Chapter 1 : Evil Always Comes In Fours

Mal gritted her teeth as she watched the festivities take place beyond her bedroom window. Cobwebs circled her room, homing many of her eight-legged friends she used to scare and terrorize the fearful little children that dared pass by her home. Her eyes glowed a bright green as she locked eyes with the next awaiting victim. A boy, same age, a few inches taller. He was sporting a killer grin. Mal didn't like it.

"Jay..." The ten-year-old cursed, gripping on the moth-eaten velvet seat cushion of her bay-window.

With a wink, Jay eyed the daughter of Maleficent as he proceeded to pick-pocket three bystanders, before swooning another ten-year-old into giving him her rotten apple. Mal rolled her eyes when he climbed up to the window, and smiled at her.

"Hey, Mal-" The son of Jafar was quickly cut off, "Anything good?" Mal cracked open the window, eyeing his filled pockets. He nodded, "A few coins..."

She rolled her eyes again, "Keep 'em."

"Thanks."

Mal cringed, "Don't say that. 'Thanks' implies that I was being nice. Which I wasn't."

He nodded, "Of course, you're never nice..."

She smiled. Jay's face quickly drained of color when he looked past Mal's shoulders, his eyes widened and said, "H-Hello... M-Maleficent..."

Mal's eyes flourished a ghostly green, finally noticing the shadow of two horns looming over her. She snapped forward, pushing Jay off the edge. He plummeted down onto the cold, hard cement below. She let out a wicked laugh as she quickly locked her window, and cautiously turned around.

"H-Hey, Mom." Mal peered up at the mighty Maleficent in all her -short- glory. Her horns were as sharp as ever, and her eyes never glowed brighter.

"Mal, I've told you how much I despise that boy..." The evil fairy's words quickly sank into the ten-year-old, who unconsciously sunk her head down between her shoulders. But Maleficent gripped her chin and snaked her head back up to lock eyes with her. "Look at me, dear."

The purple-haired girl gulped, feeling her mother's finger nails sink into her skin.

"Never disobey me again, my dear child. There will be consequences."

She threw her daughter's head back with a jolt, hearing it crack another frame in her stained-glass window. Mal whimpered from the pain, watching as her mother disappeared into the dark corridor. "Y-Yes... M-Mother..."

Jay gasped for breath as he gripped onto the mossy wall of Maleficent's home, circling around as he blinked from blurry vision. The fall knocked the wind out of him.

Even at ten-years-old, the small child knew the feeling of pain. Jafar was no gentle father. Nor were some of his father's clients, who used him as a way of a bargaining chip when deals went south. He can still remember in vivid detail, the flash of silver that unsheathed from a man's cloak, pressing against his throat as he screamed at his father to cheapen the price. In tears, Jay begged to be let go. His father barely made a dent in the price, knocking off a few coins at best.

Not that he was allowed to tell anybody, but Mal was the one who saved him. The man got a nasty bite on his ankle after eight-year-old Mal saw the conflict unfold in front of her as she walked by. The two kids darted out of the store and hid for hours. Even Mal was scared, what would happen if her mother found out she saved someone? Surely nothing good. They'd been frenemies ever since.

Jay was knocked back off his feet when he stumbled into a young boy, "Ouch!" The younger one stammered, gripping his heel after Jay kicked it.

"Watch it!" The young thief yelled. He caught a glimpse of white, frosted-hair before he dashed off down one of the alleyways.

Jay slowly rose, dusting off his backside and boots, "What a brat..." He muttered under his breath, stepping down off a cluster of broken and busted-up cement. Without a care, he quickly swiped a few more rotten apples from a stand when the guy wasn't looking.

He smiled after a bite, rotten, his favorite flavor.

Carlos stumbled down the dark alleyway, panting for breath after running from his grieving mother. He found Cruella weeping over her Dalmatian furs, screaming for just one more puppy. But when she spotted him in the doorway, she latched onto his arm and yanked him into the giant heap of clothes, throwing and slamming more and more of the furs on top of him until he was gasping for air.

The De Vil family was a wild one, at best.

Cruella thrashed around in the pile, screaming over her son's screams as he desperately tried to dig himself out. The sheer weight was already crushing his chest. The little eight-year-old was crying, too.

He clawed his way out after Cruella's thrashing pushed a few heavy coats off the load above him. Tears rolled down his freckled-cheeks as he dragged himself off the pile. Crawling silently on all fours, he left his mother to her weekly-tantrums. Once out of sight, he dashed out of his home and into the streets of the Isle.

The island seemed even smaller every time he escaped his dreadful mother. He was trapped, with her.

He didn't even know how far he ran before he stumbled into an older boy. Carlos recognized him easily, one of the older kids at Dragon Elementary; Jay, the son of Jafar. He knew he was right when the boy kicked him in the heel after the initial fall. Jay was like that. But Carlos bit his lip after yelling an ear-piercing, "Ouch!" and continued to run down the adjacent alleyway. He didn't bother looking back to see if Jay was alright.

Carlos wasn't much of a talker, he was quiet, oddly-talented with technology, and nothing like his mother. Apart from the hair, of course.

"Dogs are vicious. Mother is vicious. I am vicious." Carlos repeated the words over and over as he cradled his hurt ankle behind one of the alleyway's many dumpsters. His mantra, as some would call it, was enough to stop the tears. He added the last part just to make himself feel more threatening, not that it would ever work.

Evie smiled happily, twirling around in her tiara of seashells she collected by the docks. Her full-length mirror was in the corner of her room, cracked and rusty from years of ugly misuse. Evil Queen got her hands on it when first brought to the island, after being resurrected, of course. Evie got it on her tenth-birthday only a few weeks before, and she loved it.

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the prettiest of them all?" Evie gleamed her pearly-white teeth, kissing the mirror before finishing with one last twirl.

Being Castle-schooled wasn't so bad. She was never late to class, but on the Isle of the Lost, that's considered something a goody-goody would do. And she wasn't a goody-goody. Or a Princess. Or anything special. At least that's what the kids who walked past her window said about her on their way to Dragon Elementary, late, as always.

"Ah!" Evil Queen rushed into the room, "My baby!"

Evie's face blossomed red, "I'm pretty!" Her smile matched her mothers.

"Beautiful, darlin', the word is beautiful!" Evil Queen wrapped her arms around the adolescent, "You remind me of myself, back when I cursed apples and turned into old hags."

The blue-haired girl looked at herself in the mirror once again; the small tingle in the pit of her stomach started to grow. Her smile faded, "Y-Yeah..."

"Alright," Evil Queen straightened up, gripping the seashell tiara in her ocean-blue locks of hair and ripping it from her head; "Enough of that ugliness."

"M-Mom?" Evie whipped around, trying to grip her precious tiara, her mother tore it away from her reach and quickly snapped it into pieces.

The little Princess gasped as tears reached her eyes, "W-Why? Why w-would-"

"Oh, hush up, buttercup. You look better without that ugly thing."

Evie watched as her mother slipped out of the room, closing and locking the door behind her. The little Princess backed up into the corner of her room, crying as she slid down the wall and curled into a ball.

That's all for Chapter 1! I wanted to start this story off with a flashback of the villain's lives when they were younger. Hopefully this'll keep you tuned in until the next chapter. Reviews would be appreciated, thanks for reading!