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Character expressions art by Scott Watanabe.

(Now with art)

In ancient times there were demons who stole the souls of their victims, empowered by the evil Demon King, Gwi Ma. He got stronger and stronger in our world, until a single songstress named Celine rose up to fight him with her magical sword and lyrics.

Celine gave up her physical form and sacrificed her life on earth to create the Honmoon, a magical barrier that seals Gwi-Ma away in another dimension. She left behind a song with powerful but hard-to-interpret lyrics. They definitely mention Gwi-Ma gaining power and returning on Dongji (winter solstice,) while three brave songstress characters in the song rise up to stop him, though. That much the song makes clear.

Over the years, generations of young singers memorize Celine’s song, try to live like she lived, try to interpret it, and prepare for each year’s Dongji. They hope they’re the Trio in Celine’s Sacred Song, born to stop Gwi-Ma from returning. They fight the demons leaking through the Honmoon and do as much good as they can, but generation after generation, they are slain by demons and Gwi-Ma, though he does not break through quite yet, gets stronger.

Enter Rumi, Zooey, and Mira. They are this generation’s brave new warriors, trying to decode and live up to the prophetic Sacred Song.

Instead of doing nothing wrong and learning shame from a mother-figure, Rumi is actually a bit of a diva. She still hides her marks and her half-demon heritage, but it comes out in the way she interacts with fans. Being a half-breed, she has her own way of “stealing souls.” She almost can’t help it—almost. When she sings, it does strengthen Zooey and Mira’s songs and help the band fight better. However, her most diehard fans seem to slowly lose individuality and their entire personalities are absorbed in adoration of Rumi. Rumi’s not proud of this effect, and its subtle, so it’s easy to keep hidden from the others—but like her markings, she believes that the ends (defeating Gwi-Ma) will justify the means. And the love of her fans does make her feel better about her half-breed identity, in the meantime.

(There’s a side-character named Yu, who is briefly seen in a couple through-line scenes as like a C-plot. She’s a little artist who has a unique perspective on life, and not a fan of KPop until she moves to the city and her neighbor takes her to a Huntrix show. She’s the primary example of Rumi’s demon-half stealing souls as her personality morphs into a little version of Rumi.)

Rumi, Zooey, and Mira have frequent dreams and visions of Celine as the Dongji solstice, and 400-year anniversary of Celine’s Sacrifice, gets closer. She’s hard to understand in the dreams, but they always wake up feeling a sense of loss. Vision-Celine is kind, usually appears as a hero chasing away nightmares the Huntress’ are having, and is trying to tell them something about her song.

Before they can compare notes and figure out what this means, the Huntress’ lives and careers are interrupted by Jinu and the Saja Boys, who, like the original film, want to steal the Huntress’ fanbase. The Huntress’ realize they are demons and this is Gwi-Ma’s strategy to gain enough souls to finally break the Honmoon and come through—this is the Dongji the Sacred Song warned of. And they must be the Trio who stands against him, after all.

With the pressure on, it is surprising that Jinu saves Rumi’s life during a vicious battle. She isn’t sure why he’s done it—until he asks to meet and reveals that he knows she’s part-demon. The trick is, in this AU, Jinu doesn’t know that Rumi is lying to her friends. He saw her markings, assumed Zooey and Mira already knew, and mistakenly believed they loved and accepted one another anyway. He also does not know that Rumi is secretly fighting an addiction to half-stealing souls.

Jinu wants what he thinks Rumi has—hope. A way to be known and loved, and fight his demon half. He hasn’t had that hope in centuries. Rumi is skeptical at first, but eventually comes to believe that Jinu can be cured by the defeat of Gwi-Ma, too, just like she hopes to be. She starts training him in the way of Celine, teaching him the Sacred Song and how a Hunter lives.

Jinu becomes a kind of double-agent against the Saja Boys—all of whom have tragic backstories, too. But they don’t want to get better. They’re perfectly happy stealing souls. Jinu does not tell Rumi his own secret—that he abandoned his family. Though he believes she is different, she is free from shame, he is still holding on to fear that if he reveals his own, she’ll reject him. He’s not trying to manipulate her in this version. He’s just trying to keep her relationship with him.

