Excuse me, mine good bitch, what seems to be the fuck?

Spin the wheel to find out what!

Then we go to Monoco's theme to stave off the depression

There are literally like 3 other fics for this ship and I was shooketh to find out that so few people saw this badass cat lady captain and this overworked, tired but amazing mother and didn't immediately go "They should kiss."

I am on my hands and knees begging.

...do you have more? 👀

Dimension travel and Time travel are my absolute favorite flavour of au because they can be soooo good in the fix-it way but also in the angst way. I love them all to death.

And yes! they were trained and raised with stories of Celine! I don't think their canon counterparts actually got a super-duper lot of stories about Mi-yeong and Soo-min because I think it's a wound that never stopped bleeding for Celine. She was alone in her grief and with Rumi as a responsibility on top of that. Post-movie and post-reconciliation might be the first time Celine actually has the space and the environment necessary to actually start healing.

Soo-min and Mi-yeong, meanwhile, had each other after demon dad and Celine kicked it, so they'd have healed... better? I guess? It's very much a wound that never stopped hurting, theirs just stopped bleeding.

So yeah, they girls know a lot of stories, and they've seen the pictures, so they all recognize her (Zoey being the first to do so lol). They immediately assume demon at first, until she pulls her weapons out and they all just go "!!!???". That's when they start noticing everything wrong, like the gray hairs, the scars along her arms, the wrinkles in her face etc etc.

ANYWAYS Yeah! have some more because I love dimension travel so fucking much:

And then it just went out. That little light that shone so brightly in her gaze, shone of shock, confusion and overwhelming grief just... flickered out. Leaving no emotion, no hurt. It made her dark gaze look as endless as the cosmos and as cold as the night sky. It was as if their lover had walked away, hidden behind ice and just left her body behind. It wasn't violent or sudden. Mi-yeong could see the moment the light started to waver, could feel when the door slammed shut in this stranger's mind. She tried to force herself to say something- anything. Soo-min was frozen beside her, their girls were looking between them holding their breaths but Mi-yeong couldn't move. Her tongue was leaden in her mouth and her throat was dry. "I see." It hadn't changed. Over twenty years and her voice was the exact same as Mi-yeong remembered it. A gentle timbre that'd wash away uncertainty with the calm certainty of success. But it was still wrong. Cold, detached. Apathetic. Like she was measuring them and simply jotting down her observations. Like she had to. Like she couldn't remember the days they'd spent telling each other their deepest secrets and forgiving each other for their darkest sins. "Celine?" Soo-min found her voice before Mi-yeong could, but it was shaky at best. Celine-not-Celine nodded sharply, only once. Not unlike how she'd respond to an order from their mentor, back in the day. Mi-yeong felt lightheaded. "Yes." She responded, still in that monotone that made Mi-yeong's skin itch. "But not yours."

Ok ok ok ok. A Celine who sees this almost-perfect world (perfect because she's not in it?) but starts seeing more of the cracks like Rumi's patterns and the shame she's still holding. I wonder what she'll make of Huntr/x's relationship to each other in this world - ways that they're closer, ways that they aren't.

Also a Celine who's a sole survivor (and the survivor's guilt involved in that) trying so hard to keep Miyeong and Soomin separate in her mind, leading her to be that cold, detached self.

(But... but, well, there's Huntr/x. She's raised those girls solo and it's so easy to fall into habits with them when she sees those little weaknesses and wants to help them fix it.)

(Miyeong and Soomin watching as the hardness softens when Celine forgets herself and begins guiding Mira through an unfamiliar moveset she had brought up. Watching almost enviously when Zoey takes advice Celine gives to heart and prank-ambushes her and Celine dodges but laughs.)

(They don't notice the matching longing looks Celine throws their way. Doesn't see how Celine sees how they've grown up to lean on each other so much more in her absence. Doesn't see how Celine aches when Rumi goes to them first and calls them by the title Celine has always prevented herself from having--)

It's so fun to toy with in my book. Time-travel tends to be my fix-it au's while dimension hopping tends to be my comparison pieces but they're both so delicious to me

When it comes to huntrix's relations to each other, the biggest difference would be that Mira and Zoey were told about Rumi's patterns way earlier, which allowed another level of closeness that canon!huntrix didn't get to have due to the secret needing to be kept.

