Chapter Text
Maleficent casually strolled through the county fair with her customary grace and elegance. She provided a stark contrast to the mundane and lower class quality of her surroundings, and her attire drew strange glances from all around her, though most would quickly look away if they were caught staring. Next to the corndog stand, a pudgy little boy and an older man wearing a sweat stained wife-beater shirt that barely covered his beer gut made no secret of the fact that they were staring at Maleficent.
"Daddy, that lady is scary lookin'," the pudgy boy said.
"That ain't no lady, son," the father replied. "That's one of them faggots who like to dress like women. He's probably a Vamper too or at least a Fang Banger."
Maleficent stopped in her tracks but did not turn around. The orb atop her staff began to glow a sickly green. From somewhere up above, the sound of dozens of wing flaps could just barely be heard over the music coming from the Ferris wheel. The father glanced up, and though they blended well into the night sky, the flock of black birds flying towards him was unmistakable.
The father scrunched his face. "What the fuck is-"
The birds descended upon the father and began to claw and scratch at his face. He tried to swat them away and shield his face, but the birds were relentless as they got to work pecking the man's eyes clean out of their sockets. A few people tried to call for help, a few video taped the ordeal on their phones, but most ran as far away from the horrific sight as fast as they could. The pudgy little boy, overwhelmed by fear, was one of the ones who attempted to run. However, he was quickly stopped by a green hand with long purple fingernails grabbing ahold of his shoulder.
"You were right to fear me at first glance," Maleficent said as she knelt down to get on eye-level with the boy. "Fear is an instinctive reminder to respect the forces of the universe more powerful than you, my pet... a lesson your father failed to learn."
Maleficent nodded her head over to the father. He was currently writhing on the ground in pain as the birds continued to swarm on top of him.
"Know that there are consequences for forgetting this simple truth," Maleficent warned. "Do you understand me, child?"
The little boy nodded and tried to bite back his sobs. "Ye... yes."
"Yes what?" Maleficent asked firmly.
"Yes ma'am," the boy corrected himself.
Maleficent smirked and rose back to her full height. "Good boy."
Maleficent then turned back around and proceeded away from the bloody sight, walking leisurely away as if nothing had happened.
The fairgrounds were situated next to a large lake, and along the lake's shore was a beach that was a favorite recreational spot for the locals on hot days. Maleficent spotted her fellow Overtaker the Evil Queen Grimhilde standing on the beach and looking out at the dark lake. In her queenly garments she appeared even more out of place standing against the carnival than Maleficent did. When Grimhilde noticed Maleficent, she waved her over. As Maleficent descended the beach toward her friend, she crossed a magical barrier that Grimhilde erected to prevent any unwanted interference from the carnival. Once Maleficent was on the other side, two other Overtakers Russell Edgington and Fish Mooney became visible, fighting against something unseen in the shallows of the lake.
"You've found the creature, I presume?" Maleficent asked as she took her place next to Grimhilde.
Grimhilde nodded. "It's a Rusalka, a shadowy water demon."
Maleficent turned her attention towards where Russell and Fish were currently fighting. Looking harder, she could make out a feminine shadow in the water, quickly swimming back and forth around Russell and Fish's attacks. Maleficent's eyes widened when she saw a shadowy tendril just barely miss grabbing ahold of Fish's leg.
"Can the demon possess bodies and steal powers?" Maleficent asked urgently.
Grimhilde seemed taken back by that question. "We've... confirmed she can possess bodies. She took over a small dog earlier to get close to the animal's master. As for powers, it is unconfirmed but likely that the Rusalka is a Vampirimorphus, able to take the form and abilities of anything it consumes."
The Rusalka slipped further into the water, disappearing into the blackness not illuminated by the lights from the carnival. Russell made a move to go after the demon.
"Fall back at once, both of you!" Maleficent ordered, her voice bellowing inside Russell and Fish's minds.
Russell and Fish seemed confused but obeyed their leader and rejoined Maleficent and Grimhilde on the shore of the lake.
"What'd you call us back for?" Russell asked. "I had that little bitch on the run."
"More likely is that the Rusalka was luring you into open waters where she could more easily sneak up upon you," Maleficent said. "It is one matter for the demon to possess and steal the powers of a dog. It is quite another to hand that demon the speed and strength of a three thousand year old vampire or the mind control toxin that Fish possesses."
"That's... a good point," Fish admitted before turning to glare at Russell. "This is your world. Why the Hell didn't you think of that?"
