A/N: I know, it was a long wait to get Act Two started, but the new trailers threw me for a loop. This story was supposed to be kind-of canon-compliant after all, and now I've got new canon to deal with -_- Anyway, I freaking love Celia and her outfit, but Hades is... Unusual, to say the least. This chapter begins the new practice of merging flashback chapters with present day chapters. Eventually it'll be all present day and we'll be caught up with the current plans of our wicked witches, wily warlocks, and other mischeivous magical users! This chapter also contains casual cannibalism jokes so. Be aware?
"Assassination is a quick release from intolerable fate, an act of sunny optimismthat one man's end will alter the flow of events in society's favor"
- Robert B. Baer, The Perfect Kill
Auradonians were nothing, if not hypocritical, and that showed when it came to technology and magic, and the curious parable of Isle TV. Mal was only a toddler when it first came to the Isle, worming it's way into their homes and hearts and minds. And like all things in this bizarre story, it had started because of Ben.
Because Ben was a toddler too, but he was a Prince, and bounced on his father's knee as he watched one of Auradon's new children's programs, a show with puppets and actors and music, all about goodness, and the alphabet. The television show was quaintly titled "Goodsville", and featured (predominantly white, straight, Christian) actors interacting with puppets of primary paint colors, in a little town of the title name.
"Do they have Goodsville?" Ben had asked, simply, with a child's candor.
Of course, the King knew who they were. Ben had maintained that he knew two best friends on the Isle of the Lost, since he first learned to talk. Imaginary friends, he and Belle had assured each other, because how could Ben know anyone from that awful place? Much less two children who were born after the barrier fell, like him. Still, Ben talked about them, and it often gave his father ideas.
"No, son. I suppose they don't watch Goodsville on the Isle." He thought for a moment. "They don't have televisions."
"That's sad." Ben said seriously, in the solemn tone that only a five year old can master.
"Why is it sad, Benjamin?" The king had asked with amusement, and the response surprised him, as his golden boy beamed up at him with eyes of the clearest blue.
"Because if they learn about goodness, they could come live here, in Auradon!"
Of course, Adam Beast had no intention of letting villains come to live in Auradon. Not now, not ever. But the more liberal side of the council (voters like China, Maldonia, Arendelle), had been on his back lately about some kind of rehabilitation program, something that would encourage villains to better themselves instead of just languishing (though the bastards deserved it to be sure) and it planted the seed of an idea in his mind, the kind of idea that required little effort, little money, and was sure to secure his victory in the November poll, when the council voted for the King who would lead Auradon for the next ten years.
He called up Lumiere to work out the details.
When television came to the Isle, they made sure it was powered by magic, so that even when the rolling brownouts kept heat from working on the cold winter nights, or air from blowing in the humid island summer, the televisions still blared, showing their propaganda and nothing else at any time they were turned on. There were two channels. ANN, the Auradon News Network (which featured the disgustingly sweet King Beast's Fireside Chats every Sunday night) and The Isle Channel, which played all propaganda, all the time, and was treated with as much respect as could be expected by the denizens of the Isle.
When television came to the Isle, Mal was five. Unlike Ben, who spoke sentences as soon as he could, and Evie, whose first words were a perfect "Mother may I?", Mal didn't speak much as a child, and as a five year old, who could read perfectly well, and had a vocabulary the size of her library, she spoke almost nothing, communicating in single words that charmed her mother into rare smiles. Now, she was focusing her single-minded intensity onto the television screen as it played reruns of Goodsville, and Maleficent couldn't help but scowl as an actress who looked painfully like Aurora spoke to a fluffy pink puppet about how girls should sit properly, and only speak when spoken to.
Mal narrowed her eyes, as if concentrating, and where her mother saw a bigoted and mind-numbing little show that she only watched because she'd read all her books, and the only thing else to do was socialize - Where her mother saw the program for what it was intended, Mal saw a creature. A pink creature that was not quite animal, and not quite human, like her uncle Diaval, conversing ever so normally with a human being, who Mal sensed held great magical power.
"Mama." Mal whispered (because she always spoke in whispers, even when no one else was around to hear them).
"What is it, my little dragon?" Maleficent asked, and paid more attention to her child and the program than she had in the last thirty minutes of daydreaming.
Mal silently swallowed, and pointed a finger to the puppet on the screen. "Fae?"
"No." The mother couldn't hold back a sneer, and she was glad her Mal was turned away, so the child wouldn't think the sneer directed at her. (Later on, she got sloppy with that, because she was tired, and sad, and Mal learned on her own, to distinguish the 'mad at you' sneers from the 'mad on your behalf' sneers.)
