Shop Steward of the Damned

• Chapter 1 Bone-Dry Onboarding
• Chapter 2 The Lava Pit Hazard
• Chapter 3 Teeth, Claws, and Co-Pays
• Chapter 4 Grievance in Section 4B
• Chapter 5 The Minion Strike Notice
• Chapter 6 Overtime in the Torture Chamber
• Chapter 7 Hazard Pay for Doom Laser Duty
• Chapter 8 Running a Skeleton Crew
• Chapter 9 Coffee Breaks and Calamity
• Chapter 10 Inspection in the Abyss
• Chapter 11 The Ergonomics of Evil
• Chapter 12 Dental Coverage for the Undead
• Chapter 13 Bargaining at the Magma Line
• Chapter 14 The Doomsday Clock In
• Chapter 15 Collective Retaliation
• Chapter 16 Asbestos in the Secret Passages
• Chapter 17 The Doomsday Demands
• Chapter 18 Sick Leave for Henchmen
• Chapter 19 Unfair Labor Monsters
• Chapter 20 Volcano Arbitration
• Chapter 21 Picket Lines on the Drawbridge
• Chapter 22 The Mastermind's Counteroffer
• Chapter 23 Cracks in the Infrastructure
• Chapter 24 The Union Boss Battle
• Chapter 25 Ratification in the Rubble
• Chapter 26 Benefits of the Damned

The subterranean humidity of Mount Doom-Gallow had a way of rusting steel girders, warping plywood clipboards, and turning standard-issue cotton jumpsuits into dripping rags within forty-eight hours of employment. For Arthur Pendelton, the humidity was largely a non-issue. Having shuffled off his mortal coil during a steelworkers' strike in the late 1970s, Arthur was entirely composed of bleached calcium, cartilage remnants, and an unyielding commitment to the collective bargaining agreement. Heat did not make him sweat, nor did sulfur make him cough. The only thing that made Arthur’s jaw rattle with irritation was a clear violation of labor standards.

He stood in the back of Subterranean Orientation Bunker B-12, his metacarpals tapping a rhythmic, bone-dry click against his battered metal clipboard.

Before him sat forty-five prospective henchmen, mercenaries, and junior technicians, all squirming on folding metal chairs that had clearly been retrieved from a flooded scrap heap. Up at the front of the fluorescent-lit room, standing beside an old overhead projector that whined like a dying jet engine, was Mr. Fitch. Fitch was a middle-management bureaucrat in a sweat-stained khaki suit who served as the Director of Human Resources for Malakor Evil Enterprises, LLC.

"Welcome, initiates," Fitch drawled, pointing a laser pointer at a hand-drawn slide projected onto the damp concrete wall. The slide depicted a crude illustration of a smiling man in a black jumpsuit being showered with golden coins. Above the drawing, in bold red marker, were the words: Your New Life as a Minion of Darkness! "You have been selected from thousands of desperate applicants to serve Lord Malakor, the Sovereign of Scorn, Master of the Obsidian Citadel, and CEO of Malakor Global. You are the frontline of evil. You are the boots on the lava ground."

A nervous hush fell over the room. A young man in the front row, wearing a tactical vest three sizes too big, raised his hand. "Excuse me, sir? Is there dental?"

Fitch let out a dry, barking laugh that ended in a wheeze. "Dental? Son, if a superhero breaks into the fortress and kicks your teeth down your throat, you wipe the blood off your chin and pick up a bazooka. Next question."

Arthur adjusted his wire-rimmed spectacles, which rested precarious on the bridge of his missing nose, and took three slow steps down the center aisle. His femur bones creaked like old floorboards.

"Hold on just a minute, Fitch," Arthur said. His voice didn't come from vocal cords; it echoed directly from the hollow interior of his ribcage, carrying the dry, dusty resonance of a forgotten archive. "Page four, paragraph three of the Master Employment Agreement clearly states that all full-time minion staff are entitled to basic preventive medical and oral care after thirty days of continuous service. Don't go lying to the fresh meat before they've even signed their non-disclosure agreements."