"In my defense, we usually don't have a Rusalka in these parts," Russell grumbled.
"As a point of fact, I must make it known that from what I have seen of it, your world is utterly wretched," Maleficent remarked as she glanced back towards the carnival.
"Blame the humans for that," Russell said with a sigh. "It used to be beautiful before they started actively destroyin' their own habitat."
"Back to the matter at hand," Grimhilde interjected. "Is there nothing to be done regarding the demon?"
"That thing moves incredibly fast in the water," Fish said. "My ice magic couldn't even touch her. We need to find a different way to fight her."
"She's been goin' after any boat on the lake," Russell said. "She may not be a vampire, but she sure has an insatiable appetite for anything that drifts into its territory. Maybe we can use a boat as bait."
Maleficent ran a finger across her chin. "Perhaps indeed... with the right sigils in place, the moment she attacks the boat, she'll be caught in a magical trap."
"There's still the matter of sailing the boat," Grimhilde remarked. "Perhaps instead of risking one of us being possessed by the Rusalka, we can entrust the task to a Heartless. I doubt the Rusalka can possess one, and even if she can, it will be little trouble disposing of a single measly Heartless."
Maleficent nodded in agreement. "Wisely put. Very well then. Let us prepare the trap."
They summoned up a Battleship Heartless to serve their purposes and prepared the boat with the appropriate runes and symbols. Once that was done, Russell set the boat in the water and gave it a push, casting the Heartless off into the lake. The Battleship seemed to vanish into the darkness, and all was silent as the four Overtakers patiently waited. There was a splashing sound, a lot of thrashing, and then a shriek of rage. The Overtakers grinned smugly as Maleficent reeled the Battleship back to shore. Once it was back in the light, the writhing Rusalka became visible, trapped on the deck of the tiny ship.
"Russell, this is your home world," Maleficent stated. "Would you care to do the honors?"
Russell gave a quick bow. "It would be my absolute pleasure."
Russell charged up a ball of fairy light in his hand and then released the golden beam of energy onto the demon. Immediately upon being struck by the light, the Rusalka was vaporized, it's angry shrieks silenced at last.
"And that is that," Grimhilde remarked. "This demon will trouble these shores no further."
Maleficent opened a Corridor of Darkness and the four villains proceeded through the dark portal, leaving the beach behind. The four Overtakers reappeared in the council chamber of their castle, the Eminence Palace. Hades, Ursula, Jafar, and Captain Hook were already there waiting for them.
"Did all go as planned?" Maleficent asked.
Hades nodded. "The aberration we dealt with in Halloweentown was a cursed music box. Was puttin' all the townsfolk to sleep. Could've used your knack for sleeping magic out there."
"You seem to have done quite well regardless," Maleficent remarked.
"Thanks to me," Jafar boasted. "We had a similar magical object housed in the catacombs beneath Agrabah."
"What'd you guys face against?" Hades asked.
"A Rusalka," Russell answered. "Nasty creature. What the Master was even gonna do with a thing like that is beyond me."
"I'd've thought when the Tribunal of Magic restored the universe that they'd have accounted for demons and curses belonging to the Age of Chaos slipping through the cracks," Hook sighed. "It feels as though we've done nothing but hunt after aberrations for weeks since we dealt with the Master."
"On the upside," Ursula said as she held her crystal ball out in front of her, "I haven't been able to detect any more aberrations. I think those might've been the last two."
"Good," Maleficent nodded, "then we can finally close the book on our dealings with the Great Old Ones once and for all."
"It almost doesn't feel real at this point," Fish said with a sigh. "I can hardly remember what it feels like to focus on literally anything else but the Great Old Ones."
"It will be good to turn our attention back towards conquest and the death of our enemies," Grimhilde remarked.
Another Corridor of Darkness opened on the far side of the room, and from that dark portal, Loki and Doctor Doom stepped out. Loki spread his arms dramatically and took in a deep breath.
"Oh it feels wonderful to be home once again!" Loki declared.
"Why does it just figure that you two came back from your honeymoon the moment we finished dealing with the chaos aberrations?" Jafar asked, scowling at the two of them.
"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," Loki said with a smirk.
"How was the honeymoon in Vanaheim?" Hook asked.
"Good for us, bad for the Vanir," Doom answered.
Maleficent smirked. "I am glad to hear all went well."
"You mentioned aberrations from the Age of Chaos," Doom remarked as he crossed over to his computer terminal and began typing on the keyboard. "I presume you've all been thorough in your examining the worlds for-"
Doom winced.
