How to Become a Henchman, A Novel: The Henchman's Survival Guide

by J Bennett

  A Note About the Future: One of my early draft readers complimented me on my world-building skills. She explained that all of the new trends and inventions I imagined added depth and ingenuity to the story. The truth is that I can’t really take any credit for that. Almost everything that makes Biggie LC and the greater Henchman world strange and different from today is based on trends and ideas that are currently circulating or in use.

  For example, the concepts of universal healthcare (UHC) and universal basic income (UBI) are being fervently debated in the United States today. The “Bands” that all my characters wear are basically an upgraded version of the wearable smartwatch that my boyfriend can’t live without.

  What about Alice’s dismal “Stream score?” Yep, citizen scores are actually a thing that China is currently rolling out.

  How about people living in shipping containers? That’s already happening, too.

  Chat bot everything? Software teachers instead of flesh-and-blood? Indoor crop planting? Genomic medicine? 3D printers in the home? People who make a living based on online micro-tips from strangers? Huge anxiety about automating away most jobs? A growing minimalist movement? Plans to send colonists to Mars?

  All of these things are happening… right now.

  Does this mean that we will eventually find ourselves in a world with a seriously under-employed population addicted to social media and obsessed with their online profiles? Hopefully not, but that world doesn’t feel too unfamiliar, does it?

  I wrote Alice as a sort of warning against going down this path. I love technology, and I am certainly up for debating the merits of UBI and universal healthcare. I’m excited about what innovation can mean for our future. I’m less impressed by people who spend their vacations trying to snag the perfect selfie to make their friends jealous or all the television shows that claim to show “reality,” but instead incite pointless drama.

  Alice, in many ways, is the personification of my own worries about where we are heading, but I also wrote her as a strong, level-headed woman. So maybe that means I think there is a middle path that allows us to embrace and benefit from the big changes ahead without losing ourselves to the inane distractions that come with the ultra-personalization of media and technology.

  Did I mention that superheroes are cool and that villains are cooler? Sorry, things were getting a little deep just now.

  HOW TO BECOME A HENCHMAN is a big triumph for me. Of course, Alice, Adan, Lysee, Sequoia, Gold, The Professor, and all the rest of the citizens of Biggie LC are far from done! Now that Alice is an official henchman, she’s got a lot of mayhem to create and some big adventures ahead and maybe, just maybe, a love interest to pursue. She just has to stay away from a certain dark Shadow that’s threatening the town. That dude is seriously scary!

  I hope you’ll stick with me and this series and pick up a copy of HOW TO DEFEAT A SUPERHERO when it comes out. I’m writing as fast as I can!)

  Your nerdy writer friend,

  J Bennett

  On Instagram @jbennettwrites

  << NEXT UP – SNEAK PEEK OF HOW TO DEFEAT A HERO >>

  Also By J Bennett

  Girl With Broken Wings Series

  A gritty and darkly humorous paranormal adventure series about family, loss, redemption, and cool abilities

  Falling (Book One)

  Coping (Novella, 1.5)

  Landing (Book Two)

  Rising (Book Three)

  Recovering (Novella, 3.5)

  Leaping (Book Four)

  Flying (Book Five)

  Girl With Broken Wings Complete Box Set

  The Vampire’s Housekeeper Chronicles

  A light-hearted humor series about a grouchy vampire and his loveable human housekeeper

  Employment Interview With A Vampire (Novella #1)

  When Vampires And Ninjas Collide (Novella #2)

  Apprenticeship With A Vampire (Novella #3)

  Thanksgiving with the Werewolves (Novella #4)

  Showdown with the Supernatural Hunter (Novella #5)

  The Vampire's Housekeeper Chronicles, Vol 1 (Novellas 1 - 3)

  The Vampire's Housekeeper Chronicles, Vol 2 (Novellas 4 - 5)

  How to Defeat a Hero

  Chapter One

  There are plenty of brill opportunities to wreak havoc and destruction upon Big Little City, which is why I’m so disappointed that we’re currently on our way to kidnap the mayor.

  How unoriginal. I had def hoped for something better on my first mission as a henchman for The Professor.