Fitch’s eyes narrowed as he spotted the skeleton. He pinched the bridge of his nose, letting out a long, exhausted sigh. "Arthur. I should have known you’d be skulking around onboarding. Don't you have a grievance file to sort out in the toxic waste processing plant?"

"That was handled at nine-thirty this morning," Arthur said, reaching the front of the room and turning to face the class. He tapped his clipboard with a ballpoint pen. "Good morning, everyone. My name is Arthur Pendelton. I am your elected Shop Steward for Local 666 of the International Brotherhood of Minions, Henchmen, and Subterranean Workers. If you look inside the yellow folder sitting on the floor beside your chairs, you will find your union authorization card alongside a copy of our current collective bargaining unit summary."

The recruits blinked. A large, muscular man covered in skull tattoos looked down at his yellow folder, then up at Arthur, then back to the folder. "Wait," the man grunted. "We have a union?"

"You do," Arthur said firmly. "And despite what Mr. Fitch here is about to tell you during this mandatory orientation session, you are not legally required to sign away your right to a thirty-minute meal break, nor are you required to sign a blanket liability waiver covering 'accidental death by magma, laser-grid dismemberment, or unprovoked disciplinary disintegration.'"

Fitch slammed his hand on the podium, rattling the overhead projector. "Pendelton, you are interfering with an official corporate onboarding process! Lord Malakor demands a fully executed stack of liability waivers from every single recruit before they are issued their sidearms and standard-issue black hoods!"

"Lord Malakor can demand whatever he likes," Arthur replied calmly, turning a page on his clipboard. "But as long as Mount Doom-Gallow operates under the Jurisdiction of Inter-Lair Employment Regulations, his demands are subject to the labor laws established in the 1984 Dark Fortress Accord. Now, Fitch, turn off that projector and let’s go through the paperwork properly. I won't have another batch of fresh hires signing away their right to steel-toed boots because you tricked them with a pizza party."

A murmur went through the room. The recruits began picking up the yellow folders.

Fitch glared at Arthur with a mixture of hatred and profound weariness. "It wasn't even real pizza, Arthur. It was cafeteria-grade tomb-bread with imitation mozzarella."

"Which is a violation of the catered orientation clause," Arthur noted, writing a quick entry on his sheet. "I'll be filing an informational request regarding the dietary specs for today's lunch."

Arthur stepped up to the edge of the stage, resting one hand on his pelvis bone and gesturing to the room with his pen. "Alright, listen up. Onboarding is where management gets you. They throw a lot of big words at you—'synergy,' 'dominance,' 'unforgiving loyalty'—and while you're busy worrying about whether Lord Malakor is going to feed you to his pit-beasts, they snip away your rights one clause at a time. Today, we're going to make sure your bones stay inside your body, or at the very least, that your next of kin receives a proper burial payout if they don't."

A kid near the back raised his hand. "What if we don't have next of kin?"

"Then you designate a beneficiary," Arthur said. "It can be a friend, a spouse, or a stray dog. But Malakor Global doesn't get to keep your unpaid wages. That's Rule Number One."

Arthur walked down the aisle, his skeletal frame casting a long, strange shadow under the dim bunker lighting. He stopped beside a young woman who was holding a sixteen-page contract titled Standard Minion Indemnification & Absolute Submission Agreement.

"Let me guess," Arthur said, pointing his pen at the document. "Fitch told you to flip to page sixteen and initial beside the red X?"

"He said if we read the whole thing, we'd miss our shift assignments and be demoted to the guano caves," she whispered, her hands shaking slightly.

"Classic management tactic," Arthur said dryly. "Creating artificial urgency to bypass legal review. Look at paragraph seven, right here." He tapped a microscopic line of text at the bottom of page nine. "'Employee agrees that in the event of an attack by a licensed superhero, superhero team, or vigilante group, the Employee shall act as a human barrier to cover the retreat of Executive Leadership, without expectation of body armor or hazard pay.'"

