Time passes…
Scout Minion flinches awake after almost an hour. Mumbling to herself, she looks around the cabin. It seems real. This doesn't feel like a dream.
"Ah, I see you're finally awake," a suave, banjo-twang voice says from the rocker where Cardio Minion had dozed off upon last night. Scout Minion pulls herself up, only the slightest hint of infusia leaking from her front side. Now she's mostly recovered, and in record time too. The question she has, is why she is still alive?
"Yeah," she says, uncertain. "And… whoare you?"
The voice gets down from the rocker, revealing a stature somehow even shorter than hers, but due to the trucker hat on his head—it makes him look quite a bit taller.
She squints at the words as her vision returns to her:
"Women need me, but my love is the ocean. Wildlife itself is my only companion, but I walk alone on this bare earth with a rod in my left and a Bible in my right," and then there is this ellipsis before going on to say "—and by that we're talkin' about a fishin' rod and a fishin' magazine. Yee Haw."
This script alone, with it's big font, makes it roughly seven times taller than a regular trucker hat, so it's truly, outrageously tall.
"You're… you're…" she waves her finger around, trying to place the name.
"Fishin'ion," he says. "I do at times go by Fishion', though. I'm the High Overlord's number one Fish-Man."
"Oh," she replies suspiciously.
"He wants it, I pull it outta the water."
"So you must have been the guy on the lake," she asks.
"Yep. Been here the whole time. Went fishin' 'cause I got here early."
She blinks at him. "And you just missed everyone else?"
He shrugs. "Fishin' don't wait."
She nods. "Right. Sure," she says, not scorning his hand attempting to help her up as she pushes herself to her feet. "Where's everybody? Where's That dickass Knight?" she asks, stretching for round two, wherever it could be.
"I don't rightly know. It seems as though everyone's upstairs," he says with a flick of his antennae with little hook shapes at the end. Scout Minion squints, and with her enchanted eyes she can just barely make it out. There is not just one presence up there: it's five now; in fact, she can almost feel it as six.
"The… hell?" she mumbles as Fishin'ion gets back in his chair to do a little rockin'.
"He must've gone easy on you," he says, "probably wanted to get to the bottom of it before makin' his decision."
"No, he tried to kill me," Scout Minion steps back. "No one goes easy on me."
"Then why are you alive, darlin'?" he asks, tapping his cool little fishing boots together. Really, they look like regular boots, except for the fish on them, and he likes that because he likes fishing, and fish.
She sighs. "This is so messed up. Like, how did they find us?"
"Can't recognize. I know when I tossed that fish out the window, I was figurin' he'd just run off like some bear. But he looked 'round for me for the better part of a half hour, then went back around t' the cabin… Went back around here to take a look again. Imagine they're all up there. You wouldn't reckon t'know what's goin' on, would ya', miss?"
Scout Minion gives an exasperated sigh as she searches for her good sword. "I mean, it's like a…"
"It's like some kind of demon," he says.
She flinches. "Yeah. How'd you know?"
He nods as he continues to rock in the chair. "When I fell asleep on the boat," he takes a deep, manly breath in sweet, rustic reminiscence: "It was a recreation of 'The Old Man and the Sea,' and that was just wonderful… and then it was a perfect recreation of 'Moby Dick,' and that was just wonderful too… and I was havin' a great time. I don't always subscribe to none of them big philosophical arguments, but you can bet me when I see a fish, I'm gonna catch it, but my rod just kept breakin'."
"Oh, so he offered you, like, a really good rod in exchange for your soul?" Scout asks.
"But right away, I knew that my strings don't break like that because I'm the best fisherman there ever was," he says, pulling aside the brim of his cap to conceal his wide eyes filled with the mystery of a man and his battle against the aquatic life of the many worlds he's traveled.
Scout Minion almost snorts in pleasure. "Oookay. Well, we gotta get him."