  Let’s just be clear about this. Every two-cent vil who wants to gain a little fame has taken a try at nabbing Mayor Grimbal Wisenberg. I’m guessing Wisenberg orders his window replacements in bulk.

  Leo’s a canny producer. During our henchman tryouts, he revealed a knack for throwing well-considered and thoroughly unhappy surprises at us. So why such a lame launch?

  Course, I can’t show my disappointment. The cams are rolling, which means my face is frozen into an expression of intent seriousness. The rental van trundles us to our devious destination. I sit in the middle of the back row, squished between Sequoia and Mermaid.

  I close my eyes and remind myself to think of them by the new henchman handles. Sequoia is Nitrogen, and Mermaid is Arsenic. It’d be just the perfect launch to my henchman career if I blurted out the nicknames I made up for them during tryouts.

  A streetlight washes over us, glinting on the lab goggles pulled over our eyes and then the spikey hair of The Professor in the front row. When we pass the light, darkness descends again, halted only by the glowing LEDs in each of our bowties.

  I glance out the window. We’re approaching Iconic Square, home to the governor’s mansion. Traffic is light around us. A tourist bus rumbles past, only half filled. It’s been two weeks since Shadow’s attack, and our city and tourist revenue still haven’t recovered from the rampage.

  Shadow. Even the thought of that unhinged vil makes me shiver. He’s the whole reason I had to turn to this henchman gig in the first place. In fact, up in the distance, I can see the burnt wreckage of The Redemption Café, where I used to deliver bland syntho-chicken fingers and mushy, overpriced burgers to tourists. I push the image of Shadow’s glowing red eyes out of my mind.

  I need to focus on the mission and the part I’m supposed to play. Cue about a thousand butterflies in my stomach. Some lameitude K-Pop song hums over the van’s speakers. It’s obvi that The Professor didn’t pay the extra fee to either choose his own music or request silence. It’s also a little embarrassing that we’re rolling to our first mission in a rental van owned by the city. Our particular ride includes an image of Shine, the city’s most glam sidekick, on the front hawking toothpaste.

  Ironies of ironies.

  The rental van and the shrill K-pop are more reminders that our show is on the tightest of budgets. PAGS doesn’t mess around anymore. The media conglomerate gives you just enough funds to cobble together a few eps, and if the audiences don’t heart you, they’ll swipe your show out of existence. This is true even for the big comeback of The Professor, one of the town’s very first and most famous vils. These days, he’s got to prove himself and grab eyes, just like every other newbie sponsored vil or cape.

  That means we’ve got to go big today and pull off an iconic caper. We pass the huge statue of “The Hero” bathed in soft lights in the center of the square. The marble statue of a female hero embracing a small child looks suspiciously like Beacon.

  What if our town’s most popular cape shows up today and tries to stop us? Even without all the expensive mods in her suit, her combat skills are legendary. Also, she has a particular bone to pick with us, considering that we have something that belongs to her.

  Why does my fitted lab coat suddenly feel so tight?

  The van rolls into a dark alley a block away from the mayor’s mansion. The City Council conveniently overlooks the need to add adequate lighting to alleys throughout Iconic Square and the rest of Biggie LC. />
  Mermaid heaves open the door and pops out into the night, her body fluid as water. Leo had a cam drone clamped to the roof of the van to record our trip. It whirs softly outside, drinking in our gallant exits. I begin to squirm my way over the seat toward the door, but Gold beats me to it from the front row. He flashes me a devious smile as his shoulder bumps me back. He jumps out in a crouch and looks around before quickly scuttling against the wall next to Mermaid.

  That lens-grabbing bastard. Gold is all charm and betrayal wrapped up with a toothy grin. He’s got more than enough cunning and grit to be dangerous. We’re supposed to be a team, but no one wants to end up on the cutting room floor when Leo’s done polishing this latest ep. FITG – Fame Is the Game, at least here in Biggie LC.

  Biting my cheek, I finally make my way out of the van. The lasso on my hip snags on one of the seatbelt nubs, and I have to yank it loose as I stumble into the night.

  Great moment, Iron, I think to myself, using my new henchman name.

