Fanfic / Ten Times The Witch

Ten Times the Witch is a crossover AU story between The Owl House and Ben 10, in which Luz is the one to get the Omnitrix at age ten and eventually become a world-famous hero. Exhausted by her fame after her identity is exposed in the wake of foiling the Highbreed invasion, Luz is hoping for her first quiet summer vacation on years, but her destiny to end up in the Boiling Isles cannot be denied...

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• Ability Mixing:
  • Luz has started to combine her aliens and magic, like using Snare-oh's bandages to form the shape of glyphs.
  • After learning of her Anodite heritage, Amity starts working on combining her mana magic with her bile sac magic.
• Acquired Situational Narcissism: Inverted with Luz. Unlike canon Ben, she's a lot less happy with her newfound fame on Earth and beyond, wishing for the days before the Highbreed invasion and her identity being exposed, where she could be a hero largely anonymously.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • In this AU Luz is the bearer of the Omnitrix, and she even gets a scan of witch DNA from Eda, allowing her access to a form capable of casting spells. She even wins against Amity in their witch's duel in this AU, and could have done so solely with glyph magic due to learning about the fire spell early if the power sigil wasn't in play.
  • Hunter similarly has a knockoff Omnitrix called the Demonitrix created by a captive Vilgax in this universe.
  • Amity has Anodite heritage in this AU, giving her the inherent ability to use mana-based magic in addition to her spell circle magic.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • When Vee crosses into the Human Realm, Kevin is immediately suspicious of her and takes her to the Plumbers. This leads to Luz and Vee meeting each other immediately after the events of "A Lying Witch and a Warden".
  • Rather than delivering potions on her second day in the Boiling Isles, Luz instead goes to the library to research basilisks, and Amity helps her to find the information she needs.
  • When attempting to rescue the other escaped basilisks, Luz encounters and fights Hunter, who has been tasked with recovering them.
  • Rook Blonko appears to take over Luz's work with the Plumbers while she's in the Demon Realm, just after the first of the basilisks aside from Vee has been rescued.
  • The Fire glyph appears when Luz first goes to Hexside, while in canon Luz wouldn't discover it for several weeks longer, near the end of season 1.
  • Due to scanning King with the Omnitrix, Luz gains a titan form much earlier than in canon, having access to the option of becoming one from the first day she enters the Isles. She first does so by accident during the duel with Amity at the Covention. However, she's a full juvenile titan rather than a hybrid.
  • The plant glyph is discovered by Luz on her first day at Hexside.
  • "Phil" shows up when Matt accidentally sends himself, Gus, and Kevin to the Null Void.
  • King's Super-Scream powers manifest much earlier than in canon, while he, Eda, and Luz are babysitting the Bat Queen's children.
• Adaptational Heroism: In this story Charmcaster/Hope has had a full Heel–Face Turn after her failed attempt to bring her father back, and even took up a role similar to Gwen's in canon during the Highbreed invasion.
• Adaptation Expansion: The basilisks other than Vee get a lot more focus than in canon here. For example, the reason that the Greater Basilisk, One, was stealing so much magic, besides taking revenge on the witches of the Isles for what she and the other basilisks went through, is because one of the other basilisks laid a clutch of eggs and she was getting magic for them.
• Adapted Out: The Tennyson family seems to be completely absent in this AU, with Luz taking Ben's place as the Omnitrix bearer, Manny replacing Max as the older family member associated with the Plumbers, and Charmcaster/Hope taking on Gwen's role as the magic user of the team. Author comments imply that in this universe, Max never got involved with aliens, so he stayed with the space program and he and his family currently live normal lives. Although he isn't named, the local Ben finally makes a minor appearance in the Albedo omake.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: After experiencing human periods and suffering from lactose intolerance due to his Omnitrix glitch making him a genetic double of Luz, Albedo outright begs to be let out of the porta-potty he's trapped in, even saying that he'll confess and surrender to Azmuth.
• Alien Non-Interference Clause:
  • Manny outright states that the Plumbers can't actively work against the Emperor's Coven, explaining that they'd be seen as unjust invaders if they try and force a non-spacefaring world to adhere to galactic laws. However, it doesn't prevent them from going on a rescue mission to save the remaining basilisks.
  • The author has also confirmed that the Plumbers will take action if they were to discover the truth about Belos, on how he is technically an alien invader and that he's seeking to commit genocide against the local population.
• All for Nothing: Luz duels Amity in "Covention Complication" because Lilith offered her information on the basilisks if she won, risking the Omnitrix if she lost. Despite winning, in spite of Lilith's twisting of the rules, the heroes don't get anything that they didn't know already. The only real upside to the whole event is that Amity starts to realize the truth of the Emperor's Coven and open up to Luz after their falling out at Hexside.
