Archive of Our Own

The Wednesday shipment was always disappointing and smelled like rot and rust.

The drop zone was a stretch of cracked asphalt behind the market where the guards from the bridge would kick crates off the truck bed and leave before anyone got close enough to make eye contact. 

Carlos was elbow-deep in the materials pile before the guards even finished unloading, which was partly because he was fast and partly because being small meant he could wriggle between adults who didn't bother watching where they put their feet around fourteen-year-olds. Jay was perched on the wrecked concrete divider at the edge of the lot, watching for Uma's crew with the kind of lazy alertness that looked like boredom but was actually very much not. Evie was three crates over, already running food through her hands, separating what was actually rotten from what was only almost rotten, which was a skill that took years to develop and saved your life regularly. Mal was somewhere behind him, negotiating, which was what Mal called threatening people at a conversational volume.

Carlos dragged his pile of scrap around the side of a dumpster so he could sort it without anyone jostling him. The materials pile was the least popular cut of the shipment - most kids went for food or clothes first - so nobody was watching him, which was how he liked it.

Copper wire. Three screws, stripped. Four screws, not stripped. A ruined laptop, run over by something large and then rained on for several months, but still useful for the hardware inside. Half a blender motor. A magazine that had gotten wet and fused into a solid brick.

Carlos almost missed it.

It was at the bottom of the heap, under the magazine brick and a curl of what had once been a curtain. Small. Black. Rectangular.

A phone.

Not a modern one, nothing sleek or glass-screened. This was old, maybe eight or nine years out of date, the kind with a small screen and a physical keypad and a camera lens on the back no bigger than Carlos's thumbnail. The screen was cracked but when he pressed the power button, expecting nothing, the screen flickered.

Low battery. 12%.

Carlos stared at it.

He looked up, over the lip of the dumpster, to make sure no one had seen. Nobody was looking at him. Nobody ever looked at him at the drop. He shoved the phone under his shirt, gathered the rest of his scrap into his jacket like a sling, and walked, not ran, because running would make someone notice, back across the lot to where Jay was sitting on the divider.

He walked past Jay without stopping. Jay, to his credit, read the set of Carlos's shoulders in about half a second and slid off the wall to follow.

"Mal," Jay called over his shoulder, easy, bored-sounding. "Pup's got something."

They made it back to the hideout in four minutes flat.

"It's a phone," Carlos announced the second the door was shut, breathing hard, holding it up.

Mal looked up from where she'd been sharpening a knife - their current best knife, which they'd lifted from a market stall three weeks ago. "I can see that."

"It works."

That got everyone's attention.

Jay was off the wall and beside him in seconds. Evie abandoned the food sort. Even Mal set down the knife.

"Charge it," Jay said immediately.

"I know that, that's not the problem." Carlos was already talking fast, the way he did when his brain was moving faster than his mouth, which was often. "The problem is what you do with a phone that has no service because there's no cell towers on the Isle because Auradon doesn't want us calling anyone, and also no apps will work without internet and also the battery is at twelve percent and I don't have the right charger but I can rig something if I have-"

"Carlos."

"-about a week and the wire from the laptop and maybe a nine-volt battery which I think I have in the workshop-"

"Carlos!"

He stopped. Blinked. "Yeah?"

Mal took the phone from him gently, looked at it, turned it over. Looked at the tiny cracked camera lens. Then back at Carlos. "What can it do?"

Carlos thought about it. "...Take pictures. Take video. Play whatever's already stored on it locally. And I can build stuff with the hardware. The processor alone-"

She held out her hand to stop him from rambling. "Do it.”

With permission granted from his leader, Carlos smiled wide.

The thing about Carlos's workshop was that it was not, technically, a workshop. It was a corner of the condemned building that Mal's crew used as a base, specifically the corner that had partially collapsed and was therefore not useful for sleeping or storing food or anything else, but which Carlos had gradually filled with equipment salvaged from fourteen separate Wednesday shipments and which now constituted the only working electrical setup on their block.

The charger took four days and a creative interpretation of three different power sources, including a car battery Jay had liberated, which is what Carlos called definitely stolen.

The phone charged and it turned on. The phone was, as Carlos had dreaded, basically useless, because they had no signal, no WiFi, no internet, and the only apps that worked without it were the camera, the calculator (which at his big age of fourteen he didn't need anymore!), and a snake game from 2011.

Jay played the goddamn snake game for six hours.

"It's not that interesting, Jay." Mal reprimanded him. "You're wasting power."

"You're just saying it 'cause you're bad at it." Jay replied and showed her his tongue. "Cry more, score 334."

Evie laughed, because she managed to achieve an incredible score of 561 before her snake ate its own tail. Carlos was the second lowest at the ranking, making him a proud 398 achiever, which he was extremely proud of seeing that the touchscreen barely captured his movement due to the lack of fingerprints in his dominant hand. You see, he wasn't that skilled with chemicals when he was 8.

Mal was a very sore loser, because she showed Jay the finger and went back to her wall painting, which was a very sanitized way to say 'drawing a canonically accurate dick on Jay's wall'. Jay really didn't seem to mind, having his brown eyes fixated on the screen.

Out of nowhere, Jay yelped.

"HA! 876 points!" He threw his body into the couch, laughing loudly while Evie heavily sighed. "Suck that, Princess!"

"Gimme that!" She said and snatched the poor phone away from the thief's hand. She graciously took a lock of deep blue hair out of her eye, placing it behind her ear, and prepared to attack. "I'll show you the princess!"

The phone also had internal storage, from what Carlos could gather. There were audio files too corrupt to listen to, two downloaded articles, and exactly 47 photos of a family vacation somewhere so green it had to be fake. There were photos of bright trees, a beach, and of a child of approximately six holding an ice cream cone, mouth open, sun on her face like it was simply given to her.

It was the first time Carlos had seen the world so colorful, and it was through a cracked screen.

There were also the ads.

The snake game was free, which meant every three rounds it would freeze for a full five seconds and show something. Most of them were for apps that didn't work here - a dating app, a weather service, a bank. But one kept coming up, over and over, a loop of bright teenagers lip-syncing and doing a little dance, pointing at words that appeared over their heads, a logo in the corner shaped like a musical note.

Download TikTok. Make your first video in 60 seconds. Millions watching now.

"What's a tictoc," Jay said the fourth time it played.

"Tick-tock," Evie corrected, without looking up. "It's like a clock sound."

"What does it do."

Evie squinted at the screen. "People dance, I guess?"

"We don't need an app for that. I can dance."

Evie snorted. "You cannot dance."

"I can dance excellently, Evie."

"If excellently means ‘like you're being electrocuted’ then sure."

Mal, from her wall, said without turning around: "Leave the tictoc. Pup, get over here, I need your hands."

Carlos sighed and got up. He could tell Mal was in a bad mood, so he didn’t even correct her in the stupid nickname.

The purple lineart was already done, so all he had to do was fill it before Mal could render it and make the veins pop or something. He wasn't nearly as skilled as Mal while drawing, but he had enough precision in his hands that he could color between the lines at least.

Mal handed him a brush and the red tin. He started on the glands.

"Remember that TV channel situation," Mal said, after a minute of companionable painting. “We talked about it the other day.”

"Hm?"

"Two channels, Carlos. Two. One of them is the weather and the other is the king."

"Yeah, it sucks. Although I do like the king channel." He liked informative things.

Mal looked at him like he was stupid. "You have dibs on the materials of every shipment, Carlos.” 

“Yup.” He nodded. That’s why they were the most technologically advanced turf in the isle.

“You're telling me you can't make the TV do more."

Carlos kept his brush moving. He opened his mouth to say something technically complicated about broadcast bandwidth and barrier interference, and then closed it, because Mal had her command voice on, which sounded exactly like her regular voice if you didn't know her, and which Carlos had learned to recognize at the age of eleven when she'd told him to duck and he hadn't and she'd had to explain, later, very patiently, the concept of a direct order.

"How many more," he said.

"All of them."

"Mal."

"All of them, Carlos."

"That's not a number."

"Forty," she said. "Fifty. I don't care. Figure it out."

Oh god.

"When."

She finally looked at him, sideways, brush paused. Her eyes did the thing, the almost-green at the edges. "Soon."

"That's still not a number."

"Soon," she said again, and went back to the lineart.

Jay, upside down on the couch now, said cheerfully: "Just like Mal to demand the impossible. She has so much faith in you, Carlos."

"Shut up, Jay." Because his mood had just soured due to the ‘reach the heavens’ task that had just gotten dropped in his lap.

"Our beloved engineer. Our little electrician."

"I will end you." He snapped at Jay.

Mal went back to rendering. Carlos kept filling in the glands, brush on autopilot, the smell of paint filling his lungs and making him swallow a cough.

Goddamnit, it was so unjust how the barrier kept clean air out. Kept communication out. Kept magic and light and drinkable water and not rotten food away from his greedy little hands.

The barrier was, at its core, a frequency. Perhaps one built by magic standards, but a frequency nonetheless, seeing that it definitely wasn't a particle. Maybe it was a wave signal, seeing the pattern it makes when someone touches it. Something done by humans and maintained by humans and therefore, theoretically, something that could be-

Fiddled with.

Not broken, because Carlos wasn't stupid. Breaking the barrier would bring the entire Auradon military down on them in about four minutes and everyone on the Isle would suffer for it. He'd seen what happened when people tried to break the barrier.

But fiddling with it? Making a very small, very targeted hole, just big enough for a specific frequency to pass through? Mal wanted TV channels. TV channels were broadcast. Broadcast was frequency. If he could tune a receiver to punch a hole only wide enough for a specific bandwidth, one that follows a sinusoid so closely in a refined controlling method that whatever infrequency noticed by data could be defined as-

Oh.

Carlos's brush stopped.

"Pup," Mal said, without looking. "You painted outside the line."

"I have to go."

"What?"

"I have to go I have to go I have to go-"

He shoved the brush into Mal's hand, knocked over the red tin on his way past - Jay yelped as it rolled under the couch - and was out of the room before she finished turning around.

"CARLOS!"

"I'M GETTING YOUR TV CHANNELS!" he yelled back, already halfway down the hall.

The workshop door slammed.

It took him three weeks.

Week one was easy, in that it was just math, and Carlos liked the theory of control systems. He was excited and tested out several controllers for different plant models to the point he needed a new pencil. Obviously, a simple PID wasn’t even scratching the initial itch the problem demanded, Carlos had to hit his books again to learn different theoretical controlling methods, configuring this the happiest day of his life. He ended up settling for a Fuzzy controller. Albeit simple, it was fun to work with nonetheless.

Week one was also where he realized his workshop was not going to cut it, because the car battery Jay had liberated was going to pop like a balloon the second he tried to push a real signal through his receiver, and the only working generator on their block was in Jafar's shop.

Jafar's shop was a problem.

"It’s probably fine, I mean. I'll deal with him," Jay said, when Carlos explained. Jay had his feet on the table and his hands behind his head and he was not looking at Carlos, which was how Carlos knew Jay was thinking harder than he was letting on. "If he notices, which he won't, he’ll yell a lot, so maybe brace yourself. But if it comes to that, which it won’t, I'll steal something for him, it'll be fine."

"I need to use it for two more weeks, Jay. Every night."

"He has a generator because he stole it from a guard shipment in '12 and it runs on whatever oil we pour in it. Dad's not using it for anything except the fridge he keeps his beer in and the little TV where he watches the weather channel. He's not gonna miss it between midnight and four."

"And if he catches me."

"He won't catch you. He falls asleep at nine. He’s stubborn and thinks he's still a sorcerer so he doesn't set alarms, he senses intruders. He senses them right through a snore."

Carlos stared at him.

"But if he does, which he won’t, I’ll be there," Jay said. “Trust me.”

Carlos did, as it turned out, trust him.

He didn't tell anyone what he was doing, even when Evie poked him, metaphorically and literally, with her finger asking “what is that,” “why do you need four capacitors,” “don’t you think you’re messing too much with the integrator?” Because she was too damn smart for her own good. But although she had valuable input, Carlos refused to tell them because explaining takes time and if his hands don’t keep up with his brain then the whole time Carlos spent holed up in his circuits was going to be for nothing and then Mal will be disappointed, which was a whole thing.

Damn, he was struggling to even take the time to use the bathroom. Pulling Evie into it would just make their turf more vulnerable since two of their four members would be occupied in a machine it might not even work. He didn’t need the others to go crazy with expectations and disappointments. Carlos himself was going crazy and Carlos was the one building the damn thing and burning his finger with hot solder.

Mal at some point physically removed him from Jafar's back room, demanding he talked to her, because when she told him to find fifty channels she didn’t think it would mean Carlos disappearing and starving himself for several days. Carlos barked that he was working on her order and he couldn't stop yet because he was almost there and please just let me do it. And he made sure to use his pretty giant huge brown eyes to make her fold so she didn't notice that he started the conversation being very, very rude to his leader.

She folded. She also said "one week, Carlos, and then I'm dragging you out by your ear," which he took as an acceptable deadline.

The machine looked insane. It was built from the materials shipment, radio parts, some copper wire that had been inside a broken ceiling fan, the frame of an old satellite dish he'd found in the dump two years ago and never gotten around to using. It lived in the corner of Jafar's shop, plugged straight into the generator with a cable Carlos had spliced himself, and held together with electrical tape and a fervent hope. Jay slept on the shop's cot most nights, because someone had to take Carlos's face away from the circuit when the machine exploded, which had, admittedly, happened more than once. Per night.

Jafar, for his part, did not notice. Jafar was very consistent in this.

Carlos flipped the switch for the fifth time that hour, with bleeding fingers in places where wire ends cut, and a chronic trembling that started roughly three days into the sleeping deprivation journey. The solder was already in his free hand to fix whatever tries to fall.

What Carlos expected was something to hum and die with a concerning smoke dancing out of the capacitor, which was what happened all the other times he tried to turn on his machine.

