In retrospect, Eda should have suspected that there was something off about the human—Luz, she reminded herself—when her tent spontaneously combusted just a few seconds after meeting her; if not then, then the fact that she was able to pull some sort of foam-shooting device out of her overly-sized backpack without skipping a beat should have tipped her off. The simple fact that she was a human, and not a particularly bright one who could easily be manipulated, distracted her from all of that as she talked her into using her human DNA to break through the barrier containing King's crown at the Conformatorium, and the joy of seeing Hooty getting stung by a bee made her push it even further aside.
If she had known that her night would end with her seeing the Conformatorium reduced to a smoldering pile of ash, she probably would have thought about it a little more.
"On the plus side, all of the good prisoners managed to escape in time, so this is probably a win for us," Luz said, her smile still as wide and unwarranted as it was the moment they first met.
"But I didn't get my crown! Now my true power will elude me until the end of time!" King cried about that for about twenty seconds before Luz pulled another paper crown out of her backpack and placed it on his head. "Yes! I can feel my power flooding back into me! Life is good, again!" King didn't seem to notice or mind that the crown Luz gave didn't even look like his old one, the new crown coming from somewhere called "Mr. Slushy Dawg", but whatever made him happy, she supposed.
"Okay, now that that's over with, someone feel like telling me what happened in the five minutes I left you two alone?" Eda asked.
"Oh, yeah, I can do that," Luz said. "After you dropped us off, we ran into some prisoners who were all locked up just for being kind of weird, and I just did not agree with that, so I tried to set them free, and I did!"
"Really? Those levers are pretty heavy, and no offense, kid, but you look like you weigh thirty pounds soaking wet underneath that giant backpack you got there."
"None taken, and I didn't actually manage to pull it up, it just broke off. And then it went flying right into Warden Wrath's face." Eda truly wished she could have been there to see that. "It must have hurt him a lot, because he started spitting out fire and melting the bars on a bunch of the jail cells and a bunch of people started running free. One of the cells had some magic-looking ribbons around the bars that melted when the fire melted the bars, and then this freaky-looking guy flew out. He had these big wings and a lot of hair and three heads attached to his head. Oh! There was also a skull where his stomach was supposed to be."
"Luz, did you cause Albion the Emoter to escape from jail?"
"Was that his name? All the heads made me think of Hecate, so I didn't catch it. He seemed like a nice guy, though, even as his extra heads started going off about how the world would be torn apart with each flap of his wings; he shot these big lasers from his wings that broke a lot of the Conformatorium, so I guess he really meant it. It's okay, though; I asked him not to destroy the world, and he said he wouldn't because he owed me for setting him free."
"Even if he didn't, there's no way he'd be able to beat me, especially when my full power is on the rise!" King said with a maniacal laugh. Eda decided that it would be best not to talk about how King had no chance against a demon as dangerous as Albion the Emoter and motioned for Luz to continue her story.
"So after Albion left through the giant hole in the ceiling he made, Warden Wrath started yelling at us and threatening to kill us, but then this tiny little girl with a big nose tripped over a loose brick and fell in his mouth. I pulled a boxing glove gun out of my backpack to give him the Heimlich maneuver, he spat out Tiny Nose, and wouldn't you know it, she ended up flying right into a guard and bowled him over. That guard fell into another guard, and that guard fell into another guard, it was this big domino-type deal that ended with the last guard falling head-first into all of these magic bombs—"
"And the bombs just went off?" Eda cut in.
"No, of course not. Warden Wrath made one of his arms turn into a spear, then I jumped out of the way and tied him up with a jump rope, then his clothes caught on fire when he jumped into some of the embers he left behind when he was breathing fire, then he fell over onto the bombs, and that's when they went off."
"Okay, I guess that lines up with when I started hearing explosions." The way that Luz energetically nodded her head while still smiling was probably more unsettling than she had intended for it to be.
"It was awesome! Especially the part where we almost died," King said.
"But we didn't, and neither did anyone else. Some people are probably a little beat up, and Warden Wrath and the guards are probably a lot beat up, but the point is that everything turned out fine. I mean, aside from the building burning down to the ground and all, but it didn't seem like a good place, so that's fine, right?"
"Yeah, sure." Luz smiled as she reached into her backpack and pulled out a bag of pistachios. She offered Eda and King some, but only Eda refused, as she was still trying to wrap her head around everything that she just heard, mostly in regards to the utter insanity of it all.
"Kid, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that none of that was a coincidence," Eda said.
"No, all of it was. I just made it more likely to happen than not," Luz said.
"What, you got some kind of bad luck curse, or something?" King asked in-between bites of pistachios.
"It's not a curse, King. Curses don't work like that," Eda said.
"Oh yeah? Since when are you an expert on curses?"
"Since none of your business, that's when." Not the best deflection she could come up with, but it would have to do.
"I don't really get any of this, but it's not a curse, it's Murphy's Law," Luz said. Eda made sure to give Luz a look that made it abundantly clear that she had no idea what she was talking about. "See, Murphy's Law is the idea that anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and my family, the Murphys, have embodied that idea for as long as we can remember, meaning that wherever we go, things like this," Luz flourished over the pile of burning trash that was once the Conformatorium, "end up happening. It's usually only the men of the Murphy family who inherit Murphy's Law, not even my mom got it, but I somehow ended up being the first female Murphy to get it. Lucky me, right?"
"You have a weird definition of 'lucky', kid."
"Hey, when life gives you lemons, you pull out your faceguard to keep the citric acids from blinding you and making you fall off of a cliff into a chasm of dangerous spikes."
"I like the way you think, Luz. More odd-tasting nuts, please." Luz seemed happy to give King another handful of pistachios.
