Here is the next chapter!
As you may have seen from my profile, I am going to attempt to update this story twice a week now, to catch up with the whole plot line before Descendants 3 comes out. This way, you won't have to wait too long for the idea.
HOWEVER: There will be a week break when I get to the end of each 'arc'. For example when I am finished with the plot of the first Descendants movie, there will be no update for a week before I post a chapter from the second book.
I will let you know if I am unable to keep up and have to change back to once a week.
Enjoy.
After a few hours of rest, Mal and Evie set out in the evening for Jay and Carlos's room to plot the wand heist.
With its wide-screen TV and wood-paneled walls, dark plaid curtains, and high ceiling, Jay and Carlos's room was sumptuous blend of old money and state-of-the-art technology, which typified Auradon. Carlos faced the wide-screen TV, playing a fun simulation video game with nunchakus. Evie sat on the abandoned bed to check her appearance in her mirror while Mal walked over to Jay, who was pulling a stolen cell phone for a hidden compartment in his vest.
"Jay," Mal greeted as she stood next to him. "What are you doing?"
"It's called stealing," Jay answered sarcastically, tossing the phone onto his bed to join the assortment of other items he had stolen from the school already, which included a few gold rings, tokens, coin purses, a watch, and much more.
"What's the point?" Mal wondered as she examined the stolen goods.
"Well, it's like buying whatever I want," Jay explained as he pulled a laptop from his vest, "except it's free."
"Okay. So, you could do that, or you can leave all of this here and pick it up when we take over the world," Mal chastised with a wide smile.
Evie looked up from her mirror, announcing with an evil smile of her own, "You sound just like your mom!"
Mal placed a hand over her heart at the compliment. "Thank you!"
Jay rolled his eyes as he tossed the laptop aside. "You do it your way and I'll do it mine."
"Die, suckers!" Carlos shouted at his virtual foes in the video game. He paused the entertainment to call over his friend. "Jay, come check this thing out!"
Curious about the peculiar item, Jay cautiously took the controllers and stepped in front of the TV. His biceps bulged as he abruptly swung the toy weapon. Carlos watched him, laughing and whooping as Jay fought off the animated attackers.
"Guys!" Mal shouted over the loud noise to get their attention. "Do I have to remind you what we're all here for?"
"Fairy Godmother, blah, blah, blah," Jay said as he swung. "Magic wand," he turned to her with a smirk, "blah, blah, blah."
Evie laughed at him while Carlos continued to cheer Jay on.
"This is our one chance!" Mal declared louder than before. "To prove ourselves to our parents!"
Evie's laughter dwindled down to nothing. Carlos stopped his hollering. Jay paused the video game. Mal had their full attention.
"To prove that we are evil and vicious and ruthless and cruel," Mal continued. "To show that we have just as much darkness as them. That we are better than them." She raised her eyebrows to show her seriousness. "Yeah?"
Her friends nodded solemnly. The three knew their parents wouldn't do anything too harsh to them. But as for Mal's mother . . .
"Evie," Mal called, snapping her fingers to get the princess's attention, "mirror me."
Mal and Evie sat at the table as Jay and Carlos gathered around them.
Evie lifted her mirror so everyone could see. "Mirror, mirror, on the—"
"Stop." Mal rolled her eyes in annoyance. "The chant starts with 'Magic Mirror', not 'Mirror, Mirror', and it's not on the wall. Say 'Magic Mirror in my hand, where does Fairy Godmother's wand stand'."
With a slight huff, Evie reluctantly repeated the phrase. A few moments later, the mirror showed an extreme close-up of the powerful, sparkling wand.
"There it is!" Evie announced with a victorious smile, pleased that the enchanted item actually worked. "Magic Mirror, not so close."
After another moment or two, the mirror changed the image to show an aerial view of the world.
"Closer," Evie ordered.
The mirror eventually showed the kingdom they were currently in.
"Closer," she instructed again.
The mirror showed the town, slowly coming nearer to the location they needed.
"Closer," she said once more.
"Can I go back to my game?" Carlos wondered as he already started backing away. "I'm on level three."
"Stop!" Jay shouted.
They peered at the mirror together, which showed an old building lit by blue lights, with an engraved sign in from of it that read MUSEUM OF CULTURAL HISTORY.