"No, Mal. That's just a doll, being controlled by a silly little human in a studio in Auradon."
Mal furrowed her brow then, and for some reason, the last Queen of the Fae suddenly found the air a bit too thick for her liking, for reasons she did not understand.
"But I sense it." The words came out, so distinctly her daughter's but tainted by magic, and Maleficent's mouth went dry. The child's father had been a human - she was certain of that. She wasn't even certain Mal could use her dragon form. How could a five year old use any kind of magic on the Isle, much less a five year old who was so much more human than Fae?
And then the realization hit her, right as the program changed to King Beast's Fireside Chats, and her daughter's eyes were still glowing.
"I know what you're sensing, dear." She practically purred. "The magic that causes that reaction is inside the box."
Mal nodded, understanding dawned on her young face, and the world once again made sense. Her mother dug around in the crates of scavenged things, and found a particular brick she'd taken a liking to.
"Now darling, shall we try and get the magic out?"
Mal grinned, and though her mother wouldn't let her pick through the glass of the wrecked television set like she did ("You haven't the gloves, Mal. Stay back."), Mom had let her throw the first brick through King Beast's stupid face, and it was a memory she would treasure, especially once she was old enough to really appreciate it.
They'd dug through the ruins until they found what they were looking for - a crystal that glowed red, and bled magic like a broken battery. Maleficent felt the ache of something irreparably lost, as she held the crystal and failed to cast a single spell, failed to make her eyes glow even marginally more than she normally could, and nothing like Mal's beautiful, toxic green. If she was a true villain, she might have kept it out of spite.
But she had never been a true villain, so Maleficent put that gem on a necklace, and gave it to the one of them who'd be able to use it. That same pendant would one day be the center of a blood ritual, and Mal would place it reverantly around Evie's neck as her first follower. Her first disciple.
Mal's first real gift to Evie was a gift from Ben, and none of them ever fully grasped the significance of the coincidence and luck, and the streams of happenstance that led to that convergence.
But Fate knew all, and the goddess whom the Fae worshipped as a faerie with a thousand eyes smiled.
Eleven years later, one Hadie, daughter of Hades, sat at a goblin cafe, with her girlfriend, Ginny Gothel, and the rest of their measly crew - Dizzy Tremaine, Diego DeVil, and Freddie Facilier. The latter was sporting a black eye and a split lip, and more scrapes and bruises than it mattered to count, because she'd run into her sister Celia, her daddy's little pet, the loved child of the family because she was Uma's half-sister, and powerful enough to actually work magic on her own, without the rituals. She was the backup, the contingency plan, the daughter her daddy had made because Freddy wasn't good enough, and as soon he had proof that Celia was better, he'd sent the zombies after her, to get rid of his mistake.
She hated Celia.
"When I get ahold of that little bitch, I'm gonna skin her alive." Facilier hissed under her breath as she bit into one of the double-cooked meals they ate, made from salvaged food with the mold cut off. The specialty of this cafe was a type of pizza, made with stale bread and blue cheese (because you couldn't stop cheese from molding here, but at least you could try and make it the right kind of mold.) Ginny was eating something she'd brought from home, because it was well known that she was seriously allergic to mold, and it was too risky eating out in this neighborhood (or any neighborhood, really. Most people saw the mold as extra nutrition, and goblins in particular didn't see the issue with it).
"I could fry her for you." Hadie laughed, coming out like a bark as she got enough of a flame up on her palm to light a cigarette. "I know it ain't much, but with some fuckin' kerosene, we could light her up."
"Then maybe I could eat something that wasn't green and fuzzy for once." Ginny snorted, grimacing as she put the cool back of her hand against the patchy hives on her face.
"Don't worry about it." Freddie smiled. They weren't being serious (probably) but this was something she wanted (no, needed) to handle on her own. "Next time I see Celia, I'm gonna slit her throat and send her to meet Baron Samedi myself, you know?"
"I'm suddenly glad I'm an only child." Dizzy grinned, elbowing Freddie lightly, not hard enough to hurt her bruises.
"We got stuck with cousins, little chica." Diego snickered, ruffling her hair as she leaned over the table, nearly knocking things over to swat at him.
"I'm not little! I'm just a year younger than you, idiot!"
"At least you guys have normal cousins." Hadie frowned, thinking about something. "I think some of my cousins might also be my uncles."
It was a normal day on the Isle, and just like every other day, when the bare-bulb lights flickered and dimmed, and the air conditioning suddenly gave out, they all hooted and booed at the television in the corner. It fed off the magic trapped within the barrier, and never, ever lost power. Their benevolent overlords could easily wire the rest of island to work off the same power source, but it wouldn't benefit King Adam in the same way that "rehabilitation" via the televisions would, so people would still die of heatstroke in the summer, and hypothermia in the winter, and electrical outages would be just another defining feature of life on the Isle.
