"WAIT!"

Fei Fei flinched, immediately drawing her hand away from the swirling vortex, looking chagrined. Kipo could understand why, as a scientist, she was embarrassed FOR Fei Fei.

First rule of discovering new, weird stuff that doesn't make sense: don't use your bare hand, at least get a long stick or something.

The four of them turned, facing the person racing towards them speedily. They were jumping up and down, waving frantically, and were clearly trying to spot the group before they did anything with the portal. The way they bounced, running so desperately, that they nearly dislodged the scarf-like thing wrapped around their shoulders. But now that the four of them had clearly stopped and were waiting for them, Kipo couldn't imagine why they were still running. Too much energy, perhaps, or...

Kipo suddenly tensed. Was the newcomer trying to give them a warning? Were they in danger? She leaned forward, squinting at the person, trying to figure out if they were saying something, but her attention was soon torn away. Her eyes widened as she gasped.

"Huh?" Anne glanced towards her. "Is something wrong?"

"That's one of the people that I saw in the crystal!" Kipo explained excitedly, pointing. "I can't believe it, she just showed up!"

Fei Fei blinked, surprised (and perhaps a little suspicious), but Anne just grinned.

"Wow, nice," Anne said, sounding impressed. She squinted at the figure as well. Suddenly, her mouth fell open in surprise. "Wait... actually, I recognize her, too..."

None of them were smiling, suddenly. Anne's face had fallen into something akin to pain, and now Kipo and Fei Fei were more concerned that anything else. Even Kris seemed more somber than usual.

"Anne-," Fei Fei started, but before she could ask anything, the figure had met up with them, smiling and happy and seemingly unaware of the somber mood around her. She didn't say anything at first, instead doubling down and wheezing for... a worryingly long time.

"I...huff... wow... even though I've been walking around nonstop recently... huff... I still am just a nerd at heart... huff... geez." Suddenly, the girl straightened up, and her eyes fell on Anne. They widened in surprise, and then her mouth spilt into a beaming gin. "ANNE!"

Despite her feelings earlier, Anne couldn't seem to help but to grin as well. "LUZ! I... You're here, too?"

Luz pumped her fist in the air, cheering. "Yeah! This is amazing! If I have to be stuck in another world, at least it's with you!"

Kipo and Fei Fei glanced between though two of them. Throughout their journey, all three of them had shared bits and pieces of their prior journeys, and, in one of Anne's stories of that strange frog world, this girl, Luz, had been mentioned. The pieces were starting to come together.

Anne's smile was a little forced. "Yeah... so, did you not make it home, either, huh?"

Luz paused, and then looked to the ground, her energy fading just a little bit. "Yeah... I thought I did, once, but then I just ended up here. This place... is a lot emptier than the Boiling Isles..."

The conversation trailed off, and Kipo, Kris and Fei Fei watched as Luz fiddled with her hands, before slowly raising her head again.

"And you?" she asked, obviously trying to sound upbeat. Anne sighed.

"I... got home for a little bit, but..." Anne crossed her arms. "Well, obviously I didn't get to stay."

"Oh..." Luz reached forward, wrapping Anne in a hug. "I'm sorry, Anne."

Anne froze, letting Luz hug her for a few seconds, before wrapping her arms back around Luz and then stepping away.

"It's alright, I found friends pretty quickly," Anne told her, waving her hands to their audience "This is Kris, Fei Fei and-."

"You!" Luz's eyes went wide again as she pointed at Kipo.

"Well, her name is actually Kipo," Anne corrected, but Luz didn't seem to hear her.

"You're that person I've kept seeing!" Luz cried. "The person with the crying crystal, right?"

"Huh?" Kipo blinked. "That sounds familiar. You mean this?"

Kipo struggled to get the crystal out of her pocket, and raised the crystal up to Luz, who studied it closely.

"Ooh... I've never seen a blue one before," Luz noted. "What about you, Six?"

Anne tilted her head, and voiced all of their confusion. "Si-huh?!"

Suddenly, the strange, white, furry scarf around Luz's neck lifted its head, revealing an elegant snout that poke forward, two black eyes peering at Kipo's object, who stared at it.

"Uh..." Kipo said, but the creature seemed to ignore her.

