was in the trash”, the voice said. 

No, a voice. 

There was more than one. 

The first was smooth, albeit a bit high from disgust or disbelief. 

Another was trying to hide a snicker badly. 

“Aw, come on. Growing demons got to eat, Ro”, another, deeper voice, says with a teasing, smile filled lilt. 

A fourth, muffled by something, seems to agree. 

Luz peers around the corner of the alley. Down by the dumpsters, hidden in the gloom that was left by the broken bulb Eda hadn’t ever replaced by the back kitchen door before or after she came to Seoul, were four human figures. Tall, probably half a head taller than her at the least, maybe more. She could only make out their silhouettes from the streetlights at the far end of the alleyway, which wasn’t helpful. 

They were all huddled around the dumpster, one leaning over it with what Luz could only assume was food Eda hadn’t given to Hooty. Which…she wasn’t going to question it. She wasn’t…but there was something heavily familiar about their voices. And, they hadn’t been there the first time. She knows they hadn’t. She would have heard them the first time. 

Where had she heard those voices before?

“Food for your demise.”

Luz jumped, hopping once, twice to keep herself on her feet as she looked over and saw…

“Oh, that’s where you are”, she said, huffing annoyed at the strange, terrier sized rat with demon-magic-purple eyes that glowed at her with a hunger…for fries. Always for fries. 

Then the quiet hit her. 

Looking to the side, four pairs of definitely not human eyes reflected back at her from their place by the dumpster. Because Jean-Luc had startled her out of her hiding spot and into the middle of the alley entrance. 

“Aw, farts.”

————————————————————————————

“That wasn’t as difficult as I thought it’d be”, Baby muttered as he stood from pulling himself out of the small red tear in the ground in an unlit alley…somewhere in Seoul. 

He hoped it was Seoul. It smelled like it. Air felt like it. Buildings looked like it. But he’d been known to be wrong before. Sometimes. 

Turning, he kneeled and shoved an arm back into the gap, not big enough to get on the radar of anyone connected to the Honmoon. Little more than a dog door at this point really. And he felt a hand meet his own a moment later and tugged. Had he not been a demon, pulling Abby to the surface like that might have broken his poor back. As it was, it took every ounce of his leverage to pull the bulky guy to the edge of the tear. 

Where he promptly got wedged.

Baby looked down at him for a moment, blinking at this new development. 

“Why do you have to be built like a Dorito”, he huffed, kneeling back down and testing the edges of the Honmoon with a careful claw, hoping to open the tear just enough to allow Abby to pass through so they could pull the others out. 

“Oh hush. You love it”, Abby grunted, trying to free himself with the one arm he’d been able to get up above the ridge of the Honmoon. 

“Never said I didn’t. But it doesn’t make this easy”, Baby hissed back as he moved to slice the Honmoon. 

Before it seemed to shift and the tear widened on its own. Baby snatched his hand back, watching with wide-eyed fascination as the web of the Honmoon settled easily around the tear, turning the harsh red of the tear into a pulsing light purple as it seemed to…wait. Baby wasn’t going to test how patient it would be for them. Grabbing Abby under his armpits, he helped haul the man from the hole and was immediately back down and reaching back into the tear. 

Another hand. 

Ro followed, Baby pulling his arm up and out until Abby grabbed him to pull him further from the tear. 

Another, the last. 

Mystery clambered up, one hand in Baby’s and the other digging shallow marks into the concrete as he slumped out of and rolled away from the tear. He stopped right at Abby’s feet, as the demon was rushing back to help pull him free. The smile pulling at Myst’s lips as he lay on his back, looking up at Abby as he stopped rolling told them the quiet demon was alright. 

And after another quiet moment, they felt the shift. A look back at their small doorway through the Honmoon showed the threads weaving back together easily, closing the way back into Hell behind them. 

“Good riddance”, Myst muttered.

It earned a laugh from all of them as they stood and tried to take stock. None of them recognized where they were, though Ro was sure that it was Seoul. Just like Baby, he said it had the right feel. Abby and Myst didn’t question them. Until they could get somewhere higher up, they weren’t going to be sure. 

And higher up they would have gotten…had Myst not started toward the dumpster, looking to be sniffing at something. 

———————————————————————————————

Amity’s leg bouncing under the table as she looked between where Eda and Camila had disappeared up the stairs and the main door was shaking the entire table. Which was making a small consistent tapping noise where the table hit the wall it was pressed against just under the kitchen passthrough window. 

At about the same time, Willow set a hand on Amity’s shoulder to grab her attention and hopefully knock her from spiraling, Hunter shoved a stack of napkins into the space between the table. King, who’d been hiding behind him when Camila passed through, was doing the same on the other side of the table. 

“I’m sure she’s just grabbing her bag. She’ll be in in a minute”, Willow said, trying for a comforting smile even as she was getting nervous, “You know how she likes to make an entrance.”

Amity nodded, still not taking her eyes off the door. Willow glanced over at the other three, chewing her lip as she worried. Matching worry met her as she looked to them. What was taking Luz so long?

She was about to suggest they go out to find her when-.

“Hey, that’s my garbage”, Hooty’s grating voice yelled from the back, thankfully buried under the din of loud speakers and half garbled lyrics. 

The table knocked around more as four teens and an eight-year-old pushed away from it and bolted for the kitchen’s back door faster than any of them had moved toward Hooty — ever. 

Hunter got there first, his body blurring in that lightning yellow his wavering speed magic made, shouldering the door open and skidding into the alley in a battle stance, claws at the ready and teeth bared. Flapjack, who’d settled in a pocket on his shirt as they waited wasted no time flapping to his shoulder and puffing himself up. Hooty was already winding his way out, leering at the possible threat over the shoulder of one of many new friends he’d been told not to bother that day. 

Then Hunter’s eyes widened, and he felt his stance drop suddenly as he heard Willow, Amity, Gus, and King come skidding to a halt just a step behind him. 

Next to the dumpster, just outside Hooty’s door, was…a sight. 

Luz was standing under a small collection of lights, glowing soft amber in time with a small webbing of patterns showing just barely under the sleeve of her left arm. She was looking more than a little perplexed as she watched the four new figures there in the alley with her. Older than them from the look of it by a few years at least, was a decidedly colorful group of older guys. Two with pink hair, one with blue, one with purple. 

Luz was standing with the blue-haired one, nearly shoulder to shoulder, while the long pink haired one stood on the other side of the dumpster with a fist covering his mouth, like he was going to gag. All three watched as the buffer pink haired one cheered on the weirdest tug-of-war match they’d ever had the misfortune to see. 

Because the purple one was trying to wrangle a half eaten something from Jean-Luc. It was too degraded to tell at this point, half hidden in a wrapping of some kind. And Jean-Luc was winning.

“Come on, Myst. Teach that rat whose boss”, the buff one cheered, not doing a single thing to help his obviously struggling friend.

“I’m so sorry”, the blue-haired one muttered, almost to himself, but Luz shook her head.

“No, it’s…it’s fine. I think. But, does he know that we could probably…maybe, make him something fresh inside? Like, not poisoned and potioned scrap food”, Luz asked, still blinking at the scene, even as her ears told her someone had entered the alleyway near them. 

Probably just Hooty about to get territorial. 

“You hear that, Mystery? Please stop fighting the rat for food. We can get good food. Fresh food”, Ro called, before running a hand down his face and turning away, “This is worse than that grease pot of a restaurant on the other side of town.”

“Not true. That place gave me food poisoning. It gave Mystery heart burn. This stuff is actually decent by comparison”, Abby argued, turning to Romance and spotting the new group in the alley just behind them, “Oh, hey.”

Luz, Baby, Mystery, and Romance turned to look where he was talking, letting Jean-Luc gain the advantage he needed to tear the food from Mystery’s grasp and dive back down into the dumpster with his prize. 

“Guys!”

“Who’re-?”

“My food!”

“Aw, you lost-.”

“Myst, don’t-.”

Luz broke away from the boys and bolted over to the teens, colliding in a pile of laughing and crying limbs as they all reached for her. The small purple-furred demon wriggled his way up into her chest at the center of the group hug. 

Romance groaned as Mystery tried to dive headfirst into the dumpster after the rat, Abby laughing as he grabbed the demon around the waist and stepped toward the group of teens. Baby and Romance followed him as they watched their strange new…human? friend they’d made in the past five minutes meet with the group. Baby’s eyes were on the bird tube wriggling ominously behind them, beady eyes on the boys but not moving toward them as the teens all talked over one another in their excitement. 

It was Hunter and Willow who pulled back first, moving to place themselves between the two groups with suspicion on the four older guys.

“Who’re you?”

“Hunter, it’s okay. They, well, I think they’re like us. Right, Saja Boys”, Luz said, and the teens all paused as they recognized the name, and put the faces before them into place. 

“The ‘Soda Pop’ guys”, Hunter asked, wrinkling his nose.

“What are those pop eagworms doing here”, King stage-whispered into Luz’s ear where he’d perched on her shoulder. 

“Didn’t they release that a month from now”, Willow asked, ears pinning back. 

“Where’s the normal one”, Gus, ever the observant one, asked, scratching his chin as his eyes flicked over the alley. 

Said normal one did not materialize or pop up like magic from the dumpster under his scrutiny. 

“Ji would absolutely love hearing someone say that after he convinced us all to have stupid hair colors”, Baby said, a deadpan settling over his face. 

“Like us how, batata”, Amity asked, turning to Luz and grabbing for her hand, Luz immediately twining their fingers together with a smile. 

A smile that Amity noticed the small pinpricks of fangs in. Her eyes went wide. Luz didn’t have fangs…didn’t have patterns…but the soul she felt brimming in her was still the same Luz she’d always known. A quick glance at Gus and King, who were the closest, showed they’d noticed it too. Gus shrugged a little. 

Later. It was for later. 

“They remember. Just like we do.”

The teens eyed the boy band members. Baby was trying to hard to look nonchalant even as his eyes scanned over the little amber globs of light still floating resolutely over their heads. Ro smiled sheepishly, more a grimace next to the beaming smile Abby gave them, even as he still had Myst slung over his shoulder like a rag doll. Myst, whose stomach growled so loudly that Hooty could hear it a few paces behind the teens. 

And the woman behind Hooty, who leaned a hand on her hip with a skeptical look at the lot. A sigh drew everyone’s attention to her a moment later. 

“I’m not a fan of people rooting through my garbage. So we’d better figure this out inside, over actual food”, Eda said, nodding to Hooty and sending the fluffed up bird tube wriggling back into the kitchen. 

Luz beamed at her, and she met it with a fond smile, gold tooth on display. She waved a hand, motioning the group back inside. Luz pulled Amity along, only dropping her hand to give Eda a bone crushing hug that the woman returned tenfold before letting Luz and the rest of their little group make their way inside. 

