Chapter Text
“Luz? Where are you?”
Number Five panicked. Clearly the abandoned house wasn’t too far from a human settlement. She had hoped that she could duck out into the woods for a while and figure out where to go from there, but evidently deciding to cross into another dimension came with incredibly fast-acting consequences. She had so many questions, none of which she had the luxury to ponder at the moment. She had to transform into a human quickly if she wanted to avoid detection, and unfortunately, she’d only seen the one. Was “Luz” the name of that human girl back in the Isles?
“Well, it better be, or else I’m screwed!” Number Five thought to herself as she hastily shifted into her form just in time for a taller, darker-skinned woman with glasses - Luz’s caretaker, she assumed - to come out of the trees calling “her” name. Number Five took a deep breath as she prepared herself. If she messed up even once, she was as good as dead.
“Hahaha, hello, fellow human!” she said nervously, hoping like heck that she got the voice right. She’d only heard a brief snippet of it as she was making her escape, but from what little she had seen, this “Luz” girl seemed to be incredibly theatrical and prone to saying odd things. Taking that limited advice into consideration, Number Five fumbled a bit. “Um...skin’s sure weird!” she added awkwardly, pulling at her arm for emphasis while silently dreading what she was certain would be the older woman’s inevitable recognition of the otherworldly monster that she really was. When no such recognition came, however, she was...perplexed, to say the least, particularly when the older woman chuckled in response to her “daughter’s” strange attempt at a joke.
“Very funny,” the older woman said, walking towards her as Number Five resisted the urge to bolt and run back into the abandoned house. “But I was thinking...instead of taking the bus to camp, why don’t we drive?” she asked, only raising more questions in Number Five’s mind. “I got the day off of work, and you’ll have full control of the playlist,” she added with a smile, one so full of love that Number Five couldn’t help but smile back at her.
A part of her knew she shouldn’t get too attached: this wasn’t her caretaker, she wasn’t this woman’s daughter, and this wasn’t even her dimension. And yet, as the older woman guided her back to her weird mechanical carriage and got them on the road to this “Reality Check” camp she was apparently supposed to go to, Number Five couldn’t help but sigh happily.
She had made the right decision.
Luz Noceda. That was her name, now.
Being based out of some middle-of-nowhere town in a place called “New Jersey,” the drive from “Connecticut” to the camp was going to take hours according to Luz’s mother - Camila Noceda, said the name tag neatly pinned to her veterinarian scrubs. As such, Number Five had a lot of time to figure out everything she had to know to not only survive in the Human Realm, but successfully imitate Luz Noceda well enough so that the girl’s mother wouldn’t get suspicious before she got to camp. Once there, she reasoned, she’d be free to carve out more of an identity for herself, and could easily slip away into the woods if anything went wrong. It wasn’t exactly the most airtight plan, but she’d gotten pretty good at improvising since...since…
Number Five shook her head. Now wasn’t the time to think about that.
Instead, she could better occupy herself by reviewing what she needed to know. That was far easier to focus on than thinking back to her time in that horrible place. Thus, while she was in the middle of ravenously wolfing down Camila’s leftover “chili fries” after they had stopped at a Burger Queen to eat, she constructed a mental list of everything that she had learned so far:
- Reality Check Summer Camp was a three month summer camp designed to help humans rein in more chaotic impulses and become contributing members of society. Luz Noceda had apparently gotten into a lot of trouble during the previous school year, thereby necessitating her being sent to this camp. Among the incidents that Camila jokingly alluded to over the course of the car ride were: Luz using violent snakes and fireworks in a book report; Luz adding anatomically correct spider breath to a griffin model (how a human girl had known about that was a separate issue); and Luz doing some weird trick with her eyes at cheer tryouts that Number Five couldn’t duplicate.
- The metal carriage they were traveling in was called a “car,” and there were untold millions of them, each one serving as an incredibly fast vehicle that humans used to travel everywhere in spite of the fact that the exhaust they generated was slowly making life unlivable.
