[OP: "Mess of Me "--Switchfoot]

"That was so cringe." Rumi put her hand over the rest of her face once they walked away from the counter after buying the CD. "I can't believe you said that to him. What if he knew it was me?"

"Best lie is the one that is close to the truth but not quite." Raven didn't seem to feel guilty in the least. "I'm sure he'd find it easier to think that a wannabe pop star would walk in here than the real thing. Really, you could easily use that cover with a lot of people, probably. People are stupider than you think they are."

"Stupider isn't a word, honey," Morph commented, joining them.

"It should be one," Raven said.

"Your Korean is good for a foreigner," Baby finally remarked for the first time in several minutes.

"Languages have always been easy for me." Raven shrugged nonchalantly. "Probably because I can naturally imitate tone and voice so well due to my mutation."

"Crazy how that gives you more than one power then?" Zoey joined them without any warning whatsoever.

"Shape-shifting would be pretty useless without being able to do that, if you think about it," Mira said. "At least long term."

"That's a good question," Morph said, "since not all mutants have the skill naturally to match their mutations, but we both seem to be lucky that way."

"Guess you are different from demons." Zoey honestly meant that to be a compliment, but it didn't sit well with Raven.

She frowned.

"Unless that's not true..." Zoey then looked at Jinu questioningly.

Jinu started to wonder if being the spokesperson for what being a human-turned-demon was like was going to wear real thin for him in the future.

He sighed. "I don't know, okay? Again, couldn't shape-shift that much. Apparently, we also can't even tell when it's not demons doing it, since I was completely fooled when they did it."

Morph made jazz hands.

"So that was a waste of time," Mira changed the subject. "Right?"

"We got this." Rumi held up the CD. "Maybe it'll help. But we'd still have to find someone who liked that band...and that could be hard."

"Online forums," Zoey said. "Just saying."

"So nothing about this felt familiar?" Jinu asked the Saja Boys.

"Why would a random shop feel familiar to us?" Romance sounded testy by now.

"I don't remember that we ever went there," Abby said.

"For once, honestly, it doesn't even matter because it was a waste of time." Mira gestured wildly.

"Oh, good," Abby said with a straight face.

She gave him a strange look.

Then he gave her a wicked smile.

So he'd actually done it on purpose that time.

Raven was starting to think he wasn't quite as brain dead as he acted. However, taunting Mira wouldn't be any better for his chances of survival.

"Are you just faking not remembering?" Mira was already wary.

"We genuinely do not remember anything about that shop," Romance said. "Unless someone else remembers?"

No, none of them said anything.

"A dead end, huh?" Zoey said, disappointed. "And that took an hour...dang it. But maybe we could at least listen to the music. I could have got that off the internet too, though. What I don't get is why I didn't find any full story on what happened to the band. It's like it was deleted or something."

Raven and Morph exchanged a look.

"You know, when we mutants want something to stay quiet," Morph said, "we delete the records, online or otherwise. Just how good at hacking are your band managers?"

"Uh, Bobby would never delete any other articles." Rumi held up her hands. "He would just counter it with positive publicity. And honestly, we hardly ever have bad publicity anyway. He even spun Mira wearing a sleeping bag to a gala in a positive light."

Mira smirked.

"You wore a sleeping bag?" Raven said. "I'm not even going to ask you how, but why?"

"For the memes," Mira said.

"What does that mean?" Morph asked, with an air of intelligent curiosity, like a scientist might ask.

"Translation: she did it to be funny," Zoey said. "Or iconic, whichever... I need to make you a list. I could just look that up too though."

"Does leg work even exist in your timeline? Or do you use the internet for everything and rely on other people's opinions to gather information?" Raven asked.

"That's a little unnecessarily negative, isn't it?" Rumi said. "What's wrong with looking stuff up online?"

"A lot of it is made up though, isn't it?" Morph said.

"Well, you check with different sources," Rumi said.

"So you can't just use one website?" Morph said. "Like an official one?"