Glancing back up, she noticed the boys standing awkwardly where they had been, looking more than a little lost. She raised an eyebrow at them.

“That included you lot”, she said, crossing her arms and looking over at them with no real heat in her half-glare, “No more dumpster diving. Jean-Luc and Hooty already fight over that stuff enough. Inside. Now.”

They filed past her, trying not to glance over at Hooty or her. 

Eda sighed again as the group ducked out to their table and the scrape of chairs moving drowned out the thump of the speakers. 

“Lily’s right. I might have a problem.”

Chapter Text

Eda leaned against the counter of the now closed Oni Karaoke. Guests had all left. Machines were all off, half the lights as well. Most of the kitchen was cleaned, and what wasn’t could be handled by Hooty or done tomorrow before opening. 

Camila had retired to her new room, tired from the flight and travel time that’d taken the Noceda family most of the day. She’d been impressed as far as Eda could tell, with the tour and space she’d be renting out of Eda’s third floor. Eda had done everything in her power to make sure she was after the disaster of their first meeting. She’d seemed even more happy to see Luz hanging around the group of teens, though confused. Eda had covered it as her sons being extremely friendly and their friends happy to welcome a newcomer. She’d explained the Saja twerps away as older brothers to some of the other kids. 

And now, she watched as the time rolled toward early morning as the group of teens and young adult demons talked and ate, holding no less than three separate conversations around and with each other if Eda’s ears were hearing right. Luz was involved in all of them. King was curled easily between Luz and Hunter. 

Eda was already plotting how to sniff out her missing kid, along with, Demon King forbid, another young adult that they needed to find. Maybe more than one if the snippets of names were anything to go by. 

“When did I become a mother of twelve or more? So much for Lord Calamity”, Eda said, running a hand down her face. 

A small hoot brought her attention to Owlbert, who was perched on the counter next to her. Smirking like the nosy little owl he was. 

“No one asked you”, she huffed back, knowing her voice sounded more fond than annoyed. 

It was a nice little reprieve, the chatter and the sassy guardian spirit next to her. That warmth from before everything rapidly started falling apart. At least for tonight, Eda let the weight of their predicament and all the unknowns slide off her shoulders. For a few hours, she could focus on the simpler things. 

Like making sure her kids were taken care of. 

Stepping around the counter, she clapped as she strode toward them, catching ten pairs of eyes flicking over to her. She gave the group a fanged smile. A little teasing, and warmer than she would have allowed herself the first time around. 

“Alright, you lot, it’s late. Time to head up and figure out sleeping arrangements.”

Her teens stood to make their way toward the stairs, King clambering up Luz’s back and perching on her shoulder. The older twerps looked a bit more awkward, half rising from their seats like they weren’t sure if they were included. 

“That still means you four”, Eda assured, rolling her eyes and shooing them after the teens, “We’ll figure everything out later in the morning. Once everyone’s gotten a little rest.”

The small grins, barely there, she received made her preen, not that she’d ever admit it. She tried to ignore the way her curved patterns unfolded slightly into feathers as the Fenghuang spirit she shared a body with also preened. While the bird brain and her still seemed to be on the same page, she didn’t want to go full Harpy mode right now. 

Eda followed the gaggle upstairs, letting them all filter into the second floor’s spacious living room. And just like clockwork, the teens split off into groups as they tackled the usual sleepover checklist. 

King scrambled down the hall toward his room to collect his army of darkness to stand guard, while Hunter trailed behind to raid the linen cabinet for every pillow, blanket, and soft thing they had. Amity and Willow ducked toward the kitchen, while Gus and Luz snuck up the stairs toward the third floor. 

Eda stepped in and pulled up some of the pillows and cushions from the surrounding chairs, tossing them on the ground behind the Sajas. 

“Hope you boys like movies, tea, and too many snacks. Sleepovers at the Clawthorne household demand nothing less”, Eda smirked. 

“Didn’t we just eat”, the pink long haired one, Romance, she remembered, asked.

“Hardly matters”, Amity said as she stepped back in setting a kettle and a box of teabags on the coffee table. A set of abomination hands wrestled the entire household’s mug collection onto it right beside them. Eda ignored the small pang at the ones that were missing. 

Willow followed behind her with an armful of snacks, dumping them onto the table as well. Hunter and King weren’t far behind as they stumbled back in, arms ladened with plush of all kinds. They dropped plushies and bedding unceremoniously onto the growing pile behind the Sajas and started in methodically building a nest, just like Eda had taught them. Sure, they weren’t inhabited by the queen of all mythological birds…but nothing beat a comfy and well built nest. 

The soft patter near the stairs preceded Gus and Luz reappearing. Gus had arms full of dvds from Luz’s collection that would find their way into the family shelves soon enough. Luz had a little less. In fact, she only had one thing. A fuzzy, familiar pink lump. 

“Francois”, King cried, scampering away from the nearly complete pillow nest and up the last few steps to get to his favorite toy. 

Luz giggled as he climbed right up her pants to her shirt and deposited the plush bunny right into his waiting claws. She held him up instead as he nuzzled into the bunny.

“I snatched him from one of my boxes before the movers loaded them up. I figured you’d want your favorite general with you sooner rather than later”, Luz said, walking down the remaining steps with King in her arms, running her fingers through his dark purple fur. 

Another clap pulled everyone’s attention back as the pillow nest was finished and snacks were arranged. A small pile of shoes and jackets left forgotten by the end of the couch. 

“Okay, brats. Check in time”, Eda said, looking over the group as they all settled down with blankets and pillows, some mugs already steaming and chips already open, “I don’t normally have to ask, but given the circumstances, what has everyone told their parents?”

“I’m at Gus’s house”, Willow said.

“And I’m at Willow’s”, Gus smirked.

They shared a look before breaking into soft laughter. If their parents checked in with each other, they’d be in trouble. Given the circumstances, that seemed the least of their worries. 

“Boots”, Eda asked, looking over to the green haired demon. 

“Mom’s off on a business trip, probably to the compound. Dad is…Dad, again. And the twins won’t notice I’m not there at this point”, Amity replied with a shrug. Luz was quick to pull her into a hug. 

“Remind me to have a talk with your mother and dad soon. One needs their priorities rearranged…and the other needs her shit rocked”, Eda muttered the last bit, feeling her feathers pop out a bit more insistently. She quieted the Fenghuang with the promise of a hunt soon. 

“My mom said I could be here”, Hunter said, his matter-of-fact tone not hiding the twitch of his lips.

“Mine too”, King added, his laugh not hidden as well. 

“One of mine did”, Luz smiled, “The other would if she knew.”

Eda rolled her eyes with a fond smile at the three as it broke the last of the tension in the room. The Sajas laughing with the younger teens as they all shuffled to get comfy. She was ready to leave them to their rest, knowing they’d be putting in a movie until they all passed out. But…there was one thing she needed to know, having already seen some of the small signs as the night wore on. 

“Luz, I know I said tomorrow for the heavy talks, but-”, Eda started, walking over and kneeling next to where her kid was settled on the nest, “I need to know how you’re doing. No details yet, if you don’t want to, but I need to know you’re okay. Physically, mentally, emotionally.”

Luz felt eyes on her. She’d have balked at the idea of all the unneeded attention not too long ago. It still caused a guilty part of her to wriggle in that strange little spot in her ribcage. Taking a breath, she looked Eda in the eye, feeling King snuggle in closer on her lap. 

“I’m…not sure. There’s so much I need to tell you all, about what happened…about me. But, I know you’ll listen tomorrow. I think I’ll be a bit more ready tomorrow.”

Eda gave her a soft smile and a nod, taking a moment as she stood to ruffle the kid’s hair. She’d done that with all the teens when they’d gotten there, taken them aside and checked in. Especially with Hunter and Amity. Luz had more weighing on her, it seemed, but they all seemed to be more or less okay for the night at least. 

“I’ll hold you to that, kiddo. If that changes”, and she took the moment to meet every person’s eyes, even the Saja twerps, “For any of you, you come to me. No questions asked. I’ll be in my nest at the end of the hall”

With that she gave Luz, Hunter, and King a hug and kiss each. A hair ruffle for Boots, Goops and Glasses, earning fanged smiles and ear wiggles from the lot of them. Then she disappeared down the hall toward her room, making sure to leave the door cracked slightly, just in case. 

There was a moment of silence as everyone settled in again.

“She’s a good mom”, Mystery said, suddenly into the quiet. 

“The best”, Hunter said with a slightly guarded look, “Hopefully, you’ll get to meet Mama and Ren too.”

Another pause.

Then Gus held up a movie in each hand, turning to face the group at large.

“Cosmic Frontier or Princess Bride?”

And the movie debate began in earnest.

—————————————————

Rumi watched as the first rays of sun filtered in through the balcony door. It was the only portion of the windows she’d left unblocked by curtains when she convinced Vee to rest. The snake demon was curled in a small ball at the center of the bed, tucked in and surrounded by every soft blanket, pillow, and plushie Rumi and Jinu could find in the room. Jinu sat backwards on the chair from her desk, head resting on his arms as he spaced out. Susie was perched on his head. Rumi looked on at them from where she was leaned against the door to the hall, Derpy curled up and sleeping, tail wrapped loosely around her feet. 

She had maybe an hour left before one or both of her girls were awake. Probably less, knowing how restless Zoey got when the sun started rising, and how easily Mira was woken when coffee was brewed. 

She needed to tell them about everything. Everything. The demon marks were going to make them mad for sure. There was no other response, not when she’d been hiding them for nearly a decade. She should have told them, countless times before now, Celine’s misgivings and denials be damned. She was used to Celine’s anger, her fear. A fall out with her would be much preferred to one with Mira and Zoey. 

Then there was the time travel, the demons, the misinformation, the Honmoon, the fact that they may not have been doing the right thing all this time. 

“I need to make you lot food”, she breathed, looking at the ceiling as yet another thing was added to the list of responsibilities for the day. 

Jinu and her hadn’t eaten since…maybe two days ago now? She couldn’t remember. Who knew when Vee last ate. Derpy and Sussie were probably fine, given their penchant to take care of themselves, but it’d be rude not to make them something too. And if she was making food for them, she’d make food for the girls too. Obviously. How could she not?

Stepping out of Derpy’s tail and gently tucking it away from the door, Rumi opened it to the hallway and stepped out, still predatorily quiet as she made her way to the kitchen. She’d switched out of her costume from the Idol Awards when they’d gotten Vee into bed. Jinu had, likewise, shed his robes and gat. Thankfully, Rumi’s attire of hoodies and sweatpants included oversized ones when she wanted to drown in clothing. Both were now far more comfortable, and it let Rumi feel a tad less exposed. She’d even undone her hair, only tying it back with a single band in a long, low ponytail to keep it mostly out of her face. It still curtained her in with how long it was. 

