She reads the words: "Maniac World."
"Nice," she mumbles to herself over the cacophony of carnival music playing all around her. A massive parade of cool robots, all in his likeness, parade across the street, playing grand scores all for the glory of Maniac Minion. There's Maniac Minion-themed food sellers on the sides of the street selling Maniac Minion-themed hot dogs, pork buns, pretzels, and more. An everlasting 24/7 fireworks display erupts all across the land, flooding the universe with a thin patina of rainbow light with each explosion, each one exploding to display Maniac Minion doing something cool.
She gets up to her feet and tries to make sense of everything as she's quickly approached by a pair of bulky guards in Maniac Minion-accented armor.
"Well, well, well. Look who's here for the party," the one on the left says as he positions his broadsword over his shoulder for a quick slash. "Now you better come with us, little girl."
"Oh, where are you taking me?" she asks, keeping her hands on the handles of her dreamed up blades with a nonchalant, deceptively unready-looking poise.
"Where else?" the douchey-sounding guard on the right ejaculates with a shrug. "Over to see the big boss himself. Not like there's anywhere else worthwhile to go— know what I'm saying?"
The two guards produce a gut-reversing chuckle: overfed jovial laughter with an equal part of pre-vomit gurgling thrown in.
With a curt nod, she steps forward. "You know, that sounds good to me. Let's go, fellas."
How nice of them to take her exactly where she wants to go. If they become a bother, she's dealt with fellows that size hundreds of times, perhaps thousands— one tends to lose count when they're considered the best for so long.
Her checkerboard scarf billows in the wind as the two great doors, both embossed with galactically exaggerated depictions of Maniac Minion, display him as a ten-foot-tall Adonis capable of downing any enemy in his wake, surrounded by beautiful women of all kinds as he slides down the block on a cool skateboard all at once.
She distills mental paragraphs of disgusted, irritated, pitying observations into a single disparaging thought.
"Loser," she thinks to herself with a smirk.
They lead her through gaudy platinum, gold, and silver-plated corridors encrusted with jewels from the farthest reaches of the strangest, most dangerous places in The Verses. Across great paintings of great acts and great moments in his history, the vast majority of which being outright fabrications, they ascend the steps fashioned with a marble so pure and so rare that they exude a cloud-like glow.
Scout's antenna twitches. She can hear a fight somewhere nearby, but she isn't quite sure where. The walls lie to her here, untrustworthy matter in an untrustworthy realm.
At the summit of the stairs, in a massive Jacuzzi throne room/amusement park/cafeteria combo, sits in the center, his greatest and most royal of majesties: Maniac Minion. He waits, surrounded by a hundred attendants, viewed by a thousand, and worshipped from afar by millions. He, upon his holy throne, looks down upon Scout Minion as she's demurely led up like a captured maiden to his grand pedestal of attendants.
He mutters his greeting out like a long, confused string of things he could say, but none of them sound good in his head, so he doesn't. "A fan of the place?" he gets out, despite the complete awkwardness of the greeting. All the attendants seem very pleased with it, however; and give him a round of applause for the very clever thing he said.
Scout Minion squints. "It's cringe. So what's the big idea with this demon?" she asks, cutting right to the chase.
"Demon?" he laughs back. "There's no such thing. I met a guardian angel," he says, bringing his hands to his chest as if preparing to make a glorious soliloquy. "And he helped realize my dreams forever: No more pain. No more suffering… Is that something a demon would do?"
She scoffs. "Dude, what pain and suffering?" she asks. "We're minions of, you know, him. Like, we don't need to worry about anything. The only thing we have to suffer with is when you go out and do stupid things like this!"
"Pain," Maniac Minion interrupts, "the kind of pain one has when you're belittled your whole life, day in and day out. Suffering… the kind that you could not even begin to fathom, the sense of worthlessness, the ineptitudeof it all."
"Very good, very good," says one of the bystanding courtesans, who joins in with her fellows to give Maniac Minion another round of applause.
"Ah, seems like that was just the right thing to say, wasn't it?" Maniac Minion says with an incorrigibly punchable smugness as he adjusts the ten pound crown atop his head.
Scout Minion glares at him before going on. "Either way, you need to call this off. Get us out of here."
