Luz Noceda, on top of being a Fantasy geek, is also a Teen Genius with a gift for robotics and engineering. She dreams of becoming an inventor and creating a super-suit just like her favorite comic book hero Iron Man.
When her mami is about to send her to summer camp, Luz instead finds herself in the Demon Realm and makes friends with Eda the Owl Lady. Here, she is able to learn and grow and finally finishes her first suit, becoming the Iron Witch.
A Hero Forged is a The Owl House fanfic by RedGrowle
. This fic can be read on Archive of Our Own here. You can also visit the author's Tumblr page here for related content.
A Hero Forged provides examples of:
- Adaptational Badass: Luz in canon was more an overzealous kid who usually survived half of the things she did through dumb luck and quick thinking, not really reaching any level of genuine badassness until the first season finale. Here she manages to create a fully-functional Iron Man suit within her first week there and is far less fragile for it.
- Adaptational Expansion:
- Chapters 36 and 37 explore the time between "Young Blood, Old Souls" and "Separate Tides".
- We see more interaction between Gus and his father, Perry.
- Adaptational Intelligence: While Luz in canon was clever and resourceful, she was rather Book Dumb in certain STEM subjects and her Genre Savviness would be more inaccurate than not. Here, she's a Teen Genius that was able to build her first solar panel at age 6, has created multiple Powered Armor and A.I., and she not only incorporated glyph magic into her suits, but she managed to create a whole new power-source using Titan bone only a few days into her time in the Boiling Isles. She's also shown to be less gullible than her canon-counterpart, being able to see through Adeghast's con from the start and she's quick to intervene when Edric and Emira are up to something.
- Ascended Fangirl: In this universe, Iron Man is just a fictional character, Luz having been introduced to the comics at a young age and has seen the film adaptations. Within a week on the Boiling Isles, Luz manages to create her first fully-functional Powered Armor, an AI to run it and a new, alternative power-source to run it, essentially making her her own universe's answer to an Iron Man-esq hero like Ironheart.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Luz wants to be like Tony Stark, chapter 40 has her end up with an arc reactor.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: I.S.A.A.C. manages to surmise that Witches only have one lung to make room for the bile-sack that lets them cast magic. To get around intaking less oxygen than humans, their muscle density is much lower too, so Luz is still physically stronger than most examples even with her nerd-body. Exceptions to the rule — like the super-strong Warden Wrath — aren't technically "witches".
- The Cameo: In classic Stan Lee fashion, it's revealed that a young Luz had met Stan Lee at a convention and asked him to autograph her Iron Man comic.
- Cassandra Truth:
- When she notices the similarities between Luz and Eda, Lilith immediately comes to the conclusion that Luz is Eda's half-human daughter and that she has been keeping it a secret from everyone. When Eda finds out about this and tries dissuading this theory, Lilith dismisses this as her denying it.
- Pretty much everyone at Hexside also believe that Luz is Eda's daughter, referring to her as "Clawthorne" and making up excuses for explanations to the contrary.
- Clarke's Third Law: Everyone thinks that Luz is either using some kind of super-advanced form of Construction Magic or some kind of "Human Magic" unique to her to create her Iron Witch suits. While she is using titan bone as a power-source and has incorporated glyphs into the designs to utilize glyph magic, her suits are otherwise 100% based on human science.
- Coming-Out Story: In chapter 42, Luz comes out as bi to Lilith.
- Didn't See That Coming: Odalia and Alador's reaction to learning that Luz (a 14-year-old) is the founder of Noceda Industries, not the heiress.
- Entertainingly Wrong: Lilith and most of the people at Hexside all assume that Luz is Eda's half-human daughter and ignore all claims to the contrary.
- Famed In-Story: Luz quickly becomes the talk of the town due to how out-of-nowhere her debut is, becoming famous across the Isles as the "Iron Witch."
- For Want Of A Nail:
- While Amity walks in on Luz at the worst time and thinks she was trying to steal her diary in "Lost in Language", here she overhears Luz trying to prevent her brother and sister from stealing it, preventing this misunderstanding from occurring in the first place.
- While Amity burned Willow's photo-memories in "Understanding Willow" to try and hide evidence of their friendship, Luz instead did that to herself to try and forget a toxic friend from the past.
- While Amity was nominated Grom Queen with Luz filing to replace her in "Enchanting Grom Fright", here Luz was the first to be nominated. And the fears she battled before Grom took the form of Camila are different.
- Instead of Lilith, it was Kikimora who captures Luz.
- Luz's tendency to hide her pain from her friends and family shows the night following the petrification ceremony.
- In Spite of a Nail:
- While canon-Luz was put in the Potions track in "The First Day", here she's put in Construction. Ironically, she's still thrown in the Detention Track because she tried using a potion to perform Construction magic.
- Despite the different circumstances, Luz still ends up working on Salty's ship.
- The Insomniac: Luz often loses track of time on her robotics and sleeps for only a few hours a night, it getting to the point where someone else in the Owl House would intervene. Her coffee addiction probably doesn't help with this.
- Machine Monotone: While T.I.T.A.N. was designed to speak with an expressive British inflection, I.S.A.A.C. speaks with a more explicitly mechanical voice.
- The Nicknamer: Luz has a habit of dolling out nicknames, though whether they're affectionate, spiteful or a little of both depends on the person. King is "Cubone", Willow is "Thorns", Gus is "Mini-Loki" and Amity gets "Minty", "Thin Mint", "Lemon Drop" and "Tea Leaves."
- One-Steve Limit: Luz names one of her A.I.s "T.I.T.A.N.", something that AI points out would get confusing. He's right too, since people think she's talking to/about the actual Titan.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: The events of "Sense and Insensitivity" are glossed over almost entirely, the only reference being that Ruler's Reach is a published book.
- Sequel Hook: In Chapter 27, Luz considers starting her own business in the Boiling Isles.
- Shout-Out:
- One of the first dilemmas Luz has when working on her inventions in the Boiling Isles is finding an alternative to palladium because of its toxicity, a dilemma that Tony Stark had with his miniature arc-reactor in Iron Man 2.
- Luz likes to call King "Cubone".
- Luz calls Gus "Mini-Loki" because of his superfluous use of illusion magic.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Luz loves coffee, often drinking whole pots of it during the night, likely contributing to her being The Insomniac.
- Trauma Button: After her MK 2 suit overheated with an unconscious Luz inside it after saving them from the Slitherbeast, Amity starts to panic whenever she sees Luz in "Iron Witch" mode, worrying that it will happen again without her there to save Luz.
