Ben had wanted an exciting reunion ball, but he didn't quite get the excitement he wanted when he came back in from the gardens with Audrey. He thought the most stressful part of the night would be trying to let down Audrey easy and not sending her into histrionics. He did not expect to walk into what looked like a complete brawl, with Mal right in the middle of it.
Honestly, Mal in the middle of it wasn't too surprising. He had hoped that the reunion ball would go better than Family Day had, but it didn't seem like it from where he was standing.
He hadn't seen what had started it, or who had started it, but Mal was hard to miss in the middle of the dance floor with Phillip Dormant. Her words calm, yet full of malice.
"Phillip Dormant," she spoke, keeping direct eye contact and even from the opposite side of the ballroom he could see the green glow that signified trouble was on its way if Phillip wasn't careful. "Your daughter may have more charm, and more class than I, but what you should know about this isle slut-" she spit the slur out with more hatred than Ben had ever seen her use and he wondered who had called the name first. "-is you won't like her when she's angry."
Ben stared on, just what had he missed in the ten or so minutes he had stepped out?
"Are you as much of a whore as your mother was?" Phillip asked her. Ben had spent enough summers with him to know that he was drunk. Things never went well when Phillip was drunk and Ben wished for a peaceful resolution somehow, even though he could feel his own fists curl in rage. Still, the thought that Mal had said she didn't need protecting flashed in his head.
He didn't want her anger upon him too.
"Do you kneel before your king and beg him to use your pretty mouth as he wishes?" Phillip asked, gripping her cheeks hard with his hand. Mal didn't show any sign of retaliation. Ben stood frozen, shocked just as everyone else seemed to be. That was his girlfriend Phillip was talking about, had his hands around, and even the VKs were still. Then he saw it. Mal was holding them back too, her free hand outstretched in the universal sign for "wait". She wanted to handle it herself.
"Or do you whine and whine until he spreads your legs and fucks you in your-" Ben didn't think he could make fists any tighter, and yet his knuckles curled tighter. Phillip's hand moved further down her neck toward the top of her dress, and Ben was ready to step forward, the idea of Mal's need to protect herself and not be saved forgotten. Before Phillip got any further, Mal grabbed his arm and twisted hard shoving him to the ground.
"Don't you dare touch me!" She shouted, shoving him further into the tiled floor. Ben had nearly missed it, as it happened so fast, but she held Phillip down, her heel shoved into his back, pulling his arm farther out of the socket than it should have been. He knew he should really step in and stop her, before she got too much further, but he was frozen where he stood, as was everyone else.
He hoped Phillip would shut his mouth, and come to terms with the fact that a girl half his age and size had shoved him face first into the dance floor, but Phillip had always been too cocky for his own good.
"Your mother thought she could seduce all of the seven kings of the seven kingdoms," Phillip spoke, his drunkenness most likely preventing him most of the pain and preventing him from shutting up. "Are you going to beat her record of five?" He asked and Ben wasn't even sure how true that was, but he could feel his own anger rising as a growl in his throat, if he had had hackles, they would be up.
"Or are you worried you would enjoy it too much with your possible fathers?" Phillip asked and Ben watched as Mal began to change before him, her anger as she shoved Phillip further into the tiles, transforming her.
In the blink of an eye, she wasn't Mal anymore, or at least not as much Mal. Her skin had greened, taking on the sickly translucent hue of that of a healing bruise, her eyes glowing green with her anger, and what looked like two Rams horns jutting out of her head and tangling in her hair.
She looked more like her mother and that seemed to scare people, the flashbulbs capturing proof before she quite possibly destroyed them all. It scared him what could happen in the next few minutes, but he stepped forward anyway, knowing he needed to call everyone to order.
How did his dad used to do that? Right, yelling. And Ben had enough rage in him to quell a tsunami.
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?" He roared, effectively pulling everyone's attention back to him, including Mal, sharing more of her mother's features than ever.
Phillip again, couldn't keep his mouth shut. "The faerie attacked me!" He shouted, his face shoved further into the floor as he spoke. Mal was not happy, and she wasn't about to let him up it seemed.
At the mention of the F word, everyone in the room seemed to change too, not physically, but in their stances and their expressions. The best Ben could describe it was brainwashing somehow, and they all moved like a zombie horde toward Mal.
He didn't have to be spelled himself to know that it was magic. He looked around to see that Carlos, Evie and Jay seemed normal still too. Evie had her hands to her mouth in shock and the boys stared, wondering what Faerie Mal would do next. Everyone else was closing in on her and Ben didn't want to wait and see what happened when they swarmed her.
"Mal," he spoke, taking a few steps closer to her, and she stared him down with her glowing green eyes and her spiked teeth.