• All Periods Are PMS: When Albedo gets turned into a copy of Luz, they both get their period, and the cramps continue to affect them even in alien form. The cramps are even a large part of why he surrenders, after being irritable for most of the omake.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Luz's opinion of the life-form lock feature. While it lets her stay as a specific alien for up to an hour, once she drops the form, even if it's before said hour is up, the Omnitrix won't let her change shape again for another hour, making it a liability in most fights where she needs to change form quickly and only useful in scenarios where she needs a longer-term disguise, like her "Luzura" form blending into the Isles better than her human one would. Not to mention that she apparently tends to get nauseous after she changes back.
• Badly Battered Babysitter: Luz briefly tried to take care of Big Chill's babies herself. Her and her friends and family quickly learned that it was a losing battle to take care fourteen babies with An Ice Person powers, and the babies currently live in a free-range facility near Mercury with a couple pf Plumber caretakers.
• Berserk Button:
  • Luz really hates bullies, and gives some Hexside students shooting spitballs at Willow an earful.
  • She also hates it when innocents, like the resurrected basilisks, are threatened, yelling at Lilith when the witch tries to make it look like they were protecting the citizens of the Isles by imprisoning them, and earlier she brings up Wrath's actions imprisoning people who don't deserve it when denying Lilith's offer for the Omnitrix.
  • Kevin really hates it when people are mean to Luz or the rest of Nocedas.
• The Cameo: In the omake chapter detailing what happened with Albedo in this AU, the cashier at the smoothie place is a teenager with brown hair and green eyes. Author comments make it clear that this is the local version of Ben.
• Cliffhanger: Chapter 24 ends right as Kikimora detonates a large crate of explosives in an attempt to kill Hunter during his fight with Luz.
• Composite Character:
  • Luz gets the Omnitrix instead of Ben in this AU, though he still exists and has shown up in a few omakes.
  • Manny takes on the role of Max as an older family member associated with the Plumbers that was originally meant to get the Omnitrix (and having weird culinary tastes, or at least a desire to experiment).
  • Charmcaster/Hope also takes on a role similar to Gwen's for Luz's team after her Heel–Face Turn.
  • Amity also takes on some of Gwen's traits, namely her Anodite heritage and inherent ability with mana-based magic.
• Contrasting Replacement Character:
  • Luz Noceda does not like her newfound fame after her secret identity is revealed after the Highbreed invasion, unlike Ben who loves to bask in it.
  • Unlike Ben who sees his alien forms as part of him, Luz sees hers as an independent identity entirely separate from herself.
    Luz: When I control fire it's with Heatblast, not Luz Noceda. When I absorb and redirect energy it’s Chromastone, not Luz Noceda. Everything cool I do is with one of the aliens in this watch, not as myself.
• Does Not Like Magic: As a result of having his soul sucked out by Hope's attempt to bring back her father, Kevin has a dislike of magic, or at least her magic, even after she's repeatedly proven her Heel–Face Turn.
• Decomposite Character:
  • Gwen's traits are split between Hope and Amity. The former gets her role as the magic-user in Luz's team during the Highbreed crisis, while the later gets her Anodite ancestry and mana abilities.
  • Hope is the one that ends up in the library with during the Wailing Star incident instead of Luz, and Kevin takes her place as the one who goes to the club meeting with Gus and gets stuck in a dangerous place because of Matt.
• The Dog Bites Back: After Luz cures all the witches that Tibbles mutated with Corrodium, they decide to pummel Tibbles as payback.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap:
  • For some reason, Luz is unable to access any forms other than the ones that she's personally scanned when in the Isles due to a lack of a connection to Primus, despite it having worked in alternate dimensions before. This obviously prevents her from using many of her more powerful alien forms, like Way Big, and thus from wrapping up the plot in ten minutes.
  • Hope is in her room when the Owl Beast first appears, and since she'd soundproofed it to deal with Kevin's noise, she can't hear him screaming for help. Combine that with Luz's Omnitrix being timed out, and it's a lot harder for the heroes to deal with than it normally would be.
• Easily Forgiven: Both Kevin and Hope note that Luz is quite forgiving, as she's forgiven both of them for their actions against her before their Heel–Face Turn(s).
• Everyone Has Standards: Hope may not like Amity much after learning of her Anodite heritage, but she does not support Edric and Emira stealing her diary and posting it around the school.