What Carlos wanted, originally, was more TV channels. Mal had said forty. He thought he could do forty.

What he got when the machine hummed alive, was something else.

The phone, laying soundly on Jay's chest after another failed attempt to reach 1000 points in the goddamn snake game, chimed.

Jay immediately sat up, looking around to search for whatever threat woke him up. "Carlos." Jay said, but it was meant as a question.

"It's fine, go back to sleep." Carlos said, approaching to pick up the phone from Jay's lap.

"What time is it."

Carlos's eyebrows frowned. "I dunno, four?" Carlos murmured and pocketed the phone as swiftly as he could, before placing both hands on Jay's shoulders and guiding him back to the cot. "Sleep, it's okay."

Jay seemed content with that. "You need too."

"Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna."

"Don't die explosion." Jay faintly murmured before promptly going back to sleep.

Carlos chuckled silently, making a mental note to not die explosion, and sat again on the workshop bench.

The machine was still humming behind his back as he opened up the phone, the brightness of the screen making him scratch his eyelids until he had it adjusted.

One bar.

There was a bar where there should have been an X and Carlos stared at it for a very long time.

Carlos was convinced sleep deprivation had him hallucinating or maybe confounding things, because there was no way he had gotten WiFi, right? Maybe he had fallen asleep on the bench, had a capacitor explode in his nostrils and now he was in hell. That's what hell feels like, right? Being so out of yourself that the hand unlocking the phone didn't even feel like your own.

Network connection: AUR_PUB_5G.

He opened the browser. It loaded. It actually loaded, the little spinning wheel going round and round and then-

He was looking at the Auradon Daily Herald website.

Carlos de Vil, fourteen years old, son of Cruella de Vil, born and raised in the only place in the world with no internet connection, sat on a cold bench in Jafar's shop and read the entire front page of the Auradon news at 4am. Then he went to the second page. Then he accidentally found a cooking website and read a recipe for something called a crème brûlée which sounded fake but was apparently real. Then he found an educational forum for students and read three threads about advanced mathematics.

He read until the battery hit 5%.

Then he plugged the phone into the charger table, sat down next to Jay on the cot, and promptly passed out with his forehead on Jay's shoulder.

He was going to tell them in the morning.

He was going to tell them the second they woke up.

"Okay," Mal said. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor of their usual meeting spot - a burned-out shop in the market district that used to be someone's bakery, which they'd annexed at the start of the season after the previous occupants had made the mistake of trying to jump Carlos. "Walk us through this."

"I made a thing that pokes a small hole in the barrier's frequency."

"In the barrier." Jay's voice was very flat.

"A small hole. Specifically tuned for WiFi signals and TV broadcast bands. Nothing comes through except those."

"How small are we talking," Evie said.

"Very small. Like. Metaphorically the size of a needle."

Mal's eyes had gone a little green at the edges. Carlos recognized this as interest, which was the same color it turned when she was angry, but with very different energy. "And the WiFi goes to the phone."

"And the phone has internet."

Silence.

"The Auradon internet." Jay said.

"I mean, yes, that's the only internet there is."

"Can Auradon tell." Mal said. "Can they trace it back?"

Carlos opened his mouth and then closed it.

"...See, that's tricky. The signal looks like interference. Like a glitch. It happens sometimes at the barrier naturally - weather, solar stuff, the magic wobbles. I checked the Auradon monitoring forum, they log it as routine. As long as I keep it small, it should look like noise. If I try to make it bigger - if I try to get more than the four of us on it, if I try to, I don't know, call someone - the signature changes. They'd know within a day. Maybe faster."

"So it stays small."

"It stays small."

"And it stays between us."

"Especially between us."

Mal reached out and he handed her the phone.

She stared at it. Then she opened the browser, apparently on instinct, and her thumbs started moving. Carlos watched her face as she looked at things, the tiny micro-expressions that crossed it: surprise, contempt, something that might've been wonder, then contempt again.

"This is what they're doing out there." She said finally.

"Some of it." Carlos said. "Mostly this was for the TV, originally. I just. It was easier to punch through on a WiFi band. The TV part works too, by the way."

"Both?"

"Both."

"Pup," she said, and it was almost soft. "You made us both."

Jay, who had been leaning over her shoulder, said: "Open the snake app."

"Jay-"

"Open the snake app, Mal."

Mal opened the snake app. They waited. Three rounds went by. Jay died on round three at a score of 902, which he swore loudly about. And then the ad came up, the bright one, the teenagers, the dance.

"Tictoc," Jay said, pointing. "The thing. From the ads."

"Tik-tock," Evie said again, on reflex.

"Is it real?" Mal said.

Carlos took the phone back, thumbed over to the app store, typed tiktok with two fingers, albeit with some difficulty, and the page loaded. A green download button. Two billion downloads. Five-star average.

"It's real," Carlos said.

The four of them looked at each other.

"We're downloading it," Jay said.

"We haven't even talked about-" Mal started.

"Mal," Evie said. Evie had the look she got when she'd already decided something and was just waiting for everyone else to catch up. "We have to see it. You know we have to see it."

Mal looked at Carlos. Carlos, who had not slept properly in three weeks, who had bleeding fingers and solder burns on his wrist and a smile he couldn't quite suppress, shrugged one shoulder.

"It's a small signature," he said. "Downloading one app is nothing."

"Fine."

Jay already had the phone. The download bar crawled. It finished. The app opened. It asked for a username.

"Rottenfour," Jay typed, before anyone could stop him.

"Jay."

"What. It's funny."

"Password," Evie said, peering over.

"1234."

"Jay." Carlos warned.

"What! Nobody's gonna hack us, Pup, we live in a barrier."

And then the camera was open.

And then they were looking at themselves, the four of them crammed into the frame on the floor of a burned-out bakery at 7am, Mal with her split lip and her green-edged eyes, Evie with her hair falling out of its braid, Jay grinning like he'd won something, Carlos with dark circles under his eyes and dried tin on his cheek.

Apparently, people did dance in the app.

part two: the first videos

🎥 @rottenfour -posted 03:42 a.m.

duration: 9 seconds

A shot of a boot walking. Cobblestones, wet and black. The camera is vertical but tilted, held at a sloppy angle. A male voice off-camera is saying wait how do you know it's recording, and a female voice says the red dot, Jay, the red dot. The boot stops at a puddle. The puddle reflects a sliver of a gray, overcast sky.

The camera swings up. A man is sitting against a wall with a crate over his head. He's asleep. Or dead. It's unclear.

The camera swings back down to the boot.

End.

Caption: morning walk

Comments: 3

@auradonprepgirl: is this supposed to be art?? lol [❤️ 1]

@benfan_22: this is so weird and dirty omg where is this [❤️ 0]

@ghostkidonline: sick aesthetic [❤️ 2]

🎥 @rottenfour -posted 11:16 a.m. next day

duration: 14 seconds

A marketplace. The camera is unsteady. There are stalls made of driftwood and rusted metal. A woman is selling what looks like gray meat on a string, and a pile of shoes, and a sack of something that might be flour but probably isn't. There's a kid behind her stall with no shoes.

The camera pans to a different stall. A cracked mirror, a bowl of apples that are clearly rotting -dark spots, one with a visible worm. A small hand (pale, freckled) reaches into frame and takes an apple that's slightly less rotten. The hand is fast.

"Carlos," a girl's voice hisses off-camera, warning.

The hand disappears with the apple. The camera jerks back and runs. The footage goes shaky, very shaky. Someone is shouting in the background, the word thief very clear.

The video cuts.

Caption: grocery run

Comments: 11

@auradonprepgirl: ummm. that was STEALING [❤️ 4]

@benfan_22: this doesn't look like any market in auradon i've ever been to [❤️ 8]

@shawnc: where IS this dude. the fruit was actively rotten and they took it anyway [❤️ 12]

@jasminelover: is this a bit??? like a performance art bit?? [❤️ 3]

@shawnc: @jasminelover it didn't look staged man. that woman was really yelling [❤️ 15]

@ghostkidonline: bro the kid was like NINE he was so fast [❤️ 9]

@ghostkidonline: carlos is such a weird ass name [❤️ 22]

🎥 @rottenfour -posted that evening

duration: 22 seconds

Four teenagers in a hideout. The ceiling is slanted because it's under some kind of broken staircase. There's a mattress on the floor, a lot of candles, and a wall where someone has been drawing -big, sweeping murals of a dragon, of a woman in a horned headdress, of the sea.

A boy with long dark hair is stretched out on the mattress, grinning, tossing an apple up and down. A girl with long blue-black hair is stitching something, and behind her another girl with purple hair -purple hair, actually purple, like dye-job purple -is sitting cross-legged braiding a leather cord.

The boy filming is off-screen. He's younger. You can tell by the voice.

"Mal, say hi to the camera."

"No."

"Come on, canky leader, say hi to the camera."

"Carlos, I will break your fingers."

"Jay say hi to the camera."

The long-haired boy looks up, grins, and flips the camera off with both hands.

"Evie say hi to the camera."

The girl with the blue-black hair looks up, smiles, and says "Hi, camera. Hi, whoever is watching. I hope your day is going better than ours."

"Our day is great," the purple-haired girl mutters.

"Our day has been rained on. Metaphorically."

"Also literally. It's still raining."

The video ends on the boy filming -just the blurry edge of a pale, freckled face -laughing.

Caption: us!

Comments: 84

@auradonprepgirl: okay the purple-haired girl is SCARY [❤️ 19]

@benfan_22: why is that dude flipping us off fuck you [❤️ 7]

@shawnc: the blue-haired girl is so pretty i- [❤️ 22]

@jasminelover: my day is going great thank you for asking [❤️ 46]

@kingbenstan: the boy filming has an accent i can't place. the vowels are weird. all of them have weird vowels [❤️ 31]

@ghostkidonline: it's like a mix of every accent in auradon at once and then some??? i've never heard it before [❤️ 55]

🎥 @rottenfour -posted 2 days later

duration: 40 seconds

The camera is down an alley. You can hear running feet, your own breathing, someone laughing. The footage is a mess -wall, wall, wall, sky, wall. A voice shouts "LEFT GO LEFT," the camera jerks left. A chain-link fence goes by, some kind of dog barking behind it. The laughter gets louder.

The camera stops. Cuts to a rooftop -how they got on the roof, unclear. The four of them are on the roof, panting.

"Did we lose him?"

"We lost him."

"Jay, what did you even take?"

Jay holds up a brass compass. He's grinning. It's a really nice compass.

"That's it? We ran twelve blocks for a compass?"

"It's a good compass, Mal."

"It's a decorative compass, Jay."

"It POINTS."

"It points at magnetic north, it doesn't do anything else, there's no magic, what are you gonna do with it."

"I'm gonna know where north is."

"YOU ALREADY KNOW WHERE NORTH IS."

The camera is shaking because Carlos is laughing. The camera, finally, turns to him -a smear of face, dark eyes, white hair with black roots, freckles, a bruise under one eye that's about four days old.

"You okay, pup?" Jay asks from offscreen.

"Don't call me that."

"You okay, pup?" He asked again.

"Jay."

"Yeah, I'm good. It's just a really dumb compass," Carlos says, and the way he says it, you can tell he's given up.

Caption: jay risked our lives for aura *skull emoji*

Comments: 341

@auradonprepgirl: WAIT WAIT WAIT WHY DOES THE LITTLE ONE HAVE A BRUISE [❤️ 203]

@rottenfour: @auradonprepgirl im not little fuck you? [❤️ 224]

@shawnc: that's not a small bruise that's a black eye. like a real one [❤️ 189]

@jasminelover: okay but they're FUNNY??? "you already know where north is" is sending me [❤️ 244]

@kingbenstan: they run like people who run from stuff a lot. like. professionally. maybe they do parkour? [❤️ 99]

@ghostkidonline: WHY IS NOBODY TALKING ABOUT THE FACT THAT THEY JUST STOLE AND RAN AND THOUGHT IT WAS FUNNY LMAO LIL BROS ARE GOING TO JAIL [❤️ 302]

@ghostkidonline: are we sure this isn't outside auradon [❤️ 502]

@benfan_22: @ghostkidonline their account says they are from the region. there's nothing in the region except auradon and the isle and you can't broadcast from the isle [❤️ 88]

@ghostkidonline: @benfan_22 yeah that's my point [❤️ 1.2k]

@auradonprepgirl: "you okay pup" 🥺🥺🥺 the big one calls the little one PUP [❤️ 611]

@jasminelover: @auradonprepgirl the little one HATES it did u hear how fast he said "don't call me that" he has been protesting this nickname his whole life [❤️ 904]

part three: reddit, first thread

r/AuradonCurious "Something weird is going on with @rottenfour on TikTok (long post, theories inside)" posted by u/cogsworth_defender • 2d

Okay I know I'm gonna sound crazy but hear me out.

There's this account on TikTok called @rottenfour. It's four teenagers and they keep posting these videos of what looks like a slum - like genuinely a slum, I don't think anywhere in Auradon looks like this -and they're STEALING and fighting and running from people and it's all played for laughs. Like they think it's funny. Like it's their normal life.

I've been pulling screenshots. Look at this:

[IMG1] - that's a stall with RAW MEAT sitting out uncovered. Aside from the fact the meat looks NOT like beef or chicken or pork, you can see flies all around it. The vendor is a woman I can't ID but she's wearing what looks like a genuine Victorian-era shawl that is shredded.

[IMG2] - that's the sky above them in three different videos. Gray. All three. ALWAYS gray. Does anyone know what the weather's been in Auradon for the past week? SUNNY. It's been sunny. So where are these kids?

[IMG3] - this is the one that made me make this post. Look at the BACKGROUND. Look at what's behind the wall. Is that a. Is that a shimmer? Does anyone else see the shimmer? It's in every outdoor shot. It's faint but it's there.

I think these kids are on the Isle of the Lost.

