(AN: Updates will resume in January)

After a decent enough night in your room with Yoru on guard once more, and with King curled up at the bottom of the sleeping bag, you head downstairs to help Eda with breakfast. You take some of the Yakitori meat and vegetables off their skewers and fold them into an omelet using Griffin eggs. After breakfast, however, Eda has you (in disguise) and King (plus Senna) follow her into the nearby woods. In her hands are several cloth/linen bags and a few different-sized pickaxes.

After a few minutes of walking the trees start to thin out until you find yourselves approaching a beach. The wind suddenly shifts and you bend over clasping at your nose as the scent of rotting flesh and garbage almost makes you puke. You dry heave for several moments as you desperately try to cut off your sense of smell using your chakra with little success. You feel a hand settle on your back along with a three-toed paw on your leg as you try to recover.

The moment you muffle the scent enough that you won't dry heave with every word you croak out "What even is that smell" catching Eda's attention. As you describe the scent her face slowly takes on a look of realization as a drawn-out 'ohhhhhhhhhhhh' escapes her lips. She points somewhere on the beach and following her finger you see a large creature moored on the sand. She explains that the creature is something called a Trash Slug and gets that name due to its diet, trash. She carefully brings you closer keeping an eye on you in case you double over again, but you manage to keep your breakfast down for now.

She stops not far from a pool of what looks like bile and sticks her hand in it before swirling it around. She pulls out a round mass that after a moment clock as something alive, due to the nature chakra wafting off of it. She hands it to you, and you hesitantly take it and give it a quick shake to get off the remaining bile before holding it in your hands. She thankfully places the hand that wasn't used to pick up the mass, on your shoulder and tells you that a good witch is resourceful so she wants you to take this mass and figure out a use for it rather than have you help her with the trash slug.

You give her a small nod and give King a pat on the head, before spinning around and walking back to the Owl House. Midway back there you stop and pause as you feel a slight flare of nature chakra further away. You tilt your head slightly before eyeing Senna before heading toward the flare. You eventually find your way to the edge of a clearing. You carefully peer through the forage and find what you assume to be the source of the flare. A glasses-wearing witchling, or what you assume to be a witchling, light-skinned and stocky appearing with dark blue hair. They, she?, wear some sort of uniform with pink and black coloring.

You watch as she paces back and forth and you listen as she mentions bad grades, her parents are right, better opportunities, and that needs to get to school. You watch as she unknowingly steps on a lone flower, and she seems upset the moment she realizes it. She kneels before it, forms a spell circle, and heals the flower. You stare at the flower and you really hope that isn't this world's Flowey. With a quick twist of her pointer finger a green spell circle forms above the flower and within moments it perks back to life.

For a moment you're interested in this new magic, but then off in the distance you can hear wooden wheels against the ground coming closer, and based on the cart beside the witch before you, you can take a guess on what is coming. After a moment you just faintly make out the witch's ear twitch as you assume she hears the same noise you did. A cart similar to the one already in the clearing rolls its way next to the witchling, the only difference being a slight green glow surrounding it that you can just faintly see.

But the witchling atop of the pot on the cart however is what really catches your attention. The witchling wears a uniform similar to the other but has light green hair with a burst of brown directly above their forehead giving it a starburst pattern from what you can see. You can almost feel the light blush building on your face as you gaze upon this witchling. But then they open their mouth. "Willow! Wow. You're so unnoticeable I almost rolled into ya." You almost shiver slightly at her voice but stop as the words finally connect in your head. Of all the rotten luck in the world, the first crush that you have, and could allow yourself to have, is on a bully.

You watch with furrowed brows as the two exchange words. You hear the first girl, Willow?, call the mean girl, Amity as they talk about their schoolwork, which catches your attention. You have to remind yourself that usually, schooling goes on past twelve but your past days in the Academy make you in no hurry to head back to school, heck in your original life school was a pain to get through due to a mixture of physical problems and mental ones.

You're drawn out of your musings as Willow's pot starts to rattle in her cart before it tips over of its own accord and spills out a puddle of purple liquid. You take a hesitant sniff of the air and find that besides a more potent scent of clay, you can't tell much more about this stuff at a distance. You hear the mean witch call Willow 'Half-a-Witch Willow' which makes your eyes narrow as the mean witch snaps her fingers after taking off the lid to her own pot with a command of, "Abomination, rise."

Rising from the pot is a humanoid figure made out of the purple fluid. At first, you instinctively think zombie based on the reaching out arms but you manage to catch yourself right before you grab a kunai and chucking it at the thing's head. This thing, this... abomination, reaches out with its hand and pokes Willow on her forehead as it speaks in a weird tone, "You...Are...A...Star..." before the arm drops down. The two continue to speak for another moment before Amity makes the thing disappear back into the pot before she starts to push it in the direction she had originally been headed.