"That is not my name," She spat at him, Phillip still under her, the hoard moving closer, getting close enough for her to touch and maim if her evil little heart so desired. Chad got close enough to swipe at her and she plowed him to the ground with a simple fist.
"Mal, sweetie," Evie started, her voice shaking, she was scared of that Mal and she seemed to know it. "It's time to put the horns away," She said gently, moving closer to Mal too.
"That is not my name," The Mal that wasn't quite Mal spoke again, dropping an entire line of people with a green streak of magic.
"What are we to call you?" Ben asked, fending off more guests as gently as he could as they closed in on her. Still, they pushed past him, knocking into him as if he were just someone else, not their king. Whatever the spell was, it was bad news. Still, it seemed that anger would not be the way to appease her. Negotiations would be best, judging by the way the green magic mowed down any guest that got close enough to her.
Mal gave him an evil smile that rivaled her mother's. "Can you not guess, Benjamin Florian Adamson, son of the Beast?" She asked, looking right into his soul it seemed.
Ben cringed. The papers were going to have a field day with this scandal. "Maleficent!" He called out, hoping he was right, wishing he was wrong. By the way she reacted, turning her full attention to him and no longer casting streaks of green lightning across the room, he knew he had been right. It was better than nothing and he went with it. "I need you to come with me," He said, sneaking a glance to Evie and the boys, knowing they had to escape the mob somehow. He had to keep Mal safe however he could.
She stared at him, and he could swear he could see a shade of Mal behind the faerie. "Why should I go with you, Benjamin Florian Adamson, if you are frightened of me?" She asked, as more guests closed in on her and she brought the green flames back to her hands.
Ben stood taller, keeping eye contact with her as more green magic surged from her hands, sending more guests to the floor. "I'm not frightened of you," He spoke calmly, his eyes in complete contact with hers, his face calm as the chaos reigned all around them.
Faerie Mal hissed. "You lie!" She shouted, her magic surging with her emotions, flying around the room and zinging through the wine glasses shattering them into a thousand shards. The zombies that had once been guests unaffected. Ben himself unaffected.
Ben took a deep breath, he hadn't expected that. "Have I ever lied to you before?" He asked, knowing he had, but only to protect her. He moved closer to her as the hoard began reaching into their suits and dresses and dropping what looked like salt or sugar on the floor all at once.
She couldn't answer before she became distracted, spouting out numbers like she was calculating something. "4,538." She spoke, looking at a small pile of salt closest to her. "8,764," She continued, removing herself from Phillip and pushing her way through the crowd counting the small piles of sugar or salt. Ben stared, slightly confused as Mal followed the trail of them to-
He looked down toward where the path led and saw the net she was about to step foot in. If he had to guess, and his knowledge of fae was accurate, he would say it was iron. "Mal!" He shouted, unable to get her full name out as her foot tripped the mechanism and it swooped her up in its metal clutches, burning her skin wherever it made contact and sending ear splitting shrieks from her lungs.
The crowd swarmed under the net, as if she were some kind of piñata and they were desperate for the prize inside. Ben covered his ears, her shrieks not only ear splitting, but it was Mal in there and the whole situation just made him scared and livid. He had to come up with a plan somehow.
"Ben!" Jay shouted, pointing up to the coat of arms above the throne, the swords of his parents' families intertwined. If it hadn't been such a weird situation, he would have laughed at the thief finding the shiniest gold thing in the room. He was sure he had never seen the swords actually used, but it was worth a shot.
He ran for it, pushing past the zombified subjects of his court, his fellow students and their parents. He was trying not to hurt them, but Mal's cries were only becoming more agonizing the longer she was trapped.
"Carlos!" He shouted as he jumped up on the throne and grabbed the far sword of the coat of arms, "Jay! I need you to keep the crowd back," He explained as he pulled and the whole arms came crashing down with him in one piece. The loud crash not even distracting the horde in the slightest.
"Bashing some faerie hating zombies?" Jay shouted back, already waist deep in arms grabbing for the net, "You don't have to tell me twice." And where Jay went, Carlos followed.
"Evie!" Ben shouted to her, pulling her out of her frightened stupor. "I need you to talk Mal down," He explained as he tried to shake the sword out of the gold encasement. "You've seen her like this before?" He asked, though he figured she had.
"Never this bad," Evie explained, moving closer to Mal, still writhing in pain, her shrieks unbearably uncomfortable. "Mal, sweetie!" She began to shout over the deafening sounds all around them. "It's Evie." He didn't hear the rest as he fought to smash the arms to bits. And it was nearly impossible to hear anything over her deafening screams and the sounds of battle from Jay and Carlos, who might have been having a bit too much fun.
Finally, the sword shook loose enough that he could maneuver it out. He just had to reach high enough to slice through the net and hope that it would be enough to knock Mal loose. Or Maleficent, whatever she wanted to be called.