The woman’s eyes went wide. "Is that legal?"

"It’s an unfair labor practice," Arthur said. "It was struck down in arbitration three years ago after the Dread Captain Carnage tried to use his entire third shift as a shield against the Paladin of Light. Management lost that suit, but they keep sneaking the language back into the new hire packets, hoping you won't notice."

He pulled a red rubber stamp from his coat pocket, breathed on it—a purely nostalgic habit, given his lack of lungs—and slammed it onto her contract. The bright red ink spelled out: EXCEPTED BY UNION AGREEMENT LOCAL 666.

"There," Arthur said. "Now if a guy in a cape breaks into the lair, your only obligation under the contract is to shout an alarm and proceed to the nearest marked emergency exit in an orderly fashion. You are under no obligation to engage in hand-to-hand combat unless you have completed the Level Two Tactical Defense Training, which, I might add, management currently refuses to fund."

Fitch crossed his arms, leaning against the projector screen. "If you make them all stamp their contracts, Pendelton, the Master is going to hear about this."

"I welcome the meeting," Arthur said. "The Master hasn't attended a safety committee briefing since the Third Era of Darkness. His absence is currently recorded on sixteen separate compliance forms."

Arthur moved to the next row of desks, handing out official union pens. They were cheap plastic ballpoints with the Local 666 logo stamped on the side, but they worked.

"Now," Arthur continued, raising his dry, cracked voice so it carried across the concrete bunker. "We need to talk about the physical environment of this facility. Mount Doom-Gallow is an active stratovolcano. It generates a tremendous amount of geothermal power, but it also generates toxic fumes, extreme ambient temperatures, and structural instability. During your first week, you will be assigned to various sectors—the Gunnery Deck, the Dungeon Sector, the Superweapon Assembly Line, or the Supply Depot."

He stopped and looked around the room, making eye contact with every wide-eyed recruit.

"When you arrive at your workstation," Arthur said, "the first thing you look for is not the red button that fires the doom cannon. The first thing you look for is the eyewash station. If there isn't an eyewash station within ten meters of a corrosive chemical storage area, you do not touch the chemicals. You pull out your phone, you take a photo of the non-compliant workstation, and you bring it straight to my office in Sub-Basement Four."

"What if our supervisor tells us to handle the chemicals anyway?" asked a goblin recruit sitting near the middle.

"Then you ask for the order in writing," Arthur replied, a hint of satisfaction creeping into his dry tone. "Nothing makes a middle-manager drop a hazardous work request faster than asking them to put their signature on it. Fitch knows what I'm talking about, don't you, Fitch?"

Fitch grunted, looking away and pretending to examine his thumbnail. "The operational efficiency of this lair is being strangled by paperwork, Pendelton."

"Efficiency without safety is just high-turnover slaughter, Fitch," Arthur retorted smoothly. "And high turnover costs money. It costs time. Do you know how much it costs to train a new death-ray operator after the last one dissolved in an ungrounded electrical surge? Far more than it costs to install a five-dollar rubber safety mat."

Arthur turned back to the class, holding up a small, neon-orange booklet.

"This is your Rights and Responsibilities Handbook. It covers everything from standard shift lengths to emergency evacuation protocols. I expect every one of you to read it before your shift starts tomorrow morning. If management tries to force you to work more than twelve consecutive hours without a hot meal break, you come to me. If they tell you to go down into the magma sub-levels without an air filtration respirator, you come to me."

He paused, leaning heavily on his clipboard, his dark, empty eye sockets sweeping across the nervous faces of the new hires.

"Lord Malakor may own the fortress," Arthur said softly, every word distinct in the quiet room. "He may own the doom laser, he may own the mountain, and he may claim to own the future of the world. But he does not own your labor, and he certainly does not own your safety. You work together, you stay safe, and you stick to the contract."

