Luz hummed to herself as she arranged the materials needed to create the Portal Door, musing as she went that she was not sure how most of it was supposed to help Eda during an apocalypse.
Now, a thing that Luz hadn't considered was the source of mechanical energy needed to trigger the final transformation of the materials in question into the portal door. They hadn't thought to bring Eda's pedal-powered flying bathtub with them. However, Luz was set up in the gym, as it was the largest unclaimed open space, and some quick searching had turned up a rather witchy-looking exercise bike in one of the side rooms that would work nicely.
She made sure everything was hooked up right and was about to sit astride it when she felt the presence of her beloved "Amity!" After all this time, she'd more than gotten used to her sweet potato's feeling in the 'people sense' of her ESP.
"Hey," Amity said gently. "I got your message that you were working on the portal door," she said while holding up her texter. "Well, after I got through the fifty-six different limerics you wrote about how much you love my glorious golden eyes. And the seventeen haikus about wanting to hug and kiss me. And a proposal that we get formally engaged on your eighteenth birthday, written entirely in iambic pentameter."
Luz developed an Amity-tier blush. "So um... I was high on painkillers when I sent those," she said with a nervous laugh. "The uh, the sentiment's real but... No filter."
"I liked the poems," Amity said with a smile. "But... Are you okay?"
"Yeah, totally fine, why?" Luz asked.
In response, Amity simply pointed to the incomplete portal door. Specifically, one of the more macabre ingredients that was currently affixed to the door with a loose strand of witches' wool.
Luz sighed. "Yeah, that was a dumb question. I'm fine, no pain, suffering, or feeling like something's missing."
"You've still got the bandages on," Amity replied.
In response, Luz touched her face, feeling the medical wrappings and the cotton pad over her eye. "So I do," she admitted. She then carefully took them off and blinked a few times as her new eye got used to the light. "See, it's fine."
Amity got really close to Luz's face, looking her right in the eyes, and examined them closely. After several awkward moments, just as it was starting to get uncomfortable, Amity broke eye contact and admitted, "I can't tell it's not the same eye."
"And you've looked into them enough to know," Luz replied with a big grin.
Amity first shoved Luz playfully, then pulled her into a hug, which turned into a kiss, which then turned back into a hug.
After a few moments of just holding other, Amity suddenly asked, "Where's Camila?"
"Once Mom was absolutely sure I'd be okay, and she started to relax, she kind of got roped into helping organize teenagers." Luz then disentangled herself from the hug and gestured to the bike. "There's just one last step to make the portal."
With that, Luz climbed onto the bike and began to pedal, generating the energy needed to trigger the reaction that caused all the disparate materials of the portal door to glow and collapse in on themselves into a rectangular shape. The glowing cooled and...
"It looks just like the original door," Amity said while looking at the giant golden eye in front. "Except that the wood is Luz Purple."
"Just one last thing," Luz said as she stepped up to the door. Floating before it was the new Portal Key, a shell containing some of the Titan's Blood used to make the portal. Without the ingredients to make the key, the portal would have been unstable and uncontrollable, much like how, without a Titan's eye, it would lead out into the In-Between Realm instead of the human one.
Taking the key, which stopped floating as soon as she touched it, Luz unlocked the door and gently pushed it open.
On the other side was the sweet air of the human realm and the forest outside of Gravesfield. It seemed that Val had stepped away for the moment, but her monitoring equipment was still set up. Luz checked her phone, she had reception, and—
"Huh. Got a text from Mable," she said... "Huh."
"What?" Amity asked.
"Apparently Stan never actually got around to filling to divorce 'Marilyn Fakenamé' so in the eyes of the US Government he and Eda are still legally married. Kinda, he had the whole assumed identity thing going on... So since Eda legally adopted me, I'm technically his stepkid... And he's been laughing about how 'That loser Bill came back' and got 'whooped by the kid he didn't know he had' all week."
"Huh," Amity agreed.
"Anyway, let's do this," Luz concluded and then started making calls.
TLOA
"Okay, everyone," Vee called out. "Right this way, single file line, these people will take good care of you."
The young basilisk, currently in human form, was helping to organize as Luz's classmates were evacuated. The institute's people were teleporting students in small groups before returning for more. They'd already cleared out a few dozen students, with more being evacuated through the portal as others were taken to the Institute.
A few volunteers from Hexside were working with her, Mashy, and the staff from the Institute. Mostly older kids, but also the handful of adults who had survived the 'Puppeting.'
One of them was a tan-skinned witch with a single horn growing out of one brow, and Vee froze when she overheard him convincing what was apparently his little brother to go along with the next batch of kids being poofed away by a 'Professor Wagner.'
