When the upcoming confrontation between a mother and a daughter finally occurred, it promised to be spectacular. Spectacular as in the case of entire lands laid waste, skies turning bloody, oceans boiling dry, dogs and cats living together in sin—
Okay, maybe not the last, but given how Maleficent and her sole child known to all as Mal were both powerful spellcasters specializing in evil enchantments, they probably weren't going to hold a polite, civilized discourse concerning recent events. Right now in their assorted homes, Mal's friends and these teenagers' parents were most likely waiting for the fireworks to start and also laying bets on how loudly the ensuing explosions would reverberate throughout the entire Isle of the Lost.
Glumly pushing around with a spoon the now-cold porridge which she'd barely tasted for breakfast, Mal sneaked a peek at where Mom was brooding at the other end of the table on Bargain Castle's topmost balcony. Her mother hadn't had much of an appetite either, judging from the untouched plate before the older woman. Uh-oh. Mal knew it'd been imminent, but she really would've rather put off a little longer the whole shouting match.
Maleficent continued to balefully regard the sliced pear on her plate now turning pure black under the enchantress's menacing glower. This fruit's new color matched Maleficent's irate mood. True, she'd eventually regained her normal form after being turned into a six-inch lizard at Prince Ben's coronation and then banished once more to the Isle of the Lost, completely defeated by the forces of good.
What really annoyed Maleficent was that her own daughter had been responsible for her losing! Backed up by this little chit's friends around then, Mal cast a very impressive counterspell for someone her age which changed Maleficent in the throne room from a magnificent, fire-breathing dragon into an ignominious teeny reptile, right in front of everyone she'd just been about to devour. How humiliating!
On the other hand…it'd been such a lovely bit of ruthless spellwork that Maleficent would've been utterly proud to claim its use by herself, much less a girl trouncing her own mother. Now, that was prime evil, right there. Even so, there were going to be words concerning this between these two females at their balcony dining table.
Looking up directly at Mal, this young woman home for the summer from Auradon Prep flinched at Maleficent's icy stare. However, right before Maleficent would've commenced with her blistering tirade, a shrill metallic whine unexpectedly activated which drifted upwards from somewhere lower down in Bargain Castle.
Simultaneously wincing at this mysterious loud humming sound they hadn't anticipated, Maleficent and Mal regarded each other with sudden bewilderment. Shouting over the droning which set their teeth on edge, Maleficent demanded, "Did you do that?!"
"No!" a baffled Mal responded. "You mean, you didn't?"
Any reply from Maleficent about this was interrupted by a thunderous BOOM! which rocked the entire castle. Clutching at their chair armrests to avoid falling over, the two ladies thankfully had their home return at once to immobility, along with that weird whine also going away just as quickly.
Springing up to her feet, Maleficent exclaimed, "That came from the cellars! Come on!"
The older enchantress dashed towards the nearest stairway of Bargain Castle, followed closely by Mal. They descended all the way to the ground floor, just in time to see the cellar door being chopped down from the inside by a large battleaxe.
Smashing through the wrecked door, a man only a few years older than Mal held ready in both hands his axe while he ran forward. Skidding to a stop a few yards away from the two women gaping at him, this stranger shouted at Mal, "Run for it, kid! I'll take care of that dangerous bitch while you get to safety!"
Having absolutely no idea what was going on, Mal's attention was still caught by how this total lunatic who looked oddly familiar had just insulted her maternal unit. "Don't you dare talk that way about Mom!"
"Mom?" incredulously repeated the man, eyeing the all too familiar very short older woman dressed in ornate black and also wearing one really weird double-pointy hat. "You mean some blind fella who didn't have a ten-foot pole with him actually got it on with her?"
Maleficent's dry voice now joined the conversation. "I don't remember any pole at that exact time, or any blindness either. As a matter of fact, you were quite happy to get up very close and personal with me while inspecting with both eyes every square inch of my body, Xander Harris."
"WHAT?" shrieked Mal, with this same word echoed in a somewhat more manly scream by Xander.
"Oh, yes. Mal, meet your father."