"I guess if you wanna be boring you could look at an official music site," Zoey said. "But that's not the same as a news site or blog. You want fans' opinions, you have to go to the fans."

"I'm...starting to think that there's a much broader gap in how we do research than I realized..." Morph said weakly. "Didn't any of you use any legitimate sources?"

The girls gave him blank looks.

"Since when is social media not a legit resource?" Mira said.

"What is social media anyway?" Raven slapped her forehead the dramatic way people do on TV shows.

"You did not just ask us that." Mira gestured also, though not as dramatically.

[For you kids reading, social media didn't exist in its current form till the late 90s. The 80s would have had chat rooms, and that would be the closest to things like Discord or Reddit.]

"Okay...this is nothing," Morph said. "After all, Shine and Wally deal with cultural barriers all the time. I'm sure we can work out our differences. Zoey, what exactly did you find out...and what did you get it from?"

"Well, I looked on message boards, gossip sites, and news blogs...Couldn't find a real news site with anything about it." Zoey shrugged. "But like I told the girls earlier, the Stellae band just disappeared. Totally off the radar. Something about a scandal that tore the band apart."

This was the first thing any of them had said that got a reaction from the Saja Boys.

They all froze.

Then Mystery looked kind of tense and began to move away from them all.

Baby looked at Zoey like he was sizing her up.

Mira, noting it, grabbed her shoulder and pulled her a little farther away from him. "What's your problem, toddler?"

Zoey hadn't noticed the look he was giving her till then, and she paused, confused.

"I don't remember any scandal." Abby was thinking.

"I still don't remember being in a band called that," Romance said.

"Well, look at this." Rumi showed him the CD. "It's just like the picture in Dr. Han's office... I mean, different outfits, but, same guys... They look a lot like you, don't they?"

"Not the hair color." Romance peered at it. "But that one does look a lot like Baby..."

"Plus, you could see Mystery's eyes if that was real," Zoey pointed out. She looked a little dreamy for a second.

Mira gave her a jerk, and she snapped out of it. "Uh, so do you recognize it?"

Romance stared at it a moment, then shook his head. "No."

But when he looked up, they saw his eyes glow.

"Ah!" Mira jumped, reaching as if she was going to pull out her Gok-do.

"Bad eyes!" Zoey cried.

Rumi took a defensive stance also, and Jinu tensed.

"Were you lying?" Mira frowned.

"No..." Romance said, confused. "What's wrong with you? A guy can't answer a question now, honestly." Very over dramatically.

"The eye glow thing doesn't just mean they're being demonic," Raven noted. "Must be a signal of some kind."

"Mine would glow when I was thinking about being one also," Jinu supplied nervously. "Or just when Gwi-Ma's voice got stronger."

"Let's try something then," Morph said, looking like a doctor again--literally.

[You know, this is his humor in the Exiles Comics, where he's featured the most in the X-men franchises... A shame not many people would ever get my attempt to be accurate.]

He pointed at Romance. "When you say you don't remember, is there any chance you hear a voice telling you you don't remember? Maybe just a slight whisper saying it."

"Wouldn't a voice saying 'you don't remember' be pretty obvious?" Mira objected.

"Why don't you let him answer?" Raven said tersely.

Mira frowned at her again.

Romance looked at Morph blankly. "I..." Then he winced. "No..."

Morph narrowed his eyes a little. "Do you hear something telling you to say no right now?"

Romance almost looked...scared. "No, of course not!" he said, way too quickly.

"Yikes," Zoey shuddered. "That's so creepy."

"How did you hear Gwi-Ma's voice?" Raven turned to her. "Was it obviously his voice? To me, it began to sound like my voice after it had gone on long enough."

"Same," Morph said. "I think it was more like mine from the start."

"Me?" Zoey didn't like thinking about it. "Well, it sounded like my voice, but definitely not talking in the first person, if you know what I mean. Something about 'I'll help you belong.'"

"That's...sad..." Morph said.

