She's in her bed in the cabin, and it is silent like a tomb, but this time it's in the very worst way. Her eyes, wide and violated, search the ceiling for answers.
"What the living hell is going on?!" she whispers to herself. She looks around. Even the animals are all asleep. Everyone is asleep but her, and there's something in the air – that feeling from the attic.
Well, not for long. Scout Minion's not the sort to flick her antennae around begging for someone to come and answer her distress call – she can flatten lesser overlords, and she can meet whatever's creeping around the cabin head on.
She gets up and sneaks over to Druid Minion's bed. Druid Minion's trembling.
"No, no, Crucius!" she mumbles under her breath. Scout Minion lifts her hand and gives Druid Minion a firm, authoritative slap.
"C-Crucius?!" she whines again.
Scout Minion sighs out a single, motherly "nope," and straddles Druid Minion before going to town on her face.
"Wake up, ya' stupid tree hugger," she snips, one word for every full-armed slap.
Nothing. Druid Minion's still out.
Scout pulls away. "This is stupid." She turns to leave the room and get someone else, and that something is clear in the air again… but this time, it isn't like before.
There's something alive now, and it is alive with her, and it knows she's awake. A chill runs up her ethereal spine, but she's undeterred. She turns to go to Fashion Minion's room, where he convulses and makes little weird woodchuck squeaks as he rolls over in dread every few seconds.
She gives him a few slaps too. Nothing.
"What the f*** is going on?" she asks.
Finally, she hops over to the next room over and pulls up on Cardio Minion's face, who just shakes her head and keeps whispering that she "can't do it in time".
"What is going on here?" She snips before storming up the attic, finds the soundly sleeping, chuckling Maniac Minion and she gives him a few swift kicks to his groin. Not that this would hurt anywhere else more specifically than any other place on one of Chaos' minions, but it is a habit she's picked up for him.
"Wake up, idiot," she demands.
Yet, he seems perfectly happy with everything. Without a single wince of discomfort on his brow, he's truly in a wonderful, wonderful dream and cuddled up in the wool blanket that Scout Minion may or may not have put over him earlier.
She scoffs. "Huh. Right. Thanks," she takes a few deep breaths and looks around as if it would have the answer. This is weird, and if there's something weird in the dreams trying to get them to sell their souls, if that even works or not is beyond her, but she does know that dealing with that sort of stuff is risky business either way, especially when there's no High Overlord around to just beat the ever living souls out of any demons that run around who are in the business of stealing souls.
She looks at the box that he is sleeping next to, and finally, her curiosity gets the best of her. She opens it up and she finds a summoning kit.
"Oh, you bastard," She snips over her breath. She, again, is not very well versed in magic or demonology, but she's taken it upon herself during some raids to various hell dimensions to take all of their cool stuff and also make fun of them, for the 'funnies' of it, of course. Demons are usually kind of pushovers, but right now the cat is away so the mice will play, and what's even worse is it looks like Maniac Minion's invited the mice into their house in a very big way. A lit candle, waxed over with a tiny bit of paper creating some kind of a scary star… a hexagram, a sexy gram? What the hell is that thing called? Whatever. It's a six-pointed star and very magical looking.
It shines out with a menacing demonic irritation. Even the air around it feels corrupted by the sizzling heat of its spitting candles and glowing incantations.
Scout Minion scratches out the incantation, and blows out the candles – the magical feeling in the air does not disappear.
" 'Put the relic in the box! I'm sure no one will open it! Back to my shows!' " she mocks under her breath with a crude imitation of Magic Minion. "I am gonna kick her ass so hard for this."
And indeed, kicking Magic Minion's ass for being irresponsible and leaving extremely dangerous magical items around is on her priority list now, but even higher is getting everyone out of this evil trance and maybe salvaging the weekend. She glances around when she finds, almost, inexplicably, a book about dream walking. Written by Magic Minion in one of her half-finished tomes, its title is Stuff About Dreams and Thoughts About Dreams— good enough for her. This must be Magic Minion's storage room for sleep magic related items.