Someone at the back of the cafe was already drunk at two in the afternoon, and he threw a tomato slice at the offending screen. The goblin behind the counter took umbridge at that, and jumped over the makeshift cash register and safe to chew him out in the rapid-fire language they spoke.
Mal was the only non-goblin that Freddie had ever heard speak to them in their own tongue, and she never told her outer circle (everyone but Carlos, Jay and Evie) how or why she'd learned.
With nothing better to do, Freddie turned away from Diego and Dizzy, who were getting increasingly flirtatious with their argument, and Hadie, who was trying to impress Ginny by getting her hair to light up in the darkened storefront. Displays of affection made her gag, so she glanced towards the marginally less vomit-worthy news program.
"Hey - shut up idiots - something's going on." The dark-skinned girl growled, raising a hand to silence the others, and she could never quite pull it off the way that Mal did. Dizzy whined, and Hadie glared at her, but they followed her gaze to the television, where King Ben the Naïve stood at a podium for a breaking news broadcast.
"And thanks to my father, King Adam, and my lovely betrothed, the lady Mal," the golden boy said, all radiant and handsome, in a crown too big for him, "We can now welcome four new children from the Isle of the Lost. Four more young people with a chance to choose good."
Waiting with bated breath, afraid to make a sound, afraid to even blink, and when the man at the back of the cafe sneezed, the goblin threw him out, silently, even more annoyed than when he'd thrown the slice of tomato. The goblin had served these kids for years, and if that patron interrupted this moment, his blood would soon be on the table, and it would be a mess to clean up.
"I'd love to welcome Hadie, daughter of Hades, Ginny Gothel, Dizzy Tremaine, and Freddie Facilier to Auradon!"
"'Guess I'll have to kill Celia later." Freddie smirked, to hide her relief, as Diego hugged Dizzy close to him, and spun her around in the air, her multicolored skirt flaring out around her like a flower.
"I can't leave without you." Dizzy whispered, tearing up, as much as she couldn't stop smiling. "I couldn't leave Anthony either."
"You know I want you to go, princess." Diego grinned rakishly, spinning her into a tango as the lights flickered back on, and the cafe music started to play again. "Mal arranged this. She had to have made it happen, which means I'm next in line, kiddo."
"I'm not a kid!" The girl protested, playfully beating on his chest as she cried with happiness, tears pooling out under the rims of her glasses, and her next words were quieter. "You know she'll want the coven first, and you're not magic. She only brought me over, because she promised Anthony."
She was right of course, but Diego never reminded her of it. It was the single thing that ended the turf war between the Tremaines and the Core Four when Anthony and Mal sat down to negotiations.
("If you and blueberry love Dizzy so much, give her the best possible life you can, and I'll stay out of your way." He'd said, and they shook on it, and Mal had abided by that while they lived on the Isle. Now that she had the power to take four more out of hell, it went without saying that Drizella "Dizzy" Tremaine, daughter of Drusilla, would be one of the newest immigrants of Auradon.)
"I can't believe it." Hadie laughed like she was about to cry. "My gods, I can't believe Mal did it. How did princey know my pronouns?"
"A witch can do anything." Ginny grinned a feral grin, prouder than any of them that she could have taken something that her mother tried to use against her and made it her own. In that way, Freddie thought, she and Ginny were very alike.
"C'mon Gin. We've got to pack. Got to say goodbye to my parents." Hadie commented in a serious voice, but she couldn't keep the smile off her face as she stood from the booth and held out her hand for her girlfriend.
Diego and Dizzy were still dancing wildly, dipping and twirling, and Freddie stared off into the distance outside the glass-less windows as she came to terms with what had happened.
Across the Corona Channel, in a country called Auradon, a purple haired sorceress was creating a ritual.
Poison would be discovered, thanks to modern forensics, and a healthy dose of villain paranoia. A murder would mean a search for an assassin, and suspicion could mean an end to the VK program, and the four who were slated to come over from the Isle. As long as King Adam lived, Ben was just a figurehead, but for Adam to die, the circumstances had to be perfect.
"A coffin. A trapezoid." Mal murmured.
"Seven-pointed gateway." Jay said. "Seven for numerology, and the gateway for the dreamer."
"Religious iconography for that personal flair." Carlos suggested with a smirk.
"And it needs a circle, the symbol of the witch." Evie added the final detail, and the outline was complete.
"Well, my dear King Adam." Mal smiled, once she showed the blueprint to her friends. "Welcome to your worst nightmare."