Soon afterwards, back on the balcony, Maleficent was sardonically explaining.
"I was still the ruler of my domain then, but one night I disguised myself with a glamour and went to the local tavern to listen for any signs of plotting against my reign. However, the only one there besides the bartender was some drunk stranger crying in his beer—"
"I wasn't crying!" yelled Xander from his own seat between the other two at the castle's balcony table.
"Buckets," Maleficent muttered in a sotto voce aside to Mal watching and listening in total fascination. Smirking at a disgruntled Xander, Maleficent resumed her story.
"What attracted me right away at first was how the magic was absolutely pouring off him. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Naturally, I tried to find out more, which involved buying another dozen beers for your father who was glad enough to swill them all down his throat while telling me his complete tragic tale."
Xander's face turned hard, and under the table his fists clenched. Even after so long, the memories still hurt.
ZZZAAAPPP!
Buffy Summers' glazed eyes rolled upwards and she collapsed onto the walkway of Glory's tower. Tossing aside the military-grade taser he'd also liberated long ago during the whole stolen rocket launcher caper, Xander made sure the Slayer wouldn't spill off the walkway to the ground far below. Stepping over Buffy's weakly-stirring body indicating she'd recover nicely in a few minutes (and then undoubtedly tear off his arms and beat him to death with them), Xander reached an open-mouthed Dawn holding onto the tower's railing.
Just a few steps further on, the still-expanding portal a mere yard beyond the walkway's end glowed with tremendous mystical energies.
"Xander!" cried Dawn, "Please, I have to do this! Only my blood will close that portal!"
Edging past Dawn, Xander then turned around to put the portal at his back. He started to say something, only to pause. Even if this wasn't exactly the right time for this, there was no possible way a devout sci-fi fan could avoid passing up the delivery of a classic movie line to tell her some very important news.
Extending a hand towards Dawn, Xander next rasped to her in a definitely familiar James Earl Jones imitation: "Dawn, I am your father."
"Huh?" gawked the younger Summers sibling standing there and wondering when Xander had totally lost it. That supremely satisfied, ear-to-ear grin presently done by him didn't exactly help, either.
He reassured Dawn, "No, honest. Remember the whole deal when we first found out you were made from Buffy? I know it's magic and all, the Key stuff, but hey, actual biology has to come in it somewhere! Like, say, every kid is the product of two people, not just one, and I couldn't help thinking the same applied in your case. So the first chance I had to get a sample of your blood without anyone else knowing, I sent it to a DNA test lab along with my own sample. If it turned out wrong, I wouldn't try again. But, uh…the final result was a hundred percent match. You're essentially made from both Buffy and me."
Shocked to her core, Dawn stared speechlessly at Xander. Only when he took a step in reverse did Dawn realize the horrible truth.
"DON'T!"
"I have to, Dawn," Xander sadly told her. "Buffy was ready to jump into that thing without a second thought until I got here and killed Doc right after he took down Spike. If it's got to be someone's blood, better mine than hers or yours. She'll be really mad, but tell her I love you just as much as your big sis does."
Dawn began to sob, even when Xander took another step away. And then, one more into thin air off the walkway while Xander put up his right hand in a split-fingered gesture to next intone in the middle of falling backwards, "Live long and prosper!"
Returning his attention to the Bargain Castle's balcony setting, Xander became conscious of Mal staring at him in sheer awe.
Maleficent, however, was examining with a trace of boredom her nails to next say dismissively at no one in particular, "Yes, yes, a stupidly heroic sacrifice which saved everybody. This included us, too, by the way. After all, if the portal bought him straight here, the dimensional breakdown started by Glory would've also destroyed our own universe. I figured that earned him a little reward—"
"Yeah, right," jeered Xander, having had quite enough. "You just don't want to admit you're an easy drunk, what with all the booze you slugged back too during my confession in order to keep me talking."
Saying this promptly earned Xander one of the dirtiest looks ever sent his way by a woman. Mal herself now had a very red face after connecting the dots regarding what must've happened next in private when two inebriated people staggered off together to the nearest bedroom.