So, comfy-clothing clad, hair down, and running on pure insomnia-fueled workaholic energy, Rumi shuffled into the kitchen and set about pulling out everything she’d need. Morning after a tour meant big appetites and bigger cravings for the usual comfort foods. One Zoey had introduced to them a few years prior would work perfectly. 

Pancakes. 

Along with some rice and eggs, it should make for a simple, filling, and easy breakfast. One even Rumi could make for the amount of people that were in the penthouse right now. Mira would be better. Cooking was her comfort thing, one she was skilled at, and Zoey would blow through baking like no one’s business. But Rumi could manage. Enough time watching the girls meant she’d picked up a few things over the years. 

After a half hour, the kitchen had warmed nicely under the heat of the different pans, the rice maker, and the kettle going. She’d saved the coffee to be last. Piling up a few plates with a stack of pancakes, and grabbing two decent serving bowls for half the rice and eggs she’d made, Rumi was quick to shuffle back to her room as she started up the coffee maker. Shouldering the door open, she deposited the food on her desk behind a groggy Jinu, who looked up a bit confused. 

“Breakfast. That should be enough for you, Vee, Derpy, and Susie. I need you all to stay in here until I’ve had a chance to talk to Zoey and Mira. After, if you want more, I can make more, or we can order in”, Rumi said, handing him a cup of tea and setting a cup of juice to the side for Vee. 

Jinu raised the mug in acknowledgement, before waving her off with a yawn. 

Rumi stepped back out into the hall and closed the door behind her, making sure it was secure, before moving back to the kitchen. She had a bit more batter to get through, and coffee to make before the girls started waking. 

—————————————————

Luz woke slowly, feeling the sore muscles in her lower back and legs from the multiple flights and day of travel finally having caught up to her. The precious few hours of sleep she’d gotten after having passed out somewhere in the middle of the second movie did little to help. Before she even opened her eyes, she knew it was too early, and that she was likely stuck. The sun’s rays were still thin, and the slight weight on her legs told her Hunter was still dead asleep with his own legs thrown over hers. Another weight on her chest. King. Willow’s snoring echoed from the chest her head was pillowed into, and she felt and saw Gus next to her, acting as a pillow for both Willow and Hunter’s heads. On her other side, Amity curled up around her arm, fingers intertwined, her head on Willow’s stomach and her legs tangled between hers and Hunter’s. 

Then she heard the unfamiliar snoring, and tipped her head back to see behind them. 

The Saja boys were piled in an awkward slump on the couch behind them, having moved there to drink their tea and get hopelessly wrapped up in the plot of Cosmic Frontier when it won the first round of movie debate. 

Abby had been deemed the mattress during sleep, crushed and snoring against the couch with Romance and Mystery both slumped bodily on top of him. Baby had his legs thrown up over all three of them and his head on the other arm of the couch, arms crossed over his chest. Which would have been very in character for his rapper persona on stage…if he wasn’t also hugging a crushed bag of shrimp chips. 

Luz felt her lips twitch up and had to force down a laugh at them. They looked ridiculous. They also looked like they’d have sore necks, each and every single one of them.

It took her a few minutes, and a carefully moved King, before Luz was able to stand and head toward the stairs to the third floor. She needed to brush her teeth and use the bathroom. And, she wanted to make sure to see her Mama off. Her phone said it was six in the morning. Her Mama would be leaving to go check in at her new job location within an hour. And until she was filled in on everything (until Luz figured out the best way to break that sort of news) Luz wanted to make sure she didn’t act too familiar with people she shouldn’t even know, much less be this close to. 

Teeth brushed and business done, Luz took a few minutes to look at herself and pull on her hoodie again. She was glad her patterns weren’t as noticeable as some of her friends’, otherwise her Mama would have noticed well before now. Then, she stepped out and made her way into the small kitchen connected to their new home. Switching on the kettle, Luz pulled out some mugs from one of the few bags they’d brought along, set about making tea. And maybe toast. She was sure they had the stuff for some toast. 

Camila was in the kitchen not long after, and stopped in her tracks when she noticed Luz moving around the kitchen as tea steeped and toast was being buttered.

“Mija? What are you doing up this early?”

Luz jumped before turning, owlishly wide eyes blinking at her before Luz seemed to register it was her. 

“Oh, morning, Mama. Made some breakfast, for your first day. It’s…not a lot, but I knew you had to get going early today”, Luz said as she pulled the tea bag from the mug and tossed it in the trash before sliding a plate of toast toward her from across the counter, “Couldn’t go back to sleep.”

“Ah, the jet lag. That time difference is going to affect us for a little bit for sure. Thank you, mija. I really appreciate it”, Camila said with a warm smile as she grabbed the tea and toast. 

A quick glance toward the clock, though, had her hurrying. 

“I’ve got to get going. It’ll be a long day today. Orienting myself and job responsibilities at the new offices. I probably won’t be home till late”, Camila said, drinking down her tea enough to make sure it wouldn’t spill, and taking the napkins Luz offered for her toast to take with her, “Will you be alright until I’m back? I know you’re old enough to take care of yourself, but still-.”

“I’ll be alright, mama. Really. I’ve got some books and movies to keep me busy. If I get hungry, I can either make something, order something, or go down to the Oni when Ms. Eda opens it later today. And if anything happens, I’ll call you”, Luz said as she watched her make her way to the outside stairwell. 

Camila blew her a kiss and waved goodbye before bolting out the door and down toward the parking lot. Luz stepped forward to watch from the window as she got into the car and was off down the street. She watched until Camila was out of view.

Turning away from the window, Luz ducked back into her room and fished out a few more things she would need today. Her journal, now cram packed with everything she remembered from her time with Papa Demon. It even had a page dedicated to notes on her new sigil pattern on her arm. She’d written down a few notes when she and Gus had ducked upstairs a few hours earlier. She’d not known exactly what would happen the night before, when she’d used the sigil in her hand to summon multiple balls of light to illuminate the alley. She’d also been trying to blind what she’d thought was a threat…until Mystery had continued shoving dumpster food in his face, completely unbothered by her presence. 

‘Just like with sigils drawn on paper, tapping it or clapping with it between the hands activates it. A complete circuit. Unlike with paper, the sigil doesn’t disintegrate or even harm the material. Thank the Demon King, cause the material is my arm’, was written in a tight, hasty scrawl just below the heading ’New Sigil Research Notes’. 

She’d recreated all her previous findings in the previous pages alongside everything from Papa Demon, but it was more of a precaution. Her original sigil notes were basically seared into her mind after five months of study and learning. 

Along with the journal, Luz pulled out a poster that she would have hung on her wall the first time around. Now, she tucked it under her arm as she left her room and made her way back downstairs. 

———————————————————————

Mira woke with the smell of coffee. And felt a twinge from her muscles as the finale of their world tour caught up with her. She needed painkillers, a full thing of coffee, and about twenty-four hours of non-stop Couch. 

And that small, necessary to-do list is what got her moving. Dragging herself from bed, she stepped into the hall, the wall of coffee and pancakes cooking hitting her like a warm blanket from the dryer. Breathing deep, she moved toward the hall, and jumped back slightly when Zoey’s door also opened a moment later. Zoey looked as tired as she felt, but gave her that sunshine smile that sent her heart beating faster. 

“Hey, I thought you were cooking”, Zoey said, stumbling into her side as the two continued shuffling toward the end of the hall.

“And I thought you were”, Mira said, settling her arm over Zoey’s shoulders to pull her closer, and feeling Zoey happily cuddle in, “Which means that it must be Rumi.”

They turned the corner and stopped in their tracks, a veritable feast sitting at the counter, the dirty dishes in the sink soaking already, and a full pot of coffee sitting next to their pre-made cups for the second and maybe third cups that they’d be having. Two spots were set. Only two.

“Rumi? Are you out here?”

“Yeah, go ahead and eat you two”, Rumi called from somewhere farther into the living room space, “I’m not too hungry right now.”

Mira couldn’t see her, even as she poked her head past the separating wall. It concerned her a lot. Rumi sometimes skipped meals, when she was stressed or overworking. A habit that she and Zoey had done their best to curb when they could. 

“You alright”, Zoey asked, tucking into her pancakes even as her brows pinched in worry. 

“Y-…No. Not really. We’ll talk after you’ve eaten. Enjoy”, Rumi called, and Mira pinpointed where she was. The balcony door was open, and she caught the edge of a pair of sweatpants where Rumi was leaning against the railing. 

Mira and Zoey looked at each other, eyes wide and brows creeping into their hairlines. Zoey just about lost the bite of pancake from her mouth as her jaw dropped open. 

Did Rumi…Rumi…just admit she wasn’t doing well?! The woman who’d taken hits and criticism alike with little more than a flinch and never admitted when she was struggling? 

Food was forgotten, left there half eaten and alone at the kitchen counter as Zoey and Mira nearly face planted in their haste to get to Rumi. Rumi who just admitted she wasn’t doing good. Rumi who never admitted it. Rumi who sounded so…tired, so out of it, so scared. Rumi who was on the fucking balcony alone.

“RUMI!”

Rumi startled, turning to look as Mira and Zoey collided in the balcony doorway, half on top of each other and looking pale, worried. Had she already messed this up? Why were they freaking out already? She didn’t expect them to be this worked up so quickly, not when she was sure they hadn’t seen her patterns yet. They’d only just woken up…unless they knew…?

The immediate switch from worry to shock curbed that particularly small hope and sent it up in flames. No…they didn’t know. 

“What-?”

“How do you-?”

Rumi pressed back against the rail, hoping that giving them a bit more space would calm them down. Instead, their mouths clamped shut, the shock going right back to worry, wide eyes and small twitches of muscle like they wanted to bolt. 

“I suppose we should talk now, then?”

Rumi tried to smile, hoping a joke would lighten the mood, but she was sure it looked more like a grimace. The fangs probably didn’t help. She tried not to let the tears pricking at her eyes show.

Before she could move, though, two sets of hands grabbed her and yanked her forward. She yelped as she stumbled forward into Mira, who circled her arms around her and turned. Distantly, she heard as Zoey slammed the balcony door shut and locked it before the smaller of the three barreled into them. For a long moment, it was just silent. The three of them standing there at the edge of the living room, both of them clinging to Rumi like she might disappear, arms tight and breathing ragged. Rumi tried to stay still, not understanding what had worked them up so much. It’d obviously not been her patterns, they were touching her. Strangling her with how tight their hugs were as they seemed to calm down, their stuttered breathing slowing. 

Hesitantly, she brought her arms up to circle them, rubbing soothing circles into each of their backs and feeling as they seemed to loose the last of the tension they’d had. 

“This…isn’t the reaction I was expecting to my patterns”, Rumi said, looking up as much as she could where her head was wedged under Mira’s chin, “What has you two so worked up? Did I say something…oh…”

Rumi tried to imagine it from their point of view. Big tour ended, hiatus, big breakfast, balcony, admitting she wasn’t doing good. She didn’t do that. But Jinu had said to just tell them, and her girls had only ever wanted her to be honest with them. But all of it together?