"Hm... yeah, I've seen that before," the creature said in high, cutesy-like voice. They shook their head, waving around their long ears that hung down, and the odd antenna atop its head twitched. It was strange, like the alien version of a cross between a cat and a dog. "Hm hm. As usual, the blue crying crystal is much more powerful, more than the others combined."

"Wow!" Luz stuck her face even closer to it, but Kipo made sure to pull it away before she could accidentally knock into it. "I wonder if I can see the magic..."

Kipo had to pull it away before she accidently brushed into it again. "Careful," she warned. "If you knock into it, it'll force you into a bunch of visions."

Luz's eyes went wide, but, to Kipo's concern, she didn't move back. "Really?" she gushed. "That IS powerful! Usually, you have to hold them for, like, and hour before they show you anything useful, but with this one, I could even SEE you! That's insane! Where'd you get it?"

"They're not that rare," Fei Fei spoke up, sounding confused. "There are plenty in the village we came from."

"Really?!" Luz turned to her, wide eyed. "We have to go there, then! Six said if she absorbs enough magic, she can take us back home!"

...Wait. What? Kris, Anne, Fei Fei and Kipo's eyes swivelled onto Six, who either didn't notice or didn't care about the attention. She only yawned, the only sound in the tense silence.

Eventually, Fei Fei spoke up. Her voice sounded strained. "R-Really?"

Luz nodded excitedly. "Course!" She turned to look down at Six. "Right?"

Six nodded. "That is what I promised."

Luz turned back to the group, beaming. "Alright, lead the way!"

Nobody moved, and Luz's smile started to slowly fall into confusion. She glanced around at them. "Um..."

Anne snapped out of her shock first, shaking her head. She stepped forward, giving Luz a reassuring smile. "Um... yeah, we'll definitely do that, but first, we're looking for more people."

Luz blinked, looking around at the group once again, but now she was frowning. "R-Really?" she asked, now sounding nervous. "How many of you are there?"

Kipo counted on her fingers. "Si-no, fifteen." Kipo didn't want to think about that too much. "With you here, we're only missing two people, and we all make up fifteen people."

Luz looked taken aback. "Oh... and we're all in the same situation, right? We all need to go home?" Luz glanced down at Six as Kipo nodded. "Can you help all of us?"

"Mm..." Six's eyes met with the ones that were staring right back her. "My capacity is pretty high, so, probably."

Luz pumped her fist in the air with a 'WHOO-HOO', and Anne laughed. They shared a high five.

"Great!" Anne said cheerfully. "Then we just need to find the other two as fast as possible. At this rate, it'll take, like, two weeks!"

"Yeah!" Luz agreed, beaming. She looked proud of herself, and Kipo smiled.

"Well, we have to find them AND fix this problem," Fei Fei pointed out, and in unison, the group turned to gaze up at the swirling portal behind them.

"Oh," Anne remembered. "Right."

For a second, none of them spoke, all too focused on wondering what to do about the thing in front of them. It'd be nice if there was a convenient off switch or something around, or if literally any of Kipo's physics knowledge would help, but portals just didn't exist in real life!

Eventually, the silence was not broken by a voice, but by Kris chucking a rock through the portal. All of them tensed, but nothing happened.

They let out a sigh of relief.

"Hm..." Luz sounded nervous for a second. "Um, well, I'm not going to say I'm an expert, but I AM a witch in training, so I can give it shot!"

Kipo turned to look at her. "You think you can do it?"

"Yeah!" Luz said. All trace of her earlier hesitation was gone. "I'm pretty sure, anyway. The way magic works in this world is that you use the various things in this world and kind of... transfigure them."

"Oh, so like geometry?" Kipo asked. But just when she felt like she was starting to understand, and disgusted look crossed over Luz's face.

"What? Ew, no, gross, it's magic," Luz spat out, like the very words tasted disgusting. But that voice was dropped rather quickly. "Anyway, I have a theory. I know the way to make the shadows of doors move to close them, and, well, usually the shadows just return to normal, but I think I can make THIS shadow-"

Luz motioned around them, at the shadow of the rock. The sun was going down now, so the shadow was stretched out for miles behind them.

"And move it to close up the portal permanently!" Luz finished explaining by throwing out her arms dramatically, like she was in a magic show. "Get it?"

While Luz waited for confirmation, Kipo forced her face to remain neutral. The truth was that no, she didn't get it, but after seeing the portal she wasn't going to argue against the physics of this world too hard. Slowly, she nodded.