A quiet beat passed in the bunker. Then, slowly, the recruit in the oversized tactical vest picked up his pen, filled out the union authorization card inside his folder, and dropped it into the collection box Arthur held out. One by one, the rest of the class followed suit, the scratching of pens filling the humid air.

Fitch shook his head, slumping down into a folding chair by the projector. "You're killing me, Arthur. You're absolutely killing me."

"I'm keeping them alive, Fitch," Arthur said, taking the stack of signed union cards and tapping them against his hand to align the edges. "Which means you'll actually have a workforce left to run the lair by Friday."

Arthur tucked the cards neatly into his leather satchel, nodded once to the room of newly minted union members, and turned toward the heavy iron exit door. The first step of onboarding was complete. The recruits were documented, organized, and informed. But as the distant thud of heavy machinery echoed through the volcanic stone beneath his boots, Arthur knew this was merely the opening salvo. The real work was waiting deeper down in the heat.

Sub-level Three of Mount Doom-Gallow was known among the rank-and-file as the Crucible, though on official blueprints it was blandly labeled Geothermal Thermal Exchange & Slag Processing. It was a cavernous, subterranean vault where the heat didn't just warm the air—it saturated it, turning every breath into a lung-searing gulp of vaporized sulfur and heavy metals. Rivers of liquid basalt glowed with a sickening, orange-yellow luminescence, roaring down artificial sluiceways toward the main heat pumps that powered Lord Malakor’s superweapon grid. Over top of these roaring rivers suspended narrow, rusted iron catwalks, completely devoid of handrails, toe-boards, or harness anchorage points.

Arthur Pendelton’s leather soles clicked dryly against the heat-warped grating of Catwalk Delta. The steel beneath his boots was hot enough to scorch leather, but Arthur’s calcified feet felt nothing beyond a mild vibration. He adjusted his wire-rimmed spectacles, which were coated in a fine layer of soot, and pulled out his favorite tool: an industrial-grade telescoping measuring tape.

"Three feet, two inches," Arthur muttered to himself, extendable metal tape snapping back into its casing with a sharp clack. He scribbled a note on his clipboard. "Distance between open flame channel and primary foot traffic corridor: zero point eight meters. Clear violation of Sub-Section 12 of the Subterranean Safety Standard."

Down on the main platform, a team of six line-workers, clad in flame-retardant suits that looked suspiciously like repurposed canvas grain sacks, were attempting to clear a slag blockage from Sluice-Gate 9. They were using iron crowbars to pry loose a glowing boulder of cooled magma while standing on a ledge no wider than a standard office desk. A single slip meant a two-hundred-foot dive into a bath of twenty-two-hundred-degree melted granite.

Standing over them on an elevated gantry was Shift Supervisor Vane. Vane was a burly, iron-jawed man wearing a spiked leather harness and a custom-fitted respirator that made him sound like an asthmatic forge bellows. He held a heavy shock-whip, occasionally popping the tip against the steel railing to keep the men moving.

"Pry harder, you worthless maggots!" Vane bellowed, his voice echoing off the basalt walls. "The Master’s orbital reflector array needs maximum geothermal yield by sixteen-hundred hours! If that gate isn't cleared in ten minutes, I'll start tossing you into the channel to raise the fluid level!"

"Supervisor Vane!" Arthur’s voice cut through the thundering roar of the lava river like a rusty file across iron.

Vane whipped his head around, his scowl deepening behind his respirator mask as he saw the tall, slender skeleton shuffling down the catwalk toward him. "Pendelton. What in the Nine Hells are you doing down here? This is an active production zone. Non-essential personnel are restricted to the upper galleries."

"I am hardly non-essential, Vane," Arthur said, reaching the gantry and patting his leather satchel. "I am conducting a mandatory Class-A safety audit following three separate anonymously filed hazard reports regarding the structural integrity of Catwalk Delta and the total absence of fall-arrest systems in Sector Seven."