Rumi squeezed them, trying to keep her strength in check. 

“I wasn’t”, she said, “I promise, that’s not…I’m bad but not…I won’t leave you like that.”

Because she wouldn’t. Not now. But that was a conversation for a little later, when her patterns and the mounting pressure of time travel weren’t at the forefront of their issues. 

Mira and Zoey pulled back after another moment, and Rumi felt a pang at the red in their eyes, the tear tracks down their cheeks as they looked at her. And they did, now, truly look at her. Rumi saw and felt as their eyes traveled over what little her clothing didn’t cover. Her hands, her neck, her face. Zoey pulled one of her hands up and looked at it, fingers gentle as she flipped it back and forth, tracing patterns with her eyes. Mira’s hand was at her cheek a moment later, a thumb rubbing gently at one of the patterns on her face. 

“Patterns.”

It was soft, but Rumi could hear the underlying tension. It was as much a question as an accusation, held back from biting too harshly as Mira met her eyes, her own squinted as she tried, desperately to understand. Zoey was also looking at her, wide eyes a mix of worry and steely confusion. Rumi took a deep breath and practically deflated. With her free hand, she motioned toward Couch. 

“I’ll tell you everything. Just like I should have a long time ago”, she said.

Mira and Zoey were settled tensely on Couch a few moments later, only relaxing minutely when Rumi walked back in from the kitchen with their forgotten mugs and the pitcher of coffee. Both were settled on their end of the coffee table before Rumi dropped to sit cross-legged behind the other end. Maybe, if she was small enough, defenseless enough, non-threatening enough, she could avoid the blazing blade of a weapon pointing her way again. Because as much as she understood, she wasn’t sure if she could go through it a second time. 

“I’m not sure where to begin…I’ve been trying to think of a good starting point for a while now, but I don’t think there is one”, Rumi began, settling her fidgeting hands in her lap in the hopes her claws wouldn’t be seen if they came out. When they came out.

“Would it help if we started with questions”, Zoey asked, ever thoughtful.

“Sure”, Rumi said, almost whispered. 

A pause. Then, Mira looked up from the mug she’d been staring at on the table like it owed her something, sharp gaze falling on Rumi. 

“How long?”

“I was born with them”, Rumi said, letting her eyes fall from the harsh gaze, “They…this is a newer development, the rainbow and…everywhere…-ness of them. It used to only be, be on my shoulders. My arms. Purple. Shameful. S’why I started wearing the long sleeves…even here at home.”

Something in Mira’s face twitched, a flicker of the very thing Rumi had seen under the stage at the Idol Awards. Betrayal, hurt, anger. She was trying to hide it, if only to keep things moving, keep them all talking. Rumi felt her claws, felt as they stung, pressing into her palm, even as she kept her hands fisted closed in her lap. She let the pain sharpen where her panic and fear were starting to force her out of her head. She needed to be here. She needed to answer them, to be present. She owed them that and more. So much more. 

“My father…he was a demon. It’s why I never mentioned him. Why Celine didn’t-.”

“Celine knew?”

Rumi glanced up to see Mira practically seething and her eyes went down again just as quickly. She saw, partially through her peripheral, when Zoey laid a hand on her shoulder to calm her down. Mira looked over, but let some of the blatant anger bleed out, leaving the rest to simmer. 

Zoey turned and then slid down onto the ground, now eye level with Rumi, who still didn’t raise her eyes. 

“Why didn’t you tell us before now?”

Rumi bit her lip, holding in the slight hiss as her fangs nearly gouged them. The sharp iron taste washed over her tongue, making her grimace. It was too early for this. When had she last slept?

“I was scared.”

God, that felt horrible to say, her voice hushed, almost croaking out that answer. Because…she’d never been scared of them…just what their training would make them do. Because even at the Idol Awards, no part of her thought that they’d actually hurt her there below the stage, not even with weapons drawn. Death never scared her, hadn’t in a long, long time. No, she hated hurting them more, of putting them in the position to have to hurt her. Had been scared to see just how badly the rift between them would be when she wasn’t hiding. Was scared of how right Celine might be, and how wrong she was.

“Rumi?”

She’d not realized she’d been so lost in the memories of that night, last night, until a hand on her shoulder pulled her from her thoughts. Zoey was next to her now. Mira was too. Both were crowded on her side of the table, hurt warring with very obvious worry for her. 

“I’m here.”

They settled on either side of her, bracketing her in without fully breaking her bubble. Zoey let her hand clutch back into the chest after they were sure she was there, present.

“You were scared”, Mira picked back up, her voice solid despite the soft tremble Rumi heard there, just below the surface, “Scared of us?”

Rumi was quick to shake her head. 

“No! No, never of you two. I was…I was scared that she, that Celine would be right. That your training was too good”, Rumi said, feeling tracks of crimson leaking past her still clenched fingers, probably staining into her sweatpants as she forced the words from her throat, “That you’d see a demon, and would do your duty to the Honmoon. That I’d see the way you look at me change, right there in front of me.”

Mira and Zoey each felt the floor drop from under them, the air pushed from their lungs as Rumi went on. Do their duty? Was she worried they’d kill her?! Celine being right? Had Celine said they’d do that? Right to Rumi’s face?! Their mouths opened near simultaneously to argue, to defend themselves, to say something. But Rumi didn’t notice, still not meeting their eyes fully. She simply continued. 

“I wouldn’t even blame you. We were trained to kill anything with patterns. It’s how we’ve been doing things for years now, so why not? But-”, Rumi felt some small spark of anger well up, the blaze of Gwi-ma’s fire still burning behind her eyes, bodies in her arms, “But that’s not what scares me most anymore. I can’t lose the two of you!”

“We’re right here”, Zoey cried, tackling into her side, and sending Rumi tumbling into another warm body as Mira shuffled forward to catch them both. Zoey buried her face into Rumi’s chest, wet marks bleeding through. 

“We’re not leaving, Ru”, Mira said into her hair as she settled them all in, “I’m mad. Pissed. At a lot right now. But we’re not leaving.”

Rumi let them hold her for a moment, wanting to pull her hands up to hug them back, but knowing her palms likely looked like a slasher movie at the moment from her worried clawing. And…she wasn’t done yet, was she?

“That’s…not even half of it”, Rumi admitted to the air above Zoey’s head, putting her gaze on some fixed point in the wall behind Couch, “It gets worse. In so many ways.”

Mira stiffened, and she heard Zoey stop sniffling as she raised her head, trying to meet Rumi’s gaze. 

“How much worse”, Mira whispered into her hair, loud enough for all three to hear. Rumi sighed, so heavy and full of everything it felt like she’d exhaled her lungs and ever bit of the tension she’d carried back with her.

“What are your thoughts on time travel?”

———————————————————————————

“We have to find a pop star?”

“K-pop legend, thank you”, Luz corrected, still holding the poster up for all the gathered demons to see. Her Huntrix poster. And her mission right there at the center. Ryu Rumi. 

“Is this that band you’re all obsessed with? The one that cancelled, like, two shows and had beef with, well, them”, Hunter asked, hand on his chin as he studied the poster closer before waving a hand at the Saja boys sitting casually on the sofa behind them. 

Said Saja boys had been silent since Luz had finished explaining her talk with Papa Demon. Baby was wide eyed and stunned, jaw half open in shock. Mystery seemed unbothered, or was hiding his emotions as well as always. Romance was wide eyed as he looked on. And Abby looked confused, scratching his cheek. 

King, who was closest to Luz, had practically glued himself to her left as she spoke more and more about his dad. And his tail had started wagging when his big sister mentioned another big sister. He had a half-sibling?! Was she like him? Could he learn more about how he’d grow up? Did she want to be part of the family?

“So, we’re, like, all looking for the same people then”, Abby said finally, looking back and up at Eda, who stood at the back just behind the sofa, for confirmation. 

Eda was going to get double gray hair at this point. Luz. Her kid! Had met a demon king who’d supposedly passed ages ago. The same one who was King’s dad. Who had yet another kid she needed to look out for. Not to mention the one the Saja twerps kept mentioning, some Jinu guy. And now Luz was a demon, or half one? She could do some sigil magic without needing her paper, had the characteristics of a demon of her age, just like her friends, and seemed tuned into the world strings as much as the rest of them. Though it was apparently called the Honmoon. Powered by hunters. Demon hunters who were also the exact people they were meant to go track down and keep safe for the old Demon King. 

“I need a liter of apple blood and an hour to process”, she muttered before pulling a hand down her face and leveling her gaze at the room, every eye on her, “Seems we’re all in this mess together now. Our best bet is to get everyone we can together first, before we try to figure out how to get those without their memories back on our side. Super fan, where do we start?”

Luz shot her an unimpressed look, rolling up the poster and setting it by the bookshelf with her journal.

“Best guess, Huntrix Tower. Unless their tour ran long this time around, I bet they’d be there”, Luz said, “It’s that big one. Center of the city.”

“Which is where we were going to go looking for.”

“Until someone started eating from a dumpster”, Romance finished Baby’s comment as the two looked at their doofus mates pressed there between them on the couch. 

“That place is locked up, though. No one is going to let in a bunch of random people, especially not demons”, Willow said, “We’d be lucky to make it in the door.”

“And finding them in the city would probably end with someone being hurt or killed”, Amity agreed, “Given that they’re supposedly the Hunters from our history and stories.”

“Supposedly nothing. The pink one nearly took my head off with that spear-.”

“Gok-do.”

“Whatever”, Abby groaned, “The point is, unless we can get to Jinu and Rumi first, we’d be walking to our deaths with the other two. They won’t give us a warning shot either.”

The room fell silent, looking all in their own heads as they tried to think of an idea. 

Until a distant clatter and Hooty’s shrieking pulled their attention toward the stairs. 

“Don’t tell me there are more boy bands eating from my dumpster”, Eda scowled as she started toward the stairs, King and Luz on her heels as the rest of the group scrambled after her. 

“It’s very good garbage, Ms. Eda”, Mystery called from the back of the pack as they made their way down the stairs and into the back areas of the Oni. 

Luz ran into Eda’s back as the taller woman stopped short at the entrance of the kitchen. Looking around her, bright amber eyes locked on the reason why. 

The fluffy, adorable reason why. 

A tiger. A blue tiger the size of a large dog with the goofiest, dopiest smile, was trying to right a trash bin near the middle of the kitchen that it had apparently knocked over. Hooty wasn’t hissing at the tiger. Instead, he was having some sort of squawk off with a little magpie…wearing a hat!

“So cute”, Luz stepped around Eda with a grin as she walked slowly toward the tiger. 