You have to stop yourself from flipping her off as she struts away from the two of you, before turning your attention back toward Willow. Almost immediately you can tell that something is very wrong. Rolling off her in waves is an obscene amount of nature chakra, an amount that you're worried will turn her to stone if she doesn't get a hold of it soon enough. You cautiously begin to make your way forward, when before you can even recognize it a vine saturated with nature chakra wraps around your ankle. Before you can even move it tightens briefly before yanking you into the clearing, making you and Senna both yelp slightly as you're both pulled off the ground and suspending you upside down in front of Willow.

You wrap your arms around where Senna is swaying before the witchling. You notice that her eyes are completely encased in a soft green glow that is by no means natural. The moment she realizes that she has you hanging by a vine Willow seems to come back to herself, allowing the light green glowing eyes to disappear to reveal expressive olive green eyes. Almost immediately after that, you're dropped to the ground where you land with an oomph on your back. You and Willow exchange a look as you suck in a breath as Senna scrambles out of your hanten, catching her off guard.

You allow her to help you up off the ground and brush the worst of the dirt off you as Willow starts to apologize profusely for what just happened. You wave her off, if anything you blame Amity more than her, and she did no lasting damage, barely a few scrapes, you've had worse raising the new members of the Pride, Skulk, or Mischief. Willow formally introduces herself to you, and you give her the name Sam in return.

The two of you get to talking, her asking if you were new here, what school you attended, and your track, that last one throws you for a loop but you manage to give her a dismissal answer hoping that you're not screwing yourself over here and make a note to ask Eda about this stuff later. You help righten out the cart and pot before turning your attention toward the clay-smelling slime. You can't help but give it a poke and to your surprise, as you pull away your finger a 'thread' of the slime comes with it.

You ask if she has any idea how to transfer the slime back into the pot as she stares at it with a look of defeat. You try to think about something to get her mind off this thing and ask about that thing she did with the flower earlier which catches her attention real fast. She looks away and scuffs the floor with her foot as she mentions that she shouldn't even be doing plant magic which makes you internally frown in confusion before you press her a bit more about why she would rather be doing something she either hates or has no emotional connection to when her soul sings for plants, which takes her aback for a moment before she shrugs.

From off in the distance, the two of you can hear a bell ringing catching your attention. You eye Willow with a raised eyebrow before she sighs before she rolls the cart to where the bell is ringing. With nothing better to do you stick your hands in your hanten and follow after her with Senna at your heels. From within your pockets, you feel the thing Eda gave you and pull it out to look at it. Then you get an idea, and you speed up and slip it inside the pot. When Willow gives you a questioning look, and you tell her to use it as a template to make her Abomination more stable.

She gets a look on her face, a look of worry maybe, before the two of you reach the school. "Welcome to Hexside School of Magic and Demonics," you stare in disbelief at the size of the school in question for a moment before you watch as Willow struggles briefly to get the cart up the stairs, and you grab the front of the cart and help her get it up the stairs.

You watch as Willow makes her way to where you assume her classroom to be before you decide to take a tour here, shinobi style. For the next few hours, you wander the halls using the ceilings taking stock of the school. Here and there you cause a bit of chaos, you mess with the bells, which are apparently a bit sentient, you 'steal' a few trophies and hide them throughout the building, and upon finding a few 'ratworms' in the stables around the back of the school you take one of the smaller ones and place it in the gymnasium.

Unfortunately, you end up getting caught by a man with something on his head. As he approaches you with a frown on his face, you see a clipboard in hand. You stop what you're doing, lean against the wall, and wait for whatever is about to happen. He stops in front of you, glares at you, and asks, "Just what do you think you're doing here? You're not a student here, and yet here you are causing chaos. You are now banned from the premises give me your name and get out of here."

For a moment, you freeze thinking before an idea pops into your mind. With an internal smirk you speak, "The name is Sam, Samantha Clawthorne in fact." This gives you a much better reaction than you first thought. The man goes to write your name, before freezing in terror. He looks you up and down as his face pales before he stammers, "A-any relation to a Lilith Clawthorne?"

You give him a slow shake of your head, before stating "Sorry, Eda Clawthorne is the only parent I have ever known." This just makes him pale further, and the best thing about this this statement isn't even false. Your godfather might of looked after you, but he was never really a parent to you. Eda on the other hand was more of a parent to you in the past few days than your godfather ever was in the three years you had known him. As he starts to almost hyperventilate, you begin to wonder if this was the school that Eda once attended, if the man before you was an old teacher of hers, because with the way this man was reacting you would think he was having war flashbacks, rather than remembering Eda's pranks.

His eyes are then drawn farther down to Senna who sits at your feet looking at him with a blank look on their face. If this guy wasn't feeling faint before, he certainly was now, you eye his now swaying form for a moment, before you click your tongue as you push off the wall and walk, more of a saunter really, past him. You casually swipe the 'wanted' poster that somehow already has your disguise and code name on it. You speed walk toward where you believe the front entrance to the school is, but somehow get turned around. Thankfully not long after that, you find yourself almost running directly into Willow and a younger witchling.