Vane let out a deep, chest-rattling laugh, pointing his shock-whip at Arthur’s ribcage. "Fall protection? This is a evil lair, Arthur! We deal in terror, doom, and global subjugation! We don't spend capital on padded walls and baby gates! If a worker falls into the pit, it's because they lacked the agility required to serve the Sovereign of Scorn."

"It's because you failed to install standard forty-two-inch guardrails with mid-rails and toe-boards, as mandated by the 1998 Industrial Lair Safety Code," Arthur countered smoothly. He didn't blink—mostly because he lacked eyelids—as he stepped right up to the glowing tip of Vane's shock-whip. "And furthermore, threaten to throw workers into the magma channel is a direct violation of Article 4, Section B: Protection Against Arbitrary Disciplinary Defenestration."

Down on the ledge, one of the slag-clearing workers—a young guy named Jenkins, who had signed his union card just yesterday in Bunker B-12—looked up from his crowbar. "Yeah! Article 4, Section B! You tell him, Artie!"

"Shut up and keep prying, Jenkins!" Vane roared, snapping the whip near the edge of the ledge.

The loud crack of the energy whip startled another worker, a heavy-set goblin named Gort, who lost his footing on the slick, oil-stained iron. Gort dropped his crowbar, his arms flailing wildly as his feet slipped out from under him. He tipped backward, hovering over the open lava channel.

"Gort!" Jenkins yelled, reaching out, but he was too far away to grab him.

Before Gort could plunge into the molten death below, Arthur moved with a speed that belied his ancient, skeletal frame. He swung his metal clipboard around, catching the back of Gort’s canvas collar with the sturdy aluminum hook at the top. The joints in Arthur’s arm popped with a dry crack-crack, but his calcium structure held firm under the weight. With a sharp tug, Arthur hoisted the trembling goblin back onto the solid platform.

Gort sprawled out on the hot metal, gasping for breath, his eyes wild with terror. "I... I almost went in. I almost melted."

"Take five, Gort," Arthur said gently, reaching into his coat pocket and slipping the goblin a small stick of chalky mints. "Go sit by the cooling intake. You're suffering from heat fatigue and shock."

"He doesn't take five until that gate is clear!" Vane yelled, stepping down off the gantry, his boots heavy on the iron plates. "Get back on that bar, Gort, or I'll cut your daily ration in half!"

Arthur stepped directly between Vane and the terrified goblin. He reached into his satchel, pulled out a thick red folder, and slapped it against his palm.

"Under Clause 14-C of the National Labor Relations for Henchmen and Minions Act, I am issuing an immediate Stop-Work Order on Catwalk Delta," Arthur announced, his dry voice ringing with absolute, legal authority.

The entire work crew froze. The thundering splash of the lava rivers seemed to dim under the weight of the words. Vane’s face turned a violent shade of purple above his respirator.

"A Stop-Work Order?" Vane sneered. "You can't issue a Stop-Work Order! Lord Malakor himself ordered this sluice opened by four o'clock! Do you have any idea what he will do to me if the doom laser suffers a power drop during the preview demonstration for the Syndicate of Evil?"

"He'll probably demote you to the scullery," Arthur said without a trace of sympathy. "Which, frankly, would be a blessing for the safety rating of this sector. But as it stands, this catwalk presents an Imminent Danger to life and limb. There are no tie-off points for safety lanyards. The steel grating has degraded due to sulfur corrosion by more than thirty percent. And your workers have been on shift for nine consecutive hours without an thermal recovery break in a zone where the ambient temperature exceeds one hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheit."

Vane raised his shock-whip, his knuckles turning white. "Out of my way, skeleton. Or I'll see how well your ribs hold up against ten thousand volts."