But that is also basically the only one (very big indeed, but still) because Celine did encourage the girls to get close to each other. They needed to be close and trust each other when they were both on the field and on stage for things to go smoothly.

And this perfect world isn't perfect because Rumi's patterns are still very much fueled by shame. They are that purple colour and while she doesn't have to hide them from Mira and Zoey, she still needs to hide from the world. They're smaller due to the lack of shame from hiding them from her fellow hunters, but they're still very much not iridescent like C!Rumi's.

And something else is that Soo-min and Mi-yeong were very focused on helping them grow as people, putting duty slightly on the back burner. They saw hurting youngins and decided they were more important, something Celine couldn't do.

Celine turned them into hunters and idols, Soo-min and Mi-yeong turned them into people(at least from Celine's PoV. Unreliable narrator anyone?).

But being a well adjusted individual therefore comes at the cost of their skills. They're good hunters and fighters, don't get me wrong! But Celine looks at them and she sees rigidity and technicalities. They are technically perfect in what they do, reminding Celine so much of how she herself used to fight when she still had her own Soo-min and Mi-yeong to fight with.

But after they died she had to do everything on her own. She had to learn to be more dangerous, more skilled. It then translated into what she taught C!Huntris, making them extremely lethal. It meant that most demons that came through the tears in their world were nothing but canon fodder to them. au!Huntrix strategized and still got close calls where C!huntrix would have made a game out of who could slay the demons in the funniest way if put in the same situation.

Maybe that's how it starts lmao

Celine sees them out hunting at some point and Rumi -her fellow sword wielder- does something that's technically correct, but could've been done so much smoother, finally gets Celine to snap. They are going to die just like Soo-min and Mi-yeong had, just like Celine had at this rate! (is the excuse she gives herself. In reality it was honest to the Honmoon 99% reflex that caused her to shout-)

"Footwork Rumi! You do not slow down in a fight, unless you want to try tanking a blow, of course."

And it unfortunately distracts au!Rumi a bit, so Celine tosses her own blade at an approaching demon to banish it. Then she has to think back to all those lessons she gave years ago at this point.

"Think of the ground being lava. If you stay still too long you'll burn your feet, always keep moving." And she can tell this other Rumi is a bit annoyed with her backseat hunting, but she can also see her take the words to heart as she starts moving again, her feet carrying her along with each of her strikes, no longer staying in one place.

Either way it starts her down the path of coaching Huntrix once more. She doesn't have the time to re-train them, she needs to get home after all, but she does give them pointers when she can.

Soo-min and Mi-yeong will see this, see the familiarity and they'll ache. This is what they could've had if Celine had survived. They could've had her gently chopping Zoey on the top of her head when she tried to ambush her. They could have had Celine instructing the younger generation on how to keep their hair out of their faces when they fought (because neither Soo-min nor Mi-yeong let their own hair out when fighting), allowing Mira to finally do a simple half-up half-down style that wouldn't bother her as much.

(Also something something, Celine being in the middle of hunts and Soo-min and Mi-yeong actively panicking about it because of what happened last time their Celine was faced with a hoard of demons something something it doesn't help at all to see how dangerous she has become, it just highlights how different this Celine is something something Celine would also panic if she were to see them fighting demons something something)

And like you said: They won't see how Celine looks on with a burning throat when Rumi doesn't call out to them by name. Celine knows she's not made for that role, she knows that.

She'd grown too sharp in her time alone, she'd just cut anything that she held too tightly.

That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.

Also:

C!Huntrix is fucking BESIDES themselves by the time they figure out how to get to the different universe. Celine might've been gone for weeks at this point, they had to lie and forge Celine's signature for the company so that they'd think she was just taking an extended vacation or something.

Add to that the first thing they learn in this new universe is that Celine is dead???? Yeah no. They are not having a fun happy time.

Maybe they come in through a tear or something, so other Huntrix goes to take care of it and. Well. Soon enough the Honmmoon is basically sending out a distress signal lol.

Celine is closest at that point so she hurries over only to see au!Huntrix taking hits from an enraged looking Rumi, fangs and claws out and everything; an angry looking Mira, who keeps glaring at her counterparts hair; and a strangely annoyed looking Zoey, who keeps tossing random shit she finds on the ground to mess up the trajectory of au!Zoey's shin-kals.

C!Rumi leaps at au!Rumi and is promptly snatched out of the air and held up by the back of her jacket like she's a misbehaving cat.

