Back to the Drawing Board

[Maleficent]

Forbidden Mountain | Throne Room | June 15th

Any joy Maleficent felt at being back home in her castle was completely overshadowed by the crushing defeat that had brought them there.

Clopin was now officially the top of her list for people she would kill if given the chance. She had severely underestimated him and now she was reaping the rewards of that so she would not make the same mistake again. Still, after two defeats, her army was not nearly strong enough for the vengeance she craved. Soon, she promised herself, soon she would make him pay.

But most pressing on her mind at this moment was suspicion. How easy it had been for Clopin and his band of degenerates had snuck their way into her private sanctum far too easily in her mind. She knew that Frollo would have likely told them all he knew of Agrabah and that she had expected but very few were ever allowed near her chambers. The more she stewed on this thought the more she began to suspect that Frollo wasn't the only recent traitor within her ranks. Someone had to have shown Clopin the route, have let him and his band into the palace, had to have made sure the guards she had posted were distracted or otherwise engaged.

The sorceress sat on her throne, her fingernails tapping on the arm as she awaited the arrival of those she had trusted. Perhaps she should not have been so willing to do so considering their miserable failures in both Paris and now Agrabah's loss, with the exception of Nasira. Her fury was burning deep inside her breast but she would give them all one last chance to give her the victories she craved. The sooner they all arrived, the sooner she could get to laying out their new strategy.

[Nasira]

Nasira was among those summoned. She had not known about the council of war in advance, but one could guess what it entailed. 

Agrabah's loss had been hard on them all. Nasira had been inconsolable and for the better part of the week, she only left her room to do what was required of her. Perhaps she had slept; she could not be certain. Agony and grief had debilitated her senses to the point where she could not be sure if she was conscious or not. It was no small thing to cast off the last threads of what had been her home for many, many years. And when she thought of the Rogue king and...him, the man who had once been her brother, she would have wept, but the tears would not come. There was nothing she could do for him at the moment, so she made herself put all thought of him aside for the time being. Agrabah will be avenged if not reclaimed. That much was certain.

As Nasira had walked through the great stone maze of the castle, she became more alert, shrugging off her weariness as details caught her interest. She passed an open window, where a gust of wind made her stomach drop with a sudden feeling that she would be plucked and thrown from it to the unseen ground. The Forbidden Mountain's castle stood high and impregnable, surrounded by smaller peaks reminiscent of glass shards and as black as a starless sky. Vertigo seized her again as Nasira caught a glimpse of the drawbridge below; forty feet long and ten feet wide, with a precipitous drop to either side. The wood had all but disintegrated, the gaps as unsightly as missing teeth. And the chains attached to the weathered stone windlass were so eroded that the links looked as though they would snap at any moment. Crossing that thing had been a nightmare even for those with the means to levitate. 

The passage widened into a big, imposing vaulted chamber. Nasira saw Maleficent seated on an elevated platform and caught her breath. Judging by the look on her face, this was not going to be a very pleasant conversation.

"Your Grace," she greeted, bowing.

[Tabs]

        Tabs was forced from stasis, even though they probably shouldn’t have been.  It would take some more time to fully recover physically from the meltdown their body had to endure.  This said nothing of their mental state.  They had slept, a thin film membrane cocooning them.  The sight was grotesque, but one brave messenger persistently prodded the fleshy thing until it stirred.  Tabs was awake, but they weren’t completely lucid yet.  Their body was drenched in a clear, bitter-smelling fluid that had once surrounded them in their cocoon.  It dripped on the stone as they floated just barely over the ground.

        They were introduced by a brief wet cough.  A bit of black bile sputtered from a maw of broken glass that stretched across their lower two screens.  The tip of a slick, dark red tongue appeared to rest at the bottom jaw.  Tabs’s hooves met the floor of Maleficent's chamber and they settled into a dubious standing position, their thin body barely looking able to support itself.  But, they were here nonetheless.

        One of the top screens flashed on, revealing one face.  It’s expression reflected what everything else about Tabs’s appearance told -- they were tired.  They hoped at least that their stepping in to save his masters was acknowledged.   If it wasn’t, they couldn’t even be mad about it -- not yet: not with all the sedatives their body was flooding itself with to promote healing.  In their haze, they were curious to learn the specifics of what happened, given their altered state of mind during the siege was no doubt unreliable.

        Two voices spoke at once;

        “Ahrroo Rrah-ah.”

        “Greetings, my master.”

[Shiloh]

Shiloh walked into the room, her normally pristine, semi-formal outlook all but abandoned in the past few days. Long hair pulled into a messy, half fallen bun, jeans and a disheveled looking sweater replaced her normal clothes.

Ever since the fall of the Blackblood Legion, and the loss of Agrabah, Shiloh took it upon herself to figure out a way to bring about a security system of some kind once they had started to settle in the forbidden mountain.

It was clear that among the many number of those in the Shadowglen, she was one of the few that knew much of anything about more advanced technology. Radar, motion trackers, heat signature detectors, they needed something to prevent an event like the siege of Agrabah from happening twice.

Fortunately, Shiloh had a “friend” who had access to such things, and who owed her a favor.

Unfortunately, it had taken a couple days for the equipment to even arrive at their location, and when it had, it wasn’t the advanced technology she was expecting.

