Chapter Text
The sun was setting over the quaint town of Gravesfield, Connecticut, and the cooler winds of autumn had just started to set in, replacing the warmth in the air just a few weeks before. To everyone else, this was just normal everyday life. But to a certain household residing within this small suburban town, it was far from it.
It had been about a month since Luz had returned from the Demon Realm, bringing home with her four witch friends, the four of them slowly getting used to the Human Realm over time.
***
Luz was determined to get her friends back home, and she knew the only way to do that was to make a portal door. So with what she knew from when Eda had made that makeshift portal door and the help of her friends, she got to work. Using the door to the abandoned house, the five of them worked together to try to turn it into a working portal door.
Currently, the door had a large piece of paper taped onto it, a large eye-like shape drawn in the center. Luz placed an ice glyph and a fire glyph on top of the eye as Willow used her plant magic to secure the door tightly. Gus was setting up four hamster wheels for the four palismen to run on in hopes of powering the door. At the same time, Amity was carrying several small trinkets and started to hang some on the vines above the door. Finally, as Hunter connected the power source to the doorknob, giving Gus a thumbs up, Gus placed the four palismen on the hamster wheels, frowning a little when his Palismen failed to climb up, it was time to power the door.
Electricity surged through the wire to the doorknob and for a brief moment, it looked like it had actually worked. Unfortunately, the combination of the rapidly moving electricity and the metallic doorknob deemed too much for it to handle, and d within seconds, the door was completely consumed by flames. Hunter quickly jumped out of the way as the explosion blew everyone backwards. Gus grabbed a fire extinguisher and swung it around like a nunchuck, Vee quickly taking it from him to properly put out the fire.
Luz knelt down and hung her head in shame. Yet another failed attempt at recreating the portal door. This was getting out of hand. At this rate, her friends would never make it back home to the Demon Realm. Once again, she had failed.
Amity approached Luz in her sorrow, she crouched down and offered her girlfriend a hand for comfort.
“You okay, Luz?”
“... I messed up again.”
Amity sighed. “Luz, come on, you can’t blame yourself for something that’s out of your control.”
“But it’s not out of my control!” Luz huffed. “I’ve already made a portal door before, this shouldn’t be that hard.”
The sight of her girlfriend unhappy made Amity’s heart ache. Truly, none of this was Luz’s fault. Though the girl always seemed to blame everyone else’s inconveniences on herself. If only there was a way for her to see that not everything was her own fault.
Amity paused for a moment, pondering. Something was wrong. Wasn’t there something else that was essential to making a portal door work?
“… Isn’t there something we’re missing?”
Luz looked up. “Right, Titan’s Blood, how could I forget? If only there was a way to get some in the Human Realm.”
“Well… why don’t we take a break?” Amity smiled at her. “Get your mind focused on something else.”
Luz smiled back. “That sounds great, batata .”
***
Luz put her head down on her desk. Amity was right, she needed a healthy distraction from everyone’s problems including her own. And the only thing she could think of at the moment was art.
Normally, she would use her sketchbook, but very recently she had found a nice web app on her laptop as an alternative. Very convenient, too, as her sketchbook was starting to run out of pages.
So booting up her laptop, Luz got ready to let her imagination run wild.
Unfortunately, instead of her desktop, she was greeted by something completely different.
“What the…?”
***
Amity, Hunter, Willow, and Gus were all chatting in the Nocedas’ living room when Luz burst through the door with her laptop in hand.
“GUYS,” The Latina said through quick breaths. “Something weird happened to my laptop.”
“What do you mean by ‘weird’?” Willow questioned the girl.
“Look!” Luz opened up her laptop for everyone to see. Instead of the cool desktop background she had, the screen was completely white, save for a few key details. The most prominent one being an illustration of a young human boy, with a pure white skin tone and a simple black hairstyle, wearing a black tank top. Said boy on the screen also had his lips curved downwards in a frown, and his eyes were dark and emotionless.
The second thing that caught everybody’s attention was the singular word that was positioned directly above the boy also coloured in black. It read “OMORI”, with the second “O” being replaced with a black lightbulb.
The last feature that was present on the screen other than the completely white background was three buttons along the bottom of the screen. The first one read “NEW GAME”, the second one “CONTINUE”, and the third “OPTIONS”.
There was something else, too… Aside from the visuals, a soft piano tune seemed to be playing. The melody was… nostalgic… or maybe melancholic would be a better term to describe it?
“What is it?” Amity asked. “It looks, uh… interesting.”
“I think this is some sort of… game?” Luz replied. “I have no idea how it got on my laptop, though.”
“Uh… Is there a problem?” Hunter noticed the distress present on the younger girl’s face.
“Well, yeah… it’s just…” Luz sighed. “I can’t seem to close out of it? It’s just permanently stuck on my laptop.”
“Well if we don’t know what it is, the best thing to do is to hit Play and see what happens, right?” Gus asked the rest of the gang.
“I don’t see why not.” Amity shrugged. “Plus, this would be a healthy little distraction from all of our problems momentarily.”
Luz took a moment to look at everyone’s faces. Gus and Amity seemed excited to see what this mysterious game was, while Hunter looked like he didn’t really care. Willow, on the other hand, seemed content with whatever the rest of the group picked.
“Alright, I guess we’ll check it out.” Luz sat down on the couch with everyone and put her laptop in a position where everyone could see. “Just one more thing… how do I press start??“