"You allowed Dr. Watts the use of my computer whilst I was away," Doom stated.
"We needed a technology liaison," Maleficent stated. "He was here; you were on sabbatical."
"In the future, my Doombots will suffice for that task," Doom huffed. "There is no reason for Watts, respect him though I do, to have access to my carefully cultivated mainframe."
"That's what you get for bein' the only technologically literate member of our Inner Circle," Russell said with a shrug. "You left witches, pirates, and vampires alone with a computer and without clear instructions."
"He is quite correct, my husband," Loki said to Doom with a smirk. "You've only yourself to blame for that mistake."
"Doom does not make mistakes," he grumbled as he focused his attention on the computer.
"At any rate," Loki said as he twirled his cape around dramatically. "We have a new beginning to forge ahead! Our empire will not rebuild itself. Perhaps we should consider another artifact of great power. I have a few ideas."
"These long quests for items of power never work out for us," Fish pointed out. "The Book of Prophecies was destroyed by the heroes before we could win. The Gems of Cronus got taken by Cronus and were destroyed along with him. And lest we forget last month when the Master stole our prophecy out from under us and used it to destroy the whole universe, which we had to fix at the cost of our carefully conquered empire. Playing magical instant checkmate does NOT work. But you know what does work? We do!"
"We've got the largest team of villains from across the universe," Ursula agreed. "Every time we put our heads together and support one another, everything goes swimmingly."
"My friends are my power and all that booga-booga," Hades scoffed. "No, but really, I hate that the Keyblade brat was right about that one."
"I think we can all agree just to go after what we want directly instead of chasing down ancient relics," Hook said. "I for one prefer keeping an eye directly on the horizon."
"Then I suppose the matter is settled," Maleficent agreed. "No further quests for omnipotent power. We'll set ourselves to rebuilding our empire one world at a time."
"Then let's start with reclaiming Agrabah!" Jafar declared.
"Out of all the worlds we could regain, Agrabah is the least valuable," Loki snapped. "Whyever would we waste our time with your poverty stricken backwater desert?"
"At least I was able to hold Agrabah for more than a WEEK!" Jafar hissed. "How long were you King of Asgard this time? Three days?"
"And yet it was a more successful tenure than your year in power in Agrabah," Loki retorted. "I believe I spent more time in Asgard as its king than you did in Agrabah as its Sultan."
Jafar was about to argue further, but Hook placed his hand on Jafar's arm and pulled him gently away from Loki.
"Leave it be, love," Hook said as he rubbed his hand on Jafar's arm. "He's only trying to antagonize you."
Hook gave Jafar a quick kiss on the lips to calm him down, and Jafar seemed to decide that Loki wasn't worth arguing with.
"I thought you said you eliminated all of the aberrations," Doom said as he turned back around to face the team.
"We did," Grimhilde stated. "Why do you ask?"
"My scanners show a surplus of chaos aberration energy right here in the Overtaken Kingdom," Doom pointed out.
"WHAT?" the other Overtakers chorused.
"Why did the crystal ball not tell us?" Maleficent asked.
"I wish I knew," Ursula grumbled as she shook her crystal ball to try to get it to work. "Darn enchantment must've eroded."
"The answer is simple," Doom sneered. "You had Ursula scrying for aberrations through witchcraft, and you had Watts scanning for universal anomalies with his limited understanding of my technology. But only Doom possesses the power to combine science and sorcery for the most accurate results."
"I shall keep that in mind the next time you wish for time away from the Overtakers," Maleficent sneered. "Any future vacations will be denied."
"As long as that policy does not apply to the rest of us, I'm all for it," Hook quipped.
"Oh but Captain, we need you here at all times," Russell quipped. "Pretendin' like we need you really brings the team together."
"I would say 'bite me,' but I fear you'd take it literally," Hook sneered.
"It's true, I would," Russell said with a laugh.
"Come along, gentlemen," Grimhilde said with a sigh. "We have an aberration in our own kingdom to attend to."
A swirling void of dark chaos energy hovered in the middle of the plaza in front of the House of Villains. Wisps of chaos seemed to be coming from all directions, feeding energy into the dark mass. The ten Overtakers appeared in front of the aberration and eyed it with suspicion.
"That's certainly odd," Loki remarked. "Were the other aberrations formed in this manner?"
"No, they were not," Maleficent answered.
"Well there's no reason to wait until it's trying to kill us to do something about it," Jafar said as he held up his snake staff. "After all, in this wretched universe, it's kill or be killed!"