- A “playlist” was a collection of songs stored on a “phone,” a strange human device that could be used to communicate with each other over long distances, among a wide array of other increasingly superfluous functions. She mostly just used it to play a playlist of surprisingly catchy music called “merengue.” She would’ve thought it was magical in nature if not for the fact that she couldn’t sense any magic within it, leading into the next point:
- The Human Realm is completely magically inert. Unlike the Boiling Isles, magic did not suffuse the environment nor the inhabitants, leaving Vee wholly dependent on conventional food sources to stay alive. Not much of a problem for her, though, considering that:
- Human food was delicious, not to mention so absolutely chock full of unnecessary calories that Number Five would never have to worry about going hungry ever again!
As she polished off the final “chili fry,” Number Five coughed slightly while Camila came back from the restroom with a slightly woozy expression.
“Oof, I think me and chili fries are going to have to spend some time apart,” she quipped as she held her stomach, causing Number Five to chuckle. “You ready to go, mija? We’ve only got another hour left before we get to camp, so if we hurry, I can get back home by nightfall. That sound good?” As Number Five looked at the older woman for a moment, she couldn’t help but smile. She had no idea why Luz ran away to the Boiling Isles of all places, not when she had a kind, caring, and hilarious mother who clearly loved her more than anything else in the world right here.
A part of her thought that she may very well get used to this.
“Coming, mamá!” she said happily, getting up off of the table and following Camila out of the fast food restaurant and back into the parking lot. No sooner had they gotten to Camila’s car than Number Five spotted a curious detail she hadn’t noticed before: a custom bumper sticker depicting a green haired version of Luz wearing a white witch’s cap and robe while holding a staff aglow with magical power. Although Number Five was briefly perplexed by the sticker and what it represented, Camila was taken aback for a moment before smiling softly.
“You know, I still maintain that this is some of your best work,” she said before a melancholy expression came over her and she gave voice to a question she had been unwilling to ask until now. “Say, mija, you...you still have that old Azura book, don’t you? The one I saw you put in the trash can outside the house? You...you went back for it before we left, right?”
At this, Number Five found herself thrown for a loop. What was an “Azura book,” and why did Camila care what she had done with it? It must have been something Luz liked, but then why would she have thrown it away before she came to the Boiling Isles? Maybe because Camila didn’t like it, or because Camila thought it was symptomatic of Luz’s problems? But then, why would Camila then be asking about it like it was something she still wanted Luz to have? Believing she had only a few seconds to think of an answer before Camila would start to get suspicious, Number Five decided on what she saw as the safest bet she could make.
“No,” she said simply. “It’s still in the trash can.” At this, Camila’s heart sank.
“Oh, I...I see,” she replied, wondering what she had done to make Luz think she wanted her to give up the things that she cared about. Desperate to make things right, Camila attempted to apologize, only for Number Five to cut her off. “Mija, I-”
“It’s alright. That’s...that’s where it belongs, right?” Number Five replied, seeking to try and get some kind of confirmation that she had made the right call. Judging by the way Camila’s face fell at her “daughter’s” words, she hadn’t. Wanting to get things back on track before she could mess things up any further, she quickly adopted a cheery expression. “Come on, let’s get back on the road!” she said before quickly getting into the passenger seat, leaving Camila to simply stand there...
Heartbroken.
Before long, they were in the small dirt parking lot of Reality Check Summer Camp, and Camila was giving “Luz” one last goodbye before leaving her on her own for three months.
“I know you forgot your phone, but don’t forget to keep in touch while you’re gone, alright mija?” Camila said as she handed her some replacement clothes that she had purchased for Number Five while on the road after realizing “Luz” had “forgotten” everything they’d packed. “Make sure you listen to the counselors, don’t get separated from the other campers, and remember: while you’re here, no schemes, no plots, no ruses...and no shenanigans. Got it?”
“Got it,” Number Five replied on cue, not quite sure where that warning was coming from. Camila paused for a moment before suddenly wrapping her up in a hug. Having no prior concept of what a hug was, she panicked for a moment before realizing how...nice it felt.
“I love you, cariño,” she whispered solemnly. “Nothing will ever change that, okay?”
“Okay,” Number Five replied automatically as Camila broke away from the hug, a vague feeling of guilt eating away at her until Camila waved goodbye from the car one final time before driving off towards Connecticut. Towards home.
Luz’s home.
But Number Five was not Luz, even though she had to borrow her form for a while. And although that guilty feeling was still there, Number Five elected to ignore it in favor of meeting up with the other campers as they were corralled around for cabin assignments inside the camp gates.