Arthur didn't flinch. He didn't even draw back. He simply pointed his pen at the supervisor's chest. "Strike me with that whip, Vane, and you're not just dealing with a labor grievance. You'll be in personal violation of an active union representative performing official duties. That carries an automatic freeze on your operational budget, an immediate audit of your personal expenses, and I will personally file a injunction with the Regional Labor Board that will lock down every airlock in this mountain until a federal magistrate arrives."

Vane paused. The tip of the whip hummed violently, casting blue light across Arthur’s polished skull, but the supervisor didn't swing. He knew Arthur wasn't bluffing. Two years ago, Arthur had locked down the Torture Chamber for three weeks over an uncalibrated thumb-screw device, costing management millions in lost intimidation revenue.

"You're insane, Pendelton," Vane spat through his respirator. "This isn't a factory in Cleveland. This is a lair of doom!"

"A lair of doom that operates within a structured corporate hierarchy," Arthur corrected. "Now, clear these men off the catwalk. They are taking an immediate thirty-minute break in the air-conditioned breakroom on Level Two."

"Level Two breakroom is for managerial staff only!" Vane barked.

"It is currently designated as the primary heat-relief shelter for Sector Seven because you converted the actual heat-relief shelter into an illegal tactical archery range," Arthur countered, pulling a folded blue sheet from his file. "Here is the temporary space assignment order signed by Fitch. Deny them entry, and it's fifty dollars per worker, per hour, in penalty pay."

Jenkins looked at the other workers, then threw his crowbar down on the grating with a satisfying clatter. "You heard the Shop Steward. Tools down!"

One by one, the rest of the crew dropped their gear. The metal rods and wrenches clattered against the iron flooring. They lined up behind Arthur, their canvas suits dripping with sweat, but their eyes shining with a rare spark of triumph.

Vane looked at the idle tools, then at the frozen sluice-gate, and finally at Arthur. "Malakor will hear about this, Pendelton. He’ll flay the flesh right off your bones!"

"He's about thirty years too late for that," Arthur said, tipping his frayed hat. "Come on, boys. Let's get some ice water into you."

Arthur led the crew off the dangerous gantry, guiding them up the narrow stairs away from the suffocating heat of the lava pits. As they walked toward the heavy steel airlock that led to the upper levels, Jenkins walked alongside Arthur, his hands still trembling slightly from the near-miss on the catwalk.

"Thanks, Mr. Pendelton," Jenkins said, wiping soot from his eyes. "Gort would've been a goner if you hadn't caught him."

"It's just Arthur, son," the skeleton replied, adjusting his clipboard. "And don't thank me. Thank the collective bargaining agreement. Without it, I’d just be a guy screaming at a boss. With it, I'm a structural roadblock."

"Do you really think they'll install guardrails?" Gort asked, clutching his box of mints.

"They will, or the magma pumps won't start back up," Arthur said flatly. "Management likes to act like they hold all the cards because they have death rays and pit monsters. But a death ray doesn't fire itself, Gort. It needs someone to pull the lever. And if the guy pulling the lever slips into an open pit because nobody spent forty bucks on a safety rail, the whole show comes to a screeching halt."

They reached the airlock, the heavy iron doors sliding open with a hiss of cool, filtered air. The workers gasped as the refreshing draft hit their faces, stepping through into the clean light of the upper corridors.

Arthur stayed behind in the threshold for a moment, looking back down into the dark, orange-lit expanse of the lava pit. Down below, Vane was furiously kicking a discarded wrench into the magma, his muffled curses lost beneath the roar of the subterranean furnace.

Arthur pulled a red tag out of his coat pocket—a heavy-duty plastic tag that read: DANGER - CONDEMNED EQUIPMENT - DO NOT OPERATE. He looped it through the latch of the main control lever for Sluice-Gate 9 and pulled the zip-tie tight.

"Safety first, Vane," Arthur whispered to the empty air. "Always safety first."

He stepped through the airlock, the heavy doors sealing shut behind him with a deep, resonant thud, leaving the heat and fire behind for the moment, and securing another small, bone-dry victory for the damned.