It didn’t react as both she and Eda came up next to it, it’s sole focus on that knocked over trash can. It would get it almost up with its big clunky paws before the can tipped off balance again and smacked back down onto the tile with that same plastic clatter they’d heard from upstairs. And again. And again. And again and again and again and again.

Luz finally took pity on the poor thing and leaned down, picking up the can and setting it right side up next to the tiger. That’s when its eyes…she wasn’t going to say they focused, because there was no way they could as large and outward pointing as they were. But they looked slightly more at her. 

And then the tiger stepped toward her, Eda with a hand on her shoulder to pull her back, just in case. 

Smack!

The trash can tipped again as the tiger brushed against it in his bulky movement. And those eyes drifted back down to it with that same determined focus. Luz felt Eda’s hand slip from her shoulder as she snorted, trying and failing to hide the snicker that built up at the scene. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me”, she said, looking as the tiger started right back up again, “I didn’t think a guardian could be more obtuse than Mike Socks.”

“That is one big guardian spirit”, Hunter muttered, a hand coming up to brush Flapjack’s feathers as he looked on from the doorjamb. Next to him, Amity, Willow, and Gus looked on, equally impressed with the size of the thing. Guardian spirits didn’t usually get bigger than a small dog, even when the animal they were mimicking was supposed to be bigger. Viney’s future lion guardian spirit was proof enough of that. It didn’t get bigger than a house cat when it was trying, only slightly bigger than Ghost. 

The Saja boys heads poked over their in the doorframe, and smiles broke out across their faces, so wide their fangs and the baby tusks they kept tucked in their lower jaw showed. 

“DERPY!”

The tiger didn’t falter from his mission even as four bodies collided with his, sinking into the dense blue fur with pats and coos at him that he’d normally melt under. A huff, and a moment later the can was picked up a second time, now by Eda, and placed out of the way. With it gone, the tiger, Derpy, looked up and finally acknowledged those around him. A happy purr slipped from him as he butted his head against Romance’s side for pets, before his eyes fell on Luz and Eda again. King scrambled up onto Luz’s shoulder as the rest of the teens filed into the room around the tiger. 

“Hooty, stop harassing the bird”, King called, looking over with an unimpressed look, very reminiscent of the one Luz had shot Eda upstairs. 

“He started it”, Hooty whined back, still wiggling and squawking like mad as the magpie ducked and dived around him with a teasing smirk. 

“Sussie, knock it off you instigating little shit”, Abby called over his shoulder, then flailed as a missile of black feathers smacked him in the face, “Hey!”

Sussie landed on Derpy’s head with a sound too close to a laugh to be anything but, six eyes closed in mirth as he puffed up his feathers. Abby wiped his arm over his face with an annoyed expression, ruined by the smirk tugging at his lips. 

“More friends of yours, boys”, Eda finally asked, letting the sickeningly cute display settle as she crossed her arms and looked over the two. They weren’t linked to the boys in front of her, but there was a familiarity there for sure. 

“These are Jinu’s guardian spirits”, Romance said, patting Derpy on the head. 

“The magpie is, at least”, Mystery corrected, holding his hand out and letting Sussie fly up onto it with a preening warble. 

“What about the tiger”, Amity asked, Ghost appearing over her shoulder as she stepped closer and scratched easily behind Derpy’s ear, earning another purr from him.

“Aw, he’s so friendly”, Gus said, walking up and practically leaning into the blue furred wall of cat, “Willow, Hunter, he’s so soft. Come here!”

The teens crowded around, Derpy rumbling happily from the attention. King plopped off Luz’s shoulder onto Derpy’s head, and Luz rubbed a spot just under Derpy’s chin. They tuned out the conversation, catching the Saja boys giving theories, but not knowing for sure. It was a nice break from the heaviness that was their supposed Demon-King-assigned mission that Luz had run them through for the last few hours upstairs. 

“Is that normal?”

Hunter’s question brought everyone’s attention back and then down. Right under their feet, where Hunter was looking a little apprehensively. Bright blue, a full circle of it, almost transparent, like a circle of magic that spread out from the tiger like a focal point. Bleeding out under their feet until it had all four Saja boys inside of it. Eda’s eyes widened, knowing that kind of magic, as she stumbled forward to get in the ring. The Saja boys eyes all went wide as well, though they were more stunned that Derpy could form a teleportation ring this big more than anything. 

And then they were falling.

————————————————————————————

Jinu had eaten his breakfast, looked through Rumi’s books, showered, snooped in every available place in Rumi’s room for something exciting, gave Vee her breakfast when the little noodle had finally woken, and was now bouncing his leg in the desk chair itching to do something. Anything. 

“Are you okay, Mr. Jinu?”

That caught his attention, leg going still as he looked over at the young demon. Vee was still on the bed. She’d shifted into a form that looked a little closer to human, with legs to put in the sweatpants they’d found her. Drowning in the too big hoodie that she’d been unwilling to part with from the night before.

“Just Jinu is fine, kiddo. And yeah, just nervous. And bored. Rumi is taking forever. Part of me thinks she’s stalling out there.”

“Stalling what”, Vee asked, shrinking a little as she wrung her hands, “If that’s alright to ask?”

“Of course it’s okay to ask”, Jinu soothed immediately, hoping to keep the kid from getting too tense, “And stalling telling her friends she’s a demon. Half-demon, technically.”

“They don’t know?”

Vee was confused. Surely anyone living with Rumi would have seen her patterns. They were everywhere. 

“No. It’s…a long story. One you’ll learn about eventually. If you want to stick around that is. I won’t say it won’t be a bit of a chaotic s- uh…storm, of a time”, Jinu said, looking at the door like it might open at any moment, “But we’ll take care of you if you want us to.”

Vee paused, looking over at Jinu with big watery eyes.

“Really?”

“Really.”

They sat in comparable silence for a while longer, Jinu trying not to let the wait get to him when a strange twitch ran through his chest. A sharp, squawking twitch.

‘Who are you fighting, Sussie’, Jinu asked, a pulse of connection sent out between him and his guardian spirit. 

Sussie and Derpy had been friends since before meeting Jinu, well before Jinu and Sussie had formed a connection. Derpy came as a package deal despite the lack of bond. Which meant that wherever one went, the other followed. 

And right now, said bird was fighting something and very vocally preening about it. Flits of things like restaurant and, of all things, bird tube, were sent back across his bond, leaving him more confused than he had been before he asked. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he let the connection fade into the background and just hoped the bird knew when to pick his fights. He wasn’t in the position right now to go get him out of trouble. 

And so another little while passed like that. Silence around him, and chaos through his bond as the two demons waited in the midst of the Hunters’ shared penthouse space. 

‘Incoming.’

And with that one word, Jinu stood, the chair clattering to the ground behind him as he looked around, expecting Derpy to be falling down to crush him from a misplaced portal. Vee visibly flinched, looking around just as frantically despite not knowing what she was looking for. 

The crash came a second later, loud and monstrous and layered in so many noises that it was hard to place just how much Derpy had brought with him this time. Except…Jinu was unscathed. Rumi’s room was intact. Nothing had come through here. 

It’d echoed from past Rumi’s door out in the main living room space, where Rumi and her girls had been talking for a few hour now. Hushed talks and occasional outbursts that were now covered by the chaos of multiple voices and people that had just been dumped into it. 

Jinu threw open the door, Vee moving to follow, nearly tripping over the too long sweatpants before she shifted to her tail and left the sweatpants on the floor behind her. 

They entered into chaos in 21 parts. Now 23. 

Chapter Text

The talk had been going surprisingly well, all things considered. Weapons hadn’t been drawn, and while tempers flared, half the time it wasn’t directed at her. Celine was a different story, and Rumi wondered if she should call and warn the woman of the impending doom headed her way in the form of her girls. 

“So, you came back from the future”, Zoey asked, pen set above one of a few notebooks she’d run and dragged out of her room. 

One was open with various questions she’d been scribbling down. The one the pen was poised over was the notes from everything Rumi had divulged to them so far. Which included the abridged version of the last five months, the truth about her patterns, and Celine’s insistence on hiding them. She’d tried to explain the good demons bit from what she knew and heard from the Sajas. 

She was less enthusiastic about the harder parts, like the full picture of the Idol Awards incident…or the entirety of the final showdown that’d brought her back here. Those felt like things to bring up when their world view wasn’t already in shambles. 

“Yes, though not too long from now. A few months, really.”

“This all happens in a few months?!”

Mira was pacing, having moved behind Couch for more room to do so and so she could duck out and grab drinks and food. She and Zoey had burned through the coffee quickly once things had started really rolling, and now various energy drinks and sports drink bottles littered the table and cushions. Snacks were also strewn about. Even Rumi had been relaxed enough to grab something…after Mira had patched up her hands with a murmured curse and a quiet request for Rumi to keep her hands in sight for them. Rumi decided holding a drink or snack, no matter how little of it she had, was the best way to do that. She was currently holding a mostly uneaten bag of chips.

“Happened. Things are already different. I don’t know how that’s going to affect things. Especially with those I ended up bringing back with me”, Rumi said.

“Demons. Good demons?”

“Yes.”

“Cause that’s possible. Thanks Celine”, Mira said, throwing her hands up to the ceiling as she continued pacing.

“Which she should have known if Rumi’s mom was with one”, Zoey grumbled, writing something down and scanning something in between her notes and flipping between two notebooks at once, distracted, “Honestly, how else do you get someone as gentle and kind as Rumi if her dad wasn’t also a good demon?”

Rumi tried to will down the blush creeping up her cheeks, though it did nothing to hide the pink that crept through her patterns. Snitches, the lot of them. She felt eyes on her patterns, and saw both Mira and Zoey hide smiles as they paused, before both went back to their own fidgeting. 

Yeah, things were going much better this time around. She wanted them to stay that way. 

Now how to gently bring up the fact that two demons were waiting patiently in her room to meet them? 

Turns out the universe had an answer for that, and a karmic response to her flicker of hope. 

Derpy. 

For a moment, Rumi got the distinct impression of a toothy, too wide smile and bright orange eyes, like a flitting mental image popping into her head, followed by a word that was more feeling than speech. 

‘Incoming.’

“What.”

Mira and Zoey paused again as she held a hand to her head, and then all three looked up as a noise echoed down from the ceiling above them. Above Rumi specifically. 

Throwing her hands out, Rumi had just enough time to yell, “No weapons!”

And a couple hundred pounds of tiger landed heavily on top of her in a descent that was all belly flop and very little grace, smothering her in bright glowing blue fur. Had she not been half-demon, Rumi was sure that would have been her demise. Her eulogy would read ‘crushed to death by giant free-falling blue tiger’ and the tabloids would question their collective sanities. As it was, her head spun from the impact and left her wheezing as the air was shoved entirely from her lungs. It took a few minutes to regain her breathing, and another few seconds after before her ears finally decided to work again. 