“Hey, fellow humans!” she said much more confidently than the first time, thinking perhaps that a bit of oddball humor might endear her to these people. Unfortunately, all it got her was a bunch of blank stares, so she tried again. “You, uh, you guys excited to learn about...taxes?” she said more hesitantly, to which the other kids mostly groaned as Number Five was left cringing in embarrassment at how bad she was at this.
“Ugh, as if!” one kid, a snooty looking blonde teenager whose hair was done up in a ponytail, remarked in a manner that suggested she thought “Luz” was less than dirt. “What kind of lame weirdo would be excited about that garbage, Luz-er?” At this, several of the girls standing next to her laughed in that haughty, mocking way popularized by many a high school comedy film, only making it more apparent how much of an outsider Number Five really was. It was bad enough that she wasn’t all that good at fitting in herself, but apparently Luz Noceda had not exactly been a social butterfly among her own kind either. Honestly, given what she had heard about the human girl in the car, this should not have surprised her.
“Aw, c’mon, guys, it can’t be that bad,” she tried saying in the camp’s defense in order to salvage the situation, to which another girl outside of the mean girl clique simply scoffed.
“Please,” the girl said dismissively, clad in all black and looking as though she’d rather be in Hell itself than spend another moment there. “This place is nothing but a prison,” she said, causing all of the color to drain from Number Five’s face.
“What?” she muttered, so quietly that no one else could hear her, yet filled with more abject fear than could be contained within a single word.
How could she have been so foolish? She had been so enamored with everything that she had read in that brochure that she had failed to notice the signs! A twenty-foot high iron fence surrounding the entire camp with forbidding gates at the north and south ends! Assignment into numbered cabins for easy categorization and subsequent dehumanization by “counselors” who clearly didn’t want to be there! A handful of rules posted all throughout the camp that seemed intent upon mandating campers’ behavior every hour of the day for the duration of their “stay” on the grounds! It wasn’t nearly as bad as the last prison she had been in, but it was certainly bad enough, and Number Five had already had her fill of being in a prison, thank you!
It was clear to her now that that brochure must have been lying, and that in her haste to escape her old prison, she had unwittingly stumbled into a new one. As the goth girl continued to speak, completely oblivious to Number Five’s internal turmoil, she made another impulsive decision.
She wasn’t going to be trapped again.
“The only reason this camp exists is to better prepare us for our new and exciting adult lives as wage slaves to the capitalist oligarchs that-whoa, hey, where are you going?!” The girl cried out in surprise as Number Five sprinted past her at a speed moderately too fast for a human to be able to run. Caught off guard by her sudden departure, the crowd of children watched her escape with interest and varying degrees of envy while the two counselors there scrambled to respond.
“We’ve got a runner! Close the gates!” The first one, a man named Darrell, called out into his walkie talkie as if he were in an action movie, causing the other one to groan in exasperation.
“Aw, c’mon, seriously? Figured we’d at least get through cabin assignments this time,” the second one, a lady named Marisha, grumbled. “We really need to reconsider the advertising of this place. We already had three parents accuse us of being a conversion camp, for Christ’s sake!”
“Just shut up and grab her before she gets herself hurt!” Darrell barked, prompting the two to take off after Number Five as best they could. Although she briefly balked as the gate doors slammed shut in front of her, a brief couple seconds of hesitation gave way to the basilisk hurriedly altering her form just enough to where she could squeeze between the bars, shocking the onlookers.
“Whoa, what the heck?!”
“How’d she do that?!”
“Girl must be hella flexible, like dang! You think she’s a gymnast?”
While some of the children cheered as Number Five ran off into the woods and left the two counselors panting in front of the north gate, the blonde punk from earlier narrowed her eyes.
“Riiiight,” she said, getting the sense that there was more to the unfortunate return of Gravesfield’s most infamous weirdo than she had originally thought. Before she could think the situation over for much longer, though, a new arrival to the scene left her with far more questions than anything having to do with the weird runaway.
“Oh, great,” Darrell grumbled as the onlookers saw something fire off overhead before wrapping around the top of the iron fence and holding fast, with the goth girl being the first to voice the one question on everyone’s mind.
“Wait a second, is that a freaking-?!”