"Jay!" He shouted again and Jay turned back to him, looking quite satisfied as he bashed two teenage boys heads together. Ben cringed. They would feel that later. "Shield jump!"
It was one of Jay's favorite tourney moves, probably because it was illegal in most tourney tournaments, but if he could get it right, it might boost him high enough to get to Mal. He slid one of the silver platters from the dining table across the floor to Jay and then waited for Jay to get into position. Of course, if it went wrong, he could run himself, or Mal through with the sword, but no pressure.
Jay crouched down, holding the platter like a tourney shield and Ben gave it one last look over before he broke into a sprint and jumped up as high as he could when Jay flipped the platter up, giving him an extra boost of height. Just enough to grab onto the net and shake off the zombie hand that had grabbed his ankle as he had tried to jump. He looked down to see Audrey, zombified. He expected nothing less from her, even as a zombie.
If he weren't so focused on getting faerie Mal to shut up after screeching nearly non stop for several minutes, he would have made a jab about having to save her; if he wanted to be murdered, a "honey I'm home" joke. But it was no time for jokes. Her shrieks were starting to drive him insane. He climbed up the net, to the top, thankful he had chosen tourney and weight lifting along with Mock Trial as his after school activities.
His knowledge of traps didn't hurt either as he shoved the sword between the joined corners of the net and the thick rope it had been strung up with. It was going to be a pretty rough landing for both of them, and whoever happened to be under them. He sliced through and closed his eyes, though the drop wasn't that far.
Everything was quiet for several long seconds as Ben lay on the three or four people he had taken out. Even faerie Mal had stopped shrieking. Everything has seemed to stop, except it really hadn't. The zombie hoard was still reaching for faerie Mal and Jay, Carlos and now Evie were fighting them off.
"Run!" Evie shouted at him, pulling him out of the brief shock of their landing. "We'll hold them off, but get Mal out of here." They did seem to know what they were doing.
Ben stood and looked down at faerie Mal, mumbling to herself about liars and thieves and numbers. He did not want to have a repeat of their previous conversation, or of her previous entrapment. He squared his shoulders, pulled the crown back onto his head and looked right at her, fangs, horns, green skin and all.
"My name is King Benjamin Florian Adamson," he spoke, his voice confident and strong. "I am King of Auradon and the seven kingdoms, like my father before me and I command you to follow me, Maleficent Bertha Blackheart of the fae." He had never had to command her, or anyone else officially before, but it felt amazing to have that power surge through him.
Mal had her spells. He had his commands.
She stopped mumbling in an instant and stood, as if the once ballroom guests, now in tattered gossamer and blood stained tuxes, didn't bother her at all. Then he led her toward the wine cellar doors on the wall closest to them. There were a few secret passages that he could think of that would come in handy.
"Evie!" He shouted and she whipped her head around, bashing her fist backwards into Chad's nose with a satisfied smile. "How do I break it?" He asked, wondering if there was anything special he needed to do, hoping it wasn't permanent. He fought off Audrey and Jane, holding Faerie Mal behind him. He resisted smiling, suddenly feeling like the referee in a girl fight.
"It's like PMS!" She shouted back and both Jay and Carlos giggled. "I just usually throw chocolate at it and hope for the best," She admitted, elbowing Lonnie and Mulan back.
"Get out of here!" Carlos shouted. "The zombies get worse the longer they're exposed."
Ben had so many questions, but he knew they would have to be answered later. He turned Mal toward the doors and began to push her through when a hand gripped his shoulder hard. He turned to see Phillip Dormant staring right at him, not zombified like the others, the stench of alcohol nearly unbearable.
"That thing will never be Queen!" Phillip spat out, trying to push past Ben to get to faerie Mal, his eyes crazed with more than just the drink.
Ben tried to keep his anger in check, but after all that he had gone through at the hands of the Dormants and his parents, and after the way he had heard Phillip speak to Mal, after their attempts to trap her with a strange magic, he was completely done.
"That thing," he started, "that girl," he amended, "is my girlfriend!" He gripped the lapels of Phillip's suit hard, practically pulling the older man off the ground, his anger and frustration surging through him like an electric shock. "And I would appreciate it if people started acting like it," He growled, shoving Phillip toward the floor and advancing on him. He needed to hit something and it would be so satisfying to get a little revenge on the man, the part of the group that had tried to make his life horrible.
"Ben!" Evie shouted, bringing his attention back to the three of them fending off the subjects of the court, still trying to chase Faerie Mal into the cellars. She decked his father right in the nose and Ben himself found a strange satisfaction in it. "Get out of here!"
He didn't need to be told again. He remembered Faerie Mal waiting for him and turned on his heel, slamming the door down to the cellars shut behind him. Then he took Faerie Mal's freezing hand in the darkness. They had to get to the secret passages.
From there, once he could think clearly again, they could make a plan.