Haughtily lifting her chin, Maleficent sniffed, "You should be very grateful I still had agreeable memories about the entire affair several weeks later when you stormed my castle at the head of the usual rebellious mob. A quick transformation of you into a statue ended that—"
"Mr. Stony!" exclaimed Mal, who then stared in wonder at a confused Xander. "I used to swing from your arm playing in the cellar here when I was a little girl!"
Maleficent nodded to herself. "Ah, so that's where he went. When we got banished, King Beast ordered all our possessions except for the obviously magical ones be sent with us. Nobody knew you to be anything but an ordinary statue, so you wound up in the cellar where I never thought to look for you."
Mal angrily burst out to her mother, "Why didn't you ever tell me about it? About him?" She finished her annoyed questions by pointing at Xander, who wanted to know this, too.
The older woman just scornfully shrugged at her daughter. "Tell you what, exactly? That you were the product of an intoxicated one-night stand and I turned your father into solid rock afterwards? A spell that I couldn't ever reverse, so I put that statue in some hallway to keep from seeing it every day and being reminded of my failure."
Xander frowned at this news. "Hold it, you couldn't change me back? What for?"
Maleficent's eyes narrowed in deadly sincerity towards a suddenly nervous Xander. "You should be really glad, particularly when I found out I was pregnant then and it was all your fault. Believe me, if I could've returned you to flesh and blood, I had plans."
Someone who once held the title of 'Mistress of All Evil' savored how pale Xander's face turned at that point. Maleficent was interrupted in relishing this by her daughter pointing out, "Wait a minute. Are you saying your spell lasted from even before I was born to today, almost seventeen years later? Why would it stop without anybody doing something to change things?"
Mal's mother shrugged again, this time in mild disinterest. "I have absolutely no idea. Maybe the magic your father picked up when he went through the portal in his home dimension to here finally wore off."
Xander immediately straightened up in his chair, staring with growing optimism at Maleficent. "The whole reason I set out to get seriously drunk that night was because nobody with the major mojo I talked to could send me back to Sunnydale! Are you saying that's possible now- Oh, hell," glumly concluded Xander in a swift change of mood into sudden moroseness which mystified his listeners.
"What's wrong?" Mal asked Xander, beating out her mother in saying this.
"Like you said, it's been almost seventeen years. My friends must've gone on with their own lives without me around, if they were really lucky. The Hellmouth isn't a place for sissies. For all I know, everyone's dead or moved away."
"Not necessarily," Maleficent told the other two while shaking her head. "If the spellcaster is powerful enough, they can return someone through a dimension portal to have them appear there only moments after they originally went into it, no matter how long they stayed on the other side."
"Someone like the Fairy Godmother, you mean?" guessed a delighted Mal.
Maleficent looked as if she'd just started sucking on a lemon, sour face and all. The older woman glared at her daughter. "Kindly do not mention that name again in my presence…ever."
Not sure at all at why things had abruptly gotten tense between the two women, Xander glanced back and forth at Maleficent and Mal trying to outstare each other. He cleared his throat.
"Uh, can what's-her-name really do it? Send me back, that is?"
Mal promptly announced, "Sure!" She shot a mischievous glance at her grouchy mother, who after a few more moments performed a reluctant nod of agreement. Once she'd seen that, Mal still in her impish mood turned to Xander.
"She's the headmistress at Auradon Prep, my new school. She owes me a huge favor now—" (from the head of the table came a vicious feminine growl) "—and if I ask her, I bet she'll send you home…"
"What?" wondered Xander after hearing Mal trail off and then regard him with a very doleful expression.
"Do you have to leave right away? Uh, I thought we could talk for a while. You know, learn more about each other, that kind of thing," finished Mal with a hint of sheepish hope lurking in her tone.
Actually, Xander was all in favor of that. Even now, he had a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that he'd become the father of one really adorable kid in spite of the whole purple hairstyle. This Mal girl certainly was a lot nicer than her mother—
"You can have your big father-daughter reunion back at his dimension," Maleficent snapped at the startled pair. She directed her best evil glower towards Xander whose jaw had just dropped at hearing this surprising announcement.