The cacophony of so many voices overlapping one another was worse than the ringing she’d been experiencing for the precious few seconds, or minutes. 

“Woah, wait! Hold on, we’re good, promise!”

“Where the f-?!”

“Is that a tiger?!”

“Rumi?!”

“Kids, get back!”

“Mom!”

“Boys, what-?”

“Ms. Rumi, are you ok-?”

“Is that Vee?”

“JINU!”

The last one was a quartet, ringing loud and clear above all the other voices and sounds. A quartet she’d heard before now. Dragging her head out from under the bulk of fur and spirit muscle, Rumi caught the motion of four colorful blurs tackling Jinu out and through the kitchen with the speed of a bullet. Distantly, she heard a wheeze and the sound of multiple bodies colliding with tile and cabinets holding pots and pans. Vee stood nearby, her gaze pulled between her and where Jinu had disappeared.

And then she turned her head the other way. 

Around her, close to Derpy’s still sprawled form and half hidden behind a large wall of gray feathers…was a small band of kids. No older than Vee from the look of it. And their pets if the animals near them were anything to go by. 

“Kids?”

The word, still dazed and confused, pulled the teens attention to Rumi. Some held surprised recognition. A few were just confused. A pair of amber eyes were looking at her with a sort of recognition even she couldn’t place. 

“Ryu Rumi?”

“Present?”

“Rumi, are you alright?!”

Mira. That was Mira. She sounded close, but Rumi couldn’t see her. Not until the wall of grey feathers shifted. A pair of bright yellow eyes, wreathed in black sclera peered back at her briefly. And over their shoulder, Mira and Zoey looked on, standing at the ready, but thankfully without their weapons brought out. Rumi felt herself release a breath she wasn’t sure she could hold in her current position. 

And then one of the teens bent down and she felt Derpy start to be slowly moved.

“Help me here, guys. We need to get Derpy off her”, a young voice said, spurring the other teens, five in total, forward to help shift Derpy’s weight. 

From her peripheral, Rumi saw Vee hesitate only a moment before slithering forward to help, the closest teen not even looking over in surprise as they successfully shifted the tiger up and off Rumi’s chest. Two sets of hands found her under her shoulders, and she was pulled free from where she’d been trapped. 

“Are you okay, Ms. Ryu?”

The kid with the bright amber eyes was looking down at her as she took a full breath for the first time in a moment. Shaggy brown hair and a large purple Huntrix hoodie that drowned her frame. On her shoulder, the strangest dog Rumi had ever seen looked down at her with similarly amber eyes and a level of intelligence that seemed on level with Sussie. A guardian? 

“I’m okay…mostly”, Rumi said, pushing herself to sit up as she heard multiple people sigh in relief. 

“Aht, no. Stay there you two. Brats, move”, came an older voice, and Rumi looked up as the teens scattered off to one side, staying well behind the wall of feathers as it shifted out of the way between her and her girls. 

It was a demon, large and harpy-like in its looks. She looked ready for a fight, but kept her wings open like a shield between the two hunters and the teens. Two of the teens, the blonde one and the one with amber eyes and the weird dog on her shoulder, had gently tugged Vee along with them as they moved out of the way and tucked behind the older bird-like demon. 

————————————————————————————

Mira’s eyes tracked her until the harpy was settled securely against the far wall, watching but not moving from the spot in front of what looked to be a bunch of kids. Zoey rushed forward as soon as Mira let her arm down, the taller of the two following more slowly and keeping an eye on the demons they could see. The four others that had disappeared tackling a fifth into the kitchen didn’t seem to be coming back that quickly. 

“Please tell me these are the ones you brought back with you”, Zoey asked, helping Rumi to stand while keeping an eye on the spaced out tiger and the entrance to the kitchen. 

“Some of them”, Rumi replied, “The bird woman is new. So are the kids.”

“Hey, I’m sixteen”, one of the kids said, incredulously. (It’s Hunter.)

“That’s what a kid would say”, Mira shot back as she stepped into Rumi’s other side and helped Zoey tuck their leader onto Couch’s far end, “Rumi, look at me.”

Rumi complied, looking up at the dancer without much complaint. 

Mira looked right back, her eyes scanning over Rumi’s face, then across the rest of her, searching. 

“Good, now Zoey.”

Rumi’s eyes snapped to Zoey, who was checking her over, running a hand over a quickly forming bruise on her shoulder where she’d smacked into the ground first.

“Good. Can you tell me what time it says”, Mira continued, pulling up her phone and holding it, screen-first, to Rumi.

“11:45.”

Mira nodded, and stood up fully, “Likely no concussion. I’ll check again later. We need to ice that shoulder, and deal with…whatever our lives have become now.”

Oh, so that’s what Mira had been checking. Rumi made a mental note to thank Mira for doing in-depth first-aid classes all these years. She already had, but it’d been…she’d never been given first-aid by the girls. Rumi let that sink in as she watch Mira and Zoey look in opposite directions, flanked on either side of her in front of Couch, each with a different group of demons right there. No weapons drawn despite how much Rumi could tell they wanted to draw them, simply because she’d said not to. 

Why hadn’t she trusted them, again? 

“Um, hi”, came a voice, the same one that had spurred the other teens forward. 

The one with amber eyes and the Huntrix hoodie stepped out from behind one of the harpy-demon’s wings, one hand on Vee’s shoulder to push the snake demon farther behind wing cover. The blonde one, who now had the strange dog on his shoulder, peered out with a strict glare aimed at the small group of hunters, but he didn’t step out. 

“I’m Luz. Luz Noceda-Clawthorne. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Huntrix. And, uh, well I suppose now would be as good time as any to ask if you know about what happens five months from, five months from now?”

Rumi’s eyes widened at that. Did this new group of demons know about the future? Did all demons? Was it a demon thing?! And why…did these demons have souls? As the Honmoon seeped into her vision, trying to communicate in the ways that it could, the small, familiar blue of the souls in the room glowed just there behind the heart. And the same blue shone back from the group and the harpy protecting them. Blue, alive, there, demons. 

The girls must have seen it as well, as they both froze, looking intently at the group like waiting for the illusion to fade. Because demons weren’t supposed to have souls. Rumi knew demons could get their souls back, like Jinu and his boys had…but for some of them to be so young? For Vee to have one? No, this was something else. 

Mira was the first one to break the silence. 

“Yes and no. Not like her”, she said, gesturing toward Rumi with her head, “How do you know what happens, kid?”

“Heh, that’s a bit of a funny story, actually”, Luz said, scratching the back of her head nervously, her smile showing small little fangs poking out, “I was, sorta, sent back…by your dad?”

…

…

“What.”

“What did you boys get into? We were separated for less than twenty-four hours!”

Behind them, poking their heads out of the kitchen doorway, the Saja Boys were all looking in. Jinu had his jaw dropped, a look of disbelief on his face as he took everything in. The rest looked unrepentant, smiling in like they were having the time of their lives. 

“I’m pretty sure we got adopted by Ms. Eda”, Mystery said. 

“Do not call me out, twerp”, Ms. Eda mumbled, still loud enough to be heard. 

“What, by the pigeon demon?”

“You must be Jinu”, Eda continued, leveling a glare at the man, “No filter, no common sense, the plain looking one. Checks out.”

Jinu put a hand to his chest in mock offense, even as a smirk tugged at his lips at the challenge. 

Next to her, Mira and Zoey sunk into Couch with her, pressed in on either side of her as the continued banter flew back and forth over their heads. They looked tired and perhaps a little shell-shocked. Rumi was sure she didn’t look any better.

“How much weirder can it get from here, Rumi”, Mira asked with a tired look over at her. 

Rumi raised her hands in surrender, looking back and forth between the two groups of demons, the guardian tiger still, still slumped on the floor. The guardian magpie that had shown up at some point and was currently watching the banter between Jinu and Ms. Eda like a tennis match. The kids poking their heads out to watch. Luz standing a bit in between the two groups, glancing their way every now and again as the weird dog looking guardian scrambled back over and up onto her shoulder. 

“I’m already out of my depth, Mi. If I say it can’t get weirder-.”

A hand was shoved unceremoniously over her mouth, and both girls looked over at Zoey, who was cringing. 

“You say that, even jokingly and-.”

A knock at the door cut all the noise off. 

Zoey looked back at the girls from the door and gestured as if to say ’See what you did?!’

“Girls, you in there? I came by to congratulate you, but security was saying they heard a lot of yelling up here”, Bobby’s voice came drifting in through the door, “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay before I head out for the week.”

Derpy, because of course, chose that moment to drag himself up, dislodging the coffee table as he did and sending a clatter of drinks, snacks, and coffee mugs hurling to the floor. 

“Oh shit-!”

Rumi pushed up from Couch like it was on fire, vaulting over the back as she scrambled toward the door. Because Bobby had a key to the apartment. Zoey had dove for the mugs, missing by a hair’s breadth, and leaving her flopped on the floor. Mira was half a second behind Rumi. 

Neither girl made it before the door swung open, Bobby looking as close to panicking as he was to swinging a fake plant vase he’d gotten from somewhere just outside the door. 

Everyone froze.

Rumi and Mira skidding to a halt before they could crash into their dad manager. Zoey looked up, flopping on her side with a sheepish smile and trying to act normal there, lying in the remains of their early morning talk session. Eda and the kids behind her tucked closer to the wall, slightly more out of sight, but not by enough. The Saja Boys slowly slid back behind the wall they were poking their heads from behind with all the grace and stealth of leather on a plastic slide. Sussie made a guffawing sound that sounded like laughter. Derpy slowly raised a paw and tried righting an energy drink can he’d knocked over. 

And Bobby…Bobby looked on at all of this with his improvised weapon and jaw going slack. 

———————————————————————————————————————

Bobby was not a stranger to…well, the strange. 

No one in this industry made it in the industry without seeing their fair share of purely, stupidly, ridiculous nonsense. The best and worst nonsense that humanity could and would put out into the world. 

So, walking into his girls’ penthouse to see…all that? 

Not necessarily the strangest thing he’d seen in his twenty years in the industry. No, that spot was still held by a weekend he’d spent scouting a place for a possible music video during an American tour back in 2016. That little town in Oregon had been the single weirdest weekend of his entire life, and he wasn’t even sure if it had been fully real. He’d not picked it for the music video, obviously. 

This, right here, as he sat on Couch with his girls, a group of boys that looked like a rival K-pop group, and a collection of kids under the care of a half-bird looking woman (none of them looking particularly, fully human)? With a giant blue tiger and a six-eyed magpie hanging nearby?

Second on the list. A very close second. 

Rumi, a young girl who’d introduced herself as Luz, and the plain looking fellow from the boy band, Jinu, were having a rushed huddle at the other end of the room as Mira prepped tea with the blond boy from the bird woman’s group, and Zoey pulled notebooks toward her. The two pink haired guys from the boy band had graciously righted the coffee table and pulled it closer so Zoey could lean over it while still on Couch. 