"Right. Right. Well, I guess you want to be going home, then. I'll pull the door around and you can get back to bringing this unique thing of yours to all your friends." Eda pulled her key out of her hair and pressed down on the eye; with that, they just needed to wait a minute or two for the portal to fly over to them, and Eda wouldn't have to deal with the embodiment of unbridled chaos, anymore.
"Actually, do you mind if I stay here for the summer? Today was a ton of fun, and I was thinking that it might be fun to learn magic and have a few more ways to deal with Murphy's Law."
"Hey, if more stuff like this happens, I'm game," King said.
"You don't make the decisions around here," Eda said. "As for you, kid, as much as I could use the extra help, I'm sure your friends and family or whatever are probably missing you, so you shouldn't make them worry."
"No, it's fine. I can tell my mom what I'm doing, and everyone else in town is always trying to get me to go somewhere else whenever school is out, so that works out."
"Oh." That was all Eda had to say in response to Luz's unexpectedly sad comment as the portal finally made its way over to them, not that she seemed to be aware of any of that. "Look, Luz, you're a nice kid and all, but I just don't know if I'm really equipped to deal with this Murphy's Law stuff, you know?"
"I do know, but that's what the backpack is for. I promise that things don't always get as bad as this, so how 'bout it?" That time, when Luz was smiling at her, Eda actually let herself feel affected by it. On the one hand, her positivity felt infectious to a suffocating degree, and even if she didn't show it, it was clear that her life on Earth had room for improvement. On the other hand, she was a literal walking disaster, and with everything that was going on in her life, she didn't need someone who could make it worse simply by existing.
It was a tough decision to make, and it was one that was taken completely out of Eda's hands when a fleshy axe flew over and cut the portal in half.
"Hey look, Warden Wrath survived. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Luz asked as Warden Wrath pulled himself out of the rubble.
"You three! You destroyed Conformatorium! Released dozens of criminals onto the Isles! Cost me my pension and dental plan!" Warden Wrath said. "You won't get away with this! I will make sure that every second you still draw breath for is filled with nothing but everlasting—"
In the middle of Warden Wrath's ranting, the griffin Eda and Luz flew by earlier picked him up in its beak, and flew off into the night sky.
"Well that worked itself out," Luz said with a smile.
"You're bleeding a lot," King said.
"I am?" Luz put a finger to her forehead and got it covered in blood. "Neat. A new scar. Been a while since I got one on the head."
"Be happy all you want, we're still taking care of that when we get back to the Owl House." Luz's already big smile somehow got even bigger and brighter than before.
"You mean I get to stay and learn magic?" Eda did her best to make her sigh as short as possible.
"Well, considering that I have no idea how long it's gonna take to fix the portal, I don't really have a choice in the matter."
"I'll take it!" Luz wrapped her up in a hug, and despite her usual aversion to things like that, she still let it happen, even when one of the surrounding bone structures broke apart and nearly crushed them all.
"We should go home, right?" King asked.
"Yep. If I'm gonna die, I'd prefer to die in the comfort of my own home," Eda said.
"That's the spirit!" Once again, Luz's positive attitude was infectious to a suffocating degree.
"...no word on how long it will take to reconstruct the Conformatorium or round up the escaped criminals, but Emperor's Coven leader Lilith Clawthorne assures us that the inevitable tax hike to cover the damages will be reasonable and that Albion the Emoter returning to his rookery atop the Knee does not mean that we are due for a millennium of unrelenting misery as was once prophesied. Ms. Clawthorne refused to comment further, and Warden Wrath wasn't available for commentary on account of being fed to a nest of adorable baby griffins. Coming up next, what the migration of the old-timey bathing suits to the beachside means for your ability to influence on social media."
The crystal ball of Blight manor was shut off at that point; the people watching had gotten everything they needed to get out of Perry Porter's report, and then some.
"Well, dear, this isn't the sort of news we were expecting to hear tonight, but it's definitely what we needed to hear," Odalia Blight said with the evil laugh that she had spent years perfecting.
"Yes, it looks like we have an unknown ne'er-do-well to thank for throwing the Isles into a bit of chaos for us to take advantage of," Alador Blight said with an evil laugh that wasn't nearly as good as Odalia's; evil was hard to come by in their day and age, though, so she couldn't afford to be picky.
"Indeed, we do. For while the Boiling Isles deal with this chaos, we will swoop in and make our move." Odalia stood up in front of the brightly lit fireplace and, with the kind of dramatics that befitted a true evildoer, undid her blouse to reveal a shirt emblazoned with a picture of a muffin inside of a purple heart. "It is finally time for L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. to make their next move in the Boiling Isles!"
"Honey, I agree with you, but how long have you been wearing that shirt underneath your other clothes?" Alador asked. That was not the question Odalia expected to hear, and she wasn't entirely sure how to respond to it.
"That's not important."
"Do you always wear that underneath your clothes in case you get a chance to do something like this?"
"I said it's not important."
"I understand that being evil requires dramatic flare, but that just seems silly."
"I didn't ask for your opinion, Alador!"
"Mom, Dad, what are you doing?" Odalia and Alador—Odalia quickly buttoning up her blouse to cover up her L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. shirt—turned to see their youngest child, Amity, standing in the doorway with a glass of chocolate milk in hand. "I came down for a glass of milk before bed and I heard you talking about a bunch of nonsense. Is this about that weird club you two are in?"
"It's not weird, and go back to your room, young lady!" Odalia shouted. Amity stared at them for a second before taking a sip of her chocolate milk and doing just that. "Honestly, that girl. If she wants to be in the know, she needs to try harder to have even a single evil bone in her body like her parents."
"She can probably skip the bones that make you wear extra shirts every day, though." Odalia wasted no time in smacking Alador upside his head.
By the way, Albion the Emoter is based on a creepy drawing Dana Terrace posted to her Tumblr.