"I'm not having you underfoot in my castle any longer than necessary! My reputation as the worse villain on the whole island is already in tatters because of what Mal recently did! All I need now is everyone here learning the idiot who left me on my own with a child showed up again and they'll laugh their heads off at me behind my back!"
"You mean, I can go with him to that place called Sunnydale?" Mal asked incredulously. She eyed her mother with extreme skepticism. "The last time you let me off the island, I was supposed to steal the Fairy Godmother's wand and free you and the others from your captivity here. What's the catch this time?"
Maleficent just smiled sweetly at her daughter. "Oh, you'd really prefer to spend the whole summer cleaning every inch of the castle with a toothbrush? It's either getting punished for turning me into that stupid lizard, or I have some peace and quiet again while you're gone for a couple months."
When Xander opened his mouth to say something, he was cut off by Maleficent menacingly pointing a long, black, needle-tipped fingernail at him. "She's going with you, and that's final! If I hear a single word of protest from you about staying here instead, just remember I'd be more than glad to start off the thorough revenge I had in mind the minute I learned there was going to be a bouncing baby nine months in my future! It's all coming back to me now, especially the one with the garlic press and your testicles—"
Hastily looking at Mal, Xander asked her in a rushed voice, "Fairy Godmother, huh? Maybe you should call her up right away, before she gets all busy with the pumpkins and mice and the snazzy ballroom dress!"
WHUMP!
"Ow."
"Urrgghhh…"
"My hair!"
"This is all your fault, Carlos!"
"Mine? How do you figure that?"
"Because it always is!"
"Where's your dad, Mal?"
"GET OFF ME!"
Four teenagers hurriedly scrambled up onto their feet from where they'd been lying in a heap upon a very cranky Xander Harris at the bottom of this pile with his face uncomfortably pressed into the meadow grass. Ignoring how this older guy painfully got up and then began brushing himself down, his companions consisting of Mal, Evie, Carlos, and Jay stared around in complete bafflement at their different location. Just seconds ago, they'd all been in the main school courtyard of Auradon Prep where the Fairy Godmother was going to perform the spell to return Mal and her dad to this father's hometown in another dimension.
Evie, Carlos, and Jay had special permission from the Fairy Godmother to watch this tremendous feat of magic. For their own reasons (i.e., a direct threat from Maleficent to allow it or suffer a most dire fate), these children's parents also exiled to the Isle of the Lost had grudgingly consented for them to attend their friend's departure. However, the respective Evil Queen, Cruella de Vil, and Jafar definitely hadn't meant for their descendants to involuntarily accompany Mal in this cross-reality journey.
"What happened?" Evie was the first bewildered youngster to ask them all.
Both Jay and Carlos shrugged to signify their own vast incomprehension.
Mal herself shook her head in puzzlement. "I don't know! The spell seemed to be working okay, what with the 'ties of blood' and the rest—"
"Oops."
They all, Xander included, looked at where Carlos was intently studying his boot toes instead of meeting anyone's eyes. Eventually, this mixed-race boy cleared his throat, still looking down.
"Guys, you remember my ninth birthday party?"
Evie's pretty face scrunched into a rare frown. "I thought we agreed to never talk about the Cake of Doom—"
"Not that part! Afterwards!" Carlos gritted before lifting his head in exasperation to regard his friends. At seeing their blank expressions, he reluctantly continued, "You all felt so sorry for me that we cut our thumbs with Gaston's knife Jay stole from him earlier in the party and swore blood brotherhood with each other to cheer me up. I think we're here because of it."
Jay smirked with genuine satisfaction, "I knew it was totally his fault!"
However, this muscular boy with Middle-Eastern features had these abruptly turn somber. "Dad and the other 'rents are gonna freak over how we vanished from there."
"Maybe not," Mal pointed out. "We were supposed to come here on the next day when my own dad went through the portal on his side. For all I know, we'll appear back at Auradon Prep just a second later after Jane's mom finished the spell."
She looked over at where a distracted Xander was staring at a crude framework of metal beams in the Sunnydale park meadow. "Uh, Dad…are we at the right time?"
