A crass, wry grin crosses her face as she remembers that last time. She finally leans back from the cabinet. "Yeah, it's all terrible," she says.
Druid Minion looks over. "Really?"
"It's all a bunch of mid rom-com shit or like, like horror," Scout Minion says with a knowing tone that Druid Minion doesn't quite pick up on. "Like, just never mind. I have no clue why she left all this shit here."
"Well, as long as there's no Romans in it, it can't be that scary," Druid Minion replies with a deceptive smile.
Scout Minion just returns a look. Of course, Druid Minion is a pretty nice sort of person, relatable in most cases, enjoyable, calm, but absolutely obsessed with Romans, their empire, their centurions, and all the horrors they conducted across the worlds and eventually realms when they discovered how to do extra-dimensional travel.
"Perhaps you could find… Surely there's something that we can just get along with, right? They can't all be bad?" Druid Minion adds.
Scout Minion shakes her head, closes the cabinet, and stands up. "They are all bad. They're all bad." she reasserts.
Putting aside the bowl, Druid Minion steps up. "Truly, can I take a look?"
Scout Minion waves off dismissively. "Help yourself. There's nothing you're gonna find in there that's gonna be worth your—"
"Oh, this one looks cool," Druid Minion interrupts over Scout, who just shakes her head at her friend. She's settled on the first DVD she saw.
The come-what-may, lackadaisical Druid Minion waves the cover in front of Scout's face. It has a shirtless guy on it, and as if that were the magic word alone, Fashion Minion glances across the kitchen halfway through gathering the ingredients for a sauce.
"Oh, let's watch that one," he exclaims as a sort of half gasp.
Scout does her best to stifle the oncoming sigh. "Oh yeah, this is gonna be a weekend, alright," she mumbles to herself.
Up in the attic, Maniac Minion, with all of his adjectives and surnames tagging along to cheer him on, glances from one dusty box of articles to an antique to another. He sees various bits and bobbles from conquests and wars and things passed thousands of years ago. Pictures and memories between the minions, Chaos, those others, friends and foes, past and present, onward into history like a never-ending circular knot of adventure and lessons learned.
He has an uncharacteristically sober expression, the kind of face he'd never make when around the others. Arguably, he'd be more open around High Overlord Chaos, but to his fellow Minions, he has to keep up appearances.
After all, someone's got to keep things fun around here.
He steps through the hall of anachronisms and old memories, and he happens upon an old camera, an air exposure Model 1. He takes a picture and it prints it right there in his hands. He scoffs at the thought of the DVD player downstairs and the tube television with its AV ports. The first time the tower came across technology like this was thousands of years ago, and yet in other worlds, this is the first time they're figuring it out. He gets a unique twinge of humor in his face, pondering how the tinkering minions love preserving the past and technology so dearly that they've made it a matter of pride and honor to adhere to a strict schedule of maintenance and refurbishing to everything they find.
It seems to him that their lives are not just inconvenienced by this endless march of technology and fate, but are consumed by it.
He scoffs as he looks over a dear picture: High Overlord Chaos lifting a couple of his brave fit operator minions over his head as if they were just a pair of small cats. The grins on those ether cursed faces span across the frame of the picture, and he shakes his head. "One hell of a history," he says.
For a brief moment, he wonders how long he's been an outcast. Memories blur when time no longer truly matters. In fact, the few minions that still have a healthy regard for time are the ones with the jobs that matter. The scientist minions, the engineer minions, the aforementioned operator minions, along with a fair list more, are the ones that keep everything going, but even if they weren't there, even if there was not an endless supply of delicious, nutritious food, free energy, and generally no real work for the vast majority of the Minionry— ever-wry Maniac Minion knows that they'd get along just fine. After all, not needing to eat ever is a particularly considerable advantage to those who are also physically immortal, like they are.
Immortal? Yes… but invulnerable to the temptation of a little bit of goofy, silly fun? Not quite.
His eyes, almost as if being drawn there, pull over to the edge of the attic.
There, framed under the dull sunlight through dusty windows, sits an unassuming, but very alluring box. His eyes focus on it. For some reason, his magic sight, granted to any etherian minion of the Overlord, cannot quite see inside.
Theoretically, he should be able to peer through anything unless it's enchanted specifically to prevent such observation. Theoretically, he could look inside and see the contents just as easily as a human would need to focus on a branch to see a sparrow nearby… but there's something about this box. It's like a gas is swirling around it: some kind of wretched, blackened flame.
It consumes and swirls around the vessel as if it were leaking from the seams of the box, so filled with mal intent that it cannot help but eventually pour forth, demanding all nearby to come and witness its beauties.
Then, very briefly, Maniac Minion wonders why in the world Magic Minion left a controlled magical item, or at least something that he assumes is a controlled magical item, in a place accessible to the Minionry at large… at least whenever they put in a reservation for it.
He understands that as the functional head of Chaos' department of the Arcane, she has a lot of work on her hands, so he too can understand that she might overlook a bobble or two that should have been locked away in a secure vault somewhere.
Telling himself that he's not to be lured by something so garishly nefarious, he decides that he should at least check its contents and make sure it's nothing dangerous. It's not tempting, him, really: he just needs to check out all the things in the box so he can be sure they're not tempting him.
Leaning up from the box of photographs, he saunters over just as the black flames seem to pulse ever higher by his proximity. The closer he gets, the more irresistibly it tugs on him, as if the blue-black columns of smoke are forming hands and drawing him in to focus on the small, unassuming latch around the unassuming black box filled with unassuming, unknowable something.
