Chapter 8 Page 56
Posted March 15, 2024 at 03:32 am

This is, what, like Davy's third Yakuza nameplate intro? That's so him. Thanks for reading! All hail Razor Rex! Support Paranatural on Patreon!

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[Transcript]

        The marble of Mayview Academy’s floors was as cold, dark, and polished treacherously slick as black ice. A thrumming pulse of muffled music drifted through the empty excess of its foyer, welcoming the echo of Cody’s approaching footsteps as percussion... a slow drumroll for his imminent arrival.

        Down the Academy’s halls he walked, goldfish in hand. Down the throat before the belly of the beast. Past black candles burning blue in taloned sconces. Past suits of armor made of gold, then gilded with still more gold. Past tapestries embroidered with evil-sounding Latin slogans. Past glass cases filled with first place trophies and the bones of former students.

        With a creak of a caliber not often heard outside the bounds of Transylvania, a set of double doors swung slowly open. Here, inside the building’s largest ballroom, at the party’s pitch-black heart, fresh horrors awaited our antiheroes, a frightful feast for every single sense...

        Hijack squinted, blinded by the bright light bouncing off a slowly spinning disco ball. A swanky baritone boosted by a state-of-the-art sound system struck the next blow; its bass shook its way through Hijack’s water, rattling him back against the plastic of his bag.

        Davy Jones was singing karaoke.

“Yes, there were times...
I'm SURE you KNEW...
when I BIT OFF
MORE than I could CHEW...”

        In the crowd around the stage where Davy stood, the thralls of the PTA’s president swayed arm-in-arm with their masked Death Cult brethren. Suddenly, a second voice joined the duet—though it warbled as if wheezing out a third beneath its wail:

“BUT THROUGH IT ALLLLLLL,
WHEN THERE WAS DOUBT!!
I ATE IT UP! AND SPIT IT OUTTTT...”

        The Hijacks blinked, dumbfounded. A figure they’d taken for a crowd-surfing cultist had rolled back onto the stage in a billowing cloud of black fabric, like dust from the demolition of a diabolic wizard tower. In one hand, the thirteen-foot-tall creature held a scythe large and sharp enough to thresh victims much thicker than wheat; in the other, it held a microphone, which it had raised up to its slack-jawed canine snout.

        Razor Rex and Davy joined hook-in-hand, then joined in chorus for the ballad’s grand finale:

“I FACED IT ALLL!
AND I STOOD TALL...
And DID IT... MYYYYYYY WAYYY!!”

        The fanged and faithful in the audience clapped and cheered, some hugging each other or wiping tears from the empty sockets of their masks.

        “Thank you! THANK you!” Davy crooned. “There’s no Sinatra without his Rat Pack—and I couldn’t ask for a better sea of teeming vermin than YOU lot!” He winked down at his thralls, who screeched with delight at frequencies best used for tracking insects in the dark. “Let’s give it up for the PTA’s very own shadow secretary—the GODDESS OF DEATH, folks! Did she KILL IT or WHAT?!”

        “YES,” screeched Razor Rex in both her voices, basking in the zealous crowd’s applause. “VERY GOOD. I AM HERE ALL NIGHT.” She threw her long arms wide, which trailed a stream of bright white spectral energy. “SINCE NIGHT IS ALL THAT THERE’S GOING TO BE. FROM NOW UNTIL FOREVERRR!!!”

        Several cultists collapsed amidst the subsequent ovation, laid low by fits of pure religious ecstasy.

        “Ha ha, that’s right, that’s right,” Cody’s father chuckled. “But there’s still plenty of time before our little ritual, so if I could call the band back up on stage—”

        “THERE WILL BE A KINECT SPORTS TOURNAMENT,” Razor Rex interrupted, leaning down to steal Davy’s mic despite having her own. “IN MY CORNER OF THE BALLROOM. WE HAVE A PROJECTOR SET UP AND EVERYTHING.”

        Hijack shuddered at the depths of villainy he was witnessing, his mind momentarily reunified by mutual hatred. His goldfish fin curled tight into a fist.

        “EVERYONE IS WELCOME,” Razor Rex shrieked, raising her scythe. “WELCOME TO LOSE!” She rattled with laughter as her weapon erupted in blue flame. “TO LOSE THEIR LIVES!! KYA-HA HA HA! IF THEY BEAT ME AT KINECT SPORTS! OH-HO HO HO!”

        Razor Rex’s scythe cleared a path through her cultists as she drifted offstage, cackling and swinging her burning blade in reckless circles.

        “What a doll,” Davy said, perfectly straddling sarcasm and sincerity for both halves of his audience. Then he snapped his fingers, spurred the vampiric band at his back into motion, and launched into a subtly bisexual rendition of ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man”:

“THEY COME RUNNIN’ JUST AS FAST AS THEY CANNN...
’CAUSE EVERYONE’S CRAZY ’BOUT A SHARP-DRESSED MAN!!”

        The Hijacks looked to Cody for a port amidst the storm. The boy’s blithe smile seemed more strained than ever; RB instantly understood, he felt, the sheer weight of his burdens. Before his incredibly embarrassing father could notice him, the younger Jones took a turn as sharp as Pac-Man and marched away along the wall, vanishing into the horde of mingling monsters.