The royal guard is regretting every single one of his life choices that brought him to this point.

"Excuse me," he says, "are you Sasha, uh, son of nobody?"

The name is deliberately confrontational and he shouldn't be annoyed about how dubious this guy sounds about it. Still.

"The one and only." 

"Okay. Um. Well. Could you point me to where your parents are? I have something I have to tell them."

Whyyyyyyy didn't he stay at hooooooome and farm cows, or steal cows, or slaughter cows, or otherwise engage in some sort of cow-based career. No, he was too good for cows. He wanted to see the world. He wanted to make something of himself. And now he's on an island full of villains trying to get a surly sixteen-year-old to explain who his parents are.

"...I literally just confirmed for you that my name is 'son of nobody,' and you still want to know where my parents are because whatever it is you have to say is meant for them and not for me. Are you fucking kidding me." 

"I just work here, okay? I wasn't the one who decided what the instructions were. King Ben was just like 'find the parents of these four people and tell them the thing so that they can break the news gently to their kids and veto it if they don't think it's in their kids' best interest.'"

"Well, I haven't talked to my parents in four years and I have no clue where they are, so unless you feel like searching the whole island, you can tell it to me." 

"I guess!"

He throws his hands up in the air. On one hand, he is supposed to obey the king completely and utterly and without question, and on the other hand the sooner he gets off Garbage Fucking Island the better. Some of the stuff on the street oozes.

This has been the worst day. 

"You have been selected as one of the four members of a pilot program to get the villain kids off the Isle. If you accept, you will live with an Auradonian family and attend school in Auradon. You have 24 hours to think about it, and you can have an extension upon request. I can answer any questions you have."

What the fuck what the fuck what the fucking fuck. 

"Who are the other three, how are the families chosen, what kind of school — is it true that food just grows out of the ground in Auradon —" 

"The other three are Claudine daughter of Frollo, Mackenzie daughter of Mother Gothel, and Carlos son of Cruella. The king chose the families personally. You will have a castleschool curriculum designed by one of the king's closest advisers and regular private tutoring. Where else would food grow?" 

...so there are some considerations here. 

First of all, there's his gang, obviously. One fewer person means one fewer pair of eyes, one fewer pair of hands, one fewer brain. But he's tiny and far from their strongest member and honestly there's not much he can do that Nat and Nico can't, so it's not like he's leaving all that much slack to pick up. 

Second of all: Auradonian families aren't likely to treat a villain kid well, even if the king did hand-pick them. Oh, it'll help that nobody knows who the hell his parents are and wouldn't recognize the names if he did tell them, but it probably won't help that much. 

Third of all: homeschooling is what your parents do to you if they're the sort of people who lock you in a tower. 

But. There's going to be food, and light, and Auradon is clean, and probably people try to hurt you less there, although he's careful not to put too much weight on that. 

"So you're going to talk to Mother Gothel and Claude Frollo and expect them to do what's right for their kids instead of keeping them in towers forever? That'll go awesome," he says instead of any of that. 

"I am not at liberty," he says uncomfortably, "to divulge how negotiations are going with other parents."

Horribly. They're going horribly. He almost wishes he'd be thrown into a dungeon about his failure but instead King Ben is going to make a sympathetic face and it's the worst.

He looks at the guard's face. 

He looks in the direction of Mother Gothel's tower. 

"Try checking under Mackenzie's window, she drops letters sometimes. If they aren't written in purple they're a fake written by Gothel. And I'm in." 

A look of relief crosses his face. "Good! That's-- good. Do you have any more questions?"

It's kind of a long shot, but, "Can you tell me who the family I'll be staying with is?" 

"Princess Charlotte La Bouff, daughter of Big Daddy La Bouff, and her husband Prince Ralph of Maldonia."

....there has got to be a story behind that name and he is going to find out what it is. 

"Thank you. Is there any place in particular I should be so you can find me?" 

He gives directions to a place with a good view of Auradon City.

Thaaaaaat's pretty firmly in Mal's territory but if Carlos is one of the people being selected she'll know what's going on and probably it won't be a thing.

He elects not to explain this to the random Auradonian who wouldn't get it anyway and instead nods and agrees to be there. 

Great! That was easy!

With any luck he will only have to put up with a small disappointed face.

The royal guard retreats back to Auradon City and takes an extremely long shower.

He tells his gang. They aren't happy about it, but Queenie tells him to give Auradon hell for them and nobody voices any objections after that.

He eats a black banana and a piece of bread so hard you could use it as a projectile weapon for dinner and sleeps curled up against Nico and is in the place he was told to be the next day. 

So are Claudine, Mackenzie, and Carlos!

The royal guard is in the driver's seat of a limousine. 

Weird. 

He nods to the other three but doesn't say anything if they don't. 

Frollo is saying something to Claudine in some language that isn't English. His voice is contemptuous. He makes hand gestures over her: a sharp line down, then a line across.

Cruella De Vil is openly weeping, unsure how she could possibly survive without her Carlos to massage her feet and clean her windows and wash her furs.

"It'll be fine, mom--" Carlos says.

Cruella slaps him. "Don't you dare say I'll be fine without you! Useless boy."

Gothel, too, is sobbing, imploring how Mackenzie could do this to her. 

(Mackenzie looks like she might cry too. She isn't doing it yet, though.)