"Zoey...?" Mira was kind of bothered by that.

"I'm sorry," Rumi said. "That was my fault..." She looked guilty. "If I hadn't..."

"No, no, it's not your fault," Zoey said. "Don't worry about it. It's all in the past now." She forced a smile.

"Well, what did you hear, Mira?" Morph turned to her.

But Mira wasn't about to say it in front of the Saja Boys.

"None of your business," she said.

"I remember what she said," Raven said. "She was the only one who actually answered us when we talked to her, but only like someone who was sleepwalking."

"And you'd better keep to yourself whatever it was I said," Mira said, threateningly.

"Why does it matter now?" Raven said. "You know what he said to us. The point is to see if there's a pattern in it."

"A pattern is what we want to avoid," Mira said.

"Okay, but you can at least confirm whether it sounded like your voice or not," Rumi said. "We're trying to figure something out here."

Mira looked dark. "It sounded like my voice...but yeah...not in the first person. But it could be that was just how our brains would interpret whatever the spell Gwi-Ma puts on people is."

"I did not expect one of you to think of that on you own," Morph said.

"Did you just call us stupid?" Mira was insulted.

"Uh...no, just that hypnotic suggestions are a thing telepaths can do, without it being super clear to them in words, so we might have thought of that, but you don't have any experience with it." Morph shrugged.

"Honesty, yeah, Mira where would you even get the idea?" Zoey was confused.

"Nowhere." Mira turned away as if all the attention bothered her. "I guess just...something Rumi said before the Awards that I thought of. That the demons were already trying to make us afraid. That's not really something we ever talked about before, but it's not like they literally spoke to us, trying to make us freak out. It was the effect the Honmoon disappearing had...so...maybe that was how Gwi-Ma got into our heads."

"That's a pretty good thought," Morph admitted. "You might be onto something with that idea."

"Mira is actually smart?" Raven said, in a tone that sounded pretty mockingly surprised. "Would have been nice to know before."

"What the heck is your problem with me?" Mira whirled back around to face her.

"Maybe that was her way of complimenting you?" Zoey hoped it was.

"That was not a compliment!" Mira was still angry.

"I told you we're not stupid." Rumi was a little miffed also. "I mean, hello, we have to come up with ideas all the time to save people. Why do you keep acting like we're dumb?"

"I was only thinking that Mira has not contributed anything constructive in this quest of ours since we started it," Raven said. "If she had had ideas before, she should have shared them."

"And why would I ever want to think about this?" Mira was nearly growling. "You know, Raven, I'm starting to get tired of the way you act like we should just care about all this when it's literally not even our job to. We're only doing this because we're being nice."

"This is you being nice?" Baby didn't help anything by saying.

"You really need to shut up." Jinu was tired of him doing it.

"You're not the boss of me anymore," Baby said snidely. "You quit, remember?"

"Shut up," Abby said.

"What?" Baby glanced at him.

"This fight was just getting good, and you're starting to derail it," Abby said.

"Didn't think you were such a troll," Romance said flatly.

"The Huntrix are fighting in front of us, and you don't want to see how it ends?" Abby said.

However, if his goal was to make them keep fighting, he failed miserably because as soon as he said that, Mira got the idea that Gwi-Ma might just be spying on them.

She clammed up so fast that it was like magic.

"Forget it," she said and walked away in a huff.

"Ouch." Zoey was mad at Abby also. "That was a pretty insensitive thing to say, you big jerk!"

"Why?" Abby said.

"Why? You want us to fight now?" Zoey said. "We're trying to help you."

"Again, we never asked for that," Romance pointed out.

"Maybe we should just stop this then." Zoey was losing her patience with them.

"That sounds great," Baby said.

"ERR!" Zoey was about to whip out her knives and send him back to Gwi-Ma the hard way.

"And that's our cue." Morph grabbed Zoey's shoulders before she could do that. "You need to simmer down, Quick Draw. I think we should at least try to see their perspective... This has been a long day, and we haven't got any real answers yet."

