Chapter Text
“Ma’am, you have to stay back!”
“I know them!” Celine shouted, trying to push past the beleaguered young Assistant Inspector. She was tired, exhausted, her leg screaming courtesy of a glancing blow from a demon club, the only things keeping her standing at the moment adrenaline and Miyeong’s desperate plea to keep her daughter and husband safe, “I’m a friend of the family!”
Unfortunately, her leg chose that moment to finally give out on her. She collapsed to a knee, biting her tongue to hide the hiss of pain as the inspector steadied her.
“Ma’am, please-,”
“What happened!?” she demanded, “My friend got a call saying her husband’s car had been in an accident,”
It wasn’t a lie, not technically. But the call had come from the Honmoon itself, an agonized scream somehow more violent than the usual discord that accompanied breaches, one that each and every member of the Sunlight Sisters knew had something to do with Rumi.
Unfortunately, they’d been delayed from answering by a demon ambush which had left Miyeong herself half conscious. Thus her plea, thus Celine’s urgency, and thus the cresting wave of dread as she watched the policeman’s face morph into something painfully sympathetic.
“Are they okay?” she whispered, forcing back the wave through sheer stubbornness.
“We…haven’t found any bodies,”
“Bodies!?” she shot to her feet, ignoring the screaming of her injuries, the pounding rain which had turned the coastal road into a slipping hazard, and turned the curve.
It was only once she laid eyes upon the car did the wave crash.
It lay crumpled and half submerged on the rocks like a reverse shipwreck, its front bumper flattened and its roof peeled open like a can.
She could imagine what the official story would be playing out before her eyes. A slippery road, a collision, a cinematic car flip which had carried the car over the guardwall. The man and five year old girl inside killed in the impact or drowned while attempting to escape the car, any sign of them washed away by the rain or tides.
Only she recognized the demon claws piercing the roof, the club which crumpled the bumper, the true danger of the water, or what the lack of bodies meant.
“We’re still searching the water,” the policeman offered, painfully earnest in some attempt to reassure her, “We’ll find something,”
Celine knew they wouldn’t.
What was she supposed to tell Miyeong?
---
“There’s been some suspicious activity with Zoey’s account,”
Miyeong shot Celine an ever so slightly judgemental look, “You’re monitoring her finances?”
“She asked!” Celine defended, “And I think she might have been hacked,”
“Or maybe she’s just buying gifts for Mira,” Miyeong hummed, drawing a frown from Celine, “Oh, you can’t be holding her refusal against her,”
“I’m not, I just-,” Celine sighed, “You saw their chemistry, they’re destined to be Hunters, together,”
“Even destiny can only go so far in this day and age. And don’t forget not everyone’s cut out for the idol life. Trying to push her of all people is going to end disastrously,”
“It still feels like a waste,”
There was another look from Miyeong, loving but stern, and Celine gave a quiet nod of surrender.
“I’ll leave her be, let her remain Zoey’s secret dalliance,”
“Don’t speak badly of secret dalliances, Moonie. They can end quite nicely,” Miyeong mused, casually scratching her nose, flashing the ring that Celine had slipped onto her finger in a Las Vegas Chapel.
“Imo Celine! Imo Mimi!”
“Hello there little songbirds!” Celine smiled, holding out her arms as two eight year old projectiles barreled into her.
Sori and Hyuna Oh were the spitting image of their mother Soo-Jin, only straighter hair which Sori left loose and Hyuna pulled into a pair of ponytails to separate them from her and each other.
Now they wore identical grins as they practically vibrated with excitement.
“Something catch your eye?” Celine asked, “A gift for your parents when they get back?”
The twins shook their heads, Hyuna more sheepish than Sori.
“There’s a dance group down the street!” Sori said, the words practically bursting out of her, “And they’re soooo cool!”
“Oh really?” Miyeong asked, “Even cooler than your mom?” that fetched an out of sync nod from both girls. “Even cooler than us,”
That got another nod from the girls, a gasp of overdramatic offense from Miyeong, and a laugh from Celine.
“Betrayed by my biggest fans!” Miyeong placed a hand over her heart and Celine laughed harder.
“We’re Huntr/x’s biggest fans now,” Hyuna added, genuinely sorry for that fact, and Celine doubled over.
