Zach's writing slowly climbs to a middle-school level. He doesn't struggle with word choice or sentence fluency, but he's used to quick answers and writing only short notes to help him remember things. It takes him a while to grasp the idea that he has to explain himself to someone on paper. His handwriting isn't the best either. Ben gets him a letter book to practice forming letters in, but he hates it so vehemently that Mal doesn't even protest when he runs it through the shredder the second week.
"I already know what letters look like!" He snaps at Ben when Ben asks what his alternative will be. "I don't like learning over and over again!"
Impatience, Mal thinks, might be Zach's fatal flaw. He utterly hates anything that can't be immediately memorized and applied. Practicing things is of the devil, as far as he's concerned. Still, he's got to learn to write legibly, and if he won't do it the way Ben learned, then they've got to figure out something to help him. Mal suggests art classes. If he can control a brush or a pencil, her reasoning is, he shouldn't have a problem with lettering. However, Zach responds to that proposal with so much hate that she immediately backs down. Zach likes art, but he hates trying to make it. Dozens of Christmas coloring books have been buried or burned or thrown away under his care. Crayons and markers are only useful when pens and pencils are scarce. In his opinion, restaurant kids menus waste too much space with pictures and should devote more paper to riddles, trivia, and word searches. Her son thinks in words, and not pictures.
In the end, Mal comes up with a solution. They purchase a composition notebook, sit Zach down at the table every night, and have him write two front-and-back pages about his day. It turns out to be very therapeutic for him - the first few pages spew insults and rants about how awful his parents are for doing this to him and how much his hand hurts, and then once his hand gets used to the motions he's able to convey his frustration about his brother and his parents and his sister in a much more effective manner. On the night summer begins for kids in Auradon, Mal reads to Tyler on the couch while Zach fills five pages straight at the bar, ranting about how Tyler smashed a soda can on the ground and caused it to blow up everywhere before going straight into talking about how he's annoyed at his guitar classmates because all they can talk about is how school is getting out. His handwriting is becoming more consistent, but it's big, so Mal improvises a new strategy. The following night, she tapes off the back portion of Zach's book and tells him to only write two pages, front-and-back. There's a small tantrum and a few scathing remarks, and then his handwriting goes from covering two lines to having two neat lines fitting inside of one line. His handwriting is smaller than Ben's, and that's saying something. She doesn't comment when he requests sticky notes from Ben and continues filling the book with his thoughts about his day in shades of blue and yellow.
Eventually, Mal doesn't even have to remind him that he has to do some writing because his composition book sits in his room on his headboard with his dictionary and textbooks. She lifts the ban on using more than two pages and Zach takes advantage of the added space by letting his handwriting get a bit bigger to fill the lines properly. The last exercise she makes him do before letting habit take over entirely is to set a timer for twenty minutes and tell him that he has to write to fill the time, not the pages. It's the final thing that tips Zach's handwriting from legible to acceptable. Now that he's tapping his pencil along to the seconds and not caring about how many pages he can fill with his seven-year-old rage, he's taking the time to make little embellishments on his handwriting and takes care to have it stretch evenly across the page. It's not glorious, but it's understandable and neat. It's also good for Zach to have something he can fill with his thoughts on his family and his studies without fear of Mom and Dad picking it up and examining it. Mal feels a little like a genius when she notices that the more he spews out his frustrations on paper, the less annoyed he is the next day.
Once he's managed to grasp the concept of "you need to explain your ideas to other people, not just spit out random facts", his essay writing improves ten-fold. There are usually ten or so different places where he has to go back and re-write a part that doesn't fit into his thesis, so he's not perfect, but it is certainly an improvement. And it's just enough for Mr. Jensen to agree to let him sit in on Mathematics 1010 and Biology 1010 at Auradon Prep. If he handles it well, they'll add him to classes in the Winter semester. His student ID arrives a week before they leave on their trip to Motuni. Mal can barely see through her tears as she snaps a picture, but she passes it off as happy tears to Zach and holds off the worst of it until she's alone with Ben.
Zach gets new textbooks, but Ben makes him leave them behind for the week they're gone from the palace. "You will disengage," he says slowly as he locks them into the family safe. "You will not go and hide in a book, Zach. You need to be present and in the moment. We're going to take lots of photos and go look at lots of different places and I don't want you staring at a book the entire way there and back."
He does get to bring Ben's old laptop and his composition notebook as compensation. The notebook loses a considerable amount of pages during the plane ride when Zach starts watching a little kid's spelling and math show on one side of him and Baby Belle begins to cry on his other side. Mal has to scoot past Zach to walk around the plane with Belle and she budges his extra pens onto the floor as she tries to quell the crying. Other passengers glance at her, do a double-take at the purple hair, and Zach's in-use pen flies more furiously across the page with every whisper of "Queen Mal?"
Ben finally offers him a pair of headphones, but the thing about Zach is he doesn't appreciate much music outside of guitar and instrumental, while Ben prefers current pop bops. The poor kid is about to kill someone or break something by the time they finally land.
