"So this is what passes for a demon in the human realm?" Amity asked as she rather casually blasted apart yet another monster with a riff and a cone of flame and sound.
"I wouldn't know," the companion she picked up noted before slashing a monster apart. Amity had to admit, the large toadlike biped was doing pretty well for someone with just one arm.
"Gotta say, I'm disappointed," Amity said. "I was told that human realm demons were powerful, evil spirits. These are just generic monsters."
"You know," the biped said, "you're starting to remind me of someone."
A flash of pink alerted Amity to someone arriving. She turned and saw that it was Luz's friend Sasha, but just as she was about to greet the human, the teenager in question saw the one-armed warrior. "Grime!"
Amity watched the human fly down and hug the large toad. "Huh. Small world."
"Sasha," the so-named Grime, "my girl, how are you?"
"Great. Things are going better with the 'rents and steps, got my powers back, obvi, we've got a lead on a way back and forth to Amphibia. I'm dating Anne and Mar-Mar."
"You mean you weren't already?" Grime asked.
"Why does everyone keep asking that!?" Sasha demanded.
"Well, excuse me, but that breakdown you had when you realized they were happy without you gave a certain impression," Grime deadpanned.
"Okay, you know what, fair," Sasha conceded.
More monsters arrived to interrupt the reunion, but Amity blasted them apart. She didn't really have enough abomination slime on her to make constructs, and while she could have smashed or slashed them apart with her own abomination form, she really didn't want to touch them.
"Nice," Sasha said. "By the way, I've been meaning to mention it, but the girls and I are kind of a band. We should jam sometime."
"So you know her?" Grime asked.
"Yeah, we're in a support group with her girlfriend. She's nice, kind of like Marcy. All of their group is cool, really. They're the ones who helped us find a way back."
"This is probably not a good time to be having this sort of conversation," Amity noted while gesturing to a large number of approaching monsters.
...Which were all immediately eaten by a giant glowing pink heron.
"I've been practicing," was the only explanation Sasha gave. "But yeah, you're right. We should get back to it."
TLOA
"This is so so surreal," Camila said of the sight before her.
"What?" Eda asked. The witch was in her "Harpy" form and was clearly enjoying that the golden apple had put the color back in her hair and 'healed the old bile sack.' Camila had thought the children were powerful, but the golden light, displays of raw elemental power, and many large constructs that resembled the Hooty character Camila had seen pictures of, were on a whole other level.
"I am looking at a modern-medieval fantasy fusion version of a popular cartoon character who's been around for decades," Camila explained. "I literally watched a movie about him and his kid. I showed it to Luz a few years ago. She sang one of the songs from it in a talent show. And now here he is, bashing los monstros around with a shield."
"And Captain America is right there, fighting alongside him like it's not even a thing," Luz's friend Anne, who had arrived some time ago to investigate the 'hot bird lady,' observed.
And it was true. The first Avenger, the Sentinel of Liberty, the Star Spangled Man With a Plan, was fighting the horde of hellspawn, looking every bit like the greatest hero in history he was always thought to be, and next to him, matching him shield bash for shield bash and throw for throw, with no comment, as if they'd been fighting together for year and this was the most natural thing in the world...
Was Goofy.
"And he sounds like a younger Hop Pop," a little pink frog boy who wandered up at some point observed.
"Yeah, he does, Sprig," Anne agreed absent-mindedly. She then did a double-take. "Sprig?" The girl then picked up the frog in a crushing bear hug. "Frog, I've missed you."
"Can't breathe!" the little pink frog declared raspily.
Anne let him go, and he scrambled up to hang off her shoulder. "So how have you been?"
"Been exploring a whole new continent," the frog, Sprig, said. "Things are going great with Ivy. You?"
"Great. Found another music box, I'm dating Sasha and Marcy now," Anne replied.
"Cool!"
"...So you're not gonna ask that we weren't already?" Anne asked.
"Anne, we lived together for most of a year," Sprig answered. "I think if you were with either of them, you would have said something during all the times you spoke about them. I'm not that dumb."