"It's in a museum," Mal deduced. "Do we know where that is?"
Carlos typed something on the laptop. "Two point three miles from here," he said, turning it so his friends could see while he went to playing his video game.
Mal opened the door to the bedroom and checked the hall. The coast was clear.
Jay and Evie followed her down the hall. Jay called Carlos's name over his shoulder. Carlos reluctantly stopped playing his game and ran out the door after his friends.
The lawns of the prep school were void of any kind of guiding light as the gang made its way to the museum. After walking for some time, they eventually approached an impressive building marked MUSEUM OF CULTURAL HISTORY. It had tall, imposing stone pillars that completely towered over them.
"Check your mirror," Mal whispered to Evie.
"Is my mascara smudged?" Evie asked worriedly, instinctively checking her eyes in the mirror before she received an answer.
"Yeah, and while you're at it, why don't you see if you can find us the wand," Mal chided.
"Sure." Evie held out her mirror. "This way!"
They followed Evie around the back of the building, where they stopped at a set of double doors to peer through the windows. A guard sat at the front desk, spinning in a chair to watch the several monitors in front of him. On the monitors were iconic artifacts from all the famous fairy tales: King Beast's mystical rose, Cinderella's glass slipper, the Genie of Agrabah's lamp, King Triton's trident, etc.
The guard spun to face the doors, forcing the villain children to take cover. When some time had passed, they peeked back through the windows, studying a small spinning wheel on a pedestal that was a showcased display—Maleficent's spinning wheel.
"That's your mother's spinning wheel?" Jay wondered rhetorically with a small chuckle.
Carlos laughed as well. "Yeah, it's kind of dorky."
"It's magic," Mal argued defensively. "It doesn't have to look scary." Mal flipped open her spell book to fine a particular page. Looking through the window at the guard, and began to incant: "Magic spindle, do not linger. Make my victim prick a finger. . . ."
Nothing happened to the guard as he turned to look at the spinning wheel.
"Impressive," Jay taunted, shaking his head.
"I got chills," Carlos mocked, him and Jay chuckling once again.
Mal rolled her eyes at the childish jabs. She concentrated again, her eyes flashing bright green. "Prick the finger, prick it deep. Send my enemy off to sleep," she chanted.
The guard slowly stood and began walking toward the spinning wheel as if he was in a trance. He reached out his finger and gently touched the spindle. Within a few seconds, the guard laid next to the spinning wheel, curling up on his side to fall right asleep.
Mal let out a laugh as she smiled smugly at the boys. "Not so dorky now, huh?" She tried to open the door, but of course, it had to be locked. She yanked a few times, hoping the door would cave on its own.
Jay pushed everyone aside. "Stand back," he instructed as he backed up to take a leaping kick at the door.
Mal stared at the door and recited, "Make it easy, make it quick, open up without a kick."
Jay ran at full speed and leaped to kick the door—just as it opened by itself. He landed on his butt inside the museum. Mal, Evie, and Carlos laughed and stepped over him.
"Coming?" Mal asked Jay, mocking him this time.
The gang passed the lobby and ran through the dark museum with Evie leading the way as she consulted her mirror. "Upstairs," she whispered to them.
They ran down a hall and up some stairs, stopping short in a doorway to a room called the Gallery of Keyblade Warriors. Inside were a few pedestals that stood wax figures of the Keyblade wielders that foiled the villains plan. Three of the wielders had versions of themselves from each of their three main journeys. However, the 'main' wielder also had versions of himself from each world he traveled to that changed his appearance. Each figurine had a model of their Keyblade, five of them having more than one. Against the walls were relics, artifacts, from their journeys.
Mal wanted to pretend she never looked in the room. However, her friends just had to walk around to observe the marvelous attractions.
"Careful!" Mal chided in a harsh whisper when Jay came too close to a closed book with a gold latch on it, which on a podium with a soft light shining on it. "If you open that book, you'll get sucked into another world with talking stuffed animals that will annoy the hell out of you."
"Hey, Mal!" Carlos shouted as he gestured to a star-shaped crystal he was standing in front of. "What's this thing?"
