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Despite the occasional online comment about being the boring one of the group, Zoey liked to think she had done well to insist on keeping her hair undyed. Besides not having to worry about roots showing and the long-term health of her hair from bleaching and color, there was the whole "effortless natural youth" thing and more importantly, the "easier identification with local fans and the wider East Asian demographic" thing. The latter was particularly helpful, because just with some careful makeup and her black hair down, it meant she could go around town without drawing too much attention. Very useful on night walks to clear her head with some fresh air and exercise, and more importantly, for midnight snack runs.
A con: she wasn't nearly as wary of who might be following her, even if stalkers had been something Bobby and Celine and just about everyone had told her to keep an eye out for. Being a Hunter probably did not help with her carelessness in that department, considering the MMA that worked even when she was unarmed.
This is all to say that she wasn't nearly as concerned as she should have been when she, passing through a deserted shortcut, noticed she was being followed later than she should have. She didn't think anything was amiss until the footsteps paused, and even when she raised her blades at the pounce, she was nothing but cool and confident-
Until her blades passed through the body reaching for her as though it were mist, and that deranged grin grew wider and nearer as grimy nails reached for her throat. For a terrible second, she felt as she did the first time a demon had lunged for her, and she had frozen in shock-
But training- blessed, brutal training- seized her and had her leaping backwards, arm knocking back to scatter the shin-kal-
They passed through the body and clattered against cobbled stone.
She stared at them, as the figure did, and it turned to her with a malicious sneer that made her skin crawl until it was abruptly and unceremoniously smashed to the ground.
It should have been messy. Teeth scattered from the impact, and the thing below screamed as the black shape that had slammed it to the stone viciously tore into its throat and ripped its limbs with the ease of a child pulling the legs off a spider-
The rending claws, the piercing fangs- they should have dripped with blood. Instead, the severed parts began flaking into fading ash, and the only red lay as a dim glimmer between fangs as the black shape turned, gold eyes bright through swaying lavender. A whine was accompanied with a stare both cornered and concerned, and his name was on her lips as she reached for him-
In a moment of déjà vu, Mystery was also abruptly and unceremoniously tackled and wrestled to the ashy ground.
"SPIT IT OUT SPIT IT OUT!"
A hand was thrust into his mouth and the blue-haired Saja tried to pry open the jaws that had snapped shut as if by instinct.
"COUGH IT UP MUTT YOU CAN'T GET ALL OF IT ! ARE YA TRYING TO GET STUCK IN HELL AGAIN OR WHAT?!"
"Get off him-!"
"You stay out of this!" the demon spat, shoving her back and the face beneath him turned livid and snarled-
The demon seized the moment to pull the twitching, glowing mass from his teeth. Mystery growled as Baby stepped away, looked ready to lunge-
"Is that a soul?"
It twitched in Baby's hand. The Saja Boys had put on a comeback concert shortly after returning, had sent Huntrix VIP tickets. The stadium had filled with ghosts until the performance sent them off to the sky as a mass of butterflies, each glowing soft as a lantern. They were proper guides to the afterlife now, Jinu had said-
This butterfly twitched on wings like coal, dark veins of bloody red lacing through it like cracks through magma.
"Is that a soul," she again asked, demanded-
Mystery made a scolded sound, hanging his head as he crouched on the ground. Baby rolled his eyes.
"A real ugly one, yeah," Baby replied.
Zoey stared at them. Mystery pulled himself to his feet. Stepped towards her-
"Are you hurt? Are you okay?"
Not really. Her boyfriend was maybe eating souls behind her back-
"Come on, mutt, we're still on the clock! Suck face with your bitch later!"
Mystery growled again, but stopped as she had her hand against his cheek.
"I'm okay, are you?"
He leaned into her hand, whining softly, his hand reaching up to curl its fingers around hers.
She gathered her nerves, the words she didn't want to ask, and softly, "Were you eating-?"
"We don't have time for this!"
He was pulled away by the back of his clothes like a scruffed kitten. Then, Baby leapt and took Mystery with him-
As the footsteps faded, Zoey thought of Mira, of her spears, and the Honmoon answered her. She gripped the staff and ran before sticking the blade in the ground, vaulting to the roofs-
She caught sight of the black-robed forms, one running and the other dragged, and began the pursuit. She ran over tile and leapt over ledges as residences turned to the city. They must have heard. Mystery, morose and cross-armed, lifted his head and began trying to wrest himself free. Baby looked back and groaned.
"Go home, Hunter!"
"Get back here! I want an explanation!"
