II: The Rather Not-so-bad Penal Tower
In only minutes, Super Maniac Minion takes his minion rabble across the realms to the infamous Penal Tower— where all the worst minions do hard time under the watchful eye of Corrective Administrator Minion.
The shoals of the bay glisten in welcome to the crew, who make land through the portal and rush off immediately to the storage sector.
“So, what’s the plan of attack?” a more-than-a-little excited Scout Minion asks, running alongside her temporary leader.
“Easy!” He yells. “There’s at least twenty ways I thought of already, but most simple would be to go through storage, hit up the cafeteria, and funnel them all out after one of Saltpeter and Sulfur Minion’s explosions!”
“Wh- me?” The exceptionally poor-smelling Saltpeter and Sulfur Minion asks, looking up from his dense book on chemistry, which he has been running with because there’s simply not enough time in the day to appreciate sulfur’s wondrous properties otherwise.
“Yeah, dude!”
“I’ve never made an explosion in my life— except for that one time I mixed my saltpeter and sulfur at seventy-five and fifteen to a ten of charcoal,” he explains, uneasily shuffling the pack of nothing but saltpeter and sulfur upon his shoulders.
“That’s… really specific,” Scout Minion notes.
Super Maniac Minion looks back as they get to the side of the great gray tower’s cargo entrance.
“Forestry Minion,” he starts.
The tall, dark, and handsome Forestry Minion looks down to his leader. “How are you, Super Maniac?”
“I need some charcoal.”
Forestry Minion pulls out a small piece he often uses as a chalk. “Here, but why would-”
Super Maniac Minion snatches it out of Forestry Minion’s hand, and shoves his other hand into Saltpeter and Sulfur Minion’s pack.
“H-hey! Who said you could take my-”
“Tell me something cool about saltpeter, my dude,” Super Maniac Minion suggests, pulling out the right ingredients and mashing them up crudely in his hands.
Like a magic spell, Saltpeter and Sulfur Minion’s face lights up. “Oh! Did you know that back in the old days, saltpeter was made by putting horse manure into a barrel, peeing into it, and then filling that up with water? It’s true! I would do it myself but I can’t really pee because, well you know— but I’ve been able to get Drug-Test Minion’s help because he has so many sampl-”
“Wow,” Super Maniac Minion responds. “That’s super interesting, thanks,” he adds, lifting the crude mixture into his cupped hands. With everyone else watching, he sets the powdered mixture onto the enchanted lock which guards the interior of the tower, and looks over to Pyromancer Hell Minion— who ironically enough was both a hellish pyromancer in his previous life, and recruited into Chaos’ minionry from an actual hell dimension for pyromancers.
“It is something I can burn,” he states, small, scary eyes peering out from his hood.
“Do it!” Super Maniac Minion shouts.
With a quick, arcane word and flick of the hand, Pyromancer Hell Minion conjures a mystic flame at the point of the lock, causing a loud, antennae-shaking bang.
“He doesn’t even need a damn costume!” Super Maniac Minion declares, blowing past the actually quite-sturdy lock and sending the door flying open. The enchanted lock is entirely unharmed, but the door it was holding onto is quite gone.
The dust settles, and at the other side is none other than Prison Guard Minion— three times larger than the biggest minion in the group, and naturally with a great disgust for dirty, holiday-crazed lowlifes.
“Well well well,” his gruff voice reverberates in a very Chaos-like fashion, “I suppose we have some more…” he takes a deep breath, “degenerate scum wanting to join in the fun, eh?”
With a cremungiony, rather cute gait, Super Maniac Minion steps forward with his arms crossed and his back curled forward. “Well well well,” he mocks with a wry grin, “looks like this weenie boy here wants to know why we’re knocking! You better step aside or we’re gonna have to rough you up. This is a prisonbreak!”
Prison Guard Minion leans forward, his imposing frame casting a shadow over even Forestry Minion. His officer cap’s shiny Chaos-head emblem blinds the group when it gets into the sunlight. “I think that’s a perfect application to Mintuanamo Bay. Welcome!”
Super Maniac Minion steps aside to reveal the one minion behind him: Scout Minion. “Get this fool!”
She mutters in confusion just as Prison Guard Minion starts back in shock, turning tail at the sight of her.
“Wait, so you didn’t tell me I’d have to beat up minions on the job, dude.”
“Wh- Why is that important?”