"No." Is all Celine says as she stands in-between the participants of the one-sided beat down.

in .3 seconds C!Rumi has attached herself to Celine in a koala hug and C!Zoey and Mira are actively leaping at her to join the hug because thank fuck you're not dead!

au!Huntrix is like ??? These are your versions of us???

And Celine is just like Yupp. These ones are mine.

au!Huntrix is left just staring as C!Huntrix is actively glaring at them from where they're clinging to Celine who... looks very used to being a human jungle gym.

Celine tearing through demons but what seems like an opening appears and Miyeong/Soomin throw themselves forward to protect it. Except it wasn't an opening, Celine was absolutely doing something insane with the honmoon or whatever and now their appearance throws everything off.

Miyeong and Soomin fighting and Celine seeing that they're... perfect. There are no openings, they completely cover each other and flow together like one unit. (There's no space for her--not like she should try to insert herself but...)

And I love canon!huntr/x with Celine. Human jungle gym Celine acting all long-suffering but for the first time since she's arrived in the new world, she's fully and utterly relaxed.

When I was creating this little au of mine, I thought about including one of the soul-mate aspects to it. Like, in the end I decided to just do the whole "Oh, they're them but they aren't them" so the souls don't connect and heal and whatever tf.

But.

There was a time where I thought about being a bit mean.

(Summary of how soul-mates work in my little world The honmoon connects all trios of hunters by having them share their souls with each other, making them soulmates. Each hunter has only 1/3 of their own soul in their body. The other 2/3's are filled by the souls of the other two. Essentially, they all have 3 different 1/3's in their body, together making one full soul. When a hunter dies, she takes back her soul part(unwillingly or not, she does not get a choice in the matter) because she needs it for the after life, but she does not return the pieces of the souls she was already carrying, instead safe-keeping them until the other hunters join her in death. This also means that the remaining hunters are missing pieces of their souls until they die. Therefore Celine only has 1/3 of a soul left in her cause Soo-min is also dead in this world.)

Anyways-

Like, just after Celine has hopped through and cleared things up with au!huntrix, au!huntrix have to basically gently drag Celine back to the tower/hanok.

This is were the fun begins, because now is when the other two members of polylight come back. Rumi had texted them fully panicked just "Come back! I don't know how to deal with this you need to get here pelasepleasepleasehelp!". So they bust through the doors ready to swing on sight.

And all they see is a very tired Celine, lounging in one of the armchairs while Zoey is filling her in on things that are obvious(to them).

She has gray streaks in her hair and wrinkles around her eyes, like she actually got to grow old with them both.

And in this bad time-line the pieces of their remaining souls would snap together, intertwining once again upon reuniting.

This would not be seamless.

The reason it's barely noticeable when it happens the first time is because it's an exchange. The parts of the soul that is being given away is immediately replaced by the souls of the other two.

But they're all running on fumes now that there are parts already missing. You know how when a person is starving, their stomach will shrink? It's like that, and now they're trying to basically stuff themselves on a five course meal after surviving on nothing but a stale piece of bread for decades.

It's painful for Mi-yeong and Soo-min. Like something is trying to stretch out in between their lungs and force room for itself to stay. They're gasping for breath, leaning against the walls/each other trying to stay upright, spitting blood because they bit their tongues either in pain or trying to keep from making any noise about said pain.

It's bad for them.

It's worse for Celine.

Those two were missing 1/3 of their souls. Celine was missing 2/3's. For her it's excruciating. Like something is fully trying to kick her rib-cage open from the inside. The worst type of pain she has ever experienced, even worse than loosing her soul pieces in the first place, and she can't even scream because she can't breathe. It's fully physical for her as well. I'm talking bleeding from the mouth, nose, ears, eyes. Clawing at her chest trying to get the pain out. She might actually end up best off, because she is not staying conscious throughout the entire ordeal.

Which fucks Mi-yeong and Soo-min up so bad. They can not handle another Celine unmoving on the ground in a growing pool of her own blood.

It's a horrible ordeal, even for au!huntr/x who are also there. Zoey and Rumi are crying, watching in horror, Mira is holding them trying to comfort them as much as she's trying to comfort herself. They are not trained for this. They have no fucking clue what to do. All they can do is watch as Soo-min finally gets her feet under her and manages to stumble the last of the way over the Celine.

And she'll start trying to rouse her.