"As soon as we get close to any answer, something happens to stop us!" Rumi was starting to get frustrated. "It's like it's planned--" She stopped short as she realized that it could actually be planned.

"Gwi-Ma," Jinu picked up her thought. "He may not be visible right now...but as long as he's connected to them, he's going to interfere in some way...even if it's quietly... Maybe that's why they keep trying to cause tension."

"Oh, no, really?" Raven said. "Don't tell me you only just figured that out? And you wonder why I think you're all naive."

"Well, then enlighten us, oh, wise one." Rumi resorted to sarcasm, which was not her usual M.O.

But sarcasm was far more Raven's conversation style than direct confrontation was, so if anything, this only encouraged her.

"I'm merely pointing out that if you didn't think that Gwi-Ma was behind their constant attempts to start altercations with you, you're being simple," she said, gesturing towards the Saja Boys. "They never tried to start fights before this. If he can't control them enough to make them leave, then why not try to at least make them act more obnoxious than before? They can hardly hope to survive a confrontation with you. Why would they provoke us without him...giving them ideas?"

"If that's true, then Gwi-Ma is talking to us with them," Rumi said.

"Isn't this obvious?" Raven said. "That whole hypnotic song they were singing at those awards was clearly Gwi-Ma speaking through them...so were those advertisements they had. It's not like it was literally true for them. They don't need people's souls--they don't feed off of them, but they speak for Gwi-ma."

"Makes them sound like the Lorax," Morph said.

She cast him an annoyed look.

"Ugh," Zoey grimaced. "That's so creepy. Speaking for Gwi-Ma... Then how do we know they ever are not speaking for him?"

"Jinu is proof that it can go both ways." Raven pointed at him. "He did also, but he also spoke for himself, even affected the Honmoon slightly... Shine told us in her letter from last week that humanity's gift is to be able to switch back and forth from good and evil...and that someone who is on the side of good can still serve the devil's purpose. But she also said someone bad can serve God's. Which explains why Rumi can both tear the Honmoon with her voice and heal it... It can't because be she's part demon, if there is any such a thing as that (as we've been discussing, there probably is not), but it's because she's human but connected to both sides...but so are we all, really. You Hunters have massive spiritual power, that's it. Any human could speak for Gwi-Ma."

"The Screwtape Letters does say that in the end either the devil or God will say 'mine' about every person in the universe," Morph mused. "But I mean, the devil will burn in hell forever, so... at that point, who cares if he owns someone else?"

"They will care if that means they burn with him," Raven said tightly. "Gwi-Ma is a fire, isn't he? Symbolically, it must be related."

"Whoa, slow down." Rumi held up her hands. "You threw a lot at us right there... I can switch sides? What does that mean?"

"Oh, it doesn't mean you're literally switching sides every time," Morph said. "It's more like...you know that you can take a wrong turn when you're on a path somewhere. But you can also turn back the right way at any time... Only you could just keep going wrong, until you're hopelessly lost. Every step you take towards good doesn't mean you can't still go wrong...but it doesn't mean you will... I mean, you'd get better at direction after a while."

"Not sure I get it," Zoey said. "Rumi broke the Honmoon, but then we made a new one."

"Isn't it a little simplistic to say Rumi did that by herself?" Raven said carelessly. "Don't you  think you both also played a part in it unraveling?"

Zoey winced. "I guess...yeah, probably."

"But only I made it shake like that," Rumi said.

"It's a little presumptuous to think they couldn't have done that too," Morph said. "They didn't really try yelling like that...but if ordinary humans can start to take on those traits, Mira and Zoey could both do it too. They didn't, though, thankfully. But just because it's easier for you to do it, doesn't mean that it's impossible for other people. Let's not be naive, like Raven says. We all have to be adults and acknowledge that our choices matter. Even she and I could have succumbed to it. We got close for a horrible minute."

"Excuse me," Romance said--and it was strange he said it politely at all, "but where did you learn all this?"