“Well, Poppi gave them that job. Don’t you think it would be kinda wrong to-”
“Hey, you can’t be laming me out, kiddo,” Super Maniac Minion notes with a hop into the tower. “We all know Master Insanity ain’t got enough time to perfect all his rules.” He pats Scout Minion gently on the head, the large mob of minions passing by into the depths of the Penal Tower. “Rise above,” he says before turning into the recesses himself.
Scout huffs. “I’m telling you. If Poppi personally gave one of us a job I’m pretty sure he knows what he’s doing-”
“Blee blows blut bees booing,” he mocks with an insipid grin. “Trust me, I got plans that’ll blow his mind way outta this world.”
The group is moving fast, talking at a typical volume and stress, though they’re all going at Olympian speeds.
“You gotta respect Poppi, my dude. Don’t you hear what happened to eh… Subspace… Observation something… Minion?”
He scoffs as they arrive at the back tunnel’s section for the cafeteria. “Time Keeping Minion—”
“Twelve fifty-eight,” he says with a dry tone.
“Wh- I didn’t even ask you for the ti-”
“What the hell else do you people talk to me for?” He mutters grumpily, about as pouty and cute as a minion can be.
The Maniac looks aside in awkward surprise. “Uh, sorry, dude. I didn’t kno-”
“No one does. Let’s just get on with it,” he adds with a snippy inflection that Super Maniac Minion would expect to fit more with Teenage Drama Minion than anyone else.
He shrugs. It’s not like Time Keeping Minion is good for anything other than keeping time anyway.
“So lunch should be going on already,” Super Maniac Minion notes, peering through the solid concrete and into the mess hall. The group looks with him to see a few dozen minions sitting about in agonizing comfort as they enjoy only slightly-lower-quality food cooked by Prison Cooking Minion— who is basically a nasty, scarred up version of Cooking Minion, with a shady past and thick Eastern European accent despite it still being so squeaky and cute.
“Ready, Professional Asset Acquisition Miniom?” Super Maniac asks, looking aside to address him with a gaze fiery in excitement.
A riot-helmeted minion in the group comes up from the tunnel and sets a breaching charge into the wall and backs up. “Ready.” Professional Asset Acquisition Minion confirms with a calculated, gravelly tone.
“Hell did you come from?”
“Wait, we had explosives this whole time?”
“B-but my saltpeter and sulfur!” A few of the minions respond to the activity just as the steady, ready beeping of the charge ticks down in time. The group backs up, and with another, much bigger explosion, half of the floor to the cafeteria collapses into the service tunnels below.
The prisoner minions, driven half crazy from listening to pre-recorded readings of philosophy and encouragement provided by Overlord Chaos, look at the voided floor like news of winning the Towerne Lottery.
“What’s this?” Chemistry Minion asks, her tattered lab-coat draped over her bench and folding as she stretches to look over her table to the hole.
“It’s Super Maniac! He’s here to break us out!” Flower Minion exclaims, slamming her little hands upon her table.
“B-but the hole, it’s not circular,” the hand-cuffed Circular Shape Enthusiast Minion says with a truly demented tone, layer upon layer of zero-sided insanity bearing upon his tormented psyche.
“The shape doesn’t matter you dumbass, let’s get outta here!” Angry Ex-Hobo Minion yells, throwing his tray of fillet mignon and double-cooked mashed potatoes up into the air before dashing through the hole.
The whistles blow and the klaxons blare as the escapees join the mob and start out at a crazed sprint.
“I’m pretty sure this is totally illegal!” Scout Minion accuses with a wide gaze.
“Shut up Scout,” Super Maniac Minion spits back, his running form both hilarious and effective.
The group reaches the outside of the tower, and there he is— the infamous Corrective Administrator Minion.
He adjusts the brim of his officer’s hat as he oversees the group running out to meet him.
“I thought I might find you all here,” he says with a calm tone, his hands confidently drawn behind his back like a superior, pretentious commander. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”
“We’re gonna stick it to those clueless holiday nerds and make the greatest, scariest, deadliest holiday of all!” Super Maniac Minion shouts with an enthused glare.
Corrective Administrator Minion looks over the group, including Scout Minion, and smirks. “No, in fact you’re all going to come with me to processing, and I’ll see you all to your rooms.”
“N-no!” shouts one escapee.
“We’re not doing anything wrong!” shouts another.
“The rooms aren’t even circular!” another screams with violent indignation.
“Do or die time, Scout. Get this paper-pushing weenie-bitch!” Super Maniac Minion commands with an encouraging point.