Scout Minion glances over to the contents of the black box, complete with the small magic book required for its incantations. With a little study, she realizes that the entity they're dealing with is a demon called Long Night, and is chief in his demonic hierarchy for delivering things such as beautiful dreams and completed wishes within the realm of the night. Scout Minion, firmly a "dreamer-of-the-day" type, couldn't care less about such a laughable proposition: selling one's soul for an ideal nightlife, as it were, but she can't put it too far past one of her little buddies… if she could even call him her "buddy," that is.
She glances over to Maniac Minion, sleeping soundly in bliss, and she leans over to the hexagram, where she takes up the piece of paper resting in the center. She unfolds it, and realizes that it's a description of his perfect dream. A scowl of pure disgust crosses her face, realizing that this is what he's willing to trade for the peace and sanctity of their little weekend cabin, as well as everyone within it.
No longer.
Scout Minion cross-references between the two books until she finds a nice passage written in Magic Minion's long cursive script about entering someone else's dream. Scout Minion stops reading there, because she has an idea. She rushes down to her room and hops in Druid Minion's bed.
A moment passes as Scout Minion utilizes her practiced sleep technique, and loses consciousness right next to her leaf-covered friend.
Then, a good half minute passes, which could be any length of time within dreams…
All of a sudden, Druid Minion's eyes open wide and white, her human body once again just a figment of her imagination, the true one packed down deep away around the High Overlord's ether that surrounds her.
"I," she stumbles, trembling and gulping down her stress. She looks around, realizes that it was truly only a dream, and then takes a deep breath. "That was… horrible," and she glances over Scout Minion, having awakened the second she freed Druid Minion from her prison of her own mind.
"How's it goin', kiddo?"
The cloaked minion blushes a little bit, stripes of white marking her face. "I mean, if you were scared about… you know, sleeping by yourself, you could have just asked. I thought the raccoon in there would keep you company," Druid Minion explains. "We're good friends, but I didn't really think—"
"I'm fine," Scout Minion interrupts. "You really don't remember anything about the dream?"
And suddenly Druid Minion remembers everything.
"Oh…. Oh no. I'm sorry," she replies, looking away with her black face almost fully white with embarrassment. The reality is that she had remembered the dream, and more so was hoping that Scout Minion wasn't actually in her dream, judging her.
"Yeah, so like, did he always look like that?" Scout, finding a way to enjoy herself despite the seriousness, asks her friend.
"N-no. I mean," Druid Minion stumbles over her words as she tries to find the most correct way to tell Scout Minion about her total sexy fantasy without coming across as a total freak, "we were… good friends, and it became romantic."
"Really," Scout Minion says plainly.
"Y-R-Really," Druid Minion lies.
Scout hums. "Well, can't blame you," is what she comes back with, winning a shocked look from her antlered friend. "Now get up. Come on. We need to, like, dismiss this demon or something."
"Demon…" Druid Minion's eyes alight. "Wait. A contractor?"
Scout Minion, stretching up for movement, smiles, "Uh, yeah, one of those losers."
Druid Minion struggles up and gets out of bed, pushing over the owls that were nesting in the blankets next to her.
"Well… how?! Those have to be invited in by someone."
"Yeah, no time to explain. Let's go." Scout Minion replies.
Druid Minion gets her stuff on, pulls over her cloak, makes sure that the acorns are tied to her antlers, and other such bits and bobbles that are important for druids.
As the animals snore soundly, the two minions creep out from the room.
"We're just gonna go right across, and we can get Fashion Minion, okay?" Scout directs.
Druid Minion nods, but just as they dip her antennae out into the hallway, they feel a presence.
There's someone nearby down in the hallway, looking right at their door, and as much as Scout Minion doesn't want to admit it, there's a part of her that feels the presence is familiar, very familiar and disliked. Yes, she may dislike it, but to the others, it's dangerous: downright terrifying.
The two pause in a moment of conjoined stupefaction.
"No way," Scout hisses through her jaws as she gets her blades ready, her wide white eyes sharpening to critical slits.
"W-who is it?" Druid Minion, who more or less knows what is going on by this point, says as she pulls out a stick that would definitely help her in the moment to come.
"It's—"
"Who?!" Druid Minion interrupts.
"—that bitchass," Scout Minion says in her unique and beautiful type of colloquialism.