Bobby was at the middle of the at capacity Couch, his weaponized vase having been set to the side of Couch to be put back later, and promised to be told everything. The bird woman, Eda, sat just on the other side of Zoey, squarely between her and where her kids were sitting. Every now and again, he saw her eyes flick to him, but she didn’t say anything. 

Ten minutes. That’s how long it took for everyone to fully settle. Rumi, Jinu, and Luz stayed standing across from them all, each looking a bit nervous under the collective eyes. 

“So…here’s what’s happened”, Luz started. 

Chapter Text

“So…here’s what happened…”

————————In the In-between—————————————

“…daughter? You have two kids?”

Luz looked up at the Demon King, eyes wide and worried. Her vision was still blurred by the tears, but, if King had a sister…and she was screaming like that?! She had to go, she had to help. This was King’s sister! That meant that was her sister!

“Quite. Though only King got the entirety of my good looks. My daughter is…a special case”, he said, glancing at her, even as tears still streamed from his eyes and soaked into the fur near the base of his skull, “Half human. Half demon. A bridge between worlds in every sense. And left in a horrible situation because of my mistakes.”

There was a beat, a pause, before the Demon King sighed heavily and continued. His entire form sagging from the weight of his regrets. 

“I met her mother a while ago, when my power had allowed me a small stint into the world in a more human, less powerful form. She was a Hunter, a protector of the Honmoon, the net that protects the human world from demons threatening the souls up there. A problem that was manageable until my reign, and control of the demon realm, was ended by Gwi-ma. My advisor”, the Demon King continued, eyes turning back to the horizon as he reminisced, “Me and Mi-young weren’t…an immediate match. In fact, we fought constantly for two years before we actually started really talking to each other. And then we were inseparable. We taught each other so much…grew to be friends…and then grew to be something more. Mi-young was…everything to me. And I knew Rumi would be as well. I was so happy King would hatch to an older sibling.”

Luz’s brow furrowed at the names, her mind racing. That…there was no way that he was talking about who she was thinking about. Right? Rumi and Mi-young were…common enough names, right?

“And then I was banished, what little power I had to exist within the realm gone before my daughter was even born. Because her aunts Celine and Ji-hon couldn’t see past me being a demon.”

And like that, Luz’s mind screeched to a halt. Mi-young, Celine and Ji-hon. The Sunlight Sisters. Which meant that Rumi wasn’t just a random half-demon woman. She was Ryu Rumi, the lead of Huntrix!

“You’re the dad of Ryu Rumi?!”

The Demon King hummed his confirmation, eyes still glued to that point in the distance, eyes narrowing and the fur near where ears would have been rustling up despite no wind or movement around them in this space. Luz opened her mouth to ask more, when a furry clawed hand was held up, causing her to shut her mouth just as quickly. The Demon King stepped forward, he was listening to something even if Luz couldn’t hear it. 

Looking out where he was, Luz swore she saw she could see a small blur of blue and the same amber of the Demon King’s eyes glow to life out among the angry red on the horizon. The world strings were frayed beyond saving now, breaking and drifting as if pushed out across water. And yet, right there, where that single spark of blue and amber was, a small net of the world strings seemed to cling, like a small safety net.

“I knew that boy would find a reason to use it eventually”, the Demon King said, turning to face Luz again with a small spark in his eyes, something close to amusement, “Which means we’re on a tighter schedule than I thought. So listen close.”

He kneeled down to be at her height, a hand reaching into the inky water below and pulling up a cube like those floating around them. 

“Things are about to be reset, a young demon who’s been studying my old magic has already started the process to bring us back, to try to right the wrongs that have befallen all of us. I’ve brought you here to help my children do this.”

“Me? Why me? I’m not special, I’m not even a demon, I just use the sigils. Wouldn’t Eda have been a better candidate? Or Willow, she’s so strong, a powerhouse really. Amity too! Gus and Hunter even. I’m not…I’m not that powerful”, Luz argued, arms waving as if to show off her very human features. 

“True, they are powerful, each and every one of them. Powerful in ways that a human can’t be outside those connected with the Honmoon. And yet, it was you, a human, who brought them together. It was you, a human, who gave Eda the will to continue and be better for those around her. You, a human, who gave Willow confidence, Gus a needed support, and Amity the courage and love needed to become the person she wanted to be. You, a human, who saved Hunter from that abomination, Belos. And you, a human”, the Demon King said, waving a hand through the air and creating a small arch of floating, glowing sigils that matched those printed onto his sweatpants, “Who I showed my sigils to. Because I saw someone who could bridge a gap between our worlds. Not with unending power or unstoppable force…but with kindness and understanding. With a hand outstretched to others, even when it was hard or dangerous.”

The Demon King smiled at her, and it reminded her of all those times that her mama, mom, and ren would look at her when she mastered a new sigil combination, or passed one of her tests. How her papi used to look at her when she showed him her art projects from school way back in kindergarten. 

Pride. 

“So now, I extend a hand to you”, he continued, holding out a fuzzy clawed hand to her, slowly starting to glow with sigils, “A gift to a good young human with a large heart, and a big task being asked of her. One that is, truly, too much to ask of one so young, but I must. If you accept, I grant you my blessing, hailed as one of my own, and able to tap into the abilities of my kind at will.”

Luz looked at the hand, trying to process everything, still unsure. She…didn’t feel like she deserved this, but…well, there wasn’t anyone else here to take it either. The Demon King seemed to sense her hesitation.

“This is a choice, Luz. Not a demand. You will be sent back with or without my blessing. And I have no way of making you do anything, not if you don’t want to. I wouldn't want to anyway. All I can do is ask you to protect my children. But it is up to you”, he assured, lowering his hand slightly to bend down and catch her eyes, “It will be a big change, either way, going back like this. I will not force that to be harder for you. My blessing is not without its changes.”

The light out across the horizon was growing now, bleeding out against the red, vying to overtake it. Luz had a feeling that that meant they were running out of time. Looking back at the Demon King, she lifted her hand, hesitating only a moment as she looked at the sigils burned into his, before reaching forward to take his hand. Looking him in the eye with more determination than she truly felt, she shook the Demon King’s hand. His eyes shown with teary gratitude as the light of the sigils from his arm slid and crept up hers. 

Swirling as they moved, a path of smooth patterns raced up Luz’s arm, bleeding amber light that settled below her skin like warmth from the sun, and leaving behind the ghost of their afterimage on her arm. Distantly, her tongue found the now knew edge of fangs, and her eyes felt a little too sharp, a little itchy. 

The light on the horizon burst out across the sky around them, blanketing the space in blue and amber hues, driving back all of the red. Even the water below them, once pitch black, reflected the colors in a near blinding way. And Luz felt herself become infinitely lighter. 

Looking down, she realized why. She was floating, quite literally, out of the water below. An orb of sigils in that same amber light encased her, only broken by the Demon King’s hand still held to hers through the barrier, anchoring her there. 

“I don’t know exactly when or where you’ll be headed, so wake with caution Luz”, the Demon King said, voice rising above the rush of energy around them.

“W-wait! What about-?”

“Eda? Give her my best! She’s doing great work.”

“No”, she tried again, pulling at his hand with both of hers to stay anchored even as the orb tried to pull her away, “What about King, and Rumi? Don’t you want to tell them anything?”

The Demon King paused at that, a claw coming up to his chin in thought, before he pulled her close and whispered in her ear. 

——————————Huntrix Penthouse, Current Day——————————

“He wanted me to pass along something to each of you”, Luz said, looking to Rumi first, then King. 

King nodded to her, moving closer to her and scrambling up her shoulder so she could tell him. Leaning in, she passed along his dad’s message to him, a smile tugging at her lips as she did so. King paused, his tail wagging excitedly as a smile crept across his features. 

“I loaf you? I loaf you! Ha, bread pun”, King crowed happily, nuzzling his head into Luz’s cheek in his excitement and settling fully onto his sister’s shoulder. 

At her other side, Luz saw Rumi with a confused but small smile on her face as she looked over at them. Her eyes flicked to King, taking him in closer, before quickly looking away when Luz turned to her with a bigger smile. 

“Would you like me to tell you what he said”, Luz asked her. 

Rumi looked back over, before nodding and stepping closer to the teen. Luz waved her forward and stood up on her tiptoes, Rumi bending down slightly to meet her, as Luz whispered her dad’s words to her. 

Rumi felt tears slip down her cheeks as she stood back up, looking down at Luz, who was giving her an understanding smile. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that…but she supposed the warmth in her chest wasn’t anger, now was it? 

“Oh”, she said, almost breathless, as she stepped back, reaching up to wipe the tears from her face, “I….”

She tried again, but when the words refused to come out, she closed her mouth with a click of fangs and nodded at Luz, a tight but happy smile on her face. 

She felt more than saw Mira, Zoey, and Bobby’s worried eyes on her as she stepped away and out into the kitchen trying to compose herself. Jinu also looked after her, but was quick to turn back to the group and step forward. 

“My turn then. So, here’s what was happening with us.”

————————Seoul, Four and a Half Months ago…the First Time around———————

Jinu stepped out into the sunlight with a squint, holding a hand up to block the early morning light as he waited. Behind him, four sets of footsteps shuffled, scuffling telling him at least one had tripped over the ledge of the tear. Probably Myst, based on the lack of cussing. 

A rush of weight nearly toppled him over a moment later as Abby folded into him, an arm slung over his shoulders and his whole body leaned forward to take in the busy street before them. The last of his patterns disappearing under his human disguise and a bright excitement buzzing in him through the small bouncing motion he was doing on the balls of his feet. He looked like a kid ready to bolt to a candy store doing it, a mischievous smile rivaling Baby’s on his face as his eyes darted around to take in everything. 

Romance was more subdued, coming up to lean against his other side with a disinterested air about him, despite the small tick of excitement Jinu knew he had, a hand running almost obsessively through his hair. 

Baby and Myst were last, stepping up on Abby’s other side. Baby kept shooting Myst teasing grins, and Myst looked to be staunchly ignoring it in favor of maintaining some small semblance of his bruised pride. 

“Ready to be pop stars, boys?”

Four pairs of eyes fell on him, even as he smirked and nodded up toward a billboard screen at the other end of the street before them. A billboard with their likenesses spread across it advertising a show they’d be appearing on tomorrow night. 

“Wow…that guy wasn’t kidding. He does move fast”, Romance muttered, raising a brow at the display, “When did he get that picture? I don’t think we ever posed like that?”

“Oh, no idea. Best guess? Demon magic”, Jinu said as he tugged himself out from between the pink-haired duo and started out and down the sidewalk with a wave for them to follow, “Not the point. Do you all remember the music and choreography? We need to be perfect tomorrow for our debut.”