“GRAPPLING HOOK!!!” the mysterious head of Reality Check Summer Camp proclaimed with youthful vigor as she was lifted aloft by the reliable contraption, holding it in one hand while using the other to gently cradle an old, but still dependable porcine companion that she held under her arm. As the pair soared over the gate and easily landed without a scratch on the ground outside of it, the children watched with wide eyes and open mouths at the display of absolute coolness.
“So, does the program here include learning how to do that?” one camper, a somewhat larger kid with square-shaped glasses, asked Marisha, to which she shook her head.
“Kid, I wish the program included that,” she admitted.
Number Five would have gotten a lot further, had it not been for the pig.
The one upside to being a basilisk was that changing her shape didn’t diminish her physical abilities in the slightest, and although she hadn’t realized it, she was a fair bit stronger and faster than these human guards who were trying to capture her. All she had to do was lose them in the woods, transform into a bug or something, and hide away. After that...she wasn’t sure. She could risk going back to Camila, positive that the kind woman hadn’t known about how horrible this place really was, but she knew it was only a matter of time until Luz returned and forced her to run away...again.
She blinked back tears as she continued to run. Worrying about the future wasn’t important right now. What was important was getting herself out of sight so she could get away from this awful place and figure out what to do next. She had been clever enough to evade the Emperor’s Coven; she could handle a few college students in cargo shorts.
Waddles, however, was another matter.
The pig was old and not as fast as he used to be, but he had survived perils the likes of which would make even the toughest demon quiver in fear. He wasn’t afraid of this weird girl, but the reverse could not be held as true, as would be made apparent when the old hog cut Number Five off with a squeal. Having no idea what a pig was and thus no clue as to its true capabilities, Number Five stumbled backwards with a cry of fright and curled up into the fetal position, struggling with every fiber of her being to keep herself from reverting to her true form. As Waddles carefully waddled towards the girl and began to lick her face in hopes of bringing her comfort, the approaching sound of rapid footsteps made that a much easier proposition than it would have been otherwise, especially once her pursuer finally burst from the trees with a triumphant laugh.
“Ha-hey, good job, buddy!” Mabel Pines cried happily as she scratched Waddles underneath the chin, only to quickly turn to Number Five as she overheard the soft sound of sobbing. “Whoa whoa whoa, hey, hon! It’s okay!” she said soothingly, attempting to place a hand on the girl’s shoulder only for her to quickly smack it away as she turned away from her pursuers.
“No it isn’t!” she snapped, pointedly looking down so that she didn’t risk Mabel seeing the half-transformed sclera of her true eyes peeking out within her human form. “I gave up everything I had ever known to finally get away, and just when I’d deluded myself into thinking I’d be safe for once in my life, I had to get shipped off here! And now you and your little pink demon are gonna drag me back in chains...and I’ll be right back to spending the rest of my life in a cage.” As Number Five continued to sob quietly, a tiny part of Mabel’s heart broke for the poor girl. She wasn’t sure whether or not the kid was being metaphorical about all this cage and chains stuff, but the fact remained that she had evidently been through something horrible and was hurting badly. After taking a deep breath and gesturing for Waddles to offer his amazing cuddles to the poor girl, Mabel cleared her throat and attempted to reassure her as best she could.
“Look, ah...change can be scary, I know, but...sometimes it’s for the best,” Mabel began. “I never would’ve imagined I’d be running a place like this nine years ago, but then again, I was also convinced that I’d have a spectacular summer romance when I was twelve years old. Spoiler alert: that still hasn’t panned out for me at 22, and not for lack of trying, mind you!”
Mabel attempted to chuckle as a way to alleviate the tension in the air, only for Number Five to remain unresponsive. “Anyway, being creative and having fun are all well and good; the last thing I want this camp to do is to make kids feel like they can’t be kids, you know? What I set up this place to do is to teach you not to get too carried away with it, because if you go too far, you can end up hurting people unintentionally...including yourself.”
Mabel paused as a wistful expression crossed her features, not that Number Five could see it at the moment. “My summer trip nine years ago was the best summer of my life. It was so incredible that I never wanted it to end, and because I was so determined to cling to a fantasy and ignore reality...I almost ruined everything forever.”