"Damn right," he says with a single tip of his hat. "When you're ready, let's go up and get 'em."
The scout takes every precaution before she goes up the stairs – professionalism is key to a professional, after all.
Fishin'ion, on the other hand, just kind of saunters up: an old country boy, unbothered by anything. To him, it is quite obvious that this is just another day not fishing, and as such, it is to be dealt with the maximum amount of lackadaisical, lazy sort of gallivanting that would most easily deliver him to the next session of him fishing without worry, which is clearly the one thing he truly cares for.
"Can you quiet down?" she says with a quick, silent flick of the antenna to transmit the message to him.
"I save my quietness for the water, Missy," he replies back, out loud. "Let's get this over with."
The demonic exuberance within the attic is palpable. It isn't simply a feeling now, but a sight, a sound, a scent: a complete envelopment of warning: that whatever is before them is encroaching, ugly, and unspeakably evil.
Through the engulfing miasma, they can see the skim outlines of downed minions and a kneeling knight, as well as the spell circle from before spewing rotten demonic energies in all directions as an affront to all that is beautiful and good in their world.
"Looks like they entered the dream," Scout notes with a hiss. "Why?"
"Yup. Looks like they're in the grasp of that demon again," he says with a matter of fact tone as he grips his suspenders and leans forward.
She looks over to him with a mixed expression. "I mean… duh? The question, is how are we going to get—" She stops herself as a spiritual tremor runs through both of them. She stumbles back. "H-how in the world?!" She stumbles over her words a moment doubly in shock.
Granted, for a minion, it isn't a usual happenstance for some attempted demonic possession to be successful in any way. Obviously, with the protection of the High Overlord's ether, one gains an arguably ludicrous amount of resistance to almost any kind of control—mental, physical, spiritual, or otherwise. The realization that this pulse of energy almost took them off their feet is proof enough that the creature they're dealing with is extremely powerful.
Scout Minion's eyes slowly dim in concentration. The downed knight, kneeling as if in prayer or contemplation, seems entirely unguarded. Could it be that this great warrior has allowed himself to become vulnerable to banish the demon and save them? If he'd truly been taken in by the demon's dream, then she could simply, with a few sturdy strikes of her blade, be away with him forever… but in these days, a semblance of honor does exist between the Minionry of Towerne and the Royal Knights of Reinen…
To each other, they are something to foil, perhaps capture and imprison, but not kill. For her to kill a Knight would issue a rampage of climactic proportions from the Knighthood, one that would set Lord Knight Captain Order on her next rampage against them. She knows better, just as she's relieved to see that he does too, as a result of her survival from their rare engagement.
She sits down across from the wall, joining her hands together, and enters a Zen-like stance, prepared for a meditative trip that will test her to her maximum limits.
"Alright," she says. "I'm going in. You can come along too. Just take a few deep breaths and—"
"I don't think I'll be doing that one," Fishin'ion says. "The Good Lord forbids such dealings with demons. There ain't nothin' a little faith and a good fishin' rod can't fix," he says, correcting her.
Scout Minion's eyes squint with disgust. "I mean, we probably need to meet this thing on its own playing field if we're going to beat it, but if you want to just go sit around and play with your rod, I guess you can keep a lookout."
Fishin'ion turns to look through the other side of the window over to the lake. "Oh, I'll be lookin' out, all right."
"Great," she sighs.
"For some fish," he adds.
Scout Minion sighs and closes her eyes. "…Okay, whatever," she says, trying to calm down. "Just don't do anything crazy," she adds, winning a smile from him.
The next pulse from the demonic circle fires out, and immediately she's swept into the dream… but it isn't like last time. Her senses and consciousness are integrated seamlessly into the new paper-mache-like reality that she steps into…
She opens her eyes, and the first thing she sees is the 24-karat, fully solid, 70,000-ton head of Maniac Minion, wearing a crown in statuesque elation, looking up to the sky as the centerpiece for a great gate.