Listening to Our Hearts 《Descendants》

I

Mal

The week after Ben's coronation, I was still in disbelief about what had happened. I wasn't expecting Jane to take Fairy Godmother's wand and inadvertently release my mother Maleficent from the Isle of the Lost in the process. The most surprising part of the whole thing was when I turned Mom into a lizard. I didn't even know what would happen if I chanted "The strength of evil is good as none, when stands before four hearts as one" when she was trying to force me to submit to her will. I was desperate to protect Auradon, my new home, and I guess that's what did the trick, because she turned into a lizard. Fairy Godmother explained that the reason why Mom became a lizard was because it was equivalent to the love she had in her heart. I was still scared that she would turn back into her normal self and curse me or something, even though Fairy Godmother told me that she would remain a lizard until she learned to love, like I had. I had lots of friends in Auradon, in addition to the three others who came to Auradon with me. Evie, Carlos and Jay had been a major part of helping me discover that I wanted to be good, not bad. Another person that was a major part of my decision was King Benjamin, the son of King Beast and Queen Belle. He showed me that just because I'm Maleficent's daughter doesn't mean that I have to be like her, and I don't have to be scared of her either. I stared at the Beast-head ring that Ben had given me shortly before his coronation, smiling at it and remembering everything that I had already done in Auradon, despite only being here for about a month.

I had used a blonde hair spell a few weeks after Ben's coronation as a way to try to fit in better, but I kept the tips my signature shade of lavender. Evie wasn't happy that I had used a spell on my hair, but I told her that it was my decision to make. She had already donated her Magic Mirror to the museum, and she had been trying to get me to donate my mother's spellbook ever since. My issue with doing it was because I knew that I would feel insecure without it, plus it was the only thing that Mom had ever given me. Even though I had told myself that I wasn't going to use it anymore, I had found it harder than I first thought it would be. Not to mention that my schedule was insanely packed with so many things that I couldn't see how I could possibly do everything on it in a single day. On the bright side, it sounded like Ben and I had a tour of the kingdom coming up, so I had something to look forward to. The day before the trip, Ben stopped by my dorm while I was packing to talk to me. "Oh, hey Bennyboo," I said, smiling sweetly at him. "Hey Mal. I was hoping that we could talk without all the press hounding us," he said. "I've been trying to do that for a while now," I said, walking over to him. "I want to start by apologizing for the press hounding you everywhere you go. I know that you're used to minding your own business and all that, and I get that you probably still want that, right?" He asked. "It would be nice to be able to hang out with Evie, Carlos and Jay without being hounded by a bunch of reporters," I admitted.

When Ben and I got into a limousine for the start of our tour of the kingdom, my phone rang almost immediately. "I've gotta take this," I told Ben, then I answered my phone. "Hello?" I said simply. "Hi M, it's Evie. I just got a text that's got me really worried about you and Ben," Evie said, and I could hear the worry in her tone. "What did it say?" I asked. "Just a second, I'm gonna put you on speaker, 'cause Carlos and Jay just joined me," Evie said, then answered my question. "We all got a text, so you probably will pretty soon if you don't have one yet. Anyway, mine says 'I have sent you and your little VK friends different portions of a message for Mal and Ben. Yours is: "to find" blank "before".' I can't make sense of it," Evie said, and I pulled out a book and a pen and began writing down what she said. "Okay. What about you, Jay? What did yours say?" I asked. "Well, mine had the same intro, but a different message. My message was 'The' blank 'of' blank 'is near. To' blank 'you will have'," Jay said, and I wrote down his part of the message. "Okay, mine also had the same intro, but my message was 'stop' blank 'the wand' blank 'by' blank 'Sunday," Carlos said, and I wrote his part down as well. Almost as soon as I finished writing down Carlos' part of the message, I heard my phone's text alert go off. "I just got a text. I'll call you back once I read it, then we can try to decipher the message," I said, hanging up and checking my texts. Sure enough, there was a new message from an unknown number that read, "new ______ ______ ______ ______ next." I was about to show it to Ben when his phone went off too. "This is weird. I just got a text message that says, 'age' blank 'villains' blank 'the plot'. What were you talking to Evie about?" He asked. "Her, Carlos and Jay all got texts similar to the one that you just described, and I got one too. I think that they're parts of a message for you and me," I said, showing him the messages that I had written down in my book.

"Huh. See how on Jay's message, there are two words capitalized?" Ben asked. "Yeah," I said. "I think those are the first parts of the two halves of the message. Then, if you combine the last phrase of the text that I got with the first word of Carlos' and the last few words of Jay's, you'd get, 'To stop the plot, you will have', right?" Ben asked. "Yeah. Then, if we combine the first part of Evie's with the middle part of Carlos', it would become, 'To stop the plot, you will have to find the wand,'" I said. "Yeah! And then, when you add the last two words from the message Carlos got to the last word of yours, what do we get then?" He asked. "'To stop the plot, you will have to find the wand by next Sunday.'" I said. "I think we can get the first three words of the first half of the whole message from the start of Jay's, the start of yours, and the start of mine, then add in the part of Jay's right before the second half starts..." Ben trailed off, and I could tell that he was trying to put it all together. "I've got it!" He exclaimed after a few minutes. "What is it?!" I asked breathlessly. "The whole message is, 'The new age of villains is near. To stop the plot, you will have to find the wand by next Sunday.' I really don't like the sound of that," he said. "Neither do I, Ben," I said, then realized that I still had to call the others back to tell them what we had discovered.

Evie

My phone rang a little while after Mal hung up, and I answered. "Yeah?" I said simply. "E, it's Mal. Ben and I both got texts with parts of the message, and I think we've decoded it. I won't go through the whole process that we did because of time, but the whole message is, 'The new age of villains is near. To stop the plot, you will have to find the wand by next Sunday.' I think we both know what wand the message is referencing," she said, and I realized with a gasp that there was only one wand that the message could be referencing: Fairy Godmother's wand. "Tell Ben that you need to cancel the tour of the kingdom because of a serious security threat," I said. "Okay, I'll tell him," Mal replied, then I could hear her telling Ben what I had said to tell him. "Okay, he said that he's working on canceling the tour right now, and he's having our driver turn around and take us back to Auradon Prep," Mal said, then she hung up. "What's going on?" Carlos asked nervously, and I explained to him and Jay what I'd learned from Mal. "So... that must mean that someone from the Isle must have snuck off and came here, and they must've taken Fairy Godmother's wand, or they're going to," Jay said. "Exactly. The problem is, we can't exactly convince anyone else that someone might try to steal the wand without Ben's help," I said. "Why do - oh, right," Carlos said, and we went to meet up with Mal and Ben when they came back.

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Here's a new story I came up with after I watched all three Descendants movies recently, and I hope you enjoy it. Until next time!