"..You?" She said out loud before she could stop herself.
The man turned to her, looking confused for a moment. "I'm sorry, do I know you?"
"...You were the coven scout on guard duty," Vee continued. "The one who let us out."
He then looked more closely at Vee, her face, and, based on the glances at the sides of her head, noticed her ears, "Number Five?"
"It's Vee, now," Vee corrected gently.
"Well, if one of you managed to get somewhere safe, then that makes getting reassigned to Lilith's personal task force worth it," the man said. "Even if it did get me beat up by the Owl Lady's house demon."
"Thank you, but... Why?"
"I'd been having doubts for a while," he said, "and it was pretty obvious that magic eaters or not, you weren't the monsters the legends said you were... Except the big one, but I'm pretty sure she was just crazy. Anyway, after what happened to One and Two, I knew I had to do something and..."
Vee had a feeling she'd regret the answer to her next question. "What happened to One and Two?"
The apparently former Scout grimaced. "You don't want to know. It would only hurt you to know."
Vee felt herself go pale as her mind involuntarily turned to several gruesome fates her elders could have suffered, only to be snapped out of it by a familiar voice.
"What's going on here?" Masha asked.
"Um, this is..." Vee held up a hand to introduce the witch, only to realize he hadn't said his name.
"Steve," he filled in. "Steve Tholomule."
"Steve was... He was the guard who let us out," Vee finished.
Masha held out their hand. "Masha," they said. "They/Them. And, thanks. For letting me meet my VeeVee."
Vee blushed. Steve shook Masha's hand and smiled. "Good to know she's taken care of."
The evacuation process continued, and soon enough, everyone who was going to the institute was gone, leaving just Vee, Masha, some of the heroes hanging around in case of trouble, and Luz and co, who popped back to this side to make sure everything was going well.
After receiving hugs from her Mama and her hermana, Vee made what she thought was an obvious observation.
"Luz, you're looking... Better."
"Yeah," she said with a big grin. "Getting back to the Demon Realm and being able to work on the plan to fix everything, it... Well, it did wonders."
"And your eye?"
"No problems," Luz confirmed. "Grew right back, good as new. Everything's going well, I just have one more thing to do, and then we confront The Collector."
"Actually, now that I think about it, there's something I should go check on," Willow said and then rushed off the path towards the house.
Luz pulled out her phone to check the time. Not long after, in three flashes of light, Luz's friends from her support group touched down.
"Did we get here too late to help with the refugees?" Anne asked.
"Just missed the last of them," Luz confirmed.
"Shoot, Sorry," Anne apologized.
"I should have flown ahead instead of waiting for Anne and Sashy," Marcy lamented.
"Nah," Sasha interrupted. "Our powers are stronger when we're together: You'd have made it in time, but Anne and I would have been even later."
"Anyway," Luz interrupted before her friends could continue on their tangent, "I should probablycheck with Eda before just giving this to you, but I can always arrange for you to talk with her later and I've just got this itchy feeling that maybe having this around while talking to the Collector might be a bad idea," Luz said as she called up some of her symbiote-goo and started rooting around in it. "And like, you can maybe make sure it's real or whatever?"
Luz finished by pulling an ornate music box, frog-themed, from essentially inside herself and holding it out.
"...It's real," Marcy said as she took it. "I studied our music box extensively," she said while going over the device in question, revealing that it was a bit more complex than it seemed. "I don't even need to do this, I'm just confirming. There are no gems, and even if there were, the artifact we used to get our powers back means we couldn't charge them, but... Just having this is bringing us closer to finding a way back than we've ever been... Thank you."
Those thanks were echoed by the other two girls.
"Anyway," Luz said, "we need to be getting back to confront the Collector."
"You want us to stick around in case you need backup?"
"I mean you can if you want to," Luz said, "but the Fantastic Four are in town for exactly that reason. And with the portal, is only a call away, so we should get going. Vee," Luz said while turning to the basilisk, "you gonna be okay for just a little bit longer?"
"...Actually," Vee started on impulse, "um... You know... I have to confront my fear of going back sometime, right? Now that you've got... You said the portal is portable, right?"
"You wanna come with?" Luz asked.
"Yeah," Vee said. "I think I do."
"Oay, but you be sure to let me know if it's too much and you need to get back home," Luz agreed.
Masha pulled out their phone. "Going to the Demon world, don't wait up, send," they said.
Once Willow got back from whatever she'd been checking on, Luz turned back to the portal and loudly declared, "Next stop, the Titan's head!"
AN: And with this, we slowly but surely enter the story's final arc.