I know. I KNOW. I know there's no way to broadcast from the Isle, I know there's no internet there, I know the barrier blocks signal going in and out. I know. But something is weird here and I can't stop thinking about it.

u/malificent_did_nothing_wrong: OP is insane. This is just some kids in a poor part of Camelot filming themselves doing petty theft. There's poor places in Auradon. Not everywhere is the capital. [↑ 860]

u/cogsworth_defender: there are no "poor parts" of auradon. check the auradonian poverty statistics. 0.3%. all in the outer provinces. none of those provinces have the kind of marketplaces these kids are filming in. [↑ 892]

u/malificent_did_nothing_wrong: 0.3% is still like thousands of people. maybe there's a village somewhere nobody cares about. [↑ 509]

u/cogsworth_defender: maybe there's a village somewhere nobody cares about read what you wrote again, slowly. [↑ 1.7k]

u/historian_marjorie: Commenting as somebody who literally wrote her dissertation on post-Banishment spatial-political geography -OP is not insane. The "shimmer" in the background of outdoor shots is consistent with a magical containment barrier of the type installed around the Isle of the Lost in year 1 of the Age of Auradon. The architecture is also consistent with pre-Banishment non-Auradonian dwellings (note the spire on IMG3, upper left -that's in the style of the pre-Belle Beast-kingdom gothic which was demolished in Auradon proper in the tenth year of rebuilding). However. The Isle has no power grid outside of what can be jury-rigged from shipment scraps and no telecommunications infrastructure of any kind. There is not supposed to be a way for a video to be uploaded from the Isle. So we have a paradox. [↑ 4.4k]

u/malificent_did_nothing_wrong: or OP is wrong and it's just some kids somewhere. [↑ 88]

u/historian_marjorie: The shimmer in IMG3 is objectively present in the frame. I'm not saying I know where they are. I'm saying the "just some kids somewhere" explanation does not cover all the evidence. [↑ 2.1k]

part four: going viral

They did not know it was going viral. They did not even know what viral meant.

What Evie did know was that the little heart icon next to the video about Jay's dumb compass had gone from 3, to 30, to 300, to 3,000, and she was reading the numbers out to the group like a sports announcer.

"Eight thousand," she said.

"What does that mean," Mal said.

"Mal, I know you’ve been skipping class but this is ridiculous."

"Evie, I swear to- I know what a number is!”

"It's the people who are watching us, Mal, which is a lot of people. That's more people than live on the whole Isle."

"More than double," Carlos said, because he was always an exact little shit.

They were on the roof of the hideout, which wasn't really a roof, it was more like a balcony where the roof used to be before it collapsed about four years ago. Carlos had rigged up an extension so the wifi reached up there, and they'd strung up some Christmas lights they'd pulled out of a garbage heap, and it was -if you squinted, if you forgot about the smell from the tanneries two streets over -it was nice. Kind of nice.

Jay stretched out on his back, hands behind his head. "So people like us."

"People are watching us," Mal said.

"That's what I said. They like us."

"Watching is not the same as liking, Jay."

"Eight thousand of them, Mal."

Carlos was scrolling through the comments. He was the only one who really understood the interface. Evie was close; Jay was hopeless; Mal refused to engage with the phone on principle because she'd decided it was a stupid tiny brick and she was above it, even though she was clearly not above it, because she kept leaning over Carlos's shoulder to read.

"They think we're in Auradon," Carlos said.

Mal snorted. "Are they stupid. Have they watched with their eyes closed?"

"I mean, I'm saying that's what they think."

"Well they're dumb."

"Some of them don't think we're in Auradon."

"Oh?"

Carlos turned the phone. "Some of them think we're on the Isle."

Everyone stopped.

Evie's stitching slowed. Jay sat up. Mal looked at the phone for a long time.

"Huh," Mal said.

"Yeah."

"Let 'em wonder."

"You don't want to tell them?"

Mal shrugged one shoulder. "What, you want a welcome party? A pity party? You want them to send us a muffin basket? Let 'em wonder. Let 'em squirm. Film something else."

Jay grinned. "Okay. How about -how about we film Carlos stealing."

"I don't steal."

"Oh my GOD, Carlos, you absolutely steal."

"I steal strategically. For purposes."

"STRATEGICALLY, Mal did you hear that, strategically -"

"Film him stealing," Mal said.

🎥 @rottenfour

duration: 29 seconds

Carlos is walking through the market. The camera is clearly Evie's -steady, well-framed. Carlos looks small and bony under his jacket. He's humming. He's humming a song that sounds vaguely like a nursery rhyme but off, like someone started it wrong.

He stops at a fish stall. The fishmonger is a large, angry-looking man with a wooden arm.

"How much," Carlos says, pointing at the third-smallest fish.

"Four," says the man.

"I got two."

"Then you got nothing, kid, get out."

Carlos looks genuinely crestfallen. The fishmonger softens a little -half a degree, barely -and Carlos tilts his head and asks about a different fish, asks about the net the fish came out of, asks what the weather was like this morning on the water. The fishmonger is answering and then the fishmonger is smiling, and then the fishmonger is laughing, and then -

Carlos has a fish under his jacket. You can see the tail. For one moment he tucks the tail down and you can see it. The fishmonger does not see it.

Carlos waves, says "Thanks, Mr. Petrov," and walks off.

The camera, very carefully, follows him. Around a corner. Down an alley. Up a fire escape.

On the fire escape: Jay. Leaning out, grinning.

"Carlos Oscar De Vil," Jay says. "You are a prince among men."

"Please don't ever call me that again."

"A prince. Among. Men."

"Jay."

Carlos throws the fish at Jay's face.

Caption: dinner

Comments: 2.3k

@auradonprepgirl: THIRD TIME THEY ARE COMMITTING CRIMES ON SCREEN WHAT [❤️ 1k]

@shawnc: okay he's SO good at that?? the kid?? oh my god the fishmonger had NO idea [❤️ 820]

@jasminelover: i'm sorry did the tall one just say "CARLOS OSCAR DE VIL" [❤️ 4.1k]

@jasminelover: CARLOS [❤️ 2.8k]

@jasminelover: OSCAR [❤️ 2.7k]

@jasminelover: DE VIL [❤️ 3.9k]

@benfan_22: cruella de ville is on the isle of the lost. the one from the dalmatian incident [❤️ 5.5k]

@kingbenstan: OH MY GOD [❤️ 3.2k]

@auradonprepgirl: no no no hold on that could be a coincidence there could be more than one person with that name [❤️ 402]

@historian_marjorie: There is not. Surname registries are closely kept. De Vil is not a common surname and after the banishment no descendants of Cruella remained in Auradon. If that is this child's real name, he is the son of the villain. [❤️ 12k]

@ghostkidonline: 😨 [❤️ 4.9k]

part five: the reddit thread breaks containment

r/AuradonCurious "[MEGATHREAD] @rottenfour is posting from the Isle of the Lost. We have evidence now." posted by u/cogsworth_defender • stickied • 6h

New video dropped last night. The tall dark-haired boy called the white-haired kid Carlos Oscar De Vil.

There is one living person with that name. He is the son of Cruella De Vil. He was born on the Isle of the Lost. He has never left.

The kid in the video is the son of a villain. Let me repeat: the kid in the video is the son of a villain.

And he is on the Isle. Which means the other three are, too. Which means somebody on the Isle has internet.

I want to make some things very clear before the comments start:

1. We do not know how they got internet. The official position of the Crown is that the Isle is a closed system. This is, evidently, no longer true.
   
   
2. The Isle was established to contain people who did genuine, sometimes mass, harm. Maleficent cursed a child and laid waste to a kingdom. Jafar attempted genocide against a nation's ruling family and enslaved the people of Agrabah. Cruella de Vil attempted to skin ninety-nine puppies. The Evil Queen poisoned her stepdaughter and is rumored to have done worse. These are not "misunderstood" people. They are not fairytale caricatures; they caused real documented harm.
   
   
3. The kids in these videos are not those people. They are their children. By the best estimates from pre-Banishment records and what we can see in the videos, these children are between 11 and 17 years old. They have lived their entire lives on the Isle.
   
   
4. We do not know them. Do not pretend you know them. The comments on their videos are getting out of control. Half of you are terrified of them and half of you are in love with them and both of those are weird, guys. They are children. Children on a prison island.
   
   

Keep theorizing. Keep documenting. But keep it human. I'm going to pin a running list of confirmed and theorized identities below.

CONFIRMED

• Carlos Oscar De Vil Age unknown, but probably 11 (?) -son of Cruella De Vil. (Confirmed by name drop in "dinner," posted 09/14.)

STRONGLY SUSPECTED

• The purple-haired girl ("Mal") Looks around 15 - descendence not confirmed but likey daughter of Maleficent. Purple hair is genetic, likely a fae trait, and Maleficent is the only fae imprisoned on the Isle. The others address her with deference. Not a princess in any Auradonian sense -Maleficent never had a crown, fae don't -but as Maleficent's daughter and the group's clear leader she's the closest thing to an heir the Isle has. More the daughter of a warlord than a fairy tale princess.
  
  
• The tall dark-haired boy ("Jay") Probably 16? 17? He’s the tallest -descendence not confirmed yet. Theories: son of Jafar (strongest; he runs a lot and is described as a thief in multiple videos, and also he's stated he has a "shop" he brings stolen things to). Other theories: son of the Horned King, son of Shere Khan (uh, no), son of Sinbad villain.
  
  
• The girl with blue-black hair ("Evie") Looks around 15 -heavy debate on her descendence. Two leading theories:
  
  
• (A) Daughter of the Evil Queen. The makeup is an obvious match. Apple symbolism. The constant attention to her appearance. Also, if this is correct, she is technically the only literal princess on the Isle (the Evil Queen was a crowned queen consort of the Snow White kingdom; her daughter would have inherited a title that Auradon never formally revoked). Let that sit with you: the actual princess of the bunch is the one stitching stab wounds with her own hair.
• (B) Daughter of Mother Gothel. Unusually long thick dark hair. An obsessive attention to her reflection.

Current academic consensus (@historian_marjorie and u/aurdn_studies_dr) leans toward Evil Queen. There's a specific way Evie examines her face in reflective surfaces in the "morning walk" and "the crew" videos that is, honestly, chilling. It looks practiced. It looks like a habit she learned young from someone checking her.

u/malificent_did_some_wrongs: lol you guys are insane. they're just kids. [↑ -2.3k]

u/cogsworth_defender: you changed your username recently didn't you. [↑ 8.9k]

part six: auradon reacts

Snow White went on air. She was still the main news anchor for the Kingdom and she had a face she used for her serious reports, which was pressed-together lips and a small tight line between her eyebrows.

"Auradonians," she said, "we have been made aware of a social media account, currently operating under the handle @rottenfour, which purports to document life on the Isle of the Lost.

"The Crown asks, for the safety of our citizens and in order to support the ongoing investigation, that you do not engage with this account. Do not view its videos. Do not comment on them. Do not share them."

She paused. She looked at the teleprompter.

"We remind our viewing audience that the Isle of the Lost is a containment zone and that the individuals imprisoned there, while entitled to humane treatment, are not and have never been considered safe for contact with Auradonian citizens. The Crown will issue further statements as the situation develops."

The broadcast cut to a weather forecast.

Across Auradon, three million teenagers pulled up TikTok and searched @rottenfour.

part seven: videos & comments, compiled

🎥 @rottenfour -"stitches"

duration: 1 min 4 sec

Evie is leaning over Jay. Jay is sitting on an upturned crate with his shirt off, his left side toward the camera. There's a long gash running from his ribs to his hipbone. It's clean but deep. Evie is threading a needle. The needle is a sewing needle, not a medical one.

"This is gonna suck," Jay says, cheerfully.

"It's going to suck more if you move."

"I'm a rock."

"You are a whiny rock. I've stitched you sixteen times. I have kept count."

"You have a list?"

"I have a mental list. You are first place. Carlos is second."

The camera turns to a filming Carlos, who waves to the camera, and then to Mal, who is boiling something on a camp stove that looks like it used to be a hubcap.

"What are you doing, Mal?" Carlos asked.

"Thread. I'm boiling the thread."

"Good." Evie said, without looking up.

"Because I'm a benevolent leader."

"You're boiling it because I told you to."

"I'm boiling it because I'm a benevolent leader, who cares about her minions."

Evie makes the first stitch. Jay doesn't flinch. Jay does say, in a very calm voice, "You know I could stitch myself, right? Like I'm a grown man."

"You are seventeen, Jahid."

"God, Jahid. Who calls me Jahid? Do you want me to call you Evelyn? It’s Jay, and how do you know my age?” He asked alarmed. “I might be twenty, you don’t know that!"

Evie snorted. “Your father says you were born in the Year 3.”

“Ah, yeah, and he is a super reliable source of information about me.”

"Shut up and bleed." She lightly stabbed him in the good arm with the needle.

The camera lingers on Jay's face. He's watching Evie work. His face does a thing -soft, quick -that he snaps out of as soon as he catches Carlos looking. "What are you filming for, you little gremlin?"

"Content."

"CONTENT."

"For the internet."

"You fucking love the internet, huh."

"I do love the internet, Jahid."