This witchling has dark skin, dark brown hair, and dark blue, almost grey eyes. And like the rest of the students here are wearing the uniform in light blue. After eyeing them for a moment you realize that you can feel Willow's nature chakra fluctuating in an uneven pattern, a bit similar to what happened earlier. If you knew her a bit better you might offer a shoulder, or place a hand on hers but since you had just met this very morning you instead awkwardly stand before them as you try to figure out a way to help. You watch as the younger witchling coaches Willow through a set of breathing exercises to help calm her down for a minute or two more before you feel her chakra almost mellow out completely.

The witchling stares at you for a moment, a confused look on their face at your lack of uniform before Willow greets you with a stoic look in her eyes. You blink as you take her all in and realize that her uniform is completely covered in that Abomination goop from earlier. You ask her what happened and she goes on to explain that she hadn't used the thing you had given her because she hadn't wanted to mix tracks and be thrown into detention because of it. Here she seems to realize that the two of you are ignoring her friend and she introduces you to Augustus and gives him your name in turn. You give him a look before asking if you could call him Gus instead, to which he perks up significantly.

At this point a wave of red washes over the alcove you're all in. You slowly stick your head around the corner half expecting a knife or something to be thrown at you but nothing happens... at first. You call over your shoulder and ask if they have any idea what that light was, to which they reply that was Principle Bump sealing the school. You sigh, because you had half expected something like this to happen, having someone unexpected in a school without everlasting problems was just asking for too much. You wonder how you're going to get out of this mess when a lightbulb goes off in your head. "Hey, Willow if you don't mind, could you use that thing I gave you earlier to help me break out of here before this Bump tries to do something to me... like cut me open."

She gets a look in her eyes before standing and pulling the nature chakra-infused object from her uniform. As she deals with that you turn your attention to Gus and find that he has a somewhat familiar magazine in hand. It takes you a moment to place it but eventually, you remember that this magazine was once popular with the more... fangirlish of your classmates, showing off different ways to attract a boyfriend and more to the preteens. You also find that since the magazine is still in its native writing, Japanese, the entire thing has been annotated from cover to back in English. You ask him a few questions about the magazine to get a feel about how much he has figured out before sneakily nudging toward the more absurd 'correct' answers found within the laminated pages.

At this point, you and Gus hear a loud crashing and squealing sound echo down the hall. You turn your attention back to Willow and find that the entire hall leading up to the front door is almost smothered with vines. You walk up behind her with a look of amazement on your face as Senna scuttles up your pants, up your hanten, and then into it. You hesitantly reach out a hand and only once you're sure that she has seen it do you softly rest it on her shoulder. You give it a slight squeeze before going to speak, "Now this, this is what I'm talking about. If anyone calls you Half-A-Witch after this, then they're dumber than a sack of rocks Willow."

You just faintly hear her stifle a snort of laughter before waving you off. You give both of them a wave as you walk out of the giant hole that was once a set of doors. From behind you, you can hear footsteps that suddenly stop. You speed up your escape and just before you're out of hearing range you just hear "Remarkable." You make the unanimous decision to book it out of there, and within minutes you're jogging down the path that leads to the Owl House.

The moment you make it into the clearing that has the house in it, you have to slide to a stop and pinwheel your arms back as you take in the sight before you. On the roof of the Owl House is King with a giant barrel of some sort, while directly beneath him is a living trash slug that thankfully doesn't smell. You see him glare at the beast before loudly proclaiming that 'he has no son' before pushing the barrel over, allowing the contents to spill all over the thing. To your great befuddlement, the moment the contents land on the creature the thing starts to shrink and compact until it reaches the size of your palm. It lets out a shrill squeak before scooching off for yonder.

You turn your attention back to King just in time to see him slip off the roof. You jolt forward to catch him, but Eda catches him before you have a chance to. You have to windmill your arms to prevent yourself from crashing into both of them, catching them slightly off guard. You ask what you have missed, to which Eda just laughs slightly and tells you, "Just a bet." You raise an eyebrow and say "If that was the result of a bet remind me not to take bets with you two in the future. But before I forget here," You pass along the banned poster with your picture and the name Samantha Clawthorne on it.

For a moment she doesn't seem to realize the last name, but then she does a double-take before staring at you with wide eyes. You let out a forced chuckle as you rub the back of your head as you scuff the dirt with a foot, before speaking, "Probably should have gotten your consent about this beforehand, but I needed a surname that wouldn't raise any eyebrows, and... well... what better way than using the name of the one I'm currently living with right?"

For a moment Eda has a look of sadness in her eyes but you blink and just as suddenly it was there it was gone. She forces out a chuckle as she passes back the poster and you begin to realize that something isn't quite right here, but you can't force her to talk about it until she's ready. She places a hand on your head and ruffles your hair slightly. You give her a small smile and a short side hug as she pulls you into the house proper King still balanced on her shoulder. You're barely in the door when she asks, "How did you get banned in only a few hours with Bumpypoo in charge?" This confirms your theory that this man taught Eda years ago, and most likely dealt with her 'pranks' before. With a small smile, you begin to explain your day making her and King both laugh as they hear the chaos you had caused within Hexside.