And now for something completely different. After nine chapters focused solely on the heroes and their personal lives, it's time for a chapter or two about the villains. What was the Unchained Legion doing between the end of The Xehanort War and the start of Connected Worlds, you ask? This chapter should give you all a piece of the overall puzzle of what their goals and motivations are. This chapter may seem a little weird at first, but things will make sense as the chapter goes on.
Episode 10: A Plaything of the Body:
The Great Forest – Lake Island: November 2019
The moment he opened his eyes, career criminal Turk Barrett knew that something was wrong. For one thing, he had fallen asleep in bed with his latest "date" yet had somehow woken up in a field of freezing snow. For another, he was completely naked and there was no sign of civilization in any direction. With no clothes or any other protection from the weather, the New York City resident began shivering worse than when Daredevil and his partners came down on his criminal operations.
"Where the hell am I?" he whispered as he pushed himself up from the ground and looked around. Although he was self-conscious about the fact that he was wandering around naked, self-preservation dictated that he explore his surroundings and figure out a way out of this situation. An hour later, he was severely dehydrated and freezing cold, and just when he was about to give up hope of finding anything to drink, he found an unopened bottle of lemonade leaning against a nearby tree, kept cool by the frozen snow. All rational thought went out the window as the dehydrated criminal twisted the cap off and chugged the entire bottle. In his rehydrated relief, he was oblivious to the tingling that swept up and down his body.
As he finally finished off the bottle of the beverage that wasn't really lemonade, he found that he suddenly didn't feel as cold anymore. Now that he could think clearly again, he looked down to examine himself. And that was when he let out a horrified scream. Almost very square inch of his body below his chin, with the sole exception of certain parts between his legs, was covered with thick brown fur. A loud and lengthy stream of expletives flew from his mouth as he patted himself down and pinched himself to make sure that this was neither a dream nor a hallucination.
Once he confirmed that this was indeed reality, he bolted across the field in a blind panic. After half an hour of sprinting, he calmed down and began to think things through. As he contemplated what and how had happened to him, he realized the benefit of having a fur coat while trapped naked in the wilderness. He could get used to the pelt, and besides, he could always shave himself when he got back to civilization. As he set off through the trees around him in search for a sign of where he was, he remained oblivious to the elderly Chinese woman watching him under the veil of a Vanish spell.
Madame Gao smiled as she watched her newest test subject stop walking in realization, and reach down to touch his new cloven hooves. The potions brewed by Yzma had provided the Unchained Legion with an unexpected solution to a problem they had been wrestling with since High Praetor -now Imperator- Skuld came up with the idea of The Endgame. Namely, what to do with the scum of the world. Once The Endgame was complete, the Unchained Legion planned to purge the world of darkness, but none of them could agree on how to do so.
Everyone agreed that villainous scum like Xehanort and Maleficent would need to be killed because of their power, but mortals who were steeped in Darkness needed to be disposed of. Centurion Stephen believed that those with high quantities of Darkness in their hearts could be rehabilitated, while High Praetor Robert believed that everyone with a trace of darkness in their heart should be executed. With the discovery of Yzma's animal transformation potions, Gao had come up with a solution. Those with a low quantity of darkness in their hearts could be transformed into livestock animals such as horses and goats, while those whose hearts were overflowing with Darkness would be turned into wild game such as deer or boars for the Legionnaires to hunt at their convenience.
The solution satisfied everyone, and now the discovery of Zootopia had given Gao a new idea to experiment with. With some magical and chemical modification, she hoped to create a variation of the Night Howler plant that, rather than turning a sentient animal feral, would rewire the minds of the humans being transformed with Yzma's potions in favor of their new forms' instincts and behavior. Turk Barrett was one of the targets being used as a test subject for the first batch of her "Animorphic Cocktail", and the results were working almost as predicted. The man was well on his way to becoming a magnificent stag, yet while he was exhibiting the behavior of his new body, he was clearly acting erratically, indicating that the Night Howler mixture needed to be fine-tuned a bit before the End Game.
"Nice work, Praetor," a gruff voice called out, and she whirled around to find Centurion Stephen walking up behind her. Although she could see him, her magical senses told her that he too was concealed from the test subject's sight by a Vanish spell. "Praetor Stone sent me to check in with you on the progress of your Night Howler experiments on my way back to our division headquarters." Ah yes, she remembered. The Chaste. Each of the four Praetors of the Unchained Legion's High Council was given command of one quarter of their forces. And each division fulfilled a specific task in the grand scheme of their operations.
The now defunct Huntsclan, under the command of Praetor Samantha, were charged with protecting humanity from the decadent influence of Earth's magical races. Praetor Pat's unit was assigned the task of protecting the Earth from external threats like the Chitauri and Thanos (The Battle of New York was a major collective embarrassment for the Legion, and they were glad they didn't have to deal with any public scrutiny). Gao herself was in charge of preparing for The Endgame, while Warden Lerena was given command of an elite black ops unit that dealt in intelligence gathering and assassinations. All four divisions reported to one of the two High Praetors, and they in turn reported to the Imperator.
But Stone's group, The Chaste, they were the threshold guardians. Their job was to guard the Realm of Light against the return of The Fallen Ones. The pure light of the seven Princesses of Heart kept the dark demons at bay, but if even one of them were to be destroyed, it would crack open the seal keeping the Fallen from returning to Earth. And there was a cult of demon worshipers who actively attempted to break the barrier. And their ideas of using the spawn of that Inhuman half breed Sephiroth as weapons of war was simply repulsive. But she was getting off track. She had a progress report to deliver.
"Thank you, Stick," she replied with a smile as she gave her report and the blind Unchained departed through a Corridor of Light. She wasn't worried about the lab rat (or lab stag in this case) seeing. His mind was already too far gone to realize what he was seeing or what it meant.
The title of this chapter is a reference to the trope where people who change forms, like shapeshifting into an animal for example, their mind, personality, and perception changes to fit their new form. Fitting given what happened to Turk during this chapter. Speaking of, Turk Barrett is that guy from Daredevil who was running the sex slave trafficking ring in the first episode and kept getting beaten up/arrested in almost every subsequent appearance.
So now you all know what the Legionnaires were stealing Yzma's potions and the night howlers are for. That's not going to be as big of an impact on the plot. It'll come up again, but the main focus will be on the mysterious Endgame and figuring out what that is and how to thwart it. We're going to get another "good guy" chapter after this one, and then the final chapter will deal with Maleficent and her team getting ready to bust Loki out of prison.
Madame Gao's reference to "The Fallen Ones" isn't going to play a role in the Acolytes of Chaos saga. That's just a seed that's being planted for the Invaders From Beyond Saga whenever I get around to it. Just like to flesh out the universe even as I push the main storyline forward, so that'll be something to keep your eyes out for later on.