He laughs, pauses, and then laughs again. "Oh, dear. That's not how it's going to work," Maniac Minion says, his gaze slanting with pure elitism. "This dream is now our reality. We're here forever. Nothing will be able to rescue you, my little Scout. It will simply be a perfect dream upon a perfect dream upon a perfect dream… forever!"
"Aw, shut up, will ya'?" she shouts.
With a flick, she draws her blades in the blink of an eye. "If you're not gonna come willingly, I'm just gonna cut ya' to bits until you're begging to wake up!"
Other blades show up as fast and as deadly as her own.
She looks around. Every attendant seems to be a weapon master of some sort— melee, ranged, magical: the entire gamut of warfare seems to be represented here—there's even a pair of attendants manning a mortar tube aimed in her direction and pointed very, very high.
Maniac Minion snaps his fingers. From an overhanging beam, rope pulleys activate to lower down the other minions from the real world, tied and dangling helplessly in the air.
She sighs. "For real?"
He nods in return. "For real, for real," Maniac says, glancing up at Fashion Minion, Druid Minion, and Cardio Minion like fetching trophies. "I control reality around here, Scout, and that's because I'm absolutely the best… and finally, everyone here will know it."
"Any of us could destroy you," one of the guards says behind her as the sounds of battle rage on from someplace far off. Scout still can't quite place the direction. This entire place is overwhelming her.
Smiling, she doesn't put away her weapons. "You think I'm gonna go down like a bitch and become your little water girl?" she asks with a crass grin.
As if what she said were some kind of dire premonition, he immediately tugs on the collar of his regal, excruciatingly gaudy golden chest piece.
"No thanks, sister. He's got plenty of people who can serve him something to drink," a lithe voice says from the back of his surrounding crowd. "Comin' right up, sir!" the person adds as the crowd parts for them to move up.
Scout squints over as Maniac Minion stumbles over himself.
"O-o-oh there's no need for a drink right now! I didn't ask for one, thank you!" he says before bouting into nervous laughter.
The same moment, the source of the voice reveals hereslf, falling out from the crowd with a tray replete with fancy drinks.
It's Scout Minion… except it isn't quite Scout Minion.
With drink tray in hand, she strikes an uncharacteristically graceful, coquettish pose. Despite wearing high heels that could only be the marker of either insanity or direct demonic influence, she balances the drinks between her hands with an unearthly skip. Also, the scarf is gone, replaced instead by a tasteful white bathing suit.
Yes, indeed, there's nothing that either Scout Minions have to hide when it comes to body shape or private parts, after all, the ether conceals and consumes every feature of one's body… with that said, however; Scout Minion can indeed feel the severe fetishistic impropriety being pushed upon her by seeing her own form in a tight, delicate-looking bathing suit.
She blinks for a moment to make sure that what she's looking at is real, or at least real within the dream.
With his cover blown, Maniac Minion has to simply accept the glass of water from the clone version of Scout Minion.
"Th-thanks," he coughs out.
While he drinks the glass of water nervously, Scout Minion, the real one, can't help but look aside to the others.
Surely, he couldn't possibly have intended it to be this way, right?
She glances over to the serving girls to confirm her suspicions. The usual suspects are indeed there. At least the kinds she would expect to be talked about, fantasized about, and thought about in this particular way: Magic Minion, loved by some, Lady Minion by a few others, and of course, the top on most of the lists, the practically indescribable Beach Volleyball Minion. These false simulacrums of these people all stare at Maniac Minion with obtuse gazes of endless admiration. Yes, surely he is that guy, and this is his perfect reality, and Scout Minion finally clicks through her head that this does, in fact, include a version of her in a cute one piece.
There's a waiting pause in the place as she looks to the floor.
She can't quite say anything about it yet. She doesn't even have the words for such an uncharacteristically awkward moment, even from him. This is truly a new low.
She glances over at the demure, less vicious version of herself, and then glances back at Maniac Minion, who avoids her gaze.
"Gotcha," is all she puts out.
He clears his throat.
She releases a quick 'tsk' before looking over to her clone. "And who are you supposed to be?" Scout Minion says.
Suddenly, the sweet smile on the clone gains a hint of maliciousness. "I'm you," then her eyes slant, "but better," she adds with a little sway of the hip that's apparently supposed to look a little bit sexy while also being a little evil at the same time: we should ask Maniac Minion just what the hell he was thinking sometime after this.