A grumbled chorus of half-sure agreements sounded out behind him. He expected it. While good musicians, his boys weren’t exactly as up to date on the demands of current day performances. Each of them had come, like him, from a time in the past where some of the current day performance aspects were downright unbelievable, if not entirely unachievable. Jinu’s only saving grace had been the freedom of movement Derpy and Sussie had given him when they’d met. Coming and going from the human side of the Honmoon on a whim with minimal input from Gwi-ma had allowed him a certain insight to the world his fellow demons hadn’t had. 

“Well, then none of you will mind showing off that competency for me”, Jinu said, making a few turns as they walked before they stood outside a studio space. 

The rest of the boys swallowed thickly, looking at the studio space and the visible dance section of the space with growing worry. 

Today was going to be a long day. 

———————

The Saja Boys weren’t sure what to make of Rumi. They’d been watching Jinu when he’d met the purple-haired hunter. Far enough away not to draw her eye, close enough to help their leader if he truly needed them. 

The idea of a half-demon hunter was absurd. So absurd that they’d believed Jinu the second he told them after the bathhouse incident. There was no way the guy could make up something like that. 

Didn’t mean they liked the idea of working with her. As much as they all wanted to be free from Gwi-ma, working with a Hunter of all things seemed like a sure-fire way of getting your head chopped off and sent as a dust cloud into the King’s maw, left to an eternity of nothingness. 

So they watched, only holding themselves back that first night because Jinu had signaled them to stay out of sight. 

Watched as the meetings became more frequent. Watched as their leader and the Hunter’s leader became something more like friends than the tentative business partners they had started as. Derpy and Sussie liking her was enough to get the boys to relax slightly as her presence became more common. 

Laughed at Jinu when he told them about the bracelet and the Hunter’s message about hope. Stopped laughing after thinking about it for a bit, and it was Myst who took the bracelet and set it up on a small spot right on the mantle in their hideout, right where they could all see it. 

Felt the dread that night when Gwi-ma’s voice infected them all, draining that hope from them in a way that left them hollow and haunted. 

Instructed the demons they pulled up to act as crew for them to fake a kidnapping of the Huntrix’s beloved manager. Watched as their leader used some low rank demons to expose the Hunter leader. Directed the imposters on how to act, what to say. Crouched in the rafters above the stage as the lights shattered around them and threw the world into darkness. A single spotlight on a lone demon among the masses, haunted just like they were. 

Watched, their voices falling as silent as Jinu’s when the Hunter’s leader…when Rumi, stepped into the stadium and the flare of Gwi-ma’s flame. Patterns purple and claws out, a single eye of amber peering out at them. 

And felt that small flicker of hope, the one she’d given them through Jinu and that small bracelet they’d left sitting on the mantle, spring back. Weak and fragile. But there, even as the flames of their king blazed at their backs. 

And a single thought that rang through their minds, bright and unburdened even by Gwi-ma’s now mighty voice. A thought that sat at the core of a song that would never reach its end under the onslaught of fire. 

‘None of us are out here on our own.’

They were blinded by bright amber and blue light, Baby’s magic and the Honmoon’s chosen coming together to perform one of the most difficult of the old Demon King’s spells. And they felt in their chests the bright glow of a part of them they’d lost so long ago, now returned as they strived to right one of many wrongs they’d made. 

—————————————Huntrix Penthouse, Current Day—————————————

Jinu felt the room’s eyes on him, even as he continued looking at the ground, knowing more than half of those eyes were glaring at him or his boys. He knew it was deserved. And he knew he had a lot to make up for. A lot he’d not even gotten to apologize for yet due to how quickly everything had happened since they got back, how much stress he and Rumi had been under from the second they reappeared in her room. 

“Well, that explains some of the stuff Luz would tell me about Huntrix and their boy band feud after Golden released the first time”, Eda snarked, breaking the tension slightly with a fanged smirk and an eye roll. 

Jinu looked up at her, confused and surprised. He noticed his boys doing the same from where they were sitting on the couch. Eda looked between them, her smirk turning into a begrudging smile. Not happy, but not angry. 

“Look, no demon under Gwi-ma is gonna be completely guiltless. Sorta the point, twerp. Humans that fall under that flame-brain’s control always have something that fuels their shame. It’s what makes your lot so dangerous. Shame is a hell of a motivator”, Eda said, crossing her arms and leveling them all with a look, “That said, you boys have some things to work through, and some apologies to make when things have calmed down a bit more. I expect you to put in the work for whatever mistakes you’ve made now that you have those souls of yours back.”

Jinu nodded, bowing slightly to her, his boys following his lead. 

“I only hope we can atone for some of it. We’ve done…I’ve…done so much to be ashamed of”, Jinu said as he stood back up fully. 

A hand settled on his shoulder a moment later, pulling his attention as Rumi stepped back into the room, eyes still a bit puffy. She gave him a sad smile. 

“Luckily, you now have time to try”, Rumi said softly, looking from him to the boys with a gentle look. 

“And some new friends to help”, Luz added, gently nudging Jinu with her elbow. 

King and Eda looked at her with bright smiles before giving Jinu and the boys that same gentle look. Jinu decided he would keep that look tucked close in his memories, right next to the bracelet. Because hope, as fragile as it was, needed reminders to fuel it. 

Rumi’s hand slipped off his shoulder as she took a step forward and looked at the group spread out along Couch. Taking a fortifying breath, she did her best to ignore the dread pooled in her chest. 

“On our side of things…”

———————Huntrix Tower, Five Months Ago, The First Time Around————————

Rumi pressed the button on her screen and locked the phone. Her entire form was buzzing. Half nerves, half excitement. This was it. This was how they’d get the Golden Honmoon. She’d be free. The curse of her birth would be wiped from her skin and for the first time, she’d be able to live. She could go back to wearing what she wanted, when she wanted. Her summers would no longer be spent halfway to heatstroke. Celine would finally look at her. All of her. 

She could finally be closer to her girls. Fully there with them, instead of stuck behind these walls she’d kept up all her life. She could go to the bathhouse with them. She could pass out on Couch during movie nights without fear of her hoodie riding up. No more secrets, no more hiding when all she wanted was to tell them everything. 

The weeks following Golden’s release were a whirlwind of rehearsals and promos. Every stage light as they were paraded around in the lead up to the Idol Awards felt like it was trying to find a way in, to see her patterns, to expose her. She didn’t let it get to her.

And then she did. 

Her voice, cut off by the patterns and the shame that was eating her alive. And the one note she could actually hit sent a shockwave out across the Honmoon, not unlike a rip in it. A demon’s effect. 

The Saja Boys had been another stressor in her life at the time, pompous and vying for the attention of the fans. 

(If Rumi shot Jinu a glare during that part, still slightly miffed at him stealing her “medicine”, no one commented. Jinu looked the other way with a hard to miss whistle.)

The game show. The bathhouse. The quick save from their view the first time. 

That first meet-up, everything that she’d learned about demons…or at least Gwi-ma’s demons. The way the boys clung to the sidelines, thinking they were out of sight. 

If the entire room sent glances to Eda’s brood, it was ignored or passed over in favor of Rumi continuing her side of the story. 

The following meet-ups with Jinu, his boys always somewhere just “out of sight” despite the beacon each and every single one of their colorful heads were.  Rumi’s own one-sided conversations with demons during their hunts. The fan signing that the boys crashed. 

The Idol Awards…

Rumi paused, feeling the room almost close in on her as she remembered everything that happened that night. It was only a day ago now… for her. She shook her head, forced her gaze back to the group at large. If her voice caught when her eyes landed on her girls, it wasn’t commented on. She decided to keep it simple. The details weren’t something the kids needed to know. Weren’t something that even Bobby needed to know. 

Jinu and the boys stayed silent. She silently thanked them and the Honmoon for that. 

She skipped her visit to Celine. 

Where she had gone wasn’t as important as what came next. 

Namsan Tower. The sounds of the Saja Boys, ‘Your Idol’ blared over the speakers as bright blue turned red and the Honmoon fell apart around them. 

A generations old lullaby, monotone but ringing out against the din of Gwi-ma’s crackling fire. The biting facts Gwi-ma had thrown her way. And her refusal to back down, even in the face of the inevitable. 

The song. 

Rumi stops, then, clamping her mouth shut even as the shadows of that night still move behind her eyes. The song coming to a halt. Her voice in that moment doing the same. 

The fire.

Two figures rushing in, one from either side as Gwi-ma’s fire raced at her. She had been trying to raise her sword to ward it off, knowing it’d likely do little more than stop the inevitable. 

She didn’t realize just what had happened until she was being shielded by them. 

Zoey and Mira. 

Her girls. 

Stood there in front of her, their backs to the flame, a hand of their on either of her shoulders. Their faces pained but trying to smile for her, for her, even as she saw them fading. She didn’t remember the screams that tore from her that Luz had seen, that the boys had heard. She didn’t remember Gwi-ma stopping his assault as the last of the Honmoon shattered under Rumi’s grief. She didn’t remember sinking to her knees as she caught her girls, limp, there in the middle of the stage. 

She didn’t tell the group that either, remembered or not. 

Instead…

“We…Gwi-ma won, that night.”

The weight of that statement felt heavy in the room. Eda sighed, leaning her head against the back of the couch and glaring at the ceiling. 

“And Belos won on our end. Leave it up to the evil embodiments of fire and rot to set off the actual apocalypse. And leave it to the Demon King of old to decide that time travel is the perfect solution without giving us the full team at our backs. We need actual support here. Five months till possible end-of-the-world times, and we have people who didn’t come back like Red and Buns here on both sides. Telling other time travelers that ya time traveled is one thing. Convincing the people we need to believe us is gonna be a whole other issue”, Eda complained, letting out her frustration before straightening and looking over at the shorter man next to her, “Looks like you and I have our work cut out for us.”

“I’d say so”,Bobby agreed, already typing away at his phone like a man on a mission, “Does anyone have food allergies or things they won’t eat?”

The silence at that question was enough to banish the last of the heaviness in the room, leaving bewildered eyes all glued to the manager. The manager who looked up and around with wide and innocent eyes, a shrug at his shoulders even as he continued typing. 

“What? In my professional and long-standing managerial opinion, any good trauma dump needs a decent amount of food to counter it. So, lunch”, he said, and Eda leaned over to see a large order on a delivery service already started, “Full stomachs make everything seem a little less doom and gloom. Trust me, an apocalypse on the horizon is still better than one happening right now. Now, shellfish, peanuts, that sort of thing? Otherwise I’m putting in the bulk order.”

Another beat of silence. 

Eda leaned back with a smirk, folding her arms over her chest and letting herself relax slightly for the first time that day. 

“You. I like you”, Eda said, pointing a claw at him, “Hopefully, with a bit of convincing, the two of us won’t be the only responsible adults in this mess.