Caption: evie's sixteenth surgery on this idiot

Comments: 41k

@medstudent_auradon: SHE IS USING A SEWING NEEDLE. THAT IS NOT A MEDICAL NEEDLE. I AM GOING TO SCREAM. THAT IS NOT STERILE. SHE DID NOT CLEAN THE WOUND. THE WATER SHE BOILED THE THREAD IN WAS NOT STERILE EITHER. OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD. [❤️ 88k]

@medstudent_auradon: okay ignoring my first comment. she's actually really good at it?? the stitch spacing is even. the tension looks right. she's done this a LOT. who taught her how to do this [❤️ 52k]

@jasminelover: "I have a mental list. You are first place. Carlos is second." they are SO funny why are they so funny they shouldn't be this funny [❤️ 33k]

@kingbenstan: why is he SECOND [❤️ 41k]

@kingbenstan: WHY IS THE PRE PUBERTY CHILD SECOND ON THE STITCHES LEADERBOARD [❤️ 67k]

@rottenfour: @kingbenstan PRE PUBERTY??? fuck you im 14 [❤️ 100k]

@kingbenstan: @rottenfour me when i lie [❤️ 114k]

@medstudent_auradon: @rottenfour IN WHAT WORLD ARE YOU 14 BFFR [❤️ 100k]

@rottenfour: @medstudent_auradon what is that supposed to mean [❤️ 89k]

@ghostkidonline: i think i'm going to throw up [❤️ 19k]

@auradonprepgirl the fuck does ‘year four’ mean [❤️ 23k]

@shawnc: guys this is horrifying. this is a horror video. we're laughing because it's funny and they're charming but this is a horror video. a seventeen-year-old has sixteen documented stab wounds. [❤️ 102k]

🎥 @rottenfour -"where"

duration: 11 sec

The camera pans across a stretch of cobblestone. Carlos's voice, low, a little amused.

"This is where Jay got his ass stabbed once."

The camera holds on a dark patch on the stones. Could be water. Could be oil. Could be.

"He cried."

"I DID NOT," Jay shouts from offscreen.

"He cried. Evie held his hand."

"I HAD A PUNCTURED INTERNAL ORGAN."

"And you cried."

Caption: local landmarks

Comments: 18k

@auradonprepgirl: local LANDMARKS LMAOOO [❤️ 12k]

@kingbenstan: ah yes normal teenagehood, building a tourist brochure of the places they've almost died. my bros this is not normal [❤️ 33k]

@jasminelover: "punctured internal organ" jahid looks kinda stupid but he sure is using words i don’t know the meaning of [❤️ 44k]

@rottenfour: @jasminelover fuck you?? my name is jay [❤️ 63k]

@rottenfour: @jasminelover also im not stupid [❤️ 97k]

@ghostkidonline: for context if you've never been stabbed you do not know off the top of your head whether you've had a punctured internal organ. this means at some point a medical professional or a person-pretending-to-be-one told him "yes your organ got punctured" and he remembers this. sit with that [❤️ 71k]

🎥 @rottenfour -"tutorial"

duration: 50 sec

Evie, close up on her face. She looks directly at the camera. Her hair is pulled back. The lighting is candle-yellow, the warmest lighting in any of their videos so far.

"Hi," she says, smiling. "So a lot of you have been asking about my makeup. I'm going to show you how to do the smoky eye I'm wearing tonight."

She holds up a piece of charcoal.

"This is charcoal. I got it out of the fire pit about twenty minutes ago. You want to wait until it's cool enough to hold, which is way cooler than you think -it'll burn you if you rush it. I know this from experience."

She holds up a little tin.

"This is my homemade binder. Because on its own the charcoal is too dry. You mix it with -and don't laugh -you mix it with a little bit of lamp oil, a little bit of honey if you can find honey, and if you can't find honey, syrup. It has to be sticky or the charcoal won't stay on your lid."

She smudges a little onto her finger and demonstrates. She's very gentle. She's really good at this.

"I don't recommend doing this to yourself if you have access to real makeup, because the charcoal is harsh on the skin and the oil will clog your pores, but -"

She pauses. Looks directly at the camera.

"-but if you don't have access to real makeup and you want to feel pretty anyway, you can do this. That's really what I want to say. Everyone should get to feel pretty."

She smiles. The smile is complicated.

"Next week I'll show you how to do a lip stain out of beet dye. Love you guys. Bye."

Caption: charcoal smoky eye!! 💕

Comments: 224k

@shawnc: i need you all to understand that i am weeping [❤️ 88k]

@jasminelover: heartbreaking: the prettiest girl you’ve ever met just said everyone should get to feel pretty <\3 [❤️ 155k]

@auradonprepgirl: EVERYONE SHOULD GET TO FEEL PRETTY. [❤️ 141k]

@medstudent_auradon: "too dry on its own" "clogs your pores" "the charcoal is harsh on the skin" she is doing REAL cosmetic science with trash. she could be in an auradon lab if she had access to one. she'd be head of the lab. [❤️ 99k]

@kingbenstan: is it bad that i'm. kind of. learning from this tutorial. [❤️ 200k]

@benfan_22: [deleted]

@benfan_22: i am posting this from an account i made specifically to post this comment. my name is benjamin florian beast. i am the crown prince. i have just been shown this video by my advisor during what was supposed to be a policy briefing. i don't know what to do with the information that a girl on the isle of the lost, who has likely never in her life held an actual tube of mascara, is explaining cosmetic chemistry on tiktok to feel pretty. [❤️ 1.2M]

@jasminelover: PRINCE BEN???? [❤️ 400k]

🎥 @rottenfour -"the game"

duration: 1 min 20 sec

A rooftop. Four teenagers. A tin can.

"Okay," Mal is saying, "okay, okay. Rules. Jay is it. Jay -no, Jay, stop laughing, listen. You have to tag one of us while holding the can. If you drop the can you're still it. If we get the can from you without you tagging us, we're free. If we make it to the chimney, we're safe."

"This is just tag," Jay says.

"This is not just tag."

"This is tag with a can."

"It is a GAME, Jay."

"It's TAG."

"Carlos named it."

"What's it called."

"Dickin Baws."

"It's tag."

"It's Dickin Baws, Jay, play the GAME."

Jay plays the game. It's chaotic. Mal is fast, but Evie -Evie is shockingly fast -and Carlos is inhuman. Carlos is a blur. Carlos moves like he's never had weight. Jay tries to grab him and Carlos slides under his arm and hits the chimney and turns around grinning, both arms up, and Jay is laughing and saying "WHAT, HOW, where did you LEARN that," and Carlos is laughing too, and he looks -in this one second, maybe -he looks like a normal kid.

Mal hits the chimney a second later. Evie half a second after.

Jay is left in the middle of the roof holding the can.

"I am being punished," he says. "I am being bullied. I am being bullied by three smaller people."

"Good run, pup," Mal tells Carlos, breathless, and ruffles his hair as she goes past.

"Stop calling me that."

"No."

"Play again," Carlos says, ignoring her.

"I'm tired." Jay whined.

"PLAY AGAIN."

Jay plays again. Jay loses again.

Caption: dickin baws is a real sport we swear

Comments: 55k

@auradonprepgirl: the way carlos moved [❤️ 28k]

@ghostkidonline: carlos moving is the scariest kindest thing i've ever seen i guess where did bro even go [❤️ 18k]

@shawnc: @ghostkidonline it's because he's small probably due to malnutrition. he looks 10 when he said he’s supposed to be 14. his friends know it, watch how jay doesn't grab him hard even when he almost has him. watch how jay PULLS the grab. he doesn't want to hurt him. [❤️ 62k]

@rottenfour: @shawnc why are you guys getting this number lower last time you said i was 11 [❤️ 100k]

@shawnc: @rottenfour i mean are u? [❤️ 78k]

@rottenfour: @shawnc no i’m 14 i look 14 i was born in the year 6 im 14!! [❤️ 104k]

@medstudent_auradon: @rottenfour oh buddy [❤️ 223k]

@jasminelover: THEY LOVE HIM. they LOVE him. look at jay's face when carlos hits the chimney. look at mal's. [❤️ 88k]

@auradonprepgirl: wait. WAIT. they keep calling him PUP?? carlos DE VIL?? whose mom is CRUELLA?? they're calling him PUP. [❤️ 102k]

@shawnc: @auradonprepgirl it's worse than that. he moves like a puppy. watch him. he darts. he bounces. his whole body language when he's relaxed is puppy-like. they are not calling him that just to be mean about his mother (although its funny lol) they are calling him that because it's ALSO TRUE. [❤️ 211k]

@rottenfour: @auradonprepgirl please dont talk about dogs in my comment section that shit is scary thank you [❤️ 499k]

@auradonprepgirl: @rottenfour ?? [❤️ 378k]

@auradonprepgirl: @rottenfour wtf carlos are you scared of dogs?? [❤️ 400k]

@medstudent_auradon: @rottenfour aint no way [❤️ 397k]

@ghostkidonline: @rottenfour the poetry of this child being scared of dogs AND being called a puppy by the only people who love him. i'm unwell [❤️ 340k]

@rottenfour: we don't love him he's annoying! - mal [❤️ 412k]

@jasminelover: MAL REPLIED [❤️ 500k]

@jasminelover: HI MAL [❤️ 504k]

🎥 @rottenfour -"tour"

duration: 2 min

It is Jay's voice this time. He has the camera.

"Okay, we're taking a tour of the market today. Everyone say hi to the market."

The camera sweeps. The market is bleak. Stalls lean against each other like drunks. The awnings are made of sail scraps and rope. Somebody's selling rats -actual rats, on strings, dead -and the camera stops on them.

"This is Beryl. Beryl sells rats."

Beryl, who is about sixty and has two teeth, says "I sell rats."

"How much are the rats today, Beryl?"

"Six for one."

"Six what for one what?"

"Six teeth for one rat."

"That's -that's a lot of teeth, Beryl."

"Rat's been a good rat. Fat one."

The camera pans to show the rat. The rat is, indeed, fat.

"Most of the meat here is rat," Jay says to the camera, casually. "Like -I know that probably sounds wild to anyone outside, but most of the meat here is rat. If someone sells you 'beef' it's a rat. If someone sells you 'chicken' it's a rat. If somebody sells you 'mutton' it's -well, mutton could be a seagull, but also a rat."

"JAY!" Evie shouts from off-camera.

"What?"

"You're scaring them!"

"I'm educating them."

"Jay oh my god."

The camera pans to Evie. She looks apologetic at the camera.

"Hi. Sorry. He is correct. Most of the meat is rat. But Beryl's rats are really very good rats."

Beryl beams.

Caption: beryl's rats 🐀

Comments: 180k

@shawnc: BERYL [❤️ 75k]

@shawnc: BERYL SELLS RATS [❤️ 120k]

@medstudent_auradon: "six teeth for one rat" is an unusual currency not gonna lie [❤️ 35k]

@historian_marjorie: @medstudent_auradon It's a common currency substitute in closed economies with no minted coin. Teeth are durable, hard to counterfeit, and -on the Isle -easy to come by. That last part is bleak. [❤️ 400k]

@kingbenstan: currency. being teeth. in a prison. because people there are constantly getting their teeth knocked out. or pulled out. or extracted. hello. [❤️ 1.1M]

@benfan_22: i hope it at least tastes alright

@kingbenstan: @benfan_22 PRINCE BEN HI  [❤️ 900k]

@rottenfour: @benfan_22 Hello, Your Majesty! It tastes fine, thank you for your concern. [❤️ 987k]

@benfan_22: @rottenfour hello evie. i’ll get you all out of there as soon as i can [❤️ 1.3M]

@shawnc: @benfan_22 did prince ben just clocked evie even without her signature because she’s the only one with manners lmao? [❤️ 893k]

@rottenfour: @benfan_22 haha! sure, good luck getting to us blondie [❤️ 1M]

@benfan_22: @rottenfour i promise you, mal [❤️ 1.5M]

🎥 @rottenfour -"we found a trend"

duration: 48 sec

Carlos, looking directly at the camera. He has the phone propped on something. Behind him Evie is visible, braiding her hair with extreme concentration.

"Okay so we found a thing on the internet. That apparently people do. It's called a hear me out cake and apparently you print a photo of your crush and stick it on a cake and you have to defend them to the camera."

"We don't have a printer," Evie says, without looking up.

"We don't have a printer. But we do have, uh -" Carlos holds up a scrap of paper with a drawing on it. "I drew mine."

He holds the drawing up to the camera. It's actually a very good drawing -quick, skilled, clearly someone who's been drawing since he had nothing else to do. It's a woman. She's wearing a lab coat. She has very dramatic hair.

"Okay, hear me out," Carlos says. "This is, huh, we don't know her name. But she’s a doctor. She was in the shipment paperwork one time. Her name was blurred but not her photo, and she has a PhD in biochemistry. She designs things. She makes things. She -"

"Carlos," Jay says, from somewhere off-frame.

"She could totally had messed with the barrier to allow fresh air. She genuinely could, if she wanted to, she has the -"

"CARLOS."

"She's SMART, Jay."

"She's like forty."

"I'm not saying I -it's a hear me out! It's a HEAR ME OUT. I'm not saying -"

"Is your crush an Auradonian biochemist you've never met."

"I have met her. Through the paperwork."

"CARLOS."

"HEAR ME OUT."

Evie, from the back, is now crying with laughter. She has dropped her braid entirely.

Caption: hear me out cake but we used paper

Comments: 77k

@jasminelover: HE DREW HER. THE ATTENTION TO DETAIL ON THE LAB COAT. THIS BOY. [❤️ 41k]

@jasminelover: what a bad drawing though omg. [❤️ 60k]

@shawnc: "i have met her. through the paperwork." carlos de vil the 9 year old you are [❤️ 55k]

@rottenfour: @shawnc im!!!! 14!!!!! [❤️ 63k]

@auradonprepgirl: wait hold on. he has good reasons for this crush. she's brilliant and could fix the barrier. carlos has a crush on someone who represents like. freedom. and science. both of his special interests. i'm fine. i'm totally fine. [❤️ 88k]

@kingbenstan: now I need the others to do theirs [❤️ 33k]

@rottenfour: @kingbenstan jay refused lol -carlos [❤️ 66k]

@rottenfour: because i don't have something like that -jay [❤️ 71k]

@rottenfour: Actually, Jay was super into a girl from the shipment dock who smiled at him once two years ago!. She was a redhead! - Evie [❤️ 400k]

@rottenfour: i will kill myself in front of you evelyn -jay [❤️ 490k]

@rottenfour: try. -mal [❤️ 450k]

@auradonprepgirl: notice how they never reply when we are talking about their living conditions but to clock jay from his crush then the whole gang is here [❤️ 543k]

🎥 @rottenfour -"hear me out cake pt 2: evie"

duration: 55 sec

Evie is in front of the camera. She is dressed beautifully, as always -she has made herself a new collar out of salvaged leather dyed a dark blue. She looks like a princess. She looks exactly like a princess, which nobody has pointed out yet in the comments but it's only a matter of time.

