Chapter Twelve - Head Minion

Sam leaned against the wall, because getting a seat at the moment wasn't in the cards, even if her feet were killing her.

The backroom of Azzip's Pizzeria was far too tight for this kind of clandestine event, but at the same time, the decor worked. There were two small tables, one near the door where they'd stacked the pizzas they'd bought and where Emily's brats were congregating around to grab as much food as they could. The room had several fridges and racks for packages of cheese and flour and a few huge floor-to-ceiling stacks of unfolded cardboard pizza boxes.

There was a bigger table in the middle of the room with some seats around it.

They'd put four seats on one side, and one opposite. That's where Emily was sitting, looking intimidating as hell and yet also exuding anxious energy. It didn't help that she was sitting on a tall stool, which made her tip forwards a little bit and which made her knees brush against the underside of the table. She was towering over the new minions in a way that was making all four of them lean back and away.

Sam had grown rather fond of Emily, in a sort of big-sisterly way. Which was somewhat ironic, she supposed, considering how much of a big sister role Emily herself played.

The girl was a mess of contradictions. She was a social disaster the likes of which Sam had never seen. It was a miracle every time Emily managed to get through a conversation without having a panic attack.

And yet, when push came to shove, Emily was... vicious.

The girl had the confidence of a kitty facing a wolf, but sometimes, when she was in costume and things were going wrong, she'd suddenly move and act with terrifying efficiency.

Emily might not have wanted to be a villain, but the more time Sam spent around her, the more she could see why Emily had landed in that position.

It was less about the cliched villainous need to do evil and to do things which were morally reprehensible, and a lot more about Emily not conforming to what the world expected of her.

Sam blinked, then pulled out a small notepad from her back pocket and scribbled that down. That'd be a nice tangent to explore in her thesis, actually. The link between heroism and conformity, and villainy and a lack of conformity. After all, heroes more often than not worked to keep the status quo intact, even if that status quo was patently unfair.

Yeah, that would be a nice topic to explore to pad things out.

Happy with herself, Sam flipped her notebook's page around and looked up. The interview, insofar as they had one of those, was about to begin.

As the newly dubbed Minion Red (should she dye her hair?) Sam was something of a senior member in the Boss' villainous organisation. She was also the one keeping most of it afloat because Emily was kind of useless sometimes.

Emily cleared her throat, then looked to her side. Athena was standing there, a long slice of pizza sticking out of her mouth and her cheeks puffed out.

There was a fresh grease-stain down the front of her dress, and Sam just knew that Emily was going to be annoyed once she noticed.

She made another note in her pad. Get a used washing machine for the base.

"So," Emily began. She always pitched her voice a bit deeper when playing the role of the Boss. At least for a sentence or two. Then Emily would forget and her voice would return to normal.

Sam was waiting for a good moment to point it out. It would be fun to see Emily die a little inside when she learned that.

"How do you handle high-pressure situations?" Emily asked.

Sam's eyebrows rose. Emily was going right for the jugular. At least it wasn't 'where do you see yourself in five years?'

The minions looked between each other, and then seemed to decide on who would be going first. Sam made a little note of that. They were communicating non-verbally with each other without too much difficulty. That suggested that they were all used to each other. She had an inkling that the four were friends already, but this cemented it for her.

"Well," Liam, the shorter redhead that Sam suspected worked out, said. "I'm not sure about high-pressure Mask situations, but I think all of us have handled some impressively stressful things while working together."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Liam, I don't know if tabletop games count," Chloe said.

Sam almost smacked herself in the face. Yes, of course the people Emily somehow managed to find and convince to work with her for this long were all Mask geeks. That... that only made sense. Who else would want to take the risk and work with an unknown?

"I see," Emily said. "Uh, let's count that. So, our, um, organisation isn't affiliated with the HRT or any other heroic or villainous group. If you work for me, for us, then I'd expect you to be able to keep some secrets to yourselves. I don't want to ask people to do things they're not comfortable with--"

"What? That's not true!" Trinity said.

Emily half-turned to give the racoon girl a look.

Trinity pouted right back. "You're always telling me not to put stuff in my mouth," she grumbled.

Emily turned back to the new minions. "I mostly don't ask people to do things they're not comfortable with, but I still need to know if you're able to be, ah, loyal."

"That feels a bit, uh, loaded. No offence, Boss," Lucas said. "Just asking for that much loyalty without offering something in return feels a bit off?"

"That's... fair, I guess," Emily said. "I can't promise anything too big, but I think that if you agree to help me, then I can help you in turn. We don't make that much money, but we do make some. And, uh, the experience might be worth the effort?"

"She's not wrong," Ethan said. "Where else are we going to get to spend time with an actual Mask? It'll make for an awesome story."

"Stories don't pay rent," Lucas pointed out.

And wasn't that a painful truth, Sam thought. She loved working with Emily and the kids, and she had her own ambitions for why she was doing all of this, but it was a little costly, especially at first.

Still... "We do pay, a little," Sam said. "Part of our... protection system means gaining monthly donations from local shopkeepers in exchange for keeping them safe from villains and the like. That money goes towards a lot of expenses, of course, but some of it goes into pay. Not that it's, ah, taxable pay, exactly."

Of all the somewhat legally dubious stuff Sam had been up to lately, not paying taxes was pretty low on the list.

She was mostly coasting on the firm hope that it wouldn't catch up to her.

"Pay is nice," Lucas said with a nod that was mimicked on the faces of his friends.

Emily seemed ready to go on when her phone rang.

Every eye turned to her, and Sam held back a laugh at the red crawling up Emily's neck and to her uncovered cheeks. "One moment," she muttered as she finished her phone out of her pocket with some difficulty.

Everyone was still watching as Emily frowned at the screen, then answered right then and there while standing up. "Hello?"

Emily's frown deepened.

"Glamazon, slow down," she said.

The minions perked up at that. Probably at the casual name-dropping of another local hero's name. This bunch was going to be so easy to sway with a bit of celebrity, Sam figured.

"Oh... that's... right, that's not good," Emily said. "Yes... uh-huh...um, well, yeah? Maybe?" The girl winced. "I'll see what I can do? But no promises."

Emily lowered the phone and hung up, then frowned at nothing in particular for a moment.

"What's up, Boss?" Sam asked.

"Um. You know that new villain that showed up recently? The one that beat up Glamazon? He's back again."

Sam blinked. "And what is he up to now?"

"He's robbing a money truck downtown," Emily said. "Glamazon didn't have all the details, but it sounds like he tipped the truck over and is just taking everything?"

"That'll be an issue," Sam said. "Some of our clients are downtown. That's their money he's taking."

"Right," Emily said. Sam could see the discomfort that she was trying to hide. The Boss needed to respond to this, and since they were close, and in-costume, there was little she could do to squeeze out of this one. "Okay. Minions, girls, let's head out. We're going to see if we can't stop this Rattles villain before he causes too much trouble."

"All right!" Teddy cheered loudest of them all. "Let's show that punk that he shouldn't mess with our turf!"

***