"Yeah, you'd think most people would think like that, but even my parents assumed," Anne replied.
"Fair enough," Sprig. "So um... They're still good?"
"Yeah, they're great. Marcy's getting the help she needs, and Sash's is working on getting to be the kind of person who can give the kind of help she needed to other kids who need it," Anne replied. "Also, the other day she apologized for making me be Peter Pan in the school play that one time, so..."
"There's a story there," Camila suddenly found herself interjecting.
"...You know those stage shows they put together when you're in elementary school?" Anne asked. "I was the tooth in a show about dental hygiene in kindergarten. And I tripped. And somehow started a fire. I haven't trusted the stage since."
"It was a whole thing," Sprig added. "So who are you?"
"This is Camila, Sprig," Anne introduced, "she's the mom of a girl that I and the girls are friends with. Luz, she's nice. All her friends are cool; she's the one who helped us find the new box."
"It's nice to meet you, Ma'am," Sprig said while making eye contact with Camila for just a little too long.
"And the bird lady is Eda, Luz's other mom," Anne finished. "I'm just meeting her right now."
"How does that work?"
"We filled out the paperwork and signed it," Eda replied.
"Which is a lot less involved than how it goes on Earth," Camila added.
"But more than on Amphibia," Anne noted. "Hop Pop claims me as a dependant on his taxes, and poof, I'm his granddaughter."
"Oh, that would have been so much easier," Eda replied. "Or it would have been if I paid taxes."
Eda held out her arms, clearly intent on saying or doing something or other when something small and black landed in her good hand. "King?"
Anne gasped, and Camila's first thoughts were that the little guy was just as cute as everyone said he was. But then she noticed that his expression was one of cold shock. And that in his paws, he was holding Luz's staff. And a little red cube with a little boy—the Collector, Camila realized—trapped inside.
...And the pendant that Amity had given Luz.
Eda realized that something was up just a second later. "King? What happened?"
"...L-Luz," he said quietly while looking up from where he came.
TLOA
The initial battle in the technicolor JRPG final boss dimension was honestly easier than Phase II. Now Mephisto seemed almost afraid of using too much of the power in the cube.
He was also monologuing. Frankly, Luz didn't respect him enough to listen, but had picked up enough to know that he'd built the cube using a broken Cosmic Cube he'd gotten years ago from Thanos, a lot of Helfire, and a crystal he'd planted on the moon to absorb all the magic from Belos's draing spell before trapping the Collector.
Regardless, it was just magic against magic and sword blows against claws now.
He was so smug that he was almost leaving himself open and...
"Weh!" Luz let off a sonic blast when he was right at close range and then, while he was off balance, snatched the cube from his left hand and then bolted backwards.
"...Why you little..." the devil mumbled as he gave chase.
"Hold on," Luz said to King as she shifted so that she was properly riding her staff and took off. It took everything she had, every bit of practice flying, all the training she did for the Gland Prix, all of it to stay ahead of the greatest loser in the multiverse as he chased her in the form of the kind of giant serpent that's supposed to end the world in a number of mythologies.
Unfortunately, after flying at top speed for several minutes, she was forced to come to a dead stop as a wall of sinister flames manifested from the aether to block her path.
The serpent caught up with her, and in its mouth were even hotter flames, forming a massive ball that exploded outward.
Thinking quickly, Luz conjured a barrier with every bit of power she could muster behind it... And it held. For a moment.
As she realized it was starting to give...
She kissed her little brother on the forehead and gave him the cube. And the pendant Amity gave her. "Keep this safe for me, it's important. Tell everyone I love them, and thanks."
She then sent him off, trusting that Stringbean would take him to safety.
With how many heroes were here, not that she's taken the Pandemonium Cube from Mephisto, there was no way he wouldn't be beaten, so she wasn't afraid. Her last thought before her shield broke was that she had no regrets.
AN: I feel so bad that the chapter is so short after such a long time writing it, but the executive function just refused to cooperate. If you're asking yourself, 'Why did they kill Luz when she already has Titan powers?' well, if you've been paying attention, the answer shouldn't be hard to guess.