#also i love the idea of amity and hunters being the engineers of this project

[lollytea]

Delighted myself thinking about the witch kids again, specifically their various attempts to build a replacement portal during the Summer. I'm picturing lots of brainstorm sessions that stretch late into the night and when they get tired enough, they devolve into arguing over who gets the last piece of pizza or playing truth or dare or whatever.

Hunter is feeling really proud of himself for having helped Belos rebuild a portal before. He has experience! He can make himself super useful! And then Amity 'Woman in STEM' Blight is also aiming for the same thing. She's an inventor's daughter. Her Dad's main area of expertise is using magic to power technology. She has plenty of opinions on the mechanical side of things.

Hunter and Amity either click extremely well and are plotting away at a prototype immediately or they disagree on every trivial detail and cannot go five minutes without arguing about it. There's no real resentment here. They're both just used to doing everything themselves and struggle to work as a team.

I don't think the project would get off the ground without Luz. She keeps everybody from wasting time with dud ideas because she's already spent tons of time in the Boiling Isles attempting to build a portal home. She knows exactly what WONT work cuz she's already tried it. She's also got a knack for thinking outside of the box and knows that even though glyphs are rendered useless in this realm, they can still be utilized. If she draws just the right glyph combo and finds a bit of magic for the glyphs to soak up, she's pretty sure they can light this portal's engine up.

Vee reminds them that she's still got a supply of Hexes Holdem cards, which have been working pretty well for keeping her human form. Luz, who had forgotten those things existed, nearly hits the roof in excitement.

Vee doesn't contribute much to the whole construction process, but while she does supervise. She did a health and safety course while at Summer Camp and is diligently making sure nobody is getting their asses blown up.

Portal Building is not Willow's strong suit. She does not have Luz and Hunter's experience, Amity's engineering knowledge or Gus' enthusiasm for tinkering with human technology. So she does what she does best and offers support. She hypes her smart friends up. And when they start doubting that they're actually making any progress, Willow swoops in to encourage them that if ANYBODY can build a portal, her best friends can!! Once the team realizes that they're gonna need something super strong to hold the portal upright, Willow beams. Her vines!! Her vines are tough as hell!! She can do that!!

Gus falls behind a little at first. He might be a prodigy but his skills are quite dependent on the existence of actual magic, so he struggles a bit to find his purpose here. He's very eager to work with human technology but Luz knows more about them than he does. He's smart enough to offer ideas but Hunter and Amity always come up with them before he does because they're both annoyingly STEM brained and have gotten a bit competitive about it. Gus is given the task of gathering equipment for the portal with Vee and he tries not to pout about it. After they managed to track down a half busted TV at a lawn sale, Vee takes him to a petstore to cheer him up. Gus gloomily stares at the hamsters running in their little wheels. He idly thinks about an article he read in one of his human magazines. About how hamsters in wheels can create energy. Unfortunately, hamsters aren't magic.

Cut to 2 days later when the team realizes that the Hexes Holdem cards just aren't gonna cut it. They don't possess nearly enough magic to power up a portal. It's not gonna work. All the time they've spent on this, and it's not even gonna work. They need something else. Anything else.

Luz looks like she's gonna burst into tears. Amity is pacing back and forth. Hunter is like this close 🤏 to slamming his head against the wall in an effort to rattle a genius idea out of his brain. Willow is making a valiant effort to keep everybody from having a full blown meltdown.

Gus is staring intently at Flapjack who is pecking away at the floorboards again. Then he's like "Hey....hear me out....what if-?"