They call him the Minion Whisperer. It's said he can train any species, even mermaids, who are known to be breathtakingly stupid.
—ARTICLE ON DR. CRITCHLORE IN MINIONS TODAY
I heard music coming from the alcove, and when I peeked around the corner I saw him sitting in a wingback chair by the fireplace. He was watching a television that sat in a hidden compartment in the bookshelves.
I gasped. I had never seen Dr. Critchlore looking so … so casual. Usually he was as evil overlord-y as they came—tailored suit, pinkie ring, slickly gelled hair, goatee trimmed to a point, and a stare that could melt steel. He wasn't quite so intimidating wearing a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers.
Even worse, he was crying, dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief.
I tried to back away, but he spotted me before I made it to the door.
"Oh, Handley," he said, reaching out to me.
When I said he was like a father to me, I meant the sort of father who was busy and distant. The kind who couldn't remember his kids' names.
"What have I done with my life?" he said. "What have I accomplished? Look at me, past my prime, with no children of my own."
The TV commercial showed a father tenderly dabbing cream on his smiling daughter's cheek. The voice-over said, "WartGrow, because people trust a witch with warts."
This wasn't the Dr. Critchlore I knew. Just last year he taught us about exploiting an enemy's weakness without mercy. He'd invented tactics such as Shock and Maul, the Monster Wave Attack, and the Hammer and Mace. He was a steel-hearted genius who ran the school with an iron fist, because it prepared us to work for an evil overlord.
He beckoned me over, and I carefully sidestepped the trapdoor in the floor. It was hidden, of course, but I knew exactly where it was. You don't watch someone disappear screaming without it leaving an impression. Dr. Critchlore told me he'd installed it because sometimes people bored him and it was too much effort to call Miss Merrybench to come in and take them away.
"Hickenlooper, my boy." He patted my hand, looking up at me like an eager-to-please puppy. "I have this overwhelming desire to buy a new dragon."
"A dragon, sir?"
"A really mean one. Powerful. It's what the kids are riding these days, right?"
"Well, I have a Domvoy."
He dropped my hand, a look of confusion on his face. "What's that, a griffin? A pegasus?"
"Um, no, it's a bike."
"Hmm. Lacks pizzazz, Hollins, if I'm honest. What are you, nine?"
I shrugged, because I didn't know how old I was. Closer to eleven or twelve, though. I thought I'd better change the subject so I could get out of there. I really wanted to get out of there. "Dr. Critchlore? I've been put in the wrong dorm again, and I was wondering, since I'm a junior henchman trainee now, if you could change—"
But I didn't get to finish my sentence, because at that moment a new commercial came on the television—an advertisement for the Pravus Minion Academy.
Dr. Thiago Pravus strolled through his ultramodern campus wearing a black suit and a bright teal tie. He looked like the kind of action hero who wears a tuxedo at night but can kill you twenty different ways with his bare hands. Word had it that he'd personally trained Wexmir Smarvy's dragon militia.
The commercial cut from one impressive building to the next, showing what seemed like thousands of minions in various stages of training. The school looked humongous, and everything in it was so new and shiny—the buildings, the weapons, even the dragon's teeth. (I'd been on dragon tooth-cleaning duty before, and let me tell you, it's not easy. And getting them to floss? Forget about it.)
"Gone are the days when an evil overlord could make do with a posse of weak, servile, untrained minions," Dr. Pravus said. "Today's evil overlord must have the very best: Pravus minions."
I glanced sideways at my bathrobe-wearing headmaster, who was turning the color of cayenne pepper.
"I despise that man," Dr. Critchlore said.
"And unlike other minion schools we could name"—Pravus winked at the camera, like he was looking right at Dr. Critchlore—"we guarantee our graduates won't become the embarrassment of the entire minion community."
Dr. Critchlore clenched his fists and pounded the arm of his chair. "Damn that video."
"Yeah," I said. "About that—"
He waved a hand in the air, as if he were shooing the subject matter away. I saw his other hand move toward the "boring person button," so I quickly reached into my pocket.
"Explosive gum, sir," I offered.
He took the gum, chewed it for a few seconds, and then tossed it at the TV. I plugged my ears as the TV disappeared with a bang.
This was terrible. Dr. Critchlore didn't look like he was doing anything about that video. I turned to tiptoe out of the office—and that's when Miss Merrybench caught me. Literally, because she was running into the office to check on the explosion and she knocked me over.
"Did he destroy another TV?" she asked.
I stood up and nodded.
Her face looked different—softer, somehow—as she gazed into the smoke.
"He's fine," I said, and then regretted it, because she turned her angry stare at me full blast.
"What do you think you are doing?" she asked, yanking me out of Dr. Critchlore's office. "He's a very busy man. He mustn't be disturbed."
Busy watching TV, I thought, but I didn't say anything. I'd learned long ago that it was a bad idea to cross Miss Merrybench. She could make a kid's life miserable in many ways, and not just by assigning him to the wrong dorm. I'd heard she had a whole arsenal of tiny weapons in her hair bun.
I wasn't sure if that was true. I tried to check, but she was taller than me.
Miss Merrybench let go of my arm and returned to her chair. I knew I had to make my plea before she picked up her headset, so I blurted out, "I think I'm in the wrong dorm."
"Mr. Higgins," she said. "I make all the dorm assignments. Are you suggesting I made a mistake?"
"No! It's just, I thought that maybe, since I've been in the D-Hum for two years already, maybe you didn't think about moving me now that there are vacancies in the Momido."
This year, some of our top monster recruits had gone to other schools, scared off by the freaky outbreak of wyvern flu we'd had last term. And I'd heard a rumor that some Cyclops recruits had just withdrawn. And then I remembered Tiffany. We usually had a whole pride of manticores each year. As far as I'd seen, she'd been the only one.
I gasped.
Was it because of Dr. Pravus's commercial? Because of the video?
"I think you are fine where you are," Miss Merrybench said. She had a pile of file folders on her desk, and she opened one.
"But last year I missed out on—"
"Mr. Higgins," she interrupted. "It's the first day of the new term. I have hundreds of things to attend to, each one of them more important than a room assignment. Ever since that video went viral, the phones won't stop ringing, and Dr. Critchlore won't take any calls."
She took a quick glance toward Dr. Critchlore's open office door, but then her gaze shot my way like a flaming arrow, so searing I almost ducked. "I understand you are starting in the Junior Henchman Training Program this morning?"
"Yes, ma'am," I said.
"I suggest you concern yourself with that," she said. She returned her attention to her files, muttering under her breath, "As I see it, you'll be lucky to last a day."
The bell rang. I had five minutes to get to my class, which was all the way on the other side of campus, on the sports fields.
"Tardy on the first day," Miss Merrybench said, shaking her head.