They have to wait until everyone else disembarks because of security. When Tyler's show ends and a new one starts with its catchy, silly intro music, Zach slams his head into the chair in front of him and lets out a feral growl of frustration.
Mal begins to wonder if they're going to survive this trip.
The thing about the boys is that they've always had their separate spaces. Zach's room is Zach's and Tyler's room is Tyler's and the boys have their specific seats in the car and their belongings and spaces and everything is separate. And on the ship, it's not like that. Ben and Mal keep Little Belle in one room, but the boys share the next room over. At first, it's exciting for them. Zach wants the bottom bunk because there's a lamp beside his pillow. Tyler wants the top bunk because it's higher up. Zach wants the desk all to himself. Tyler wants the TV. Zach gets the high shelves in the dresser. Tyler gets the lower ones. There is a division of space.
She should have known it was too good to last.
Ben is out taking a phone call on the deck when she hears a thump'n'crash from the next wall over. She hurries to put Belle into the portable crib without waking her up and by the time she makes it into the wall, there is screaming coming from the boys' room. The door is unlocked, so she opens it and steps into a war scene.
"I told you not to jump!" Zach howls in a tone so loud that Mal's eardrums threaten to burst. The left side of his forehead is bleeding and the top bunk bed, which was screwed into the wall, is lying on Zach's bed. His face is all purple as he shouts at a crying, stunned Tyler. "I told you no and you didn't listen, you idiot!"
"I'm not an idiot!" Tyler yells right back. Green light fills his eyes. "You're just a stupid, smart-aleck bully!"
"At least I don't break everything I touch!"
"At least I don't make momma cry!"
"You make mom cry all the time because you're insensitive and blind!"
"Well, at least I'm normal!"
"What on earth?" Mal interrupts from the doorway. Neither boys notice her.
"Maybe if you could calm down for once then this wouldn't happen!" Zach yells in this deep, throaty voice that sounds like a growl as tears stream down his face. Could she be imagining it, or do the sides of his face seem darker the angrier he gets?
"Mind your own business, you rat!" Tyler howls back with purple smoke curling out of his nostrils. "Go back to not talking to anyone because no one wants to talk to you anyway!"
Zach lets out a deep, vicious growl and Tyler screeches right back at him. A fountain of flames spills forth from Tyler's mouth. Mal panics. "No!" She shouts, jumping forward and shoving Zach and Tyler apart as green flames catch on the floor and on Zach's shirt. Mal stomps out the flames on the ground and tries to brush away the fire on Zach's shirt but he wrenches himself away from her and takes a swipe at Tyler. His fingernails aren't there anymore – they're claws and they leave three cuts across Tyler's face before he throws himself to the ground and starts sobbing and thrashing around in a complete meltdown.
The fire alarms go off. The floor is on fire; the beds are on fire; Zach is on fire. He howls and claws at himself and Mal grabs him by the neck as his shirt starts to rip open and burn away at the same time. Horns are curling out of his head and his knuckles are becoming horribly knobby and crooked as she shoves him into the bathroom shower and turns the cold water on full blast.
Purple smoke is still emanating from Tyler on the floor and Mal catches on too late, distracted as she is with trying to contain the bedroom fire with her powers as Zach collapses under the cold shower wall, sobbing. His face is longer and deformed, but he seems to be going back to normal or at least not morphing any further. Tyler sneezes, and his body explodes into a new form. A tiny purple dragon is now writing on the floor, spewing green flames as he thrashes about.
"No!" Mal shouts though yelling isn't doing much good. Tyler flaps clumsy, frail wings and rolls onto his back accidentally, coughing up green flames and sounding a lot like a dying chicken. Fire singes Mal's heels, and she hears people running down the hall to her. Cruise ship attendants appear and their mouths fall open at the dragon on the ground and the sparse fires everywhere. Mal makes a split-second decision and grabs the first part of Tyler she can touch before he writhes away from her. It turns out to be his tail, which she uses to pull him, squawking and crying, into the shower beside Zach. Zach hisses when he sees him, but Mal claps her hands in front of her oldest and Zach flinches away from the noise miserably. She slams the door to the bathroom before the attendants can see Zach and then turns to extinguish the flames before finally taking a deep breath to try and explain all of this to them.
The baby is crying next door. Where is Ben?
"Hi," Mal coughs a little. Her voice is hoarse now. "I'm so sorry about the chaos." She waves her hand at the fire alarm a little helplessly and it turns off without much prompting. Thank goodness. "The boys… they got into a fight… I can fix most things and we'll pay for what I can't fix."
"Was that a dragon?" One of the attendants asks, looking white even though he has darker skin and tan lines.
Mal winces. "Yes, uh, he should be fine in a moment. I'll help him as soon as you all leave… do you happen to have a screwdriver?"
"A screwdriver?" A girl with a braided bun squeaks. "Is he going to eat it?"