“Huntr/x, huh?” Celine heard Miyeong say, and she could envision her wife’s Assessing Producer voice.
“Yeah, Huntr/x! They’ve got these cool dance moves, these cool masks, and their center has these really cool patterns!”
The laughter died in Celine’s throat and she whipped her head to see Miyeong’s expression, frozen with barely hidden dread.
“Patterns, songbird?”
“Yeah!” Sori shouted as Hyuna nodded, “I don’t know if they’re tattoos or body paint or something but she looks like a tiger!”
“Why don’t you show us?”
Sori seized Miyeong’s hand while Hyuna took Celine’s, both girls dragging them along the street, ignorant of their dread.
They pulled them towards the sound of fast paced music and an excited ring of people singing along to the words.
“Huntr/x don’t miss!”
“How it’s done done done!”
“Certainly catchy,” Celine groused, earning her another glance from Miyeong, donning a mask to further disguise herself.
They shouldered their way through the crowd, their nieces acting like cute battering rams to get them to the front and see what they’re dealing with.
And what they were dealing with…well, there was a reason why Miyeong was always the lyricist.
The three women were in street wear and matching jackets colored green, blue, and pink. Two of them wore masks, while the third, their center in the pink jacket, had her tiger mask clipped to her belt, exposing her shoulder length purple hair, her teasing, fang edged smile, and shimmering pearlescent tiger markings covering her face.
“Yeah, something about when you come for the crown”
“That's so humbling, huh?”
The center, the demon center, delivered her lyrics with a cocky smile that set Celine’s teeth on edge, before the one in green swept forward, tall and graceful and wearing a mask patterned after magpies as she delivered her lyrics in a burst of aggressive Korean.
“Gapjagi wae geurae? Meonjeo geondeuryeo, wae?”
“Ijeya pogihae, what?”
The blue one leapt to the forefront, uncontainable energy compared to Pink’s confidence or Green’s grace, her wide smile as clear as day even behind a mask that reminded Celine of a turtle ship’s figurehead.
“Nothin’ to us, run up, you’re done up we come up,”
“From sunup to sundown, so come out to play,”
For some reason, the blue one rankled her the most. Something about those lyrics, the way she sang them seemed frustratingly familiar.
She looked to Miyeong, but her wife was frozen, her eyes trained on the pink one as she retook the central position, her lyrics issuing a challenge.
Because that’s what this was, a challenge so blatant she wanted to start laughing again.
Last night there’d been a breach in the Honmoon, larger than they’d ever thought possible with their almost golden barrier (that almost rankled her to no end). She and Miyeong had spent half night running all over Seoul in search of seemingly non-existent Demons, with only sleep deprivation to show for it.
Now it all made sense.
A demon girl group. An idea so ridiculous she was almost impressed.
She pulled at the Honmoon, her hwando weaving together-
Then Miyeong caught her wrist, shaking her head slowly.
Not here. Not now.
Fine. But soon.
The demon center’s voice cut across their silent conversation.
“Hear our voice unwavering,”
“'Til our song defeats the night,”
“Makin' fear afraid to breathe,”
“'Til the dark meets the light!”
Celine had to hand it to the Demon: her voice was devastatingly impressive.
As her voice crescendoed, the crowd around them went silent, dumbstruck as the note rose higher and higher and higher.
The moment passed, and the crowd’s cheers crashed around them like a wave, Sori and Hyuna’s chief among them.
Then she saw it. A Honmoon, like the Honmoon but centered entirely around Huntr/x, pearlescent strings the same color as the center’s marks coalescing around them.
And it was growing.
Fuck.
---
Zoey slipped through the door as nonchalantly as possible, adjusting her bucket hat as she scanned the bar.
The person she was looking for found her first, stepping out from the back and making an oh-so-casual beeline towards her.
“Hey, pretty girl,” she drawled, turning Zoey’s carefully planned greeting to mush on her tongue.
“Hehe, wassup?” she fired back with a pair of finger guns.
“I see you’ve taken my advice and stopped wearing tropical shirts,” Mira teased.
“I suppose I was dressing a little too gangsta,”
Mira rolled her eyes, still smiling, “Something like that. Why don’t we talk somewhere a little more quiet?”