On the eve of the Dongji Solstice, the Huntress’ have a breakthrough in interpreting the Sacred Song. They each have an emotionally-charged vision about Celine, again. It appears that, on the Dongji Solstice, she could return. They have to harness the power of song to make this happen. Obviously, as their hero, their dream-mother figure, and their ideological mentor, each of the Huntress’ would lay down their lives if it meant restoring Celine to physical form.

The pressure is on. They are determined to have the biggest, most successful show ever. At first, Zooey and Mira believe that they should perform this show at the ancient outdoor amphitheater where Celine made her final sacrifice. But Rumi, firmly believing they need fan participation, forces them to have it at a state-of-the-art super-arena a mile or so away from that spot.

Thanks to her budding love story with Jinu, Rumi also contributes an idea to the new song they’ll use on the Dongji Solstice—it should be centered on love and acceptance, not hate. Then she completely stuns Zooey and Mira by announcing that the Saja Boys will open for Huntrix on this show. She tells them that they can use the performance as a trap and defeat the Saja Boys and Gwi-Ma in one swoop. But secretly, she and Jinu have their own plan.

Jinu will turn on the Saja Boys and hold them off under the stage while the Huntress’ perform their new song, bringing Celine back and locking the Honmoon once and for all. This, Rumi believes, will finally cure her of her half-demon parts and restore Jinu’s humanity. Then they can be together, and Celine will be back, and it will be happily-ever-after.

It backfires. Because as the performance starts, Rumi becomes more and more powerful. She’s gained the adoration—and hero-worship—of almost every fan in the stadium. She’s doing her own half-breed version of stealing their souls. She’s transforming. In her mind, she believes she feels so powerful because it’s working and they’re defeating darkness with the new song. But she doesn’t notice that Zooey and Mira’s horrified faces, or the fact that they can no longer keep up with her or sing in her range. Meanwhile, Jinu is getting the tar beaten out of him under the stage by the Saja Boys, barely holding them back.

It all comes to a head when Rumi hits a high note that the other Huntress’ can’t reach, she floats above the crowd, the light of their souls bending toward her—and the Saja Boys smash through the stage using Jinu’s battered body, harmonizing with Rumi.

She turns around and realizes what she’s done. The fans, like little Yu, are in some kind of trance, chanting her name. Gwi-Ma is suddenly blazing in the center of the stage—he’s broken through. Zooey and Mira are fighting desperately with hordes of demons but can’t reach her.

Jinu is pinned down by the Saja Boys, who taunt Rumi. They knew all along that she and Jinu would try something like this, and they knew about their relationship. They force Jinu to meet Rumi’s eyes and tell her the truth—that he’s been lying to her about his own past, how he became a demon, how he abandoned his own family. He sees the horror on Rumi’s face. He’s heartbroken.

Gwi-Ma joins in. He reveals that Rumi’s father (a demon) once joined him. Look at how powerful she is. She should do the same.

Rumi looks around at the glowing blank-eyed fans, down at her own claw-like hands. She’s trying to block Gwi-Ma out. She grabs the nearest fans’ shoulders (Yu) and shakes, yelling at them to snap them out of it. They just stare and cling to her in mindless worship. She wavers between running to help Zooey and Mira, or continuing to plead with the fans, stammering that she didn’t want this.

Gwi-Ma commands Rumi to join him—he can give her all the love she craves. With the hearts of the world, she’ll never feel unknown or unloved ever again.

Rumi screams, “No!” A shockwave goes through the lights of the fans’ souls—but it’s sickly pink. For a moment though, it’s brighter than Gwi-Ma himself. Jinu stares in awe as the Demon King dims, just for a moment, under Rumi’s power.

In that moment, the Saja Boys let go of Jinu and descend on Rumi. She tries to fight them, but everything she does is feeding off of the souls of the fans. Panicking, she flees the arena. Zooey and Mira break away from their opponents and follow for a while, keeping pace with Rumi and beating back the Saja Boys wherever they can. They get a moment to breathe, and Rumi apologizes, but Zooey and Mira have no time to forgive her. The demons are coming. They’re yanked away by the Saja Boys, separated from Rumi as they try to regroup in the woods.