"Our mentor told us some hints," Raven said, putting a hand on her hip. "The rest of it we're figuring out as we go. Like all of you."

"You seem to know a lot for someone just figuring it out." Baby was a little wary.

"It's more impressive you didn't know this, since you're the ones stuck with Gwi-Ma's voice," Morph said. "And you never really answered our question, by the way. Do you hear him making suggestions to you?"

"The idea might be his," Romance said, so casually that Zoey and Rumi again had to shudder. "But what if I can't tell anymore what are his ideas and what are mine?"

"Been there," Jinu said uneasily.

"We just have to take this slowly," Morph said. "Let's try this now... Romance, objectively speaking...do you seriously think it's going to help you if the Huntrix argue with each other?"

"I wasn't actually the one trying to make them argue," Romance pointed out.

"Fine, but just answer the question," Morph waved off this concern.

Romance thought about it. "I don't think it would really help me."

"Okay," Morph said. "So there," he said to the girls. "That's not Gwi-Ma."

"To make us fight..." Rumi said, "I feel like that's Baby, if it's anyone..."  She glared at him.

Baby didn't show any remorse.

"Well, he can be kind of the worst at that," Jinu said. "He's good at making people angry. He wrote Huntrix on that slide at the game show."

"That was you!?" Zoey said. "How did you write it that fast?"

"Quick thinking." Was Baby's whole explanation.

"But why did you have the slide there?" Rumi asked.

"Hunch you'd show up." Jinu shrugged.

Rumi almost had to be impressed by that kind of forward thinking.

"But how did you know we would be wearing leather?" Zoey said.

"We didn't..." Jinu looked embarrassed by that question.

"Didn't you see us wincing?" Romance said. "That was painful for us to watch also."

"Yeah, but then you did that smug look." Zoey folded her arms.

"If your enemy does an epic fail, you'll look smug," Baby said, with the same expression now.

"At least I wasn't wearing a bib!" Zoey shot back. 

"What's wrong with that? Keeps food from getting on your clothes." Baby shrugged carelessly.

"Focus." Raven snapped her fingers. "We were getting somewhere before this. All of you get distracted far too easily."

"I don't think you insulting all of us every other sentence is any more helpful." Mystery said one of his rare lines.

Raven frowned at him, but he said it so deadpan that it almost was more intimidating than if he'd just sounded whiny.

Zoey snickered.

Raven frowned at her, and she shut up at once.

"Ahem," Morph cleared his throat. "Any of you other guys want to share any...impression you've been getting that could be Gwi-Ma? Think...anger, fear, hatred...guilt."

For once, this seemed to get the Saja Boys' full attention, probably because those emotions were so common for the demon realm.

They appeared to actually ponder it seriously.

"Well, we don't like Huntrix," Romance offered.

"Yes, we want them to fail," Abby agreed.

Zoey and Rumi frowned at them again.

"I don't like any one of you," Baby said, again with zero remorse.

Mystery just shrugged like he agreed with the rest of them.

"Okay...well, that could all be Gwi-Ma," Morph said, trying to take it nice and steady. "Can any of you name a reason you have, apart from him, to dislike them?"

Blank looks from everybody but Baby, who said readily, "I really don't like Mira. She's constantly threatening us--and, she's a jerk."

"Mira is not a jerk!" Zoey said angrily.

"I don't really like you either," Baby said. "Apart from Gwi-Ma. Something about you is just annoyingly energetic."

"I..." Zoey sputtered, too angry to think of a retort.

"Don't talk to Zoey that way either," Rumi said.

"Says the liar and half demon," Baby snorted.

Jinu glared at him. "Shut up."

"Oh, so you can expose her to the entire world, but I just say it and I'm the bad guy?" Baby doubled down.

Jinu was speechless, since, naturally, this was a guilty point for him still.

Rumi was also speechless after the jab.

Raven kicked Baby in the shin hard enough to make him fall over.

