Chapter Seven - Minion Hunting

"So, I've been talking to head-minion Sam, and I think it's about time we start recruiting more minions," Athena said.

They were at their new home, the bunker under the underpass. The place was a bit cold, and a little small, and it could really use some more windows, but Athena wasn't going to complain.

Mostly because it was a hidden bunker, with secret entrances and the entire place's aesthetic was so cool that she'd have to be an idiot or some sort of goody-two-shoes to actually complain about living in such an obvious villain-like base.

Her sisters didn't complain either.

Teddy had taken over one room and had filled it with blankets and pillows and created what she called a 'bear cave' and what Athena had heard her Big Sister call a 'fire hazard'. Trinity had decided to only take up one room, but also the janitor's closet. She hid all the best junk in the closet and kept her room mostly clean-ish... for now.

Maple's room had quickly turned into an itty-bitty workshop, with some tools and lots of strange noises, and Athena had decided not to go in there because anything that entered Maple's room was unlikely to come out of it in the same shape.

And Athena herself had turned her bedroom into a proper study room, with a lot of second-hand books and plenty of notes sticky-taped to the walls with all sorts of information that Athena thought was useful. Sam had given her an old laptop, and Athena had plugged it in her room (the battery was broken and she was afraid to ask Maple for help) so she could go online and look up all sorts of stuff about how to be a proper villain.

There really wasn't much, so she relied on looking at the 'how to be a hero' sites and doing the opposite.

Anyway, right now her Big Sister was back from another day at school. The next day was the weekend, so it was a perfect time to get up to some villainy.

"You want me to what?" Emily asked.

"To get more minions," Athena said. "Look, I made a flowchart about it."

She reached into a small file folder she had borrowed from Emily's school stuff and removed a page with her flowchart drawn on it.

"See, this is us here, right now. We have three important tasks to do. First is cuddles and family time." She tapped that one. It was circled twice. "Second is doing basic maintenance villainy."

"Maintenance villainy?" Emily asked. Athena had caught her in the kitchen, so she was only glancing over every so often while paying a bit of attention to the water she was boiling.

They were gonna have mac and cheese.

"Yeah. Maintenance villainy. That's the kind of villainy that Sam does. Extorting money, putting up gang signs, blackmail, sabotaging the heroes. You know, the little stuff."

Athena brought her finger down and double-tapped the next point on her list.

"The last thing is real villain stuff. That's like... robbing banks, attacking the heroes, monologuing darkly, kidnapping sexy reporters."

Big Sister paused, cheese packet in hand. "Kidnapping sexy reporters?" she repeated.

"It's traditional," Athena said. "Sexy reporters make up sixty-percent of all heroic love interests, so it's normal that a villain will want to kidnap them to hurt the heroes as much as possible."

Emily nodded along while stirring the pot. "Makes sense," she muttered. "As long as you don't start shipping me with anyone."

Athena made a mental note to look up what that meant later. "Anyway. A lot of your precious time is spent on maintenance villainy, right?"

Her big sister turned her way, a long wooden spoon in her mouth. "Hmm... not that much time. Sam mostly takes care of it, honestly."

"That's because our operation is tiny," Athena said. "But look at how many villains we have! There's you, me, Teddy, Trinity, Trinity, Trinity, and now Maple. Plus we have Alea Iacta who... I guess counts as a minion more than a villain. But anyway, that's seven! Or at least five if we only count Trinity once. Most villain organisations never get that many members to begin with."

"I think I'd rather keep our operations tiny," Big Sister Emily said.

"You're just saying that because the maintenance stuff is a lot of work!" Athena said. She pointed to the next bit of her flowchart (what was a flowchart, anyway?) and smiled big and wide. "See. If we get more minions, then we won't have to do nearly as much work, which means less time spent on this." She touched the maintenance villainy bit. "And more time spent on cuddles and monologues."

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It was foolproof.

"And where, exactly, would we find minions to begin with?" Big Sister asked. "It's not like I can put an ad in the paper for it."

"I sent Teddy out to get some already," Athena said. She puffed her chest out. "She said that she was real good at convincing people."

Emily froze. "You sent Teddy where exactly?"

"Uh, I think she said she was going to go look in a place where she could find people that would be easy to convince to join our cause."

"Teddy!" Emily called out, and predictably, there was no response. "Oh no," she said. Her hand flicked out and turned off the stove, then she started to move.

The pan moved too, and Emily squeaked as she caught it mid-fall and spilled a bunch of cheesy noodles across the side of the stove and floor.

She used a few of the forbidden words, then ran out of the room.

Athena paused for a moment, then ran after her. She noticed one of Trinity staring, then running into the kitchen only to gasp. "Floor food!"

"Where are we going?" Athena asked.

"To find Teddy," Big Sister said. She ripped her coat off of the couch, then shrugged it on in a hurry before pulling her phone out. She stared at it for a moment, then looked towards Athena. "Where is Teddy, exactly?"

"You don't need to worry so much, she brought a minion with her," Athena said. She... could kinda see where she might have messed up, a little. Big sister, despite being a villain, worried a lot about her sisters. Which was nice and it made Athena feel warm. But sometimes it was a bit much. They could take care of themselves. They weren't babies, and they were all villains!

"A minion?" Big Sister asked. "Which one? Is it Sam? Please tell me it's Sam."

"Uh... no?"

"So, Teddy is out in the city with Alea Iacta then?"

Athena nodded.

"And she's looking for new minions to recruit."

"Yup."

"From... where?"

"Well, we thought about it a lot, and we figured that we should start with the usual sort of person for new minions."

"The usual sort of person?" Emily asked.

Athena nodded again. "Yeah. You know, lonely people, with no friends, bad social skills, lots of anxiety. They're like, prime material for joining a cult or becoming a minion."

Big Sister pinched the bridge of her nose. "And where will Teddy find these people?"

"That's the tricky part," Athena said. She was pretty proud of their solution for this bit, actually. "Most of those kinds of people are probably holed up in their homes minding their own business and trying not to go outside, which means that finding them is gonna be really tricky."

"Please tell me Teddy isn't going door-to-door talking to people about joining our... our gang," Emily said.

Athena snorted. "No, that wouldn't work. She's just going to nerdy places with Alea Iacta. She's putting his powers to good use finding desperate, vulnerable people."

"That's... that's not a good thing," Emily said.

Athena grinned. "I know! I thought about it after reading about it on a hero site. See, the heroes go around looking for that kind of person all the time to tell them that everything's okay, and to get them to do, like, volunteer work or whatever. You know, good stuff. But I thought to myself, hey, Athena, you're a smart bird, why wouldn't you turn this into a villain thing instead? And now we're going to get so many new minions you won't know what to do with them. Uh... after we do the intro."

Emily stared at her, then looked at her phone, then back up. "What intro?"

"For the new minions," Athena said. "You know. We invite them all to some secluded place, then turn on the lights, like pash pash pash, and then you're sitting on a throne of skulls and then you give them a monologue and then they're your new minions."

"We... there's several problems with that," Big Sister said.

"I've got Trinity looking for skulls already. She found six!"

Big Sister seemed to give up. "I'm calling Alea Iacta. Next time, Athena, just.. Tell me before you start planning something like this. Please. I don't know how much of this my heart can handle."

***