"Ah, no," Mal shakes her head and takes a few steps further into the room to put a hand on the fallen bed. "I just… the screws came out of the wall and I was hoping to screw them back in?"
The first man looks around, shell shocked, and runs a hand down his face. "Perhaps we should simply… move you into a different room?" He asks feebly. "You may fix this one if you like, but, uh, it might be easier to simply move everything."
Mal smiles a tight little smile. "My husband is on the deck," she explains through her teeth. "I'd like to discuss it with him when he gets back. Now, could you please leave, so I can attend to my children?"
"W-would you be requiring anything?" The man stammers out.
"Some hydrogen peroxide would be lovely," Mal forces a smile and then steps out into the hall. Belle is crying even louder now and others in the hall are exchanging odd looks and looking down to where the commotion was. She quickly scoops up Belle, but Belle only starts to cry even louder as she's jostled into her mom's arms. Mal locks her door behind her. The attendants stand, stone still, outside the boy's door. From down the hall, Mal sees the tall, steady figure of her husband appear from the stairwell. He heads down, pauses when he sees everyone standing outside their doors, and then walks faster as Mal hovers in the doorway of the boys' room, trying to quell the distraught baby.
"Is everything okay?" Ben asks, glancing between everyone's faces. He peers into the room and his mouth falls open. "Oh, dear…"
"Thank you," Mal addresses the attendants and gestures him in. He steps over the threshold and Mal finally gets to close the door.
"What happened?" He gasps as she shoves the baby into his hands and storms over to the window to start letting the smoke out before the alarms go off again.
"The boys fought," Mal responds briefly. She opens the door to the bathroom and shuts off the water to the shower before Ben sees their two young charges. He lets out a ragged, shaky breath. The only thing holding them both together is all the crazy experiences they had as teens together.
Zach has the nose of a cat in a dark shade of pink, like a baby lion. Tiny horns are peeping out of his shaggy locks and his hands are gnarled paws with long claws attached. He has red marks like sunburns on his neck and chest. His button-down shirt has been ripped open and the remnants of hair stretch down his torso, visible through the rips. It's his appearance that has Ben about ready to hyperventilate, despite the fact he doesn't look as bad as he did before and his normal features are quickly returning.
Tyler's body shape has returned to normal. He looks wiped out as he leans, exhausted, against the shower tiles opposite Zach. His hands are curved talons with four fingers each. Dragon skin still stretches down the left side of his face and when he breathes, smoke curls out from his lips. The cuts on the right side of his face are still bleeding, but he doesn't seem that hurt now that he's wasted all that energy in dragon form.
Mal wets a rag hanging on the wall, rubs a bar of soap against it, and starts cleaning Tyler's cheek off. He whines as she does so and then curls up with his head on her leg as she treats the cuts. He's not burned. Like her, he must be resistant to his own flames.
"Well, Beastie," Mal sighs, pulling Tyler's cheek down so she can clean the cuts out, "Maybe you'll have your own marks like Mom's after this."
Tyler whines and pulls his face away as the soap stings the flesh of his cheek. He struggles to sit up and peer into the mirror before falling back down beside her. "I don't like them," He mumbles, and curls his face away into her belly.
"Zach?" Mal calls softly. "Are you hurt?"
Zach lifts his arms, feels his face, and shakes his head. "I just bit my tongue," he mutters angrily and then distracts himself by pressing on his nose to feel the shape of it while his fingers slowly return to normal.
Mal nods and glances up at Ben, who's managed to calm Belle down. She flicks on the bathroom fan with a sigh. "Ben, please get them some new clothes," she requests and reaches down to start tugging Tyler's light-up sneakers off of him. He moans a little, but she manages to get his socks and shoes off before Ben starts tossing things her way. The dragon skin on his face is fading.
First one child, and then the other, is undressed, dried off, and fixed up. Mal has Ben take them into their bedroom to rest while she tries to figure out what to do about the room. Zach has burns on his upper body and Tyler's cuts go almost all the way through his cheek, but they're both asleep now, so she'll have to deal with their complaints later.
"What happened?" Ben asks as they work together to heave Tyler's collapsed bed off of Zach's. Books have been crushed between the two, but they all look okay.
"Tyler was jumping on the bed and I think it caught Zach on the way down," Mal mumbles tiredly. "Your son has some very cruel insults in him."
"Which one?"
"Both."
They manage to reattach the bed to the wall and Mal starts pulling off singed, bloody sheets. She's not sure what to do with them. Ben lifts the books off of Zach's bed with pinched lips. "Do these look familiar?" He asks Mal.
Mal squints. They're textbooks, not uncommon of Zach, but specifically, they're the new ones that Ben locked in the safe before they left home. Beside them is Zach's well-loved composition notebook. Mal is suddenly understanding why her son chose the route of screaming at his brother instead of just sighing and coming to get her. "How'd he get those?" She asks.
Ben shakes his head. He doesn't look happy, to say the least. "I don't know," He responds. "You're sure he doesn't have magic?"
Mal gestures around the room. "After this? I'm positive."