Mabel grew solemn for a moment before shaking her head to dispel the negative thoughts that had never really gone away after that fateful summer ended. “I don’t know what you did back home to warrant coming here, but it’s nothing that me and my staff can’t help you with. No matter what the place might look like, it isn’t a prison. Nobody here is ever going to hurt you or punish you for anything. Whatever you did back home, it doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person, and it doesn’t mean that your parents don’t love you or want you gone. I mean, heck, I’ve only known you for all of two minutes and I already think you’re a total sweetheart!”
At this, Number Five finally smiled just a bit, and Mabel grinned as she realized she was finally getting through to the kid. “And hey, if you still aren’t convinced to give the place another shot after I give you Mabel Pines’ Magnificent Tour, then I promise we’ll call your parents or whoever you feel comfortable staying with and get you somewhere safe as soon as possible. Okay?” When she heard the kid mutter a faint “Okay” in response to her proposition, Mabel finally decided to try placing a hand on her shoulder again and was grateful to find that the contact was not rebuffed this time. “What’s your name, hon?” she asked, only to find herself surprised as the girl finally turned around with eyes that were still black with yellow pupils and teal sclera. Seemingly unaware of this, the girl panicked somewhat before quickly answering the lady’s question.
“Number-agh!” she said, just barely catching herself before settling on a better answer. “Vee,” she said, liking the sound of that name. “It’s, uh, it’s actually ‘Luz Noceda’ on the paperwork, but, ah...you can call me Vee. Y’know, when it’s, um...just the two of us, if that’s okay?” Left unwilling to dig the hole any deeper, Vee simply stood there awkwardly twiddling her thumbs as her eyes slowly shifted back to normal. Mabel smiled at the strange girl, putting all of her numerous questions into the back of her mind where they belonged. After having had nine years to reflect on the events of that summer in Oregon...Mabel knew well that some mysteries were better left buried.
“Welcome to camp, Vee!” Mabel said cheerily. “I think you’re gonna love it here.”
And so it begins. Ngl, I'm a little nervous about this one. xD
This fic has been cooking for a while now; about three months, checking on the version history of my doc. What started as my idle thoughts regarding my own take on the "Vee's Perspective" fics that I haven't seen much of anymore grew into a rather detailed outline for a massive story that paralleled the story of The Owl House in many ways, thereby lending to its punny title. The initial plot I'd sketched up by outlining chapter summaries was grander in some ways, featuring a much longer stay at Reality Check and a focus on the other basilisks escaping after Vee to cause problems in the Human Realm, but it seemed to totter the line of ridiculousness after further inspection. I'm hopeful that my revised take on things will prove to be more successful, although it's probably going to be some time before all of it is finished.
Because I knew that this story would be a major undertaking no matter how I went about it, I took a few measures to protect my sanity, with varying degrees of success. Firstly, all of the chapters are relatively short, being around 4-8 pages in my doc on average, so they're more vignettes than longer episode-parodying plots, although their titles still pay homage to various episode titles from the show. Secondly, I made sure to have a pretty hefty backlog of the chapters over and done with before I even considered going live. I've got fifteen chapters completed now, the first of three arcs I've planned out for this story, which will hopefully leave me in pretty good shape. Finally, although I don't like doing this when I can otherwise avoid it, I think it would be best to schedule hiatuses in between the arcs. Having experienced this once before with my big DBZ fic, Hermit, I'd rather not find myself hastily throwing down the railroad tracks while the minecart is still going a second time. xD
As far as the crossover elements of this fic go, they'll be present, but not to the point of distraction, I hope. This is still very much an Owl House story, but the idea of Mabel Pines being the head of Reality Check after learning her lesson from Weirdmaggeddon entered my head and refused to leave until I made it manifest. I did consider cutting the crossover elements along with my initial plot outline, but I find that I like them enough to keep them around. If that turns you off from the story, c'est la vie.
For the rest of you, though, the plan is to release the fifteen chapters that comprise this first arc weekly on Saturdays, paralleling the release schedule of the show itself. This arc will be examining brief snippets of Vee's life in the Human Realm up until Yesterday's Lie, a five chapter event all its own because recounting an entire episode while also adding my own spin on things ended up being way more complicated than I had ever anticipated. I hope that you enjoy this story. As always, thank you all for reading, stay safe, wear a mask and get vaccinated if possible, have yourselves a fantastic night, and take care.