She is holding a drawing. She turns it to face the camera.

It's a man. He's tall and broad with dark hair. He looks, roughly, like someone off an adventure serial.

"Okay," Evie says, composing herself. "His name is presumably something heroic and long. I don't know his actual name. He is an Auradonian knight -I saw him in the background of the Royal Banquet broadcast in November. He was carrying a tray. He had very good posture."

"Evie," Mal says, from off-camera, sounding pained.

"He had good posture, Mal. You can tell a lot about someone from their posture. My mother always said -"

"Do NOT quote your mother to me right now."

"He looked kind. You can tell. He looked at the kitchen staff like they were people." Evie pauses. "Which they are. Which is a low bar in Auradon, probably, I don't know, but I notice when people notice other people. And he noticed them."

Silence.

"He was also very tall," Evie adds.

"There it is," Carlos says.

"I'm allowed to have standards."

"You've never spoken to him."

"I've SEEN him. With my EYES."

"On a TV broadcast."

"Carlos Oscar De Vil, let me have this."

“Alright No-name Evie Grimhilde.”

Caption: hear me out cake pt 2 (she's down bad for a man she's seen once on television)

Comments: 120k

@shawnc: GRIMHILDE?? EVIE DAUGHTER OF EVIL QUEEN CANON?? [❤️ 70k]

@ghostkidonline: @shawnc bro shut the fuck up “canon” they are real people, that’s quite literally someone’s life rn [❤️ 85k]

@jasminelover: evie grew up with a mother who never noticed anyone who wasn't her own reflection. she fell for a man who NOTICED PEOPLE. her whole love language is just being SEEN. [❤️ 99k]

@auradonprepgirl: wait. a tall dark-haired Auradonian knight. i'm going through the royal staff records. [❤️ 22k]

@kingbenstan: "he was carrying a tray. he had good posture." she has NOTHING to go on and she is FULLY gone for this man [❤️ 88k]

@ghostkidonline: carlos knows her so well he KNOWS her standards, PUP. [❤️ 111k]

@shawnc: why no name though [❤️ 140k]

@historian_marjorie: @shawnc See, that’s an interesting fact. In grimhildian legislation and culture (the kingdom’s name before Evil Queen’s dethronement), most women went by their middle name before marriage. After it, their name, which had previously been a blank space, became their husband’s name + surname before an apostrophe. [❤️ 170k]

@shawnc: @historian_marjorie wait so her name would be like John Doe’s Evie Grimhilde  [❤️ 130k]

@shawnc: @historian_marjorie that’s fucked up im a little sick actually [❤️ 156k]

@historian_marjorie: @shawnc i said “interesting” not “cool” [❤️ 134k]

🎥 @rottenfour -"hear me out cake pt 3: mal"

duration: 28 sec

Mal does not have a drawing.

Mal is standing in front of the camera with her arms crossed.

"No."

"MAL."

"No. No hear me out cake. No crushes. No. I don't -"

"You literally told me last week -" Carlos starts.

Mal's eyes go green. Like, actually green. Like, they shift.

"-that you had no crushes," Carlos finishes, very smoothly. "Which is what I was going to say. That you told me you had no crushes. Which is a valid stance."

A beat.

"Good pup," Mal says.

"Please stop calling me that."

Caption: mal "declined to participate" in the hear me out trend (she has a crush she would rather die than discuss)

Comments: 88k

@jasminelover: HER EYES WENT GREEN. MAL'S EYES WENT GREEN WHEN SHE THOUGHT CARLOS WAS GOING TO OUT HER CRUSH. MALEFICENT'S DAUGHTER HAS FAE EYES THAT SHIFT COLOR WHEN SHE'S ABOUT TO DO VIOLENCE. [❤️ 80k]

@shawnc: “good pup” after we saw peak self-preservation in action what is this account [❤️ 55k]

@kingbenstan: carlos absolutely knows who the crush is. he redirected SO fast. he's seen mal look at someone like that and filed it away. that's the most politically intelligent 8-year-old on the isle. [❤️ 79k]

@rottenfour: @kingbenstan 14* - carlos [❤️ 103k]

@auradonprepgirl: the caption is a CRY FOR HELP is carlos being held at gunpoint [❤️ 44k]

🎥 @rottenfour -"dinner party trend"

duration: 2 min 19 sec

The four of them are sitting in a rough circle on the rooftop. Carlos has the camera propped up on a crate so they're all in frame -Mal cross-legged, Jay stretched out, Evie folded neatly, Carlos hugging his own knees. Between them: the remains of something that might have been a dinner. There's a pot. A loaf of bread. Something wrapped in cloth.

"Okay," Carlos says. "Okay so I found this trend. It's a dinner party trend. You go around and everyone says their name and what they brought and also a fact about themselves."

"What kind of fact," Jay says.

"Any kind."

"Why."

"Because it's a trend, Jay. We do the trends. That's what we do now."

"Since when."

"Since I decided we do the trends. Evie, you start."

Evie smooths her hair. She does a small polite smile at the camera.

"Hi. I'm Evie. I'm sixteen. I brought the bread." She holds up the loaf, which is, diplomatically, not great. "It's a little stale. I found it in the market this morning and I traded a button for it. The button was nicer than the bread, honestly. My fact is that I can sew any garment from scratch with no pattern and I once remade an entire gown in four hours because my mother said the color wasn't right." She pauses. "The first color was right. The second color was also right. She made me do a third. I had needle marks in my fingers for a week."

Silence.

"Thank you, Evie," Carlos says, pressing on. "Jay."

Jay sits up. He runs his hand through his long dark hair. He looks, for a moment, like he's going to do the charming performance version of this. Then he doesn't.

"I'm Jay. I'm seventeen according to Evie, I guess. I brought the -" he gestures at the pot "-whatever's in the pot, I stole it off a window ledge three streets over, someone was cooling it, I don't know what it is."

"It's stew," Evie says.

"It's STEW. I brought the stew. My fact is -" he thinks, genuinely, for a moment "-my fact is that my dad has a pawn shop and I have been stealing for him since I could walk and I have never once been caught in the act. Not once. Plenty of times after. Never during."

"That's actually impressive," Mal says.

"I know."

"Okay, Mal."

Mal looks at the camera. She looks at the camera for a long moment, like she's deciding something.

"Hi. I'm Mal. Year four. I brought the, uh." She holds something up. It's a small jar. "I found some honey. In the market. It's mostly crystallized. Some of it is mold."

"It's MOSTLY honey," Evie says diplomatically.

"It's mostly honey. My fact is-" Mal stops. "My fact is that I was six the first time I set something on fire on purpose. My mother wanted to see if I could." A beat. "I obviously could because I’m alive today, but she said I should've done it bigger. Unfortunately, there were limits to how big I could do it at six. Anyway. Carlos."

Carlos takes the camera off the crate and turns it on himself. He holds up a small and slightly miserable looking apple.

"Hi, I'm Carlos. I'm fourteen. I brought an apple. It's got one bad spot but the rest is fine, I checked." He turns it over. The bad spot is maybe thirty percent of the apple. He puts it back down. "My fact is that I rewired the television to get fifty channels and also accidentally got the internet and now we're doing this trend. So I guess that's on me. My other fact is that my mom used to make me sleep on a small coat closet and bear traps. I think I still remember all the scars? Also the coats were real fur, whose I’m allergic to. It wasn't -actually, it was pretty bad, but it's probably also on me, so."

"Carlos," Evie says, softly.

"The apple's good though," Carlos says, brightly. "Mostly."

He takes a bite of the apple. He gets the bad spot. He chews it anyway.

Caption: dinner party trend (we made it weird. sorry.)

🎥 @rottenfour -"jay teaches theft 101"

duration: 1 min 40 sec

Jay, sitting on a wall. The camera is very close to his face. He's grinning the way he grins when he knows he's good-looking.

"Alright, alright, you all have been asking how I steal. Fine. FINE. Lesson. Don't say I never gave you anything."

He holds up his hands.

"Rule one. Hands are distractions. Everyone watches hands. You want people watching the WRONG hand. Here -"

He demonstrates. His right hand flourishes. His left hand disappears behind his back and comes out with an apple. It's Mal's apple. Mal is off-camera, going "HEY."

"Rule two. Smile. Smiling disarms. Nobody suspects a smiling thief."

He smiles. He is, inarguably, disarming.

"Rule three. If you get caught, run. If you can't run, apologize. If you can't apologize, charm. My father said 'whoever has the most gold makes the rules,' and my father is an idiot -don't tell him I said that -because the real rule is, whoever people like makes the rules. And people like you if they think you like them. So -"

He leans into the camera.

"-like people. Or pretend to. Either works."

He winks. The camera cuts.

Caption: theft 101

Comments: 130k

@jasminelover: "my father is an idiot" DOES JAY HATES JAFAR? I FEEL LIKE HE SAID THAT FROM THE CORE OF HIS SOUL [❤️ 89k]

@kingbenstan: gee i don’t know, let’s think for maybe one second if jay likes the father who made him steal his place in the household. hmm maybe they played basketball when they closed the store, who knows [❤️ 45k]

@jasminelover: @kingbenstan fuck you don’t be rude [❤️ 78k]

@ghostkidonline: "like people or pretend to, either works" is insane to say to a camera as a sincere life lesson. he IS charming. that's the thing. HE IS. and he just told us it's fake and we're STILL charmed [❤️ 200k]

@shawnc: jay is the most dangerous person on that island full of villains and he is seventeen years old [❤️ 140k]

part eight: tumblr

grimhilde-defense-squad followed you

hotgoth-historian:

been thinking a LOT about the rotten four videos and i want to put this out there bc no one on reddit is saying it right

the four of them aren't a friend group. they aren't. they keep saying they aren't. when jay said on camera "we're not friends we're allies" and carlos laughed and said "aw jay you don't mean that" jay got DEFENSIVE. he snapped at him. he said "I MEAN IT."

but watch the "stitches" video again. watch jay's face when evie is working on him. watch mal's face when carlos hits the chimney. watch the way they keep each other close.

they are a turf. that's what they are. a turf is a political-territorial unit and it's what you become when you can't afford to admit you love people. they have a TERRITORY (the hideout, a few blocks around it), they have RESOURCES (what jay steals, what evie sews, what mal protects, what carlos builds), and they have a POWER STRUCTURE (mal is leader, jay is enforcer, evie is logistics, carlos is… whatever carlos is. tech and scouting and i think also sometimes bait).

they have another turf they RIVAL: uma, harry, gil. we've seen glimpses of those three in the backgrounds of like four videos now.

and they have ALLIANCES. the brief appearance of anthony tremaine in the "market" video is consistent with a traded-favors alliance. the way nobody hassles them in the market outside of the fish stall is CONSISTENT WITH A TURF.

they love each other. they do. but loving each other on the isle is a liability, so they've wrapped it in something they can survive. they call it allies. they call it a crew. they call it annoying each other. and they would rather DIE than say it to each other's faces.

#rotten four #descendants of villains #isle of the lost #i have thoughts #nineteen thousand notes in two hours pls. pls stop.

(reblogged 32,000 times)

quotes-from-the-isle:

EVIE: the charcoal is harsh on the skin and the oil will clog your pores, but -EVIE: -but if you don't have access to real makeup and you want to feel pretty anyway, you can do this. everyone should get to feel pretty.

#this is gonna kill me

(reblogged 201,000 times)

part nine: the auradon council meeting

There was a meeting. There is always a meeting, in Auradon, for things like this.

King Beast and Queen Belle sat at one end of a very long table. Their son Ben sat between them looking, frankly, haunted. Fairy Godmother was there, and three members of the Council, and Snow White (not in her news capacity, in her Auradon-queen capacity, of which there was only occasional), and a man from the Bureau of Magical Containment who was sweating.

"How," said Beast.

"Your majesty," the man sweated, "we're not sure -"

"How."

"One of the children -the one named Carlos -we believe he's responsible for the breach. He has been flagged in our records as a technically-inclined minor."

"A technically inclined minor."

"He's fourteen, sir."

"And he punched a hole in the barrier."

"Not a hole, sir. A -a leak. A very narrow bandwidth leak. He's pulling internet signal and broadcast signal through what I'm told is a very elegant antenna modification. The signal itself is not bidirectional in a dangerous way. Magic cannot pass through. Objects cannot pass through. Only -only data."

Beast looked at Belle.

Belle looked at Ben.

Ben looked at the table.

"Ben," Belle said, gently. "Ben, love."

"I'm watching the videos," Ben said, without looking up. He didn't need to. Everyone knew he was watching the videos. He had been watching the videos during the State of the Dwarves address.

"Ben."

"They're children."

"Ben."

"They're children, mom."

"Darling," Beast started.

"They're children and they are making jokes because they don't know what else to do, they're stitching each other up with sewing needles because they don't have anything else, they have a seventy-year-old woman named Beryl selling them rats because there is nothing else, and we -"

"Ben."

"-we PUT them there. We put their PARENTS there, sure, I don't argue with the parents, but we put them there too, the babies, we said 'you're born on the wrong side of a line and therefore you get the rats and the stitches and the stolen apples' -"

"Benjamin."

Ben stopped. His jaw worked.

"The Council," Belle said, delicately, "has to consider what this means strategically. The barrier cannot leak indefinitely. The signal has to be cut. And if possible -reinforced."

"Reinforced."

"Yes."

"So we make it -what, harder? We shut the videos down? We -"

"Ben, there are real security risks -"

"Let me watch this meeting on tape afterwards," Ben said. "I have a headache."