"Since we're being honest, I don't like you either, apart from Gwi-Ma," she said, looking down at him.

"Someone's a little overprotective," Romance noted. "I don't think the Hunters need you to defend them, whatever your name is."

"Raven," she reminded him tersely. "But you can call me 'ma'am'."

"It's an interesting question about whether or not we dislike them for our own reasons," Abby said, as if the entire last few minutes hadn't happened. "I never thought about it. So you think Gwi-Ma is the reason we don't like them? That that little voice that says how awful they are is just his influence?"

"So you do hear a voice?" Morph said.

"It's not so much an audible voice anymore." Romance rubbed his head. "I don't think it works that way for us. Not like Jinu, anyway. We told you, it's like our thoughts..."

"But then your thoughts must contradict each other." Morph tapped his forehead. "Like...did you ever start maybe having a good thought about the girls, and then the other thoughts came in as soon as you did?"

Rumi was less interested to know the answer than Zoey was. In all honesty, the idea creeped her out more than it would have been comforting.

But Zoey looked expectantly at the Saja Boys.

The boys thought hard again.

Morph noted that they actually seemed to care about the answer to this... Was it possible even they didn't like the idea that Gwi-Ma could control their emotions that much?

"Ah." Romance put his hand up. "I remember I started to feel the slightest bit sorry of them when they slid down that slide."

"Really? That's your big moment?" Rumi was nonplussed, and it showed.

"Oh, yeah, their eyes glowed right after that." Zoey actually had her notebook out now. "Could that be when Gwi-Ma starts putting the other thoughts back in your head?"

Confused looks again.

"Don't remember," Abby finally said.

"That tracks." Raven crossed her arms. "But...I suppose that's at least a hint. We'd have to watch them, see if they show any signs of the same thing happening again."

"That could take days to confirm." Rumi already looked tired. "How long can we keep them around without any concrete evidence that we can save them? I can't keep doing this to Mira for much longer."

"And we don't want to hang around you anyway." Baby finally got off the ground, since no one was doing anything to prevent it.

"Actually, I'm not sure about that," Mystery spoke up, startling them, since he'd been quiet for several minutes now. "What if they're right?"

"What do you mean?" The other guys all looked at him.

"Don't all of you feel...like you're missing something?" Mystery said slowly. "Hollow? And not knowing whether Gwi-Ma is the one thinking your thoughts or you are...? It's not much different than being dead. It could be."

"It could be..." Abby said, now as if this was bothering him.

"Or they could be messing with us," Baby said disagreeably. "Like we can trust them."

"If they wanted you dead, they could have killed you when we first found you," Morph said. "How much more proof do you need that they want to help?"

Given the girls' track record, that was hard to refute.

"So let's say, for a second, that we bought this," Romance said. "And that we all would be interested in finding out our real thoughts...how would you go about that?"

"That's still what we're trying to discover," Raven said. "But this is a first step, it sounds like... We got you to at least think about it. We didn't know if we could even do that... Rumi, Mira may not like it, but this is the most progress we've made."

"I know, but I know how hard it has to be to be worried about them all the time," Rumi said. "And they're staying with us a few minutes at most before they space out again... What if every day is like this? If they re-set as soon as we make progress, this is pointless."

"So we would need to find out if they can retain anything," Morph said. "But...there is a good sign--they did at least remember who we were, a little. So they can remember some stuff."

"Yeah, but if Gwi-Ma blocks out their memory of anything we offer them to help, that's the important part." Zoey had a good point.

Somber silence.

"If we give up now, we won't know," Morph finally said.

"I guess," Rumi said. "I mean, I don't want to give up, don't get me wrong. I just...want us to be all on the same page."

"Mira has been gone too long," Raven suddenly said. "She wouldn't stay gone this long just in a fit of temper. She's never done that before."

"Oh shoot, you're right," Zoey said, alarmed. "But...what could have happened to her? Gwi-Ma has been quiet."