"Get it from your loverboy la-!"
Baby let out a shout as the other demon bit, his grip loosening enough for Mystery to shed his durumagi-
He was yanked back, arm twisted and cheek pressed against rough concrete. The other demon snarled with a boot to his back. "You fucking useless, mongrel simp ! Can you stop chasing tail for one minute-!"
"Let go of him and let go of that soul!"
Baby glowered at her and her fan of shin-kal.
Then, he grinned.
"Fine," he said, lobbed the soul upwards with the velocity of a firecracker as it trailed red. It vanished, but a bloody glow remained in his hand, a scrap of torn wing-
He ripped it with his teeth and swallowed, and forced the rest down the other demon's throat, laughing even as teeth and claws left trails of black blood on the other demon's skin. Mystery's patterns pulsed like his own at the swallowed bit of soul, and the monster let her rush to Mystery's side.
"Sorry," he whispered, getting to his hands and knees. "I'm sorry-"
"You wanna see what we're up to?" She glared at the other demon, but he only smiled. "Don't say I didn't warn you."
He started shouting then. She felt her bones itch at the force of it, the insults and chants and perverse provocations leaving his lips. He insulted honors and houses, taunting obscenely with slights to mothers and fathers for generations, challenging skill and sex and manhood-
She felt the shift in the air as monstrous eyes bore into her, saw claws upon the roof's edges, shadows on those beyond creeping close to answer the taunt. She readied her blades as the demon cursed them closer-
Darkness over her vision, a gat's brim pulled over her eyes-
"Don't look," he murmured softly, pushing her back, but she had to, as a Hunter-
They were a whirlwind of violence. Here the maknae who smiled sweetly at fans and displayed perfect cuteness and unassailable aegyo struck out brutally, breaking necks and limbs as he laughed and mocked on with childlike glee. There her soft, sweet, silent puppy of a boyfriend snarled like a mad wolf, an unrelenting force of flashing fangs and claws. They crippled and killed without hesitation, one finishing what the other didn't, and bloody, dim-winged souls filled the sky as bodies crumbled around them.
Still the foes came. She joined the fray-
But where her daggers pieced one body, they passed through another. Over and over, she'd miss what should have squarely pierced through-
"Watch it!" the blue-haired demon snapped, barely blocking the blade that whizzed at him with a body thrice his size.
She traded her shin-kal for mudang, trying to keep combat close, but had no better luck guessing what could make contact and what couldn't. But the other demon lingered by her, taking down what she couldn't-
In a moment of reprieve, their side of the roof cleared, and she turned. As much as she hated him right then, her heart dropped. The other demon stood alone, surrounded without another fighter to thin his hordes-
Red pulsed through his patterns, gathering in his hand and claws. Then, a spiked club, a bangmangi, was clenched in his fists-
"FEAST ON THIS, YA BASTARDS!"
The dokkaebi swung and smashed to pulp the heads of those that leapt upon him. He brought the club down on the mangled forms even when they stopped moving. Through ash and ashen wings, he panted, but gave a manic grin. It widened when he caught her gaze, as he charged, swinging his club-
She was pinned to the ground, and behind the pale hair of the form keeping her down, the dokkaebi's club crushed a massive skull with a sickeningly-wet sound that rained blood upon them all. It turned to ash soon enough, as she was pulled up-
"Ey mutt!" the goblin called, pointing a claw at the retreating shapes as the battle was abandoned. "Are ya gonna wrap this up or not?"
The demon stayed, glaring at the dokkaebi-
An arm was swung around her shoulders and Mystery growled as she did -
"Do your job, and your precious little girlfriend will be fine." The dokkaebi smiled cheerfully at her. "You don't want him to slack off and get in trouble do you?"
She didn't know how much was truth, how much was lie, but she was alive, and the monsters were getting further away-
"It's fine," she managed. "Go. I can take care of him if he does something."
The demon holding her scoffed. The other demon's eyes looked soft and sorry. His patterns glowed a bloody red at his throat, at his fingertips. He turned away, gave a blood-curdling, paralyzing howl, and sprang across the roofs on sharpened claw for the stragglers.
There was a huff by her ear. "Dumb dog."
He let her her go, and she spun to face him with her daggers-
He tilted his head as he leaned against his club. "I save your ass and this is thanks I get? What a surprise- Huntrix's Zoey ain't such a sweetheart after all."
"What was that?"
"What was what?"
"Those demons. Why couldn't I hit them?"
He blinked. Then raised a brow. "I know you're a maknae, but are you really this fucking naive?