He left.

Fairy Godmother cleared her throat.

"I propose," she said, carefully, "that we table the question of reinforcement until after the viral moment has passed. If we move to shut down the signal now, the Auradonian public will notice. And the Auradonian public is, at the moment, very invested in these children."

"Four hundred million views," sweated the Bureau man.

"Four hundred million."

"In nine days, sir."

Beast put his head in his hands.

part ten: uma's crew

Uma, on the Isle, did not have internet.

Uma had her mother's restaurant, which had a television, which -because of Carlos's work -now got every channel in Auradon, and Uma had discovered that one of those channels was about three teenagers she hated and one she didn't hate but was obligated to, on a platform called TikTok.

"They have a phone," Harry said. He was leaning over the back of her chair, close enough that she could smell the salt on him. Harry smelled like the ocean no matter how long it had been since he'd been near it. "They have a phone and they're using it to film themselves being twats."

"Yeah."

"Uma."

"Yeah, Harry."

"We could get a phone."

"No we couldn't."

"We could."

"How."

"…" Harry considered. "Beg."

"From who?"

"From the purple loser."

"Harry."

"I'm jesting."

Uma watched Mal, on screen, dancing on a rooftop with the boy who was clearly Carlos, clearly, now that she'd had a chance to really look at him. He'd gotten taller. He was still tiny, by Isle standards. Uma had always had a soft spot for the De Vil kid -everyone did, except his own mother -and she watched him spin Mal around, and she watched Mal laugh, and Uma felt something complicated.

"Captain," Gil said from the doorway. Gil was holding a fish. Gil was almost always holding a fish. "Captain, Harry's mom is looking for him."

"Tell her I'm dead," Harry said.

"She'll be happy," Gil said, cheerfully, and wandered off.

"Harry."

"Aye, captain."

"Look at Mal's face."

Harry looked. He leaned on her chair harder, his hand braced on the table near hers. He was close enough that if she turned she'd be kissing him and neither of them would talk about it, ever, the way they'd never talked about any of it.

"She's happy," Harry said, quietly.

"She's on camera," Uma said. "She's on camera and she's happy and there are a hundred million people watching her be happy, and I'm -we're -"

"Eating stew. In a fish shop. Invisible."

"Yeah."

"It's not fair, captain."

"I know it's not fair."

"We should make them pay for it."

"We can't get to them, Harry."

"No," Harry said, "but they film themselves in the market. Every day. They film themselves all over the Isle. And we are also all over the Isle."

Uma looked at him.

Uma smiled.

🎥 @rottenfour -"some old friends stopped by"

duration: 30 seconds

Mal is backing up. The camera is Evie's. Carlos is behind Evie -you can see his pale hand gripping her sleeve.

Three figures are in the alley opposite.

Harry Hook, standing dead center, twirling a hook. His eyes are bright. His grin is the kind of grin that has caused problems.

Uma, arms crossed, turquoise braids over her shoulder, the glare of a person whose entire personality is You Will Respect Me.

Gil, off to the side, looking unbothered, holding an apple.

"Oh," Mal says, flat. "Great. Hi, team."

"HI, MAL," Harry says. He is shouting it for the internet. He has been told there is an internet. The crew knows about it now. "HELLO INTERNET, I'M HARRY. I'M ALSO ON THE ISLE. THIS IS MY CAPTAIN UMA. THIS IS MY FRIEND GIL. SAY HI, GIL."

"Hi," Gil says, waving with the apple.

"Uma," Mal says, "what do you want."

"What I want," Uma says, "is for you and me to talk. Privately."

"What about your -"

"They'll stay."

Harry's eyes flick to the side. To Carlos, specifically.

"Hello, little De Vil," Harry purrs.

"Oh god," Carlos groans, "oh god, not this."

"You get prettier every time I see you."

"Jay," Carlos says, turning, "Jay -"

Jay is already in frame, already stepping between Carlos and Harry, tall and bristling, his shoulders a wall. He does not say anything. He does not need to.

"Easy, big brother," Harry says, hands up, grinning.

"Not his brother," Jay says.

"Could have fooled me."

"Go stick a hook up your ass, will you?"

Uma puts up a hand. Harry stops talking.

Mal takes a step forward. Evie lowers the camera -the video ends.

Caption: hi uma

Comments: 620k

@ghostkidonline: WHAT JUST HAPPENED [❤️ 280k]

@jasminelover: "HELLO INTERNET I'M HARRY" I AM HOSPITALIZED WHY IS HE HOT [❤️ 501k]

@someone why is this weirdo flirting with a kid [❤️ 875k]

@med: @someone carlos is just short, but he’s 14 [❤️ 650k]

@auradonprepgirl: WHY IS HARRY HOOK FLIRTING WITH A 7 YEAR OLD. WHY IS HE BEING ALLOWED TO DO THIS WHERE ARE THE LAWS IN THIS PLACE. [❤️ 800k]

@jasminelover: @auradonprepgirl LMAOOOO IS CARLOS GONNA BE 6 NEXT TIME? [❤️ 752k]

@auradonprepgirl: @jasminelover the goal is to reach zero years old!  [❤️ 280k]

@shawnc: jay is not a step dad he’s the dad that stepped in omg [❤️ 900k]

@@kingbenstan: @shawnc LMAO? [❤️ 740k]

@kingbenstan: did you see how quickly carlos went behind princess evie. it looks so natural, i think carlos has been going behind evie since he was a little kid. [❤️ 650k]

@rottenfour: carlos can defend himself and hook is not a threat. he just doesn't like hook. nobody likes hook.[❤️ 2.1M]

@rottenfour: he’s a fucking prick. [❤️ 2.6M]

@rottenfour: -jay [❤️ 2.3M]

part eleven: reddit, now it's academic

r/IsleStudies (new sub, 230k members in 4 days) "The political geography of the Isle of the Lost as revealed by @rottenfour, a working taxonomy" posted by u/aurdn_studies_dr (flair: Auradon U, Post-Banishment Politics)

I'm putting this together because my DMs are flooded and because my colleagues and I have been calling each other at 2 AM for a week.

What we're seeing on @rottenfour is, I genuinely believe, the first ethnographic record of life inside the Isle of the Lost. We have never had footage from inside the barrier. There are no records. Every contact with the Isle is mediated through the Wednesday shipment, and no shipment personnel have ever been allowed off the dock. The Crown, until ten days ago, operated on the premise that the Isle was a sealed system about which little needed to be known beyond that the villains inside were contained.

This was naive.

What @rottenfour shows us:

1. There is an economy. It is a barter economy, with teeth as a durable substitute currency. Goods are clearly traded in a semi-public market. There are vendors with recognizable specialties (Beryl, rats). There is competition, pricing, and haggling. This is not a feral or pre-civil state. This is a small, compressed, resource-poor city.
2. There is a political structure. The four individuals known as the Rotten Four operate a defined territory (visible in the "tour" video and the "rooftop" video as the blocks surrounding their hideout, which appears to be an abandoned structure on the east side of the central market). They are in rivalry with another group led by Uma, Gaston's son (Gil), and Captain Hook's son (Harry). The Uma-Gil-Harry group operates around Ursula's Fish and Chips and the harbor.

Other actors exist in the background of several videos. I have tentatively identified:

• an older boy consistent with Anthony Tremaine (grandson of Lady Tremaine) in two market scenes
• a much smaller girl at what appears to be a hair salon (consistent with Dizzy Tremaine, who would be ~10)
• a young Black girl with dark hair in voodoo-associated imagery, consistent with Celia Facilier

The Isle has a polity. Deformed, brutal, but a polity.

3. The children are not their parents. I cannot emphasize this enough. The children we are watching are competent, socially sophisticated, funny, and visibly bonded. They steal, but they are stealing food. They fight, but the fights we see are defensive. Carlos De Vil in particular seems to act as a de-escalator within the group -notice how many of the videos end with him making a joke that breaks tension. This is remarkable, because his social position is the most precarious (smallest, youngest, least physically capable in a fight).
4. The living conditions are catastrophic. Scurvy is visible in at least two background vendors (Beryl, the fishmonger Petrov). Tooth decay is pervasive. Wounds are treated with sewing needles and boiled thread because there is no medical access. The children are visibly malnourished. Carlos De Vil is fourteen years old and, by comparison to documented growth curves, is probably the size of an Auradonian eleven-year-old.
5. This is our fault.

I realize I'm going out on a limb with (5), but I don't know how to end this post honestly any other way. We -Auradon, the Crown, the academy -established a prison island for convicted adults and then did not check what was happening to the children born there. We forgot about them. We did not forget in the sense that we didn't know. We forgot in the sense that we didn't care. Nobody on the Auradon U ethics committee has published a single peer-reviewed paper on the Isle population since the Banishment. Not one. I checked.

We get to be horrified by the videos. We do not, ethically, get to be surprised.

-I am turning off the comments on this post because my inbox has become a war zone. Please direct academic responses to the forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Post-Banishment Studies.

↑ 89.4k | 🏆 47

part twelve: more videos

🎥 @rottenfour -"q&a"

duration: 3 min 02 sec

The four of them on the roof. Mal has the camera for once. It is steadier than Jay's but less flattering than Evie's.

"Okay," Mal says, "we got a lot of questions. Carlos said we should do a Q and A. Carlos? You wanna do a Q and A?"

Carlos leans into frame. He looks tired. He's got a scab on his lip that he keeps touching.

"Sure."

"Okay. First question. @jasminelover says -where do you guys get food?"

"Market," Jay says, from behind the camera, because Mal has reversed the camera mid-shot. "Everything's from the market. You steal it or you trade for it or you find somebody who owes you."

"And on Wednesdays," Carlos adds, "we get the shipment."

"The Wednesday shipment from Auradon," Evie says. "Every Wednesday a barge comes. Drops off food and supplies."

"Mostly expired," Mal says.

"Mostly?" Jay scoffs. "All, Mal. All expired. All the time. It's Auradon's trash."

A silence. Evie puts her hand on his arm.

"They do their best," Evie says, to the camera. Her voice is diplomatic. "I'm sure they do."

"Evie, they do NOT -"

"Jay."

"-they allow us to eat RAT -"

"JAY."

"NEXT QUESTION," Mal announces.

"Okay," Carlos says, reading off the phone, "uh. @ghostkidonline asks -how often do you eat?"

The four of them look at each other.

"Depends," Mal says finally.

"Elaborate?"

"Depends on what we can get."

"Okay. Uh. @shawnc asks, uh -" Carlos pauses. "Do you like your parents?"

Oh, the shift is so fast. It's a thing you can watch on four faces at once.

Jay laughs -one bark, short.

Evie's hand goes up to her hair. She tucks a piece behind her ear that doesn't need to be tucked.

Mal goes still.

Carlos just looks at the phone.

The silence runs for maybe eight seconds. The longest silence in any of their videos.

"Next question," Mal says.

"Mal -"

"NEXT QUESTION, CARLOS."

Carlos scrolls. "Uh. @auradonprepgirl asks -what's your favorite thing about each other?"

"I hate all of them," Jay says instantly.

"Same," Mal says.

"Mutual," Evie says.

"Annoying," Carlos says.

They are all smiling. All four of them. Not big smiles. Small ones.

The video ends there.

Caption: q&a pt 1

Comments: 3.1M

@ghostkidonline: the 8-second silence after "do you like your parents" damn i think they love their parents you guys [❤️ 2.1M]

@jasminelover: WHAT DO YOU MEAN DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU CAN FIND IS THAT WHY YOU ARE ALL SO SKINNY ? [❤️ 1.8M]

@rottenfour: Awnn thank you, Darling ❤️ - Evie [❤️ 5.8M]

@jasminelover: EVIE MY PRINCESS THIS IS NOT A COMPLIMENT [❤️ 4M]

@shawnc: i'm sorry for asking it. i didn't think it would land like that. i'm sorry [❤️ 902k]

@rottenfour: It's okay, every teenager has complicated feelings about their parents, I think! - Evie [❤️ 5.5M]

@shawnc: @rottenfour me when i lie [❤️ 6M]

@shawnc: @rottenfour sorry [❤️ 6.3M]

🎥 @rottenfour -"prank"

duration: 55 sec

A setup. Jay is explaining to the camera in a whisper.

"Okay. Okay, listen. Carlos has been a little shit all week. Little shit. He hid my boots yesterday. I had to walk across three rooftops with no BOOTS on, Mal, I stepped on a nail -"

"So what are we doing," Mal's voice asks, amused, off-camera.

"Revenge."

The camera switches. Evie holds it now. Carlos is asleep on the hideout floor, curled up on the mattress, one arm under his head, a thin blanket half-off him. He looks smaller asleep. He looks like a child.

"Jay," Evie whispers, "Jay, don't be super mean,"

"I'm not going to SCARE him. I'm gonna -"

Jay produces, from behind his back, a bucket.

"Jay no."

"Jay yes."

"JAY, he's -"

"Evie he HID MY BOOTS."

Jay tips the bucket -it's water, just water -over Carlos.

Carlos is up before the water hits him. The camera catches it. Half-asleep, he rolls, and the water misses him, and he comes up on his feet in a crouch with a -with a -is that a knife? There's a knife in his hand. Carlos has a knife. Carlos has a knife out, ready, and the camera captures Jay's face in real time going from laughing to alarmed.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, pup, pup, it's me, it's me -"

Carlos blinks. Focuses. Sees Jay. Sees the empty bucket.

Drops the knife. Looks mortified.

"…you threw water on me."

"I was trying to throw water on you -"

"Why would you throw water on me -"

"-because you HID MY BOOTS."

A beat.

Carlos drops back onto the mattress, flopping full-body, arms out. "I hate all of you. I hate it here. I hate you specifically, Jay."

Jay sits down next to him and ruffles his hair, roughly, like you would a puppy. "Yeah, hate you too, gremlin. Go back to sleep."