"That could change at any time." Raven put her hand down, her blaster materializing in it. "Or fans could have found her, I suppose. Or both."

"But we'd have seen the Honmoon ripple if Mira was fighting someone," Rumi said. "Maybe she just walked into another store. Still, we should find her, just in case..." She took out her phone and called.

Mira didn't answer.

"Oh, we put our phones on silent while we were on the train," Zoey remembered. "Just in case. She probably didn't turn her ringer back on."

"Great," Rumi sighed. "Fine, I'll go look for her then."

"On the chance that something is wrong, maybe you shouldn't go off alone," Morph said.

"We'll both go," Zoey said. "You just watch them." Pointing at the Saja Boys.

She and Rumi walked off the direction Mira had gone.

A few minutes went by.

"We'd have seen the Honmoon turn red if she was in trouble," Morph told Raven.

"Why do you care?" Baby said. "Don't you hate her anyway?" He meant Raven.

"Why would I hate her?" Raven said.

"You say a lot of sharp things to her," Abby pointed out.

"Oh, really, that you remember?" She rolled her eyes.

"Who could hate Mira?" Morph said easily. "She's a good kid...woman? I'm not sure if I should call her a kid. I mean, she's not that young for a normal human, right?"

"Anyone is a kid to us." Raven saw no reason to really care.

"I suppose the reasons Mira doesn't like us don't really mean that normal humans wouldn't like her," Romance reflected, as if it was a philosophical point. "They aren't demons...though they certainly look like them."

"Well, she didn't like us at first for that reason either," Raven said. "But I guess she finally believes that we're not demons...but she thinks I'm a criminal, after my poorly timed confession yesterday."

"She can't really think that it matter that much," Jinu commented. "You wouldn't be here if you still were that person. And didn't you help save her?"

"Rumi saved her. We just did damage control," Raven sniffed. "Don't make us out to be heroes, Jinu... I don't care if Mira doesn't like me anyway."

"Sounds like you do," Abby said.

"Do you?" Raven narrowed her eyes at him.

Abby looked like he hadn't asked himself this before.

"Well, I do have abs," he said. "I think she checks me out a lot."

"Ugh." Morph made a face. "Guys like this always seem like apes to me."

"Hm, well, any normal woman might appreciate it." Raven glanced at him slyly. "But, not enough to overlook the nearly-died-because-of-it part. That takes a special kind of person with no self respect."

"Speaking from experience, are you?" Baby said nastily.

"Yes." she said without hesitation.

That response actually floored him so much that he was silent.

The other boys all cringed also, Jinu especially.

"Could you...not say things like that?" he asked. "It's...kind of weird to think about."

"You're 400 years old, and that's strange for you?" Raven scoffed. "Didn't you ever have any ex-es you were ashamed of?"

"No." Jinu shook his head.

"Really?" Raven frowned. "None at all?"

"Most of those 400 years were in the demon realm," Jinu pointed out. "And not that many of them before that were even around girls, so..."

"You know, that's the other part of why the deal sucks," Morph said. "The part where you don't even get to enjoy your life for that long after making it before Gwi-Ma takes you to his realm seems like it's not even worth it. Like, if he led with the, 'oh, you get to enjoy life but only for about 3-5 years,' I think most people would just say, 'screw that.' I mean, I could take a few more years of being hungry if it means not losing my soul."

"Well, he didn't mention that part." Jinu was a bit testy about it still.

"That's a good point," Romance said.

"It is?" Jinu looked confused.

"Yes...how long ago did all of us make a deal with Gwi-Ma?" Romance asked a coherent question for once. "We seem to be younger than you, and if we were that boy band you found, it couldn't be more than 30 years ago...which means whatever we got in return only lasted...a few years at most."

"That's not even worth it," Abby said.

Mystery shook his head.

Baby frowned again.

"Learning has occurred," Morph said, with a sort of feigned pride--but not wholly feigned, because this seemed like real progress.

And a second after that, a red wave rippled across the area.