• Evil Knockoff: Thanks to Belos having Vilgax, with his knowledge of the Omnitrix's blueprints, in captivity (though apparently Belos was working on it long before he got his hands on the former warlord), this universe's version of Hunter has a knockoff Omnitrix called the Demonitrix, which lets him turn into Demon Realm creatures like a Slitherbeast. It's much larger than the Omnitrix though (consisting of a gauntlet more like the canon Ultimatrix in size connected to a pack on Hunter's back), needs basilisk blood samples mixed with the blood of the species of the transformation in order to work, and lacks a number of the features that the original has, like preventing damage from carrying over between transformations or the ability to repair genetic damage.
• Exact Words: Mentioned by both sides of the situation in "Covention Complication", when Luz makes a deal to duel Amity for information on the basilisks from Lilith if she wins, and giving up the Omnitrix if she loses. For the heroes, Kevin suggests grabbing the Omnitrix as soon as Lilith has it if Luz looses, as the deal never said how long she'd have it for. For Lilith, after Luz is declared the winner in spite of Lilith's Screw the Rules, I Make Them! moment, the "information" the heroes get is something that they had already figured out on their own, as Lilith never specified that it had to be useful information.
• Fantastic Drug: After getting his paws on some Corrodium, Tibbles finds a way to turn it into a gaseous form with less obvious mutagenic effects that he sells as a "performance enhancer". Then, when his customers are good and hooked, he uses their debt to lure them into being fully mutated and fighting for him in an arena without knowing what they're signing up for.
• Fantastic Racism: Hope has a grudge against Anodites because when Addwaitya attacked, none of the Anodites hanging around Legerdomain even tried to help the citizens evacuate. The fact that Anodites can snap their fingers and do feats of magic that take mages like Hope significant study and work, and tended to lord it over them while acting like partying tourists, certainly doesn't help. She's even initially rather rude to Amity after learning of Amity's Anodite heritage, despite the fact that Amity herself didn't know of it until just a couple days before and barely has any idea what it means, though she gets better after Amity manages to save her from Otabin.
• First Period Panic: In the first omake, we learn that Albedo, unfamiliar with human anatomy, kind of freaked out when their period started after they became a copy of Luz, outright asking people on the street for help.
• Hover Board: Luz owns one, which she can make use of to fight even without the use of the Omnitrix, and Manny gives a child-sized one to King as a gift.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Well, not quite "normal", but when the story starts Luz is feeling rather burnt out by her fame and the pressures that being known as the hero of the universe brings. In fact, part of why she's so excited to go on the mission to the Boiling Isles is because no one there besides Eda really knows about her, so she's not being hounded by fans and paparazzi.
• I Meant to Do That: King tries to claim that his turning Luz into Nanomech instead of Frankenstrike was intentional instead of a complete fluke. Luz clearly doesn't believe him, but doesn't call him on it besides some minor snark.
• Imported Alien Phlebotinum: As it turns out, alien tech is leaking into the Isles alongside human trash.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: After getting roped into a talk at Hexside that somehow resulted in him, Gus, and Matt getting sucked into the Null Void, Kevin doesn't want to relay the story to Hope sober, so he drinks some 5% alcohol apple blood, and Hope joins him after nearly getting stitched into a book by Otabin.
• Instant Expert:
  • Due to her experience with Heatblast, Luz is able to use a fire spell via a training wand on the first try. If anything she's too skilled at it, as she uses up the entire charge in one go that reduces the training dummy to ash. That said, she has some minor issues when using fire glyphs in her witch's duel against Amity because she's used to being able to fire longer bursts as Heatblast and has to remember that the glyphs work differently.
  • Since Luz has experience with Blitzwolfer, she has an easy time figuring out how to use her titan form's sonic shouts in her witch's duel with Amity. She even compares the form to "Blitzwolfer-lite with wings".
  • Luz's played guitar before, but Kevin's never let her use his electric guitar before. Nevertheless, thanks to a combination of her own great memory and Frankenstrike's enhanced processing ability, she gets the hang of it pretty quickly in Bard class.
  • Luz admits to King that the Omnitrix downloads some of the alien form's instincts into her head when she uses it, like a form of muscle memory that makes it easier for her to use the powers of her forms for the first time. Unfortunately, this means that she has trouble properly explaining to King how to use his Super-Scream abilities.
• Jedi Mind Trick: Mealymouth, one of Luz's aliens, has a more limited form of this. She tries to use it to get One to tell her where the other basilisks are, but One is too hateful and paranoid for her to manage to get through in the limited time she has.
• Not Quite Flight: Luz's titan form's wings aren't strong enough to support flight, but she can hover for a brief moment or use her Super-Scream ability to get enough of a boost to glide for a few seconds.