Jafar fired a bolt of crimson energy from the staff into the dark mass. The mass seemed resistant to the spell, so Jafar put even more power behind his blast. The dark mass responded by exploding outwards, hurling the crimson energy back upon the Overtakers, knocking them all flat onto their backs before disappearing. An eerie fog descended upon the plaza where the dark mass had been.
"Next time you want to throw magic at a strange obstacle," Doom growled as he staggered back to his feet, "make sure you are the only fool in the line of fire!"
"At least I did something," Jafar spat as he propped himself against his staff and rose back up. "You would have stared at it until the end of time!"
"Boys, enough," Ursula said as she righted herself. "Something's in that fog."
Inside of the fog, a silhouette became visible and the sound of slowly clopping hooves broke through the silence. A large black horse stepped out of the mist. Its glowing red eyes and foggy breath caused it to cut an intimidating figure. Riding on the horse's back was a man in black armor with a blood red cape billowing behind him. Grimhilde's eyes widened when she saw the rider's face.
"Impossible!" Grimhilde whispered. "Humbert, can that truly be you?"
Humbert, the Queen's former huntsman, sneered down at her. "Yes, your majesty, it can and it is."
"It seems the Master had low standards indeed," Grimhilde sneered. "Only a fool would trust you and your bleeding heart."
"I was a tool for the beast to use against you," Humbert said. "A ghost from your past."
"You know this fool with the neck beard and the bad haircut?" Fish asked.
"Humbert the Huntsman," Grimhilde answered. "Once my most loyal of subjects. I entrusted him with all of my dark bidding. However, when I ordered him to kill Snow White and bring me her heart as proof, he took sympathy on the girl and tried to fool me with the heart of a pig! He evaded my wrath for some time, but when I reclaimed my kingdom last year, I finally was able to execute him for good."
"Wait a fuckin' minute, I was there at that execution," Russell sneered before turning back to address Humbert. "You had your head taken clean off."
"Indeed I did," Humbert said. "A fate I must still endure...."
Humbert placed his hands on the side of his head and slowly lifted it off of his shoulders. As his headless body held his severed head out in front of him, the head became engulfed in flames, and Humbert's face melted away, revealing the head to be a flaming jack-o'-lantern. And though he had no head to speak of, Humbert let out a chilling laugh.
"He's become a Headless Horseman," Hades stated.
Hades summoned a fireball to his hands and hurled it for the Headless Horseman, but Humbert quickly rode away into the fog, avoiding the flames and vanishing. Grimhilde spread her arms to summon forth a blast of wind to blow the fog away. However, suddenly the horseman emerged from the fog and charged into the crowd of Overtakers, swinging his blade wildly. Most of the Overtakers scattered, but Russell attempted to tackle Humbert off his steed. Russell, however, simply passed through the horseman as if he were nothing but thin air and tumbled to the ground.
"He's a ghost," Russell shouted as he peeled himself up off the ground. "Isn't that your territory, Hades?"
"Not in the Underworld; not one of my subjects," Hades said as he continued to hurl fireballs towards Humbert.
"Then somebody go get Caleb Covington," Fish said with an exasperated sigh.
"NO! We can handle this ourselves!" Loki insisted.
Loki then transformed himself into the form of a mare in heat in hopes of distracting Humbert's horse. However, the undead horse was immune to Loki's trick and continued to obey the will of its master. Humbert hurled flaming pumpkins wildly at the Overtakers, and they exploded into bursts of fire whenever they struck the ground. Loki transformed back into his humanoid form in order to evade the flames. Hook regarded him with a look of disgust.
"It worked on Sleipnir's father," Loki insisted.
"Aye, but at what cost?" Hook asked.
Maleficent erected a wall of thorns to deflect the fiery pumpkins from striking her, and Grimhilde ducked behind the thorny wall with her. In her arms, Grimhilde was carrying a book close to her chest. Maleficent recognized it as the Darkhold, the Book of the Damned that they'd recovered from the Shattered Library a few months ago.
"I have a spell that may work on this phantom," Grimhilde explained. "It's a curse to bind a spirit to corporeal form, but I will need help to cast it."
Maleficent nodded and the orb atop her staff began to glow as she bade her words to echo in the minds of the other Overtakers.
"My Overtakers, Grimhilde and I have a spell to turn the tide of this battle," Maleficent explained. "But we will need uninterrupted time to cast it. Ursula, come help us with the spell. The rest of you, keep the horseman preoccupied."
"Doom is no mere distraction!" Doom said, scandalized by the order.