With a savoring slip of the hand, Maniac Minion undoes the latch of the box. The black smoke from within bellows over and fills the attic. The hot scent of sulfur reacting with blue fire enters the room.
His eyes, crescent moons of observation, widen into their full lunar brilliance as he looks upon what's inside. "Well, well, well… what do we have here?" he whispers under his breath as the air from his lungs deep within that ether-bound body curl with black smoke. "This should make things a little more interesting," he adds before reaching inside.
…He feels something reach back.
Opting against a wholesome dinner at the table, the crew decides instead to take their dinner and sit by the TV. Fashion Minion's pot roast is delicious, and now it's time for the part everyone's been waiting for.
Druid Minion, Cardio Minion, and Fashion Minion all hold their eyes glued to the screen as they shovel handful after handful of fireplace s'mores into their mouths. It was only possible with a bit of assistance from the fire that Cardio Minion got roaring once she brought in all the wood that she found from her run (yes, she did indeed just run with 100 kilograms of sticks under her arms for resistance training, or at least so she says).
After that, tomato soup with lots of crackers, grilled chicken, and Drake wings, both sauced over to the point that it was difficult to tell which was which, and of course massive mugs of hot cocoa – truly a feast fit for The Overlord.
Scout Minion, having taken a spot on the couch where she can keep the film in her peripheral vision and the other three minions' expressions and actions front and center, gives a long, silent sigh. She's only tuning into the dialogue every now and again to confirm her suspicions that it is in fact, totally, painfully brainless. She wasn't a human before she was infested. She had no love for humans. She thought humans were horrible. In many ways she still believes that whole heartedly.
It is with this in mind that seeing this confident, successful, smart young man suddenly take a phone call that he asked for in order to maintain his $1 billion a year super surgeon job, leaving behind the stumblingly awkward but very conventionally attractive young lady who is no doubt the protagonist and the one that the director wants all the women in the audience to relate to, she can't help but chuckle a little.
The thing that grasps the attention of the others isn't the chuckle: it's that the chuckle happens at a part of the movie that is actually quite tragic.
It's the beginning, and the call the surgeon has to take over the intercom is to begin operating on the protagonist's mother. The other three minions are in full empathy mode, or at least they are mostly empathizing with the things that they empathize about. Druid Minion is perhaps the only person interpreting this in a human sort of way. Cardio Minion is obsessed with the movement on the screen, especially spotting the moment when the surgeon runs off: she admires his energy, the peppiness, the attitude, the winner "can do" spirit of it all. Fashion Minion, on the other hand, is just looking at his biceps. He has no clue, none of them do, why this hospital's uniform does not have full sleeves for the coats, but it shows off the guy's arms really well, and he likes this a lot.
Scout has no idea why he had to take a phone call to answer the intercom, but it seems that the movie's logic, like that of a dream, doesn't expect all that much from its viewers.
That said, none of them are engaged in what they are seeing and hearing quite enough for them not to notice when Scout Minion gives out a single jarring, "hehe."
"Something funny?" Cardio Minion asks with a smile just as the main character breaks down to her knees and begins weeping in the middle of the hallway, one that's very busy with gurneys being pushed between masses of nurses and doctors inches from running over her hands.
"Why are you laughing?" Druid Minion adds, her mouth filled with chips, glancing over with a chastising glare. "Her mom's about to die."
"Nah, nah," Scout Minion says, leaning back and lackadaisically waving her hand forward as if to dismiss her behavior. "It's just… wasn't expecting that."
"Wasn't expecting this?" Druid Minion nods. "Yeah, I suppose the writing's pretty good, isn't it? I really didn't see that coming."
Scout Minion inhales sharply to stifle another scoff. "Yeah, you bet," she answers.
Fashion Minion gives a single knowing puff through his serrated, triangular jaws. "Not to your liking?"
She sighs. "I mean, no," she says, glancing over to the scene where the main love interest surgeon is practically crying over the operating table for this woman's mother. They've had no reason to be this close, but he's just thatsensitive.
Fashion Minion gives her a slant look. "Hmm. So since you can't have any fun, you're not going to let anyoneelse-"
"That's not what I'm saying," Scout interrupts. "I didn't say anything. I just scoffed. I chuckled. That was it, dude, stop reading into things. This movie sucks, straight up."
The other three share a conjoined chuckle. "You really sounded like Maniac Minion now," Cardio says.
"Yeah, but like," Scout Minion reels out her hands, reaching towards the television as if to try and blame it for all of their problems. "You know what? You're right. I'm not going to inconvenience y'all when you're enjoying high art. I'm just gonna go check on him," she says, swinging her little black hands down to push her up from the couch and set her on her way towards the attic steps.
"Try not to disturb him if he's built his nest up there," Cardio Minion says with a chuckle. "You know how territorial he can be when he's having a bad time."
"Certainly do," Scout adds as she steps on.
"You two be good up there," Fashion Minion says with a parental tone.
And just as quickly, Scout Minion, still turned away and heading to the steps, gives him a single flick of the middle finger from her right hand.
Scout Minion goes up the steps, creaking lightly under her weight. She pops her head up through the open way into the dark of the attic… but this time, dinner has been enjoyed, and the sun's already set. The gentle, dull light of the growing evening that Maniac Minion enjoyed is now silhouettes, stillness, and a growing sense of something hidden nearby.
"What's poppin', shithead? Where you at?" she asks, glancing around and her antenna flickering to try and ascertain the location of her not-in-any-way-close-to-being-a-friend type of friend.
She receives no reply in that weirdly cold attic. It's as if all life has been pulled from the room… except for a single, looming feeling of anticipation – something between the realms of life and death that's waiting for her to find it.