Zoey didn’t bother hiding her goofy grin as Mira grabbed her hand and led her to an out of the way booth.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Do I need a reason to see the prettiest girl in the world?”
“What, you don’t have a mirror in your fancy penthouse?”
Zoey giggled, her banter once again melting at Mira’s words. It was unfair, really, how easily she could do that.
“You could always see for yourself,” she suggested.
“As long as Celine isn’t there,”
“She’s not going to try and make you an idol…again,”
“Still don’t want to risk it,” she half-joked, “I’ve spent too much time tormenting myself to fit other’s expectations, I’m not going to join an industry built on that. No offense,”
“None taken,” Zoey waved her hand flippantly, “Although…”
“Zoey…,” Mira groaned warningly, but Zoey had already unleashed her puppy eyes full force.
“I would like to use your designs. We don’t even have to put your name on it! You could use a pseudonym!”
Her offer was met by the harsh press of Mira’s lips, and Zoey couldn’t help the sinking feeling in her gut as she refused to properly answer.
“Really?” she demanded, unable to hide the hurt in her voice.
“I’m thinking about it, okay?” she said roughly.
“I want you to be successful. You were the one who told me that it’s all about who you know, and, well, you know me! And…,” she looked up at Mira with wet eyes, “I want to show you off in whatever way I can. Your designs deserve detention and I…I don’t want to keep loving you in snatches,”
“We’d still be doing that if I joined you. Plus we’d have to deal with people like Dispatch picking apart our private lives. If something like us went public-,”
“Something like us could break tomorrow and we’d be in the same boat,” Zoey pointed out.
“I know that, alright?”
“Then do we stop seeing each other?”
Mira froze, her expression hardening as Zoey’s heart sank into her stomach.
“I dunno,” she whispered, harsh and frosty, “Do we?”
And with that, the falling sensation tumbled into an unexpected rage.
Mira was trying to shift this onto her?
“I’m not talking to you about this,” she said, tamping down the anger. If this continued, she was going to get angrier and angrier, turn it into a fight, and she didn’t want to be angry, not at anyone, not Mira, and she didn’t want to fight, especially not with Mira.
“So you’re leaving?” Mira hissed, a blade against her heart.
“I have stuff to do,” she lied. She’d cleared her entire afternoon in the hopes of spending some quality time with Mira, “Answer that question for yourself and call me when you do,”
She stood, making for the door before Mira had a chance to respond.
But there was no response, no call of her name, no hand on her shoulder, which somehow hurt even more.
She stepped back into the street, pulling her hat down low to hide her identity and the tears as her mind began to fall down a dark spiral.
The buzz of her phone to the tune of her favorite Sunlight Sisters thankfully distracted her.
A message from Celine flared on the screen:
Celine: Situation, get to the house. Now.
---
“We have a problem,”
“That’s to be expected,” there was a click as a makeup mirror snapped shut, its owner tucking it into the inner jacket of a pocket as its owner turned mismatched eyes to the one who had addressed her.
“You say that,” her companion offered, casually stroking the large spirit tiger which wound itself around his legs, “I’m just not sure it extends to what I’m looking at,”
“Oh my god, are you being difficult on purpose?” she snatched the phone from his hand, staring in confusion at the video on screen, depicting a trio of street performers, only for the realization to hit her harder than the demons responsible for her combat training.
“Jinu. What. The. Fuck”
“I know, she looks just like you,”
“Not that,” she growled, even as her ire at Jinu’s sass mixed with growing fury at the leader of this trio, with a face just like hers but different, more settled, despite the glowing patterns which seemed more extensive than hers. She glanced up, past Jinu, past the other demons recruited for this scheme, using their glamour for a money laundering operation, landing on the still figure clad in black Talchum clothing watching over them.
“She’s stealing our act,” she declared, not removing her eyes from the figure.
“So what’s the plan?” Jinu drawled, almost playful, “Hunt them down, drag them back to Gwi Ma so they can explain what the fuck they’re doing?”
“No,” she answered automatically, “We lay low, if need be we go with the original plan just with you instead of me. I’m going to gather info,”
She glanced down at her doppelganger, smiling wider and more genuinely than she could ever remember. Her patterns pulsed as the resentment in her gut curdled.
“I’m getting to the bottom of this,”