"What?" said Xander, tearing his consideration away from Glory's tower. "Looks like it, honey. That thing's still here, but all the bodies are gone and the grass at the bottom of it isn't any taller than what I remember. So, figure a day or two, no more than that."
"And what about them?" Mal persisted, waving a hand at the other teenagers. She paused in this action to hold up her arm in displaying the new copper wristband she'd been given by the Fairy Godmother. "My instructions were to put a drop of my blood on this when I want to go back. How do we know it'll work for us all unless we try it? But if it does, we'll be gone with you staying behind."
Xander scratched his chin in deep thought. "Sounds about right, but we'll just have to wait and see. It's not like you have to straightaway cancel your visit. So…yeah, sure, Mal, your friends can stay with us until then."
Happy grins were shared among the descendants at this opportunity to hang out with each other in a new and exciting adventure, only for Xander to loudly clear his throat in order to get everyone's attention.
He examined the rest of Mal's gang gazing back at him in ready anticipation. "Listen up, people. This isn't your home where you know how things work. Sunnydale's one really dangerous place where bad things can happen to anyone at any time. Also, around here, your parents and the other people you live with at the Isle of the Lost, they're considered nothing but fictional Disney characters who don't have the best of reputations, to put it as nicely as possible. Short version, keep your mouths shut and your eyes peeled. I know you'll still get in trouble – you're teenagers, it's only to be expected – but at least try to keep the immature unruliness to under suicidal levels."
Four heads nodded obediently at Xander's instructions, from which he took wry comfort this meant those kids would wait, oh, maybe a couple hours before doing something absolutely crazy and dumb.
Sending one last glance at where that damn tower stood, Xander turned around and started walking. "Come on, follow me. Buffy's house is a few miles that way. I'll fill in the time until we get there with more advice on surviving Sunnydale."
When his newest charges did as he'd ordered, Xander shifted into a more comfortable position the heavy leather knapsack on his back filled with small but weighty gold ingots given to him by Maleficant for spending purposes in Sunnydale just before he and Mal left Bargain Castle. After hugging her daughter goodbye, the older enchantress fixed Xander with a gimlet stare and directed him to send their child back safe…or else.
Seated in the living room armchair of his Slayer's home that morning, Rupert Giles felt old and useless. It'd been only yesterday when they'd defeated Glory, but at a truly immense cost: the death of Xander Harris who sacrificed himself to close that insane Hellgoddess' portal. Leaving behind both physical and emotional wreckage upon their battlefield, the Scoobies numbly returned to a California suburban home well after midnight and tried to come to grips with their hurts.
These losses now included one more of their former number, Anya who'd once been a thousand year old vengeance demon before turning human again and having a bumpy relationship with Xander. Right after entering Buffy's house, a sobbing Anya wretchedly informed them all that she was leaving Sunnydale forever and they'd never hear from her again now that her orgasm friend was gone forever, too. Anya then stalked out of the house, only to return several seconds later to retrieve her purse with the car keys inside.
A stunned houseful of people then heard Anya drive away, after which they all went to bed and what scraps of slumber those there could manage for the rest of the night.
Now it was day again, but nobody had stirred for hours from their positions in the living room. As mentioned, Giles was in the armchair, and two pairs of females were together on the opposite sides of the couch. Curled up in each others' arms for whatever comfort these could provide, Buffy and Dawn were on the left-hand side with Willow and Tara on the right.
Staring straight ahead at the far wall, Giles' recent memories continuously ran through his mind of which the most vivid were of him suffocating Ben to prevent Glory from ever coming back. He felt no guilt about this, merely an intense distaste that it'd been needful. By now, the anonymous telephone call reporting a homicide to the Sunnydale coroner just before retiring last night had probably caused Ben's corpse to be collected by the police sometime after sunrise (no sane city employee would venture outside when it got dark). The other demons' bodies had probably dissolved long since and Spike's ashes must've blown away—
The doorbell rang.
Nobody in the living room even moved.
After nearly another minute, the doorbell rang again.