The camera ends on Evie's face. She is, quietly, laughing.

Caption: revenge for the boots

Comments: 890k

@medstudent_auradon: HE HAD A KNIFE. HE SLEEPS WITH A KNIFE. HE'S A CHILD. HE'S ACTIVELY A CHILD AND HE SLEEPS WITH A KNIFE. [❤️ 555k]

@shawnc: "hate you too, gremlin" is that i love you in sibling language [❤️ 444k]

@jasminelover: he was so embarrassed when he realized he pulled a knife on jay. "you threw water on me" in that little voice. i cannot [❤️ 622k]

@rottenfour: @jasminelover i keep a knife because i am small and easy to grab -carlos [❤️ 2.1M]

@jasminelover: @rottenfour please read what you just wrote slowly [❤️ 1.5M]

@ghostkidonline: @rottenfour carlitos my dude what does that even mean </3 [❤️ 1.5M]

@rottenfour: it means what it means, you guys are so weird sometimes -carlos [❤️ 2.3M]

@ghostkidonline: hey so daily reminder that this is insane! you are insane please be happy [❤️ 3.8M]

part thirteen: the sneak peek

They did not mean to film Maleficent. It happened on accident.

Carlos had been testing a new angle mount -he was always tinkering -and the phone had been on when Mal had ducked home to grab her jacket. She was going to be in and out. Two minutes. She left the phone recording because she was going to make a joke video later about how fast she could get in and out.

Two minutes became eight.

The footage that came out of that eight minutes made the King of Auradon cancel a press conference.

🎥 @rottenfour -"home sweet home" (REMOVED 4 HOURS AFTER POSTING BY AURADON CROWN BROADCAST AUTHORITY -ALREADY MIRRORED 14,000 TIMES)

duration: 47 sec (shortened from original 8 min)

The camera is on the floor, at a slight angle. We see: a staircase, a gothic-looking hallway, peeling wallpaper showing moss underneath. Mal walks past. She's going upstairs. She's muttering something.

A voice cuts her off.

"Mal, my darling little monster, come here."

It is a woman's voice. It is a voice like no voice in Auradon.

Mal appears in frame. She has gone -gray. Her face. She has gone gray.

"Yes, mother."

"Come HERE."

Mal steps off camera. We hear footsteps. We hear -

"You look like a peasant today."

"Yes, mother."

"You look like a disappointment."

"Yes, mother."

"Do you know what I thought of you, the day I realized I was pregnant with you."

"Yes, mother."

"I thought-"

In the doorway, for one half-second, the figure of Maleficent passes by. Tall. Thin. Black horns. Green skin in a specific, specific shade.

The figure freezes. Turns.

Looks directly at the camera.

There is a sound -a gasp, Mal -the camera is snatched up, and for three seconds we see Mal's terrified face in close-up, and then the video cuts.

Caption: nothing. just my mom.

Comments (before removal): 18.2M in four hours

@historian_marjorie: That was Maleficent. That was Maleficent in the doorway. I have read every pre-Banishment description of her. That was her. [❤️ 9.1M]

@auradonprepgirl: OH MY GOD [❤️ 6.2M]

@shawnc: MAL IS THE DAUGHTER OF MALEFICENT. CONFIRMED. [❤️ 5.5M]

@ghostkidonline: her voice. that was her voice. "my darling little monster." "come HERE." forget everything else -did you hear the voice. did you hear how mal SHRANK. [❤️ 7.8M]

@shawnc: that’s scary as shit what [❤️ 5.8M]

@jasminelover: we have to get them off the isle. we have to. i don't care what kings and councils say. we have to get them off the isle. [❤️ 15.4M]

part fourteen: winter

It got cold.

The Isle does not have weather the way Auradon has weather. The Isle has cold and less cold. When the wind comes off the water at night, between about November and February, there is a particular wet cold that goes under any number of blankets. Carlos had made a space heater out of a ruined car battery the previous winter. It worked for about two hours a night. It was, still, the only space heater on the Isle that the Rotten Four knew about.

The thing about the Isle, in winter, is: nobody has food. The Wednesday shipment gets smaller in winter. The markets are thinner. The rats hide. Everybody is sick, all the time, a rotating roster of who's too sick to steal and who's well enough to cover.

Gil got sick first.

"He's warm," Harry said. He'd come into the fish shop with Gil half-hanging off his shoulder and Uma had sat up from her chair so fast it overturned. "Captain, he's real warm."

Uma put her hand on Gil's forehead. Uma swore. Uma kept swearing.

"When did it start?"

"He was off this morning."

"And it's been -Harry, it's been what, six hours?"

"About."

"In six hours."

"Yes, captain."

"Okay. Okay. We. Okay."

Gil coughed. Gil's eyes, when he opened them, didn't quite land on her face.

"Hi, captain."

"Hi, sweetheart. You're fine. You're fine."

"Okay," Gil said, agreeably, and closed his eyes again.

Carlos got sick the next day.

He had been out on the rooftop, in the wind, fixing a loose wire, and he'd come back in and sat down very carefully like he was balancing a glass of water on his head. Mal looked at him for approximately two seconds.

"Carlos."

"M'fine."

"Carlos."

"I'm fine, Mal."

"Pup, you are shaking."

"I'm FINE -"

His head went down because his body put it down. Mal caught his shoulders before he hit the table.

"Oh, fuck," Mal said.

"Fuck," Evie agreed, already moving.

Jay was there in six seconds. He picked Carlos up like he weighed nothing, which he did, and put him on the mattress, and Carlos tried to sit up and Jay put a hand flat on his chest and said "stay," in the voice he used when he was really afraid, and Carlos stayed.

"How hot," Evie said.

Mal pressed her wrist to Carlos's forehead, then his cheek, then his throat.

"He's cooking," she said.

"Oh, fuck."

By that evening, Harry came banging on their door.

On the Isle you do not go to your rivals for help. You do not even go to your rivals for a drink of water. But Harry came anyway, banging, and when Jay opened the door there was a second where both of them -both of them -stood there ready for a fight and did not fight, because they both knew something was wrong.

"Gil," Harry said.

"Carlos," Jay said.

They looked at each other.

"Fever," Harry said.

"Fever," Jay said.

Harry's face did something.

"Come in," Jay said.

Uma came with Gil. Gil was on his feet only barely. They laid him on the floor -there was only one mattress, and Carlos was on it -and Mal and Uma, in the same room for the first time in two years, looked at each other and did not fight either.

"The shipment is in five days," Uma said.

"Yes."

"Fever like this. Five days."

"Yes."

"That's -Mal, that's -"

"I know."

"Your kid and mine."

Mal looked at Carlos. Carlos's eyes were closed. Carlos was breathing through his mouth because his nose was full of something. Carlos had a scar from his collarbone to his shoulder that neither of them had gotten him in time to stop.

"We need medicine," Mal said. "And food. He needs to eat. He hasn't -"

"I know, Mal. Neither has Gil."

"We can't wait five days."

Uma swallowed.

"No," she said. "We can't wait five days."

The options on the Isle, when you need something badly, are limited.

You can steal it, if somebody has it. Nobody had medicine. Nobody on the Isle has had medicine in a decade, except for the small black market in aspirin, and even Jafar didn't stock aspirin, because aspirin had run out at the end of summer.

You can ask for it. There is no authority to ask, except -

There are adults on the Isle. Not many of them retain their power the way they used to have it on the outside; the barrier strips magic, and age has done the rest. But some of them still have leverage. The barrier doesn't strip cruelty, and cruelty in a closed system is a kind of power.

There's a woman called Madam Mim in the back of the apothecary. She keeps a stock of things -boiled roots, dried herbs, a jar of moldy bread with a specific kind of mold on it that she swears cures fever. She asks for prices.

Madam Mim's prices are not teeth.

"She wants what," Mal said.

"You heard me," Harry said. He had gone with Uma. He had gone because Uma couldn't go alone. He was pale under his eyeliner. "She wants a young body to sell."

"To who."

"Doesn't matter who. Pick one. She has a list."

"Harry."

"It's a shortlist, Mal. We can look at the shortlist."

Jay had been quiet, not moved from the mattress in about nine hours.

"We're not doing it," he said. “Because last time we needed anything, Evie was the one to go and she was bedridden for days.”

"I can do it then, Jay -"

"No, you’re not, because I’m not doing that again. I’m not watching any of you go through that ever again.”

“I’m not asking you to take care of the aftermath for me, Jay-”

“We're. Not. Fucking. Anyone. For. Medicine." He growled, already up and in front of Mal. “Because I was the one to take care of Evie while you were doing your mommy’s bidding.”

“That’s not fair. My mom-”

“I KNOW, I- Didn’t mean it- I’m just saying we’re not doing it.”

“I don’t want Evie to go either, Jay. I can-”

“No.”

“But -”

“I’m not losing any of you.”

"Jay, he's going to DIE -"

"We are not FUCKING anyone FOR MEDICINE."

"Then what, genius, THEN WHAT -"

"Post on tiktok."

The room went quiet.

"No." Mal said.

"Mal -"

"Jay, NO."

"Mal. We cannot afford another shipment for the chance that they send medicine. We cannot afford to wait. We cannot afford to - Mal, he won't make the five days, he is dying."

"We have NEVER begged. I have never. We have never. I have NEVER -"

"I know, Mal."

"I will NOT -"

"Mal," Jay said, and his voice broke. His voice broke, and Mal stopped, and she looked at him, and Jay was crying, actually, real tears, and Mal had not seen Jay cry since they were about eleven.

"Mal," Jay said, "he is the only good thing that has ever happened on this fucking island, and I will not. I will not lose him. So you are going to swallow your pride for ten minutes and we are going to beg, on the camera, and if they don't come we will do worse. We will do the thing that Mim wants. I will go to whoever she wants myself, but please. Please, Mal. Please beg with me first."

Mal looked at Jay.

Mal looked at Carlos.

Mal looked at Evie, who was crying silently because Evie was always crying silently, and had been since about hour four.

"Fine," she said.

"Fine?"

"FINE."

"Okay."

"Film it. Film it before I change my mind. Film it NOW."

🎥 @rottenfour -"we need your help"

duration: 1 min 38 sec

It is dim. It is the darkest video they have ever posted. Someone is holding the camera -Evie, probably, based on the shakiness being particular -and she is turning it to show the mattress.

Carlos is on the mattress. Gil is on the floor next to the mattress. They are not moving. Their chests are moving, fast and shallow, but their bodies are not. Carlos's lips are cracked. His hair is plastered to his forehead with sweat. He is so small. He is so small on the mattress.

The camera turns.

Mal's face.

She has clearly been crying. Her eyes are red. Her mouth is a thin line. There is something deeply humiliated about her. She is trying to keep the dignity but the dignity is fraying at the edges. You can see where she swallows. You can see her throat work.

"Hi," she says.

She clears her throat.

"So -so, um. So, hi. My name is Mal. I'm the one with the purple hair. Some of you -a lot of you, I guess -have been watching our videos. And you've been -nice. I guess. You've been nice. And we haven't asked you for anything because we don't -we don't -that's not what this was for. This was for, uh."

She laughs, a little. It is a bad laugh.

"This was for fun."

A pause.

"My friend is sick. He's fourteen- Not six. I think Carlos would like for me to point out he’s not six years old, but thank you all for your concern.” She chuckled silently without humor. “You all -you know him, you know Carlos. He -he's had a fever for three days and it's not breaking, it's getting worse, and our -our rival, who is, huh, Gil, he's got it too. They're really sick. They're really, really sick. And the next shipment is in five days. And they -"

Mal stops.

"They are not going to make five days."

The camera jerks -Evie is sobbing, quietly, just out of frame.

"And even if they do, it’s never guarantee that anything useful is coming through. We don't -we don't have medicine here. We don't have -I don't know what they have in Auradon, I don't know what they have that fixes a fever, but we don't have it. We have boiled water and we have some old aspirin we bought off a guy who sold it to us two months ago and we have been -we have been pouring it into him, and it isn't working. And we don't have food for them. We can't -they can't eat what we have. He, uh. Carlos has been throwing up what we can get him to eat anyway."

She closes her eyes.

"So I'm -Jay -Jay told me to ask you, and I'm asking you, um, if you can -if anyone can send medicine, and food, clean food, to an earlier shipment. If not, then the Wednesday one is fine. I know it's a long shot. I know you guys don't -you aren't the ones who pack the shipment. I know. But I know some of you are, like, important, and some of you know people. So."

She opens her eyes.

"Please."

The video ends on her face.

Caption: please

Comments: 48.8M in six hours

@shawnc: she doesn't know how to ask. you can see her not know how to ask. because she's never ASKED anyone for anything. in her whole life. [❤️ 22.1M]

@benfan_22 (Ben): I am personally sending a helicopter. I am personally sending a helicopter. I am personally sending a helicopter. I am bypassing my parents I am bypassing the council I am bypassing every advisor I have been told to listen to. THE HELICOPTER IS COMING. [❤️ 45M]

@auradonprepgirl: EVERY PHARMACY IN CORONA IS PACKING BOXES RIGHT NOW. EVERY PHARMACY. MY MOM OWNS ONE. SHE LITERALLY LOCKED THE DOORS TO STOP CUSTOMERS SO HER STAFF COULD PACK. [❤️ 19M]

@medstudent_auradon: MY HOSPITAL IS PACKING SUPPLIES RIGHT NOW. FULL IV KITS, ANTIBIOTICS, ANTIPYRETICS, GLUCOSE DRIPS, NUTRITIONAL FORMULA. I AM PERSONALLY GOING ON THE HELICOPTER IF THEY LET ME. I HAVE NEVER STABILIZED A FEVER PATIENT AS A STUDENT BUT I HAVE READ EVERY BOOK AND I WILL FUCKING LEARN ON THE WAY. [❤️ 25M]

@kingbenstan: "they are not going to make five days" [❤️ 17.2M]

@jasminelover: THE KING'S OFFICE JUST CONFIRMED THE HELICOPTER IS BEING MOVED TO TOMORROW MORNING. TOMORROW MORNING. TOMORROW MORNING. [❤️ 50M]

part fifteen: the long night

They were all in Jafar's shop.