Instead of finding her friends, Rumi is found by Jinu. Bruised and doubled over after his fight, he’s still managed to catch up to her. He tries to apologize for lying but she beats him to it—she apologizes for nearly getting him killed, for ruining everything, for being a monster, she was so stupid to think she could—but then Jinu interrupts. “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known. Look at you. Look at what you can do. You can beat him. Let’s overthrow Gwi-Ma, together.”

At first Rumi is comforted, but then she meets his eyes and finds them glowing pink with the same soul-light Yu and the whole arena had gazed at her with. She realizes that a scene like this one must have happened years ago, between another Huntress and Demon—her mother and father, believing that they could defeat darkness with one another. But Jinu is looking at her with the same blanket-adoration the fans had. And she knows now that that can’t save anyone. She runs from him.

She collapses, exhausted, in the center of the amphitheater where Celine made her historic Last Stand. She looks down at her claws, and then out at the forest she’s just run through. Between her and the arena in the distance, the pink fire of Gwi-Ma is starting to consume the trees. Soon it will consume everything.

The Saja Boys reappear, dropping the defeated Zooey and Mira down next to Rumi. They’re gloating, ready to go in for the kill. Mira, Zooey, and Rumi look at one another. They’re not the prophesied Trio from Celine’s Sacred Song. They’re just another in a long line of would-be hunters who thought they could stop Gwi-Ma. But this time, he’s broken through.

Thinking they’re about to die like their predecessors, the girls join hands and sing their last song. It’s not the one they wrote, the new one they planned to win with. It’s just Celine’s Sacred Song.

When they reach a familiar line about “surrender” and “light turning over darkness,” the sun comes over the hills. And suddenly its brightness seems to be right in the middle of them. The Saja Boys pull up short. Gwi-Ma’s fire halts. Because Celine has reappeared. All along, this was what the lyrics were about. Not ending the darkness by accepting it. But surrendering to the light by letting go of your own ability to end the darkness.

Celine, back in her physical form after hundreds of years, looks at the scene around her, legendary blade drawn. The Huntresses are stunned. But Rumi kneels in front of her, ashamed. She’s finally meeting her hero, the figure of her hopes and dreams, not in a vision, but in the flesh…and she’s a monster. Her failure flickers in the devastation behind her. She sobs out an apology and bows her head, begging for Celine to end it. She assumes Celine is going to kill the Saja Boys, beat back Gwi-Ma, and destroy the demons—including herself. She knows she’s dangerous beyond control, now.

But instead, Celine looks down at her, with all the recognition in her eyes that she’s had in the nightmares and visions where she’s met Rumi before. She smiles, and extends her hand, lowering her sword. Rumi takes it, almost in disbelief.

Celine’s touch suddenly causes Rumi’s markings to change. They shimmer gold. But to Rumi’s surprise, Celine herself, in her bright new return to a physical form, begins to fade. Rumi’s demon patterns seem to have transferred to her. Celine’s smile never dims, though. She presses her blade into Rumi’s hand, then begins to glow—and suddenly, she’s gone again. Sacrificed herself again. In her place stands Rumi, with her new blade, shining from head to toe in new markings that match Celine’s iconic garb.

Rumi turns to her friends. They approach her cautiously, then embrace her. When they do, all the scrapes, bruises, and marks of their battle heal over. Then they face the Saja Boys and begin to sing. It’s a remix on Celine’s Sacred Song. Tear-stained but smiling, the Huntresses attack the Saja Boys, and drive them back. When they’ve chased them into the arena, they discover that Gwi-Ma is shrinking, being drawn back into the underworld by the glowing light of the Honmoon closing around him. The Saja Boys follow.

With them, unfortunately, is a limping Jinu. He looks down at himself, then meets eyes with Rumi. She moves toward him, but he doesn’t hold her gaze, and backs into the Underworld with the others just before the gate closes.

It wouldn’t be the end. It would be sort of a cliffhanger. But that’s how I’d do it.

If i think im a Zoo, what should I do?? Ive been raised in a super anti household and feel disgusting but id never hurt me animals, i dont even own the one im attracted (?) too. I havent told anyone and rlly need asvice

I’d recommend befriending or just talking to zoos/pro-para people. Even if you turn out not to be a zoo it’s still nice to have more open-minded people around.

Zooey Deschanel attends Marni Dinner for Consuelo Castiglioni on 4/29/06