Still nothing from the five people inside the house.
The doorbell rang yet again, but it continued ringing probably due to someone keeping their thumb firmly squashed down upon the push button.
Glancing over at where Dawn, Willow, Buffy, and Tara hadn't seemed to even notice the ongoing racket, Giles creakily got up from his chair. He headed towards the front door, mentally rehearsing the declaration that whatever it was, they bloody well didn't want this and just sod off with maximum alacrity!
When Giles stopped at the door and reached out for the handle, the doorbell stopped ringing. However, not more than a moment later, there came another sound from where Giles was out of sight from the people in the living room. It was the noise of a limp body falling onto the floor, due to this Watcher collapsing in a dead faint right after opening the front door (for which he would be teased forever).
That at least got Buffy and the others' attention. Scrambling up and out of the couch, these young women dashed towards the front door, led by the Slayer outstripping them all with superhuman speed. Turning into the entryway, Buffy saw Giles face-down on the floor, the door open…and out on the porch was none other than a missing and presumed-dead Xander Harris looking alive as ever.
In that instant, Buffy Summers was both supremely ecstatic over her best male friend's survival and wrathful beyond measure that this was another Hellmouth trick using a pretend Xander. Running right at that bastard, Buffy leapt over her Watcher to land gracefully out onto the porch in front of this insult to her rescuer from drowning in the Master's cave, her right hand swinging in a tremendous slap. Only at the very last instant when her Slayer senses told Buffy this was a real, undemonic human did she ease off enough in time to avoid tearing off Xander's head.
Being punched by Buffy still knocked Xander completely ass over teakettle, flat onto his back on the porch floor. Staring down in horror at him, Buffy didn't pay any attention to the other people there out in the porch, until another girl in this small group shrieked at her, "YOU HIT DADDY!"
Buffy looked over at that accuser just in time to see an unfamiliar feminine face surrounded by purple hair had her eyes glow a mystical green, followed by a powerful blast of enchanted energy from hands thrust into Buffy's direction. This energy gathered up and then hurled Buffy through the air the entire length of the hallway, embedding with a crashing noise the Slayer's body into the far wall at the end of this corridor.
A dazed Summers daughter slowly fell forward out of the female-shaped hole, landing nose-first with a thud onto the carpet. Mumbling into this, "Auntie Em, why can't I keep the flying monkeys that followed me home from Oz?", Buffy then proceeded to peacefully pass out.
From their position standing in the entryway to the living room where they'd just watched Buffy sail past them, a shell-shocked Dawn, Willow, and Tara turned their heads to see and hear Xander being helped up off the porch by two strange guys Dawn's age while he blearily told them with massive pride in his tone, "That's my girl!"
Shaking himself loose, Xander then grabbed the hand of the purple-haired girl and weavingly hauled her along into the house. Both of them stepped over Giles into the direction of the trio of Scoobies gaping at them. Halting in front of Dawn, Xander already having his face turning into one big bruise beamed at her. He then let go of the other girl's hand, indicating to each other in introductions, "Dawn, Mal. Mal, Dawn. Meet your sister, ladies. Now, I know you'll have a lot to talk about, so I'm just gonna take a little nap. Wake me up when it's dinnertime, unless Buffy's cooking, then we'll send out for pizza instead."
After delivering that final bit of babble the result of his impending concussion, Xander staggered over to where Giles was lying, knelt down besides the comatose Englishman, and stretched out next to this older man. Snuggling up to Giles, Xander threw an arm over his bedmate's shoulder, and sank into blissful oblivion.
Back out on the porch where they'd been observing it all, Carlos turned to Evie and happily declared, "Hey, you know what? The magical explosions, flying bodies, overdone family drama…this is the first time since we got here that this place feels like home."
Evie had to nod in agreement. As for Jay, he was already looting Giles' and Xander's unconscious bodies.
Author's Note: I recently watched a re-run of the 2015's Disney Channel Descendants movie before the sequel comes out later this summer. It inspired this one-shot chapter and I hope you liked it! One more thing - I don't intend at present to carry on with this story, so there's no point in asking for more.