It wasn't supposed to happen this way. Jafar had come back from the market and found them -his son, his son's friends, and Uma's gang, all of them, huddled around a mattress they'd dragged in from the hideout and another one from somewhere, with two half-conscious boys and a camp stove going and several candles -and Jafar had opened his mouth to start yelling.

Jay had looked up.

Jay had not said anything. Jay had just looked.

Jafar had closed his mouth and gone upstairs.

The shop was dangerous because of Jafar but it was warm because of the generator and because of the big stone walls that trapped heat from the kitchen on the other side. It was the warmest place they knew. And they had needed the warmest place they knew.

At around two in the morning, Carlos's breathing changed.

Evie noticed first. Evie was sitting against the wall next to the mattress with her hand on Carlos's ankle -she'd been holding his ankle for eight hours, on and off, because she needed to know he was still there -and her eyes snapped up.

"Mal."

"What."

"Mal."

Mal was next to her in half a second. Uma was next to her in another half. They crowded around.

Carlos was breathing in a stuttering way. Like there was a rhythm he was losing track of. In, in, out, hold, in, out, out, hold.

"Oh god," Evie said.

"Oh god oh god -"

Gil, on the other mattress, made a sound like he was trying to say something and couldn't.

Harry, who had been stationed at Gil's side all night and had not moved, dropped to his knees.

"Captain," Harry said.

"I know."

"Captain."

"I KNOW, Harry -"

It was Jay who picked up the camera.

Nobody asked him to. Jay picked up the camera and pointed it and his hands were shaking so badly the frame was shaking. He did not say anything. He did not caption it. He did not know what to caption.

🎥 @rottenfour -"the night before"

duration: 38 sec

The video is dim. It is badly lit. It is badly held. But you can see:

A stone room. Two mattresses on a floor. Candles. On the mattresses, two boys -one blond and broad, one small and pale. Both of them, breathing badly.

Around them: five teenagers, pressed in close. One is weeping silently -Evie, you can tell by the long dark hair. One is holding a boy's ankle like an anchor. One -Mal -has her forehead pressed to Carlos's forehead. Her eyes are closed.

The figure filming's hand is shaking. You can hear his breath. The breath catches.

The camera pans -you see Uma, on the other mattress, smoothing Gil's hair back. You see Harry, on Uma's other side, gripping Gil's hand with white knuckles.

Uma, quietly, is singing. It is a sea shanty. It is a lullaby version of a sea shanty. She has a lovely voice, and it is destroyed, absolutely destroyed, by the fact that she is crying while she sings.

The camera cuts back to Carlos. His mouth is open. His eyes are half-open. He is not seeing anything.

For the last six seconds of the video the camera just holds on his face.

Caption: please make it

Comments: 120M in 90 minutes

@jasminelover: @kingben @queenbelle @beastking @fairygodmother PICK UP THE FUCKING PHONE [❤️ 60M]

@benfan_22 (Ben): WE ARE TWO HOURS OUT. TWO HOURS. HOLD ON. HOLD ON. TELL THEM TO HOLD ON. [❤️ 80M]

@shawnc: uma is singing to gil [❤️ 55M]

@medstudent_auradon: I AM ON THE HELICOPTER. I AM ON THE HELICOPTER. I HAVE IV FLUIDS IN MY LAP I HAVE IT IN MY HANDS RIGHT NOW. WE ARE COMING. WE ARE COMING. [❤️ 70M]

@auradonprepgirl: stay with us carlos stay with us. gil. please. please please please [❤️ 60M]

@ghostkidonline: mal pressed her forehead to his forehead because that's what her mother has never done and now she is doing it for him. do you understand. do you understand. [❤️ 88M]

part sixteen: morning

Ben came himself.

He had been told not to. He had been told it was a security nightmare, it was a political nightmare, it was every kind of nightmare. He had listened, nodded, said I understand, gone to his room, waited for his parents to fall asleep, and then walked out the front door and to the helipad where the medical shipment was waiting.

He told the pilot: we're going now.

The pilot, who was a kind man, and who had a daughter the age of the one with the purple hair, said: yes, your majesty.

The helicopter landed at the dock at 5:47 AM. The sun was beginning to come up -not fully, the Isle doesn't really get sun, but there was a sort of gray lifting over the water.

He was not alone. Behind him came a medical team (six nurses, one doctor, and one medical student @medstudent_auradon -a boy named Darren -who was first off the chopper and already sprinting), and behind them came food. A lot of food. An absurd amount of food. Fresh bread. Fresh oranges. Fresh everything.

They were all still there. They had not moved in six hours. Mal was still pressed against Carlos's forehead. Evie was still holding his ankle. Jay was on the other side of the mattress, one hand on Carlos's wrist like he was taking a pulse, like he had been taking a pulse every three minutes for hours, and his face was -

The door flew open.

Everyone flinched.

Ben stopped in the doorway.

He took in -one mattress, two dying boys, five teenagers he had seen on a tiny screen and now saw in front of him, a camp stove, three candles almost out.

"Hi," Ben said.

His voice cracked.

"Hi. I'm. I'm Ben. I brought -I brought. I brought medicine. Um. And food. And doctors."

Behind him, Darren the medical student shoved past and into the room and was on his knees next to Carlos before anyone could stop him, with a small bright device pressed against Carlos's neck and a bag of fluids already coming out of his pack.

"Pulse is there," Darren said, loud, professional. "It's fast but it's there. Hanging IV now. What has he been -okay never mind. Jenn, get Gil on fluids. Marcus, get me vitals."

The room exploded into organized medical action.

Mal was staring at Ben.

Ben was staring at Mal.

"You came," Mal said. She sounded like she hadn't used her voice in a long time.

"Yeah."

"Yourself."

"Yeah."

"But you are the prince, you didn't have to."

"I’m sorry I was late."

Mal's face, in that moment, did something that nobody who knew her had ever seen it do.

She began to cry.

She didn't make a sound. She just began to cry. Her whole face crumpled, and she turned and pressed her face into Carlos's shoulder, and she cried, and Ben stood in the doorway of Jafar's shop and watched her and did not move, because he was -realistically -also crying.

part seventeen: aftermath

It took four days for Carlos to wake up clean. Four days of fluids, of broth, of antibiotics, of a hundred thousand anxious viewers refreshing the @rottenfour page for any sign of a new video. Gil woke up faster -two days -because Gil was bigger and had more to burn. Carlos was a spider. Carlos had needed every IV bag they'd brought and then some.

On the fifth day, Carlos opened his eyes, and Evie was there, and he said, "I'm hungry."

Evie laughed so hard she fell off her chair.

"Oh, pup," she said, climbing back up, wiping her eyes. "Oh, pup, you scared us. You scared us so bad."

"Evie, don't call me that."

"I'll call you whatever I want, you almost died, shut up."

"…okay."

🎥 @rottenfour -"he's up"

duration: 40 sec

Carlos. On the mattress. Pale as a sheet but upright. Eating. Eating an orange, specifically. An orange that is, objectively, a real orange. Fresh. Bright. Not rotten.

He is eating it slowly. He is eating it the way you eat something that you did not believe was real.

"How is it," Evie says, off-camera.

"Good," Carlos says, with his mouth full.

"Carlos."

"Mm."

"Carlos."

"Mmm."

"Carlos, can you say hi to the internet. Many millions of them think you died."

Carlos looks up at the camera. He has orange juice on his chin.

"Hi," he says.

He waves, limply.

"I didn't die, sorry."

A pause. He looks at the orange.

"Thank you guys. For the orange. And the. All the stuff. I don't know who sent what, but um. Ben, the king? The future king? Brought a helicopter. Mal cried. Don't tell her I told you she cried."

"I WILL BREAK YOUR KNEES CARLOS," Mal shouts from off-camera.

"She cried a LOT," Carlos tells the camera.

"CARLOS -"

"She pressed her forehead to my forehead. So cute, like a mom would. That's what Evie said. Evie said it was what a mom would do. Which was weird because we don't know what a mom does."

A long silence off-camera.

Carlos eats more orange.

"Anyway," he says. "Thanks!"

Caption: pup’s up

Comments: 300M

@jasminelover: "it was what a mom would do. which was weird because we don't know what a mom does." [❤️ 180M]

@shawnc: i am never going to emotionally recover from the rotten four. i am never. this is a permanent wound now. [❤️ 88M]

@ghostkidonline: look at him eat that orange. slowly. carefully. like he doesn't believe it'll still be there in a minute. a child eating an orange like it might vanish. please. [❤️ 150M]

@rottenfour: it was a significantly good orange -carlos [❤️ 220M]

part eighteen: the meeting, again

There was, again, a meeting.

It was a longer meeting. It ran for nine hours. King Beast did not speak much. Queen Belle took a lot of notes. Ben, who had slept for fourteen hours straight after he got back from the Isle and was still a little red-eyed, was - for the first time since he had been named successor - the one doing most of the talking.

"The program," Ben said, "is this. We bring them off the Isle. All four of them first. Then more. We make a school program. We make a gradual integration. We -"

"Benjamin," Beast said, "the political implications -"

"Dad."

"Benjamin."

"Dad. Three hundred million people watched a fourteen-year-old almost die. And four hundred million watched him wake up. The political implications of not doing this are worse."

"Ben is right," Belle said, quietly, not looking up from her notes.

Beast looked at her.

Beast sighed, a long animal sigh.

"Which four," he said.

"Carlos De Vil. Jay. Evie. Mal," Ben said. "And we extend the program. Every six months. Four more. Starting with Uma's group. Gil. Harry. Uma."

"Captain Hook's son."

"Yes."

"In Auradon Prep."

"Yes, dad."

Beast put his head in his hands, for approximately the twelfth time that month.

"God help us," he said.

"God help them," Ben said.

part nineteen: epilogue

The last video posted from @rottenfour, before they left the Isle, was not dramatic. It was not captioned emotionally. It was not sad.

It was, in fact, deeply stupid.

🎥 @rottenfour -"last day"

duration: 1 min 12 sec

The four of them on the roof. The roof is tidy, for once -Evie has cleaned it. She cleans things when she's nervous. Carlos is sitting on the ledge, legs swinging, wrapped in about four layers because he's still getting his strength back. Jay is pacing. Mal is lying flat on her back staring at the sky.

"Okay," Evie says, looking at the camera. "Last video from the Isle. We're going to Auradon tomorrow."

"Is it going to be really fancy?" Jay asks.

"It's going to be really fancy."

"I don't have anything fancy to wear."

"I will MAKE you something fancy to wear, Jay."

“Blonde did promise us to take us out of here.” Mal, still flat on her back: "I'm not saying goodbye to my mother."

"Okay," Evie says, softly.

"I just want to make that clear. I'm not saying goodbye. I'm going to leave and I am not going to tell her."

"Okay."

"Same," Carlos says, small.

"Same," Jay says.

"Same," Evie says.

A silence.

“So you liked Ben’s attitude?” Carlos asked Mal.

“The prince himself brought a helicopter to make sure you’d live to see another day, Carlos. Yes, I think it was pretty rad.”

“Would you say crushingly rad?” He teased.

Mal turned red within a second. She opened her mouth to scold him before seeing the camera and turning her face the other way. Carlos snickered loudly.

Jay sits down on the ledge next to Carlos. He puts his arm around Carlos's shoulders.

"Move over, pup."

"I'm gonna stop responding to that as soon as we're in Auradon."

"No you're not."

"I am."

"You aren't."

"Dude," Jay says, "we're not friends, right? We're allies."

Carlos nods. "Allies."

"We're not a family," Jay says.

"No way," Carlos says.

"We definitely don't love each other."

"No, that would be weird."

"Great."

"Great."

They sit there, with Jay's arm around Carlos, for a long moment.

Mal crosses the roof. She sits down on Carlos's other side.

Evie puts the camera down on a ledge, angled to catch them, and sits down on Mal's far side.

The four of them, on a roof, under a gray sky.

"For the record," Mal says, "I do not love any of you."

"Mutual," Carlos says.

"I would not die for any of you."

"Mutual," Jay says.

"If I was given the choice to save you or a stranger I'd save the stranger."

"Oh, absolutely the stranger," Evie says.

"Great. Good. We all understand each other."

"Perfectly."

The four of them sit there for a while.

Nobody speaks.

Evie leans her head on Mal's shoulder. Mal does not push her off. Jay pulls Carlos a little closer under his arm. Carlos does not pull away.

The camera catches this for another forty seconds before the video ends.

Caption: bye

Comments: the most any video has ever had, and probably ever will

@jasminelover: "I DO NOT LOVE ANY OF YOU" WHILE LETTING EVIE LEAN ON HER [❤️ 400M]

@shawnc: "if i was given the choice to save you or a stranger i'd save the stranger" SHE WOULD NOT. NONE OF THEM WOULD. THEY WOULD ALL CHOOSE EACH OTHER. THEY ARE ACTIVELY CHOOSING EACH OTHER AS THEY SPEAK. [❤️ 320M]

@ghostkidonline: they said goodbye. this was them saying goodbye to the island and also goodbye to the rooftop and also goodbye to the version of themselves that only got to love each other in hiding. tomorrow they're going to a place where it's okay to love each other out loud. but first they had to sit on this roof and pretend one more time because that's how they know how to do it. [❤️ 500M]

@rottenfour: ok we gotta go the car is here from mr. ben -evie [❤️ 280M]

@rottenfour: it is a LIMO evie it is a LIMO -jay [❤️ 290M]

@rottenfour: shut up jay you'll scare the driver -mal [❤️ 301M]

@rottenfour: bye internet. thanks for the orange. -carlos [❤️ 1.1B]