Mal sighed in annoyance, but quickly explained, "That's a Star Shard. It teleports its user, as well as anyone in physical contact with the user, to a different world. If the user doesn't know how to control the shard, the traveler will never know where he or she will land or when he or she will be transported away."
"M?" Evie called as she snarled her nose at one of the figurines. "Why is his facial expression like this?"
Observing a figure of the 'main' wielder of when he was turned into a monster to blend into a world, Mal somehow suppressed her laugh. "That," Mal began with a smile, "is the 'Funny Face Special'. In the world that makes him look like that, he and his companions used that to make a little girl laugh to power certain parts of a factory."
After explaining a few more things from the gallery, Mal headed to the entrance to wait for her friends, until she caught sight of something that made her jaw drop. "No way," Mal commented to herself, shaking her head in denial as she came closer to a particular 'exhibit'. "It's actually here. It's actually real!"
Resting in a protective and secure glass display next to its 'rightful' owner was a beautiful Keyblade that Mal's mother described to her on more than one occasion, Way to the Dawn. Maleficent explained that the Keyblade was an upgraded version of another one called 'Soul Eater'. Way to the Dawn's guard was once composed of one demonic wing and one angelic wing. A dark angelic wing had been 'added' to the original blade of the Soul Eater to act as the teeth of the key. Its token is the Heartless Emblem, but without the spiked bars crossing it.
Sadly, the Way to the Dawn was still in its shattered form, with the break being close to the bottom of the blade. You see, after a vicious battle in the Realm of Darkness—where a Heartless swarm called the 'Demon Tower' had swallowed its owner—the Way to Dawn had been fragmented.
The owner left the Keyblade on the shore of the 'End of Sea', but the Auradonians somehow recovered it! No, Mal was not mistaken. She could practically feel the Keyblade radiating its life from just standing a couple feet in front of it.
"Well, the wand's not here," Jay announced after he finally got bored of the area. "Let's bounce!"
Evie and Carlos followed him back into the hall, having finished looking around too. However, Mal lingered in the gallery. She couldn't take her eyes off the broken Keyblade. Oh, how she wished it could be hers. She wanted nothing more than to steal the Way to the Dawn from its prison, but there's no way to fix a broken Keyblade . . .
"Hey!" Evie shouted with a smile as she popped back into the entrance.
Mal whipped around to face her.
"I found the wand!" Evie proclaimed victoriously. "Let's go!"
Mal stole one more backward glance at the Way to the Dawn in its presentation. With a regretful and reluctant sigh, she ran after Evie to join their gang of misfits. They looked through an opening in the floor at the powerful wand floating in a display.
The gang raced downstairs, past a room called the Hall of Castles, with Jay whooping and cheering the whole time, leading the way.
In the wand gallery, they approached its sole exhibit—Fairy Godmother's wand. It was lit from above and below with a soft blue light. Mal and her friends stopped at the threshold, taking a moment to admire. Jay sized up the situation, deciding to pounce.
"Jay don't!" Mal advised, eyeing the blue light.
Jay shot her a suave smile as he continued forward.
"Wait, no!" Mal continued to shout as he crawled into the exhibit. "No! No!" Jay reached out his hand . . . "Don't!"
CRACK!
Jay was blown back by a giant shock as an alarm started to blare. Mal and her friends held their ears to protect their eardrums from the annoying sound.
"A force field and a siren?" asked Carlos.
"That's just a little excessive," Jay stated sarcastically, regaining his stance.
Mal and her friends raced down the corridor. The alarm had woken the guard in the lobby, who ran toward the noise. The group bolted for the exit, unseen, but Carlos stopped at the guard station. As his friends ran past Maleficent's spinning wheel, he assessed the equipment, looking for the alarm shutoff.
The guard's phone rang and Carlos answered it without a second thought. "Hello? Uh, just give me one second, one second." He examined the guard's clipboard before turning the alarm off with a few pushing of buttons. "Uh, yeah, yeah. No, false alarms," he said casually. "It was a malfunction in the LM 714 chip in the breadboard circuit. Yeah. Okay. Say hi to the missus." He hung up to see that the others had left without him. "You're welcome," he grumbled to no one as he ran after his friends.
The four, empty-handed, sprinted through the night away from the museum.
"Way to go Jay!" Mal remarked sarcastically. "Now we have to go to school tomorrow!"