• Point of Divergence:
  • Author comments note that in this timeline, Max never got involved with aliens, instead going to the moon with NASA, so the Tennysons currently lead normal lives.
  • The Nocedas managed to track Kevin down after their first encounter, and basically adopted him.
  • Thanks to Kevin, it's realized far earlier that Vee replaced Luz, and the Plumbers start an operation to rescue the other basilisks and offer them refuge on Earth.
  • Luz finds the fire glyph after the light glyph, after using a training wand at Hexside.
  • Luz finds the plant glyph immediately after entering Hexside, instead of right before Grom.
  • King discovers his Super-Scream powers earlier than in canon due to Luz's Titan form letting him know that they exist.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • Apparently the Titans once "attacked" Legerdomain in the distant past, only to be repelled by the Ancients of the realm with few-to-no casualties on either side. Reading between the lines, it's clear that these "invaders" were fleeing from the Archivists and their attempts at Titan genocide, but failed to properly communicate this to the Ancients.
  • When Eda becomes the Owl Beast, the fact that Hope soundproofed her room using magic to deal with Kevin's noise means that she can't hear him crying for help. And because Manny didn't tell Kevin or Luz that he gave Hope a Plumber's badge for the mission, they didn't think to use it to call her.
• Purple Is Powerful: Luz's Omnitrix is colored purple in this AU, and as for powerful, given what it allows her to do, it couldn't not be considered powerful. Several of her forms have purple colorations as well, like her form based off of Warden Wrath or her basilisk form.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: After Luz beats Amity in their duel, Lilith tries to claim that Amity was the winner despite her having surrendered due to Luz's use of glyph magic, despite the fact that there aren't any rules against using wild magic in a duel, just because Lilith's the referee and if Luz looses she gets the Omnitrix. Luckily, thanks to Hunter and Kevin, Lilith's cheating with the Construction glyph on Amity is exposed, and since Amity used magic before Luz did, Luz is rightfully declared the winner.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In this AU, Manny is alive, instead of dying to what was presumably cancer in canon. He still got sick, but recovered after visiting a hospital in Bellwood (with it being implied that some of his Plumber contacts used alien medicine to help save his life).
• Stating the Simple Solution:
  • When the group is debating how to disguise Kevin on the Isles, he just puts his hood up.
  • After the Owl Beast is subdued, which Hope couldn't hear due to the soundproofing she put up to deal with Kevin's noise, she asks why they didn't just call her Plumber's badge that Manny gave her. The answer is that they had no idea that Manny did give her said badge.
• Synchronous Episodes: Hope's adventure with Amity in the library in Chapter 17 takes place at the same time as Luz, King, and Eda handling the Bat Queen's babies and Kevin getting stuck in the Null Void with Matt and Gus.
• Too Dumb to Live: In Chapter 24 Kikimora, in an attempt to find a power source in the caves at the Knee, keeps recklessly setting off explosives and nearly collapsing the tunnels on all their heads despite being warned of how unstable the caverns are. And then she decides to go further and set off a large crate of them where Hunter and Luz are fighting in an attempt to kill the former...
• Wham Episode:
  • Both parts of "Covention Complication". In the first part, Luz gets a prophecy from a spirit that can sense Ghostfreak in the Omnitrix, confirming that he's going to escape while Luz is in the Demon Realm. In the second part Luz changes into her Titan form for the first time during her duel with Amity by accident and showcases the form's Super-Scream abilities, Amity learns the truth about the basilisks, and it's revealed that said basilisks are hiding out in an area with potent magic hidden behind a locked gate, with one of them having laid a clutch of eggs, along with "One" plotting revenge against the witches of the Isles.
  • Both parts of "What Can Go Wrong, Will Go Wrong". Not only does using Barcus's potion gives Luz a vision of what is implied to be Malware, One not only manages to absorb energy from the Omnitrix and mutates in a fashion similar to Kevin, but she manages to drain mana-based magic from Hope and Amity, with the latter proving to have Anodite heritage somehow.
• The World's Expert (on Getting Killed): Like in canon, Matt claims that his detention knowledge will help when he, Gus, and Kevin accidentally end up in the Null Void thanks to him, only to get abducted by a Null Guardian almost immediately afterwards.
• Wrong Context Magic: Luz's Omnitrix abilities are nothing that the Demon Realm has ever seen before. Warden Wrath assumes that she has to be an escaped basilisk when he sees her turn into Blitzwolfer, because it's the only way he can make sense of it.
• You Are Number 6: As in canon the Emperor's Coven only gave their revived basilisks numbers, not names, which they literally branded onto them.

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