  Iron. It’s a lot more glam than my real name, Alice, but I’m not sure why The Professor picked it for me. Iron is heavy and bland. It bludgeons. Is that the way he thinks of me?

  If anyone has an aptitude for bludgeoning, it should be the final henchman on our squad. I’m a little soothed to see that Sequoia also manages to blow his van exit. Course, he has an excuse. It’s not exactly easy to leap from a small van when you’re roughly the size of a moose. The ripped sleeves of his lab coat and glowing red bowtie make him look particularly menacing. If only he didn’t give me a sheepish smile as he shoves himself through the seats and lands on the sidewalk. That little expression is a dead giveaway that under all those hard muscles he’s a huge softy.

  He’s really got to learn how to control his face. “Mind your face!” Tickles the Elf says that all the time on his blog, The Henchman’s Survival Guide.

  Sure, 90% of what we do won’t make it in the ep, but you never know which frame or reaction Leo will use. Also, the more good footage we give him, the more ep time we’ll snag. This gig isn’t a stepping stone toward future greatness for me; it’s a paycheck, but I still need to stay relevant enough so Leo doesn’t get any ideas about killing off my character in some heart-wrenching plot to gush The Professor’s ratings.

  Speaking of the boss, now that all the henchmen are out of the van, he makes his grand exit.

  The Professor is a sight to behold. His bowtie swirls in shifting colors, and the ragged edges of his burned lap coat flap against his thin frame. He wobbles unsteadily, playing heavily on his “bum” leg. And then he’s out of the van, leaning against his cane, looking around.

  This is not The Professor of the old days. Sure, his frizzy silver hair is the same, and his deep laugh is iconic as ever, but the kookiness is gone. He’s gotten a gritty makeover, complete with a tattered lab coat and the injured leg. Even his voice has taken on some gristle as he whispers to us.

  “Elements, you know the plan. Do not let me down. Wisenberg is an ally of Beacon’s and all the other heroes in this town. I want him in my beaker.”

  Beaker is a nickname for his lair.

  I nod stoically. Gold steps forward. “We won’t let you down, Professor,” he says, his voice about three octaves lower than usual. Typical lens grabber move.

  The five of us turn, and Mermaid leads the way as we slink down the alleyway onto a small backroad that will take us right to the mayor’s mansion. I unlatch the lasso from the belt beneath my lab coat. The truth is that even after two weeks of practice with my signature weap, I’m still barely functional with it. I’d begged Leo to let me use something different – a stun laz gun like what Gold grips at his side would have been perfect – but Leo rebuffed me.

  It’s my own fault. I’d sloppily used a lasso in my big iconic move to join the Professor’s henchman squad two weeks ago, and now Leo claims that viewers associate me with the weap.

  When we reach the mayor’s house, a city cam drone spots us. It pulls out of its lazy auto circuit and zooms down for a closer look. I almost feel like gulping. Whatever low-paid city employee is currently humaning the bank of cams operated by the City Council will immediately know what’s going down, and will place a call.

  If this were a normal town, that call would go to the police department. Not in Big Little City. Instead, the watcher will tip off some hero who needs a ratings boost. We’ve probably got 20 mins at the most to get this caper done.

  “Nitrogen, do your magic,” Mermaid says.

  “It’s not magic, it’s science,” Sequoia hisses back. I can see the tension of his shoulders, but his hands are sure as he pulls a variety of small vials from the intricate belt he wears. Opening up a collapsible dish, he begins to pour. All of this – the belt and the vials – was Sequoia’s idea, and Leo was smart enough to recognize the genus of it. Sequoia may look like a brute on the outside, but he’s the smartest among us. Positioning him as the group nerd was the perfect complement to his real-life personality and it goes against the grain of expectations.

  “Hurry,” Gold hisses. He makes a show of glancing around nervously. Good idea. I’ve been watching Sequoia quickly stir his solution. That’s not going to get me lens time. I start looking around too, and I swing my lasso loosely back and forth as if I’m ready for a fight

  “K,” Sequoia sighs under his breath. He moves forward to apply the solution to the door, but Mermaid deftly grabs the dish from him and splashes its contents across the scan pad.