Scout stares Corrective Administrator Minion square in the face, and she doesn’t see anyone other than Chaos.
“No.”
“Wh-” The mob of minions jolts in surprise alongside Super Maniac Minion. “What are you saying?!”
“This is wrong,” she turns for the space gate. “See ya.”
“Y-you can’t go! You’d be depriving The Head Maniac of the greatest holiday ever!”
“Not if it means breaking crimmies out of prison, dude. See you freaks later.” That’s the last thing she says before reaching the space gate and heading off to elsewhere in Towerne.
Super Maniac Minion scoffs, shrugs, and finally looses a confident, if shaken, “Heh!” “Who needs that dumb nerd anyway?”
“We do! Hell we gonna do against Corrective Administrator Minion?!” Shouts one of the criminions.
“Pffft, don’t worry, guys! It’s just one of him. What’s he gonna d-”
Super Maniac Minion stops himself, seeing an extra pissed-looking Prison Guard Minion emerge from the hallway into the tower.
Some among the group begin to scream and dash about in horror, some burying themselves in the sandy swampwater mix.
“We’re doomed!”
“Don’t hurt us!”
“Why do you guys hate the holidays so much?” screech a trio of the terrified underlings.
Corrective Administrator Minion steps forward with Prison Guard Minion coming in at the other side. “I don’t hate the holidays, but I do hate criminals that use them as an excuse. Do you not appreciate Seneca?”
“No!”
“He’s boring!”
“He doesn’t even have a degree!” Resound the minions.
With a click and a decisive *thwip*, Corrective Administrator Minion draws his baton. “That simply goes to say you have much to learn from him, now line up!”
Amidst the panic, Super Maniac Minion turns to the two minions that, past Scout Minion, he knows can get them out of this bind.
“Hey, Geometric Stuff.”
Geometric Shape Enthusiast Minion glances over. “What do you ne-”
“Pretty sure Circle Guy’s binds aren’t geometrical.”
They both look over to Circle Enthusiast Minion’s chains, and then look back at one another with nigh-theological gazes. “Yes, I agree. However simply because it is not geometrical does not warrant its dislike. It may be objectively inferior to the symmetrical glory of the geometri-”
“Also, they hate octagons.”
“What.”
In an instant, Geometric Shape Enthusiast Minion, straining along with Circular Shape Enthusiast Minion, tears open the shackles with a rending, powerful snap.
Super Maniac Minion looks at the two with a smug grin. “Hey dudes.”
“Yes?”
“Ci-circles— I mean, yes?” the two respond.
He reaches down into the dirt and starts packing down a ball of wet sand. “Did you hear that Corrective Administrator Minion hates shapes in general?”
“No, I was not awa-”
“He hates… c-c-circlies?!”
Super Maniac Minion tosses the spherical ball of sand at Corrective Administrator Minion who, with nary a blink, slices his baton through the projectile, obliterating it into particles.
Circular Shape Enthusiast Minion screeches with primal fury as he rushes his little body forward for the kill. He lunges forward to the prison warden, biting at his heels with the strength of a hundred bears.
Geometric Shape Enthusiast Minion just shrugs. “I don’t see why this would concern me. It’s not really as though-”
“The ball was made out of sand,” Super Maniac Minion notes.
“Yes, and why would that be pertina-”
“Sand grains are geometric shapes.”
“…My god, and that… lunatic just smashed into them, perhaps separating them into even finer grains… some of which might not…” he seethes in confused disbelief, “-might not be geometric!”
Like a bolt, he slams brutally into Corrective Administrator Minion, and with their uneasy alliance forged in pure hatred revealed, the two shape enthusiasts make concerningly-short work of Corrective Administrator and Prison Guard Minion, thought of by most to be among The Overlord’s strongest.
“We did it!” Shouts one minion that actually didn’t do anything.
“We’re saved!” Exclaims another.
An uproarious cheer meets the dimensional heroes, rising up above the white-splattered unconscious bodies of the two orderly minions.
“Their shapes… have been scraped,” Geometric Shape Enthusiast Minion says in a grim tone, standing beside his no-sided counterpart, who is convulsing on the ground in delirious excitement.
“Hell yeah!” Super Maniac Minion shouts, raising a victorious black fist into the air. “Now back to the hideout. We’re about to make holiday history!”
He leads the charge back to the space gate, his retinue of festive lunatics dashing on with feverish anticipation.
-To be continued tomorrow. Tune in!-
Coffee... WRITING!... COFFEE!! 