"Could you just explain-"
He snickered. "You thought that was a demon?"
"What else would it be?"
"Did you see patterns on the guy who jumped you?"
. . .it had been a body. She could tell it had nothing but hostility in it. But when she tried to recall, its face didn't have patterns-
"You think all souls come nice and easy with a bit of singing and dancing? You think all humans are sweet and cute wike widdle old you?"
She glared at him-
"Grow up!" he said, then stumbled when the club disappeared. He swore at the empty air-
She thinks of every missed mark, each one missing those stripes and swirls that glowed upon the dokkaebi. "Those were humans?"
"Your Honmoon shit was meant for demon scum like us. What did you think was happening, agassi?"
". . .you ate a human soul."
"What? You don't eat before a show? And before you get on my case about every human soul being precious, you really wanna say that about every human? Murderers? Rapists? The ones who hit their kids and lovers? You wanna scold us for being big bad demons for eating bits of them? What a big fat heart you've got- caring more about trash than even the fucking heavens-"
"You forced him to-!"
"If you weren't around, he wouldn't have made a show of it. If you weren't around, he would have hunted down a worse one instead of chasing the one that spotted ya, and we'd have split a bit of better wing, and we could have done our jobs easy without worrying about dead weight."
The demon met her gaze with one as tired as it was accusing. There was no bloodlust, no malice. "You know what happens if we mess up again?"
Her throat tightened.
"You have your stupid dates and sappy shit. But this? This, you stay out of-"
"Zoey."
Mystery was on the roof behind them. In the distance, she thought she could see the last trails of souls as they faded.
"Next time, stay outta our way."
Beside her hear, teeth snapped together at the smoke where the other Saja stood but a moment ago. She threw her arms around him and he went still, then soft.
"Are you alright?" he asked gently.
She held him close, pressed her ear against his chest. "He said you'd eat souls. You have a reason, right?"
His arms curled around her.
Only a little, he promised. Only the bad ones, never enough to stop them from moving on. Only enough to get rid of the other bad ones and the demons that would eat all the other lost souls otherwise. They had to thin out the bad ones, the dangerous ones, or their concerts would be feeding grounds for demons and spirits.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you."
Was every human soul precious? She tried to think so, even at Burbank. Even when some fans squeezed too tight or looked at her less than innocently. Be good, be nice, be the best you can be, and think the same of others.
She thought of the waves of the dead, man and demon alike in their monstrosity.
". . .I guess it would have been hard to understand without seeing it."
His arms seemed to stiffen. "Were you scared?"
Her fingers tangled into his hair. She shifted to kiss him, and smiled. "Not of you. And hey, I'm a Hunter and a popstar. I've seen worse, you know?"
He smiled and laid his head atop hers. He made a soft, happy sound in his throat, as he leaned-
A less fit human would have buckled beneath him, because the slim form he cut on stage truly did not belie how much muscle mass and weight he had. She braced against him to keep them both upright. "I think you should go and rest. You must be tired."
He whined, pouted, said nothing but tilted his head down. She looked away.
"You can't stay in my bed right now! It's so late! Mira will skin you alive!"
He muttered a sound that sounded suspiciously like, you can have my skin, didn't move an inch-
She pushed him back by the shoulders to look at him seriously-
Big mistake.
He looked at her with big, sad eyes, and the hands that had been pulled from her push now curled near his chest, like paws-
She inhaled deeply. "Okay fine but you're going to shower and you're leaving at six."
He beamed so bright it could have been sunrise.
One teleportation, shower, and change of clothes later, they were both in her bed in one of the many matching pairs of pajamas she had been wondering when to give. Well, more specifically, he sat the foot of the bed as she sat on her knees behind him and toweled off his hair. She insisted every strand be dry before he was allowed to sleep (her room, her rules) and he acquiesced, but there was only so much she could do to stall the inevitable.
Eventually they were in bed. Together. Her back was to him, because his eyes were like nightlights in the dark room as they looked at her, and she did intend to sleep tonight. His arms were around her though, hugging her the way she was hugging her pillow (the usual plush confined to the closet, since he got stupidly, cutely jealous about her cuddling things with faces when he was around), pressing her back against a toned chest.
Her eyes drifted to the arms around her, one under her, because her protests about possibly ruining his blood circulation led nowhere. His patterns seemed to shimmer in the moonlight.
"Thank you," she said softly, in case he was sleeping. "For earlier."
The arms around her tightened, and he nuzzled her head.
"Thank you for not running."