  “Hey!” Sequoia hisses. It was his job to get through the door. His solution quickly burns through the security pad. Sequoia makes to push the door open, but Mermaid slams through with a massive kick.

  The kick looked good. There’s no way Leo won’t put that in the ep. I’m half-disgusted, half-jealous with Mermaid’s superior fame instincts. She takes off inside the house. Gold shoves past Sequoia to follow her.

  Those two aren’t following the plan. Well, they are following a plan, it’s just not the one The Professor laid out for us with guidance from Leo.

  “Lens grabbers,” I hiss at Sequoia and shrug. Gold and Mermaid want to play that game? Then we’re going to have to play it too. Sequoia takes off inside the house, and I follow. My cheapo goggles only provide basic night vision, heat sensory, and low-grade computational abilities.

  Not that I need any of that. Mermaid and Gold already triggered the motion sensors and lights kick on as they move. I run down a plushly carpeted hallway filled with portraits of previous mayors. There’s Luna Renaldo, the very first mayor of Biggie LC after the PAGS turned this place into the very first semi-reality town. I heard that she was forced into retirement after a serious back injury led to a little too much dependence on Mellows. Being the mayor has its perks, but it also means you live with a huge bullseye on your chest.

  By the time I make it to the mayor’s bedroom door, Gold and Mermaid have already taken out the two robo guards. I have to admit I’m a little relieved. My fighting skills are decent, but I’m about 50/50 on successfully lassoing Sequoia, even when he stands completely still 10 yards away from me.

  Gold shoulders through the mayor’s bedroom door.

  I am 100% sure that Grimbal Wisenberg knows that we are here. He’s got cams all over this place, and the fighting outside couldn’t have been quiet. However, he turns in a perfect performance of surprise, shooting up from his bed, revealing a stylish pair of silken pajamas.

  “What…what is the meaning of this?” he squawks. I can’t help but notice that his jet black hair is perfectly combed and oiled.

  “My hypothesis is that your capture is eminent,” The Professor says behind us. We henchmen peel away to let him step forward, though I notice Gold only takes half a step back, so that he’s almost shoulder-to-shoulder with our villain. That’s guaranteed to get him in this shot.

  “The Professor!” Wisenberg gasps dramatically. “Where are my guards? GUARDS!”

  “You will find that they are otherwise occupied,” The Professor says. He
nods toward Sequoia, who takes a step forward. He holds a newly concocted vial in his hand. I move in behind swinging my lasso lightly. I hope my expression is menacing. I also dearly hope Sequoia’s formula works to knock out the mayor entirely, so I can just tie the rope around him instead of trying to lasso him.

  “I would like to formally extend an invitation to come tour my lab,” The Professor says. His voice is deep and liquid, every word perfectly articulated for the cams. He is in his element, and though I know he feels this caper is beneath him, he’s playing it with all his gusto.

  “No. Never! You won’t get away with this,” Wisenberg cries. He stands up now and puffs out his chest. “I’m not afraid of you!”

  “I’m afraid the lab tour is mandatory as is participation in my experiments,” The Professor says. He gives Sequoia another nod. The big henchman takes one step toward the bed when the bedroom door splinters open.

  We all spin around, and I have to force my mouth closed. It’s too early for capes to arrive from the City Council tip. We’ve still got a good ten minutes even in the worst case scenario.

  But tell that to the three muscled figures standing in the doorway, each wrapped in glinting carbon fiber suits. The twisted, toothy masks on their faces and sharp spikes jutting from the sleeves of their suits are even scarier in person than on the eps my roommate endlessly swoons over.

  “Mayor Wisenberg, might we be of a little assistance?” says Argon, leader of the Dragon Riders.

  The Professor is flummoxed for just a sec and then recovers. There’s only ever one play when capes show up. For the first time, I’m in sync with my fellow henchmen as we all turn to face our adversaries. My hands are so sweaty, I worry my pitiful lasso is going to spill on the floor.

  “Get em!” The Professor growls.

  And then, on my first henchman mission, all hell breaks loose.