Still, it was more than they had before, and with some tinkering she could probably make something out of what little she was given. Which is what Shiloh had spent the last few days doing, and the reason for her rather unkempt appearance.

She gave a nod to Maleficent, her tired looking eyes passing over both her and Nasira with farmiliarity,
"Maleficent-sama," perhaps it was due to lack of sleep that she was slipping back to using formal suffixes, perhaps it was just easier than trying to remember the new hierarchy names and ways of addressing, "Nasira-senpai..." 

[Dr. Facilier]

The defeat of the siege of Agrabah was nothing short of embarrassing for the former Legion. Upon arriving at the castle, everyone, even the higher-ups, had retired to tend to their wounds and recover. But Maleficent always had a plan, and even if they were still trying to gather what exactly went wrong, both Shan Yu and Facilier knew that they were expected to be present. In his own quarters, Dr. Facilier was attempting to heal what he could of the wounds he’d endured during battle, although his magic didn’t seem to be doing much to help. He’d only managed to escape with a few of the masks that he had kept on the wall of his chambers as an altar to the Loa, leaving the larger ones behind in an attempt to save his own skin while the palace was stormed by that fraud of a king and his men. He’d received the summoning to come to the throne room via Sol, but as soon as the Akita trotted off, Facilier was left to his own devices once more. He knew he had to be there regardless of how he was feeling, but for a brief moment, he sat down on his bed, looking at the empty space beside him.


“Who thought this is how it was gonna end up Morty? You’re dead and gone, killed by that bastard king and his men, and we’ve been run out of Agrabah by those same—“


“Are you planning to sit there all day talking to a dead overseer, or are you going to dust yourself off like the rest of us and get into that throne room? You know I am not a fan of people running late, and neither is Maleficent.”

Facilier’s attention was pulled from his conversation to the hulking figure that took up most of the entrance to his doorway. Shan Yu’s shoulders looked as if they could barely fit through the frame, and he looked at the witch doctor with those piercing yellow eyes of his, a scowl on his face. Facilier hadn’t seen Shan Yu since the last time he had ordered them to attack, and from what he could gather, the man seemed to be taking the defeat in silence.

“I thought I had some time to myself before I got ready to leave.” Facilier muttered, as he grabbed his staff. Shan Yu stepped back to allow the witch doctor to pass him, and fell into stride as they began their ascent up the mountain, following the footsteps of their peers in mutual silence as they crossed the drawbridge. Hayabusa flew ahead of his master, calling out to announce their arrival as soon as they reached the throne room.

“Apologies your Grace. I was rounding up the stragglers.” Shan Yu said, with a respectful bow to Maleficent. He then nodded to Tabs, Shiloh, and Nasira in acknowledgment, before stepping back to be among them.

[Maleficent]

Most of her elites gathered, Maleficent decided she would begin.

"First of all," she spoke, her eyes sweeping to each individual assembled before her with her expression unreadable for the most part "I wish to say that you have my congratulations for your actions during our unfortunate situation. We lost. We were caught unprepared and suffered for it, but I am not callous enough to disregard your efforts in putting up a desperate fight in a desperate hour."

Of course, she was angry that they had lost, she was infuriated that Clopin had bested her and her army and forced them to flee like cowards with their tails between their legs. That was the past, however, and it couldn't be changed. What she could do was look to the future and see that revenge would come their way eventually even if a long game had to be played to achieve it. She was used to being patient when the promise of reward was great enough.

"That being said," Maleficent continued "we have a lot of business to take care of."

First, she turned her gaze to Shiloh

"We must see to it that our defences are even stronger than ever lest we want a repeat of Agrabah. As soon as you have the resources I want the best security you can muster, Lady Shiloh. I discounted your expertise with technology in favour of more...mystical means and for that I have been proven mistaken. This will be your task moving forwards." then her gaze turned to Facilier and she added "You will help Lady Shiloh with her efforts and reinforce with magic where her technology fails. I want every possible hole in our defences is plugged to the best of your combined abilities."

Then her attention turned to Shan Yu 

"What soldiers who remain with us I expect to be put to hard work making themselves battle ready again as soon as possible. I want them trained hard. Until we can get new recruits into our ranks, they need to be at the top of their game. Work with Morren to ensure that the soldiers can be pushed harder without completely ruining them. Another thing, if you don't see the potential for warriors, I want you to mark out those soldiers and perhaps we can use them to further our reach as spies."

Then Tabs became the subject of orders

"That fool Clopin may have thrown us out of our base but he has also given us a marvellous opportunity for some sympathy weaving, I believe. I don't care if it's true or not, you are going to work hard to milk Agrabah for all that it is worth. Make sure that everyone believes that the Rogues were a marauding army and that we did nothing to provoke the attack. If you can pin crimes on them, do it, I don't want them using this victory to add to their ranks."

Finally, it was to Nasira she turned and the ghost of a smile seemed to come across her face as she spoke to her second-in-command. 

"As for you, my dear, Crow has given me some delightful news. He believes he has given us a general area to start rooting out those Freedom Fighters, or Dawnseekers, or whatever they are calling themselves now. Thanks to our little prisoner, we should be able to at least put down that little annoyance whilst we focus on the larger threat. I would like you to find someone who would not arouse suspicion, who can pose as convincing defector, and I want you to send them to North America as a double agent. With luck, they can find where they're hiding and we can exterminate them once and for all."