"Go for it," Anne told her, and Luz nodded excitedly. But before she moved, she glanced down at Six.

"Uh... I can do that, right?" she asked, almost sounding timid.

"Your logic is sound," Six replied, and Kipo could hear the interest in her voice. Six sounded very interested in where this would go, and the sound of it echoed the look on their audiences faces.

Luz clapped her hands. "Okay!" she said. "Here, it goes."

Luz immediately started directing everyone around the shadow, pushing everyone out of the rock's shadow.

"If any part of you is touching the shadow, especially your shadow," Luz warned. "Because, uh, well... something will happen."

"Something bad?" Fei Fei guessed.

"Probably," Luz replied, far too cheerfully.

The five of them of situated all around the shadow, with Luz situated at the very top of it. With the way they were spaced out, there had to be at least a mile or two between them. When Luz spoke to them, she had to shout.

"Everyone, get ready!" Luz told them. "Make sure you don't touch the shadow!"

After a series of confirmations, Luz raised her hands, and Kipo watched with interest. Her eyes widened as she watched the shadows underneath her feet move, almost turning into a liquid-like thing, and then, to Kipo's amazement, it lifted up into the air, into a sort of mist.

Kipo tilted her head. So, this shadow was supposed to cover up the portal? Kipo... was interested to see what that would look like.

Unfortunately, she wouldn't really get to see it.

"-Ipo! Kipo!"

Startled out of her thoughts, Kipo looked up to find that Fei Fei and Anne were much farther away than they'd been before. Kipo blinked, momentarily confused, before she finally got it, glancing down at her legs, which were now covered in the cold, inky black mist.

The setting sun! That was the problem! As the sun had gone down, the shadow had gotten bigger, and Kipo hadn't even realized it!

Desperately, Kipo tried to force her way to the edge, but it was like moving through glue. She spotted Kris at the edge of the shadow, stretching a hand out. Felling the panic in her throat, Kipo raised her hand as well, and, to her relief, they managed to grab a hold of each other.

But Kipo's relief was sort lived, because instead of pulling her out, and Kris was doing getting sucked in.

In a last-ditch attempt, Kipo dropped their hand, but at that point it was too late. They had both been trapped in the inky spider's web.

"H-Huh?!" Kipo heard Luz's sudden confused cry. She must have only just realized what was going on. "Kipo? Kris?! What are you doing?!"

"I-." Kipo didn't get the chance to answer, suddenly startled out of it when the shadow mist began to rise, taking her and Kris along with it. When Kipo looked through the fog, she could see the ground quickly falling away from them.

"No... NO!" Luz was shouting, her voice shaking with panic. "Six, what do I do?!

"Get them... quickly!"

"W-Wha-?"

"Hurry!"

Startled into action, Luz jumped forward, into the shadow. Kipo watched her carefully; would she be able to move through all this?

Apparently not, as she struggled through it just as much as Kipo and Kris were. Meanwhile, the fog just kept rising, but, to Kipo's surprise and worry, it wasn't going straight up anymore, instead tilting towards the portal. The shadow was practically vertical at this point, and if Kipo wanted, she could reached up and stick her hand through it.

Kipo didn't do that, instead, she struggled, trying to get herself out of the shadow's terrifying grip. But when the top of Kipo's head brushed the portal, she knew it was useless. Kipo closed her eyes, tensed her body... and fell.

The sudden feeling of falling made Kipo gasp, and then the hard and sudden impact forced the rest of her air from her lungs as she landed painfully on her side. She wheezed, noticing only subconsciously when Luz and Kris landed next to her.

For a second, none of them spoke, to busy gasping and moaning in pain. Kipo was the one that recovered first. She felt like she was going to cry, but she didn't know it was from the guilt, the pain, or both.

"I..." Kipo coughed, glancing up. "I'm s-sorry, I'm so-."

Kipo's words died on her tongue as something caught her eye, and suddenly, she was less sorry and more relieved. Scrambling to her feet, she gazed through the dark tunnel ahead, and at the castle, silhouetted through the moon.

"Oh," she gasped. "Oh. The castle! I know that castle!"

Luz groaned. "What?"

Kipo turned to them. "That's where the blue haired... girl... is..."

Once again, Kipo's words got stuck in her throat as she stared at the wall behind them. It was blank. Whatever Luz had done to the portal, it had worked.

They were trapped here.