"I, on the other hand, am quite adept at distractions!" Loki said with a triumphant cackle.
Loki unleashed a barrage of illusions around Humbert, interfering with the horseman's ability to tell what was reality. Maleficent, Grimhilde, and Ursula, meanwhile, opened the Darkhold to the chosen ritual and began enacting the spell. False images danced around Humbert, distracting him from beams of energy coming from Jafar and Doom. The horseman had no way of knowing what around him was real, and what was illusion. He threw exploding pumpkins at anything that moved, but still the Overtakers persisted. After a few minutes of spellcasting, Maleficent, Grimhilde, and Ursula enacted the curse. The horse stopped in its tracks and rose on its hindlegs, neighing angrily at the sensation. The headless rider's body began to bend and contort as a skeleton grew inside of it and streaks of shadowy flesh began to bind the horseman's form to the bones. A fleshy stump where Humbert's head used to be protruded from the neck and began dripping black blood.
"Hook!" Jafar bellowed. "Your Blackguard blade! End it NOW!"
Hook nodded and charged forward with his cutlass drawn. The horseman attempted to parry Hook's sword, but dueling with a pirate proved to be beyond Humbert's capabilities. Hook drove his sword through the horseman's chest. A scream from nowhere echoed around him as Hook's sword reaped the Headless Horseman's soul. Then, in a flash of darkness, the Headless Horseman and his steed became nothing more than ash floating in the wind.
Grimhilde grabbed a handful of ash out of the air. "You knew the penalty if you failed, Humbert, and now you shall fail me no further."
"Hopefully that hunky Ironwood huntsman of yours'll do the job better," Ursula remarked.
Grimhilde smirked. "No fear of that. James has already exceeded my expectations in that regard."
Grimhilde then dropped the ashes and dusted off her hands, proverbially washing her hands of her former henchman.
The Overtakers returned to their council chambers, and once again Doom was bent over his computer terminal scanning for chaos energy.
"It seems that was, indeed, the final aberration to slip through the cracks," Doom stated. "Your earlier work dealt with the others quite handily. We can now with absolute certainty call the matter of the Master resolved in its entirety."
"And what's the margin for error with that claim?" Hades asked.
"Doom does not make errors," he insisted as he turned back to face the others.
"Y'know, I missed this," Russell said with a big wide grin.
"Missed what? Nearly getting murdered?" Hook asked.
"No, I missed the ten of us bandin' together to put uppity motherfuckers back in their place!" Russell declared. "You can't tell me it wasn't fun to have the band back together in full."
Fish grinned. "I had a good time, at least."
"As did I," Loki remarked. "I had nearly forgotten how satisfying upstaging you all felt."
"I'm sorry, but who dealt the killing blow this time?" Hook asked. "Oh, that's right, it was me."
"As if either of you could have done it without me!" Jafar said with a smirk.
"Oh please, my spell is the reason we won," Grimhilde pointed out.
"And your poorly disposed of huntsman is the reason we had to fight in the first place," Doom argued.
"Yet the reason we're here together at all is because of me," Maleficent interjected.
Ursula let out a deep laugh. "I'll drink to that!"
"To the best damn leader we could'a asked for," Hades said as he summoned a martini glass to his hand. "Cheers to Maleficent for bringin' the ten of us together!"
The other Overtakers echoed the sentiment, and Maleficent beamed with pride.
"I am most pleased indeed by the assemblage I gathered," Maleficent said. "You all have exceeded any of my expectations time and time again. We all have accomplished much together, and there is much we will accomplish moving forward together."
"I feel like celebratin'," Russell said. "Who wants to go out? I'm thinkin' we hit the town in Gotham just like old times!"
"Penguin did tell me the Iceberg Lounge is having a Drag Show tonight," Fish added.
"Is the floor open to glamorously upstaging acts from the audience?" Loki asked as he transformed himself into Lady Loki.
"For us the floor is open to anything," Fish remarked.
"This is a frivolous waste of time," Jafar sneered.
"Come on, love, there's nothing I want more right now than to go get drunk somewhere exciting," Hook said as he wrapped his arms around Jafar from behind. "And you know how I get when I start drinking..."
"Yes, but you also never stop drinking," Jafar remarked. "But fine, fine, I'll go along with this."
Maleficent chuckled a bit to herself. "I believe a night of revelry would be most fitting. In fact, I shall command it! We shall all celebrate this night together! To the Overtakers!"
And they all echoed back, "To the Overtakers!"